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And what if the polices were wrong? I have looked at the data and came to the conclusion that the danger from covid is tiny (to see how low - check qatar - prob

And what if the polices were wrong? I have looked at the data and came to the conclusion that the danger from covid is tiny (to see how low - check qatar - probably the country with most extensive testing) and preventing is totally not worth it the sacrifices and damage to society. Qatar has 44000 cases per 1m pop and 69 deaths per 1m. That is not much higher than flu.

oarsinsync 6y ago
What else is Qatar doing? What does Qatar do to a person who is confirmed infected? Does the same action occur to someone with the flu? What is Qatar asking it's population to do differently today, compared to this time a year ago? Does that have any meaningful impact on transmission rates?
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place. I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.
  - komali2 6y ago
    You deny the fact that at least 172,000 Americans have died from covid?
    - ReptileMan 6y ago
      No. Is that much for a nation of 333 000 000? People die all the time. Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities.
      - cmrx64 6y ago
        how is it that almost 6 months have passed and this same syllogism gets trotted out repeatedly? this is 1. factually incorrect, 2. morally reprehensible. everyone dies eventually and gets sick with something else someday. let’s just front load all the death into 2020 and get it done with forever, eh?
      - komali2 6y ago
        > Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities When the actions to prevent these people from dying, uh "just earlier than they would have," are as simple as wearing a mask and social distancing, it is unethical to not do so.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I think it's pretty misleading to characterize "no going to the gym, ever, until further notice" as a simple action.
        komali2 6y ago
        Why? It's a pandemic. If anything we're lucky it wasn't more deadly than it is. I'm not gaining muscle mass but I'm having absolutely no trouble whatsoever maintaining it at home with exercise bands and calisthenics. It's a tiny, tiny price to pay for helping keep my community safe. I would sacrifice the gym for the rest of my life if it meant adding even a year of life to a single person. Sentient existence is immeasurably more valuable.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I guess there's a values gap there I don't know how to bridge. I don't recognize the entire category of unbounded obligations to preserve life that you're suggesting.
      - rurp 6y ago
        > Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities. Why bother treating any sick person if this is your position? The healthcare system would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier if we just "frontloaded some death" for everyone who gets seriously ill.
    - dublin 6y ago
      Yes, emphatically. The statistics clearly show that deaths from flu and other infectious diseases and lung conditions have dropped to nearly zero over the past several months. This doesn't pass the most basic smell test: People didn't stop dying from those things simply because of a new virus. The only reasonable conclusion is that those deaths were misattributed to the Wuhan virus because of political, economic, or other pressures.
      - gowld 6y ago
        https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Total predicted number of excess deaths since 2/1/2020 across the United States: All causes: 174,930 - 235,728 All causes except COVID-19 : 29,416 - 78,932 > the Wuhan virus Propaganda pro-tip: If you want people to trust you, suppress the obvious tells.
      - didibus 6y ago
        What are you talking about, here's the link to the CDC flu data: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... It shows: 39,000,000 – 56,000,000 flu illnesses 18,000,000 – 26,000,000 flu medical visits 410,000 – 740,000 flu hospitalizations 24,000 – 62,000 flu deaths Which is actually kind of on the higher side for the flu season. They attribute that most likely on the increased testing happening this year due to people getting tested for Covid.
      - komali2 6y ago
        The evidence doesn't support your, uh, "thesis." Until you provide overwhelming evidence (because that's what you're up against), you're spreading misinformation. Seems to me like you're speaking from a feelings position, rather than a facts one.
  - oarsinsync 6y ago
    > > That is not much higher than flu. > It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place. The explicit comparison to the flu doesn't really seem to hold, since the conditions applied to the infected aren't equal. If those carrying the flu were subject to the same conditions as those carrying this covid-19, the comparison would hold up a lot better. > I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction. Mortality numbers as a % of tested peoples are hugely variable due to the differences in testing between nations. Mortality numbers as a % of the population (deaths per 100k/1m) make for good comparisons, and unless the nation is engaging in outright deception, those numbers are reasonable to use as a comparison. According to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality the USA has 52.52 deaths per 100k. In line with your previous, Qatar has 6.94 deaths per 100k. 10x more people have died in the USA vs in Qatar. What's going on?
    - ReptileMan 6y ago
      There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation. Look - my country no one bothers to observe measures and our system is far from overloaded. I think that a lot of influential l people threw too much social capital on stay at home and stuff like this and now they just can't handle the situation if covid is less dangerous than thought. I think we are in the sink cost fallacy.
      - oarsinsync 6y ago
        > There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation. There are 10x more deaths as a percentage of the population in the USA than in Qatar. The number of tests / positive cases is not relevant to that number.
esrauch 6y ago
The US is going to be something close to 1 death per 1k total population with the policies we have. It doesn't make logical sense to think the number could be orders of magnitudes lower in the US if we didn't close businesses.
didibus 6y ago
In the US, there's been 172k death in half a year for Covid. And if using the worst case data for flu season, it's 61k per year. So it's looking like for a full year, it'll be 344k death for Covid versus 61k death for the flu. That makes Covid 5.6 times more deadly than the flu. But, the Covid numbers here are from a complete lockdown, where people are social distancing, wearing masks, schools are closed, everyone is working from home if possible, etc. And even with those level of precautions, it is at best 5.6 times deadlier. That's why the estimate from the CDC is that Covid is 10 times deadlier than the flu. The other thing is, this only measures immediate death. But there are unknown long term risk. Other type of SARS virus are known to cause long term issues to people that recovered from it. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the case for Covid but it could, and we don't know yet. The last problem is mutations are possible. There's already one known mutation that makes it even more contagious. And the more the virus spreads, the more likely it mutates as well. So containment is important for that as well. Now, that's the risk of it from the data today. You can decide that it is a risk worth taking or not. That's kind of a personal thing. But it is absolutely much higher than the flu.
- thekyle 6y ago
  You can't just compare absolute death totals like that. We have a vaccine for the flu which reduces the infection rate. What if the reason COVID-19 has 5.6 times more deaths is because it has 5.6 times more infections.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    In the 2017-2018 flu season (one of the worse, which had the estimated 61k deaths in the US) infected an estimated 45 million people in the US; that's roughly in the middle of the range of the number that have caught COVID-19 so far (30-50 million the last I heard; note this is an estimate of total cases, not the confirmed 5.7 million cases, but so is the 45 million). So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.
  - didibus 6y ago
    That's fine, when we say it's estimated to be 10 times deadlier, it isn't in terms of you being 10 times more likely to die from it than the flu if you catch it, but that Covid let loose in our population will result in 10 times more deaths. This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious. So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year. And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.

oarsinsync 6y ago

What else is Qatar doing? What does Qatar do to a person who is confirmed infected? Does the same action occur to someone with the flu? What is Qatar asking it's population to do differently today, compared to this time a year ago? Does that have any meaningful impact on transmission rates?

ReptileMan 6y ago
It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place. I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.
- komali2 6y ago
  You deny the fact that at least 172,000 Americans have died from covid?
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    No. Is that much for a nation of 333 000 000? People die all the time. Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities.
    - cmrx64 6y ago
      how is it that almost 6 months have passed and this same syllogism gets trotted out repeatedly? this is 1. factually incorrect, 2. morally reprehensible. everyone dies eventually and gets sick with something else someday. let’s just front load all the death into 2020 and get it done with forever, eh?
    - komali2 6y ago
      > Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities When the actions to prevent these people from dying, uh "just earlier than they would have," are as simple as wearing a mask and social distancing, it is unethical to not do so.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I think it's pretty misleading to characterize "no going to the gym, ever, until further notice" as a simple action.
        komali2 6y ago
        Why? It's a pandemic. If anything we're lucky it wasn't more deadly than it is. I'm not gaining muscle mass but I'm having absolutely no trouble whatsoever maintaining it at home with exercise bands and calisthenics. It's a tiny, tiny price to pay for helping keep my community safe. I would sacrifice the gym for the rest of my life if it meant adding even a year of life to a single person. Sentient existence is immeasurably more valuable.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I guess there's a values gap there I don't know how to bridge. I don't recognize the entire category of unbounded obligations to preserve life that you're suggesting.
    - rurp 6y ago
      > Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities. Why bother treating any sick person if this is your position? The healthcare system would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier if we just "frontloaded some death" for everyone who gets seriously ill.
  - dublin 6y ago
    Yes, emphatically. The statistics clearly show that deaths from flu and other infectious diseases and lung conditions have dropped to nearly zero over the past several months. This doesn't pass the most basic smell test: People didn't stop dying from those things simply because of a new virus. The only reasonable conclusion is that those deaths were misattributed to the Wuhan virus because of political, economic, or other pressures.
    - gowld 6y ago
      https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Total predicted number of excess deaths since 2/1/2020 across the United States: All causes: 174,930 - 235,728 All causes except COVID-19 : 29,416 - 78,932 > the Wuhan virus Propaganda pro-tip: If you want people to trust you, suppress the obvious tells.
    - didibus 6y ago
      What are you talking about, here's the link to the CDC flu data: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... It shows: 39,000,000 – 56,000,000 flu illnesses 18,000,000 – 26,000,000 flu medical visits 410,000 – 740,000 flu hospitalizations 24,000 – 62,000 flu deaths Which is actually kind of on the higher side for the flu season. They attribute that most likely on the increased testing happening this year due to people getting tested for Covid.
    - komali2 6y ago
      The evidence doesn't support your, uh, "thesis." Until you provide overwhelming evidence (because that's what you're up against), you're spreading misinformation. Seems to me like you're speaking from a feelings position, rather than a facts one.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > > That is not much higher than flu. > It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place. The explicit comparison to the flu doesn't really seem to hold, since the conditions applied to the infected aren't equal. If those carrying the flu were subject to the same conditions as those carrying this covid-19, the comparison would hold up a lot better. > I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction. Mortality numbers as a % of tested peoples are hugely variable due to the differences in testing between nations. Mortality numbers as a % of the population (deaths per 100k/1m) make for good comparisons, and unless the nation is engaging in outright deception, those numbers are reasonable to use as a comparison. According to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality the USA has 52.52 deaths per 100k. In line with your previous, Qatar has 6.94 deaths per 100k. 10x more people have died in the USA vs in Qatar. What's going on?
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation. Look - my country no one bothers to observe measures and our system is far from overloaded. I think that a lot of influential l people threw too much social capital on stay at home and stuff like this and now they just can't handle the situation if covid is less dangerous than thought. I think we are in the sink cost fallacy.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      > There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation. There are 10x more deaths as a percentage of the population in the USA than in Qatar. The number of tests / positive cases is not relevant to that number.

esrauch 6y ago

The US is going to be something close to 1 death per 1k total population with the policies we have. It doesn't make logical sense to think the number could be orders of magnitudes lower in the US if we didn't close businesses.

didibus 6y ago

In the US, there's been 172k death in half a year for Covid. And if using the worst case data for flu season, it's 61k per year. So it's looking like for a full year, it'll be 344k death for Covid versus 61k death for the flu. That makes Covid 5.6 times more deadly than the flu. But, the Covid numbers here are from a complete lockdown, where people are social distancing, wearing masks, schools are closed, everyone is working from home if possible, etc. And even with those level of precautions, it is at best 5.6 times deadlier. That's why the estimate from the CDC is that Covid is 10 times deadlier than the flu. The other thing is, this only measures immediate death. But there are unknown long term risk. Other type of SARS virus are known to cause long term issues to people that recovered from it. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the case for Covid but it could, and we don't know yet. The last problem is mutations are possible. There's already one known mutation that makes it even more contagious. And the more the virus spreads, the more likely it mutates as well. So containment is important for that as well. Now, that's the risk of it from the data today. You can decide that it is a risk worth taking or not. That's kind of a personal thing. But it is absolutely much higher than the flu.

thekyle 6y ago
You can't just compare absolute death totals like that. We have a vaccine for the flu which reduces the infection rate. What if the reason COVID-19 has 5.6 times more deaths is because it has 5.6 times more infections.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  In the 2017-2018 flu season (one of the worse, which had the estimated 61k deaths in the US) infected an estimated 45 million people in the US; that's roughly in the middle of the range of the number that have caught COVID-19 so far (30-50 million the last I heard; note this is an estimate of total cases, not the confirmed 5.7 million cases, but so is the 45 million). So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.
- didibus 6y ago
  That's fine, when we say it's estimated to be 10 times deadlier, it isn't in terms of you being 10 times more likely to die from it than the flu if you catch it, but that Covid let loose in our population will result in 10 times more deaths. This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious. So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year. And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.