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U.S. surpasses 200k Covid-19 deaths
- pstuart 6y agoAll pretty much preventable if the government has done its job correctly.
- minikites 6y agoI'm not sure what we could have expected after 40+ years of anti-government policies and rhetoric in the name of "freedom".
- pstuart 6y agoWe had a bi-partisan program set in place to deal with this event -- we were technically prepared. Note the use of past tense.
- icare_1er 6y agoWhich country has 0 COVID deaths ? :o)
- soared 6y agoToday? Quite a few, but not the US.
- p49k 6y agoVietnam has 35 in a country of 90 million people.
- tome 6y agoWow, that's amazing. How is that possible?
- crispyambulance 6y agoSane leadership, people who listen to facts, preparation, contact tracing.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoCould it be that they have one (if not the best) obesity rate in the world? I’m suspicious that this isn’t just countries with order of magnitude healthier populations (although maybe they have malnourishment the US doesn’t have).
- crispyambulance 6y agoThe USA and Vietnam have almost the same life-expectancy stats. I don't think one can say the difference in health is "an order of magnitude".
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoObesity in Vietnam is 1%...lowest in the world. Versus US with ~42%. We know the seriousness of obesity wrt covid.
- tome 6y agoSeems like this relationship would be very easy to discover in the worldwide statistics.
- rsynnott 6y agoIf this was the decisive factor, you'd expect Belgium, Italy and France to have low rates, with Germany, the UK, and most of Eastern Europe having high rates. This turns out not to be the case.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
- pstuart 6y ago> pretty much preventable
- FormFollowsFunc 6y agoThese countries haven’t reported any COVID-19 deaths yet: Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, North Korea, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu. Mostly tiny islands in the Pacific.
- crispyambulance 6y agoThe key thing is we (as in the government and it's people) could have handled this crisis differently. There's no good reason for the USA to have had a higher per capita death count than South Korea, Germany or other well resourced nation that is fully capable of dealing with large-scale crisis. This was a profound failure of leadership when it was needed the most. In the future, students in high school history classes will watch with their jaws hung open at clips of the president of the USA in 2020 free-associating doing and his insipid "air-accordion" gestures during the daily briefings at the peak of the crisis.
- throwaway894345 6y ago> There's no good reason for the USA to have had a higher per capita death count than South Korea There are some reasons which probably explain part of the gap: * South Korea and Germany are both smaller and more homogeneous, making them easier to govern * South Korea has a lot of recent experience responding to respiratory epidemics Moreover, while I would like to see the US at the bottom of a chart of deaths per capita, the US is in the same cohort as many western European countries including Sweden, the UK, Spain, and Italy. There's still plenty to criticize, but the media are pretty deliberately choosing metrics that are designed to exaggerate the US's handling of the crisis, specifically by ignoring per-capita death rates. I'm sure they're just doing this to get Trump out of office at all costs (ends justify the means), but they risk playing right into Trump's hand (and in any case, they certainly contribute to a broader atmosphere of fake news and partisanship).
- crispyambulance 6y ago> ...the media are pretty deliberately choosing metrics that are designed to exaggerate the US's handling of the crisis... "The media" would have had far less grist if Trump hadn't been astonishingly incoherent and outright lying much of the time. I think it's not a coincidence that a good number of nations with delusional tin-pot autocratic wannabee's have been hit very hard by covid-19.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
- dudul 6y agoWhat were they supposed to do differently?
- gdubs 6y agoDistribute masks to everyone’s door, not send mixed signals - being charitable here - about the seriousness of the virus when they had intelligence briefings about it in January, not turned mask-wearing into a political thing, not contradict their own doctors and scientists, not water down the stimulus meant to make staying home and closed affordable for people, and on, and on, ...
- pstuart 6y agoThat's A Bingo!
- throwaway894345 6y agoThe politicization of masks was an interesting thing, at least in my bubble. Initially when the CDC and the WHO were telling people not to wear masks, my very left-leaning friends and acquaintances were anti-mask and my right-leaning friends were very pro-mask. But once the CDC and WHO came around that (obviously) masks were effective, the positions nearly reversed (my right leaning friends didn't become anti mask per se, but they became very sympathetic toward those on the right who were anti-mask). Every partisan affair is a tragedy, but this one felt particularly sad. The right had an opportunity to be correct and vindicated and they spurned it. The left initially took the anti-science position (I'm assuming there's no scientific defense for "in the absence of knowledge about a respiratory virus, we should default to masklessness"--and to be clear, none of my left-wing friends were arguing that we should forego masks to save them for healthcare workers), but only came around to masks when it became politically convenient (which is marginally better than the other way around). Anyway, here's to hoping we can overcome COVID and partisanship in short order.
- dudul 6y agoYou do realize doctors, the WHO and the CDC were advising against masks originally? The same "problem" of not recommending masks from the beginning happened in a lot of other countries. I do think it was pitiful how masks were turned into a politician device, but this was the doing of both parties. Not just the "government". As for taking the virus seriously, a travel ban with China was put in place fairly early and was criticized as being "racist".
- Diederich 6y agoI know there are tons of visualizations out there, but this is the one I use to get a very quick, at a glance look at the trends at the US and state levels: https://mackuba.eu/corona/#united_states.daily https://mackuba.eu/corona/#united_states.daily
- quattrofan 6y agoMAGA working out well I see
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot; in fact it's nearly all that your account has contributed to HN. That's really not what this site is for. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lisper 6y agoTo put this number in perspective, the number of Americans killed in World War II was 291,557. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/coronavirus-death-toll-vietnam-war-cvd/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/coronavir...
- aloukissas 6y agoAgain, to put this in a more recent perspective that most of us are familiar with: the number of people killed on 9/11 was 2,977 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11...].
- minikites 6y agoAnd try not to think too hard about why 9/11 brought about a massive restructuring of our government along with a mass infringement of our civil liberties but a pandemic doesn't.
- metalliqaz 6y agoThat's just human nature my dude. Same reason why Pearl Harbor brought a reluctant nation into WWII.
- dividedbyzero 6y agoThe part with the mass infringement of civil liberties might still happen, I wouldn't discount it yet
- rhino369 6y agoLockdowns were a mass infringement of our civil liberties that was arguably much more significant than anything post 9-11. Governors and mayors shut down churches and assemblies by fiat. People weren’t allowed to see their family. Couldn’t sell goods and services. You may think that was necessary (and at least some of it was). But That doesn’t change what it was.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
- salmon30salmon 6y agoDeaths will continue the slow roll until herd immunity is reached, either artificially via a vaccine or naturally. Masks, distancing, lockdowns do not _prevent_ infections, deaths or otherwise. They _delay_ and _slow_ infections, deaths etc. There is no perfect compliance to masks, lockdowns etc. and masks, lockdowns etc. are not 100% effective. The greatest lie we were told back in March was that lockdowns were temporary to beat COVID. There is no beating COVID, we are not gods. The disease will continue until it doesn't.
- minikites 6y ago>Deaths will continue the slow roll until herd immunity is reached, either artificially via a vaccine or naturally. Masks, distancing, lockdowns do not _prevent_ infections, deaths or otherwise. They _delay_ and _slow_ infections, deaths etc. There is no perfect compliance to masks, lockdowns etc. and masks, lockdowns etc. are not 100% effective. Then why does almost every other nation have a much lower per capita infection rate and per capita death rate?
- salmon30salmon 6y agoReally? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... For we are doing great, but we are not the worst either. That is basically the story of the USA in general I think
- icare_1er 6y agoThere is no second wave (look at the death charts). This panic is grotesque.
- christkv 6y agoI find it extremely annoying that hey stopped publishing age demo-graphics for deaths in Spain from covid. If you say 169 people died over the last 48h let me know in what age groups they are.
- minikites 6y agoWe never got out of the first wave, we're still in it.
- kyleee 6y agoI was interested to see that Scotland is implementing a 2nd lockdown in the face of a flat death curve
- centimeter 6y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Comorbidities https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co... "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death." Calling all of these "Covid-19 deaths" is extremely disingenuous. All it means is that someone (may have) had Covid-19 in their system at the time they died. Some states don't even require a positive PCR test to list Covid-19 as a cause of death - just suspicion they might have had it!
- just-juan-post 6y agoFolks you can downvote him all you want but he's right. Almost one third of Covid deaths in July and August 'primarily caused by other conditions' https://www.yahoo.com/news/almost-one-third-covid-deaths-155426293.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/almost-one-third-covid-deaths-155... Source: Oxford University
- d9DM7MLa9U 6y agoThe article you posted says "It means someone who suffered a heart attack, or even died in a road traffic accident, may have been included in the figures if they had also tested positive for coronavirus at some point, or if doctors believed the virus may have exacerbated their condition." But, the CDC link in the parent post has the detailed breakdown and it has a category for "Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events" and that amounts to 5,930 off the total 179,927. Though there is also a sizable chunk in another category "All other conditions and causes (residual)" which has 88,801 off the total 179,927 (mostly 65+ year olds)
- p49k 6y agoMore than 200,000 additional people in the US have died in 2020 compared to this point in 2019. There is no other reasonable explanation for those additional deaths. That makes it abundantly clear that they are COVID-19 related. Hand-wave all you want, you can’t get around this obvious indicator.
- dzonga 6y agoI'm in Austin and based on what i'm seeing on the streets. this corona thing, will never end in the states without a vaccine. even then some people don't believe in vaccination. I won't even start with fl where parties are going non stop
- nradov 6y agoWhat's happening in the streets is largely irrelevant over the long term. SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus some animal hosts, just like four other coronaviruses. So it will never end, but a vaccine will hopefully reduce the death rate. Even people who don't get vaccinated will indirectly benefit from herd immunity in the vaccinated population.
- mempko 6y agoThe comments in this thread are a microcosm of why there are 200k COVID deaths in the USA. A website with supposedly smart people are posting wild conspiracy theories around COVID and the reasonable responses being down-voted. By most measures the USA has done a terrible job, worse job than countries with much fewer resources. There is nothing to be proud of here.
- btilly 6y agoPlease note that this is the official tally, and not the likely real answer. According to the NY Times in https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deat... we likely passed 200k dead by mid-August. And since then we've become even more parsimonious about who we count as dead of COVID-19. An example of a problem counting this is co-morbidities - if you have heart problems and COVID-19 (even if it was apparently asymptomatic), the odds that your heart problems kill you goes up. If you die from a heart attack, should you be counted as COVID-19? Maybe you would have died without COVID-19, maybe not. And depending where you die, maybe you would be counted as a COVID-19 death, and maybe not. So there is both an over and under count going on. But based on excess mortalities, it is likely that COVID-19 is being undercounted a lot more than it is overcounted.
- DuskStar 6y ago> But based on excess mortalities, it is likely that COVID-19 is being undercounted a lot more than it is overcounted. Unless lockdowns are rather bad for one's health, you mean.
- btilly 6y agoI am not aware of any definitive evidence either way on whether lockdowns are good or bad for physical health. They are clearly bad for people's mental health (except adolescents) and are horrible for the economy. However for physical health we have a variety of effects. Positive ones include reduced car accidents and communicable diseases of all kinds. Negative ones include more suicides and less preventive care. I don't know how they balance out. Do you have any data on that?
- DuskStar 6y agoI don't think anyone does yet, and there's still the massive confounder of 'covid'. But it's hard to say for sure that excess deaths above normal beyond what are reported to be from covid are missed cases, when we don't know the size of other effects.
- cpr 6y agoTo put this number in perspective, the CDC also published that only 6% of those were from c19 itself, the rest "WITH c19". Remember Birx announced some months ago that anyone dying with c19 would be counted as c19? To put this in further perspective, the number of flu deaths in recent years has been as high as 80-120K.