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U.S. Hits Record Daily Death Toll, with Worse Likely to Come

128 points by deegles 6y ago

dsabanin 6y ago
But Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
- w0m 6y ago
  this probably doesn't include the turkey day push yet i'd assume...
  - delecti 6y ago
    It absolutely does not. Most people who got it during Thanksgiving travel have only been feeling first symptoms in the past couple days. I fear for how bad things will get by Christmas. I only hope that enough people react appropriately to the spike we're about to see in the coming weeks, that there isn't an even bigger spike in early January.
moneywoes 6y ago
When can we expect vaccination to combat these numbers
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  Maybe after summer 2021.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  From what I've read in financial news, optimists place the vaccine rolling out in December, but more conservative guesses are towards Q1/Q2. Note that in the US and most countries, it'll be folks working in hospitals and other healthcare settings that get it first, then likely high risk elderly (nursing home patients, etc). The UK has a very extensive set of guidelines on who gets it, the US does not yet but those policies will happen at the state level.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    It is reasonable to think that the first vaccine will be approved next week and a few million people will have their first dose. The second dose (3 weeks latter) will be next year, and it is a week after that before full protection arrives.
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      The FDA has not yet approved it, and that approval may be as late as the 17th. I do not believe the vaccine can be shipped to doctors until it has been approved, and logistics of a cold vaccine takes time.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        The 17th when the advisory board meets for the second vaccine. For this the board meets on the 10th. Though you are right that we don't know when (or if) it will be approved, it seems unlikely they will wait that long after the board meets.
- gerbal 6y ago
  It really depends on vaccination rates and the transmission rates of vaccinated people. Vaccines aren't going to reach mass distribution until February or March at the earliest. It's an open question just how much vaccination reduces low-level infection and retransmission. The published vaccine trials have been focused on incidence of symptoms and reduction in mortality in the vaccinated group. It remains possible that the death rate may climb among the unvaccinated if others' vaccinations is used as an excuse for risky behavior.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    >Also vaccinated people can still catch and transmit covid, though they are not going to experience severe symptoms. This is stated with far too much confidence. It may be true that vaccinated individuals can still transmit COVID. It may also be true that they can't. We don't know yet.
    - gerbal 6y ago
      You are correct, I've edited my comment to be appropriately hedged
    - MaxDPS 6y ago
      Isn’t this a fact though (just not in the way OP meant)? The current vaccines have a ~90% success rate. That means that 1/10 people might still get COVID-19 and possibly transmit it.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        The vaccine trials did not test whether people who did not get COVID-19 might nonetheless have been infectious. The assumption is that it reduces or even eliminates infectiousness but that hasn't actually been tested for AFAIK.
      - 0xffff2 6y ago
        The statement as originally written implies that all people who are vaccinated can still transmit the disease. That may be true, but it's unlikely and we don't have enough data to say one way or the other yet.
- hnrodey 6y ago
  In the US we have pinned 1000% of our hopes on a vaccine. What if the vaccine does not deliver the expected results? What does the average layperson expect the results to be?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's unlikely the US will maintain strict social distancing restrictions after a vaccine rollout. There's every reason to believe that the vaccine will stop the spread, but if somehow it doesn't, I expect most laypeople will just accept the world's become a deadlier place.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      That sounds about right. I expect the holidays will see people relaxing in any case. And once individuals are vaccinated, they may maintain some masking etc. for a while just because it's easier to comply with rules than get into confrontations. But I see people getting more casual in general already and when they're vaccinated I expect it will be pretty much flipping a switching as far as activities are concerned.
      - hnrodey 6y ago
        If the “protect thy neighbor” narrative falls apart after a vaccine is narrowly available then much of that was shenanigans and/or virtue signaling all along.
    - hnrodey 6y ago
      Looks like no one knows for certain if the vaccine will prevent the spread. What if the vaccine does not have a significant impact on the spread? I wonder how the “protect thy neighbor” group will change once people feel genuinely comfortable their personal risk is lowered. https://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/528619-pfizer-chairman-were-not-sure-if-someone-can-transmit-virus-after https://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/528619-pfizer... https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  For the death toll, very soon - vaccinations are expected to start in the US next week, and nursing homes which drive almost half of the deaths in the pandemic are very high on the priority list. Hospitalization and case numbers won't be affected by vaccination so quickly, but most sources I've read expect that general vaccination will start by springtime and end the crisis by summer.
branon 6y ago
I'm unable to read this article. Any way to bypass the "create an account to continue" wall?
- mkup 6y ago
  YesScript2 addon in full-blocking mode (in Firefox).
- slimed 6y ago
  Very quickly use the "stop loading" function/icon in your browser. NYT continues to allow this to work because reasons.
- known 6y ago
  https://archive.vn/0RcJi https://archive.vn/0RcJi
- darwinwhy 6y ago
  https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
hsnewman 6y ago
Time to stay home.
tannedNerd 6y ago
It’s truly sad to see the amount of people smugly not covering their noses or wearing such a loose mask it’s obviously not doing anything, even here in the Bay Area. If we can’t learn to work together, we are doomed to repeat 2020 with the next pandemic.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a bit vexing that humanity doesn't learn long-term lessons very well. I'm curious we'll ever solve that problem.
  - ls65536 6y ago
    I think in some sense it's just basic human nature. Over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, humans seem to have been generally tuned to avoid specific, concrete, short-term threats to their own life/health individually, or perhaps extending very slightly just to their own family/group/tribe, but anything that's a threat more generally, more abstractly or longer-term tends to fall off the radar quickly, even if there's a high probability that those things might turn into an existential threat to the individual at some point in the future. I'm also curious how (or if) we're going to learn to collectively solve some of these long-term problems before many of them really start to turn into those specific, concrete, short-term threats to us as individuals, at which point many of the "easier" solutions may no longer be effective anymore.
- artvark11 6y ago
  If our leaders actually followed their own rules and stopped flipflopping on what works, people would be more likely to listen to them.
  - akudha 6y ago
    Wearing a mask during a pandemic is just common sense, it is not that complicated to understand. Why do we need leaders to tell us this basic stuff? people should take a bit more responsibility for their own safety. We aren’t all children to be told every single common thing to follow. Especially after quarter million deaths!!!
bwb 6y ago
When I read this I just think "how American", and I am sad but with a dark smile. It seems like as a nation we are a group of psychological outliers that are a bit messed up. It makes me think how much "DNA" is shared between behaviour like this and entrepreneurship/art/creation? Can America exist without this bullshit and still capture a significant part of our national ethos?
- smt88 6y ago
  I seriously doubt that there is meaningful overlap between anti-maskers, entrepreneurs, and artists. The issue is that misinformation and conspiracy theories are thriving on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and they're received the illusion of legitimacy from one of our minority political party that controls 2 out of 3 branches of government. Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible.
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    "Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible." Very true, wish more people realized this.
- guscost 6y ago
  “Live free or die.” “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” These are not platitudes.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Yes, those are platitudes. Thank God people had more sense when polio and whooping cough were around.
padseeker 6y ago
Everything is a partisan issue now, even something like a virus that has killed more than 250,000 people in the US, and at it's current pace will blow past 300K before the end of the year. How do you convince people that live in an alternate reality that this thing is real?
- 1PlayerOne 6y ago
  You can't. We just have to get through to the other side of the pandemic, and then we can figure out where we stand.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    The same place we stood before, only worse.
hnrodey 6y ago
I'm working on a COVID data website using public data from the New York Times. It's on my list to make the code open source but I'm just not there yet. FWIW, based on county test results and my anecdotal poking around the US - most counties in the US have 1% or less of their population getting a positive COVID test in the past two weeks. In the grand scheme of things, I contend we have only a handful of people infectious in any two week period. Find your state and county at https://thecovidcomplex.com/states https://thecovidcomplex.com/states Queue the hug of death. Using ASP.NET Core and Digital Ocean droplet for hosting. I have some really specific biases about the COVID response in the US that I shall not dwelve in to here. You can read about them on the About and Resources page. The other day I posted my site as a comment to something else COVID and you can read that discussion thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255589 just search for my username in the comments.
- artvark11 6y ago
  Right now this is the most upvoted thing in this thread, once people actually see the point of this website, they will flag it and down vote it into oblivion, as it does not fit their narrative.
  - hnrodey 6y ago
    Censorship with my site has been off the charts. Definitely does not fit the public narrative.
    - Erik816 6y ago
      People not agreeing with you is not censorship, or at least not the kind anyone should worry about. Let us know if the government has restricted your speech in any way.
      - hnrodey 6y ago
        Fair enough on the censorship term - no one from the government has reached out to me yet ; )
ZanyProgrammer 6y ago
I wish people would have the smallest amount of empathy and civic virtue to stay the course for just a little while longer-to let up your guard this late with the vaccines right around the corner seems criminal.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  It's a lot to ask the whole country to do a half-assed but still really inconvenient year-long thing. We should have done the right thing, which is a proper month-long strict stay at home, then we could have returned to normal life like Taiwan or Vietnam.
  - benjohnson 6y ago
    That would work Only if we got Mexico and Canada to do the same at the same time frame and helped Mexico with it’s southern border.
zug_zug 6y ago
Not to poo-poo this headline, but with a growth curve, your expectation is that every single day will be the worst (until herd-immunity/vaccination). I've seen this headline at least 12 different times on youtube. It can be deceptive depending on your local area, as well as just exhausting to hear so many times. For example, if you live in New York, yesterday's death toll was 7% of the highest day its ever been.
- thrav 6y ago
  Not enough people realize that these waves are almost completely regionally isolated, with a bit of spillover everywhere. Wave 1: NY + NJ (some other northeast) Wave 2: Florida + Texas + Arizona (most of south) Wave 3: Midwest You can even see this within California. Wave 1: Bay Area, Wave 2: Some LA, Wave 3: All SoCal Each wave basically amounts of when that population gave up distancing, and once you’ve undergone your wave, you don’t really get it that bad again. (unless you have a small wave that misses much of the population, like LA) Texas’ wave 3 is popping in different cities than wave 2 (Texas, like Cali, is just huge).
  - ghaff 6y ago
    There are a ton of narratives that lump regions together, impute a bunch of political and/or cultural factors, etc. and I suspect that, at the end of the day, we'll look back and a neutral examination will have trouble consistently mapping outcomes to controllable (or at least explainable) factors. What did Belgium do to piss off the COVID-19 gods?
- FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
  We have see again and again that people don't take common sense measures to protect themselves and others until scared by climbing death rates. Once this happens, positivity rated decrease. Then they get COVID fatigue, relax these behaivors and the numbers climb once again.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I love that term: COVID fatigue. We may be tired of COVID, but COVID is not tired of us. Even when the death rates are super scary, people still don't follow common sense measures. Remember the so-called lockdowns in the USA? Everyone was still out horsing around, getting together, buying their khakis, eating at whatever restaurants they could find that were open. There was no enforcement, so nobody followed the rules. What a surprise! Even now, where the disease is arguably worse than it's ever been, local governments are talking about opening up schools and other indoor super-spreader businesses like bars and night clubs. In most places, churches, with their saliva-fest indoor singing and chanting, are fully open. Nobody is taking sane measures at the arguable height of the pandemic! If we learned anything from this pandemic, we learned that we can't rely on people voluntarily acting collectively to make things better for everyone.
mrfusion 6y ago
What do excess deaths look like for 2020?
- pcunite 6y ago
  ^ The metric I hope to get my hands on come January.
  - purple-again 6y ago
    I am not sure about this specific metric but based on my experience with government metrics you will be waiting until closer to April than January for those numbers.
    - MagnumOpus 6y ago
      Your experience is misleading you then. The CDC numbers for excess deaths are only a bit more than a week out of date: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- mynegation 6y ago
  GIFY https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- Damorian 6y ago
  This is the only question that matters in the context of covid deaths, at least at a high level. After the initial shock, it's dropped to around 10%. I expect that this will continue to drop as we lose our most vulnerable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- DanTheManPR 6y ago
  The CDC has an excellent visualization for this. 2020 is a major outlier in the last few years in terms of excess deaths. If you drill down into the local data, you can see some really stark visualizations: for example, the tremendous increase in deaths in New York City in spring of 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
satysin 6y ago
This is so sad to see and from looking at the number of people who travelled for Thanksgiving last week I think it is almost certain that these kind of daily death numbers will continue into the new year :( Honestly I don't really know what to say when I see these headlines anymore. I am in France but have many friends and family in the US and hearing the stories from them is both saddening and infuriating. Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year. People I used to think of as very intelligent falling for the most insane conspiracy theories and other such nonsense. It has been really eye opening in an increasingly depressing way. And on top of that as someone from the UK (but now living in France) I also have the stupidness of Brexit to deal with. People talk about the impact of lockdowns on mental health but honestly that wasn't a big deal to me, the biggest impact to me this year has been the stupidity and selfishness of so many people. It is draining having to listen to people talk about 5G spreading the virus or Bill Gates wants to microchip you with the vaccine or going on rants that surgical masks lead to a dangerous build up of CO2. There is something seriously wrong with the human race. A shocking lack of education and rational rather than emotional thinking for starters. Sorry I guess my comment doesn't really add to the discourse. Guess I just needed to just put something 'out there' rather than it just rattle around in my head right now.
- webwanderings 6y ago
  > Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year. This has been the most astonishing fact of life that has come out of Covid. Blown away by discovering the same. I think a whole lot of humans must have discovered this fact for the first time in their life.
  - satysin 6y ago
    The thing is I am without a doubt a person of average intelligence and what I don't "get" is how people whom I know are more intelligent that me doing the most stupid things. I try to listen to as many different perspectives as possible, look up claims I hear being made, listen to experts in the respective fields and err on the side of caution. Back in March when medical experts said masks are unlikely to help I was like "okay well that sucks but they know much more about this kind of thing so I will just keep my distance, etc". Then when some data showed that actually masks do seem to help I didn't argue. I listened to the reasons for the change in advice and it all sounded, to me at least, perfectly reasonable. Yet I still hear people saying medical experts are "flip flopping" on masks as if changing ones advice based on new, scientifically backed information is a bad thing. Highly intelligent people I know have made comments to me about masks, 5G, Bill Gates microchip vaccines, "Plandemic" and all that kind of stuff. Sadly I have a (second) aunt that has been sucked into the QAnon madness. She honest to god believes the election was stolen from Trump. She isn't even American! She is a lamb farmer in Wales that still believes Brexit is going to be the best thing ever. But that is a conversation for a different thread. I am just mentally exhausted from it all. I miss the days of moon landing and what really goes on at Area 51 conspiracies.
kylebenzle 6y ago
With Covid-19 Rates Rising Adding an Air Purifier To Your Home is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health [1] [1] https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your-home-is-the-single-most-important-thing-you-can-do-to-improve-your-4b9568c8056e https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your...
typon 6y ago
The US will probably never recover from this pandemic. The sociological harm done by this virus (normalizing anti-expert sentiment) is far greater than the physical harm in the long run.
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  I’d argue that’s not a new phenomenon by any extent. Climate change denial has had a strong following for over a decade. We’re just seeing how devastating the effects of this sort of behavior can be in a short timeline (I agree with Chomsky that ultimately Covid is a blip and climate change is far more catastrophic long term).
- mrfusion 6y ago
  I actually wonder if that’s the only good thing to come out of this. I feel like you’re lamenting that people don’t follow your experts. I mean look at all the experts that signed on here: https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ Why don’t they count?
- jazzyk 6y ago
  You assume that experts are completely impartial. Or ethical. They aren't. See "Inside Job" - an excellent documentary about the 2008 financial crisis. Highly credentialed Harvard, MIT, Columbia professors produced reports for Wall Street to convince buyers to buy their toxic financial products (while collecting enormous fees). I am all for science, but one needs to watch out for $cience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/S0iT4 https://archive.is/S0iT4

128 points by deegles 6y ago

dsabanin 6y ago

But Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

w0m 6y ago
this probably doesn't include the turkey day push yet i'd assume...
- delecti 6y ago
  It absolutely does not. Most people who got it during Thanksgiving travel have only been feeling first symptoms in the past couple days. I fear for how bad things will get by Christmas. I only hope that enough people react appropriately to the spike we're about to see in the coming weeks, that there isn't an even bigger spike in early January.

moneywoes 6y ago

When can we expect vaccination to combat these numbers

throwaway4good 6y ago
Maybe after summer 2021.
vorpalhex 6y ago
From what I've read in financial news, optimists place the vaccine rolling out in December, but more conservative guesses are towards Q1/Q2. Note that in the US and most countries, it'll be folks working in hospitals and other healthcare settings that get it first, then likely high risk elderly (nursing home patients, etc). The UK has a very extensive set of guidelines on who gets it, the US does not yet but those policies will happen at the state level.
- bluGill 6y ago
  It is reasonable to think that the first vaccine will be approved next week and a few million people will have their first dose. The second dose (3 weeks latter) will be next year, and it is a week after that before full protection arrives.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    The FDA has not yet approved it, and that approval may be as late as the 17th. I do not believe the vaccine can be shipped to doctors until it has been approved, and logistics of a cold vaccine takes time.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      The 17th when the advisory board meets for the second vaccine. For this the board meets on the 10th. Though you are right that we don't know when (or if) it will be approved, it seems unlikely they will wait that long after the board meets.
gerbal 6y ago
It really depends on vaccination rates and the transmission rates of vaccinated people. Vaccines aren't going to reach mass distribution until February or March at the earliest. It's an open question just how much vaccination reduces low-level infection and retransmission. The published vaccine trials have been focused on incidence of symptoms and reduction in mortality in the vaccinated group. It remains possible that the death rate may climb among the unvaccinated if others' vaccinations is used as an excuse for risky behavior.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  >Also vaccinated people can still catch and transmit covid, though they are not going to experience severe symptoms. This is stated with far too much confidence. It may be true that vaccinated individuals can still transmit COVID. It may also be true that they can't. We don't know yet.
  - gerbal 6y ago
    You are correct, I've edited my comment to be appropriately hedged
  - MaxDPS 6y ago
    Isn’t this a fact though (just not in the way OP meant)? The current vaccines have a ~90% success rate. That means that 1/10 people might still get COVID-19 and possibly transmit it.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      The vaccine trials did not test whether people who did not get COVID-19 might nonetheless have been infectious. The assumption is that it reduces or even eliminates infectiousness but that hasn't actually been tested for AFAIK.
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      The statement as originally written implies that all people who are vaccinated can still transmit the disease. That may be true, but it's unlikely and we don't have enough data to say one way or the other yet.
hnrodey 6y ago
In the US we have pinned 1000% of our hopes on a vaccine. What if the vaccine does not deliver the expected results? What does the average layperson expect the results to be?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's unlikely the US will maintain strict social distancing restrictions after a vaccine rollout. There's every reason to believe that the vaccine will stop the spread, but if somehow it doesn't, I expect most laypeople will just accept the world's become a deadlier place.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    That sounds about right. I expect the holidays will see people relaxing in any case. And once individuals are vaccinated, they may maintain some masking etc. for a while just because it's easier to comply with rules than get into confrontations. But I see people getting more casual in general already and when they're vaccinated I expect it will be pretty much flipping a switching as far as activities are concerned.
    - hnrodey 6y ago
      If the “protect thy neighbor” narrative falls apart after a vaccine is narrowly available then much of that was shenanigans and/or virtue signaling all along.
  - hnrodey 6y ago
    Looks like no one knows for certain if the vaccine will prevent the spread. What if the vaccine does not have a significant impact on the spread? I wonder how the “protect thy neighbor” group will change once people feel genuinely comfortable their personal risk is lowered. https://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/528619-pfizer-chairman-were-not-sure-if-someone-can-transmit-virus-after https://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/528619-pfizer... https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
For the death toll, very soon - vaccinations are expected to start in the US next week, and nursing homes which drive almost half of the deaths in the pandemic are very high on the priority list. Hospitalization and case numbers won't be affected by vaccination so quickly, but most sources I've read expect that general vaccination will start by springtime and end the crisis by summer.

branon 6y ago

I'm unable to read this article. Any way to bypass the "create an account to continue" wall?

mkup 6y ago
YesScript2 addon in full-blocking mode (in Firefox).
slimed 6y ago
Very quickly use the "stop loading" function/icon in your browser. NYT continues to allow this to work because reasons.
known 6y ago
https://archive.vn/0RcJi https://archive.vn/0RcJi
darwinwhy 6y ago
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

hsnewman 6y ago

Time to stay home.

tannedNerd 6y ago

It’s truly sad to see the amount of people smugly not covering their noses or wearing such a loose mask it’s obviously not doing anything, even here in the Bay Area. If we can’t learn to work together, we are doomed to repeat 2020 with the next pandemic.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Yeah, it's a bit vexing that humanity doesn't learn long-term lessons very well. I'm curious we'll ever solve that problem.
- ls65536 6y ago
  I think in some sense it's just basic human nature. Over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, humans seem to have been generally tuned to avoid specific, concrete, short-term threats to their own life/health individually, or perhaps extending very slightly just to their own family/group/tribe, but anything that's a threat more generally, more abstractly or longer-term tends to fall off the radar quickly, even if there's a high probability that those things might turn into an existential threat to the individual at some point in the future. I'm also curious how (or if) we're going to learn to collectively solve some of these long-term problems before many of them really start to turn into those specific, concrete, short-term threats to us as individuals, at which point many of the "easier" solutions may no longer be effective anymore.
artvark11 6y ago
If our leaders actually followed their own rules and stopped flipflopping on what works, people would be more likely to listen to them.
- akudha 6y ago
  Wearing a mask during a pandemic is just common sense, it is not that complicated to understand. Why do we need leaders to tell us this basic stuff? people should take a bit more responsibility for their own safety. We aren’t all children to be told every single common thing to follow. Especially after quarter million deaths!!!

bwb 6y ago

When I read this I just think "how American", and I am sad but with a dark smile. It seems like as a nation we are a group of psychological outliers that are a bit messed up. It makes me think how much "DNA" is shared between behaviour like this and entrepreneurship/art/creation? Can America exist without this bullshit and still capture a significant part of our national ethos?

smt88 6y ago
I seriously doubt that there is meaningful overlap between anti-maskers, entrepreneurs, and artists. The issue is that misinformation and conspiracy theories are thriving on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and they're received the illusion of legitimacy from one of our minority political party that controls 2 out of 3 branches of government. Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  "Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible." Very true, wish more people realized this.
guscost 6y ago
“Live free or die.” “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” These are not platitudes.
- krapp 6y ago
  Yes, those are platitudes. Thank God people had more sense when polio and whooping cough were around.

padseeker 6y ago

Everything is a partisan issue now, even something like a virus that has killed more than 250,000 people in the US, and at it's current pace will blow past 300K before the end of the year. How do you convince people that live in an alternate reality that this thing is real?

1PlayerOne 6y ago
You can't. We just have to get through to the other side of the pandemic, and then we can figure out where we stand.
- jfengel 6y ago
  The same place we stood before, only worse.

hnrodey 6y ago

I'm working on a COVID data website using public data from the New York Times. It's on my list to make the code open source but I'm just not there yet. FWIW, based on county test results and my anecdotal poking around the US - most counties in the US have 1% or less of their population getting a positive COVID test in the past two weeks. In the grand scheme of things, I contend we have only a handful of people infectious in any two week period. Find your state and county at https://thecovidcomplex.com/states https://thecovidcomplex.com/states Queue the hug of death. Using ASP.NET Core and Digital Ocean droplet for hosting. I have some really specific biases about the COVID response in the US that I shall not dwelve in to here. You can read about them on the About and Resources page. The other day I posted my site as a comment to something else COVID and you can read that discussion thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255589 just search for my username in the comments.

artvark11 6y ago
Right now this is the most upvoted thing in this thread, once people actually see the point of this website, they will flag it and down vote it into oblivion, as it does not fit their narrative.
- hnrodey 6y ago
  Censorship with my site has been off the charts. Definitely does not fit the public narrative.
  - Erik816 6y ago
    People not agreeing with you is not censorship, or at least not the kind anyone should worry about. Let us know if the government has restricted your speech in any way.
    - hnrodey 6y ago
      Fair enough on the censorship term - no one from the government has reached out to me yet ; )

ZanyProgrammer 6y ago

I wish people would have the smallest amount of empathy and civic virtue to stay the course for just a little while longer-to let up your guard this late with the vaccines right around the corner seems criminal.

jeffbee 6y ago
It's a lot to ask the whole country to do a half-assed but still really inconvenient year-long thing. We should have done the right thing, which is a proper month-long strict stay at home, then we could have returned to normal life like Taiwan or Vietnam.
- benjohnson 6y ago
  That would work Only if we got Mexico and Canada to do the same at the same time frame and helped Mexico with it’s southern border.

zug_zug 6y ago

Not to poo-poo this headline, but with a growth curve, your expectation is that every single day will be the worst (until herd-immunity/vaccination). I've seen this headline at least 12 different times on youtube. It can be deceptive depending on your local area, as well as just exhausting to hear so many times. For example, if you live in New York, yesterday's death toll was 7% of the highest day its ever been.

thrav 6y ago
Not enough people realize that these waves are almost completely regionally isolated, with a bit of spillover everywhere. Wave 1: NY + NJ (some other northeast) Wave 2: Florida + Texas + Arizona (most of south) Wave 3: Midwest You can even see this within California. Wave 1: Bay Area, Wave 2: Some LA, Wave 3: All SoCal Each wave basically amounts of when that population gave up distancing, and once you’ve undergone your wave, you don’t really get it that bad again. (unless you have a small wave that misses much of the population, like LA) Texas’ wave 3 is popping in different cities than wave 2 (Texas, like Cali, is just huge).
- ghaff 6y ago
  There are a ton of narratives that lump regions together, impute a bunch of political and/or cultural factors, etc. and I suspect that, at the end of the day, we'll look back and a neutral examination will have trouble consistently mapping outcomes to controllable (or at least explainable) factors. What did Belgium do to piss off the COVID-19 gods?
FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
We have see again and again that people don't take common sense measures to protect themselves and others until scared by climbing death rates. Once this happens, positivity rated decrease. Then they get COVID fatigue, relax these behaivors and the numbers climb once again.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I love that term: COVID fatigue. We may be tired of COVID, but COVID is not tired of us. Even when the death rates are super scary, people still don't follow common sense measures. Remember the so-called lockdowns in the USA? Everyone was still out horsing around, getting together, buying their khakis, eating at whatever restaurants they could find that were open. There was no enforcement, so nobody followed the rules. What a surprise! Even now, where the disease is arguably worse than it's ever been, local governments are talking about opening up schools and other indoor super-spreader businesses like bars and night clubs. In most places, churches, with their saliva-fest indoor singing and chanting, are fully open. Nobody is taking sane measures at the arguable height of the pandemic! If we learned anything from this pandemic, we learned that we can't rely on people voluntarily acting collectively to make things better for everyone.

mrfusion 6y ago

What do excess deaths look like for 2020?

pcunite 6y ago
^ The metric I hope to get my hands on come January.
- purple-again 6y ago
  I am not sure about this specific metric but based on my experience with government metrics you will be waiting until closer to April than January for those numbers.
  - MagnumOpus 6y ago
    Your experience is misleading you then. The CDC numbers for excess deaths are only a bit more than a week out of date: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
mynegation 6y ago
GIFY https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Damorian 6y ago
This is the only question that matters in the context of covid deaths, at least at a high level. After the initial shock, it's dropped to around 10%. I expect that this will continue to drop as we lose our most vulnerable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
DanTheManPR 6y ago
The CDC has an excellent visualization for this. 2020 is a major outlier in the last few years in terms of excess deaths. If you drill down into the local data, you can see some really stark visualizations: for example, the tremendous increase in deaths in New York City in spring of 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

satysin 6y ago

This is so sad to see and from looking at the number of people who travelled for Thanksgiving last week I think it is almost certain that these kind of daily death numbers will continue into the new year :( Honestly I don't really know what to say when I see these headlines anymore. I am in France but have many friends and family in the US and hearing the stories from them is both saddening and infuriating. Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year. People I used to think of as very intelligent falling for the most insane conspiracy theories and other such nonsense. It has been really eye opening in an increasingly depressing way. And on top of that as someone from the UK (but now living in France) I also have the stupidness of Brexit to deal with. People talk about the impact of lockdowns on mental health but honestly that wasn't a big deal to me, the biggest impact to me this year has been the stupidity and selfishness of so many people. It is draining having to listen to people talk about 5G spreading the virus or Bill Gates wants to microchip you with the vaccine or going on rants that surgical masks lead to a dangerous build up of CO2. There is something seriously wrong with the human race. A shocking lack of education and rational rather than emotional thinking for starters. Sorry I guess my comment doesn't really add to the discourse. Guess I just needed to just put something 'out there' rather than it just rattle around in my head right now.

webwanderings 6y ago
> Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year. This has been the most astonishing fact of life that has come out of Covid. Blown away by discovering the same. I think a whole lot of humans must have discovered this fact for the first time in their life.
- satysin 6y ago
  The thing is I am without a doubt a person of average intelligence and what I don't "get" is how people whom I know are more intelligent that me doing the most stupid things. I try to listen to as many different perspectives as possible, look up claims I hear being made, listen to experts in the respective fields and err on the side of caution. Back in March when medical experts said masks are unlikely to help I was like "okay well that sucks but they know much more about this kind of thing so I will just keep my distance, etc". Then when some data showed that actually masks do seem to help I didn't argue. I listened to the reasons for the change in advice and it all sounded, to me at least, perfectly reasonable. Yet I still hear people saying medical experts are "flip flopping" on masks as if changing ones advice based on new, scientifically backed information is a bad thing. Highly intelligent people I know have made comments to me about masks, 5G, Bill Gates microchip vaccines, "Plandemic" and all that kind of stuff. Sadly I have a (second) aunt that has been sucked into the QAnon madness. She honest to god believes the election was stolen from Trump. She isn't even American! She is a lamb farmer in Wales that still believes Brexit is going to be the best thing ever. But that is a conversation for a different thread. I am just mentally exhausted from it all. I miss the days of moon landing and what really goes on at Area 51 conspiracies.

kylebenzle 6y ago

With Covid-19 Rates Rising Adding an Air Purifier To Your Home is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health [1] [1] https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your-home-is-the-single-most-important-thing-you-can-do-to-improve-your-4b9568c8056e https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your...

typon 6y ago

The US will probably never recover from this pandemic. The sociological harm done by this virus (normalizing anti-expert sentiment) is far greater than the physical harm in the long run.

khalilravanna 6y ago
I’d argue that’s not a new phenomenon by any extent. Climate change denial has had a strong following for over a decade. We’re just seeing how devastating the effects of this sort of behavior can be in a short timeline (I agree with Chomsky that ultimately Covid is a blip and climate change is far more catastrophic long term).
mrfusion 6y ago
I actually wonder if that’s the only good thing to come out of this. I feel like you’re lamenting that people don’t follow your experts. I mean look at all the experts that signed on here: https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ Why don’t they count?
jazzyk 6y ago
You assume that experts are completely impartial. Or ethical. They aren't. See "Inside Job" - an excellent documentary about the 2008 financial crisis. Highly credentialed Harvard, MIT, Columbia professors produced reports for Wall Street to convince buyers to buy their toxic financial products (while collecting enormous fees). I am all for science, but one needs to watch out for $cience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/S0iT4 https://archive.is/S0iT4