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3100 people died in a single day, and your response is: > My bias is that the COVID-19 response in and across the United States is overblown and hysterical. In

3100 people died in a single day, and your response is: > My bias is that the COVID-19 response in and across the United States is overblown and hysterical. In other words, the juice has not been worth the squeeze. These are the kind of statements that people in future generations will look back on in embarrassment. "How could people be so purposefully blind to what's happening right in front of them?" Also this; > I argue that getting sick is a human right and that no one can deny you this right. Do you not realize the fundamental issue with this statement? Edited to add: 3,100 deaths reported in a single day, not necessarily all dead on the same day.

heartbreak 6y ago
> 3100 people died in a single day Realistically 3,100 people died over several days, possibly weeks, and due to reporting delays caused by the Thanksgiving holiday, the numbers were all reported on one day. There's never a more important time to follow the seven-day rolling average than around a major holiday. A lot of people died of covid yesterday, and a lot of people will die of covid today, but not 3,100 people. We have a significant number of people in this country (including the person you replied to) who sincerely believe that covid is overblown. Obviously incorrect statements like "3100 people died in a single day" reinforce those beliefs and are counterproductive.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  You're right, thanks for the correction. Either way, the fact is still that we're at nearly 280k thousand deaths in just the US, and are very likely to hit 400k or more, and people are still out there saying we're overreacting. It's absurd.
  - hnrodey 6y ago
    What would be your response to the small business owners who lost their livelihood because government arbitrarily decided to cut off their revenue stream? The kids who are being left behind because schools across the country have gone virtual? The increases in domestically violence? Suicide and depression rates? The unavoidable health decline because people have been forced in to their homes and apartments for several months? There’s a boatload of problems in the US. COVID is a symptom - not the cause. Health is the antidote to COVID - not lockdown. And as we see, far too many people have spent years upon years sacrificing their health and now suffering consequences.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it. The rough price of a human life in estimates of cost-benefit analysis is on the order of $10-100 million. That puts the cost of pandemic in lives lost in the US alone as of this date to a couple of trillion dollars. Were the pandemic to infect everyone in the US, the resulting death toll would have a calculated cost of approximately 100% of yearly GDP. The economic costs of a lockdown are a bargain in comparison.
      - hnrodey 6y ago
        >My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it. Yeah, agree with all of that.
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      You seem to think I'm advocating for hard lockdown, which I never said. I see this pattern in COVID discussions all the time. Someone claims COVID is overblown, people push back, then the response is always "yeah but lockdowns are horrible!". It's largely a strawman.
      - hnrodey 6y ago
        Lockdown and restrictions have been the primary means to control the spread of COVID. COVID, as a disease, should be taken seriously. It is absolutely more serious for some than others. Ultimately every person needs to exercise personal responsibility instead of demanding that others change their behavior.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jcranmer 6y ago
  I know my state tracks case data and death data by date of test/death, not by date of report (which generally means that the last ~2 days in the daily report are undercounts, although annoyingly, the running averages don't stop a few days early). I don't know how well other jurisdictions do at distinguishing between day-of-report versus day-of-event, nor how well aggregations do at tracking the disparities here. In any case, at current trends, "3100 people died in a single day" will shortly be true if it is not true already.
andomar 6y ago
In a normal year 3,000,000 people die in the US. The numbers are higher because of covid-19, but not by a lot. You can check the CDC graph for excess deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Nobody would have predicted the current response based on that graph. It fits a trend where people become less and less willing to accept physical risks. Why can't we discuss this without calling one another "purposefully blind"?
- lefrenchy 6y ago
  Why do people keep making this argument that the numbers are so low and don’t warrant a response without addressing or considering that the world has taken MAJOR steps to curb the spread and impact of the virus. If we all lived our lives as normal, it would likely be way worse. Not to mention that if we were to have lived our lives as normal and not cared, then deaths outcomes would rise even more in proportion to hospital admissions since the more overloaded a hospital gets, the harder it is to get proper care. It’s really not rocket science. Epidemiologist and doctors are saying we should take significant measures to stop this, I think I trust them. I wouldn’t want a doctor telling me how to engineer a web service.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Yeah, when your hospitals are operating at 100% capacity, the argument "but excess deaths this year aren't actually much higher" doesn't really work. And then if, through heroic effort and sacrifice the hospitals don't get overrun, people say "why were we worried? The hospitals never went over capacity!". Like if a team of engineers spend a week mitigating a security attack, then all of the non experts at the company say "well, nothing ended up happening, guess the whole thing was overblown".
  - andomar 6y ago
    Which epidemiologists are you referring too? It seems even Scientific American can't get information from them. "One epidemiologist told us the environment was “too toxic” to talk to us, even anonymously." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science-wars1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science...

heartbreak 6y ago

> 3100 people died in a single day Realistically 3,100 people died over several days, possibly weeks, and due to reporting delays caused by the Thanksgiving holiday, the numbers were all reported on one day. There's never a more important time to follow the seven-day rolling average than around a major holiday. A lot of people died of covid yesterday, and a lot of people will die of covid today, but not 3,100 people. We have a significant number of people in this country (including the person you replied to) who sincerely believe that covid is overblown. Obviously incorrect statements like "3100 people died in a single day" reinforce those beliefs and are counterproductive.

Trasmatta 6y ago
You're right, thanks for the correction. Either way, the fact is still that we're at nearly 280k thousand deaths in just the US, and are very likely to hit 400k or more, and people are still out there saying we're overreacting. It's absurd.
- hnrodey 6y ago
  What would be your response to the small business owners who lost their livelihood because government arbitrarily decided to cut off their revenue stream? The kids who are being left behind because schools across the country have gone virtual? The increases in domestically violence? Suicide and depression rates? The unavoidable health decline because people have been forced in to their homes and apartments for several months? There’s a boatload of problems in the US. COVID is a symptom - not the cause. Health is the antidote to COVID - not lockdown. And as we see, far too many people have spent years upon years sacrificing their health and now suffering consequences.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it. The rough price of a human life in estimates of cost-benefit analysis is on the order of $10-100 million. That puts the cost of pandemic in lives lost in the US alone as of this date to a couple of trillion dollars. Were the pandemic to infect everyone in the US, the resulting death toll would have a calculated cost of approximately 100% of yearly GDP. The economic costs of a lockdown are a bargain in comparison.
    - hnrodey 6y ago
      >My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it. Yeah, agree with all of that.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    You seem to think I'm advocating for hard lockdown, which I never said. I see this pattern in COVID discussions all the time. Someone claims COVID is overblown, people push back, then the response is always "yeah but lockdowns are horrible!". It's largely a strawman.
    - hnrodey 6y ago
      Lockdown and restrictions have been the primary means to control the spread of COVID. COVID, as a disease, should be taken seriously. It is absolutely more serious for some than others. Ultimately every person needs to exercise personal responsibility instead of demanding that others change their behavior.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jcranmer 6y ago
I know my state tracks case data and death data by date of test/death, not by date of report (which generally means that the last ~2 days in the daily report are undercounts, although annoyingly, the running averages don't stop a few days early). I don't know how well other jurisdictions do at distinguishing between day-of-report versus day-of-event, nor how well aggregations do at tracking the disparities here. In any case, at current trends, "3100 people died in a single day" will shortly be true if it is not true already.

andomar 6y ago

In a normal year 3,000,000 people die in the US. The numbers are higher because of covid-19, but not by a lot. You can check the CDC graph for excess deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Nobody would have predicted the current response based on that graph. It fits a trend where people become less and less willing to accept physical risks. Why can't we discuss this without calling one another "purposefully blind"?

lefrenchy 6y ago
Why do people keep making this argument that the numbers are so low and don’t warrant a response without addressing or considering that the world has taken MAJOR steps to curb the spread and impact of the virus. If we all lived our lives as normal, it would likely be way worse. Not to mention that if we were to have lived our lives as normal and not cared, then deaths outcomes would rise even more in proportion to hospital admissions since the more overloaded a hospital gets, the harder it is to get proper care. It’s really not rocket science. Epidemiologist and doctors are saying we should take significant measures to stop this, I think I trust them. I wouldn’t want a doctor telling me how to engineer a web service.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Yeah, when your hospitals are operating at 100% capacity, the argument "but excess deaths this year aren't actually much higher" doesn't really work. And then if, through heroic effort and sacrifice the hospitals don't get overrun, people say "why were we worried? The hospitals never went over capacity!". Like if a team of engineers spend a week mitigating a security attack, then all of the non experts at the company say "well, nothing ended up happening, guess the whole thing was overblown".
- andomar 6y ago
  Which epidemiologists are you referring too? It seems even Scientific American can't get information from them. "One epidemiologist told us the environment was “too toxic” to talk to us, even anonymously." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science-wars1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science...