7 ms·

Well, just for starters, millions of people haven't died of the virus. At last count, the death toll so far is just over 1.5 million. A terrible number, to be s

Well, just for starters, millions of people haven't died of the virus. At last count, the death toll so far is just over 1.5 million. A terrible number, to be sure, but if you claim to not be engaging in hyperbole or misstatement of facts, it would be good to back that by not making your very first statement completely non-factual.

jacobolus 6y ago
There have been 1.5 million confirmed Covid deaths, but the total number of people who have died from Covid is far higher than that, I would guess at least 1 million more, but possibly higher. Even wealthy countries with developed healthcare/government infrastructure are missing a significant fraction of deaths (in the USA alone, we have probably missed about 100k Covid deaths from the confirmed count). In many less developed countries, a majority (in some cases an overwhelming majority) of Covid deaths are never counted as such. It will be hard to get a total estimate until at least a year or two after the pandemic is over, because even in developed countries death reporting can lag by up to a year (that’s leaving aside cause-of-death attribution). If you check back in a year or two WHO, CDC, etc. will have much better estimates for the total death toll in 2020, with (possibly wide) error bars you can largely trust. Beyond that, this is weak pedantry about the definition of “millions”. People commonly use this plural to mean >1 million; we’re talking about the order of magnitude here, not the precise count.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  "Died with Covid", not "died from Covid". Regular old respiratory infections are a frequent indirect cause of strokes and heart attacks, but we've never claimed before that common colds cause "millions" of deaths.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I love how the assumption is always that confirmed covid death that were actually unrelated to covid are more frequent then covid death that were not confirmed. But, chances are that latter are more frequent. Covid tests are not done on all deaths precisely in places where situation is worst.
    - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
      > I love how the assumption is always that confirmed covid death that were actually unrelated to covid are more frequent then covid death that were not confirmed. There is no such assumption. Read my post again: millions and millions of people died from the common cold before 2020. The media never reported those deaths as 'common cold deaths', though, even though it would have made just as much sense as reporting 'Covid deaths' does.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      I think in the first world the former is more likely. I personally know someone whose grandma died of entirely unrelated causes and the hospital offered to pay for the funeral if they agreed to report her as a COVID death. Our governments are setting perverse incentives.
  - jansan 6y ago
    No the common cold, but the flu. The official death toll in Germany from the 2017/2018 flu season is still higher than deaths from COVID-19 so far. And I suspect that if we used the same method for COVID-19 deaths that was used for the flu (indirect measurement), the flu of 2017/18 would surpass COVID-19 by far.
    - jacobolus 6y ago
      Across every age group (except children) Covid is roughly 5x to 10x deadlier than the seasonal flu. It also spreads faster (higher reproductive number), is much more often spread by asymptomatic/presymptomatic people, and nobody has any apparent pre-existing immunity. (And the seasonal flu is a serious deadly disease which stresses hospital systems every year, not some joke. Even if Covid were only as bad as the flu, it would still be a real threat.) The method used to estimate flu deaths every year is far more expansive than the method used for confirmed Covid deaths. One interesting thing to see is that the social reactions vs. Covid have radically reduced the amount of flu spread this year vs. previous years.
      - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
        > Across every age group (except children) Covid is roughly 5x to 10x deadlier than the flu. Two points: a) 'Flu' is a different disease than respiratory viral diseases. (A.k.a. "common colds".) Covid is a kind of respiratory viral disease. b) "Common colds" are also deadly and cause a huge number of deaths each year. They just get classified as deaths from stroke or heart attack, not the common cold: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=does%20the%20common%20cold%20cause%20strokes https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=does%20the%20common%20... So counting mortality rates is not a simple issue and depends a lot on cultural factors, political incentives, etc.
- ibejoeb 6y ago
  > There have been 1.5 million confirmed Covid deaths It'd really be halpful to frame with some kind of context. TB kills that many annually. To make matters worse, it's a curable disease, so these deaths are entirely unnecessary, but when was the last time you heard a peep about that? It's been raging for decades, and WHO is targeting 2030 as the end of it.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    You're ignoring the fact that this is despite huge restrictions around the world to limit its spread, if approached the same way as TB it would do insanely more harm.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    The best current estimate of the IFR of Covid is something like 0.5% with good medical care, or much higher without. If populations take no action whatsoever to curb spread, somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of people will likely be infected. If we multiply that by the population of the world, we get something on the order of 15–50 million people dead. Not as bad as the 1918 flu, but worse than any pandemic since, roughly comparable to the entire death toll of AIDS over the past 40 years. Thankfully all around the world people have taken significant steps to slow the virus down, and so hopefully the vaccine will arrive in time to save tens of millions. I am happy to agree with you that humanity could do a whole lot more to prevent deaths from infectious diseases, including tuberculosis.
    - shadowprofile77 6y ago
      Truly, where do you keep pulling the most alarmist numbers you think you can plausibly get away with from? COVID IFR at 0.5% with exceptional treatment? No, none of the wider more recent data backs this up, and please, don't just take my word for it. The CDC's more recent overview results don't at all back up your claim even though they do state that IFR can vary by region due to demographic and other factors. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html
- timeeater 6y ago
  If you want to play number games like that, then you should also acknowledge that many who died were on the brink of dead already without Covid. You should only count excess deaths, not who was tested or not. Show me the 3 million excess deaths, before you continue with the alarmism.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Eh, you probably should count what actually killed them, though you can make some arguments. If you have let’s say two years left to life and COVID ends up finishing you off, that’s a death due to COVID.
    - timeeater 6y ago
      Just show me the excess deaths. And what if somebody has only one month to live, and dies with Covid, also a death from Covid? Maybe yes, but really worthy of hyperbole then? My grandmother died from the flu, at 99 years old. I never felt I should blame her death on the flu pandemic, though.

jacobolus 6y ago

There have been 1.5 million confirmed Covid deaths, but the total number of people who have died from Covid is far higher than that, I would guess at least 1 million more, but possibly higher. Even wealthy countries with developed healthcare/government infrastructure are missing a significant fraction of deaths (in the USA alone, we have probably missed about 100k Covid deaths from the confirmed count). In many less developed countries, a majority (in some cases an overwhelming majority) of Covid deaths are never counted as such. It will be hard to get a total estimate until at least a year or two after the pandemic is over, because even in developed countries death reporting can lag by up to a year (that’s leaving aside cause-of-death attribution). If you check back in a year or two WHO, CDC, etc. will have much better estimates for the total death toll in 2020, with (possibly wide) error bars you can largely trust. Beyond that, this is weak pedantry about the definition of “millions”. People commonly use this plural to mean >1 million; we’re talking about the order of magnitude here, not the precise count.

otabdeveloper4 6y ago
"Died with Covid", not "died from Covid". Regular old respiratory infections are a frequent indirect cause of strokes and heart attacks, but we've never claimed before that common colds cause "millions" of deaths.
- watwut 6y ago
  I love how the assumption is always that confirmed covid death that were actually unrelated to covid are more frequent then covid death that were not confirmed. But, chances are that latter are more frequent. Covid tests are not done on all deaths precisely in places where situation is worst.
  - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    > I love how the assumption is always that confirmed covid death that were actually unrelated to covid are more frequent then covid death that were not confirmed. There is no such assumption. Read my post again: millions and millions of people died from the common cold before 2020. The media never reported those deaths as 'common cold deaths', though, even though it would have made just as much sense as reporting 'Covid deaths' does.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I think in the first world the former is more likely. I personally know someone whose grandma died of entirely unrelated causes and the hospital offered to pay for the funeral if they agreed to report her as a COVID death. Our governments are setting perverse incentives.
- jansan 6y ago
  No the common cold, but the flu. The official death toll in Germany from the 2017/2018 flu season is still higher than deaths from COVID-19 so far. And I suspect that if we used the same method for COVID-19 deaths that was used for the flu (indirect measurement), the flu of 2017/18 would surpass COVID-19 by far.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Across every age group (except children) Covid is roughly 5x to 10x deadlier than the seasonal flu. It also spreads faster (higher reproductive number), is much more often spread by asymptomatic/presymptomatic people, and nobody has any apparent pre-existing immunity. (And the seasonal flu is a serious deadly disease which stresses hospital systems every year, not some joke. Even if Covid were only as bad as the flu, it would still be a real threat.) The method used to estimate flu deaths every year is far more expansive than the method used for confirmed Covid deaths. One interesting thing to see is that the social reactions vs. Covid have radically reduced the amount of flu spread this year vs. previous years.
    - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
      > Across every age group (except children) Covid is roughly 5x to 10x deadlier than the flu. Two points: a) 'Flu' is a different disease than respiratory viral diseases. (A.k.a. "common colds".) Covid is a kind of respiratory viral disease. b) "Common colds" are also deadly and cause a huge number of deaths each year. They just get classified as deaths from stroke or heart attack, not the common cold: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=does%20the%20common%20cold%20cause%20strokes https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=does%20the%20common%20... So counting mortality rates is not a simple issue and depends a lot on cultural factors, political incentives, etc.
ibejoeb 6y ago
> There have been 1.5 million confirmed Covid deaths It'd really be halpful to frame with some kind of context. TB kills that many annually. To make matters worse, it's a curable disease, so these deaths are entirely unnecessary, but when was the last time you heard a peep about that? It's been raging for decades, and WHO is targeting 2030 as the end of it.
- corin_ 6y ago
  You're ignoring the fact that this is despite huge restrictions around the world to limit its spread, if approached the same way as TB it would do insanely more harm.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  The best current estimate of the IFR of Covid is something like 0.5% with good medical care, or much higher without. If populations take no action whatsoever to curb spread, somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of people will likely be infected. If we multiply that by the population of the world, we get something on the order of 15–50 million people dead. Not as bad as the 1918 flu, but worse than any pandemic since, roughly comparable to the entire death toll of AIDS over the past 40 years. Thankfully all around the world people have taken significant steps to slow the virus down, and so hopefully the vaccine will arrive in time to save tens of millions. I am happy to agree with you that humanity could do a whole lot more to prevent deaths from infectious diseases, including tuberculosis.
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    Truly, where do you keep pulling the most alarmist numbers you think you can plausibly get away with from? COVID IFR at 0.5% with exceptional treatment? No, none of the wider more recent data backs this up, and please, don't just take my word for it. The CDC's more recent overview results don't at all back up your claim even though they do state that IFR can vary by region due to demographic and other factors. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html
timeeater 6y ago
If you want to play number games like that, then you should also acknowledge that many who died were on the brink of dead already without Covid. You should only count excess deaths, not who was tested or not. Show me the 3 million excess deaths, before you continue with the alarmism.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Eh, you probably should count what actually killed them, though you can make some arguments. If you have let’s say two years left to life and COVID ends up finishing you off, that’s a death due to COVID.
  - timeeater 6y ago
    Just show me the excess deaths. And what if somebody has only one month to live, and dies with Covid, also a death from Covid? Maybe yes, but really worthy of hyperbole then? My grandmother died from the flu, at 99 years old. I never felt I should blame her death on the flu pandemic, though.