4 ms·
What social effects does this inform us about?
by CivBase 6y ago
What social effects does this inform us about?
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat there'll be a lot of people with varying levels of grief, loss, and trauma. This may have some long-term impacts on psychological health that we should be prepared to mitigate.
- CivBase 6y agoGrief, loss, and trauma are hardly specific to covid-related deaths. If that's our concern, we should really be considering overall mortality rates (looks to be about 10-15% higher than previous years) and how many Americans know someone who has recently died, regardless of cause.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI'd argue that mass casualty events have some specific characteristics that differ from the normal background noise of deaths that happen on a routine basis. 9/11, for example, had a pretty disparate impact versus the raw number of deaths it generated.
- CivBase 6y agoSure, but the impact of a mass casualty event like 9/11 is not limited to people who knew the victims. Even though COVID-19 kills more Americans daily than the 9/11 attacks did, 9/11 has a comparable social impact because to most Americans it was an unanticipated, unprecedented act of human violence and we didn't know what to expect moving forward.
- MrRiddle 6y ago1 in 3 people know someone who died on any day of any year. Number of deaths of Covid is not that high.
- kube-system 6y agoNon sequitur -- a new single cause that is equivalent to the combined sum of all causes of death in a typical year is a "high" number by any definition.
- kube-system 6y agoI'd think it's pretty universally agreeable that the COVID pandemic has has some social effects. Step one to understanding the size and scope of social impact is to start measuring it. This is one of many measurements that may lead us to some conclusions.