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Thanks for summing up the relevant numbers, it's helpful in putting all this in context. .1% isn't nothing, but it isn't really a disaster either. The Black De

Thanks for summing up the relevant numbers, it's helpful in putting all this in context. .1% isn't nothing, but it isn't really a disaster either. The Black Death was 30-50% of the population in Europe. The "Spanish" Flu of 1918 killed about .64% of the US population. Things could still get worse of course. But barring that, and considering the absolute disaster that Covid has revealed our political system and interlocking health and government bureaucracies to be, I think we got off lucky. If this had been a "real" plague, of the kind humanity has faced repeatedly in the past (and has been expected for some time now), we would have been totally and utterly screwed. Will this serve as a wake-up call? For the most part, probably not. The best we can hope for is that some of the new thinking and systems created for this situation will still be around when the other shoe drops and we really, really need them.

soared 5y ago
I feel like the more logical take is that our healthcare technology, policy, etc prevented the deaths from being on a scale closer to previous plagues. It may have been closer to 1918 but we stopped that from happening.
umvi 5y ago
> If this had been a "real" plague, of the kind humanity has faced repeatedly in the past (and has been expected for some time now), we would have been totally and utterly screwed. Not necessarily. Part of the reason there was so much pushback against public health mandates was because covid was so tame. You are being forced, by the government, to wear a mask, isolate from others, and stop going to work for an entire year for a disease that, for the vast majority who get it, just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms. If it were like black death and 50% of people who got it were dying you better believe there would be bi-partisan support for mask usage and lockdowns.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Agreed. But now the bar is set. Hyperbole and data abuse have longer term consequences. Eventually, we'll face something more deadly. But plenty of citizens will be sceptical, as they should be. That's the problem. Some call this a test run. I'm not so sure crying wolf qualifies.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  I can accept that the initial worst case mortality claims turned out to be too high. But I can’t accept this claim: > a disease that, for the vast majority who get it, just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms People who’ve been sick and survived, even with minimal symptoms, are experiencing long term health issues. It’s one thing to recognize that the early estimates overstated mortality. It’s another thing to minimize what people who’ve survived infection are experiencing.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "People who’ve been sick and survived, even with minimal symptoms, are experiencing long term health issues." I would say 65-80% of non-hospitalized people being fine is consistent with the prior comment's use of "vast majority".
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      I didn’t object to the quantification, I objected to minimizing the impact and characterizing it as temporary. I don’t know the distribution of long term impact (and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about), but it’s pretty well known that there’s more than mortality rate at stake.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        "(and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about)" The CDC and others have looked at at long term effects, which is where I got those estimates. If you mean it's too early to tell because not enough time has gone by, then we could say the same about the vaccine (which is somewhat valid for both sides, but lacking evidence relegates it more to a belief than fact-based opinion). The comment wasn't minimizing the impact. They were simply stating that people didn't take it as seriously as they would have if covid was more impactful. I think this is a valid point. We see similar issues in attitudes for other infections that can carry longterm impact (even lack of education and protective measures around stuff like hepatitis and HIV).
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
  I think that's exactly why the COVID pandemic has been so bad. The outcomes aren't as terrifying as say, ebola. If COVID had been ebola but with incredibly high transmission rate, people would have shut down hard. Everyone. Everywhere. With an extreme abundance of caution. I bet we would have stopped that early. Instead, you have this insidious disease that is so easy for people to compare to the flu and common cold, and it preys mostly on the oldest and most frail, so many people went with a "I'll be fine" attitude. And most of those folks did survive. And the virus just continued to spread, steadily doing its thing, killing millions of people worldwide.
  - xwolfi 5y ago
    It s so easy to compare with common cold because both are coronavirii... Look I wore the mask like everyone in HK since the first day, but you have to admit you talk of it like it could kill you. It wouldn't, deaths are rare. Millions of people are not a big relative number... There are things that must kill way more that you consider absolute necessity, like coca cola, whisky or cigarets.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      This line of argument is so tiresome. If death is not a big deal to you, you're welcome to give it a swing and see what you think. Or to take as much personal risk as you want. But people get to choose. If a recreational skydiver gets pancreatic cancer, that's still bad and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
      - sethammons 5y ago
        > Or to take as much personal risk as you want That’s the point that all people challenging the lock downs and mask are trying to make. It just kinda ignores the whole “this can cause it to be more likely to be encountered by a person who will handle it poorly” thing.
    - lastofthemojito 5y ago
      That's exactly my point. I got COVID. It was a mild case and I survived it with no issues. My case did feel like a common cold, as did so many others. I also know someone who died of COVID. That's the sneaky thing. It's almost as if the virus plays eeny, meeny, miny, moe - a bunch of us get a sore throat, and one person gets absolutely ravaged. It's very tempting not to put your life on hold when there's a really good chance you'll beat it. Of course, when vast numbers think that way, the virus spreads widely and many die. As to your "millions of people are not a big relative number" point - at the peak of the pandemic in the USA, COVID became the leading cause of death.[0] That seems fairly major in a relative sense. [0] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/slide/covid-19-now-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-united-states/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/slide/covid-19-now-...
msbarnett 5y ago
Another way to look at this is that if the Black Death had broken out in 2019, we’d have expected the excess mortality to be pretty close to zero (in truth some remote regions with poor access to antibiotics still experience it, but it’s essentially a non-issue in the modern world). Which is to say, comparing deaths across centuries is hard. It’s hard to say how many people COVID would have killed without oxygen and intubation in the time period of the Black Plague. That it killed as many as it did even given our medical advances may indicate that it is in some absolute sense much worse, not better.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"The Black Death was 30-50% of the population in Europe. The "Spanish" Flu of 1918 killed about .64% of the US population." The populations were much lower back then. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, so there are probably many more deaths to come.
- dham 5y ago
  Hong Kong flu killed (100,000 people) 0.05% of US population in 1969. Would be around 160,000 people today. Although as a whole we were much more healthier back then. Lower weight etc. It's no inconceivable that if the same exactly Hong Kong flu hit the United states today there would be more deaths than Covid, due to the much poorer health of the nation.
- claytongulick 5y ago
  > The populations were much lower back then As a percentage of the population, why would this matter? Other than for population density which you would generally expect to cause an increased rate of infection, not less.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    It matters because a million people dying is worse than ten people dying, even if those ten people were 50% of some population and the million were only 10% of another population.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Even if that's true, that doesn't support your position. Conservative estimated deaths: Coronavirus - 3M Black death - 75M (in ten years) Spanish flu - 35M
mdoms 5y ago
Seven million dead people isn't a disaster?

soared 5y ago

I feel like the more logical take is that our healthcare technology, policy, etc prevented the deaths from being on a scale closer to previous plagues. It may have been closer to 1918 but we stopped that from happening.

umvi 5y ago

> If this had been a "real" plague, of the kind humanity has faced repeatedly in the past (and has been expected for some time now), we would have been totally and utterly screwed. Not necessarily. Part of the reason there was so much pushback against public health mandates was because covid was so tame. You are being forced, by the government, to wear a mask, isolate from others, and stop going to work for an entire year for a disease that, for the vast majority who get it, just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms. If it were like black death and 50% of people who got it were dying you better believe there would be bi-partisan support for mask usage and lockdowns.

chiefalchemist 5y ago
Agreed. But now the bar is set. Hyperbole and data abuse have longer term consequences. Eventually, we'll face something more deadly. But plenty of citizens will be sceptical, as they should be. That's the problem. Some call this a test run. I'm not so sure crying wolf qualifies.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
I can accept that the initial worst case mortality claims turned out to be too high. But I can’t accept this claim: > a disease that, for the vast majority who get it, just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms People who’ve been sick and survived, even with minimal symptoms, are experiencing long term health issues. It’s one thing to recognize that the early estimates overstated mortality. It’s another thing to minimize what people who’ve survived infection are experiencing.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "People who’ve been sick and survived, even with minimal symptoms, are experiencing long term health issues." I would say 65-80% of non-hospitalized people being fine is consistent with the prior comment's use of "vast majority".
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    I didn’t object to the quantification, I objected to minimizing the impact and characterizing it as temporary. I don’t know the distribution of long term impact (and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about), but it’s pretty well known that there’s more than mortality rate at stake.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      "(and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about)" The CDC and others have looked at at long term effects, which is where I got those estimates. If you mean it's too early to tell because not enough time has gone by, then we could say the same about the vaccine (which is somewhat valid for both sides, but lacking evidence relegates it more to a belief than fact-based opinion). The comment wasn't minimizing the impact. They were simply stating that people didn't take it as seriously as they would have if covid was more impactful. I think this is a valid point. We see similar issues in attitudes for other infections that can carry longterm impact (even lack of education and protective measures around stuff like hepatitis and HIV).
lastofthemojito 5y ago
I think that's exactly why the COVID pandemic has been so bad. The outcomes aren't as terrifying as say, ebola. If COVID had been ebola but with incredibly high transmission rate, people would have shut down hard. Everyone. Everywhere. With an extreme abundance of caution. I bet we would have stopped that early. Instead, you have this insidious disease that is so easy for people to compare to the flu and common cold, and it preys mostly on the oldest and most frail, so many people went with a "I'll be fine" attitude. And most of those folks did survive. And the virus just continued to spread, steadily doing its thing, killing millions of people worldwide.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  It s so easy to compare with common cold because both are coronavirii... Look I wore the mask like everyone in HK since the first day, but you have to admit you talk of it like it could kill you. It wouldn't, deaths are rare. Millions of people are not a big relative number... There are things that must kill way more that you consider absolute necessity, like coca cola, whisky or cigarets.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    This line of argument is so tiresome. If death is not a big deal to you, you're welcome to give it a swing and see what you think. Or to take as much personal risk as you want. But people get to choose. If a recreational skydiver gets pancreatic cancer, that's still bad and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
    - sethammons 5y ago
      > Or to take as much personal risk as you want That’s the point that all people challenging the lock downs and mask are trying to make. It just kinda ignores the whole “this can cause it to be more likely to be encountered by a person who will handle it poorly” thing.
  - lastofthemojito 5y ago
    That's exactly my point. I got COVID. It was a mild case and I survived it with no issues. My case did feel like a common cold, as did so many others. I also know someone who died of COVID. That's the sneaky thing. It's almost as if the virus plays eeny, meeny, miny, moe - a bunch of us get a sore throat, and one person gets absolutely ravaged. It's very tempting not to put your life on hold when there's a really good chance you'll beat it. Of course, when vast numbers think that way, the virus spreads widely and many die. As to your "millions of people are not a big relative number" point - at the peak of the pandemic in the USA, COVID became the leading cause of death.[0] That seems fairly major in a relative sense. [0] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/slide/covid-19-now-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-united-states/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/slide/covid-19-now-...

msbarnett 5y ago

Another way to look at this is that if the Black Death had broken out in 2019, we’d have expected the excess mortality to be pretty close to zero (in truth some remote regions with poor access to antibiotics still experience it, but it’s essentially a non-issue in the modern world). Which is to say, comparing deaths across centuries is hard. It’s hard to say how many people COVID would have killed without oxygen and intubation in the time period of the Black Plague. That it killed as many as it did even given our medical advances may indicate that it is in some absolute sense much worse, not better.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"The Black Death was 30-50% of the population in Europe. The "Spanish" Flu of 1918 killed about .64% of the US population." The populations were much lower back then. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, so there are probably many more deaths to come.

dham 5y ago
Hong Kong flu killed (100,000 people) 0.05% of US population in 1969. Would be around 160,000 people today. Although as a whole we were much more healthier back then. Lower weight etc. It's no inconceivable that if the same exactly Hong Kong flu hit the United states today there would be more deaths than Covid, due to the much poorer health of the nation.
claytongulick 5y ago
> The populations were much lower back then As a percentage of the population, why would this matter? Other than for population density which you would generally expect to cause an increased rate of infection, not less.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  It matters because a million people dying is worse than ten people dying, even if those ten people were 50% of some population and the million were only 10% of another population.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Even if that's true, that doesn't support your position. Conservative estimated deaths: Coronavirus - 3M Black death - 75M (in ten years) Spanish flu - 35M

mdoms 5y ago

Seven million dead people isn't a disaster?