5 ms·

> It's not okay to just say that only the old, fat, and vulnerable are at risk of dying so why should everyone else have to take all these precautions? The lack

by blast 5y ago

> It's not okay to just say that only the old, fat, and vulnerable are at risk of dying so why should everyone else have to take all these precautions? The lack of empathy is staggering. You're not representing the article fairly. For example, here is the passage where the author mentions obesity: Vitamin D and exercise have both been linked to better outcomes for COVID-19 patients. In the U.S. 78% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 were overweight or obese. Lockdowns caused Americans to gain an average of two pounds per month and reduce their daily steps by 27%, thereby increasing the likelihood of adverse COVID-19 outcomes. If you disagree, fine, but at least disagree with what she's actually saying.

Spivak 5y ago
While true I could be more charitable to the article I think it would do a disservice to not point out the fact that the author constantly minimizes the impact of the pandemic by highlighting how the death rate is for lower the non-elderly non-vulnerable non-obese and there’s no reason to even being this up unless you’re trying to drive home the subtext.
ashtonbaker 5y ago
I'll bite. > thereby increasing the likelihood of adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Assuming they get the virus! Which the lockdowns were supposed to prevent! If you do the math and the benefit of the lockdowns were small, and the risk from gaining weight was large, then fine, but the pathologic case of this logic looks like: "The government wouldn't let me drive to the store today because of the tornadoes. They say I should go tomorrow, at which point I'll be older, and therefore statistically a worse driver, putting me at an increased risk." I'm VERY open to critiquing the lockdowns on these kinds of grounds, I'm just getting sick of folks with an agenda bringing a condescending tone and the false appearance of logic to a complex discussion.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > Assuming they get the virus! Which the lockdowns were supposed to prevent! The key words being "supposed to". COVID killed as many people as it did despite lockdowns that destroyed the economy and ruined everyone's lives for the past 15 months.
  - ashtonbaker 5y ago
    Well, presumably it would have killed more without the lockdowns, but it's not clear how many more. It sounds like you're saying not doing lockdowns would have been worth the extra deaths. Which is certainly a justifiable argument if we're being specific, but absent some sort of rough sense for how many extra deaths, it seems like a bold kind of thing to write a blank check for.
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    Yea. One thing is, to know how many people would have died without lockdowns would require to go into some other dimension or universe where this was the case. Otherwise, its about accurate as me saying what the world would like if world war 2 had not happened. It would require too many assumptions for it to be reliable
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      There's no need to imagine other dimensions, Sweden and numerous US states which did not lock down allow us to make at least a ballpark guess as to how different the outcome would have been in terms of deaths from Covid. North Dakota vs South Dakota is a particularly apples-for-apples comparison. Even adjusting for the greater population density of some of the lockdown states & countries, it's not a massive difference.
      - tcmart14 5y ago
        South Dakota has a higher death rate per capita than north dakota. Both are in the top 3 for covid cases for per capita. I would say bad example. Where as California was an extreme compared to either state and per capita death rate is 161/100,000 and South Dakota is 229/100,000. That is a roughly 42% difference between South Dakota and California?
        AndrewBissell 5y ago
        I mean, New York was also an extreme compared to South Dakota, and more comparable in terms of latitude, and it had a 20% higher per-capita death rate. But I don't think either it or CA make for a very good comparison as opposed to ND, whose per-capita Covid death rate was about 10% lower than SD's. This is the upper bound on lives saved by the lockdown policy, from which you have to start subtracting out deaths from the knock-on effects of lockdowns (isolation, delayed medical screenings and treatments, economic impacts, etc).

by blast 5y ago

Spivak 5y ago

While true I could be more charitable to the article I think it would do a disservice to not point out the fact that the author constantly minimizes the impact of the pandemic by highlighting how the death rate is for lower the non-elderly non-vulnerable non-obese and there’s no reason to even being this up unless you’re trying to drive home the subtext.

ashtonbaker 5y ago

I'll bite. > thereby increasing the likelihood of adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Assuming they get the virus! Which the lockdowns were supposed to prevent! If you do the math and the benefit of the lockdowns were small, and the risk from gaining weight was large, then fine, but the pathologic case of this logic looks like: "The government wouldn't let me drive to the store today because of the tornadoes. They say I should go tomorrow, at which point I'll be older, and therefore statistically a worse driver, putting me at an increased risk." I'm VERY open to critiquing the lockdowns on these kinds of grounds, I'm just getting sick of folks with an agenda bringing a condescending tone and the false appearance of logic to a complex discussion.

josephcsible 5y ago
> Assuming they get the virus! Which the lockdowns were supposed to prevent! The key words being "supposed to". COVID killed as many people as it did despite lockdowns that destroyed the economy and ruined everyone's lives for the past 15 months.
- ashtonbaker 5y ago
  Well, presumably it would have killed more without the lockdowns, but it's not clear how many more. It sounds like you're saying not doing lockdowns would have been worth the extra deaths. Which is certainly a justifiable argument if we're being specific, but absent some sort of rough sense for how many extra deaths, it seems like a bold kind of thing to write a blank check for.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Yea. One thing is, to know how many people would have died without lockdowns would require to go into some other dimension or universe where this was the case. Otherwise, its about accurate as me saying what the world would like if world war 2 had not happened. It would require too many assumptions for it to be reliable
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    There's no need to imagine other dimensions, Sweden and numerous US states which did not lock down allow us to make at least a ballpark guess as to how different the outcome would have been in terms of deaths from Covid. North Dakota vs South Dakota is a particularly apples-for-apples comparison. Even adjusting for the greater population density of some of the lockdown states & countries, it's not a massive difference.
    - tcmart14 5y ago
      South Dakota has a higher death rate per capita than north dakota. Both are in the top 3 for covid cases for per capita. I would say bad example. Where as California was an extreme compared to either state and per capita death rate is 161/100,000 and South Dakota is 229/100,000. That is a roughly 42% difference between South Dakota and California?
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        I mean, New York was also an extreme compared to South Dakota, and more comparable in terms of latitude, and it had a 20% higher per-capita death rate. But I don't think either it or CA make for a very good comparison as opposed to ND, whose per-capita Covid death rate was about 10% lower than SD's. This is the upper bound on lives saved by the lockdown policy, from which you have to start subtracting out deaths from the knock-on effects of lockdowns (isolation, delayed medical screenings and treatments, economic impacts, etc).