6 ms·

Every year, ~647,000 Americans die from heart disease alone. Even if the COVID death numbers aren't over-inflated, I guarantee you that if I were to time-travel

Every year, ~647,000 Americans die from heart disease alone. Even if the COVID death numbers aren't over-inflated, I guarantee you that if I were to time-travel to 2019 and ask you if you think that it would be worth precipitating a global supply chain disruption, missed schooling and medical appointments for children around the globe, both first and third world, and the greatest erosion in civil liberties in Western society since at least WW2 (since we've already eclipsed 9/11 in loss of liberty, shockingly)...all over 4 million and change deaths globally, you would think that was crazy

shadowgovt 5y ago
I, for one, wouldn't think that was crazy, no. Not when the preventability of those deaths is proportional to how well people stick to pandemic mitigation protocol. Very, very few people are willing to just shrug and say "600,000 preventable deaths is acceptable" in this context. The pandemic creates challenges that are uniquely tuned to impact the American "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. Pandemic mitigation is a serious collective action problem (at the limit, it wouldn't take more than total isolation for four weeks to completely burn the virus out... And that's never going to happen in the United States, nor should anyone expect it to).
- lupire 5y ago
  > "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. I would love a source for this, because "rugged individualism" is the reason why US has the worst healthcare and homelessness of developed nations.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Agreed. Those are two more circumstances that it doesn't work well for. It does seem to do a decent job of encouraging and rewarding entrepreneurism.
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    People travel from all around the world to obtain US healthcare. Say what you will about affordability (I would contend that the main problem is that we don't have a free market for healthcare, we have an unholy crony capitalist hybrid system), but the quality of the healthcare itself is unparalleled anywhere in the world. If you're at serious risk of death you want to be in a US hospital. I hate the trend of conflating "access to affordable healthcare" with the actual healthcare itself.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > and homelessness of developed nations That's false by a large margin. The US rate of homelessness has been massively reduced over the past 20-30 years and is comparable to Austria. The US homelessness rate is far below Sweden, France, Britain, Australia, Canada. It's also below the Netherlands. The housing first program by the US worked exceptionally well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...
kenjackson 5y ago
600k deaths after huge mitigations. Without any mitigation’s is it 3 million in the US dead?
- rajin444 5y ago
  How can you prove the mitigations worked? The only controls out there (Sweden, some US states, etc.) aren’t very robust (nor in favor of mitigation efforts).
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    All you have to do is look at a deaths/infections curve before and after mitigations.
    - rajin444 5y ago
      Yes, but you need a control to compare it against. How do you get one?
      - nielsbot 5y ago
        Just look at the trend line? You might also want to look at the excess statistically significant deaths numbers. https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac8...
        rajin444 5y ago
        You need controls to account for confounding factors. Looking at a trend line does not account for confounding factors.
        nielsbot 5y ago
        Ok, what would be a confounding factor?
    - 5y ago
rat87 5y ago
If anything Covid deaths are significantly undercounted. How much is hard to tell but it's probably over a million and was likely 900k during March based on excess death estimates https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/06/994287048/new-study-estimates-more-than-900-000-people-have-died-of-covid-19-in-u-s https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
- djrogers 5y ago
  Dramatically false. In fact over the past few months many places have reduced their Covid death counts by ~25%, as they took off the ‘died from X but had COVID’ people. Alameda county, Santa Clara county and others…
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
I can’t tell if this is a serious comment. Surely you know heart disease isn’t contagious.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  The contagiousness is irrelevant (I’ve heard the “it’s not exponential” talking point a million times in the last year, and boy am I tired of it), but you should know that all social behaviors are contagious, and social behaviors correlate with health outcomes like cardiac disease. If you smoke your friends are likely to start too. If you sit on a couch all day your friends are more likely to, etc. My point was just about putting a contextless “600k omg” in perspective

shadowgovt 5y ago

I, for one, wouldn't think that was crazy, no. Not when the preventability of those deaths is proportional to how well people stick to pandemic mitigation protocol. Very, very few people are willing to just shrug and say "600,000 preventable deaths is acceptable" in this context. The pandemic creates challenges that are uniquely tuned to impact the American "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. Pandemic mitigation is a serious collective action problem (at the limit, it wouldn't take more than total isolation for four weeks to completely burn the virus out... And that's never going to happen in the United States, nor should anyone expect it to).

lupire 5y ago
> "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. I would love a source for this, because "rugged individualism" is the reason why US has the worst healthcare and homelessness of developed nations.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Agreed. Those are two more circumstances that it doesn't work well for. It does seem to do a decent job of encouraging and rewarding entrepreneurism.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  People travel from all around the world to obtain US healthcare. Say what you will about affordability (I would contend that the main problem is that we don't have a free market for healthcare, we have an unholy crony capitalist hybrid system), but the quality of the healthcare itself is unparalleled anywhere in the world. If you're at serious risk of death you want to be in a US hospital. I hate the trend of conflating "access to affordable healthcare" with the actual healthcare itself.
- adventured 5y ago
  > and homelessness of developed nations That's false by a large margin. The US rate of homelessness has been massively reduced over the past 20-30 years and is comparable to Austria. The US homelessness rate is far below Sweden, France, Britain, Australia, Canada. It's also below the Netherlands. The housing first program by the US worked exceptionally well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...

kenjackson 5y ago

600k deaths after huge mitigations. Without any mitigation’s is it 3 million in the US dead?

rajin444 5y ago
How can you prove the mitigations worked? The only controls out there (Sweden, some US states, etc.) aren’t very robust (nor in favor of mitigation efforts).
- nielsbot 5y ago
  All you have to do is look at a deaths/infections curve before and after mitigations.
  - rajin444 5y ago
    Yes, but you need a control to compare it against. How do you get one?
    - nielsbot 5y ago
      Just look at the trend line? You might also want to look at the excess statistically significant deaths numbers. https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac8...
      - rajin444 5y ago
        You need controls to account for confounding factors. Looking at a trend line does not account for confounding factors.
        nielsbot 5y ago
        Ok, what would be a confounding factor?
  - 5y ago

rat87 5y ago

If anything Covid deaths are significantly undercounted. How much is hard to tell but it's probably over a million and was likely 900k during March based on excess death estimates https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/06/994287048/new-study-estimates-more-than-900-000-people-have-died-of-covid-19-in-u-s https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

djrogers 5y ago
Dramatically false. In fact over the past few months many places have reduced their Covid death counts by ~25%, as they took off the ‘died from X but had COVID’ people. Alameda county, Santa Clara county and others…

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago

I can’t tell if this is a serious comment. Surely you know heart disease isn’t contagious.

__blockcipher__ 5y ago
The contagiousness is irrelevant (I’ve heard the “it’s not exponential” talking point a million times in the last year, and boy am I tired of it), but you should know that all social behaviors are contagious, and social behaviors correlate with health outcomes like cardiac disease. If you smoke your friends are likely to start too. If you sit on a couch all day your friends are more likely to, etc. My point was just about putting a contextless “600k omg” in perspective