6 ms·

More like being inundated by smoke. My town is currently experiencing intermittent days of smokiness from fires burning 100s of miles away. People are dying in

More like being inundated by smoke. My town is currently experiencing intermittent days of smokiness from fires burning 100s of miles away. People are dying in those fires. Homes are being destroyed. But the local fire department isn't doing anything about it. Nobody around here is installing sprinklers as a precaution. They act like there is no fire at all. Covid is a serious thing. But "engulfed by flames" is the exact overstatement that causes people to question the motivation of fear-mongers. I'm vaccinated. I wear a mask. I think too many people are whipping up a frenzy for profit. Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? Why not lockdown breweries when there are 2 million drunk-driving incidents? Why isn't there a frenzy over influenza? Covid frenzy has a better marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that has people claiming we are "engulfed by flames" when things get smoky.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? We mandate seat belts, air bags, guard rails, road construction standards, backup cameras, crumple zones, and quite a few other elements involved in road safety. Per-mile road deaths have been on a precipitous decline for decades due to ongoing increases in safety mandates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- supportlocal4h 5y ago
  So 35000 deaths per year is ok? 100000? 250000? 1.5 million (diabetes)? 500000 hospitalizations (influenza)? What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.
  - jayd16 5y ago
    Whats crazy is people have already forgotten that we had large outbreaks and hospitals overrun. The hospitals were way over capacity with the sick. Covid is not a normal problem.
    - skocznymroczny 5y ago
      I don't know about the US, but every country that has winter has hospitals "overrun" with flu every year and never such authoritarian measures were taken.
  - MildlySerious 5y ago
    > What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money. I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.
  - sixstringtheory 5y ago
    According to this table [1], we spent about double on coronavirus public funding in 2020 as we do _every_ year for diabetes. As an emergent situation with potential for much more death, that seems proportional. Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID. Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it? > What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money. Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches. [1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/ https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/ [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
  - JakeTheAndroid 5y ago
    well there are legal consequences of causing or being part of an accident, unlike spreading COVID or Influenza. So we don't consider road deaths okay by nearly any metric. If you want to call out bad comparisons your position should be included in that. Not only do we put tons of safety precautions in place on the road, people get in serious trouble when they have been negligent. And we also have tons of companies currently trying to remove the human driver error from the equation entirely. The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    You nailed it on the head. The fear mongering is absurd, and largely money driven. I would think we suffer many many more deaths from diabetes than 1.5 million/year. Of course, if you die in the hospital from diabetes complications with Covid, you get counted as a "covid death". :-/
- cies 5y ago
  Those are band-aids. A car-lockdown would save lots of lives. GPs point is: compared to other drama, covid's hype seems out of proportion. I agree.
learc83 5y ago
My wife is a children's ER doctor. They are now seeing all patients up to 25 because the adult ER can't handle the number of COVID patients. The pediatric ICU is also now full (in contrast to the earlier COVID waves were virtually no children required treatment). She's never had to do that because of a bad flu season. More than 90% of the adults in the hospital for COVID and 100% of the kids are unvaccinated. People wouldn't even be discussing shutting down schools and businesses to get this under control if we had a 90% vaccination rate.

ceejayoz 5y ago

> Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? We mandate seat belts, air bags, guard rails, road construction standards, backup cameras, crumple zones, and quite a few other elements involved in road safety. Per-mile road deaths have been on a precipitous decline for decades due to ongoing increases in safety mandates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

supportlocal4h 5y ago
So 35000 deaths per year is ok? 100000? 250000? 1.5 million (diabetes)? 500000 hospitalizations (influenza)? What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Whats crazy is people have already forgotten that we had large outbreaks and hospitals overrun. The hospitals were way over capacity with the sick. Covid is not a normal problem.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    I don't know about the US, but every country that has winter has hospitals "overrun" with flu every year and never such authoritarian measures were taken.
- MildlySerious 5y ago
  > What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money. I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.
- sixstringtheory 5y ago
  According to this table [1], we spent about double on coronavirus public funding in 2020 as we do _every_ year for diabetes. As an emergent situation with potential for much more death, that seems proportional. Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID. Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it? > What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money. Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches. [1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/ https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/ [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
- JakeTheAndroid 5y ago
  well there are legal consequences of causing or being part of an accident, unlike spreading COVID or Influenza. So we don't consider road deaths okay by nearly any metric. If you want to call out bad comparisons your position should be included in that. Not only do we put tons of safety precautions in place on the road, people get in serious trouble when they have been negligent. And we also have tons of companies currently trying to remove the human driver error from the equation entirely. The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  You nailed it on the head. The fear mongering is absurd, and largely money driven. I would think we suffer many many more deaths from diabetes than 1.5 million/year. Of course, if you die in the hospital from diabetes complications with Covid, you get counted as a "covid death". :-/
cies 5y ago
Those are band-aids. A car-lockdown would save lots of lives. GPs point is: compared to other drama, covid's hype seems out of proportion. I agree.

learc83 5y ago

My wife is a children's ER doctor. They are now seeing all patients up to 25 because the adult ER can't handle the number of COVID patients. The pediatric ICU is also now full (in contrast to the earlier COVID waves were virtually no children required treatment). She's never had to do that because of a bad flu season. More than 90% of the adults in the hospital for COVID and 100% of the kids are unvaccinated. People wouldn't even be discussing shutting down schools and businesses to get this under control if we had a 90% vaccination rate.