3 ms·

It's funny, those who wish to minimize the impact of COVID, of which there are many on HN for some strange reason, never seem to explain what's up with the exce

It's funny, those who wish to minimize the impact of COVID, of which there are many on HN for some strange reason, never seem to explain what's up with the excess deaths.

decebalus1 5y ago
There's always an 'explanation'. I take it you're not lurking certain Facebook groups. Take your pick: - lockdowns drove people into a lifestyle that favored bad health choices ultimately leading to early deaths (not going outside, not doing sports, etc..). Probably some truth to that. - lockdowns led to loss of jobs which drove people to suicides or killing others - antifa killed a lot of people during the blm riots - mask wearing made people breathe their own germs thus leading to said germs to multiply more and kill people - people were scared of covid and did not go to the hospital for minor stuff that ended up being major and ended up killing them. Probably some truth to this one also. - it was just a bad year, no relation to covid. Just more people died, what's the big deal? Population numbers are like a cycle, ok? And we just went through some sort of adjustment, which was unrelated to covid. - gay frogs became poisonous (!!!) - And ultimately, the data is broken, see the article above, it turns out it wasn't that bad, right? RIGHT? Same with the excess deaths. The data was misinterpreted, there are no excess deaths TLDR: don't worry about it. Go outside and consume, the pandemic is now over. It wasn't even a pandemic, it was a 'plandemic'.
logicalmonster 5y ago
It would be very easy to hypothesize that many or all of these excess deaths were from Covid, but what if many of the excess deaths are from some of these causes? * Extra suicides that occurred because people felt isolated and hopeless due to lockdowns and their living situation. * People accidentally overdosed on various drugs or engaged in other self-destructive behaviors because no other entertainment options were available for a long time. * Many people under lockdowns neglected exercise and good eating habits, and gained a ton of weight and harmed their health. On a population wide scale, how many extra heart attacks were achieved? Or how many people who might have otherwise survived a bout with Covid ate themselves into a bad outcome? I'm a fit person, and I know I struggled with my fitness during this time period and gained some weight. I can't imagine how many normal Americans didn't easily gain in excess of 10-20 pounds during this time. * Many people couldn't have other health procedures like cancer screenings or other procedures during the Covid panic that might have easily otherwise extended their life. What if these are some or many of the excess deaths? I'm not sure about that, but I can't believe that the last 18 months hasn't led to numerous unintended second order effects that are not properly measured when society is only fixated on 1 variable.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
  Suicide rate went down 6%: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-decreased-during-the-covid-19-pandemic https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-dec...
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    Thank you for the information. Personally I'd be really interested in some time based statistics. Seeing a weekly or monthly breakdown of suicides since the pandemic started would be interesting. I'd guess that initially suicides plummeted sharply (even depressed people might have been willing to hold out a while to see what happened with Covid) but the longer this dystopia exists, the more despair people will find themselves in and suicide rates will IMO increase. I can't imagine that bad public policy like vaccine passports in places like NYC are going to do wonders for the mental health of people who are not vaccinated. Just as another data point for my overall argument, drug overdose deaths went up 29.4% according to the CDC. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-07-14-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-294-2020 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-07-14-cdc-drug-overdo... I think calculating a statistic like "net deaths" from Covid is going to be very hard. I think this data is going to be very muddled, very hard to parse out with possibly multiple explanations, and we're going to again be left with a 2-movies-on-one-screen scenario where essentially different groups perceive different realities based on the same data.

It's funny, those who wish to minimize the impact of COVID, of which there are many on HN for some strange reason, never seem to explain what's up with the excess deaths.

decebalus1 5y ago

There's always an 'explanation'. I take it you're not lurking certain Facebook groups. Take your pick: - lockdowns drove people into a lifestyle that favored bad health choices ultimately leading to early deaths (not going outside, not doing sports, etc..). Probably some truth to that. - lockdowns led to loss of jobs which drove people to suicides or killing others - antifa killed a lot of people during the blm riots - mask wearing made people breathe their own germs thus leading to said germs to multiply more and kill people - people were scared of covid and did not go to the hospital for minor stuff that ended up being major and ended up killing them. Probably some truth to this one also. - it was just a bad year, no relation to covid. Just more people died, what's the big deal? Population numbers are like a cycle, ok? And we just went through some sort of adjustment, which was unrelated to covid. - gay frogs became poisonous (!!!) - And ultimately, the data is broken, see the article above, it turns out it wasn't that bad, right? RIGHT? Same with the excess deaths. The data was misinterpreted, there are no excess deaths TLDR: don't worry about it. Go outside and consume, the pandemic is now over. It wasn't even a pandemic, it was a 'plandemic'.

logicalmonster 5y ago

It would be very easy to hypothesize that many or all of these excess deaths were from Covid, but what if many of the excess deaths are from some of these causes? * Extra suicides that occurred because people felt isolated and hopeless due to lockdowns and their living situation. * People accidentally overdosed on various drugs or engaged in other self-destructive behaviors because no other entertainment options were available for a long time. * Many people under lockdowns neglected exercise and good eating habits, and gained a ton of weight and harmed their health. On a population wide scale, how many extra heart attacks were achieved? Or how many people who might have otherwise survived a bout with Covid ate themselves into a bad outcome? I'm a fit person, and I know I struggled with my fitness during this time period and gained some weight. I can't imagine how many normal Americans didn't easily gain in excess of 10-20 pounds during this time. * Many people couldn't have other health procedures like cancer screenings or other procedures during the Covid panic that might have easily otherwise extended their life. What if these are some or many of the excess deaths? I'm not sure about that, but I can't believe that the last 18 months hasn't led to numerous unintended second order effects that are not properly measured when society is only fixated on 1 variable.

TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
Suicide rate went down 6%: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-decreased-during-the-covid-19-pandemic https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-dec...
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  Thank you for the information. Personally I'd be really interested in some time based statistics. Seeing a weekly or monthly breakdown of suicides since the pandemic started would be interesting. I'd guess that initially suicides plummeted sharply (even depressed people might have been willing to hold out a while to see what happened with Covid) but the longer this dystopia exists, the more despair people will find themselves in and suicide rates will IMO increase. I can't imagine that bad public policy like vaccine passports in places like NYC are going to do wonders for the mental health of people who are not vaccinated. Just as another data point for my overall argument, drug overdose deaths went up 29.4% according to the CDC. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-07-14-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-294-2020 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-07-14-cdc-drug-overdo... I think calculating a statistic like "net deaths" from Covid is going to be very hard. I think this data is going to be very muddled, very hard to parse out with possibly multiple explanations, and we're going to again be left with a 2-movies-on-one-screen scenario where essentially different groups perceive different realities based on the same data.