4 ms·

These "Covid killed more people than BLANK" articles don't phase me, because we haven't separated the "died with covid" from the "did directly because of covid"

by rytcio 5y ago

rzzzwilson 5y ago
Seems like a petty distinction when you realize that the US, in one year, accumulated more Covid-related deaths than all of World War 2, and is now approaching the total deaths from the Civil War.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  There is a difference between a 75 year old terminal cancer patient dying one month earlier from covid, and a 20 year old soldier dying. If you are just counting "lives lost" and view these as the same, then you are not really engaging in an honest damage assessment. You have to first decide and what percent of the death is attributable to covid and what is attributable to the lung cancer, etc. and then you multiply that by the life years lost. That will give you an estimate of the life-years the disease has cost us. Then you divide that by the total life years available to understand the expected toll to each person. I am not going to say, "the toll is X" -- in the future we will understand the toll of covid. We will also understand the toll of the reaction to covid -- the consequences of people not being able to go the gym, of cancelling doctors appointments and deferring cancer screening, of despair from job loss, destroyed careers, lost schooling, seniors dying in nursing homes unable to see their family members, and shortages. At the end of the day, when all these tallies are counted, a lot of people screaming about civil war style death counts are going to be deeply shamed for their foolishness.
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    “CDC estimated that 545,600–660,200 excess deaths occurred in the United States during January 26, 2020–February 27, 2021.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a4.htm
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      First, you are literally just repeating the claim without taking into account whether this was 78 year old dying one year earlier or wether this was a 20 year old soldier dying in war. Second, you are not counting how many of these excess deaths were due to the reaction to covid because people were denied access to doctor's care. My best friend's father died because he was in an VA care facility and could not get any access to a doctor to diagnose his skin cancer. Because of covid. By the time he got someone to look at his skin, the cancer had spread and he died shortly thereafter. During the entire time, his family was not allowed to see him. Only when they moved him to hospice did they allow mercy visits. So at least one of those "excess deaths" was due to the reaction to covid, not covid itself. Third, the death count will keep increasing as the toll of deferred cancer screenings and medical treatment continues, as does the toll of people who lost their careers, the small business they spent their life building, their housing, and their savings. That will continue far beyond 2021. * Important cancer screenings decreased due to covid: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/important-cancer-screenings-have-decreased-during-covid-19 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/important-cancer-scre... * Learning loss due to school closures: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2022376118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2022376118 * Effects of job loss on health: Layoffs could increase mortality rates by 10.3% https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495022/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495022/ * Long term unemployment and mortality, mental health: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/412887-Consequences-of-Long-Term-Unemployment.PDF https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/... The idea that every bad thing must be stopped "at all costs" is terrible, hysterical public policy. Many times the solution may be worse than the cure, and merely restating "but the disease is so bad" does not mean that destroying social bonds and the labor market is a good idea for the society over the long term.
      - WalterGR 5y ago
        “Approximately 75%–88% of excess deaths were directly associated with COVID-19. Excluding deaths directly associated with COVID-19, an estimated 63,700–162,400 more persons than expected died from other causes.” The numbers you want are out there - many in the report I linked. (The preceding quote is from it as well.) I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to attach a, what, dollar amount loss or amount of appropriate grieving to each person’s death.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    There's a liquid nitrogen shortage going on right now, because all the tanker trucks for cryogenic liquids are being used for transporting liquid oxygen instead. If that doesn't indicate a crisis I wouldn't know what would.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      Yes, the policy we followed doesn't seem to be so effective. Then why do you think it saves more lives than it costs? Merely arguing that it is really ineffective isn't helping your case that all these lockdowns cause more good than harm. Take a nation that did nothing, like Brazil. It has 600K deaths and 215 million pop. Scaled to the US, that would be ~900K deaths. That seems to be about the ballpark of where we are in the U.S., right? So what good did all the lockdowns do, exactly? But let's say the U.S. is 200K deaths lower than the nations that do nothing, so that's how many lives the lockdowns saved. Again, my point is that you need to count lifeyears, since those are mostly elderly deaths and correspond to say, 800K - ~1 million lifeyears. Or distributed among the population, 1 lifeyear for every 3 people, or 4 months per person. Did the average person lose more than 4 months during the lockdowns, once you consider all the costs? I think a good case can be made for that. Would you agree to shorten your life by 4 months in order to have no lockdown at all and keep your house/career/savings/schooling? To be able to visit your family, friends, travel, and go to the gym? A lot of people would say yes.
      - nuerow 5y ago
        > Yes, the policy we followed doesn't seem to be so effective. Then why do you think it saves more lives than it costs? Are you really trying to argue that people should just be left to die in droves because otherwise that would have a dent in logistics/the economy?
        HarryHirsch 5y ago
        None of his parents have died of covid after a month in intensive care and he himself has a comfortable remote job with low risk of exposure. That explains the attitude, Pharao let the Children of Israel go only after his firstborn son died. It's baffling. We have a crisis now because the current policies are not working and the answer is that it's not so bad. People can't even imagine different policies, meanwhile China is very successful with covid suppression.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rytcio 5y ago
  It's more skeptisism where I see stories about elderly people dieing from old age, but because they tested positive for Covid it was counted as a covid death. Or died in a car accident, gun shot wound, fell off a ladder, etc. I've seen endless stories where these direct causes of death were counted as covid deaths because they tested positive. Hospitals were encouraged to label people as positive/covid deaths because that's how they got funding for the last two years (since no one were getting optional surgeries, how hospitals normally get their funding). If hospitals are incentivized by money to label someone as a covid patient...they'll do everything possible to do it.

These "Covid killed more people than BLANK" articles don't phase me, because we haven't separated the "died with covid" from the "did directly because of covid"

by rytcio 5y ago

These "Covid killed more people than BLANK" articles don't phase me, because we haven't separated the "died with covid" from the "did directly because of covid"

rzzzwilson 5y ago

Seems like a petty distinction when you realize that the US, in one year, accumulated more Covid-related deaths than all of World War 2, and is now approaching the total deaths from the Civil War.

rsj_hn 5y ago
There is a difference between a 75 year old terminal cancer patient dying one month earlier from covid, and a 20 year old soldier dying. If you are just counting "lives lost" and view these as the same, then you are not really engaging in an honest damage assessment. You have to first decide and what percent of the death is attributable to covid and what is attributable to the lung cancer, etc. and then you multiply that by the life years lost. That will give you an estimate of the life-years the disease has cost us. Then you divide that by the total life years available to understand the expected toll to each person. I am not going to say, "the toll is X" -- in the future we will understand the toll of covid. We will also understand the toll of the reaction to covid -- the consequences of people not being able to go the gym, of cancelling doctors appointments and deferring cancer screening, of despair from job loss, destroyed careers, lost schooling, seniors dying in nursing homes unable to see their family members, and shortages. At the end of the day, when all these tallies are counted, a lot of people screaming about civil war style death counts are going to be deeply shamed for their foolishness.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  “CDC estimated that 545,600–660,200 excess deaths occurred in the United States during January 26, 2020–February 27, 2021.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a4.htm
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    First, you are literally just repeating the claim without taking into account whether this was 78 year old dying one year earlier or wether this was a 20 year old soldier dying in war. Second, you are not counting how many of these excess deaths were due to the reaction to covid because people were denied access to doctor's care. My best friend's father died because he was in an VA care facility and could not get any access to a doctor to diagnose his skin cancer. Because of covid. By the time he got someone to look at his skin, the cancer had spread and he died shortly thereafter. During the entire time, his family was not allowed to see him. Only when they moved him to hospice did they allow mercy visits. So at least one of those "excess deaths" was due to the reaction to covid, not covid itself. Third, the death count will keep increasing as the toll of deferred cancer screenings and medical treatment continues, as does the toll of people who lost their careers, the small business they spent their life building, their housing, and their savings. That will continue far beyond 2021. * Important cancer screenings decreased due to covid: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/important-cancer-screenings-have-decreased-during-covid-19 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/important-cancer-scre... * Learning loss due to school closures: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2022376118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2022376118 * Effects of job loss on health: Layoffs could increase mortality rates by 10.3% https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495022/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495022/ * Long term unemployment and mortality, mental health: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/412887-Consequences-of-Long-Term-Unemployment.PDF https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/... The idea that every bad thing must be stopped "at all costs" is terrible, hysterical public policy. Many times the solution may be worse than the cure, and merely restating "but the disease is so bad" does not mean that destroying social bonds and the labor market is a good idea for the society over the long term.
    - WalterGR 5y ago
      “Approximately 75%–88% of excess deaths were directly associated with COVID-19. Excluding deaths directly associated with COVID-19, an estimated 63,700–162,400 more persons than expected died from other causes.” The numbers you want are out there - many in the report I linked. (The preceding quote is from it as well.) I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to attach a, what, dollar amount loss or amount of appropriate grieving to each person’s death.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  There's a liquid nitrogen shortage going on right now, because all the tanker trucks for cryogenic liquids are being used for transporting liquid oxygen instead. If that doesn't indicate a crisis I wouldn't know what would.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Yes, the policy we followed doesn't seem to be so effective. Then why do you think it saves more lives than it costs? Merely arguing that it is really ineffective isn't helping your case that all these lockdowns cause more good than harm. Take a nation that did nothing, like Brazil. It has 600K deaths and 215 million pop. Scaled to the US, that would be ~900K deaths. That seems to be about the ballpark of where we are in the U.S., right? So what good did all the lockdowns do, exactly? But let's say the U.S. is 200K deaths lower than the nations that do nothing, so that's how many lives the lockdowns saved. Again, my point is that you need to count lifeyears, since those are mostly elderly deaths and correspond to say, 800K - ~1 million lifeyears. Or distributed among the population, 1 lifeyear for every 3 people, or 4 months per person. Did the average person lose more than 4 months during the lockdowns, once you consider all the costs? I think a good case can be made for that. Would you agree to shorten your life by 4 months in order to have no lockdown at all and keep your house/career/savings/schooling? To be able to visit your family, friends, travel, and go to the gym? A lot of people would say yes.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > Yes, the policy we followed doesn't seem to be so effective. Then why do you think it saves more lives than it costs? Are you really trying to argue that people should just be left to die in droves because otherwise that would have a dent in logistics/the economy?
      - HarryHirsch 5y ago
        None of his parents have died of covid after a month in intensive care and he himself has a comfortable remote job with low risk of exposure. That explains the attitude, Pharao let the Children of Israel go only after his firstborn son died. It's baffling. We have a crisis now because the current policies are not working and the answer is that it's not so bad. People can't even imagine different policies, meanwhile China is very successful with covid suppression.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rytcio 5y ago
It's more skeptisism where I see stories about elderly people dieing from old age, but because they tested positive for Covid it was counted as a covid death. Or died in a car accident, gun shot wound, fell off a ladder, etc. I've seen endless stories where these direct causes of death were counted as covid deaths because they tested positive. Hospitals were encouraged to label people as positive/covid deaths because that's how they got funding for the last two years (since no one were getting optional surgeries, how hospitals normally get their funding). If hospitals are incentivized by money to label someone as a covid patient...they'll do everything possible to do it.