3 ms·

Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio. I don't get it. You're arguing against government interventions because of relatively low fatal

by kleiba 5y ago

Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio. I don't get it. You're arguing against government interventions because of relatively low fatality numbers. Yet, the fact that these numbers are not higher is a direct outcome of the world-wide vaccination campaigns. Don't you think you got it backwards?

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I'm saying that we violated many basic human rights because of a disease that killed 5 mio people, citing those deaths as reasons to violate all the basic righs, while we're unwilling to violate a relatively minor right (to smoke), to save even more lives. If you're saying we need a cufrew, because covid killed X people, but are not willing to ban the sale of cigarettes, even though they kill 3.2*X people, you're doing something wrong.
- nec4b 5y ago
  Covid kills X people because of the restrictions, otherwise it would kill N*X people, where N would be a lot higher number than 3.2 because of the secondary problems like hospitals overflowing.
  - infamia 5y ago
    An often ignored fact is that many of these restrictions and the fear many governments have stoked (e.g. fear of going to the doctor, fear of going out, interruptions in work) have caused many deaths. We won't know what the net cost is until many years from now.
native_samples 5y ago
Well we'd all like to think that but if you plot cumulative world deaths on a graph there's no inflection point in 2021. The graph just keeps going up and to the right at exactly the same speed as it always did: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... It's really hard to explain this. I admit to being baffled. If vaccines are saving lives then there should have been a clear bend downwards in the trend line of the graph but if any such bend exists at all you have to squint to see it. If anything there looks like a slight acceleration in the first months of 2021 (but it's small enough I can't say for sure by eyeballing it). Lots of people don't understand the numbers around total COVID deaths, by the way. In the past week alone I've seen internet comments saying that over 20 million have died of COVID, that vaccines have saved "millions of lives" when COVID overall since the start has only claimed (or rather, been temporally associated with) millions of lives, and VE lasted only months due to Omicron and when it rolled out. So it's impossible for vaccines to have saved millions of lives. But this is understandable when you consider what people tell opinion polls. Lots of people, including people who think of themselves as well informed and educated, mis-estimate the dangers of COVID by orders of magnitude :( https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...
- kleiba 5y ago
  What I see in this graph is a more or less linear growth instead of an exponential one. That's good news. But a more tangible insight into why you're wrong and why vaccines do work is to look at statistics for hospitalization in intensive care: these days, the vast majority of ICU cases of COVID are unvaccinated patients. Given that most people are vaccinated, it should be the other way around if there was no difference between vaccinated or unvaccinated. This is a much stronger argument than speculating what a growth graph should or should not look like with or without vaccines.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Why would deaths increase exponentially over a period of years? That would not be expected and was not occurring even before vaccines. The point I'm making here is that the data is contradictory, which means there is a need to investigate. Trials didn't show any impact on hospitalization or death (because it's so rare, they were too small to get significance). That means the data on them is confounded. For example, in the UK the data shows that pregnancy makes you more likely to be admitted to ICU with COVID but less likely to die. A biological effect? No, of course not. Rather, hospital staff have a lot of discretion on who they send to ICU or not, and they prefer to spend resources on women who are pregnant.
    - kleiba 5y ago
      The expected curve without intervention would have an S-shape: initially, you see exponential growth which will flatten out later on when you reach a point of saturation. In many countries, the intensive care units have not been in the situation where they had to triage, so the selection effects you report have not been necessary there. And even if, no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs. The fact that we see dramatically less vaccinated people in ICUs is most plausibly explained by the effectiveness of the vaccines.
      - native_samples 5y ago

by kleiba 5y ago

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

I'm saying that we violated many basic human rights because of a disease that killed 5 mio people, citing those deaths as reasons to violate all the basic righs, while we're unwilling to violate a relatively minor right (to smoke), to save even more lives. If you're saying we need a cufrew, because covid killed X people, but are not willing to ban the sale of cigarettes, even though they kill 3.2*X people, you're doing something wrong.

nec4b 5y ago
Covid kills X people because of the restrictions, otherwise it would kill N*X people, where N would be a lot higher number than 3.2 because of the secondary problems like hospitals overflowing.
- infamia 5y ago
  An often ignored fact is that many of these restrictions and the fear many governments have stoked (e.g. fear of going to the doctor, fear of going out, interruptions in work) have caused many deaths. We won't know what the net cost is until many years from now.

native_samples 5y ago

Well we'd all like to think that but if you plot cumulative world deaths on a graph there's no inflection point in 2021. The graph just keeps going up and to the right at exactly the same speed as it always did: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... It's really hard to explain this. I admit to being baffled. If vaccines are saving lives then there should have been a clear bend downwards in the trend line of the graph but if any such bend exists at all you have to squint to see it. If anything there looks like a slight acceleration in the first months of 2021 (but it's small enough I can't say for sure by eyeballing it). Lots of people don't understand the numbers around total COVID deaths, by the way. In the past week alone I've seen internet comments saying that over 20 million have died of COVID, that vaccines have saved "millions of lives" when COVID overall since the start has only claimed (or rather, been temporally associated with) millions of lives, and VE lasted only months due to Omicron and when it rolled out. So it's impossible for vaccines to have saved millions of lives. But this is understandable when you consider what people tell opinion polls. Lots of people, including people who think of themselves as well informed and educated, mis-estimate the dangers of COVID by orders of magnitude :( https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...

kleiba 5y ago
What I see in this graph is a more or less linear growth instead of an exponential one. That's good news. But a more tangible insight into why you're wrong and why vaccines do work is to look at statistics for hospitalization in intensive care: these days, the vast majority of ICU cases of COVID are unvaccinated patients. Given that most people are vaccinated, it should be the other way around if there was no difference between vaccinated or unvaccinated. This is a much stronger argument than speculating what a growth graph should or should not look like with or without vaccines.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Why would deaths increase exponentially over a period of years? That would not be expected and was not occurring even before vaccines. The point I'm making here is that the data is contradictory, which means there is a need to investigate. Trials didn't show any impact on hospitalization or death (because it's so rare, they were too small to get significance). That means the data on them is confounded. For example, in the UK the data shows that pregnancy makes you more likely to be admitted to ICU with COVID but less likely to die. A biological effect? No, of course not. Rather, hospital staff have a lot of discretion on who they send to ICU or not, and they prefer to spend resources on women who are pregnant.
  - kleiba 5y ago
    The expected curve without intervention would have an S-shape: initially, you see exponential growth which will flatten out later on when you reach a point of saturation. In many countries, the intensive care units have not been in the situation where they had to triage, so the selection effects you report have not been necessary there. And even if, no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs. The fact that we see dramatically less vaccinated people in ICUs is most plausibly explained by the effectiveness of the vaccines.
    - native_samples 5y ago