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I’d wager it’s a small number of people who thought it was never a crisis. Approximately 1 in 350 Americans died of COVID in the past two years, so most people

by elil17 5y ago

I’d wager it’s a small number of people who thought it was never a crisis. Approximately 1 in 350 Americans died of COVID in the past two years, so most people know someone who died. Personally, it’s hard not to call it a crisis when it hits that close to home.

toolz 5y ago
The places in the world that reacted the least to covid have excess deaths you can barely even tell there was a potent disease. Not a single country that avoided lockdowns is in the top 30 excess death (per capita). So did many people treat this as a crisis? I would say so. Should we have? That seems to be clearly a no.
- willnonya 5y ago
  People are conflating the ideas of it being crisis and that it required government action, or at least the government actions we got. It is possible for something to both be a crisis and not be something that is handled well by the heavy hand of government.
- taeric 5y ago
  This feels a little... Too convenient. Would love to see an analysis that covers all confounders. That is, I'm sympathetic to the idea that a lot of what we did was probably not super helpful. I'm less inclined to believe that a counterfactual world had fewer deaths. Seems more likely that, while we could have protected nursing homes better, most everything else was likely to look very similar to how it did. I mean, I get the butterfly flapping a wing argument. But in general, large things moving in a direction tend to arrive where they are headed.
michael_j_ward 5y ago
> 1 in 350 Americans died of COVID in the past two years Putting 1/700 a year death from covid into context of our overall mortality rate: 1,027.0 deaths per 100,000 population [0] I know more under 40 that have died from overdose in the past two years than I know that have died from covid (which is 0) [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
- nukemaster 5y ago
  I actually don't know a single young person who died from Covid over the pandemic but I know a few who committed suicide and a couple more who attempted it.
  - notafraudster 5y ago
    There have been about 24,000 people under age 40 who died from COVID-19 in the US during the pandemic. Suicide data is not available for 2021/2022 yet, but based the age ratio of past suicides (around 50% of suicides below age 40) and the total number of suicides in 2020 (around 40,000), then the number of suicides is likely to be higher than the number of COVID deaths but in the same qualitative arena. Further apples to apples comparison is tough because kids 0-5 die of COVID but the US does not record any death below age 5 as a suicide. A related comparison: more school age children died of COVID during the pandemic than have ever across all history died from school shootings.
    - nukemaster 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 5y ago
  Overdose deaths are a public health calamity. COVID topped them by an integer multiple.
  - fortran77 5y ago
    I think that depends where. In San Francisco, there were more OD deaths than COVID https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/04/29/fact-check-did-san-francisco-have-twice-as-many-drug-overdose-deaths-as-covid-deaths-in-2020/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/04/29/fact-check-did-...
  - michael_j_ward 5y ago
chronofar 5y ago
I don’t know, I think it depends on how you qualify crisis, and what you deem as an appropriate response. If we’re trading anecdotes I don’t personally know anyone who has died or even been hospitalized with COVID. I know people who know people who did, but that is a small number and the majority were not likely to live long due to other causes (I do know one of one family member of a friend who was in seemingly good health and was hospitalized). For my personal health and the health of most people I would say there wasn’t ever a crisis, though the delta wave got closest to being so that also coincided with the vaccine availability which removed any crisis that would have come otherwise. For others who are prone to severe illness it has been a crisis and continues to be. Aside from the political banter that is what has made this so divisive, the real risk and experiences of people can vary wildly.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I also don't know anyone who died from covid. However, any event that overloads hospitals to the extreme that care has to be rationed is absolutely a crisis. This happened all over the country. We can debate what the appropriate responses to this crisis should have been but it was unarguably a crisis. Pretending otherwise is simply delusional.
  - chronofar 5y ago
    Let's try and refrain from strong language such as "delusional" and "unarguably," we'll likely find more to agree on if we do. But yes, I agree a hospital overloading is a crisis for those providing or seeking to receive care at said hospital. The cause and remediation of said crises are I think likely significantly more involved than just attributing it to COVID. In other words, the crisis of a particular overloaded hospital is not likely strictly a COVID crisis, but rather an issue with how care is prepared for and distributed in general.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      This is BS semantic goalpost shifting. There was a crisis. It had many aspects (medical, economic, social, political) and there were many different methods of alleviating those different aspects. Claiming "there was no crisis" is simply, factually wrong.
tohnjitor 5y ago
If each person's Dunbar number is 150, then most Americans do not know someone who died.
beefbudd69 5y ago
- beefbudd69 5y ago

by elil17 5y ago

toolz 5y ago

The places in the world that reacted the least to covid have excess deaths you can barely even tell there was a potent disease. Not a single country that avoided lockdowns is in the top 30 excess death (per capita). So did many people treat this as a crisis? I would say so. Should we have? That seems to be clearly a no.

willnonya 5y ago
People are conflating the ideas of it being crisis and that it required government action, or at least the government actions we got. It is possible for something to both be a crisis and not be something that is handled well by the heavy hand of government.
taeric 5y ago
This feels a little... Too convenient. Would love to see an analysis that covers all confounders. That is, I'm sympathetic to the idea that a lot of what we did was probably not super helpful. I'm less inclined to believe that a counterfactual world had fewer deaths. Seems more likely that, while we could have protected nursing homes better, most everything else was likely to look very similar to how it did. I mean, I get the butterfly flapping a wing argument. But in general, large things moving in a direction tend to arrive where they are headed.

michael_j_ward 5y ago

> 1 in 350 Americans died of COVID in the past two years Putting 1/700 a year death from covid into context of our overall mortality rate: 1,027.0 deaths per 100,000 population [0] I know more under 40 that have died from overdose in the past two years than I know that have died from covid (which is 0) [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

nukemaster 5y ago
I actually don't know a single young person who died from Covid over the pandemic but I know a few who committed suicide and a couple more who attempted it.
- notafraudster 5y ago
  There have been about 24,000 people under age 40 who died from COVID-19 in the US during the pandemic. Suicide data is not available for 2021/2022 yet, but based the age ratio of past suicides (around 50% of suicides below age 40) and the total number of suicides in 2020 (around 40,000), then the number of suicides is likely to be higher than the number of COVID deaths but in the same qualitative arena. Further apples to apples comparison is tough because kids 0-5 die of COVID but the US does not record any death below age 5 as a suicide. A related comparison: more school age children died of COVID during the pandemic than have ever across all history died from school shootings.
  - nukemaster 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 5y ago
Overdose deaths are a public health calamity. COVID topped them by an integer multiple.
- fortran77 5y ago
  I think that depends where. In San Francisco, there were more OD deaths than COVID https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/04/29/fact-check-did-san-francisco-have-twice-as-many-drug-overdose-deaths-as-covid-deaths-in-2020/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/04/29/fact-check-did-...
- michael_j_ward 5y ago

chronofar 5y ago

I don’t know, I think it depends on how you qualify crisis, and what you deem as an appropriate response. If we’re trading anecdotes I don’t personally know anyone who has died or even been hospitalized with COVID. I know people who know people who did, but that is a small number and the majority were not likely to live long due to other causes (I do know one of one family member of a friend who was in seemingly good health and was hospitalized). For my personal health and the health of most people I would say there wasn’t ever a crisis, though the delta wave got closest to being so that also coincided with the vaccine availability which removed any crisis that would have come otherwise. For others who are prone to severe illness it has been a crisis and continues to be. Aside from the political banter that is what has made this so divisive, the real risk and experiences of people can vary wildly.

shkkmo 5y ago
I also don't know anyone who died from covid. However, any event that overloads hospitals to the extreme that care has to be rationed is absolutely a crisis. This happened all over the country. We can debate what the appropriate responses to this crisis should have been but it was unarguably a crisis. Pretending otherwise is simply delusional.
- chronofar 5y ago
  Let's try and refrain from strong language such as "delusional" and "unarguably," we'll likely find more to agree on if we do. But yes, I agree a hospital overloading is a crisis for those providing or seeking to receive care at said hospital. The cause and remediation of said crises are I think likely significantly more involved than just attributing it to COVID. In other words, the crisis of a particular overloaded hospital is not likely strictly a COVID crisis, but rather an issue with how care is prepared for and distributed in general.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    This is BS semantic goalpost shifting. There was a crisis. It had many aspects (medical, economic, social, political) and there were many different methods of alleviating those different aspects. Claiming "there was no crisis" is simply, factually wrong.

tohnjitor 5y ago

If each person's Dunbar number is 150, then most Americans do not know someone who died.

beefbudd69 5y ago

beefbudd69 5y ago