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COVID virus spike protein attaches directly to ACE2 receptors which are found all over the blood vessels in the body. It is uniquely evolved to target and dama

COVID virus spike protein attaches directly to ACE2 receptors which are found all over the blood vessels in the body. It is uniquely evolved to target and damage the vascular system in the body. edit: And people ARE tracking things like flu vs. COVID statistics. So far COVID-19 is roughly 10x as deadly as a bad flu year. Ten times...

toolz 4y ago
Tissue fibrosis has been a leading factor and cause in mortality in developed nations far longer than covid has existed. Neither what you said or your parent said is false, but there does seem to be an awful lot of exaggerating the effects of covid.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  COVID has been the #3 cause of overall death in the US for two years now: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0422-third-leading-cause.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0422-third-leading-... "For the second year, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer." It is no exaggeration to say that COVID is a significant cause of death and threat to the health of the public. Only two things kill more people a year--heart disease and cancer. Not car accidents, not gun violence, not suicides... all those kill far fewer people than COVID.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    > COVID has been the #3 cause of overall death in the US for two years now And yet two years into this I've yet to hear a solid answer to "is it 'died with' or 'died from'?" It's kind of funny that there is no answer to that because it dramatically changes how to interpret your figure. All these "experts" just skirt right around that question and asking it gets you labeled as a horrible alt-right grandma killer (which isn't hyperbole either, I've literally been called this multiple times).
    - DennisP 4y ago
      The number of total deaths has gone up a little more than the number of known covid deaths. You do the math.
      - toolz 4y ago
        in countries that avoided hugely disruptive lockdowns the excess mortality barely moved at all. Sweden, a noteable example because the media attacked them for a year, was the worst faring non-lockdown country in the world and they still don't even break top 30 countries excess deaths during covid. Not only that, but in 2021 sweden had the lowest excess mortality in the entirety of Europe. So let's not pretend the math is simple here. Social disruption is lethal to vulnerable demographics. Even daylight savings time changes notoriously cause a large surge in heart attacks.
        DennisP 4y ago
        Ok. And how many covid deaths did they report? Was it also low, or did they report lots of covid deaths while their overall death rate magically stayed the same? Only the latter fits your "death with covid" scenario. In the US, it seems rather unlikely that (a) doctors all over the US report a certain number of deaths that they say were caused by covid, and (b) we have about that many excess deaths, BUT (c) the excess deaths were from other causes and just happened to match the number of reported covid deaths.
        notahacker 4y ago
        Excess deaths which align with reported deaths with COVID not just in aggregate numbers, but in spikes. Spikes which also postdate spikes in infection by the roughly 30 days from infection to death observed in acute COVID patients (but don't align at all well with other things like lockdowns and economic downturns) People die with cancer too, but few people are quite perverse enough to take that as evidence that the threat posed by cancer is exaggerated. Possibly the only comparable level of denial about the causal relationship between a well known ailment and people who don't normally die being likely to die afterwards for reasons well-explained by how that ailment affects the body I can think of is HIV/AIDs, and it's not coincidental that one's highly politicised too.
water554 4y ago
spookthesunset 4y ago
> It is uniquely evolved to target and damage the vascular system in the body. There is so much panic, hysteria and just mythos around covid that I have a hard time believing this. Calling this thing "novel" gave some of these experts a hell of a lot of artistic liberty in how they describe covid. > And people ARE tracking things like flu vs. COVID statistics. So far COVID-19 is roughly 10x as deadly as a bad flu year. Ten times... I'm still not fully convinced that due to the massive amount of surveillance we've built around covid, it is even fair to compare the IFR of the flu vs. covid. We've never measured the progress of any virus to this degree. If we tracked the flu the same way we tracked covid, what kinds of numbers would we be getting for that virus? We have a massive river of data coming in for covid. Vastly more data about it than any other virus in human history. I don't think anybody knows how to process all of it in a way that lets us meaningfully compare it to anything prior.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  First you say "we should compare COVID to the flu" and now you say "look there's no way you can compare COVID to the flu". And then top it all off with the classic, "well you just can't trust any science in the last two years". You clearly are not arguing in good faith or of sound mind.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    People in my area completely lost their minds. Like it was as if somebody cracked open their head and ran a stick blender up there. Some of the smartest people I knew bought so deeply into this stuff that when they'd harass me and call me a "grandma killer", it was basically word salad coming out of their mouth. It was nuts! Of course I'm calling in suspect pretty much every bit of research conducted over the last two years. Nobody had a level head, myself included. It will be at least a decade before things cool down enough to actually look objectively at covid and our mitigations. And I strongly suspect when it is objectively looked at, it will be regarded as one of the worst public health fuckups in human history. Mass hysteria at a level never before possible.
    - 4y ago

toolz 4y ago

Tissue fibrosis has been a leading factor and cause in mortality in developed nations far longer than covid has existed. Neither what you said or your parent said is false, but there does seem to be an awful lot of exaggerating the effects of covid.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
COVID has been the #3 cause of overall death in the US for two years now: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0422-third-leading-cause.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0422-third-leading-... "For the second year, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer." It is no exaggeration to say that COVID is a significant cause of death and threat to the health of the public. Only two things kill more people a year--heart disease and cancer. Not car accidents, not gun violence, not suicides... all those kill far fewer people than COVID.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  > COVID has been the #3 cause of overall death in the US for two years now And yet two years into this I've yet to hear a solid answer to "is it 'died with' or 'died from'?" It's kind of funny that there is no answer to that because it dramatically changes how to interpret your figure. All these "experts" just skirt right around that question and asking it gets you labeled as a horrible alt-right grandma killer (which isn't hyperbole either, I've literally been called this multiple times).
  - DennisP 4y ago
    The number of total deaths has gone up a little more than the number of known covid deaths. You do the math.
    - toolz 4y ago
      in countries that avoided hugely disruptive lockdowns the excess mortality barely moved at all. Sweden, a noteable example because the media attacked them for a year, was the worst faring non-lockdown country in the world and they still don't even break top 30 countries excess deaths during covid. Not only that, but in 2021 sweden had the lowest excess mortality in the entirety of Europe. So let's not pretend the math is simple here. Social disruption is lethal to vulnerable demographics. Even daylight savings time changes notoriously cause a large surge in heart attacks.
      - DennisP 4y ago
        Ok. And how many covid deaths did they report? Was it also low, or did they report lots of covid deaths while their overall death rate magically stayed the same? Only the latter fits your "death with covid" scenario. In the US, it seems rather unlikely that (a) doctors all over the US report a certain number of deaths that they say were caused by covid, and (b) we have about that many excess deaths, BUT (c) the excess deaths were from other causes and just happened to match the number of reported covid deaths.
        notahacker 4y ago
        Excess deaths which align with reported deaths with COVID not just in aggregate numbers, but in spikes. Spikes which also postdate spikes in infection by the roughly 30 days from infection to death observed in acute COVID patients (but don't align at all well with other things like lockdowns and economic downturns) People die with cancer too, but few people are quite perverse enough to take that as evidence that the threat posed by cancer is exaggerated. Possibly the only comparable level of denial about the causal relationship between a well known ailment and people who don't normally die being likely to die afterwards for reasons well-explained by how that ailment affects the body I can think of is HIV/AIDs, and it's not coincidental that one's highly politicised too.

water554 4y ago

spookthesunset 4y ago

> It is uniquely evolved to target and damage the vascular system in the body. There is so much panic, hysteria and just mythos around covid that I have a hard time believing this. Calling this thing "novel" gave some of these experts a hell of a lot of artistic liberty in how they describe covid. > And people ARE tracking things like flu vs. COVID statistics. So far COVID-19 is roughly 10x as deadly as a bad flu year. Ten times... I'm still not fully convinced that due to the massive amount of surveillance we've built around covid, it is even fair to compare the IFR of the flu vs. covid. We've never measured the progress of any virus to this degree. If we tracked the flu the same way we tracked covid, what kinds of numbers would we be getting for that virus? We have a massive river of data coming in for covid. Vastly more data about it than any other virus in human history. I don't think anybody knows how to process all of it in a way that lets us meaningfully compare it to anything prior.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
First you say "we should compare COVID to the flu" and now you say "look there's no way you can compare COVID to the flu". And then top it all off with the classic, "well you just can't trust any science in the last two years". You clearly are not arguing in good faith or of sound mind.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  People in my area completely lost their minds. Like it was as if somebody cracked open their head and ran a stick blender up there. Some of the smartest people I knew bought so deeply into this stuff that when they'd harass me and call me a "grandma killer", it was basically word salad coming out of their mouth. It was nuts! Of course I'm calling in suspect pretty much every bit of research conducted over the last two years. Nobody had a level head, myself included. It will be at least a decade before things cool down enough to actually look objectively at covid and our mitigations. And I strongly suspect when it is objectively looked at, it will be regarded as one of the worst public health fuckups in human history. Mass hysteria at a level never before possible.
  - 4y ago