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> We hit over 1 million dead The median age of a Covid-associated death in the US, with its hugely obese and unhealthy population, is about the same as the ave

> We hit over 1 million dead The median age of a Covid-associated death in the US, with its hugely obese and unhealthy population, is about the same as the average life expectancy. (You can see here[0] that over half of all "deaths involving Covid" are aged 75 and over, compared against the US life expectancy between 78-79.) You refer to "less economic damage", but that's the least of it. Diseases and deaths of despair like suicides or drug abuse shot up tremendously. Civil liberties were greatly degraded, and precedent has now been set for substantial suspension of normal life by executive fiat -- the old adage of never letting a crisis go to waste rings true. It's incomprehensibly more barbaric the way that we insisted on schools closing for multiple years, with most of the burden of learning loss falling on children whose parents aren't wealthy enough to hire private tutors or even have a separate room in their house for their so-called remote classes. In a country where a fifth of high-school graduates are functionally illiterate, that's a real tragedy. All this for a disease that more often than not kills those who were already going to die very soon, anyway! Of course people think mistakes were made in policy. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Retric 4y ago
You just described what happened with mitigating strategies but 1 million dead are the good outcome not what would have happened if we lead the disease run rampant. We didn’t have an option for nobody died and nothing bad happened, just how many deaths where acceptable. As to COVID just taking those near death, looking at just the US deaths from COVID in 2020 estimates suggest on average people would have lived another 14.5 years if they hadn’t been infected. But that understates the impact as the elderly got vaccinated earlier so 2021 and 2022 deaths tended to be younger than 2020 deaths. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/16/americans-lost-more-years-of-life-to-covid-19-in-2020-than-to-all-accidents-combined-in-a-typical-year/ft_2021-06-16_covidyearslost_01/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/16/americans-l... In a world without social distancing the extra deaths would have largely come from younger healthier people who couldn’t get access to basic treatments from a healthcare system past the breaking point.
- prottog 4y ago
  > on average people would have lived another 14.5 years if they hadn’t been infected How did you get that from your Pew Research source? The math on 5.5 million life-years lost over 330 million Americans works out to 6 days per person. Are you referring to a different source? The one I found regarding US Covid deaths in 2020[0] shows more or less the same distribution, with over half of the 378k deaths being over age 75. For your statement (that the average person who died of Covid would have had another 14.5 years to live to the average life expectancy) to be true, the average Covid death would have to be roughly around 64. The 55-64 age group of Covid deaths in 2020 was under the 20th percentile, so I can't see how that works out. In a world without state-mandated social distancing, perhaps the most vulnerable would have distanced on their own, avoiding getting sick and breaking the healthcare system, and the younger, healthier people could have lived on as usual. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
  - Retric 4y ago
    Only people who died lost time, so it’s 380k people losing 5.5 million years. If you want the time for the total population you need to consider some people survived also have reduced life expectancy due to complications, but that’s harder to calculate. As to the calculation we want pre pandemic numbers average life expectancy for both genders: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-19.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-19.pdf 85 is 6.7 years 80 is 9.3 years 75 is 12.4 years 70 is 15.9 years 65 is 19.6 years 60 is 23.5 years 55 is 27.5 years 50 is 31.8 years 45 is 36.3 years As to your mistake yes mostly old people die but it’s easy to underestimate how long 75 to 80 year olds live who and how quickly to population dies off. Almost the same number of people died between 75 and 80 who collectively had a 10+ year life expectancy vs 80+ because the population over 80 is so much smaller. Similarly the 80 to 85 year deaths make up a large fraction of the 80+ year old deaths and they had a ~7-8 year life expectancy etc. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... Actual numbers may have been somewhat lower than 16 years on average as people who died tended to have other risk factors beyond age, but by no means was everyone on deaths door.

Retric 4y ago

You just described what happened with mitigating strategies but 1 million dead are the good outcome not what would have happened if we lead the disease run rampant. We didn’t have an option for nobody died and nothing bad happened, just how many deaths where acceptable. As to COVID just taking those near death, looking at just the US deaths from COVID in 2020 estimates suggest on average people would have lived another 14.5 years if they hadn’t been infected. But that understates the impact as the elderly got vaccinated earlier so 2021 and 2022 deaths tended to be younger than 2020 deaths. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/16/americans-lost-more-years-of-life-to-covid-19-in-2020-than-to-all-accidents-combined-in-a-typical-year/ft_2021-06-16_covidyearslost_01/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/16/americans-l... In a world without social distancing the extra deaths would have largely come from younger healthier people who couldn’t get access to basic treatments from a healthcare system past the breaking point.

prottog 4y ago
> on average people would have lived another 14.5 years if they hadn’t been infected How did you get that from your Pew Research source? The math on 5.5 million life-years lost over 330 million Americans works out to 6 days per person. Are you referring to a different source? The one I found regarding US Covid deaths in 2020[0] shows more or less the same distribution, with over half of the 378k deaths being over age 75. For your statement (that the average person who died of Covid would have had another 14.5 years to live to the average life expectancy) to be true, the average Covid death would have to be roughly around 64. The 55-64 age group of Covid deaths in 2020 was under the 20th percentile, so I can't see how that works out. In a world without state-mandated social distancing, perhaps the most vulnerable would have distanced on their own, avoiding getting sick and breaking the healthcare system, and the younger, healthier people could have lived on as usual. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
- Retric 4y ago
  Only people who died lost time, so it’s 380k people losing 5.5 million years. If you want the time for the total population you need to consider some people survived also have reduced life expectancy due to complications, but that’s harder to calculate. As to the calculation we want pre pandemic numbers average life expectancy for both genders: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-19.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-19.pdf 85 is 6.7 years 80 is 9.3 years 75 is 12.4 years 70 is 15.9 years 65 is 19.6 years 60 is 23.5 years 55 is 27.5 years 50 is 31.8 years 45 is 36.3 years As to your mistake yes mostly old people die but it’s easy to underestimate how long 75 to 80 year olds live who and how quickly to population dies off. Almost the same number of people died between 75 and 80 who collectively had a 10+ year life expectancy vs 80+ because the population over 80 is so much smaller. Similarly the 80 to 85 year deaths make up a large fraction of the 80+ year old deaths and they had a ~7-8 year life expectancy etc. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... Actual numbers may have been somewhat lower than 16 years on average as people who died tended to have other risk factors beyond age, but by no means was everyone on deaths door.