6 ms·

In my opinion (physician/radiologist) we're going to see higher mortality and health care costs for a while as we are just starting to feel the effects of covid

In my opinion (physician/radiologist) we're going to see higher mortality and health care costs for a while as we are just starting to feel the effects of covid/prolonged lockdowns on missed screening. As one example, at my large tertiary care centre we were doing around 80% less screening mammograms during the pandemic and we are seeing ~2-3x more females presenting with locally advanced breast cancer than we were pre-covid (I believe the breast division is publishing a study on this in Ontario). Locally advanced at presentation means you now also need systemic therapy (chemo) with its complications and possibly an axillary lymph node dissection (fair bit of morbidity with this) instead of what would have been a lumpectomy+radiation+sentinal node biopsy. Beyond the direct patient morbidity and mortality effects (higher rates of metastatic disease and death go hand in hand with advanced presentations of all cancer) the strain on the system will mean we're busy/spending on dealing with these very sick patients that will undoubtedly impact other care we can provide (only so many $ and human resources to go around) and there will be some cascading effect (how much, I'm not sure). It will take 3-5 years to fully capture what the human and financial cost of all of this would have been, versus what was saved with prolonged lockdowns (particularly post delta when Covid stopped becoming very deadly).

gandalfgeek 4y ago
The "COVID deniers", as they were labeled, (think people like Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas et al), warned about all of this. They presented the tradeoffs and probabilities on both sides. But they were completely shut down without debate, in the name of "following the science." They were shut down in concerted fashion-- by govt, by social media (under govt coercion, or ideological pull), by legacy media. And now the truth is coming out, and there is still no accountability for the "beat COVID at all costs" proponents. If we are to prevent this the next time a pandemic rolls through the world (and it will), there needs to be a society-level post-mortem, and not a blameless one.
- lettergram 4y ago
  [flagged]
- sdwr 4y ago
  Sure, practically, it would have been more efficient to go Sweden-style scorched earth. What I want done better next time, is building an "off switch" into the messaging. It should have been made clear from the start that COVID was temporary and would settle down into background flu noise in a few years. The danger has dissipated a lot faster than the hype. My local university just transitioned from "masks required" to "masks recommended", and the vaccine has been available for 1.5 years already.
  - User23 4y ago
    Sweden? Look at Jamaica. Absolutely no impact from covid.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Jamaica had significantly more deaths from COVID than the global average. 3,476 deaths out of 3 million people is 1.16 deaths per 1000 people. Global average is 6,713,093 deaths from 8 billion people or 0.84 deaths per 1,000 people. Granted there is likely underreporting in global numbers. The real difference is simply the age of the population. Jamaica has a median age of 29.4 years old, where Italy which got hit even harder with 3 deaths per 1,000 people has a median age of 46.5. This is also why the developing world got out so easily: https://www.statista.com/statistics/829732/global-population-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/829732/global-population...
  - bsder 4y ago
    Sweden's death totals per capita are still somewhere around 2x to 3x their neighbors. Is that a success? Certainly not unequivocally.
    - incrudible 4y ago
      Misleading. In terms of all cause mortality, Sweden is the clear winner in Europe.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Bhattacharya is also a vaccine skeptic (or, at least, an mRNA vaccine skeptic), so if you're taking him seriously on public policy, flip a coin.
  - pcbro141 4y ago
    Sounds like as far as the mRNA vaccine, he was skeptical of the need to vaccinate young children given the extremely low COVID mortality rate in kids and concerns about myocarditis. Doesn't sound all that crazy. It's kind of expected some people will be skeptical about such an unprecedented situation (mass lockdowns, school shutdowns, quick vaccine rollout, mRNA being a relatively new technology at scale etc). Honestly it's a good thing to have scientists who are willing to be skeptics within reason, scientists make mistakes all the time and it's good to have other scientists checking them. Also important to remember some of what was considered 'crazy' and 'misinformation' and got people banned is now accepted as fact (like vaccines don't stop the spread, myocarditis risk etc) https://www.salon.com/2022/12/16/why-elon-musk-and-right-wing-pundits-are-cheering-a-doctor-with-questionable-vaccine-views/ https://www.salon.com/2022/12/16/why-elon-musk-and-right-win... > Bhattacharya is expressing tacit agreement with the panel's premise that "the Biden Administration and pharmaceutical corporations continue to push widespread distribution of mRNA vaccines on the public, including children as young as 6 months old, through relentless propaganda while ignoring real-life adverse events." Bhattacharya is also agreeing to work with individuals like Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, who has spread misinformation about mRNA vaccines. Additionally, in May he argued the data on whether COVID-19 vaccines save lives is "surprisingly nuanced" and that it led him to believe "public health authorities should have recommended the cheaper adenovector vaccines over the mRNA vaccines all along for most patients."
    - tptacek 4y ago
      https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/ https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/
      - pcbro141 4y ago
        Genuinely don't see what he's said wrong here. He's just quoting a legitimate scientific review? Do you feel he misrepresented what's in the study? From the article you linked: > A bombshell new study by a distinguished team of Danish researchers led by Prof. Christine Stabell-Benn suggests a surprisingly nuanced answer. In the randomized trials of the covid vaccines, the adenovector-based vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, reduced all-cause mortality of study participants relative to people randomly assigned a placebo. Indeed, the reduction in mortality is larger than expected from the Covid effect and may suggest additional beneficial “non-specific effects” from those vaccines against other health threats. > On the other hand, Stabell-Benn and her colleagues found no statistically meaningful evidence in the trial data that the mRNA vaccines reduced all-cause mortality. The numbers of deaths from other causes including cardiovascular deaths appear to be increased in this group, compensating for the beneficial effect of the vaccines on Covid. Stabell-Benn is keen to stress that the sample is relatively small and is calling for further investigation, and also that the study took place during very low levels of Covid, so the relative advantage of protection against Covid would have been smaller at that time compared to at other points in the pandemic. > However, these preliminary results stand in sharp contrast to the unambiguous message from public health agencies and governments worldwide, which granted emergency authorization to the vaccines based on evidence from the trials that the vaccines reduce the likelihood of getting symptomatic covid. From a purely scientific perspective, preventing symptomatic covid is an interesting outcome to study. From a public health perspective, prevention of covid symptoms is not as important as prevention of death or disease transmission, which the randomized trials did not study. Dr. Stabell Benn and her colleagues have now looked at overall mortality for the first time. > At the very least, the plain implication (since both sets of vaccines are available) is that public health authorities should have recommended the cheaper adenovector vaccines over the mRNA vaccines all along for most patients. > In other words, the international move to de-authorise the AstraZeneca vaccine across Europe and elsewhere looks like it may have been a mistake, and that AZ was actually a better option than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. > It offers a potential contributory explanation for the better overall mortality outcomes in the UK (which overwhelmingly used the AZ vaccine) than much of continental Europe (which phased out the AZ vaccine) after the vaccine programme in the second half of 2021. From the study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489 > To examine the possible non-specific effects (NSEs) of the novel COVID-19 vaccines, we reviewed the randomised control trials (RCTs) of mRNA and adenovirus-vector COVID-19 vaccines reporting overall mortality, including COVID-19 deaths, accident deaths, cardiovascular deaths and other non-COVID-19 deaths. For overall mortality, with 74,193 participants and 61 deaths (mRNA:31; placebo:30), the relative risk (RR) for the two mRNA vaccines compared with placebo was 1.03 (95% CI=0.63-1.71). In the adenovirus-vector vaccines there were 122,164 participants and 46 deaths (vaccine:16; controls:30). The RR for adenovirus-vector vaccines versus placebo/control vaccine was 0.37 (0.19-0.70). The adenovirus-vector vaccines were associated with protection against COVID-19 deaths (RR=0.11 (0.02-0.87)) and non-accident, non-COVID-19 deaths (RR=0.38 (0.17-0.88)). The two types of vaccines differed significantly with respect to impact on overall mortality (p=0.030) as well as non-accident, non-COVID-19 deaths (p=0.046). The placebo controlled RCTs of COVID-19 vaccines were halted rapidly due to clear effects on COVID-19 infections. However, the data presented here argue for performing RCTs of mRNA and adeno-vectored vaccines head-to-head comparing long-term effects on overall mortality. I don't see what's so crazy in his article, doesn't seem like a gross misrepresentation of the study.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  My area experienced a hospital overload and that was very debilitating. No emergency services were available and that influenced people’s behaviors way more than the local lockdown order. This was the worst case scenario that the lockdown orders were made to avoid. In hindsight, I’m more so annoyed that additional healthcare capacity hasn't occurred, 3 years in. All the time borrowed and none of it used. To your credit, I do wonder if a month or two of debilitated emergency services in a Darwinian surge would have been better. The purge still happened, just took longer and SOME people got more fine tuned treatments by getting sick later, at the expense of healthier people having missed screenings for longer.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >My area experienced a hospital overload and that was very debilitating. Are you sure? Are you really sure? As opposed to just hearing dire warnings? My understanding is that all or almost all of the predicted overload of hospitals never actually happened. In Wales, for example, Millennium Stadium was converted into a temporary field hospital with 300 beds and capacity to expand to 2000 beds. It was such a big deal that a public contest was held to name it Dragon's Heart Hospital <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital>. However, said hospital never had more than 46 patients at one time, and was closed in six weeks for lack of use! Even in NYC, which really did see overloaded hospitals briefly in March-April 2020, USNS Comfort treated a total of 179 patients. USNS Mercy treated a total of 77 patients in LA.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      Regarding "hospitals" then, no, I'm not really sure, you seem to have some data although the time period I'm referring to was Winter 2020-2021. Regarding lack of availability of emergency services due to some bottleneck of medical resources and personnel? then, yes, I'm really sure.
      - GenerocUsername 4y ago
        If the industry is anything like every other industry, than bottlenecks were surely induced BY the lockdown then and not prevented by it. So the justification for the lockdown was caused by the lockdown
Alex3917 4y ago
What about the millions of people who are getting more exercise and eating healthier due to no longer needing to commute? It’s not unlikely they’ll actually live longer, even if it takes decades to see the effects.
- postalrat 4y ago
  Is that purely creative thinking or do you have some statistics to back it up?
  - hedgehog 4y ago
    There are a handful of studies showing an association between longer commutes and negative health outcomes, I think down mostly to the lack of exercise in sitting in a car for extended amounts of time. Hard to say if people working from home as a group are getting more or less exercise than baseline (doesn't help if you roll out of bed and then slouch on the couch).
    - billti 4y ago
      I find many of my “work from home” days worryingly sedentary. If I’m slammed with work at home I barely leave the chair. If I’m slammed at work in the office I’m usually running between meetings and going to talk to people at their desk.
  - Alex3917 4y ago
    I don’t have statistics, but it’s definitely true. The bike industry has been booming like crazy, parks have been busier than ever before, Peloton stock through the roof, etc. I definitely am not claiming that people are getting more exercise on average, but it’s very clear there is some subset who are.
    - unmole 4y ago
      > Peloton stock through the roof, etc. You might want to check that again.
carbocation 4y ago
Where were there prolonged lockdowns?
- haldujai 4y ago
  Ontario has had multiple waves of lockdowns and government restrictions on elective care. We also have been pushing the questionably evidence based COVID narrative way more than we have been reminding people to get strongly evidence based screening.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Melbourne, Australia had lockdowns that lasted around a year, split over multiple lockdowns.
tptacek 4y ago
To begin with, it's going to be hard to extract the impact of lockdowns on elective health care from the impact of overflowing hospitals on elective health care.
- haldujai 4y ago
  The thing is, we weren’t really overflying in mammography for example. Completely different staff and don’t need beds. So it’s easy to separate the two in this case. COVID protocols meant we were booking less to cleaning times (fair enough) but people were also too scared to come, and it seems we’ve forgotten how many people used to die before colonoscopies and screening mammograms.
null_object 4y ago
> the effects of covid/prolonged lockdowns on missed screening. This ignores that lockdown was a 'side-effect' of covid that affected the health-service, whereas covid itself had the exact same effect on healthcare, with or without lockdown. This can be seen in Sweden, for instance. Not only were death-rates during the height of the pandemic much higher in Sweden than its Nordic neighbors, the healthcare system was crippled by the workload and stress. People were not getting health-checks here — just the same as in countries with lockdowns - so the effects of late screening on cancers are just as great. The system is still overloaded, so there are constant stories in the news where people who need treatment urgently, are needing to wait a year or 18 months or more for treatment that might save their lives. In addition, the stress that was caused by having totally overloaded emergency wards for 3 years has meant that nurses and doctors are leaving in unprecedented numbers, leaving the service woefully under-staffed. A recent survey of all the country’s hospitals by an oversight authority found every single one of them under the minimum standard that they should maintain, with long waiting lists, people dying unattended in corridors and on floors, and staff-levels that are way too low. Sure you could have a coffee in town during the pandemic in Sweden. But getting decent healthcare wasn’t (and still isn’t) an option.
boppo1 4y ago
>post delta when Covid stopped becoming very deadly Is covid no longer very deadly?
- vfclists 4y ago
  Has Covid ever been a deadly disease? It is contagious but not deadly as far as deadly diseases go. In the areas of Africa where malaria is endemic, it kills an estimated 400,000 people a year. Covid didn't even get to 40,000 in those regions and those are the least vaxxed areas on the plant. How deadly could Covid be when the policy for people with symptoms was to stay at home without treatment or medication until the symptoms got too much too bear. Try that with malaria or meningitis and see how well that would turn out. If anything it could be argued that it wasn't that deadly but the policy above made it more deadly than it should have been for those who succumbed to it, not to mention those who have developed long Covid.
beginningguava 4y ago
[dead]
zackees 4y ago
[dead]

gandalfgeek 4y ago

The "COVID deniers", as they were labeled, (think people like Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas et al), warned about all of this. They presented the tradeoffs and probabilities on both sides. But they were completely shut down without debate, in the name of "following the science." They were shut down in concerted fashion-- by govt, by social media (under govt coercion, or ideological pull), by legacy media. And now the truth is coming out, and there is still no accountability for the "beat COVID at all costs" proponents. If we are to prevent this the next time a pandemic rolls through the world (and it will), there needs to be a society-level post-mortem, and not a blameless one.

lettergram 4y ago
[flagged]
sdwr 4y ago
Sure, practically, it would have been more efficient to go Sweden-style scorched earth. What I want done better next time, is building an "off switch" into the messaging. It should have been made clear from the start that COVID was temporary and would settle down into background flu noise in a few years. The danger has dissipated a lot faster than the hype. My local university just transitioned from "masks required" to "masks recommended", and the vaccine has been available for 1.5 years already.
- User23 4y ago
  Sweden? Look at Jamaica. Absolutely no impact from covid.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Jamaica had significantly more deaths from COVID than the global average. 3,476 deaths out of 3 million people is 1.16 deaths per 1000 people. Global average is 6,713,093 deaths from 8 billion people or 0.84 deaths per 1,000 people. Granted there is likely underreporting in global numbers. The real difference is simply the age of the population. Jamaica has a median age of 29.4 years old, where Italy which got hit even harder with 3 deaths per 1,000 people has a median age of 46.5. This is also why the developing world got out so easily: https://www.statista.com/statistics/829732/global-population-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/829732/global-population...
- bsder 4y ago
  Sweden's death totals per capita are still somewhere around 2x to 3x their neighbors. Is that a success? Certainly not unequivocally.
  - incrudible 4y ago
    Misleading. In terms of all cause mortality, Sweden is the clear winner in Europe.
tptacek 4y ago
Bhattacharya is also a vaccine skeptic (or, at least, an mRNA vaccine skeptic), so if you're taking him seriously on public policy, flip a coin.
- pcbro141 4y ago
  Sounds like as far as the mRNA vaccine, he was skeptical of the need to vaccinate young children given the extremely low COVID mortality rate in kids and concerns about myocarditis. Doesn't sound all that crazy. It's kind of expected some people will be skeptical about such an unprecedented situation (mass lockdowns, school shutdowns, quick vaccine rollout, mRNA being a relatively new technology at scale etc). Honestly it's a good thing to have scientists who are willing to be skeptics within reason, scientists make mistakes all the time and it's good to have other scientists checking them. Also important to remember some of what was considered 'crazy' and 'misinformation' and got people banned is now accepted as fact (like vaccines don't stop the spread, myocarditis risk etc) https://www.salon.com/2022/12/16/why-elon-musk-and-right-wing-pundits-are-cheering-a-doctor-with-questionable-vaccine-views/ https://www.salon.com/2022/12/16/why-elon-musk-and-right-win... > Bhattacharya is expressing tacit agreement with the panel's premise that "the Biden Administration and pharmaceutical corporations continue to push widespread distribution of mRNA vaccines on the public, including children as young as 6 months old, through relentless propaganda while ignoring real-life adverse events." Bhattacharya is also agreeing to work with individuals like Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, who has spread misinformation about mRNA vaccines. Additionally, in May he argued the data on whether COVID-19 vaccines save lives is "surprisingly nuanced" and that it led him to believe "public health authorities should have recommended the cheaper adenovector vaccines over the mRNA vaccines all along for most patients."
  - tptacek 4y ago
    https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/ https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/
    - pcbro141 4y ago
      Genuinely don't see what he's said wrong here. He's just quoting a legitimate scientific review? Do you feel he misrepresented what's in the study? From the article you linked: > A bombshell new study by a distinguished team of Danish researchers led by Prof. Christine Stabell-Benn suggests a surprisingly nuanced answer. In the randomized trials of the covid vaccines, the adenovector-based vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, reduced all-cause mortality of study participants relative to people randomly assigned a placebo. Indeed, the reduction in mortality is larger than expected from the Covid effect and may suggest additional beneficial “non-specific effects” from those vaccines against other health threats. > On the other hand, Stabell-Benn and her colleagues found no statistically meaningful evidence in the trial data that the mRNA vaccines reduced all-cause mortality. The numbers of deaths from other causes including cardiovascular deaths appear to be increased in this group, compensating for the beneficial effect of the vaccines on Covid. Stabell-Benn is keen to stress that the sample is relatively small and is calling for further investigation, and also that the study took place during very low levels of Covid, so the relative advantage of protection against Covid would have been smaller at that time compared to at other points in the pandemic. > However, these preliminary results stand in sharp contrast to the unambiguous message from public health agencies and governments worldwide, which granted emergency authorization to the vaccines based on evidence from the trials that the vaccines reduce the likelihood of getting symptomatic covid. From a purely scientific perspective, preventing symptomatic covid is an interesting outcome to study. From a public health perspective, prevention of covid symptoms is not as important as prevention of death or disease transmission, which the randomized trials did not study. Dr. Stabell Benn and her colleagues have now looked at overall mortality for the first time. > At the very least, the plain implication (since both sets of vaccines are available) is that public health authorities should have recommended the cheaper adenovector vaccines over the mRNA vaccines all along for most patients. > In other words, the international move to de-authorise the AstraZeneca vaccine across Europe and elsewhere looks like it may have been a mistake, and that AZ was actually a better option than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. > It offers a potential contributory explanation for the better overall mortality outcomes in the UK (which overwhelmingly used the AZ vaccine) than much of continental Europe (which phased out the AZ vaccine) after the vaccine programme in the second half of 2021. From the study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489 > To examine the possible non-specific effects (NSEs) of the novel COVID-19 vaccines, we reviewed the randomised control trials (RCTs) of mRNA and adenovirus-vector COVID-19 vaccines reporting overall mortality, including COVID-19 deaths, accident deaths, cardiovascular deaths and other non-COVID-19 deaths. For overall mortality, with 74,193 participants and 61 deaths (mRNA:31; placebo:30), the relative risk (RR) for the two mRNA vaccines compared with placebo was 1.03 (95% CI=0.63-1.71). In the adenovirus-vector vaccines there were 122,164 participants and 46 deaths (vaccine:16; controls:30). The RR for adenovirus-vector vaccines versus placebo/control vaccine was 0.37 (0.19-0.70). The adenovirus-vector vaccines were associated with protection against COVID-19 deaths (RR=0.11 (0.02-0.87)) and non-accident, non-COVID-19 deaths (RR=0.38 (0.17-0.88)). The two types of vaccines differed significantly with respect to impact on overall mortality (p=0.030) as well as non-accident, non-COVID-19 deaths (p=0.046). The placebo controlled RCTs of COVID-19 vaccines were halted rapidly due to clear effects on COVID-19 infections. However, the data presented here argue for performing RCTs of mRNA and adeno-vectored vaccines head-to-head comparing long-term effects on overall mortality. I don't see what's so crazy in his article, doesn't seem like a gross misrepresentation of the study.
yieldcrv 4y ago
My area experienced a hospital overload and that was very debilitating. No emergency services were available and that influenced people’s behaviors way more than the local lockdown order. This was the worst case scenario that the lockdown orders were made to avoid. In hindsight, I’m more so annoyed that additional healthcare capacity hasn't occurred, 3 years in. All the time borrowed and none of it used. To your credit, I do wonder if a month or two of debilitated emergency services in a Darwinian surge would have been better. The purge still happened, just took longer and SOME people got more fine tuned treatments by getting sick later, at the expense of healthier people having missed screenings for longer.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >My area experienced a hospital overload and that was very debilitating. Are you sure? Are you really sure? As opposed to just hearing dire warnings? My understanding is that all or almost all of the predicted overload of hospitals never actually happened. In Wales, for example, Millennium Stadium was converted into a temporary field hospital with 300 beds and capacity to expand to 2000 beds. It was such a big deal that a public contest was held to name it Dragon's Heart Hospital <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital>. However, said hospital never had more than 46 patients at one time, and was closed in six weeks for lack of use! Even in NYC, which really did see overloaded hospitals briefly in March-April 2020, USNS Comfort treated a total of 179 patients. USNS Mercy treated a total of 77 patients in LA.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    Regarding "hospitals" then, no, I'm not really sure, you seem to have some data although the time period I'm referring to was Winter 2020-2021. Regarding lack of availability of emergency services due to some bottleneck of medical resources and personnel? then, yes, I'm really sure.
    - GenerocUsername 4y ago
      If the industry is anything like every other industry, than bottlenecks were surely induced BY the lockdown then and not prevented by it. So the justification for the lockdown was caused by the lockdown

Alex3917 4y ago

What about the millions of people who are getting more exercise and eating healthier due to no longer needing to commute? It’s not unlikely they’ll actually live longer, even if it takes decades to see the effects.

postalrat 4y ago
Is that purely creative thinking or do you have some statistics to back it up?
- hedgehog 4y ago
  There are a handful of studies showing an association between longer commutes and negative health outcomes, I think down mostly to the lack of exercise in sitting in a car for extended amounts of time. Hard to say if people working from home as a group are getting more or less exercise than baseline (doesn't help if you roll out of bed and then slouch on the couch).
  - billti 4y ago
    I find many of my “work from home” days worryingly sedentary. If I’m slammed with work at home I barely leave the chair. If I’m slammed at work in the office I’m usually running between meetings and going to talk to people at their desk.
- Alex3917 4y ago
  I don’t have statistics, but it’s definitely true. The bike industry has been booming like crazy, parks have been busier than ever before, Peloton stock through the roof, etc. I definitely am not claiming that people are getting more exercise on average, but it’s very clear there is some subset who are.
  - unmole 4y ago
    > Peloton stock through the roof, etc. You might want to check that again.

carbocation 4y ago

Where were there prolonged lockdowns?

haldujai 4y ago
Ontario has had multiple waves of lockdowns and government restrictions on elective care. We also have been pushing the questionably evidence based COVID narrative way more than we have been reminding people to get strongly evidence based screening.
Gigachad 4y ago
Melbourne, Australia had lockdowns that lasted around a year, split over multiple lockdowns.

tptacek 4y ago

To begin with, it's going to be hard to extract the impact of lockdowns on elective health care from the impact of overflowing hospitals on elective health care.

haldujai 4y ago
The thing is, we weren’t really overflying in mammography for example. Completely different staff and don’t need beds. So it’s easy to separate the two in this case. COVID protocols meant we were booking less to cleaning times (fair enough) but people were also too scared to come, and it seems we’ve forgotten how many people used to die before colonoscopies and screening mammograms.

null_object 4y ago

> the effects of covid/prolonged lockdowns on missed screening. This ignores that lockdown was a 'side-effect' of covid that affected the health-service, whereas covid itself had the exact same effect on healthcare, with or without lockdown. This can be seen in Sweden, for instance. Not only were death-rates during the height of the pandemic much higher in Sweden than its Nordic neighbors, the healthcare system was crippled by the workload and stress. People were not getting health-checks here — just the same as in countries with lockdowns - so the effects of late screening on cancers are just as great. The system is still overloaded, so there are constant stories in the news where people who need treatment urgently, are needing to wait a year or 18 months or more for treatment that might save their lives. In addition, the stress that was caused by having totally overloaded emergency wards for 3 years has meant that nurses and doctors are leaving in unprecedented numbers, leaving the service woefully under-staffed. A recent survey of all the country’s hospitals by an oversight authority found every single one of them under the minimum standard that they should maintain, with long waiting lists, people dying unattended in corridors and on floors, and staff-levels that are way too low. Sure you could have a coffee in town during the pandemic in Sweden. But getting decent healthcare wasn’t (and still isn’t) an option.

boppo1 4y ago

>post delta when Covid stopped becoming very deadly Is covid no longer very deadly?

vfclists 4y ago
Has Covid ever been a deadly disease? It is contagious but not deadly as far as deadly diseases go. In the areas of Africa where malaria is endemic, it kills an estimated 400,000 people a year. Covid didn't even get to 40,000 in those regions and those are the least vaxxed areas on the plant. How deadly could Covid be when the policy for people with symptoms was to stay at home without treatment or medication until the symptoms got too much too bear. Try that with malaria or meningitis and see how well that would turn out. If anything it could be argued that it wasn't that deadly but the policy above made it more deadly than it should have been for those who succumbed to it, not to mention those who have developed long Covid.

beginningguava 4y ago

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zackees 4y ago

[dead]