COVID topic vol 2

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
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Campitor
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Campitor »

Viktor K wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:28 pm
Yes “essential” workers have to work. I don’t see how that makes US response more admirable.
It doesn't make them more admirable but it does make the virus hard to contain - there are a lot of essential workers here and our cities are very dense. Not exactly rocket science to determine why the virus is hard to contain even with vigilant PPE use. People touch their mask, they touch other stuff, other people touch that stuff and then touch their mask, then they go home and spread it. Rinse and repeat.
US “essential” workers aren’t getting any assistance with that. Company by company policy. Decentralized government. Trump effect as well obviously as mentioned.
Trump effect? Really? At what point do you start holding local/state government responsible? The president has no say in how states run themselves regarding non-federal matters. And of course the policy is company by company - a tech company can make certain allowances that a in-person service company can't. You can't exactly run a business that requires in-person delivery of services. You can't telecommute HVAC for example. And companies can't keep paying workers who aren't working - they may have been possible in the short duration but impossible in this nearly year long scenario.
Wearing a mask and staying home... I’ve done them fine. If it was 5 years ago when I was working at a grocery store, I’d look at the lack of enforcement of best practices, lack of PPE, slow rollout of “suggestions” and state by state variations.
I worked in a hospital infectious unit and operating room and PPE enforcement wasn't exactly that strict either - and the people in charge were familiar with the data. If those with acute knowledge of infectious control transmission let procedures slip, I don't expect better from the politicians who seem to be using the finger in the air method for determining public health policy especially when you look at the size of the country.
Look at little to no travel restrictions (e.g. UK still flying to US).
https://www.kayak.com/travel-restrictions - seems like we have lots of company. People will want to travel. Planes will continue to fly (they delivery supplies and food too while carrying passengers).
Also very individualistic society, with no centralized control. Not surprised the reaction.
A country founded on that very principle hence the separation of powers and the state versus federal jurisdiction. Some consider this an important tradeoff hence the Revolutionary war and the American Civil War. We're willing to die for what we believe in for better or worse. Thank you Europe for making life so miserable in the colonies that we decided to undertake this great experiment.
Patriotism is a funny thing. Feels like if US was less obsessed with patriotism, more educated, less individualistic, wouldn’t be a virus hotspot.

Not true - viruses care not for education or individualism. Viruses care about population, means of exposure, and variable conduits of infection.

It's convenient how Europe has their COVID hotspots spread out amongst their members while the US is treated as a whole. If you combined Europe's population, their hotspot rate would look equally bad. The US has 17 million cases and Europe has 23 million cases (combined); only by adding South America do our number exceed European numbers.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographi ... ncov-cases:

America: 33 216 866 cases; the five countries reporting most cases are United States (17 844 839), Brazil (7 263 619), Argentina (1 547 115), Colombia (1 518 067) and Mexico (1 325 915).

Europe: 23 081 330 cases; the five countries reporting most cases are Russia (2 762 668), France (2 473 354), United Kingdom (2 040 147), Italy (1 953 185) and Spain (1 819 249).
Essential workers working is not a contentious issue. Yes I can stay home. No I can’t rely on contact tracing, United action/policies, can’t close borders, screen trackers, can’t track citizens have to rely on them just telling me who they came into contact with, if they want to and if they ask.

And I think the US is defensive about these things. Not all the US, but doesn’t have to be all Americans to make it a problem.
There are 55 million essential works in the USA - 55 million people who can potentially spread the virus. Having 55 million potential hosts of infection makes it hard to contain a disease. It's not being defensive - it's being realistic.
Last edited by Campitor on Thu Dec 24, 2020 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Riggerjack
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Riggerjack »

Recent poll shows huge divide in those willing to wear a mask, along party lines. Guess that means more republicans dead in the months to come, relative to other political parties.
That's one way to look at it.

Another would be to recognize that the best predictor of blue or red party preference is local population density.

From there, it is easy to see that the people most in favor of masks, are the people most in need of masks, and vice versa.

But that perspective is less likely to generate that warm fuzzy feeling that smacking an outgroup generates. :roll:

Campitor
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Campitor »

Viktor K wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:53 pm
That sounds like something out of my primary school, US-propaganda filled education. In between inspirational interpretations of the US revolution, freeing the slaves, and slaughtering the natives:

“Remember class (Remote), Taiwanese may be living their normal life’s today while we pass 1 million deaths and are in tier 5 (in name only, of course), but unity comes at a cost. And democracy is the best.”
Tawain is an island and its total population is 24 million which is smaller than the 55 million essential workers in the USA. It's easier to control and administer COVID strategies on an island with a population of Texas than it is to manage a 330 million population with a land mass many times larger.

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

Viktor K wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:53 pm
Taiwanese may be living their normal life’s today while we pass 1 million deaths and are in tier 5 (in name only, of course), but unity comes at a cost.”
Spectrum of possible outcomes from inhaling a dose of Covid-19 virus.

0----------1-----------2----------3----------4----------5

0 Their innate immune system immediately took care of it. They showed no indication that they were infected and had no antibodies because their adaptive immune system never engaged. They were never infectious.

1 Their innate immune system took care of most of the virus but their adaptive immune system engaged for the remainder. They may or may not have know they were infected. They may or may not have tested positive. They may or may not have been infectious.

2. Their innate immune system worked but became overwhelmed. Their adaptive immune system kicked in, created antibodies, and cleared the virus. They knew they were mildly sick. They would have tested positive. They were infectious.

3. They got sick, were very infectious, but eventually created antibodies and were able to clear the virus with only mild assistance.

4. Innate immune system did not respond. Adaptive immune system was very slow to respond. Extremely infectious. They got extremely sick, were hospitalized, treated with antivirals, anti-coagulants and other treatments. Recovered.

5. Same as 4 but never recovered.

Everyone automatically assumes that the success of different countries is a result of their governmental response. That may partially be true but it fails to recognize that different populations have different proportions of people in each group above. The more people in the lower numbered groups, the fewer chances for the virus to spread. We've known this since the beginning but nobody wants to talk about it because there is not much to be done about it now. So we do the things we can do because it feels good to do something.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jacob »

A Life of FI wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 3:08 pm
The States with the most deaths per million are an equal mix of Democrat and Republican States - The virus doesn't appear to have a political bias
The virus will infect people regardless of political bias, but people who don't socially distance, don't wear masks, or think the virus is some kind of conspiracy hoax are certainly easier to infect. Digging deeper into the numbers at the county/district level, and adjusting for population density, income, race, etc. ongoing virus-friendly behavior does indeed demonstrate a political bias.

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2020-44/ --- the popularity of Fox News for a given county shows a positive effect on COVID prevalence...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-aven ... d-america/ --- as does the level of Trump support. In particular after the first wave hit NYC and Seattle, the COVID maps in the fall were a pretty good map for which states Trump ultimately won/lost.

And while this is more on the anecdotal/small-sample level than hardcore population statistics, 70% of those testing positive in congress by end of November were Republicans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewst ... 169fd445b7 ... and other than Pence how many connected to the White House have NOT been infected at this point?

Add: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/83369237 ... f-congress is up-to-date ... just eyeballing it, red dots dominate infection lists.

It would be really interesting to have even deeper data and know the team color of individuals testing positive or dying. Insofar the split is 70/30 for subsequent waves in the general voting population as well, that implies a 40,000 vote red loss/blue gain for every 100k voters who die. That's enough to decide elections.

(Note that many US counties/districts are "sorted" or gerrymandered so effectively that most representatives are elected in a landslide. However, governors, senators, and presidents are not and sometimes the election for a given state is determined by just a few thousand votes.)

Presumably such stats will eventually materialize. Seeing this is science, we'll have to wait several months for such to get through the peer review process. Also, this is controversial stuff, regardless. Learning that one's political ideology can be personally harmful is sure to cause some cognitive dissonance.

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Viktor K
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Viktor K »

@life of fi - Chinese believe they should follow what they are told to do by government.... and also trend higher towards communal on the communal vs. indivualistic aspect. This is my point, US culture perfect for a spectacularly terrible COVID-19 response. Power disparity is also in the form of believing in experts, managers, leaders - not just political ones.

"rugged, self-reliant" people - I see the patriotism in these choice of words.

Right and wrong in terms of COVID-19, I do think the US system is much more "wrong". As in ineffective, more deadly, more spread, less united, longer lockdown, longer restriction period, less actual control...

Are you in the US with no lockdown? Not because I'm surprised (also in US, under 'lockdown') but because again of the huge variation in US response to virus. This is why it's spreading out of control. Only as strong as weakest link.

If deaths are equal vs the (conservative) US democratic and (ultra-conservative) US republican states, that's not really a surprise. There is no real border between states, much less so than even international borders. And is not the point I was making, my point is on moving forward under new administration. Ideally, US citizens regardless of political party would wear masks and follow guidelines. Uncle and Auntie not wearing a mask means (conservative) democrat grandma still dies, makes sense.

@campitor China cities are more dense than US. So please don't excuse the US cities exploding numbers on population density. That makes no sense.

Yes trump effect. Bully pulpit is one of the main powers of the US president. Downplaying a virus, attacking science, sowing distrust... So uh, I don't know how that's not obvious. As for company differences, those differences exist in every country. So again, like the US isn't this unique "city on the hill" lol. It's just a state with a failed COVID response, and a pitiful effort.

Politicians response vary by country. Again, bully pulpit. In the US you have doctors going viral saying Plandemic, a US president calling it a hoax... Checkout Taiwan's leadership's (specifically the medical) alternative use of bully pulpit: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... nd-the-who

Yes on travel - other countries suck like the US too. Doesn't make US less sucky.

"willing to die for what we believe in for better or worse"... dying for worse is kind of a waste isn't it. Again, this just sounds like patriotism to me, other nations have similar narratives and pride over them. Not sure relation to COVID or how it makes US COVID response good.

As for education... Taiwan has nearly twice the degrees per capita as the US... but not saying its causal. Saying that I find it hard for any critical thinker to say "virus is a hoax, I'm not wearing a mask, call up the fam, weddings on!" I would hope education helps with that. I suppose Europe is relatively educated as well, relative the US? So ya, but Europe's response wasn't good either lol...

There are more essential workers in China.

@Riggerjack Nice perspective, but I don't see how that makes it less necessary. I'm not wearing a mask right now in my apartment. But if I go to the supermarket, I would need to wear one. Rural areas get destroyed by bad flu seasons, so they also need to wear masks for COVID. Mink outbreaks on rural farms...

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

@Jacob, red states and counties are also significantly less healthy which makes them more susceptible to infection and serious outcomes. Less healthy people are more likely to become sick from covid and more likely to be infectious.

It would be interesting if someone did a matched-pair analysis on people from the reddest and bluest counties to see the degree to which masking and lockdowns work and to see how much is a result of the health of the population.
Last edited by Ego on Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Viktor K
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Viktor K »

@Ego I certainly the get the "this country's people are fatter/smoke more/sit more/more diabetic so they die more"

But if you don't get infected, don't die, right? I mean if I don't get infected, if my country was smarter and actually had a lockdown for, geez, 2 months? Then I could be playing football right now at the local pitch with 15 other sweaty, heavy breathing strangers. And none of us would be dying of COVID, even though we live in a country that's more susceptible.

So ya I get that, but I don't buy that US #s are because fatter, if that's the point you were going for.

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

Viktor K wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:36 pm
But if you don't get infected, don't die, right?
Absolutely, yes. But you are missing an important factor. If I am infectious and go to a party in South Korea where (hypothetically) 3/4 of the people are in my 0 or 1 categories above then far fewer will become infected and far fewer will later be infectious. Everyone will assume it was something the government did to make the result happen but the reality would be very different. If I go to a similar party in New York where 3/4 are in my 3, 4 or 5 categories above then it will spread much faster. You may have noticed that we stopped talking about the R-value a while ago because it varied so widely by location/population.
Last edited by Ego on Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OTCW
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by OTCW »

Got round one of the vaccine this morning. Hoping we are through this by summer and also hoping we learned a few things along the way. Both on society and individual levels.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jacob »

Ego wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:34 pm
@Jacob, red states and counties are also significantly less healthy which makes them more susceptible to infection and serious outcomes. Less healthy people are more likely to become sick from covid and more likely to be infectious.
The first paper corrects for health as well. The conclusion that political bias affects case and death numbers stands. That is, given the same level of health, you're more likely to test positive and/or die if you're misinformed (believe in the wrong information).

Insofar red states are both significantly less healthy AND misinformed, it only increases case/death numbers further.

The other argument is "whatever population density". Again, this has also been corrected for. Insofar red counties had the same density as blue counties, the political bias would increase case/death numbers. A hint of how much can perhaps be gleaned from the 70/30 ratio amongst politicians.
Ego wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:34 pm
It would be interesting if someone did a matched-pair analysis on people from the reddest and bluest counties to see the degree to which masking and lockdowns work and to see how much is a result of the health of the population.
The matched pair in the first paper compares viewers of Sean Hannity (who initially claimed the virus was a hoax) and viewers of Tucker Carlson (who warned it was real) in the same counties, so it's direct A/B-testing of information vs disinformation while correcting for very many other variables.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Lucky C »

Small sample size but so far five partisan state-level elected officials have died of COVID. 100% Republican.
One partisan local-level elected official has died, a Democrat sheriff (why is this partisan?) in Michigan.
So that's 5/6 = 83% Republican elected official deaths so far with 100% of state reps/senators being Republican.
Source

I was also going to say death rate could be even more skewed red/blue than the 70/30 Congress cases suggest, due to R being older on average, but the source I saw showed only a few percentage points difference in age groups leaning R vs. D, which would only skew it another couple percent toward red/blue death ratio compared to red/blue infection ratio. Still could amount to thousands of deaths which could impact an election, but not as big of an impact as hygienic habits/choices.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jacob »

I counted positives on the npr link (above) which was recently updated.

In the senate, 8 have tested positive. 100% Republican.
In the house, 38 have tested positive, 74% Republican.

I'll punt the t-test to someone else, but this does not look random or even.

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

Riggerjack wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:56 pm
@ life of fi

Because you seem to be in Monday morning quarterback mode.
Riggerjack I'm not in Monday morning quarterback mode here - I was living it in real time.

I was within 100 miles of the place where the outbreak occurred in Italy at the time when it started. Starting the day after I stayed at home, even though the streets and markets there were still packed with people.

When I went to the grocery store, I wore a mask, well a scarf, and, don't laugh at me here, gloves and this was a time when people were not wearing masks in large numbers. I was not so much afraid of getting it, the data we had from China at the time was about 5,000 people dead in a province of 50 million, so I thought it potentially might not be that contagious or as deadly as rumored, but the risk that data was incorrect combined with the hassle of maybe having to go to a hospital where I did speak the language lead me to be more cautious.

Then on March 17th Italy released a study of their covid deaths to date - median age over the life expectancy there, 75% with 3 preexisting conditions, 50% with 2 preexisting conditions and 99% with 1 or more. This made me much less concerned about it.

Over the next month after or so I read the various dstudies on IFRs that came out and seen it was probably going to end up coming in sub .3% and maybe eventually sub .1% and at this point basically was not really worried about it or at least no more so than any other risk of death that is out there.
Riggerjack wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:56 pm
What we should/should not have done, knowing what we know today.
Yes that is a good question

I would say that root of the answer lays in believing in personal decision making of American's and probably not thinking that the government can make decisions regarding our health better than we can. We deal with all kinds of just as severe risk without governmental control. Why do we think that for this one risk in our lives our fellow Americans are incapable of deciding risk how to balance the risk of protecting their health and living their lives?

If people are really incapable of making such decisions how strong, or rather weak, of a country are we?

How can (from a FI perspective) we invest in companies which are not controlled by the government if we don't trust people’s decisions?

The answer to these questions is that people are on average not less capable of making their own decisions than people in other countries, or else our stock market would be worth much less.

And also that people on average are more capable of making decisions by the government, which by the very nature of a government, will be afflicted with the problems of:

- No skin in the game

- Group think

- Slow action embodied by large organizations

- Politicians often not elected for their competency

- The generally lower salaries paid by government compared to the private sector, which means they are at a disadvantage in recruiting staff


In this case these problems have manifested themselves in the form of:

- Slow initial reaction to set-up extra hospital capacity

- Continuing slow reaction to set-up extra hospital capacity (how can politicians say their states/cities are running out of hospital capacity but have done
nothing to set up any extra capacity - Perhaps it’s not really needed but for them to say it begs the question of why they haven't done anything about it
for 9 months)

- Not protecting nursing homes at the beginning which we knew was where the at-risk population was located

- And actually transferring infected people into nursing homes, which is the opposite of protecting them

- Not performing statistical population wide seroprevalence studies to gauge the IFR

- Not performing statistical population wide studies to access any after effects of the virus

The list could go on but this is not to say we should expect the government to handle these things well due to the weaknesses in all governments that I listed above.

Rather it is to say that government inherently often doesn't handle benefit/risk decision trade-offs as they relate to an individual as well as the individual who suffers the consequences.

If the roles were reversed would a politician really decide to close their own business and bankrupt themselves and sit at home – or might they instead choose to keep them open, so they would have the money to go on vacations and eat at expensive restaurants.

Would an 80-year presidential candidate say he could not run and an 80-year government health person resign because they believed they need to follow the CDC guidance for the isolation of older at-risk people or might they believe that the benefits of continuing to pursue their positions outweigh the risks?

From what we have seen the latter appears the case. Keep in mind I am not saying they made the wrong decisions, I might make the same decisions myself if I were them.

But should these same people then tell a healthy 25-year-old that they need to close their business and go into poverty?

During historical very deadly pandemics people would take extreme measures to avoid infection on their own, including abandoning cities and going to live of the land in some remote place - humans are programed after 50 million years of evolution to avoid deadly risks.

The problem in this case is that the government is treating this like a very deadly plaque and trying to get people to do the same while many people have accessed an IFR of around .2% (and even less for the younger and healthy) as not very deadly and this mismatch creates the problem. If the IFR was 5% across all ages and health statuses people might reafily voluntarily go further than what the government is asking

So in the end I think the solution lays in allowing people to access and react to the risk in their lives themselves.

It’s what we what we have done during previous similar pandemics and do for every other risk in life and have become a very successful country doing things this way.

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

Viktor K wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:53 pm

That sounds like something out of my primary school, US-propaganda filled education.
And a Chinese education is propadanga free?

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Viktor K
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Viktor K »

So in the end I think the solution lays in allowing people to access and react to the risk in their lives themselves.

It’s what we what we have done during previous similar pandemics and do for every other risk in life and have become a very successful country doing things this way.
This is simply not true.

Bolded - is false, I'm not sure which pandemic you are referring to that is similar to this one. Also, people uprooting lives and fleeing population centers as the appropriate action during pandemic? Seems pretty medieval to me, you would think science + technology (e.g. China response, Taiwan response, South Korea response, etc) is better response now.

Underlined - this is opinion, and whatever country you're referring to (I'm not sure who "we" is) has faults. I'm focusing on COVID-specific.

The rest of your post about the severity of the pandemic seems to miss the issue of hospital overloading, and the sheer # of deaths due to the contagious nature of COVID. Are there any examples of countries that have gone on business as usual? I think the only example would be Wuhan, before they took action. Didn't seem like a fun place to be.

@Life of FI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

jacob wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:00 pm
The virus will infect people regardless of political bias, but people who don't socially distance, don't wear masks, or think the virus is some kind of conspiracy hoax are certainly easier to infect.
Those links make some sense on the face of it as States with more infections per million tend to be Republican, but I was referring to the death numbers per million - These tend these be more evenly split between Democrat and Republican States

Don't know exactly why

Are possibly healthy Republicans more open to exposing themselves to it than healthy Democrats, in line with your links above, while at the same time at-risk/unhealthy Democrats and Republicans both equally protecting themselves from it.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by thrifty++ »

The only places in the world that have the virus under control are New Zealand and Tawian. Everywhere else it seems out of control. Scary. Korea has a huge outbreak and its hospital system cannot handle it. People are dying before they get to see a doctor. USA gets worse every day. Britain and South Africa have new strains. Life has been normal in NZ for the most part for the last 4 months with next to no restrictions anymore, except more recently for mandatory mask wearing on public transit. Everywhere else seems to be getting worse and worse. I hope the vaccines bring it under control soon. Obviously wont be super fast but I hope we are looking at a very different picture in 3 months time.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

thrifty++ wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 9:09 pm
The only places in the world that have the virus under control are New Zealand and Tawian. Everywhere else it seems out of control. Scary. Korea has a huge outbreak and its hospital system cannot handle it. People are dying before they get to see a doctor. USA gets worse every day. Britain and South Africa have new strains.
Only .1% of the US population has died from it, that is one tenth of one percent, and almost 1% of the US population dies normally every year

These type of things occur frequently thoughout history especially when populations become older - like ours is now.

We have been lucky to live in a time of few deadly wars or disease outbreaks but the 40s 50s, and 60s had a lot of these.

Repiratory diseases are not something humans have been proven to control to any great extent.

Are things really so bad from this prespective?

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by thrifty++ »

@Life of FI - I guess compared to the 1940s and previiously things arent so bad. But they seem pretty bad for my lifetime scale.

I am certain that the numbers of deaths and disease actually going on will be well in excess of what is reported in real time. That is always what happens in every pandemic. Im picking at least 5 million are dead so far. USA will be one of the places with the most transparent reporting. There will be many placed underreporting deaths by orders of magnitude.

Take Yemen for example. It has reported 606 deaths while it has reported less infections than New Zealand where only 25 people have died. That makes no sense. In actual reality, we might find later, that 5,000 people actually died there up until now and the number of infections were 50,000 rather than just 2,000. This will be widespread across the world. The virus is probably the leading cause of death right now and we just dont know yet. But we will. And unlike the other leading causes of death, it is not lifestyle related which makes a big difference.

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