COVID-19

[scott2000]

Then there are fentanyl poisonings (they have seized thousands of pounds of the stuff ) that only takes a couple milligrams to kill us.

It's crazy... I was even watching a news report on the school masking debate and one of the shots that panned the classroom had a kid with a Sinaloa Airplane logo hat on...No mention of that..

 

[crazydoc]

There are many ways to die these days, besides the Covid.

JR

Although many of them are directly linked to the pandemic, and would not have occurred in the numbers they did without it. So in that sense they are due to the pandemic, though not necessarily from SARS-CoV-19 infection of an individual.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Regrettably some of these excess deaths are related to how we responded to the pandemic. It is too late to undo much of that damage but we can strive to learn from our mistakes. Most human progress comes from recording and learning from history, even relatively recent history.

Of course we all draw different lessons from our different experiences.

JR

 

[hodad]

Remember, though--it's a big wide world out there. The numbers crazydoc cited were global, not local. Pandemic response in South Africa, or Iran, or Mexico was not the same as in the US or EU. We can certainly point to deaths caused here in the US caused by postponed medical procedures or checkups, by mental health issues brought on by the shutdowns, etc. But not every country's response was similar to ours, and even among Western industrialized nations there are plenty of obvious variations.

There's a lot to learn from the various pandemic responses, and there have absolutely been unintended negative consequences of measures meant to protect and to save lives. But that doesn't mean COVID itself hasn't killed a lot more people than the official number.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Moderna is testing the mRNA vaccine technology on an HIV shot in a new clinical trial.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

It wasn't Covid that caused the increase in deaths, but the overwrought fear-based response as JR alludes. Radical desocialization, job loss, restricted access to healthcare, etc are not good for humans. Many people pointed this out in 2020 and 2021. The cure was worse than the disease. "Safety" culture is deadly.

 

[crazydoc]

It wasn't Covid that caused the increase in deaths, but the overwrought fear-based response as JR alludes. Radical desocialization, job loss, restricted access to healthcare, etc are not good for humans. Many people pointed this out in 2020 and 2021. The cure was worse than the disease. "Safety" culture is deadly.

Without the "overwrought fear-based response", AKA measures (including vaccination) to mitigate the actual effects of the disease itself (morbidity and mortality), death and illness from the disease would have been significantly higher. Our social systems did their best to deal with this.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[rob_gould]

Without the "overwrought fear-based response", AKA measures (including vaccination) to mitigate the actual effects of the disease itself (morbidity and mortality), death and illness from the disease would have been significantly higher.

It is really incredible that two years on, this point *still* needs to be made every time this conversation comes up.

 

[Script]

It wasn't Covid that

Read that in the US there's an unusually high number of people as of late who quit their jobs cos of low pay, lack of social security, high contact work environment, etc. So many people that some industries are running into problems recruiting. If true, I find that much more interesting

 

[JohnRoberts]

I am not smart enough to pontificate about medical outcomes but I will observe and question.

Right now we are seeing a major resurgence of covid in China and for more speculation I wonder if their policy of severe lockdowns hindered reaching herd immunity? It may also reflect on their chinese vaccine's modest efficacy, but our vaccines don't even completely prevent infection while they do reduce severity of infections. The covid appears to also be evolving toward less severe variants.

===

For a little covid humor, my neighbor (the druggist) asked his doctor what happened to the flu this winter... his doctor replied that the flu must have caught covid and died.

Read that in the US there's an unusually high number of people as of late who quit their jobs cos of low pay, lack of social security, high contact work environment, etc. So many people that some industries are running into problems recruiting. If true, I find that much more interesting

Not completely sure about the actual list of whys, but indeed the hiring market has been tight for some time leading to wage inflation, a good thing for workers, not so good for product price inflation. Many workers had a cushion of unemployment and covid stimulus money so started working part time in the gig economy. Some even took the opportunity to start new small businesses while sheltering at home. As this reserve of consumer personal savings dissipates many may return to the workforce possibly relieving hiring pressure.

I consider this uptick in new small businesses a positive thing long term, while we need to worry about high inflation and slowing growth (affectionately known as stagflation). But I still can't predict the future.

JR

 

[fazer]

I can’t imagine a couple of $1200 stimulus checks creating that much disruption in the job market in the us. Seems more like mediocre pay with high risk causes much of this and mix that with the idea that you could die in your 20’s. 30’s. What would happen if Andrew Yang’s $1000 a month UBI took place.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Economic incentives are not a hard science but I recall reports of people getting more money from unemployment than entry level jobs, especially if jobs only offered reduced hours (two years ago). That said I am not an expert about unemployment. I never sipped from that government teat.

JR

PS: Walmart took down the mask mandate signs, post office is still asking customers to protect...

 

[crazydoc]

I never sipped from that government teat.

JR

I did. When I got back from Viet Nam I went to the employment office in Sacramento to look for a job. They told me as an unemployed discharged soldier I was eligible for unemployment compensation, which I was glad to accept. Within a month I got a job as a framing carpenter from my experience in school construction in the Peace Corps in French Equatorial Africa.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I was working at MIT Instrumentation Lab when I got drafted, so by law they were supposed to hire me back when I got out. They did hire me back but not into the same engineering group. When drafted I was working on a deep submergence rescue submarine project for the Navy, they hired me back to work for a group designing inertial navigation for missiles. So one job was about saving lives, the other was about killing people.

I was not a happy camper. Within a few months I got recruited away to work in audio electronics by an engineer I worked with in my previous MITIL gig.

I have never been without a job (when I wanted one), but I did experience some thin times running my own businesses.

JR

 

[ruffrecords]

Covid cases shot up in the UK this week after most people topped wearing masks a couple of weeks ago. We kept wearing them in crowded areas and will continue to do so.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Matador]

Covid cases shot up in the UK this week after most people topped wearing masks a couple of weeks ago.

You haven't been keeping up on this thread...this is impossible, because masks do nothing to stop the spread and are ineffective except for choking children and babies yada yada....

 

[JohnRoberts]

My druggist neighbor mentioned today that there is another covid strain expected to hit here (MS) in a few weeks. He hadn't heard anything about severity or deaths. I expect if it was a new killer variant we would have heard more about it. There are lots of variants that don't make the evening newscast because they are so mild.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Without the "overwrought fear-based response", AKA measures (including vaccination) to mitigate the actual effects of the disease itself (morbidity and mortality), death and illness from the disease would have been significantly higher. Our social systems did their best to deal with this.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

No, the extended lock downs, flimsy masks, shuttering of businesses and schools did not provably reduce or mitigate enough to offset the damage they did. Vaccines are still an unknown as we haven't gotten data on longer term consequences. For older people it likely was worth getting, for the rest, not at all clear (unless you hold certain stocks).

The groupthink on this is really stunning to observe. Having moved from a state of fear (California) to one of pragmatism (yes, a red state) in 2021 the difference is apparent in both the attitude of individuals and government.

 

[volker]

Numbers taken from here: Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, Maps, Historical - US Mortality Monitoring

California reported 326,648 deaths of all ages for the year 2020. Expected deaths were 287,849. That is an increase of 38,799 deaths (+13.5%).
California reported 331,936 deaths of all ages for the year 2021. Expected deaths were 279,855. That is an increase of 52,081 deaths (+18.6%).
Texas reported 257,450 deaths of all ages for the year 2020. Expected deaths were 219,669. That is an increase of 37,781 deaths (+17.2%).
Texas reported 270,234 deaths of all ages for the year 2021. Expected deaths were 217,495. That is an increase of 52,739 deaths (+24.2%).

Your theory of fear killing people doesn't hold up very well, when Texas has higher numbers of excess deaths than California. Also keep in mind Texas has half the population density compared to California. So could it possibly be that a healthy respect for a historical crisis along with taking necessary precautions could actually prevent people from dying? Or are Texans just more afraid?

 

[crazydoc]

The groupthink on this is really stunning to observe.

That's for sure. "I think that..." is your evidence.