Pandemic threat? Anyone else concerned?

Arjun

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BC or AD?
Lol 2020 AD
Now that’s what I call a nasty typo

Imagine missequencing a Functional gene simply because a lab technician threw in the wrong amino acid; thus giving rise to COVID

what could be worse? :facepalm:
 

mcapeed

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The amount of BS on the topic is mind boggling. Simple 4th grade math is all one needs to know in dealing with Covid.

99.6% of Americans will not die from it. Listen to social media and one would think the death rate is 99%.

Use your brain and the numbers not emotions to deal with Covid.


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Frankenscript

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Also consider something like 5-10 % of cases (cases, not infections) have persistent health problems brought on by the disease even if they don't die from it. Some of these clear up over time, others may not. Like BigRedFish says, it's not just the flu.

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Arjun

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Take a break from Current Events
This will be the celebratory song when all is well ;)
 

Armed&Overclocked

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it is true that the majority of people who contract covid will likely survive and may not even have long term affects (that data still isnt conclusive)
but simply white washing the deaths that do occur is frankly absurd.

to put the 200,000 (and counting) death toll into perspective below is the amount of combat related casualties for some of the wars the U.S has been involved in

ww1-53, 402
ww2-291, 557
korea-33, 686
vietnam-47,424
Gulf war-149
Afghanistan-1,833
Iraq-3,836
 

Arjun

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As a species, to some, it always feels good when records are broken :(

Here are a few that comes to mind

  • Death toll from wars
  • Vaccine / Placebo trials
  • Penis Size
  • Car Size
  • Phone Size
  • Breast Size
  • Buttocks Size
  • Biceps / Triceps
  • Debt
  • Total assets
  • Number of trees replanted
  • Number of hurricanes
  • Number of cases
  • Number of Kids
  • Not going on a tangent, but the list goes on
  • Feel free to add on to this list
Its insane, to the media, Bad News is Good News

it is true that the majority of people who contract covid will likely survive and may not even have long term affects (that data still isnt conclusive)
but simply white washing the deaths that do occur is frankly absurd.

to put the 200,000 (and counting) death toll into perspective below is the amount of combat related casualties for some of the wars the U.S has been involved in

ww1-53, 402
ww2-291, 557
korea-33, 686
vietnam-47,424
Gulf war-149
Afghanistan-1,833
Iraq-3,836
 

Jessie.slimer

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If the 200k number is true, and I'm not convinced of that number yet regardless of the many fancy charts and graphs put together, nobody is saying its not a horrible thing. Many are wondering if locking down our economy and destroying countless businesses was the right thing to do then, and especially now. Did it really help?
 

bigredfish

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I don’t honestly know. And I don’t think we’ll ever really know. It would be based on “what if” numbers.

What if we didn’t do what we did (other countries did more) and the number was 400,000? What if they were 1million? And to your point what if they were still about 200,000?
 

Arjun

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It just made the situation worse. I don't imagine many small businesses returning. E-commerce is rapidly taking over now :(

If the 200k number is true, and I'm not convinced of that number yet regardless of the many fancy charts and graphs put together, nobody is saying its not a horrible thing. Many are wondering if locking down our economy and destroying countless businesses was the right thing to do then, and especially now. Did it really help?
 

Armed&Overclocked

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If the 200k number is true, and I'm not convinced of that number yet regardless of the many fancy charts and graphs put together, nobody is saying its not a horrible thing. Many are wondering if locking down our economy and destroying countless businesses was the right thing to do then, and especially now. Did it really help?
personally i think the numbers would be higher had we not performed a lock down like we did. there are probably some charts out there that will show what the case/death numbers are before and after a state or regions stay at home orders. i know locally when we went into phase three things got worse, then they put us back in phase 2 and things normalized eventually. Also the country of sweden never really did any lock downs and instead just relied on masks and social distancing and they got hit harder than other Scandinavian countries.


as far as if has been "worth" the impact on our economy i will say "yes" because lives are more important than business. i will also say that businesses going belly up is largely a failing of the gov't. There really needed to be a better response to this whole mess to help businesses out. PPP was a start, but tbh small and medium sized businesses should of been able to sign up for some sort of assistance on monthly fees, like leases and utilities, so that they could stay afloat while being shut down or at reduced capacity. this would also have helped the landlords and other services that feed these companies stay afloat too.

as far as the citizenry goes there should of been more done as well. the boosted unemployment and that one stimulus check was nice, and frankly more than i expected, but tbh there should of been a check every month regardless of your employment situation. If i were a member of congress my goal would of been that small businesses and regular people would be able to exit the pandemic no worse (financially) than when they entered it. it would of been expensive but some light taxation of online goods (with sunset provisions) could of paid it off over time.
 

Arjun

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There are deaths each year, not flu / COVID-related


Many of the numbers being reported in each state are not entirely factual; there have been numerous accounts of misreporting

2017 Data from the CDC

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
  • Heart disease: 647,457
  • Cancer: 599,108
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
  • Diabetes: 83,564
  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173


personally i think the numbers would be higher had we not performed a lock down like we did. there are probably some charts out there that will show what the case/death numbers are before and after a state or regions stay at home orders. i know locally when we went into phase three things got worse, then they put us back in phase 2 and things normalized eventually. Also the country of sweden never really did any lock downs and instead just relied on masks and social distancing and they got hit harder than other Scandinavian countries.


as far as if has been "worth" the impact on our economy i will say "yes" because lives are more important than business. i will also say that businesses going belly up is largely a failing of the gov't. There really needed to be a better response to this whole mess to help businesses out. PPP was a start, but tbh small and medium sized businesses should of been able to sign up for some sort of assistance on monthly fees, like leases and utilities, so that they could stay afloat while being shut down or at reduced capacity. this would also have helped the landlords and other services that feed these companies stay afloat too.

as far as the citizenry goes there should of been more done as well. the boosted unemployment and that one stimulus check was nice, and frankly more than i expected, but tbh there should of been a check every month regardless of your employment situation. If i were a member of congress my goal would of been that small businesses and regular people would be able to exit the pandemic no worse (financially) than when they entered it. it would of been expensive but some light taxation of online goods (with sunset provisions) could of paid it off over time.
 

Jessie.slimer

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personally i think the numbers would be higher had we not performed a lock down like we did. there are probably some charts out there that will show what the case/death numbers are before and after a state or regions stay at home orders. i know locally when we went into phase three things got worse, then they put us back in phase 2 and things normalized eventually. Also the country of sweden never really did any lock downs and instead just relied on masks and social distancing and they got hit harder than other Scandinavian countries.


as far as if has been "worth" the impact on our economy i will say "yes" because lives are more important than business. i will also say that businesses going belly up is largely a failing of the gov't. There really needed to be a better response to this whole mess to help businesses out. PPP was a start, but tbh small and medium sized businesses should of been able to sign up for some sort of assistance on monthly fees, like leases and utilities, so that they could stay afloat while being shut down or at reduced capacity. this would also have helped the landlords and other services that feed these companies stay afloat too.

as far as the citizenry goes there should of been more done as well. the boosted unemployment and that one stimulus check was nice, and frankly more than i expected, but tbh there should of been a check every month regardless of your employment situation. If i were a member of congress my goal would of been that small businesses and regular people would be able to exit the pandemic no worse (financially) than when they entered it. it would of been expensive but some light taxation of online goods (with sunset provisions) could of paid it off over time.
Could be, don't know. However it's a slippery slope from depending on government to help out, to socialism. But that's a conversation for another thread.
 

Armed&Overclocked

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There are deaths each year, not flu / COVID-related


Many of the numbers being reported in each state are not entirely factual; there have been numerous accounts of misreporting

2017 Data from the CDC

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
  • Heart disease: 647,457
  • Cancer: 599,108
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
  • Diabetes: 83,564
  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173
yes having poor health, or not taking care of your poor health can result in deaths.

when this year is over its going to be interesting on how covid will impact those numbers. For instance suicide might be higher, but traffic fatalities will be lower.
 

Frankenscript

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Right. The only way we'd know is if a truly scientific approach was taken, with a control group. Sweden seems to be doing well without lockdowns after their initial hit, but again, it's still too early to tell.
As I've said, repeatedly actually ( :) ), there is a way to look at this with a scientific approach with a control group.

Sweden took a late & light-handed approach. Sweden's per capita COVID-19 death rate is 579/million population.
Norway and Finland are NEARLY IDENTICAL to SWEDEN in terms of way of life, city/rural spread, population density, public vs private transportation, diet, obesity, medical systems... but these two countries locked down fast and hard. Their per capita death rates are 49 and 61, respectively. ~10X less than Sweden.

Thus, late/weak interventions give a dramatically worse result than early/strong interventions.


Why do people here keep thinking Sweden did well? They are basically Europe's nightmare scenario come true. They didn't get things together until pretty late when they realized they were doing poorly compared to their neighbors and switched things up.

The US did MORE than Sweden did initially, but LESS than Norway/Finland. We can't directly compare results in US to those Nordic countries because our ways of life and other risk factors (obesity etc.) are wildly different. So comparing our death rate with those from Sweden/Norway/Finland is invalid.

What we can take away from this is that the spread between a relatively weak hand and a strong hand on lockdown can be 10X. The US saved a lot of lives by what we did, and the R values correlate state by state showing relative impact of distancing that people actually did. Had we done more, more lives would have been saved. Had we done less... as @mcapeed said, 99.6% of Americans won't die from it (actually, he's off by a few tenths of a percent probably but we'll let it slide). But if we let it run its course and everyone gets infected, 0.4% is still 1.3M deaths.
 
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