On big subs, like worldnews.
Like, a lot of people quoting one CDC report on IFR that presented COVID as less dangerous, without actually knowing the difference between CFR and IFR. Despite the fact that the numbers (in the report) are still very fucking high.
I hear more and more people saying that countries overreport deaths, based on some anecdotal evidence (one time a bike crash was reported as a COVID death), which is complete bullshit, of course, easily checked by looking at excess deaths.
Absolutely braindead comparisons to seasonal flu, as if seasonal flu isn't
- less dangerous
- a huge fucking problem and a cause of millions of deaths
Chapos, COVID is the most deadly airborne virus pandemic since spanish flu, and the most deadly virus since HIV/AIDS.
Oh yeah, I say "since HIV/AIDS", but HIV/AIDS pandemic is still happening. Literally millions of people die. We haven't cured it. Who said that we'll cure this one?
Also, you cant really compare coronavirus to HIV, but if we look at annual deaths, then HIV was at its peak at ~1.9 million deaths (in 2005, I think). Compare that to COVID. This is just the first 7-8 months of the pandemic and we already have more than a million deaths! That is, despite the fact that:
- Deaths are seriously underreported (I'm talking 30-50% just in the US. Imagine fucking Brasil. Russia? In Russia its way worse).
- Coronoviruses are seasonal and they peak at winter
- The whole world went into lockdown for months.
Holy shit, I fucking can't.
You won't hear about it if Biden wins though. So many people on the Left are way too guillable when it comes to MSM propaganda/hype machine and end up confused and depressed when the levers of power move the distraction elsewhere.
True, as soon as Biden wins the media will shift from the case and death numbers to other things. I suspect CNN will take down their case counts that they show all the time sometime right after the holidays. It's still going to be a disaster of corse, so funny how libs think Biden will get in and just make the virus go bye bye.
I'm just glad my counties winter is over and excess mortality is back to normal levels, can't imagine entering winter now, stay safe.
How high are the chances of CDC being corrupt because it is a part of the executive branch of US government, which is supposed to be under Trump's control.
I don't think it is, but I don't think it is the best source either.
There's probably some internal friction, but the CDC is still staffed with scientists and not politicians, so it's a bit harder to get them to adhere to a party line. There are definitely leaders there that might withold info or load language, but the actual reports are still done by educated people that care about infectious disease.
There's a reason they transferred data collection from CDC to HHS who then subcontracted to a private company. If the CDC was willing to cook data for the WH, they wouldn't have been striped of their data collection duties.
also wear them outside
My impression is outside transmission is much less likely, so really only a concern if you're close to people, especially for extended periods - i.e. there's no real point in masks unless you're closely gathered, with little wind. No?
The international and American authorities being less than trustworthy on this has been a huge problem. When this first started becoming a thing, I paid close attention to what China was doing and saying, so never paid attention to the early mixed messaging on masks, followed along when they had that graphic of a restaurant showing it was likely airborne, etc.
Kind of a shame we America can't really trust our CDC as much as we should.
My S/O and I have been super intense about it over the past 7 months and it’s been a massive drain on our mental health. We’re disinfecting everything every day, wearing masks everywhere, only shopping essentials, above and beyond anything I’ve seen any other American do. Now we’re both starting new jobs that will expose us to the public and I’m like, holy shit, what’s the point? We’re gonna get it from someone else’s stupidity anyways.
I just don’t know what to feel now. It sucks. I want off of hell world.
It's fucked. Glad to hear you're doing what you can. Stay safe out there.
Yeah this is where I'm at too.
All full lockdowns did was expose the working class as fodder for the virus PLUS cause them economic harm as well while protecting the PMC with their comfy WFH jobs. Not just in the US, all capitalist countries have seen this play out. Only reason China was able to do what it did was because of its state economy, and we are well past the point of being able to eliminate the virus anyway until there is a really good vaccine at least. So it's like how do you keep society running the best way possible, while living with the virus until enough immunity is built up via natural infection or vaccine. To me its like open schools as much as possible (while providing PPE for teachers + hazard pay plus often testing of kids plus other social distancing measures/masks, improved ventilation), encourage people to work from home still but those who can't (as we still need people to run essential supply chains, etc) get full protection plus hazard pay. Ones who are laid off, full UE until the pandemic is over plus health care. Options and funds for employees to fully buyout any business that fails. Encourage anyone over 50? 55? to stay at home, pay them if we have too. Protect those in LTC facilities at all costs. Fully fund the arts so they come back strong. Allow and encourage low risk outside activities for exercise and mental well being. Anyone who does get sick no cost treatment at any hospital of their choice plus full on quarantine/isolation support at NICE hotels or treatment centers.
Well... maybe it's about more than YOU. This attitude sucks, have some social responsibility for fuck's sake. Very cool that you don't care if you get sick, but fuck you for not giving a fuck if you get other vulnerable people sick and kill them.
Over 1 million people have died.
Go to a fucking park and see your friends and family. Have a small gathering inside with masks. There's a million ways to responsibly visit your family and friends without being like, "ah fuck it, this is too hard, covid for everyone!".
I support the abolition of personal vehicles in urban, suburban and exurban areas and the construction of trains, light rail and bus systems.
Do they think they are owning the left by talking about how cool and normal vehicle deaths are?
Unfortunately, they do—they think 30–40k dead americans every year is just the price we gotta pay for our freedom.
Ok, so this crisis didn't expose the capitalist system as being unsustainable and we have to go out an risk to die so the system doesn't collapse? Makes sense...
It's either ovious bots/propaganda pushing or your stereotypical gullible redditors that just want to go back to normal ™️. I've also noticed a new trend of bots/redditors saying European leaders, like Boris Johnson, didn't downplay the virus. Just the most obvious narrative and manufacturing of consent online. And you're right the death count is vastly underreported elsewhere, my country has 17 000 official deaths, but 45 000 execess deaths during the same period. That's an undercount of 260% or even more? Yeah this virus is fucking horrible.
You know how many deaths were reported to WHO during swine flu? Like, 18000, I think. Now the number quoted everywhere is 100-800 000.
These dipshits are infecting Canadian subreddits too, namely /r/Ontario and /r/Toronto. All of them want to boot lick for their dumbass leader Doug Ford even as the situation deteriorates in the province.
There was one person on a local subreddit complaining that covid blocked their international job offer. Not that they lost their job, but that they can't get a massive promotion and earn Euros or US dollars. Just misinformation all round.
Lol that sounds like complete bullshit anyway. A lot of countries are still issuing work permits given they go through the necessary procedures like testing and quarantine on arrival.
They lost the timeframe to apply for a visa or something if I remember the post correctly.
These dipshits are infecting Canadian subreddits too
I mean Canada is essentially the northern US in every sense of the word, so it makes sense
Mexico has 173,000 extra deaths compared to last year. COVID is decimating our country but our president keeps downplaying the crisis. Our governor was praised for his quick action on locking down our city (Guadalajara), but a month and a half in, they changed their strategy to "personal responsibility", which is going to kill us all.
There's no feasible way to lockdown Mexico to the extent needed to meaningfully halt transmission without massive wealth redistribution so people who live on a dime can stop going to work. This can't exist even at the level of thought under bourgeois politics, so nobody suggested it. We were fucked from the start.
And still all our bougie population believe AMLO is going to instaurate socialism.
I fucking truly hate them, AMLO entertains them because they're a pathetic caricature of right wing populism and it makes him look good in contrast, but it's like he doesn't see Trump, a caricature of american right wing populism is like, there, being president.
Yeah people want an easy out that doesn't exist for this pandemic, and are looking for any piece of information to support that. The only way out is a competent and science based government and community response, but that isn't possible in the USA due to the political environment and large amount of Covid denial. (Anti maskers, etc). So people are just looking for any little piece of information (CDC IFR stats, etc) and remove it from the context of the larger picture in order to make covid "not that bad" so they can return to normal™️. Because let's be honest, as necessary as quarantine and mask wearing is, it sucks for a ton of people and 6 months in they're just sick and tired of it.
I've noticed that trend starting on /r/COVID19, actually, right down to the bike crashes deaths reported as covid 19. Now it's gone, so I figure it comes in waves. And it's not just reddit bots or whatever, tenured professors like John Ioannidis have been pushing hard the idea that lockdowns were an unnecessary and even harmful precaution. There were a bunch of preprints that calculated the real R0 to something insane like 30 so the real IFR was 0.01% that were doing the rounds and getting massive upvotes. I imagine all that stuff eventually circled back to the CDC itself and now /r/coronavirus is peddling old misinfo. What follows I guess is T-cell immunity being much more prevalent that anyone imagined, which is probably true enough but not as prevalent as some people will claim it is.
I don't even think it's that hard to end up believing that kind of stuff though. Like I had to fight against it myself, there's real comfort imagining that this stuff is way overblown.
One thing that pisses me off as of very recent is the supposed stat from the World Health Organization that an estimated 1/10 of the entire world population has had COVID-19 and then of course a majority of the comments went to downplay the pandemic because of this very number, people complaining about lockdowns and et cetera.
Like yeah alright, let's ignore the fact that in just seven months a (confirmed) 215K have died, much more than the flu could in the span of an entire year, or the fact that even if you don't die that you could be left with long-term or lifelong effects. If we can assume the case count is much higher than what is known likewise the death toll is much much higher.
How does 10% had it mean that it's not that bad. We didn't overwhelm most medical systems, are still not doing great and have to sixtouple this number to achieve some kind of heard immunity. If this came out in April, ok. But like this... It means we have to socially distance for another three years until we can even think of heard immunity (ignoring vaccines for this example). Plus, this doesn't even mean that 10% are immune. The virus can mutate or your antibodies can decrease over time. Asymtomatic patients didn't show any antibodies 3 Monath after their infection in one paper. If anything this number says we are still 90% fucked.
The first months the Western media was comparing different countries and regions and analyzing how well they were controlling the spread. Now that the US and other developed countries are doing so poorly they don't dare tell the population about any foreign activity regarding Covid. Once Americans got banned from international travel it's like we can't be made aware that we are the lepers of the world.
There's no truth, your parents are idiots. Just compare the overall deaths in 2019 compared to now. Gee there's a huge spike in deaths I wonder what could possibly be causing that.
Yep.
Forgive me for linking to 538, but I found this article to be a decent explanation on why counting deaths is complicated and how our current methods are not built for the just-in-time nature of a pandemic:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-deaths/
There are certain guidelines for WHO reporting, I can find them if you want. So, if you die from completely unrelated causes, it doesn't count. If you recover and then die, it doesn't count.
Even if there are some % of cases overreported the best way to fight that argument is by pointing out excess mortality stats.
Here's an article from august 12 saying 200000 people had already died in US, based on excess death numbers.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html
This comes from either a misunderstanding or an intended obfuscation of what "cause of death" means, and how it's determined. Technically there is really only one way to die: not enough oxygen gets to the brain. But this can be caused by a million different things, and one thing can precipitate the next, so where do you draw the line?
When you have a patient with covid who then catches pneumonia and dies, was it the covid or the pneumonia that killed them? What if the process was less cut and dried than that? Like a covid patient with comorbities who deteriorates and dies; was it the comorbities that killed them? Or did covid push an unhealthy person past the point they could recover from?
I think this question is the nugget of truth to "anyone with covid is counted as a covid death" argument, but even if there are some cases that are absolute stretches at best (like the bicycle example), they are such an absolute minority of cases when compared to the million plus other worldwide deaths so far.
You don't "catch" pneumonia - it's a disease state that can result from an infection. You catch the causative agent of pneumonia.
Sorry if that sounds pedantic but I think it's emblematic of how easy it is to mischaracterize something this complex by not knowing the correct medical terminology.
You're not wrong, but in this case I do think you're being a bit overly pedantic and making a distinction without a difference.
I think it's a perfect example of how the general public has a limited vocabulary with which to discuss these things.
I'm also a clinical lab scientist, so speaking in very specific terms about this stuff is kind of my bag.
I’m also a clinical lab scientist, so speaking in very specific terms about this stuff is kind of my bag.
lol. Ah, well there's your answer.
I worked as an ER scribe for several years and then as a hospitalist scribe for a couple years after that. Throughout all this time I saw innumerable examples of the physicians saying the patient "caught" pneumonia, or "got" pneumonia, or whatever generalized term you want to use. Medical professionals understand that you catch Strep pneumo, or Klebsiella, or Mycoplasma, or whatever, and not just "pneumonia," but there's really no need to be anally retentive like that when discussing the patient with another person on the treatment team, you know? Especially considering that most of the time they don't even know what pathogen is causing the pneumonia until a blood or sputum sample gets down to you guys.
And yeah, the general public might not understand that you don't actually catch pneumonia, you actually catch some pathogen that causes it, but again, I'm struggling to see how that makes much of a difference in this case.
It doesn't change your point about comorbidities. It was only tangentially related, tbh.
Basically, are some deaths wrongly reported? Sure, mistakes happen. (Even though you have to realise that each doctor is not stupid and probably has some idea what caused it)
But does it mean there are actually less deaths? Hell no.
Your parents are dumb boomers
The stats clearly show more deaths
Of course a dude in a car crash was counted as a COVID death. COVID can cause extreme brain dysfunction, fainting, strokes, and so much more.
If a guy is COVID+, has a stroke while driving and crashes his car and dies, then he died of COVID.
If a guy is COVID+, and gets into a traffic accident and dies, but has a spotless traffic record for a decade before that, he died of COVID.
If a guy is COVID NEGATIVE, but still has lasting symptoms, and he crashes his car and dies, but he never crashed his car during the last 15 years, then he almost certainly died of COVID.
Because COVID made them crash their cars. kindergarten shit
etc
Gotta keep capitalism going some how during q very anti capitalist virus
