Over/Under Covid 19 deaths in US

Over/Under Covid 19 deaths 2020

  • More than 25K

    Votes: 65 72.2%

  • Less than 25K

    Votes: 25 27.8%
  • Total voters
    90
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midwestpa24 said:
I can't validate it, but I have seen it reported that overall deaths in the country have decreased compared to the same time last year, even including COVID victims. I saw numbers along the lines of March 2019 - 60,000+ deaths, March 2020 - 44,000 deaths. It was attributed to the reduction in travel and accidents.
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Not sure where you're getting 60'000 from. March 2019 saw 253k deaths from all causes.

But March is too early to compare - there were only 4000 US COVID-19 deaths by March 31st. 85% of US COVID deaths happened in April. Well, in the first 15 days of April.
 
denverpilot said:
Wife works with an ER doc. He said he an colleagues honestly have no idea where all the heart attack and stroke patients went, but they have almost none right now.
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I have a friend who's a FDNY paramedic. A week or two ago he said that at-home DOA's are about ten times normal. They usually get about 20/day. As of a week or two ago, they were getting about 200/day. It's reasonable to assume that at least some of the deaths were of people who knew or strongly suspected they were having heart attacks, but who decided to take their chances rather than call EMS.

The actual number of at-home deaths is undoubtedly much higher because the dead can't report their own deaths. NYPD and FDNY typically respond when someone complains about the stench, or when a friend or relative requests a well-being check. Because of the lockdown, very few people (including family members) are visiting each other; and neighbors are less likely to notice things like the little old lady down the block not taking her daily walk to the bodega at precisely 10:02 a.m.

This actually illustrates one of the biggest failings of the current mitigation approach. As with everything else that government does, it's based on controlling the masses rather than assisting people. A more sensible approach would focus on aggressively protecting the vulnerable. It would include things like income replacement, delivery of groceries and anything else they need, and daily well-being checks of the most vulnerable by people trained to at least take vital signs (for example, nursing students and EMT trainees whose classes have been suspended).

Unfortunately, that's not the approach being taken. The current approach consists of ever-increasing restrictions on the movement of the apparently healthy, and punishment of those who fail to comply -- even if their non-compliance is simply a result of their not being able to keep up with all the restrictions. It's an authoritarian approach rather than an assistive approach. It's based on control and punishment, not addressing needs. The only assistive services are being provided by volunteers who, ironically, are breaking the law by providing them.

It's all a huge mess run by imbeciles and control freaks. In other words, it's exactly what I expect of government.

Rich
 
Rich,

The problem with your assist concept is you need a critical component to make it work. You need massive testing, on a national scale. Not state by state, but a true national response. The more willing people are willing to give up civil liberties (e.g. cell phone location history tracking) the lower the bound is on the number of tests we need. If you want to minimize the civil liberties impact, then you need massive testing focused more on what legally is considered a privilege not a right. e.g. you need to pass a test to go on commercial air, you need to pass a test within X days to take mass transit, to attend large events (e.g. sports) you need to pass a test within X days, to get medical care you must take the test.... One economist and epidemiologist wrote we need to perform 22M (yes twenty two million) test a day. That is increasing testing by over one hundred (yes, over 100) times. No way can this be done at the state level.

Tim
 
tspear said:
Rich,

The problem with your assist concept is you need a critical component to make it work. You need massive testing, on a national scale. Not state by state, but a true national response. The more willing people are willing to give up civil liberties (e.g. cell phone location history tracking) the lower the bound is on the number of tests we need. If you want to minimize the civil liberties impact, then you need massive testing focused more on what legally is considered a privilege not a right. e.g. you need to pass a test to go on commercial air, you need to pass a test within X days to take mass transit, to attend large events (e.g. sports) you need to pass a test within X days, to get medical care you must take the test.... One economist and epidemiologist wrote we need to perform 22M (yes twenty two million) test a day. That is increasing testing by over one hundred (yes, over 100) times. No way can this be done at the state level.

Tim
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I disagree. You need to aggressively protect the vulnerable, implement reasonable precautions for the rest (masks, sanitizer, and so forth), close a very few high-risk and unquestionably unnecessary businesses (like tattoo parlors, for example), and let people decide for themselves how much risk they're willing to accept within the scope of the precautions.

Traveling on any form of mass transit is inherently risky, and all the testing in the world won't detect virus that people picked up on their clothing and possessions while traveling to the conveyance. Testing, at best, provides marginal protection and a false sense of security. So acknowledge that there's no such thing as a risk-free world, take reasonable precautions, provide the best possible advice about how people can protect themselves, and let them decide for themselves whether they're willing to take the risk.

Self-preservation is an innate instinct. Given accurate information rather than the propaganda du jour, most people will make the right decisions. As for the rest, they're Darwin's problem.

Rich
 
deonb said:
It also doesn't account for people not wanting to risk going to the hospital and dying at home from heart disease etc. It's probably a wash between the two since accidents are not a very common cause of death, compared to everything else.
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denverpilot said:
Wife works with an ER doc. He said he an colleagues honestly have no idea where all the heart attack and stroke patients went, but they have almost none right now.
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From CNBC:

In the first five days of April, the number of people who died in their homes or on the street in New York City was more than eight times the deaths recorded during the same period last year, The New York Times reported, citing the New York Fire Department.
 
denverpilot said:
Wife works with an ER doc. He said he an colleagues honestly have no idea where all the heart attack and stroke patients went, but they have almost none right now.
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Strange, that’s been the case in my area as well. The hospital is like a ghost town and my med crew said the other day they’ve never seen it so clean and so quiet. I’m like, how is COVID preventing the normal strokes / STEMIs we normally fly??? Social distancing to the point of not seeking medical care I guess.
 
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People aren't out doing crazy things. Non CV-19 ER visits are way down.
 
bflynn said:
People aren't out doing crazy things. Non CV-19 ER visits are way down.
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My wife's nephew is an ER doc. He said his ER is normally filled with people who don't need to be there (just want attention and/or trying to score some free opiates) and a few with holes in them that do need to be there. Once this all started, the hypochondriacs and the pill addicts disappeared immediately and flow of people with holes in them reduced to a trickle.
 
So I went back and looked at cumulative US deaths every Monday since March 2. Cumulative total deaths more than quadrupled after that first week, then tripled the following week, 6x the next week, quintupled the next, then tripled last week.

After this weekend if we get to 47k total by Monday morning (April 20), we will be down to a 2x weekly rate.

If we continue to improve, then by Monday May 4 (2 weeks from this coming Monday), if we only double the total every 2 weeks instead of every 1 week, we’ll “only” have had 94k die over 2 months time. And that’s with doing all these “restrictions”.

What can go wrong if we ease “restrictions”?

What I find interesting is people thinking that taking temperatures is a decent albeit imperfect infection preventive method. It’s not imperfect, it’s a joke, when the virus just uses 80% of those it infects to simply to carry it around asymptotically eventually to someone that it finally impacts (not too hard, 1 of 5 of us). No different than a Zika mosquito (sorry).

What I also find interesting is how people are not “allowed” to change their minds (“on March 23, you said...”). I didn’t think COVID was as big a deal as it is, but I didn’t stick my neck out about it (cuz I’m expert at being wrong).
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
So I went back and looked at cumulative US deaths every Monday since March 2. Cumulative total deaths more than quadrupled after that first week, then tripled the following week, 6x the next week, quintupled the next, then tripled last week.

After this weekend if we get to 47k total by Monday morning (April 20), we will be down to a 2x weekly rate.

If we continue to improve, then by Monday May 4 (2 weeks from this coming Monday), if we only double the total every 2 weeks instead of every 1 week, we’ll “only” have had 94k die over 2 months time. And that’s with doing all these “restrictions”.

What can go wrong if we ease “restrictions”?

What I find interesting is people thinking that taking temperatures is a decent albeit imperfect infection preventive method. It’s not imperfect, it’s a joke, when the virus just uses 80% of those it infects to simply to carry it around asymptotically eventually to someone that it finally impacts (not too hard, 1 of 5 of us). No different than a Zika mosquito (sorry).

What I also find interesting is how people are not “allowed” to change their minds (“on March 23, you said...”). I didn’t think COVID was as big a deal as it is, but I didn’t stick my neck out about it (cuz I’m expert at being wrong).
Click to expand...
So well said!
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
What I find interesting is people thinking that taking temperatures is a decent albeit imperfect infection preventive method. It’s not imperfect, it’s a joke, when the virus just uses 80% of those it infects to simply to carry it around asymptotically eventually to someone that it finally impacts (not too hard, 1 of 5 of us). No different than a Zika mosquito (sorry).
Click to expand...

I find the temperature taking to be a complete joke as well. None of us had fevers during our exposure. The published case numbers are way, way lower than actual because of the number of people that are asymptomatic.
 
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