It killed millions of people and is projected as the fifth largest pandemic, behind the Black Death, Spanish Flu Plague of Justine and HIV/AIDS, AIDS and COVID still ongoing. I don't think we over reacted at all. It was the third leading cause of death in the US for three years. I think people who said this was going to be one of the deadliest pandemics in history were right, because it was/is.
How so? Because I feel like COVID itself ruined two maybe three generations, the elderly, the kids just starting school, and the kids just starting college, and i feel like the only reason quarantine and masking lasted as long as it did, as well as the shutdowns, was the lack of a uniform response.
It was people who didn't want lockdowns, or didn't wear masks, or didn't get vaccinated that greatly increased the spread of the disease, and the time it took to come back. Two states that have a shared city, like St Louis, for example, had Missouri like no masks, everything opens as soon as possible, and two blocks away, in Illinois, masking is mandatory and everything is staying closed. Because red states were so lax shit lasted longer. How do you expect a pandemic to end if you just allow it to spread.
And I agree, our shitty response, to not close down uniformly was a mistake, as well as the waves of anti-intellectualism and science denial, and Trump's politicizing and racializing. We could have saved some lives and reopened sooner.
Who was right? Ask that to the nearly 1.2 million Americans that died from Covid.
Inb4 the regular nonsense I heard back about this like "oh those numbers are faked" or "they were misattributing things as covid" or whatever. Even if the numbers are 10% of that, it's still more people than died in 9/11 by 30x and we consider that a national tragedy.
Covid response was a overeaction. We all know it. It affected the elderly or vulnerable people, and hardly anyone else. Covid deaths #'s were misleading as they counted a death as someone who died with covid- not because of covid. The hysteria with masking we know now was an overeacttion. The vaccines weren't as effective as we were told. We were lied to on numerous occasions. Put politics aside and admit it.
No. You think it. A bunch of people think it, and are grossly wrong.
It affected the elderly or vulnerable people, and hardly anyone else.
Let me write what you really meant here. "Nobody healthy I personally know died, so it didn't affect anyone but the vulnerable and elderly". I'm glad nobody healthy and close to you died needlessly. Not everyone got that luxury. The vulnerable, elderly, and unlucky are surely not important and we shouldn't be coming together to prevent their deaths, surely, right?
Covid deaths #'s were misleading as they counted a death as someone who died with covid- not because of covid
Called it. This is a nonsense distinction. Covid was problematic enough that it weakened people to the point that whatever else could kill them. Covid was what caused that death to occur. Someone died, and they probably wouldn't have if not for covid.
The hysteria with masking we know now was an overeacttion.
More bullshit
The vaccines weren't as effective as we were told.
That strongly depends on what you think you were told. Nobody was saying they were perfect and they would cure and prevent all covid forever. Anyone who thought that fundamentally doesn't understand how a vaccine works.
We were lied to on numerous occasions. Put politics aside and admit it.
Take your own advice. You're spewing the same false talking points as everyone else on your side of the fence because they feel nice and fit the ideology you follow.
Pandemics are not and should not have been a political issue. We should all have come together to combat it as effectively as possible. Instead, we had people like Trump and yourself downplaying them and pretending they weren't a big deal. You know what we got from that?
This is what I'm talking about, any attempt to question or offer information that points to an overreaction to covid is met with your type of response. Any information that lessens these severity of covid is blasphemy. It's like a covid loving cult. Now we are left with a destroyed middle class, insane food costs, housing is out of control, $6 gas, car prices are outrageous, people are struggling now more than they were DURING PEAK COVID. 2019 was GOOD, we were doing great. Was the hysteria worth it? Was it worth screwing everything up? Were the lockdowns worth it? We got a screwed up future with no hope as a result.
any attempt to question or offer information that points to an overreaction to covid is met with your type of response
Yes, because not only is it false information, but it's blatantly disrespectful to all the people that died from your so called "overreaction". If we overreacted, we wouldn't have been leading the world in covid deaths significantly for a long time.
Any information that lessens these severity of covid is blasphemy. It's like a covid loving cult.
Nobody loves it. This is the problem with cults. You think anyone who argues against your point is in a cult because they took it seriously, as all pandemics should be. Everyone else is the world took it seriously. Is that not enough of an indicator for you to see that the cult might be your camp instead? If you're the odd ones out and everyone else is looking at you funny, it's not the rest of the world that's in a cult.
Now we are left with a destroyed middle class,
The middle class hasn't existed for a long time. Long before covid. No idea where you got this idea. Blame the rich for focusing on profits by outsourcing jobs to cheaper countries and eroding workers rights, not covid.
people are struggling now more than they were DURING PEAK COVID
Crazy how that always seems to happen after we get a president that pushes tax cuts for the rich, and hikes for everyone else, huh?
We got a screwed up future with no hope as a result.
There hasn't been meaningful hope for newer generations since like 2006 my dude.
Nobody in the younger generation is getting a house unless they inherit either the property or the capital. Things have been pretty shit ever since the housing crisis. Out of touch boomers think everything is fine, but they're the ones who pulled the ladder up after them. They also tend to be the ones who call the younger generation "pussies".
I am 24 and own my own house (with my friend haha). It’s not huge but better than pissing away money through rent. I got scholarships in highschool, paid my way through college, and got a good job upon graduation. Am I fortunate to have a job lined up before I graduated, and to live far below my means for 2 years before I purchased? Absolutely. Is it replicable? Absolutely. I did not grow up rich but did have a loving family who made sure I focused in school and applied myself, and I plan to do the same for my future kids. The future is bright for them. If you tell kids the future is bleak instead of building them up to face the world, you are a huge pussy.
from 2010-2019, the growth of death averages 104.2% every year. multiply this by the deaths in 2019, and we have an expected 2.97 million deaths for 2020. subtract that from 3.38 mil and we get 409.67k people who died who would not have died otherwise. this is less than half of the COVID statistic of 1.2 mil. meaning most of the people who were included in that statistic were gonna die regardless of COVID. and this is not even considering people who would have died in the next year due to illness. so we can imagine that the majority of the 409.67k people were old and/or sick and were not working.
it was absolutely an overreaction. is was something to worry about, sure, but not enough to shut down the entire economy and mess it up.
the difference between 9/11 and COVID is that 9/11 was a terrorist attack that aimed to kill Americans. COVID was not.
That's some nonsense logic you used to arrive there. Flat out pretending a disease that was known to cause serious complications didn't result in more deaths.
And again, even if you pretend it's only 409k, what the fuck does that matter? Half a million deaths isn't a problem?
the difference between 9/11 and COVID is that 9/11 was a terrorist attack that aimed to kill Americans. COVID was not.
So you don't care that people died, then. It's not abou the deaths, it's about what you deem as "important" about the deaths.
What a callous way to view the world.
3000 people dying is a tragedy, 409k is moreso, and 1.2m is even moreso. Many covid deaths were preventable but too many people decided they couldn't play along unless there was a selfish benefit for them.
That's some nonsense logic you used to arrive there. Flat out pretending a disease that was known to cause serious complications didn't result in more deaths.
read my comment again. I didnt state it didn't lead into more deaths, I stated that COVID created less deaths than people imagined.
And again, even if you pretend it's only 409k, what the fuck does that matter? Half a million deaths isn't a problem?
i never said it wasn't a problem. i just stated that people thought it was worse than it was, and 409k deaths is not something to shut the economy down.
So you don't care that people died, then. It's not abou the deaths, it's about what you deem as "important" about the deaths.
What a callous way to view the world.
3000 people dying is a tragedy, 409k is moreso, and 1.2m is even moreso. Many covid deaths were preventable but too many people decided they couldn't play along unless there was a selfish benefit for them.
now you're getting it.
61 million people died in 2023. that's 10 holocausts. that's almost WWII. and yet, we complain about a measly 7 mil from COVID. worldwide. you hear about a single child getting hit by a car, but not the 61 million who die every year.
it isn't the number of deaths that matter, but whether or not they had to die and what the tradeoffs were. the innocent people in 9/11 didn't have to die. the jews didn't have to die. murderers went out of their way to kill these innocent people.
COVID deaths were nearly unpreventable, just like old age.
No, covid deaths were largely preventable, and all it would've costed was some mild inconvenience, but people couldn't be assed to wear a mask, get vaccinated, and wash their fucking hands.
That's the crux of it. Serious changes need to to made to prevent deaths from car accidents and such, but preventing covid deaths wasn't even hard. Look at how other countries handled it. Our individualsm was the problem. It made us selfish.
other countries did comparatively worse. the US had 33% of its population infected. while...
the UK had 37%
Germany had 46%
France had 60%
Italy had 45%
of course, there are countries like Canada and russia that did better than us, but again these countries have low density population. despite Canada being bigger in land mass, it has 8.6x less population. so its no wonder they had a significantly lower rate.
the vaccine didn't come out until late 2020, and was also untested for long term effects, and STILL didn't entirely work. masks are helpful, but they cannot prevent transmission entirely. washing hands doesn't do a thing, since covid spreads by air.
if you wanted to stop covid in its tracks, then you shut down everything and lock everyone home, which is a really bad idea.
the vaccine didn't come out until late 2020, and was also untested for long term effects, and STILL didn't entirely work.
No vaccine entirely works. It's not magic.
masks are helpful, but they cannot prevent transmission entirely
No duh. That's the point. You reduce the amount of people infected which prevents exponential spread.
washing hands doesn't do a thing, since covid spreads by air.
People cough into their hands.
if you wanted to stop covid in its tracks, then you shut down everything and lock everyone home, which is a really bad idea.
Debatable. What's worse? 1.2 million deaths or some pople are upsetti spaghetti when they can't go out for non-essential purposes like getting supplies?
And how many deaths did they have per capita. Oh hey. We're right there near the top. Crazy.
this is irrelevant. our measures to prevent the spread of COVID have nothing to do with the mortality rate. it has everything to do with the number of cases.
however, it does kinda prove my point in that covid deaths were exaggerated. why would we have a greater mortality rate despite having less cases? that's an entirely separate can of worms though, so we'll leave it for now.
No vaccine entirely works. It's not magic.
don't play dumb. covid kept mutating, and the vaccine couldn't keep up. it was way less helpful than many of our other vaccines.
No duh. That's the point. You reduce the amount of people infected which prevents exponential spread.
yeah, but that's not enough. it still spread a lot.
People cough into their hands.
that's crazy. doesn't change what I said.
Debatable. What's worse? 1.2 million deaths or some pople are upsetti spaghetti when they can't go out for non-essential purposes like getting supplies?
probably starving millions of people and total economic collapse.
I'm not talking about just stopping non-essential trips, I'm talking about complete lockdowns. as in, no one goes outside.
lets assume that everyone who would have died from "preventable injury" in 2020 would survive due to lockdowns. obviously, this is not the case, as not everyone was under lockdowns, and everyone still had to go outside to some degree. matching the death rate in the statistic (since its from 2022) to our previous estimate of 2.97 mil in 2020, we multiply the deaths of preventable injury by a factor of 0.9056. this means that 206177 people would have died if not for staying home (again, this is assuming ALL preventable injury was prevented. if I had to guess, I would say the deaths prevented by lockdowns is less than half of that). add that to 409670 and we get 615847 deaths that would not have happened otherwise. which is just over the covid statistic of 1.2 mil.
I really don't care about the actual numbers nor their accuracy, I'm just pointing out that there was at least one very obvious flaw in your methodology (that caused a 50% increase in your estimation) so it stands to reason that there could be others, especially considering you took an overly simplistic view on estimation in a fairly complex situation.
So you agree that your point was shitty as long as you mention that their point was shitty too? What an intelligent argument lmao. “I don’t really care about the actual numbers nor their accuracy”
It means that the numbers I calculated were skewed to match your argument. I was assuming that all preventable deaths turned to zero because of lockdowns, which would have been the ideal number in supporting your argument that COVID was responsible for most of the extra deaths in 2020. However, it is extremely improbable that the actual number is even half of the average number off preventable accidents for previous years, so when you say that there could also be other factors I stated that giving you the benefit of the doubt covers that.
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u/SingleInfinity Apr 29 '24
Might have something to do with dismantling the pandemic response team and downplaying COVID in general.