AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I believe this. But because this is my estimate, not because it is from IHME.
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
It looks like long haulers have a ray of hope. ‘I can feel the clouds lifting.’ Many long-haul COVID patients report improvement post-vaccination, surprising medical experts.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
It is so weird how they claim there have been 920k COVID deaths. I believe there have been excess deaths...but the evidence for 300k extra uncounted COVID deaths seems...a bit limited. I’d probably shrug and say ok if they said 100k-150k. I have no idea what the actual excess is, exactly. I have not read about their methodology...I believe this. But because this is my estimate, not because it is from IHME.
Hopefully delta is not as transmissible as indicated. That is more of an issue than partial immune escape. I still think it is a complicated situation to analyze in the context of a partially vaccinated population like the UK. With the partial immune escape, and with many in the UK with just one dose, you’d expect to see a transmission advantage. So very complicated it seems to me, but we will see. I am not sure what the UK PHE has done to analyze rates of transmission in groups over 65 comparing alpha to delta.
We really need to start vaccinating the world!
I guess I’d expect delta or a similar variant to cause problems eventually in under-vaccinated US populations. Hope we can find a way to convince people who don’t want to be vaccinated to get vaccinated. Also it seems that we need to get full approval of the vaccines ASAP! That will help too.
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Depends on which Senators are saying it. Both parties have positions that are pushing back on mainland China, but one party is more vocal about it than the other. It could be an anti-mainland China move. But Taiwan is also a major player in the world's electronics market. I don't know how many ICs they make, from my experience most of those are made in other countries in Asia, but they do produce a lot of electronics products. Especially high end electronics.
Unfortunately the US has always had a segment of the population who has resisted authority. If someone with any kind of authority says anything it's almost automatically rejected. And it's being amplified right now in one wing of the news and by some politicians.
I saw yesterday that the right wing media has decided to pile onto Anthony Fauci and cast him as some sort of Bond villain. It's insane, but that's where the US is.
The US became the dumping ground for Europe's extreme believers. Groups who didn't fit into the larger culture ended up moving to the American colonies and later the US. Things have changed some over time, but those cultures still exist in the American melting pot. Europe is dealing with immigrant populations for the first time, but the native born population tends to be more trusting of science, even if they don't understand it, than the native born American population. Every country is going to have some holdouts, but I suspect the phenomenon is worse in the US.
I suspect when the vaccines become universally available and everyone who either wants one or can be convinced to get one has it, the US will be among the lowest percent vaccinated of the developed countries. The US is near the top now because of availability. The US and UK developed their own vaccines and are vaccinating their own first.
If the delta or a mutation of the delta ends up being much more deadly the US could see a bad outbreak and possibly a lot of deaths in the population who refuse to get vaccinated. It's a hard way to learn a lesson, but maybe it will snap some people out of their knee jerk reaction to reject anything an expert says and only believe people of questionable knowledge.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I don't think so. My opinions on the wisdom of human beings have changed quite a bit over the last 5 years. Maybe some, I suppose.
Main thing with full approval of the vaccines is that a lot of places (like the military, reserves, and associated industry, government entities, etc.) will start requiring them, so that will help.
Gonna be tough if variants ever really get going in under-vaccinated communities. The conspiracy theories will be lit.
Hopefully vaccination rates get up to a high enough level that it never happens. The issue is right now, a lot of these communities are relying on natural immunity, which is going to be of very low utility (with certain variants) it appears. Right now, it doesn't appear that the virus can really survive in the US, even when viewed at a fairly local level, when accounting for natural immunity. Looks suspiciously like herd immunity now, but we'll see (herd immunity is also a moving target for various reasons...).Case rates are really plunging - no signs of stopping!
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Doggydogworld
Active Member
Yeah, it's nuts. CDC estimates 581-714k excess deaths from all causes since 2/1/20. I'd take the high end of that range as it's easy to see miscounting on the excess death charts as each region got its first wave. But after that the counts line up pretty well. 920k not only implies massive and ongoing COVID miscounting, but also a 200-300k reduction in actual vs. expected non-COVID deaths. I see no evidence for that.
I don't think so. My opinions on the wisdom of human beings have changed quite a bit over the last 5 years. Maybe some, I suppose.
Main thing with full approval of the vaccines is that a lot of places (like the military, reserves, and associated industry, government entities, etc.) will start requiring them, so that will help.
Gonna be tough if variants ever really get going in under-vaccinated communities. The conspiracy theories will be lit.
Case rates are really plunging - no signs of stopping!
Vaccine distribution is not spread out evenly. In our current society, we have a lot of voluntary segregation. People who are likely to seek out vaccines are more likely to associate with others who feel similarly and vice versa. We have a chunk of the population who are associating with one another of which none are vaccinated. The new, more serious variants have not found those pockets yet, if they do, it could rip through them like a whip saw.
Going forward we may see overall low incidence rates with very regional breakouts.
Because some people were trying to hide the ball with COVID death rates, some of the delta in excess deaths between the total excess deaths and reported COVID deaths are certainly from COVID. Other factors are that some of the people who died of COVID in the last 18 months would have died anyway of other causes. My father was lucky to be in an assisted living facility in a town that was very lucky and had very low COVID rates all year. He died in September of organ failure (at 100, everything just shut down), but if COVID had ripped through his facility he might have died in April or May.
The excess death rates for 2020 also have noise in the numbers because we had fewer accidental deaths from car accidents and fewer industrial accidents. However people also died because they put off treatment for conditions because the hospital either wouldn't take them or they were afraid to go to the hospital. Some of those turned lethal.
We will never be able to get a definitive answer. Too many variables.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Oddly traffic deaths were up in 2020, apparently because of higher levels of speeding and less use of seatbelts.
Motor Vehicle Deaths in 2020 Estimated to be Highest in 13 Years, Despite Dramatic Drops in Miles Driven - National Safety Council
The National Safety Council is the leading nonprofit safety advocate. We focus on eliminating the leading causes of preventable injuries and deaths.
www.nsc.org
I did not expect it either but traffic deaths for 2020 actually seem to have gone up compared to previous years
'Tragic': Driving Was Down In 2020, But Traffic Fatality Rates Surged
"Driving was markedly down in 2020, yet a new report found a surprising and alarming statistic: Traffic deaths actually rose last year.
The National Safety Council (NSC) says deaths from motor vehicles rose 8% last year, with as many as 42,060 people dying in vehicle crashes.
When comparing traffic deaths to the number of miles driven, the rate of fatalities rose 24% — the highest spike in nearly a century, NSC says.
"It is tragic that in the U.S., we took cars off the roads and didn't reap any safety benefits,"
...
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a government agency, has not yet released its analysis of deaths in 2020, but its preliminary results for the first 9 months of the year show similar trends, with total deaths and death rates both up noticeably.
NHTSA said it was "too soon to speculate on the contributing factors" of the uptick.
Martin, the president of NSC, says her organization has not finished its analysis of the causes either."
In the EU deaths seem to have dropped as one would have expected for the year of lock-downs
Road deaths in Europe fall to all-time low | Three60 by eDriving
"Latest statistics have shown an estimated 18,800 people lost their lives on European Union (EU) roads in 2020, almost 4,000 fewer than the previous year.
Preliminary figures, published by the European Commission, show 18 Member States registered their lowest ever number of road fatalities in 2020. EU-wide, deaths fell by an average of 17 percent compared to 2019 with the largest decreases of 20 percent or more occurring in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Malta and Slovenia."
Although the UK adult population is currently 76.6%/52.5% 1/2-dose vaccinated, the UK strongly focused vaccination on the older population, which means that of that 52.5% a high proportion are in the older, more vulnerable population.
So far they still report that the 2nd dose vaccination is holding up, with the people in hospital not fully vaccinated and weighted towards younger, healthier people who don't need critical care. So the NHS concern right now isn't being overwhelmed with COVID patients, it's that rising COVID hospitalizations would slow down clearing other treament backlogs.
Also, I'd note that calling it Delta hides that it's the Indian variant, which is highly relevant to the spread in the UK, with a large population from Indian subcontinent, with concentrated populations in particular regions of the UK and a lower vaccination rate than the general population. Hopefully the Indian variant has people in those areas to vaccinate, and the UK is doing some surge vaccination in those areas to give them the opportunity.
Oddly traffic deaths were up in 2020, apparently because of higher levels of speeding and less use of seatbelts.
Motor Vehicle Deaths in 2020 Estimated to be Highest in 13 Years, Despite Dramatic Drops in Miles Driven - National Safety Council
The National Safety Council is the leading nonprofit safety advocate. We focus on eliminating the leading causes of preventable injuries and deaths.
Lots of people died driving to the hospital with COVID symptoms?
More drunk driving? (Alcohol use was apparently way up last year.)
Soaring Pandemic Alcohol Sales Cause Concern For Doctors
"While alcohol can temporarily dampen anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings, the relief is short-lived and negative emotions tend to increase above normal when the alcohol wears off."
www.forbes.com
Also, I just generally got the sense that a lot of people "forgot how to drive" (out of practice.)
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Doggydogworld
Active Member
It was mostly lack of testing. Certainly in New York and surrounding areas in the first wave. My elderly aunt died in West Virginia's first wave without being tested. Her adult kids got it shortly after she died, though.
As others have noted, US vehicle deaths rose in 2020. Gun deaths also rose. I don't know about industrial accidents, but preliminary CDC data shows a rise in total accidental deaths.
Heart disease and stroke rose and are IMHO the main candidates for COVID undercount. We now know COVID causes blood/vascular issues, but in the early days it was considered to be purely respiratory so coroners missed deaths that didn't involve lung failure.
Early on they were only testing people who made it to a hospital. My mother died in a nursing home in NJ in March 2020. She was on chronic O2 and always dyspneic so COVID would have killed her fast but we'll never know since she was never tested. Death certificate says AHD, Alzheimer's and Anemia. Also as I also posted here before our county Coroner told me back then he had a number of nursing home and home deaths from pneumonia in February/March and again he couldn't get test materials from the PA State Health Dept or the CDC. They just didn't have enough back then.
News-Medical.Net: New data from CDC on effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
www.news-medical.net
New data from CDC on effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines
Researchers in the United States have conducted a study demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines at preventing infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
www.news-medical.net
jbuenavides
Member
I can't wait for this thing to be over soon. I got my vaccine but I'm still extra careful when going out.
Most people are not wearing masks in Las Vegas after the mask mandate lifted. Our vaccination rate is ok but would be better if higher, esp with visitors.
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