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I Do Not Understand Covid Panic
I don’t get the level of panic that surrounds Covid-19. This particular disease has a mortality rate on the order of 2% or less (and apparently declining), yet government and other organizations and people of influence are acting as though the disease has a mortality rate at least an order of magnitude higher than that. They are acting as though Covid has Ebola-level mortality (approx. 50%). And too many people are going along with this excessive panic. Most of the Covid-19 mortality is in particular demographic groups. For younger adults the mortality rate is barely measurable, and for children the mortality rate is essentially zero.
Yet in the name of this disease from which the vast majority of people recover, especially younger people, governments and others have required, and continue to require, that almost everyone to change their lives in ways big and small. People are required to reduce (and in some cases eliminate) their interactions with other people. Rules explicit and implicit require people to alter how they interact with other people, changing some of the basic features of our society. Schools have significantly altered schooling and even the entire childhood experience for children. Schools have made some rules so difficult that they have effectively cut some children off from school altogether.
Governments (aided and abetted by influential organizations and people) have put the economy into shambles. People can’t get even rudimentary tasks completed because of shortages of things and people.
Governments are limiting what people can say and who can speak in public and in private (enlisting organizations and people to carry out the details).
Governments and employers are requiring people to be injected with a vaccine that has not been fully tested nor officially approved*. We assume but do not know there will be no long-term consequences that might appear in years down the road. What happens as vaccinated women grow children?
I might consider these extensive and costly responses reasonable for a disease that kills a significant proportion of the people it infects. Covid-19 does not**. Yet government, media, and other powerful groups and people act as though every case of Covid is a death, and we should be writing the obituary of anyone who gets Covid.
Yes, people die of Covid, and I would prefer they not. But the reaction of government and of others in positions of power and influence seems way out of proportion to the risks the disease poses. We seem to suffering through a panic hype that is causing a lot of harm. Other than trying to calm down a few of my personal friends, I wish there was a way to get people to look at the actual risks, not the government and media induced panic.
* I know, in many cases, people can avoid vaccination requirements by receiving frequent and intrusive tests, which has its own problems.
**at least unless the person is in particular demographic and health groups
Published in Healthcare
I’ve dealt with people like that in high positions. I go with Jerry with “both” as an explanation. It’s surprising how unimpressive some of those people are when you meet them. I’ll add another factor – they are also bureaucrats and for most of them looking after what they see as their best interests (which they define in their minds as the same as the public interest) and how to best avoid any accountability drives their decision making.
I agree that the response, panic, and reporting has been a disaster.
A note on the 2% issue. This is a pretty useless disease to use an overall figure on since the risk profile is so dramatically different in each age group. Covid is less deadly than the flu is you are under 20 and more deadly if you are 65+.
Here are the current fatality rates by age group in Arizona where I live. Note this is the maximum rate because it only counts known cases in the denominator. One the other hand it is probably a reasonable surrogate for “I’m sick enough to know I’ve got something“.
0-19 0.02%
20-44 0.19%
45-54 0.9%
55-64 2.6%
65+ 11.4%
If you are diagnosed with covid and you are 65+ your mortality risk is almost 60X that of someone between 20-44 and 600X of someone under 20.
Maricopa County, with 60% of the state’s population, further breaks down the situation in Long Term Care facilities where the fatality rate is 27%. Doing the math it results in a fatality rate of 9% and hospitalization rate of 20% if you are 65+ and not in LTC, which, for me, is an appreciable risk.
This is pretty consistent with the national numbers. Instead of draconian widespread restrictions we should have focused on risk and protection of 65+ and those with significant co-morbidities like diabetes and heart disease. We knew this by the spring of 2020. It also would have meant older folks like me curtailing activities with potential exposure and younger family members limiting time with us because of risk. DeSantis in Florida seems to have done a fairly good job so far by this type of focus.
By failing to focus on this early on we needlessly panicked a lot of people (if you look at polling, people overestimate hospitalization and fatality rates for those under 50 by a large amount) and often failed to do what we could to protect the most vulnerable.
The other problem is that it was posited that one outcome was almost no one would die from covid if it was handled “correctly” when the truth is this is a transmissible virus and it was going to do its thing regardless, though we could help blunt some, but only some, of its impact.
It’s worth pointing out over half of the Covid deaths nationwide were 75 or older. It is really the new pneumonia. Pneumonia has been a traditional killer of the elderly and extremely infirm.
Again, it boils down to your immune system. I got Covid in December, when I was 65. For me it was a moderate chest cold. However, in 2018 I had to go to the E-room overnight for a Covid-like illness. I suspect that it was a Covid and that is one reason my case was so mild in December. My body’s immune system was up to the challenge and had faced something similar shortly before.
If I get the Delta variant this year or next I suspect it will be even milder than the last case. That’s how viruses work. If I get it when I am 91? It would probably kill me because by then a common cold would kill me.
I think that is correct though covid has a higher mortality rate than flu even for 75+. Based on the Maricopa data and other national data I looked at the risk for my wife and I (70 and in reasonably good health) and estimated a 3-4% fatality risk and 10% hospitalization risk.
Shouldn’t people be pushing back?
For one of the first times in my life. sadly, I have to say the people of Europe are more courageous and much more brave than we Americans.
Where are the protests equal to those in Europe of the destruction of our freedoms and the American Way of Life?
I thought America was supposed to be Home of the Free and Land of the Brave. But I guess no more.
I want protests many times that of Europe and now! I want Congress, our Supreme Leader and the Federal bureaucracy quaking in their boots. This destruction of our freedoms is an absolute atrocity and must stop now!
We all need to wear yellow vests.
It’s confusing. Some reports have said that the Delta variant is more contagious and more deadly. Most medical people say that isn’t how viruses work. They mutate to increase transmissibility but decrease lethality to improve the chance of propagating.
While there is a media narrative, I do not blame them. Following media is a personal decision. No, this is the logical conclusion to removing masculinity from society. As we are likely moving towards more lockdowns, I think the history books will look at this as the final tipping point in the death of the west. Panic and hysteria is seen as a virtue, while reason, stoicism and toughness is seen as toxic:
A congressmen, also a veteran, is shedding tears on television because some unarmed trespassers entered the capital.
College age students are given coloring books and special corners to sulk in because they cannot mentally cope with an election.
Grown men are telling other grown men to “be safe” while performing death-defying tasks like picking up a pizza or going to the post office.
Grown men are demanding mandatory vaccinations for a disease that carries virtually no risk to the healthy, while they themselves gorge their way towards type 2 diabetes.
Millenials are diagnosed with fake mental illnesses and prescribed drugs because public speaking or talking to the opposite sex is a “traumatic” experience.
And those are just a few examples off the top of my head. A society that only values safety becomes incapable of handling any conflict whatsoever. We are absolutely screwed if we run into a real insurrection, war, or disease.
Odd. The actual data I have seen shows that the “Delta variant” is far less deadly than previous versions (deaths as a percentage of infected people), which as you note is consistent with other viruses. Perhaps those “more deadly” reports illustrate the statistical illiteracy of media reporters? A more contagious virus infects more people, which might result in more total deaths, but a lower death rate. But many media people are too illiterate, and might misreport it as “more deadly.”
It was a few weeks ago and I think it could be because of illiteracy and trying to hype the variant. Others seem to have a lot invested in the government control and want to keep the power trip going.
And gas turbine power generation, which is one of the main benefits of fracking, can be up to 60%, so far, and the improvements continue as time passes.
They also make other bad assumptions. I’ve received forwarded emails from my benighted mother about how awful and selfish and wasteful people are with their big-screen TVs etc… it took about a minute to show her that a big-screen HDTV takes a fraction of the power used by an old CRT TV. Not that she cared.
Well, it’s kind of “both,” or “and” if you prefer: the evil people are telling the stupid people what they must do.
And then humanity dies out, because no matter what they SAY, women don’t want to have children with wimps.
And the “We Can’t Admit We Were Wrong” category.
I dunno, I get the impression that Europeans are more prone to pointless protest, while Americans are more likely to just ignore the orders they are being given and just carry on.
I think this is worth discussing seriously.
What if we started a movement to wear a blue or yellow or green armband when we went out in public? A sea of law-abiding citizens making a constant statement against these restrictions. I think, over time, it would (a) catch on and (b) make lots of people think about it and possibly join the movement.
[“this” being the very substantial difference in mortality between different age groups.] The overestimation of hospitalization and fatality rates for those under 50 is where I lost what little respect I had left for teachers’ unions. The teachers’ unions were claiming that going into a school building was a death sentence. But the vast majority of teachers are under 55 (with many in their 20s and 30s) and thus had an extremely small probability of having serious consequences from Covid-19. That they could not (or would not) correctly evaluate their risks illustrated that they were incompetent for teaching children.
well, teachers aren’t necessarily mathematicians or statisticians, and remember they were also being lied to by the politicians, and their unions.
Don’t let the rank and file off the hook. I am sure there were many teachers that wanted to go back to in person, but in most districts it wasn’t a majority.
I don’t think this latest panic is going to take hold. I work for a typical silicon valley unicorn startup that shut down before the mandates came down last year. We don’t have mask mandates in our offices now, and I haven’t heard rumblings about changing it.
All of which makes it even more ridiculous that the most recent rounds of restrictions and mandates are being put on the least vulnerable people – children, military service members, young workers.
What’s your point? This has been the theater of the absurd since May 2020.
The U.S. Surgeon General is demonstrating a particularly virulent form of irrational hysteria when he says vaccinated people should wear masks for the sake of unvaccinated children, and out of doors as an “extra step” of protection. (Some are reporting his words as calling for wearing masks at home around your own children, but that’s not how I read his words.) Actions such as those provide at most infinitesimal additional benefit in situations that already have virtually zero risk. Does the surgeon general use a car that has a built-in roll cage to provide that extra step of crash protection for himself and his passengers? Does everyone in the car wear a 5 point belt harness for that extra step of protection in case of a crash? Does he wear knee pads, elbow pads, and wrist guards when he walks to provide that extra step of protection should he trip and fall? Does he wipe down with sanitizing solution every surface that he has touched before anyone else might touch it? As the benefit to cost ratio diminishes, incurring those costs makes less and less sense.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/us-surgeon-general-vaccinated-people-masks-outdoors-extra-step-protect-others
Government officials are giving us daily ever more reasons to refuse to take seriously anything they say.
Well, that it’s getting more absurd.
It’s actually worse than that. It offers negative benefits. Long-term mask wearing is bad for your health. For example, the blood draw for my annual physical showed elevated levels of CO2 in my blood. I had been wearing a mask for two hour prior to getting the blood drawn. Since I lacked any other symptoms of lung disease (consistent with the elevated CO2 levels) my doctor concluded it was due to breathing through the mask for that length of time.
Basically you should only wear a mask when the danger from not wearing a mask exceeds the danger of wearing one, and you should wear it as briefly as possible.
OSHA has regulations regarding masks in the workplace which have been routinely ignored since “Two weeks to stop the spread” started.
MAYBE more deadly if you are over 65. At 20, your death rate from all sources is 0.001146 at 70 it is 0.022889. This is from the SSA, which has a big interest in understanding death rates.
The “Covid deaths” are generally overstated because if a 70 year old with cancer, heart disease, etc dies and tests positive for Covid, that is marked as the “cause”. “Excess Deaths” is good to look at.
Actually it’s definitely more deadly than the flu for 65+. If you look at how the CDC calculates flu deaths you’ll find that it is even more sketchy and likely to overestimate deaths than the methodology for covid deaths so on an apples to apples comparison I think it pretty clear.
Man, that’s the video definition of pathetic.
No- this has been debunked ad infinitum-death with COVID isn’t counted as death from COVID
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-covid-19-deaths-are-counted1/
Doesn’t Social Security keep sending money each month to people who, according to their reported birth dates, must be like 120 years old?
Except, except, I have talked to doctors in hospitals saying this very thing is going on and they have seen it.
And I know a couple, both diagnosed with COVID-19 when they gave up standing in line for their COVID test.
I don’t trust the articles. I don’t trust the CDC. I don’t trust anyone in authority anymore because they have openly lied (and have admitted it) and made bad call after bad call. Masks don’t work and that is clear from actual data around the world, but they want us in them again.
Besides, the hospital, getting reimbursed for the death by COVID can just lie. Someone dies of pneumonia and were positive for COVID? COVID death. Someone already with congestive heart failure and a positive test (by way overemotive tests by the way)? Covid. Sorry, I don’t trust people not to lie to make money.
Sorry, man, before I believe links like you post, I have to trust the people in power again. I don’t.