death rate in perspective

[nospam99]

Sources
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/   for comorbidity factors

 

2.8 million deaths in the US annually.

Counting the CDC causes of heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, and influenza and pneumonia as within the definition of covid-19 comorbidity factors, 60% (feel free to check my math or pick a different list from the CDC page) of deaths in the US are attributed to those factors. The reported death rate with no pre-existing conditions is less that 1% of CASES, which is, by definition, lower than the overall population death rate. How many of the covid-19 deaths (still an unknown number) would have been within that 60% of 'typical' deaths even if the individuals didn't catch covid-19? (We'll know, maybe, when the CDC reports deaths for 2020 and future years.)

It is still wise 'public policy' to limit the spread of covid-19, to work on developing vaccines and treatments, and to gear up manufacturing of medical supplies and equipment.

Edited April 4, 2020 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[Gaeta]

I notice a lot of people are trying to  justify the death of thousands of people 'before their time'. 

Take my parents for example. My mom is 73 and my dad 80. They are both living in their house, both are active, have many hobbies, still drive around, etc. If my mother gets this she will die from it. Sure one day she will die, but I'd like her to die when her time has come, not 15 years ahead of her time because of a pandemic. Her life matters even if she is above 70. It's not 'OK' to justify or accept all those people will die because they are older.

Then there is the 1% death amoung the young. Sure it's low, very low, but who wants to play roulette russe and end up in that 1%. It could be my kid, my nephew, my niece. 

[lana-banana]

The "underlying conditions" include heart disease, asthma, obesity, and hypertension, which a majority of Americans have (even if they've never been formally diagnosed). They also include things like arrythmias and lung deformities that most people never know they have.

20% of people 30-44 who test positive require hospitalization. A substantial percentage (could be as low as 10 or as high as 40) are left with permanent lung scarring. It's beyond irresponsible to suggest this is somehow a matter of perspective, or that people "would have died anyway".

[pepperbird]

1 hour ago, lana-banana said:

The "underlying conditions" include heart disease, asthma, obesity, and hypertension, which a majority of Americans have (even if they've never been formally diagnosed). They also include things like arrythmias and lung deformities that most people never know they have.

20% of people 30-44 who test positive require hospitalization. A substantial percentage (could be as low as 10 or as high as 40) are left with permanent lung scarring. It's beyond irresponsible to suggest this is somehow a matter of perspective, or that people "would have died anyway".

Perhaps one takeaway from all this could be the importance of living at least a somewhat healthy lifestyle. Obesity, type II diabetes, etc. have all been linked to being more prone to developing serious complications with covid-19.

[Redhead14]

2 hours ago, nospam99 said:

Sources
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ for comorbidity factors

2.8 million deaths in the US annually.

Counting the CDC causes of heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, and influenza and pneumonia as within the definition of covid-19 comorbidity factors, 60% (feel free to check my math or pick a different list from the CDC page) of deaths in the US are attributed to those factors. The reported death rate with no pre-existing conditions is less that 1% of CASES, which is, by definition, lower than the overall population death rate. How many of the covid-19 deaths (still an unknown number) would have been within that 60% of 'typical' deaths even if the individuals didn't catch covid-19? (We'll know, maybe, when the CDC reports deaths for 2020 and future years.)

It is still wise 'public policy' to limit the spread of covid-19, to work on developing vaccines and treatments, and to gear up manufacturing of medical supplies and equipment.

What is your point exactly?  Are you suggesting that the entire world is making a mountain out of a mole hill? 

[lana-banana]

3 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

Perhaps one takeaway from all this could be the importance of living at least a somewhat healthy lifestyle. Obesity, type II diabetes, etc. have all been linked to being more prone to developing serious complications with covid-19.

Perhaps the takeaway from all this should be the importance of universal health care and expanded nutritional assistance. I'm not about to tell a lady that sips on Coke in between her three jobs that she needs to exercise more. 

[mark clemson]

Link below as a contribution to the discussion on # of deaths.

IMO it IS wise to at least consider less extreme measures because the extreme measures needed to preserve lives have serious knock on effects (unemployment, bankruptcy, probable eventual homelessness etc). We're in something of a no-win situation for many folks, unfortunately.

https://www.loveshack.org/forums/topic/593319-dating-and-coronavirus/?do=findComment&comment=7782054

[nospam99]

@redhead. I don't know what the mass media in the non-US world is doing. My point is that the US mass media is, typically, making a bad situation appear worse by reporting the covid-19 death rate outside the context of the overall national and comorbidity death rates.

Edited April 2, 2020 by nospam99

[Ellener]

All deaths are sad to someone, and maybe a death that isn't, that is the saddest of all...

Covid-19 seems to have a way lower rate of deaths per million than say MERS but until everywhere has peaked and the numbers been accurately collated we don't know the full picture, plus MERS did not become a pandemic. 

I do wonder if panic and fear will later be identified as factors in outcome of contracting the illness, I know severe respiratory distress burdens the heart but so does anxiety and adrenalin.

I already have it fixed in my head that if I get sick it's important to stay as calm as possible, if I can. Which is often a basic survival rule.

Surviving this situation is different in different places too, and we can look to history for answers as to why people respond as they do psychologically:

'Before the birth of modern medicine, infectious disease would have been one of the biggest threats to our survival. The immune system has some amazing mechanisms to hunt and kill those pathogenic invaders. Unfortunately, these reactions leave us feeling sleepy and lethargic – meaning that our sickly ancestors would have been unable to undertake essential activities, like hunting, gathering or childrearing.

Being ill is also physiologically expensive. The rise in body temperature during a fever, for instance, is essential for an effective immune response – but this results in a 13% increase in the body’s energy consumption. When food was scarce, that would have been a serious burden. “Getting sick, and allowing this wonderful immune system to actually work, is really costly,” says Mark Schaller at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “It’s kind of like medical insurance – it’s great to have, but it really sucks when you have to use it.”

Anything that reduces the risk of infection in the first place should therefore have offered a distinct survival advantage. For this reason, we evolved a set of unconscious psychological responses – which Schaller has termed the “behavioural immune system” – to act as a first line of defence to reduce our contact with potential pathogens.

The disgust response is one of the most obvious components of the behavioural immune system. When we avoid things that smell bad or food that we believe to be unclean, we are instinctively trying to steer clear of potential contagion. Just the merest suggestion that we have already eaten something rotten can lead us to vomit, expelling the food before the infection has had the chance to take root. Research suggests that we also tend to more strongly remember material that triggers disgust, allowing us to remember (and avoid) the situations that could put us at risk of infection later on.

Since humans are a social species that evolved to live in big groups, the behavioural immune system also modified our interactions with people to minimise the spread of disease, leading to a kind of instinctive social distancing.

These responses can be quite crude, since our ancestors would have had no understanding of the specific causes of each disease or the way they were transmitted. “The behavioural immune system operates on a ‘better safe than sorry’ logic,” says Lene Aarøe at Aarhus University in Denmark. This means the responses are often misplaced, and may be triggered by irrelevant information – altering our moral decision making and political opinions on issues that have nothing to do with the current threat.'

( David Robson, BBC, 4/1/2020 )

[Redhead14]

8 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

@redhead. I don't know what the mass media in the non-US world is doing. My point is that the US mass media is, typically, making a bad situation appear worse by reporting the covid-19 death rate outside the context of the overall national and comorbidity death rates.

But, why would they do that?  What purpose does that serve?  Do you think there is some underlying sinister plan of some sort?

[Tamfana]

Interesting perspective.  I suppose it boils down to what you think and feel about death and preventing death.  I see this pandemic and the US responses as consistent with the script people chose  in November 2016 so I haven't gotten upset- dismantle federal govt, accept govt deceit and incompetence as it's dismantled. Think of it as applying the Atlas Shrugged philosophy  but in this case the competent and expert keep helping and treating people.    

Edited April 2, 2020 by Tamfana

[nospam99]

@redhead. No underlying sinister plan. Just business as usual or, as I said, typical. Stirring up panic sells more advertising.

[Redhead14]

9 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

@redhead. No underlying sinister plan. Just business as usual or, as I said, typical. Stirring up panic sells more advertising.

Can't buy that thought process.  This is about the entire world and governments are also overreacting to the media hype/overreaction???  Nah.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Redhead14

[elaine567]

My guess this is the "Spanish flu" 2020 style.
This is not overreaction.
Governments are not going to shut down whole economies for nothing.
I guess they know a lot more than they are telling us about the dangers from this virus...
Trump I guess went "Lalalala, everything is hunky dory, the economy is king", until someone put him straight about this virus and its implications

[Gaeta]

2 hours ago, nospam99 said:

@redhead. I don't know what the mass media in the non-US world is doing.

The News from around the world are available to Americans as well. It's only up to you to go see how the rest of the world is managing this. I am located in Canada, we watch Canadian news, right after we watch news on an European channel. What I see is the exact same pattern repeating everywhere. It starts with a few cases, then it multiplies by 100s then multiplies by 1000s, there is a shortage of masks, shortage of ventilators, the deads are kept in freezer-vans for lack of space, the medical staff is exhausted, etc.

Last night we watched on TV5, a european channel, a special on the US and the pandemic. These people have nothing to gain from minimizing it or blowing it. They're analyzing it as it is, with all their specialists available. I can tell you, the countries around the world are worried about the US.

 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Gaeta

[basil67]

2 hours ago, nospam99 said:

I don't know what the mass media in the non-US world is doing. My point is that the US mass media is, typically, making a bad situation appear worse by reporting the covid-19 death rate outside the context of the overall national and comorbidity death rates.

May I suggest you break out of your US centric bubble and look at what is going on in the rest of the world?  Look at the countries who have done well, look at the ones who’ve struggled.   And read different news papers from those countries.  Then you’ll be in a better place to address your own country’s response.  

[gaius]

If you're looking for some perspective, daily overall death rates in New York City are currently around double what they were on an average day before the virus hit.

The city is home to over 8 million people, while 52,000 have been diagnosed with the virus. Even if you want to assume triple that amount of people are actually infected, lets say 150,000, that means a virus that has infected about 1.7% of the population has caused twice as many people in the entire city to drop dead every day.

If you want even more perspective, it's likely at this point the death toll will exceed 9/11 in New York City alone. And its within the realm of possibility that nationally we may start losing more people to the virus in a single day than we did on 9/11. Every day a 9/11 or close to it, with this stretching on for months. You get the picture.

Edited April 3, 2020 by gaius

[Juha]

If you want the "truth" watching the news on tv is the last place you will get it...

All main media outlets are not news anymore, they are propaganda outlets.

Joseph Goebbels would be proud of what and how the major media/news outlets operate/report

After all they are all using his tactics.  

 

All major media outlets have an agenda and report what they want you to know, which is not the truth or all the facts of whatever they are talking about.

 

You can disagree, laugh, make fun of, mock me I do not really care.

If you really wanted to know what was going on you would not depend on the news or major media outlets...

[2BGoodAgain]

16 hours ago, elaine567 said:

My guess this is the "Spanish flu" 2020 style.
This is not overreaction.
Governments are not going to shut down whole economies for nothing.
I guess they know a lot more than they are telling us about the dangers from this virus...
Trump I guess went "Lalalala, everything is hunky dory, the economy is king", until someone put him straight about this virus and its implications

though i agree that this virus has taken a turn for the worse, mostly in NYC b/c of the high density population, in the US example, though the spain situation seems very dire... gov't is still run by people, and people are faulty by intention or mistakes.... and you put too much faith in gov't.

people are fallable and so is gov't... 

look at Louisiana and that govenor/government reasoning for going forward with Mardi Gra which led to the coranavirus explosion there... b/c Trump said it wasn't that bad... i mean come ON... we knew how irresponsible/hard headed he could be...and you suddenly decide to base mardi gra on him??

Trump was in denial, obviously... he was hoping for the best, but it turned south on him real fast, too much hubris.... now he has no where to run except to hope for the best again, but hopefully this time with realistic expectation with a slight helping of hope.

 

[pepperbird]

19 hours ago, lana-banana said:

Perhaps the takeaway from all this should be the importance of universal health care and expanded nutritional assistance. I'm not about to tell a lady that sips on Coke in between her three jobs that she needs to exercise more. 

we have universal health care. we also have expanded nutritional assistance for those who need it. it;s not making much difference.

[pepperbird]

18 hours ago, Redhead14 said:

But, why would they do that?  What purpose does that serve?  Do you think there is some underlying sinister plan of some sort?

the news is a profit making enterprise.

[Redhead14]

20 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

the news is a profit making enterprise.

This virus is affecting the entire world.  So, the governments of every country in the world are overreacting and responding based on the media's hype and overreaction????  Nah.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Redhead14

[Libby1]

12 hours ago, gaius said:

If you want even more perspective, it's likely at this point the death toll will exceed 9/11 in New York City alone. And its within the realm of possibility that nationally we may start losing more people to the virus in a single day than we did on 9/11. Every day a 9/11 or close to it, with this stretching on for months. You get the picture.

In the UK we're pretty much where Italy and Spain were a week or so ago, with 684 deaths today...in a population of 66 million.  A comparable figure in the US would be 3351 in a day - which is probably what you're looking at in a week or so, since you seem to be about a week behind us.  The small city I live in probably has about 3% of the population of New York, and during the day about every 15 minutes an ambulance is going past my home - sometimes more than that.  Normally you'd maybe hear one every couple of hours or so. 

 

There seem to be people out there who still aren't getting that it's not just the fatality rate we have to worry about, here.   Far higher than the death rate is the number of cases that are serious enough for people to end up in hospital.  The burden on health services is already immense.  A temporary hospital - the Nightingale hospital - has been set up in East London, with potential to hold around 4,000 patients.

[Redhead14]

Just now, Libby1 said:

There seem to be people out there who still aren't getting that it's not just the fatality rate we have to worry about, here.   Far higher than the death rate is the number of cases that are serious enough for people to end up in hospital.  The burden on health services is already immense.  A temporary hospital - the Nightingale hospital - has been set up in East London, with potential to hold around 4,000 patients.

Yep.  The "regular" flu doesn't come and hit millions at basically the same time and require medical intervention in droves.  That's the real problem.  That in turn, causes more deaths for other issues.  In some areas, people who are extremely ill, can't get into a hospital so they die at home.  There will be lots of these kinds of cases which is another reason death numbers won't be accurate. 

[Gaeta]

46 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

we have universal health care. we also have expanded nutritional assistance for those who need it. it;s not making much difference.

It makes a huge difference. You do not want to be sick on the other side of the borders without private insurance. The problem is so many Americans lost their insurance coverage when they lost their job. Sure if they are sick they will be taken care of you at the emergency but will follow a bill the size of a mortgage. 

Do you know 40% of Americans do not seek medical care because they are afraid of how much it will cost and this even with insurance as their premium often will run in the 5 digits.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Gaeta