An "Unthinkable Tragedy"
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U.S. COVID-19 death toll surpasses 1 million
One million Americans have now died from the coronavirus, according to an announcement made Thursday by President Joe Biden, marking a long-dreaded milestone for an incomprehensible tragedy.
"Today, we mark a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to COVID-19. One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic. Jill and I pray for each of them," Biden said in a statement. "As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow. To heal, we must remember."
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This looks at excess deaths rather than reported cases:
https://www.bbc.com/news/61333847
The numbers for India are horrendous.
I seem to think I was laughed at by a former poster when I suggested these kind of numbers.
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Hm, all these numbers are rather dubious.
"Dying of COVID" is a very vague notion.
"Excess mortality" is difficult, too. For instance, presumably many people died of unrelated causes because hospitals were too busy with COVID stuff, or because people were afraid of going to a hospital in the first place.
Also, a death is not a death in my opinion. If somebody who would have died anyway in the next 6 months and was very weak and died a little earlier due to COVID is something different from a healthy child dying of COVID. One should weight a death by remaining life expectancy w/o COVID.
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Hm, all these numbers are rather dubious.
"Dying of COVID" is a very vague notion.
"Excess mortality" is difficult, too. For instance, presumably many people died of unrelated causes because hospitals were too busy with COVID stuff, or because people were afraid of going to a hospital in the first place.
Also, a death is not a death in my opinion. If somebody who would have died anyway in the next 6 months and was very weak and died a little earlier due to COVID is something different from a healthy child dying of COVID. One should weight a death by remaining life expectancy w/o COVID.
@Klaus said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Also, a death is not a death in my opinion. If somebody who would have died anyway in the next 6 months and was very weak and died a little earlier due to COVID is something different from a healthy child dying of COVID. One should weight a death by remaining life expectancy w/o COVID.
It's good that we can say things like this now without as much risk of being belittled and marginalized by those in the throes of moral panic and concern for their own health.
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Hm, all these numbers are rather dubious.
"Dying of COVID" is a very vague notion.
"Excess mortality" is difficult, too. For instance, presumably many people died of unrelated causes because hospitals were too busy with COVID stuff, or because people were afraid of going to a hospital in the first place.
Also, a death is not a death in my opinion. If somebody who would have died anyway in the next 6 months and was very weak and died a little earlier due to COVID is something different from a healthy child dying of COVID. One should weight a death by remaining life expectancy w/o COVID.
@Klaus said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Hm, all these numbers are rather dubious.
"Dying of COVID" is a very vague notion.
"Excess mortality" is difficult, too. For instance, presumably many people died of unrelated causes because hospitals were too busy with COVID stuff, or because people were afraid of going to a hospital in the first place.
The point about using 'excess deaths' is that it levels the playing field, and takes away different categorizations of cause-of-death, which may or may not be doctored for political or other reasons. If you just look at how many extra people died, it paints a very different story from how many people died from confirmed Covid.
If you never test anybody, then nobody dies from Covid.
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I'm wondering if the spike right now is bigger than it appears. People may have so many home tests that cases are not being reported.
@Mik said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
I'm wondering if the spike right now is bigger than it appears. People may have so many home tests that cases are not being reported.
My guess is that positive cases are being underreported these days, because people either don’t test, don’t bother to report test results, or wanted to report test results but could not (because they don’t know how to that there is no one to take their reports).
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1,000,000 deaths is 0.3% of the population.
Given ~60 % of the population has contracted the disease, that gives a first approximation on an IFR of 0.5%.
However given the vast difference in lethality between Alpha-Delta and the omicrons, as well as the timing of vaccinations, it must have been substantially higher than that in the first year and quite a bit lower in these later stages
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Why haven't we seen a reformulation of the vaccines?
They've had plenty of time.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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@Jolly said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Why haven't we seen a reformulation of the vaccines?
They've had plenty of time.
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@Jolly said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Why haven't we seen a reformulation of the vaccines?
They've had plenty of time.
Pfizer says this fall.
They are quoted as saying ‘it’s easy to make one for omicron, but it’s harder to make one for all known variants this far” which is what they’re doing.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
@Jolly said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Why haven't we seen a reformulation of the vaccines?
They've had plenty of time.
Pfizer says this fall.
They are quoted as saying ‘it’s easy to make one for omicron, but it’s harder to make one for all known variants this far” which is what they’re doing.
@jon-nyc said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
@Jolly said in An "Unthinkable Tragedy":
Why haven't we seen a reformulation of the vaccines?
They've had plenty of time.
Pfizer says this fall.
They are quoted as saying ‘it’s easy to make one for omicron, but it’s harder to make one for all known variants this far” which is what they’re doing.
They're never going to get one for all known variants and they know that. Viruses gotta virus.
What they could have done is formulate a booster that included Omicron and most known variants at the time of manufacture. But they didn't. The reason?
