Japan Acted Like the Virus Had Gone. Now It's Spread Everywhere. (bloomberg.com) 313
After initial success, Japan is facing a reality check on the coronavirus. From a report: The country garnered global attention after containing the first wave of Covid-19 with what it referred to as the "Japan Model" -- limited testing and no lockdown, nor any legal means to force businesses to close. The country's finance minister even suggested a higher "cultural standard" helped contain the disease. But now the island nation is facing a formidable resurgence, with Covid-19 cases hitting records nationwide day after day. Infections first concentrated in the capital have spread to other urban areas, while regions without cases for months have become new hotspots. And the patient demographic -- originally younger people less likely to fall seriously ill -- is expanding to the elderly, a concern given that Japan is home to the world's oldest population.
Experts say that Japan's focus on the economy may have been its undoing. As other countries in Asia, which experienced the coronavirus earlier than those in the West, wrestle with new flare ups of Covid-19, Japan now risks becoming a warning for what happens when a country moves too fast to normalize -- and doesn't adjust its strategy when the outbreak changes. While Japan declared a state of emergency to contain the first wave of the virus, it didn't compel people to stay home or businesses to shut. That was ended in late May and officials quickly pivoted to a full reopening in an attempt to get the country's recessionary economy back on track. By June, restaurants and bars were fully open while events like baseball and sumo-wrestling were back on -- a stark contrast to other places in the region like Singapore which were re-opening only in cautious phases.
Experts say that Japan's focus on the economy may have been its undoing. As other countries in Asia, which experienced the coronavirus earlier than those in the West, wrestle with new flare ups of Covid-19, Japan now risks becoming a warning for what happens when a country moves too fast to normalize -- and doesn't adjust its strategy when the outbreak changes. While Japan declared a state of emergency to contain the first wave of the virus, it didn't compel people to stay home or businesses to shut. That was ended in late May and officials quickly pivoted to a full reopening in an attempt to get the country's recessionary economy back on track. By June, restaurants and bars were fully open while events like baseball and sumo-wrestling were back on -- a stark contrast to other places in the region like Singapore which were re-opening only in cautious phases.
A bad day in Japan... (Score:2, Insightful)
A bad day in Japan is better than a good day in the USA where you see the true impact of poor leadership.
Florida's deadly governor would love to have numbers like Japan so he could go back to demanding an apology from people who said his shortsightedness and deceptive statistics would kill thousands.
Good thing we have lots of rifridgerated trucks to store all of Trump and Governor Deathsantis' corpses.
Re: A bad day in Japan... (Score:2)
Hey Cuomo is that you? The deadliest states were the complete and utter fuckwits on the NE coast who completely ignored federal guidance and stuffed sick old people into nursing homes with healthy old people and had Covid positive caretakers working with them.
Re: A bad day in Japan... (Score:4, Informative)
It is not the number of infections, that is arbitrary as for by far the majority the vius is nothing or negligible. The minority who get severe symptoms is the problem. This is never reported on because the number is so small. They should only report the number of hospitalised patients, not those with minor symptoms, they are the reality, it spreads through them once and then it is gone. Dragging it out, just allows much more time for extremely dangerous mutations to occur.
Facemask is also an extremely bad idea for all day use. The first time you take it out of the packet and put it on, it is reasonably safe but as you use it so you exhale through it and build up moisture and dead cells and all sorts of crap on the inside face, a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of infections next to your face. As soon as you expose that inside face to atmosphere it will pick up a whole range of infectious agents who will find a perfect breeding ground, that you keep topped up with moisture and dead cells, yummy, yummy, for those infectious agents and you are now inhaling through it.
Wear a face mask, take it off, just once, throw it in the bin, do not even try to wash it, and get a new one out of a hermetically sealed packet, you will be breathing through it for hours, breathing through a contaminated mask is insane.
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I'm baffled as to why this has been some kind of competition between liberals and conservatives to see who is responsible for killing more people. You call the Governor of Florida 'Governor Deathsantis'? Florida is currently 18th among states in deaths per capita. The top five?
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island. And they are all more than triple the rate of Florida.
Stop me when I get to a state that is even remotely conservative.
What are you going to nickname THOSE governo
Re: A bad day in Japan... (Score:3)
There's a big difference between the densely populated, internationally connected NE Coast which was hit almost immediately, and Florida, who had literally months to prepare.
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New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island. And they are all more than triple the rate of Florida.
These states all get caught out when Covid first reached the USA. With nobody knowing what to do. Now it's four months later. New York learned from it. Florida didn't. Today, forty times more people die in Florida every day than in New York. And today, it is not bad luck, but bad management.
We can do a count in three months time.
Re:A bad day in Japan... (Score:4, Insightful)
As well as a lower deathrate than most major European countries for now.
FTFY. Because you're catching up fast.
You overtook France in terms of death per million at the end of July. The only reason your position at place 10 in the world's greatest deathbeds per millions didn't move is just that Peru and Chile overtook faster than you could levave France and the Netherlands in the dust.
Currently about 1,100 Americans die every day (running average through 7 days). Or, in other words, your death-by-million number rises by about 3-4 daily. This means that you'll catch up to Sweden (who are at about 1 dpm/d and roughly 100 deaths "ahead" of you) by October. Around the same time you'll overtake Italy, which is beloe 1dpm/d right now. You catch Spain before November. UK could be tough to beat considering they themselves are still growing by 2dpm/d, but it can be possible before Christmas.
Leaving only Belgium to catch up to for next year. I know you can do it, provided Brazil doesn't leave you in the dust, their government seems to be more hellbent on getting the top spot than even yours is.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Many countries are doing a poor job. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think many countries are trying to find a very difficult balance. You could just shut everything down until there is no one with the virus, but the economic hit would be devastating and could lead to deaths. Or you could just let it rip and also have a very bad outcome.
If anyone thinks they have the perfect solution, then they are more deluded than the politicians they are criticising.
Shutting down doesn't lead to deaths (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about saving lives. Addressing an event this size would require broad changes to our society of the Star Trek type. We need to pay folks to stay home. And we need to pay them a _lot_ so the economy stays functional.
This is all doable. The virus hasn't really hit production of necessities very hard. It mostly shut down restaurants, sporting & entertainment events (cruises too) and other non-essentials. Worst case scenario the National Guard gets called out to be truck drivers for a few months if enough of those get sick.
But all this means a lot of social changes. And we've got conservatives in charge of virtually every government on the planet. So they're resisting change, because that is what conservatives do, and trying to drag us back to the "good 'ole days", because that is what conservatives do.
Trouble is we saw what happened when the social structures of 1918 were faced with a pandemic and it wasn't pretty....
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We need to pay folks to stay home. And we need to pay them a _lot_ so the economy stays functional.
Forgetting about the social ramifications of 200 million bored people sitting at home with nothing to do...
This is all doable. The virus hasn't really hit production of necessities very hard. It mostly shut down restaurants, sporting & entertainment events (cruises too) and other non-essentials.
I really do hope you are right, but nothing we know about the economy, or history points in that direction.
We are to a pretty large degree a service economy. An enormous number of jobs are taken up in those industries. Not to mention those are the lower-end jobs, where folks are less likely to have a nest egg to get them through. The GDP has dropped 33%: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/3... [cnbc.com]. That's in a w
It's not 200 million (Score:3, Insightful)
But they can't run bars, restaurants, sporting events, cruise ships, concerts or even schools. We could probably just barely pull off schools had everybody locked down and if we were willing to put around $100 billion into securing them, but neither of those are the case.
But the main thing is this: we don't _need_ a service economy to keep the human race going. Inste
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It's not really (Score:3)
Jobs are needed to produce or there's nothing to buy, but we're producing just fine. Plenty of food, water, shelter, medicine, etc.
We've closed bars & restaurants & entertainment venues. Yes, doing that is a huge blow to our economy, but we can easily fix that buy shifting the resources that were going to those places. We can do that the way the rest of the world is:
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Yes, it only hit "nonessential" businesses, but that's at the same time the problem: Most people in our society are employed in nonessential businesses.
Almost 80% of our population works in the service industry. Also known as (mostly) nonessential businesses. The only kind of third sector employment that is essential are the shelf stockers at WalMart and the like. And they are not exactly known as the people that bring home the big bucks.
Our economy is dying because people have no money left to fuel it. It
So pay them to stay home (Score:2)
Inflation happens when there's more money than there is stuff to buy in an economy. We're nowhere's near that. We're risking the opposite. A deflationary spiral where businesses collapse and shut down.
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Re:Many countries are doing a poor job. (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
"The death rate in Japan remains low by almost any standards, and the medical system isnâ(TM)t over-burdened -- a key factor public health officials use to judge success of virus containment. The country has fewer than 100 people in critical care due to Covid-19."
It might be a bit soon to be calling their strategy a failure. The infection rate has been falling in the last few days and it may be that they are getting used to living with it.
or, perhaps (Score:2)
most governments can't really handle their people getting tired of lockdowns and getting back to normalcy LIKE STAT. in those countries where population is less reasonable there is only so much you can do other than watch the inevitable trainwreck you can do nothing to prevent..
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It feels like most governments are incapable of effectively balancing the many variables that need to be managed during a pandemic. The politicians in government often have preferences for policies that are incompatible with effectively managing a pandemic. That combined with a tendency for governments to be resistant to taking some drastic actions that may be necessary for the best outcome.
Let's be honest; every government and every country is struggling with this.
Those that aren't, are either lying, or are ignorantly in denial like Japan was, and like Japan will soon feel the pain of inaction.
Re:Many countries are doing a poor job. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or they did what it took [bbc.com] to shut it down and keep it shut down.
Re:Many countries are doing a poor job. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what TFA is about and what's been South Korea's and Japan's undoing. They succeeded in shutting down the virus early on, and thought that meant they could resume normal economic activity. But all stopping the virus did was leave their population completely vulnerable (almost zero immunity) with a false sense of security that they'd "beaten" it. When new cases of the virus eventually popped up, it was like fire in dry uncleared brush, and spread more rapidly than if they'd let more of the population get sick and recovered. The virus is now widespread enough that it's not enough for your country to beat the virus. All countries have to beat the virus in order for the world to be rid of it.
Unless you're absolutely certain that a vaccine can be developed, your best strategy is to let the virus spread just fast enough that your hospitals are close to full, but not overwhelmed. That naturally vaccinates your population at the quickest rate which is still safe, and moves you closer to the goal of enough of the population being immune that the virus begins to die off quicker than it can spread.
That said, I suppose since New Zealand is an island, they could completely close their borders - shut down international travel (both foreigners coming in, and citizens traveling overseas) to cut off any means for the virus to re-enter their country. Wait the couple years it'll take for the rest of the world to fight off the virus and kill it off. Then re-open their borders. But imports and exports [wikipedia.org] account for roughly a quarter of NZ's economy, so the economic impact of closing their borders for a couple years will be brutal.
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They're not, we gutted governments (Score:5, Insightful)
TL;DR; we put people who don't believe in gov't in charge of gov't. It's like putting Barb Boxer in charge of the NRA. What did you expect was gonna happen?
We've been telling everybody for 40 years that "Government is the Problem". This was mostly done so we could slash environmental regulations (the kind that keep poison out of your drinking water, not the "Shave the Whales" kind) and so we could slash taxes on the wealthy while they raided the commons and ignored anti-trust law to buy up the world.
That's all well and good, but it also means that about 20% of the population won't respond to public health crisis. It also means that we can't muster the economic response needed (e.g. we need to pay people to stay home).
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When the talk about austerity, ask "Austerity for whom?"
When they talk about freedom, as "Freedom for whom?"
When they talk about risk, ask "Risk for whom?"
When they talk about Reward, ask "Reward for whom?"
When they talk about hard work, ask "Hard work for whom?"
etc,etc,etc.
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The evidence from Sweden is that this is a false dilemma. As it turns out their economy is only doing nominally better. In other words, lots more death and no economic miracle.
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To be fair, Sweden like all Nordics is a very export-driven economy. So it doesn't help much if local economy works fairly well if all the export clients are in the gutter.
This doesn't apply to large imperial states that are not in the category of being extremely dependent on exports for basic economic functions in the society.
But it's also rather silly to compare it to large imperial states for a reason of very different culture as well. People socially distance when asked (other than the "new Swedes" who
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If you want an economic miracle in Europe, look at Austria. Severe lockdowns with people being forced to stay home during March/April and early May, restaurants closed 'til June, yet people who still have money and keep the economy going.
I sure have ZERO sympathy for the government there right now, being an odd coalition between the conservative and the green party (yeah, it's like pickles on the PB&J sandwich), but it seems they did something right there.
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The evidence from Sweden is that this is a false dilemma. As it turns out their economy is only doing nominally better. In other words, lots more death and no economic miracle.
Swedens GDP Q2 median estimates -7% https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com] compared with US Q2 GDP -32.9% https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com] Of course you can fantasize about a huge pickup in the economy by the end of the year, many do. But it seems like Sweden has found a way that is sustainable and not requiring any new lockdowns while this is highly questionable for other parts of the world.
Science vs. Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Difference between religion and science is that religion is false regardless of what you believe, and science is true regardless of what you believe.
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Difference between religion and science is that religion is false regardless of what you believe, and science is true regardless of what you believe.
Counterpoint: Not everything that is true is provable, and not everything that cannot be proven is false.
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It's more like science not having all answers but religion prefering to making assumptions instead of trying to find them.
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So I can finally disprove P = NP by forming a religion around it?
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No, but you can make a religion and believe it. Close enough?
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And viruses act as they do regardless of what you think. You're feelings are completely irrelevant. Viruses are a physical object and nothing you say and no matter the level of name-calling, they are what they are. So grow the fuck up baby
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Funnily enough, this is technically false. Your feelings moderate your immune system to a significant degree. Feelings associated with stress for example are well documented to reduce immune response in humans.
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I see where you were going with that, but the wording is a bit clunky.
Religion can't be proven wrong, science can be.
At the same time: religion also cannot be proven, but science can be.
Re:Science vs. Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you should look up the scientific definition of the word "theory", because what laymen call a theory is actually a hypothesis at best, an arse pull at worst and most of the time just a bunch of barely connected musings.
a higher "cultural standard" (Score:3)
Yeah, one of racism and snobbery towards anything other than "Real Japanese". How's your hubris holding up now, Mr. Finance Minister?
US (Score:2, Insightful)
Japan now risks becoming a warning for what happens when a country moves too fast to normalize
Well aren't Americans lucky there isn't ever anything fucking normal there.
Welcome to the second wave. (Score:2)
Japan, Australia, several countries are now experiencing their second wave, and just like in 1918 it is worse the second time round than the first.
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Or they never really got hit at all statistically and the virus has finally caught up to them.
Pandemics or epidemics are measured by the mortality rate. Infections are unimportant in the long term, obviously not in the short term.
Australia has 212 deaths and Japan just over 1000.
Looking at their curves, they basically did not get hit at all in the "first wave".
A virus that doesnt have a vaccine WILL go through a good portion of the population if its highly infectious like SARS-CoV-2 is.
If it didint at the b
Article is sensationalist as hell (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Japan#Statistics
To put it in another perspective : yesterday Japan got 800 new infection. The US got 1000+ death and 60K+ infection.
But you know what I have seen : many news outfit from the US push the narrative that a lot of infection explode outside the US. Yesterday : CNN stating infection explode in Germany (we went from 500 to 900 a week over the last 3 weeks) same shit now with Japan explosion they went +400 per day start of July to 800 last 23 weeks. The US media push a narrative other country are failing when in reality only the US failed - and use wording like record infection to mislead. That article from Bloomberg and the other from cnn are just non sense. Neither Germany nor Japan are "suffering" from explosion and resurgence right now. If you want to check explosion and resurgence look at the US.
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Insightful)
And the other problems like chronic health problems an infection often creates in younger survivors.
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Except that Florida has a much older population than NY and yet the death rate is much lower. Its also almost a month now since the 'spike' in cases. Its almost like the statistics don't support what what you are saying at all - no wait its exactly like that. Sweden now has a lower death rate than a lot of the EU that implemented stronger lock downs too. Basically there isn't even a correlation between the 'fuck it lets plow through this' scheme and increased risk to grandma.
Now there probably IS a correla
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Except that Florida has a much older population than NY and yet the death rate is much lower.
But the actual infected people, up till now, have been younger. So the rest of your comment is irrelevant, except the nursing home bit which is absolutely true. Almost looks like deliberate mass murder. I'd suspect that Cuomo is too high up to have actually made the wrong decision itself, but both in NY and in the UK this needs to be treated like a murder investigation.
Nursing homes are only 50% of the deaths (Score:5, Insightful)
Give it 10 years and you'll see a large spike in mortality (read:death) that if we're being honest will be traced back to this pandemic.
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Or were you talking about these known side effects of the regular flu,
Does the flu cause blood clots to spontaneously form [cnn.com]? How about strokes [npr.org] in addition to the blood clots? How about lung scarring and heart damage [berkeley.edu]? Memory loss [nbcnews.com]?
Keep the excuses coming. First we were told this is no big deal. Then we were told it's no different than the flu. Then we were told the flu kills more people. Then it was car accidents. The excuses keep coming because that's all people have. Covid-19 has killed more people in
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it kills between 250 000 to 650 000 people world wide each year.
Yes, across an entire planet it kills that many. How many in the U.S.?
Keep the excuses coming and shifting those goal posts.
The question is are COVID-19 severe complications more frequent than Influenza and Influenza like illnesses average?
Go find any studies which show the flu causes blood clots, strokes, memory loss, organ damage or which necessitates people needing ventilators to try and stay alive.
Keep the excusing coming and shifting the g
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I think the GP is saying that there's not enough data to show what the risk of the complications you mention actually is. For instance, if I contract COVID, what are the chances I'll suffer from blood clots? 20%? 5%? How about heart damage? None of the articles you linked to make any mention of the odds of these things occuring, and at least one of them quotes a doctor as saying it's too early to tell.
I don't doubt that these complications can occur, I'm just not really interested in anecdotes about t
They're different things (Score:2)
The focus on nursing homes is a dodge, if you're in a nursing home you're usually just waiting to die. There's an implicit implication that the virus isn't a big deal because it's just killing people who are going to die anyway. It's another right wing talking point used as an excuse to reopen t
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Do we shut down for the flu, yet people die from it so we are not safe. Please explain how we get to safe by shutting down? Then explain how that plan could be piratically implemented when we have riots and protests which are going on. If your idea is shut down until we have a vaccine then please consider. The
How many numbers do you make up (Score:2, Informative)
50% of total deaths are in nursing homes.
Made up number. Fake news! Estimates are as high as 40%, not fifty. But there is no number bad enough that you won't make worse, is there?
20% of all cases require hospitalizations.
Another made up number. The CDC says [cdc.gov] that as of July 25, there is a ~9% hospitalization rate, not 20% This has been pointed out to you over and over and over, yet you still run around here with your hair on fire bleating "20 percent!" "20 percent!!" "20 percent!!!" day in and
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Hospitalization rate seems even lower than that, if I'm reading this right from the CDC.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov].
Seems like the cumulative hospitalization rate overall is 0.13%. And 0.36% for 65+ demographic.
Also his claim of long term consequences are all anecdotal. There are long term consequences for people hospitalized with Influenza as well.
What we dont know is at what rate comparatively.
All the scare stories going around in the news about blood clots, chances of stroke, heart damage, memory l
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Well, my math to get to 9% is from the CDC's 130.1 per 100,000 - which would yield ~429,330 hospitalizations so far (330,000,000÷100000*130.1). Worldometer [worldometers.info] show total cases on that date to be 4,317,231. As I calculate that out now, I must have fat-fingered something when I said 9%, because it's actually 10%. Maybe I'm missing something? Ah well. Still half what that idiot rsilvergun says.
Thanks for the link to that page. I found this interesting - it says " the percentage of deaths attributed t
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We should have locked down old people and nursing homes instead of trying to literally lock down the entire world. We'd spend far less overall and far more per capita only having to protect 10% of the population.
This is the Sweden model which has been shown not to be effective in either containing deaths or economic damage. There's only one national model that has continued to be successful at both containing deaths and economic damage. That is the Taiwan model, which is surprisingly absent when national responses to the virus are mentioned. It seems almost too obvious to try to emulate the Taiwan model, but unfortunately responses to the virus are now political and not really a health issue anymore.
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I'm a covid researcher, and I'm fuzzy on what the Taiwan model even is??
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"I'm fuzzy on what the Taiwan model even is??"
It's similar to Iceland's and South Korea's.
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Care to share?
It's not too hard to find on google. Try this link [cnn.com], for example.
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Other than that, Covid-19 is about as deadly as any flu.
Do you mean "someone infected by flu is as likely to die from it, as someone infected by Covid-19"? Or do you mean "some uninfected's chance of dying from flu is equal to the chance of them dying from Covid-19"? The two are way, way, different.
What do you think society would do about flu if we didn't have flu vaccines and it went unchecked through our society?
Re:Merrit (Score:4, Informative)
Your last sentence is bullshit. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.or... [hopkinsmedicine.org]
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Informative)
Erh... no.
55,672 people died of influenza in 2017 [cdc.gov]. I couldn't find one for 2019, but it's probably going to be around the same rate, 2017 wasn't 1918 after all. Covid-19 has a death toll of about 160,000 [worldometers.info] (ok, 158,706 at the time of writing this, but if you read it tomorrow it should be accurate) so far in the roughly 5 months it's been ravaging the USA so far. Let's assume it doesn't get worse, despite all indications pointing towards it will, and we'll end up with about 300,000 - 350,000 dead people in a year total.
I guess it does not require a degree in statistics to consider a difference by a factor of 5-6 to be something other than "statistical noise", does it?
And no, it's not just people who would have died from something else anyway. The results for excess mortality are in [cdc.gov].
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The flu numbers are actually estimates and likely overblown.
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The confirmed numbers of flu deaths are measured in hundreds, not thousands. They are then extrapolated. The coronavirus numbers are confirmed, that is the difference.
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Insightful)
That's way more than the flu.
And you're forgetting another important point - many covid-19 survivors are permanently injured whereas most flu patients are not.
Also realize that those elderly you don't seem to care about have their final major medical bills paid for by what is left of Medicare.
Don't get me wrong, I think a total lock down and telling people they don't need masks was a catastrophe, but spreading the lie that this is only an old people problem is absolutely false and outrageously immoral.
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Insightful)
This concept has as much merit as your spelling of merit in your comment subject, ie none whatsoever.
Why the fuck do you people bang on about Sweden and studiously ignore the fact that a much greater proportion of its population has been killed or injured by this virus than Norway, Denmark or Finland, its Scandinavian cousins who adopted less fuckwitted policies? And its economy is no better off than theirs, either. Just more dead and injured people for the same amount of economic pain.
Re:Merrit (Score:4, Interesting)
Today the deaths may be less, but that won't hold over time. Time and time again, we're seeing outbreaks in places that have supposedly squashed the virus. Minus a full-on "silver bullet" vaccine, everyone is going to have to go through this, it's just a matter of when. And actually, Sweden's economy is doing much better off than the others.
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The difference is what countries consider "outbreaks". We have an "outbreak" here, there are 100 new cases. One hundred. Even adjusted for population that's still a magnitude lower than what the US are currently dealing with.
That's what is an "outbreak" over here in Europe, and enough to make governments require masks again and ponder closing down restaurants again. Just so we know what we're talking about when we're talking "outbreaks". Our "outbreak" is a tenth of what you consider daily routine.
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... Time and time again, we're seeing outbreaks in places that have supposedly squashed the virus. Minus a full-on "silver bullet" vaccine, everyone is going to have to go through this, it's just a matter of when.
Gee - do you think maybe those resurgences have anything to do with governments and populations going back to 'business as usual' instead of continuing to take precautions? What so many places are doing is the equivalent of having a huge rat infestation and then saying "we've killed so many rats that we only have a dozen or so left, so let's forget about the traps and the poison and start leaving food out in the open again". That's the only reason "everyone is going to have to go through this" - everyone is
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This concept has as much merit as your spelling of merit in your comment subject, ie none whatsoever.
How much death, and hardship will result from a decimated economy? How many people will be left without healthcare (and how many will die from lack of it?). How many people will end up on drugs? Homeless? Suicide and other mental health problem that go along with not being able to feed your kids, or your life otherwise falling apart?
There's no magic here. People seem to think the government is some endless well of money. They simply do not have the capability of supporting the jobless masses. The businesses
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This concept has as much merit as your spelling of merit in your comment subject, ie none whatsoever.
How much death, and hardship will result from a decimated economy?
Lots. In the places which didn't try to stop the virus and just let it ran there will almost certainly be even bigger economic effects killing even more people [medium.com]. The whole point is that the effect on Sweden's economy is worse than the effect on Finland's economy and it will remain so for longer.
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So far you are wrong.
Sweden has seen a 0.1 increase in GDP for Q1: https://tradingeconomics.com/s... [tradingeconomics.com]
Finland has seen a 0.9 drop in GDP for Q1: https://tradingeconomics.com/f... [tradingeconomics.com]
We will see the long term effects. But so far, Sweden economy is fairing better than most.
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Sorry, I meant Q2.
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Compare that to the US, where we have in common that we will never let any authority tell us what to do ever, Democrats and Republicans come together hail Mary (as long as she doesn't tell me what to do)!!
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go smoke a pack of cigarettes all at once, and don't tell me anything about science I want to die of emphysema and cancer together I have that right.
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Also as of May 15th, the US is doing better than Sweden in terms of Covid-19 related deaths per capita.
https://newsroom.uvahealth.com... [uvahealth.com]
When the US does a better job than you at containing an epidemic, then you really should start worrying about that epidemic.
Because there's an election coming up (Score:2)
Dave Pakman of YouTube fame called it "Garbage Math". The idea is that they can go on TV and talk about a how the GDP is growing at it's fastest rate ever, ignoring that the reason that it dropped 30% overnight so that if it goes up 5% that is, technically, "growth".
And as we all know, technically right is the best kind of right.
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow we moved from 'flatten the curve' which implies continuing spread of the disease, to some sort of belief that it can be quashed. We've got the PPE, we've got the ventilators, and for most part the hospital systems in the US are managing. I don't foresee a Spain/Bronx NY style meltdown despite a certain amount of gratuitous press indicating otherwise.
I would love for it to be the case that we could eliminate this thing asap to avoid more deaths, but I just don't see a realistic path there. It is also true that there is a lot of a--hattery going on that unnecessarily increases these numbers, that should be vilified. Until definitively proven otherwise, the masks should be worn, obvious things like gyms, theaters, etc are done. Keep working from home if you can, stay away from grandma and grandpa, and fingers crossed when kids go back to school. That will be one giant experiment come Aug/Sept.
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Somehow we moved from 'flatten the curve' which implies continuing spread of the disease, to some sort of belief that it can be quashed.
Exactly. Barring a miracle vaccine, it's here to stay. The reality is that almost everyone alive now is going to be exposed to COVID-19 before we're done here. Sooner or later.
We ought to be focusing on how to live with it... which it seems like we have a pretty good idea about actually.
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There is no "flatten the curve". It's the wrong strategy for the wrong disease. Flatten the curve works with a theoretical flu outbreak where there is no asymptomatic (pre-symptomatic) spread and where the disease is not airborne and random. With covid-19 trying it takes too long to realise that it has gone out of control in a group you lack visibility of for the infection rate to be stabilised at anything other than 0.
Yes, you can then expect flare ups again as people sneak in from failed nations like
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Somehow we moved from 'flatten the curve' which implies continuing spread of the disease, to some sort of belief that it can be quashed.
Masks + social distancing + contact tracing have worked fine for many countries to quash the disease.
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As I said in previous post, the more Herman Cain's and Bill Montgomery's die off, the better.
Even better, we can bankrupt more people with medical bills because even though they didn't die, they have to contend for months with the after effects of being infected including getting heart transplants [cnn.com].
I've said for a long time we need to reduce the world's population. Th
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they have to contend for months with the after effects of being infected including getting heart transplants [cnn.com].
The story you link to has nothing to do with COVID-19. Her infection and heart transplant were in 2018.
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Gee. I can't imagine why measures taken to reduce the impact of one virus might not also reduce the impact of another one at the same time.
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Any studies to backup your outlandish claims?
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there's all kinds of articles showing scientific evidence that masks don't work, social distancing indoors doesn't work
Evidence such as that cases jump up everywhere where the things mentioned are ditched?
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To put it in context... (Score:3)
https://91-divoc.com/pages/cov... [91-divoc.com]
(averaged over the last 7 days).
OMG CASES!!!! What about hospitalizations and deaths? That is the standard to be using.
I agree; deaths per million is less dependent on how many non-hospitalized people get tested. 0.0017 deaths per million population for Japan. 3.44 per million in the U.S. (both per day).
Re:Merrit (Score:5, Funny)
Viruses don't care about libertarianism
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I wonder who's been leaving moddowns without at least a reply stating why these posts were modded down?
You can't mod and reply because if you post a comment then you cannot do any mods for that story.
As to why calling the Coronavirus a "horse that's long dead, still being beaten by mouthpieces, shills, and hacks in the media" would be modded down, it is probably because it more accurate to say that it is 700,000 people who are long dead [worldometers.info]. It is far too late claim that the virus will have no effect. Such obvious misinformation seems like the work of a troll, and it was modded as such.
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It was until very recently. Japan has a lot riding on success of the 2020 olympics, and their culture is one that emphasizes ploughing through hardship no matter what. It's well documented in things like just how much Japanese had to endure in the end of WW2 with US firebombing of their cities to extent where they had problems finding targets for the two nuclear strikes.
Theirs is a culture built around enduring hardship. It's why they have karoshi as a national problem. People genuinely accept that they sho
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Re: No, Japan got it right... (Score:2)
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