Just for the record, I agree there have been 500,000+ COVID deaths in the U.S. What I’m saying is, if we had done everything “right” with all our lockdowns, how many of those deaths still would have happened? (400,000? 200,000?)
On the other hand, if we had done fewer restrictions from the beginning, how many deaths would there have been? (1 million?)
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I think that’s why we are having a discussion instead of having a consensus - because the answer is unclear.
It’s clear to me at least that the 500,000 deaths have been due to COVID. So we agree on that.
So what I’m saying is, what measures could we have taken to reduce the Covid deaths, and by how much? How big a difference would additional measures now make in that final toll?
Dr. Brix stated recently if the Trump admin had taken it seriously from the beginning we probably would have reduced deaths by 200-300k. That’s quite a statement from the head of the previous C-19 task force.
I understand and I appreciate that BUT that brings me back to the flu. We know now- don’t we? Or maybe it was just a coincident that we wore masks and took other steps and cases decreased and we had fewer deaths? I am sure that’s it- pure luck! Great!
Me too! That’s why we do our own shopping, travel, eat out, do take out (I have a friend who will not take out anything she cannot reheat at home) … and stay in hotels. We got to meet in person last week at Disney!
We’ve known for awhile how the virus is transmitted. We know how we can effectively minimize our risks. Let’s implement the precautions and move on with life.
Think about everyone who had to work in person from day 1 of the virus without knowing much about it. They masked up and went to work. How many of them have never contracted the virus through work? DH and DD are included in the numbers of those who have worked in person but never contracted the virus. DH just got his first dose of the vaccine today.
Yes, that’s why I’m a mask supporter! And I think we should continue to wear masks until cases are way way down. It is such an easy thing to do and goes a long way.
(ETA: Those who don’t think we need to wear masks will have to make their own arguments, cause except in extreme circumstances - like @Pod who lives in a rural area with almost no active cases - I don’t understand the argument for no masks)
In Asian counties, they have been through H1N1, SARS… Mask wearing has not an issue for them in public. During flu season, Asians wear masks, even the immigrants to the US. I would hope that moving forward, Americans will wash their hands more and perhaps wear a mask in public during the flu season because not everyone has the means to stay home when sick.
I hear the mental health concerns and I’m going to bring up another side of that. My DDs and I were discussing our reduced anxiety b/c we don’t have to deal w/ traffic, ppl at work i.e. the world. We discussed that we are NOT looking forward to going back to normal …we like being home. We don’t have any diagnosis that prevents us from leaving our homes but it’s been really nice, peaceful and calm at home.
Back to the idea of what’s acceptable deaths, none are. How do we as a society take better care as a whole? If anything I’ve seen it shouldn’t go back to the way it was. how do we do it better?. Some children have thrived being at home while others have failed; how to we meet the needs of everyone? How do we find a way that isn’t one size fits all?
My point from my initial post was that attendance at an MLB game will not result in a mass casualty event. It just won’t. Like the riots did not and the election events did not, and so on.
amvanhoose responded with an overall number of deaths. Not deaths from a single event.
We won’t know for years (and only if CDC, etc. is transparent) what the decade’s death trends are. Will we see fewer deaths over the next few years? More? Will we have more cancer deaths next year from late diagnoses? More suicides? Etc. And time will tell the economic fall out as well.
Every single bad thing I was worried about last March has come true. And then some.
Totally agree! We age ourselves sitting in traffic and trying to get a parking space!
Before the pandemic, I telecommuted once a week. It was a great break from sitting in traffic 2 hours a day. I’ve been working remote full time for more than a year. I don’t want to return 4 days a week to work in the office. But I do want to go to work in person a couple of days a week to interact and collaborate with others; and to work on my social skills!
This is a great post, but I’ll be clear in stating you’ve dug much deeper than what I was specifically saying. I just don’t see gloom and doom where others do. Then again I have been in NY and only last week were our travel restrictions lifted. And just now we are getting theaters and such open again. It’s been a long year and I’m happy to see crowds going out again.
I’d love to say this is Darwinism at its finest but you know its going to be the little grandma that went to the grocery store once and came in contact with one of these oafs that dies instead…
Maryland just opened up vaccinations today for all adults 16 and over (through the mass vaccination sites) and I was actually able to get an appt for a few days from now! I am shocked. Also, be aware that sometimes (at least in Maryland) a phone call from the mass vaccination site will appear as “potential spam” on a cell phone. I could have signed up a few days earlier if I had only answered that call, which came 3 times. The 3rd time I wondered if it was that and answered but was a little too late. I suspected it was spam b/c I had checked, on the pre registration, the box for being contacted by email or text, not phone. I got my appt when I called the 1 800 number on the website, instead of calling back the suspicious number. When I called to ask about the suspicious number they immediately made me an appt. I had tried to call the 1 800 number earlier but had reached a recorded message instead of a person. I wonder if the Easter holiday had something to do with the delay. In any case, I am glad to have an appt. I was given a choice of vaccine and chose a further away vaccination site to get my first choice vaccine.
Another note on the mental health concerns . . . there’s a lot of evidence that getting Covid has a deleterious effect on your mental health, too; an increased number of people are diagnosed with mental health issues within 90 days of testing positive, no matter how sick they did or didn’t get. As well, having people you love get sick is hard on your mental health, as is trying to live with long term issues Covid might leave you with. (One of my dearest friends, at the age of 58 and with no risk factors, spent 99 days in the hospital with Covid last summer. 11 weeks on a respirator in ICU. I can promise you that was a lot harder on her family’s mental health than the isolation was on mine. And she is still, at almost 10 months out, on oxygen 24/7; having to deal with the possibility that she is permanently disabled is also awfully challenging to her mental health.) So I think, no matter HOW we handled Covid, we were going to have a mental health crisis out of it, whether it was from the isolation or from the impacts of Covid itself. All we can do is give people as much support in that area as possible.
