We already know there are serious consequences that manifest within months for people who have severe cases, and this is not limited to the elderly or infirm. The frequency in various populations (eg. age groups, comorbidities, etc) are important but even amongst young and otherwise healthy people who are hospitalized I believe there is a high risk (say 90%) of persistent complications. That is a big topic that I don't really want to argue ad nauseum. We are indeed fortunate there aren't more young/healthy people requiring hospitalization after contracting COVID, but the % is not trivially low.

There's no evidence either way about long-term effects because the disease as we know it is less than a year old. It's reasonable to hypothesize and reason towards a prediction, but chickenpox is not a valid analogy for many reasons - it is irrelevant. As for the flu, people do care, it is less severe, and there are vaccines, which are somewhat effective, and elderly people are prioritized to receive it. I've taken a bunch of elderly people to get flu shots. I don't get them myself, because I'm not in a high risk category, but the vaccine is one of many things elderly people can avail themselves of nowadays to extend their lifespan and improve their quality of life as they age. If such a vaccine existed for COVID it would be a game-changer.

I don't think people were concerned about the potential of COVID as a long-term chronic disease in January 2020. The acute and imminent threat to life, and healthcare systems, are what gripped the collective consciousness. At least that is true for me. So I don't think it is accurate to say the analysis has not changed; certainly not for people with subject matter expertise; they are drinking from the firehose.

CDC report last week:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm

I'll bow out after this post for a bit....but this pretty much sums up the silliness/overreaction to covid.

I'm not saying locking down won't save lives, but I am saying "it's not worth it."

Great post Tooth, couldn't of said it better myself. (although I would STRONGLY advocate for the mental health aspect too...why are so many 9 year olds missing out on friends/school/doing fun things when they're basically at 0 risk, and bored as **** at home driving mom nutso)

(side note: my daughter goes to a school in Idaho that makes her wear a mask, but is otherwise 100% open/normal and the principal just told the health district to pound sand...which 22 of the 24 parents in my daughters class supported, so my comment on driving moms nutso applies more to my rentals/tenants in Spokane WA then it does to my own life...which is ironically only a 22 minute drive from my house)



I'll be at my Church's harvest festival tomorrow night (1,000+ people, sub 1% will wear a mask, no one socially distances, people shake hands, the mayor/police will be there to participate not to lockdown) but if you guys want to stay quarantined like I was back in Feb-June you're more then welcome to, I'd just point out that as long as borders between states like Idaho/Washington are still open, and Idaho acts like Idaho, this will never go away in Washington until we bink a vaccine/reach herd immunity/reach a combo of things like 2021 summer + partial herd immunity etc.

And why should I feel "bad" if I get covid, give it to someone else and they die? I mean I'd prefer covid magically disappears tomorrow. I'd prefer no one dies ever and we cure all diseases etc. etc. But if I gave the flu to someone in 2019 and they died, I wasn't "ZOMG it's the end of the world!!!!"...why should I do that for something that's basically just a worse flu....ESPECIALLY when people NEVER have to interact with me? (my daughter is the only person on the planet who doesn't get a choice in interacting with me, every other person on the planet can choose to quarantine etc. and never have to see me ever in their entire life) They can order groceries online, buy everything they need online, work online, talk to family online, etc. etc. 100% of people that interact with me CHOOSE to interact with me. And there's risks when people interact with other people, even before covid (like the flu, or chicken pox, etc. etc. etc.)

False dichotomy. Flu and associated virus's cost a fortune. Them being taken more seriously lead to scientific advances that will be of massive economic value. Nothing is given up and nothing non-political is stopping us from tackling world hunger or other problems.

But I have more sympathy with your view than many do. I have said to DS in the past that even though I dont support this approach, there's probably nothign we can do with wealth that benefits the poorest (over time) more than spending it on STEM type stuff.

We have had two family weddings cancelled. One was a decision freely made (although I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been allowed by the time it came round in Feb next year). I was relieved as it's tough to refuse and it's so much easier on family relationships if it's just not allowed.

chez,
I'm talking about the costs and economic losses from excessive prolonged lockdowns, not the price testing and of developing vaccines and treatments, which is tens of billions only and of course worth paying. And there's no false dichotomy - the world is trillions of dollars poorer now after its response to corona, and will be poorer for many years, growth being an exponential that builds on itself.

RikaKazak,
I agree. There's also near complete protection available for the average person in public spaces with $5 eye covering (shield/cheap glasses) + $5 N95 masks, enough to reduce your odds of dying to less than the flu.

Pandemic risk has long been identified as one of the greatest risks to US and other nations. It is also believed it is increasing in severity and frequency due to deforestation, population density and other measures.

Arguing over the speculative severity is not the point. You have to consider it from all extremes and ask if you are ready.

If the pandemic is not serious or is mild then, yes, few will die BUT WHAT IF it is not? What if it is novel virus that is catastrophically deadly?

Is the US prepared? Does the US have a plan? Would they even be able to institute one if they tried?


You seem to be arguing 'it is not likely to be that deadly so we are fine in our inability to fight it'. Just keep hoping that is the case because we certainly will not be preparing."

Tooth has made it clear he simply believes the US is uniquely unable to fight anything like that.

If there are rogue nations who want to end the US the path forward is clear. All efforts should be put into a bio weapons program where an infected person or agent can be set loose in the US population. The US is then pretty much hopeless to fight it or held to the level of its stupidest citizens.

I am guessing your counter would be "I don't assume we would ever be attacked that way so there is zero need to prepare''. As if preparation for you is only reactive and never done in preparation.

Once the virus was a fact then a huge economic cost came with it because people adjust to the deaths with or without lockdowns. Opening up too fast in UK/Europe is unfolding as an economic disaster as well as a health disaster. Generally the countries that have the most effective preventative measures, including lockdowns, are going to do the best economically.

This seems backwards to me. Opening up too late has been the economic disaster in Europe. Summer controlled corona for you/Europe, and you did needless economic damage staying closed too long.

You lock down early. You open up early. Exactly the opposite of instincts.
I'm not sure where you get this from. The real world data shows the US crushing Europe for example in extent of initial economic drawdown and degree of economic recovery. It's not even close. The US economy has done very well compared to the longer lockdown countries, depsite being dealt a worse hand with the southern waves, which none of the temperate summer climates had.

Only if you ignore the unfolding disaster from opening up too soon and allowing the virus to resurge. That's a huge price to pay for a bit of a resurgence in the summer as so many are now discovering.

The incompetence in Europe has been staggering. That's not being disputed although it still remains to be seen how it plays out in the EU and the USA.

I'm not sure the comparison works very well and it may be different in the USA. In countries where people dont react to the mounting death toll as much then lockdowns have more of an economic effect than in countries where we do. There's no doubt that in London, as I mentioned at the time, it was comng like a ghost town well before the lockdown started.

USA has tripled its deficit in a year to 3trillion$, of course its GDP has gone up.

Coronavirus doesn't concern or scare me anymore. The waves will come and go until it is over. I keep my distance and don't meet a lot of people because I just don't like having a H1N1 type strong fever.

The economies of the world were smart enough to re-open and pump money into the system so economically we salvaged our livelihoods which is extremely important.

I am sorry Cuepee but this is just plain wrong and hyperbole again.

Your bioweapon needs to be highly contagious.
Your bioweapon needs to have an extremely high death rate.
Your bioweapon also needs to allow the infected person to be healthy enough for an extended period of time to walk around and infect other people.

Since we don't live with rats anymore.... Not concerned.

The latin numbers aren't surprising. I mentioned these demographic trends developing a couple months

Cases and mortality by country
COUNTRY
CONFIRMED
DEATHS
CASE-FATALITY
DEATHS/100K POP.

San Marino 124.32
Peru 107.09
Belgium 97.79
Andorra 93.50
Bolivia 76.58
Spain 75.91
Brazil 75.65
Chile 74.92
Ecuador 73.80
Mexico 71.57
US 69.59
United Kingdom 68.83
Argentina 67.58
Panama 63.76
Italy 62.72
Colombia 61.94
Sweden 58.20
France 53.48
Moldova 48.76
North Macedonia 46.23
Montenegro45.31
Netherlands 42.16
Armenia 42.11
Iran 41.22
Ireland 39.06
Kosovo 36.47
Bahamas 35.27
Bosnia 34.93
Romania 34.31
South Africa 33.08
Israel 28.07
Iraq 28.02
Honduras 27.66
Canada 27.21

It's too early to look at total annual excess deaths since not enough time has passed. We could start to see a trend forming though. Like we can start to see that people were likely to die in 6 months have the process accelerate. If a million elderly die per year on average, you could see 1.5 M die this year and half a million die next year. The same applies to things like diabetes, people with heart and respiratory conditions etc.

We know the elderly are the most vulnerable and we know many of them will be dying of something in the short term. It will be interesting to see if there is a rapid decline of non covid deaths in many categories as covid has accelerated the death of the vulnerable up front

Sure but we should do all of those things anyway instead of what we spend money on normally. I’m not sure of the breakdown by age but the USA is approaching 20% of its GDP on health care spend. Other developed countries spend 10-12%. If we add it all up that’s many trillions globally. If we just euthanized any sick person age 70+ or cancer/serious disease patients rather than giving them health care treatments running assisted living facilities etc we’d likely save trillions annually, not just temporarily with these COVID restrictions. We could theoretically solve world hunger and all the things in your post. Why not do that too? Where is the line drawn?

You literally have no answer but to say "i don't think it will happen so we don't need a plan or way to address it".

Very Trumpian in your 'wishful thinking'. But no responsible government, NONE, operate that way. They do not see risks and say 'they are unlikely so don't bother planning or worrying about it'.

Nope, the opposite is true. In wargaming out scenarios like this they absolutely do consider low probability but deadly scenarios and IF they might happen, how do we act and react?


It is unacceptable to simply say "low probability...unlikely to happen... so no preparation is needed. YEs if the worst happens we are f*cked but lets cross our fingers it simply does not'.


The FACT that the US if faced with an exponentially more deadly pandemic would have no ability to force a course of action to deal with it, control it, minimize it ... and thus is held hostage to the level of the stupidest citizens amongst them, is not an answer.

Because the situation you are talking about is borderline ridiculous. All the worst pandemics death wise historically are a near non issue today.

Even Covid was a non issue. We destroyed the economy on our own. The death rates for the functioning humanity don't come close to being some kind of apocalyptic agent you are talking about.

I'll file that scenario in with meteors hitting the earth.

The situation i am talking about is ANY future pandemic worse than Covid.

Do you not think it is even within the realm of possibility that pandemic could be 2X worse? 3X worse? etc, in terms of death?

If you do, then do you think the entire US should be held to the standard of the stupidest amongst them, setting what the reaction and actions taken should be?

Because right now, the stupidest amongst them, are setting the standards of what will be done as they are unrestrained in what they choose to believe and act upon.

It's a bit of a stretch to say that people going and living their lives with a 99.9% survivable virus around is "stupid". I would probably call that "smart". Locking a country up for a year for a 99.9% survivable virus for healthy <50s is NUTS.

You'd see very different reactions (and population tolerance of harsh lockdowns) for a 5% death rate. In fact, you wouldn't even need to lock down, it would take care of itself as people stay away from each other and keep R below 1 out of pure fear. In the first wave, when it could have been easily controlled, the loser experts were telling people not to be afraid, that the risk was low, that borders with China shouldn't be closed. The media barely talked about it, focused on a hoax instead. Comparing that to a bioweapon situation is just dumb.

Corona action has become the ultimate anti-science/anti-rationality loser's religion. He's the NYT Times today:

How crazy is this? Worthless virtue signalling about a "mask mandate" that the candidate admits wouldn't even work legally. This is a religious movement now, not rationality. Classic religious thinking:

Good people (pray/wear masks) because we believe in (Jesus/ the science) and the (evil thing/ coronavirus) continues to spread because of the bad people who don't also believe in (Jesus/ wearing masks).

Never mind that masks did jack **** in Europe with massive uncontained spread that rocketed past the US from a far lower base despite mask mandates. Never mind that 75% of Americans already wear masks. Nope - it's all about the virtue signalling.

The trajectory of this is fully played out until there's a vaccine. The US will stay open with some distancing and only lock down when hospitals are near full. Lockdowns will generally be targeted to certain cities/regions rather than blanket. Some state leaders will lock people down across the state to much resentment and economic damage. Lots of young people and minorities will continue not to care and spread it widely as has been the pattern since the beginning.

A 99.9% survivable virus could never have been controlled in the US once the CDC botched the tests. It was always going to look just like this. The only wiggle room was that mildly fewer summer deaths could have been bought with far more economic and personal damage, followed by a worse/more locked down winter wave as Europe is experiencing, which would have been a terrible tradeoff.

Cuepee,

The only reason why Americans and now Europeans (general citizenship) didn't care about Covid transmission was because the death rates for the healthy population is extremely low. It is only dangerous for immunocompromised (old people and underlying condition). Most humans aren't immunocompromised.

If Covid had Bubonic plague levels of death rates with same transmission mechanism, plus we had no treatment for it, do you think this would have played out the same? You're out of your mind if you do. If this was Bubonic plague level death rates we would have killed this thing off in 1 month. The speed of information transfer is way too fast in this day and age. Everyone is plugged into their devices. If Covid started killing people at black death rates everyone would know in 12 hours and we'd get off our asses to do something about it.

Since covid isn't like that. We don't.

Tooth backpeddling again. lol.

States countless times it is just impossible for Trump (POTUS) to control and force compliance. Dirty LIbs would never comply.

Now suddenly when he sees the hole in his argument, 'of course if it is was worse they would comply'.

Next is 'both those arguments are the same and right as I can add caveats to change what i said prior at any time.' FLOL.


FWIW Tooth, at the onset of this pandemic 5% death rates and higher WERE reported so your thesis falls apart again, so get busy adding another caveat. I assume you will pretend that somehow that in fact it proved to be lower LATER, means that is why they did not comply then, when they did not know that.

Except as i say above they did not know that at the onset and a lot of the initial fear projections were a lot higher.

Don't waste your time trying to counter with 'later with data we determined it was lower' as that does not serve you. You react in the moment to the info of the moment. If the death rate ended up multiple higher later the initial reaction would not have changed. People would NOT have reacted better prior. If you understand the concept of why Results Based Thinking is wrong in poker you will understand this. If you are a results based thinker you will contest it.

We knew in April.

It was the ******s that kept hyperventilating about how this is the next bubonic plague that turned the world into a panic.

This is your original point.

It is completely ridiculous and hyperbolic. You created a hypothetical scenario that never happens and go overboard telling us we need to prepare for it. Give me a break.

- Covid is not a "contagious agent with true society ending potential". Not even close.

- Covid 3x? Not even close.

- Bubonic plague part 3? I already told you why it won't happen again and why it hasn't happened for hundreds of years.

Why are you hyperventilating for? Is this a natural thing to be freaked out all the time? This is like Shuffle absolutely convinced millions of Americans will die over the winter because of Covid.

Are the 40% of the USA’s adult population who are obese “healthy”?

TOOOOOTH