Covid- Thank you, Next! Get out of our lives.

[Zorral]

The US official numbers via the CDC for covid deaths has reached 600,000. That number is the deaths that are officially known to be from covid.

People are still dying in the vast groups of those who refuse, or for other reasons haven't gotten vaccinated.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/u-s-surpasses-600-000-covid-deaths.html

 

Quote

 

...Thursday also marked the first time since January that the seven-day average of new vaccinations fell below 1 million shots per day since January, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

CDC forecasting also suggests that the death rate will continue to decline over the next four weeks, with “800 to 4,800 new deaths likely reported in the week ending June 26, 2021.” While the decline is promising, that thousands of deaths are still anticipated for June reveals the danger of the virus among vulnerable populations and the unvaccinated. That threat was made more clear by an analysis in late May by the Washington Post, which suggested that the coronavirus death rate among adults who haven’t been vaccinated is as high as it was in March.

 

 

[Zorral]

Again, Covid and adolescents -- it's far more often harmful to short-term and long term health than so many still seem unwilling to believe, including hospitalizations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/04/covid-teenagers-increasing-hospitalizations/

 

 

[Week]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Again, Covid and adolescents -- it's far more often harmful to short-term and long term health than so many still seem unwilling to believe, including hospitalizations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/04/covid-teenagers-increasing-hospitalizations/

 

 

People also seem to forget about folks that are immunocompromised, disabled, or cannot be vaccinated for some other reason. It's particularly cruel to effectively condemn them to suffering because "the death rate is near zero" for under 18. Premature "Mission Accomplished" stances are a consistent source of suffering and risk to a lot of people.

(Cue the "bUt DeR eConOmY!" responses)

I'm not advocating lock downs - so save the straw horse.

[Heartofice]

5 minutes ago, Week said:

People also seem to forget about folks that are immunocompromised, disabled, or cannot be vaccinated for some other reason. It's particularly cruel to effectively condemn them to suffering because "the death rate is near zero" for under 18. Premature "Mission Accomplished" stances are a consistent source of suffering and risk to a lot of people.

(Cue the "bUt DeR eConOmY!" responses)

I'm not advocating lock downs - so save the straw horse.

How many?

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Again, Covid and adolescents -- it's far more often harmful to short-term and long term health than so many still seem unwilling to believe, including hospitalizations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/04/covid-teenagers-increasing-hospitalizations/

I think this line is quite noteworthy...

Quote

Researchers said the cumulative covid-19 hospitalization rates for the adolescents from Oct. 1, 2020, through April 24, 2021, were 2.5 to three times higher than seasonal-influenza-associated hospitalization rates during three recent flu seasons.

There certainly is a case to be made to vaccinate the young.  Ideally, it wouldn't be required.  But, the unwillingness in the US for more adults to take the vaccine may mean it is more important for the young to do so.  OTOH, the areas in the US that have a low adult uptake, are unlikely to see a high adolescent uptake.

10 hours ago, Raja said:

New Public Health England Report on B.1.617.2/Delta VOC - Not the best news, I'm afraid.

Indeed.  I think the rest of the world could be in trouble if this gets into countries.  (And in fact, Portugal is also seeing a noticeable increase in cases after opening tourism to the UK).  The UK may just need till the end of July to get their vaccinations in a very strong position.  But most of Europe needs another month on top of that.  And most other countries are even worse.

While it seems unlikely (to me anyhow) that hospitals are going to be overrun in the UK, there certainly seems to be a reasonable chance that you'd save a significant number of lives by waiting another month before nearly all restrictions are removed.  I would think you'd need very convincing evidence to do otherwise.  After all this time, what is one more month.  Not like its full lockdown (or anywhere close).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Week said:

People also seem to forget about folks that are immunocompromised, disabled, or cannot be vaccinated for some other reason. It's particularly cruel to effectively condemn them to suffering because "the death rate is near zero" for under 18. Premature "Mission Accomplished" stances are a consistent source of suffering and risk to a lot of people.

(Cue the "bUt DeR eConOmY!" responses)

I'm not advocating lock downs - so save the straw horse.

We talk about white privilege a lot, but we rarely discuss this kind of privilege. It's actually one of the easiest ways to convey the broader concept of privilege. 

[HoodedCrow]

I was vaccinated.I don’t want to be a plague factory to others. Staying in place went from three weeks, to...not sure this long after. 

[Week]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We talk about white privilege a lot, but we rarely discuss this kind of privilege. It's actually one of the easiest ways to convey the broader concept of privilege. 

And yet, consistently denigrated and maligned by the sea lions of the board that are better left ignored than engaged with.

Eugenics ftw? 

[Heartofice]

You’d think before throwing around words like eugenics ( because of course you did) you’d let us know what kind of numbers you are talking about when it comes to people who cannot be vaccinated 

[JoannaL]

12 hours ago, Zorral said:

Again, Covid and adolescents -- it's far more often harmful to short-term and long term health than so many still seem unwilling to believe, including hospitalizations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/04/covid-teenagers-increasing-hospitalizations/

 

 

I am quite surprised by this numbers. It must be different numbers for differnt countries. (But why?) . In Germany we had quite a lively discussion about vaccination of the 12-15 year old, because there is a conditional approval now from the EMA,which our health minister jumped on, but our national approval committee said more or less clearly that they will not follow and they will not recommend vaccination. they say they have not enough data yet. Since the benefit (not getting Covid) is not a high benefit for children, the risk for taking the vaccine must be extremely low, and for this they need more data (higher pool of participants, long term studiies). So no recommendation in Germany. 12-15 year old may take it though from now on (as with AZ under 60 year old its allowed just not recommended). In course of this discussion I got the German data for deaths since March 2020:

Germany 83 mio inhabitants, 88000 died of covid

of these 13,7 mio under 18 year old , 8 died of Covid

[Luzifer's right hand]

33 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

I am quite surprised by this numbers. It must be different numbers for differnt countries. (But why?) . In Germany we had quite a lively discussion about vaccination of the 12-15 year old, because there is a conditional approval now from the EMA,which our health minister jumped on, but our national approval committee said more or less clearly that they will not follow and they will not recommend vaccination. they say they have not enough data yet. Since the benefit (not getting Covid) is not a high benefit for children, the risk for taking the vaccine must be extremely low, and for this they need more data (higher pool of participants, long term studiies). So no recommendation in Germany. 12-15 year old may take it though from now on (as with AZ under 60 year old its allowed just not recommended). In course of this discussion I got the German data for deaths since March 2020:

Germany 83 mio inhabitants, 88000 died of covid

of these 13,7 mio under 18 year old , 8 died of Covid

A good puplic health care system should prevent most if not all deaths among teenagers and should also reduce long term effects. 

You can't compare most European countries to the US because they lack a for profit health care system. 

There are shocking numbers for infant deaths from Brazil but such deaths are nearly unheard of in Europe. 

There are also different variants at work. 

Edit: As numbers from India show deaths rise quickly if health care systems are completly overwhelmed and that did not happen in western countries. People still died because health care was not as good as during normal times. At least around here even the dates for critical things like brain and heart surgery were moved on a regular basis because of the lack of ICU beds(coworker got his brain tumor removed 6 months later than planned for example. He was already in the hospital at one point but they ran out of the last ICU bed they had avaliable.)

Things were far worse than most people wanted to know. 

[JoannaL]

13 hours ago, Week said:

People also seem to forget about folks that are immunocompromised, disabled, or cannot be vaccinated for some other reason. It's particularly cruel to effectively condemn them to suffering because "the death rate is near zero" for under 18. Premature "Mission Accomplished" stances are a consistent source of suffering and risk to a lot of people.

(Cue the "bUt DeR eConOmY!" responses)

I'm not advocating lock downs - so save the straw horse.

Herd immunity is a good thing and it will help save lives, I agree with you that we should try to accomplish it. But why are you angry at the children for not doing their duty (when they get only risk from vaccination and almost no benefit) and not about the adults who will not get vaccinated (though they would get a personal benefit out of it)? Is it not more a duty for the adults to help the community than for the children?

[Raja]

33 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

 and that did not happen in western countries. People still died because health care was not as good as during normal times.

Yeah, I think people that are not health professionals have no idea how overwhelmed the health systems were in lots of different parts of the world, and I include the UK in that. We shouldn't really talk in binary terms of 'overwhelmed' and 'not overwhelmed', imo. That is too simplistic and ignores the realities of how hospitals work and the excess mortality we have seen even in patients that did not have COVID 19.

[Luzifer's right hand]

26 minutes ago, Raja said:

Yeah, I think people that are not health professionals have no idea how overwhelmed the health systems were in lots of different parts of the world, and I include the UK in that. We shouldn't really talk in binary terms of 'overwhelmed' and 'not overwhelmed', imo. That is too simplistic and ignores the realities of how hospitals work and the excess mortality we have seen even in patients that did not have COVID 19.

Good point. 

Here they have now revealed to the public somethings that was long known for interested people. They did not count long covid patients in the ICU and in the hospital as covid cases once the test became negative even people who do not have functioning lungs anymore are counted as "recovered" in Austrian statistics. Vienna has now started counting them and ICU cases doubled there and people are making surprised Pikachu faces.

[Raja]

4 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Good point.

And I only mentioned mortality - as you mention previously - cancelling elective procedures, cancer care, losing 1-1 nurse to patient ratio in ICU, cancelling outpatient appointments, cancelling colonoscopies, endoscopies & bronchoscopies - cancelling all of these are also signs of what I consider to be 'overwhelmed' health systems - all of these have impacts. In addition to the mortality, ofc.

Yeah, it would be odd not to count those, tbh. I'm glad Vienna is doing it now.

[Luzifer's right hand]

2 minutes ago, Raja said:

And I only mentioned mortality - as you mention previously - cancelling elective procedures, cancer care, losing 1-1 nurse to patient ratio in ICU, cancelling outpatient appointments, cancelling colonoscopies, endoscopies & bronchoscopies - cancelling all of these are also signs of what I consider to be 'overwhelmed' health systems - all of these have impacts. In addition to the mortality, ofc.

Yeah, it would be odd not to count those, tbh. I'm glad Vienna is doing it now.

Germany is not doing it either afaik. 

[JoannaL]

28 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Germany is not doing it either afaik. 

no, we are not, but we are monitoring excess mortality and most months its negative (less than in the average last 5 years).

[Luzifer's right hand]

8 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

no, we are not, but we are monitoring excess mortality and most months its negative (less than in the average last 5 years).

People in ICU beds can live pretty long. The does not mean that they are "genesenen" even if they get out of the ICU alive. But people don't care because they want to go to pubs and go on holidays. That is why we have bullshit "genesenen" numbers and don't track long term effects with numbers. 

It has never been only about deaths for people who are actually capable of caring for people outside their ingroup. 

We are clearly a minority though. 

Edit:Parts of Germany did better than Austria though. 

[JoannaL]

33 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

People in ICU beds can live pretty long. The does not mean that they are "genesenen" even if they get out of the ICU alive. But people don't care because they want to go to pubs and go on holidays. That is why we have bullshit "genesenen" numbers and don't track long term effects with numbers. 

It has never been only about deaths for people who are actually capable of caring for people outside their ingroup. 

We are clearly a minority though. 

Edit:Parts of Germany did better than Austria though. 

I agree with you that it is difficult to measure the exact number of fatalities. At least we count everyone who died "with" Covid, and we also don't stop after 28 days after a positive test as other countries. Additionally monitoring excess mortality seems also a good way to get a feeling for the magnitude of a problem.

Long covid is also real, but I do not know of good studies yet how big the problem really is and how persistent it is. This really has to be studied!! Also it is certainly true that a lot of people who survived Covid aren't well, but no one here said otherwise.

About the overwhelmed or not overwhelmed discussion, I think the system could cope here ok with the problem, but it certainly was not business as usual. Some hospitals became "Covid" hospitals and got in some kind of emergency state, and did less other procedures here as well. the other hospitals in the area had to take their cases of cancer and heart attacs and only  just now (so last or this week) most of these hospitals started to go back to normal status.

[Clueless Northman]

Western healthcare systems were in many countries close to collapse. They didn't collapse because people were basically left out to die in nursing homes, or sick elder people opted to die at home, instead of them flooding ICUs. If the old and very sick had been handled the way it usually was, ICUs would've been full and people would've begun dropping off like flies.