[__blockcipher__]

That effect does not happen with COVID-19. Most cases are asymptomatic, paucisymptomatic, or comparable to a cold in severity. Doubly so for children. There is no evidence of serious “long-term” harm in anybody. With severe COVID-19 - the kind that almost kills people - you might have a few months of non-permanent lung abnormalities.

SARS-2 is not the scary virus it’s made out to be. It’s just not. It’s a poor killer and a great spreader. Exactly the type of virus we in the general population need to let pass through us.

[VikingCoder]

You sound authoritative, so I'll ask you to respond to something that seems on the face of it to be scary,

"Hundreds of health-care workers lost their lives battling the coronavirus"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/healthca...

"The nation’s largest nurses union, National Nurses United, puts the total much higher: 939 fatalities among health-care workers, based on reports from its chapters around the country, social media and obituaries."

Isn't that a lot?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/02/exc...

"Excess U.S. deaths hit estimated 37,100 in pandemic’s early days, far more than previously known"

Isn't the fact that you can visibly SEE excess deaths, greater than previous years' trends, concerning?

> It’s a poor killer and a great spreader.

It's such a great spreader, that even though it's a poor killer, it's killed 140,000 in the US.

Isn't that, you know, a lot?

[__blockcipher__]

No, 140,000 is not particularly a lot for a semi-novel virus, especially when you look at the populations dying from it (at least half of these deaths are people at death's door. That doesn't mean their lives don't matter, but it does mean that, it's not necessarily something unique about COVID-19 that killed them)

You should know that the way we classify deaths is highly suspect, but my argument doesn't hinge on that so assume all the deaths are legit.

> Isn't the fact that you can visibly SEE excess deaths, greater than previous years' trends, concerning?

As for excess deaths, assuming those are COVID-19 deaths is foolish. More people die every year from cardiac events than have died thus far from COVID-19 (and likely that will still hold by the end of this year for an apples-to-apples comparison); it stands to reason that many of those deaths are from cardiovascular disease, amplified by the unprecedented suspension of elective surgeries and preventative care, not to mention how afraid of going to the hospital people are.

BTW, go look at 2019 all-cause mortality compared to 2020 all-cause mortality. They're almost identical. So no, statistically this is not something super crazy.

^ Seriously, go actually look at that data. You will probably be shocked. I was.

Likewise, hundreds of health-care workers losing their lives isn't very surprising. Although in general I don't like to 'rebut' news articles because they don't give much that's actually rebuttable.

---

BTW, I've said this elsewhere but probably not on this thread yet:

Given COVID-19 kills the very old and spares the very young, once it has passed through the population, deaths in subsequent years will be nearly non-existent. Why? Because the set of COVID-19-naive individuals (of those who can actually get infected, since many cannot due to cross reactivity) becomes dominated by new entrants to the world, e.g. babies/toddlers. The same individuals who are virtually incapable of dying from COVID-19. Therefore unlike Flu, which apart from its ability to mutate is responsible for significant recurring death, COVID-19 will not have significant recurring death. Thus amortized over many years, the numbers look even better than they do now. And I know this sounds hard to believe, but the numbers to me look really good.

I believe our policy of lockdown has certainly increased all-cause mortality - I consider that inarguable - but furthermore, I think it is very likely that our policies have put our bodies into a state where we suffer worse outcomes from COVID-19. This is due to people staying inside and therefore not getting sun exposure, with vitamin d and to a much lesser extent nitric oxide playing INCREDIBLE roles in the outcomes of respiratory diseases (the magnitude of effect size shocked me w/ vitamin D), lack of exercise due to gym closures etc, social isolation which has been shown to increase death apart from the feeling of emotional loneliness (i.e. even if you take away peoples' emotional loneliness they still die more), lack of sleep and general life disruption attributable to unemployment and the "new normal", etc. I could go on, but really I should step away now before I spend hours in this thread...

[VikingCoder]

> Likewise, hundreds of health-care workers losing their lives isn't very surprising.

Sorry, this seems to be completely wrong.

"5,250 workers died on the job in 2018." If 939 health-care workers died from Covid-19... That's a really big percentage.

> You should know that the way we classify deaths is highly suspect,

That's why looking at excess deaths makes a ton of sense to me.

> it stands to reason that many of those deaths are from cardiovascular disease

Sorry, that seems like an extraordinary claim.

It sounds like you're standing on your head to not blame the novel disease. And intentionally standing on your head to say that when the conclusion of the cause of death is Coronavirus, it's wrong. Both at the same time.

Wouldn't we see autopsies saying "the cause of death is a cardiac event" close to 140,000 cases more than normal, for your claim to be remotely true? We're not seeing that.

> BTW, go look at 2019 all-cause mortality compared to 2020 all-cause mortality.

Can you provide the references that you found? It's not clear to me how to find this exact data.

How many people who would have lived from a cardiac event are having trouble finding an ICU bed?

We hear 50+ hospitals in Florida have their ICUs completely full?

[arronkau]

According the the CDC [1] the all-cause mortality in 2020 is currently 155,446 higher than the equivalent date range in 2019. This despite the fact that recent weeks for 2020 are definitely undercounts as it takes time for all the data to come in.

[1]:https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

[arronkau]

> BTW, go look at 2019 all-cause mortality compared to 2020 all-cause mortality. They're almost identical. So no, statistically this is not something super crazy.

This is just a flat-out lie.

According the the CDC [1] the all-cause mortality in 2020 is currently 155,446 higher than the equivalent date range in 2019. This despite the fact that recent weeks for 2020 are definitely undercounts as it takes time for all the data to come in.

[1]:https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

[netsharc]

Long term effects: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53368768

[netsharc]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Too lazy to google, but has anyone done any research on how the recovered are doing, say in Wuhan 6 months after they got infected?