[andomar]

In a normal year 3,000,000 people die in the US. The numbers are higher because of covid-19, but not by a lot. You can check the CDC graph for excess deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Nobody would have predicted the current response based on that graph. It fits a trend where people become less and less willing to accept physical risks.

Why can't we discuss this without calling one another "purposefully blind"?

[lefrenchy]

Why do people keep making this argument that the numbers are so low and don’t warrant a response without addressing or considering that the world has taken MAJOR steps to curb the spread and impact of the virus. If we all lived our lives as normal, it would likely be way worse.

Not to mention that if we were to have lived our lives as normal and not cared, then deaths outcomes would rise even more in proportion to hospital admissions since the more overloaded a hospital gets, the harder it is to get proper care.

It’s really not rocket science. Epidemiologist and doctors are saying we should take significant measures to stop this, I think I trust them. I wouldn’t want a doctor telling me how to engineer a web service.

[Trasmatta]

Yeah, when your hospitals are operating at 100% capacity, the argument "but excess deaths this year aren't actually much higher" doesn't really work.

And then if, through heroic effort and sacrifice the hospitals don't get overrun, people say "why were we worried? The hospitals never went over capacity!". Like if a team of engineers spend a week mitigating a security attack, then all of the non experts at the company say "well, nothing ended up happening, guess the whole thing was overblown".

[andomar]

Which epidemiologists are you referring too? It seems even Scientific American can't get information from them.

"One epidemiologist told us the environment was “too toxic” to talk to us, even anonymously."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science...

[lefrenchy]

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

We know how to beat this virus, other countries have done it (South Korea, Taiwan, NZ). The solution is incisive contact tracing, short effective and targeted lock downs, social distancing, etc...

The problem is that in the US our institutions have failed us so badly that those solutions are not an option. Because of the delayed (and insufficient) response and our hollowed out institutions the virus has become so widespread (and our institutions so rickety) that we can’t effectively apply the solutions we know exist because it’s too late.

This is where the problem lies. Instead of talking about the solutions we know work, we are forced into a position where our only options are extreme (full lock downs and such) and they can't even fix the problem, only mitigate the damage (with significant collateral damage). Our binary choice is essentially death or destruction, and that is a direct result of our own failures. These are not the only two existing options, they are just the only ones presented to us in the US.

I am not trying to say that epidemiologists all agree on full lock downs. But no epidemiologist worth their salt will say we should do absolutely nothing about this virus, they will argue over specific strategies and their collateral damage, but they will not say that we should do nothing.

You're being dishonest however in saying "look the excess deaths are so low" without considering that their have been significant measures put in place to reduce that death count. That's logically equivalent to saying "see we don't need seatbelts because the number of people dying is not that high" after seat belt laws have been implemented. In this case, the reason excess mortality is lower is not because the virus isn't deadly to many people, but precisely because the measures we have taken.

[andomar]

The few epidemiologists that have spoken out against the measures have been ordered to stop talking publicly. Studies have been accompanied by lengthy apologies for the facts they found. See for example https://www.wnd.com/2020/11/major-peer-reviewed-study-finds-...

I don't know a lot about viruses, but I know groupthink when I see it. Suppressing competing opinions is the opposite of science.