I wonder if Humanity will shut itself out of existence if we start counting every single pathology on that affects Humans on big banners and "social-media-fy" it. I mean, there were 3x more deaths by overdose in SF than by Covid. There are 2x more deaths in India by TB, and a lot more from malnutrition and poverty.
Why are the Americans doing this propaganda op ? Ionnidis' latest paper even points to lockdowns not being particularly helpful across multiple countries.
Again this idiotic discourse that doesn't understand that letting a pandemic spread unchecked across the world has huge risks even beyond the obvious death toll.
Covid19, even with the current measures, has killed more people than TB worldwide in 2020. Those deaths are often in addition to those killed by TB, overdose, and most other diseases you care to pick. It has let countless other people with chronic symptoms of varying severity, possibly for the rest of their lives.
Ioannidis has a bone to pick ever since his first paper on the topic was proven wrong, and he keeps digging deeper. His papers have been very low quality, with obvious holes even for a layman, like choosing to measure the effectiveness of lockdowns only in countries with known implementation problems (USA, UK, Sweden, Netherlands and a few others) while ignoring the countries that have not seen almost any cases of disease by comparison (Vietnam, Australia, NZ), as well as alternatives to lockdowns that have worked wonders, such as Taiwan.
>It has let countless other people with chronic symptoms of varying severity, possibly for the rest of their lives.
This is complete FUD with as-of-yet no scientific support. The lifetime effects of poverty and depression, in contrast, are quite well-studied and there's strong evidence that even a single year of unemployment can have a significant negative impact on lifetime health outcomes.
>Covid19, even with the current measures, has killed more people than TB worldwide in 2020. Those deaths are often in addition to those killed by TB, overdose, and most other diseases you care to pick
The vast-majority of these people were on death's door already, whereas the people taken by overdoses and depression are in the prime of their lives.
I'm not sure I can agree with the "death's door" statement, but I do agree that many COVID-19 related deaths were in people with some other underlying conditions.
I also find the way COVID-19 related deaths are being counted to be somewhat disingenuous. Every single person who dies and is COVID-19 positive is counted as a "COVID death." Many of those with an underlying condition may have died in the near term anyway, or on contraction of some other influenza-like virus. I think the figure which we will never know is the number of COVID-19 deaths in otherwise healthy people.
Yet, when 23 people in Norway die soon after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot, they are not counted as "COVID vaccine deaths." Rather, every media story I read was at pains to point out that these people were all elderly, frail and had underlying health conditions.
Then there are the other issues related to lockdowns - domestic abuse, mental health etc. The comment by `cheph` about damage to their back and hips has been downvoted to hell, and it was probably written in a combative tone. Nonetheless, these are very real problems that are not being discussed enough.
The COVID-19 pandemic is real and dangerous, but the reaction and reporting is not very well balanced.
> This is complete FUD with as-of-yet no scientific support. The lifetime effects of poverty and depression, in contrast, are quite well-studied and there's strong evidence that even a single year of unemployment can have a significant negative impact on lifetime health outcomes.
So because they haven't been studied, we should assume there are none? We know for sure that SARS has left most survivors with chronically reduced lung function, so there are a priori reasons to believe it is a risk for Covid19 as well.
Also, unemployment and poverty are not natural consequences of disease preparedness, they are consequences of specific policy decisions and of valuing the rights of rich people more than the vast majority of the population.
> The vast-majority of these people were on death's door already, whereas the people taken by overdoses and depression are in the prime of their lives.
No, they weren't. The majority had chronic illnesses that they would have expected to live more than 10 years with, but their lives were cut short by Covid19. Also, the majority of the increase in death rates in most places in the world has been due to Covid19.
Not to mention, the countries that took the disease the most seriously and had the most effective lockdowns ALSO had the shortest lockdowns and the most rapid economic recovery. Look at Vietnam for an excellent example. Short, localized, but quite extreme lock downs have meant that most of the country has been in business as usual mode for most of 2020, with less than 100 total deaths (total, in a country with half the population of the US living in an area the size of one state, neighboring China!), despite being the first country outside China to have community spread.
Excess deaths are measurably up from this pathology, and we can continue working on those problems too. Unfortunately, there’s little overlap between preventions or treatments for drug addiction and infectious disease.
Correlation does not equal causation. Maybe the $1400 stimulus checks were the problem, giving addicts a windfall that they then used on drugs. Or maybe it was triggered by peoples relatives passing away from COVID, all alone in the hospital, that caused an uptick in depression and suicide.
You are making a fairly strong claim that the lockdowns (which were barely even enforced) were the cause. Generally, strong claims should be backed up with some evidence.
Why are the Americans doing this propaganda op ? Ionnidis' latest paper even points to lockdowns not being particularly helpful across multiple countries.