(11-30-2020 07:03 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: So my question is at what point does a death total become significant?
Define significant.
Pandemics are relatively rare occurrences... much more rare than even 'natural disasters'. Also, mortality isn't merely a function of external factors like disease, but of intrinsic ones like population ages. As an average population ages, you would expect mortality rates to rise somewhat. Even picking a 'random' time frame like 5 years (which the CDC does in their 'expected deaths') has pretty significant variance, even without a pandemic... and of course even greater variance if that period encompasses one. I guarantee that in 5 years, people will be touting 'improvements in our healthcare system' which will primarily be linked to the natural progression and reaction to a global pandemic... especially when adjusted for changes in population aging, also potentially influenced by the pandemic.
I'm not trying to pigeon hole you here... but if I read you correctly, you were essentially saying that some source was saying that 2000 out of 7500 daily deaths were due to COVID... and at what point is this significant? 20%? 30%? 70%? Given all the factors, I don't know that even fairly like minded people would agree on a level. A pandemic by definition is significant.
In addition to the above, I think the premise they are presenting misrepresents the issue. If someone has ESRD and because they're now on Hospice, far fewer precautions such as family visits etc are taken... and they contract COVID and die... they COULD be listed as a covid death... even though they died from ESRD. The only reason we would even test them for COVID could be for contract tracing as a result of the pandemic. We would not do so if it were the flu. This is an extreme example, and far more such issues would happen in far less direct and obvious situations, but it is these extreme ones that most clearly demonstrate the issue... and inferences about the wide array of other more likely possibilities can be made.
In addition to the inability to find any single definition of 'significant', I think we'd have to look at this years numbers in context and adjusted for a variety of variables... I think we will obviously see a spike in deaths this year... and the only way to look at it in an unbiased way would be to see how far beyond the standard deviation it is... and THAT will be the primary determinant of how significant this year was. It would be easy to look at averages and say something like... we averaged 1.8mm deaths over the last 5 years and we had 2.2mm this year so the number is 400,000... but that would not remotely be taking all of the factors into consideration.
As a point not really related to your comment about deaths... but something worth noting when we listen to the media... I'd note that I suspect that a VERY high number of reported cases are the result of such incredibly frequent testing of athletes at all levels, of people for contact tracing and the availability of testing as opposed to simply testing symptomatic people... meaning 'the number of cases' isn't really comparable to anything else in our world... because never in my lifetime have we had such widespread testing done. I mean, sure... ANYONE can go in and get a flu test... and if you really want one, few doctors would deny it to you... but without symptoms, almost nobody would go get tested for it or 'press' a doctor who didn't recommend it... and we certainly wouldn't have random athlete testing multiple times per week or month or free drive-through clinics. I'm not remotely saying its wrong to do these things under these circumstances... I'm merely saying that we need to keep that in the back of our minds when we are looking at the number of cases. Deaths are a far more meaningful number... and even that is suspect due to similar precautions.
(12-01-2020 05:38 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote: One problem is that the federal government has dropped the ball on making sure that those industries affected the most by restrictions (like bars), are cared for and not left out to dry.
This is where you lose me and it SEEMS your disdain of all things Republican taint your perspective. If that's not the case, you should be able to answer this fairly easily.
You say the Federal Government has dropped the ball when the restrictions being put in place almost all come from the states. Why isn't it the responsibility of the people putting the restrictions in place to make sure that they take care of the results of those restrictions? I suspect the feds would say they HAVE taken care of them by a) not placing their own restrictions and b) providing funding to the states to address their needs for the industries the states have CHOSEN to shut down. As with most things... some states will get more and some will get less. Some states will ask for more and some states will ask for less... because they take different approaches or have different needs.
I mean, you may as well argue that a state could say that all stores and offices of all kinds within the state are to be shut down and nobody should leave their homes... and it is the responsibility of the federal government, who didn't support nor enact that legislation... to make sure that everything within the state still worked and people still got paid. That's an extreme position to make a point, but what is the difference other than degree?
Please tell me why its the responsibility of the feds to address the results of state decisions about which they had little to no input? Or why it should be the responsibility of a central government to address all of the thousands of individual inputs into an equation like this in all the vast variety of potential situations?
Let me give an example... Many people are praising Rice for its handling of COVID... our results have certainly been better than many state 'party' schools... so if the feds had decided that Rice had to follow the example of UT and A&M and LSU and Michigan or some sort of centralized national University standard.... would you agree with that decision? Or instead would you say that they should provide funding and guidance and let places like Rice do more if they choose? My guess is that lots of progressives (and you personally may or may not agree) would say that what Rice has done is the 'smart' thing, and that everyone should follow this expert advice... yet plenty of schools (like my daughter's) have done even better with even fewer and certainly different restrictions. Are they even 'smarter'? Or is their solution just working because their situation is different? Should this central group be tasked to design 4,298 separate plans? Or should they provide guidance and funding and let schools design their own policies? If you say the former, then why does Rice need a board of Trustees an an administration at all?
(12-01-2020 09:19 AM)Rice93 Wrote: The numbers of Texas hospital/ICU beds being taken up due to COVID have been increasing and seem to be hitting a critical level. Is your take that the MSM media has pushed forward this false negative and that hospitals are actually not busy at all?
Addressing this, and ONLY this.... and doing so in the specific context of the question.
The MSM media has pushed forward the false negative that the numbers of Texas hospital/ICU beds being taken up due to covid seem to be hitting a critical level. Yes, there are some hotspots, but this narrative misrepresents the way hospitals function in terms of managing resources.... especially during a pandemic. Like hotels, hospitals do their best to be 'close to full' at all times and during a pandemic, you would of course sequester those with the highly contagious virus.
To the extent that there are shortages, the biggest shortages come from staffing which is primarily driven by
a) seasonality, which is compounded during a pandemic
b) regulation at all levels
c) the ACAs primary means of driving down costs
People can argue with me about this, but most of those doing so have never had to manage these things. I have... especially in 'difficult to staff' locations. If you want to know why these smaller countries don't have the same issues we do its primarily because they're smaller countries.
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Trump tests positive for Covid-19, what happens now?
