You're far more optimistic than I am. People can find many ways to mold statistics to fit their beliefs (or simply reject the numbers as a deep state conspiracy).
It won't be refusing to look; it will be asserting speculation as fact, e.g. saying that the excess deaths are from increased domestic abuse and suicide because of the lockdown.
EDIT: This is not in reference to comments here on HN. I wrote this before seeing any comments referencing those other causes of death, and those comments here on HN are not presenting speculation as fact.
This is so interesting to me. Facts are still important to those seeking truth. Sure, there are a lot of people seeking reassurance ahead of truth, but there are also simply a lot of people. Given that people now have more ability to make their opinions widely known, I suspect that truth and facts are just as relevant as ever, but that loud noises will be made by those who won't be doing anything relevant about it either way.
Our ability to judge the relative value of messages is proportional to our ability to reason about the sheer number of people with things to say. I think that wrapping one's mind around the enormity of 330 million people may be valuable towards honing in on not only what messages are important, but what movements simply aren't.
> Facts are still important to those seeking truth.
What about the people that don't want to seek truth?
> The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [1]
Again, lots of people produce lots of opinions. If I'm understanding you correctly, the meme that "the deplorables" all think alike (and are thus wrong) doesn't have much merit after more than a cursory glance.
While I agree in a sense, it doesn't seem useful that people keep pointing out how facts don't matter. Not only is it debatable whether they ever were relevant, but I've heard this sort of phrase used too often in a way that is dismissive. No one even replied that COVID isn't real, or whatever nonsense, but you're already arguing against some nameless side of the COVID debate.
The pandemic, like everything else, must have its costs weighed against benefits, even if it involves people dying; for that reason alone, whether or not people think the pandemic restrictions are justified, the debate should be ongoing. It should never be considered a settled issue because the facts often come out long after it has passed. I'd be concerned if everyone agreed on anything in unison.
Heh! Facts are always relevant when you are debating in good faith. People who find facts not supporting their beliefs argue dishonesty that doesn't mean facts are not relevant.
You're speaking as if this article gives us certainty that the 400,000 extra deaths this year, compared to last year, are due to COVID. The article makes no such claim. Maybe that's not what you meant, though, because clearly there are things like drug overdoses, suicides, domestic violence, etc., that can also explain a lot of it as well. Tens of thousands of people die of fentanyl overdoses each year, and the number was growing up to this point, so it's not farfetched to consider that the COVID restrictions have resulted in more people taking addictive drugs or killing themselves out of desperation.
I’ve worked in four emergency departments in three states this year. All of them have been overwhelmed by patients with covid, and not patients with overdoses, suicides, or domestic violence. Granted the incidence of those non-covid pathologies are likely higher this year, but they are no-way elevated at the scale of covid-19. I haven’t seen, or heard from any colleagues, hospitals brimming with suicides and overdoses to the point where they are filling an entire icu with those patients, or having so many domestic violence cases that they have to shut down operating rooms and convert them into icu beds.
Thank you for helping in all these emergency rooms, and I’m sorry that some people are downplaying the virus’s effects on mortality in the USA in 2020.
People floating potential alternate explanations is not a downplaying COVID. It's trying to better understand the issue through open-minded inquiry, and giving people like the OP an opportunity to help inform people by sharing their reasoning and personal experience.
Equating the consideration of different theories with the rejection of one particular theory will discourage the kind of free discourse that makes society more informed.
I've heard this argument many times over. While it's certainly plausible, I've yet to see real statistics supporting the claim that there's been a significant rise in suicides / drug overdoses during the pandemic.
After doing some research on 2020 suicide rates, the only legitimate source I found suggested there was a decrease in suicide rate towards the beginning of the pandemic due to a "honeymoon pulling together" phase and no peer-reviewed data thereafter.
Half this country didn't care about drug addicts before. Now all of a sudden people care about drug addicts. They don't care though when it comes to cutting social programs or health care reform.
People didn't care when Wal-Mart decimated mainstreet and Amazon killed who was left. Now people are all about small business.
Sick of the hypocrisy. It's sad we can't take care of our own people in this country.
The devil's advocate could point out how trivial it would be to fudge these numbers. "Government releases data showing government is benevolent. Trust government."
Better yet, he might point out how absurd it is that we need to wait this long to identify a potentially statistically significant increase in deaths... during one of the worst pandemics in recorded history.
>With this statistic, the explanation for the huge annual increase can only be COVID.
Do you really think that the lockdown and its effect (the bankruptcy, unemployment, reduced social activity, delayed treatment of other illness, etc) could not cause increase in death ?
Not sure why you're downvoted. Your question is valid. That said, I've yet to find solid evidence that supports a substantial rise in suicide rates. The only source I found suggested the opposite: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352
I didn't downvote, but it's probably because every time talk about covid related deaths comes up, there is someone that tries to downplay it, and almost always with the same line of reasoning.
Problem is it ignores all the actual reports of covid deaths, overwhelmed hospitals and lack of stats on significant increases (or at least significant enough to account for the extra deaths) from other causes. The implication is almost always something along the lines of Covid is just a flu, it's not that deadly and we shouldn't have taken the measures we have.
I see reports that hospital levels are fine, it's just that their dedicated covid areas are filling up. Or that nursing shortages are more to do with layoffs or hiring freezes by penny pinching executives. And reporting that covid deaths are vastly inflated from perverse incentives or political agendas or mandatory rules of which the nuance is lost in reporting.
Not saying any of this is true. Just saying I'm not exactly watching Alex Jones or Fox News and this is still the stuff I hear, and just because you hear a report about something doesn't mean it's the arbiter of truth and everyone else is wrong.
There are countries on the list here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ that had lockdowns but have no significant excess mortality, so it’s at least possible.
There were other factors that differed in 2020 compared to other years, like the effects of the lockdowns: mass-bankrupties [1], social isolation for the elderly [2], an increase in drug-overdoses, a decline in access to quality-of-life enhancing services, etc.
Isolation in general is extremely deadly. [3]
My guess is that the effects of COVID on the US's 2020 mortality rate were much greater than the effects of the lockdown, but that is just a guess, not a scientifically validated conclusion.
Some said that COVID deaths inflated due to federal subsidies to hospitals with COVID patients.
Some said that deaths would have occurred anyway due to the serious medical conditions - co-morbidities - that patients had.
With this statistic, the explanation for the huge annual increase can only be COVID.