Who [in America] Is Dying from COVID Now - Scientific American

[ThatRobGuy]

We were always at that place to say to competent adults "it's on you, dude...do what you want". Unlike some, I trust adults to make the own decisions for themselves and do not believe they need governmental oversight and management.

Really? Because I know adults who think they're okay to drive drunk, some who regularly eat fast food and weigh over 300lbs, some who over-indulge in drugs, etc...

When it comes to medical decisions in the US:
35 million people a year go to chiropractors
And this little gem:

A quarter of Americans view homeopathy as effective | YouGov

Over a quarter of Americans say that homeopathy is an effective treatment, and nearly half say the same about herbal medicine and acupuncture

today.yougov.com

If a quarter of Americans think homeopathy is an effective treatment, then at a minimum, a quarter of Americans have their "competence" called in question.

With regards to some of those "competent adults" during covid, there were a sizeable number who thought the virus was an all-around hoax and allowed that to dictate their behavior.


The key difference is, if a person believes allergies are a hoax, or believes allergies are real and tries to treat them with a homeopathic remedy, it doesn't impact anyone else. Contagious pandemics that have the propensity for exhausting hospital resources are a different beast.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Really? Because I know adults who think they're okay to drive drunk, some who regularly eat fast food and weigh over 300lbs, some who over-indulge in drugs, etc...

When it comes to medical decisions in the US:
35 million people a year go to chiropractors
And this little gem:

A quarter of Americans view homeopathy as effective | YouGov

Over a quarter of Americans say that homeopathy is an effective treatment, and nearly half say the same about herbal medicine and acupuncture

today.yougov.com

If a quarter of Americans think homeopathy is an effective treatment, then at a minimum, a quarter of Americans have their "competence" called in question.

With regards to some of those "competent adults" during covid, there were a sizeable number who thought the virus was an all-around hoax and allowed that to dictate their behavior.


The key difference is, if a person believes allergies are a hoax, or believes allergies are real and tries to treat them with a homeopathic remedy, it doesn't impact anyone else. Contagious pandemics that have the propensity for exhausting hospital resources are a different beast.

Yes, really. Sorry about the typo.
No other medical situation has ever been treated this way, with top-down pressure, and later mandates for EVERYONE (over 6 months old!!!!) to consume a brand new drug with ZERO long term data. The situations you mention are either criminal violations (driving drunk or drugging) or carry their own natural consequences, which NO ONE but the body owner controls (overeating).

We do not mandate overweight people to do anything, but we do share the medical and nutritional information when one will receive it. It does NOT violate the law to refuse to get a Flu shot, an actual comparison - or to be overweight, for that matter. Your body, your choice.

Chiropractors can do harm for sure, especially the old school "crack your back" kind. That isn't done anymore by anyone who knows better. The good ones can really help you, and do it quickly, not requiring you to come back for months on end. I experienced that myself at one point, years ago. He told me that I had no reason to come back. Two appointments (declined to charge me for the second, as the first resolved the issue). Problem resolved for well over a decade now.

The pandemic was addressed, with stay at home orders. We stayed at home, eased up "the curve", and then it was OUR decision how to proceed, and people proceeded to handle the advice given as they saw fit, in conjunction with their own doctors. Never at any time was it appropriate to treat all people exactly the same, when the only ones at serious risk were the elderly and those with co-morbidities, who complied, for the most part. Younger, healthier people were never at any serious risk at all, and there was no legitimate reason to pretend they were (but there was a monetary reason).

May the chickens come home to roost on that mismanaged mess.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

No, the problem was that at the start of the pandemic and at its peaks, covid patients were overwhelming the hospitals and morgues, to the point where non-covid patients and corpses were unable to get the care they needed. This is what made covid a public health emergency.

That's really not true on any wide scale; it was propaganda to perpetuate the narrative and keep Americans scared and at home. Very few places were overrun. Some - as in NY - were caused by stupid actions, such as the governor ordering positive adults to go back to nursing homes, killing tens of thousands (most of whom came back to the hospital on the way to death). Of course he claimed the nursing homes "misunderstood". The extra capacity on ships and the Javits Center were never really utilized.


"Hospitals converted operating rooms into intensive care units, and at least one replaced the seats in a large auditorium with beds. The state worked with the federal government to open field hospitals around New York City, including a large one at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.


But when New York hit its peak in early April, fewer than 19,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19. Some hospitals ran out of beds and were forced to transfer patients elsewhere. Other hospitals had to care for patients in rooms that had never been used for that purpose before. Supplies, medications and staff ran low. And, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, many New York hospitals were ill prepared and made a number of serious missteps.


All told, more than 30,000 New York state residents have died of COVID-19. It’s a toll worse than any scourge in recent memory and way worse than the flu, but, overall, the health care system didn’t run out of beds."

How America’s Hospitals Survived the First Wave of the Coronavirus

ProPublica deputy managing editor Charles Ornstein wanted to know why experts were wrong when they said U.S. hospitals would be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients. Here’s what he learned, including what hospitals can do before the next wave.

www.propublica.org

 

[ThatRobGuy]

No other medical situation has ever been treated this way, with top-down pressure, and later mandates for EVERYONE (over 6 months old!!!!) to consume a brand new drug with ZERO long term data. The situations you mention are either criminal violations (driving drunk or drugging) or carry their own natural consequences, which NO ONE but the body owner controls (overeating).

Although, in all fairness, can you think of another medical situation (that was contagious), that caused 2.2 million hospitalizations in the course of a year?

Even in an exceptionally bad flu season (like the one of 2017-2018)
It was 800k hospitalizations.
(most flu seasons are around 150k hospitalizations)

We do not mandate overweight people to do anything, but we do share the medical and nutritional information when one will receive it. It does NOT violate the law to refuse to get a Flu shot, an actual comparison - or to be overweight, for that matter. Your body, your choice.

Right, because obesity isn't contagious (nor are the effects of obesity). If an elderly person or immunocompromised person gets breathed on by a 400 pound diabetic, they're not going to catch heart disease or diabetes from them.

Chiropractors can do harm for sure, especially the old school "crack your back" kind. That isn't done anymore by anyone who knows better. The good ones can really help you, and do it quickly, not requiring you to come back for months on end. I experienced that myself at one point, years ago. He told me that I had no reason to come back. Two appointments (declined to charge me for the second, as the first resolved the issue). Problem resolved for well over a decade now.

Any problems Chiropractors have solved or can solve, was the result of inadvertent luck. If you look at the original premise of Chiropractic (and what they still teach in Chiropractic schools), it was that "subluxations" are the cause of all human disease, and removal of the "subluxation" is the key to allowing the body to heal itself from everything.

They just got lucky when their panacea-approach happened to work for one or two things like mild to moderate back pain. For every one person who gets some pain relief, there's another person like my dad who declined actual treatment with a real doctor (when his cancer was in an earlier and much more treatable stage), because his Chiropractor told him that adjustments would stimulate his natural immune system and "unlock the body's own healing power" Hint: It didn't work and he paid for that decision with his life in April 2021.

So I think my original assertion still stands, which is that the medical competency

The pandemic was addressed, with stay at home orders. We stayed at home, eased up "the curve", and then it was OUR decision how to proceed, and people proceeded to handle the advice given as they saw fit, in conjunction with their own doctors. Never at any time was it appropriate to treat all people exactly the same, when the only ones at serious risk were the elderly and those with co-morbidities, who complied, for the most part. Younger, healthier people were never at any serious risk at all, and there was no legitimate reason to pretend they were (but there was a monetary reason).

This is one part where we'll have a certain level of agreement.

The "15 days to flatten the curve" thing was poor messaging on the part of health officials and they never should've even pitched that kind of timeline without knowing what they were up against.

And I was an advocate for the Sweden model back in this was all first popping up, which is protect the elderly and immunocompromised and people with comorbidities, and let it run its course through the young healthy people.

However, the caveat to that is that most people lacked the self-awareness to know if they were actually healthy enough to take on the original strain of covid and be alright (evidenced by the fact that our hospitalization rates dwarfed that of other countries)

We know that weight issues were a major link to poor outcomes with the original strain of covid and delta. 78% of the people hospitalized with it were people with weight issues. Our obesity rates are nearly double that of Sweden, so Sweden giving citizens the option to "throw caution to the wind and take their chances" isn't going to have the same impact even if the percentage of self-delusion in the populations were equal.

As where we, on the other hand, have a big "denial" problem. We have people who are 275lbs (and in terrible shape) who would rather say "Well, The Rock is 275lbs and that's why BMI doesn't matter!" rather than acknowledge that they have a self control problem and need to lose weight.


Even if we had taken the "let's do it like Sweden" approach, there would be a lot of "Sweden advocates" in the US who would've been less than thrilled about the fact that they would've still been in the group that was told to stay home and keep their distance.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Although, in all fairness, can you think of another medical situation (that was contagious), that caused 2.2 million hospitalizations in the course of a year?

Even in an exceptionally bad flu season (like the one of 2017-2018)
It was 800k hospitalizations.
(most flu seasons are around 150k hospitalizations)

Right, because obesity isn't contagious (nor are the effects of obesity). If an elderly person or immunocompromised person gets breathed on by a 400 pound diabetic, they're not going to catch heart disease or diabetes from them.

Any problems Chiropractors have solved or can solve, was the result of inadvertent luck. If you look at the original premise of Chiropractic (and what they still teach in Chiropractic schools), it was that "subluxations" are the cause of all human disease, and removal of the "subluxation" is the key to allowing the body to heal itself from everything.

They just got lucky when their panacea-approach happened to work for one or two things like mild to moderate back pain. For every one person who gets some pain relief, there's another person like my dad who declined actual treatment with a real doctor (when his cancer was in an earlier and much more treatable stage), because his Chiropractor told him that adjustments would stimulate his natural immune system and "unlock the body's own healing power" Hint: It didn't work and he paid for that decision with his life in April 2021.

So I think my original assertion still stands, which is that the medical competency

This is one part where we'll have a certain level of agreement.

The "15 days to flatten the curve" thing was poor messaging on the part of health officials and they never should've even pitched that kind of timeline without knowing what they were up against.

And I was an advocate for the Sweden model back in this was all first popping up, which is protect the elderly and immunocompromised and people with comorbidities, and let it run its course through the young healthy people.

However, the caveat to that is that most people lacked the self-awareness to know if they were actually healthy enough to take on the original strain of covid and be alright (evidenced by the fact that our hospitalization rates dwarfed that of other countries)

We know that weight issues were a major link to poor outcomes with the original strain of covid and delta. 78% of the people hospitalized with it were people with weight issues. Our obesity rates are nearly double that of Sweden, so Sweden giving citizens the option to "throw caution to the wind and take their chances" isn't going to have the same impact even if the percentage of self-delusion in the populations were equal.

As where we, on the other hand, have a big "denial" problem. We have people who are 275lbs (and in terrible shape) who would rather say "Well, The Rock is 275lbs and that's why BMI doesn't matter!" rather than acknowledge that they have a self control problem and need to lose weight.


Even if we had taken the "let's do it like Sweden" approach, there would be a lot of "Sweden advocates" in the US who would've been less than thrilled about the fact that they would've still been in the group that was told to stay home and keep their distance.

Not finding your figures for flu in 2018-19, not that it is all that relevant. Call me skeptical about how the counting - whether for flu or for Covid was done: "CNN medical analyst Leana Wen told CNN on Tuesday that the U.S. has been “overcounting” the deaths and hospitalizations of patients due to COVID-19 and stressed the importance of “transparent reporting” on the actual numbers." Yeah, tell me about it. Think I said that a couple years ago.

We can agree on the bad messaging and the "protect the elderly and those with co-morbidities" model. It's rational. It is what has always been done. It is what people naturally do on their own. You STILL see elderly and those with co-morbidities wearing masks; they feel it protects them. More power to them. It absolutely should have run its course through everyone else, which was always going to happen anyway. It's happening now to those who tried to escape exposure, though I suspect not many did. Some just aren't vulnerable, so they think they didn't have it.

Right now, China is experiencing what it would have experienced 3 years ago, except for its extreme lockdowns.

No doubt overweight carries more risks, in many ways. I never said otherwise.

 

[The Barbarian]

But something that does concern me is that amid the political bickering and other societal arguments going on, conversations about proper oversight of labs and wet markets have fallen by the wayside. ...and if the focus on prevention of new viruses emerging isn't what it should be, we could be doomed to repeat that whole thing again some day. And the next one could be worse.

Yes, but there's some good news. Biden has restored the Pandemic Response Team that Obama established (and Trump abolished just in time for the pandemic).

FACT SHEET: White House Launches Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy | The White House

Major General (ret) Paul Friedrichs Will Serve as the Inaugural Director The Biden-Harris Administration has made historic progress on our nation’s

www.whitehouse.gov

 

[The Barbarian]

Not finding your figures for flu in 2018-19, not that it is all that relevant. Call me skeptical about how the counting - whether for flu or for Covid was done: "CNN medical analyst Leana Wen told CNN on Tuesday that the U.S. has been “overcounting” the deaths and hospitalizations of patients due to COVID-19 and stressed the importance of “transparent reporting” on the actual numbers." Yeah, tell me about it. Think I said that a couple years ago.

You got it backwards...

Uncovering COVID-19’s Hidden Deaths in the United States As the nation’s pandemic death toll approaches one million, a BU public health researcher joins with reporters to investigate why some counties are underreporting deaths

Uncovering COVID-19’s Hidden Deaths in the US

As the nation’s pandemic death toll approaches one million, a public health researcher joins with reporters to investigate why some counties are underreporting deaths

www.bu.edu

One reason this overgeneralization is flawed is because hospital deaths are distinct from out-of-hospital deaths. In out-of-hospital settings, COVID-19 testing is often lacking and death investigators have less training and less information about the deceased. In fact, our research suggests that COVID-19 deaths are largely undercounted in out-of-hospital settings.

Investigative reporting among coroners in rural areas has also revealed significant variability in out-of-hospital cause of death assignment. Some coroners have even gone on record to state that they do not include COVID-19 on death records if it contradicts their own political beliefs or if families wish for it to be omitted.

COVID-19 deaths in the US continue to be undercounted, research shows, despite claims of 'overcounts'

Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, a recurring topic of debate has been whether official COVID-19 death statistics in the U.S. accurately capture the fatalities associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

medicalxpress.com

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Yes, but there's some good news. Biden has restored the Pandemic Response Team that Obama established (and Trump abolished just in time for the pandemic).

FACT SHEET: White House Launches Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy | The White House

Major General (ret) Paul Friedrichs Will Serve as the Inaugural Director The Biden-Harris Administration has made historic progress on our nation’s

www.whitehouse.gov

While having such a team is better than not having one, I do have doubts about the efficacy of such a team.

It's one thing to armchair quarterback it with what we know now, but when the virus was mutating as quickly as it did, and there were 4-5 months of "we got some new info, so forget what we thought we knew a month ago", that's a moving target that's going to be tough to hit.

And, in particular (with regards to what I was mentioning before, the labs and wet markets), I don't necessarily have a huge level of confidence in their ability put "fears about political correctness aside" in favor of looking at it objectively. If you recall, the reason why so many steered clear from even talking about those two facets was out of fear that they would be viewed as "being bigoted against Chinese people", or afraid that if they did talk about it, it may embolden potential racists in the US who may have already been looking for a reason to dislike Asian Americans.

...and that's not a solid approach to public health.

And I'll have to spend some time reading though the details of this re-launch, because I'm interested to see if they have an provisions or gameplan for managing public sentiments and attitudes. (IE: 30% of the people first thinking it was a hoax, then refusing the free vaccine that was offered, then clinging to "alternative therapies")

I'd be interested to hear what their plan is for how they're going to manage that. Because you can set up funding channels for research, build out contact tracing & reporting mechanisms, construct robust information silos staffed with the top practitioners of every related field...and it'll be an uphill battle that won't play out in real life like one may think it would on paper

Response Team: "We've diverted $3 Billion of funding to two different universities to develop vaccines, build a state of the art reporting system, hired the best top scientists from major medical institutions to make recommendations, and set up a framework for disseminating this information through both private and public media partners"

Jim: "I don't wanna...my chiropractor said..."

 

[The Barbarian]

While having such a team is better than not having one, I do have doubts about the efficacy of such a team.

They worked in other nations that used the policies Obama planned for:

Front Public Health
2021; 9: 708496

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparison of Strategies in Six Countries​

Conclusions: China, Korea, and Singapore, which implemented strict containment measures, had significant outbreak control. Meanwhile, the successful practices in China, Singapore, and South Korea show that the containment strategies were practices that work especially at the individual level identifying and managing the infected patients and their close contacts. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, which implemented the mitigation policies, the effect of epidemic prevention and control was not significant that the epidemic continued or even increased epidemic relatively quickly.

A half-hearted effort seems to not do very much. This is why we messed up so badly.

 

[The Barbarian]

While having such a team is better than not having one, I do have doubts about the efficacy of such a team.

They worked in some nations. We should find out what they did.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

They worked in other nations that used the policies Obama planned for:

Front Public Health
2021; 9: 708496

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparison of Strategies in Six Countries​

Conclusions: China, Korea, and Singapore, which implemented strict containment measures, had significant outbreak control. Meanwhile, the successful practices in China, Singapore, and South Korea show that the containment strategies were practices that work especially at the individual level identifying and managing the infected patients and their close contacts. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, which implemented the mitigation policies, the effect of epidemic prevention and control was not significant that the epidemic continued or even increased epidemic relatively quickly.

A half-hearted effort seems to not do very much. This is why we messed up so badly.

But that doesn't account for the aspect I mentioned, which is public resistance and lack of compliance.

It goes without saying that places like China and Singapore also have much more authoritarian governments to enforce certain things that can't be enforced here.

Unless Obama's pandemic playbook also included "armed troops marching the streets threatening you" (like in China) and/or "$7,000 file, caning, and 6 months jail time" (like in Singapore), it still wouldn't address the non-compliance factor I was talking about.

 

[The Barbarian]

But that doesn't account for the aspect I mentioned, which is public resistance and lack of compliance.

It goes without saying that places like China and Singapore also have much more authoritarian governments to enforce certain things that can't be enforced here.

Unless Obama's pandemic playbook also included "armed troops marching the streets threatening you" (like in China) and/or "$7,000 file, caning, and 6 months jail time" (like in Singapore), it still wouldn't address the non-compliance factor I was talking about.

We should be looking at nations more like ours, such as New Zealand or S. Korea:

New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it?​

New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it? | Michael Baker and Nick Wilson

This pandemic and future pandemic threats will remain challenging – New Zealand needs to build on its achievements

www.theguardian.com

South Korea is one country which has responded well to the Coronavirus pandemic. How did they do so? In-country experts provide key insights.

Emerging COVID-19 success story: South Korea learned the lessons of MERS

South Korea is one country which has responded well to the Coronavirus pandemic. How did they do so? In-country experts provide key insights.

ourworldindata.org

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

They worked in some nations. We should find out what they did.

What help in other countries, is that they used mask , stayed contained and social distance. Because they obeyed what officials told them to do. In America, we had bad leadership in the White House, media and governor's that were giving people bad advice. And telling people not to were mask, social distance. We had people, that claimed to be Christians, protesting for their rights not to wear masks. Even on this forum, some were people claiming to act in an irresponsible manner. I watched the news in other countries and realized how bad COVID-19 was. People were acting worse than children. Because the left were taking more serious. America will never be responsible in a pandemic. I was in and out hospitals, chemo, multiple doctors appointments and dialysis, because of my dad. They told it very serious and didn't follow the lies, that were

 

[DaisyDay]

They worked in other nations that used the policies Obama planned for:

Front Public Health
2021; 9: 708496

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparison of Strategies in Six Countries​

Conclusions: China, Korea, and Singapore, which implemented strict containment measures, had significant outbreak control. Meanwhile, the successful practices in China, Singapore, and South Korea show that the containment strategies were practices that work especially at the individual level identifying and managing the infected patients and their close contacts. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, which implemented the mitigation policies, the effect of epidemic prevention and control was not significant that the epidemic continued or even increased epidemic relatively quickly.

A half-hearted effort seems to not do very much. This is why we messed up so badly.

Contact tracing/quarantine is effective, but just imagine the panic and paranoia if tracking were to be implemented here.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

We should be looking at nations more like ours, such as New Zealand or S. Korea:

New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it?​

New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it? | Michael Baker and Nick Wilson

This pandemic and future pandemic threats will remain challenging – New Zealand needs to build on its achievements

www.theguardian.com

South Korea is one country which has responded well to the Coronavirus pandemic. How did they do so? In-country experts provide key insights.

Emerging COVID-19 success story: South Korea learned the lessons of MERS

South Korea is one country which has responded well to the Coronavirus pandemic. How did they do so? In-country experts provide key insights.

ourworldindata.org

There's a couple different aspects that factor in with regards to New Zealand's success in virus mitigation that are luxuries we don't have here -- and that many other countries don't have for that matter. (even if 100% of US citizens were as compliant as New Zealanders were)

The big one is the size and number of the vectors of transmission in terms of city-to-city.

Point of reference, I live in Ohio...considered a "rural" "flyover state" by US standards. We have Cleveland/Akron/Canton that are all daily commuter cities for people with essential jobs, and they're all about 35 mins away from each other on the i-77 corridor with lots of people making the daily commute. To put that in perspective, those 3 cities would rank as the #2, #4, and #5 largest cities in New Zealand...and the respective cities who hold those ranks in New Zealand are 4-8 hours apart.

Another one is the aspect of their climate in most places being more conducive for outdoor activities vs. indoor (which we know outdoor is much safer with regards to covid)

Also, Island nations have a much easier time doing border control and tracing who's coming in and who's leaving for tracing purposes.


In the case of South Korea, mask-wearing compliance wasn't really a major factor for them as it was already a common practice there (it's even considered a fashionable form of "street wear culture" among the youth there and has been for a while). They also benefitted greatly from some of the systems they had in place post-MERS since they had a rough go of that one. They also had a pretty robust hospital system (something that can't be built overnight). I remember reading somewhere (but I could be mistaken) that in terms of beds per 1,000 people, they rank the highest and something like 2-3 times the average for OECD countries.

That comes into play with regards to isolation abilities. Obviously the goal is to not get to the point where a lot of people need hospitalization. However, if you have triple the beds per capita, you're going to have the advantage of not having to play the "triage game". The end result of the triage pattern that other countries were forced to use means that if someone has a moderate case, and they're limited on bed space, they would send the person home (to potentially to spread it to other people)


There are other factors that make a country-to-country comparison difficult as well. For instance, if you country's largest sector is farming (people standing out in a field, already social distanced), that could be advantageous, if your countries largest sector is tech workers, that's great, because all of those people can work remotely. If the largest sector is making widgets in a widget factory, that may be a little tougher.


None of this is to say that we couldn't have done a lot of things better, obviously we could have. But it's incorrect to assume that the measures of NZ and SK would've worked equally well (in proportion) if other countries had done them...that may be tad optimistic given that there are a plethora of variables not being accounted for.

 

[The Barbarian]

None of this is to say that we couldn't have done a lot of things better, obviously we could have. But it's incorrect to assume that the measures of NZ and SK would've worked equally well (in proportion) if other countries had done them...that may be tad optimistic given that there are a plethora of variables not being accounted for.

Clearly, they would have worked better than the mess we had coming out of Washington, mostly denial and touting quack remedies. Nothing ever scales up perfectly, but we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, if there had been a competent response.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Clearly, they would have worked better than the mess we had coming out of Washington, mostly denial and touting quack remedies. Nothing ever scales up perfectly, but we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, if there had been a competent response.

And what if there was 30-40% of the population that refused to comply with any and all measures of the competent response?

"Public willingness to go along with the plan" is still the foundation of any response plan.

Do you think any of the conspiracy theorists and contrarians would've been willing to submit to contact tracing and forced isolation?

And that last comment isn't meant to be a partisan jab at republicans. While that camp did have a higher proportion of the conspiracy types surrounding covid, compliance was a pretty big issue across the board. They were regularly busting up big house parties in LA and Chicago three weeks into the stay-at-home orders.

Without compliance, much of any well-formed plan falls apart pretty quickly.

...and all of that still doesn't address the issue of countervailing interests. While it was dismissed as "cruel" to even bring up in the thick of covid, "economics/education vs. years of life lost" still had a place in the conversation for any policymaker worth their salt. Those are the kinds of trade-offs that society and policymakers consider all of the time, yet the national conversation drifted toward rhetoric along the lines of "even one covid death is too many, if it saves one life, it's worth it" (famously said by Andrew Cuomo "Andrew Cuomo said, “And if everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy.”")

 

[The Barbarian]

And what if there was 30-40% of the population that refused to comply with any and all measures of the competent response?

Then hundreds of thousands of American would die for no reason but stupidity. They did.

Without compliance, much of any well-formed plan falls apart pretty quickly.

Which is, to a large degree, why we blew it.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Then hundreds of thousands of American would die for no reason but stupidity. They did.

Which is, to a large degree, why we blew it.

So doesn't that make a case for the sentiment I expressed earlier, which is that Biden reinstating that Pandemic playbook isn't necessarily the game changer that some outlets purported it to be? (I noted that having such a committee is better than not having one, but I'm skeptical as to how much impact it would have)

There would've been some benefits like restocking the national supply of PPE and Ventilators (and perhaps adding some beds per 100k in certain areas), but I don't know if that would've impacted the trajectory in any significant way.

The areas where the "playbook" really shined are the areas that ended up being the least of our problems.


It seems like more effective use of funds would be focused on the upstream aspects (targeting the emergence) by international experts putting pressure on China to crackdown on the sources of where these viruses come from in the first place. That way, we're not relying on cooperation from your average Tom, Bob, and Harry in Anytown, USA to gleefully get on-board with lockdown policies and vaccine uptake.


I think the big one that nobody predicted, is that so many Americans (who absolutely love pharmaceutical solutions in almost every other realm - and that data supports that - even the new ones) would've been so resistant to this one new pharmaceutical product.

Nobody (not in the medical community, not politicians, not pundits) could've predicted that a nation full of people who, for years, will readily "ask your doctor if <new blood pressure drug> is right for you!" (after seeing a 30-second commercial of people singing around a campfire at a beach party) rather than swap their Pizza for a salad once or twice a week, would've be so resistant to this one.


If they lion's share of their revised playbook doesn't make "Public confidence" the #1 focal point, I fear they may be missing the mark.

 

[The Barbarian]

It seems like more effective use of funds would be focused on the upstream aspects (targeting the emergence) by international experts putting pressure on China to crackdown on the sources of where these viruses come from in the first place. That way, we're not relying on cooperation from your average Tom, Bob, and Harry in Anytown, USA to gleefully get on-board with lockdown policies and vaccine uptake.

The world is changing. More mobility, warmer climate, and more people. So expect more of these. It's just the way things are, now.

It was predictable. In 1995:

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance Paperback – Unabridged, October 1, 1995 ​