US Covid deaths approach 500,000

I thought it had already passed 500,000 several days ago, according to worldometer.

Official counts lag the Worldometer counts by a few days.

I saw today that if the Vietnam War memorial was intended for COVID-19 victims, the wall would have to be 87 feet tall to fit all the names.

Trogdor the Burninator said:

The US was in WW1 for just over 1 year, WW2 for over 3 years and Vietnam for more than 10 years. Yet in a single year, COVID has killed more Americans than all those wars combined.

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Not intended to eclipse the OP, but Tuberculosis kills an average of 4,000 a day in the world.

AIDS another 3,500...each day.
Abortion ( infanticide ) = 90,000...today.
Communicable disease deaths - 27,000...today.
Cancer = 17,000 today.
Seasonal influenza deaths = 1,032 today.
Traffic fatalities = 2,900 today.

Also, more people died in the United States during the H1N1 "Spanish Flu" outbreak of 1918-1919 than have so far died from Covid-19...
600,000 +

1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) | Pandemic Influenza (Flu) | CDC

In other words, more people, just from America, died during 1918-19 than in all the wars that the United States, as a nation, has ever waged or been involved in.
Also, it may very well be that far more people died of H1N1 in 1918-19 than will ever die, in the world, of Covid-19...

500 million +

Given that SARS-Coronavirus 2 ( # 8 in the coronavirus family ) has a roughly .65% mortality rate, perhaps 6.5 people per 1,000 who are exposed to it, will die of it.

Navair2 said:

Not to eclipse the OP, but Tuberculosis kills an average of 4,000 a day in the world.

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If we take the pandemic to be 1 year old and we use Worldometers numbers, Covid has been taking 6,800 deaths per day worldwide. Even if one insists on bumping the pandemic to 400 days, you're still at 6.2K.

Still, 500,000 is a lot of people when one considers how big a city, even one as big as like New York, is.

That's why I'm glad that the Lord promises to deliver me...
Even from plagues ( Psalms 91:10 ).

Trogdor the Burninator said:

The US was in WW1 for just over 1 year, WW2 for over 3 years and Vietnam for more than 10 years. Yet in a single year, COVID has killed more Americans than all those wars combined.

That America's response was catastrophically mishandled is now a matter of record. We can only hope that a combination of a change in government and the availability of a vaccine will help contain this at last.

A Ripple Effect of Loss: U.S. Covid Deaths Approach 500,000

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It was/is a horrible thing, but I don't think it can be solely attributed to mismanagement.

The US was going to have a "tough time of it" regardless of how good or bad the leadership was at the time.

Could it have been better? Absolutely. It doesn't help having an administration that's undermining concepts like social distancing and masking.

But with that said, if anyone thinks that "had we just done what New Zealand did, we'd have their same low per capita numbers" or "If it weren't for those Trump supporters wanting to get a haircut...", they're quite mistaken.

The US, being a major player in the global/economic supply chain, and having far more large cities in close proximity to each other, was going to have it worse than certain other nations (in a pandemic scenario) that either A) have geographical advantages, or B) have a pre-existing culture that includes one of the key mitigation strategies.

Or, in other words, we could've had the best, most science-influenced, leader on the planet, who made all the best decisions they could based on the medical information at the time, and we still would've had a tough go of it in terms of Covid 19.

People forget that numbers on everything are bound to go up because population continues to go up. If you go by percentages the 675,000 deaths in 1918 with a 103 million population would equate to about 2.16 million deaths today and we are not even at 1/4 of that with Covid and likely may not even hit 1/2 of that if the vaccines start slowing the spread a little.

Navair2 said:

Not intended to eclipse the OP, but Tuberculosis kills an average of 4,000 a day in the world.

AIDS another 3,500...each day.
Abortion ( infanticide ) = 90,000...today.
Communicable disease deaths - 27,000...today.
Cancer = 17,000 today.
Seasonal influenza deaths = 1,032 today.
Traffic fatalities = 2,900 today.

Also, more people died in the United States during the H1N1 "Spanish Flu" outbreak of 1918-1919 than have so far died from Covid-19...
600,000 +

1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) | Pandemic Influenza (Flu) | CDC

In other words, more people, just from America, died during 1918-19 than in all the wars that the United States, as a nation, has ever waged or been involved in.
Also, it may very well be that far more people died of H1N1 in 1918-19 than will ever die, in the world, of Covid-19...

500 million +

Given that SARS-Coronavirus 2 ( # 8 in the coronavirus family ) has a roughly .065% mortality rate, perhaps only 6.5 people per 1,000 who are exposed to it, will die of it.

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So what?

Sophrosyne said:

People forget that numbers on everything are bound to go up because population continues to go up. If you go by percentages the 675,000 deaths in 1918 with a 103 million population would equate to about 2.16 million deaths today and we are not even at 1/4 of that with Covid and likely may not even hit 1/2 of that if the vaccines start slowing the spread a little.

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Interesting. I guess it's not a tragedy then. Best tell my friend to stop grieving their gramma

rambot said:

Interesting. I guess it's not a tragedy then. Best tell my friend to stop grieving their gramma

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If you also put it in perspective the other direction the percentage amount of deaths compared to 1918 would make the 500,000 deaths today 156,000 equivelsnt deaths back then if they did as well so apparently we are doing considerably better than they did in 1918 for some reason.

Navair2 said:

Given that SARS-Coronavirus 2 ( # 8 in the coronavirus family ) has a roughly .065% mortality rate, perhaps only 6.5 people per 1,000 who are exposed to it, will die of it.

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lol wut?

6.5/1000 is 0.65%, not 0.065%

Living in the state of NJ has a 0.25% covid mortality rate - not being exposed in NJ, just living there.

methinks your rates are a bit low

Trogdor the Burninator said:

The US was in WW1 for just over 1 year, WW2 for over 3 years and Vietnam for more than 10 years. Yet in a single year, COVID has killed more Americans than all those wars combined.

That America's response was catastrophically mishandled is now a matter of record. We can only hope that a combination of a change in government and the availability of a vaccine will help contain this at last.

A Ripple Effect of Loss: U.S. Covid Deaths Approach 500,000

Click to expand...

Sadly more people will die. Because some people are brainwashed against COVID-19 being a problem. Thank too lies from the right. And they're encouraging people disobey COVID-19 commonsense. Wear mask and social distance. And they refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccination.

Trogdor the Burninator said:

Not solely, no, but criminal mis-management certainly didn't help.


I'm not sure I agree. I'm not saying it would have been perfect, but there hasn't really been a country (apart from perhaps Taiwan) that has handled covid near perfectly.

The problem was that the US took ages to act, and when it did it constantly sent mixed signals and implemented half-hearted measures. And it was lead by someone who simply didn't take covid seriously and who's supporters continued to laugh it off or create ridiculous conspiracy theories about it.

By April last year everyone, and I mean everyone, knew exactly how to control covid - sanitise, enforce social distancing, no large groups of people, masks in public places, restrict movement of people and lockdown when needed in areas where breakouts occur.

Other countries, those that did well in controlling covid, implemented most or all of those measures quickly, the US did not.

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I would say that many countries did a great job.

Australia and New Zealand did pretty well in terms of numbers.

My point of objection would be with people who suggest that if we would've done the exact same things, at the exact same time, as the two aforementioned countries, we would've had similar per capita numbers compared to those countries.

Certain countries have some built-in geographical advantages that make them much better suited in pandemic scenarios.

I'd go as far as saying that New Zealand would perform better under bad leadership than the US would under good leadership in a pandemic scenario.

Obviously, the margin was very wide in this particular instance, because we happened to have bad leadership and NZ took it seriously.

And then as I've touched on before, many southeast Asian countries already had mask culture and rigorous hygiene culture in place prior to the pandemic, so there really wasn't a "cultural curve" so to speak, they were already doing the thing that was considered to be one of the chief mitigation strategies.

I've likened it to a scenario where if we had a new pandemic show up next month, and one of the most effective mitigation strategies was abstaining from alcohol consumption, I'd expect Middle Eastern nations that already have longstanding alcohol prohibition in place to perform a lot better than countries where drinking is commonplace, and a new forced prohibition would be something that people would resist or not comply with.

rambot said:

So what?

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So people die everyday from things that are either controllable, or can be avoided.
Covid-19 isn't the only thing killing people, but right now it's the only illness that people are talking about.

All I've heard for the past year is Covid this and Covid that...

Everyone's worried about SARS COV2, but people are still dying everyday.
Mostly from things that they already have vaccines for, or they already have other treatments for.
Or, in the case of many, things that are completely avoidable;
Like smoking, alcoholism, AIDS, STD's and many others.

So my question is,
Where is the concern for all of the rest?

To put it bluntly, I never see anyone being all that concerned over the 1 million or so deaths that happen every. single. year. due to AIDS, and that's been around since I was in high school...37 years and counting.

rambot said:

Interesting. I guess it's not a tragedy then. Best tell my friend to stop grieving their gramma

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It is a tragedy...
But she would have died from something anyway.
My point is, we're all going to die.

But we as Christians have this hope:

" and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." ( Hebrews 9:27-28 )

When does the right start being pro-life again?

iluvatar5150 said:

When does the right start being pro-life again?

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That's for before someone is born. After you are born, you could die of anything at any time, so why not co-vid?

iluvatar5150 said:

lol wut?

6.5/1000 is 0.65%, not 0.065%

Living in the state of NJ has a 0.25% covid mortality rate - not being exposed in NJ, just living there.

methinks your rates are a bit low

Click to expand...

Apologies, my decimal point was off.

Coronavirus Death Rate (COVID-19) - Worldometer

The death rate can be crude death rate, case fatality rate, or estimated exposure-to-infection and death rate.
It's been stated by some, that as many as 3 times the number of reported people have actually had it and were asymptomatic...that means that 3 times as many people have actually been exposed to it and lived.

For example:
In New Jersey, the total positive number of cases has been 769,109 with 22,874 deaths ( supposedly ). That's a case fatality rate of 2.97%, so 97% of all the people who have tested positive have survived it, and 3 people out of every 100 ( 30 people out of every 1,000 ) who have tested positive for it have died.

Take that same number of deaths and factor in how many people actually live in New Jersey = 8,882,190 against 22,874 deaths...that's .00257, or .257% crude death rate, so 2.5 out of every 1,000 people in New Jersey have died of it.

Now take 789,109 x 3 = 2,367,327 estimated cases and divide by the actual number of deaths = .00966, or .9% estimated death rate...or 9.66 deaths per every 1,000 estimated ( both tested and non-tested ) cases, or a 99.1% survival rate.

That will vary state to state...

But my point is, the average death rate based on estimates was revised downwards last October, when the US CDC actually began realistic estimating based on the number of people they believed were asymptomatic and were never tested.