Effect of Covid on the Crude Death Rate

[TommyGunn]

The lockdowns to prevent overcrowding of hospitals was reasonable. As you note, when the hospitals were overwhelmed things got bad fast.

Lockdowns to prevent spread in general are an expensive way to fail at the impossible.

Reasonable .... yes in theory .... but apparently hospitals in a great many areas never maxed out capacity.   Was the Mercy Ship Trump moved to NYC  even used?

[dogmush]

Reasonable .... yes in theory .... but apparently hospitals in a great many areas never maxed out capacity.   Was the Mercy Ship Trump moved to NYC  even used?

......because lockdowns work well to flatten the curve and prevent hospitals going over capacity.

[freakazoid]

To know if it was over-hyped and fear mongered we'd need to know how many people would have gotten the virus and died if we hadn't hyped it and gotten people scared.

So please, provide us a reasonable model of both death rate and infection rate/spread in a modern, interconnected country with easy travel that did not hype this virus.  Please.  Really, because we don't have any models that are decently reliable for that.

Death rates were higher in countries that neared or surpassed their hospital capacity.  Spread was higher in countries that were later to or didn't lock down.

It is reasonable to assume that more people would have died had the US just done nothing.  There were also real economic and peoples life costs to how we handled (and are handling) the COVID outbreak.  I'm actually of the opinion that we didn't handle it very well at all, so in theory we could be in agreement.  I also believe that some of the major talking heads went beyond the pale in exaggerations ignoring evidence that didn't align with their political views.  So we could agree there as well.  But just as many people have ignored evidence to be more fearful than warranted I've seen at least an equal number ignore evidence and first hand accounts so they could continue to believe that COVID-19 is a moderate severe flu, which it's clearly not.

You have, several time in this thread, made a sweeping assertion with, at best, no evidence to support it, and sometime in the face of the evidence provided.  If you'll excuse my bluntness that's a remarkable ignorant argument from someone that normally posts cogent, well thought out posts.

No one will ever be able to prove the negative (what would have happened in the US if nothing was done), and it's an observable fact that the virus and our response to it has been politicized by our chattering class, but to go from there to "insignificant event" without some kind of decent evidence is a bridge to far.

How about Japan?
How about the Disney Cruise, or the Theodore Roosevelt?

"Death rates were higher in countries that neared or surpassed their hospital capacity. "
Which countries and why did this happen?

[Ron]

Apropos article I read this morning.

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/08/22/learning_our_lessons_from_asymptomatic_covid-19.html

[Ben]

......because lockdowns work well to flatten the curve and prevent hospitals going over capacity.

On the devil's advocate side, how much of that staying under capacity was people, out of fear, not going to the hospital for either COVID symptoms or other health issues?

We keep hearing about it, but I haven't seen (and am unsure you measure) numbers on how many people stayed away from the doctor out of fear of catching the virus, thus making whatever condition they had worse, or maybe even dying. Certainly if I were an elderly person, given all the MSM coverage on old people dying if they get anywhere near the virus, I would be afraid to go to the doctor for anything.

[dogmush]

Reasonable .... yes in theory .... but apparently hospitals in a great many areas never maxed out capacity.   Was the Mercy Ship Trump moved to NYC  even used?

As another data point, I mentioned this comment to my (nurse) friend that went up to NYC to help out, and when she stopped laughing she let me know that they absolutely did max out hospital capacity in NYC.  Not beds, but they ran out of trained folks to care for ICU patients and had to significantly lower the standard of care.  Things like instead of 1 or 2 trained Critical Care nurses per vented ICU patient, there would be one Critical care nurse for every 5 or 6 patients and med/surg nurses falling in to try and fill the gaps, as well as accelerated/abbreviated Critical Care training to try and get folks that didn't have the skills to help up to speed.  This happened with NP's as well, apparently.  They had enough beds for the patients with the added COVID wards, but not enough trained staff to take care of them.  This is probably why the Mercy seemed under utilized, as it didn't bring what was needed to the city.

Something to think about when yo read "XX ICU Beds free".  It doesn't really help if there's no one to administer care.


So I learned something new today.

[RocketMan]

The Mercy was sent to NYC to take in non-COVID patients.  They treated less than 200 people if I remember correctly.  I suspect this was due to government officials telling people to stay home if they had problems unrelated to COVID.  That instruction went out in many cities across the country, not just NYC.

[zxcvbob]

Let us also keep in mind that the mortality rate of everyone is 100.00%. Everyone dies (Except Jesus Christ and I'm not sure about Moses ...)

There are a couple of other exceptional cases (maybe they died, maybe they didn't)  Enoch and Elijah. :)   I think the end of Deuteronomy says Moses died and God personally buried him.  

[freakazoid]

As another data point, I mentioned this comment to my (nurse) friend that went up to NYC to help out, and when she stopped laughing she let me know that they absolutely did max out hospital capacity in NYC.  Not beds, but they ran out of trained folks to care for ICU patients and had to significantly lower the standard of care.  Things like instead of 1 or 2 trained Critical Care nurses per vented ICU patient, there would be one Critical care nurse for every 5 or 6 patients and med/surg nurses falling in to try and fill the gaps, as well as accelerated/abbreviated Critical Care training to try and get folks that didn't have the skills to help up to speed.  This happened with NP's as well, apparently.  They had enough beds for the patients with the added COVID wards, but not enough trained staff to take care of them.  This is probably why the Mercy seemed under utilized, as it didn't bring what was needed to the city.

Something to think about when yo read "XX ICU Beds free".  It doesn't really help if there's no one to administer care.


So I learned something new today.

Maxed out from what, and did they need to be there maxing out the hospital?

[dogmush]

Maxed out from what, and did they need to be there maxing out the hospital?

Maxed out on ability to care for patients that needed ICU/Critical Care.  In general,  folks recieving that level of hospital car do need it.

[Ron]

Have we flattened the curve yet?