I think the (really dumb) argument is, that since the excess deaths from things like flu and possibly car accidents are down quite a lot this year (supposedly, a lot of those deaths aren’t properly reported for a while), these covid deaths are taking up that slack space?
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I’ve been bitching and moaning, along with most of y’all of course, that only talking about deaths is so very very wrong. But for the past few days, I’ve been kicking myself at quite a decent pace for not having thought of this particular framing:
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Iirc, there is an “excess mortality” statistic published somewhere that showed, some months ago, a >300k excess death over expected. So, yeah, citation required.
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Very much agreed, I’m guessing the biggest issue is they’re harder to quantify, for example, a soldier’s PTSD isn’t counted as an injury (possibly now), so you still don’t get the full picture.
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Also Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-chart-us-death-figures-2020-idUSKBN2872MV
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Re: Tulum
This is the same issue people are dealing with at street level all over Mexico and the US — people who think that servicing their own desires is more important than looking out for the community.
Partiers, anti-maskers, COVID-deniers, it all comes from selfishness.
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Possible clue to “long COVID”: it seems to trigger autoimmune problems.
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There’s also the factor that these tourists will find a new magnet destination in a few years, leaving financial ruin for the locals who have come to depend on them for their livelihood.
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There won’t be one, because back in the reality-based community, COVID deaths aren’t compensating for other deaths, because other deaths are up as well.
Some of these will be hidden COVID cases, some will be other conditions getting worse or not treated due to the pndemic, and some ma be survivors of acute COVID succumbing to the symptoms of “Long COVID”
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when deaths in things that are co-morbidities with covid are magically up ( diabetes, high blood pressure, and probably strokes and heart attacks ) i feel like logically it means undiagnosed covid.
the step parent of my partner died suddenly and unexpectedly from a stroke a few months ago. nobody bothered ( eta: im sure the hospital couldn’t “waste” the test given short supplies ) doing a covid test and no one will ever know for sure what happened.
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And in many cases, they’re up the most in states which have been hit hardest by the pandemic, so I’d say that’s a good bet.
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Another long one, a Members Only article, but I have to share:
Trump’s Last Con?
By Josh Marshall
December 14, 2020 12:55 p.m.Today we’re watching truly exciting, genuinely joyous images of people receiving the first non-trial study COVID vaccine injections in the United States. President Trump is predictably crowing about it as though he produced it in his study in the living quarters of the White House. Operation Warp Speed – the plan that involved federal financial support to vaccine research and development – is reasonably seen as standard federal government blocking and tackling during a global epidemic. But it is at least fair to say that providing financial back up that allowed vaccine makers to go big on vaccine development is the one area of COVID response Trump didn’t clearly screw up or sabotage.
But lost in the mix is that through a mix of malice and indolence President Trump has organized things so that the funding to actually get the country vaccinated peters out within days of his leaving the White House. That’s a potential disaster in the making for public health, needlessly delaying an end to the pandemic in the United States. But it also seems like a political time bomb, left as a Trumpian house-warming gift for President Biden during his first weeks and months in office.
Click to Open the Full Essay
First, our Josh Kovensky has been on this story since back into early October. You can see pieces on it here and here. Kovensky and Kate Riga returned to the subject last week with this article on the total breakdown in any national plan or budget to get the country vaccinated.
Here are some basic outlines of what’s happening. As we learned last week the Trump White House skimped on actually buying enough doses of vaccine from Pfizer. But the federal government will cover the actual purchase of vaccines. The White House says the military is in charge of and has a plan to actual get the supplies to the states. And though we don’t know all the details let’s assume they have that covered. But that only appears to be getting the crates of supplies to a central staging point in each state. That’s not a negligible job. But it’s only a relatively small part of actually getting the country vaccinated. You need public health campaigns. You need staging areas and distribution from wherever the military drops it off to actual health centers and vaccination centers around each state. And finally you need a small army of medical professionals to actually administer the doses. It’s a big job and the Trump administration hasn’t funded any of that or devised any national plan.
In the absence of any federal plan or budget the CDC and HHS have cannibalized existing budgets to get some money to states for planning. But the sums are by most estimates an order of magnitude less than the amount needed.
State governments would be hard pressed to fund an operation like that during the best of times. But states and local governments around the country are already pushing massive cuts because of the dislocations caused by the pandemic. Through much of the latter part of 2020 the assumption was that this would be dealt with in a follow-up stimulus plan. But of course that never happened.
What the White House has arranged funding for is a critical but relatively small part of the vaccination effort: vaccinations for people in assisted living facilities and health care workers. Those are the two most critical populations. They should go first, and the plan is to get those people vaccinated in December and January. But that leaves the great bulk of the population unvaccinated. The plan is for that phase to end around Feb 1. Meanwhile CARES Act funding, which states can use for various purposes, has to be spent by Dec. 31.
That’s all that’s funded. It’s like a trap door set up for Biden to fall through. So as you can see, today’s excitement and anticipation over the vaccine is cued up to turn sharply to disappointment in February when people start asking where their shots are and blame the train wreck on President Biden. No plan. And no funding to implement a plan. Of course that is potentially catastrophic in human terms. But a lag in vaccination means not only more suffering and death but more delay in allowing the economy to get back on its feet, since people aren’t going to go to restaurants and participate in public life until case numbers drop dramatically.
As I said, this is both a waiting public health calamity for the country. But it’s also an epic dirty trick the defeated President and his allies on Capitol Hill have waiting for the new President.
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A new strain may be causing faster/wider spreading in SE England
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Yeah, last I was in Tulum an American cheer leading squad, college age, in full uniform were doing human pyramid stacks in front of every structure on the site. F’ing annoying. Beautiful site otherwise. The Mayans had great ocean front digs there.
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I’m sorry to hear that, gatto. Wishing you and your partner ease with your loss.
I think about situations like that a lot. It seems like there will be so many unanswered questions from this time period, that just won’t be possible to ever get an answer to.
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Similar thing happened to a friend of mine with his father. But it was in Arkansas during the early No Tests = No Covid period, so he’ll never know.
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Even better: Better make sure you’re making Trump happy!
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/white-house-mcenany-staff-covid-19-vaccine
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