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If there were a "weaker" US strain of the corona virus...
Go to Coronavirus Update - Worldometer[^] - one of the sites that has gained a lot of reputation lately. Scroll down to the 'Reported cases' table. Click on the the header of the "Deaths / 1M pop" column to sort it on that property. Look at which countries are at the top of the list.
A few countries shot like a rocket to the top in spring, partially because it wasn't clear how serious the situation was, and which precautions are necessary. Later, the growth in deaths/1M in some of these countries have been far slower.
Some list top countries have health facilities far below Europe/US level, and a social structure that makes it difficult to enforce protective measures. Note that several top entries most likely have the US "weaker strain" of the virus, yet topping the Deaths/1M list.
Then: The country claiming to have the best medical system, the best hospitals, the best doctors in the world: #10 on the list today, and climbing. Not long ago, it was #14, but has passed UK, Italy, Sweden... Those ahead of it include Ecuador (which may soon be overtaken), Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, ...
If the US strain is weaker, and the US health system is better than anywhere else, why then does the corona virus kill far more people in the US than in the great majority of European countries, as well as in most other countries?
One essential element is lifestyle. "I am free - I have a right to be infected". Obviously, that is only one element. But it is part of the problem.
You may argue that "It would be even worse if we had the more aggressive European strain of the virus". Today, the US has 13 times as many deaths per million as my country. Maybe, with the European strain the US death count per million would be 20 times as high, or 30 times as high as in my country. In spite of the best hospitals in the world, the best doctors, the best testing... If the US strain is weaker, I guess US guys should be really happy that they didn't get anything more aggressive!
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trønderen wrote: why then does the corona virus kill far more people in the US
I don't know that it does. The CDC gave statistics that only 6% of those "killed by Covid" died exclusively because of Covid. The other 94% had other conditions. For some extreme examples, gunshot victims, cancer victims, heart attacks, people that are actually still alive, have all been part of the "killed by Covid" numbers.
So, frankly, the numbers mean nothing. They can't be trusted.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Sure. Like that overweight senior citizen with diabetes and too high cholesterol levels are killed by a burglar, it is not the burglar's fault, because the victim wouldn't have been living very much longer anyway.
I am perfectly fine with that sort of argumentation, as long as we use the same kind of argumentation in all similar cases. Or have good arguments for why those other cases are not 'similar'.
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trønderen wrote: Like that overweight senior citizen with diabetes and too high cholesterol levels are killed by a burglar, it is not the burglar's fault, because the victim wouldn't have been living very much longer anyway.
That analogy does not work.
When someone is shot and killed but had covid it gets reported as death by covid. When someone is in the hospital dying of cancer but then pick up covid while there, they did not die of covid.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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What ZurdoDev is referring to is the policy to count car accident victims, for example, as having died from covid if they have the virus in their system at the time dying from the car accident.
Same with heart attack victims, cancer victims, etc who died from something other than the virus are counted as covid deaths if they have the virus in their system.
I don't know how much that skews the numbers, but it does make one wonder...
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Riiiight ... they're looking for co-virus in someone with a smashed head from a car accident.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Are you in dead earnest suggesting that people killed in car crashes are not counted as car crash victims if they are cov19 positive?
... Some conspiracy theories are funnier than others ...
How do you think this works: If four people are killed in the same accident, and one of them is cov+, do they then file it as four covid fatalities? Or are they treated separately: Three of them as car crash fatalities, one as a covid fatality?
Who do you think are responsible for this classification of car fatalities as covid fatalities? The police at the site of the crash? The best doctors in the world? The funeral homes?
Why are they doing it? Do they (whoever "they" are) want to make it look as if the corona handling has been handled with less competence than in other countries, to put the US in a bad light? Or are they car driving fanatics who want to suppress the fact that cars kill a hundred persons a day in the US alone? Or are they extreme left wingers who believe that (mis)classifying car crash fatalities as covid fatalities helps building a solid foundation for a revolution?
This is completely crazy. Sure there are some borderline cases, e.g. if a covid patient has a stroke that he might have survived if he wasn't weakened by covid. Without covid he might have survived, without the stroke he might have survived. So how do you classify his death? - but extending this to car crash victims is just way off.
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I have firsthand knowledge of this, so believe me or not -- I don't care. And no, I don't think it's trying to make the US look bad or incompetent. I think they honestly believe it's the way it should be for some reason. Maybe so no mistake is made in the other way: discounting things that should be counted as covid.
But, like I said, I don't know how much this skews the numbers one way or the other. I guess you'd have to know how many died of "true" causes vs covid and I'm not sure there's a way to know.
It's not a conspiracy, it's just facts.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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TheGreatAndPowerfulOz wrote: But, like I said, I don't know how much this skews the numbers one way or the other. I guess you'd have to know how many died of "true" causes vs covid and I'm not sure there's a way to know.
You can't get an exact count, but by the end of they year, you can count the total number of deaths and compare to previous years. If the number of deaths jumps up by a quarter of a million from the 2019 and 2018 figures, you go looking for possible explanations.
In some groups of death causes you may discover that death counts are reduced, e.g. fewer road accidents because people stay more at home, drive less, fewer people drowning because they don't go as much to the beach this year, fewer deaths from the common flu because the covid precautions has significantly reduced the spread of the common flu, etc. So you may actually end up with an increase in "unexplained" deaths of more than 250,000.
Maybe you have other explanations for some of these, like a big increase from earlier years in fatal heat strokes due to global warming, or a lot more young men being shot or strangled to death. When you have subtracted these numbers, you are probably still left with a significant unexplained increase in deaths. You may ascribe them all to Covid-19, or in part to some other special condition this year. But as long as you do not present any credible alternative explanation for the increased death counts, ascribing them to Covid sounds reasonable.
You may of course do the same for other figures, not ony deaths but e.g. hospitalizations, number of people who has been need ventilators etc., compared to 2019 and 2018, but some of these numbers may be less accessible and may be less exact or debatable (deaths are more absolute). You may assume that the reporting was similar in previous years, so even though the figures may be inexact or incomplete, you may look for changes in 2020, to shed light on the death counts.
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trønderen wrote: The country claiming to have the best medical system
Are you referring to the country that has shorter life expectancy than Lebanon? And three to five years less than most of western Europe? Linky[^] 
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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I guess that the keyword is "claiming to have".
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ZurdoDev wrote: I have gotten it, my whole family got it, half the people at work got it, a 70 year old at work got it and was back to work in a week. It wasn't that bad.
Then consider you and your close people as lucky.
I consider myself very, very lucky. I have noone close to my daily life here in Germany that has had problems for covid.
But...
I have two cousins (mid 50) being doctors in spain, both got it at work. She needed breath assistance and he was in bed for a week (at least without assistance). He is someone that like sports and pretty active. Now (some moths later) when he tries it, he needs 3 to 5 breaks to get home using the stairs (4th floor).
Regarding the statistics (from other posts in the thread) I do think too there is a difference between "killed by covid" and "died with covid", but it is really difficult to make an accurate distinction.
Example: A guy that went to my school (1 year younger than me, living the parallel street behind my child address) died due to covid. He was risk group as he had something nasty before. But he was doing pretty good and the doctors gave him several years expectation. Covid didn't directly kill him, but his body got so damned weak that the other disease took over and finished the job. He might have died anyways due to that, yes, but covid reduced his life time (I would even say drastically). So I think that cases like this belong to the statistics too.
ZurdoDev wrote: Everyone in the world at some point will be exposed to this thing
Agree.
ZurdoDev wrote: Maybe it's the people that got infected early on that are having the worst time?
As others said, the first wave got us unprepared. Numbers got down because we started using the masks, cleaning hands many more times a day than before, keeping distance and all that annoying (but necessary) things. And... because in Sommer (north Hemisphere) people is a lot more time outside.
I hope not, but I do expect another important increase in the statistics in the cold season due to being more inside in closed rooms and people getting tired of or maybe not being able to keep social distance.
ZurdoDev wrote: Schools have been back in session for 2 months and nothing has happened. I know some denser populations had some problems when school opened back up.
Same here. We haven't had any problems (so far) in my town, but in Spain there have been some groups getting closed in the school and quarantined in their class room. Munich was not that extreme, but closed a couple of places too, sending the kids home (friends of mine had no Kindergarden for 3 weeks... again).
ZurdoDev wrote: It's easy to understand those that have been impacted hard are fearful of it and those that haven't don't worry much about it.
I can understand it but only until a certain level. I can tolerate some (actually many) things, but there is people that deserve being kicked in the balls or getting it (the nasty version, please). Most of those "It is my right" people forget that their rights end when other people's rights are affected.
I do like the last decission regarding this "it's my right" of the government here in germany: People in vacation that travel voluntarilly to an officially listed risk area before the trip starts and get it, they don't get the economical help if they can't work due to quarentine when they come back or the "sick leave pay" if they do get ill.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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perhaps I come back next year.
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In the last two months, apart from the fact that some new articles and blogs have been posted, some new members have been added, some members have been removed, some members have posted not-so-intelligent s questions, some have posted good questions, a good number of questions have been answered, some surveys have been done, members have increased their reputation points, and things like these, ...
... really NOTHING has changed!
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NOTHING has not changed, it's still just NOTHING.
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Okay, *that's* subtle! Extra points sir.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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It's nice when that happens. 
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And that's one of the things I like from this site: Its contancy 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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No one noticed you were gone 
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Nothing has changed. Conservatives are still attacked even by Sean and Chris. And we are not allowed to make fun of the left, but the left can make fun of the right and post political comments. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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That's what I thought. Sad, really. See you next year.
TRUMP 2020 BIDEN 0000
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Slacker007 wrote: . See you next year.
Maybe. Sean just threatened to kick me off because I made fun of those making fun of Trump.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Message Removed
modified 2-Oct-20 14:14pm.
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Message Removed
modified 2-Oct-20 14:14pm.
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