What I want to know is realistic estimate of non covid deaths due to economy being closed down, plus covid deaths during lockdown… versus realistic number of covid deaths opening economy back up. Then what happens with partial reopening of economy.
I’m assuming someone, somewhere, is running models?
I would like the personal choice to take chances of going out and to work with things under control as possible like people have in other countries that followed the standard way to handle a pandemic (Taiwan, China, South Korea, and other countries). I’d be find there. It is here where I feel my personal choices have been forced and limited to either stay in a bubble or take a risk (how big I have no idea) and go back to work and that this my personal choice was made for me and forced to these two bad options by very poor decision making by others in leadership positions who should have done better.
This is what I would like to know as well. I would also like to know how many of the non-covid deaths due to the economy being closed down would be eliminated if the economy opened up. If you lose your job at a movie theater because the economy is shut down, but then the economy opens up and your movie theater can’t succeed because not enough people want to go there, you’re still out of a job.
Yes.
I honestly don’t think that people mean to be insensitive but if you are the one who has the condition or loves someone with it, it might not sound so kind-hearted. It might sound quite the opposite. I think it is easy to minimize things but I see very few volunteers to sacrifice themselves. Somehow on the other end of thing perspective tends to change.
I actually had a friend spout out something about the people like me should just stay home and not force the rest of ‘us’ to live in prison and some other things like that. It really felt she was blaming me and that she was indicating I was expendable and less important than her ability to feel her job is secure. While I think her having a job is extremely important, I personally put my life on a higher rank than that and would feel the same about her life and my job. I have not done one thing that would have caused our state to be in stay home. I’m not responsible for the decisions the governor of our state has made, but in her moment of emotional honest, she said somethings that were pretty rude. I didn’t get mad but I noticed it and decided to emotionally distance a bit. Next days same friend called to ask me to help her out of a panic attack over her own safety at work and the fact that she has asthma and is being asked to go into unsafe position. Said maybe she should get work from home job. I think people are emotional now. People are losing businesses, people have friends sick or dying or who have died. People are scared of dying themselves. I think it is good to be forgiving to people saying a variety of things because strong emotion can make us say all sorts of things that sometimes are a deeper truth but sometimes are a reflection of pain, fear, suffering, etc.
@MaineLonghorn , thanks for that repost ! I miss that young woman. She is right on about how science works.
Right. Children in poverty right now, because parents lost jobs, may still have unemployed parents long term, after the economy opens up.
If they need food, because they don’t have school lunches, we can provide the family food.
So there has to be a formula that calculates death (lockdown and opened up) food insecurity (lockdown and opened up) and a calculation made what solutions cost (death rates),
I’m really not a mathy person (as C.F. Knows) but mathy people must be trying to figure this out. How else is public policy decided?
I think it is unfortunate that this is an election year.
Reposting because it’s hilarious.
@MaineLonghorn That’s a great post by your friend. Unfortunately, I think the people who need to hear it the most (I’m thinking of people who do not post here) will not understand it.
This is not obvious. On this thread, there have been multiple examples of those over 80 that are active with relatively good health. There has also been significant discussion on the number of deaths in nursing homes. Just because the mortality rate of an average 85 year old male is 9.8% does not mean that absent COVID, the mortality rate of those that died would have been 9.8%. There is no reason to believe those individuals are average, and quite likely that those that died started the year in poorer health than an average 85 year old.
Amazon shipping is totally unreliable these days. Two consecutive orders haven’t reached destinations. Just got a refund for the 1st one and I’m chatting with Amazon to get them to re-ship the 2nd order. One-day shipping doesn’t even appear as an option on the item. Apparently, Amazon prioritizes the shipment of certain items (and mine isn’t on the list).
Before I ramble, I’m going to upfront admit I don’t know the answer to the question I’m going to bring up. I’m not arguing with your point, just thinking through if I agree that the data is comparable.
We all know 80 and even 90 years olds who are independent and active. They’re in the expected life pool with the 80-90 year olds who are living in nursing homes. We already know from other data that once someone lands in a nursing home, the average time they live there is what - 6 months? So if the active, independent group is in with the nursing home group, they are in the same group but their expected life remaining is vastly different even though they’re the same age.
We already know approximately half of the C19 deaths in some areas are for people living in nursing homes. That suggests to me that a reasonable number of the dying - even in the 80-90 year olds - are the ones in nursing homes, not the active, independent 80-90 year olds. So I’m thinking if we keep digging into the data, we might find that the death rate in the non-nursing home 80-90 year olds is not significantly different pre and post C19. That C19 is picking off the sickest, most vulnerable who would already fall into the group that’s expected to die within a few months, not those averages that show the life expectancy for that cohort would be 5+ years.
Not minimizing it, not saying it’s not awful, not saying C19 doesn’t also hit and kill the healthy 80-90 year olds, but I’m guessing it’s not mostly killing the group that’s expected to live another 5+ years.
As the data emerges, we will know more.
I think reopening should be done based on data and science, not people feeling tired of staying home. I think that done right, we should be able to reopen with massive rapid testing (so people don’t want and infect others while waiting for results), contact tracing, quarante ready, along with sufficient PPE for those in high contact jobs, and a society that understands that masks stop the spread and have bought into wearing them in % of the population high enough to really help stop any outbreaks. The fact that many places are not doing that is where the difference of opinion is. It isn’t that we think people should stay home forever. It is that we think we should open smartly so we don’t have shut down again right away. That would be worse for people’s lives (physically and financially). We could have done better and have this chance now and sadly I fear we are blowing it.
[quote=“ucbalumnus, post:4816, topic:2093584”]
Your 80-year old population must be very unhealthy.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html gives the following:
Age Male Female
%die RLE %die RLE
80 5.82 8.28 4.28 9.68
85 9.79 5.89 7.43 6.95
90 16.54 4.05 13.14 4.78
95 26.36 2.81 21.89 3.31
100 35.42 2.12 30.77 2.42
105 45.21 1.60 41.18 1.76
108 52.33 1.34 49.05 1.44
%die = probability of dying in a year (in percentage terms)
RLE = remaining life expectancy in years
Only when people get to about 108 years old would you expect about half of them to die within a year.
[/quote/]
But you are forgetting that a huge percentage of the deaths nationwide were from nursing homes. The median length of time in a nursing home til death is less than six months. Sixty five percent die within one year
https://www.geripal.org/2010/08/length-of-stay-in-nursing-homes-at-end.html
Thus the over 80 population that doctor was talking about is far different, was indeed “ very unhealthy” vs the General over age 80 population.
I’m sure that many of you know this, but for those that don’t, half of the US death rate from the 1918 flu were in young adults age 20-40. Just wondering if we would be having the same discussion about opening up if that were the case now, and if not, what does that say about this discussion?
Maybe, but I have a feeling that working for 20+ years in a statistically average public high school where the local income is below the median for our state and fewer have post high school degrees than average has given me a pretty good idea.
I do come on cc for a different perspective, but pretty much always, it’s the perspective of those wealthier and more educated than my area.
Choice of news and IRL sources works both ways.
The power of posting on CC! Kid got her graduation card today! (I had posted earlier she had not received it yet).
USPS Pony Express apparently. 3 weeks from Chicagoland to Lexington, KY
@milee30 The nursing home stats are even more complex. A significant portion die within 90 days. If you survive this long, the average length of stay jumps to almost three years. We typically breakdown any analysis of nursing home populations into two different pools.
One of the questions is what pool are the COVID-19 nursing home deaths coming from? Are they distributed evenly between the two pools, or more heavily weighted to one pool or the other? It is far to early to answer this question as three months ago, we knew of one COVID-19 death in the US, but the answer will ultimately significantly impact the calculation of excess deaths and projected future mortality.