Civilization set for 'irreversible collapse'

[+and-then]

On 9/2/2020 at 8:06 AM, Emma_Acid said:

Sure, and everyone before the millennials did such a good job didn't they

Pretty sure Thomas Malthus would agree with you.

[+and-then]

On 8/16/2020 at 3:32 PM, DieChecker said:

Arizona is a at a higher stage, almost back to normal, but they've had almost 4000 dead.

When one factors in that only 6% of deaths are exclusively caused by Covid, it makes it abundantly clear that this virus is being politicized and is being used to take freedoms.  Last I checked, college attendance is completely voluntary.  Will some students get terribly sick or even die?  Sure. I have no respect for those who would cancel living in fear of a virus that is NOT killing millions.  I thought when the original "flatten the curve" 15 days was over, we'd be seeing lots of deaths.  Especially in Africa and India.  This is politicized BS.

[Peter B]

23 hours ago, and then said:

When one factors in that only 6% of deaths are exclusively caused by Covid, it makes it abundantly clear that this virus is being politicized and is being used to take freedoms.  Last I checked, college attendance is completely voluntary.  Will some students get terribly sick or even die?  Sure. I have no respect for those who would cancel living in fear of a virus that is NOT killing millions.  I thought when the original "flatten the curve" 15 days was over, we'd be seeing lots of deaths.  Especially in Africa and India.  This is politicized BS.

And yet lots more people are dying this year than last year. If it's not related to COVID-19 what is it? And why are hospitals in heavily affected locations overwhelmed with people with breathing difficulties?

https://theconversation.com/up-to-204-691-extra-deaths-in-the-us-so-far-in-this-pandemic-year-143139

The number of deaths in the United States through July 2020 is 8% to 12% higher than it would have been if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened. That’s at least 164,937 deaths above the number expected for the first seven months of the year – 16,183 more than the number attributed tp COVID-19 thus far for that period – and it could be as high as 204,691.

[DieChecker]

On 9/7/2020 at 10:52 PM, Peter B said:

And yet lots more people are dying this year than last year. If it's not related to COVID-19 what is it? And why are hospitals in heavily affected locations overwhelmed with people with breathing difficulties?

https://theconversation.com/up-to-204-691-extra-deaths-in-the-us-so-far-in-this-pandemic-year-143139

 

 

So... Youre on about those extra 16,000 people who died?

I thought i read that due to the covid pandemic many people who would otherwise get screened, or who skipped their yearly checkup, were dying, or getting very ill, because they were not seen this year. 

[Peter B]

On 9/9/2020 at 4:28 PM, DieChecker said:

So... Youre on about those extra 16,000 people who died?

I thought i read that due to the covid pandemic many people who would otherwise get screened, or who skipped their yearly checkup, were dying, or getting very ill, because they were not seen this year. 

No, I'm responding to AndThen's statement about only 6% of COVID-19 deaths being exclusively due to the virus meaning that the virus is being politicised.

The issue is not 16,000 extra deaths. Read the article again. That number of 16,000 is the difference between the official number of COVIS-19 deaths and the number of excess deaths compared with the same period of time in previous years (in the USA that is).

Put simply, a lot more people are dying this year than in previous years. The main candidate is COVID-19, which, even if it isn't directly and solely responsible for people dying, is at the very least increasing mortality among people who are unwell but might have survived if the virus hadn't been around.

As for "...many people who would otherwise get screened, or who skipped their yearly checkup, were dying, or getting very ill, because they were not seen this year..." yes, I understand that's a problem too. I don't have the figures so I don't know the comparative scale of the issues (COVID-19 and people avoiding treatment for other conditions) but it's certainly something I've seen doctors comment about here.

[DieChecker]

19 hours ago, Peter B said:

Put simply, a lot more people are dying this year than in previous years. The main candidate is COVID-19, which, even if it isn't directly and solely responsible for people dying, is at the very least increasing mortality among people who are unwell but might have survived if the virus hadn't been around.

Ive read, and watched videos, of the claim that many, if not most of the Covid19 deaths were people who might have died otherwise.

I think the proof as to if this is true, or not, will be the 2021 mortality numbers. If the US numbers decrease significantly, by say around the number of increased deaths this year, that will say that though Covid19 led directly to their deaths, they likely were on the way out anyway. 

So I see some truth in both positions.

What im not sure of, is that there is another mysterious illness hiding in the numbers. I dont think 16000 is enough to show that, alone by itself, without further clinical proof.

[Essan]

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Ive read, and watched videos, of the claim that many, if not most of the Covid19 deaths were people who might have died otherwise.

 

I am 100% certain that everyone who dies from Covid-19 would otherwise have died from something else .....

(And some might well have died this year, even)

[Doug1029]

On 9/7/2020 at 12:37 AM, DieChecker said:

The difference, i think, will be that when that happens, we'll be going and recruiting them, so few will be able to complain.

SS/FICA will need to be adjusted a lot sooner, or the system will run out of reserves.

The idea of paying people to raise more kids has been floated.  But which families will get that privillige could be an issue.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 12:37 AM, DieChecker said:

And yet almost all politicians are lawyers. 

That's a problem for everybody.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 12:37 AM, DieChecker said:

Yet my friend, much like many today, said it was Too Late, we were all going to die. I wonder now if that may be in part why he did so badly in college, and why he drank so heavily.

If you use trends to make your predictions, you are practically guaranteed to be wrong.  The current trend, no matter what it is, nearly always changes.

Besides, the ozone hole is an environmental success story.  The world's nations worked together to outlaw the cause.  And it worked.  We took the science and applied it.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 12:37 AM, DieChecker said:

Yes, but the liberal thing to say at the time (1988) was that we would be ten times the number of hurricanes within 20 years, which didnt happen. He was wrong again. But was convinced he was right.

The number of severe storms has been increasing over the last fifteen or so years.  When counting hurricanes, don't forget to include typhoons (Pacific Ocean), cyclones (Indian Ocean) and derechos (land-based hurricanes).  The increasing energy in the atmosphere is discharged through storms of all sizes.  The number of small storms in the southern Great Plains has been increasing since 1965.  Most people only count hurricanes that hit the continental US.  That's a small part of the picture.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 12:37 AM, DieChecker said:

That was my entire point, just because someone is convinced they are right, and it sounds like they are spreading science and logic... doesnt make it so.

Science-based statements can be backed up by reference to research papers.  If you doubt what someone is saying, or even just want more information, ask them for scientific sources.  The typical research paper will have 30 or more additional sources to back it up.  There are specialized search engines that track what recent papers have cited a given source.  That allows you to find out what more-recent researchers have said.

Doug

[Doug1029]

And Then:  When one factors in that only 6% of deaths are exclusively caused by Covid, it makes it abundantly clear that this virus is being politicized and is being used to take freedoms.  Last I checked, college attendance is completely voluntary.  Will some students get terribly sick or even die?  Sure. I have no respect for those who would cancel living in fear of a virus that is NOT killing millions.  I thought when the original "flatten the curve" 15 days was over, we'd be seeing lots of deaths.  Especially in Africa and India.  This is politicized BS.

 

Deaths that are exclusively the result of covid are not the only ones caused by covid.  Most diseases are deadlier if a victim is already sick.  Excluding these additional deaths biases the statistics.

 

The official death count in the US will exceed 200,000 by the end of this week.  Even that may only be one-third of the covid-caused deaths.  We will probably see, officially, over 400,000 by the end of the year and around 430,000 by Inauguration Day.  Even if Biden wins and begins immediate efforts to suppress the disease, we will likely see another 70- to 100,000 deaths before this is over late in 2021 or early 2022.

Trump's "herd-immunity" strategy probably won't work.  First, there are 16 different varieties of covid grouped into five families.  Immunity to one does not guarantee immunity to another.  A vaccine may work against one strain, but not another.  To reach herd immunity will require about 70% of the population be immune, either from having contracted the disease or from a vaccine.  Covid currently infects about 10% of the US population.  It will take about four years to reach 70%, so even if it works, we could well see a million dead and as many as three million unofficially dead.

Trump's "October surprise" will be to pick an inadequately-tested vaccine and try to get manufacturers to make it.  There are only seven or eight weeks remaining in which this vaccine can be rolled out before the election.  The fastest vaccine that has been developed before this was mumps and that took four years.  Polio took 18 years and we still don't have a vaccine for AIDS, work on which started in 1982.  BUT:  if there is a vaccine that works, even though it kills people, it might kill fewer than the disease.  In this case, it might be worth the risk of producing and distributing it.  This is what Russia is doing and Trump worships Putin.

 

Covid kills about 3% of those it infects.  The rate is higher for those over 65 and lower for younger people.  But beware of those numbers.  The higher rates for the elderly may actually be higher rates for those living in group settings, or those with some pre-disposing medical condition, like diabetes.  But killing isn't the only metric.  The disease also causes permanent disability in some patients and life-long health issues for others - pre-existing conditions that will disqualify victims from health insurance.  About 15% of covid victims develop later conditions.  Some of the people with these conditions will die years from now, meaning that covid will continue killing for years, just as radiation from Hiroshima is still killing people.

 

If I were a parent with kids in school (grade through college) I'd keep them home, no matter what my local school board or Board of Regents was saying.  You can always go back to school in a year or two, but not if you're dead.  

 

As I recall, 15 days was never considered a reasonable time for a shutdown.  Last March we thought a month would be long enough, but before the end of March arrived, the figure had jumped to four months where it remains.  We knew the disease killed about 5% of those it infected and we thought we'd see exposures of 40% or more.  That would have produced millions of deaths.  But social distancing has actually worked - the exposure rate is well below 40%.

 

Africa and India had the self-discipline to control their epidemics through the use of shut-downs, masks and social distancing.  We in the US lack not only those, but also competent leadership.

Doug

[Doug1029]

On 9/6/2020 at 2:00 PM, Doug1029 said:

Week later:  We now have 62 covid cases in town.  University still open, but staff is working from home.  They're having it both ways.

Only got a few chronologies detrended last week, so nothing new to report there.  The University of Missouri has created a chronology for Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains.  Hoping to get a copy of it; it's unpublished, but maybe we can fix that.  I'm told it shows that same bump in soil moisture in the early nineteenth century that my other chronologies show.  Waiting to hear if we are going to make a chronology of our own for that area.

Still working on the slopover problem.  Got the part done for a plot overlapping a stand boundary with a single turning point.  Now for complex stand boundaries.  There's a variation using arcs instead of straight lines to simulate the stand boundary, but I don't know if the HP35s has enough memory for it.  Maybe do a computerized version of it.  So, I still need at least a couple weeks to finish - maybe a lot more.

Doug

 

Week lwater:  Still working from home.  Covid-count continues to rise, but slowly.  I suspect they'll try to keep the university open for another couple of weeks, at least.

No chronologies detrended since last week.  That project is on dead stop.

Still working on the HP35s slopover program.  It now computes the intersection points between the plot and stand boundaries for a one-turning-point plot.  Expect to be starting the double meridian distance part this coming week.  That's the fun part.  It's going to be at least three more weeks before I get the paper done.

Doug