Oh, how the mighty have fallen

[BeBMan]

Biden 306, Trump 232.



IIRC outgoing pres Trump said such numbers are a landslide

[BeBMan]

Someone would say the election result is huge, tremendous, and historic.

[BeBMan]

As a wartime pres Trump, who successfully avoided wartime service himself, made great progress in the wars against the rule of law, decency, facts, and in general against reality, but the costs to the American people were terrible.

[Berzerker]

Assad and the Taliban endorsed Trump too

[pchang]

Most importantly, he is endorsed by Serb!

[BeBMan]

He may get credit for bringing troops back. Not so much for saving American lives at home in the largest public health crisis since ca. 100yrs, whith the US death toll now more than two times above US wartime losses in WWI.

[Dinner]

The COVID thing is really a no factor to any informed person. Just about every where they’ve had major outbreaks and very few countries have been able to control it long term. The important part is the death rate and at 2.3% the US has had a pretty good response. Most European countries have done far worse yet we don’t hear ignorant Eurotwats about that, now do we? Nope, they just don’t talk about that stuff. Hell, even as a percentage of population they have done worse on average. Also remember the death toll still remains lower than your average three months of flu season by a large margin. On any given flu season 600,000-700,000 will die year in year out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVI...tes_by_country

[pchang]

Where the heck are you getting your flu numbers? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

[Dauphin]

Sounds like world wide numbers.

[Dinner]

Hardly. That is the problem with ideologically possessed people; they imagine anyone who points out facts that don’t jive with their ideology must be “the enemy”. In reality an intelligent person takes all factors into account and then let’s the chips fall where they may even if it contradicts a person’s chosen ideology. You should try it sometime, Mobius.

[Dauphin]

The COVID thing is really a no factor to any informed person. Just about every where they’ve had major outbreaks and very few countries have been able to control it long term. The important part is the death rate and at 2.3% the US has had a pretty good response. Most European countries have done far worse yet we don’t hear ignorant Eurotwats about that, now do we? Nope, they just don’t talk about that stuff. Hell, even as a percentage of population they have done worse on average. Also remember the death toll still remains lower than your average three months of flu season by a large margin. On any given flu season 600,000-700,000 will die year in year out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVI...tes_by_country

As has been pointed out by many commentators, the fatality rate is not comparable from country to country because of how testing alone is done. Those rates are almost without value unless you know what the actual prevalence is, which we do not in any way. Just as I don't trust the death figures for the same reason. If I were to compare, I'd look at excess deaths.

That said, and assuming the figures were somehow representative, I don't think saying "Hey look, only 2.3% of our COVID patients died compared to (say 4% in the UK)" is that great a thing to say, given that the number of recorded infections in the US is so much higher that the end number of recorded dead is almost identical.

ALso, your flu season comment, are you refering to the US? I presume not, as that number is thoroughly wrong if so.

[BeBMan]

On any given flu season 600,000-700,000 will die year in year out.
[/URL]

Edit: oops, US yearly flu estimates post-2010 , from pchang's CDC link (Figure 1):

[BeBMan]

Not-so-fun fact, I'm sure informed persons knew already:

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html

So 600-700k hits it for the worst flu pandemic in ages, not for yearly figures since then.

[Dinner]

As has been pointed out by many commentators, the fatality rate is not comparable from country to country because of how testing alone is done. Those rates are almost without value unless you know what the actual prevalence is, which we do not in any way. Just as I don't trust the death figures for the same reason. If I were to compare, I'd look at excess deaths.

That said, and assuming the figures were somehow representative, I don't think saying "Hey look, only 2.3% of our COVID patients died compared to (say 4% in the UK)" is that great a thing to say, given that the number of recorded infections in the US is so much higher that the end number of recorded dead is almost identical.

ALso, your flu season comment, are you refering to the US? I presume not, as that number is thoroughly wrong if so.

It does appear those numbers were global so I was in error. Sorry. Excess deaths is a good way to look at the data. Of course, we’d still have to parse the raw excess death data as I suspect there will be more suicide deaths due to loneliness and isolation during lock down but maybe those numbers are off set by fewer deaths due to other diseases.

[pchang]

In the US, excess deaths >> covid deaths. Suicides << (excess deaths - covid deaths).