Originally Posted by merrymini (Post 1944821)

Too bad the death numbers from 2019 and 2020 do not support the over 500,000 plus figure. I guess facts do not matter.

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 1944826)

I do not understand your post.

If you are suggesting that the 570,000 dead Americans didn't die from COVID, I disagree. The numbers are supported by numerous forms of evidence. Could you share your evidence of fraud/errors/whatever?

The numbers in the US are consistent with the numbers from around the world, so the conspiracy would have to also be international.

If that is what you are suggesting, then somehow all the governments in the world agree to conspire to inflate the number of people that died from COVID.

Originally Posted by merrymini (Post 1944821)

Too bad the death numbers from 2019 and 2020 do not support the over 500,000 plus figure. I guess facts do not matter.

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 1944425)

I think it is very easy to sit at a computer screen and second guess world leaders. World leaders have millions of lives at stake on every decision they make. No matter what decision they make a LOT of people are going to be unhappy. I am thankful to not be in that position and respect anyone that made the best decisions they could at the time.

Originally Posted by tuccillo (Post 1944844)

Here are the facts. The number of deaths in calendar year 2020 are still provisional numbers. However, the CDC is estimating the number of excess deaths for calendar year 2020 at over 300K. Excess deaths is the number of deaths over what is expected. The 500K number (of COVID deaths) includes 4-5 months in 2021so it is obviously in excess of the calendar year numbers.

Originally Posted by Swoop (Post 1944331)

Sweden remained open during Covid. Bars, restaurants, schools, businesses, gyms etc. They initially had a spike in Covid deaths, but where are they today? The pundits all told us that they made a terrible mistake and their population would suffer because of their decision to remain open. The US shut schools, forced businesses to close, isolated families, trashed the economy and compounded the national debt. But we saved lives - right? Not based on the statistics we didn’t. Sweden has a population of 10.23 million and 14,267 Covid deaths. We have a population of 328.2 million and 584,000 Covid deaths. That’s .0014 of Sweden’s population and .0018 of the US population...

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 1944852)

That does not prove anything. "excess deaths" means more total deaths than would be normally expected. It does NOT take into account reductions in deaths that would have accused without COVID.

Sorry, that is not evidence.

Originally Posted by tuccillo (Post 1944861)

I assume you mean "occurred" and not "accused"?? The number of expected deaths each year increases, presumably because of a continually aging population. There was no other event in 2020 that can account for a roughly 10% increase in the number of expected deaths. 10% is a large spike in a number with normally small variations. I am sure someone at some point will do the statistical hypothesis test.

Originally Posted by tuccillo (Post 1944844)

Here are the facts. The number of deaths in calendar year 2020 are still provisional numbers. However, the CDC is estimating the number of excess deaths for calendar year 2020 at over 300K. Excess deaths is the number of deaths over what is expected. The excess deaths in 2020 are clearly COVID related, either directly or indirectly. The current 500K number (of COVID deaths) includes 4-5 months in 2021 so it is obviously in excess of the calendar year 2020 numbers.

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 1944864)

Yes, auto-correct got me.

"No Other Event", should probably read "No Other Known Event". because something is not known does not make it a fact that it doesn't exist.

I will continue to trust experts until there is evidence they are lying.

Originally Posted by Bill14564 (Post 1944868)

Did your 300K number come from this page? That estimate was from January until October 3. Add 58 days at 700 average deaths and 31 days at 1,500 average deaths and you get close to 400,000 for the year.

Using the data at the bottom of this CDC page (data here) you can see that there were 583,877 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019. While some of this data is still preliminary, it is from actual counts and not estimations.

Originally Posted by tuccillo (Post 1944871)

I thought the 500K number included part of 2021?

Originally Posted by Gulfcoast (Post 1944457)

Members of my household have been going to their service industry jobs and dealing with the public face to face throughout this pandemic. Even when dentists and primary care physicians had closed their offices and weren't seeing patients, there were workers heading to their jobs at grocery stores, pharmacies, food service, gasoline stations - day in, day out.

That has helped to shape my perspective as to the risks of this virus. When you live with the risk daily, you get a pretty good idea how bad (or not so bad) things really are, at least in terms of yourself and your own family.

I'm the 55 year old mom who had healthy, active teens going to their jobs and schools plus activities. And, I was also the whippersnapper who was out running errands for her elderly mom. I haven't had the luxury of "staying safe" but thankfully we did manage to get through the better part of a year without a vaccine.

Now that the cases are falling, vulnerable people have gotten vaccinated and the actual risks of catching Covid have been greatly reduced we are now supposed to run out and get vaccinated even though we have likely already had the virus, albeit mild cases of it?

Why?

Originally Posted by coffeebean (Post 1944585)

You ask "why"? There are many un-vaccinated people that are prime hosts for the virus to create more variants. Those variants have the ability to possibly render our current vaccines incapable of the protection they currently provide. It is all about mitigating the variants at this point, IMHO.

Originally Posted by kenoc7 (Post 1944890)

Why? Herd immunity and the common good.