Was the economic impact of Covid really necessary?
 

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...

Did you mean was it unescapable? This is the difficulty. This never before faced difficulty by those now living on earth brought many unsolvable problems. Our leaders faced them and none really solved them but used compromises. They would be damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

Naturally a deadly virus that attacks the whole world is going to slow down economic exchange. It is like the story of King Solomon and the two women who both claimed to be the mother to a baby. He asked them....Should I divide the child with my sword?? We were in that kind of mess with this Pandemic. There was no PAT answer. People do not want to die and they do not want their loved ones to die and they do not want their income to stop.

Now we are opening back up and the stipends are making things worse, not better.

I think that the highly selective business shutdowns were not necessary in this situation and did more harm than good to the country. Ditto school shutdowns.

I think the added precautions in LTC facilities saved lives and were necessary. Beyond that, I think that people should have just been allowed to assess the risks for themselves and reacted accordingly. Painting everyone with one broad brush when most people were never at great risk from this virus was misguided.

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.

Remember "Two weeks to slow the curve"? That was the advice of Fauci and the CDC before they really had an understanding of what was going on. When it became apparent that this was a much more serious health crisis, we had a leader who stepped up, cut through red tape, and got the ball rolling on vaccines and mitigation.

Now, 14 months later, we find the CDC and Fauci way behind the curve with their rules and mandates. Almost 55% vaccinated not counting those who have immunity from getting Covid. Yesterday TSA screened the highest number of air travelers since 14 months ago.

Yes, there are pockets where, I'll be blunt, Darwin's children refuse to get the shot but in general I believe we are over the hump and ready for normalcy whether the CDC says so or not. We have had enough of bureaucratic overreach.

I would guess the families and friends of the 584,000 dead would disagree.

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?

Won’t argue any scientific with you, or anyone, but a few corrections in your post...

1. Dr Faucci was not . The person who made the announcement “ Actually, he was not even the advisor for the WH (that was Dr Brix at the time this announcement was made). This announcement was made on March 16, 2020, not by Faucci.

Fact is, a few days later, after we were told by the government (not Faucci) that this virus would dissipate by July or August of 2020, Faucci actually said that Americans should be staying home for “several weeks”.

Covid: A year later, Trump'''s '''15 days to slow the spread''' shows how little we knew

Fauci predicts Americans will likely need to stay home for at least several more weeks

Not a scientist, but I think the vaccine trials began in December of 2020, and that Pfizer worked with German money and scientific knowledge to get the vaccine going. I am sure that within WHO, there was sharing, however in May 2020, the US pulled out of WHO

I post this and if anything is in error, please correct. It just seems we have serious memory lapses and want to make Faucci the scapegoat always, even when he was not involved. He is not perfect to be sure, but misquoting and using partial truths is not fair.

I would agree, but equally as bad is the “misremembering” of facts, the distorted out of context quotes to make some obscure point.

Tough calls for all who were involved

Remember "just like the flu, and gone by April - magically".

Everyone made mistakes, everyone was learning as we went.

Disagree with what?!? We had the shut downs they are still dead. I truly don’t understand your post...

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.

Perhaps disagree with this sentence from a post just prior to that post

"when most people were never at great risk from this virus was misguided."

Then the post you question makes sense....

"I would guess the families and friends of the 584,000 dead would disagree."

Hind sight is 20/20

Hindsight is always the clearest. Sweden also has social programs that we don't that provides a safety net for their citizens.

Decisions were made by governments and hindsight is easy to dispute good or bad. Why don't you simply look at California New York and Florida for the differences those two states were much more strict than Florida but it had more deaths per capita but really neither result was correct because what if we did not shut down and everyone died they'd be no economy whatsoever so you can air on the side of caution and I hope the government will support you the economic light or you can be a free spirit let everyone die and then wonder why there's no companies left

Wrong or right, a lot of actions by the gov had a lot to do with the final outcome.
A question that still needs to be answered is: How did this get started?
We KNOW for a fact that OUR government granted/gave China Wu Han lab research money. How much did that have to do with the Covid virus? The Director of NIH stated in a recent interview that the money was not "meant" to be used to weaponize the virus. He said it WAS meant for research into Sars. So, how much does our gov. know that they are not telling us? I understand the need for secrets, but there seems to be an awful lot of effort going into shrugging off the origination explanation of where it started and how it got spread worldwide. What are they hiding?
On a different subject, we are spending trillions of dollars that we do not have on blatant, frivolous spending. Who are we borrowing the money from? Are we printing more money? Who dictates how much money we can print? What is the difference between printing money and borrowing money? I am not an expert in finance or economics so folks like me just want some simple answers in layman terms. How can we be concerned about billions of dollars spent and now welcome trillions to be spent. Because some small percentage is being given to us in the form of Covid relief? No one is worried about the great debt that we are building? Did no one learn anything from Greece's bankruptcy? There are many countries out there waiting to ponce on us like vultures on a wounded animal. Who's going to bail us out, China?
Covid is being used by the gov to waste an awful lot of money and no one is paying attention.

Why not?

Was the impact really necessary? No, but no one could know that until after it had started. Hindsight is 20/20 but in the moment things aren't so clear.

I believe most (all?) Governors acted with the best intentions. Some chose to lock down hard and long and others took a more relaxed approach. It's easy to see that NY with its continuing restrictions (mask mandates even beyond the CDC recommendations otherwise) has had a higher death rate than FL with its light touch to restrictions. FL came through this in better shape but maybe we were just very lucky.

What concerns me is the tendency to act in "an abundance of caution" rather than taking evidence-based, measured steps. There was little or no concern for the economy, for individual freedoms, for mental health, or for anything other than squashing the curve. Some of the measures were necessary and probably kept the death toll from being twice as high. By downplaying or ignoring the economic and societal costs however, some unnecessary damage was done. We'll recover but it is a shame that the recovery is necessary.

Hopefully, there will not be a next time but realistically, there probably will be. With any luck we will learn from the past year and be better prepared to handle all the impacts.

Grants & Funding | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Wuhan University

Wuhan University is an internationally respected medical school and research facility.

Good points - as a nurse, I can say that you certainly may NOT have had COVID - who knows? The reason to have the vaccine is to achieve herd immunity. I’ve talked to so many people who are terrified of the vaccine. However, it is safe and the science behind it is good. Those who don’t get the vaccine are hoping the rest of us will provide herd immunity. Unfortunately, if you do get the virus, you can spread it. It kills a lot of people and causes long term problems. That being said, I believe in free choice, although I don’t understand why people don’t want to keep the virus from spreading to those who are vulnerable. To each his own!

I Know 5 people that died with Covid
 

Out of the 5 people that I know that death was attributed to Covid 19, one was battling Stage 4 Lung Cancer, Another one was battling 2 major strokes and paralyzed, one had Pancreatic Cancer, One was on the list for a heart transplant, and the last one died of Covid 19, I am not a Doctor, but my point is that a lot of deaths attributed to COVID-19 were of people that had other maladies and their immune system was compromised and couldn’t fight this virus. Yes the virus is real, however if you are have a normal immune system, your chances of surviving it are good. We closed the best economy in our history, closed schools, however WalMart, Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot and other major retailers stayed open, our small business was annihilated, many of them were forced to go out of business. We had major differences on reports by the CDC, WHO, Fauci and others one day wear two masks, wear no mask, wear a shield. Open our Country, those that want to wear masks, please continue, those that don’t want to eat in restaurants, that is your choice, don’t want to shop, not a problem, however please don’t demand that I have to, I am fully vaccinated, let’s get back to Normal, we are here in Florida and I thank our Governor for that. May God Bless America!!!

Cases are falling in part because people are getting vaccinated. They have fallen to about 35,000 new cases per day and 600 deaths per day. A yearly death toll of about 220,000 does not seem acceptably low.

It is likely that each of the deaths (over 600 per day) was someone who said, "we are now supposed to run out and get vaccinated?"

While "the actual risks of catching Covid have been greatly reduced," the vaccination goes farther and reduces the risk by a factor of 20.

The arguments against Covid vaccinations sound similar to the arguments against measles vaccinations which led to the outbreak in early 2019. We need to learn from the past and avoid a Covid resurgence in the fall.

It will be interesting in a few years to compare Ca and Fl. Similar states that took different approaches.

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ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETLY, TOTALLY, PERFECTLY said my Friend.

EXACTLY my point of view as well. I cannot add much other than, thank you.:bigbow:
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The most likely reasons those states had higher rates are numerous - majority international hubs, mass transit is heavily used, population density, etc. All contribute to a more rapid spread of a virus and an overwhelming of medical systems.

I don't know of any models that suggest everyone would die (extinction level event) if we did nothing - a LOT, but not everyone.

The issue is what is the purpose of government. And conservatives and liberals disagree on that - it is almost the entire disagreement between them. Liberals (me) believe the purpose of government is to do things the people want to be done that the people can't reasonably do alone or even as a company. For instance, reaching the moon, building the Interstate highway, the post office, etc. Conservatives believe that free-market capitalism will supply what people want - ie. supply and demand. Obviously, there is a spectrum from the radical right to the radical left, with many shades of purple in between.

As a liberal, I believe one of the purposes of the government would be to take control of pandemic mitigation. I personally feel the government should have required masks, should have used the emergency production act to supply needed items, like masks and ventilators, etc.

I completely agree with the government providing economic support for people impacted by the pandemic - another of those "things a government should do".

I think the government could have done a lot more to work with companies to figure out how to make the workplace safe for those companies that are involved in critical production.

But, I agree we are where we are. Pointing fingers might make us feel better, but will not help us move forward. We are in a terrible situation, and we can't solve it, so by my definition, it is the job of the government. We need the government to take aggressive actions to stimulate the creation of a mix of temporary and long-term jobs. I see the government trying to do that now, unfortunately, I also see some people trying to prevent the government from doing anything.

counter factual are "impossible" to prove because they didn't happen. . .
counter fatals are at best, an opinion, but unless you are in the position of making responsible decisions for others, such as doctors, elected officials, etc, you are just complaining or are a Russian disinformation troll

since the last major pandemic was about 100 years ago without modern medicine and world wide news and cooperation, or even work wide communications.. . . this pandemic was a unique and first event. . . so unless you have a crystal ball better than science, you are just picking at your own scab hoping others will sympathize with you

Covid is and was a political "planned-demic". Never before has a disease or virus with a 99% survival rate had such extreme measures forced upon its citizens. The ultimate impact financially, emotionally, and socially will never be calculated with the effects on school children, people unable to schedule critical surgeries, attend funerals, weddings, graduations, be with their hispitalized spouses, etc. Pure, unadulterated, absolute insanity driven by unhinged fear.

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

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.

I lost count of how many times I asked a poster to document their claim that there were significantly fewer than 500,000 additional deaths in 2020. Maybe you'll have better luck getting an answer.

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.

World leaders do not have our best interests at heart. They only have theirs.

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.

One thing for sure “you can’t win for losing with Covid”.
We can Monday night quarterback but it won’t change the out come of the game.....all we can do is learn from this. I truly feel if we weren’t so divided as a nation we would have walked through this 100% better

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.

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.

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.

Please feel free to speculate on what other event occurred in 2020 that could have given rise to a 10% increase in the expected deaths. The provisional number of excess deaths is consistent with the reported number of COVID related deaths. Both were about 300K through calendar year 2020.

I thought the 500K number included part of 2021?