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Comment by hnrodey | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on a COVID data website using public data from the New York Times. It's on my list to make the code open source but I'm just not there yet.

FWIW, based on county test results and my anecdotal poking around the US - most counties in the US have 1% or less of their population getting a positive COVID test in the past two weeks. In the grand scheme of things, I contend we have only a handful of people infectious in any two week period.

Find your state and county at https://thecovidcomplex.com/states

Queue the hug of death. Using ASP.NET Core and Digital Ocean droplet for hosting.

I have some really specific biases about the COVID response in the US that I shall not dwelve in to here. You can read about them on the About and Resources page. The other day I posted my site as a comment to something else COVID and you can read that discussion thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255589 just search for my username in the comments.

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I'm not sure your data rhymes with your interpretation. Having 0.5%~1% of people having a positive corona test in the last two weeks means that every week 3.2~1.6 million people are walking around with Corona. I would not call that a handful of people. (This is even the lower bound as it excludes untested people which are positive)

With a fatality rate of 2% (source: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid?country=~USA) that means 64~32 thousand die every two weeks. This translates to 1.7~0.8 million people dying every year. With that I'm obviously ignoring the large spectrum between 'no lasting symptoms' and 'death'.

With one of the most lax responses in the western world I cannot see how you conclude from this that the US's response is 'overblown and hysterical'

655,000 people die every year from heart disease. In the US.

Where’s the outrage and concern from eating pie and cookies for breakfast?

> My bias is that the COVID-19 response in and across the United States is overblown and hysterical.

Can you say more about this? Lots of people have died; if anything my feeling is that our response has not at all been commensurate.

Read the remainder of that paragraph.

I'm just gonna skip a bunch of steps here, which may be unwise but whatever.

Your argument is that if you're fit and healthy, you shouldn't have your behavior dictated by people who aren't. They've made poor choices, they're the ones who should bear the consequences. You further argue that the low per-capita positive tests indicates that COVID-19 doesn't deserve the response we've (so far) given it.

Here's why you're wrong:

- Fit, healthy people do die from COVID-19. They can also suffer long-term effects.

- There are people with high vulnerability to COVID-19 through no fault of their own. They can have autoimmune disorders, or simply be old. You acknowledge this. However, you generally can't choose to transmit COVID-19 only to the obese and not the old (for example).

- Further, you broadly can't choose to contract COVID-19 and not transmit it to others. It's possible to be asymptomatic and shedding for days. To be clear: you can have COVID-19, not know it, and infect dozens of others who can do the same.

- Tests are a poor measure of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. They do lend themselves very well to manipulation and motivated reasoning, which I would guess is why people who are motivated to diminish the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic like using them. The only stat that matters is death count per capita.

First, I appreciate the thought you put in to your response.

Every possible demographic has experienced some type of negative outcome from COVID. Most people make a full recovery. Have the fit and healthy passed from COVID? Absolutely, albeit at a staggeringly lower rate than others.

Personally, my wife and I made a decision back in the summer to get back to living our lives and accepting the consequence because we are a family of four healthy individuals. We workout several days per week. Our children are healthy. We don't eat like assholes. We are not licking doorknobs. We have stayed at home when we knowingly came in to contact with someone who tested positive. We respect others' decisions who have decided that stricter measures are right for their situation.

On the site I acknowledge asymptomatic transmission of COVID. If I am worried about getting sick then I should be taking all possible precautions to minimize my risk including self isolation, etc.

A large part of my personal motivation for starting this in the first place is because of the terrible way the media currently reports COVID which is almost exclusively through number of confirmed cases. I'd argue that stat means very little.

It seems true to reason that the sick and unhealthy are the group who suffer the largest impact from COVID. Health is a choice (obviously there are exceptions). Millions of people die every year in the US from otherwise preventable causes like heart disease, lung disease and various forms of cancer. Therefore my thesis is that we are punishing the responsible people in the world to prioritize those who have willfully neglected their health for a significant portion of their life. It's really straightforward to not be significantly overweight and workout 2-3 days per week.

Thanks! I think your viewpoint is one shared by lots of people for valid reasons, so hopefully I'm not coming across as too argumentative or whatever. But on the other hand stakes are high, so I don't want to sugarcoat anything either.

> Have the fit and healthy passed from COVID? Absolutely, albeit at a staggeringly lower rate than others.

The end of this argument is "the mortality rate for X people is/isn't worth response Y", e.g. "the mortality rate for fit people isn't worth lockdowns for everyone". This seems like a good analysis to engage in, but it isn't, because you can't pick who gets COVID-19. The rejoinder here is "it is worth lockdowns for everyone because fit people can still infect other groups with a much higher mortality rate with COVID-19." Another rejoinder would be "the current mortality rate is 1-2%, which means if we're all infected millions of people die."

> On the site I acknowledge asymptomatic transmission of COVID. If I am worried about getting sick then I should be taking all possible precautions to minimize my risk including self isolation, etc.

You are essentially saying you accept the risk of contracting COVID-19 and infecting others. I think that's the crucial point you're missing: infecting others. You may be in a position to make that choice for yourself, but many others aren't and can't avoid you. They could be essential workers, or dealing with a situation that forces them to take a risk. Many, many health workers or their family members have died because people like you infected them with COVID-19 after they got sick and sought care. Many of them quarantine themselves away from their families during outbreaks for exactly this reason. Please reconsider your stance here.

> A large part of my personal motivation for starting this in the first place is because of the terrible way the media currently reports COVID which is almost exclusively through number of confirmed cases. I'd argue that stat means very little.

But your chief data source, the New York Times, is already doing this. Their README [1] gives the exact same motivation you do. The difference is they don't highlight a stat that downplays the severity of the pandemic. Given this, I think your site is deeply misleading, and a prospective user would gain more valuable insight simply by loading the NYT's CSV into Google Sheets.

> It's really straightforward to not be significantly overweight and workout 2-3 days per week.

It may be for you, but many others struggle with weight for completely valid reasons (disability, mental illness, hormone disorders, metabolic and dietary disorders) and you can't distinguish them in the grocery store. I would also argue more broadly that we shouldn't value the lives of the overweight of obese less than others, no matter the cause.

It's also worth saying that while you keep focusing on obesity as the chief comorbidity, in truth it's age, and no amount of personal responsibility can let you avoid that (the opposite, actually).

---

I don't want to imply that I don't want to get back to life. Despite being misanthropic and super privileged, lockdowns and precautions haven't been wonderful for me--and it's been even worse for people I'm close to. But to be blunt, your position is selfish. I urge you to change your behavior. Many people and their loved ones are vulnerable to COVID-19 through no fault of their own, and you are putting them in danger. We should have vaccines in the next few months. It doesn't feel like that much to ask to try and stay in your home as much as possible, wear masks and socially distance when you can't, and wash your hands frequently until then. Compared to the potential consequences, I just can't see any justification for not doing so.

[1]: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data#methodology-and-def...

You appear to be a completely reasonable person. Given that we each have so much to say I'd be up for an in-person conversation via FaceTime/Zoom/etc. if you're interested.

You make several valid points for which there is little argument. I feel I do the same. At this point we simply have a different frame of reference on what is important to each of us.

My moms co-worker got it. Now 2 of his family is dead after he spread it. One of those was a 24 year old athlete. Can we PLEASE stop adding to noise on the internet with our opinions and pet projects?

Young, healthy, fit people are getting this and dying. Your hypothesis may be accurate overall, I do not know, but frankly it's noise nobody needs.

How can we fight a widespread infection using emotional anecdotes instead of statistics?

An emotional anecdote conveys the personal impact of an issue. It helps with empathy, something OP is not demonstrating. Statistics do back that it is possible for young people to die of COVID, albeit less likely than older people.

I have a significant amount empathy which is why I have invested personal time and actual dollars in building this site and engaging in professional discussions.

My empathy is primarily towards the people who have worked hard for what they have only to have it ripped away because of arbitrary government decisions.

Regardless, the people who have passed directly from and because of this disease is a tragic story in the history of our country.

Nationwide in the US in 2020, 7,151 people under the age of 45 have died after Covid diagnosis. Under the age of 25, only 528 people have died.

During the same time period, over 50,000 people under age 25 have died from all causes:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

The odds that I die after getting hit by a bus are presumably infinitesimal, yet I still don't make a habit of hanging out in traffic.

The odds that you die after getting hit by a bus are presumably quite high.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

3100 people died in a single day, and your response is:

> My bias is that the COVID-19 response in and across the United States is overblown and hysterical. In other words, the juice has not been worth the squeeze.

These are the kind of statements that people in future generations will look back on in embarrassment. "How could people be so purposefully blind to what's happening right in front of them?"

Also this;

> I argue that getting sick is a human right and that no one can deny you this right.

Do you not realize the fundamental issue with this statement?

Edited to add: 3,100 deaths reported in a single day, not necessarily all dead on the same day.

> 3100 people died in a single day

Realistically 3,100 people died over several days, possibly weeks, and due to reporting delays caused by the Thanksgiving holiday, the numbers were all reported on one day.

There's never a more important time to follow the seven-day rolling average than around a major holiday. A lot of people died of covid yesterday, and a lot of people will die of covid today, but not 3,100 people.

We have a significant number of people in this country (including the person you replied to) who sincerely believe that covid is overblown. Obviously incorrect statements like "3100 people died in a single day" reinforce those beliefs and are counterproductive.

You're right, thanks for the correction. Either way, the fact is still that we're at nearly 280k thousand deaths in just the US, and are very likely to hit 400k or more, and people are still out there saying we're overreacting. It's absurd.

What would be your response to the small business owners who lost their livelihood because government arbitrarily decided to cut off their revenue stream?

The kids who are being left behind because schools across the country have gone virtual?

The increases in domestically violence? Suicide and depression rates?

The unavoidable health decline because people have been forced in to their homes and apartments for several months?

There’s a boatload of problems in the US. COVID is a symptom - not the cause.

Health is the antidote to COVID - not lockdown. And as we see, far too many people have spent years upon years sacrificing their health and now suffering consequences.

My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it.

The rough price of a human life in estimates of cost-benefit analysis is on the order of $10-100 million. That puts the cost of pandemic in lives lost in the US alone as of this date to a couple of trillion dollars. Were the pandemic to infect everyone in the US, the resulting death toll would have a calculated cost of approximately 100% of yearly GDP. The economic costs of a lockdown are a bargain in comparison.

>My response is that we should be mad at the government for failing to enact policies to actually eradicate COVID, who instead decided that it's hopeless and that we should only use halfhearted, ill-enforced methods of questionable effectiveness. And further more, we should be mad at them for failing to take more effective fiscal measures in response to the pandemic to actually support people who are hurting financially as a result of it.

Yeah, agree with all of that.

You seem to think I'm advocating for hard lockdown, which I never said.

I see this pattern in COVID discussions all the time. Someone claims COVID is overblown, people push back, then the response is always "yeah but lockdowns are horrible!". It's largely a strawman.

Lockdown and restrictions have been the primary means to control the spread of COVID.

COVID, as a disease, should be taken seriously. It is absolutely more serious for some than others. Ultimately every person needs to exercise personal responsibility instead of demanding that others change their behavior.

I know my state tracks case data and death data by date of test/death, not by date of report (which generally means that the last ~2 days in the daily report are undercounts, although annoyingly, the running averages don't stop a few days early).

I don't know how well other jurisdictions do at distinguishing between day-of-report versus day-of-event, nor how well aggregations do at tracking the disparities here.

In any case, at current trends, "3100 people died in a single day" will shortly be true if it is not true already.

In a normal year 3,000,000 people die in the US. The numbers are higher because of covid-19, but not by a lot. You can check the CDC graph for excess deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Nobody would have predicted the current response based on that graph. It fits a trend where people become less and less willing to accept physical risks.

Why can't we discuss this without calling one another "purposefully blind"?

Why do people keep making this argument that the numbers are so low and don’t warrant a response without addressing or considering that the world has taken MAJOR steps to curb the spread and impact of the virus. If we all lived our lives as normal, it would likely be way worse.

Not to mention that if we were to have lived our lives as normal and not cared, then deaths outcomes would rise even more in proportion to hospital admissions since the more overloaded a hospital gets, the harder it is to get proper care.

It’s really not rocket science. Epidemiologist and doctors are saying we should take significant measures to stop this, I think I trust them. I wouldn’t want a doctor telling me how to engineer a web service.

Yeah, when your hospitals are operating at 100% capacity, the argument "but excess deaths this year aren't actually much higher" doesn't really work.

And then if, through heroic effort and sacrifice the hospitals don't get overrun, people say "why were we worried? The hospitals never went over capacity!". Like if a team of engineers spend a week mitigating a security attack, then all of the non experts at the company say "well, nothing ended up happening, guess the whole thing was overblown".

Which epidemiologists are you referring too? It seems even Scientific American can't get information from them.

"One epidemiologist told us the environment was “too toxic” to talk to us, even anonymously."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-science...

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

We know how to beat this virus, other countries have done it (South Korea, Taiwan, NZ). The solution is incisive contact tracing, short effective and targeted lock downs, social distancing, etc...

The problem is that in the US our institutions have failed us so badly that those solutions are not an option. Because of the delayed (and insufficient) response and our hollowed out institutions the virus has become so widespread (and our institutions so rickety) that we can’t effectively apply the solutions we know exist because it’s too late.

This is where the problem lies. Instead of talking about the solutions we know work, we are forced into a position where our only options are extreme (full lock downs and such) and they can't even fix the problem, only mitigate the damage (with significant collateral damage). Our binary choice is essentially death or destruction, and that is a direct result of our own failures. These are not the only two existing options, they are just the only ones presented to us in the US.

I am not trying to say that epidemiologists all agree on full lock downs. But no epidemiologist worth their salt will say we should do absolutely nothing about this virus, they will argue over specific strategies and their collateral damage, but they will not say that we should do nothing.

You're being dishonest however in saying "look the excess deaths are so low" without considering that their have been significant measures put in place to reduce that death count. That's logically equivalent to saying "see we don't need seatbelts because the number of people dying is not that high" after seat belt laws have been implemented. In this case, the reason excess mortality is lower is not because the virus isn't deadly to many people, but precisely because the measures we have taken.

The few epidemiologists that have spoken out against the measures have been ordered to stop talking publicly. Studies have been accompanied by lengthy apologies for the facts they found. See for example https://www.wnd.com/2020/11/major-peer-reviewed-study-finds-...

I don't know a lot about viruses, but I know groupthink when I see it. Suppressing competing opinions is the opposite of science.

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