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Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

There's only been around 20,000 Covid deaths this year in the under 55 age group this year. The under 55 age group is 80% of the population. That's less than car accidents.

So this is a disease that is very low risk for 80% of the American population.

They have a right to be upset.

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

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The death rate is low because we have managed to keep it somewhat under control. If the ICUs fill up, the death rate for all age groups will greatly increase.

They've been saying hospitals are going to fill up for almost a year and they haven't.

Didn't happen in Houston, didn't happen in Miami even after the news media spread all kind of fear based reporting about it. The heads of all the major hospitals in Houston got together and did a press conference to dispel the false press.

Hospitals also havent filled up in numerous places with virtually no Covid restrictions like Sweden.

The flat curvers are looking to be as wrong as the flat earthers.

I'd also like to see stats on hospitalization and age that you casually threw out there.

Only 500 people died of Covid under the age of 24 while over 200,000 have died above the age of 55.

It would stand to reason that hospitalization stats are wildly skewed towards the older generations.

From The U.S. Has Passed the Hospital Breaking Point in The Atlantic [1]:

In South Dakota, a network of 37 hospitals reported sending more than 150 people home with oxygen tanks to keep beds open for even sicker patients. A hospital in Amarillo, Texas, reported that COVID-19 patients are waiting in the emergency room for beds to become available. Some patients in Laredo, Texas, were sent to hospitals in San Antonio—until that city stopped accepting transfers. Elsewhere in Texas, patients were sent to Oklahoma, but hospitals there have also tightened their admission criteria.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/12/the-worst...

Edit: typesetting

The Atlantic was one of the media outlets that was drumming up fear that Houston was running out of room back in July and it never happened. Actually all of the heads of the hospital in Houston came together and said that was false reporting and there was plenty of capacity.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.khou.com/amp/article/news/h...

The Atlantic has been drumming up fear about Covid this entire time with numerous fear-mongering articles.

Just look at the headlines of the Atlantics reporting of Covid.

Everything is dire or a disaster or a death knell. Super sensationalist. The Atlantic has become the NY Post and they're probably making tons of money with fear-based articles.

https://www.theatlantic.com/category/coronavirus-covid-19/

I would love a real actual data set.

The news media is not a scientific reference to me.

It actually scares me that ppl use the news media as a scientific reference.

> The Atlantic was one of the media outlets that was drumming up fear that Houston was running out of room back in July and it never happened.

I call BS. I had a family member who was hospitalized in late June in Houston, for non-coronavirus reasons, at the #1 rated hospital in Texas for general medical care. They were literally hospitalized the night when our county judge put out the emergency alert on all mobile phones to stay home and isolate because the hospitals were going to go over capacity. The hospital was my family member was at was absolutely inundated. The pharmacy would hang up on the nurses because they were so swamped. Sometimes meals would come nearly 3 hours late. Nurse calls were not answered at times for over an hour.

My family member was also hospitalized in October, for non-coronavirus reasons, and it was actually worse than in late June.

These hospitals are basically now running two hospitals in one: a coronavirus hospital and a non-coronavirus hospital--that are not supposed to mix (everybody admitted to this hospital gets tested for coronavirus) but this still happens anyways.

This is such a huge undertaking and requires tremendous amounts of work by all of the healthcare staff.

Dude, you are being so disrespectful towards the people who are literally working non-stop under tremendous pressure. They are our last line of defense, for saving lives, and you are just totally blowing the whole situation off like it is no big deal.

So are the heads of the hospitals then apparently?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.khou.com/amp/article/news/h...

For future reference in your discussions anecdotal evidence is actually considered a logical fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal

>If the ICUs fill up, the death rate for all age groups will greatly increase

Can you explain the mechanism? Because hospitalization does _zero_ for survivability. We have no medicine that works, incubation turned out to straight up harm and kill patients. All you get at ICU is oxygen. You can get same thing at home. Two of my family members received portable units and isolated at home, third didnt get anything other than some pills for inflammation, last one stayed at the hospital and didnt receive anything other than oxygen and some random probably useless antibiotics.

This is how it looked 8 months ago in Italy:

"Italy Cremona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkbv_WQtn0 Italy Bergamo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_suhYeWEcJg Two hospitals, not a single patient survived ventilation/ecmo to date" Those hospitals were accepting 100 patients per day, and simultaneously producing same amount of body bags.

If this isn't over by summer 2021 it's time to quarantine the olds an allow the rest of citizens to return to normal life. We gave it a year. we can't go on expecting younger folks to give up all social life, development, sex and so on so old people can sit on Facebook alone at home or in nursing homes.

The young and reckless are why it continues to spread. There have been numerous reports of frat parties and college keggers being super spreader events. They lack discipline.

Only 500 people have died of Covid in the under 24 crowd since Covid started.

They have virtually no risk and they don't crowd hospitals because their symptoms are minimal.

Maybe if the old people who are actually vulnerable to the disease stayed in quarantine instead of going to Starbucks...we could keep the economy going and keep deaths to a minimum and hospitals from overflowing.

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

More "mature" person blames immature people acting immaturely. The only solution to that is time and experience...

This could even work unless another genius governor sends covid patients straight to nursing homes, cough Cuomo cough

https://eu.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alba...

That’s a nice narrative, but for every one of those that died from C19 there are many that didn’t. Unlike a car accident, those that survived do contribute to the spread of the virus and expose people who are at higher risk of a far more fatal outcome. Additionally every person that contracts this has a chance of needing supplemental oxygen and an intensive care bed. These are already in short supply and the people to manage these intensive care facilities aren’t an infinite resource. It is just reckless to expose more people to this virus when we have vaccines on the way to inoculate the highest risk communities.

While people certainly have a right to be upset, they don’t have a right to willfully endanger others.

The thing is...if the vulnerable 20% of the population can't stay in quarantine... but 80% of the population is low risk...this is not societies problem anymore.. this is that 20%'s problem.

What's the upper limit on the percentage of people you're happy to throw under the bus? Are problems only problems if they affect 51% or more of the population?

You've got it wrong. The people being thrown under the bus are the people being sent into poverty because 20% of the population can't seem to stay in quarantine.

Would you put 100 million people into poverty to save 1 life of a person who wants to go to Starbucks to get a Peppermint Mocha?

This is classic trolley problem.

This is literally the trolley problem haha.

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