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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

When this pandemic started, a 35-year-old family friend of mine got infected with COVID19, infected his father, and then both died. Then we couldn't attend their funeral because the devastated family was worried they would spread COVID19 to everyone else during the funeral.

You can't live like normal in these social circumstances.

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Florida's death rate has been far higher than the rest of the country due to their decision. And for what? Omicron arrives, and their "natural immunity" is falling apart like a paper tiger.

"Natural immunity" gave them absolutely no protection at all.

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That’s unfortunate about your friend.

The chances of a 35 year old without serious pre-existing conditions dying at the beginning of the pandemic is about the same as being struck by lightning. Another family member getting sick and dying also seems unlikely (<10%). Wonder if there was a genetic component.

https://www.qcovid.org/

That said, it doesn’t change the risk profile. The stats are the stats, individual circumstances will happen. As the pandemic goes on the community immunity will improve, treatment options improve and virus should evolve to be weaker.

Yeah. Treatment options have definitely gotten better. IIRC, something like 80% of deaths can now be prevented thanks to a combination of Dexamethasone, Monoclonal Antibodies, and other such advancements. Monoclonal antibodies may have stopped working for Omicron, but the Pfizer pill looks like it still works.

A lot of it was probably timing, getting hit early before doctors really knew what the best treatment options were is the "lightning" event for sure.

The father was older, near 70 and with some pre-existing conditions. He was being careful about COVID19. But the chain was nurse -> 35-year-old -> pass to his father. Sometimes, even with all the precautions you take, its not really possible to avoid the disease.

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Nonetheless, my sister works in the emergency room as a doctor. She's had to declare plenty of 30-some year olds dead. I know for a fact that my story is far from unique, plenty of other young folk have died from this disease.

You can talk to anyone who works in the emergency room: there's plenty. Firefighters / First Response teams, nurses, and doctors. Hear the stories directly from them.

When I read comments like OP's, I always try to square where their perspective is coming from.

If P_death is 0.1% and Dunbar's number is 150, the chance someone you care about will die of Covid-19 is a mere 14%. You have to get to caring about 700 people before you're more likely to know someone who dies of Covid-19 than not.

This whole thing essentially only really matters in aggregate. Sure comorbidies, protecting yourself from long Covid, etc. But in general there is so much leeway to come up with your own hypotheses and have them "confirmed". I've got a special rock that keeps tigers away etc.

One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn't go telling a nurse that the past two years have been for their imagination. Especially not with hospital occupancy being what it is.

(PS I'm sorry for your family's loss. Negotiating funeral customs during Covid is truly terrible.)

Florida is 27th in age adjusted death rate from Covid.

https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/blog/states-ranked-by-age-...

> "Natural immunity" gave them absolutely no protection at all.

Would you please give me a source for this claim? I doubt that natural immunity is completely useless.

I am sure you have a source for the claim, as a Dec 23 FL and CA have about the same Deaths per 100,000 population, massively under NY, IL, MI, etc.

One trend that is clear, Cold Weather states have MUCH higher death rates than states Warm States, I think weather more impact than any government policy has a on COVID deaths.

Florida has a population of 21 million and 62,347 COVID19 deaths: a rate of 0.29% of the total population.

California has a population of 39 million and 76,332 COVID19 deaths: a rate of 0.19%, far lower than Florida's deaths-per-capita.

> When this pandemic started, a 35-year-old family friend of mine got infected with COVID19, infected his father, and then both died.

I've now had literally dozens of friends and family get Covid, ranging from children all the way up to elderly relatives. None have had more than minor illnesses, from which they quickly and completely recovered.

Anecdotes are worthless as arguments. Appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy, and that's all you're doing here.

> Then we couldn't attend their funeral because the devastated family was worried they would spread COVID19 to everyone else during the funeral. You can't live like normal in these social circumstances.

I'll say this: we most certainly can't live like normal when we're being prevented from living like normal by people who make up silly and inhumane rules, based on speculation and fear.

> Florida's death rate has been far higher than the rest of the country due to their decision.

According to CDC data, Florida and New York at this time have the same death rate. About 320 excess deaths per 100K.

Re: NI, I'm baffled how this is still controversial in the US when the UK, Germany, Israel, etc. Many others recognize it as a valid alternative to vaccination.

It absolutely did give them protection against severe illness just like South Africa. It's in the data.

This discussion has happened literally every surge.

Hospitalizations lag case counts by about 1 to 2 weeks. Deaths further lag hospitalization counts by another 1 to 2 weeks.

Omicron arrived in NYC weeks before it arrived in Florida. You can see it evident in the case counts. You have to wait the appropriate amount of time (ex: ~1 to 2 weeks to compare hospitalizations, and ~2 to 4 weeks to compare deaths).

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Omicron hasn't hit Texas yet. So in a week or two (or whenever Omicron arrives there), Texans will be making the same time-delayed fallacy that everyone else has made.

After 3 or 4 "humps", you'd think that people would be understanding of this time-delay effect by now.

"Just wait two weeks" - this mantra is a bit overplayed? The USA is not monolithic. COVID has proven to be seasonal. Flu season in Texas/Florida are quite different than New York/Michigan.

Florida hit +300% cases in the past 5 days.

That's too quick to show up in hospitalization statistics yet. I'm expecting that in 2 weeks or so, those people start showing up in hospitals.

Yep, just wait 2 weeks :-)

https://www.miamidade.gov/information/library/2021-12-27-cov...

In the past 7 days, hospitalizations rose by 107% in Florida, matching the rate of COVID19 growth from a week or two ago.

We're _already_ seeing the massive increase in hospitalization numbers in Florida. Its a time-delayed compared to case-counts, but its clearly hitting Florida now. What do you think will happen in the next week (when last week had +300% case count) ??

There was a blip in the data for Christmas / Christmas Eve (I dunno if that's because fewer people were working, or if fewer people decided to go into the hospital). But otherwise, the trajectory and hospital usage number-trend is pretty clear and evident already.

Florida's death rate is not "far higher than the rest". It's actually about 14% higher than the USA national average. Which is about what you would expect considering that age is the primary risk factor: Florida has 21% of their population over age 65 compared to only 17% for the country as a whole.

You also haven't established any causality between those decisions and the death rate.

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