Where is the hard evidence that actually would have happened -- mass overwhelming of a country's medical system? Isn't it curious that hasn't actually happened anywhere? NYC was absolutely convinced that was going to happen. We were all told it was too late -- the virus was out in the population before effective mass prophylactic measures were in place. There were parades, mass parties, no social distancing,etc.. Absolute horror stories about what was coming on the news. There emphatically weren't going to be enough hospital beds, there weren't going to be enough ventilators, an unavoidable disaster of epic proportions....but it didn't happen. Also told the same thing about Spring Break in Florida. Didn't happen.
In fact, even for weeks after most places put restrictions in place, we were repeatedly being told that we were not following social distancing guidelines enough, and that things were going to be even worse than projected because we had disregarded the guidance.. The "oh, the numbers were low only because people complied more than we thought" was only a post-hoc justification that directly contradicted what they'd been telling us all along about our lack of compliance.
Most medical people have a natural proclivity to be risk-averse, which means assume worst case scenario and be overly cautious. That's usually not a problem when the only real considerations are purely medical. But that's not the case here. I have heard a senior infectious disease expert at the CDC say that they weren't really wrong about their early projections -- rather, that when you have a chance to make public pronouncements that may affect the way people behave, it's not important if you're wrong if you change the behavior as desired. Basically, lying to us for our own good, as was done with the advice that masks don't work. Great -- way to to build trust in the public pronouncements of medical experts.
I don't doubt there would be some systems that might be overtaxed. I just believe the very long term damage that is being done to the country requires more than projections about mass overwhelmed systems that have yet to come true.
It absolutely happened. It happened in Italy simply because they reacted too late.
Although, it's pretty cool that, as predicted, if we did enough to stop the curve, people would claim the virus wasn't really that bad. The virus was spreading at an exponential rate. You don't stop that without changing behavior. We changed behavior, and curbed the spread. You don't take action, and you wind up in the situation Italy was in.
You're absolutely correct that statements are made to affect behavior. Listen to any epidemiologist and they'll tell you the number one thing to minimizing the impact of a wildly contagious outbreak is to act quickly and decisively. Even if your actions aren't perfectly informed or correct, you have to act as quickly as possible with the best information you have, if you want to give yourself the best possible outcome.
Or at least, some of the interpretations can do that. That's what I argued in my senior leadership paper at the Boat School, anyway. And I think using it as a guide as to what people "should" do is wrong.
Maslow's hierarchy is useful in a very general sense to predict how others may act. But you can't apply it in a rote matter as to how they should act, as if everything that is safety related must come before everything that has to do with "love/belonging", and that before everything that has to do with self-esteem, etc. Sometimes, you need to take risks with your sense of safety to develop self-esteem or reach self-actualization. Or even a sense of belonging or love. Just to give a sense...imagine if everyone in the military (and I understand that sports are not the military, but it still works) followed that hierarchy rigidly. You'd stay cowering at the bottom of your fighting hole while everyone else went up. You'd never achieve the sense of belonging with everyone else, you'd lose your self-esteem, and would never realize your potential.
The people who always prioritize safety over everything above that in the hierarchy can cripple their success and enjoyment of life, regardless of their vocation. True story -- I have a relative who is so paranoid about school buses that she refused to ever let her children ride them because she was afraid they'd be kidnapped, or the bus would get in an accident. So her kids attended school very irregularly, or she had to walk them, etc.. And sure, buses do get in wrecks, and bad people can get on a school bus. But she was letting what should have been a comparatively minor "safety" issue trump much more important things, even though those other things were higher up the period and therefore should come after considerations of safety. So was she right? Obviously not.
The point is that the magnitude of the consideration is just as important as its place on the hierarchy. You may choose to subordinate physiological needs for a period of time to achieve some goal that is higher up. Likewise, while the Black Death is a sufficiently important safety concern that is likely to take priority over just about everyone above it, Covid-19 isn't the Black Death. And an absolutist position of "safety is more important than everything else" is not the way a lot of people choose to live their lives.
I think you're right here, except for the Maslow "eating a dick" part which I took out. In no world should the smallest amount of a lower item be valued over the largest amount of a higher item. A 1% improvement in safety is not worth completely eliminating the top 3 tiers of the pyramid. But, that's also not the intended purpose of the model and if you wrote a paper on it I'm sure you understand that.
No, the U.S. reported a number of deaths that equaled more than a fifth of the number of deaths reported by the rest of the world. Actual deaths caused by Covid and deaths reported to have been caused by Covid are only the same if all of the following are true:
1) Every singly country uses the exact same standards as does every other country to determine whether a death should be attributed to Covid;
2) Every single area locality within a country uniformly used and applied that exact same standard;
3) Every single country was equally competent administratively in terms of recording and reporting to a centralized authority every single Covid-caused death under those standards.
4) No country, nor any locations or facilities within a country, made any deliberate effort to suppress/conceal the number of deaths caused by Covid
5) There was no efforts by anyone within the United States where a bias existed to attribute deaths to Covid that should not have been.
I don't believe for a moment that any of those are true. Countries don't all use the same standards, and we don't even use the same standards within this country. There is no way that deaths are tracked as accurately in NYC as they are in a Third World slum where there may not even be access to health care at all, much less anyone recording accurately the cause of death. I don't doubt for a single second that China has deliberately undercounted/underreported deaths properly attributed to Covid, and the head of the CDC himself in this country stated publicly that differences in reimbursement created a financial incentive to attribute deaths to Covid that should not have been, and he was confident that had happened to some extent. Shit, Florida actually reported as a Covid death a guy killed in a motorcycle accident because he had a positive Covid test. It was only removed from the rolls after that became public. While I'm pretty sure that isn't normal, it also illustrates the complete lack of consistently applied, reasonable standards in determining what is a Covid death.
tl;dr Cross-national comparisons of Covid deaths are not reliable.
In order to make a perfect model, you're correct. However, the numbers are far more accurate, and valuable, than you're claiming here. Finding a small inaccuracy doesn't mean the rest of the data is invalid. We can make valuable, informed decisions and judgments based on the data available.
Obviously there are exceptions. China's deceitfulness is one. A country without the ability to recognize COVID is another. But in general, the COVID deaths are the best indicator we have of the way the virus hit each country.
Also, the whole COVID-for-profit conspiracy that it's a prevalent, rampant problem tends to fall apart when you look into it.
I have to imagine this conspiracy theory originated from only one place--that Medicare insurance reimburses hospitals more for a COVID patient than they do for a simpler respiratory illness, like pneumonia, the cold, or the flu. Is this accurate?
If so--that's true. Insurance companies provide compensation based off the level of care required for the illness. However, the nurses and doctors who are working the front lines don't care about that. They don't see a dime of that money. It would be the hospital administrators and higher who would have interest.
So, in order for your conspiracy theory to hold any water, there would have to be a system of hospital administrators ordering nurses and doctors to provide false COVID diagnoses to patients who don't have COVID, in order to turn a meager profit (a few thousand more insurance dollars per patient). This would then have to be kept quiet by every doctor and nurse, as well as any patient who may find out.
- Front Line health care professionals would not go along with this scheme--as they tend to value their profession and their responsibilities quite highly, and there is no reason for them to adhere to such a scheme
- This is a massive amount of fraud you're suggesting for a piddly amount of payoff
- The risk is far too high (imagine being exposed for doing this) for the miniscule reward
I think we're getting a bit off the NFL theme here. So if you want to respond, maybe the politics section is more appropriate.
