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Medicine United States

America's Covid-19 Deaths Likely to Exceed 9/11's Death Toll Every Day, For Two Months (thehill.com) 387

Just today in America there were 223,365 new Covid-19 cases. The Hill notes that's "the worst it has ever been."

Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat also highlights this quote from Robert Redfield, the director of America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "We are in the timeframe now that probably for the next 60 to 90 days we're going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor," Redfield said during an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition, when asked about the vaccines which are being prepared for use, Redfield said, "The reality is the vaccine approval this week's not going to really impact that I think to any degree for the next 60 days." Redfield, echoing a wide range of health experts, urged people to "double down" on basic precautions in the short term until a vaccine is widely available [including wearing a mask but also avoiding indoor gatherings.]

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America's Covid-19 Deaths Likely to Exceed 9/11's Death Toll Every Day, For Two Months

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  • I'm sure we'll see here on /. how the numbers are inflated - the main accusation being that people, positive for Covid, dying other deaths will be counted as being a Covid death.

    I won't predict the reasons, other than to say that I expect them to be paranoid and political and not accepting the fact that this is a deadly disease.

    • I'm reminded (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:52PM (#60824184)
      of the scrub's prayer [duckduckgo.com]

      It's a Hoax.
      And if it's real it's just a little cold.
      And if it's not just a little cold it's just the flu.
      And if it's not just the flu it just kills the really old
      And if it doesn't just kill the really old they must have been really sick.

      And on and on and on. The deniers don't just have one type of denial. There's an entire list of them.

      I don't blame them per se. There's a professional media apparatus putting these ideas in their heads for profit and because they don't want to extend unemployment and housing benefits.
  • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:46PM (#60824168)

    Nearly a quarter million cases a day in the US now.

    And not that long ago [slashdot.org] (mid October) it was at "only" 8 million total cases, half what it is today.

  • Discrete events (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:49PM (#60824176) Homepage Journal
    As have been stated these are discrete events, not daily totals. As has also been stated, some of these happened a long time ago and so the numbers are much more dire they seem. For instance, the 1900 hurricane killed between a quarter and a third of the islands population at that time.

    Now, some states have stupid people who do not believe in the devil science until they are sick and need the hospitals to save them from their maker damning then to enteral hellfire. These states are seeing 10% of the population infected and may see more than 1% die. But overall the thinking people have prevailed and we are unlikely to see deaths surpass even half a percent.

    What these numbers miss is that people like all of Trumps lawyers who go out and get purposefully infected put a strain on the rest of us. It is like choosing not to work and expect the taxpayers to fund you welfare checks. Of driving without insurance and expecting others to pay your bills. It is the worst aspect of socialism. Knowing you can be as irresponsible as you wish because the socialists has said doctors have to treat you no matter the danger to themselves or cost to society.

    • by Sebby ( 238625 )

      Now, some states have stupid people who do not believe in the devil science until they are sick and need the hospitals to save them from their maker damning then to enteral hellfire.

      Yes, it's quite adorable to see those people calling dismissing or calling science fake, as they use their smartphones (brought to you by science) to tweet their theories on the internet (brought to you by science) while watching television (brought to you by science)....

      • Everything you mentioned is just magic to these people. This is why democracy cannot work with out significantly improving education standards. I mean quiz these people on what a fourier transform is and ask them how the FFT is used in their daily lives. I bet they cannot give a single example even though this beautiful math is an important part of some of these tech you mentioned. This is one of the reasons a technocracy starts to make more sense...

      • by fermion ( 181285 )
        Some blood oxygen sensors may use an FFT to filter out the extraneous frequencies.
    • So right off the bat you're off base.

      Also, I don't think you know what socialism is. It's a stateless society where ownership of the means of production is held by the citizenry. That's it really. It's got nothing to do with welfare or jobs or anythings else. It's about ownership with the assumption that states form to preserve ownership of the means of production by capitalism.

      This is relevant because you're trying to tar socialism with the brush of the COVID deniers irresponsibility. The two are c
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a stateless society where ownership of the means of production is held by the citizenry.

        Not really, socialism is a whole range of political philosophies with varying degrees of public ownership and various models for it. For example many socialist countries simply regulate private companies more heavily, or require that employees have more of a voice within the company but don't actually own or directly control it.

        Also the "means of production" is often things like healthcare, or infrastructure like roads.

  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:53PM (#60824188) Journal

    As deadly as terrorism, just as bad as war.

    • Clearly, it is far, far worse.
      Both wars and terrorist acts have explicit political goals and clear, rational, ends. Even when the means to reach those ends are not rational.
      If nothing else, at least you know the danger and the enemy and you can fight or avoid it.

      Corruption and incompetence are randomized, unguided, products of greed and ego with no clear end or goal in sight - and they spread everywhere and into everything, making everyone partially responsible.
      Thus every random act can add to the sum of de

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:06PM (#60824222)
    these numbers don't even include the Super Spreader event that was Thanksgiving. And hot on it's heels will be Christmas. We'll be pushing 5000 deaths a day by then.

    Hopefully we can manage to at least vaccinate healthcare workers, but we've dismantled our healthcare system for a fast buck so I'm not entirely sure we can do that. As one pundit put it, we don't have a healthcare system, we have a healthcare industry.

    Stay safe. I fully expect rationed care (e.g. "death panels") in January & February. There just won't be enough doctors and nurses to go around.
    • Hopefully we can manage to at least vaccinate healthcare workers

      Healthcare workers in the US will start being vaccinated within a week.

  • This is clearly a lie; the universe started with those first 2,879 deaths last Thursday.
  • R0 (Score:3, Informative)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:19PM (#60824252)
    This is what an R0>1.0 looks like. It's exponential growth, and it seems that even countries with above-average mask-usage aren't able to get the R01 and therefore stop the pandemic. Maybe only island nations, and they'll need to do widespread testing and lockdowns to keep the exponential growth from picking back up.
    • Re: R0 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IdanceNmyCar ( 7335658 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:53PM (#60824360)

      China does it really good. Mandatory masks in many areas. Social distancing in others. Quick and rapid development of health codes that track if your path intersected someone infected. Large scale testing of people and produce, and by large scale I mean testing a city with a few million or a city district with a million or more. Vietnam has done it even better. Neither is an island Nation and China's population is huge. You just have to treat this as a war which means people have to be willing to make sacrifices.

  • by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:41PM (#60824322) Journal

    there is no one we can bomb for this. Maybe bombing China will make us feel better.

  • Fake news. I can only find 3000 or so death certificates from 1900 that say: "Cause of death: Hurricane". Although here's 5000 more that say "Cause of death: Ocean".
  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:52PM (#60824356) Journal
    If only the dim witted scientists and doctors followed his directive and injected people with lysol this would not have happened.

    This many people would not have died of Covid.

    Thy might have died of lysol, but lysol is not covid. OK? So the genius invention was ignored and America is paying the price for it.

  • I'm surprised that in the list of days of significant loss of American lives, including famous battles, D-Day belongs at #13, and above Pearl Harbor (#15), but was omitted.

    Long knows that the Foundation’s list isn’t complete, but says that it’s the best figure that we have to date. Of the 4,414 Allied deaths on June 6th, 2,501 were Americans and 1,913 were Allies.

    https://www.history.com/news/d... [history.com]

    And I'm an Australian!

  • If you are going to do this, you really need to adjust past numbers by population.
  • by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Saturday December 12, 2020 @11:48PM (#60824500)
    The Spanish flu killed over half a million Americans. Is it included in this count?
    • by Sebby ( 238625 )

      The Spanish flu killed over half a million Americans. Is it included in this count?

      You're right, but I think it's meant to illustrate how many of those single-day event deaths are occurring daily, especially given the fact that it's fucking 2020 and we have the experience and knowledge that we should be able to avoid the worst of this, which the US has failed to do (along with a large portion of the world as well).

      • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @05:51AM (#60825070)

        The Spanish flu killed over half a million Americans. Is it included in this count?

        You're right, but I think it's meant to illustrate how many of those single-day event deaths are occurring daily, especially given the fact that it's fucking 2020 and we have the experience and knowledge that we should be able to avoid the worst of this, which the US has failed to do (along with a large portion of the world as well).

        The US, should have been more prepared. Mask stockpiles, ventilators, everything. Billions were invested over decades. What prevented us from being far more prepared? Same thing that prevented it the world over.

        Greed.

        And avoiding the worst of this? I wonder how many hours you stopped eating pork when the swine flu infected 50 million and put 250,000+ Americans in the hospital in the first year. I wonder how many times you've joined in with other countries to fight to put an end to the practice of wet markets. Avoid the worst of this? We're fucking welcoming the next one.

  • by zawarski ( 1381571 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @12:08AM (#60824554)
    I thought it was to protect American lives. Money well spent?
  • This is different (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:20AM (#60825556) Homepage
    American right wingers love to send their 20 year old sons off to kill civilians in Iraq, but they don't give a damn about 70 year old neighbors. Not enough to wear a mask or anything.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Ambrose Bierce

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