If this is the wrong place for this post I apologize. One of the reasons I joined here was to see a balanced set of ideas about issues. I am a fiscal con/ social lib. Essentially a Libertarian. I am looking for a civil discussion on issues with libs, cons and moderates. Afterall a wise man once said "I never learned anything in a room where everyone agreed with me"
So here goes topic one. I have questions about stats and perspective.
1) Perspective on big numbers related to COVID: Do we have a proper perspective on the relationship between 1/4 of a million deaths in a country of 1/3rd of a billion people
One way to bring that into focus is that 2.8 million plus Americans die each and every year. Therefore Corona probably added less than 10% to the total death from all cause this year. Probably far less since Neil Ferguson ( the man's who's estimated first caused panic) admits that half of these deaths were among people so debilitated that they would have died this year anyway. If he is even close to right about that then COVID may raise the total deaths considerably less than 10%.
Is that enough to have taken the actions we took in terms of closing businesses, limits on the number who are allowed to congregate together, massive increase in national debt, hospital closings/near closings and restrictions on what many of us consider personal rights?
2) Chronology question: In March we were asked to take two weeks off to "flatten the curve" based upon Neil Ferguson's model using very high death rate numbers which originally predicted 2.2 million American deaths.
At about the time the two weeks ended and the vast majority of our hospitals were suffering from no business not too much. Then in early April Ferguson adjusted the death prediction to less than 10% , not by 10% TO 10% of what his Model had predicted leading to world wide lockdowns. Now the forecasted death toll for 2020 would be very close to our reported reality.
So the question is how do you justify two weeks to flatten the curve based upon an expectation of 2,000,000 deaths then after those 2 weeks double down on months of intensified lockdowns and added mask rules given the new , far better forecast of deaths being so much lower?
So here goes topic one. I have questions about stats and perspective.
1) Perspective on big numbers related to COVID: Do we have a proper perspective on the relationship between 1/4 of a million deaths in a country of 1/3rd of a billion people
One way to bring that into focus is that 2.8 million plus Americans die each and every year. Therefore Corona probably added less than 10% to the total death from all cause this year. Probably far less since Neil Ferguson ( the man's who's estimated first caused panic) admits that half of these deaths were among people so debilitated that they would have died this year anyway. If he is even close to right about that then COVID may raise the total deaths considerably less than 10%.
Is that enough to have taken the actions we took in terms of closing businesses, limits on the number who are allowed to congregate together, massive increase in national debt, hospital closings/near closings and restrictions on what many of us consider personal rights?
2) Chronology question: In March we were asked to take two weeks off to "flatten the curve" based upon Neil Ferguson's model using very high death rate numbers which originally predicted 2.2 million American deaths.
At about the time the two weeks ended and the vast majority of our hospitals were suffering from no business not too much. Then in early April Ferguson adjusted the death prediction to less than 10% , not by 10% TO 10% of what his Model had predicted leading to world wide lockdowns. Now the forecasted death toll for 2020 would be very close to our reported reality.
So the question is how do you justify two weeks to flatten the curve based upon an expectation of 2,000,000 deaths then after those 2 weeks double down on months of intensified lockdowns and added mask rules given the new , far better forecast of deaths being so much lower?
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