Lest we forget: coronavirus worldwide: 688 million, 6.9 million dead. US 107

[niyad]

million, 1.2 million dead.

roughly 5% of the world's population, roughly 1 in 6 0f the world's cases, and roughly 1 in 6 of the dead. And those are just the ones that got reported.

[Otto_Harper]

1. I can certainly affirm that there are probably major undercounts

As an example, I lost my wife a few months ago. She was battling cancer, and probably only had several more months left. But then, while hospitalized for Sepsis, developed as a result of cancer treatments, also picked up hospital acquired Covid. She actually made it past the Covid, but, the whole ordeal had basically wiped her out. On the certificate, C.O.D. is shown as cancer.

[niyad]

2. I am so very sorry for your loss. Please know that your DU familly is here.

[Otto_Harper]

9. Thanks. She was a long-time follower of DU. Got me started.

[blm]

4. So sorry

🕯

[MLAA]

19. I am sending you kind thoughts and hugs.

I am glad your wife found some comfort support with like minds at DU and she introduced you to it.

[Johnny2X2X]

20. I can offer anecdotal proof of an undercount too

Lost 3 people I know offical from Covid, 2 others probably too, but their deaths weren't counted as Covid.

Friend was a retired Army drill sergeant, in fantastic shape, only 50 years old. Work out warrior. Got Covid in the Summer on 2020, put him in the hospital and he was battling symptoms for several months. Got home from work one night, poured himself a whiskey, sat on his couch to watch TV and fell asleep and never woke up. Autopsy was inconclusive for cause of death. Very likely Covid related as he never fully recovered.

Another friend, very large man, died in his sleep several months after having Covid.

The excess death numbers during Covid suggest we way under counted, there maybe have been closer to 2 million dead Americans due to Covid.

[Takket]

22. My sister in law also had the same thing

She had VERY advanced cancer when she finally saw a doctor but she also caught Covid in the hospital which delayed treatment.

I doubt she would have survived the cancer but the Covid. Hurt her chances and time left.

Very sorry for your loss.

[StarryNite]

31. I'm so sorry for your loss.

She was hit with a lot and it all took its toll.

[SpamWyzer]

39. May she rest in peace.

Oddly, I also recall when the count criticism was that every death, regardless of actual cause, was listed as Covid19. It is not easy to manage a pandemic, I suppose.

[niyad]

46. That criticism was mostly coming from whack world, along with the assertion

that the reason for listing all deaths as covid was because the insurance companies were paying bonuses for every covid death.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. The "Got Reported"...

...applies everywhere. I've got no faith in China's numbers. 0.038% of their population? Yeah, sure! 5,000 deaths?
Yeah, sure.
They had 44 million cases in India. They have 4x the population in very crowded cities. Hard to believe that number, too,
While I agree the numerator of 107 million may be low based on unreported cases, the same is true of the world denominator. Likely moreso.

[niyad]

5. The "got reported" was meant for all. Various studies that I have read say that

the real numbers are likely anywhere from three to ten times thise reported.

[ITAL]

6. I remember

During the middle of one of the waves India had that doctors there thought the deaths were about ten times higher than being reported. As much as we may have undercounted, we didn't do that poorly.

[niyad]

7. I give you Florida, where nearly 33,000 cases just disappeared from the rolls.

The orders from kung flu don not to test. Not counting as covid if one had not been tested ( when tests were nearly impossible to get). People dying at home wuthout medical help. And on and on.. . .

[ITAL]

10. Still not the same

Ten times the deaths in India nearly double the world's death toll by itself. Even counting Florida's likely undercount there's absolutely no way our figures would be that affected.

[niyad]

12. See post 8.

[ITAL]

18. I did

Given measures to "flatten the curve" --- it wouldn't behave like a normal exponential curve.

I thought this piece was an interesting on excesss deaths in the US.

https://theconversation.com/covid-19-deaths-in-the-us-continue-to-be-undercounted-research-shows-despite-claims-of-overcounts-198266

So, yes figures are significantly undercounted. But even so, they're not THAT undercounted compared to say....India.

[Otto_Harper]

29. It not only didn't behave like a "normal exponential curve"

It didn't behave like any curve which could be anticipated to occur under any circumstances in the known universe. Efforts to flatten a curve cannot do what these curves did. Period.

[niyad]

47. The underreporting comment was not limited to the US, so I wonder why you

made that assumption.

[ITAL]

62. Probably because the original post was

million, 1.2 million dead.

roughly 5% of the world's population, roughly 1 in 6 0f the world's cases, and roughly 1 in 6 of the dead. And those are just the ones that got reported.

At the end of the day, the percentage US figures in both cases and deaths is nowhere near the "official" number, even with undercounting here.

[niyad]

63. The OP was quite clear.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. Exactly What I Meant

Which means that we can't properly assess the US % of total Covid.
We don't know the denominator.

[Otto_Harper]

8. As a retired "Senior Techno-Geek", I started following the Covid numbers from the git-go

The characteristics of the curves that resulted from the reported numbers did not make sense for exponential functions in the real-world. It was obvious that things were being tampered with by folks who did not know that their fingerprints were screaming out of the very numbers they reported.

But then, I am just a dithering Elder, with no formal "Medical" training, so, what could I possibly know about such things.

(Hint: A dozen patents in the world of high-tech).

[niyad]

11. Yes, what could you possibly know???

I do remember endless discussions along the lines of what you pointed out. And then watching all the lies, the side-stepping, the excuses, defkections, denials, from the powers that be.

[ProfessorGAC]

54. Retired Scientist Here

And, my area of expertise (physical organic chemistry) requires a lot of math modeling.
So, I understand what you mean.
Even before manipulation became more evident, there were things wrong with the numbers.
We will never know the true number of people infected.

[peppertree]

13. Absolutely. 10 million dead - at least.

Outside Western Europe, Japan, and a few other places, most countries had around 30% undercount.

Africa's was probably north of 60%.

And taking into account that there are around 1 billion people age 60+ worldwide, mortality in that age group was even more dramatic.

[elias7]

14. I think most of the 330 million people in the US have had covid, many more than once

I saw 4 cases in the ER I work at yesterday. Possibly more, we’re just not always testing everyone. When a maskless young mother walks into our ED with her sniffling/coughing kid, also without a mask, and says 3 other kids at home have the same thing but are getting better, I have found it useless to ask about home covid testing (they likely haven’t) or testing in the ED at that point.

Covid is still running rampant and there have been hundreds of millions of cases in this country, possibly getting close to a billion as so many have had covid 3 or 4 times.

[live love laugh]

15. People don't self test even tho it costs little to nothing. They DGAF.

[TexasBushwhacker]

41. The ones who think it's a hoax or take Ivermectin rather than get vaccinated

do not test because no matter how sick they are, they don't want to admit they have COVID-19.

[niyad]

48. Why take the test when you "know" that the tests lie?

[live love laugh]

59. There is, a stigma, or a mindset, that I've seen where people with "colds"

just self diagnose and insist they do not have Covid— they won’t use available tests to confirm. And I’m not talking about anti-vaxxers. And I think there needs to be more follow up communication about the need to self test, even though we are not in an official pandemic any longer.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Couldn't the sniffing/coughing kid just have a cold?

Or maybe even flu? As the pandemic was gathering steam there was a strong tendency to assume every single minor illness or symptom was covid. Of course, it was a while before we had tests available.

And yeah, you should test in the ED with that case, rather than just assume.

I seriously doubt many have had covid 3 or 4 times. Twice, yeah, but 3 or 4?

And I haven't had it. My circle of friends and relatives is hardly a statistical sample, but I don't as that as many as half have gotten it.

[Hope22]

27. I didn't think I had had it either but antibodies in the blood test showed otherwise.

Eight months later I had a crazy headache, the only symptom, tested four times at home all negative but the PCR test came back positive. Home covid tests that show negative are very unreliable per my physician. This is why I still stay away from people.

[bucolic_frolic]

16. And that is why I don't entirely understand the housing shortage

1 million passed, sadly. Some of those homes are empty, or were sold. Didn't that help housing shortage at all?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. 1 million out of a population of just over 330 million

is three-one hundredths of one percent. Even if every single individual who died left an empty house, that wouldn't make much difference to the rest of the population. And at least some of those were renters. Others were children, or people in nursing homes, or spouses.

So no, a million dead people are not going to make any real difference, because that's not enough to free up significant housing. Now, if you get a Black Death type of event, where anywhere from a quarter to a half of the population dies, depending on the area, then a lot of housing will be freed up.

[IronLionZion]

17. COVID is with us forever

just like flu.

[fescuerescue]

24. Is it really 1 in 6 dead?

I know there were alot of people that died and I certainly got sick as heck from it.

But I don't feel that 1 in 6 of my friends, family coworkers etc were killed. There was a guy on my street that passed away. There's probably 200 people in my "circle".

This was a terrible disease, but I feel like something is off with the math here. At least where I live.

[Hope22]

28. A higher percentage of the dead were over 65.

Is that representative of your friends and coworkers?

[niyad]

42. You are misunderstanding the post. The US has roughly 1 in 6 of the dead from

covid. 6.8 million dead worldwide. US 1.2 million dead from covid. Roughly 1 in 6.

[Botany]

25. The real #s are closer to 14 million when the #s of people who died of C-19 un-diagnosed and ...

... all those people who died because they could not get the needed medical care because
the medical treatment options were all tied up treating C-19 cases.

Trump just had to get rid of the global pandemic task force and the epidemiologist who was
on the ground in Wuhan prior to the out break of the cornavirus.

[BigmanPigman]

26. I'm getting my 5th shot on Fri

But I don't know the difference between a "normal" booster or the "bivalant, auto immune. comp." kind. What is the difference?

[Hope22]

30. In Ohio the only booster our County Health Department is offering is the bivalent.

‘The bivalent COVID-19 vaccines include a component of the original virus strain to provide broad protection against COVID-19 and a component of the omicron variant to provide better protection against COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant. These are called bivalent COVID-19 vaccines because they contain these two components.’

https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/covid-19-bivalent-vaccines#:~:text=The%20bivalent%20COVID%2D19%20vaccines,caused%20by%20the%20omicron%20variant.

[BigmanPigman]

32. Thank you!!!

I was hoping I'd get a reply to explain things.

[Hope22]

34. You are very welcome.

On a side note my reactions to the original vaccines were pretty debilitating. I was not looking forward to this new one but I have to say it was much easier on me. Three seniors here, two didn’t even miss a beat. I had mild side effects but nothing like the original. I wish you the best with yours! 👍🏼😁

[BigmanPigman]

36. That is pretty much my reaction too.

The last one was the worse by far (headache for a week). The Shingles vax was no fun for me!

[orthoclad]

33. Three times as many deaths as all of WWII.

Richest country in history. Worst global pandemic record.
Something is severely broken here.

[Happy Hoosier]

35. I think the undercount world wide is probably huge.

But the idiots in this country made things much worse than they had to be.

[RVN VET71]

37. And the Foxians will continue to say:

1. The whole thing was a hoax and
2. Dr. Fauci deliberately let the virus spread to America, killing millions.

Anyone with half a brain can see that 1 and 2 are contradictory, of course. But these are Fox watchers I'm talking about.

(And, yes, assuredly yes, both propositions are persuasive only to fools and Republicans -- but I repeat myself.)

[Moostache]

38. Here's my agony...

I don't care about the under-reporting or the vaccine deniers or the assholes who made the situation worse for millions of people here and around the world.

I care that it took my mother from me. I care that because of the timing of her passing and the pandemic that it took away our ability to properly mourn and process her passing with friends and family and the community that she spent a lifetime serving and being beloved in. I care that the stress of the entire situation played a role in my father's stroke and subsequent slide into the combination of reduced/lost function and onset dementia that are taking him away one day at a time while he struggles more than I have at the loss of his wife of 52 years and now his home, his independence and mobility and memories and ability to process it all.

COVID-19 came into the world at a precarious time for myself and my family. Aging parents, health issues and vulnerabilities added to genetic predispositions became a toxic stew of bad outcomes...but what we were robbed of was the normal coping mechanisms of losing loved ones. The loss of public mourning and condolences (those of online communities like DU not withstanding). The loss of closure. The hateful insensitivity of buffoons calling the vaccine "the jab" or "Fauci ouchie" and other stupid, hateful nonsense.

I myself was able to avoid infection 3 times from 2020 through this March. My kids and my wife had mild cases and the virus skipped me and my youngest daughter all 3 times...until this March when it finally found me. I began feeling ill on a Saturday evening. On Sunday I had become so fatigued that getting of the couch to make it to the bathroom was exhausting. On Monday AM, I was beginning to think I may require hospitalization. A call to my doctor and 5 minute discussion led to a Paxlovid prescription and within 2 doses of the anti-viral course I was miraculously better. By Thursday PM, I was feeling normal again. That level of change - from feeling nearly helpless to feeling almost normal in 72 hours stays with me now - with both gratitude and regret.

I survived what likely would have been a serious case of COVID-19 and if it had infected me in 2020 or 2021, before the treatments were widely available to combat the disease in its worst cases, I might not have survived. The level of helplessness I experienced when ill made me relive my mother's passing in agonizing detail and specific relief. For the majority of the 36 hours of my worst symptoms (shortness of breath, lack of stamina, crippling fatigue), I had to wonder if this was what mom went through on top of the suffering she had already endured (fighting cancer for 18 years, a shattered ankle and more in the months before she contracted COVID). Then, literally like magic, I received medication that beat the disease my immune system was losing to and beat it like a professional sports team going against a youth-group team.

Now, I am left to wonder why mom did not get the chance to beat COVID and fight her remaining ailments with family and friends and support instead of being limited to 1 visitor per day (which we all agreed had to be my dad). The pandemic changed the history of my family forever. Whether or not millions more than are being acknowledged suffered a similar impact won't ever erase my pain or my family's void where mom once was, where a proper and temporal funeral service and mourning was denied. The damage is done and the recovery is agonizingly slow and difficult. In many ways, because of the timing and sequence of events and the constant news of the stories regarding the vaccine deniers, the under-reporting of the pandemic loss of life and more, this thing that we called COVID-19 more than 3 years ago is still with me every day. It will be until my last day as well.

So in the big picture, do I care if the death toll is ever fully known? No. Do I care if the lying bastards and ideologues in the media and on the right wing lying machines are proven wrong? No. I only care that what has been exposed - a society susceptible to charlatans and con-men and lies - is healed and prevents similar outcomes in the future. And THAT is my biggest ongoing regret...if you stand back and look at the situation from a distance and try to see positives - aside from miracle drugs and treatments coming online and making my continued consumption of oxygen and water possible - I see precious little to stop the lying bastards and their money-grubbing controllers from learning applicable lessons, of preparing a better response for a future outbreak, or even from rediscovering their basic human empathy. Its all very depressing and hurts in places and at times I cannot predict or fully understand.

[flamingdem]

43. I feel similarly Moostache

Covid revealed and took so much. I felt like a fighter and still do against carelessness. Especially for the elderly. Members of my family failed and this lead to infection of a 90 year old relative at a party. She survived but died six months later. My mother was in a facility with an outbreak. I had to tell the idiotic visitors not to leave the doors open of the infected. They were in surgical masks, good luck with that. There was one hepa filter for the whole facility. I brought one in for her room. She didn't catch it then but I believe it started her illness a few months before. The outbreak was not reported anywhere.

Humans are indeed lacking in basic sense around disease prevention and basic empathy for the vulnerable.

[niyad]

56. I wish that I had words of comfort and healing for you, but I know there are none.

Your message is so powerful. .Would you consider posting it as its own OP? I think it is so very important.

In the meantime, please know that, for whatever it is worth, your DU family is here for you.

[marble falls]

40. The pandemic has taught me one thing I never believed in my youth: I have neighbors and ...

... friends who do not give any fucks at all about me or anyone else.

We've quit our church, First United Methodists over it.

[niyad]

49. It taught me that the selfishness and deliberate and prideful ignorance that I

have been watching for years is far more extensive, and worse, than even I had imagined., and far more deadly, on so many levels.

[marble falls]

50. And not a scintilla of shame among the entire basket of them. They are unemotionally deadly.

[Hortensis]

44. TYVM for the post. Something like 1 in every 250 Americans dead. So far.

My husband and I are both high risk in spite of vaccinations and still have to wear masks in crowded areas, and worse, mostly avoid crowded areas.

[niyad]

45. You are most welcome. I am so sorrry that you and your husband are still at

such high risk, but grateful for the vaccine and paxlovid. Even without risk factors, I will continue to mask as long as necessary, even though I hate the things, and am extremely claustrophobic.

[Otto_Harper]

51. By all means, continue to mask

As an example, the night I got the call that my wife was diagnosed woth hospital acquired Covid, I had just returned from visiting her. I always masked using US made N-95 masks (not the fraudulent Chinese cr@p ones). I am on a strong immuno-suppressive regimen, equivalent to a full anti-rejection drug regimen. I tested daily for 10 days, while they did not allow me to visit, and never had a positive test, nor was in any way symptomatic. I spent 2 months visiting her in hospital, nursing home, hospital and hospice. Always masked. Never symptomatic nor tested positive.

I attribute this to the masking (black cloth 3-layer over US made N-95).

I am still very cautious about where I go, when I go, and always avoid obvious Magats in public.

[Hortensis]

52. Yes. Masking is still protecting others. Claustrophobia -- ouch!

[niyad]

55. Yeah, not fun. I gave myself hypoxia the first time I put on a mask, because I

forgot to breathe. Headache, dizzy, nausea. I had to remind myself to breathe the next couple of times. A very strange experience. But I survived my weirdnesses, and will continue masking. And cursing the braindead.

[Pluvious]

61. I'm starting to use a N95 with a one way valve...

… when I’m indoors around the unmasked

I know I’m not infected, so I’m not putting others at risk

I wear a 2nd (ineffective) “printed pattern mask” over it, as the valve’s pretty unsightly heh

It makes the exhalation SO much better, less humid, fogging, etc

FWIW

[liberal_mama]

57. Thousands of Americans are still dying of Covid every week. Our political and public health

officials are just letting this go on, even allowing hospitals to stop masking requirements around vulnerable patients. It's like they are trying to cull the high risk, disabled, and senior citizens. High risk people have been abandoned. It's sad that the United States is allowing this to happen.

[niyad]

58. Culling the herd is exactly what they are trying to do. Cannot have the old,

useless, and infirm sucking uptheir resources, now, can we?

[liberal_mama]

60. It's upsetting. I've lost several members of my family to Covid, including my dad just 6 months ago

He was 74 years old, and vaccinated and boosted.

I'm immune compromised and everyday is terrifying now. I feel like I can't even get safe medical care.

It saddens me that Covid is still killing and disabling people and hardly anyone is standing up for the people who are at risk of dying. With the hospitals dropping masks and no longer testing patients for Covid, a lot of people are going to die prematurely. You would think people would be protesting in the streets.

It's a slippery slope. If they continue to abandon the high risk to die of Covid, they will go after other groups soon. Look at Canada's MAID program. In a poll, a third of Canadians thought it was okay for people to be euthanized if they had mental illness or were poor. Japan is stating that they have a real issue with too many elderly people. A lot of people on Twitter think it's perfectly okay to strangle someone to death on the subway because they are mentally ill, hungry, and homeless. It's really scary now.

Pretty soon, they won't need suicide hotlines anymore, they will just have euthanasia hotlines.

People need to stand up for the disabled and elderly before this culling goes even further.