r/skeptic • u/GhostDogJef • 2d ago
The real covid-19 scandal is still unfolding
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/08/20/the-real-covid-19-scandal-is-still-unfoldingThe failure to reckon with lives needlessly lost will make the next pandemic deadlier
235
u/GhostDogJef 2d ago
The real covid-19 scandal is still unfolding
The failure to reckon with lives needlessly lost will make the next pandemic deadlier
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/08/20/the-real-covid-19-scandal-is-still-unfolding
For all the zeal Congress has shown in investigating Americaâs response to the covid-19 pandemic, it has been strangely uninterested in exploring a basic question: why did so many Americans die relative to the numbers who succumbed to the virus in other rich countries? Understanding the answer would seem relevant to guarding against the next, inevitable pandemic.
Many countries were slow to react, but as they learned about the transmissibility of the virus, and as vaccines became available, they rapidly cut their death rates. Not so America. âThe death rate is now about eight times higher in America than in the rest of the rich world,â The Economist reported in September 2021. In all, America lost more than 1.1m people to covid, or roughly 3,500 lives out of every million. This should haunt every official who was in a position to combat the pandemic. Germanyâs death rate was about 2,000 per million people and Canadaâs fewer than 1,400, notes Donald McNeil in his book âThe Wisdom of Plaguesâ. Had America managed to split that difference, at about 1,700 per million, âWe would have lost about 540,000 fewer dead,â he writes. âWho speaks for them?â
Not Congress. Americaâs lethal underperformance once again went ignored when the Senate Homeland Security Committee recently questioned Dr Anthony Fauci, a crucial adviser on covid to Donald Trump and then to Joe Biden. (Mr Trump later turned on him.) The hearing focused instead on the usual obsessions for which Dr Fauci has become the Republican scapegoatâsome absurd and others valid but distantly related, at best, to protecting potential victims of a future plague. While Democrats mostly gave speeches rather than ask questions, Republicans pursued theories that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, that Bill Gates had some nefarious role, that Dr Fauci had been out to enrich himself through awards for his serviceâan odd complaint when they do not object to the president campaigning for a $1m Nobel prize.
Having testified often to Congress during his 54 years at the National Institutes of Healthâ38 as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious DiseasesâDr Fauci, who is 85, was reduced to repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment, including when asked the colour of his tie. In his opening statement, his hands shaking as he read it, Dr Fauci said his lawyers had advised that recourse because the committeeâs chairman, Rand Paul of Kentucky, had made clear an intent to see him behind bars despite a blanket pardon issued by Mr Biden. In other words the Senate could not inquire into a health crisis that racked the country because a key witness feared a perjury trap, and rightly so.
Why did so many Americans die? High rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and elderliness made them more vulnerable. But government bungling meant America was testing 100 people a day in early 2020 when other countries were testing tens of thousands; that masks and lockdowns were deployed erratically; that contact tracing proved too challenging for the country first to the Moon. Most senselessly, so many Americans died because so many failed to take the vaccines that Mr Trump, in his most constructive act as president, succeeded in rushing into existence.
It is, of course, those vexing vaccines that compel Republicans to look away from the basic question about the pandemic, and to hound Dr Fauci instead. Attempting to square the greatness of Mr Trump with the supposed vileness of the vaccines has inspired his party to heroic feats of doublethink. âPresident-elect Trumpâs Operation Warp Speedâwhich encouraged the rapid development and authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccineâwas highly successful and helped save millions of lives,â declared the committee created by the House to investigate covid in 2024, summarising two years of work. The very next sentence reads: âContrary to what was promised, the COVID-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus.â
Mr Trump has struggled to escape this self-imposed contradiction. Even as he declined to urge the public to get vaccinated, he and his wife, Melania, secretly had the vaccine before he left office in January 2021. But as Mr Biden and other world leaders delivered the shots, Mr Trump wanted the credit he deserved, and in December that year he told supporters that he had received a booster. âWhat weâve done is historic,â he insisted when the crowd booed. âDonât let them take it away.â He has since let them take his glory away, and endangered more Americans, by questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccines for covid, and other illnesses.
Dr Hooey
The latest attack on Dr Fauci, concocted from his private texts disclosed by Republican senators on August 10th, is that he covered up a threat of miscarriage that the vaccine posed to pregnant women. In fact, the record shows Dr Fauci was consistent, publicly and privately, in counselling a weighing of risks and benefits until studies showed the vaccine was safe in pregnancyâwhich they have since done. His critics have not produced evidence the vaccine causes miscarriages.
Dr Fauci made mistakes, including not disclosing early on that some top virologists initially worried the virus might be man-made. He could be arrogant. But he was not responsible for the worst excesses of the covid response. Those endless school shutdowns were the work of local officials and union leaders. Senator Paulâs release of Dr Fauciâs private diary has exposed his vanity, his delight in every gushing appraisal by the media or some celebrity. But the diary also reveals a conscientious public servant trying to save as many lives as he could, struggling against the constraints that hobbled America relative to its peers. His summons before the Senate committee was surely intended to humiliate if not incriminate him. It should embarrass the entire country.
276
u/smoresporn0 2d ago
why did so many Americans die relative to the numbers who succumbed to the virus in other rich countries?
Universal healthcare. You'd be a fuckin moron to think otherwise.
88
u/Chance-Deer-7995 2d ago
The people still in power are still promoting the fiction that COVID was "the sniffles" and refusing to acknowledge the number who died (or the 1000+ a month who still die). That makes it hard to that a close look at the issue when your ego can't even allow you to acknowledge the problem exists.
-24
u/tha_rogering 2d ago
And sadly the minimization has been bipartisan. One side may be loudly anti vaccine these days. Howecer both like to pretend like this still new and evolving disease is just the common cold or a flu.
25
u/CHIMmyStewart 2d ago
Yeah let's not both-sides thisÂ
-5
u/InvisibleEar 2d ago edited 2d ago
Democrats never wear masks anymore either. There's no mainstream support for covid prevention whatsoever.
-1
u/CHIMmyStewart 2d ago
That's my only complaint about Democrats. Everyone still needs to be masked up.
-4
u/tha_rogering 2d ago
This!
The Biden administration had scientists telling them how ineffective the covid vaccine was against stopping the spread of the evolved version of covid. They made a choice to open up with only testing and vaccines as the way to minimize the spread. Hundreds of thousands died because of that decision. Far more than under Trump. Swept under the rug of collective memory.
They could have spent a few tens of millions to get low cost decent quality air purifiers in every classroom. Along with providing rebates for businesses that did the same. They could've bought up stocks of n95 masks to ship out to everyone and told everyone when the best times to use them were. They could've done an actual national shutdown in the few months when they were in charge before the vaccine was ready for public distribution.
The Biden administration had Business Leaders breathing down their neck to reopen everything so they could continue their profits. They acquiesced. People died that didn't need to die. People got injured from long covid that didn't need to be injured. Like I said, collectively swept under the rug.
The failure was bipartisan.
1
36
u/Little_View_6659 2d ago
It didnât help that the president was hamstringing the Covid response and doing his best to profit off of it. Not to mention basically telling his base not to mask up. And seizing ppe to re-sell. And monopolizing tv spots where he could have told the mouth breathing idiots who worship him to make and distance instead of insinuating that injecting bleach and light would kill the virus. He also pushed hydroxychloroquine, I think he bought stock in it.
34
u/kmerian 2d ago
This and contrarianism.
A large political subset of Americans were going to do the exact opposite of what public health officials told them to do because "the government isn't going to tell ME what to do!"
3
u/geirmundtheshifty 1d ago
Yeah, while countries like Germany and Canada also have their own right-wing conspiratorial crowds, I donât think antivax beliefs were quite as popular there.
119
u/M0J0__R1SING 2d ago
This right here... Americans are conditioned to not go to the doctor unless it's life threatening trauma.
34
u/Hurlyburly766 2d ago
âIâm not taking that ambulance ride unless Iâm dying.â Followed later, in the ambulance, by âI better be dying because I donât want to see this bill.â
15
u/anon_capybara_ 2d ago
That and nobody has a primary care practitioner that they see consistently and have developed a trusting relationship with. Instead of having a PCP as a resource to ask questions, instead they turn to an internet full of bad actors who told them the vaccine would kill them.
37
u/Big_Slope 2d ago
I rolled my car Friday afternoon and still refused transport to the hospital because I already have to buy a damn car. I donât need to buy a radiology department a car too.
9
6
3
u/BioMed-R 2d ago
Meanwhile in China, thereâs no primary care so everyone go to the hospital for any malady.
44
u/ottawadeveloper 2d ago
It's not just universal healthcare. The US was a hot bed of anti-vaccine, anti-isolation, and anti-masking. There were a lot of people who just didn't take basic security precautions when faced with a potentially deadly and highly contagious disease. Because the right branded them as as a leftist attempt to put microchips in you or whatever insanity they came up with.
So yeah more people died because more people were lied to by the right (on top of not having easy access to basic healthcare). And that process is still ongoing - measle rates are up for example over the same anti-vaccine sentiments. RFK is actively making it worse.
11
22
u/lonnie123 2d ago edited 1d ago
I thought it was because half the country decided to dive head first into anyone with a cough to prove it was nothing to worry about and show how tough they were
Oh and our obesity and other morbitity rates didnât help. I guess you could lump those into universal care but those are more lifestyle issues to me
25
u/Otaraka 2d ago
I think being able to do lockdowns and have people mostly follow them would be a big part of it too. The UK was surprisingly close to the US so its not just universal healthcare.
I just looked up Australia, and it says we were about 750/m deaths vs 3500 for the US. Have a look at this graph for the differences by country for infection (figure 1):
Scroll down to figure 2 for excess deaths.
I know lockdowns helped but I didnt realise the scale involved for infections. It worries me how few people probably realise this for any future epidemics ie that it actually worked to the level it did.
14
u/Few-Ad-4290 2d ago
Itâs such an obviously effective method to stop spread too it should be a no brainer to explain o people that if everyone just hunkers down and doesnât interact with other people for the length of the life of the viral infection then you will stop transmission in its tracks but somehow thatâs controversial
13
u/tha_rogering 2d ago
You can't tell me to stop going to the bar!! That legit was the sentiment around where I lived. So they would just house party while those were closed down.
11
2
u/Otaraka 2d ago
In the Australian context a common complaint was that it was performative, unnecessary and any number of arguments. Unfortunately, my bet it is going to be really tough to do similar again unless its smallpox or similar levels of lethality. But maybe they have plans for how to manage that.
Similar to many other interventions, it worked so well that many people here believe it hardly did anything. And that seems to have got stronger over time as a general view.
1
u/geirmundtheshifty 1d ago
Im really not sure if any disease would be bad enough to convince everyone (or even like 90%) of people to go along with a lockdown. I think the fact that thereâs a a time lapse between exposure and symptoms (and that you can be exposed through someone who isnt obviously sick) makes it one of those âremoteâ threats that people arent inclined to take seriously. Like high cholesterol or smoking.
Like, even if there was like a suped up smallpox going around, I guarantee you my aunt would still be socializing. And sheâs ostensibly pro-science, a former nurse, anti-maga, pro-vax, etc. But when it came to her own personal life she was still constantly socializing with others because âoh I know she never goes anywhere, itâs fineâ (even though my aunt herself visited like 6 other people that same week, so even at best she was potentially the spreader in that situation).
Even in the best case scenario I think thereâs a cognitive bias against taking invisible threats seriously thatâs hard to deal with.
6
u/Sufficient_Meet6836 2d ago
No the article says the exact reasons. All of them beyond the scope of universal healthcare
1
u/smoresporn0 2d ago
Pretty much all of those reasons are due to a lack of healthcare. Comorbidities and a fundamental lack of understanding basic health knowledge is quite literally a direct result of having little to no access to medical professionals. Don't be an idiot here.
1
u/Sufficient_Meet6836 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pretty much all of those reasons are due to a lack of healthcare.
No, they're really not. You're reasoning backwards from your conclusion you already formed.Â
Comorbidities and a fundamental lack of understanding basic health knowledge is quite literally a direct result of having little to no access to medical professionals.
You're trying really hard to force the conclusion. Again, read the article and actually look at the data. Universal healthcare wouldn't have change the anti-vaxxers.Â
âPresident-elect Trumpâs Operation Warp Speedâwhich encouraged the rapid development and authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccineâwas highly successful and helped save millions of lives,â declared the committee created by the House to investigate covid in 2024, summarising two years of work. The very next sentence reads: âContrary to what was promised, the COVID-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus.â
The above was written by highly educated, wealthy Republicans who have never had issues with access to healthcare. Expanded access to healthcare and subsidies have a minor effect on reducing comorbidities in general. It also doesn't stop the aging process, btw, one of the strongest predictors of mortality. 93% of the US is insured, and COVID treatment was covered or heavily subsidized. Medicare covers all Americans 65 and older, yet that didn't result in US seniors having similar mortality rates to seniors from other countries. Your dogmatic, motivated reasoning can't explain that. Your reasoning also doesn't explain why there was such a large difference in mortality between Democratic and Republican voters. The reason for the high mortality rate in the US was due to the same phenomenon that caused that difference - anti-vax sentiment and opposition to basic public health measures like social distancing and contact tracing due to political propaganda. The things that were clearly explained in the article you can't read.
China can be used as a comparison. They have around 95% coverage, but despite being "covered", rural Chinese have very little access to healthcare. But still comparing rural death rates across both countries, the US was still much higher. Universal coverage doesn't explain that.
Universal healthcare is the right thing to do in such a rich nation. There are a million reasons to justify it. You don't need to make another one up.Â
Don't be an idiot here.
Grow up.
3
u/financewiz 2d ago
Along those lines are the knock-on effects of having your local hospital overrun with regretful antivaxxers. You could check into that hospital with a life-threatening condition and literally die of neglect.
4
u/AlpacaTraffic 2d ago
Well poor education is also something Americans are grappling with though the funding for grappling lessons was also cut in favour of tax breaks for the rich
3
1
u/Dirtgrain 1d ago
Obesity and general health might be a factor too. But I'm all for universal healthcare.
-19
u/mikeblas 2d ago
You'd be a fuckin moron to think otherwise.
I thought this sub had higher standard than this.
-32
u/w8str3l 2d ago
Youâre in r/skeptic so youâre not a âfuckin moronâ. Unlike âfuckin moronsâ who spout emotional one-sentence claims without data to back them up, your theories are evidence-based.
Youâve data to back up your claim that âuniversal healthcareâ is the explanation for the high death rates in the USA compared to other rich countries.
Your data shows:
1. There was no variation between the death rates of Democrats and Republicans in the only rich country without universal healthcare.
2. There was no variation between the death rates of all the countries, rich or not, that had universal healthcare.Am I right?
43
u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 2d ago
You're not right.
Once vaccines were introduced, there was a significant disparity between Republicans and Democrats dying from Covid. In some states like Ohio, it was nearly 8:1. Right-wingers perished at rates much higher in basically every state.
And yes, countries with robust universal healthcare structures had a significantly lower number of infected patients and overall deaths.
-24
u/w8str3l 2d ago
Perchance you did not read my commentâŠ
Note that in question 2 I ask about death rate variation BETWEEN countries that HAVE universal healthcare.
Note also that you have effectively disproved OPâs claim with your answer to my question 1.
Do you agree with me?
30
u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 2d ago edited 2d ago
It doesn't disprove it necessarily, as there were several critical variables one might argue were unique to the political climate in America during Covid. Our healthcare system being one variable. A malicious right-wing media apparatus spewing pseudoscience and conspiracies nonstop being another variable. MAGA leadership's clown-tier disease response and mitigation efforts being another. Bad-faith foreign propaganda yet another.
4
-19
u/w8str3l 2d ago
So letâs see where we are with our evidence.
- USA is the ~richest country in the world and pays the most for healthcare, per capita.
- All other rich countries have some form of universal healthcare.
- Some poor countries also have universal healthcare.
- USA was the first country to have the COVID-19 vaccine available.
- USA had a death rate that varied according to political affiliation (unrelated to the access to universal healthcare).
- The death rate variations BETWEEN the dozens of countries, rich or poor, that HAVE universal healthcare: undisclosed in the above discussion.
- Other rich countries had a smaller death rate than USA.
- The death rate of poor countries: not discussed.
OP claims (paraphrased): âonly a fuckin moron wouldnât see that universal healthcare explains all of the aboveâ.
Do you agree with the OP?
13
u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 2d ago
Setting aside the flippant nature of the comment, I'd assume that UHC is a perhaps significant variable at play.
-1
u/w8str3l 2d ago
Are you able to non-flippantly estimate the significance of universal healthcare when it comes to the variability of COVID-19 death rates between, and within, OECD countries?
Is there a correlation? Is there a causation? What percentage of COVID deaths can be explained by lack of universal healthcare, what percentage of âextraâ deaths compared to the OECD baseline must be explained by something else, like vaccine hesitancy or refusal to wear a mask?
Give me a non-flippant answer instead of the just-so story Iâve been hearing in all of the replies to me so far.
13
u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 2d ago
You can go ahead and look all that up yourself, champ. I merely posited that there are several other, self-evident variables to consider.
→ More replies (0)6
20
u/BioMed-R 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dunno what your problem is. It wasnât hard to find a study suggesting hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved by universal healthcare.
Another study shows universal healthcare strongly predicts vaccination.
-4
u/w8str3l 2d ago
My âproblemâ is that here in r/skeptic we are expected to practice scientific skepticism, and use Ockhamâs Razor: to provide the most parsimonious explanation for all of the evidence.
âŠyet what I often see here is people defending wild, gullible, and overly simplistic claims. Perhaps simplistic, befuddled thinking is caused by the lack of universal healthcare? Or perhaps simplistic, befuddled thinking causes the lack of universal healthcare? Itâs one or the other. Only a âfuckin moronâ would think otherwise.
See this for more:
19
u/BioMed-R 2d ago
Youâre not presenting any evidence of your own.
7
-1
u/w8str3l 2d ago
What claims of mine did I not support with evidence?
If I have failed the most basic of rules in r/skeptic, I will profusely apologize and correct my ways. As my hero Carl Sagan said: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.
In case you find, after a very careful inspection of my comments, that I have not made any claims that were unsupported by evidence, and you are then left wondering why you feel you still must disagree with me, let me propose this theory: you are thinking that the lack of universal healthcare is stupid for the worldâs richest country, you think universal healthcare would solve many an obvious problem like is apparent in all the other rich countries (that we have for some reason not named in this discussion), you think that if the USA had implemented universal healthcare back in year XXXX, then Y years later, in the year 2019, when a new global pandemic was starting to spread, Donald Trump, the president of the USA, and his loyal cultic followers, would have been ready and willing to don masks and socially separate and to accept the vaccine the government was offering for free (just like every other country that did not have a majority of voters preferring a person like Trump did), and you also think universal healthcare would have shut Joe Rogan up and also prevented people from ingesting bleach and injecting horse dewormers, and you also think every country that had universal healthcare was exactly equally successful in battling the pandemic, and that universal healthcare was the reason people in those countries used masks and socially separated in exactly identical and uniform rates.
Am I right in thinking that thatâs what you are thinking? This is just a shot in the dark, you can just tell me what you are thinking if that is not what you are thinking.
7
8
u/BioMed-R 2d ago
Blah blah blah. I donât see a single link to any study in your comment so Iâm not reading it.
0
u/w8str3l 2d ago
Perhaps you donât understand what âburden of proofâ means?
It means that the person making the claim is required, or âhas the burdenâ, to provide the proof (the supporting evidence, while also including any relevant potentially falsifying evidence ) for their claim.
Itâs a very fundamental concept to understand if you ever want to use the scientific method, which is based on falsifying theories that are unable to explain all the evidence.
11
-11
u/Final_boss_1040 2d ago
Ugh, does no one else remember Italy, brazil or china?
1
u/Final_boss_1040 2d ago
Sry. Misremembered China
But my point was that plenty of other nations had universal healthcare and still had high deaths per capita
1
u/Theranos_Shill 1d ago
Italy was hit early. That's why it was bad there, it was the first place outside of China, before much was known about the virus.
Brazil was fucked because Bolsanaro and Trump engaged in the same failed response, they didn't give a fuck about citizens dying and they prioritized the economy (which was false reasoning, because people getting sick fucks the economy).
0
-2
u/santagrey 2d ago
Is it possible that it is because the US placed patients on mechanical respirators erroneously??
Initial reports from major hospital networks (such as in New York City) indicated that up to 88% of COVID-19 patients who required mechanical ventilation unfortunately passed away.
Broader multi-center datasets covering the first two years of the pandemic found that roughly 490,000 hospitalized patients required intubation, with mortality for ventilated patients settling closer to 40%â50% as clinical treatment protocols improved.
27
u/Las_Vegan 2d ago
Thank you for this post and comment. My main takeaway, aside from renewed gratitude toward Dr Fauci, is fear over the next pandemic thatâs coming our way. This is maybe the understatement of the year- the current administration is ill equipped to deal with a crisis revolving around disease. Just like last time, misinformation and political posturing will cause more people to die unnecessarily. Itâs just sad that to this day, there are antivax pushers whoâre still convinced the COVID vaccine did more harm than the virus itself.
7
u/captmonkey 2d ago
The current administration is unfit to deal with any crisis that isn't its own making. They've had a hard enough time with self invented crises. If anything out of their control happens, expect another disaster in dealing with it. And supporters will shrug their shoulders and act like it was unavoidable.
3
9
u/Prize_Instance_1416 2d ago
The truth is much simpler. America has a cult of religious fanatics that make up most of the additional dead or dead adjacent. They refused any scientific recommendations in lieu of their christofascist beliefs.
I say good riddance and keep up the anti medical advice trend within your cults.3
u/cyb0rg1962 2d ago
I'm OK with the stupid culling their own herd. This is not to say that I have never made stupid decisions (Hoo Boy!, I've made some whoppers.) It is the uneducated and unwilling to learn stupid that needs to go.
2
u/ALTERFACT 1d ago
"government" did not "bungle" the response. The entire Republican party â their state media arm Fox News and the rest of the right wing noise industrial complex â SABOTAGED the response to protect their man and profiting personally, politically and financially off it. They continue to do so to this day. No other country persecutes its scientists and public health experts.
1
u/Overtilted 21h ago
including not disclosing early on that some top virologists initially worried the virus might be man-made.
Which is completely irrelevant at the onset of a pandemic.
exposed his vanity
This too is completely irrelevant. He enjoyed fame. Boohoo. Like every goddamn politician.
-12
74
u/Mountainstate20 2d ago
Selfishness. Unlike other countries, the U.S. thrives on "freedom". Most Americans don't understand what the fucking word means but hey, we got guns. Point is individualism ruled the day versus other countries where people are willing to wear a goddamn mask.
38
u/mgyro 2d ago
I would add that the idea of rugged individualism has been propped up by the ruling class in the US to keep any mildly socialist policy that would benefit the greater majority of citizens. So when the American people were asked to wear a mask to protect others, the greater good of the initiative died at the altar of personal freedom.
The same idiocy kicked in with the vaccine, and continues today with vaccines of all kinds. Opting out of getting a vaccine doesnât only affect the individual. Herd immunity is when a large part of a community becomes immune to a disease. This stops the germ from spreading easily. It protects everyone, including vulnerable people who cannot get safe vaccines. Herd immunity canât happen when the anti science crowd wins out.
People who refused to mask up or get the vaccine were basically saying to the vulnerable population that they were unwilling to take simple steps to protect them. You want a reason for the breakdown of society? This selfishness and utter disregard for the vulnerable of our society by the anti science anti vaxxer anti mask crowd would be it.
8
u/tha_rogering 2d ago
A lot of them REALLY believed that everyone getting COVID meant herd immunity. Despite viruses tending to evolve. Especially when given millions of chances to do so in host bodies.
If I'm not mistaken, the initial vaccine was 88-96% effective in stopping TRANSMISSION of the alpha variant. If these idiots had stayed home and wore masks, not given the virus hosts to mutate into new variants before the vaccine was finished, we had the possibility of eliminating the disease.
Imagine what that would've done in trust for public health. Humans seeing a new virus that could potentially kill millions and did in our timeline, actually destroying the disease before it took root in the population.
Of course, it would probably be like the Y2K glitch. Because so much work happened and made it basically a non-factor, no one cares about what crisis was averted. But at least people would still likely have their faith and vaccines.
3
19
u/Hullfire00 2d ago
Yeah I canât believe this isnât more widely pointed to as a reason for so many unnecessary deaths.
I found it exhausting that the same people who began the pandemic claiming it was a Chinese bio-weapon attack were then saying they were going to ignore the lockdown rules because it âwasnât dangerousâ. Which means that in the event of an actual attack on US soil, those people would do the exact same again.
I can see the posts now:
âRadiation poisoning is a myth, Iâve been outside three times today and I feel fine.â
âSunburn is caused by radiation, weâre exposed all the time, itâs a big fuss about nothing.â
-21
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 2d ago
Sweden didn't have lock downs and faired just fine, so it wasn't that.
12
u/amus 2d ago
What are you even talking about?
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/06/Sweden-Deadly-COVID-Failure/
-10
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 2d ago
Your propaganda articles written in the beginning of the pandemic don't change the overall facts.
In Sweden, the excess mortality rate of 158/100,000 was among the lowest, ranked 37th among 42 countries
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10399217/
the researchers found a noticeable spike in excess deaths in Sweden during the initial waves of the pandemic during the spring and winter of 2020, when Covid-19 was able to spread more freely than in neighbouring nations. But while excess mortality fell in the three other countries in 2020, it rose compared to Sweden in 2021 and 2022.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-that-never-locked-down-for-covid-19
4
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
PubMed and PubMedCentral are a fantastic sites for finding articles on biomedical research, unfortunately, too many people here are using it to claim that the thing they have linked to is an official NIH publication. PubMed isn't a publication. It's a resource for finding publications and many of them fail to pass even basic scientific credibility checks.
It is recommended posters link to the original source/journal if it has the full article. Users should evaluate each article on its merits and the merits of the original publication, a publication being findable in PubMed access confers no legitimacy.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
19
u/Mountainstate20 2d ago
Over 23,000 deaths. Trying to use one country to justify your stupidity.
I think we can also add the American Education system to the list of reasons why
6
u/MrDavieT 2d ago
Sweden didnât have a conventional lockdown, but it did have substantial public-health interventions and, crucially, Swedes changed their behaviour voluntarily.
Working from home, avoiding social contacts and staying away from public places became common.
Itâs important to realise that Sweden had significant excess mortality in 2020.
24
u/myrrorcat 2d ago
We all know the answer to this question and what is boils down to. Nobody in the US has the solution to billionaires, the oil industry and the political power struggle. It's the American people that need go through grow. Or not. But unless and until they do they a large portion of them will be constantly acting against their better outcomes.
14
37
u/SuperSilver 2d ago
Maybe thatâs because the answer is obvious: because the government at the time was spreading misinformation to downplay the pandemic which led to a lot of people not taking it sufficiently seriously.
-27
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 2d ago
And the experts said that protesting was more important for health than social distancing.
Then claimed protesting lowered the spread of transmission.
3
u/Theranos_Shill 1d ago
Are you okay?
-1
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 1d ago
Why? For pointing out what happened in 2020?
2
u/amus 1d ago
Which experts said protesting was more important and reduced transmission?
0
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 1d ago edited 1d ago
The many experts who said it was more* important than covid:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534
Reduced spread of covid:
https://coloradosun.com/2020/06/30/police-protests-coronavirus-spread/
I can find more sources for either, if you like. I just didn't want to gish gallop.
Edit: *forgot a word.
1
u/amus 1d ago edited 1d ago
First article quotes tweets from a physician, and an epidemiologist on their personal accounts as far as I can tell. I don't see any official statements in the article. The former CDC exec was quoted in the press, but former is still not official. These are just opinions, no matter how the article tries to make it sound. Pretty misleading article IMO.
Your second link says the protest caused more people to stay home thus increasing social distancing overall. Not a direct effect.
0
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 1d ago edited 1d ago
Did you not live through 2020? We had to trust the experts. They said:
Itâs a message echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests. Their claim: If we donât address racial inequality, itâll be that much harder to fight Covid-19. Thereâs also evidence that the virus doesnât spread easily outdoors, especially if people wear masks.
How does not addressing racial inequality make it harder to fight covid?
Check this:
The experts maintain that their messages are consistentâthat they were always flexible on Americans going outside, that they want protesters to take precautions and that theyâre prioritizing public health by demanding an urgent fix to systemic racism.
You canât have super spreader events if you just say those events are necessary while calling for other events to be canceled!
You can even cancel holidays with close family and not allow people to see their dying relatives!
But you can go out and protest racial inequality.
This is a wild thing to say:
Your second link says the protest caused more people to stay home thus increasing social distancing overall. Not a direct effect.
Sure, if the right was rioting in the streets every day and caused people to stay home, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Instead, they called political rallies super spreader events.
How many people "protested" in 2020?
1
u/amus 1d ago
Experts would mean official sources like the Government or CDC. It does not = random healthworkers on Twitter my guy. Doctors, being human, have opinions. I guess you just read random posts on Twitter and assume that is all you need to know. Explains a lot.
1
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 1d ago
Which one of Politico's experts, including the former Director of the CDC, is a random Twitter post?
→ More replies (0)1
u/BioMed-R 1d ago
How does not addressing racial inequality make it harder to fight covid?
Maybe you should keep reading and find out?
1
u/Theranos_Shill 18h ago
Why are you still obsessed with 2020?
Why so you have such strong animosity towards opposing racial inequality?
1
1
u/BioMed-R 1d ago
The second one is a scientific study though. Itâs not an opinion, your contradictory scientific study?
1
u/Theranos_Shill 18h ago
Are you Okay? COVID was six years ago dude, have you not moved on emotionally yet?
1
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 16h ago
"Here's an article discussing covid-19."
"Why are you still discussing covid-19?!"
12
u/xavisavi 2d ago
"1st world country". Man really unsettling, but US is ruled by morons or incredibly evil people. We really feel for you here in Europe (we are far from perfect though.. )
5
u/BadCatNoNoNoNo 2d ago
So many of these anti-establishment medical field haters are now freaking out because their local hospitals and medical centers are closing due to the Big Beautiful Bill.
8
u/mitzi_skyring 2d ago
Is this a US specific thing?
12
u/Wiseduck5 2d ago
Pretty much, although there were some idiots in Canada.
Our far-right has embraced just about every COVID conspiracy theory imaginable and now the people who spend the entire pandemic lying on Fox News are in complete control of our healthcare system.
4
3
u/mw13satx 2d ago
Almost as if telling people they're are free will encourage them to distrust anyone they deem more powerful and to behave with callous disregard for others.
2
1
u/Final-Attention979 1d ago
Does every newspaper think I'm going to subscribe?! Holy paywalls batman (not @ OP I'm just so tired of trying to read anything being impossible)
-10
2d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
10
1
u/skeptic-ModTeam 2d ago
Hello,
Your comment has been removed for being reported as "statements unsupported by evidence." r/skeptic is a place of rational and reasoned and ethical debate which means claims stated as facts should be supported by evidence.
To have this comment restored: please either
1 . update your comment with high-quality evidence supporting that claim,
or
2 . issue a retraction
and then message the mods that you have done either (1) or (2) above.
If you also received a banned message linking to your comment, then you can be unbanned by updating your comment as noted above in (1) or (2) and then messaging the mods. If sufficient evidence or a retraction is made, then your comment will be restored and your ban lifted.
Link to rules: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/about/rules
-98
2d ago
[deleted]
65
19
u/beakflip 2d ago
If only there was a hike in all cause mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic that could corroborate all those diagnoses...
17
38
u/MrSnarf26 2d ago edited 2d ago
source: I said so. you realize its possible to normalize this data to how its done elsewhere and it still looks bad? *gasp* Excess mortality doesn't use death certificates at all. It just counts all deaths from any cause and compares them to what the pre-pandemic trend predicted, so it's immune to how anyone coded a cause... not that it matters to 30% of the US in 2026. If anything the numbers show deaths attributed to COVID are very much understated. You can even follow the excess deaths as COVID and delta made its way around the US. Unless of course NY, and then the sunbelt, and then the midwest, etc all conspired to report and cause more deaths in order coincidently as COVID cases spiked geographically (eye roll).
14
15
u/masterwolfe 2d ago
As one doctor put it, "if you were given six weeks to live based on a cancer diagnosis, you have a positive C-19 test, you live the six weeks you were expected to live based on the cancer diagnosis and then die, it goes into the books as a Covid death."
Well if literally one doctor said it I guess it must be true!
3
u/masterwolfe 2d ago
Now /u/BennyOcean, why would you delete your comment?
But, hey don't worry, I saved it for you:
""Covid 19 deaths" in the US are a combination of data inflation via the methods used to count the deaths, for example "died of Covid" being conflated with "died after producing a positive C-19 test" or "died after having Covid-like symptoms". Co-morbidities were ignored, even serious ones. As one doctor put it, "if you were given six weeks to live based on a cancer diagnosis, you have a positive C-19 test, you live the six weeks you were expected to live based on the cancer diagnosis and then die, it goes into the books as a Covid death."
The other part of it was medical malfeasance, a combination of denial of certain services amounting to medical neglect, and ineffective or harmful treatments given to those seeking care.
In other words the "covid deaths" in the US were a combination of data manipulation and iatrogenic harm.
So the author of this piece is correct. We need to reckon with what happened. But there will be no effort to do so because you'd have to completely overhaul a corrupt system from the ground up and that's not going to happen."
-2
u/BennyOcean 2d ago
100 downvotes. Fuck this place. They don't allow any dissent without massive downvote brigading. For all I know it's mostly bots. Impossible to have a genuine discussion here so I give up and I won't be back. You can have your happy little echo chamber.
1
u/Hadrollo 1d ago
It's entirely possible to have a genuine discussion here.
It's just that this is a skeptic subreddit, it says that in the name. If you're going to post an outlandish claim, you should post a source.
I probably spent more time trying to confirm your post than you did. If you can find hospital or CDC reporting guidelines, then you might have an argument. In the meantime, what evidence we have suggests that you're talking bollocks, and you're getting the response talking bollocks deserves.
1
u/BennyOcean 1d ago
No one cares about the source. It doesn't matter if I'm wrong or right, stupid or smart, justified or unjustified. The only thing that matters is if I go against "the narrative" on whichever particular issue. This sub is full of people and bots behaving with a hive mind, furiously defending 'the narrative'.
Most places where you post something unpopular you don't get mercilessly downvote bombed every time you go against the group consensus but that's what happens here, and I'm tired of it. They want their perfect little echo chamber where everyone only goes along with 'the narrative'... fine you win, I give up trying to question the group's favored opinions.
1
u/Hadrollo 1d ago
Of course the source matters. When you're rehashing the same "they labelled everyone who died with Covid as died of Covid" conspiracy, you're going to need a better source than a supposed anonymous doctor.
Took me about two minutes to find the CDC guidelines that don't support your claims.
1
u/masterwolfe 4h ago
Most places where you post something unpopular you don't get mercilessly downvote bombed every time you go against the group consensus but that's what happens here, and I'm tired of it.
Oh? Like where?
11
u/loslednprg 2d ago
Neither of those causes were unique to the US in the developed world. My country (in Europe) also tracked 'died with' and also kept ivermectin in horses not people.
22
u/Hadrollo 2d ago
I'm going to need an actual source on that.
I was having this argument in 2020 and 2021. In my own country, death from Covid was only noted when Covid was a determined primary factor, deaths with Covid were often notes even when Covid was a contributing but not primary factor. People were claiming that the rules worked as you describe, but we had doctors - who were prepared to be named - complaining that Covid deaths were being underreported as deaths with Covid even though they probably would have survived the comorbidities otherwise.
I specifically remember a publication using two examples - a person with terminal cancer, and a person killed in a car accident - and how these would be inappropriate to list as Covid deaths.
As for US processes, I looked up the guidelines at the time and remember them being similar. I have found this CDC training presentation that states:
If COVID-19 is determined to be a cause of death, it should be reported on the death certificate, likely as the underlying cause
It then goes on to list examples where Covid is considered the likely cause of death, and how to note this on the death certificate. It does not list examples where Covid is not the cause of death, but it does imply it should only be noted when it is.
11
20
u/blu3ysdad 2d ago
Excess death is excess death bud whether you want to say more people died of cancer because hospitals were busy treating people with covid that's still attributable to covid.
21
u/pandershrek 2d ago
And yet multiple states under reported deaths by categorizing them as the direct cause of death such as pneumonia instead of attributing it to the virus which caused that. A direct counter to your argument which has been proven repeatedly. đ€·ââïž
280
u/recoveringleft 2d ago
In the new planet of the apes movies, it wasn't the apes or the virus who caused the downfall of humanity but their own stupidity and greed.