Grim statistics about Covid

[Dolphster]

With Covid we only count the people who die of the disease immediately, but not the 20 year old who survived Covid with 20% lung capacity who will die at age 30 from shoveling snow.

True, and that is a good point because we may not know the full effect of Covid for many years.  But unfortunately with Covid we also count people who die "with" Covid as Covid deaths even if the underlying condition of diabetes, coronary disease, etc. is the main reason they died.  And therein lies the problem with the number of deaths attributed to Covid.  By no means am I saying that Covid is not a terrible problem and I'm not denying that a huge number of people die as a direct result of Covid.  But a lot of people fail to recognize the difference between "dying WITH Covid" and "dying FROM Covid".   Again, I am not downplaying the horrible number of people who truly are dying because of Covid.  But just like with everything, as long as there is money to be made from the misery of others, people are going to play shenanigans with numbers. 

[Fau Teixeira]

True, and that is a good point because we may not know the full effect of Covid for many years.  But unfortunately with Covid we also count people who die "with" Covid as Covid deaths even if the underlying condition of diabetes, coronary disease, etc. is the main reason they died.  And therein lies the problem with the number of deaths attributed to Covid.  By no means am I saying that Covid is not a terrible problem and I'm not denying that a huge number of people die as a direct result of Covid.  But a lot of people fail to recognize the difference between "dying WITH Covid" and "dying FROM Covid".   Again, I am not downplaying the horrible number of people who truly are dying because of Covid.  But just like with everything, as long as there is money to be made from the misery of others, people are going to play shenanigans with numbers. 

By this logic nobody has ever died from AIDS. they died with aids .. but never from aids.

[Spider-Dan]

India's low death rate has nothing to do with leadership.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-the-invisible/explaining-indias-extraordinarily-low-death-rate-from-covid-19/

That's just the first one I came across, there are many more articles explaining why.

Others have already explained some of the problems here, but this outdated article from July - after India had previously imposed strict lockdowns - reads like fairy tale denialism.  The author does not, for a single moment, appear to consider the ramifications of the claim "Vitamin D significantly reduces the spread of COVID"; he just throws it out there to distract from the notable success of India's early lockdowns, in exactly the same way that he invents a convenient "resistance due to the common cold" that Indians supposedly have.  (I wonder why Brazil, another large developing nation in the tropics, does not seem to enjoy the same protection as India?)

Furthermore, the fact that we are comparing ourselves to a developing country like India (and losing!) is itself an embarrassingly low bar.  The real question should be why we aren't doing BETTER (in deaths per million) than other economically strong democracies like Japan, Germany, South Korea, Canada, and Australia?  Since when has America been reduced to this "Technically, we're not the worst" excuse-making?

[Dolphster]

By this logic nobody has ever died from AIDS. they died with aids .. but never from aids.

Nope.  That isn't even remotely what I said.  I said that there is a difference between "died WITH Covid" and "died FROM Covid".     

Maybe you just missed the part where I said "I'm not denying that a huge number of people die as a direct result of Covid."

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Since when has America been reduced to this "Technically, we're not the worst" excuse-making?

Maternity leave
ending  slavery
Use of death penalty
equal opportunity  for women
treatment of indignant peoples
treatment of refugees
number of imprisoned persons
gun deaths
civil rights
Line of thinking was also used to justify treatment of Japanese American citizens in WWII

This is not new.  The fact that one other country does it worse or just as bad as us is used as justification (particularly by the right) to justify resistance to change.