Howdy yanks, it's doomer time 😎

The linked editorials discuss how for every excess pandemic-related death, there is an average of 9 people who would be severely impacted by the death (and may even present PTSD symptoms). In short, the current mental health crisis is expected to get much worse.

Also there is a graph in the Ars article that can easily be misread. At first glance, it may seem to indicate a declining death rate per capita over time, but that's not what it's communicating. The deaths since May 10 include the deaths since June 7, and it's presented that way to show what countries managed to slow infections in that May-June period (when it became very clear that significant government response was mandatory to curtail spread) and what other countries just let it keep on going.

  • Zhoutaku [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It really is amazing that the US was almost laboratory designed to fail a pandemic.

    Can't wait until the next one, with a high fatality rate, so people just start capping people for not wearing masks.

      • Zhoutaku [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I have to wonder how effective that rhetoric is.

        Because 60% of the country lives paycheck to paycheck, many with 0 paid sick days, I have to wonder how much of that is cope. Like "I literally can't afford to stay home with Covid, so actually Covid isn't that big a deal and anyone I give it to will live through it" type shit.

      • Zhoutaku [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Oh, for sure. It's fucking amazing how the US can just prop up the dumbest shit and make it controversial, while we just immediately normalize the truly horrible things.

        ONE MAN in this entire country tried to free an ICE facility.. That was the peak of the outrage. We literally spent more time squabbling about the definition of concentration camps than we did fighting them.

        • AbolishAmerikkka [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          RIP williem van spronsen. Rest in power hero. Never forget, never forgive. The pigs have blood on their hands.

    • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      All they have to do is accidentally release the smallpox that the American military keeps locked down instead of destroying. New American Smallpox Plague.

        • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          No. Their genes are sequenced all the possible studying to be done is done. It would be best to simply destroy all samples and move on.

            • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Other than lab accidents, the last known smallpox case was in the 70s. You may have heard about some accidents where people were exposed to smallpox or some mishandling happened.

              You may have confused smallpox outbreaks with the black plague (Yersinia pestis) which does occasionally pop up periodically. Or perhaps the measles which was declared eradicated in the continental US in 2000 but has made a comeback in no small part due to anti-vax proliferation.