Originally Posted by
OVC010CB
I was looking into population density. I'm not sure there is a correlation. For example, New York is the most densely populated city in the country, and has 7,300 deaths as I write this. San Francisco, the second most densely populated city in the country has a total of 15 deaths. Los Angeles has 296 deaths, but it is less than 1/2 as dense as San Francisco.
San Francisco has (had) a huge amount of Asian flights, a large homeless, immunosuppresed population and a significant illicit drug problem. What the heck is going on?
By the way, the average age in New York is 2 years younger than that in San Francisco.
Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Belgium and Taiwan are some of the most densely populated places on the planet yet they don't have nearly the death of Italy and Spain (Italy and Spain are relatively rural nations).
We can then go back to the whole lock down, social distancing thing. Florida was one of the last states to social distance, yet to date they only have 470 deaths (and a heck of a lot of elderly people). Sweden has no lockdowns, yet a fatality rate that is a fraction of the United Kingdom (severe lockdowns, quarantines and social distancing).
So, is the data just garbage?
There is loosely a connection to overall health and age to the risk of death, but other than that it is really difficult to find a correlation. The more I dig into this I see there aren't many standards in medicine -- there are significant differences in how, what and why constitute a COVID death from nation to nation. I'm familiar with hard (real) sciences myself, reading through some of the studies I've seen on COVID remind me of physics studies from World War I. It's disconcerting that significant policy and social changes are made on pseudo-science that lacks consensus, to say the least.
The one thing that does stand out, thank goodness, is that children are almost never affected significantly. All the data shows that unless a child already has a severe underlying condition it is almost unheard of they will become significantly ill.
Great post, and it really highlights that we’re pretty much flying in the blind right now. We might be overreacting, we might be underreacting. Who knows. It reminds me of something I read from a highly regarded virologist a few days ago, and I’m paraphrasing: “There are no covid specialists. The virus hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to claim they know what we’re dealing with.”