I ace in biology because my whole life been well connected to it in my choice of profession and personal health. I alway get asked often for my ID as a senior and my daughter age 30 get asked for ID at the bar.

@Castlepaloma please tell me English isn't your native tongue.

I got id'd into my 30's so obviously I have the same acing in biology you've achieved.

And with having now established equality in our knowledge of biology, I can say, as an equal peer, that your hypothesis above is alarmingly stupid. Whatever that actual hypothesis is.

Anyways, have fun and the last word.

I don't call anyone stupid, how much can I learn from that.
Try living off grid with a whole community on an eco villages. Than tell me your experience with biology.
Why take life so seriously, I'm most serious when joking.

but i gotta ask if we're not now focusing on numbers that are more or less average for a year? How many ppl died of flu virus in say 2018? The numbers the cdc provides don't seem to be adding up tbh, apparently we had a "pandemic" in 2009 too hmm

@bbyrd009 No, these numbers are not average. When is the last time 4000 people died of a disease in one day, day after day?

As reported in Time magazine:

In total, the CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died. That’s fairly on par with a typical season, and well below the CDC’s 2017-2018 estimates of 48.8 million illnesses, 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths.

That's a death rate of about 1/10 of 1 percent, if my math is correct.

Cases of Covid-19, in the US alone, currently stand at 26.2 million, with 441 thousand deaths. That's a death rate of roughly 1.6 percent.

If the flu had the same death rate as Covid-19, almost 690 thousand people would have died of flu in 2018-19.

The flu is a common illness, as is the common cold (another form of coronavirus). But we don't call it a pandemic, because we have effective treatments for it and we have reduced it, for most people, to a nuisance instead of a deadly threat. That's the goal for Covid-19 as well. But pretending that it isn't currently a matter of life or death is not going to help.

I don't see increasing population and more empty hospital would make covid a panoramic. Just signs of a poor health system.

In Canada we do have a much better way of handling covid. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a public interest group, is pushing back on the lockdowns as unprecedented and unconstitutional destructions of Canadians’ basic liberties, freedoms and charter rights.

The group observed in a November media release that “Half of the latest deaths (COVID) are from outbreaks at care homes or hospitals, where elderly residents are already in lockdowns. A total of 123 deaths in Manitoba could be attributed to COVID-19 since March. More than 11,000 Manitobans die each year, more than 900 Manitobans die every month, and more than 200 die every week. The total deaths from COVID-19 in eight months has been less than the number of people who die in the province in a week from other causes. Why are these deaths considered less important, or less sad, than deaths caused by one virus?”

The Black Death
Instead of focusing on a problem concentrated in our long-term care facilities, politicians have closed vast swaths of our economy, throwing hundreds of thousands out of work and bankrupting countless businesses. Beyond this self-harm, our quality of life has been severely degraded by the costly micro-management of Canada’s economic and social life.

Consider the civil discord and social divisiveness these policies are creating: pitting ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ businesses against each other, symbolic but ineffective masking rules (a gold-standard Danish study released recently suggested that masks don’t stop the virus), and the creation of snitch lines for busybodies reporting on neighbors’ illegal social gatherings.

Finally, the lockdowns have closed services, funerals, weddings, many schools, and other basic aspects of normal life.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel. The damage and civil discord is becoming so obvious that elected officials may finally recognize that lockdowns truly are a cure worse than the disease. The virus will follow its natural course and eventually burn itself out – with or without the billions to be spent on vaccines.

If the political leadership is smart, we will see the end of the dismally performing monopoly models of health care and education and a much needed rethink of universities.Also rethink of mass transit in favour of personal mobility (electric cars, driverless cars, Uber).

Think telemedicine, remote learning, compact/high performing governments, joining the world of online shopping, food delivery, and remote working that has been so turbocharged by the stumbling lockdown panic. Over a nasty strain of the flu.

@Castlepaloma "I don't see increasing population and more empty hospital would make covid a panoramic. Just signs of a poor health system."
hmm, apparently its a fab way to empty out the treasury tho huh, whats biden about to "borrow," like 4-5 $TRILLION more?

gotta wonder who is buying all this debt anyway?

and ty for the rest of your post, of course don't expect any pats on the back now or later, when the post is proven to be the more accurate lol, bc ppl

@Paul4747 "But we don't call it a pandemic, because we have effective treatments for it and we have reduced it, for most people, to a nuisance instead of a deadly threat. That's the goal for Covid-19 as well. But pretending that it isn't currently a matter of life or death is not going to help."
so, i'm reduced to my original thought here, "a virus with a 99.9% survival rate i can live with, and is decidedly not a 'pandemic' by any definition of the word" wadr

i mean the population is not being reduced at all, paul--the treasury is tho huh--and all other fact-massaging aside, what effects has c19 had upon you, personally? might be a better way to judge

@bbyrd009 You mean, has it made 1/4 of my coworkers and 1/3 of my clients (prisoners) ill in just under a year, killed many who were personally known to me including one coworker who was younger than me and in better shape, have friends and relatives caught it and been quarantined with terrible illness, did it make me personally severely ill with effects that are still lingering 2 months later, and has it swept through my workplace like a wildfire several times running?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And yes.

"The population is not being reduced at all".... en masse, maybe not, I haven't looked it up. In the specific cases of 442,000 people and counting who did not need to die if we had addressed this pandemic a year ago, or if we did not continue debating and denying and instead simply took actions like wearing masks in public and staying 6 feet apart, the population has been reduced by the sum total of their lives, and the effect they had on their friends, loved ones, their careers, and whatever they may have done with the rest of their lives. No one can calculate that.

And you're not paying attention. The death rate for covid may be only 1.6%, but that's still hundreds of thousands of deaths. The only reason it's not millions is because of the stringent measures to prevent its spread until we have an effective and widespread vaccine program and immunity built up. Meanwhile, flu deaths are only about 0.1%; or a survival rate of 99.99%. That may not seem like a big difference until you multiply it by the millions who contract each disease, and then it's thousands of deaths a day.

More people died of covid in only the state of California in a month and a half, than died in the entire country from the flu in a year. Does that put it in perspective? That's more covid deaths in 45 days, in 1 state, than flu deaths in 365 days in all 50 states together. This is not "massaging numbers"; these ARE the numbers. They horrify me, and they ought to horrify you.

@Paul4747 paul, we have 2 million dead out of 7billion people, waaay less than .1%, and i don't know how that can be put as a "pandemic" any kind of way, your personal (and you gotta admit pretty atypical) experience aside?

my guess is that the US numbers are so hopelessly engineered as to be useless, although i really don't know--but they arent adding up right, seems to me

@bbyrd009 The numbers aren't adding up to what you want them to be. But they add up.

I realize that no matter how many times I recite the statistics, no matter how many comparisons I draw, no matter how many times I explain that covid is more than 10 times worse than the flu- and we don't take precautions against flu other than advising people to get vaccinated, which fewer people are doing each year because of unscientific, inaccurate, and downright lying propaganda against vaccines, thank you Robert F. Kennedy Jr.- so if we treated covid in the same manner we treat flu, telling people "it's not that bad, just cover your mouth when you cough", we could have 2 to 5 times the deaths we do have. The worst-case estimate was for around 2 million deaths in the U.S. by the end of 2020, assuming no mitigation strategies were undertaken. Good thing someone was listening to Dr. Fauci. No matter how many times I go through this, you're going to come up with a "yes, but" or "that doesn't seem right to me". So it's a waste of effort on my part.

Hospitals have had to park refrigerated trailers outside to act as temporary morgues. Funeral homes have run out of room to hold services. Not everywhere, but in enough places that this is horrifying to me.

My experience is atypical to you. It may be atypical to many. It is not atypical to people in the health care field, the corrections field, the education field, or anywhere that people are stuck working and/or living crammed together and have no choice about it. There is no option to work from home in corrections or in a hospital. Many teachers have been forced to go back to work in person, have caught the virus, and several have died as a result.

This is reality. You choose to ignore it and construct a different reality. I can't do anything about that, so this is really kind of pointless from my end. I only hope you don't learn about reality the hard way.

@Paul4747 honestly it isnt that i am choosing to ignore those paul, so much as i live in the country, where those are mainly just stories to us. So i do recognize a large divergence there ok

So many of the same symtoms of covid deaths are related to most of the other top ten ways to die. Like comparing marijuana car deaths to alcohol car deaths. They lock up people who grow plants more than any other group.

I do care for other humans and all species of plants and animals.
Why do atheists care about religions so much so? At least, I don't care like most of you about religious BS. Richard Dawkins said nationalism is more dangerous than Religion. Most of you here care about nationalism, I don't.

@Castlepaloma You are either missing or choosing to miss (and I suspect the latter) the essential difference.

To die in a car accident, alcohol-related or otherwise, one has to choose to get in a car.

To catch Covid-19 all you have to do is breathe the air someone else exhaled. And if that someone is asymptomatic but doesn't believe in wearing masks, because that's just "giving in to indoctrination", you can catch it too, even through your own mask.

No protection is perfect, but two people wearing masks reduces transmission chances to almost zero. This isn't "indoctrination". This is science.

@Paul4747
A few were attacking my character. It's no good anyways defending myself once they are onesided.This kind of nationalism is worst than being religious, it's more harmful than good.

I am not against protection in anyway, it's part of life. It's just the way Governments are shutting down our lives and enslaving us. . You can be covid tested both positive and negotiate at different places. Masks effectiveness is largely debatable and self toxic plus usage is greatly abused. I invited a gathering at my house. All the seniors stayed home and all the younger ones that came, we talk about the handling of covid. Now confident they will do a much better job handling it next time.

If you called me an egomaniac 15 years ago, you would be correct. With the world's largest sand & snow sculpture company and the nations largest sculpture shop about15 years ago. Then went to pioneering urban farming and tiny house communities and almost lost my shirt. No longer a millionaire or preoccupation with self and entertainment. You experience true freedom and happiness when you are effectively serving others. Today it's coming together and a better answer for covid and for all species.

@Castlepaloma You're not serving others by touting disinformation.

To save space; you seem to claim that low numbers of deaths from Covid-19 are an argument that lockdowns and masks aren't needed. Compare Canada's death numbers to America's and you can see exactly why they are needed. It's like you're protesting against seat belts and speed limits by pointing out the low numbers of traffic deaths since speed limit and seat belt laws were passed.

I don't expect you to see this analogy any more than you see that thousands of deaths a day isn't the result of a health care system, it's the result of a disease. Call it "a nasty strain of the flu" all you want, it does not change scientific fact or statistics. The infection rate and death rate are hundreds of times those of influenza. Furthermore, Covid is caused by a SarS virus, not the influenza virus. That's why it's not called "flu virus 2019", it's covid-19. Check your facts before you write.

Bye.

@Paul4747 so " the sky is falling, the sky is falling," only the population is still growing, and the world had thousands of deaths every day anyway, paul? Fwiw i would be highly suspicious of any numbers put out by the US anyway, as they are obv busy robbing us blind eh

@bbyrd009

These people actually think that this empire cares about the little guy in their game of chess. What ever their owners are doing, it's a hell of a shell game and many are not on the ball. A distraction for something even worst.

@Castlepaloma ha well i guess we're about to "borrow" another 4-5 $Trillion, love to know who is buying the debt? But looks to me like a deliberate crash of the $

@bbyrd009

Homeless out number the Government servants. Then they will be coming for our Pensions and they will get it. Since prisoners have raisen 10 times in the pass 40 years. Corporations have bidding wars over cheap labor prisoners. That will become more fashionable along with white Indian ReveraNation.

Its a matter of preferences. I prefer not be raised in indoctrination camps to make the tyranny of the world covid order seem normal. Normal for me (no BS) is living as an international unknown artist, a natural lifestyle for 45 years. Grow commercially organic food for pets/ humans, supplying most of my food to me, my family and communities. Build tiny house and furniture totally natural.
Kind of feeling found, not lost like most people.

@Castlepaloma You assume that your own lifestyle choices are better than everyone else's. You assume most people feel lost, because that assumption makes you feel superior. A psychologist would call it "projection" as well as "egomania".

[newsweek.com]

There are stories all over the map about covid. Some can be mostly full others more empty, over all way down from last year. I have had heart valve surgery, only had one phone call check up by a doctor in a full one year. I was told by my surgeon I need 4 physical check ups, per years min. Only one death from covid since May in Nova Scotia Canada. 100s maybe 1000s have died of heart disease since May and 45% of the world population. Good thing I am my own best doctor in the world. Check world population stats 7.8 billion people this year, and last year 7.7 billion according to Government stats.
Seem like hospital are not that hard at work, maybe the people themselves make better doctors.

One reason that Any beds are available, i believe, is that barring severe bleeding or heavy chest pain, no one i know would go Near a hospital or ER right now....too scary!

@Castlepaloma Did you just contend that 45% of the world's population has died of heart disease?

Heart related stroke, halves, by passes and many others.

[marketwatch.com]

I don't see covid on this list of 10 ten ways to die. It should not be or ever will be because covid deaths have dropped by 50% since May.

@Castlepaloma 100,000 deaths in the U.S. in the last 5 weeks alone does not count as "down 50%". It's a wildfire.

Deaths declined in May and were steady through the summer. Beginning in November deaths climbed sharply. The last day for which statistics are availabe, January 12, saw 4.406 deaths, compared to 2,752 on the worst day in May. That's actually up by over 60%. The 7-day average is up 50%. The worldwide trend mirrors this. Check the math. Check the figures.

And it's only going to get worse if people deny the problem exists.

Since you don't seem interested in the reality-based world, I see no point in carrying on this discussion. I've exposed you to the facts and figures, do with them what you will.

@Paul4747

[ctvnews.ca]

There are so many Medical records that are fake and all over the map. In Nova Scotia Canada my home, there has been 64 covid deaths up to May. Today January 20th there is one more death, making a total of 65 deaths, yet we are in lockdown.

An estimated 10 nonillion (10 to the 31st power) individual viruses exist on our planet—enough to assign one to every star in the universe 100 million times over. Chances are people are dying of other viruses far far greater rather than from covid. There are many other viruses that kill far greater than covid. As these viruses have a majority similar symtoms as covid. The Reality for many people seem more like matrix of nationism and religion. I don't live in the heavily persona world like most. Yet rather the strong individual reality type sharing with other like minded people.

Population of the US round off.
2018 327 million population
2019 -328 million
2020 - 331 million
How are Americans dying off from covid when the population has tripled from last year or the year before. Maybe in your world, the Government has never lied to you.