S21.E03: Medaria Arradondo; Bret Stephens; Ruben Gallego

[tessaray]

Air Date:  February 3, 2023

Bill’s guests are Medaria Arradondo, Bret Stephens, and Rep. Ruben Gallego.

[munchiewoman]

Wow, someone who is not parroting Bill's anti-mask rhetoric.  Thank you, Ruben, for actually saying that people who are not perfectly healthy don't deserve to die.  And that a million people died even with all the precautions taken.  If we saved 2 million people, isn't that a good thing?

[heatherchandler]

Ruben doesn’t understand the difference between dying from covid and dying with covid.  
Bret Stephens is the best.

[arachne]

Hated that final New Rule. Sure, "wokeness" sometimes gets out of hand. But comparing American college professors to the victims of China's "Cultural Revolution" is ludicrous! (For a lot of those poor Chinese, it was either debase yourself or die.) And this from a guy who complains about false equivalency. 😒

[aghst]

Dying with covid is a BS distinction.

When they look at excess deaths in the pandemic years compared to excess deaths before the pandemic, there are more deaths than the official covid death tolls.

This is the case in many nations.  So if anything, they're undercounting covid deaths.

Then there's long covid which they haven't found a good diagnostic to measure.  But what they can measure, this past year, every month there's been over 1 million workers who called in sick.  In some months, approaching 2 million.  That is way more than before the pandemic.

Quote

About 1.5 million Americans missed work because of sickness in December. Each month, more than a million people have called out sick for the past three years. In June 2022, about 7% of adult Americans had long Covid, which can affect productivity and ability to work, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The last time the absentee number dipped below a million Americans was in November 2019.

Last year, the trend accelerated rather than returning to normal. In 2022, workers had the most sickness-related absences of the pandemic, and the highest number since record-keeping began in 1976.

In 2022, the average was 1.58 million per month, for a total of 19 million absences for the year. The largest spike was in January 2022, when 3.6 million people were absent due to illness, about triple the pre-pandemic number for that month.

Parents and caregivers also saw the highest rates of childcare-related absences of the entire pandemic in October 2022 as illnesses surged amid relaxed precautions and lower vaccination rates among children.

Patterns in absenteeism correspond with rises and falls in the spread of Covid. But long Covid is probably contributing to sick leave rates as well.

One analysis in New York found that 71% of long Covid patients who filed for worker’s compensation still had symptoms requiring medical attention or were unable to work completely for at least six months. Two in five returned to work within two months, but still needed medical treatment. Nearly one in five (18%) of claimants with long Covid could not return to work for a year or longer after first getting sick. The majority were under the age of 60.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/29/covid-absence-workforce-health-long-covid

Bill:  "Healthy people are fine!"

Yeah more hand-waving and denial.

 

 

[Hedgehog2022]

Ugh…Bret Stephens.

[EtheltoTillie]

4 hours ago, Hedgehog2022 said:

Ugh…Bret Stephens.

Gee, he just had to shoehorn in that statistic about 99.5 percent of police are good . . .

[munchiewoman]

You know, if someone I care about gets T-boned by a drunk driver running a red light, and their bad heart gives out from the injuries in a way that a healthy heart might not have, I'm still going to blame that drunk driver, because that person could have lived for years and years with the bad heart.  To dismiss a million deaths because a majority also had other health issues is horrifying to me.

Even Bill called out the 99.5% good cop number. In any case, even if that number were accurate, does that mean the .5% don't matter?  No.  And very few people will say all cops are bad.  Very very few people, even the "defund the police" people.  They're saying the same thing Ruben said, that cops are being required to do more than serve and protect, they're supposed to be marriage counselors, welfare agents, therapists, mediators...all on comparatively very little training. We need to change the culture of policing in many ways.

[Hanahope]

the problem is that those .5% seem to perform 90% of their bad acts (with devasting outcomes) on POC.  that means something more systemic than just some bad apples.

I was glad that Ruben clapped back frequently.  And Bill, there was more "wrong" with Kristen than just the BBB bill.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Hanahope

[sistermagpie]

10 hours ago, Hanahope said:

the problem is that those .5% seem to perform 90% of their bad acts (with devasting outcomes) on POC.  that means something more systemic than just some bad apples.

 

And with the alleged good ones defending them or looking the other way. People always refer to "bad apples" as if the end of that phrase isn't how they spoil the whole barrel. Literally, that's what rotting apples do in a barrel of non-rotting apples!

Edited February 7, 2023 by sistermagpie

[heatherchandler]

On 2/5/2023 at 3:22 PM, munchiewoman said:

You know, if someone I care about gets T-boned by a drunk driver running a red light, and their bad heart gives out from the injuries in a way that a healthy heart might not have, I'm still going to blame that drunk driver, because that person could have lived for years and years with the bad heart.  To dismiss a million deaths because a majority also had other health issues is horrifying to me.

I don't think anyone is dismissing any death, but when someone dies from falling down the stairs, car accident, overdose, and they HAVE covid, to call that a death FROM covid is not correct.  Heart attack, who knows if covid had a hand in the death, maybe that IS a covid death.  But not all deaths with covid are deaths from covid, and that was how they were counting them.  I don't know if they still do this.

[Hanahope]

14 hours ago, heatherchandler said:

I don't think anyone is dismissing any death, but when someone dies from falling down the stairs, car accident, overdose, and they HAVE covid, to call that a death FROM covid is not correct.  Heart attack, who knows if covid had a hand in the death, maybe that IS a covid death.  But not all deaths with covid are deaths from covid, and that was how they were counting them.  I don't know if they still do this.

That's why they focus on deaths overall.  the US has a million more deaths over a year time frame during covid than in a prior year time frame that did not have covid.  that at least suggests that most of those extra million deaths had something to do with "having" covid, not just that they died "with" covid.  

[heatherchandler]

5 hours ago, Hanahope said:

That's why they focus on deaths overall.  the US has a million more deaths over a year time frame during covid than in a prior year time frame that did not have covid.  that at least suggests that most of those extra million deaths had something to do with "having" covid, not just that they died "with" covid.  

Of course people died from covid, I don't think that has been disputed.  But a car accident, gun shot, overdose death should not have been included in covid deaths.  

Edited February 7, 2023 by heatherchandler

[aghst]

1 hour ago, heatherchandler said:

Of course people died from covid, I don't think that has been disputed.  But a car accident, gun shot, overdose death should not have been included in covid deaths.  

Do you think they weren't counting deaths from car accidents, gun shots, overdoses in previous years?

We're talking about excess deaths, before and after the pandemic.

 

Or do you think there was more of an increase in car accident, gun shot and overdose deaths during the pandemic than covid deaths?

 

This is the CDC dashboard of excess deaths, both actual and expected.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

It generates different charts depending on which parameters you select.

Try selecting " Excess deaths with and without COVID-19" and then click the button to generate the chart.

Even accounting for growth from other causes of deaths, you can see that since early 2020, we're well above the expected deaths, the red crosses at the top of the chart.

The people who spout the "die with covid, not because of covid" claims don't expect people to do even basic research for themselves.

It's probably cost the global economy trillions and will cost trillions more, no matter how much Bill and others of his ilk try to diminish the impact.

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by aghst

[Hanahope]

53 minutes ago, aghst said:

Or do you think there was more of an increase in car accident, gun shot and overdose deaths during the pandemic than covid deaths?

Also, i would presume that during 2020 there were probably fewer deaths from car accidents and gun shots than in prior years because so many people were staying home.  there may have been an increase in overdoses.

[heatherchandler]

7 hours ago, aghst said:

Do you think they weren't counting deaths from car accidents, gun shots, overdoses in previous years?

We're talking about excess deaths, before and after the pandemic.

 

Or do you think there was more of an increase in car accident, gun shot and overdose deaths during the pandemic than covid deaths?

 

This is the CDC dashboard of excess deaths, both actual and expected.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

It generates different charts depending on which parameters you select.

Try selecting " Excess deaths with and without COVID-19" and then click the button to generate the chart.

Even accounting for growth from other causes of deaths, you can see that since early 2020, we're well above the expected deaths, the red crosses at the top of the chart.

The people who spout the "die with covid, not because of covid" claims don't expect people to do even basic research for themselves.

It's probably cost the global economy trillions and will cost trillions more, no matter how much Bill and others of his ilk try to diminish the impact.

 

 

Ok I know there were excess deaths.  People died from covid and complications of covid.  This is not in dispute.

What Bill was trying to say that Ruben wasn’t getting was that someone having covid when dying from something else shouldn’t be counted as a covid death.  Early 2020, the COVID death definition included anyone who has COVID listed as a cause of death on their death certificate, AND any individual who had a COVID-19 diagnosis within 60 days but does not have COVID listed as a cause of death on their death certificate.  This was changed in late 2021 or 2022, the updated definition reduces this timeframe from 60 days to 30 days for individuals without a COVID diagnosis on their death certificate.  

So early on, someone killed by a gunshot, if they had tested positive for covid were considered a covid death.  This is a small amount of deaths, of course, but because they initially counted them, we don’t have an accurate count of actual covid deaths.  

 

[heatherchandler]

6 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Also, i would presume that during 2020 there were probably fewer deaths from car accidents and gun shots than in prior years because so many people were staying home.  there may have been an increase in overdoses.

 

Gun violence increased by more than 30% in the US during covid, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. 

[aghst]

There were 50 states and who knows how many county examiners?

Probably they had different definitions for tallying causes of deaths, especially in a pandemic involving a new infectious disease.

Bill has consistently tried to diminish covid.  He flipped on masking and on vaccines real quick.

He hated doing shows in his backyard back in 2020 and he wanted to do it before a live audience.  Maybe he needed his live gigs to provide the income he was accustomed to.

Still keeps saying young and thin people have nothing to worry about.  But among the over million deaths in the US and millions across the nation, it wasn't only diabetics or people with other chronic diseases who were dying.  May be a small percentage but it was far from zero.

[sistermagpie]

12 hours ago, aghst said:

Still keeps saying young and thin people have nothing to worry about.  But among the over million deaths in the US and millions across the nation, it wasn't only diabetics or people with other chronic diseases who were dying.  May be a small percentage but it was far from zero.

And of course, people who aren't thin or young, or have chronic diseases still count as deaths! Also, we don't know about the longterm effects, including in children, who people claimed weren't affected at all. Even I've seen this new thing of parents claiming that it's always been totally normal for children to miss a week of school every month because they've come down with the latest thing going around.