Adjusted for population, Europe has twice as many people hospitalized for covid19 than the US. If you get the NYT, it's here.

Wtf? Is it that the US is just behind due to weather? I actually don't know of any reason for this that makes sense. — frank

Americans avoid the hospital out of fear of bankruptcy. Europeans don't have to worry about something as silly as that.

Yes, and you can add that, especially in America, COVID is disproportionately affecting the poor who are just the ones who would have that fear.

Americans avoid the hospital out of fear of bankruptcy. Europeans don't have to worry about something as silly as that. — Michael

I'm guessing you're joking. I was asking a serious question.

I'm guessing it's not a joking matter.

"disproportionately affecting" Always an interesting concept. It pre-supposes that all things should inherently be affected in equality, something I have never seen in reality.

Covid is an amazingly elegant beastie. It affects each person individually according to their baseline physiological weak points, seemingly analyzing where and how to have the most effect. No matter how good the mask, it cannot protect you from a life time of being unhealthy.

The mortality numbers in the US are high while the mortality rates are less disturbing. Canada has less mortality, raw death number-wise, yet nearly triple the mortality rate (confirmed infection to death ratio).

Low socio-economic status results in a generally less healthy lifestyle, lower quality food, less exercise/more sedentary lifestyle, less medical follow up, etc. The basic determinants of health, as a baseline. In comes Covid and finds a population of less healthy individuals...Poof! higher infection rates, higher mortality rates. Covid highlights, and hits, the weakest points within a healthy individual, weakening them further, perhaps unto death, most often not. Leaving the survivor depleted, with an adjusted baseline, that, theoretically, can be restored with time, exercise and commitment. However, if an individual lacked the resources initially to be optimally healthy, it is highly unlikely that they would, after infection and initial recovery, suddenly find themselves in a position to rectify a lifetime of previous lack.
The poor are always hit harder than the wealthy. Again, fundamental determinant of health : Can you afford to be healthy? or are you doing the best you can with what you have?

I suggest that "appropriately affecting" is a more accurate term. There are reasons populations are affected as they are, whether these reasons are readily identifiable is not always clear.

Define " Moral responsibility" please. I would like your definition as I am curious regarding what it encompasses. Thanks.

Low socio-economic status results in a generally less healthy lifestyle
...

The poor are always hit harder than the wealthy. — Book273

I do not think you have made an appropriate generalization here, Book273. Health cannot be tied to wealth in this way. Wealth can buy treatment is about as far as we can go.

Define " Moral responsibility" please. I would like your definition as I am curious regarding what it encompasses. Thanks. — Book273

Can you provide the context please?

Canada has less mortality, raw death number-wise, yet nearly triple the mortality rate (confirmed infection to death ratio). — Book273

That's the case fatality rate not the death or mortality rate.

I stand corrected.

Why is this not the big topic on TPF? What happened to the big pandemic? Did people stop dying? Or has our new way of life finally set in as the new norm? — Merkwurdichliebe

CoViD fatigue.

It's not a thankful topic for philosophers anyways. It doesn't lend itself to analysis from first principles, and a lot of data is unclear. Figuring out just what kind of reaction is justified is very technical.

Define " Moral responsibility" please. I would like your definition as I am curious regarding what it encompasses. Thanks. — Book273

OK, I've got the quote here:

It's an interesting experiment, how so many people will give up moral responsibility at the drop of a hat, for the sake of insignificant pleasure. It seems like if one individual person does not follow the rules, for the sake of "freedom", then the next will see this transgression as an excuse not to follow the rules, quickly producing a cascade, until a large portion of society falls into that hole. Monkey see monkey do. — Metaphysician Undercover

This was in response to M of S's description of how people sort of give up on physical distancing practices, suddenly, seemingly altogether en masse. "Moral responsibility" here would refer to one's apprehension of being liable for one's own decisions as to good and bad actions.

I noticed the usage in one of your earlier posts and was curious as to your parameters applied to the term. I cannot find the reference now.

Regarding the social determinants of health, wealth (socio-economic status) play much larger roles than simply being able to purchase treatments. Wealth allows one access to quality foods, preventative health regimes (exercise programs, equipment, etc), adequate housing, clothing, as well as allowing restorative downtime. Additionally wealth allows increased security, both perceived and real. All of these are contributors to an individual's base health level.

"Good and Bad" actions. I assume these descriptors would be based on the perspective of society, rather than on those committing said actions? I seek specific clarification of subjective terms as I have been gifted (my perspective on it anyway) with a profound ability to not relate to societies accepted norms. I understand that they are accepted norms, I just have no idea why, so I ask what are often perceived to be offense questions. They are not meant to be offensive, but to allow a greater understanding of another's perspective.

Wealth allows one access to quality foods, preventative health regimes (exercise programs, equipment, etc), adequate housing, clothing, as well as allowing restorative downtime. — Book273

It is only extreme poverty which denies people quality food and adequate shelter. Generally the lack of proper nutrition is the product of other factors. I believe that eating quality foods is more a matter of attitude and priority, and this makes it more of a psychological issue rather than a financial issue. Sure there are people at the fringe of society who are incapable of buying healthy food, but if they were not actively seeking a healthy diet, and you gave them some money, this would not incline them to seek a healthy diet. The majority of those who do not eat healthy, buying low price, low quality, or for whatever other reason, do so as a matter of choice. Their priorities are elsewhere.

I assume these descriptors would be based on the perspective of society, rather than on those committing said actions? — Book273

No, it's a matter of personal choice, therefore the judgement of good and bad is based in one's own perspective. So, for example, if an individual hears about a party taking place, but knows from one's own perspective of good and bad, that it is not good to attend that party because there may be COVID transmission there, the individual might still choose to attend that party. This would be a matter of shirking one's moral responsibility.

I seek specific clarification of subjective terms as I have been gifted (my perspective on it anyway) with a profound ability to not relate to societies accepted norms. I understand that they are accepted norms, I just have no idea why, so I ask what are often perceived to be offense questions. They are not meant to be offensive, but to allow a greater understanding of another's perspective. — Book273

What you ought to recognize about what I am saying, is that it does not matter whether one's judgement of good and bad is based in "accepted norms". An individual is free to act in accordance with, or in discordance with what one believes is good and bad, based in ones own reasoning. And this is what I mean when I say "people will give up moral responsibility", when a person acts in discordance with what one believes. In the particular example I replied to, what is the case is that people know, and believe, from their own sense of moral responsibility that gathering is not a good idea because it puts the health of numerous people at risk. But if others start gathering, they see this as an accepted norm, and therefore relinquish their own sense of moral responsibility (go against one's own belief) because others are. It's a sort of herd mentality, which inclines one to dismiss one's own moral sense of good and bad because others are behaving in a different way, which produces the illusion that this is an accepted norm.

CoViD fatigue.

It's not a thankful topic for philosophers anyways. It doesn't lend itself to analysis from first principles, and a lot of data is unclear. Figuring out just what kind of reaction is justified is very technical. — Echarmion

Great term!

Unclear data, like the actual effectiveness of masks.

Covid vaccine: First 'milestone' vaccine offers 90% protection

Two doses, three weeks apart, are needed. The trials - in US, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Turkey - show 90% protection is achieved seven days after the second dose.

Pfizer believes it will be able to supply 50 million doses by the end of this year, and around 1.3 billion by the end of 2021.

Pfizer believes it will be able to supply 50 million doses by the end of this year, and around 1.3 billion by the end of 2021.

...and this is supposed to be good news? Has the narrative so easily been rewritten?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/pfizer-flynn-pharma-fined-prices-drugs-nhs-cma-a7460266.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pfizer-bribed-nigerian-officials-in-fatal-drug-trial-ex-employee-claims/

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/pfizer-fined-23-billion-illegal-marketing-off-label/story?id=8477617

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-lawsuit-idUSKCN10D1D8

...and this is supposed to be good news? — Isaac

Yes, because a vaccine will help protect people from infection and help slow the spread of coronavirus.

Yaaaaay!

Yes, because a vaccine will help slow the spread of coronavirus. — Michael

According to the industry with hundreds of proven (and thousands of suspected) cases of lying about the results of its trials, lying about the procedures for testing them and manipulation of markets.

ok

I'm not saying vaccines don't work, but seriously...if this happened in any other field we'd be up in arms - oil industry, pestcides, arms sales, banks...we don't trust a word they say and with absolutely good reason. The covid narrative has become so politicised that industries like the giant pharmaceuticals can just sweep in uncontested because literally any opposition to any action at all taken to prevent the disease is automatically considered right-wing, and they're not going to oppose the pharmaceuticals are they? So we hand them whatever corporate strategy they want on a silver platter because the right-wing don't care and the left-wing have voluntarily gagged themselves in frenzy of partisanship.

Oh, and also...we already have a way of slowing the spread of coronavirus. Test, trace, isolate, mask, hand-wash. It's nothing short of criminal that these things haven't been (and still aren't being) properly done and betting everything on the 'white knight' of the coming vaccine is part of that problem.

And one last thing. Global vaccine take-up hovers around the 80% mark with well-trusted, widely distributed vaccines whose patents have either run out or been disseminated. We're in the low 40s with the rest. How exactly do you think we'll achieve anything like the necessary global take-up with one which has been rushed through testing, and is in the hands of a small number of multi-nationals with a reputation for putting profits over health?

No. All a vaccine is going to do in the short term is make an enormous amount of money for a few firms out of the terrified wealthier nations, while the rest of the world gets shafted by their utter failure to do anything at all about the cripplingly poor healthcare systems which could otherwise cope adequately with this and future such pandemics.

When I first saw the news, in my gut I thought: Pfizer probably sat on its vaccine until after the election because a Biden administration would be more profitable than a Trump administration. If it means delaying vaccinating the population and letting thousands of people die unnecessarily, so be it.

So we hand them whatever corporate strategy they want on a silver platter because the right-wing don't care and the left-wing have voluntarily gagged themselves in frenzy of partisanship. — Isaac

To add to this, we are already reaching health-care saturation in many places and with "lock-down fatigue", the exponential growth (over the time frame of next months) has already locked in disaster in many places. So, it should be clear that even if the vaccine does work, it hasn't "saved us from disaster" of the first wave nor the second wave, whereas countries, such as New Zealand and communist Vietnam, have proven other policies can prevent disasters unfolding.

To connect with the previous discussion about vaccine efficacy, these phase 3 results do not establish immunity against existing or novel strains of Covid that the trials didn't address (by definition), such as the Mink strain (which may or may not be a truly novel strain). It seems the Mink strain has been contained (I don't have a problem believing that, the response was consequential) but what this event demonstrates is that Covid can jump into an animal reservoir and back to humans in a relatively short turn around (the same thing that drives novel flue strains), and so the same thing that happened with Danish minks could be happening in other much worse conditions where there isn't testing for new strains; such as US pig farms where many industrial pig agro-corporate-managers may not even believe in Covid and so may not sound any alarms even if they obverse respiratory disease in their pigs.

I think it is reasonable to assume there has never in the history of humanity been this many individuals carrying a dangerous novel pathogen at the same time (and if that's not the case now then I think it's fairly certain to arrive in a few more doubling times), due to there simply being more people than ever as well as plane travel spreading the virus efficiently around the globe, and so there is no real precedent to evaluate evolutionary potential of such a pathogen, numerically positioned in this way.

The purpose of such an analysis is to first avoid wishful thinking around the policy of vaccine reliance (when presented in a way that displaces policies known to work and proven in many different countries), as well as simply underline the disastrous consequences of abandoning containment in the early stages of the pandemic and the incompetence of our institutions and leaders and the neo-liberal governing ideology. The short term cost of effective containment (which, again, many countries proved was possible), no matter how "relatively uncompetitive" over a short term for places with an outbreak, is nearly an insignificant global cost compared to the costs of the generalized pandemic that was left to unfold (out of fear of bringing down airline, Airbus, and Boeing stocks by a few points; of course, that ultimately the pandemic increased the stock price of our major corporations as a whole means policy has been extremely effective from the neo-liberal governing point of view), and even higher potential costs of letting a pathogen increase to the numbers we are currently seeing (and have already locked in many doubling times of even higher numbers); a very new global experiment in biology.

In short, even if the vaccine works it is not a "successful policy" for managing the pandemic considering the harms already experienced, and the vaccines may not even work due to things such as novel strains dominating once a vaccine puts pressure on the current dominant strains, or then too many "freak harms" happen due to the vaccine, as UK minister puts it, resulting in populations avoiding the vaccine even more than would anyway (either due to unscientific beliefs or then the entirely scientifically justified, assuming economics is a science, decision to free-ride on other people taking the vaccine since free-riding maximizes economic self-benefit whenever it is possible to do). Likewise, long term side effects require long term studies to evaluate, so confidence on this issue can only be, by definition, entirely theoretical at this point without any "scientific evidence" (in the sense of running experiments to confirm hypothesis, which is becoming a "fringe" definition of science nowadays in favour of the "expert consensus" of academic state-agent definition of science) to support such a belief (of course, hopefully it's true and there are no long term side effects of; but hope is not reality as has been already verified).

I will not ever take the vaccine. Firstly, if one can become immune to covid 19 then I do not need the vaccine, having already had the virus. Secondly, if one cannot become immune to it, as multiple countries have told everyone who has had it already, then the vaccine is pointless. Thirdly, if the vaccine operates similarly to a Flu vaccine, meaning the most likely 4 strains are immunized for annually, it leaves far too much room for error than I am comfortable with. Currently my options with the flu vaccine are: get vaccinated, resulting in guaranteed full-on flu symptoms for 2-3 days; or risk it and be sick for 4-5 days IF I get the flu. Neither choice is appealing. Lastly, and oddly almost as compelling as all the others combined, is the means by which many of the Covid 19 vaccines are being created is the same means used at the of Wil Smith's "I am legend" to cure cancer. Watch the movie if you can't recall how that turns out. In 30 years, once I have seen the longitudinal effects of the vaccine on those who choose to get it, maybe I would consider it. However, in 30 years I will likely be looking for the door anyway, so still unlikely to agree.
I have worked 14 years in critical care. Rushing a vaccine is ALWAYS a bad idea.

You can't just throw away the dream job and try and turn it into some ridiculous situation outside of any and all reality. I mean, really? What? Seriously? If they were dressed in work attire I fear the image you'd have to post to convey it- I'm sure it would be illegal in most countries and frankly rally PETA. By these standards.

u wot m8?