COVID-19 Deaths: Killed More Americans than the Vietnam War

Uroboros, APRN · May 5, 2020

The 20th century was the most deadly alone, killing more people worldwide than all the others combined per numerous peer epidemiology sources. Under Stalin the Russian communist machine was responsible for some 160 million, Hitler's final solution, 6 million, Chinese Mao millions more. And these were just murderous military regimes, not to mention devastating disease crisis such as Spanish Flu, Polio, Cholera, and HIV-AIDS. Yet despite those and now COVID, the world is still facing an over population and basic resource crisis that goes unspoken.

Point is the figures being thrown around with COVID are loose, anecdotal at best still, and simply confounding the masses into herd hysteria. Most of us in healthcare cannot get on the same page with it, and we are supposed to be fixing the problem.

Personally I'd rather do a month of free fecal transplants in a C Diff ward than have to listen to another Cuomo power point, at this point. Seems the politicians and leaders have forgotten they are giving complex statistical diagrams to a general public that interestingly can calmly understand the most dynamic fantasy sports metrics, but start counting coughs and they buy all the toilet paper. Or maybe they are well aware of the mind games and everything is going as planned. The optimism of nursing spirit in me remains however hopeful.

Look there's immense sarcasm here obviously. And tragedy is tragedy. But last time I checked comparing one deadly cancer to another certainly fails to lessen a somber mood. FACT; A lot of people are dying from COVID. And many more will. And I'm going to do everything I can to make that number smaller, no matter what channel keeps count, and how many.

Better question is what can you and I do today, we should have done yesterday, that will make our chances tomorrow better?

toomuchbaloney · May 5, 2020

31 minutes ago, Uroboros said:
The 20th century was the most deadly alone, killing more people worldwide than all the others combined per numerous peer epidemiology sources. Under Stalin the Russian communist machine was responsible for some 160 million, Hitler's final solution, 6 million, Chinese Mao millions more. And these were just murderous military regimes, not to mention devastating disease crisis such as Spanish Flu, Polio, Cholera, and HIV-AIDS. Yet despite those and now COVID, the world is still facing an over population and basic resource crisis that goes unspoken.
Point is the figures being thrown around with COVID are loose, anecdotal at best still, and simply confounding the masses into herd hysteria. Most of us in healthcare cannot get on the same page with it, and we are supposed to be fixing the problem.
Personally I'd rather do a month of free fecal transplants in a C Diff ward than have to listen to another Cuomo power point, at this point. Seems the politicians and leaders have forgotten they are giving complex statistical diagrams to a general public that interestingly can calmly understand the most dynamic fantasy sports metrics, but start counting coughs and they buy all the toilet paper. Or maybe they are well aware of the mind games and everything is going as planned. The optimism of nursing spirit in me remains however hopeful.
Look there's immense sarcasm here obviously. And tragedy is tragedy. But last time I checked comparing one deadly cancer to another certainly fails to lessen a somber mood. FACT; A lot of people are dying from COVID. And many more will. And I'm going to do everything I can to make that number smaller, no matter what channel keeps count, and how many.
Better question is what can you and I do today, we should have done yesterday, that will make our chances tomorrow better?

Lessen a somber mood?

It seems to me that we continue pushing against a percentage of the population who still wants to minimize the severity of the contagion. This is the time to double down on the desire to minimize death and suffering. Roughly 20% of the COVID victims are HCPs, right?

Uroboros, APRN · May 5, 2020

1 hour ago, toomuchbaloney said:
Lessen a somber mood?
It seems to me that we continue pushing against a percentage of the population who still wants to minimize the severity of the contagion. This is the time to double down on the desire to minimize death and suffering. Roughly 20% of the COVID victims are HCPs, right?

If those four words were all you took away from the four paragraphs I'd encourage you to read more carefully again. Axiomatic satire is challenging but a lot of fun to write. Sure 20% sounds like a safe statistic for 20% of anything. But scary statistics and diagrams are clearly not the solution. I mean even my dog whimpers every time she sees the Johns Hopkins map that looks more like a Chernobyl event. Point is made, COVID is a novel mass killer.

My little fat Corgi with her highly undeveloped canine prefrontal cortex knows that, as does the rest of the world by now. We can waste time and energy arguing to what degree, or put our brains to better use and find an effective treatment asap. Because as the only hope, it's on us in healthcare to do the unspoken job, for an unaware American public, that will always maintain the desire to minimize the severity of death and suffering.

toomuchbaloney · May 5, 2020

2 hours ago, Uroboros said:
If those four words were all you took away from the four paragraphs I'd encourage you to read more carefully again. Axiomatic satire is challenging but a lot of fun to write. Sure 20% sounds like a safe statistic for 20% of anything. But scary statistics and diagrams are clearly not the solution. I mean even my dog whimpers every time she sees the Johns Hopkins map that looks more like a Chernobyl event. Point is made, COVID is a novel mass killer.
My little fat Corgi with her highly undeveloped canine prefrontal cortex knows that, as does the rest of the world by now. We can waste time and energy arguing to what degree, or put our brains to better use and find an effective treatment asap. Because as the only hope, it's on us in healthcare to do the unspoken job, for an unaware American public, that will always maintain the desire to minimize the severity of death and suffering.

Those 4 words were what I chose to focus upon. Encourage away.

I'm not planning on arguing any nonsense or facts with anyone, including you. Somber is appropriate when so many of our neighbors are suffering and dying.

Uroboros, APRN · May 5, 2020

36 minutes ago, toomuchbaloney said:
Those 4 words were what I chose to focus upon. Encourage away.
I'm not planning on arguing any nonsense or facts with anyone, including you. Somber is appropriate when so many of our neighbors are suffering and dying.

And I don't have space or time to give you a lesson in semantics here, but feel free to PM me and we can set something up.

toomuchbaloney · May 5, 2020

1 hour ago, Uroboros said:
And I don't have space or time to give you a lesson in semantics here, but feel free to PM me and we can set something up.

Or we could just talk about the fact that this poorly handled American epidemic is killing Americans at record numbers and that is, indeed, cause for a somber mood.

blondenurse12, MSN, NP · May 6, 2020

A disgusting comparison, truly. For one, our population is over double what it was during the Vietnam War. Another issue is that the US primarily went to war with Vietnam to assert dominance and to test Agent Orange on humans. Of course the US didn't have a higher death count, because we were dropping bomb and poison like it was going out of style. I visited Vietnam and there are no elderly people, we killed them all. A truly shameful moment and the turning point of our history, when the government was no longer for the people but only their own special interests.