What will football be like

I'm seeing a bunch of articles that say viruses tend to become less pathogenic over time, but a little more resistant because they want to live. Wouldn't killing the host kill the stronger pathogens? You sure it's because the population gets stronger? Maybe it's a bit of both. I don't know.

Jebus Crispies. settle down. Of course some people that died of COVID would of or could of died of something else. You haven't cracked the Da Vinci code with that profound assessment there. You are trying to be a pedant to make a point and it is silly. 

Saying COVID isn't replacement deaths is saying it isn't stopping everything else in the world that also kills people right now. it hasn't taken anything's place, it is just something else. People will still die of heart disease and cancer and (gasp) the flu. People will keep on dying of everything else too. Yes, some of those people with heart disease or cancer will get COVID and ultimately die from it. but who is to say heart disease was killing them today and not in 5 years? More over, you should know it is impossible to prove the negative here. Unless the person dying of COVID ALSO has advanced stage 4 cancer metastasized to a dozen other organs it is pretty hard to point to any one person and go "yeah, he was a goner anyways". You can't really do that at a broad population level. "COVID deaths are not replacement deaths" is a broad generalized statement summarizing a high level trend. 

what you are doing is making a ecological fallacy. I am, and continue to, talk at a broad population level. You are taking statements meant to be generalized to the nation, and applying it to individual circumstances or scenarios, when it fits your need. Right now we have no way of knowing the degree to which people dying of COVID had comorbidities, and what those comorbidiites are, and if we can actually assess if that person dying in May of COVID was going to die in May of 2020 anyways, or even in 2020, or if that person still had another few years left in them. Not at the population level high enough to do a real assessment of it. We have a good sense of a few things, most notably hypertension and diabetes are major risk factors, but again, we cannot say that person was going to die of a massive heart attack or diabetes in the near term. We have small scale studies using just a single hospital's records or maybe a health system's hospital... But we do not have a state's worth let alone the nation's worth of data to analyze right now. 

Your argument is devolved to "Everyone is going to die eventually, who cares if it is COVID".

We won't know the net affect of COVID for a year or more. And there are offsetting deaths. Of course there are, that is a "no s%#t, sherlock" statement. In Oregon, emergency room volume has dropped by over 2,000 people per day statewide. there are fewer accidents, fewer traumas, fewer worksite problems, etc. But as so bravely noted by Beaverfever trying to defend a broad reopening, we have increased suicides and increased drug abuse as well as increased ODs. Net deaths are simply going to be an unknown for some time. And while we are at it, we will NEVER know the rate of "COVID-influenced" deaths related to the mental health strain of both the pandemic, the shutdown, and the economic fall out. I am sure some will try and estimate it though. 

You can find examples of "replacement deaths" all day long. It doesn't change the high level assessment that COVID is not replacing deaths, it is adding them. 

CDC website has death totals from flu seasons going way back. I assume they track all sorts of death sources if that’s what you are looking for. This year’s flu season was wrapping up as the Covid pandemic was gaining steam. Next flu season will be a mess because they’ll be dealing both with Covid and the flu and trying to figure out which is which.

Hmm. Thanks for the response. Guess it is a waiting game.
#'s will be thrown off. Less accidental(my guess) deaths with the current protocols offset by increase from Covid? I have no idea, but it's why I wonder what the death increase really is.

lol

in a very simple nutshell, a virus works because it has some nature of a protein structure that gains entry to a cell. be it via a hormone receptor or actual physical penetration through a cell wall. the protein spike injects genetic material, takes over a cell and uses the cell to reproduce itself. you "get sick" because your cells both become damaged and die and because they stop doing what they are suppose to do. The virus 

It can happen, but not often, that a virus mutates to form a less effective protein structure, less effective at entering a host. You also have to bear in mind the "goal" (as much as non-sentient, non-living things can have them) is not to kill a host, but to reproduce to infinity. a virus weakening itself to be less effective is also achieving a goal for the virus: to propagate longer. 

But in most cases, it goes the other way: gets stronger to infect more people faster. that is what history shows in the long run. 

When we say viruses tend to become less pathogenic over time, you have to remember how we measure pathogenicity : from the people it infects. from statistics and R-naught values and hospitalization rates and mortality rates and all that. The people are, and will always remain, a key part of the equation. 

It is more common the population gains immune defense, than the virus itself has a change that makes it weaker. I am not saying it cannot happen, I am simply saying what is more likely. 

Can we all agree this horse has been ridden too long and is tired.