Study says social distancing and COVID vaccines saved 800,000 U.S. lives

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

 

 

Before the first COVID-19 vaccine became available, Americans radically changed their behavior to avoid getting the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. New research from CU Boulder says that change, along with vaccines, saved more than 800,000 lives.

The cost — and the payoff — of social distancing

Social distancing allowed 68 percent of Americans to get vaccinated before they contracted the virus, which meant they had much better survival rates than people who contracted the virus before getting vaccinated. Without the behavioral changes, the paper’s authors estimate there would have been 60,000 more deaths each day during the peak of the pandemic. 

 

Before the pandemic and in its early stages, epidemiologists and other health officials didn’t anticipate that Americans could sustain behavioral changes for as long as they did. They also didn’t know the impact those changes would have both on the number of lives saved and the economic and social costs of social distancing.

 

(more)

 

https://www.cpr.org/2024/05/15/cu-boulder-study-says-social-distancing-and-covid-vaccines-saved-nearly-a-million-lives/

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/05/09/social-distancing-plus-vaccines-prevented-800000-covid-deaths-great-cost

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US
Cumulative Deaths from COVID-19

 

Andrew Atkeson, Department of Economics, UCLA

Stephen Kissler, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder
 

"We estimate that the combination of changes in behavior to slow the spread of COVID-19 and the delivery of vaccines to a substantial majority of the American population by mid-2021 saved close to 800,000 American lives relative to what would have occurred had vaccines not been developed.

We argue that the duration and magnitude of this behavioral response – and thus its overall success in delaying infections – came as a surprise, relative to both our historical experience with pandemic influenza and tomodel-based projections based on that experience.

 

Thus, we take from our experience with COVID-19 over the past four years the important public health lesson that behavior change can be a powerful force for slowing the spread of a dangerous infectious respiratory disease for a long time.

 

At the same time, these behavioral changes to slow the spread of COVID-19 came at a tremendous economic, social, and human cost."

 

(more)

 

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2_Atkeson-Kissler_unembargoed.pdf

 

[pomchop]

Don't tell all the pretend scientists and pretend doctors who think they know more about covid than professionals who study diseases for decades, look at all the data and stats and the reality of covid then put out a report...conspiracy theories seem to appeal to the pretend bunch....Que them up to respond to this study with what about this and i heard that and some podcast guy said different blah blah blah.

 

I for one was very happy to follow the covid advice from the pros ....was every word correct...no....but the vast majority was correct and based on the best information and science available to them at the time...Basic common sense tells you with no vaccines no masks no social distance that the final death toll would have been many more.

 

i do have friends who watched fox news and said it was all a big hoax and refused to be vaccinated....two of them that i know about died with a hose stuck down their throats though otherwise normal healthy guys....their wives got the shots and no problems.

[Ben Zioner]

14 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

 

Before the first COVID-19 vaccine became available, Americans radically changed their behavior to avoid getting the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. New research from CU Boulder says that change, along with vaccines, saved more than 800,000 lives.

The cost — and the payoff — of social distancing

Social distancing allowed 68 percent of Americans to get vaccinated before they contracted the virus, which meant they had much better survival rates than people who contracted the virus before getting vaccinated. Without the behavioral changes, the paper’s authors estimate there would have been 60,000 more deaths each day during the peak of the pandemic. 

 

Before the pandemic and in its early stages, epidemiologists and other health officials didn’t anticipate that Americans could sustain behavioral changes for as long as they did. They also didn’t know the impact those changes would have both on the number of lives saved and the economic and social costs of social distancing.

 

(more)

 

https://www.cpr.org/2024/05/15/cu-boulder-study-says-social-distancing-and-covid-vaccines-saved-nearly-a-million-lives/

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/05/09/social-distancing-plus-vaccines-prevented-800000-covid-deaths-great-cost

 

And some idiot felt the need to slap a "laughable emoticon". He has no idea why he did that. Maybe he wants to be idiotically trendy.

[Robert Paulson]

people put up some sand bags in front of their homes before a tsunami and then after a tsunami hits one day they proclaim their sandbags saved a bunch of lives. The problem is a tsunami gonna tsunami. I don’t really get why humans tend to *want*, even need, to believe they can do anything about Mother Nature sometimes. Although “Mother Nature” may be a stretch in this case 

 

the other problem of course is, as any reasonable person would know, we’d need a tsunami with no sandbags and a tsunami with sandbags to really know the answer. Any everyone knows that is true but we still get these types of reports. 

Edited June 29 by Robert Paulson