Whitesince63 wrote:I think it’s misleading to take the number of people in hospital a year ago and before Sluffy because the majority of deaths and serious illness occurred at the beginning of the pandemic to the oldest and weakest, who you would expect to be the most likely to suffer. Although there were some younger people who suffered, the huge majority were old and suffering other morbidities. Since then both deaths and serious illness have fallen, which you’d also expect from those who survived and proved stronger.
I heard an argument once that black athletes both in the US and here, were more successful at some sports because their ancestors on the slave ships survived because they were stronger constitutionally. Most died on the trips across so it sounds logical and could possibly be why Covid deaths and hospitalisations are now lower since those with stronger systems were better able to stand up to it? Whatever it is, it’s not affecting as many people badly and whilst it’s not gone and possibly may never, at least we can now look forward to living around it.
In your first paragraph you've missed my point completely I'm afraid.
You might well be correct that more people had Covid/died from it - the data doesn't exist to prove it one way or the other but in respect of last January we do and people occupying hospital beds with Covid peaked about at just over 40,000 and daily cases peaked around 55,000 per day. At that time only the most vulnerable had been jabbed (Margaret Keenan getting the very first jab on the 8th December, 2020 - so most catching it and dying from it were almost certainly un-jabbed at that point.
If you compare that to the present where the peak was at around 170,000 cases per day (three times higher that last January) and people in hospital beds peaked around 20,000 (half of last years), then it can be clearly seen that due to a large number having been vaccinated and/or having at some point caught it previously, together with the present dominant strain Omicron being less 'dangerous' to health than Delta was, that it was clearly the right decision not to have locked down this time and move to Covid being an endemic here and no longer a pandemic.
It can clearly be evidenced from the data we had from the second wave last January that this current wave was/is much less dangerous to us because through vaccination and people previously being infected plus the strain being 'milder', that a herd immunity has now begun to be established.
I believe you have misunderstood my previous post but think you are agreeing with my end conclusion?
As for your second paragraph, I wouldn't listen to such eugenic bollocks!
Whatever your views are, the simple fact is that although an estimated 11m slaves were transported alive to America, there were probably 100m or more that were not!
And American athletes (black, white or any other skin tone) have much better access to training facilities, equipment, coaching, nutrition ans a whole raft of other factors that helps give them an edge when competing against those who simply don't have the same access to them.