I heard a medical ethicist talking about our public health response to the pandemic. And he talked about "excess mortality." This year we'll have excess mortality, he said. But some of our pandemic control policies can increase "excess mortality" in other areas...

Not the point but man, that’s brutal, dehumanizing terminology.

I think it makes sense in some ways. Because every year people die. All of us will die eventually.

The terminology is obviously meant for scientists/practitioners, but as a lay person/patient, it can feel a bit 😬. In my experience as a formerly pregnant woman, there’s a lot of problematic terminology in obstetrics, too.

A lot of our discussion around covid has flattened death to a strange degree. A death for someone whose 80 in a nursing home is different than a death for someone who's 4.