4 ms·

The problem with fear of the unknown is the set of the unknown is infinite. Maybe you are patient zero of a brand new super-influenza that's going to wipe out

The problem with fear of the unknown is the set of the unknown is infinite. Maybe you are patient zero of a brand new super-influenza that's going to wipe out 90% of humanity. Is that hypothetical less likely to occur than some 'unforeseen consequences of covid' scenario? There are hundreds of viruses known to cause disease in humans and probably many times more that infect humans without currently causing disease. The potential for "we don't know, but what if..." scenarios is boundless.

vmception 6y ago
the difference between you and I is that I am willing to entertain boundless theories in a highly iterative process of hypothesis, if there is some observation to support the hypothesis. the supporting work for any cognitive issue would be the known neural degenerative aspect of a COVID infection as well as the blood oxygen transportation deficiencies of a COVID infection. Its just enough to say "look over there" to focus efforts on repeatable studies for eventual peer review, because people might not be looking over there yet. Its just enough to not be surprised if a brain that isn't getting the same amount of oxygen and also part of an infected nervous system suddenly stops working in the expected way.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > the difference between you and I is that I am willing to entertain boundless theories in a highly iterative process of hypothesis, if there is some observation to support the hypothesis. It's known to science that influenza mutates every year, and history has shown that it can cause pandemics. Are those not observations that also support this same style of boundless fearmonger hypothesizing? I think the reason you're preoccupied with speculative fear of covid but not influenza has more to do with media coverage than anything else. In the case of covid you're being encouraged to fear the unknown, while in the case of influenza the unknown, while just as unknown, is not currently in vogue.
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    I'm not sure what your argument is at all beyond trying to assume someone doesn't believe the influenza virus can be deadly too. Influenza can mutate to become even deadlier. That's why we have vaccines and take action to track the disease so that we can keep it under relative control. We approach it with great care because it's deadly. So why are you afraid of doing the same thing for the coronavirus? It has a lot more unknowns and things we simply do not know about and without a way to treat it, the best approach is one with extreme caution. It's already killed far more people than your average influenza season in less than half the year. It seems like you're attempting to downplay how dangerous this virus is and trying to compare it to the flu.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      The comparison between covid and polio fatality rates was made upthread by another user. I responded by pointing out a deficiency in that comparison, namely that polio had serious lasting adverse health effects on 1/4th to 8/10ths of survivors. In response to that, I received a comment suggesting that covid may yet prove to have similar lasting effects. That fear mongering is what I am now responding to. There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness.
      - fzeroracer 6y ago
        > There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness. And this is precisely the problem which you seem to have missed. There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. Post-polio syndrome took 15-30 years after infection for the effects to actually be observed, so obviously there can't be any evidence because it's not even been a year since the coronavirus pandemic started. What we have noticed is that there is evidence of damage to the lungs and nervous system even in people that have recovered from the coronavirus with more we simply don't know. The problem is that you're looking at things which we were only able to determine long after infection and then comparing it to a new virus which we simply cannot have that data yet. It's naive to assume that because there's no data that means it's obviously safe from any long term effects because I imagine people likely made that same assumption about Polio as well because these things tend to have a very long tail.
pharrington 6y ago
SARS2, right now, is both known to cause various manor of acute illness and long term damage, as well as being significantly deadly. Fear of the unknown is a problem in itself, but that has vanishingly little to do with concerns about SARS2.

vmception 6y ago

the difference between you and I is that I am willing to entertain boundless theories in a highly iterative process of hypothesis, if there is some observation to support the hypothesis. the supporting work for any cognitive issue would be the known neural degenerative aspect of a COVID infection as well as the blood oxygen transportation deficiencies of a COVID infection. Its just enough to say "look over there" to focus efforts on repeatable studies for eventual peer review, because people might not be looking over there yet. Its just enough to not be surprised if a brain that isn't getting the same amount of oxygen and also part of an infected nervous system suddenly stops working in the expected way.

catalogia 6y ago
> the difference between you and I is that I am willing to entertain boundless theories in a highly iterative process of hypothesis, if there is some observation to support the hypothesis. It's known to science that influenza mutates every year, and history has shown that it can cause pandemics. Are those not observations that also support this same style of boundless fearmonger hypothesizing? I think the reason you're preoccupied with speculative fear of covid but not influenza has more to do with media coverage than anything else. In the case of covid you're being encouraged to fear the unknown, while in the case of influenza the unknown, while just as unknown, is not currently in vogue.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I'm not sure what your argument is at all beyond trying to assume someone doesn't believe the influenza virus can be deadly too. Influenza can mutate to become even deadlier. That's why we have vaccines and take action to track the disease so that we can keep it under relative control. We approach it with great care because it's deadly. So why are you afraid of doing the same thing for the coronavirus? It has a lot more unknowns and things we simply do not know about and without a way to treat it, the best approach is one with extreme caution. It's already killed far more people than your average influenza season in less than half the year. It seems like you're attempting to downplay how dangerous this virus is and trying to compare it to the flu.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    The comparison between covid and polio fatality rates was made upthread by another user. I responded by pointing out a deficiency in that comparison, namely that polio had serious lasting adverse health effects on 1/4th to 8/10ths of survivors. In response to that, I received a comment suggesting that covid may yet prove to have similar lasting effects. That fear mongering is what I am now responding to. There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness.
    - fzeroracer 6y ago
      > There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness. And this is precisely the problem which you seem to have missed. There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. Post-polio syndrome took 15-30 years after infection for the effects to actually be observed, so obviously there can't be any evidence because it's not even been a year since the coronavirus pandemic started. What we have noticed is that there is evidence of damage to the lungs and nervous system even in people that have recovered from the coronavirus with more we simply don't know. The problem is that you're looking at things which we were only able to determine long after infection and then comparing it to a new virus which we simply cannot have that data yet. It's naive to assume that because there's no data that means it's obviously safe from any long term effects because I imagine people likely made that same assumption about Polio as well because these things tend to have a very long tail.

pharrington 6y ago

SARS2, right now, is both known to cause various manor of acute illness and long term damage, as well as being significantly deadly. Fear of the unknown is a problem in itself, but that has vanishingly little to do with concerns about SARS2.