39 ms·

> 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 observatio

> 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.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > 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. And my point is that the same can be said of the new flavors of influenza. The variations of influenza which are circulating this year haven't been studied for years because they, like covid-19, are new. They make new vaccines for influenza twice a year because influenza is constantly mutating. We don't know what the long-term effects for any new mutation of influenza are. I don't think that should be taken as a license to fearmonger.
vmception 6y ago
Dismissing everything as fearmongering is a coping mechanism, in this case I would call it denial. I think a highly iterative process of understanding the effects of COVID are an interesting thing to learn and it might also help people and lead to a breakthrough if others are inspired to entertain the hypothesis.
- catalogia 6y ago
  The simple fact of the matter is there is currently no rational reason to believe covid will have long-term effects comparable to polio. That the possibility can't be ruled out is meaningless because you can't rule out that same possibility for any other virus either.
  - vmception 6y ago
    permanently lower oxygen saturation and neural degeneration unrelated to the blood oxygen across a broad population of unknown size is crippling comparable to polio. your entire argument is based on either not noticing that, not being aware of that, or desperate to talk about why visually crippled people was a bigger problem even though zero resources need to be spent on that today.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > permanently lower oxygen saturation and neural degeneration unrelated to the blood oxygen across a broad population of unknown size is crippling comparable to polio. Comparable to polio? Put some real numbers to it, otherwise you're just pulling shit out of your ass. Post-polio syndrome effected 25-80% of survivors. The handful of anecdotes of people having trouble after surviving covid-19 are a far cry from that.

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.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > 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. And my point is that the same can be said of the new flavors of influenza. The variations of influenza which are circulating this year haven't been studied for years because they, like covid-19, are new. They make new vaccines for influenza twice a year because influenza is constantly mutating. We don't know what the long-term effects for any new mutation of influenza are. I don't think that should be taken as a license to fearmonger.

vmception 6y ago

Dismissing everything as fearmongering is a coping mechanism, in this case I would call it denial. I think a highly iterative process of understanding the effects of COVID are an interesting thing to learn and it might also help people and lead to a breakthrough if others are inspired to entertain the hypothesis.

catalogia 6y ago
The simple fact of the matter is there is currently no rational reason to believe covid will have long-term effects comparable to polio. That the possibility can't be ruled out is meaningless because you can't rule out that same possibility for any other virus either.
- vmception 6y ago
  permanently lower oxygen saturation and neural degeneration unrelated to the blood oxygen across a broad population of unknown size is crippling comparable to polio. your entire argument is based on either not noticing that, not being aware of that, or desperate to talk about why visually crippled people was a bigger problem even though zero resources need to be spent on that today.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > permanently lower oxygen saturation and neural degeneration unrelated to the blood oxygen across a broad population of unknown size is crippling comparable to polio. Comparable to polio? Put some real numbers to it, otherwise you're just pulling shit out of your ass. Post-polio syndrome effected 25-80% of survivors. The handful of anecdotes of people having trouble after surviving covid-19 are a far cry from that.