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Your perspective is a very weird American one where the response has been one giant failure, whether you think lockdowns are great or not. Others are doing muc

by arrrg 6y ago

Your perspective is a very weird American one where the response has been one giant failure, whether you think lockdowns are great or not. Others are doing much better. There are hardly any new cases in, say, Germany, with by now extremely minimal measures and no lockdown. Your epic texts seem to come from a weird parallel world.

jdminhbg 6y ago
This is just circular reasoning. Countries with lower rates of cases/deaths "did well" and countries with higher rates "did poorly." The total heterogeneity across the types and timing of responses in countries across both groups doesn't ever seem to raise any questions. In fact, that's exactly the implication of the Nature paper that's ostensibly the reason for this thread. The more we learn about pre-existing resistance to this coronavirus, the more we can figure out whether measures taken made a difference or were simply coincident with a less-vulnerable population.
- arrrg 6y ago
  But I don’t think scientists think that previous common cold exposure actually makes you immune? The hypothesis I heard is that this immune response due to previous common cold corona virus exposure could explain the high proportion of asymptomatic cases or cases with very mild symptoms. Those are already priced in, so we already know about their existence, it would just be an explanation as to why they exist. I‘m also not sure why you think that even neighboring and very similar countries are so wildly different based on wildly different levels of pre-existing immunity. That doesn’t seem very plausible. Why should, say, Germany and Italy be so different? Or Germany and France?
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    > But I don’t think scientists think that previous common cold exposure actually makes you immune? That's the subject of the paper being discussed, it's worth going back and looking at it. The researchers demonstrated T-cell reactivity against it not just in blood from people who had SARS-Cov-1/2 but those who had neither. So something else is going on -- maybe one of the common cold coronaviruses, maybe some other infective but not dangerous coronavirus, maybe something else. > I‘m also not sure why you think that even neighboring and very similar countries are so wildly different based on wildly different levels of pre-existing immunity. That doesn’t seem very plausible. Why should, say, Germany and Italy be so different? Or Germany and France? Since we don't even know the source of this pre-existing immunity, much less how it varies between countries, it's impossible to say. But it's clear that there are many differences between what happens in countries that aren't just lockdown timing/severity. Immunity, density, demographics, climate, sheer luck, etc.
__blockcipher__ 6y ago
See, you haven't actually understood what I'm talking about, so no wonder you think my position/view is contradictory. I'm not saying that as an insult BTW, just a statement of fact. Countries stop getting new cases without lockdown measures when they approach the herd immunity threshold. So, if we look at New York, which got absolutely ravaged (relatively speaking), they don't have significant new cases anymore. Not because Cuomo is a genius - he's the opposite - but because there's almost nobody left to get infected. So, no, while I have been citing American examples because I am quite clearly an American, what I'm saying is relevant to every country in the world. Following a course of lockdown, social distancing and universal masking is simply an exercise in lunacy. At best it has no effect, and at worse it massively increases mortality. In short, I really don't understand the point you're making. My goal is the maximum aggregate well-being of society, thus I oppose lockdown. If my goal were a more myopic measure like "maximum lives saved" (ignoring that a life is not a life is not a life), lockdown would still be the wrong call. Now if my goal were "minimize COVID-19 mortality regardless of the cost to all-cause mortality", then lockdown may or may not be effective, I personally think that it almost certainly makes COVID-19 mortality worse in the long run full stop, but that point is more debatable. I think the first two are inarguable, though.
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  That is complete nonsense. Germany is nowhere near herd immunity threshold. Taiwan and S. Korea and Japan are no where near herd immunity threshold.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    Please elaborate more. First you need to tell me what you think the threshold is; the findings in this paper suggest it could easily be like 15-25% as opposed to the previous figures of 70-90%.
    - arrrg 6y ago
      Germany has below 2 percent seroprevalence.

by arrrg 6y ago

jdminhbg 6y ago

This is just circular reasoning. Countries with lower rates of cases/deaths "did well" and countries with higher rates "did poorly." The total heterogeneity across the types and timing of responses in countries across both groups doesn't ever seem to raise any questions. In fact, that's exactly the implication of the Nature paper that's ostensibly the reason for this thread. The more we learn about pre-existing resistance to this coronavirus, the more we can figure out whether measures taken made a difference or were simply coincident with a less-vulnerable population.

arrrg 6y ago
But I don’t think scientists think that previous common cold exposure actually makes you immune? The hypothesis I heard is that this immune response due to previous common cold corona virus exposure could explain the high proportion of asymptomatic cases or cases with very mild symptoms. Those are already priced in, so we already know about their existence, it would just be an explanation as to why they exist. I‘m also not sure why you think that even neighboring and very similar countries are so wildly different based on wildly different levels of pre-existing immunity. That doesn’t seem very plausible. Why should, say, Germany and Italy be so different? Or Germany and France?
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  > But I don’t think scientists think that previous common cold exposure actually makes you immune? That's the subject of the paper being discussed, it's worth going back and looking at it. The researchers demonstrated T-cell reactivity against it not just in blood from people who had SARS-Cov-1/2 but those who had neither. So something else is going on -- maybe one of the common cold coronaviruses, maybe some other infective but not dangerous coronavirus, maybe something else. > I‘m also not sure why you think that even neighboring and very similar countries are so wildly different based on wildly different levels of pre-existing immunity. That doesn’t seem very plausible. Why should, say, Germany and Italy be so different? Or Germany and France? Since we don't even know the source of this pre-existing immunity, much less how it varies between countries, it's impossible to say. But it's clear that there are many differences between what happens in countries that aren't just lockdown timing/severity. Immunity, density, demographics, climate, sheer luck, etc.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago

See, you haven't actually understood what I'm talking about, so no wonder you think my position/view is contradictory. I'm not saying that as an insult BTW, just a statement of fact. Countries stop getting new cases without lockdown measures when they approach the herd immunity threshold. So, if we look at New York, which got absolutely ravaged (relatively speaking), they don't have significant new cases anymore. Not because Cuomo is a genius - he's the opposite - but because there's almost nobody left to get infected. So, no, while I have been citing American examples because I am quite clearly an American, what I'm saying is relevant to every country in the world. Following a course of lockdown, social distancing and universal masking is simply an exercise in lunacy. At best it has no effect, and at worse it massively increases mortality. In short, I really don't understand the point you're making. My goal is the maximum aggregate well-being of society, thus I oppose lockdown. If my goal were a more myopic measure like "maximum lives saved" (ignoring that a life is not a life is not a life), lockdown would still be the wrong call. Now if my goal were "minimize COVID-19 mortality regardless of the cost to all-cause mortality", then lockdown may or may not be effective, I personally think that it almost certainly makes COVID-19 mortality worse in the long run full stop, but that point is more debatable. I think the first two are inarguable, though.

hcknwscommenter 6y ago
That is complete nonsense. Germany is nowhere near herd immunity threshold. Taiwan and S. Korea and Japan are no where near herd immunity threshold.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  Please elaborate more. First you need to tell me what you think the threshold is; the findings in this paper suggest it could easily be like 15-25% as opposed to the previous figures of 70-90%.
  - arrrg 6y ago
    Germany has below 2 percent seroprevalence.