16 ms·

My pet theory is that chronic disease like obesity, combined with pre-existing immunity, and possibly some correlation to vitamin-d deficiency explains most of

My pet theory is that chronic disease like obesity, combined with pre-existing immunity, and possibly some correlation to vitamin-d deficiency explains most of how this has played out. Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection. And of course, mismanagement of those people in nursing homes means guaranteed disaster. So really, I think it's much less dangerous than we've let on, but deadly to certain demographics, that happen to be larger in the West (obese, diabetic, etc.).

Klinky 6y ago
This doesn't pan out when children have developed severe inflammatory responses, young adults have died, and not all people with comorbidities have had severe reactions. You can't just say it's fat and/or old people who are having severe symptoms or dying.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  It mostly does. Those cases you mention are quite rare.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >This doesn't pan out when children have developed severe inflammatory responses, young adults have died, and not all people with comorbidities have had severe reactions How many millions has covid infected thus far? It would be concerning if it hadn't killed a couple healthy kids and not killed a couple obese old people.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    It's not "a couple", there's been about 105 child deaths, and 4600 child hospitalizations. It's not as bad as adults, but you can't say little Johnny is magically immune, nor can you say that Brad the football star at the local college is either. I don't think it's currently clear why some apparently healthy people develop severe reactions.
    - just-juan-post 6y ago
      Do you feel we should restrict billions from gathering with and hugging their family so that we can save 105 children? Can you help us understand the thinking you use to make that tradeoff?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Klinky 6y ago
        The point of the 105 dead children was to show children can be severely affected and don't have magic immunity. 500K children have been diagnosed with COVID, with varying symptom levels. We have 200,000 dead overall in the USA, so it's not just a matter of 105 dead children justifying lockdown, it's all those other dead people you seem to have forgotten about. Also FYI, you can't hug your family member anymore once they're dead.
        neilwilson 6y ago
        What’s the median age of those that have sadly passed and the percentage with comorbidities?
        Klinky 6y ago
        Do you really mean "sadly" when trying to make the point that old people or people with pre-existing conditions are acceptable deaths?
        seattletech 6y ago
        He is Just Asking Questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
        neilwilson 6y ago
- jaywalk 6y ago
  We have to look at the bigger statistics. Some young children die of many things that the vast majority of them easily survive, but that doesn't mean we need to lock down every flu season.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Flu is harder to transmit and there is vaccine infrastructure available every year, despite that, it can still be very severe. Let's add a coronavirus with potentially greater severity than a flu, which has no vaccine, and has easier transmission, with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up.
    - just-juan-post 6y ago
      > with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up. There is no evidence of this and you are continually creating worst-case scenarios. Please stop.
      - Klinky 6y ago
        Do you know that this year will not be a difficult flu season? Do you know the ramifications of combined flu and COVID-19 infection? If the flu season is severe, then it could be quite catastrophic when combined with COVID-19. We should definitely be preparing for worst-case scenarios, and not downplaying potential severity because it's inconvenient.
        Gwypaas 6y ago
        Influenza and Noro/Calicivirus (Winter vomiting disease) stats for Sweden this year. Social distancing and increased hygiene measures implemented mid March, about week 11, killed them off much earlier than usual. Influenza: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-uppfoljning/smittsamma-sjukdomar/veckorapporter-influensa/2019-2020/figur-1-antal-fall-per-vecka.png https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-u... Calicivirus (Vinter vomiting disease): https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef377e4de6938e84b3a0ad7766/calicivirus-veckorapport-2020-v15_ny.pdf https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef37...
- hervature 6y ago
  Go here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Filter by 'Weekly Number of Deaths by Age' and you will see that it is literally the safest time ever for children and young adults because they are not allowed to go outside and do dumb stuff. Yes, some of them have died because of COVID, but the number is staggeringly small.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Maybe fewer have died of covid because of lockdown?
    - username90 6y ago
      Sweden didn't close schools, 1 person under 20 has died out of about 2 million.
      - vkou 6y ago
        How many people do people under 20 infect? How many of those secondary infections die? How many of them stay sick for months? There was a case right before schools opened in Georgia, I believe, of a kid who caught COVID at football practice. He's fine, but both of his parents died in a week. Fortunately, he now no longer needs to worry about COVID. Unfortunately, he's now an orphan.
        jtbayly 6y ago
        And he's still proof that "few children get sick" from this.
        Klinky 6y ago
        Children get sick, few have got sick enough to have died from it.
        vkou 6y ago
        I did not realize that the sole metric that our society should optimize for, to the exclusion of all else is 'how many children get sick and die from COVID'. (It's a very convenient optimization metric, though, because it requires us to do quite literally nothing.)
acqq 6y ago
No. "Obesity" and "vitamin-d deficiency" can't explain what happened in Italy (a lot of sun), and also can't explain what happened in the Nordic countries (much less sun), including Germany and Sweden (the later having order of magnitude more deaths than the former, measured as the percentage of the population). Sweden is particularly bad, having the deaths per capita even worse than the U.S. the last time I've checked. What we see is that countries that were lucky enough to do strong enough prevention actions early enough had order of magnitude less deaths than those who didn't do them (and Sweden is in the latter camp, even if they did have more response than most admit -- they did close all universities, for example). The scale of deaths seen in New York would have never happened, had the use of masks been common early enough. Eidt: Regarding "vulnerable populations" Italy and Germany have similar number of "vulnerable" and it seems Sweden would be better than Germany then: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Italy_2016.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Germany_2016.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_population_pyramid_(2018).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_population_py...
- eCa 6y ago
  > Sweden is particularly bad, having the deaths per capita even worse than the U.S. the last time I've checked. No. USA: 608 per million. Sweden: 580. [1] But the current trajectory is also important. In Sweden, the last day with more than 0.6 deaths/million was July 21 (according to actual date of death, not the date when death was reported), while the US currently is about 2-3 deaths/million/day. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
- samsa 6y ago
  It is worth noting that living in a sunny country does not guarantee the larger population receiving adequate Vitamin D through sun exposure, as many such populations somewhat paradoxically avoid sun exposure, as there are legitimate health reasons for doing so (extreme heat, concerns about skin cancer, etc.).
  - 6y ago
nradov 6y ago
There is now strong evidence that obesity and vitamin D deficiency are serious risk factors for COVID-19. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13128 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13128 https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/view/1118/1127 https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/vi... https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/9/2757 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/9/2757
belltaco 6y ago
>Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection Then why does the annual flu not wipe out this population? Immunity lasts about 3 years so every such person who is exposed to the flu should be dying in one 3 year cycle.
- gligorot 6y ago
  Wouldn't annual re-exposure to a similar virus "renew" the immunity?
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  Flu vaccination is pretty prevalent among seniors.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Which reinforces the need to have vaccines to get to herd immunity, not just herd immunity except for seniors who will die a lot.
- treis 6y ago
  Immunity lasts longer than 3 years: >According to our study, it appears they can last the entire lifespan of the human organism — 90 years plus. >n our study we were looking for antibodies to the 1918 flu. This flu virus was reconstructed a number of years ago in the lab, so we were able to test to see if 90 years later we could still find antibodies. I recruited survivors, people who were born in 1915 or earlier and thus presumably survived the 1918 flu. We found that virtually all the people born in 1915 or earlier — about 90% of them — had good "titers" to the 1918 flu, which means they still had reasonably high concentrations of the antibodies in their blood, whereas among controls, people who were born in 1926 or later, it was only about 10%. That was really quite a remarkable finding. http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,0...
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  It does, in recent years, the flu death tolls have been below average mortality - Levitt's been looking at EuroMOMO for this.

Klinky 6y ago

This doesn't pan out when children have developed severe inflammatory responses, young adults have died, and not all people with comorbidities have had severe reactions. You can't just say it's fat and/or old people who are having severe symptoms or dying.

jtbayly 6y ago
It mostly does. Those cases you mention are quite rare.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>This doesn't pan out when children have developed severe inflammatory responses, young adults have died, and not all people with comorbidities have had severe reactions How many millions has covid infected thus far? It would be concerning if it hadn't killed a couple healthy kids and not killed a couple obese old people.
- Klinky 6y ago
  It's not "a couple", there's been about 105 child deaths, and 4600 child hospitalizations. It's not as bad as adults, but you can't say little Johnny is magically immune, nor can you say that Brad the football star at the local college is either. I don't think it's currently clear why some apparently healthy people develop severe reactions.
  - just-juan-post 6y ago
    Do you feel we should restrict billions from gathering with and hugging their family so that we can save 105 children? Can you help us understand the thinking you use to make that tradeoff?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Klinky 6y ago
      The point of the 105 dead children was to show children can be severely affected and don't have magic immunity. 500K children have been diagnosed with COVID, with varying symptom levels. We have 200,000 dead overall in the USA, so it's not just a matter of 105 dead children justifying lockdown, it's all those other dead people you seem to have forgotten about. Also FYI, you can't hug your family member anymore once they're dead.
      - neilwilson 6y ago
        What’s the median age of those that have sadly passed and the percentage with comorbidities?
        Klinky 6y ago
        Do you really mean "sadly" when trying to make the point that old people or people with pre-existing conditions are acceptable deaths?
        seattletech 6y ago
        He is Just Asking Questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
        neilwilson 6y ago
jaywalk 6y ago
We have to look at the bigger statistics. Some young children die of many things that the vast majority of them easily survive, but that doesn't mean we need to lock down every flu season.
- Klinky 6y ago
  Flu is harder to transmit and there is vaccine infrastructure available every year, despite that, it can still be very severe. Let's add a coronavirus with potentially greater severity than a flu, which has no vaccine, and has easier transmission, with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up.
  - just-juan-post 6y ago
    > with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up. There is no evidence of this and you are continually creating worst-case scenarios. Please stop.
    - Klinky 6y ago
      Do you know that this year will not be a difficult flu season? Do you know the ramifications of combined flu and COVID-19 infection? If the flu season is severe, then it could be quite catastrophic when combined with COVID-19. We should definitely be preparing for worst-case scenarios, and not downplaying potential severity because it's inconvenient.
      - Gwypaas 6y ago
        Influenza and Noro/Calicivirus (Winter vomiting disease) stats for Sweden this year. Social distancing and increased hygiene measures implemented mid March, about week 11, killed them off much earlier than usual. Influenza: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-uppfoljning/smittsamma-sjukdomar/veckorapporter-influensa/2019-2020/figur-1-antal-fall-per-vecka.png https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-u... Calicivirus (Vinter vomiting disease): https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef377e4de6938e84b3a0ad7766/calicivirus-veckorapport-2020-v15_ny.pdf https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef37...
hervature 6y ago
Go here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Filter by 'Weekly Number of Deaths by Age' and you will see that it is literally the safest time ever for children and young adults because they are not allowed to go outside and do dumb stuff. Yes, some of them have died because of COVID, but the number is staggeringly small.
- Klinky 6y ago
  Maybe fewer have died of covid because of lockdown?
  - username90 6y ago
    Sweden didn't close schools, 1 person under 20 has died out of about 2 million.
    - vkou 6y ago
      How many people do people under 20 infect? How many of those secondary infections die? How many of them stay sick for months? There was a case right before schools opened in Georgia, I believe, of a kid who caught COVID at football practice. He's fine, but both of his parents died in a week. Fortunately, he now no longer needs to worry about COVID. Unfortunately, he's now an orphan.
      - jtbayly 6y ago
        And he's still proof that "few children get sick" from this.
        Klinky 6y ago
        Children get sick, few have got sick enough to have died from it.
        vkou 6y ago
        I did not realize that the sole metric that our society should optimize for, to the exclusion of all else is 'how many children get sick and die from COVID'. (It's a very convenient optimization metric, though, because it requires us to do quite literally nothing.)

acqq 6y ago

No. "Obesity" and "vitamin-d deficiency" can't explain what happened in Italy (a lot of sun), and also can't explain what happened in the Nordic countries (much less sun), including Germany and Sweden (the later having order of magnitude more deaths than the former, measured as the percentage of the population). Sweden is particularly bad, having the deaths per capita even worse than the U.S. the last time I've checked. What we see is that countries that were lucky enough to do strong enough prevention actions early enough had order of magnitude less deaths than those who didn't do them (and Sweden is in the latter camp, even if they did have more response than most admit -- they did close all universities, for example). The scale of deaths seen in New York would have never happened, had the use of masks been common early enough. Eidt: Regarding "vulnerable populations" Italy and Germany have similar number of "vulnerable" and it seems Sweden would be better than Germany then: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Italy_2016.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Germany_2016.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_population_pyramid_(2018).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_population_py...

eCa 6y ago
> Sweden is particularly bad, having the deaths per capita even worse than the U.S. the last time I've checked. No. USA: 608 per million. Sweden: 580. [1] But the current trajectory is also important. In Sweden, the last day with more than 0.6 deaths/million was July 21 (according to actual date of death, not the date when death was reported), while the US currently is about 2-3 deaths/million/day. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
samsa 6y ago
It is worth noting that living in a sunny country does not guarantee the larger population receiving adequate Vitamin D through sun exposure, as many such populations somewhat paradoxically avoid sun exposure, as there are legitimate health reasons for doing so (extreme heat, concerns about skin cancer, etc.).
- 6y ago

nradov 6y ago

There is now strong evidence that obesity and vitamin D deficiency are serious risk factors for COVID-19. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13128 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13128 https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/view/1118/1127 https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/vi... https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/9/2757 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/9/2757

belltaco 6y ago

>Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection Then why does the annual flu not wipe out this population? Immunity lasts about 3 years so every such person who is exposed to the flu should be dying in one 3 year cycle.

gligorot 6y ago
Wouldn't annual re-exposure to a similar virus "renew" the immunity?
aaronblohowiak 6y ago
Flu vaccination is pretty prevalent among seniors.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Which reinforces the need to have vaccines to get to herd immunity, not just herd immunity except for seniors who will die a lot.
treis 6y ago
Immunity lasts longer than 3 years: >According to our study, it appears they can last the entire lifespan of the human organism — 90 years plus. >n our study we were looking for antibodies to the 1918 flu. This flu virus was reconstructed a number of years ago in the lab, so we were able to test to see if 90 years later we could still find antibodies. I recruited survivors, people who were born in 1915 or earlier and thus presumably survived the 1918 flu. We found that virtually all the people born in 1915 or earlier — about 90% of them — had good "titers" to the 1918 flu, which means they still had reasonably high concentrations of the antibodies in their blood, whereas among controls, people who were born in 1926 or later, it was only about 10%. That was really quite a remarkable finding. http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,0...
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
It does, in recent years, the flu death tolls have been below average mortality - Levitt's been looking at EuroMOMO for this.