6 ms·

What percentage of people who get the flu are asymptomatic? I think the biggest issue with covid is people spreading it who don't even know they have it. A fri

What percentage of people who get the flu are asymptomatic? I think the biggest issue with covid is people spreading it who don't even know they have it. A friend of mine just happened to get a test and was found positive. The only symptom they had was a headache. Who can take a day of work because of a headache?

hef19898 6y ago
Stories like this are the reason for all the social disrancing measures and work from home. Not everybody can follow this of course. But those jobs that can be done from home should be done from home. And social distancing should be followed as much as possible. Sadly, people have to be forced to do so it seems.
- moralsupply 6y ago
  The only really sad thing is that so many people believe others should be forced (through the use of the monopoly of force the state holds) to do whatever they believe is "right"
  - libraryatnight 6y ago
    eh, welcome to living in a society. Also there's a lot more going on behind the anti-mask/social distancing nonsense than freedom. Trump supporters chanted 12 more years at a rally the other day, that doesn't sound like a group that's actually concerned with authoritarianism. So what is it really? I don't know. But stop chanting freedom while flaunting public safety.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people. Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people. Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal infectious droplets in public? Your right to shoot firearms ends at my body. Why should your right to spread a fatal disease extend into my lungs? And, before you say that I should take some 'personal responsibility' to protect myself against infection, should that premise extend to wearing type IV body armor in public just so others can shoot guns in populated areas?
    - danenania 6y ago
      While I'm not against the lockdowns for covid, following this line of logic would justify a lockdown 100% of the time due to influenza, which is also a fatal disease spread by respiratory droplets. The hard question is where to draw the line.
      - bleepblorp 6y ago
        True. I don't dispute that absolute safety is impossible. I'd argue that the socially accepted response to influenza in the west is an awful lot weaker than it should be, however. People who have flu should be self isolating and wearing masks if they must be in public.
    - moralsupply 6y ago
      The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action. From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have guns. Besides, populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls (case in point: criminals don't care about laws, by definition). Also under the perspective of individual freedoms, the enforcement of masks is not justifiable. If you feel unsafe due to a potential virus outbreak, take your precautions but don't force others to do whatever they want to do. Otherwise, we'd fall into authoritarianism.
      - wedn3sday 6y ago
        Yes, this is why there are so many shooting deaths in the UK, because they have strict gun control laws /s. I see this argument all the time from otherwise intelligent people and its amazing to me. Why bother making murder illegal? It will only stop law abiding people from killing anyone, and criminals will still murder people! Yes I know this is a reducto fallacy, however the argument you're making is fundamentally that no laws should ever be created for anything since some people are going to end up breaking them. The argument I hear commonly sited is that guns are easy to get in Chicago, or Mexico, which both have very strict gun restrictions. Although this is true, it fails to take into account that the guns are so easy to get because of the incredible lax rules in the nearby suburbs/across the boarder. The reason guns are being used to kill people in Mexico is because how stupidly easy it is to get them in Texas. The police in the United Kingdom DONT HAVE GUNS, because the general populace dont have them and the number of per capita gun deaths is < 1/1000 what it is in the US [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
  - mindslight 6y ago
    The state is forcing people to go to work so much in the first place, via the debt treadmill. If most people were allowed to accumulate savings, and so could take time off without losing the roof over their heads, then it would make sense to talk in terms of voluntary choices.
- danenania 6y ago
  It doesn't seem remotely possible to enforce measures like these--even in an authoritarian state with martial law, strict curfews, etc., the ratio of police to population is way too low to enable such microscopic control of individual behavior. Some percentage of people are going to do as they wish without regard to law or the interests of anyone else. Not even in brutal military occupations can anything approaching this level of control be achieved, and even if it were possible, the totalitarian infrastructure required would have far worse consequences than a disease. The best bet seems to be unified messaging and economic safety net programs that allow everyone who might be willing to comply under the right circumstances to do so. The US response has been a spectacular failure in both of these areas.
jonplackett 6y ago
If only it were only that. In the UK at least, they reckon 80% of people with a positive test aren’t isolating at all.
- RobinL 6y ago
  The study is here [1]. The relevant passage is: "Of those who reported having experienced symptoms of COVID-19 in the last seven days, only 18.2% (95% CI 16.4 to 19.9) said they had not left home since developing symptoms." There's a big difference between complete noncompliance (not isolating at all), or incomplete compliance (reducing social contact but not strictly complying with the guidelines). They don't seem to try to measure the extent of the behavioural change amongst the 82% who left the house. [1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/effective-test-trace-and-isolate-needs-better-communication-and-support https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/effective-test-trace-and-isolate-...
- nradov 6y ago
  A large fraction of disease transmissions are occurring in private homes. UK homes tend to be smaller than in other developed countries which makes it difficult to effectively isolate an infected person. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201900.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201900.stm
nradov 6y ago
Most influenza infections are asymptomatic. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(14)70034-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

hef19898 6y ago

Stories like this are the reason for all the social disrancing measures and work from home. Not everybody can follow this of course. But those jobs that can be done from home should be done from home. And social distancing should be followed as much as possible. Sadly, people have to be forced to do so it seems.

moralsupply 6y ago
The only really sad thing is that so many people believe others should be forced (through the use of the monopoly of force the state holds) to do whatever they believe is "right"
- libraryatnight 6y ago
  eh, welcome to living in a society. Also there's a lot more going on behind the anti-mask/social distancing nonsense than freedom. Trump supporters chanted 12 more years at a rally the other day, that doesn't sound like a group that's actually concerned with authoritarianism. So what is it really? I don't know. But stop chanting freedom while flaunting public safety.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people. Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people. Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal infectious droplets in public? Your right to shoot firearms ends at my body. Why should your right to spread a fatal disease extend into my lungs? And, before you say that I should take some 'personal responsibility' to protect myself against infection, should that premise extend to wearing type IV body armor in public just so others can shoot guns in populated areas?
  - danenania 6y ago
    While I'm not against the lockdowns for covid, following this line of logic would justify a lockdown 100% of the time due to influenza, which is also a fatal disease spread by respiratory droplets. The hard question is where to draw the line.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      True. I don't dispute that absolute safety is impossible. I'd argue that the socially accepted response to influenza in the west is an awful lot weaker than it should be, however. People who have flu should be self isolating and wearing masks if they must be in public.
  - moralsupply 6y ago
    The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action. From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have guns. Besides, populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls (case in point: criminals don't care about laws, by definition). Also under the perspective of individual freedoms, the enforcement of masks is not justifiable. If you feel unsafe due to a potential virus outbreak, take your precautions but don't force others to do whatever they want to do. Otherwise, we'd fall into authoritarianism.
    - wedn3sday 6y ago
      Yes, this is why there are so many shooting deaths in the UK, because they have strict gun control laws /s. I see this argument all the time from otherwise intelligent people and its amazing to me. Why bother making murder illegal? It will only stop law abiding people from killing anyone, and criminals will still murder people! Yes I know this is a reducto fallacy, however the argument you're making is fundamentally that no laws should ever be created for anything since some people are going to end up breaking them. The argument I hear commonly sited is that guns are easy to get in Chicago, or Mexico, which both have very strict gun restrictions. Although this is true, it fails to take into account that the guns are so easy to get because of the incredible lax rules in the nearby suburbs/across the boarder. The reason guns are being used to kill people in Mexico is because how stupidly easy it is to get them in Texas. The police in the United Kingdom DONT HAVE GUNS, because the general populace dont have them and the number of per capita gun deaths is < 1/1000 what it is in the US [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
- mindslight 6y ago
  The state is forcing people to go to work so much in the first place, via the debt treadmill. If most people were allowed to accumulate savings, and so could take time off without losing the roof over their heads, then it would make sense to talk in terms of voluntary choices.
danenania 6y ago
It doesn't seem remotely possible to enforce measures like these--even in an authoritarian state with martial law, strict curfews, etc., the ratio of police to population is way too low to enable such microscopic control of individual behavior. Some percentage of people are going to do as they wish without regard to law or the interests of anyone else. Not even in brutal military occupations can anything approaching this level of control be achieved, and even if it were possible, the totalitarian infrastructure required would have far worse consequences than a disease. The best bet seems to be unified messaging and economic safety net programs that allow everyone who might be willing to comply under the right circumstances to do so. The US response has been a spectacular failure in both of these areas.

jonplackett 6y ago

If only it were only that. In the UK at least, they reckon 80% of people with a positive test aren’t isolating at all.

RobinL 6y ago
The study is here [1]. The relevant passage is: "Of those who reported having experienced symptoms of COVID-19 in the last seven days, only 18.2% (95% CI 16.4 to 19.9) said they had not left home since developing symptoms." There's a big difference between complete noncompliance (not isolating at all), or incomplete compliance (reducing social contact but not strictly complying with the guidelines). They don't seem to try to measure the extent of the behavioural change amongst the 82% who left the house. [1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/effective-test-trace-and-isolate-needs-better-communication-and-support https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/effective-test-trace-and-isolate-...
nradov 6y ago
A large fraction of disease transmissions are occurring in private homes. UK homes tend to be smaller than in other developed countries which makes it difficult to effectively isolate an infected person. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201900.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201900.stm

nradov 6y ago

Most influenza infections are asymptomatic. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(14)70034-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...