6 ms·

Sorry, but I take issue with that statement: 100% protection against death and hospitalization for a tiny minority that are susceptible. Your statement makes i

Sorry, but I take issue with that statement: 100% protection against death and hospitalization for a tiny minority that are susceptible. Your statement makes it sound like everyone that gets it will die when that is absolutely not true. In fact, the statistics show the exact opposite: here in the UK, for example, only around 400 people under the age of 70 (I think!) that have no underlying symptoms, have actually died from COVID. Edit: Oh here we go again... drive-by downvotes. Care to state your reasons?

Grimm1 6y ago
"Chest X-rays of asymptomatic patients – those infected but without symptoms – exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time, but those with COVID-19 symptoms had one every time, she also added." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/26/fact-check-covid-19-can-cause-worse-lung-damage-than-smoking/4237874001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/26/fac... There are things that can make living quite uncomfortable. So while yes not everyone will be hospitalized and die, there is still a lot of reasons to get any decently effective vaccine. Edit: "Bankhead-Kendall, who has treated thousands of patients since the pandemic began last March, says patients who had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 80 percent of the time."
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  > exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time With a sample size of what? That's a nonsense statement that can't be scrutinised. Edit, found this: The finding is promising but will require further research given the small size of the study with only 82 patients, mostly male and average age over 50 82 people over the age of 50. It also doesn't mention how healthy these people were. This is typical of pretty much all media coverage: very little facts but also very little to throw back at them...
  - jfengel 6y ago
    The "70-80%" figure is based on thousands of the doctor's own patients. https://observer.com/2021/01/covid-long-term-health-impacts-lungs/ https://observer.com/2021/01/covid-long-term-health-impacts-... It's not a peer reviewed study, and it includes only the people whose situations were severe enough to be sent to a radiologist. But it's enough to conclude that it's more than just a dismissably small number of cases.
    - _Understated_ 6y ago
      Sorry, it says nothing of the sort. All the evidence, including government statistics, tell is it is precisely that, a dismissably small number outside known vulnerable groups.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Grimm1 6y ago
        You realize over 70m people in the US are obese right and another 100m are overweight? Known vulnerable groups include 170m people right there. I can't take your argument seriously.
        jtxxwl2 6y ago
        And I bet you think the public health experts that sat by and watched 70m Americans get obese are just the people we should turn to now, don't you?
        andybak 6y ago
        Sorry. Can you expand on this argument? In it's current form it makes almost no sense.
        jtxxwl2 6y ago
        Public health experts, in the US and other western countries, deserve no credibility due to their handling of the obesity crisis. There are clear and obvious steps that governments could take to end obesity, but public health experts have failed to even make an effort to make them happen. Instead they have sat by and watched millions upon millions of people become obese, which is vastly more harmful to the average person's health than the coronavirus. I do not even think an argument can be made that their failure is due to incompetence.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    What I don't understand with people who reply like this is why bother taking the chance? My thought is that people have never experienced a severe respiratory illness before, while I have and because of that I'm appropriately level set on how bad the consequences can be for an individual. Nothing like back to back cases of bad pneumonia 19 years ago to make me take this whole thing seriously. My understanding is the hospitalization rate even for young and healthy (20-44) is around 10%. 1 in 10 odds for something happening is really a quite good chance of that thing happening.
    - _Understated_ 6y ago
      And you have every reason to be incredibly cautious. Were I in your shoes I'd likely err on the side of caution too. Hospitalisation rate says nothing other than they were in hospital. It could have been because they were feeling a bit rough but utterly terrified due to all the scaremongering that's going around. Or they may have been close to deaths door. No way to tell. The figures don't lie: There are vulnerable groups that can be severely symptomatic and even die from this but they make up a tiny tiny fraction of the population.
      - lostlogin 6y ago
        The figures don’t lie. Of one hundred people with covid, two will die and ten will be suffering three months later. The portion suffering long covid is growing too, and it’s poorly understood. Damaged hearts and lungs for example and there are plenty of accounts about. What are you pushing for? There are places we can look to where covid ran free, it isn’t pretty. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00031-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...
        _Understated_ 6y ago
        Balance, that's what I'm pushing for. Assess your actual chances of catching and suffering from covid. Then balance it against the risk of a rushed experimental gene therapy still in initial trials. Edit: Remember that none of the media and government published figures show recovery rates - this is hugely important.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time What is a "severe chest X-ray"? This story was debated on Twitter[1]. I agree with the (unforgiving) statements put there. [1] https://twitter.com/Craig_1_1_7/status/1351203220878716928 https://twitter.com/Craig_1_1_7/status/1351203220878716928
breakfastduck 6y ago
People are more bothered about the emotional virtue of a statement than they are about it’s truthfulness when it comes to the pandemic.
nsxwolf 6y ago
I would take a vaccine just to catch one less common cold a year. I'll gladly take the COVID-19 vaccine just to prevent common cold symptoms. And if it would actually end the pandemic and let me go into a store without a %$@#&#@ mask, I'd gladly swallow the syringe whole, sideways.
JamesBarney 6y ago
1. I've never met anyone in the last year who thought Covid had a 100% death rate. Do you know anyone who believes this? > In fact, the statistics show the exact opposite: here in the UK, for example, only around 400 people under the age of 70 (I think!) that have no underlying symptoms, have actually died from COVID. Over 10,000 people under age 70 have died from covid, why does it matter if they have underlying symptoms?
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  I meant "underlying conditions", not underlying symptoms... that's my fault. So, basically, if you are healthy, your chances are absolutely tiny that you will die if you catch it. So, yeah, it matters a whole lot actually.
  - akuchling 6y ago
    But most people are unhealthy, with one condition or another. It's misleading to throw out most of the population and then say "but look how small the numbers are for the sliver that's left!"
    - _Understated_ 6y ago
      That's not an argument... Healthy is subjective but when you say it like that then, yes, everyone has something. However, there are a bunch of things that will greatly increase your chances of dying from COVID: diabetes, obesity, cancer, immune-related illnesses so this is what I am referring to. It's fair to say that people with one or more of those (not an exhaustive list) are "unhealthy". So, it's not misleading: it's people who are vulnerable either due to age or health reasons that are at risk of dying, no one else. It was even raised by an MP recently and he asked Boris Johnston why we're getting locked down when only 400 or so people with no underlying conditions have died... everyone else had underlying conditions related to poor health that made them susceptible so they should have been locked down and the rest of us left to get on with things.
      - deleted 6y ago
lostlogin 6y ago
Long covid is a problem that is going to keep on giving. A large portion of those who get covid will have symptoms 6 months later, and many cases are life altering.
thebruce87m 6y ago
Excess mortality shows us ~100,000 extra people died in the UK since COVID started. Antibody testing suggests that this was a result of ~10% of people being infected. I’ll let you do the maths for deaths due to herd immunity, and whether that is a “tiny minority”. People at risk include people with diabetes and asthma. In Scotland, the most hospital beds have been occupied by the 45 - 64 age group. Not sure about other parts of the UK.
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  > Excess mortality shows us ~100,000 extra people died in the UK since COVID started. It still doesn't negate the argument that it only affects the vulnerable. And those in the hospital beds: what were their conditions while in there? What were their underlying health issues (if any)? Did they recover? I'm not saying people don't get sick, I'm saying the cure is worse than the disease especially when the ones dying are a tiny fraction of the population. Edit: I live in Scotland - we have had the "sick man of Europe" title for a long time and we have an obesity crisis here [0] [0] - https://www.obesityactionscotland.org/media/1026/obesityfactsweb.pdf https://www.obesityactionscotland.org/media/1026/obesityfact...
  - thebruce87m 6y ago
    In a “do nothing” scenario we would probably expect hundreds of thousands more vulnerable people dying before their time in the UK, along with who-knows how many 45-64 year olds (and other age groups) due to overwhelmed hospitals. We’ve seen that overwhelmed hospitals can’t do normal things like cancer treatment either, so tally that up too. This is worth some inconvenience and higher taxes to me. I guess some people have no vulnerable relatives and no co-morbidities, or maybe value things like going to the pub above their gran. Personally I would rather have my 80 year old dad and 76 year old mum around for another few years than spend a week in Tenerife this year.
    - _Understated_ 6y ago
      I didn't advocate for "do nothing". Not at all. I live in the UK and we have the NHS so their job is to look after people when they get sick (and, to a certain extent, use preventative measure like education where appropriate). But the UK governments largest spend is the NHS. We pay a fortune every year for it. So if they can't do their job then heads should roll among politicians and NHS brass. My argument is that the death rate does not justify the measures that are being taken: by all means protect the vulnerable (my parents are in that class) but the rest of us have been locked down when the stats absolutely do not justify it. I haven't even mentioned the economic cataclysm we are facing... that's another story!

Grimm1 6y ago

"Chest X-rays of asymptomatic patients – those infected but without symptoms – exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time, but those with COVID-19 symptoms had one every time, she also added." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/26/fact-check-covid-19-can-cause-worse-lung-damage-than-smoking/4237874001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/26/fac... There are things that can make living quite uncomfortable. So while yes not everyone will be hospitalized and die, there is still a lot of reasons to get any decently effective vaccine. Edit: "Bankhead-Kendall, who has treated thousands of patients since the pandemic began last March, says patients who had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 80 percent of the time."

_Understated_ 6y ago
> exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time With a sample size of what? That's a nonsense statement that can't be scrutinised. Edit, found this: The finding is promising but will require further research given the small size of the study with only 82 patients, mostly male and average age over 50 82 people over the age of 50. It also doesn't mention how healthy these people were. This is typical of pretty much all media coverage: very little facts but also very little to throw back at them...
- jfengel 6y ago
  The "70-80%" figure is based on thousands of the doctor's own patients. https://observer.com/2021/01/covid-long-term-health-impacts-lungs/ https://observer.com/2021/01/covid-long-term-health-impacts-... It's not a peer reviewed study, and it includes only the people whose situations were severe enough to be sent to a radiologist. But it's enough to conclude that it's more than just a dismissably small number of cases.
  - _Understated_ 6y ago
    Sorry, it says nothing of the sort. All the evidence, including government statistics, tell is it is precisely that, a dismissably small number outside known vulnerable groups.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      You realize over 70m people in the US are obese right and another 100m are overweight? Known vulnerable groups include 170m people right there. I can't take your argument seriously.
      - jtxxwl2 6y ago
        And I bet you think the public health experts that sat by and watched 70m Americans get obese are just the people we should turn to now, don't you?
        andybak 6y ago
        Sorry. Can you expand on this argument? In it's current form it makes almost no sense.
        jtxxwl2 6y ago
        Public health experts, in the US and other western countries, deserve no credibility due to their handling of the obesity crisis. There are clear and obvious steps that governments could take to end obesity, but public health experts have failed to even make an effort to make them happen. Instead they have sat by and watched millions upon millions of people become obese, which is vastly more harmful to the average person's health than the coronavirus. I do not even think an argument can be made that their failure is due to incompetence.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  What I don't understand with people who reply like this is why bother taking the chance? My thought is that people have never experienced a severe respiratory illness before, while I have and because of that I'm appropriately level set on how bad the consequences can be for an individual. Nothing like back to back cases of bad pneumonia 19 years ago to make me take this whole thing seriously. My understanding is the hospitalization rate even for young and healthy (20-44) is around 10%. 1 in 10 odds for something happening is really a quite good chance of that thing happening.
  - _Understated_ 6y ago
    And you have every reason to be incredibly cautious. Were I in your shoes I'd likely err on the side of caution too. Hospitalisation rate says nothing other than they were in hospital. It could have been because they were feeling a bit rough but utterly terrified due to all the scaremongering that's going around. Or they may have been close to deaths door. No way to tell. The figures don't lie: There are vulnerable groups that can be severely symptomatic and even die from this but they make up a tiny tiny fraction of the population.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      The figures don’t lie. Of one hundred people with covid, two will die and ten will be suffering three months later. The portion suffering long covid is growing too, and it’s poorly understood. Damaged hearts and lungs for example and there are plenty of accounts about. What are you pushing for? There are places we can look to where covid ran free, it isn’t pretty. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00031-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...
      - _Understated_ 6y ago
        Balance, that's what I'm pushing for. Assess your actual chances of catching and suffering from covid. Then balance it against the risk of a rushed experimental gene therapy still in initial trials. Edit: Remember that none of the media and government published figures show recovery rates - this is hugely important.
lbeltrame 6y ago
> exhibited a severe chest X-ray 70%-80% of the time What is a "severe chest X-ray"? This story was debated on Twitter[1]. I agree with the (unforgiving) statements put there. [1] https://twitter.com/Craig_1_1_7/status/1351203220878716928 https://twitter.com/Craig_1_1_7/status/1351203220878716928

breakfastduck 6y ago

People are more bothered about the emotional virtue of a statement than they are about it’s truthfulness when it comes to the pandemic.

nsxwolf 6y ago

I would take a vaccine just to catch one less common cold a year. I'll gladly take the COVID-19 vaccine just to prevent common cold symptoms. And if it would actually end the pandemic and let me go into a store without a %$@#&#@ mask, I'd gladly swallow the syringe whole, sideways.

JamesBarney 6y ago

1. I've never met anyone in the last year who thought Covid had a 100% death rate. Do you know anyone who believes this? > In fact, the statistics show the exact opposite: here in the UK, for example, only around 400 people under the age of 70 (I think!) that have no underlying symptoms, have actually died from COVID. Over 10,000 people under age 70 have died from covid, why does it matter if they have underlying symptoms?

_Understated_ 6y ago
I meant "underlying conditions", not underlying symptoms... that's my fault. So, basically, if you are healthy, your chances are absolutely tiny that you will die if you catch it. So, yeah, it matters a whole lot actually.
- akuchling 6y ago
  But most people are unhealthy, with one condition or another. It's misleading to throw out most of the population and then say "but look how small the numbers are for the sliver that's left!"
  - _Understated_ 6y ago
    That's not an argument... Healthy is subjective but when you say it like that then, yes, everyone has something. However, there are a bunch of things that will greatly increase your chances of dying from COVID: diabetes, obesity, cancer, immune-related illnesses so this is what I am referring to. It's fair to say that people with one or more of those (not an exhaustive list) are "unhealthy". So, it's not misleading: it's people who are vulnerable either due to age or health reasons that are at risk of dying, no one else. It was even raised by an MP recently and he asked Boris Johnston why we're getting locked down when only 400 or so people with no underlying conditions have died... everyone else had underlying conditions related to poor health that made them susceptible so they should have been locked down and the rest of us left to get on with things.
    - deleted 6y ago

lostlogin 6y ago

Long covid is a problem that is going to keep on giving. A large portion of those who get covid will have symptoms 6 months later, and many cases are life altering.

thebruce87m 6y ago

Excess mortality shows us ~100,000 extra people died in the UK since COVID started. Antibody testing suggests that this was a result of ~10% of people being infected. I’ll let you do the maths for deaths due to herd immunity, and whether that is a “tiny minority”. People at risk include people with diabetes and asthma. In Scotland, the most hospital beds have been occupied by the 45 - 64 age group. Not sure about other parts of the UK.

_Understated_ 6y ago
> Excess mortality shows us ~100,000 extra people died in the UK since COVID started. It still doesn't negate the argument that it only affects the vulnerable. And those in the hospital beds: what were their conditions while in there? What were their underlying health issues (if any)? Did they recover? I'm not saying people don't get sick, I'm saying the cure is worse than the disease especially when the ones dying are a tiny fraction of the population. Edit: I live in Scotland - we have had the "sick man of Europe" title for a long time and we have an obesity crisis here [0] [0] - https://www.obesityactionscotland.org/media/1026/obesityfactsweb.pdf https://www.obesityactionscotland.org/media/1026/obesityfact...
- thebruce87m 6y ago
  In a “do nothing” scenario we would probably expect hundreds of thousands more vulnerable people dying before their time in the UK, along with who-knows how many 45-64 year olds (and other age groups) due to overwhelmed hospitals. We’ve seen that overwhelmed hospitals can’t do normal things like cancer treatment either, so tally that up too. This is worth some inconvenience and higher taxes to me. I guess some people have no vulnerable relatives and no co-morbidities, or maybe value things like going to the pub above their gran. Personally I would rather have my 80 year old dad and 76 year old mum around for another few years than spend a week in Tenerife this year.
  - _Understated_ 6y ago
    I didn't advocate for "do nothing". Not at all. I live in the UK and we have the NHS so their job is to look after people when they get sick (and, to a certain extent, use preventative measure like education where appropriate). But the UK governments largest spend is the NHS. We pay a fortune every year for it. So if they can't do their job then heads should roll among politicians and NHS brass. My argument is that the death rate does not justify the measures that are being taken: by all means protect the vulnerable (my parents are in that class) but the rest of us have been locked down when the stats absolutely do not justify it. I haven't even mentioned the economic cataclysm we are facing... that's another story!