4 ms·

Hopefully 0-10 help illuminate what I’m talking about. I think 11 and 12 point to masks being a good idea. The graphs you linked ignore population density and

• BrendanEich 6y ago
  You wrote "(Some suggesting it’s the same as a cold.)" and I asked you to cite even one tweet saying "it's the same as a cold". None of the links you gave says any such thing. Were you lying? You seem upset about tweets that I RTed or replied to, which I can and will defend, but you can't attack them on substance. In particular, your [0], from https://twitter.com/kerpen https://twitter.com/kerpen, is correct per CDC Flu and RSV monitoring. Those viruses are way down in 2020, no one knows exactly why, but given antibody studies, it seems SARS2 spread widely and preempted them, possibly in the human nose (not lungs). This needs more study but it is nothing like saying "it's just the cold". Kerpen is right (again, CDC has IFR by age figures) that Flu and RSV are much deadlier than Covid for children. So you don't like my opinions but you can't refute them, yet you can gather a bunch of tweet-links. What's the point? If we are not going to argue substance, all you've done is identify me as on Team Reality. But we knew that. What's up?
  • invisible 6y ago
    There are multiple replies and retweets that compare COVID-19 to flus/colds in a “COVID-19 is the same” context. Or suggesting that drastic measures are unwarranted or unreasonable. The kerpen tweet thread is troubling because it suggests that the CDC is both providing accurate data and that they are only providing guidance for political reasons. So they aren’t lying, but they are? Then he compares COVID-19 to the flu and cold, ignoring that transmission by children can affect adults. Here is another one (in addition to the one above about children): > No lockdown in 2017-2018 cold season! https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1335873383209177088?s=2 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1335873383209177088?s... That is ignoring that the fatality rate and transmission rate is significantly higher in COVID-19. Maybe all of these things comparing the equivalence of the cold and COVID-19 mean nothing to you, but they seem significant to me. Perhaps you’ll defend these by saying, “in isolation this data is accurate.” That point falls flat when taken in context to our situation — they are marketing a perspective. You asked me for some citations for my comments and then criticized that I provided citations for why I said what I said. Nobody said you’re on “Team Reality” but you. (Oh, and also: I can’t go back further than 10/10 on your tweets but there were a number of retweets from EthicalSkeptic saying that the death count was a lie and suggesting that COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal.) Edit: Here is a comment from someone in the thread discussed. This is the “subtext” I see. https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1282074580350312450?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1282074580350312450?...
    • BrendanEich 6y ago
      No one in any tweet said "it's just the cold" so you were misreading or misrepresenting — which is it? From my "No lockdown in 2017-2018 cold season!" tweet you linked, straight up the thread two tweets, everyone can see the quoted tweet: https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1330594561635315724 https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1330594561635315724 where Mark Changizi wrote: "Overwhelmed hospitals everywhere! ...in 2017/18 cold season. US: https://nytimes.com/2018/02/02/health/flu-symptoms-virus-hospital.html https://nytimes.com/2018/02/02/health/flu-symptoms-virus-hos... UK: https://nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-health-service.html https://nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-heal... Italy: https://thelocal.it/20180119/italy-worst-flu-season-in-14-years https://thelocal.it/20180119/italy-worst-flu-season-in-14-ye... Japan: https://japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/22/national/science-health/japanese-hospitals-sick-requests-flu-recovery-certificates/ https://japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/22/national/science-he..." Obviously the point is that we had overwhelmed hospitals in 2017-2018 (almost every year, the Guardian runs an "NHS overwhelmed" story in the UK) but no lockdowns. This was not to make light of that (bad) flu season, or to say "it's just the cold". Rather, the link pointed out that we didn't lock down over elevated mortality in bad flu years. That is relevant because WHO and CDC long-term policy guidance was and is against lockdowns: CDC 2007: https://cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/community_mitigation-sm.pdf https://cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/community_mitigat... p. 25: “... the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population....” WHO 2006: http://upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2006/2006-09-15-diseasemitigationcontrolpandemicflu.html http://upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2... argues against lockdowns. If you can't follow this context without misreading as "just the cold", I say it's time to stop reading Twitter and HN right now. (BTW, Alex Petrescu in that thread ended with a gracious concession about overreacting by using troll-form rhetoric: https://twitter.com/SeyelentEco/status/1336043936238845953?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeyelentEco/status/1336043936238845953?s....)