11 ms·

Are you claiming that Covid is particularly severe relative to historical pandemics, or that Covid-level issues are a particularly modern phenomenon? In fact t

Are you claiming that Covid is particularly severe relative to historical pandemics, or that Covid-level issues are a particularly modern phenomenon? In fact the opposite is true. If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar.

caspper69 5y ago
>If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar. Surely you can't be serious. I mean, I think we would have noticed. In fact, it would have been on a lot of people's radar. They definitely would have noticed in India, Italy & Brazil. I mean, are comments like this hyperbolic, and I'm just not in on the joke?
- somethingor 5y ago
  Not intending to make the case that Covid-19 would barely be on anyone's radar, but here is a comparison with some past pandemics that went relatively unnoticed (afaik): 1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic[1] - 1.1 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 2.9 billion) - 116,000 deaths in the US (0.07% of US population of 174.9 million) 1968 H3N2 pandemic[2] - 1 million deaths worldwide (0.03% of world population of 3.5 billion) - 100,000 deaths in the US (0.05% of US population of 200 million) Covid pandemic (so far) - 3.39 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 7.9 billion) - 586,000 deaths in the US (0.18% of US population of 330 million) --- [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemi... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...
  - thu2111 5y ago
    I suspect some readers are thinking ok, so it's ~6x worse, surely that's noticeable. But the COVID numbers are seriously inflated relative to past epidemics by the enormous testing programme, and the way mass PCR testing has cut doctors out of the loop. These numbers of deaths are deaths in which a positive PCR test was roughly temporally co-present, regardless of what an expert on the ground said the cause of death was, which is a much weaker standard than was previously used for ascribing a cause of death. Another way to look at this is overall mortality levels. In the UK, which has a reasonably high death rate, COVID raised overall mortality (per million) to around the level it was in the year 2000. Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time, it was normal. Nor has anyone really noticed or commented on the general improvements in mortality since then. In Sweden age-adjusted mortality went back all the way to 2012 levels, and that with quite minor restrictions. This is suggestive that we perceive the impact as large because it tends to be phrased in terms of deviation from a 5-year model baseline, and because of the general expectations created by enormous 'expert' predictions. Having sacrificed so much via such extreme measures, people need to view it as an extreme event to justify a worldview of 'experts are generally honest and correct' (which can be seen in this article as a very, very strong prevailing world view at the NYT!)
    - dboreham 5y ago
      > Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time They were sufficiently worried to increase cigarette taxes, ban advertising, educate the population to stop smoking.
      - thu2111 5y ago
        Anti-smoking campaigns were decades earlier and did not involve measures anywhere near as harsh as currently deployed.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  They would have noticed a few unusually bad “flu” seasons, but relative to smallpox, plague, measles, malaria, and even some historical outbreaks of the actual flu, it wouldn’t have registered as a particularly generation-defining event as it is now.
monkeycantype 5y ago
Hello Umanwizard, I'll try to make that less ambiguous. What I mean is, over the last century it has become common to believe that we are taming pathogens - smallpox, polio, maybe malaria next, diseases that have been with us for a very long time. As our technology enables this, I fear another trend pushes us in the opposite direction, that as we encroach further and further into fuller exploitation of remaining wilderness we are encountering novel potential pathogens at a greater rate, and our highly connected single global population means that transmission happens very quickly. So my question doesn't concern the lethality of Covid, rather that is is novel and has spread globally quickly - whether this might be an early data point in a future data set, that will indicate we are now be generating new novel pandemics at a greater rate. If that is the case, that will be a more difficult problem to solve than the problem of lax lab safety. There are interesting points in this thread, about how well we would respond to confirmation that the pandemic was triggered by a lab leak, so I'm not saying that there would be a good outcome from knowing it was a lab leak, rather that even if we never know the truth, it would probably be a better thing for the future of our civilisation it was a lab leak, rather than the first significant event in accelerating sequence of naturally generated pandemics. These are not the only two options of course, but that was the ambiguously stated meaning of my comments cheers monk

caspper69 5y ago

>If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar. Surely you can't be serious. I mean, I think we would have noticed. In fact, it would have been on a lot of people's radar. They definitely would have noticed in India, Italy & Brazil. I mean, are comments like this hyperbolic, and I'm just not in on the joke?

somethingor 5y ago
Not intending to make the case that Covid-19 would barely be on anyone's radar, but here is a comparison with some past pandemics that went relatively unnoticed (afaik): 1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic[1] - 1.1 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 2.9 billion) - 116,000 deaths in the US (0.07% of US population of 174.9 million) 1968 H3N2 pandemic[2] - 1 million deaths worldwide (0.03% of world population of 3.5 billion) - 100,000 deaths in the US (0.05% of US population of 200 million) Covid pandemic (so far) - 3.39 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 7.9 billion) - 586,000 deaths in the US (0.18% of US population of 330 million) --- [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemi... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...
- thu2111 5y ago
  I suspect some readers are thinking ok, so it's ~6x worse, surely that's noticeable. But the COVID numbers are seriously inflated relative to past epidemics by the enormous testing programme, and the way mass PCR testing has cut doctors out of the loop. These numbers of deaths are deaths in which a positive PCR test was roughly temporally co-present, regardless of what an expert on the ground said the cause of death was, which is a much weaker standard than was previously used for ascribing a cause of death. Another way to look at this is overall mortality levels. In the UK, which has a reasonably high death rate, COVID raised overall mortality (per million) to around the level it was in the year 2000. Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time, it was normal. Nor has anyone really noticed or commented on the general improvements in mortality since then. In Sweden age-adjusted mortality went back all the way to 2012 levels, and that with quite minor restrictions. This is suggestive that we perceive the impact as large because it tends to be phrased in terms of deviation from a 5-year model baseline, and because of the general expectations created by enormous 'expert' predictions. Having sacrificed so much via such extreme measures, people need to view it as an extreme event to justify a worldview of 'experts are generally honest and correct' (which can be seen in this article as a very, very strong prevailing world view at the NYT!)
  - dboreham 5y ago
    > Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time They were sufficiently worried to increase cigarette taxes, ban advertising, educate the population to stop smoking.
    - thu2111 5y ago
      Anti-smoking campaigns were decades earlier and did not involve measures anywhere near as harsh as currently deployed.
umanwizard 5y ago
They would have noticed a few unusually bad “flu” seasons, but relative to smallpox, plague, measles, malaria, and even some historical outbreaks of the actual flu, it wouldn’t have registered as a particularly generation-defining event as it is now.

monkeycantype 5y ago

Hello Umanwizard, I'll try to make that less ambiguous. What I mean is, over the last century it has become common to believe that we are taming pathogens - smallpox, polio, maybe malaria next, diseases that have been with us for a very long time. As our technology enables this, I fear another trend pushes us in the opposite direction, that as we encroach further and further into fuller exploitation of remaining wilderness we are encountering novel potential pathogens at a greater rate, and our highly connected single global population means that transmission happens very quickly. So my question doesn't concern the lethality of Covid, rather that is is novel and has spread globally quickly - whether this might be an early data point in a future data set, that will indicate we are now be generating new novel pandemics at a greater rate. If that is the case, that will be a more difficult problem to solve than the problem of lax lab safety. There are interesting points in this thread, about how well we would respond to confirmation that the pandemic was triggered by a lab leak, so I'm not saying that there would be a good outcome from knowing it was a lab leak, rather that even if we never know the truth, it would probably be a better thing for the future of our civilisation it was a lab leak, rather than the first significant event in accelerating sequence of naturally generated pandemics. These are not the only two options of course, but that was the ambiguously stated meaning of my comments cheers monk