4 ms·

Thanks for admitting that you are treating this like Polio, and not like the Flu... Treating COVID like polio is foolish, and naive. All indications are COVI

by syshum 5y ago

Thanks for admitting that you are treating this like Polio, and not like the Flu... Treating COVID like polio is foolish, and naive. All indications are COVID will be an annual thing like the flu, chances are mutations will be more transmissible but less deadly (and the data is bearing this out) Chances are we will need annual "booster" or other vaccine just like the flu... We do not mandate people get the annual flu shot, nor should we mandate people get the COVID vaccine. So the question is do you support mask mandates, lock down, and economic destruction for the annual flu? I do not.

robotresearcher 5y ago
The question is how to get the fraction of people vaccinated high enough, so that costly mask+behavior mandates are obviated. Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident. Flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it. (edit: added data) The 2017-2018 flu season was an historically bad one in the US, resulting in an estimated 30,453 hospitalizations the whole season. The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.
- syshum 5y ago
  >>Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident. This is assuming facts not in evidence. there are other factors at play 1. Many people avoided seeking medical treatment that normally would have for the flu this year due to covid, this do not mean they were not infected just it was not recorded 2. There are indications that some people testing positive for COVID could have been flu patients, as some PCR testing has been found to show positive for some flu [1] 3. It is unclear if behavior or mask were more effective, personally I believe Behavior modifications where more effective, a lot of which did not need to be mandatory at all and some of it was not at all (such as increased hand washing, no shaking of hands, etc which I believe it pretty effective at flu mitigation as well) >>flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it. I did factor that in, The original COVID was much more deadly, the new variants do not seem to be, and new variants + vaccine means I have a pretty low likelyhood that I will have a serious COVID infection thus I really don't feel the need to mask or cede any freedom, regardless of the vaccination status of others around me. >>The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January. Where are you getting this data? Ourworldindata[2] has the US at 60,000 Total People in the hospital for COVID, down from a peak total hospitalization of 120K people This is the TOTAL number of people in the hospital at a given time, not a per day total of new admissions, there is NOT 90,000 new people being admitted to the hospital daily in the us Further the CDC reports that the 2019-2020 Flu season saw 405,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths[3] and 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths for 2018-2019 Flu [4] [1]https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-providers/potential-false-results-roche-molecular-systems-inc-cobas-sars-cov-2-influenza-test-use-cobas-liat https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-prov... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations [3]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html [4]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    I'm vaccinated, but still wear a mask indoors in public for a simple reason. The virus can colonize the mucus membranes of even healthy vaccinated people. I'm scheduled to go on a Caribbean cruise next month. If I test positive on the dock, they won't let me get on the ship.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    Going back to find the references, I see I got both key numbers wrong. Thanks for challenging me on it. 2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record. CDC Flu: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... The COVID numbers I cited are weekly reported cases, not hospitalizations. I added a retraction message above. The total US deaths reported by CDC today are 616,459 over an 18 month period, which is more than 100 times the fatality-rate of flu in both the years you cite. CDC COVID: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendsdeaths https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... The vaccine uptake means we should not see the awful rates of early 2021 again. We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates.
    - syshum 5y ago
      >>We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates. I agree, though I suspect we will disagree on how to go about that.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  > The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January. Self-reply: these are both wrong. I read the data badly. On Flu 2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record. On COVID, these are the CDC numbers for new cases, not hospitalizations. I dunno how I got this wrong. I give the citations below, along with additional data on the relative death rates of flu and COVID.

by syshum 5y ago

robotresearcher 5y ago

The question is how to get the fraction of people vaccinated high enough, so that costly mask+behavior mandates are obviated. Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident. Flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it. (edit: added data) The 2017-2018 flu season was an historically bad one in the US, resulting in an estimated 30,453 hospitalizations the whole season. The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.

syshum 5y ago
>>Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident. This is assuming facts not in evidence. there are other factors at play 1. Many people avoided seeking medical treatment that normally would have for the flu this year due to covid, this do not mean they were not infected just it was not recorded 2. There are indications that some people testing positive for COVID could have been flu patients, as some PCR testing has been found to show positive for some flu [1] 3. It is unclear if behavior or mask were more effective, personally I believe Behavior modifications where more effective, a lot of which did not need to be mandatory at all and some of it was not at all (such as increased hand washing, no shaking of hands, etc which I believe it pretty effective at flu mitigation as well) >>flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it. I did factor that in, The original COVID was much more deadly, the new variants do not seem to be, and new variants + vaccine means I have a pretty low likelyhood that I will have a serious COVID infection thus I really don't feel the need to mask or cede any freedom, regardless of the vaccination status of others around me. >>The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January. Where are you getting this data? Ourworldindata[2] has the US at 60,000 Total People in the hospital for COVID, down from a peak total hospitalization of 120K people This is the TOTAL number of people in the hospital at a given time, not a per day total of new admissions, there is NOT 90,000 new people being admitted to the hospital daily in the us Further the CDC reports that the 2019-2020 Flu season saw 405,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths[3] and 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths for 2018-2019 Flu [4] [1]https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-providers/potential-false-results-roche-molecular-systems-inc-cobas-sars-cov-2-influenza-test-use-cobas-liat https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-prov... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations [3]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html [4]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  I'm vaccinated, but still wear a mask indoors in public for a simple reason. The virus can colonize the mucus membranes of even healthy vaccinated people. I'm scheduled to go on a Caribbean cruise next month. If I test positive on the dock, they won't let me get on the ship.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Going back to find the references, I see I got both key numbers wrong. Thanks for challenging me on it. 2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record. CDC Flu: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... The COVID numbers I cited are weekly reported cases, not hospitalizations. I added a retraction message above. The total US deaths reported by CDC today are 616,459 over an 18 month period, which is more than 100 times the fatality-rate of flu in both the years you cite. CDC COVID: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendsdeaths https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... The vaccine uptake means we should not see the awful rates of early 2021 again. We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates.
  - syshum 5y ago
    >>We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates. I agree, though I suspect we will disagree on how to go about that.
robotresearcher 5y ago
> The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January. Self-reply: these are both wrong. I read the data badly. On Flu 2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record. On COVID, these are the CDC numbers for new cases, not hospitalizations. I dunno how I got this wrong. I give the citations below, along with additional data on the relative death rates of flu and COVID.