3 ms·

Heart disease and cancer are an aggregate of very many diseases — there are many types of heart diseases (stroke, cardiac arrest, coronary artery disease), and

Heart disease and cancer are an aggregate of very many diseases — there are many types of heart diseases (stroke, cardiac arrest, coronary artery disease), and many types of cancers. COVID is a single disease that has killed many multiples more than a single heart disease or cancer.

chitowneats 5y ago
This is semantics. Taking just heart disease as an example, all of the types that you mentioned are heavily influenced by the same types of behaviors. Smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc. I addressed this in another comment elsewhere in the thread.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  Wearing a mask reduces COVID transmission by ~70% [1]. Adding vaccination on top of that probably reduces transmission to ~5% percent (just a guess). These are almost free interventions. In contrast, heart disease and cancer are much more expensive to mitigate. Regular exercise reduces the incidence of some heart diseases for the average person by about ~50% (estimating from the graph) [2]. We have no cheap way of reducing cancer incidence (besides vaccines for some viruses that cause cancer) — for example, intervening in cases of substance addiction is expensive. So even if your comparison was correct (it's not), how is it relevant? Are you trying to argue that the government should compel people to completely alter their lifestyles before they should mandate masks or vaccines? That makes no sense, because 1) preventing cancer requires mandating vaccines and 2) the interventions are orders of magnitude more expensive. Or, are you trying to suggest that the deaths of 650,000 people (in the US) are insignificant because there are some aggregate diseases that kill more? And therefore, because we can't stop all death, it's pointless to try to even mitigate some death? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.0000048890.59383.8D https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.00000488...

chitowneats 5y ago

This is semantics. Taking just heart disease as an example, all of the types that you mentioned are heavily influenced by the same types of behaviors. Smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc. I addressed this in another comment elsewhere in the thread.

tylerhou 5y ago
Wearing a mask reduces COVID transmission by ~70% [1]. Adding vaccination on top of that probably reduces transmission to ~5% percent (just a guess). These are almost free interventions. In contrast, heart disease and cancer are much more expensive to mitigate. Regular exercise reduces the incidence of some heart diseases for the average person by about ~50% (estimating from the graph) [2]. We have no cheap way of reducing cancer incidence (besides vaccines for some viruses that cause cancer) — for example, intervening in cases of substance addiction is expensive. So even if your comparison was correct (it's not), how is it relevant? Are you trying to argue that the government should compel people to completely alter their lifestyles before they should mandate masks or vaccines? That makes no sense, because 1) preventing cancer requires mandating vaccines and 2) the interventions are orders of magnitude more expensive. Or, are you trying to suggest that the deaths of 650,000 people (in the US) are insignificant because there are some aggregate diseases that kill more? And therefore, because we can't stop all death, it's pointless to try to even mitigate some death? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.0000048890.59383.8D https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.00000488...