9 ms·

Polio is one of those diseases that remind me we're not really taking SARS-2 seriously enough. From Wikipedia's article on Polio: > Up to 70 percent of those

by spion 5y ago

Polio is one of those diseases that remind me we're not really taking SARS-2 seriously enough. From Wikipedia's article on Polio: > Up to 70 percent of those infected have no symptoms. Another 25 percent of people have minor symptoms such as fever and a sore throat, and up to 5 percent have headache, neck stiffness, and pains in the arms and legs. These people are usually back to normal within one or two weeks. Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur, with a slow development of muscle weakness similar to that which the person had during the initial infection. SARS-2 binds to ACE2 which is present everywhere in the body [1]. Loss of smell might apparently be a nervous system invasion. [2] Brain scans post COVID show brain matter reduction. [3] REM sleep seems to be disturbed in 4 of 11 long covid patients. [4] We've stopped taking this thing seriously with potentially disastrous consequences [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7167720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7167720/ [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00758-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00758-5 [3]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v... and https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-may-reduce-gray-matter-volume-in-brain-small-study-suggests https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-may-reduc... [4]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33588262/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33588262/

JTbane 5y ago
Yep, people seem to forget history. The polio vaccine had issues when it was rolled out in 1955. No one bats an eye taking it today because it saves lives. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
- bserge 5y ago
  [flagged]
- sdhfjg 5y ago
  >No one bats an eye taking it today because it saves lives. It saved lives in 1955. No one bats an eye taking it today because we know it's safe.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  If only it were true that "nobody bats an eye" at taking various vaccinations that have been used safely for decades.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I remember before covid, Marin county was the antivax central, with mostly wealthy hippies that refused to give smallpox and measles vaccines to their kids. They had measles, whooping cough, all those old diseases. At Greenwood School in Mill Valley, 61 percent of the kindergartners are partially or completely unvaccinated, according to state figures. At San Geronimo Valley Elementary in San Geronimo, 58 percent of the kindergarten children are partially or completely unvaccinated. Half the children at the New Village School in Sausalito are in the same boat, according to the health department. https://www.kqed.org/news/107741/despite-the-science-marin-vaccination-opt-outs-increase https://www.kqed.org/news/107741/despite-the-science-marin-v... https://www.marinij.com/2015/01/31/california-measles-outbreak-highlights-marin-vaccination-dilemma/ https://www.marinij.com/2015/01/31/california-measles-outbre... https://www.sfweekly.com/news/whooping-cough-returns-to-marin-as-officials-woo-vaccine-dodging-parents/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/whooping-cough-returns-to-mari... There is certainly a subculture that rejected vaccines in general long before covid.
bigodbiel 5y ago
Considering the global reaction to Covid, it is extremely serious. Anymore and we’d all be living under Beijing style lockdown and traffic light system
- sneak 5y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. Bars and clubs in many cities are open and basic infection control measures are not being taken or enforced by significant percentages of staff and patrons alike. We enforce the laws against smoking indoors more diligently and stringently than we do removal of masks in crowded areas.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    If you take issue with this generalization, then you should also take issue with the parent comment's note that 'we' aren't taking it seriously enough. Some people, cities, states, are being extremely cautious. Some are not. I moved from Bay Area California to bum fuck Florida during COVID, and it's like being in a different timeline.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Personally I'd be in favor of just forcibly vaccinating people and getting it over with already.
  - djsbs 5y ago
    And Im in favor of banning video games, social media and pornography. Btw, what do you plan to accomplish by assaulting people who don't want it? The virus isnt going away no matter how draconian you get. Just for fun, imagine forcibly vaccinating Afghanistan. Or Central Africa. Not happening. Not without an army (one that can win wars, America’s doesn't count)
    - Valkhyr 5y ago
      > And Im in favor of banning video games, social media and pornography. Those are quite bad analogies you have there. Playing video games, reading/posting to social media (assuming you're not posting content inciting violence etc) and watching pornography (or producing pornography, assuming consent of all involved) are not actions that have any significant potential to cause harm to others. I don't mind if somebody spends their entire day jerking off with their left hand while playing video games with their right, all the while posting to Twitter via Siri. I wouldn't personally want to be that person(or follow them on Twitter, for that matter), but it's their life and they're not hurting anybody. Socializing without taking proper COVID precautions however puts other people at immediate risk. Getting vaccinated is one of the precautions we can take to avoid that, and it has been shown to be tremendously effective. It is also very quick, and very low risk for healthy adults. So it is our social responsibility to get vaccinated. FWIW, I'm OK with people choosing to not get vaccinated for whatever batshit reason they may cite. Their body, their choice, right? But my body is not their choice. So if they choose to commit to endangering myself and other responsible people, and potentially contribute to overloading the health system we rely on, then I also expect them to accept the necessary consequences: minimizing social contact, getting COVID tests whenever they want to enter any establishment, potentially having to look for a new job that can be done 100% from home, and waiving their right to be treated for any COVID infection they may contract while unprotected.
jimmaswell 5y ago
We shut down the economy, forced everyone to stay home, made everyone wear masks, warp speeded multiple vaccines, and still make people wear masks at the doctor and the post office. The world has to keep turning at some point.
- azinman2 5y ago
  And many are fighting all of it every step of the way, even more not in compliance, etc
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    Because there's more to creating effective public policy than just forcing people to do what "the scientists" say.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    People value things differently. There's people who bristle at the idea that the government should coerce them into getting unwanted medical procedures or restrict their movement. There's people who don't believe governments who have badly and repeatedly bungled the response to covid are a reliable or trustworthy authority on the matter. Not everyone may take covid exactly as seriously as you would wish them to, but it doesn't mean they don't take it seriously just because they value other things more. People going out en masse to protest police brutality for example apparently understood the risks of covid but believed their cause and their right to protest it to be more important. Who are you to say they are wrong? People who understood the risks but believed border closures to be wrong or racist believed that cause was more serious than covid, again who are we to say that's wrong? Do we have some ivory tower of government experts who are there to provide us unthinking plebs with the canonical guide for ranking everything in seriousness and importance? If we had the government telling us that driving automobiles causes a million deaths every year and the only way to solve it is for everyone to stop driving, but maybe we can start driving again after everyone's cars have been fitted with modifications to limit speed to 5mph which should be at least 90% effective at eliminating hospitalizations and deaths, then they're not exactly _wrong_, but of course people are going to protest it. If you drove anyway that does not mean you don't take automobile accidents seriously, that you're anti science, or that you're a grandma killer. You will certainly statistically increase the load on the hospital system if you drive, that choice does not make you responsible for possible deaths of other people who could not access sufficient medical treatment. Not even if you just went for a drive to the beach, up a mountain, or an aimless drive through the streets just because you enjoyed it.
tgflynn 5y ago
I won't argue you needn't worry about long term covid effects but I don't think comparison with polio does much to support that. Polio was known to cause paralysis in some patients since antiquity while covid is essentially a completely new disease that we just don't know that much about yet.
- j7ake 5y ago
  When one is uncertain about a situation, is the path forward to be less cautious? Common sense suggests under high uncertainty, you try to protect yourself from potential disaster.
  - tgflynn 5y ago
    Nothing in my comment suggests otherwise.
bserge 5y ago
[flagged]
- dang 5y ago
  You've been breaking the site guidelines a ton - posting flamewar comments as well as routinely being snarky and aggressive. This is not ok on HN. I've banned your account until we get some indication that you intend to, and will, follow the site guidelines in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you review them and decide that you want to actually follow them, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Yeah, this is a good outcome. Please ban the IP, too, if possible. Thanks!
throwawaysea 5y ago
I understand your sentiment, around people treating different diseases differently, but I am also not so sure that comparing polio and SARS-CoV-2 makes sense. Polio created a lot of psychological fear due to the graphic imagery of children dying or becoming permanently deformed. The WHO says (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelit...) that 1 in 200 infected with polio experience irreversible paralysis (usually the legs), and 5-10% of those with paralysis die, meaning the IFR was 0.025%. The IFR for COVID-19 is incredibly low for those under 50, as most of the deaths impacted senior citizens. Even the CDC's conservative planning scenarios (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...) use a planning IFR for minors of 20 in 1M infections (0.002%) - which is an order of magnitude less than polio. The side effects you called out (like loss of smell) are rare to begin with, subside over time for most people, and aren't as serious as having to live on an iron lung. Additionally, it isn't clear if "long COVID" is even a real thing or just a casual/imprecise term for the unknown. My speculation is that many illnesses like the common cold have similar side effects, but we're only now rigorously studying and measuring them because of the prominence of COVID-19 in the public's mind. I would also point out that there are potential consequences from a lot of things we've done in response to COVID. Limiting social interaction, hiding faces/emotions, reducing oxygen intake via masks, normalizing government overreach, hurting the economy, keeping children out of schools, and so on can have impacts we don't yet understand. And then there's the potential for vaccines to have some kind of long-term side effect of their own. My sense of the probabilities and risks is that it is preferable to take the vaccine, implement some basic hygiene protocol, and avoid the worst of it. But I also feel there is a fairly wide spectrum of reasonable choices and policies in this situation. I'm also not sure what you're expecting in terms of taking it "seriously". COVID is going to be endemic. Everyone will be exposed to it over time. In terms of government intervention, I don't think it ever made sense to do more than 'flattening the curve', and even that was perhaps a step too far since those who are healthy and under 50 can more or less treat COVID like any other common illness. It may have even been preferable for that group to simply contract it and build up antibodies so that others who are more vulnerable could re-enter society with a lesser chance of transmission.
- 5y ago
ekianjo 5y ago
> Brain scans post COVID show brain matter reduction This is a bullshit publication, not properly designed. Don't trust every paper that goes out there, more than 60% cannot be replicated.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  You got a citation for that?

by spion 5y ago

JTbane 5y ago

Yep, people seem to forget history. The polio vaccine had issues when it was rolled out in 1955. No one bats an eye taking it today because it saves lives. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

bserge 5y ago
[flagged]
sdhfjg 5y ago
>No one bats an eye taking it today because it saves lives. It saved lives in 1955. No one bats an eye taking it today because we know it's safe.
emodendroket 5y ago
If only it were true that "nobody bats an eye" at taking various vaccinations that have been used safely for decades.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I remember before covid, Marin county was the antivax central, with mostly wealthy hippies that refused to give smallpox and measles vaccines to their kids. They had measles, whooping cough, all those old diseases. At Greenwood School in Mill Valley, 61 percent of the kindergartners are partially or completely unvaccinated, according to state figures. At San Geronimo Valley Elementary in San Geronimo, 58 percent of the kindergarten children are partially or completely unvaccinated. Half the children at the New Village School in Sausalito are in the same boat, according to the health department. https://www.kqed.org/news/107741/despite-the-science-marin-vaccination-opt-outs-increase https://www.kqed.org/news/107741/despite-the-science-marin-v... https://www.marinij.com/2015/01/31/california-measles-outbreak-highlights-marin-vaccination-dilemma/ https://www.marinij.com/2015/01/31/california-measles-outbre... https://www.sfweekly.com/news/whooping-cough-returns-to-marin-as-officials-woo-vaccine-dodging-parents/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/whooping-cough-returns-to-mari... There is certainly a subculture that rejected vaccines in general long before covid.

bigodbiel 5y ago

Considering the global reaction to Covid, it is extremely serious. Anymore and we’d all be living under Beijing style lockdown and traffic light system

sneak 5y ago
This is a false dichotomy. Bars and clubs in many cities are open and basic infection control measures are not being taken or enforced by significant percentages of staff and patrons alike. We enforce the laws against smoking indoors more diligently and stringently than we do removal of masks in crowded areas.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  If you take issue with this generalization, then you should also take issue with the parent comment's note that 'we' aren't taking it seriously enough. Some people, cities, states, are being extremely cautious. Some are not. I moved from Bay Area California to bum fuck Florida during COVID, and it's like being in a different timeline.
emodendroket 5y ago
Personally I'd be in favor of just forcibly vaccinating people and getting it over with already.
- djsbs 5y ago
  And Im in favor of banning video games, social media and pornography. Btw, what do you plan to accomplish by assaulting people who don't want it? The virus isnt going away no matter how draconian you get. Just for fun, imagine forcibly vaccinating Afghanistan. Or Central Africa. Not happening. Not without an army (one that can win wars, America’s doesn't count)
  - Valkhyr 5y ago
    > And Im in favor of banning video games, social media and pornography. Those are quite bad analogies you have there. Playing video games, reading/posting to social media (assuming you're not posting content inciting violence etc) and watching pornography (or producing pornography, assuming consent of all involved) are not actions that have any significant potential to cause harm to others. I don't mind if somebody spends their entire day jerking off with their left hand while playing video games with their right, all the while posting to Twitter via Siri. I wouldn't personally want to be that person(or follow them on Twitter, for that matter), but it's their life and they're not hurting anybody. Socializing without taking proper COVID precautions however puts other people at immediate risk. Getting vaccinated is one of the precautions we can take to avoid that, and it has been shown to be tremendously effective. It is also very quick, and very low risk for healthy adults. So it is our social responsibility to get vaccinated. FWIW, I'm OK with people choosing to not get vaccinated for whatever batshit reason they may cite. Their body, their choice, right? But my body is not their choice. So if they choose to commit to endangering myself and other responsible people, and potentially contribute to overloading the health system we rely on, then I also expect them to accept the necessary consequences: minimizing social contact, getting COVID tests whenever they want to enter any establishment, potentially having to look for a new job that can be done 100% from home, and waiving their right to be treated for any COVID infection they may contract while unprotected.

jimmaswell 5y ago

We shut down the economy, forced everyone to stay home, made everyone wear masks, warp speeded multiple vaccines, and still make people wear masks at the doctor and the post office. The world has to keep turning at some point.

azinman2 5y ago
And many are fighting all of it every step of the way, even more not in compliance, etc
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Because there's more to creating effective public policy than just forcing people to do what "the scientists" say.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  People value things differently. There's people who bristle at the idea that the government should coerce them into getting unwanted medical procedures or restrict their movement. There's people who don't believe governments who have badly and repeatedly bungled the response to covid are a reliable or trustworthy authority on the matter. Not everyone may take covid exactly as seriously as you would wish them to, but it doesn't mean they don't take it seriously just because they value other things more. People going out en masse to protest police brutality for example apparently understood the risks of covid but believed their cause and their right to protest it to be more important. Who are you to say they are wrong? People who understood the risks but believed border closures to be wrong or racist believed that cause was more serious than covid, again who are we to say that's wrong? Do we have some ivory tower of government experts who are there to provide us unthinking plebs with the canonical guide for ranking everything in seriousness and importance? If we had the government telling us that driving automobiles causes a million deaths every year and the only way to solve it is for everyone to stop driving, but maybe we can start driving again after everyone's cars have been fitted with modifications to limit speed to 5mph which should be at least 90% effective at eliminating hospitalizations and deaths, then they're not exactly _wrong_, but of course people are going to protest it. If you drove anyway that does not mean you don't take automobile accidents seriously, that you're anti science, or that you're a grandma killer. You will certainly statistically increase the load on the hospital system if you drive, that choice does not make you responsible for possible deaths of other people who could not access sufficient medical treatment. Not even if you just went for a drive to the beach, up a mountain, or an aimless drive through the streets just because you enjoyed it.

tgflynn 5y ago

I won't argue you needn't worry about long term covid effects but I don't think comparison with polio does much to support that. Polio was known to cause paralysis in some patients since antiquity while covid is essentially a completely new disease that we just don't know that much about yet.

j7ake 5y ago
When one is uncertain about a situation, is the path forward to be less cautious? Common sense suggests under high uncertainty, you try to protect yourself from potential disaster.
- tgflynn 5y ago
  Nothing in my comment suggests otherwise.

bserge 5y ago

[flagged]

dang 5y ago
You've been breaking the site guidelines a ton - posting flamewar comments as well as routinely being snarky and aggressive. This is not ok on HN. I've banned your account until we get some indication that you intend to, and will, follow the site guidelines in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you review them and decide that you want to actually follow them, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
- bserge 5y ago
  Yeah, this is a good outcome. Please ban the IP, too, if possible. Thanks!

throwawaysea 5y ago

I understand your sentiment, around people treating different diseases differently, but I am also not so sure that comparing polio and SARS-CoV-2 makes sense. Polio created a lot of psychological fear due to the graphic imagery of children dying or becoming permanently deformed. The WHO says (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelit...) that 1 in 200 infected with polio experience irreversible paralysis (usually the legs), and 5-10% of those with paralysis die, meaning the IFR was 0.025%. The IFR for COVID-19 is incredibly low for those under 50, as most of the deaths impacted senior citizens. Even the CDC's conservative planning scenarios (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...) use a planning IFR for minors of 20 in 1M infections (0.002%) - which is an order of magnitude less than polio. The side effects you called out (like loss of smell) are rare to begin with, subside over time for most people, and aren't as serious as having to live on an iron lung. Additionally, it isn't clear if "long COVID" is even a real thing or just a casual/imprecise term for the unknown. My speculation is that many illnesses like the common cold have similar side effects, but we're only now rigorously studying and measuring them because of the prominence of COVID-19 in the public's mind. I would also point out that there are potential consequences from a lot of things we've done in response to COVID. Limiting social interaction, hiding faces/emotions, reducing oxygen intake via masks, normalizing government overreach, hurting the economy, keeping children out of schools, and so on can have impacts we don't yet understand. And then there's the potential for vaccines to have some kind of long-term side effect of their own. My sense of the probabilities and risks is that it is preferable to take the vaccine, implement some basic hygiene protocol, and avoid the worst of it. But I also feel there is a fairly wide spectrum of reasonable choices and policies in this situation. I'm also not sure what you're expecting in terms of taking it "seriously". COVID is going to be endemic. Everyone will be exposed to it over time. In terms of government intervention, I don't think it ever made sense to do more than 'flattening the curve', and even that was perhaps a step too far since those who are healthy and under 50 can more or less treat COVID like any other common illness. It may have even been preferable for that group to simply contract it and build up antibodies so that others who are more vulnerable could re-enter society with a lesser chance of transmission.

5y ago

ekianjo 5y ago

> Brain scans post COVID show brain matter reduction This is a bullshit publication, not properly designed. Don't trust every paper that goes out there, more than 60% cannot be replicated.

newswasboring 5y ago
You got a citation for that?