8 ms·

This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about so many people's reactions to this disease who treat infection as a binary: You die or you don't die and th

by dhosek 5y ago

This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about so many people's reactions to this disease who treat infection as a binary: You die or you don't die and the latter is just as good as not getting it, ignoring the (a) social/medical/emotional costs of a person being sick and (2) the fact that we have just been learning about the long-term effects of infection. From the beginning I've been worried that we're going to see a generations-long impact on overall health just from people who were infected and then "got better." There's so much unknown about this disease but we've let a bunch of politicians and cable TV/internet/podcast hacks claim that it's not serious so that a significant fraction of the population ends up actively spreading the disease and providing reservoirs for it to mutate.

giantg2 5y ago
" we've let a bunch of politicians and cable TV/internet/podcast hacks claim that it's not serious so that a significant fraction of the population ends up actively spreading the disease and providing reservoirs for it to mutate." This is sort of a half truth. You can still spread it if vaccinated.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  Yes, and you can still die with a seatbelt on. But a vaccine makes it less likely that you get it (can't spread it if you didn't get it), less likely to spread it (fewer days sick, smaller viral load, ability to self isolate because still functioning, not requiring outside assistance to not die).
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It seems we're in agreement - it was a half truth to target one group for the blame when clearly others are also contributing.
    - mannykannot 5y ago
      You are implying a symmetry that does not exist: one group is doing what it can to help, the other is not.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Are they though? I agree that there is not symmetry. There are many groups, doing many different activities. There are plenty of vaccinated people who are done with masking, done with isolation, and going out in public or traveling. While there are also people who caught covid while doing a necessary job before a vaccine was required. It's false to create only two groups. This completely ignores symmetry, undermining your entire argument of saying I'm ignoring it.
        mannykannot 5y ago
        I see you want to be pedantic: >It's false to create only two groups. That claim is not even a half-truth... >This completely ignores symmetry ... and this would not follow even if it were. [Update moved to a subsequent reply.]
        giantg2 5y ago
        ">It's false to create only two groups. That claim is not even a half-truth." Would you like to expand on that? There clearly are numerous different groups providing a variety of permutations of risk taking or risk avoiding actions. ">This completely ignores symmetry ... and this would not follow even if it were." Would you like to explain this too? It appears to me that two artificial groups were formed and then used in a false dichotomy. I'm not being pedantic. Attacking a large number of people in a heterogeneous, artificial group is disingenuous when a moderate to large number of the people in that group may not even exhibit the risks claimed, while wholly ignoring the risks posed by the "good" group.
        mannykannot 5y ago
        I see there was a data race in my editing, so I will move my update here: Beyond that, it is consistent with every factual claim you have made to say that the population lies on a broad spectrum of how thoroughly they are contributing to ameliorating the impact of this epidemic on the population as a whole. Your own argument is predicated on this spectrum being divisible into two populations. My point is that, wherever you make that divide, one group is helping more than the other. With regard to your specific questions here: 1) Putting aside the abstruse issue around the axiom of choice (which is not relevant here) one can always create two groups, and in my expanded reply, I made a relevant, non-pedantic case for that. 2) There are more symmetries than dichotomous ones. Also: > while wholly ignoring the risks posed by the "good" group. With words like 'wholly' and 'false', you are making straw man arguments. It is factually accurate and completely reasonable to say that some people are net contributors to public health, while others have the opposite effect.
    - aardvarkr 5y ago
      You’re blatantly ignoring logic here just to make yourself feel better. Vaccinated people catch the disease 90% less with 90% less viral load and somehow you’re equating that to an unvaccinated person’s ability to catch and spread the disease. Ridiculous. Vaccinating saves lives and reduces the spread.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        You seem to be ignoring the various permutations of the situation. How about people with natural immunity, which some studies suggest is as food or better? It seems you are ignoring scenarios to avoid cognitive dissonance. 90% is not 100%, it's not logical to assign 100% of the blame.
      - t0bia_s 5y ago
        That is debunked lie repeated like mantra in mass media. Omicron is spreading same for vaccinated or not. Gibraltar, Ireland, Portugal data proofs that... Inform yourself, please and do not repeat fantasies. Vaccines are designed to help with reducing death risk for mutations that are not here anymore.
Day1 5y ago
The thing is, I’m not sure preventing the spread is realistic. Unless you move to the country or to outer space, and never receive any mail or goods, you will always be in contact with, or in the vicinity of, something that has been in contact with, or in the vicinity of, someone else.
- guelo 5y ago
  It's not that hard. The risk is highest when we have these waves from new variants. There are forecasts that predict them with weeks lead time. And then the wave comes and goes over a few weeks. You just have to up your defenses during those weeks.
- marricks 5y ago
  It wasn't always the case. Time and time again the US government in particular chose the economy over people's lives. Or even people's live over having to do something. Counties like S. Korea, had bold actions like contact tracing and lockdowns. Many many countries covered pay for folks to stay home. The US initially had a lock down then just quit acting really. Sure, preventing ANYONE from getting COVID was unrealistically, but preventing most people from getting it was always possible.
  - kaesar14 5y ago
    I don't want to live in a country where the government enforced wide-reaching shutdowns of businesses and quarantined people forcibly in their homes like China and Taiwan do. I think it's a violation of my civil liberties.
    - sweetheart 5y ago
      This is the reasoning that leads to absurd levels of death we've seen over the last two years. It's great for you, no doubt, but incredibly selfish.
      - kaesar14 5y ago
tharne 5y ago
> This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about so many people's reactions to this disease who treat infection as a binary: You die or you don't die and the latter is just as good as not getting it When I hear folks say that, I always ask them, "Herpes has a 100% survival rate, does that mean you'd shrug it off as no big deal if someone gave you herpes?".
- JSavageOne 5y ago
  Ok but herpes never shut down the world. We never shut down or severely restricted capacity in restaurants, gyms, stores, hotels, etc. over herpes, or required a herpes test to leave the house or get on an airplane. There is no herpes vaccine, but I imagine that even if there were, you'd never be required to show your proof of recent herpes vaccination to go to a restaurant or even ride public transportation or stay at a hotel (the situation in Italy). Nobody is denying that COVID causes problems for some people, the argument is that it doesn't justify forcing everyone to wear masks everywhere, get vaccinated multiple times to do anything in society, get COVID tested anytime one needs to travel (for countries that haven't shut down borders), and force remote learning on children. Maybe it's possible that the side effects from these authoritarian policies don't outweigh the benefits, and disproportionately harm the youth for the benefit of the elderly since COVID is only statistically dangerous for those close to the median age of life expectancy. Perhaps people should be able to vote with their feet.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Actually, yes, you can basically shrug it off. It rarely poses any issue for people and the stigma around it is worse than the disease.
kyrra 5y ago
This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about many policy makers: they ignored natural immunity. They ignored that cloth masks (and likely surgical) would do nothing against an aerosol born disease. They ignored the impact of lockdown of society to everyone. The US masking 2 year old kids when the rest of the world masked starting at 6 year old or older. EDIT: just to add: from what we can see, vaccines help cut down on adverse outcomes due to a covid infection, which is why I'm still pro-vaccine. But many other policies out there are just nonsense.
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  FYI Natural immunity provides a fraction of the immune response that being vaccinated does. People were getting reinfected with Covid after six months during the initial wave before any mutations cropped up.
  - gehwartzen 5y ago
    Do you have any studies which you can point to that actually that demonstrate that "natural immunity provides a fraction of the immune response that being vaccinated does"? From what I can tell even the CDCs latest online review, as of Oct 2021, doesn't have any evidence that one is better than the other in terms of antibodi titers [1] In fact the most recent CDC published studies, from this year, have shown naturally induced immunity to be superior to vaccine induced immunity in terms of both illness and death [2] [1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/vaccine-induced-immunity.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
throw__away7391 5y ago
This is basically standard practice now for some time in medicine, at least in the United States. Every time I or my partner have ever been to the doctor for any kind of concern, they always focus exclusively on life threatening conditions. The moment that cancer or such is ruled out (even when I've insisted I didn't think that was a likely possibility), care basically stops, any further inquiry is like pulling teeth. We joke that this is like the "Not Hotdog" app from the Silicon Valley series, "Not Cancer".
- managerclass 5y ago
  My cynical view is that it's more profitable to treat life threatening issues than trying to keep you healthy which would only result in less profits for hospitals. The whole incentive structure of health care leads to very bad outcomes.
calyth2018 5y ago
Well, the original SARS in 2003 had some interesting long term effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Prognosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Prognosis Some of the HK doctors that got infected had some of these long term effects, IIRC. There's a reason why they don't fuck around in trying to limit the spread over there.

by dhosek 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

" we've let a bunch of politicians and cable TV/internet/podcast hacks claim that it's not serious so that a significant fraction of the population ends up actively spreading the disease and providing reservoirs for it to mutate." This is sort of a half truth. You can still spread it if vaccinated.

davrosthedalek 5y ago
Yes, and you can still die with a seatbelt on. But a vaccine makes it less likely that you get it (can't spread it if you didn't get it), less likely to spread it (fewer days sick, smaller viral load, ability to self isolate because still functioning, not requiring outside assistance to not die).
- giantg2 5y ago
  It seems we're in agreement - it was a half truth to target one group for the blame when clearly others are also contributing.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    You are implying a symmetry that does not exist: one group is doing what it can to help, the other is not.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Are they though? I agree that there is not symmetry. There are many groups, doing many different activities. There are plenty of vaccinated people who are done with masking, done with isolation, and going out in public or traveling. While there are also people who caught covid while doing a necessary job before a vaccine was required. It's false to create only two groups. This completely ignores symmetry, undermining your entire argument of saying I'm ignoring it.
      - mannykannot 5y ago
        I see you want to be pedantic: >It's false to create only two groups. That claim is not even a half-truth... >This completely ignores symmetry ... and this would not follow even if it were. [Update moved to a subsequent reply.]
        giantg2 5y ago
        ">It's false to create only two groups. That claim is not even a half-truth." Would you like to expand on that? There clearly are numerous different groups providing a variety of permutations of risk taking or risk avoiding actions. ">This completely ignores symmetry ... and this would not follow even if it were." Would you like to explain this too? It appears to me that two artificial groups were formed and then used in a false dichotomy. I'm not being pedantic. Attacking a large number of people in a heterogeneous, artificial group is disingenuous when a moderate to large number of the people in that group may not even exhibit the risks claimed, while wholly ignoring the risks posed by the "good" group.
        mannykannot 5y ago
        I see there was a data race in my editing, so I will move my update here: Beyond that, it is consistent with every factual claim you have made to say that the population lies on a broad spectrum of how thoroughly they are contributing to ameliorating the impact of this epidemic on the population as a whole. Your own argument is predicated on this spectrum being divisible into two populations. My point is that, wherever you make that divide, one group is helping more than the other. With regard to your specific questions here: 1) Putting aside the abstruse issue around the axiom of choice (which is not relevant here) one can always create two groups, and in my expanded reply, I made a relevant, non-pedantic case for that. 2) There are more symmetries than dichotomous ones. Also: > while wholly ignoring the risks posed by the "good" group. With words like 'wholly' and 'false', you are making straw man arguments. It is factually accurate and completely reasonable to say that some people are net contributors to public health, while others have the opposite effect.
  - aardvarkr 5y ago
    You’re blatantly ignoring logic here just to make yourself feel better. Vaccinated people catch the disease 90% less with 90% less viral load and somehow you’re equating that to an unvaccinated person’s ability to catch and spread the disease. Ridiculous. Vaccinating saves lives and reduces the spread.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      You seem to be ignoring the various permutations of the situation. How about people with natural immunity, which some studies suggest is as food or better? It seems you are ignoring scenarios to avoid cognitive dissonance. 90% is not 100%, it's not logical to assign 100% of the blame.
    - t0bia_s 5y ago
      That is debunked lie repeated like mantra in mass media. Omicron is spreading same for vaccinated or not. Gibraltar, Ireland, Portugal data proofs that... Inform yourself, please and do not repeat fantasies. Vaccines are designed to help with reducing death risk for mutations that are not here anymore.

Day1 5y ago

The thing is, I’m not sure preventing the spread is realistic. Unless you move to the country or to outer space, and never receive any mail or goods, you will always be in contact with, or in the vicinity of, something that has been in contact with, or in the vicinity of, someone else.

guelo 5y ago
It's not that hard. The risk is highest when we have these waves from new variants. There are forecasts that predict them with weeks lead time. And then the wave comes and goes over a few weeks. You just have to up your defenses during those weeks.
marricks 5y ago
It wasn't always the case. Time and time again the US government in particular chose the economy over people's lives. Or even people's live over having to do something. Counties like S. Korea, had bold actions like contact tracing and lockdowns. Many many countries covered pay for folks to stay home. The US initially had a lock down then just quit acting really. Sure, preventing ANYONE from getting COVID was unrealistically, but preventing most people from getting it was always possible.
- kaesar14 5y ago
  I don't want to live in a country where the government enforced wide-reaching shutdowns of businesses and quarantined people forcibly in their homes like China and Taiwan do. I think it's a violation of my civil liberties.
  - sweetheart 5y ago
    This is the reasoning that leads to absurd levels of death we've seen over the last two years. It's great for you, no doubt, but incredibly selfish.
    - kaesar14 5y ago

tharne 5y ago

> This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about so many people's reactions to this disease who treat infection as a binary: You die or you don't die and the latter is just as good as not getting it When I hear folks say that, I always ask them, "Herpes has a 100% survival rate, does that mean you'd shrug it off as no big deal if someone gave you herpes?".

JSavageOne 5y ago
Ok but herpes never shut down the world. We never shut down or severely restricted capacity in restaurants, gyms, stores, hotels, etc. over herpes, or required a herpes test to leave the house or get on an airplane. There is no herpes vaccine, but I imagine that even if there were, you'd never be required to show your proof of recent herpes vaccination to go to a restaurant or even ride public transportation or stay at a hotel (the situation in Italy). Nobody is denying that COVID causes problems for some people, the argument is that it doesn't justify forcing everyone to wear masks everywhere, get vaccinated multiple times to do anything in society, get COVID tested anytime one needs to travel (for countries that haven't shut down borders), and force remote learning on children. Maybe it's possible that the side effects from these authoritarian policies don't outweigh the benefits, and disproportionately harm the youth for the benefit of the elderly since COVID is only statistically dangerous for those close to the median age of life expectancy. Perhaps people should be able to vote with their feet.
unethical_ban 5y ago
Actually, yes, you can basically shrug it off. It rarely poses any issue for people and the stigma around it is worse than the disease.

kyrra 5y ago

This is the thing that drives me the most nuts about many policy makers: they ignored natural immunity. They ignored that cloth masks (and likely surgical) would do nothing against an aerosol born disease. They ignored the impact of lockdown of society to everyone. The US masking 2 year old kids when the rest of the world masked starting at 6 year old or older. EDIT: just to add: from what we can see, vaccines help cut down on adverse outcomes due to a covid infection, which is why I'm still pro-vaccine. But many other policies out there are just nonsense.

aardvarkr 5y ago
FYI Natural immunity provides a fraction of the immune response that being vaccinated does. People were getting reinfected with Covid after six months during the initial wave before any mutations cropped up.
- gehwartzen 5y ago
  Do you have any studies which you can point to that actually that demonstrate that "natural immunity provides a fraction of the immune response that being vaccinated does"? From what I can tell even the CDCs latest online review, as of Oct 2021, doesn't have any evidence that one is better than the other in terms of antibodi titers [1] In fact the most recent CDC published studies, from this year, have shown naturally induced immunity to be superior to vaccine induced immunity in terms of both illness and death [2] [1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/vaccine-induced-immunity.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

throw__away7391 5y ago

This is basically standard practice now for some time in medicine, at least in the United States. Every time I or my partner have ever been to the doctor for any kind of concern, they always focus exclusively on life threatening conditions. The moment that cancer or such is ruled out (even when I've insisted I didn't think that was a likely possibility), care basically stops, any further inquiry is like pulling teeth. We joke that this is like the "Not Hotdog" app from the Silicon Valley series, "Not Cancer".

managerclass 5y ago
My cynical view is that it's more profitable to treat life threatening issues than trying to keep you healthy which would only result in less profits for hospitals. The whole incentive structure of health care leads to very bad outcomes.

calyth2018 5y ago

Well, the original SARS in 2003 had some interesting long term effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Prognosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Prognosis Some of the HK doctors that got infected had some of these long term effects, IIRC. There's a reason why they don't fuck around in trying to limit the spread over there.