4 ms·

I fundamentally disagree with the methodology and conclusion of this article. The problem with a new disease is that we don't know the long-term impact. Polio

by blagie 4y ago

I fundamentally disagree with the methodology and conclusion of this article. The problem with a new disease is that we don't know the long-term impact. Polio led to post-polio syndrome. Tick diseases have impacts decades out. Rabies does nothing for 6 months, and then causes insanity and certain death. Syphilis led to insanity decades later. AIDS has minimal short-term impacts too; death is caused by follow-up diseases. We know more about the long-term impact of COVID in 2022 than we did in 2020, but we still don't fully understand it. We still don't really understand the impact of multiple, serial COVID infections, as everyone seems to be getting. When a new disease comes out, I'd like to exterminate it, please. I'm happy to have a month-long full lockdown everywhere it's found, like China did, while the disease dies off. If we can't do that, I'd like to lock down until we have a vaccine, and ideally, until we understand the long-term impact. I'd take no lock-down over losing 15 days of my life (or a 1-3% chance of death, for that matter). I would take a lock-down over long-term impacts of a disease of the type we've seen with COVID and other diseases. To me, it's a numbers game on long-term health impacts, not on death. Do those happen to 1% of people? To 100% of people? Do they last weeks? Months? Years? The rest of your life? When do they start? I'd like good answers to those questions on whatever disease comes out next before relaxing. With travel and population growth, we will see more and more interesting disease. We need a strategy to deal with them. I'm profoundly disappointed COVID didn't lead to us even developing one.

bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
I feel like the framing of Covid as a kind of flu contributed to the poor public response. Imagine if it caused boils on the face, or incontinence! I hope that people would have broadly supported lockdowns in that case, but I guess anything can be politicized these days.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
I don’t understand. The blog is talking about death tallies which is an easily observed binary outcome. They weren’t trying to measure other outcomes. Are you thinking a COVID infection might kill you two years later? That seems unlikely. Might it cause other health impacts? That’s almost certainly true, see long COVID. But it’s simply not the analysis being done here. This is about figuring out the degree to which countries under reported COVID deaths. What specifically do you find wrong with the methodology they took for figuring out the degree to which countries under reported COVID deaths?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I think they're referring to the stated conclusion, that this author thinks his work supports his own view that lockdown policies were too restrictive, and we should instead have more freedom/death. Even with 20/20 hindsight, that seems like a bad take, and when the decisions were taken, we didn't have 20/20 hindsight, and we won't the next time either.
  - blagie 4y ago
    Exactly. The article said: > Here’s a question: would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save yourself 10-to-15 days of life? > Is stopping that worth it to you? > My personal answer is: No. It would not be worth it to me. I’d take that loss in expected lifespan, in order to travel and live freely for a couple years. Virtually everyone's answer to that question is "no" because it's the wrong question. Phrasing this as THE question seems intellectually dishonest. There are a few better questions one might ask: - If new diseases sweep through every so often, and each of them has a 20% chance of leading to long-term disability affecting a significant portion of the population, should we have a lock-down? - If new diseases sweep through every so often, and a real world-wide lock-down means they don't become endemic for your children's children, is that worth it to you? - If a disease sweeps through, and reduces the IQ of the general population by 5 points, is getting that under control worth it to you? ... and so on. I was never worried about COVID killing me. However, I was 100% in support of tight lockdowns, of the type which would have prevented COVID from becoming endemic, for reasons unrelated to my own risk of death.

by blagie 4y ago

bqmjjx0kac 4y ago

I feel like the framing of Covid as a kind of flu contributed to the poor public response. Imagine if it caused boils on the face, or incontinence! I hope that people would have broadly supported lockdowns in that case, but I guess anything can be politicized these days.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

I don’t understand. The blog is talking about death tallies which is an easily observed binary outcome. They weren’t trying to measure other outcomes. Are you thinking a COVID infection might kill you two years later? That seems unlikely. Might it cause other health impacts? That’s almost certainly true, see long COVID. But it’s simply not the analysis being done here. This is about figuring out the degree to which countries under reported COVID deaths. What specifically do you find wrong with the methodology they took for figuring out the degree to which countries under reported COVID deaths?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think they're referring to the stated conclusion, that this author thinks his work supports his own view that lockdown policies were too restrictive, and we should instead have more freedom/death. Even with 20/20 hindsight, that seems like a bad take, and when the decisions were taken, we didn't have 20/20 hindsight, and we won't the next time either.
- blagie 4y ago
  Exactly. The article said: > Here’s a question: would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save yourself 10-to-15 days of life? > Is stopping that worth it to you? > My personal answer is: No. It would not be worth it to me. I’d take that loss in expected lifespan, in order to travel and live freely for a couple years. Virtually everyone's answer to that question is "no" because it's the wrong question. Phrasing this as THE question seems intellectually dishonest. There are a few better questions one might ask: - If new diseases sweep through every so often, and each of them has a 20% chance of leading to long-term disability affecting a significant portion of the population, should we have a lock-down? - If new diseases sweep through every so often, and a real world-wide lock-down means they don't become endemic for your children's children, is that worth it to you? - If a disease sweeps through, and reduces the IQ of the general population by 5 points, is getting that under control worth it to you? ... and so on. I was never worried about COVID killing me. However, I was 100% in support of tight lockdowns, of the type which would have prevented COVID from becoming endemic, for reasons unrelated to my own risk of death.