4 ms·

What makes it a political view? The cooperation of the population is a valid concern when planning a response to an emergency

trashtester 4y ago
Politics is when there is a disagreement about values. For example, pro choice vs pro life is about values, not facts. Scientific misinformation is when someone someone makes statements that are in disagreement with established scientific facts. For example, the theory of evolution is established enough to be considered a fact. Rejecting it is either misinformation, delusional or both. Now, it is possible that there were elements in the Barrington Declaration that was also presenting alternative ways of looking at the data, maybe opinions that would be fringe at the time (but definitely mainstream just months before). But part of this is also how you quantify deaths. Either you can count all lives equally, especially when including those who would have died roughly at the same time, even if they did not have covid. On the other hand, if you look at number of potential years of life lost, the numbers become quite different, such as in this study: https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-lost.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-los... If you look at the US (which was one of the highest), the OECD study above shows that 7700 years of life were lost per 100000 people, for the sample in time and age groups that were used. That is about 4 weeks for the average citizen. If you use a time window that includes 2021 and 2022, that could perhaps increase to 8-10 weeks per inhabitant. Maybe this would have been 2-4 weeks higher, if lockdowns had only lasted half as long, who knows. Anyway, I think average number of life-years lost per capita is a relevant metric to compare to the sacrifices involved in long-lasting lockdowns. Now, if you look at the main risk factor for dying from covid, namely obesity, the obesity in itself carries a cost in terms of expected years of life lost of 2-5 YEARS (not weeks as for covid), depending on the level of obesity. https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/arthritis-news/years-of-life-lost-due-to-obesity/#:~:text=It%20was%20estimated%20that%202,at%20least%20174%20lbs https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/arthritis-news/years-of-lif....). In other words, if instead of mandating lockdowns, the government would spend a similar effort in schools, collages and workplaces to stimulate exercise, one could quite probably have have reduced years of life lost more than the lockdowns achieved, especially during the later stages of the pandemic. Oh, btw, I'm obese myself, which probably contributed to me being happy about lockdowns for selfish reasons, especially before vaccines were available.
meltyness 4y ago
Federalism. To color the situation a bit without presuming too much. Should the whole country shut down because DC, NY, and LA are reaching dangerous levels of hospital burden? I suspect the whole country took on the measures needed in denser areas, but I speculate that it looked draconian there since the spread was delayed by a year before it really hit a quorum in some central states[0]. It's a political argument because they can contend it would have been handled better by local, county, state officials. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQKvnpyHXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQKvnpyHXM

trashtester 4y ago

Politics is when there is a disagreement about values. For example, pro choice vs pro life is about values, not facts. Scientific misinformation is when someone someone makes statements that are in disagreement with established scientific facts. For example, the theory of evolution is established enough to be considered a fact. Rejecting it is either misinformation, delusional or both. Now, it is possible that there were elements in the Barrington Declaration that was also presenting alternative ways of looking at the data, maybe opinions that would be fringe at the time (but definitely mainstream just months before). But part of this is also how you quantify deaths. Either you can count all lives equally, especially when including those who would have died roughly at the same time, even if they did not have covid. On the other hand, if you look at number of potential years of life lost, the numbers become quite different, such as in this study: https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-lost.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-los... If you look at the US (which was one of the highest), the OECD study above shows that 7700 years of life were lost per 100000 people, for the sample in time and age groups that were used. That is about 4 weeks for the average citizen. If you use a time window that includes 2021 and 2022, that could perhaps increase to 8-10 weeks per inhabitant. Maybe this would have been 2-4 weeks higher, if lockdowns had only lasted half as long, who knows. Anyway, I think average number of life-years lost per capita is a relevant metric to compare to the sacrifices involved in long-lasting lockdowns. Now, if you look at the main risk factor for dying from covid, namely obesity, the obesity in itself carries a cost in terms of expected years of life lost of 2-5 YEARS (not weeks as for covid), depending on the level of obesity. https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/arthritis-news/years-of-life-lost-due-to-obesity/#:~:text=It%20was%20estimated%20that%202,at%20least%20174%20lbs https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/arthritis-news/years-of-lif....). In other words, if instead of mandating lockdowns, the government would spend a similar effort in schools, collages and workplaces to stimulate exercise, one could quite probably have have reduced years of life lost more than the lockdowns achieved, especially during the later stages of the pandemic. Oh, btw, I'm obese myself, which probably contributed to me being happy about lockdowns for selfish reasons, especially before vaccines were available.

meltyness 4y ago

Federalism. To color the situation a bit without presuming too much. Should the whole country shut down because DC, NY, and LA are reaching dangerous levels of hospital burden? I suspect the whole country took on the measures needed in denser areas, but I speculate that it looked draconian there since the spread was delayed by a year before it really hit a quorum in some central states[0]. It's a political argument because they can contend it would have been handled better by local, county, state officials. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQKvnpyHXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQKvnpyHXM