5 ms·

> In the US, over the last 30 years approximately the same number of people have died "with" COVID as have died "with" the flu. COVID's only been around 1/10th

> In the US, over the last 30 years approximately the same number of people have died "with" COVID as have died "with" the flu. COVID's only been around 1/10th the time. I don't know about the US numbers, you have a bigger obesity problem and might've had more deaths. But where I'm from one flu season a few years before 2020 was worse and deadlier than any of the years with covid. Here an overwhelming amount of the deaths were people 85 and above, those below are almost a rounding error. Same as the flu. > Yes, CNN is biased up the wazoo. But at that point it rationally didn't matter the cause, but nipping this in the bud the best we could. The cause, and even lists of potential causes, are important to prevent future patient zeroes. But it did matter, us so-called conspiracy theorists knew everything about Fauci, Daszak and the Wuhan gain-of-function research from the beginning. We were screaming our lungs out for people to listen but were ridiculed, and WE were blamed for the spread because we knew the vaccine wouldn't prevent transmission and was useless for most people below 50-60. Given how many people and agencies knew from recent news I wonder how they all kept quiet. How is it even possible if the western countries are democracies? I want indictments and jail time, but I'm not holding my breath. Psychopaths run the world.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Are you from Australia, or any other place that was able to successfully quarantine against COVID for an extended period of time? Even so I'd like to know so that I can look at the data. An important point from that link comparing the two is that if you get hospitalized with COVID your death rate is close to twice that compared to if you get hospitalized with the flu. And I don't see how mentioning obesity rates matters. If COVID is effectively the flu then obesity should effectively matter the same for both of them. If you don't live in the US I don't understand why you're focusing on the US. >and WE were blamed for the spread because we knew the vaccine wouldn't prevent transmission and was useless for most people below 50-60. AGAIN Masking and distancing mattered, and still matters. Regardless whether one got the vaccine. I know those aholes at CNN and the like were saying that only the vaccines mattered. From my point of view, as a person who wanted to shut down this viral attack against the entire human species, a pox on both your houses. We'd actually know better if China, not the US, but China, had been more forthcoming as to what exactly happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . Do we blame the people who hire contractors for the contractors' screwups, or the contractors who had stated (through BSL-4 certification) that they were competent to do the job? Gain of function research is one thing, but it's not definitive evidence that the virus leaked from the WIV. As I discussed in this thread almost a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613
- worksonmine 3y ago
  I live in Sweden. We had very little quarantine, other than WFH. Vaccine passes existed but was up to organizers to decide. Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1]. This is why we were able to be so lax, because people generally just follow rules and very rarely questions authority. Our people are predisposed to make eachother conform so there's no need for a police state. I do not focus on the US, the issue was international which only makes it scarier to consider the scale of it. But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US, and I mainly blame Fauci and Daszak. Daszak was in the team the WHO sent to investigate the lab leak and even mentioned his conflict of interest in an interview before. While all this was public data, the lab leak was ridiculed, by who? The people who had everything to lose if it was public. Then we're supposed to get the vaccines these same people push on us for the virus they modified to transmit to humans. Yeah fuck off with that bullshit. And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion. I'm still waiting for an honest port-mortem of those years. Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected. We (as in the west) had people funding and performing the research in charge of our responses. Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1] I think in Australia this is known as cutting down the tall poppies. The presence of this effect in Scandinavia and Anglo-Oceania, places commonly thought of as egalitarian, makes me wonder whether this effect is in any way related to the observation that they have higher gender role self-segregation (particularly Scandinavia) than do less gender-equal countries. > But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US, NIH funding of gain of function research was only banned from October 2014 - December 2017 by NIH moratorium [1], and might only now be in the process of getting a more general ban [2]. > And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion. I agree. Ad hominems make really easy soundbites, and both the left and right media have been using them for a while now. > Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected. No. I'll blame them too. It's a choice that people make political cultures that preference scapegoating and reaction instead of forethought and the precautionary principle. *If* COVID did come from WIV, then they are to blame. They were under no particular existential pressure. Everyone working for WIV should have been trained in good technique. Protocols should have been in place to identify and inform on any accidental release. And if they played fast and loose with safety that's on them. > Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me. People make odd faces or suddenly think of something inappropriate to the moment all the time. [1] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099%2818%2930006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2] - https://www.science.org/content/article/house-approves-ban-gain-function-pathogen-research https://www.science.org/content/article/house-approves-ban-g...
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> But where I'm from one flu season a few years before 2020 was worse and deadlier than any of the years with covid. Looking this up an analysis was published in February 2021 after the first COVID wave in Sweden: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7930003/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7930003/ Scroll down to Table 1. The calculated excess mortality rate per hundred thousand people was 50.5 for during this first COVID wave. You have to go back to the 1931 (presumably flu) outbreak to meet and exceed that death rate. According to the estimate in this next link, the total deaths have since quintupled: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ Which would yield an excess mortality worse than anything but the 1918/19 "Spanish flu" pandemic if considered just one outbreak. And on par with the 1889/92 "Russian flu" double wave pandemic. Though when counting the third wave of "Russian flu" it was probably proportionately more lethal than COVID has been (so far with ~5 Swedish waves). Edit: I found out that the "Russian flu" may have been another coronavirus, a cattle-to-human zoonotic transmission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_coronavirus_OC43#Virology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_coronavirus_OC43#Virolog... : Comparison of HCoV-OC43 with the most closely related strain of Betacoronavirus 1 species, bovine coronavirus BCoV, indicated that they had a most recent common ancestor in the late 19th century, with several methods yielding most probable dates around 1890, leading authors to speculate that an introduction of the former strain to the human population might have caused the 1889–1890 pandemic, which at the time was attributed to influenza.[9] The COVID-19 pandemic brought further evidence of a link, as the 1889–1890 pandemic produced symptoms closer to those associated with COVID-19 (the infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus) than to influenza.[10] Brüssow, in August 2021, referred to the evidence that OC43 caused the 1889–1890 outbreak as "indirect, albeit weak" and was "conjectural", yet the 1889 epidemic was the best historical record to make predictions about the current COVID-19 path due to the similar "clinical and epidemiological characteristics".[11]

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

Are you from Australia, or any other place that was able to successfully quarantine against COVID for an extended period of time? Even so I'd like to know so that I can look at the data. An important point from that link comparing the two is that if you get hospitalized with COVID your death rate is close to twice that compared to if you get hospitalized with the flu. And I don't see how mentioning obesity rates matters. If COVID is effectively the flu then obesity should effectively matter the same for both of them. If you don't live in the US I don't understand why you're focusing on the US. >and WE were blamed for the spread because we knew the vaccine wouldn't prevent transmission and was useless for most people below 50-60. AGAIN Masking and distancing mattered, and still matters. Regardless whether one got the vaccine. I know those aholes at CNN and the like were saying that only the vaccines mattered. From my point of view, as a person who wanted to shut down this viral attack against the entire human species, a pox on both your houses. We'd actually know better if China, not the US, but China, had been more forthcoming as to what exactly happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . Do we blame the people who hire contractors for the contractors' screwups, or the contractors who had stated (through BSL-4 certification) that they were competent to do the job? Gain of function research is one thing, but it's not definitive evidence that the virus leaked from the WIV. As I discussed in this thread almost a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613

worksonmine 3y ago
I live in Sweden. We had very little quarantine, other than WFH. Vaccine passes existed but was up to organizers to decide. Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1]. This is why we were able to be so lax, because people generally just follow rules and very rarely questions authority. Our people are predisposed to make eachother conform so there's no need for a police state. I do not focus on the US, the issue was international which only makes it scarier to consider the scale of it. But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US, and I mainly blame Fauci and Daszak. Daszak was in the team the WHO sent to investigate the lab leak and even mentioned his conflict of interest in an interview before. While all this was public data, the lab leak was ridiculed, by who? The people who had everything to lose if it was public. Then we're supposed to get the vaccines these same people push on us for the virus they modified to transmit to humans. Yeah fuck off with that bullshit. And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion. I'm still waiting for an honest port-mortem of those years. Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected. We (as in the west) had people funding and performing the research in charge of our responses. Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1] I think in Australia this is known as cutting down the tall poppies. The presence of this effect in Scandinavia and Anglo-Oceania, places commonly thought of as egalitarian, makes me wonder whether this effect is in any way related to the observation that they have higher gender role self-segregation (particularly Scandinavia) than do less gender-equal countries. > But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US, NIH funding of gain of function research was only banned from October 2014 - December 2017 by NIH moratorium [1], and might only now be in the process of getting a more general ban [2]. > And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion. I agree. Ad hominems make really easy soundbites, and both the left and right media have been using them for a while now. > Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected. No. I'll blame them too. It's a choice that people make political cultures that preference scapegoating and reaction instead of forethought and the precautionary principle. *If* COVID did come from WIV, then they are to blame. They were under no particular existential pressure. Everyone working for WIV should have been trained in good technique. Protocols should have been in place to identify and inform on any accidental release. And if they played fast and loose with safety that's on them. > Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me. People make odd faces or suddenly think of something inappropriate to the moment all the time. [1] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099%2818%2930006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2] - https://www.science.org/content/article/house-approves-ban-gain-function-pathogen-research https://www.science.org/content/article/house-approves-ban-g...

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> But where I'm from one flu season a few years before 2020 was worse and deadlier than any of the years with covid. Looking this up an analysis was published in February 2021 after the first COVID wave in Sweden: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7930003/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7930003/ Scroll down to Table 1. The calculated excess mortality rate per hundred thousand people was 50.5 for during this first COVID wave. You have to go back to the 1931 (presumably flu) outbreak to meet and exceed that death rate. According to the estimate in this next link, the total deaths have since quintupled: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ Which would yield an excess mortality worse than anything but the 1918/19 "Spanish flu" pandemic if considered just one outbreak. And on par with the 1889/92 "Russian flu" double wave pandemic. Though when counting the third wave of "Russian flu" it was probably proportionately more lethal than COVID has been (so far with ~5 Swedish waves). Edit: I found out that the "Russian flu" may have been another coronavirus, a cattle-to-human zoonotic transmission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_coronavirus_OC43#Virology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_coronavirus_OC43#Virolog... : Comparison of HCoV-OC43 with the most closely related strain of Betacoronavirus 1 species, bovine coronavirus BCoV, indicated that they had a most recent common ancestor in the late 19th century, with several methods yielding most probable dates around 1890, leading authors to speculate that an introduction of the former strain to the human population might have caused the 1889–1890 pandemic, which at the time was attributed to influenza.[9] The COVID-19 pandemic brought further evidence of a link, as the 1889–1890 pandemic produced symptoms closer to those associated with COVID-19 (the infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus) than to influenza.[10] Brüssow, in August 2021, referred to the evidence that OC43 caused the 1889–1890 outbreak as "indirect, albeit weak" and was "conjectural", yet the 1889 epidemic was the best historical record to make predictions about the current COVID-19 path due to the similar "clinical and epidemiological characteristics".[11]