Jason Moyer on 2/1/2022 at 03:31
Quote Posted by SD
You'd expect to see some correlation between deaths and mask mandates if they worked, wouldn't you.
Mask mandates not working and masks not working are not the same thing.
Cipheron on 2/1/2022 at 05:51
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Mask mandates not working and masks not working are not the same thing.
Yeah, that's right.
A mandate not working is politics, not science. If people didn't actually follow the guidance.
So to get the science you ignore whether there's a "mandate" or not, and look directly at the actual rate of mask wearing in the community.
(
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html)
Quote:
A large, randomized trial led by researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University has found that wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose is an effective way to reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 in community settings.
...
The researchers enrolled nearly 350,000 people from 600 villages in rural Bangladesh. Those living in villages randomly assigned to a series of interventions promoting the use of surgical masks were about 11% less likely than those living in control villages to develop COVID-19, which is caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, during the eight-week study period. The protective effect increased to nearly 35% for people over 60 years old.
This is pretty good evidence - an actual randomized trial with a control population.
Also, the study probably heavily under-estimates the effective of masks. Think about it this way, many people in the control villages would have been wearing masks *just because* it's what people do anyway. So the study didn't really look at the no-mask situation vs the wear-mask situation, but at the incremental *amount* of mask wearing due to encouraging people in some of the villages to wear them. You can be sure that if it was between a hypothetical "no mask village" vs one where everyone wore masks, they difference would be WAY higher than 11%.
Also, look at the suspicious fact that older people were protected an additional 35%. Why was the intervention only 11% effective in younger people but reduced Covid infections by 35% in the most vulnerable? The explanation is probably that younger people didn't adhere to the mask wearing protocols.
(
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds)
Quote:
a systematic review and meta analysis of non-pharmaceutical interventions has found for the first time that mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing are all effective measures at curbing cases - with mask wearing the most effective.
...
Results from more than 30 studies from around the world were analysed in detail, showing a statistically significant 53% reduction in the incidence of Covid with mask wearing and a 25% reduction with physical distancing.
Handwashing also indicated a substantial 53% reduction in Covid incidence, although this was not statistically significant after adjusting for the small number of handwashing studies included.
Then there's Melbourne. Cases were skyrocketing, hitting 700 a day in the city. They then put in place a mask mandate, and within 2 months: zero cases per day. For about 7 months. What explains that? People could still go to supermarkets during the whole time. So supermarkets should have been super-spreader sites. They never were. Because people wear masks at the supermarket.
Starker on 2/1/2022 at 08:06
Quote Posted by SD
You said there was no reason to believe, and I gave you some very good reasons. I thought you should be aware of them. And of course the real world example of people steadfastly refusing to die from Omicron, the most powerful evidence of all.
No, you didn't say there are good reasons to believe, you said I was egregiously wrong and that there was
every reason to believe it. Well, go on then, show me the data/studies and prove me wrong. I'm waiting. And no, pointing out that there are less deaths this time is not proof of anything.
An yes, people are still dying of Omicron in the real world. It's only in your fantasy that they aren't. And, as I have repeatedly made the case, that there is less death this time around can be easily attributed to vaccines working and prior infections likewise conferring a degree of immunity. And the number of increased cases can be explained by things like people's behaviour and immune evasion, as a lot of the infections seem to be reinfections. Which some of the early evidence already seems to point to:
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Quote Posted by SD
There's still no actual evidence that masks have any real effect, what can I say. You'd expect to see some correlation between deaths and mask mandates if they worked, wouldn't you.
What are you even talking about? Mask wearing provably works:
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Quote Posted by SD
My comment about second waves was that a second wave had been predicted many times after we opened up, and that it had failed to materialise, which was true.
Except it did materialise, like many people predicted, by autumn:
To compare, lockdown measures were lifted in phases from the beginning of June to the middle of August: (
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/timeline-lockdown-web.pdf)
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Quote Posted by SD
I did not make that statement about old people, and I'd kindly ask you not to misrepresent me.
You said, and I quote:
Quote Posted by SD
If being opposed to wrecking your economy to delay the inevitable and give granny six more months in a care home is twittery.
Quote Posted by SD
I was just reading today that the average age of virus deaths in Scotland is 81 for men and 85 for women. Both of these are above the average life expectancy there. The virus is killing off people who have run their race already.
Quote Posted by SD
I said that wrecking the economy to try to delay something inevitable for a matter of months was crazy. I stand by it. A major depression will cost more lives than covid, and they won't be lives that were nearing their natural expiry date anyway.
So yes, you were arguing for letting old people die for the sake of the economy. Except your major depression never arrived, did it? So in fact you were arguing for sacrificing old people for the sake of absolutely nothing.
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Quote Posted by SD
No, I didn't excavate any bodies, scientists believe that coronavirus to be responsible for that outbreak. Whether it was or wasn't responsible for that specific outbreak isn't hugely important. This coronavirus is just doing what previous coronaviruses have done before it. Burned brightly for a short time before fizzling out.
Some scientists
speculate that it
might have been that coronavirus. We don't know if it was. So it makes absolutely no sense to make predictions based on it. Also, when did you become an expert on coronaviruses (which is a huge group of viruses) to know what they will and what they won't do? Even if one coronavirus evolved to eventually be less dangerous, there's absolutely no reason to believe all of them will behave that way or that it's what they do.
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Quote Posted by SD
There have been hardly any excess deaths in the UK in almost a year. Many other countries have fared much better than that. I'm not going to pretend that people are dying just so this institutionalised sociopathy we've had for two years can be prolongued even further.
Here's your "hardly any excess deaths":
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/UmC6PPk.png(
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-weekly-reports)
(
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYmUwNmFhMjYtNGZhYS00NDk2LWFlMTAtOTg0OGNhNmFiNGM0IiwidCI6ImVlNGUxNDk5LTRhMzUtNGIyZS1hZDQ3LTVmM2NmOWRlODY2NiIsImMiOjh9)
You might want to take note how this doesn't comport with your idea that the vast majority of the people dying were already on the verge of it, since in that case there would be an equal drop in excess deaths when those who have "run their race already" fail to show up in the next 6 months. Instead, there's only a small dip.
faetal on 2/1/2022 at 12:17
Quote Posted by SD
I'm sorry you've taken my scoffing at the many (invariably faulty) doomsday predictions we've had to be cockiness.
Thanks for proving my point :)
Quote:
Funny that you don't pull anyone else up for their predictions, just me.
What, have you only been dipping in and out of the thread then? I've responded to loads of claims. The difference is only you (and formerly nbohr) are posting your claims with an attitude of being irrefutable, without having put in the work required to support it. You think we should just value your say so, as if you had posted much more convincing and well-sourced arguments. No one cares how much you want X to be true, only how much you can demonstrate it.
Quote:
I'm not going to pretend that people are dying just so this institutionalised sociopathy we've had for two years can be prolongued even further.
I guess you are lucky you don't know many people who work in front line health care, or who have died. Fewer people are dying thanks to the vaccine and some immunity from previous infection (though as posted earlier in the thread, this tends to be dysfunctional in some cases due to sub-optimal B cell immunity), but excess deaths are still excess deaths, and an active virus pandemic is still going to mutate (we especially need to get blanket coverage in poorer countries, else they become incubators).
Quote:
Amazing how many people aren't aware of this "common knowledge" about how coronaviruses become relatively harmless colds. Maybe you'd be better off alerting them to this "remedial stuff" then they wouldn't be believing they're going to be living this nightmare for the rest of their lives.
It's very early on, in the wikipedia entries for both the common cold and coronaviruses. It's kind of fun that you are trying to be taken seriously as a self-made COVID expert, but didn't have the time to do any basic research on the subject. If you think digging as deep as the first few paragraphs in wikipedia is too much work, then maybe accept that you just don't know that much about the topic, rather than continuing to shit an already pretty full bed.
Quote:
As ever, I am eternally baffled by the affection people seem to have for the last two years
That's a pretty weird strawman. It's not that people like lockdowns and masks, it's just that we're not blubbing about doing what is necessary to prevent our emergency health systems from being overloaded so we can prevent as many excess deaths as possible.
Quote:
If I'm in a minority in wanting it to end, so be it. If people want to wear hazmat gear to go to the supermarket or spend the rest of their lives cooped up behind the four walls of their home, they're perfectly free to keep doing that.
Oh poor you. We're in a global pandemic - this is how we deal with that. The vaccines and the mandates are working as best as they can. Slowing the virus down will also slow down the rate at which it mutates. If you were at all scientific in your thought process (you seem to be more about confirmation bias and petulance about
BeiNg rIGht), you'd realise that maybe the experts know what they are doing with this, and maybe if everyone with a clue disagrees with you, it is because your take is not as solid as you think it is. I doubt that will happen, as you seem pretty invested.
[EDIT] Another thing - deaths are not the only outcome of COVID infection. There is long COVID, increased lifelong risk of cardiovascular complications, permanent lung dysfunction, as well as an entire demographic of kids who will require cardiovascular supervision for their whole lives due to the endothelial inflammation having similar effects to Kawasaki's disease.
Azaran on 2/1/2022 at 17:23
Might ruffle a few feathers, but I think COVID antivirals should be made available over the counter. That way everyone can be prepared in case they're infected, as opposed to catching it, then having to go see a doctor for a prescription, then getting sicker in the meantime (and possibly developing silent organ damage). Can antivirals be dangerous if abused? I'm sure they can. But so can aspirin and Advil
faetal on 2/1/2022 at 17:35
Depends on potential side-effects and interactions with other medicines. If there are many and / or they are severe, then health authorities will require a doctor's assessment per patient to limit potential harm. Worth noting that very few drugs are available over the counter versus prescribed.
Cipheron on 2/1/2022 at 19:03
Quote Posted by Azaran
Might ruffle a few feathers, but I think COVID antivirals should be made available over the counter. That way everyone can be prepared in case they're infected, as opposed to catching it, then having to go see a doctor for a prescription, then getting sicker in the meantime (and possibly developing silent organ damage). Can antivirals be dangerous if abused? I'm sure they can. But so can aspirin and Advil
There's a risk they will become useless if overused, like antibiotics. They don't usually give out antibiotics without a prescription either, and even then, we're already facing big problems due to antibiotic resistant microbes.
So no, handing out antivirals left and right like candy would be a massive mistake. It would shorten the effective life-span of the antivirals significantly.
One scenario would be that lots of people start chugging antivirals even if they don't need them, and not everyone is consistent about it - people tend to be forgetful and not consistent - so the virus would constantly be being exposed to low levels of the antivirals in the wider population. This would then skew the evolution of the virus towards antiviral-tolerant strains. And the effect is that when people *did* become really sick, the hospital discovers that the antiviral is less effective vs a massive infection.
Starker on 3/1/2022 at 07:17
If anybody's interested in why a variant of a virus replacing another doesn't necessarily mean it's more transmissible, here's an expert on viral transmission talking about it in an old episode of TWiV last summer:
[video=youtube_share;sF2MCXMHVqY]https://youtu.be/sF2MCXMHVqY?t=667[/video]
The transmisson talk starts at 11:07 and ends somewhere around 1:04:00. A link to the timestamp: (
https://youtu.be/sF2MCXMHVqY?t=667)
Short summary -- variants replace others all the time and the same happens to influenza, without anybody claiming that it has suddenly become more transmissible when there's a flu outbreak. The reason for it is that in a partially immune population, immune evasiveness is what allows a variant to become more fit. Which is likely what happened with Omicron.
zombe on 6/1/2022 at 17:55
Interesting. Surprisingly high percentage of the long recovery ones (28+ days) get long covid :/
And for completeness sake - this is the page it is used in: (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID)
