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Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

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Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to be cautious for any reason you want. But don't expect it of others if you can't provide evidence there is reason to be cautious.

We've got plenty of concrete evidence COVID infections can result in long-lasting chronic symptoms. That's sufficient reason to be cautious until we know the rate.

We actually don’t have this evidence. If anything we have strong evidence of the opposite.

SARS-2 radiological abnormalities resolve in months and this is for hospitalized cases which are by definition more severe than your usual cases.

There is really no evidence of what you claim.

We’re now 7 months into the major part of this pandemic and people are still stuck citing the fears we all had in April.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action. From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have g…

To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an answer. Might I suggest that you take advantage of open course syllabi from a major college/university and do some undergraduate readings on the history and moral foundations of law? There is far more to philosophy and jurisprudence than Ayn Rand.

I'm not sure why would you mention Ayn Rand in this context. Since you proposed some studying, here are a few books on the subject that I'd suggest to you:

Lysander Spooner, No Treason The Constitution of No Authority https://oll-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2194/Spooner_1...

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44800

Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty https://mises.org/library/ethics-liberty

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere outside of places New Zealand and Taiwan has had long-term, unconditional lockdowns, and nowhere in the US has reached anywhere near this level of restrictions. I live in a state that ostensibly had “extreme” lockdowns and whole cities and communities decided themselves exempt from the orders with zero consequences. It’s also impossible to stratify people on the basis of health in the US because not everyone…

UK put everyone who cannot work due to Covid on 80% of their salary (sort of). So surely it could do that to a smaller cohort too. That US cannot do it is no reason to not consider it.

The UK did this once. It's probably not going to happen again, certainly not on such generous terms, and one lockdown was not enough to stop Covid - just to delay it until right on top of the winter flu season.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are claiming "long covid" for a virus that's been around for <1 year, so presumably the prevalence of this "long covid" could be studied?

Studies and reviews are taking place. The NIHR one suggests prevalence of symptoms lasting over a month in the 10-20% range.[1] As with any other early stage research relying heavily on self reported symptoms, the prevalence figures are not well established and the mechanisms causing it not yet understood, but they don't look like flu. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3981 , https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/wp-con…

Symptoms over a month and “long term issues” are not the same thing. Severe COVID-19 can cause radiological abnormalities persisting for 3 months, but these heal.

Long COVID is unproven and anecdotal and seems to be more likely to be psychosomatic in most but not all cases.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double 0.5% is 1%. Where'd you get 50%?

I believe the parent was making a rhetorical point: if your base fatality rate were 50%, then doubling it would mean you’d be guaranteed to die. Therefore, saying something “only” doubles your risk of death can understate the impact of what that doubling means in practice.

It's pretty simple: at my age randomly dying isn't something I'm concerned about at all. So doubling those chances is still not something I'm concerned about.

It's certainly not an existential threat to society.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you need to look is not fatality rate, but total fatalities caused by the disease. Flu kills 60000 a year max in US, Covid kills 5x that number. And it is unclear what will be a fatality rate for younger people whose organs are damaged by previous infection.

> Flu kills 60000 a year max in US These numbers are patently false. If this was even remotely true pretty much every family would know someone who has died from the flu at some point. The flu numbers are statistical evaluations based on no actual death counts. The real numbers of deaths from the flu are very likely much, much smaller.

Your logic is actually backwards. Flu is extrapolated but it’s extrapolated fairly. Whereas for COVID-19 we perform mass testing and label every PCR-positive death a COVID death. I hope it’s self evident why that approach will massively inflate COVID deaths but if you would like I can break it down in detail for you.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people. Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people. Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal inf…

While I'm not against the lockdowns for covid, following this line of logic would justify a lockdown 100% of the time due to influenza, which is also a fatal disease spread by respiratory droplets. The hard question is where to draw the line.

True. I don't dispute that absolute safety is impossible.

I'd argue that the socially accepted response to influenza in the west is an awful lot weaker than it should be, however. People who have flu should be self isolating and wearing masks if they must be in public.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#178
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I view doubling a chance of dying in a year, and then returning to normal mortality for the next year, as far preferable to mass business closures, suspension of civil liberties, pulling kids out of school without evidence, mandating everyone wear masks, etc. I guess I never realized how risk averse people apparently are. I imagine these same people never drive a car since those things are deatht…

[A]n English person aged 55–64 years who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 faces a fatality risk that is more than 200 times higher than the annual risk of dying in a fatal car accident. Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

I glanced at the study and the fatality rates they use are absurdly high. They estimate .7% IFR for that age range which is way too high.

Anyway, my point was simply that if we took the same attitude towards risk that you all do with COVID and applied that elsewhere, we’d all be rolling around in hermetically sealed hamster balls until we died of boredom.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, but COVID hysteria has taken hold across the entire world, and HN is no exception unfortunately. You are being reflexively down voted because people view any comparison to Influenza as illegitimate, not realizing that you are making a broader point about risk management and attribution of blame for infection as opposed to saying that SARS-2 and Influenza are literally the same viruses. Personally I…

If you know you have the flu (or COVID-19), surely you know you are likely contagious and can spread it to more vulnerable people. Yes, it is your fault and you deserve blame if you knowingly spread it to others through negligence. Stay home if you're sick.

I agree those who are symptomatic should stay home. But for COVID we go further and tell asymptomatic people to perform (flawed) transmission control measures. Where do we do that with Flu?

The point is if I don’t know I have COVID and spread it to Grandma at the grocery store, in your eyes I’ve killed Grandma. I wonder why we don’t apply that logic everywhere.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#180
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was always a risk even before COVID-19. Regular seasonal influenza can be deadly, especially to the elderly. Patients can transmit it to others when they are asymptomatic or presymptomatic. COVID-19 has a longer incubation period and a significantly higher fatality rate but the same fundamentals still apply. Any of us could have inadvertently killed someone by giving them the flu without even realizing it.

This is all true, but COVID hysteria has taken hold across the entire world, and HN is no exception unfortunately. You are being reflexively down voted because people view any comparison to Influenza as illegitimate, not realizing that you are making a broader point about risk management and attribution of blame for infection as opposed to saying that SARS-2 and Influenza are literally the same viruses. Personally I…

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