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In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

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Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#101

Post by somewhat_drunk »

RansomStark wrote: post #73
somewhat_drunk wrote: post #17

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I…

You are comparing those numbers directly, but that's not how you compare those numbers. First the population size, as per the article, was half what it is now. So you can either double the asian flu deaths or half the covid deaths to account for this. That still leaves a huge gap, but this is where demographic analysis comes in. Usually you see this as age adjusted deaths. In this case, the population of the US has b…

>if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close.

Those are confounding factors, but I think it's quite a stretch to believe they would provide a 5x adjustment (after accounting for 2x population), especially if you also adjust for the drastically improved quality of and access to healthcare, which would skew the adjustment in the other direction.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#102

Post by [deleted] »

shapenamer wrote: post #90
shapenamer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

half my friends lost their jobs because of the not-a-lockdown. The fact that we could still buy FOOD doesn't mean we weren't locked down. What a terrible take. Well guys, we weren't physically barred in our homes and starved so we weren't locked down. Brilliant.

No replies with the downvotes, as impressive as usual. Looking back at this thread it seems every post disagreeing with the ridiculous statement that there were no lockdowns has been downvoted. Amazing.

[deleted]

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#103

Post by aakresearch »

ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #32
mcpackieh wrote: post #7

Besides the economic harm and potential developmental harm induced by closing schools for kids, I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. It gave huge swaths of the population a grudge against the system, a chip on their shoulder that won't go away anytime soon. It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.) And coupling this…

> I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. I don't know about society, but this was the straw the broke the camels back for me. I have not been the same since, I don't think I ever will be. The first lockdown in my province was when things really started to go wrong for me mental health wise in a major way and it only got worse as they continued. What's really been maddening is that people get angry…

Am I looking in the mirror now? Can relate exactly to the T.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#104

Post by southernplaces7 »

knodi123 wrote: post #63
somewhat_drunk wrote: post #17

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I…

[flagged]

Well if they lie so readily and deeply, debunk their arguments themselves. It shouldn't be difficult. It's tiresome to see constant dismissals of points of views based on an obsession with bias. Bias is inherent to most organizations and people, so weight of argument and its evidence is what should count. Going on about the GOP doesn't help either, it shuts down debate dishonestly and ignores the simple fact that many sources from the left of the spectrum are no less capable of dishonest arguments, lies and forcing through their views, complexities be damned.

edit: Also, there's nothing inherently evil or nasty about this organization having the views it does. Their being divergent from progressive liberal views, such as those espoused by many organizations with a left bias, doesn't make them shitty per se.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#105

Post by southernplaces7 »

codeulike wrote: post #54
mensetmanusman wrote: post #15

Did Sweden end up worse off with no lockdown? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-c...

I think when you talk about Sweden, you've got to remember that they do have things like legally enforced sick pay (if you're ill, you stay at home and your employer has to pay you some proportion of your salary) and high quality government funded healthcare. They have a low-ish population density and social norms that give people a _lot_ of personal space when in public. So the experience that Sweden had with no loc…

Sweden has a low population density because it's geographically large (by European standards) and has only 10.2 million people. However, maybe you forget that it's population is also 88.49 percent urbanized, so they are actually quite crowded together, in a way comparable to many American levels.. It's not like those millions lived scattered all over the landscape.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#106

Post by selimthegrim »

mike_hearn wrote: post #96
RansomStark wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that are interest in the nuances of modelling infections, I'm going to leave a Wikipedia extract here. "R_{0} is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population. R_{0} values are usually estimated from mathematical models, and the estimated values are dependent on the model used and values of other…

> it is recommended not to ... compare values based on different models i.e. R0 numbers are worthless. You can't compare these values between pathogens, you can't even compare them between different academic groups studying the same pathogen or between outbreaks of the same pathogen as modeled by different versions of the same software. There's no agreed way to measure this value empirically. Instead they write a pro…

I met the guy (Nick Hengartner) who did the 6 (really 5.7) estimate and knew his colleagues and I can tell you the paper was a lot more careful than that.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#107

Post by rewmie »

dyates wrote: post #64

I think the lockdown concept as implemented in 2020 was a great illustration of the problem of scale. It's trivially true that if you as an individual avoid all contact with others during a flu season, you won't catch the flu. You can probably extend that to your family, maybe a bit further, but at a certain scale it just becomes impossible (and undesirable) because of individual variations in occupation, lifestyle,…

> You can probably extend that to your family, maybe a bit further, but at a certain scale it just becomes impossible (and undesirable) because of individual variations in occupation, lifestyle, risk and infinitely many other factors. And because someone has keep the wheels of society turning. There was no lockdown for supermarket cashiers.

I don't understand what point you tried to make. There were naturally essential workers that were excluded from the lockdown. So what? What's your point?

> My own government got very excited by the prospect of dictatorial (...)

I'm going to cut you right there because you're diving into loony conspiracy territory, and one which was already widely proven to be utter nonsense.

The point of lockdowns is to hinder the spread of a disease so that emergency services had a better chance of coping with the demand without being overwhelmed.

Where I lived, the local government had to commandeer a sporting venue to temporarily store dead bodies. Because hospitals and mortuaries found themselves over capacity.

Some responsible people staid home voluntarily. Others could not stay home because they were front line workers. And then there were the sociopaths and morons who even went out of their way to violate even basic health and safety rules, such as spitting on people on the street.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#108

Post by mike_hearn »

selimthegrim wrote: post #106
mike_hearn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is recommended not to ... compare values based on different models i.e. R0 numbers are worthless. You can't compare these values between pathogens, you can't even compare them between different academic groups studying the same pathogen or between outbreaks of the same pathogen as modeled by different versions of the same software. There's no agreed way to measure this value empirically. Instead they write a pro…

I met the guy (Nick Hengartner) who did the 6 (really 5.7) estimate and knew his colleagues and I can tell you the paper was a lot more careful than that.

Want to explain how they computed it to us? Because if R0 is a real thing then either the people estimating R0=1.something were wrong, or Nick was wrong, and so somewhere some methodologies need to change. I read a fair few modelling papers and R0 (under varying names) was always being used by the model as a free variable used to achieve fit to a historical dataset. It was never being established via lab work, as you might expect given its definition.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#109

Post by mike_hearn »

mrguyorama wrote: post #78
UncleOxidant wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Initially "lockdowns" (and I hesitate to even call them that here in the US, we didn't have literal lockdowns like China had where they welded doors shut on apartments) were seen as positive - "flatten the curve to help our healthcare workers and keep our hospitals from being overrun". Pretty soon, though, they started getting very negative framing from right-wing social media, etc.

>and I hesitate to even call them that here in the US, we didn't have literal lockdowns like China had where they welded doors shut on apartments Were there even places that gave you a citation for being out "uneccessarily"? Every single "lockdown" I'm familiar with in the US was voluntary. There was a period where "non-essential" businesses were forced or encouraged to not operate, but even that still isn't a lockdo…

Yes, the word lockdown means forced quarantine of the entire population by law (except "essential" workers). Were they really voluntary everywhere in the USA? For example, the UK is still processing a giant backlog of fines and imprisonments for people who violated lockdown rules, more than 28,000 so far. You were allowed to go for a walk alone or with members of your household once per day, and go to supermarkets, but nothing else.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#110

Post by spiderfarmer »

rewmie wrote: post #107
dyates wrote: post #64

I think the lockdown concept as implemented in 2020 was a great illustration of the problem of scale. It's trivially true that if you as an individual avoid all contact with others during a flu season, you won't catch the flu. You can probably extend that to your family, maybe a bit further, but at a certain scale it just becomes impossible (and undesirable) because of individual variations in occupation, lifestyle,…

> You can probably extend that to your family, maybe a bit further, but at a certain scale it just becomes impossible (and undesirable) because of individual variations in occupation, lifestyle, risk and infinitely many other factors. And because someone has keep the wheels of society turning. There was no lockdown for supermarket cashiers. I don't understand what point you tried to make. There were naturally essenti…

You're making all valid points and all those points were immediately clear at the start of the lockdowns, for anyone who would listen. Problem is, a lot of people are simply unable to listen to reasonable arguments. That was a problem back then, and they'll remain convinced of their own opinions even in when they are proven to be wrong over and over. It's like people who are religious. You can't reason them out of it.
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