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

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211–220 of 312 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My general opinion of it is that lock downs at the beginning were essential for slowing the spread of the disease and allow the hospitals to prepare for it, but there was a point where the virus was endemic anyway that all the masking and isolation protocols were doing more harm than good.

I will agree that isolation for long periods could have had some negative impacts, but masking never did and never will.

Not even for children in the developmental stage of recognizing facial expressions?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9628515/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9637007/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6694...

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

#212

This article seems to be hoping people will ignore differences between the two pandemics even though we just lived through one of them: * Covid killed far more people. One estimate for global deaths for the 1957 flu is 1.1 million—around the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. alone * COVID-19 hospitalized more people. Apparently, the 1957 flu did not overburden hospitals. Even with efforts to “flatten the cur…

The WHO has global deaths at up to 30 million, most of which are in the staggering incrase of excess deaths the past 1.5 years. Then we have over 100 million with Long Covid officially and it's growing at a staggering rate too. In a lot of countries 1 in 5 have new Covid related health conditions. It's a bit early to be calling it over given its hospitalising millions world wide every week, killings 100s of thousands…

1 in 5 is probably an overestimate, but even the lowest estimates of Long COVID prevalence are alarmingly high. Honestly, even if there wasn't a single new Long COVID case starting today, the fact that many still haven't recovered would make it a significant ongoing health issue.

I agree it's not over, but saying it's raging is not correct either. In the U.S. excess deaths are close to zero [0] and hospitalizations are also low [1]. Other countries largely seem to be seeing similar patterns, although I have not looked at their numbers as closely. We could see another wave, of course, but currently we are in a lull. For what it's worth, I think there are still precautions that make sense because they are are effective and relatively low-cost, like masking in crowded indoor spaces and testing before and after attending large events.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-hospitaliza...

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03268

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is just total word salad. Please look up what habeas corpus means. It's right there in wikipedia or any other reference work of your choice. Informed consent is not a right. Those are enumerated also in reference works. Medicine in the united states is essentially the opposite of socialized. Good lord.

[flagged]

> Simply saying "you're wrong" is not an argument.

Right, which is why I followed up with a categorical and complete description of the problems with your nonsensical word salad.

>> Please look up what habeas corpus means. > You cannot detain people without charges or probable cause.

No, you're thinking of the Fourth Amendment. Habeas corpus is the mechanism by which a person can report a suspected unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court, which can then order that the person be brought forward in person, in order to ascertain whether or not the particular imprisoning entity has the authority to do so. Obviously this has nothing at all to do with vaccines except in the fever swamps.

>> Informed consent is not a right. Those are enumerated also in reference works.

> Okay then, here's a reference work:

> "Informed consent is both an ethical and legal obligation of medical practitioners in the US" according to the NIH: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/

Not therefore a right, got it.

> > Medicine in the united states is essentially the opposite of socialized.

> And yet it was public health officials who imposed lock-downs. There is clearly socialized medicine in the US.

What you're referring to as 'socialized' here is the government, which we as citizens and resident aliens agree to recognize in order to increase and defend the common good. For example, we agree to being policed, we agree to being taxed, we agree to being bound by laws, and we agree in particular in this case to working together to try to stop the collapse of healthcare systems, even if that is inimical to the political chances of the president at the time.

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

#215
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always blows my mind when people suggest the only reason someone wouldn't trust the US government is because they've fallen for some misinformation. The US government does a great job of destroying trust all by itself.

It's really odd seeing comments on HN upvoted like: US government overthrew Iran democratic government -> "I know the US is so evil!" US government secretly injecting US citizens with radioactive material -> "My gosh, what's wrong with these people?" US government lies about reasons for Iraq War -> "One of the great crimes of the century" Then someone suggests , that just maybe , the lockdowns weren't based on scienc…

> It's really odd seeing comments on HN upvoted like:

Not really. The HN user base has been taken over by big-corporation/big-government shills for years now.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine was never meant to prevent infection or transmission, it was to prevent severe symptoms like death

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No, it's true. The matter of fact was that some collective hypnosis or lie was happening, and when you told people that the vaccine wasn't meant to stop transmission, they would just get angry from the cognitive dissonance.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not an absolute right (and it's obviously constrained by the limits of what it is even in our power to control). But then neither is the right not to be detained, or really any other right. All rights run into limits when they come into conflict with other rights.

I think it was a witness test of people's moral philosophy. Rights are fundamentally philosophical position, not a law of physics. Those that favor preserving negative rights over positive rights generally objected to the lockdown. In general, people who favor negative rights do so because they don't come into conflict with each other. Positive rights come into conflict with other positive rights and negative rights,…

I agree. My personal perspective is that I fundamentally don't agree that negative rights don't conflict with each other, or that there is a meaningful difference between positive and negative rights (which is of course a philosophical position that not everybody will agree with).

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

#219
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but an infectious disease is also limiting on people's freedoms, so it's equally not obvious that those rights override the rights of people to be protected from infectious diseases.

There is no right to protection from infectious disease. It appears nowhere in the US Constitution. There was never any valid moral or legal justification for restricting the 1st Amendment right of freedom of assembly during the pandemic.

I would note that while the US Constitution is a valid authority with regard to legal justification (in the US!), it is very much not with regard to moral justification.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The vaccine was never meant to prevent infection or transmission, it was to prevent severe symptoms like death

That is simply not how the vaccine was presented by authorities and the media. They literally said the vaccine will stop you from getting it and stop transmission. It took them months to acknowledge you could still get it and spread it with the vaccine and all the data simply points to a reduction in severity of symptoms.

What happened was they rolled out the vaccine before they had all the data, and it was bit oversold despite lack of data, perhaps to encourage people to get it.

It's water under the bridge now. But don't gaslight people on what they were told.

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