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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)

#241

Post by freedude »

meaningjoj wrote: post #41

For the mathematically-minded, it is worth noting that the Asian flu had an R naught of 1.7 while Covid had an R naught of a bit more than 2. Keeping in mind these are fat-tailed distributions. So an R naught of 2 is a estimate of a true R naught, and because using sample averages to estimate means (true R naught is a mean) is unstable (the fatter the tail, the less moments of the distribution there are), once the re…

The R Naught is not as complicated as it sounds. If you get infected and pass the virus on to one person, and him to one person, and that person to another person, and this pattern persists throughout society, you have an infection rate of 1. If you pass it on to two people, and on down the line, you have an R Naught of 2. And so on it goes. If it falls below one and finally to 0, the pandemic qualifies as endemic.

The infection rate is always conjectural, not really empirical. It’s impossible to discern without universalized, random, and thoroughly accurate testing, tracing, and tracking. Those conditions have never been met in any country or any pandemic. So what seems to be a measure of an existing reality is really true only in theory, not realistically discernible in the midst of a pandemic. At best, it is an estimate.

Masks are ineffective at lowering the R Naught. Social Distancing might.

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

#242

Post by nicoburns »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #237
nicoburns wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Negative rights not conflicting with each other is the main and perhaps only factor that distinguishes them from positive rights, so if you don't think that is true, of course you won't find a difference. When it comes to practical implementation, the tools used to maintain negative rights are the same as the tools used to maintain positive rights, so they appear very similar. If you're familiar with the concept, you…

Consider two possible rights:

(1) The right to complete freedom of movement.

(2) The right to private personal space free of other people

On the face of things, neither of these require anybody to take actions. Nevertheless, one cannot fully exercise (1) without violating (2) and vice versa.

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

#243

Post by freedude »

throwaway72762 wrote: post #159

China did actual lockdowns. The US? Not so much. Herd immunity? Never happened because infection isn't preventing reinfection with a different strain. If there had been actual, effective lockdowns early enough they might have worked but by March 2020 the cat was out of the bag. Japan's model of universal masking, testing, and outdoor interaction without lockdowns is the best model for the future.

"China did actual lockdowns." Yes, they did, and literally made prisoners out of their own people. Which had the unfortunate consequence of killing people for lack of care, food and social contact.

"Herd immunity? Never happened because infection isn't preventing reinfection with a different strain." This is exactly wrong. Once you get covid you may contract a different strain, and if you are a normal healthy individual it will be like a bad cold, if you have symptoms.

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

#244

Post by echlebek »

zackpete wrote: post #211
garciasn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So what are you arguing here, that there's a generation of children that can't recognize facial expressions? Seems unlikely to me.

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

#245

Post by freedude »

jiggawatts wrote: post #191

I love watching people argue over COVID-related politics. It's such a perfect example of how tribal politics and scientific illiteracy affect public opinion and unfortunately, all too often, public policy. I went out of my way to study especially some of the mathematics used for modelling projections into the future. I not only read about the SIR model, but poked around a few of its variants like SIRV, SEIS, MSEIRS,…

I love it when people that didn't look at how accurate the numbers behind the death toll speak to how big they were. The numbers are crap and they can never be anything other than crap by design.

Did you know that not one healthy individual under 30 died from Covid?

Yet, we locked them down, took away their education and ruined their social development at a young age. Shame on you.

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

#246

Post by jjfoooo4 »

echlebek wrote: post #244
zackpete wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So what are you arguing here, that there's a generation of children that can't recognize facial expressions? Seems unlikely to me.

That there’s a generation of children who were speech delayed and under socialized during critical development years.

A pretty uncontroversial view among those who had kids or worked with kids during that time.

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

#247

Post by freedude »

wizofaus wrote: post #95
momirlan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and there's the temptation to govern in a permanent crisis mode. there is no end to reasons why there is a crisis. or, is there a scientific definition of "crisis"?

If anything COVID demonstrated the opposite - governments were all too eager to get back to BAU despite the situation still being severe, resulting in notably high excess death rates.

I think they were tired of defending indefensible policies.

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

#248

Post by triceratops »

mike_hearn wrote: post #109
mrguyorama wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, b…

In the lefty commie California Bay Area where everyone "believes in the science", I was never, ever stopped by the lockdown police to ask why I was outside. I don't know why the UK issuing thousands of fines is relevant to this discussion.

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

#249

Post by edmundsauto »

causi wrote: post #134
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,…

I think the lockdown concept as implemented in 2020 was a great illustration of the problem of scale. This is not a popular opinion but I think the fundamental mistake of lockdowns, at least in North America, was starting from a top-down approach instead of bottom-up. People are going to act like selfish assholes. We ordered them not to. I think instead of threats, we should have aligned their selfish interests with…

Agreed, the cost should have been borne by those who did not take sufficient measures to reduce transmission. Similar to how, when you do something dumb in the ocean and need a rescue, you pay the coast guard back if they determine negligence.

It was negligent to live as if there weren’t a huge pandemic.

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

#250

Post by munch117 »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #223
mabbo wrote: post #111

> Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread- that was obviously not happening. It was to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals. It allowed us to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 by having more resources per sick person.

At least in the American context, it’s far from clear the lockdowns reduced mortality [1]. Adjusting for age/health Florida had similar mortality to California’s. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/02/why-major-study-argue...

Observed excess US deaths: 1.34 million.

Expected deaths from an unchecked epidemic: 330 million × 50% infection rate × 4% fatality rate = 6.6 million.

50% infection rate is the estimated no-lockdown epidemic penetration rate that I remember hearing from an epidemiologist. 4% was the fatality rate in Italy, February 2020, when hospitals were overwhelmed.

Not even close.

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