Live data from Hacker News

Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

www150.statcan.gc.ca

131–139 of 139 posts

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#131
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are situations where that statistic/categorization is meaningful, but not in this context of trying to rank different causative diseases and public health risks. For example, imagine that 99% of all the euthanized are people who chose it after a diagnosis of the "Insane Agony Virus." Obviously we would want all those mortal data-points to get counted as reasons to fight IAV, even if only a tiny number of people…

Because secondary effects are impossible to untangle or verify. Maybe IAV is just a made up term that people use, or far more people believe that they have IAV than is actually the case, or that they are wrongly convinced that IAV is incurable or untreatable, or the medical system has been perversely incentivized to encourage medically assisted suicide in the case of IAV diagnosis, or it's actually the case that it's…

I read that as "What-If Something Completely Different Instead", rather than engaging with the point being highlighted by the hypothetical.

The correct breakdown depends on goals. If someone is stabbed with a knife, the important cause(s) of death won't be "because a lot of cells couldn't synthesize ATP anymore", and probably not " saying the wrong thing to Stabby McStabberson."

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know that such viruses have to enter your body through eyes, ears, nose or throat or there’s no way to get an infection. Why do you think it’s so surprising that blocking access to your respiratory system by a filter that is small enough to exclude the virus (whether cold, flu or COVID) prevents you from getting sick? I never said it would be surprising, I did however say that taking that seemingly plausible arg…

> Is it? Do you have empirical data to support this claim? Yes. There’s all sorts of papers to this effect. The primary transmission vector by far is nose and mouth and masks are very well established to substantially reduce infection rates. Glasses also reduce rates but not as much. The claim that studies are frequently not replicated is a good general rule of thumb. It just don’t apply to COVID where there have bee…

> The primary transmission vector by far is nose and mouth and masks are very well established to substantially reduce infection rates.

Which doesn't at all explain all of the studies that found little to no effect to pervasive masking. If the effect is as strong as you're suggesting, then even partial masking would show an effect, even at population levels. This issue is simply not as settled as you're portraying.

> It’s that you feel that people recommending masking have placed a value judgement on people who don’t and I totally get that. But notice I did nothing of the kind.

This thread started on this premise, and I replied along those lines, and then you replied to me. I've made no assumptions about you other than you're clearly pro-mask and convinced by the evidence, and the only position I've staked is that the evidence is plausible but not as clear as you and others have been portraying.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it? Do you have empirical data to support this claim? Yes. There’s all sorts of papers to this effect. The primary transmission vector by far is nose and mouth and masks are very well established to substantially reduce infection rates. Glasses also reduce rates but not as much. The claim that studies are frequently not replicated is a good general rule of thumb. It just don’t apply to COVID where there have bee…

> The primary transmission vector by far is nose and mouth and masks are very well established to substantially reduce infection rates. Which doesn't at all explain all of the studies that found little to no effect to pervasive masking. If the effect is as strong as you're suggesting, then even partial masking would show an effect, even at population levels. This issue is simply not as settled as you're portraying. >…

> Which doesn't at all explain all of the studies that found little to no effect to pervasive masking

Not sure what you're referring to here. Statistically, there will always exist studies that show the null result. That doesn't mean that there's no evidence of effect. There's been lots of repro.

Here's a link you can use to start exploring this topic with links to studies:

https://coronavirus.delaware.gov/covid-19-myth-or-fact/myth-...

I'm sure you can find other studies. But ultimately clearly no amount of information here will change your conclusion that there's no evidence that masks are effective so I don't know what more to say here. Good luck.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A month late getting booster shots into pharmacies and blatantly corrupt games played with sole sourcing the contract to a single pharmacy chain, which itself caused a pile of doses to expire and be thrown out.

A politician was responsible for that? I thought vaccines (in the US at least) are procured by the pharmacies and paid for by the recipients.

This isn't the US.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. Will you retract your insult?

They didn't. Did you bother to read what they posted? They very obviously didn't read beyond the headline.

I knew you wouldn't.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#136
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no scientific evidence for being able to "train your immune system". There is plenty of evidence the opposite happens. Covid especially can cause permanent immune damage.

We have an innate immune responses and adaptive immune responses. Innate immune responses look for common attributes of certain pathogens and then trigger an adaptive immune response if needed. Adaptive immune responses are highly specific to certain pathogens and can provide long lasting immunity to some of those pathogens, such as measles. How would vaccines work if we only had innate immunity? So being exposed to…

For stuff like colds, the adaptive response is typically hampered by genetic change/drift in the virus rather than lessening of the response.

Of course the ability to produce the not quite right antibodies is still often valuable.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't. Did you bother to read what they posted? They very obviously didn't read beyond the headline.

I knew you wouldn't.

Funny how that works eh? I read those articles when they were first published and again when I linked them.

But because the truth is inconvenient, I must certainly be lying.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country if somebody died with COVID, then COVID was found as the reason of death. Hospitals had additional bonuses for writing COVID into reason of death. Therefore I read such statistics with a grain of salt. I find your comment offensive.

> Hospitals had additional bonuses for writing COVID into reason of death This is an absurd conspiracy theory that has been proven untrue time and time again. I find your propagation of such debunked nonsense offensive.

Not at all. As someone who has family in hospitals I can say that this happened. At least in my locality.

Can you claim the same using your experience?

That is why I can say these things with total certainty. Conspiracy theory is a derogatory term to dismiss any critical voices.

In essence saying that something is "conspiracy theory" is meaningless, and it itself does not say anything. It does not provide evidence, nor logical thinking. It is represents non-cricital thinking towards things.

Post reply on HN