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Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

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Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#151

Post by Izkata »

switch007 wrote: post #65
dailykoder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. We didn't know that in the first place though. We expected it, but I shared the sentiment of better be safe then sorry. At least for 2020. I think after that it got handled extremly badly. I can only speak of germany from personal experience though. While I still can understand _some_ of the decissions made by politics, I think they w…

COVID is in a group of viruses with not dissimilar characteristics. It wasn't a completely unknown virus.

I've maintained for a while the worst thing that happened early on was calling it a "novel coronavirus".

In this context, "novel" is medical/scientific jargon that doesn't mean what the average person thinks it means. It should never have made it to the public, because it created a misunderstanding about what was going on. It simply meant "humans haven't encountered this virus before so no one has immunity". Instead the common understanding became "this virus is so different we can't rely on any previous knowledge and have to start from scratch".

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#152

Post by on_the_train »

modeless wrote: post #45
dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

> our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses This is unequivocally false. There is zero benefit to exposure to almost all viruses that infect humans. At best you would get sick and then have limited immunity to that single strain for a period of time, but getting sick is always worse than not getting it. You're not going to get immunity to the flu by "exercising" your immune system with colds or vice ver…

The best case of a virus exposure is not getting sick. Humans have an immune system, which is exactly what was being alluded to

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#153

Post by switch007 »

Izkata wrote: post #151
switch007 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is in a group of viruses with not dissimilar characteristics. It wasn't a completely unknown virus.

I've maintained for a while the worst thing that happened early on was calling it a "novel coronavirus". In this context, "novel" is medical/scientific jargon that doesn't mean what the average person thinks it means. It should never have made it to the public, because it created a misunderstanding about what was going on. It simply meant "humans haven't encountered this virus before so no one has immunity". Instead…

They knew what they were doing

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#154

Post by modeless »

on_the_train wrote: post #152
modeless wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses This is unequivocally false. There is zero benefit to exposure to almost all viruses that infect humans. At best you would get sick and then have limited immunity to that single strain for a period of time, but getting sick is always worse than not getting it. You're not going to get immunity to the flu by "exercising" your immune system with colds or vice ver…

The best case of a virus exposure is not getting sick. Humans have an immune system, which is exactly what was being alluded to

Sure, but not getting sick also won't cause your body to "learn again to fight against viruses" as OP claimed. Regardless of whether you wear a mask or not.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#155

Post by archagon »

vitehozonage wrote: post #115
01100011 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Properly done with what the consensus opinion was at the time the decisions were made, or properly done in hindsight and colored with political bias? It's weird to me how quickly folks forgot the depth of our ignorance during the beginning of covid. Do you remember when we all started washing our groceries when we got home because we weren't even sure if covid survived on surfaces? Remember when we were desperate to…

You seem to have the timing all different compared to my memory. I remember when there were less than 1000 cases worldwide (i remember clearly because i developed a tracker that kept count even then). That was when i personally was scared because we knew nothing about it. But during that time, the mainstream opinion was that nobody cared. Infected Chinese people were allowed to fly all over the world, there were zero…

You are misremembering. The “irrational over-response” came once we realized just how incredibly contagious the disease was, since it ran the risk of completely overwhelming hospitals and causing a collapse of health care systems. (And came very close in some places such as Italy.)

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#156

Post by on_the_train »

modeless wrote: post #154
on_the_train wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best case of a virus exposure is not getting sick. Humans have an immune system, which is exactly what was being alluded to

Sure, but not getting sick also won't cause your body to "learn again to fight against viruses" as OP claimed. Regardless of whether you wear a mask or not.

This is out of my expertise but I have a hard time believing that

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#157

Post by g-b-r »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #140
g-b-r wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian disinformation

I can't be the only person deeply dissatisfied with that as an answer.

It's just the truth

Even if you didn't notice that back then, all the no-vax groups (that I'm aware of) ultimately became overt supporters of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.

There was no opposition to the first, much more drastic, measures; that began when governments finally came to do something right (masks and vaccines), and towards things insignificant compared to the previous restrictions.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#158

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ingohelpinger wrote: post #83
alex1138 wrote: post #43

[flagged]

100%, the amount of legitimate comments, including mine, being flagged or removed without a trace is just astonishing, also getting "you are posting to fast" notices is just another prove for the ongoing censorship. EDIT: the thread went from Nr. 2 to Nr. 115, lol.

It sort of demonstrates the article's point. We're quite determined to not talk about it.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#159

Post by wrp »

kmacleod wrote: post #148
wrp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> look at studies done before 2020 when it became political. Good advice and easy to do. Just use your favorite source to find review articles. You don't need to read many, as conclusions were quite uniform.

When I did the pre-2020 deep-dive I found the studies to be uniformly about the mechanics of the mask (hole size and particle size) and therefore the conclusions uniform on that front. It was only after 2020 that any studies were done on effectiveness in use. The results are a lot more positive there. However, it was still difficult to do controlled studies so the results aren't as strong as one would like.

A big problem with all the discussion about masks is that there are at least three different types of study, and people tend to mix the conclusions.

1. Epidemiological: "Town A mandated masks and town B didn't. Was there any difference in reported rate of pathogen spread?" Reviews over the past century of epidemic responses indicated no overall benefit.

2. Clinical: "In a controlled situation, was there a difference in rate of pathogen spread between the mask-user group and the non-mask group?" There was soft support for some benefit in non-sterile, close-contact environments.

3. Laboratory: "On a laboratory bench, what degree of pathogen capture was achieved by the mask apparatus?" These studies assume that performance on the bench correlates to performance in the field. The N95 mask is a case in point. On the bench, it performs better, but reviews of clinical studies didn't find a strong effect in field use.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#160

Post by kcplate »

friend_Fernando wrote: post #39
dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

All the legitimate studies that did not find masks to be effective had glaring omissions, such as adherence to guidelines. Would you wear the mask properly or let it droop? E.g. from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8499874/ Results: When the adherence to mask usage guidelines is taken into account, the empirical evidence indicates that masks prevent disease transmission: all studies we analysed that did not…

> When the adherence to mask usage guidelines is taken into account

Which pretty much in my observation no one back then was wearing masks correctly, was wearing the correct masks that actually had some effect (when worn correctly), or were changing them at a appropriate frequency according to guidelines.

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