Our Covid Response

Thaluikhain

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:rolleyes:

I hope, one day, you can realise that you don't have to stress yourself out unnecessarily by believing any quack with a YouTube channel who has realised conspiracy theory and bad science is a way to make money.
Or alternatively, believe some cool conspiracy theories. Maybe try looking into the Shaver Mystery. Might not be cool per se, but at least it's different. Did you know there's a secret underground world full of derogatory robots? And that elevators often go far down, below any floor the building is supposed to have?

Was briefly popular in the 40s and 50s after a sci-fi writer wrote all about it as fiction and then revealed it was all true.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Yeah, while most conspiracy theories tend to just boil down to The Jews or Nazi Aryan myths, taken at face value they're a lot of fun.

I can't wait for the moon to hatch, personally.
 

Thaluikhain

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More seriously, if you want some conspiracies about covid, there's lots of real ones.

Lots of rich people decided that their profits were more important than whether or not people died. This one applies regardless of whether covid is going on.

Politicians gave lots of money to systems for combating covid that didn't work, but were run by their friends. Big problem in the UK.

Politicians downplayed covid to score political points off politicians trying to do something to stop people dying.

A lot of restrictions were badly handled because the people handling them didn't really care. Rules were enforced on the little people (often hard, but defensible ones) that were ignored for the rich.

Those are all big, serious problems that actually happened. They don't have the exoticness of being made up, sure, but being true should count for something.
 

tstorm823

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More seriously, if you want some conspiracies about covid, there's lots of real ones.

Lots of rich people decided that their profits were more important than whether or not people died. This one applies regardless of whether covid is going on.

Politicians gave lots of money to systems for combating covid that didn't work, but were run by their friends. Big problem in the UK.

Politicians downplayed covid to score political points off politicians trying to do something to stop people dying.

A lot of restrictions were badly handled because the people handling them didn't really care. Rules were enforced on the little people (often hard, but defensible ones) that were ignored for the rich.

Those are all big, serious problems that actually happened. They don't have the exoticness of being made up, sure, but being true should count for something.
The company making insane amounts of money off of covid shots lobbied the regulating bodies to convince you that you needed to get that identical shot like 4 times...
 

Trunkage

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More seriously, if you want some conspiracies about covid, there's lots of real ones.

Lots of rich people decided that their profits were more important than whether or not people died. This one applies regardless of whether covid is going on.

Politicians gave lots of money to systems for combating covid that didn't work, but were run by their friends. Big problem in the UK.

Politicians downplayed covid to score political points off politicians trying to do something to stop people dying.

A lot of restrictions were badly handled because the people handling them didn't really care. Rules were enforced on the little people (often hard, but defensible ones) that were ignored for the rich.

Those are all big, serious problems that actually happened. They don't have the exoticness of being made up, sure, but being true should count for something.
Ah... you forgot our PM secretly taking over department in the name of Covid. Like, Bojo giving his buds sweet deals, heaps of money and asking them to sit on their hands is really bad... but ScoMo takes the cake. Even Trump didn't do that
 

Phoenixmgs

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Backpedaling meaning that you changed your position mid-argument to avoid having to own up to having been wrong. Your position has consistently been - for a long time now - that methods to contain Covid were excessive on the grounds that Covid was less dangerous than the flu. How was it that you put it? Oh yes, something to the tune of "lockdowns cost more lives than Covid"? That makes it pretty clear that your position was applied to the general population, and you've been scrambling to evidence that claim since 2021.

Hell, in this conversation, the very thing I was taking you to task over was your rhetorical question of "The question would be, did covid kill more kids than the flu USUALLY does during that time". In no uncertain terms: Did it kill more in that period. That is explicitly a population question. And yet now you're claiming that you were only ever talking about raw lethality purely on an individual level?

Pull the other one.



I'm not trying to figure out the rate of Long Covid. In fact I've repeatedly pointed out that comparative incidence rate is irrelevant. To repeat:



What I've been explaining to you is how doctors make a positive diagnosis for long covid, which you have been insisting was impossible despite the very studies you cited - under the delusion that they supported your arguments - being predicated on those same methods.




1) Once again: comparative incidence rate is irrelevant.
2) You're a random schmuck on the internet demanding that other random schmucks on the internet provide you with in-depth technical explanations that you have demonstrated yourself incapable of understanding, and then interpreting your failure to understand those explanations as meaning that the underlying position - not your understanding, not even the explanation, but the position - was deficient.
2a) In actuality, it's mostly just down to you being an obstinate contrarian.
3) Again: what I've been explaining to you is that the paper doesn't say what you claimed it did, and that the conclusion you attributed to it was well outside the scope of its data. That's not even an argument against the paper, that's saying you misunderstood and misrepresented it.
That was never my argument. I said covid was less deadly than the flu last March when ONS data said it was, not before that. I have said for a long time that covid was similar to the flu in KIDS and that any restrictions for kids has been stupid and baseless. My argument against most of the covid restrictions was that they've caused more overall harm than benefit (hence why Sweden has the lowest excess death rate in all of Europe during the pandemic) and most of the restrictions never made sense or actually did anything as well. Saying the flu killed like no kids when the flu was gone for a year or two to prove covid is more deadly is a bullshit argument. It's like saying Hot Wheels killed more kids during that time and claiming Hot Wheels are more deadly than the flu.

The rate of long covid is important because it is all about the comparison to other similar infections. If there's say 300 million respiratory infections a year from flu, RSV, rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, etc. and covid kicked them all out and is comprising 90% of respiratory infections all year (still the same total infections), and the long covid rate from covid is the same or less of the other viruses' long symptom triggers, then we are at the same rate or lower of long whatevers. So why should we give MORE concern (not NONE) to the same thing that's happening to the same amount of people that we've already had before?

Doctors don't really care if it's long covid so why would they do some unneeded tests for that? It's not like you treat long covid differently than someone else that has long symptoms from something else so why would you care if it's long covid or not if you're a doctor? Thus, why I said you need a study.

A new study literally found no association with long covid and covid among young people. They question the WHO's definition of long covid because it doesn't really makes much sense. We don't know much about these long-term symptoms so maybe they aren't even caused by infections, that was never a thing that was proven before covid either.


OK, let's put this in the context of resource allocation. Which of the following is a better expenditure for public health and wellbeing:

1) contact tracing;

2) ensuring Exxon-Mobbil makes 0.01% higher profit in a year?



It's not either/or, as has been explained many times over. More than enough resources exist to do both.



...yet they knew enough to implement restrictions. They considered the high (and fast growing) rate of diagnosed infection, combined with the knowledge that undiagnosed cases will be much higher, to be enough information.
Those 2 are completely non-related...

The resources don't just magically exist... The amount of workers and money it would take to contact trace covid could be used so much fucking better to improve public health. Why not just contact trace the flu or head colds if we have the resources?

Sweden knew enough to not implement restrictions...


Fauci and the CDC didn't shut those schools, though, did they?

Fauci said plenty about schools - including advocating keeping them open as much as possible. But Fauci also had to point out, because the facts said so, that children are hospitalised by and die of covid, that open schools will increase spread of covid, and so on. The right-wing bullshit machine likes to pretend this was Fauci being "wrong", and to make out he ordered school closures, and they evidently suckered you hook, line and sinker. But he wasn't wrong and he didn't shut schools. Mostly, he just told people what the score was, and the decisions to shut schools were made by state or local authorities.



So you might think... but that's the peril of watching so many YouTube videos by people who want you to freak out about vaccine-related myocarditis.

However, the USA for the most part did not have a traditional viral vector vaccine: regulators did not give approval to the AZ/Oxford vaccine because they had (not wholly unreasonable) concerns about the clinical trial data, and the J&J/Janssen vaccine has it's own adverse side effects even if it might be better for myocarditis. And it might not be better for myocarditis, because data suggests myocarditis is an increased risk of any vaccine anyway (although very rare). Plus, vaccine-related myocarditis even amongst this most vulnerable group was exceptionally rare and overwhelmingly low severity when it occurred. In fact, inevitably of course, Covid infection in the unvaccinated caused a higher risk of myocarditis (mild or severe). So... the better alternative to the mRNA vaccines for US men under 25 was, er, nothing obviously supportable by the data, or available.

In other words, the decision of the US regulators was at minimum reasonable by the data and situation. There's not really a problem here. There's a problem manufactured by the right wing, anti-vaxxers, and self-interested narcissists like ZDogg and Prasad who've found a bunch of suckers to sell subscriptions and YouTube advertising to.



:rolleyes:

I hope, one day, you can realise that you don't have to stress yourself out unnecessarily by believing any quack with a YouTube channel who has realised conspiracy theory and bad science is a way to make money.
Fauci and the CDC came up with recommendations that the schools then followed... Why do you think colleges are mandating not only vaccines but boosters? There's literally no science backing that up yet the CDC recommends it so colleges mandate it...

Yet schools being open in Sweden didn't increase covid spread...

Fauci was pretty wrong by months from what we knew due to Israel (and the fact that Pfizer/Moderna never even did the trials in the first place) in this article right here. Fauci was literally spreading misinformation right here. Also, remember when Fauci initially told the truth about masks, then lied about them and continued lying about them. But of course that's just some right-wing bullshit machine and not like, you know, actually fucking science from the fucking gold standard of Cochrane.

I got the J&J vaccine because I did the research for my age/gender group, the adverse effect of clotting with the vaccine was IIRC almost exclusively women. It was the safer option for me, plus it was one and done. See, you're repeating that bullshit misuse of myocarditis information that is technically true but misses the point entirely and is basically misinformation. For the groups of people who do experience myocarditis at high rates from the vaccine, the rate of myocarditis is much higher from the vaccine vs covid infection. Why did men under 25 need the vaccine anyway? Only vulnerable groups of young ages actually gain benefit from the vaccine so why would you force someone to get any treatment that's not benefiting them? It's pretty funny how everyone got so mad at Joe Rogan for saying young healthy people don't need to get vaccinated and that statement is at worst half right.

Prasad went to Denmark recently and gave a speech and basically everyone in Denmark agrees with him on covid and their policies in the country also reflect that. Is Denmark some right-wing haven that no one knows about? Or does Denmark literally just follow actual science?

I'll believe what Cochrane says over some dude on the Escapist.
 

Silvanus

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Those 2 are completely non-related...

The resources don't just magically exist... The amount of workers and money it would take to contact trace covid could be used so much fucking better to improve public health. Why not just contact trace the flu or head colds if we have the resources?
They're related in the only way that matters: they're both potential costs to a country's finances. Meaning that a cut to one can pay for the other.

The source of the money used to pay for something doesn't have to be related to it. Why on earth would it? Governments do this literally all the time: cut one expenditure to finance a different priority.

Cut the subsidisation of enormous, profitable companies. Pay for an increase in public health expenditure. And voila: then paying for contact tracing has zero impact on other public health approaches, and you can have a multifaceted approach.
 

Ag3ma

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Fauci and the CDC came up with recommendations that the schools then followed... Why do you think colleges are mandating not only vaccines but boosters? There's literally no science backing that up yet the CDC recommends it so colleges mandate it...
Yes, the CDC recommends people get vaccinated and other infection control strategies, as the CDC very much should.

How individual schools, colleges and governments decide to act on that is up to those institutions.

For the groups of people who do experience myocarditis at high rates from the vaccine,
No demographic groups experience high rates of myocarditis from covid vaccines. They experience very low rates of myocarditis, albeit in some cases notably higher than they'd have if they neither got the vaccine nor contracted covid or other illnesses.

the rate of myocarditis is much higher from the vaccine vs covid infection.
No, it isn't.

The sole concern compared to covid infection regarding myocarditis may be with the Moderna vaccine in men under 40. However, contextually, even there the risk of myocarditis is both so low, and so low compared to the overall benefits of vaccination (remembering that covid can do a great deal more, and worse, than just cause myocarditis), it's not enough to officially recommend against it.

Why did men under 25 need the vaccine anyway?
Because they can be hospitalised or die from covid, obviously. And they get hospitalised or die from covid at a much higher rate than they get myocarditis from any vaccine.

You see, this illustrates how hopelessly wrong-headed your view of all this is. You are telling us you took the J&J vaccine to reduce your risk of myocarditis. That's fine, I have no problem with that. The problem is that after then getting a marginal risk improvement for your own health, you're incredibly cavalier about the risks for everyone else in a way that is completely inconsistent with how you have applied it to yourself. I think you do not understand the numbers at play at all. And I strongly suspect that is the result of watching far too much politicised, biased, quasi-anti-vaxx media.

Prasad went to Denmark recently and gave a speech and basically everyone in Denmark agrees with him on covid and their policies in the country also reflect that. Is Denmark some right-wing haven that no one knows about? Or does Denmark literally just follow actual science?
Sure, Vinay Prasad says Vinay Prasad is awesome. That's one of the reasons I think he's got narcissistic tendencies.
 

Asita

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That was never my argument. I said covid was less deadly than the flu last March when ONS data said it was, not before that. I have said for a long time that covid was similar to the flu in KIDS and that any restrictions for kids has been stupid and baseless. My argument against most of the covid restrictions was that they've caused more overall harm than benefit (hence why Sweden has the lowest excess death rate in all of Europe during the pandemic) and most of the restrictions never made sense or actually did anything as well. Saying the flu killed like no kids when the flu was gone for a year or two to prove covid is more deadly is a bullshit argument. It's like saying Hot Wheels killed more kids during that time and claiming Hot Wheels are more deadly than the flu.
Bluntly, you've also demonstrated beyond dispute that you can't even keep track of your own arguments. By September of 2020, you were trying to dismiss Covid as the "Least deadly pandemic ever" whose cure was "literally vitamin D" as part of your further efforts to downplay it as a non-issue by claiming that pretty much the only people even getting severe symptoms - much less dying from it - were those with Vitamin D deficiencies (and therefore that Covid did not warrant a dedicated treatment and should instead be treated as symptomatic of a Vitamin D deficiency). And now you want to lie to us that you are only now trying to claim that Covid is less dangerous? Then again, I'm not surprised that you don't remember your own arguments, because you never put any thought into any of them. Your position has never been informed or cohesive, rather they've mostly been you reflexively disagreeing with people telling you that your half-assed youtube-fed positions are nonsensical and misrepresent the sources you're pretending to defer to.

This has never been about the data for you, it has always been about your ego and refusal to accept that don't know the subject as well as you think you do. This is all about you wanting to believe that you're more clever than you actually are.

That you're now trying to claim that "it was never your argument" is both entirely unsurprising and worth less than nothing, especially when you jump right back into making the same argument in the same fucking paragraph. "Saying the flu killed like no kids when the flu was gone for a year or two to prove covid is more deadly is a bullshit argument". Not that you'd ever realize that, because at the end of the day you haven't researched the topic or given it any real thought. You're just reflexively going "Nuh-uh! I'm not wrong! you're the one who's wrong!" whenever anyone points out that your ignorance is well apparent.

Never mind that you're pushing yet another strawman argument, considering that the numbers you're bastardizing invoke past years of flu as their point of comparison, specifically to avoid the complication you're accusing them of. Eg, here's the statement I made a few pages back: "By the article's own account, despite the fact that people are still being cautious about spreading respiratory infections, Omicron still elevated the death toll by 50% over the typical flu season, and 30% higher than historically bad years." Note how this doesn't refer to a historically low year for flu - as you try to imply - but instead to the typical year and especially pronounced years.

The rate of long covid is important because it is all about the comparison to other similar infections. If there's say 300 million respiratory infections a year from flu, RSV, rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, etc. and covid kicked them all out and is comprising 90% of respiratory infections all year (still the same total infections), and the long covid rate from covid is the same or less of the other viruses' long symptom triggers, then we are at the same rate or lower of long whatevers. So why should we give MORE concern (not NONE) to the same thing that's happening to the same amount of people that we've already had before?
Because you're making ceteris paribus assumptions where ceteris paribus does not apply. Once again: comparative rate for long term complications is irrelevant because concerns about Long Covid are not predicated on comparative incidence rate as contrasted with the long term aftereffects for other diseases. This isn't a footrace wherein all the prize money goes to the first person past the post.

Generously, that'd be what we'd call the Fallacy of Relative Privation (aka the "Appeal to Worse Problems" Fallacy), a positively puerile fallacy that insists that if something isn't the foremost example of its kind, it's not worth concerning yourself with. Eg, "Breast Cancer isn't as bad as Brain Cancer, so why do we make a big deal about being vigilant about it?" When you understand why trying to object to Breast Cancer screenings by comparing Breast Cancer's fatality rate to that of Brain Cancer is idiotic, you will understand why your argument here is equally stupid.

Never mind that you're insisting on thinking of this as a binary "yes/no" as to whether or not you can say that 'long <x>" exists, without regards to what that means in each context. For instance, there's a world of difference in both severity and duration between Long Covid and a persistent cold.

Doctors don't really care if it's long covid so why would they do some unneeded tests for that? It's not like you treat long covid differently than someone else that has long symptoms from something else so why would you care if it's long covid or not if you're a doctor? Thus, why I said you need a study.
You were the one who repeatedly demanded that I explain to you "What way do we have of confirming long covid". You do not get to spend pages presumptuously claiming that "there's no way to prove long covid one way or another" and then turn around and go "nobody cares" when I explain to you that not only is it quite possible and employed, but that your own sources were predicated on such methods.

A new study literally found no association with long covid and covid among young people. They question the WHO's definition of long covid because it doesn't really makes much sense. We don't know much about these long-term symptoms so maybe they aren't even caused by infections, that was never a thing that was proven before covid either.
Oh goody, you're citing yet another study that you don't understand, and which you are yet again exaggerating the scope and conclusions of. Whereas you make a generalized claim that it shows no relation between Covid and Long Covid, the study only claims that non-specific symptoms are not unique to Long Covid (as implied by the term "non-specific"), and that a particular fatigue-focused definition needs refinement as the symptoms it cites are nonspecific and thus arguably better described as PIFS. And yet again, it's a "further study is needed" paper that acknowledges that it lacks statistical power due to its low sample size, with that sample further being prone to self-selection bias, and that its focus on mild Covid cases (wherein long covid is not an expected complication) means that its results are of questionable application to more severe cases.

So yet again, your presumptions are leading you by the nose and you have completely failed to understand what you cited.

Seriously, just stop.
 
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Ag3ma

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you know, actually fucking science from the fucking gold standard of Cochrane.
My bold - note how that same term comes in the following quotation and in what context:


AFter all, the authors cited above do an excellent job of that, although they do miss a lot of important context about the Cochrane Collaborative, Tom Jefferson, and the EBM paradigm under which Cochrane operates and that it has successfully promoted as the “gold standard” of scientific and medical evidence. I want to ask: What is it about Cochrane and EBM fundamentalists who promote the EBM paradigm as the be-all and end-all of medical evidence, even for questions for which it is ill-suited, that can produce misleading results?

Some interesting comments about the Cochrane review's author and what's really going on in his head, and the philosophy behind his movement and how they apply science to answering real-world problems.

I'll believe what Cochrane says over some dude on the Escapist.
There are two problems here. The first is that you believe what the Cochrane says with no reference to any other science. This is what much of what the last 3 years have been about - your scientific illiteracy and latching onto whatever suits your biases without a wider grasp of the field. The same site includes a criticism of that particular study (of which there are many):

The second is that you don't even believe what Cochrane says. You believe a sort of distorted view of what the Cochrane says, through a prism of your own biases. Although to be fair, that the Cochrane Institute itself had to adjust the wording of its summary because it was being serially misrepresented (by people like you) tells us a certain something.
 

Phoenixmgs

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They're related in the only way that matters: they're both potential costs to a country's finances. Meaning that a cut to one can pay for the other.

The source of the money used to pay for something doesn't have to be related to it. Why on earth would it? Governments do this literally all the time: cut one expenditure to finance a different priority.

Cut the subsidisation of enormous, profitable companies. Pay for an increase in public health expenditure. And voila: then paying for contact tracing has zero impact on other public health approaches, and you can have a multifaceted approach.
But you don't have the workers for contact tracing... Also, like I've said a million times now, whatever resources you put into contact tracing can be put into some other public health initiative to improve public health far more than contact tracing. Why spend say $100 million to get a 2% public health improvement when you can spend that to get a 10% pubic health improvement by doing something different? Also, like I've said again like a million times now, Americans are not gonna answer unknown phone numbers or download a covid tracking app. You have so many logistical issues with contact tracing in America.

Yes, the CDC recommends people get vaccinated and other infection control strategies, as the CDC very much should.

How individual schools, colleges and governments decide to act on that is up to those institutions.



No demographic groups experience high rates of myocarditis from covid vaccines. They experience very low rates of myocarditis, albeit in some cases notably higher than they'd have if they neither got the vaccine nor contracted covid or other illnesses.



No, it isn't.

The sole concern compared to covid infection regarding myocarditis may be with the Moderna vaccine in men under 40. However, contextually, even there the risk of myocarditis is both so low, and so low compared to the overall benefits of vaccination (remembering that covid can do a great deal more, and worse, than just cause myocarditis), it's not enough to officially recommend against it.



Because they can be hospitalised or die from covid, obviously. And they get hospitalised or die from covid at a much higher rate than they get myocarditis from any vaccine.

You see, this illustrates how hopelessly wrong-headed your view of all this is. You are telling us you took the J&J vaccine to reduce your risk of myocarditis. That's fine, I have no problem with that. The problem is that after then getting a marginal risk improvement for your own health, you're incredibly cavalier about the risks for everyone else in a way that is completely inconsistent with how you have applied it to yourself. I think you do not understand the numbers at play at all. And I strongly suspect that is the result of watching far too much politicised, biased, quasi-anti-vaxx media.



Sure, Vinay Prasad says Vinay Prasad is awesome. That's one of the reasons I think he's got narcissistic tendencies.
Why would the CDC recommend something they have no data for (boosters for non-vulnerable for example)? Many countries no longer even recommend certain vaccines and boosters for certain groups of people because there's no data for that so no reason to recommend it.

High rate for getting something from a vaccine is of course lower than what you'd normally call a high rate because vaccines are supposed to be extremely safe.

Calling myocarditis "JUST myocarditis" is a bunch of bullshit, it's not a sore arm or fever for a day or two. Myocarditis is a serious side effect and several countries have in fact officially recommended against certain vaccines/boosters in certain groups because they look at the data. Remember the cost-benefit analysis of the vaccine in a certain age group was only shown as providing overall benefits in nonimmune girls with a comorbidity so not even healthy nonimmune girls (with much much lower or no myocarditis issue) found a benefit to getting vaccinated.

Where's you data claiming men under 25 (especially healthy men) did indeed receive overall benefits from the vaccine?

How is Prasad or Denmark or Sweden or Norway or Finland not merely following the data? Are they all in cahoots with the American right-wing for some reason?


Bluntly, you've also demonstrated beyond dispute that you can't even keep track of your own arguments. By September of 2020, you were trying to dismiss Covid as the "Least deadly pandemic ever" whose cure was "literally vitamin D" as part of your further efforts to downplay it as a non-issue by claiming that pretty much the only people even getting severe symptoms - much less dying from it - were those with Vitamin D deficiencies (and therefore that Covid did not warrant a dedicated treatment and should instead be treated as symptomatic of a Vitamin D deficiency). And now you want to lie to us that you are only now trying to claim that Covid is less dangerous? Then again, I'm not surprised that you don't remember your own arguments, because you never put any thought into any of them. Your position has never been informed or cohesive, rather they've mostly been you reflexively disagreeing with people telling you that your half-assed youtube-fed positions are nonsensical and misrepresent the sources you're pretending to defer to.

This has never been about the data for you, it has always been about your ego and refusal to accept that don't know the subject as well as you think you do. This is all about you wanting to believe that you're more clever than you actually are.

That you're now trying to claim that "it was never your argument" is both entirely unsurprising and worth less than nothing, especially when you jump right back into making the same argument in the same fucking paragraph. "Saying the flu killed like no kids when the flu was gone for a year or two to prove covid is more deadly is a bullshit argument". Not that you'd ever realize that, because at the end of the day you haven't researched the topic or given it any real thought. You're just reflexively going "Nuh-uh! I'm not wrong! you're the one who's wrong!" whenever anyone points out that your ignorance is well apparent.

Never mind that you're pushing yet another strawman argument, considering that the numbers you're bastardizing invoke past years of flu as their point of comparison, specifically to avoid the complication you're accusing them of. Eg, here's the statement I made a few pages back: "By the article's own account, despite the fact that people are still being cautious about spreading respiratory infections, Omicron still elevated the death toll by 50% over the typical flu season, and 30% higher than historically bad years." Note how this doesn't refer to a historically low year for flu - as you try to imply - but instead to the typical year and especially pronounced years.



Because you're making ceteris paribus assumptions where ceteris paribus does not apply. Once again: comparative rate for long term complications is irrelevant because concerns about Long Covid are not predicated on comparative incidence rate as contrasted with the long term aftereffects for other diseases. This isn't a footrace wherein all the prize money goes to the first person past the post.

Generously, that'd be what we'd call the Fallacy of Relative Privation (aka the "Appeal to Worse Problems" Fallacy), a positively puerile fallacy that insists that if something isn't the foremost example of its kind, it's not worth concerning yourself with. Eg, "Breast Cancer isn't as bad as Brain Cancer, so why do we make a big deal about being vigilant about it?" When you understand why trying to object to Breast Cancer screenings by comparing Breast Cancer's fatality rate to that of Brain Cancer is idiotic, you will understand why your argument here is equally stupid.

Never mind that you're insisting on thinking of this as a binary "yes/no" as to whether or not you can say that 'long <x>" exists, without regards to what that means in each context. For instance, there's a world of difference in both severity and duration between Long Covid and a persistent cold.



You were the one who repeatedly demanded that I explain to you "What way do we have of confirming long covid". You do not get to spend pages presumptuously claiming that "there's no way to prove long covid one way or another" and then turn around and go "nobody cares" when I explain to you that not only is it quite possible and employed, but that your own sources were predicated on such methods.



Oh goody, you're citing yet another study that you don't understand, and which you are yet again exaggerating the scope and conclusions of. Whereas you make a generalized claim that it shows no relation between Covid and Long Covid, the study only claims that non-specific symptoms are not unique to Long Covid (as implied by the term "non-specific"), and that a particular fatigue-focused definition needs refinement as the symptoms it cites are nonspecific and thus arguably better described as PIFS. And yet again, it's a "further study is needed" paper that acknowledges that it lacks statistical power due to its low sample size, with that sample further being prone to self-selection bias, and that its focus on mild Covid cases (wherein long covid is not an expected complication) means that its results are of questionable application to more severe cases.

So yet again, your presumptions are leading you by the nose and you have completely failed to understand what you cited.

Seriously, just stop.
I never said any of that in that kind of regard. I said along the lines of why not try vitamin d because there's literally no harm in doing so and there was observational data pointing to it helping (along with mechanistic reasons too). We tried masks when no data said they worked and there are obvious harms to masking, and masks are more expensive than vitamin d. I think it's pretty obvious vitamin d in the winter will improve your overall health more than a mask and it's cheaper. What novel pandemic has had a lower IFR than covid in human history?

Again, you're making claims that I never made. I didn't say long covid shouldn't be of concern, I said why make it of more concern than we normally do? If breast cancer and say testicular cancer (to not have to adjust for half the population getting one vs all of the population getting the other) have the same danger, why would you be more concerned about one than the other?

You need a study (with the ways you explained) because you ain't gonna get all doctors' offices doing the same methods. That's the issue, not that what you said was wrong. Let's do a study with the proper methods, that's all I've said.

Yeah, we know very little about these long-term diseases, that was my point.

My bold - note how that same term comes in the following quotation and in what context:


AFter all, the authors cited above do an excellent job of that, although they do miss a lot of important context about the Cochrane Collaborative, Tom Jefferson, and the EBM paradigm under which Cochrane operates and that it has successfully promoted as the “gold standard” of scientific and medical evidence. I want to ask: What is it about Cochrane and EBM fundamentalists who promote the EBM paradigm as the be-all and end-all of medical evidence, even for questions for which it is ill-suited, that can produce misleading results?

Some interesting comments about the Cochrane review's author and what's really going on in his head, and the philosophy behind his movement and how they apply science to answering real-world problems.



There are two problems here. The first is that you believe what the Cochrane says with no reference to any other science. This is what much of what the last 3 years have been about - your scientific illiteracy and latching onto whatever suits your biases without a wider grasp of the field. The same site includes a criticism of that particular study (of which there are many):

The second is that you don't even believe what Cochrane says. You believe a sort of distorted view of what the Cochrane says, through a prism of your own biases. Although to be fair, that the Cochrane Institute itself had to adjust the wording of its summary because it was being serially misrepresented (by people like you) tells us a certain something.
Yes, I already knew that the Cochrane review didn't prove masks didn't work, it says based on what evidence we do have, masks haven't been shown to work. You know that when all the evidence we do have that something hasn't worked usually means? That it probably doesn't work. Again, where's the evidence that masks actually work? I'm still waiting on that. Why should I do something that has no evidence of working? And no, I'm not taking some lab study of mask blocking droplets as evidence. I want evidence it works in the REAL WORLD. If we lower the standard of something working just needing to be mechanistic, then we'd have a bunch shit that doesn't do jack shit as "working". Do you know what would've helped demonstrate mask effectiveness or ineffectiveness? Doing cluster randomized trials that the CDC and NIH didn't do a single one of them. They didn't even do the fucking science. And in the end, the claim that masks work has to be proven by the people that claim as such, I'm merely the one calling BS on it and demanding it be proven.