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.
This cohort study of Norwegian adolescents and young adults with mild SARS-CoV-2 infections examines the prevalence of post–COVID-19 condition 6 months after infection.
jamanetwork.com
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.
