Our Covid Response

[Thaluikhain]

Well yeah, there's always been lots of unelected people in government, often as advisors, but often doing things more directly, theoretically at the sufferance of the elected. The leader of your government isn't going to be an expert on all the areas they are going to deal with, they need people who are, who aren't politicians.

 

[Gordon_4]

I think there are elected officials that can enforce a policy, but increasingly, often faceless, un elected bureaucrats are formulating policy. And that is the way a lot of our elected officials like it, which has many concerned with elected government angry. Example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...ng-our-lives-glenn-reynolds-column/102750080/ There are other examples of people agreeing that the world is run by mid-level bureaucrats but they're kinda happy about it.

Are you completely unfamiliar with Government or something? Ministers propose policy, but the relevant civil servants are the ones who actually draft it. The draft is then given to the Minister and if they like it, they table it and the House votes on it. There are whole divisions in many departments who’s whole purpose in life is the development, scrutinising and implementation of policy.

 

[gorfias]

Are you completely unfamiliar with Government or something? Ministers propose policy, but the relevant civil servants are the ones who actually draft it. The draft is then given to the Minister and if they like it, they table it and the House votes on it. There are whole divisions in many departments who’s whole purpose in life is the development, scrutinising and implementation of policy.

Sorry mate, from the US. Other countries aren't real.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Oh god, this feels like chronic fatigue syndrome all over again: "They're not ill, they're just lazy!"

Can we please at least try to learn from past experience that stigmatising people should not be the first response?

There is no data saying masks work (look at anything talking about masks pre-covid or any expert and they all say masks do nothing, there's no new study that has changed the science on masks). The only data showing masks do anything is shit data on the level that said ivermectin worked. Funny how you will totally be against ivermectin but for masks when the data is basically the same quality.

Just about everything has psychosomatic elements to it. Data on long covid isn't really finding any markers and studies show that people with covid actually recover, on average, faster than people with some other respiratory infection. How did I imply to stigmatize anyone? I said stigmatizing the unvaccinated was stupid for that very reason.

Why bother? If i provide you with the explanations for the third time, You'll just be doing the same thing in a week: insisting I never gave the data, "why won't I provide it", blah blah blah.

The only way to break this cycle is to insist you actually pay attention.



Contact tracing is one element of a multifaceted approach.

In a lockdown, with functional border controls and widely available testing, cases are not too high to make contact tracing useless. It has already been used to good effect. It's a proven, tested approach.



Even this is a significant shift in the goalposts from what you were originally saying: you were originally disputing that it existed at all, and spewing these endless numbers that didn't even support your own conclusion.

You then backtracked to saying it's just the same as other long-term respiratory symptoms, and then finally you've arrived at just "a good chunk is psychosomatic". How far have we travelled from your original insistence that the whole thing is bullshit?

You never want to actually commit to anything. I pay attention more than you guys do to what I say all the time, you constantly misrepresent what I say all the time. What is so hard about either restating your policies or linking to them? It would take less time that this stupid back and forth.

You do realize in the US, covid was far too spread out to do any contact tracing. Places that it's worked had very specific characteristics like say being an island nation and very low cases at the start. In the US, 20% of NYC was infected by April alone, you can't contact trace that. It also takes far less resources to protect the vulnerable vs trying to contract trace covid among the entire population.

You're talking about me not paying attention... How many damn times do I have to repeat I used the definition of long covid that the study used because I was talking about said study?!?! It's well over 5 times at this point.

Lmao, this is proof that masks don't work in your world?
Considering how easy masks and hand washing are *and* how the law of large numbers works, I'd say it's still worth it even if the amount of disease resistance is small

You don't realize the what the drawbacks of masks are then. AGAIN, SINCE YOU ALL NEVER ACTUALLY READ WHAT I SAY. THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU ALL (THE PRO-MASKERS) THAT CLAIM MASKS WORK, YOU HAVE SUBMITTED NO SUCH PROOF MASKS WORK. IT'S IS NOT ON ME OR ANYONE ELSE TO PROVE YOU WRONG WHEN YOU HAVEN'T PROVEN YOU CLAIM.

Yes. There's a very interesting little comment dropped into the analysis near the end that a lot of these studies were often conducted with low adherence. Which is another way of saying "We didn't find evidence masks were significantly effective across all the studies we looked at, but a load of people in the studies we looked at for mask use didn't actually use masks."

And it is definitely true to say that not using masks guarantees the uselessness of masks.

Those are the best studies we have. People have been asking to do cluster randomized trials for masking for 2 years now and Fauci and the NIH won't do them. What about the Spanish study where IIRC 6th grade and up had to mask so when you look at the 5th graders and 6th graders, there was no difference in covid.

Interesting article and analysis on Newseek

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

www.newsweek.com

Funny how the left and "scientific" community did the exact same thing as Trump, which is they just doubled down on the claims they made when the data didn't fit. Vaccines stop the spread when no such study was even done on that (Pfizer had to come out and stay stop saying we did that when we never did) and we already knew from Israel that vaccines didn't stop the spread when cases there surged as they got vaccines out in high numbers before the US. Fauci even lies today that he never stated schools should be closed when he totally did. All of Europe followed basic science and kept schools open because they did the studies and actual science.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

You don't realize the what the drawbacks of masks are then. AGAIN, SINCE YOU ALL NEVER ACTUALLY READ WHAT I SAY. THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU ALL (THE PRO-MASKERS) THAT CLAIM MASKS WORK, YOU HAVE SUBMITTED NO SUCH PROOF MASKS WORK. IT'S IS NOT ON ME OR ANYONE ELSE TO PROVE YOU WRONG WHEN YOU HAVEN'T PROVEN YOU CLAIM.

Sure. That study you posted found that there may be a slight benefit to using masks with even low adherence. Thank you for providing that. I am unaware of any significant drawbacks of masks

 

[Thaluikhain]

I am unaware of any significant drawbacks of masks

Aaaaaand now we get a bunch of studies they didn't read, or written by people whose only qualification seems to be a hatred of doing things to benefit their community.

 

[Silvanus]

You never want to actually commit to anything. I pay attention more than you guys do to what I say all the time, you constantly misrepresent what I say all the time. What is so hard about either restating your policies or linking to them? It would take less time that this stupid back and forth.

If I restate them for the third time, we'll be back here again in a week. If I insist you actually read what has already been posted, there's a slim chance you'll pay better attention.

You do realize in the US, covid was far too spread out to do any contact tracing. Places that it's worked had very specific characteristics like say being an island nation and very low cases at the start. In the US, 20% of NYC was infected by April alone, you can't contact trace that. It also takes far less resources to protect the vulnerable vs trying to contract trace covid among the entire population.

OK, so we've shifted from "there's zero evidence contact tracing works at all" to "contact tracing wouldn't have worked in the US in April".

But for what it's worth, the US did not just jump from 0 to 20% of NYC without context and overnight. Other elements of a multifaceted approach would work to prevent the situation getting to such a point as it becomes untraceable.

You're talking about me not paying attention... How many damn times do I have to repeat I used the definition of long covid that the study used because I was talking about said study?!?! It's well over 5 times at this point.

If we accept that you're merely talking about that particular study's narrow focus-- self-reported long-term respiratory symptoms-- then your own conclusion makes even less sense. Because it's obvious they're real: the study shows they are, for numerous different respiratory infections.

Your own conclusions relied on more than that definition. Your own conclusion relied on 1) taking that definition, and 2) decoupling it from positive covid serology. So to counter that conclusion it's perfectly appropriate for me to focus on the second part there-- and point out that it those symptoms have a positive relationship with covid serology.

 

[Ag3ma]

I think there are elected officials that can enforce a policy, but increasingly, often faceless, un elected bureaucrats are formulating policy. And that is the way a lot of our elected officials like it, which has many concerned with elected government angry. Example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...ng-our-lives-glenn-reynolds-column/102750080/ There are other examples of people agreeing that the world is run by mid-level bureaucrats but they're kinda happy about it.

But that's what unelected bureaucrats are supposed to do. Politicians don't know the nuts and bolts of how to formulate policy.

Take the directors of an engineering firm. The average engineering firm director knows basically sod all about engineering, or at best last did any engineering 20-30 years ago and is now hopelessly out of touch. What happens is that the management tells engineers they want something and the engineers either go away and (try to) do it or tell the management it can't be done. And sometimes the engineers think of stuff themselves and propose it to management.

Now, instead of "directors" read "politicians", and "engineers" read "civil servants". The government functions in many ways just like any organisation, except the people at the top won a popularity campaign instead of getting promoted by achieving good results. (That's not necessarily a bad thing, because you need politicians attuned to the will of the populace where civil servants may not be. Although of course politicians are often not attuned to the will of the populace, they're attuned to a limited class of socioeconomic elites and whoever throws the most money at them.)

This is all by design. What we learnt from absolute monarchy is that you only need one moron with crazy ideas and too much power to wreck a country and cause untold misery: whole empires have collapsed overnight from such bad decision-making. Thus the distribution of power, and employment of professionals to oversee the maintenance of the state. I don't doubt that sometimes the civil service can become too powerful and inertia-ridden. But I also think that often the civil service is a convenient excuse for bad politicians and people trying to defend bad politicians.

 

[Gordon_4]

But that's what unelected bureaucrats are supposed to do. Politicians don't know the nuts and bolts of how to formulate policy.

Take the directors of an engineering firm. The average engineering firm director knows basically sod all about engineering, or at best last did any engineering 20-30 years ago and is now hopelessly out of touch. What happens is that the management tells engineers they want something and the engineers either go away and (try to) do it or tell the management it can't be done. And sometimes the engineers think of stuff themselves and propose it to management.

Now, instead of "directors" read "politicians", and "engineers" read "civil servants". The government functions in many ways just like any organisation, except the people at the top won a popularity campaign instead of getting promoted by achieving good results. (That's not necessarily a bad thing, because you need politicians attuned to the will of the populace where civil servants may not be. Although of course politicians are often not attuned to the will of the populace, they're attuned to a limited class of socioeconomic elites and whoever throws the most money at them.)

This is all by design. What we learnt from absolute monarchy is that you only need one moron with crazy ideas and too much power to wreck a country and cause untold misery: whole empires have collapsed overnight from such bad decision-making. Thus the distribution of power, and employment of professionals to oversee the maintenance of the state. I don't doubt that sometimes the civil service can become too powerful and inertia-ridden. But I also think that often the civil service is a convenient excuse for bad politicians and people trying to defend bad politicians.

Thank you for saying intelligently what I tried to say and said stupidly.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Thank you for saying intelligently what I tried to say and said stupidly.

Second that.

EDIT: In that I also had a less successful crack at an explanation, I mean.

 

[Kwak]

There is no data saying masks work (look at anything talking about masks pre-covid or any expert and they all say masks do nothing, there's no new study that has changed the science on masks).

Face Mask Use and Control of Respiratory Virus Transmission in Households

Facemasks, Hand Hygiene, and Influenza among Young Adults: A Randomized Intervention Trial - PMC

Limited vaccine availability and the potential for resistance to antiviral medications have led to calls for establishing the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical measures for mitigating pandemic influenza. Our objective was to examine if the use of face ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Risk of transmission of airborne infection during train commute based on mathematical model

Risk of transmission of airborne infection during train commute based on mathematical model - PMC

In metropolitan areas in Japan, train commute is very popular that trains are over-crowded with passengers during rush hour. The purpose of this study is to quantify public health risk related to the inhalation of airborne infectious agents in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Military Populations During Pandemic Influenza

Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Military Populations During Pandemic Influenza - PMC

Influenza causes substantial illness and loss of work days among young adults, and outbreaks can affect the preparedness of military units. In an influenza pandemic, people who live in confined settings have greater risk of infection. Military ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Sure. That study you posted found that there may be a slight benefit to using masks with even low adherence. Thank you for providing that. I am unaware of any significant drawbacks of masks

Just wow. I can post tons of studies that say ivermectin may have a slight benefit too... That's not how science works, you find out if something does have a benefit or not and if you can't concretely find that it does, then it doesn't have any proven benefit and you can't claim it works. It's that fucking simple. LMAO @ masks not having any drawbacks. I wonder why one of the heads of deciding to mask kids or not answered the question of "why are kids not being masked?" bluntly said because we're not idiots because that's how little sense it makes.

If I restate them for the third time, we'll be back here again in a week. If I insist you actually read what has already been posted, there's a slim chance you'll pay better attention.



OK, so we've shifted from "there's zero evidence contact tracing works at all" to "contact tracing wouldn't have worked in the US in April".

But for what it's worth, the US did not just jump from 0 to 20% of NYC without context and overnight. Other elements of a multifaceted approach would work to prevent the situation getting to such a point as it becomes untraceable.



If we accept that you're merely talking about that particular study's narrow focus-- self-reported long-term respiratory symptoms-- then your own conclusion makes even less sense. Because it's obvious they're real: the study shows they are, for numerous different respiratory infections.

Your own conclusions relied on more than that definition. Your own conclusion relied on 1) taking that definition, and 2) decoupling it from positive covid serology. So to counter that conclusion it's perfectly appropriate for me to focus on the second part there-- and point out that it those symptoms have a positive relationship with covid serology.

I shall copy/paste them.

It basically did jump from 0 to 20% (as far as our knowledge) because Fauci said to New York that there's no reason that people should change any part of their normal life on February 29th. And, again, the resources to contract trace in a country like the US is 1) even possible and 2) you can't spend those same resources in other places and get more bang for your buck? Simply telling people to just be social in their local friends and family group was alone almost certainly enough to flatten that curve to a workable level. Also something that requires a lot less resources would be having everyone take their temperature daily and basically not come into work if your temp was above YOUR normal. That's how I knew I had covid before even getting a symptom as my temp in the morning is usually like 94 (as we were doing daily temp checks in the morning) and then it was 98 (normal) and called off work with an "normal' temp and no symptoms. The amount of resources and also some app that people wouldn't be comfortable is downloading or using to contract trace is a pretty huge commitment. I always said that in theory contract tracing works but it probably isn't viable to net real world results or the resources needed to net said results are gonna be unfeasible.

You're not getting what the definition of long covid was for that study... Covid was the dominant infection so you will show an association. You'll also see an association to probably people that died from gun violence too because chances are they had covid at some point.

Face Mask Use and Control of Respiratory Virus Transmission in Households

Facemasks, Hand Hygiene, and Influenza among Young Adults: A Randomized Intervention Trial - PMC

Limited vaccine availability and the potential for resistance to antiviral medications have led to calls for establishing the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical measures for mitigating pandemic influenza. Our objective was to examine if the use of face ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Risk of transmission of airborne infection during train commute based on mathematical model

Risk of transmission of airborne infection during train commute based on mathematical model - PMC

In metropolitan areas in Japan, train commute is very popular that trains are over-crowded with passengers during rush hour. The purpose of this study is to quantify public health risk related to the inhalation of airborne infectious agents in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Military Populations During Pandemic Influenza

Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Military Populations During Pandemic Influenza - PMC

Influenza causes substantial illness and loss of work days among young adults, and outbreaks can affect the preparedness of military units. In an influenza pandemic, people who live in confined settings have greater risk of infection. Military ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

First study says literally "results did not reach statistical significance", which means nothing was proven.

2nd study is a model...

3rd study says "Ordinary surgical masks do little to prevent inhalation of small droplets bearing influenza virus"

This is the data you're giving me that you say proves masks work? I can give you much better data "proving" ivermectin works. Are you gonna take ivermectin for covid?

 

[Silvanus]

I shall copy/paste them.

? OK, go ahead.

It basically did jump from 0 to 20% (as far as our knowledge) because Fauci said to New York that there's no reason that people should change any part of their normal life on February 29th. And, again, the resources to contract trace in a country like the US is 1) even possible and 2) you can't spend those same resources in other places and get more bang for your buck? Simply telling people to just be social in their local friends and family group was alone almost certainly enough to flatten that curve to a workable level. Also something that requires a lot less resources would be having everyone take their temperature daily and basically not come into work if your temp was above YOUR normal. That's how I knew I had covid before even getting a symptom as my temp in the morning is usually like 94 (as we were doing daily temp checks in the morning) and then it was 98 (normal) and called off work with an "normal' temp and no symptoms. The amount of resources and also some app that people wouldn't be comfortable is downloading or using to contract trace is a pretty huge commitment. I always said that in theory contract tracing works but it probably isn't viable to net real world results or the resources needed to net said results are gonna be unfeasible.

So in short, you're just saying contact tracing was mishandled (I agree, I've said that since the beginning); that money could get more of a result elsewhere (I've pushed for a multifaceted approach, not this instead of anything else-- we have more than enough resources to do both) and... a reiteration of the false claim it jumped from 0 to 20% overnight, which it didn't.

You're not getting what the definition of long covid was for that study... Covid was the dominant infection so you will show an association. You'll also see an association to probably people that died from gun violence too because chances are they had covid at some point.

I know what the definition was for that study. I'm not just talking about that study, though, am I? I'm talking about long covid.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

? OK, go ahead.



So in short, you're just saying contact tracing was mishandled (I agree, I've said that since the beginning); that money could get more of a result elsewhere (I've pushed for a multifaceted approach, not this instead of anything else-- we have more than enough resources to do both) and... a reiteration of the false claim it jumped from 0 to 20% overnight, which it didn't.



I know what the definition was for that study. I'm not just talking about that study, though, am I? I'm talking about long covid.

I meant reiterate it and I'll copy/paste or link me to your post and I'll copy/paste.

How are you diverting money away from contact tracing and also including it as some multifaceted approach (that's what you're saying, right?)? The amount of resources to get contact tracing up to any usable level in the US is tons of money and tons of time, it would take months and months to get enough people hired and train them alone. In theory and in a world where resources are so plentiful you don't have to manage them in any way, contract tracing would work. We don't live in that world. As far as we are concerned, it did basically jump from 0 to 20%, the 20% was from the first survey done in April. The covid crisis in NYC in March did just spring up basically overnight. The fact that according to Fauci there was no community transmission on February 29th was a joke at that time, let alone with hindsight. Basic common sense told you covid was here in the US (and not just a rare case here and there either).

When I link to a study and talk about it, I'm referring to the study. You are trying to tell me what I was talking about, not what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about but you don't seem to get what I'm talking about. All the real data coming on long covid is not showing anything out of the ordinary. In fact, the one study comparing people with covid to those with a different respiratory infection shows the covid group does better over time than the non-covid group. Why should long covid be something people are worried about more than long flu? Where's that data? It just doesn't exist like data saying masks work just doesn't exist.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Just wow. I can post tons of studies that say ivermectin may have a slight benefit too... That's not how science works, you find out if something does have a benefit or not and if you can't concretely find that it does, then it doesn't have any proven benefit and you can't claim it works. It's that fucking simple. LMAO @ masks not having any drawbacks. I wonder why one of the heads of deciding to mask kids or not answered the question of "why are kids not being masked?" bluntly said because we're not idiots because that's how little sense it makes.

Masks aren't Ivermectin, which obviously wouldn't protect against a coronavirus and does have actual side effects.

Vs masks, which, I mean, that's not a drawback. Some dude not wanting to mask kids isn't a drawback

 

[Silvanus]

How are you diverting money away from contact tracing and also including it as some multifaceted approach (that's what you're saying, right?)?

...what? I'm not.

The amount of resources to get contact tracing up to any usable level in the US is tons of money and tons of time, it would take months and months to get enough people hired and train them alone.

Yes, if only we knew about the threat from the virus months in advance, and had the resources of one of the world's wealthiest countries at our disposal.

In theory and in a world where resources are so plentiful you don't have to manage them in any way, contract tracing would work. We don't live in that world.

You live in a country where a 1% wage cut for the wealthiest 1% would fund the program in full. Or a couple of percent off the defence budget for one year would fund the program in full.

The US has the resources. It has many, many, many, many, many times the resources required. It chooses not to invest them.

As far as we are concerned, it did basically jump from 0 to 20%, the 20% was from the first survey done in April. The covid crisis in NYC in March did just spring up basically overnight. The fact that according to Fauci there was no community transmission on February 29th was a joke at that time, let alone with hindsight. Basic common sense told you covid was here in the US (and not just a rare case here and there either).

So what you're saying is that it reached 20% "overnight" in April, even though it was "basically common sense" that it was already there in February and March?

And you don't see how you've just massively contradicted yourself?

When I link to a study and talk about it, I'm referring to the study.

Ah, then you should probably stop saying you're talking about Long Covid, then.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Masks aren't Ivermectin, which obviously wouldn't protect against a coronavirus and does have actual side effects.

Vs masks, which, I mean, that's not a drawback. Some dude not wanting to mask kids isn't a drawback

Masks also obviously wouldn't protect against coronavirus either... There's never been any data saying masks protect against such a virus of its kind in history.

Do you not understand basic child development to say masks don't have drawbacks? There's many reasons most countries didn't mask kids. The WHO never even recommended masking kids.

...what? I'm not.



Yes, if only we knew about the threat from the virus months in advance, and had the resources of one of the world's wealthiest countries at our disposal.



You live in a country where a 1% wage cut for the wealthiest 1% would fund the program in full. Or a couple of percent off the defence budget for one year would fund the program in full.

The US has the resources. It has many, many, many, many, many times the resources required. It chooses not to invest them.



So what you're saying is that it reached 20% "overnight" in April, even though it was "basically common sense" that it was already there in February and March?

And you don't see how you've just massively contradicted yourself?



Ah, then you should probably stop saying you're talking about Long Covid, then.

So you going to link your way to stop covid yet? I'm still waiting on that...

You do realize just throwing money at a problem doesn't magically fix the problem, right? You not only need money but people to do the job. You think it's easy to hire the force needed to contact trace? The jobs won't be very desirable and rather temporary and you think people are gonna sign up for that type of job in large numbers? Then you also need people to voluntary download a tracking app as well. The other things I mentioned would be far cheaper and more effective.

To our knowledge, basically. No one thought covid spread nearly that fast and that's why initial estimated IFRs were far far higher than thought because no one thought covid infected that many people before the surveys were done. The NYC covid crisis did basically happen overnight; it was everything is fine and then a couple days later, everyone stay home. It went from 0% to whatever % (maybe 10, maybe 15) it was when the US closed down.

So the study and scientists that did the study should stop talking about long covid because that's what you're saying? You still, like always, haven't brought any data to the table that says long covid is any more dangerous than long "anything else".

 

[Silvanus]

So you going to link your way to stop covid yet? I'm still waiting on that...

I'm still waiting on you reading it from the first few times it was posted.

You do realize just throwing money at a problem doesn't magically fix the problem, right? You not only need money but people to do the job. You think it's easy to hire the force needed to contact trace? The jobs won't be very desirable and rather temporary and you think people are gonna sign up for that type of job in large numbers?

It's a temporary job with a low requirement of expertise and experience, with several months for advertisement and training. The availability of candidates is not an issue.

For whatever its worth: metastudy on the effectiveness of contact tracing.

Study into contact tracing commissioned by the NZ government.

Analysis of a subset of Covid contact tracing data showing a significant decrease in mortality when properly applied.

I await the inevitable response picking single lines or limitations of the studies/articles and then acting as if they invalidate the entirety of the research.

To our knowledge, basically. No one thought covid spread nearly that fast and that's why initial estimated IFRs were far far higher than thought because no one thought covid infected that many people before the surveys were done. The NYC covid crisis did basically happen overnight; it was everything is fine and then a couple days later, everyone stay home. It went from 0% to whatever % (maybe 10, maybe 15) it was when the US closed down.

So, according to the CDC, the mean for daily diagnosed cases in NY in the first week of March was ~270, and it rose to >5,000 before we even get into April.

Hmm. That's not exactly 0%, is it?

So the study and scientists that did the study should stop talking about long covid because that's what you're saying?

No, that's not what I said, is it?

But the study you're incessantly bringing up didn't just equate long-term respiratory symptoms with long covid regardless of their cause. Which is what you're doing.

What they did was measured the incidence of those symptoms among different groups to try to identify the prevalence of long covid in comparison with long-term symptoms from other infections.

You, however, misread it-- as you frequently do-- and then started spouting this nonsense about how Long Covid is unrelated to Covid (!) and equating any and all LT respiratory symptoms with Long Covid. None of which the researchers did.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I'm still waiting on you reading it from the first few times it was posted.



It's a temporary job with a low requirement of expertise and experience, with several months for advertisement and training. The availability of candidates is not an issue.

For whatever its worth: metastudy on the effectiveness of contact tracing.

Study into contact tracing commissioned by the NZ government.

Analysis of a subset of Covid contact tracing data showing a significant decrease in mortality when properly applied.

I await the inevitable response picking single lines or limitations of the studies/articles and then acting as if they invalidate the entirety of the research.



So, according to the CDC, the mean for daily diagnosed cases in NY in the first week of March was ~270, and it rose to >5,000 before we even get into April.

Hmm. That's not exactly 0%, is it?



No, that's not what I said, is it?

But the study you're incessantly bringing up didn't just equate long-term respiratory symptoms with long covid regardless of their cause. Which is what you're doing.

What they did was measured the incidence of those symptoms among different groups to try to identify the prevalence of long covid in comparison with long-term symptoms from other infections.

You, however, misread it-- as you frequently do-- and then started spouting this nonsense about how Long Covid is unrelated to Covid (!) and equating any and all LT respiratory symptoms with Long Covid. None of which the researchers did.

When I have not copy/pasted something I had said or reiterated before when you asked?

Here is how contact tracing was going August 2020, not even close to where it would need to be. There's tons of major hurdles to get it actually working in any significant manner. You do realize the US couldn't even equip healthcare workers with masks at the start, right? Just throwing money at stuff doesn't magically make it happen.

How states are handling the challenges of contact tracing

The AMA is leading the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. See daily video updates on how the AMA is fighting COVID-19 by discussing developments in contact tracing.

www.ama-assn.org

Why are you arguing technicalities? The fact is everything was basically fine, then it was everyone stay home in a matter of days. It didn't go something like "well, we got low numbers now so it's not a big problem" over a couple weeks, then maybe something like "we're seeing the numbers keep increasing and higher than we'd like" the next couple weeks, and then like "the numbers have reached the point that they're too high and we're having all nonessential workers stay home". That didn't happen. I don't know why you care about exact numbers. It was literally as I said, one day everything was fine, then maybe 2-3 days later, it's a crisis and everyone stay home. That's how it happened.

Nope, that's literally what the study said. They took X amount of people that had long covid and then tested them for covid antibodies and found that many never had covid.

 

[Silvanus]

Here is how contact tracing was going August 2020, not even close to where it would need to be. There's tons of major hurdles to get it actually working in any significant manner. You do realize the US couldn't even equip healthcare workers with masks at the start, right? Just throwing money at stuff doesn't magically make it happen.

So: in August, after they've had at least 5 months' prep time?

You're pointing to the US's failure to get a working contact tracing system in place. But nobody here is arguing that they were doing it right. They didn't invest the time, training, or money; they fucked the logistics and mishandled damn near every other aspect of the public health response.

Why are you arguing technicalities? The fact is everything was basically fine, then it was everyone stay home in a matter of days.

The difference between "0%" and >5,000 diagnosed cases a day is not a "technicality". It's a gaping wide void between what you said and the reality.

NY failed to respond for weeks and weeks. Then they finally responded... without having done any of the necessary investment in training or procurement. And you want to take this as evidence that it was impossible to deal with?

It didn't go something like "well, we got low numbers now so it's not a big problem" over a couple weeks, then maybe something like "we're seeing the numbers keep increasing and higher than we'd like" the next couple weeks, and then like "the numbers have reached the point that they're too high and we're having all nonessential workers stay home". That didn't happen. I don't know why you care about exact numbers. It was literally as I said, one day everything was fine, then maybe 2-3 days later, it's a crisis and everyone stay home. That's how it happened.

Absolute complete cuckoobollocks. If you think >5,000 a day is "one day everything was fine", no action required, you're deluded.

Nope, that's literally what the study said. They took X amount of people that had long covid and then tested them for covid antibodies and found that many never had covid.

They didn't take "x amount of people that had long covid", though. They took X amount of people who self-reported symptoms associated with long covid.

You've consistently failed to appreciate the difference.