Official Austin COVID-19 thread and discussion. (China: physicians, history, system)

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Westerner92

Oh, so you don’t understand the difference between plague and endemic disease. Or are you intentionally muddling the two concepts because you want other people to make money for you?

That is an intellectually dishonest assertion, essentially disguised ad hominem. If you continue to attempt to use those kinds of disingenuous debate tactics, Im happy to disengage as it shows you arent serious about a discussion.

First of all plague specifically refers the disease caused by yersinia pestis.

Im assuming you mean epidemic/pandemic vs endemic. I do understand the difference. Plague is actually endemic in multiple regions around the world.

Im not intentionally muddying the concepts. Pandemics occur periodically, probably every 25-30 years or so. This is a high level discussion of the history of quarantine as a pandemic strategy

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/2/12-0312_article

However, atx cio is making the assertion that just a few years ago a known response to treat this virus in a particular way existed. It did not exist because a virus like this has not existed.

Historically every disease was resolved via herd immunity, we lived with comparable death rates in recent history. Epidemic/pandemic diseases transition to endemic, which is likely going to happen with sars-cov-2

The primary issue with covid is to avoid flooding the hospitals.

If the choices are to open up with no restrictions VS. cautiously reopen, use masks to slow the spread, but accept some level of death as the virus spreads VS. shutting down to keep the spread to zero. I dont believe any of the choices are "wrong". Which strategy you prefer depends on your priorities. Having different priorities doesnt automatically make people bad. Unfortunately the discourse today is pretty much completely weighted towards "if you disagree with me you are stupid or evil".


Finally "want other people to make money for you" is really, people have enough food to eat, dont lose their homes, can continue to be educated and live their lives, take a level of risk that they are willing to accept. I have enough money to live the rest of my life in comfort. A complete shutdown is fine for me.

[Westerner92]

Originally Posted by Austin97

That is an intellectually dishonest assertion, essentially disguised ad hominem. If you continue to attempt to use those kinds of disingenuous debate tactics, Im happy to disengage as it shows you arent serious about a discussion.

First of all plague specifically refers the disease caused by yersinia pestis.

Im assuming you mean epidemic/pandemic vs endemic. I do understand the difference. Plague is actually endemic in multiple regions around the world.

Im not intentionally muddying the concepts. Pandemics occur periodically, probably every 25-30 years or so. This is a high level discussion of the history of quarantine as a pandemic strategy

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/2/12-0312_article

However, atx cio is making the assertion that just a few years ago a known response to treat this virus in a particular way existed. It did not exist because a virus like this has not existed.

Historically every disease was resolved via herd immunity, we lived with comparable death rates in recent history. Epidemic/pandemic diseases transition to endemic, which is likely going to happen with sars-cov-2

The primary issue with covid is to avoid flooding the hospitals.

If the choices are to open up with no restrictions VS. cautiously reopen, use masks to slow the spread, but accept some level of death as the virus spreads VS. shutting down to keep the spread to zero. I dont believe any of the choices are "wrong". Which strategy you prefer depends on your priorities. Having different priorities doesnt automatically make people bad. Unfortunately the discourse today is pretty much completely weighted towards "if you disagree with me you are stupid or evil".


Finally "want other people to make money for you" is really, people have enough food to eat, dont lose their homes, can continue to be educated and live their lives, take a level of risk that they are willing to accept. I have enough money to live the rest of my life in comfort. A complete shutdown is fine for me.

Ah, for some reason I was under the impression that "plague" was just a more archaic term for "pandemic" that could refer to any contagious disease that swept quickly through the population.

What's intellectually dishonest is comparing the death rate of endemic disease to pandemic. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that opening up with no restrictions is a "matter of priorities". You have consistently ignored both my post and others talking about how even if you value non-essential enterprise more than life, letting the disease spread unmitigated is an objectively bad strategy because unchecked spread of a novel virus is historically demonstrated to raise the death rate by an order or two of magnitude. That invariably wipes out whatever short term gains were achieved by opening with no restrictions.

You only pay attention to the posts that have veiled ad hominem in them, which is why I do it. Anyone who's read your posts for as long as Austin forumers knows what kind of "priorities" you have.

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by Austin97

there is no guarantee that there will ever be a vaccine (though I think it is likely).

Million die from all kinds of diseases every year.

The problem is most people simply dont have perspective on how we already handle most diseases. The human brain disproportionately reacts to novel threats.

There most likely will 'not' be a 'permanent' vaccine. My imagination stems to believe that when one develops it will have to be continuously altered and administered like flu vaccinations annually or bi-annually depending on how rapidly the virus mutates. I also believe once you catch the virus, after symptoms and its reproduction subsides, it lays dormant in the host until another flare occurs kind of like Cold Sores meaning its here to stay vaccine or not, but I can't agree with throwing the public health at risk and hoping for the best so to speak, there's also no guarantee that the virus will not mutate fast enough to elude herd immunity if there is such a cause for concern on the premise that a vaccination can't be generated for it.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Westerner92

Ah, for some reason I was under the impression that "plague" was just a more archaic term for "pandemic" that could refer to any contagious disease that swept quickly through the population.

What's intellectually dishonest is comparing the death rate of endemic disease to pandemic. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that opening up with no restrictions is a "matter of priorities". You have consistently ignored both my post and others talking about how even if you value non-essential enterprise more than life, letting the disease spread unmitigated is an objectively bad strategy because unchecked spread of a novel virus is historically demonstrated to raise the death rate by an order or two of magnitude. That invariably wipes out whatever short term gains were achieved by opening with no restrictions.

You only pay attention to the posts that have veiled ad hominem in them, which is why I do it. Anyone who's read your posts for as long as Austin forumers knows what kind of "priorities" you have.

I have never advocated opening up with no restrictions or letting the disease spread unmitigated. This is a false assertion.

I agree 100% that we can only open in a way to keep deaths under the limit where hospitals are flooded. Where i disagree is that we should shutdown to minimize deaths.

If we can wear masks to minimize deaths Im 100% in favor of that. Im not in favor of govt mandates on masks anywhere outside of businesses and govt buildings.

I dont respond to posts that I agree with or that have too many problems to address in a short time. I generally respond to posts where people get facts/logic wrong and generally dont respond to posts where it is a matter of opinion. Except if the people are presenting opinion as fact.


It is not intellectually dishonest to compare the RATE of deaths in endemic vs pandemic situations. They are 100% analogous. The total dead in a specific time period while shocking is irrelevant. If 330M americans get sick and .5% die in 1 year or in 5 years, that is the same to me (except to the extent that hospitals are flooded and the rate goes to 5% which is worse). Before vaccinations, measles killed .2% (or whatever number you want to believe) and infected 4-5 million/year . However everyone alive went through that same infection as they were born. So instead of 330 million in a few years, it was 330million spread over many years.

It very well might be that we can slow the virus spread before a vaccine is created, but what measures we are willing to endure and for how long are reasonable debates to have.

If a vaccine is created should every person be forced to take the vaccine? What if it is 90% effective? 80%? 40%? What if there is a complication rate of 1/100000? 1/10000? etc

[Westerner92]

Originally Posted by Austin97

I have never advocated opening up with no restrictions or letting the disease spread unmitigated. This is a false assertion.

I agree 100% that we can only open in a way to keep deaths under the limit where hospitals are flooded. Where i disagree is that we should shutdown to minimize deaths.

I didn't say you advocated for no restrictions, just that you equivocate it with the economically and ethically sound decisions and muddy the discussion. You've done it since the beginning of the pandemic. Your paragraph from this morning:

"If the choices are to open up with no restrictions VS. cautiously reopen, use masks to slow the spread, but accept some level of death as the virus spreads VS. shutting down to keep the spread to zero. I dont believe any of the choices are "wrong". Which strategy you prefer depends on your priorities. Having different priorities doesnt automatically make people bad. Unfortunately the discourse today is pretty much completely weighted towards "if you disagree with me you are stupid or evil"."

You've spent the past several pages trying to confuse people on the effects of endemic disease vs. pandemic and ignored the posts pointing that out. You consistently try to play a high-handed neutral while being devil's advocate for the views of a certain portion of the political spectrum, both for this pandemic and most other topics.

[10scoachrick]

Good golly.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by Austin97

This is the part Im focusing on.

This statement is untrue, because this has never happened before in recent history. So you have no idea what we would have "settled" for. We have never been faced with the question of do we destroy the entire economy or do just enough to slow the virus so hospitals are overwhelmed.

It is true. And we had plans for something like this coming, we knew it could happen. That’s why we started with the stay at home orders, testing, following (somewhat) the prior CDC and WHO guidelines for containing the pandemic. We would not have settled for, “well, 200K deaths is OK to lose because of the economy”.

What happened is that when we failed to contain, people started spinning and backtracking to justify the failure and death count.

If you come across some new facts or proof to show we would have accepted uncontrolled spread of this virus all along, then share it. Otherwise I’ll leave you to your opinion.

[ScoPro]

Some perspective on Covid numbers..... but Texas’ stats will undoubtedly increase in some aspects in coming weeks.

[riaelise]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

Some perspective on Covid numbers..... but Texas’ stats will undoubtedly increase in some aspects in coming weeks.

Texas is only a bit bigger in population than Taiwan yet way more cases and deaths. Obviously whatever methods were employing in this country to address this virus isn’t working. Everyday I see the death counter go up by at least 100. That’s at least 100 people. Sorry, it’s hard to move past that.

[ScoPro]

The 3 Asian countries listed have totally different & denser cultures, plus they have dealt with severe viruses more/closer than we have. So the populace takes these outbreaks more seriously.

While living in Taiwan in the late 1950s and traveling around to Hong Kong, Japan & Korea, I saw first hand a lot of mask wearing on city streets, particularly all the traffic cops at the intersections. Of course at that time they were addressing the air pollution problems that were beginning to “explode”.