COVID-19 Coronavirus current events

oh no no. mercola? isn't that the world's biggest bunk site?
Your argument is a version of the Ad Hominem fallacy (attacking the source)

I was aware of the study and grabbed the first source on Google. There are many other.​

you may very well be right. But I would prefer if you challenged the statistics instead of the source.​


That’s just bad manners. He is really national news was cited in my source if you would’ve bothered to read it instead of jumped the gun.



How about The Times of Israel ? Does that withdrawal your besmirchment ?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveb...-patients-more-protected-than-the-vaccinated/

don’t feel bad I run into this all the time. I’m dyslexic so my grammar isn’t that good and people automatically take me as an idiot.

i’m fine with that . It gives me the upper hand when people underestimate me.
 
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normally i'd agree with you, but not when it comes to mercola.
At this point you probably want to read my edit.

you shot from the hip and attacked the source without even reading it.

Unless of course you next post is going to be on how untrustworthy the joooooooooos are. (Sigh)
 
and i will next time you post from Mercola as a source too. Funny how you have ignored my responsible source and are so busy ad homineming me.
It’s funny that you can’t even acknowledge that the source used had quoted credible sources.

You were wrong in this instance. But I won’t automatically discount any information you give without researching it.

Winston Churchill said it best.

“ The greatest blessing in life to learn is that even a fool is right sometimes“

by the way you used my source that quoted channel 13. And if you wouldn’t have shot from the hip you would’ve noticed in my original post I said “ appears“ and “ seems to be in question“.

which is how you put information up for debate.

all you saw was the source. And you jumped in to give me a unwarranted zinger.
 
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you used my source.



i never attacked you or what you said. i only scoffed at Mercola.
Yes are used your source. How about the times of Israel. Or the Israeli national news that was quoted in the Mercola arrival.

is the Israeli national news unreliable. Or did you jump the gun?

Without any consideration as to whether my post was accurate or not.

that’s my point.

i’m done with this conversation. I’m big enough to admit I was wrong when I said you used my source.

someone with confidence is able to do that.
 
Israel has a 67% vaccination rate last I checked.A recent study gave some interesting statistics.

I won’t come out against vaccines because they do have some affect. But it does appear the vaccination of people already infected seems to be in question.



https://media.mercola.com/ImageServ...vid-19-delta-variant-natural-immunity-pdf.pdf
Well, Mercola is certainly cherry-picking information: in your quote, he's talking about a "median 0.27% reinfection rate" while in anothe place the number is quite different:
"With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.
By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.”
Content from External Source
Note also that he's comparing on "developed Covid", disregarding that vaccinated people are known to have much less severe symptoms and die at a much lower rate than unvaccinated people.

I don't think anyone is going to disagree that having survived an infection protects as well as a vaccination;
but the main thing to note is that being unvaccinated and getting infected is much more dangerous than being vaccinated and getting infected.
So a strategy of "get infected" instead of getting vaccinated is not advisable.

Mercola is trying to downplay the danger of that with a conspiracy theory that basically says that hospitals are knowingly doing malpractice on Covid patients and that if only Invermectin was used, everything would be peachy, but I don't really think the support for that is in yet (if ever).
 
i'm aware of your point. Mercola is a schuckster. and it's important outside readers know that. I'm sorry you don't like it.
My grammar gives me pause. You should wait a few minutes for me to edit my post each time.

we probably wouldn’t be going on now. lol
 
that's weird todays jump link says
1629334818136.png


and this article from March says
Article:
Maccabi Healthcare Services found that of 149,735 members who were coronavirus-positive between March 2020 and January 2021, 154 had been reinfected, according to a new research paper that offers “real-world data of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in a large-scale population cohort.”


so where are the numbers 72 and 835,792 coming from?
 
Well, Mercola is certainly cherry-picking information: in your quote, he's talking about a "median 0.27% reinfection rate" while in anothe place the number is quite different:
"With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.
By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.”
Content from External Source
Note also that he's comparing on "developed Covid", disregarding that vaccinated people are known to have much less severe symptoms and die at a much lower rate than unvaccinated people.

I don't think anyone is going to disagree that having survived an infection protects as well as a vaccination;
but the main thing to note is that being unvaccinated and getting infected is much more dangerous than being vaccinated and getting infected.
So a strategy of "get infected" instead of getting vaccinated is not advisable.

Mercola is trying to downplay the danger of that with a conspiracy theory that basically says that hospitals are knowingly doing malpractice on Covid patients and that if only Invermectin was used, everything would be peachy, but I don't really think the support for that is in yet (if ever).
I did note that vaccinations are helpful.

you noted that natural antibodies protect people better.

which was my point.

I don’t understand why we’re having this discussion either ? Lol

I haven’t been around here much and when I do I mainly read. Because I understand this site is full of smart people and it revolves me to say anything that isn’t perceptive or accurate.
 
Mercola is also addressing the wrong question by comparing infection survivors with vaccinated people who were never infected in the first place. If you have survived an infection, what you really want to know is whether a vaccination will give you additional protection, and there's evidence that it does:
Article:
The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection.

Note that they're comparing infection survivors without vaccinations against infection survivors with vaccinations, which is right on point.

If you have been infected, and don't want to catch Covid again, get vaccinated.
 
that's weird todays jump link says
1629334818136.png


and this article from March says
Article:
Maccabi Healthcare Services found that of 149,735 members who were coronavirus-positive between March 2020 and January 2021, 154 had been reinfected, according to a new research paper that offers “real-world data of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in a large-scale population cohort.”


so where are the numbers 72 and 835,792 coming from?
Again you should’ve probably read the source. What at least we’re DaBaby now instead of criticizing.

Data presented to the Israeli Health Ministry July 17, 2021, revealed that, of the more than 7,700 COVID-19 cases reported since May 2021, only 72 occurred in people who had previously had COVID-19 — a rate of less than 1%

The data they gave was between May and July 2021. July is when the Delta variant became dominant in the US.

Statistics from March 2020 are irrelevant.
 
I don’t understand why we’re having this discussion either ? Lol
We're having this discussion because I am trying to clarify what the author of the document you've linked is aiming to make people believe; and how he uses misdirection and misinformation to do so.
 
Mercola is also addressing the wrong question by comparing infection survivors with vaccinated people who were never infected in the first place. If you have survived an infection, what you really want to know is whether a vaccination will give you additional protection, and there's evidence that it does:
Article:
The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection.

Note that they're comparing infection survivors without vaccinations against infection survivors with vaccinations, which is right on point.

If you have been infected, and don't want to catch Covid again, get vaccinated.
I’ve read news articles on additional protection from being vaccinated and having antibodies.

but I haven’t read any credible studies. I could be wrong can you please link me a credible study.

At this point I feel nobody read my original post so I will repeat it.

I won’t come out against vaccines because they do have some affect. But it does appear the vaccination of people already infected seems to be in question.

When you read that it’s clear that my post was speculative I didn’t take any position.
 
We're having this discussion because I am trying to clarify what the author of the document you've linked is aiming to make people believe; and how he uses misdirection and misinformation to do so.
By using a source from March 2020 when the topic of the article being the Delta variant was pretty much unheard of?
 
Israel has a 67% vaccination rate last I checked.A recent study gave some interesting statistics.

I won’t come out against vaccines because they do have some affect. But it does appear the vaccination of people already infected seems to be in question.



https://media.mercola.com/ImageServ...vid-19-delta-variant-natural-immunity-pdf.pdf

You had a point and @deirdre also had a valid point. Rather than questioning the impartiality of your source straight away (which is justifiable knowing Mercola's bias in favour of holistic medicine and against drugs), it's of course conversationally healthier to first acknowledge the validity of your main point.

The protection of already infected people against re-infection is demonstrably potent according to multiple surveys the world over.

And as @Mendel cited, administering the vaccine to already infected people boosts this protection further.

The problem is anti-vaccers like Mercola would illogically advice, based on the above information, not to take the vaccine, and to let the virus 'burn through' to reach herd immunity. Such argumentation is just a milder form of saying it would have been OK to let 1 % of people infected with smallpox to die in order to achieve herd immunity through natural means.

The fact that vaccines can prevent most of these deaths is deemed irrelevant, or questioned unscientifically.
 
I just did, and you even quoted the link.
Thank you . I was getting a little punch drunk . Lol

I went to the original study and read it. And deals with reinfection and the numbers are different. Now let me introduce the Massachusetts study.




During July 2021, 469 cases of COVID-19 associated with multiple summer events and large public gatherings in a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, were identified among Massachusetts residents; vaccination coverage among eligible Massachusetts residents was 69%. Approximately three quarters (346; 74%) of cases occurred in fully vaccinated persons (those who had completed a 2-dose course of mRNA vaccine [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] or had received a single dose of Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine ≥14 days before exposure). Genomic sequencing of specimens from 133 patients identified the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in 119 (89%) and the Delta AY.3 sublineage in one (1%). Overall, 274 (79%)




The numbers are pretty similar to the Israeli study and the Irish study quoted in my source.



At this point what we’re doing is pick a study. There is not enough information out there to make a decisive decision. It took a couple years to figure out the nasty 2017 2018 seasonal flu vaccine that was only 40% effective.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm







I took a while because I did some looking around. The Massachusetts study is an example. For every study someone cites there’s another one saying it’s wrong.



I don’t even know how I got into this discussion. Could be wrong but it seems a bit like moving the goalposts.



All I did was defend my source. I never said it was accurate I put it up for discussion.



Nowhere did I say don’t take a vaccine. Nowhere did I say for sure that natural antibodies were more effective.



I got a warning for impolite behavior and I apologize.



with that I withdrawal from the conversation.
 
For what it’s worth.


My thoughts on lockdowns





Let’s get the CDC definitions out-of-the-way.



#1 Quarantine:

separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.





#2 Isolation:

separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.



#3 Cohorting :

In the context of this guideline, this term applies to the practice of grouping patients infected or colonized with the same infectious agent together to confine their care to one area and prevent contact with susceptible patients



By definition the WHO, CDC, NIH , NCBI screwed up from the beginning.



So I might as well start at the very beginning.



The first large scale organized efforts to control epidemics date back to the 14th century and the plague. With the spread of disease and the distance between flareups. It was recognized to be associated with shipping and commerce. Suspect vessels passengers were order not to disembark for varying periods of time . (quarantine)The figure most historians settled on is 40 days. That was of course in order to prevent infected people from spreading the disease on shore.



Those basic parameters and definitions I cited earlier held for 600 years.



I’m going to skip over a multitude of guidelines and pandemic planning pamphlets the CDC has issued for every year since the 1950’s . I think just a few will be enough to establish what the parameters have been in recent years for since the CDC . Even though the same information is put out yearly.



ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE: CONTAINMENT STRATEGIES FOR SARS 2003



Isolation and Quarantine

Before discussing the role of quarantine as a component of community response and containment for SARS, it is necessary to distinguish, from a public health perspective, between the related practices of isolation and quarantine. Both are usually imposed by health officials on a voluntary basis; however, federal, state, and local officials have the authority to impose mandatory quarantine and isolation when necessary to protect the public’s health. (not a mention of lockdowns)



Isolation refers to the separation and restricted movement of illpersons who have a contagious disease in order to prevent its transmission to others. It typically occurs in a hospital setting, but can be done at home or in a special facility. Usually individuals are isolated, but the practice may be applied in larger groups.



Quarantine refers to the restriction of movement or separation of sick persons from those who I haven’t been exposed. Quarantine usually takes place in the home and may be applied at the individual level or to a group or community of EXPOSED persons.



Nowhere does it talk about imposing quarantine or isolation on healthy people.



ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE: CONTAINMENT STRATEGIES FOR SARS 2003 - Learning from SARS - NCBI Bookshelf



2012 Quarantine, Isolation, and Cohorting: From Cholera to Klebsiella



Isolation is defined as the separation of persons with communicable diseases from those who are healthy. This public health practice, along with quarantine, is used to limit the transmission of infectious diseases and provides the foundation of current-day cohorting.



Quarantine, or cohorting when patients are infected with the same pathogen, interrupts the spread of infections, just as the contagious disease hospitals did during the epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries.



Quarantine, Isolation, and Cohorting: From Cholera to Klebsiella







Out of every strategy or plan dealing with pandemics. There was one thing in common for over SIX decades of preparedness.



Quarantine or isolation of the healthy is warned against due to economic factors as a strategy as a way to contain a pathogen.



Lacking a vaccine what is needed to severely weaken the impact of the second wave. Herd immunity is reached natures way. For a good explanation I would like the link the press conference dealing with immunity from Dr. Dan Erickson. But YouTube and big tech censored it.I have to give you a link with the video embedded.



They were 100% right about natural immunity and the effect it would’ve had for containing the pandemic.



https://videa.hu/videok/hirek-politika/dr.-dan-erickson-and-artin-covid-19-covid19-VG8JqVtaxFfiJDRk





Once 70% plusof the population has been exposed to the virus. It blocks reproduction by limiting the pool of people that can be exposed.



600 years of tradition instantly changed in 2020 for God knows why.


The lock down in the country has prevented that from happening. We aren’t out and intermingling which is mother nature‘s way to counter the effects of a pandemic.



The best example currently I can find of this effect is the 1968 Hong Kong flu.



Because the new virus retained the neuraminidase (N) antigen N2, persons who had been exposed to the 1957 Asian flu pandemic apparently retained immune protection against the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic. This would explain the mildness of the 1968 outbreak



1968 flu pandemic | History, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica



Lockdown prevents us from building that immunity and that greatly increased the effects of a second wave.



So here’s the report card on the three definitions at top.



#1 Quarantine:

separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.



F instead they restricted the movement of healthy people.



#2

Isolation:

separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.



F minus



#3 Cohorting :

grouping patients infected or colonized with the same infectious agent together to confine their care to one area and prevent contact with susceptible patients



F minus Cuomo and other boneheaded governors





Heard immunity was being prevented by the lockdown.



So let’s finish the checklist above.



People not ill were quarantine.



Economics weren’t taken into consideration beforehand.



Sick people were forced into nursing homes by Governors mandate.



Forced lockdown weakens the whole world’s ability to fight off this pandemic and all but guaranteed the current second wave we are suffering from.



Please forgive my rambling shotgun organization efforts.
 
Nowhere does it talk about imposing quarantine or isolation on healthy people.



ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE: CONTAINMENT STRATEGIES FOR SARS 2003 - Learning from SARS - NCBI Bookshelf

yes it does. you misquoted your own link.



Article:
Before discussing the role of quarantine as a component of community response and containment for SARS, it is necessary to distinguish, from a public health perspective, between the related practices of isolation and quarantine. Both are usually imposed by health officials on a voluntary basis; however, federal, state, and local officials have the authority to impose mandatory quarantine and isolation when necessary to protect the public’s health.

Isolation refers to the separation and restricted movement of ill persons who have a contagious disease in order to prevent its transmission to others. It typically occurs in a hospital setting, but can be done at home or in a special facility. Usually individuals are isolated, but the practice may be applied in larger groups.

Quarantine refers to the restriction of movement or separation of well persons who have been exposed to a contagious disease, before it is known whether they will become ill. Quarantine usually takes place in the home and may be applied at the individual level or to a group or community of exposed persons.
 
600 years of tradition instantly changed in 2020 for God knows why.

because in the old days they didnt care if you died in agony in your home, but now a days everyone is admitted into the hospitals. Remember "flatten the curve"? That was (and still is) about keeping the hospitals and hospital staff from becoming overwhelmed.

Article:
1918
The worst horrors were seen in Philadelphia, where the number of deaths approached 1,000 a day at the pandemic’s peak. Entire neighborhoods were draped in crepe that was mounted on front doors to mark deaths inside.

....
Throughout the day and night, horse-drawn wagons kept a constant parade through the streets of Philadelphia as priests joined the police in collecting corpses draped in sackcloths and blood-stained sheets that were left on porches and sidewalks



Mar 4, 2020 — Estimates suggest that the world population in 1918 was 1.8 billion.
Content from External Source
2020 population 7.8 billion
 
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The quoted statistics sure look nonsensical. Enough to cause me to give little credibity to the report without a lot of checking.
it also doesnt take into account mild infections of covid, so people don't know they were actually reinfected.

i might have had covid last spring, but i was too sick to drive myself for a test and didnt want to infect anyone to drive me in an enclosed car. then i didn't get an antibody test, because if i did not have covid - i didn't want to expose myself in a doctor's office just to find out.

i do agree with the general theory of natural immunity, but the doctors and nurses are exhausted and broken as it is.
 
i do agree with the general theory of natural immunity, but the doctors and nurses are exhausted and broken as it is.
Agreed.
From the outset the big challenge was avoiding logistic overload of health services. Independent of country, culture, politics. Then the second level big issues - the balance between economic cost versus the "cost" of illnesses and deaths. All whilst the race was on to develop and spread vaccination. In the face of opposing agendas but recognising that a sufficiently high percentage of vaccinated population will suffice. Up around 80% could well be a "sweet point" for effectiveness. The important factor being that a small number of anti-vax opponents are unlikely to be able to prevent overall success. How effective the opposition to vax OR apathy is will be very much dependent on culture. We are currently pushing the limits of acceptability of lock-down here in my State of NSW. And it is so easy overall to forget the vastly different levels of infection between countries. Today's comparative stats:
COVID2021-08-19_07-50-05.png
 
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Now let me introduce the Massachusetts study.
Article:
In July 2021, following multiple large public events in a Barnstable County, Massachusetts, town, 469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons.

Because these people traveled there, it's a self-selected sample. If vaccinated people are more likely to travel to such an event and attend packed gatherings there, the numbers are off.

We lack information on the severity of the symptoms; other studies have shown that vaccinated people tend to have less severe cases of Covid when they get infected with Delta..

And this study doesn't address the original question you've raised.
What this study does show is that vaccinated people still need to observe social distancing and mask rules to protect themselves.

P.S.: your posts look like you're triple-spacing your paragraphs, which makes them badly readable; I'd much appreciate if you could go back and edit them down to be more readable.
 
It took a couple years to figure out the nasty 2017 2018 seasonal flu vaccine that was only 40% effective.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm
First, Influenza is different because that virus has been around for so long that it's split up in strains that you can't all vacvinate against at once, and they mutate. Basically, every year in spring, public health officials guess which strains will be predominant in the upcoming winter, and buy and disburse flu vaccine based on that guess. This procedure requires very close monitoring, and a very timely survey of how effective the vaccine was; and a paper linked from the summary you linked to indeed proves this:
Article:
Interim estimates of the effectiveness of the 2017–18 inactivated influenza vaccines against medically attended respiratory illness published in February 2018 were 36% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 27%–44%) overall,

So your "it took a couple of years" really needs to read, "it took a couple of months".

And the situation is very different because we know in advance that the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine depends on how well the spring guess matches the autumn outbreak strains, which is not an issue we currently have with Covid-19.
 
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Let’s get the CDC definitions out-of-the-way.
Thus starts a bad copy&paste of a post you made in May 2020 at https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1264595/pg1

#1 Quarantine:

separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.
You quote this, and then write
Nowhere does it talk about imposing quarantine or isolation on healthy people.
And that contradicts your own quotes on what quarantine is and does. Quarantine applies to exposed people, some of which may turn out to be healthy, and others turn out to be sick, at a time when you don't know who will become sick. Quarantine curbs the spread of diseases that are infectious before people show symptoms (like Covid-19).

At a point where an epidemic has become endemic, i.e. not limited to a ship, but where basically anyone in a community can turn out to have it tomorrow, you need to quarantine everyone to stop the spread. Wuhan showed that such a hard lockdown works on Covid-19. ( The village of Eyam is a historical example of this with respect to a 1665 plague outbreak.)

You then go on to copy&paste your May 2020 appeal for a herd immunity policy (which I had already identified as the purpose of that Mercola paper you quoted) in the face of the known death toll of Covid-19 (and in May 2020, it was already in the face of the death tolls in Wuhan, Italy, and New York).

I estimate that a non-intervention policy in Spring 2020 would have resulted in people dying at pretty much the hospitalization rate of Covid, because hospitals would have been overwhelmed and unable to treat them. It looks like that's unfolding again now, and it's shameful.
 
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From the outset the big challenge was avoiding logistic overload of health services. Independent of country, culture, politics. Then the second level big issues - the balance between economic cost versus the "cost" of illnesses and deaths. All whilst the race was on to develop and spread vaccination.
Agreed on "flatten the curve" and vaccination as the exit strategy that avoids the huge toll of death and chronic illness.

But I disgree that the second issue is economics, it was always politics, it was always about how we as a society can come together to beat the pandemic.

Go look at economics, there ought to be some data by now. I would expect that countries who locked down enough to seriously curb the virus (e.g. China, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia?) come out ahead in BOTH economics and death toll compared to countries in Europe and America.
 
It looks like that's unfolding again now, and it's shameful.
Article:
I.C.U. beds are filling up across Southern states, and Alabama is one of the first to run out. The Alabama Hospital Association said on Wednesday night that there were “negative 29” I.C.U. beds available in the state, meaning there were more than two dozen people being forced to wait in emergency rooms for an open I.C.U. bed.

The situation has grown desperate in Alabama, one of several states reporting a wave of cases driven by the highly contagious Delta variant and low vaccination rates.
 
issue is economics, it was always politics
in America politics IS the economy. First and foremost.

June 2020
Article:
“You don’t want to balance lives against the economy,” Fauci said. “So let’s get public health to help us to get the economy open as opposed to two opposing forces.”


Article:
"You have public health officials like myself who keep saying wear masks, [keep] physical distancing, avoid crowds, as if that were somehow an affront to some people," [Fauchi] said. "That we were either encroaching upon their individual rights or we were not sensitive to the impact that this has on the economy, neither of which was true."

He added: "The enemy is the virus . . . the best way to get the economy back is to control the virus."
 
But I disgree that the second issue is economics, it was always politics, it was always about how we as a society can come together to beat the pandemic.
It's not really a disagreement as much as a different approach to framing the topic. My comment was from the perspective of separating the problem from the solution. I focused on the technical aspects defining the problem - those aspects are near enough the same world wide. As hinted at by my disclaimer "Independent of country, culture, politics." Whilst the "politics" (including "culture" and some other factors - population and geography) is specific to each country. Hence, from that perspective, politics is part of the constraints on the solution. Either framing is IMO legitimate. I'm certainly well aware of the massive differences that politics has had on responses by various countries. Especially US compared with AU and NZ.
Go look at economics, there ought to be some data by now. I would expect that countries who locked down enough to seriously curb the virus (e.g. China, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia?) come out ahead in BOTH economics and death toll compared to countries in Europe and America.
I haven't studied economic data quantitatively. There is no serious doubt about either number of infections OR death toll. This is infections. Death toll is similar "shape".
COVIDCompare7_2021-08-20_09-38-56.png
 
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There is no serious doubt about either number of infections OR death toll.
Yes. However, my point is that you (and many others) have framed this as a trade-off where fewer infections means a worse economy, and a better economy means more infections. I doubt that trade-off exists when you look at the data; I believe it only exists as a political talking point.

But I haven't had time to examine the data and see if it's really bunk or not.
 
...my point is that you (and many others) have framed this as a trade-off where fewer infections means a worse economy, and a better economy means more infections...
I don't think I have ever made either of those valued judgements. Certainly not with the direct causal link you suggest. I certainly recognise that measures such as extended lock down can have economic effects and that negative economic effects would be more expected. But I would always reserve judgement on actual outcome consequences. I may have assumed that my intended objectivity was obvious.
I doubt that trade-off exists when you look at the data; I believe it only exists as a political talking point.
Please take care to avoid confusing predictive comments and assessments made in hindsight. For example post hoc here in Australia the negative economic impacts seen to have been less than was predicted. Qualitatively I think - no quantification at this stage. But I've not seen and have not myself made any causal linkages or "cost benefit" expressed as "lives saved per economic loss in $$$". (Or economic gain in $$$ if the balance post hoc is positive. ;) )
 
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