Yet another wrong “fact.” It is a response, but perhaps not the answer that you wanted to hear.

“If you want to argue numbers …”

You don’t even bother to pay attention. No wonder you missed Robert’s answer.

“… you would have to agree …”

No, I don’t, and I didn’t. Yet another “fact” that you got wrong.

“Using morbidity/mortality to make your case opens you up to that response.”

Except we have not done this. Another wrong “fact.: This is part of your own “numbers” arguments, which you deny presenting. But that makes sense, as your arguments are so embarrassingly poor.

This is fun! I’m headed out for a pre-Thanksgiving day walk for an hour or two in order to work off some of tomorrow’s calories, so I am eager to get back to read the next wrong thing that you say.

Robert’s response was not a response, for the reasons already given.
If you want to argue numbers of maimed/dead make Covid a non-problem, then, in order to remain logically coherent, you would have to agree that ANY event which provides a similar morbidity/mortality rate to Covid is also a non-problem. That would include WW I.

Using morbidity/mortality to make your case opens you up to that response. It is deeply unfortunate that the man who writes this blog, and the people who respond on it, apparently aren’t familiar enough with statistics to realize this.

I don’t have to; Robert already did. Or didn’t you notice?

“When I point out the factual problems with your response, you become quite irate and deem the statement of facts to be ‘trolling.’”

You didn’t point out a single factual problem with any of my responses. You merely complained that I responded. Your statements that I had turned your numbers argument into a numbers argument are wrong, as I pointed out.

“I’m not the one calling names here.”

I didn’t say that you were calling anyone names. You keep getting your own facts all wrong, which does not improve your argument, whatever it may be (however, you did manage to quote your link without error).

You are still distracting us from any and every topic at hand. The name fits you.

I asked if we overreacted to polio. You haven’t given a coherent response to that question. When I point out the factual problems with your response, you become quite irate and deem the statement of facts to be ‘trolling.”

I’m not the one calling names here.

You wrote: “And the Covid-19 death toll has also now exceeded the total number of Americans killed in WWI.”

You do make the weirdest and most inappropriate comparisons. Are you thinking that perhaps we should have gone into lockdown and worn masks in order to save lives in WWI? Surely you are not suggesting that we should use trench warfare to save lives from Wuhan flu. Right?

“Given that we knew nothing about the virus when we started, there was no way of knowing that it wouldn’t wreak a death toll that would cause a HIGHER contraction than the lockdowns did, so it wasn’t provable at the time the action was taken.”

Actually, we knew quite a bit about it from the outbreak region. By the time of the lockdown, shutdown, smackdown, Great Oppression, it had been studied within the U.S., and we already knew in April that extending the shelter-in-place was a horrific mistake. We already knew that the hospitals had not been overwhelmed and that a mere three weeks (two weeks for most of the country) was doing damage just from those who were forced to delay life-saving “elective” surgeries.

“If you want to switch the measure to ‘harming the most vulnerable among us’, then you have to explain why elderly people are not worth considering ‘vulnerable.’ Same metric, same conclusion.”

You are the one who specified children: “‘Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.”’” We didn’t move the goalposts. They are exactly where you placed them. As for the elderly, our governors — the ones who are supposedly saving us but are actually making everything worse — actively intentionally, and outrageously exposed tens of thousands to Wuhan, which we have been railing about since we discovered the atrocious practice.

You asked about the possible overreaction to polio in a discussion about Wuhan flu, and now you complain that we compare and contrast? If you wanted to only talk about polio, then you chose the wrong thread.

“Both of these diseases are virii.”

The mistake is yours. You think one virus (plural: viruses) is like every other, but they are not alike. You are the one spouting numbers — five of them in your initial comment, alone. — we spout consequences, which you did in your initial comment, too (pools and theaters). The consequences to the reaction to polio were minor, but the reaction to Wuhan has been egregious and deadly in ways that you just refuse to acknowledge. The carnage is everywhere.

Just as other trolls have done on this site, you have managed to change the discussion from the topic at hand to something else, such as the unfairness that the rest of us have better arguments, except it is expressed by changing the topic away from the troll’s failed arguments.

If you want the answer to the question: “Did we overreact to polio?” then perhaps you should be willing to either accept other people’s answer or have counter arguments if your opinion is different and your question was intended to bring up a different — but useful — discussion.

This is Robert’s site, however, and he seems willing to allow trolls to roam freely. Perhaps he sees them as valid opinions and not as trolls intending to disrupt the discussion with irrelevant nonsense and poor discussion techniques. Claiming that we moved the goalposts that are still in the same place that you set them is not an argument or even a valid complaint.

Davo,
Thank you for getting us back on track, and I am sorry to have fallen once again for a distraction, taking us back onto another siding instead of farther down the mainline (if I may use railroad analogies instead of aerospace analogies).

But if presymptomatic people are able to spread the virus and masks reduce the likelihood of those people passing it on, even if true asymptomatic people are noncontagious, masks still can reduce transmission rates if people without symptoms wear masks.

But as I’ve pointed out before, it’s not obvious what levels of symptoms qualifies as symptomatic, people might have such mild symptoms they don’t recognize them as an illness.

In this country we’ve had several cases in which infected people who didn’t recognize themselves as unwell have spread the virus, including via surfaces (a button in a lift).

Both of these diseases are virii. If you want to argue that WuFlu is not deadly because NUMBERS, than you aren’t comparing virii, you are comparing NUMBERS. The argument you all are making is “Disease X is not a serious disease because the NUMBERS of maimed/dead are not very high per capita.”

Well, if it’s a NUMBERS argument, I can then logically assume that ANYTHING which produces similar per capita NUMBERS (of maimed/dead) is not a serious problem.

But, the minute I make exactly that comparison, you all move the goalposts. NOW, you change it to say “well, it mostly harmed children, and THATS the real reason we are upset” or “well, it harmed the economy, and THAT’S the real reason we are upset”.

When I successfully call you out on the first metric, you instantly change metrics and continue on as if you were still correct.

You say that polio is incommensurable because it paralyzed and killed the most vulnerable among us. Do you mean to say that the elderly are not vulnerable? Do you mean to ignore the fact that polio killed FAR FEWER people than the flu?

You want to argue that the Covid response is an overreaction because the economy contracted, sure, you can make that argument, but it wasn’t provable AND it is, for most people, a non sequitor. Given that we knew nothing about the virus when we started, there was no way of knowing that it wouldn’t wreak a death toll that would cause a HIGHER contraction than the lockdowns did, so it wasn’t provable at the time the action was taken.

Worse, it’s a non sequitor for most people because people don’t like being told that they should only be kept alive if they are economically useful – sounds pretty socialist/utilitarian, and people don’t like being told that.

Perhaps if you stuck with a solid set of goalposts, it would become more clear.
If you want to argue that WuFlu is not a big deal because it doesn’t harm many people, then you have to ALSO say polio was not a big deal because it harmed even fewer people. Same metric, same conclusion.

If you want to switch the measure to “harming the most vulnerable among us”, then you have to explain why elderly people are not worth considering “vulnerable.” Same metric, same conclusion.

You also asked a question that has implications: “Did we overreact to polio?”

I am the grandchild of someone who suffered lifelong disability due to polio. It really did cause permanent harm. Wuhan flu, not so much.

“does WuFlu cripple people? Why, yes. Yes, it does. We know SARS caused long-term fatigue syndrome in 35% of its victims even 3 years after they “recovered”. Similarly, WuFlu can damage the lungs, heart and brain.”

You equate SARS to Wuhan, and the damage that you attributed to Wuhan is the reason that they stopped using ventilators with such abandon — the ventilators were causing this damage.

“So, if you think we reacted appropriately to polio, given that WuFlu’s numbers are actually QUITE similar to polio, what will it take to make you understand that this is not much different than the annual polio epidemics we used to have?”

You have conflated two extremely different diseases. Polio was not a flu, and its consequences were seriously different. I would ask you what it would take to make you understand that these are not comparable diseases, but since Robert could not convince you through reason, it is clear that you do not understand the differences between different diseases.

The reaction to polio was very different than the reaction to Wuhan Plague From Hell (not China, trust the Chinese on this). For one, those who were most vulnerable to polio were the ones who were the protected, while with Wuhan we protected those who were least vulnerable and actively exposed those who were most vulnerable. What were our governors thinking?

For polio, we did not lock down everyone, shut down most of the economy, smack down any business that did not obey rules that were enforced as though they were laws, or create a Great Oppression. People were still allowed to live their lives. Elective surgeries at hospitals continued to save lives, no one was fearful of their doctor’s office, and people suffering from heart attacks were not afraid to go to the hospital for emergency care.

People could still eat at restaurants rather than take their food home to eat. No one cancelled Thanksgiving or Christmas for polio. Social distancing? We never heard of that before 2020.

From Steve Kellmeyer’s linked article, above:

… six years from when Salk began his research, the Salk polio vaccine was declared “safe and effective.” Church bells rang and newspapers across the world claimed “Victory Over Polio.”

Now that we have 90% and 95% effective vaccines, are church bells ringing and are newspapers proclaiming victory over Wuhan? No. Governor Cuomo is refusing to distribute it in New York. No one thought to refuse to get polio vaccines just because the president, when the vaccine was created, was of the wrong party.

Were daily polio death numbers published in the newspapers or on radio or on television news? Were people afraid to take public transit, trains, or ride in taxis?

For polio, there was not collateral damage killing more people than the precautions saved. Family savings were not destroyed, people were still allowed to travel the country freely, and jobs and businesses were not systematically destroyed.

So if we may have overreacted to polio and its numbers were quite similar to this year’s new (novel) flu then we way overreacted this year.

John Moore thought: “If the disease was only spread by those who were already sick, this pandemic would be over by now.”

This would be true if we had treated this flu like any other flu, but we didn’t. Instead, we have people behaving in ways that prolong the pandemic. Flus are most spread by and among people who spend much time indoors, such as happens in winter. This is why winter is flu season. We, on the other hand, are keeping people indoors even during the summer, thus the flu continues to spread as though we are still in flu season.

We require people to wear masks, even when they are not ill. This has the effect of causing even more illness in those who become infected, because the virus ends up in a mask that is right in their face, acting like an infected person is constantly in close proximity. BrianB noted that the flu can be spread by 15 minutes of close contact. When wearing a mask, the equivalent of 15 minutes of close contact comes on the first use of the mask, so people get the disease worse than they would have, if they had not been wearing a mask. A mild infection becomes a serious infection becomes a severe infection. Those who would not have passed it on become contagious.

The world reaction to Wuhan is what is making it such a bad flu, making Wuhan flu season an all year-round season (another difference between polio and Wuhan). What a cluster bleep.

However studies have also demonstrated that those who develop only mild symptoms also have a difficult time infecting others. And it still seems to be the case that most infections occur from close contact in an enclosed space for period of 15 minutes or more with either symptomatic people or people who will go on to develop a significant case. Others simply don’t have a large enough viral load to easily transmit it.
That makes the point of public masking and a great deal of the lockdowns almost certainly of little to no value and absolutely of vastly less value than the political, emotional and economic destruction having the government essentially suspend civil and economic rights for whatever period it proclaims it will.
That so many are not only not bothered by this authoritarianism but seem to welcome it, is a lot bigger risk to the country and world than the virus is.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School.

“Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

So, at its height in 1952, with 58,000 reported cases, assuming a 2% paralysis rate, that’s 1160 people paralyzed, 3000 more killed. Covid still causes more straight-up deaths than polio caused paralysis AND death.

And, while most people recover from WuFlu (just like most recovered completely from polio), does WuFlu cripple people? Why, yes. Yes, it does. We know SARS caused long-term fatigue syndrome in 35% of its victims even 3 years after they “recovered”. Similarly, WuFlu can damage the lungs, heart and brain. The percentage is pretty much the same as polio: 3-5% of patients suffer scar-damaged lungs. For those who have been hospitalized, 13.5% were still using oxygen at home months after discharge.

So, if you think we reacted appropriately to polio, given that WuFlu’s numbers are actually QUITE similar to polio, what will it take to make you understand that this is not much different than the annual polio epidemics we used to have?

“The Iron Lung and Polio” by Mark Rockoff, MD
2016
https://youtu.be/cUCqsl6JROg
8:35

let’s hear it from the source:

“China is ______”
https://youtu.be/8fwgVUfW_O4
0:23

Do you see any flaw in the above syllogism?

Because panic is easy, and we are wired to panic. It is part of fight or flight, and since it is difficult to fight an invisible enemy, panic and flight are the only option left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKaQLYPf5hM#t=105 (Faulty Towers: Don’t Panic, about a minute)

Overcoming the panic and being rational takes courage. But for those who remain three years old, those eager to let others make the important decisions for them, following the ersatz parents is the thing to do.

Most parents keep their children calm and feeling safe, but our fearful leaders found that this results in healthy, independent citizens, so they foster fear wherever they can. It can be a fear of a disease. It can be fear of warming climates or rising seas. It can be fear of solar eclipses or the country next door.

As for the people being in love with fear, they get to be Chicken Littles, spreading the news and scolding the skeptical. Their fear has become their new normal, and this normalcy comforts them. As with Chicken Little, they take the news to the King, who will then provide the solution and make them feel safe again, but only if everyone obeys the King in order to assure that the solution works.

For them, the good news is not good news at all, because it removes the ability to scold the skeptics, and it reduces the reliance upon the King for safety. It brings Chicken Little back to independence and self reliance, two concepts that are scary, because they require bravery.

The study classifies people as either those who never had symptoms (asymptomatic) or those who did.

But… those who did have symptoms went through a period of a day or two of shedding a lot of virus, before they became symptomatic. In this study, those are lumped in as “symptomatic” – because they were – over the course of the illness. The study had no way to detect pre-symptomatic shedding.

It has been well established – after the time this study was done – that pre-symptomatic people spread the virus quite well. This makes sense, since it takes a while for the body’s immune system to activate (which causes the symptoms), and the viral load grows significantly during that time. People may not be sneezing and coughing yet (more than normal), but they can and do spread the virus by talking, by normal coughing, by singing, and any other activity (eating) that can liberate droplets or aerosols into the air.

If the disease was only spread by those who were already sick, this pandemic would be over by now. Most people with it would not be going out and infecting others, because most people, given all the publicity, are not that inconsiderate of the health of others.

Evolutionary instinct. Back when people had to guess whether those rustles in the grass by the waterhole were hungry lions or not, the consequences of being wrong were very different depending on which way you bet. We’re descended from several million years of primates who erred on the side of caution as a survival strategy, and our instincts are very bad at balancing short-term vs. long-term risks, or direct vs. indirect consequences.

A related example is risk of driving vs. fear of flying; we are instinctively more comfortable in a higher-risk situation that we feel we can control (driving a car) than a situation we consciously know to be much safer by the odds, but that we can do nothing about if the worst does happen (flying in a plane). There’s a big difference between telling someone, “There’s no need for you to take these safety measures because there’s no danger” and “There’s no point in you taking these safety measures because they make no difference,” even if the facts on the ground are identical.

Steve Kellmeyer wrote, “Did we overreact to polio?”

You seem to ignore the profound differences in the consequences of getting polio vs COVID-19. While almost everyone survives the coronavirus with no subsequent harm, survivors of polio would routinely be crippled in some way for life, with the worst impact against young children.

No, we did not overreact to polio. There were solid reasons to fear it. These reasons do not apply to COVID, especially with children. While polio was terrifying for parents, COVID should invoke no fear at all. Children are practically immune to it. As are almost all healthy adults.

Why people seem so much in love with this fear of COVID-19 I just can’t understand. I provide some spectacularly good news in this post, and all you want to do is heighten fear.

In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 deaths [in a population of 157 million].”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-deadly-polio-epidemic-and-why-it-matters-for-coronavirus

Polio had a 99.99% survival rate, compared to WuFlu’s 99.96%
As a result of numbers like that, we began a worldwide effort to eradicate polio (which is still not quite completed).

Did we overreact to polio?

I think this is stealing a base. One piece of contrary evidence, here in Mass. we have data from wastewater testing going back to March 1, when you had to be admitted with severe symptoms to get a PCR test. This data (which captures most of the Boston metro area) shows a major spike from 3/15-4/30, also shows a second smaller one starting in October right when the weather turned colder.

https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

At present, we are running around 2.5-3K positives a day, which is close to the raw numbers seen in April. However, we have only 900 hospitalized currently versus almost 4000 then, and the wastewater data suggests this spike is less than double the scale of the spring one. That *may* indicate the virus is also becoming less severe but I suspect that is more due to increased infection rates among 20-somethings now.

No argument with your conclusion based ont he studies is Robert….but the numbers used to come to that conclusion require more than a little explanation