Once again - show a side by side empirical study showing the prevalence and severity so we can determine COVID 19 is worse.
Any rational physician will tell you that a disease that causes both respiratory and vascular issues is worse than one that only causes respiratory issues --- and a disease that causes both respiratory and vascular issues will most likely cause more significant long term effects.
Town of Great Barrington, Mass., comes out against Great Barrington Declaration https://thehill.com/homenews/state-...omes-out-against-great-barrington-declaration A small town in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts has come out against a declaration made in its name by economists and scientists who advocate for a so-called “herd immunity” strategy to get through the coronavirus pandemic. The Great Barrington Declaration, released last week, urges against lockdowns and economic restrictions governments have used to wrestle the virus under control. The statement was named for Great Barrington, Mass., home to the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank that convened its authors. Instead of lockdowns, the document advocates for younger and healthier people to go about their daily lives as normal, in hopes that enough people will build an immune response to the virus to create a population-wide immunity. Public health experts have called the concept of herd immunity — a term derived from livestock management — extremely dangerous. Though the coronavirus has lower mortality rates among younger people, that rate is not zero, and even those who have more moderate cases have suffered long-term consequences. In an interview Wednesday, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention at the University of Minnesota, called the Great Barrington Declaration “a dangerous mix of pixie dust and pseudoscience.” Great Barrington, the city, is siding with the public health experts rather than its hometown think tank. “We are a Covid safe community, we are not tossing off our masks,” Mark Pruhenski, Great Barrington’s town manager, said in a statement. “We wear masks, keep safe distances as we can in public,” said Stephen Bannon, the chairman of the town Board of Selectmen. “We are among the lowest risk towns in the state, and we hope to keep it that way." The statement says town leaders “believe herd immunity is a dangerous Covid-19 strategy.” Town leaders say they share empathy and concern for the toll the pandemic is having on local businesses and communities, but that their answer is to fill food banks with donations, offer rides and shopping services to seniors, and child care to essential workers. “Anyone who might avoid Great Barrington, due to confusion over the Declaration, is invited to visit and see how Covid-safe works in a small New England town,” the statement says. Its conclusion: “Please wear a mask.”
Great Barrington's "Town Manager". Who also probably tends bar on Saturday evening at the local watering hole. Science!
Here is an idea. How about leveraging your position and create a unbiased Covid survey for those who work at your company. If find you a way to encourage high participation such as regular followup to those who have not yet completed it, you should have a statistically significant sample size. If you are willing to do this, perhaps you could create a thread for ideas on suitable questions to ask, but it is important to keep the survey small to encourage high participation. Obvious questions, top of mind, would be to ask whether the survey participants had or knew someone who had Covid and if they had or knew some who had extended symptoms of Covid.
The purpose of the study would be to validate or invalidate to a degree whether Covid is a being used to create global hysteria or that Covid is indeed a dangerous pathogen that justify taking extraordinary efforts to mitigate its effects.
Is anyone denying its a dangerous pathogen to the old or those with co-morbidities? The argument to me is whether we should be asking the old and the co morbid to protect themselves better and let the kids and younger healthier people live as they wish. The data is there... we can see the breakdown for whom this is like the flu and for whom is worse. I believe we should not be locking down the low risk when we have the hospital capacity.. We have data for that too now. it does tremendous damage to the health safety and welfare of many.. And, once countries opened up the virus came back. So.. the the lockdown people really don't have a strong argument for locking down the low risk when there is hospital capacity... If I am wrong... make the argument. Using data compare and contrast the lockdown of the risk vs letting them live their lives but social distance.
Top of mind thoughts here: 1. The young are an active transmission vector to the elderly such as familial transfer, in healthcare settings, and in leisure/travel. Don’t forget the Babyboomer generation make up the vast majority of descetionary spending globally. 2. Although there is great emphasis on deaths, severe outcomes that don’t result in deaths seem underreported. Does it make sense to you that Covid is either nothing or it kills you, without no state in between? 15% or so of Covid patients experience severe symptoms with long term recovery prospects. 3. Vaccine effectiveness for influenza type viruses is historically low, especially for older people, emphasizing the need for us to be protective with PPE, sanitation, social distancing, and anti-virus infrastructure and procedures installed in high risk locations. 4. Younger people are less likely to die of Covid complications, but still can face long term recovery prospects. We need to quantify this number of younger people so affected in order to properly convey the gravitas of Covid on this generation. There is some good news coming out concerning Covid, however. Those with certain blood types and genetic profiles are more suseptible to the severe outcomes of Covid, regardless of age. Perhaps this information can be leveraged to help mitigate the effects of this disease. The bottom line is one side of this debate is either understating the seriousness of Covid or overstating its seriousness. We need to bridge this gap in order to create effective policy on this issue. Therefore, we should let statistics and science be our guide, because in the end, if Covid is indeed serious, it is going to adversely affect our economy, one way or another. More specifically, dead or disabled Babyboomers don’t spend money on descretionary items.