I thought you had more sense than entertaining your man,
Youāve got the rest of the day free?
He thinks flu spreads at the same rate as covidā¦ this needs to be stamped to his e-forehead.
My wife has a great saying (not hers to claim, but she reminds me of it frequently as if it were). āThere arenāt two sides to every story, there are three sides, your opinion, my opinion, and the truth which lies elsewhereā (not necessarily in the middle, it might be outside the frame of reference of the discussion).
In this case it does lie in the middle. Infection rates are important, and the death count is important. Most important is the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) as that determines how seriously we should take any infectious disease. We donāt take the flu seriously because the IFR is low (around 0.1%) and we have vaccines to protect the vulnerable.
The main issue with Covid is the IFR is very high for the elderly and other vulnerable, the latest CDC estimates are as high as 9% for those over 65, a frightening number, and 0.6% for those 50-64, scary enough. But, the IFR for young people is quite low, 0.05% for age 20-49 and 0.002% for age 0-19. For most in the 10 - 40 bracket itās nowhere near as bad an illness as a bad flu.
And there lies the problem. By summer of 2020 young people had concluded that this was not a disease that they were personally threatened by, in the early teens to 30s they all knew by then lots of their friends who had had Covid and nobody who had been hospitalized, or even very sick. At that point we lost the lockdown argument, but we kept pretending we had won it. We donāt live in totalitarian societies, our ancestors fought and died to rid us of such regimes. So young people donāt have to do what the government says, and enough of them ignored not just imposed restrictions but voluntary guidance in the fall/autumn of 2020 to drive a massive winter wave.
There have been massive failures all around, the failure to see the obvious at the beginning, the failure to prepare for a pandemic, the failure to focus on protecting where the most vulnerable were (hospitals and care homes), the failure to predict a winter wave driven by the same factors that drive the winter flu, the failure of numb nuts restrictions like closing parks and beaches that caused skepticism, but maybe the biggest failure was not taking into account human psychology. Lockdown fatigue is a real thing, and young people behaving like young people is just as true during a pandemic as any other time.
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She stuck with you in the end so, fair play to her. How is she managing life on the run?
But if people who are vulnerable are vacinnated surely infections will not be as bad?
Seasonal flu has a vaccine.
Seasonal flu has no mass PCR testing
Seasonal flu has no arbitrary death assignment.
The fact Iām having to point these basic facts out to you is worrying for your own level of intelligence.
Tell me a question and tell me no more ā¦ what are the rates of transmission for flu in a given year vs covid. Lads here are arguing they are identical.
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Mexico is lovely mate, have you been?
Why do infection rates matter once those that are vulnerable are vaccinated? Strange to see @backinatracksuit like your post considering he has been telling us itās nearly over for weeks
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So are you against lockdowns then?
Maybe when we design mass PCR testing for flu weāll have an ideaā¦
So this craic is the great analytical and argumentative power everyone should fear? My godā¦
As @Fagan_ODowd clearly demonstrated the other day, Covid-19 is not comparable to seasonal influenza ā in the slightest. You have no basis on which you could sensibly make that assertion. Instead you are locked into an OIUTF loop, impervious to common sense, intelligence and coherence.
If Covid-19 was like seasonal influenza, the planet would not have cost itself billions by eschewing treating Covid-19 as seasonal influenza, would it? Your argument is straightforwardly asinine.
Your argument is likewise stupid. You are making a version of what philosophers term a ācategory errorā. You are basically asserting that two phenomena, because they share a quality, are the same phenomenon. This assertion is nonsense.
A = seasonal influenza.
B = causing pressure on hospital system.
C = Covid-19.
You are basically arguing A equals C because they both contain B. To argue with such a lack of nuance is straightforwardly stupid.
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The R0 for flu varies a lot depending on the strain, itās typically around 1.2 but the Spanish flu was probably over 2.0 and the swine flu of 2009 was around 1.5. Covid was originally estimated at 2.5 but recent studies say more like 5-6. Itās closer to measles territory than the flu.
For godās sakeā¦ Why do infection rates matter?
Are you for serious?
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Covid is more contagious , has a longer incubation period and leads to more serious illness in people. Itās completely different and has no relevance to the argument.
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Why do they matter once the vulnerable have been vaccinated I said. Please read the full sentence in future and answer my question
Saying over and over again doesnāt make it right you gobshite.
Are you actually going to be able to substantiate anything you say?
Is that too much of a challenge for your rote learning of a thesaurus? Do you think you could possibly make a logical, coherent argument?
Any chance of answering a question substantively fucko?
Are you too limited to do so?