Comment by invisible | Hacker News Reader

Comment by invisible | Hacker News Reader

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There are multiple replies and retweets that compare COVID-19 to flus/colds in a “COVID-19 is the same” context. Or suggesting that drastic measures are unwarranted or unreasonable.

The kerpen tweet thread is troubling because it suggests that the CDC is both providing accurate data and that they are only providing guidance for political reasons. So they aren’t lying, but they are? Then he compares COVID-19 to the flu and cold, ignoring that transmission by children can affect adults.

Here is another one (in addition to the one above about children):

> No lockdown in 2017-2018 cold season!

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1335873383209177088?s...

That is ignoring that the fatality rate and transmission rate is significantly higher in COVID-19.

Maybe all of these things comparing the equivalence of the cold and COVID-19 mean nothing to you, but they seem significant to me. Perhaps you’ll defend these by saying, “in isolation this data is accurate.” That point falls flat when taken in context to our situation — they are marketing a perspective.

You asked me for some citations for my comments and then criticized that I provided citations for why I said what I said. Nobody said you’re on “Team Reality” but you.

(Oh, and also: I can’t go back further than 10/10 on your tweets but there were a number of retweets from EthicalSkeptic saying that the death count was a lie and suggesting that COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal.)

Edit: Here is a comment from someone in the thread discussed. This is the “subtext” I see. https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1282074580350312450?...

No one in any tweet said "it's just the cold" so you were misreading or misrepresenting — which is it?

From my "No lockdown in 2017-2018 cold season!" tweet you linked, straight up the thread two tweets, everyone can see the quoted tweet:

https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1330594561635315724

where Mark Changizi wrote:

"Overwhelmed hospitals everywhere!

...in 2017/18 cold season.

US: https://nytimes.com/2018/02/02/health/flu-symptoms-virus-hos...

UK: https://nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-heal...

Italy: https://thelocal.it/20180119/italy-worst-flu-season-in-14-ye...

Japan: https://japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/22/national/science-he..."

Obviously the point is that we had overwhelmed hospitals in 2017-2018 (almost every year, the Guardian runs an "NHS overwhelmed" story in the UK) but no lockdowns.

This was not to make light of that (bad) flu season, or to say "it's just the cold". Rather, the link pointed out that we didn't lock down over elevated mortality in bad flu years. That is relevant because WHO and CDC long-term policy guidance was and is against lockdowns:

CDC 2007: https://cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/community_mitigat... p. 25:

“... the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population....”

WHO 2006: http://upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2... argues against lockdowns.

If you can't follow this context without misreading as "just the cold", I say it's time to stop reading Twitter and HN right now.

(BTW, Alex Petrescu in that thread ended with a gracious concession about overreacting by using troll-form rhetoric: https://twitter.com/SeyelentEco/status/1336043936238845953?s....)

What does the word “suggesting” mean to you (in the sentence as I used it)? I’m guessing “some leading the reader to believe that it is the same as a cold” would have been more clear.

No, "suggesting" doesn't help, you are still misreading. The argument was about no lockdown in 2017-2018 in spite of bad cold season. It was an argument against lockdowns, not a claim that Covid-19 is just the cold.

Perhaps you are assuming lockdowns are good policy and help. Or you think Covid mortality is much worse than the worst post-1918 flu pandemics. Neither is true.

The argument against lockdowns was based on it being comparable to a cold/flu season.

The number hospitalized so for COVID-19 in the US exceeds the 2017-2018 season. Additionally, the mortality rate is an order of magnitude higher (61k in 2017-2018 flus vs ~500k+ for COVID-19 so far, US). Dealing with dying patients is harder on hospital staff. Treating a new illness was challenging for hospitals. That result is with the extraordinary measures that we, as a society, have taken.

>Neither is true.

I’ll admit, it’s tough to say what the lockdowns did to/for us. I’m not prepared to assert the truth as willingly as you are. I’m going to have to defer to the only study I could find on this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8

> The argument against lockdowns was based on it being comparable to a cold/flu season.

No:

CDC 2007: https://cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/community_mitigat... p. 25:

“... the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population....”

WHO 2006: http://upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2... argues against lockdowns.

The argument against lockdown as ineffective above 1% spread is based on models, see the references. Whether these are good models or not, that's what CDC policy guidance was.

Western lockdowns with many essential workers spreading the virus, especially nosocomially, are even less justifiable. Wrecking the economy, including health care sector employment and facilities, while leaving people worse off on all other health fronts (deferred checkups and treatments), plus the psychological toll culminating in elevated suicides, is not worth hard-to-measure reduction in spread. Lockdowns actually focus spread into shared housing, notably nursing homes. They also select adversely in the face of mutated variants.

Lockdown policy guidance was not based on cold vs. flu or severity of either. I have no idea why you thought this.

I'd like to point out the obvious but those links are written about flus.

Here is the advice that replaces that 2007 CDC paper (from 2017):

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm

> NPIs can be phased in, or layered, on the basis of pandemic severity and local transmission patterns over time.

It goes on to explain that it may suggest "lockdowns" if the pandemic is severe enough.

Here are the two actual papers that other link is based on (the 2nd of these is more applicable):

- https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1370_article

- https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1371_article (see phase 6)

Some quotes:

> A 1959 WHO consultation concluded, "In the Northern hemisphere at least, the opening of schools after the summer holidays seems to have played an important role in initiating the main epidemic phase" (13). Despite the propensity of influenza epidemics to be amplified in primary schools (14), data on the effectiveness of school closures are limited. Apparently no data or analyses exist for recommending illness thresholds or rates of change that should lead to considering closing or reopening schools.

> Apparently no controlled studies assess the efficacy of mask use in preventing transmission of influenza viruses.

> As noted above, influenza virus isolation rates decreased, but since multiple measures were implemented, the contribution of mask use, if any, is uncertain (20). In case-control studies conducted in Beijing and Hong Kong, wearing masks in public was independently associated with protection from SARS in a multivariate analysis.

These papers are from 2006. They are also very clear that the circumstances matter. Regarding international travel, it seems they suggest that restricting travel would be difficult, if not impossible. They suggest closing schools if a link is unknown or found between schools and transmission.

School closure efficacy has been well researched, you found the same links I did when I researched this years ago. We were talking about lockdowns, so why switch to school closures? No need to answer.

Viral family, Flu or CoV, is not material to the modeling work as far as I can tell. The models consider respiratory viruses and attack rate and other such parameters.

No authority that I know of has suggested lockdown in the past for anything similar in mortality to Covid-19. If it's severe enough... but it isn't. Please focus on this. The CDC IFR estimates show Covid-19 as worse for older cohorts, much less severe for younger, than Flu.

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