Are you from Australia, or any other place that was able to successfully quarantine against COVID for an extended period of time? Even so I'd like to know so that I can look at the data.
An important point from that link comparing the two is that if you get hospitalized with COVID your death rate is close to twice that compared to if you get hospitalized with the flu.
And I don't see how mentioning obesity rates matters. If COVID is effectively the flu then obesity should effectively matter the same for both of them.
If you don't live in the US I don't understand why you're focusing on the US.
>and WE were blamed for the spread because we knew the vaccine wouldn't prevent transmission and was useless for most people below 50-60.
AGAIN Masking and distancing mattered, and still matters. Regardless whether one got the vaccine. I know those aholes at CNN and the like were saying that only the vaccines mattered. From my point of view, as a person who wanted to shut down this viral attack against the entire human species, a pox on both your houses.
We'd actually know better if China, not the US, but China, had been more forthcoming as to what exactly happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . Do we blame the people who hire contractors for the contractors' screwups, or the contractors who had stated (through BSL-4 certification) that they were competent to do the job?
Gain of function research is one thing, but it's not definitive evidence that the virus leaked from the WIV. As I discussed in this thread almost a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613
I live in Sweden. We had very little quarantine, other than WFH. Vaccine passes existed but was up to organizers to decide. Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1]. This is why we were able to be so lax, because people generally just follow rules and very rarely questions authority. Our people are predisposed to make eachother conform so there's no need for a police state.
I do not focus on the US, the issue was international which only makes it scarier to consider the scale of it. But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US, and I mainly blame Fauci and Daszak. Daszak was in the team the WHO sent to investigate the lab leak and even mentioned his conflict of interest in an interview before.
While all this was public data, the lab leak was ridiculed, by who? The people who had everything to lose if it was public. Then we're supposed to get the vaccines these same people push on us for the virus they modified to transmit to humans. Yeah fuck off with that bullshit.
And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion. I'm still waiting for an honest port-mortem of those years.
Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected. We (as in the west) had people funding and performing the research in charge of our responses. Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me.
> Our problem is our culture of conformity, we even have a word for it The Law of Jante[1]
I think in Australia this is known as cutting down the tall poppies. The presence of this effect in Scandinavia and Anglo-Oceania, places commonly thought of as egalitarian, makes me wonder whether this effect is in any way related to the observation that they have higher gender role self-segregation (particularly Scandinavia) than do less gender-equal countries.
> But it was a US program, to do research illegal in the US,
NIH funding of gain of function research was only banned from October 2014 - December 2017 by NIH moratorium [1], and might only now be in the process of getting a more general ban [2].
> And there was 0 discussion about this. We were called crazy, evil and all kinds of words. We were dehumanized, just because we wanted a sane discussion.
I agree. Ad hominems make really easy soundbites, and both the left and right media have been using them for a while now.
> Don't try to blame China, they're a dictatorship acting like expected.
No. I'll blame them too. It's a choice that people make political cultures that preference scapegoating and reaction instead of forethought and the precautionary principle. *If* COVID did come from WIV, then they are to blame. They were under no particular existential pressure. Everyone working for WIV should have been trained in good technique. Protocols should have been in place to identify and inform on any accidental release. And if they played fast and loose with safety that's on them.
> Fauci smirking behind Trump on press conferences disgusts me.
People make odd faces or suddenly think of something inappropriate to the moment all the time.
But you don't, the only reason we're even discussing China now is because you brought it up as "but China!" when I want Fauci and Daszak to get consequences for keeping quiet and lying about what they knew early in the investigation.
Here are your exact words:
> We'd actually know better if China, not the US, but China, had been more forthcoming as to what exactly happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
You can think China is equally responsible, they are not mutually exclusive views, but it's not really a response to my statement is it? It's shifting the blame. Fauci and Daszak denied any possibility of a lab leak, and should be prosecuted. The cynic in me even assumes this was outsourced to VIW in an attempt to cover up their tracks if shit hit the fan, don't fall for it.
What did they know that was pertinent? That the NIH had funded some gain of function research at WIV? What does that have to do with dealing with a current coronavirus outbreak?
> Fauci and Daszak denied any possibility of a lab leak, and should be prosecuted.
For what? Giving their opinion? WIV was specializing in this research. For very good reasons given that China was the source of SARS-CoV-1, and has a host of other animal populations and animal-to-human transfer scenarios (e.g. the Wuhan market where live wildlife is kept in close contact with humans for consumption) that the US does not have. Why not hire them to do what they are better able to do than any US institution?
An important point from that link comparing the two is that if you get hospitalized with COVID your death rate is close to twice that compared to if you get hospitalized with the flu.
And I don't see how mentioning obesity rates matters. If COVID is effectively the flu then obesity should effectively matter the same for both of them.
If you don't live in the US I don't understand why you're focusing on the US.
>and WE were blamed for the spread because we knew the vaccine wouldn't prevent transmission and was useless for most people below 50-60.
AGAIN Masking and distancing mattered, and still matters. Regardless whether one got the vaccine. I know those aholes at CNN and the like were saying that only the vaccines mattered. From my point of view, as a person who wanted to shut down this viral attack against the entire human species, a pox on both your houses.
We'd actually know better if China, not the US, but China, had been more forthcoming as to what exactly happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . Do we blame the people who hire contractors for the contractors' screwups, or the contractors who had stated (through BSL-4 certification) that they were competent to do the job?
Gain of function research is one thing, but it's not definitive evidence that the virus leaked from the WIV. As I discussed in this thread almost a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753613