Scrutable

bagpuss wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:01 am

I've been trying to work out whether you're comparing apples with apples here but can't actually find any statistics for the percentage of people diagnosed with cancer who then go on to die of it. Could you share your source for the 35% please? But if that number is correct, then you're still not making the right comparison.

It's taken from somebody else's post in the thread.

What you should be comparing is a person's chance of dying of cancer vs Covid either over a lifetime or over a specific time period.

This is the point I have fundamental disagreement on; if we do that I think we'll constantly be deceived into thinking acute risks are more serious than chronic risks.

As we can't possibly have any lifetime risk of death from Covid stats at this point

I also disagree here, given that we have data on mutation rate and the degree of protection afforded by surviving Covid once.

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:06 am

As we can't possibly have any lifetime risk of death from Covid stats at this point

I also disagree here, given that we have data on mutation rate and the degree of protection afforded by surviving Covid once.

Sorry but this is simply untrue...

- We know the "degree of protection afforded by surviving Covid once" against current variants, at most about 18 months after initial infection.
- We do not know how much more lethal future variants might be.
- We do not know the degree of protection against future variants.
- We do not know the extent to which COVID infection will lead to later mortality due to long term damage.

And as we're discussing whether we should have had "lockdowns" - prior to the introduction of vaccines - we knew even less when those decisions needed to be made.

bob sterman wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:15 am

- We know the "degree of protection afforded by surviving Covid once" against current variants, at most about 18 months after initial infection.
- We do not know how much more lethal future variants might be.

That's true of any disease, including the common cold which has a much higher mutation rate.

- We do not know the degree of protection against future variants.

We can make a rational projection based on what we know about it's mutation rate, just as we can for diseases like measles.

- We do not know the extent to which COVID infection will lead to later mortality due to long term damage.

If somebody tried to make that kind of argument about damage caused by vaccines, what would you say to them?

And as we're discussing whether we should have had "lockdowns" - prior to the introduction of vaccines - we knew even less when those decisions needed to be made.

I think we did have the information above before the end of 2020.