Re: CV and mad panic behaviour
Reply #3230 –
What does the data show about long covid?
Is it prevalent? I.e. out of 100% of cases, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% experience long covid??
We got told about this highly infectious, and virulent, and transmissable disease.
We have also been told a lot of bollocks about it, half truths, incomplete truths, random guesses, and very little transparency about it all which makes it all problematic for anyone to formulate a proper opinion.
The realist in me sees a fundamental problem. We analyse, 1's and 0's. The data is just data after all, its the assumptions formulated on said data that becomes a bit rubbery as we speculate on impact based on assumptions using data that is global but not modelled on the same demographics.
The assumptions (rightly) will be geared to a worst case scenario in a plan for the worst hope for the best scenario.
Even an extrapolated sample size of Australian data is not really telling of the story. We have 800 deaths out of 30000 that was a sample size heavily impacted by outbreaks in aged care settings which will produce biased results.
Thats not to belittle what happened here, or take away from the fact that people died or that people have gotten sick.
This is purely an effort to highlight some very real issues.
What does our data show?
Did many go to hospital because of covid or with covid?
What are the impacts aside from some flaky symptoms that are flu like?
What are the impacts of long covid (my only two first hand sources are sense of taste and smell impacted, and the other with random chest tightness but is bipolar, has anxiety and was relatively unscathed otherwise and only quit smoking in April of last year, after smoking for 20 years)?
How many of our recent cases got admitted to hospital? What was the impact of these recent 100 odd cases we have found out about to their health and well being? We dont need names, ages, date of births, just some high level information about the demographics will do: i.e. of our 100 odd, we had x that were aged 0-10, 10-20 etc and of those x were admitted to hospital for treatment with the following symptoms (etc etc etc).
Instead we get told about numbers numbers numbers and we need to lockdown for everyone's safety because this highly dangerous and transmissable strain, never really gets discussed about impacts which leaves a vacuum for people to fill in their own information with their own faulty assumptions which sways public opinion.
You know, I came to the following realisation and it actually is a better thing for people to know that the government was being transparent. Instead we here this rhetoric about the approach to lockdowns. From midnight friday, xyz is in place or no longer in place. This is bad information and approach that is geared towards control and enforcement. Instead we should be hearing "we have discovered X, and we encourage Y, and from midnight tonight we will be policing it to try and get on top of this but encourage that if you can do the 5 reasons you should and must do those reasons where possible" THAT is a better message and people are going to go raid the shops anyway and do what they need to do before going home, so we may as well do that. Instead we get this wishy-washy approach which is half bad communication, and bad planning. You know, if they said we are now recommending X as of right this minute based on the changing landscape, it would do more to instill confidence in people than the rubbery appraoch we have and it might make people consider their actions more, rather than squeezing in that holiday and running up the coast in a caravan they might be more responsible. They might not, but that's happening anyway and the longer we proceed like this, after 1.5 years of this bamboozling mess, the harder its going to be to get people to do the responsible thing based on good information and using valued judgements. Instead we encourage them to do "whatever it takes (deliberate use to highlight the real issues)" to get back to "normal".
Tell people the hard truths. Pandemics are responsible for global changes to normality and normality shifted as a result of them.
We don't know enough about COVID to draw any real conclusion, so this is the state of play:
1. Covid globally has caused a pandemic to occur and thus far we have thanks largely to good fortune and some decent planning (nope, politicians will never do this) avoided it becoming an epidemic here (terminology deliberate, look them up).
2. It seems to cause issues and grief regardless of age but not in all cases. you can gamble with your health if you wish, but dont blame us later if it goes pear shaped.
3. There is a lot of asymptomatic spread here, and thats ok, but globally that might not be the case and show the data. Our cases might simply be good luck, but here is the data on what WE have seen, vs what the world has seen which is WHY we take our appraoch (take people with you, dont just talk at them. Some will STFU because of it, rather than fill in the blanks.
4. The vaccines are our best protection method but we might see the virus mutate to resist them rendering them useless (dont pussy foot about it, just say it as it is). You don't have to have one, we won't make you take one, but you would feel pretty stupid if you ended up a statistic with one being made available to you that you refused to take because XYZ excuse. The reality is, we are doing our best here, but we just dont know enough so we are encouraging those most at risk to go for it, and let the others do what they think is necessary (messaging is better).
5. After seeing the way the government keep bungling every thing up, why on earth would anyone buy into some conspiracy theory about the suppression of one treatment over another anyway? There is nothing to suggest that the vaccine isnt just a placebo to calm the masses (this is my personal favourite as it is the most polarising, and I expect no one officially to come out and say it).
6. The alternative medicines are as horrific as any vaccine with side effects. Most doctors pushing said treatments are likely to be in big pharma's pocket anyway. So, we will make these drugs available to you if you want them, but you decide if you want them knowing that these are the side effects.
This is really not hard. For some reason, society has gone down a road where we insist on protecting everyone from themselves.
Let them decide whats good for them, and then let natural selection do the rest.
I have seen this play out in a lot of walks of life. We insist on protecting people from themselves. Stop it. Let them be what they want, and protect yourselves and stop mandating others do similar. We can all barricade ourselves indoors for the next 10 years if we must, and the life we live wont be worth talking about which is a complete waste of time, effort and energy. Encourage people to do what they want to. Life is too short to spend any extended period of time being told you cannot because the big bad wolf is out there, and we know he is out there, but when you look out the window, he is nowhere to be seen.
Draw your own conclusions here. I don't have answers for you, but here is my reason for me being vaccinated:
IF I take covid into an ICU, and I am a direct cause for one patient being sick and ergo dying ahead of their time, because I refused a vaccine, I probably couldn't bear the thought of ignoring the bit in bold. Apply the same to my loved ones. This was not an easy decision to make, because my assumption is that this vaccine is at best a time buying exercise for a world in a "pandemic" which in time we will look back and see that COVID wasnt really that big a deal.
That might be a best case scenario really, but I see it as massively likely, but even so, in case its not (nothing is certain in life) I took my vaccine anyway. The part that everyone is going to have time coming to terms with, is vaccine or not, will covid's impact be any different?