Covid-19 (Coronavirus)

Led Zeppelin said:

It would be against the law.

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What would be against the law? Supporting your assertions with evidence? How would that be illegal? I see no provisions in article 5 of the German constitution that suggest that providing evidence for your assertions on internet fora is prohibited.

Led Zeppelin said:

What are the hell are you thinking? You can decide for yourself if I am telling you the truth or if I am a psychopath who is telling you lies because I want everyone to die.

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I don't indulge in asinine judgements rooted in logical fallacies, and this is a doozy of a false dichotomy. There are many alternatives to truth and 'lying psychopath'. There are many reasons not to believe assertions, not least that the vast majority of the assertions made on the internet are complete bollocks. Let's just go with: I require evidence in support of your assertions. That way, we can stay away from motivations and charges of dishonesty.

it's like this: If you have no evidence for your assertions, you have exactly diddly squat of value to add to the discussion, because assertions are worthless, amounting to nothing more than unevidenced opinions. There's a famous saying about opinions and assholes.

Led Zeppelin said:

This is right also. I am sure that if I was in charge of controlling a pandemic, it would end in catastrophe.

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I would have killed it.

hackenslash said:

What would be against the law?

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Giving you information of peoples medical history? Besides that, I would rather keep other information regarding where my loved ones work private. Just rereading my post i see it could contain errors because I dont know for sure what these tests are called in english. I also dont know if what we call a "rapid test" here is the same test that is called a "rapid test" in other countries. But it doesnt really matter.

21st Demon Lord said:

Uhm ...!


A historian got much more information than that. Any historian can cite dozens over dozens of outbreaks over the course of history and the responses to them,

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Yes, an historian can catalogue the past - the past when people didn't have our medical knowledge, our administrative capacity, or our technology - so despite a stellar historian being able to provide a comprehensive list of past epidemics, there's no logical connection to that offering any utility to a modern global epidemic. Perhaps the only one relevant is the Spanish Flu.

21st Demon Lord said:

And most importantly, can tell you what worked and what did not.

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This just isn't a contention that has any meat to it.

21st Demon Lord said:

We have been dealing with Cholera, Small Pox, Measles etc. for thousands of years now and taken many different approaches to deal with it.

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And they all failed until we had vaccines. That's really the point here - viruses like all parasitic organisms - hijack our normal behaviors as a means of spreading themselves. No historical society did well; some may have done better than other contemporary societies, but that doesn't mean they have lessons for us to learn today. As you said earlier, in a medieval setting perhaps burning people in their houses was cutting edge virus management, but not so today.

The problem for me is that you've not really attempted to link the two components together, just put them next to each other. An historian can list historical epidemics and list the response by various people and what outcomes they had... but none of those historical settings are relevant today. Had those people had our knowledge of medicine, centralized states, and access to technology - then I would agree that the past could inform the present, but they didn't - invariably they thought spirits or god or black magic practitioners were causing the spread of disease, and they responded with just as woolly and nonsensical ideas to 'solve' them. On top of that, the extent of their human expectation of rights and freedoms is nothing like we'd expect today, and the means they often employed would be considered murderous and barbaric.

Finally, the idea that the world got this right in the past is just not real: the Black Death, for example, potentially killed a quarter of the world's population, and that's in a time completely unlike our own in which we can traverse the planet in a day - it would take them weeks to travel by horse and ship just to cross part of a continent.

21st Demon Lord said:

Btw. some more historical relevant information, we actually managed to root out Small Pox with a vaccination campaign, but didnt with the Measles, cause not enough people got vaccinated. Might wanna take the approach we did for Small Pox when dealing with the Corona vaccination and not the Measles approach.

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And these approaches were....? Let's have some substance to claims here, please.

Incidentally, you might want to consider some other elements here because these 2 viruses are not readily comparable in terms of this discussion. Measles is one of the most infectious diseases humanity has ever encountered, plus it very readily transmits between people. Smallpox, while fairly infectious, actually was much harder to transmit - requiring close contact between an infected person at a particular stage of the virus' development in the body. Consequently, it's a damn sight harder to remove measles from a population than it is smallpox.

21st Demon Lord said:

Of course thats we did for Cholera, Small Pox and Measles. Over and over and over again actually ... especially Cholera was so bad, that it was called "King Cholera" in the UK and everytime an outbreak happened, people hid in their homes till it was over. Thats why it was "King Cholera" ... cause when it came to the country, it ruled supreme.

For the most time, we had no vaccine, no proper medication and had to deal with it with simple measures. A year ago, we were in the same situation for Corona. And thats when, pretty much everyone screwed up(except for Taiwan, Japan, New Zeeland, Greenland and a few more) and they all said "They were suprised", that Corona was "unprecedented" and they did not have time to respond properly. Freaking liars, there was plenty precedent and any historian could have told you, what actions to take.

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No, no, again no. This is your claim, but you've not shown how this is actually valid. This is just not what historians do, and it's just not got anything like the value you're saying it has.

I'm not an historian because I don't get paid to do history stuff, but I am a trained historian in that I studied it undergraduate alongside anthropology. There is nothing in the historical skills set that would either allow the historian a means to acquire relevant knowledge here, nor would anyone else consider the historian's role seriously.

It would be a bit like someone fainting, the crowd gathers round nervously viewing the afflicted, then the hoped for sentence... "excuse me, let me through, I'm an historian." - it's not real world.

21st Demon Lord said:

Just to make that completly clear, I was talking about the initial response, the time when we could have beaten it.

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Personally, I think it's easy to be an expert and declare what we should have done much later when greater knowledge of the effects have already happened. However, I have to say that I don't your 'what if we had..' version here is suggestive that it'd have had a superior outcome.

21st Demon Lord said:

Sidenote: We didnt beat Cholera with a vaccine though, but just with proper sanitation.

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Too many people live in places where proper sanitation is unachievable, and it is they who still regularly fall ill from cholera - more than a 100,000 a year die from it. The vaccine gives 6 months protection, and if it were administered to everyone, then there would be zero deaths from cholera in that 6 month period. Unfortunately, cholera bacteria (plural, as more than 1 bacteria cause cholera) are found in numerous places in nature and will always remain endemic - we can't wipe it out just by vaccinating the population - it will always be there.

21st Demon Lord said:

He is not completly wrong though hack.
That you and me are alife, is good evidence that there have been no highly contagious, deadly, airborne diseases yet, since that would have wiped humanity off the face of the earth.

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That's not what he said, though.

I can change his argument and make it not wrong as well, but the original argument written by LZ amounted to: as I haven't died of X, X is not dangerous and doesn't pose a risk.

Dragan Glas said:

Greetings,


If I remember correctly, Led, you said that your partner works in a hospital?!

Hasn't she told you of anyone dying from the virus?

Kindest regards

James

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Yes but these are not people I know personally. My partner is basically in charge of keeping records, she is not able to tell me what the people who died were like because she does not deal with them personally either.

It very well could be that I do not take the threat of Covid19 seriously enough because I have hardly been affected by it all, except from the annoyance of having to follow preventitive measures.

Led Zeppelin said:

Giving you information of peoples medical history?

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You're not a doctor or medical practitioner, therefore you aren't legally bound by any patient-practitioner agreement.

But even if you were, there's nothing illegal about doctors and nurses talking about cases in the abstract. The problem only lies in naming the patient and then talking about their private medical history.

Led Zeppelin said:

Besides that, I would rather keep other information regarding where my loved ones work private.

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No one asked you to reveal it.

All that someone asked you was, if your other half is a nurse, then surely she must have told you that covid 19 is dangerous and kills people. She probably was also quite worried considering she's on the front lines, as it were.

I hope you appreciate her, LZ - she is taking a risk to help other people, and probably isn't all that well paid for it.

Led Zeppelin said:

Yes but these are not people I know personally. My partner is basically in charge of keeping records, she is not able to tell me what the people who died were like because she does not deal with them personally either.

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No one is asking WHO the people were.

Led Zeppelin said:

It very well could be that I do not take the threat of Covid19 seriously enough because I have hardly been affected by it all, except from the annoyance of having to follow preventitive measures.

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Which is more annoying? Not being able to go to the pub, or being laid up in bed for weeks fighting for life with a machine breathing for you?

Sparhafoc said:

I can change his argument and make it not wrong as well, but the original argument written by LZ amounted to: as I haven't died of X, X is not dangerous and doesn't pose a risk.

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That is not exactly what I meant. What I meant at the time was that it does not pose a risk to me.

Sparhafoc said:

I hope you appreciate her, LZ - she is taking a risk to help other people, and probably isn't all that well paid for it.

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She's not a nurse, but she must handle patient files which also puts her at risk. Ikea sent her a calander and a toy heart for christmas that has arms to give her a hug with as a thank you to all hospital employees here. They do all deserve a big thank you. It is nice of you to say what you said here.

Sparhafoc said:

Which is more annoying? Not being able to go to the pub, or being laid up in bed for weeks fighting for life with a machine breathing for you?

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I see your point and realize I am probably an asshole.

Led Zeppelin said:

That is not exactly what I meant. What I meant at the time was that it does not pose a risk to me.

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And I've already addressed this.

That you haven't died from cancer doesn't mean you're not at risk from cancer.
That you haven't died from heart failure doesn't mean you're not at risk of heart failure.
That you haven't died from a piano falling out of the sky and landing on your head doesn't mean you're not at risk from a piano falling out of the sky and landing on your head.

In each case above, there are wildly different risks associated with elements unique to you, your physiology, your medical history, or your penchant for walking underneath cranes lifting pianos...

But NONE of the risk scenarios are related to the fact that you haven't yet died from them.

Led Zeppelin said:

She's not a nurse, but she must handle patient files which also puts her at risk. Ikea sent her a calander and a toy heart for christmas that has arms to give her a hug with as a thank you to all hospital employees here. They do all deserve a big thank you. It is nice of you to say what you said here.

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I can tell you very directly: I consider people like your Mrs fucking heroes as much as fire-fighters or rescue crews. These people put their life on the line for the well-being of others.

However, again sorry, but we're not asking you to identify patients. That could plausibly be illegal. Instead, what was asked was how you could be married to a nurse yet not consider covid 19 dangerous and a serious risk to your well-being. The question posed to you was something along the lines of: hasn't your wife told you how dangerous covid 19 is?

Led Zeppelin said:

Giving you information of peoples medical history?

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Well, aside from the fact that you should be able to support most of the assertions in that portion of the post to which this pertains without revealing anything like that, there's no way you could break any law by giving that sort of information. You'd have to be a medical practitioner and/or the custodian of records for a healthcare organisation for it even to be possible for you to be on the hook for it, so that's just two ways in which your objection is specious.

Led Zeppelin said:

Besides that, I would rather keep other information regarding where my loved ones work private. Just rereading my post i see it could contain errors because I dont know for sure what these tests are called in english. I also dont know if what we call a "rapid test" here is the same test that is called a "rapid test" in other countries. But it doesnt really matter.

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I'm not even remotely interested in anybody's personal information in any way, but you made assertions that didn't involve anybody but were general statements about testing in Germany.

FYI, the reason for the high number of false positives has mostly been due to contamination, generally of the reagents. I know there were a whole slew of shoddy PCR tests made in India that were distributed, and a lot of the false positives were down to that. There's a reason for that, and it's all to do with how PCR works, because what PCR does it to amplify what's there based on targets set by primers.

@Sparhafoc So .. you are kinda adverse to the general idea of learning from history and applying lessons from the past to the present?

Oh and the way we completly routed out small pox was simple, we invested an unprecedented amount of money and send people literally to every door in every country to vaccinate people. That was especially important in Africa and South America, while people generally went to get vaccinated by themselfs in the first world.

Btw. I have a projected life span of 80 years, thats roughly 30.000 days, so the chance for me to die is 1 in 30.000 ... which means the chance for me to die today is so low, its irrelevant. Conclusion, I am immortal and never gonna die

21st Demon Lord said:

@Sparhafoc So .. you are kinda adverse to the general idea of learning from history and applying lessons from the past to the present?

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That's a spectacularly stupid thing to do. You do know, do you not, that @Sparhafoc is an anthropologist? Does that sound like somebody who fits your bill?

I highly recommend not putting words in people's mouths. Such practice will always, quite correctly, be met with hostility. It's dishonest discursive practice and it's fallacious. Indeed, this is the very definition of a straw man argument, and it's not welcome.

21st Demon Lord said:

Oh and the way we completly routed out small pox was simple, we invested an unprecedented amount of money and send people literally to every door in every country to vaccinate people. That was especially important in Africa and South America, while people generally went to get vaccinated by themselfs in the first world.

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It's laughable how simple you make it sound, but the reality is nothing like that simple. In fact, the majority of the work as done by legislation. The notion that we just sent people out to knock on doors is asinine. In reality, the eradication of smallpox took 184 years of concerted effort, and was anything but simple, especially in places like India, where they quite rightly didn't trust the British and their vaccine, and it was hugely resisted in favour of inoculation.

Sparhafoc did completly deny that our thousands years of history of fighting pandemics is in any way useful for what we are facing today and he did state himself, that historians only deal in statistics earlier, rather than historical context ... so I do not think its an unfair question.

Quote: "All an historian could tell us is how many people died in an historic epidemic." Just to make sure, that I am not being unfair.


Oh and we actually did send people to knock on doors, quite literally hack. Every freaking door on two continents. That was a monumental task unprecedented in history with marvelous results, saving billions over billions of lives over the course of history. And of course it was more complicated than that, but thats the astonishing part, so I focused on that. Just try to imagine the logistics it took, to get people and vaccines to every village in the most rural parts of africa ... but sure, if you are more astonished by the political part of it, that was also monumental, though personally I am more into the adventure behind it, rather than the PR campaign and the drafting of laws. Oh and the reason I am not citing the international cooperation it took, is simply because that wasnt all puppies and kittens.

21st Demon Lord said:

Sparhafoc did completly deny that our thousands years of history of fighting pandemics is in any way useful for what we are facing today and he did state himself, that historians only deal in statistics earlier, rather than historical context ... so I do not think its an unfair question.

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He is correct in what he says, but it doesn't carry the implication your idiotic question suggests. You're being either incredibly dishonest or incredibly stupid.

21st Demon Lord said:

Quote: "All an historian could tell us is how many people died in an historic epidemic." Just to make sure, that I am not being unfair

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Which is a true statement. What lessons could have been learned from past experience have already been learned and inform our strategies, all without the intervention of historians, who are entirely fucking useless in this regard. No utility whatsoever.

You're talking to somebody whose expertise in history far outstrips yours, and imputing corollaries that do not follow from his statements. You're wronger than a wrong thing on wrong juice.

21st Demon Lord said:

Oh and we actually did send people to knock on doors, quite literally hack. Every freaking door on two continents. That was a monumental task unprecedented in history with marvelous results, saving billions over billions of lives over the course of history. And of course it was more complicated than that, but thats the astonishing part, so I focused on that.

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I never suggested we didn't send people to knock on doors, but to reduce the 184 years of effort and legislation in this manner is as dumb as a box of rocks, and horrendously misleading, to the point of being epistemically worthless.

And there's nothing astonishing at all about the eradication of smallpox, other than it took so long because humans are, to a first approximation, morons (which I suppose should astonish nobody).

hackenslash said:

Which is a true statement. What lessons could have been learned from past experience have already been learned and inform our strategies, all without the intervention of historians, who are entirely fucking useless in this regard. No utility whatsoever.

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No it is not a true statement, any historian can provide much more information and any historian worth his salt, can give you historical context.
What you are talking about are high school history teachers. And honestly, its appaling that you completly dismiss the expertise of a very important branch of academia like that.

And are you actually serious? "have already been learned and inform our strategies" ... Yeah .. no, we simply do not. On the contrary, we are willfully ignorant of history and refuse to learn lessons, we should have 2000 years ago. But hey, maybe I am just a cynic.

Holy shit, you are so horribly wrong, I don't even know where to start.

I haven't dismissed any branch of academia. What I've dismissed is your cortical excrement regarding its applicability well, well outside its domain, and that's speaking as somebody not just with more expertise in science but in history as well (the primary focus of my writing is history of science and history of thought; you are very much within my wheelhouse now, and entirely out of your depth). Your stupid characterisation of history is massively more dismissive of history than either my stance or that of Sparhafoc, because it's fucking wrong. You have no fucking clue of what you're on about.

History is an important field, but it isn't fucking medicine, and historians have no place informing medicine, because ALL medicine INCLUDES the history of medicine. It in the nature of EVERY field of thought that it includes the entire history of that field of thought.

And I will say this only once: Never, ever tell me what I'm talking about. You have neither the cognitive capacity nor the logic chops to recapitulate my thoughts, as you've ably demonstrated with this entire line of discourse. There will be no repeat of this advice prior to simply treating you like a discursive chew-toy, and that's more respect than you deserve when you engage in such practice.