:bojo: :bolso-joker: HERD IMMUNITY TIME
Robert D. Arnott (born June 29, 1954) is an American entrepreneur, investor, editor and writer who focuses on articles about quantitative investing.
Totally someone who’s qualified to give medical policy advice to the public :cringe:
"My pay is really high, so clearly my value to society is also equally high. I'm the most qualified person to talk on any subject, especially those filthy poors"
Seriously, why the fuck was he allowed to publish this? Who decided this? Because they need to be fired or imprisoned for endangering the public.
I am once again screaming at the top of my lungs that it isn’t less fucking lethal. Whoever the first person to say that was needs to be strung up from a fucking light post. That claim is based on a complete misunderstanding of hospitalization numbers and one yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study in hamsters with a tiny sample size.
And even if it WAS less lethal (it’s not!) seeing as it’s as infectious as the god damn measles now, a less lethal virus will STILL KILL A LOT MORE PEOPLE. Less lethal + Much more infectious = More death
And I just read this again, it says FAR less lethal! It’s not!!!! Why are you claiming that???? Who the fuck do you think you are Rob Arnott?? Kill yourself you dangerous fucking moron!
ok but did you consider that I’ll lose money this year if we protect human lives from this virus
And even if it WAS less lethal (it’s not!) seeing as it’s as infectious as the god damn measles now, a less lethal virus will STILL KILL A LOT MORE PEOPLE. Less lethal + Much more infectious = More death
exactly. let's say it killed only half as many people, but infected 4 times as many people. that's still 0.5 x 4 = 2 times the deaths. but hey, i'm not an economist :agony: to be perfectly clear: i pulled these numbers out of my ass
The modern flu kills in the neighborhood of 12k-61k Americans every year. The Spanish Flu was killing into the six-digit totals, around 600k between 1917 and 1918.
That's "less lethal" in both an absolute sense and a per-capita sense. But its a far cry from non-lethal. Its also a serious shift in expectations. I'm old enough to remember Op-Eds about the value of ending Influenza like we've ended Small Pox and Polio. Now we're getting articles that are pure Learned Helplessness. Just sorta shrugging and surrendering to a virus that - purely on WSJ-idiolized GDP terms - is carving out huge chunks of the economy annually, in the fanciful hope that next year we'll be marginally better off than the last one.
I haven't seen anything say it was less lethal. Fewer people dying of this variant is just survivorship bias. I hate that so many people will die or get long covid because that's what capital demands.
:liberalism: There was nothing we could do. Also the thing that we can not stop is a good thing. Back to brunch! :liberalism:
Capital dreaming of the day it can choose both rails of the trolley problem with a worker robot pulling the lever, over and over again, until there's nothing left to extract.
Mutation??? Wtf is that? There’s no “mutation” in this Milton Friedman book
The line demands blood! Grandma must be sacrificed so that the line may keep going up!
Everyone always says the same "but the Spanish Flu became the cute l'il cold we have today!" as if it's some iron law of virology that a virus must evolve to become more mild over time. That only happens if there's evolutionary pressure and the virologist community (who have been damn near exactly right on everything for the last 2 years) are saying this could just as well evolve to become more severe.
Everyone always says the same “but the Spanish Flu became the cute l’il cold we have today!”
If they're saying that then they're wrong on two fronts. The Spanish Flu became modern day influenza. The thing that everyone's supposed to get a vaccination to protect against, annually. It ebbs and flows, but is generally considered a miserable thing to have on a good day and still quite lethal on a bad one (particularly for the elderly and the immuno-compromised).
Symptoms consistent with the common cold can be traced all the way back to the 1550s BC, and earned the moniker as early as the 16th century due to it tending to flourish during cold seasons.
it’s some iron law of virology that a virus must evolve to become more mild over time
I don't know about an Iron Law, but its certainly a noticeable historical trend. The problem is that its a trend that plays out over decades/centuries. We're currently entering into year three of viral spread. The general prediction that COVID will be with us forever is predicated on it becoming on par with seasonal flu, bouncing around the population indefinitely and requiring periodic hygienic response in kind. But there are still exceptionally bad flu years - in the US between 2010 and 2018 we saw a low of 12k deaths and a high of 61k.
So, "more mild over time" comes with an exceptionally large asterisk. More mild than when it was killing 600k/year. But far from non-lethal.
Can't have herd immunity from a thing that mutates into variants that can reinfect a recently infected person... :yea:
