anyone tried them yet?
anyone tried them yet?
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You don't have any point. Influenza hasn't been a pandemic disease for a 100 years. Flu can't spread like a pandemic. We have existing immunty to it. No-one alive is experienced with a pandemic disease. It is a distinct and rare category, "novel" as they call it. You have to treat a pandemic disease differently. Quoting flu figure deaths is utterly irrelevant.
It wasn't a point! It's a indication of the lack of perspective that seems to drive hysterical comments by some people. The WHO seems to have the following view of Influenza.
1st paragraph from this document - https://www.who.int/influenza/Global...ry_English.pdf
"Influenza is a serious global health threat that impacts all countries: every year, there are an estimated 1 billion cases, 3-5 million severe cases, and 290 000-650 000 influenza-related respiratory deaths worldwide. In this interconnected world, the next influenza pandemic is a matter of when not if, and a severe pandemic is believed by many experts to be potentially the most devastating global health event with far reaching consequences."
Maybe the only reason we don't treat flu "every year" as a pandemic is because people don't get hysterical and we've learned to live with it.
The reason we don't treat flu every year as a pandemic is that no new (novel) strain has arisen. The last time a new strain arose was in 1918. 50,000,000 people died from it. Compare that to the 290,000 deaths WHO quoted above. You can compare covid with the 1918 flu, but you can't compare it with the present day flu. To repeat: a pandemic disease is different.
To repeat: that wasn't the point but to rebut the claim in bold:-
"Five flu pandemics have occurred since 1900: the Spanish flu in 1918–1920, which was the most severe flu pandemic, the Asian flu in 1957, the Hong Kong flu in 1968, the Russian flu in 1977, and the swine flu pandemic in 2009." - Wikipedia.
There are no deaths from normal flu in 2021 (and far fewer in 2020) because it is a side effect of the social distancing / lockdowns that are being used to combat COVID. It's only common sense. Normal flu is less infectious than COVID. By trying to prevent COVID, we've also eliminated the possibility of other less transmissible diseases to transmit. If you don't like to use common sense, here's an article about it:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-...-data/12134082
I agree with your logic and love common sense.
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infect...t-20210820.pdf
If you take a look at the latest Influenza Surveillance report (now incorporated into the covid report, page 29) reveals that there has been only 13 reports of flu YTD. (Note: this report is more like a survey and is only a representative sample).
The reasons for this are likely as you said but this presentation is in contrast to observations.
At the height of our zero case load period (April/May) there were still 30,000 to 50,000 tests per day. The criteria was the presence of mild symptoms at a minimum. None of these tests produced covid cases so what was driving this testing?
Couldn't be cases because there were none, so few contacts, close or otherwise. Was Public Health "pinging" people to keep the testing rate up? Were people being cautious and "faking" symptoms? Were the symptoms really flu? I'm not sure we'll ever know why this disconnect existed. It seems like an opportunity could have been taken to log the reasons for the tests and if flu was present then that data might be useful. Perhaps it was logged but the info appears not to be in the public domain.
Without the data to reference that there really were symptoms for these tests, it would suggest that respiratory ailments other than covid are still there and maybe just as infectious. So, maybe covid has banished "ordinary" flu from our consciousness but apparently not from the landscape. Should we be bothered with this conundrum? Probably not, more urgent things to think about.
One more thing I'd like to point out. There's a big elephant in the room regarding people who are in the "anti" camp. Those that want life to continue as before and do not want to consider COVID as a problem. Let's call them Muppets for simplicity.
The big problem with these Muppets is this:
It is true that there are a lot of other causes of death that are comparable to COVID. However, none of them need lockdowns, social distancing, or generally any type of mitigation mandated by the Gov that would affect the lives of Muppets a whole lot. Wear a seat-belt, higher priced ciggies, closing beaches after a shark attack, etc. All easy to do, no suffering for the Muppets.
Then we come to COVID mitigation. Muppets need to stay home all the time, their livelihoods are lost, they can't go for a punt, etc... Whoa it's a scam!
See, the ONLY reason these Muppets are downplaying COVID as a problem, calling it a scam, is because of the required mitigation that affects their lives. If car crashes needed the same kind of level of mitigation as COVID (eg. You have to wear a helmet when driving), the same Muppets would be calling Scam on car crashes too. Or if the only thing needed to prevent COVID was to wear a seat belt, do you think these Muppets would still be calling it a scam?
There's a lot of disjointed logic, presumptions and implications of childlike cartoon characterisations here. Not what I would've expected from you, Mr GoldfishMan.
A scam requires a perpetrator that creates a victim and a beneficiary. I can't see any of those here as eventually they become one and the same with all the same risk.
I am clear on where I stand. Can the same be said about you? I repeat what I've said before: Every single one of your posts contains a contradiction of yourself. You start by agreeing to someone's points then post links or info saying the opposite.
You are what I call an "intelligent troll". You know that outright frontal attack of the widely accepted opinion will surely fail with mass down votes of your posts. So you "snipe" at it... You remove all emotional cargo from your posts and try your utmost to post info that has been vetted and completely skewed to push YOUR point across. Will you post info that makes takes away from your opinion? Certainly not!
You're an antivaxxer, and a nonbeliever of COVID. In short, you're a Muppet. And I truly believe you act the way you do because you simply do not like the "inconvenience" it is causing you, above all else that you appear to be "concerned" about. Maybe you hate needles, maybe you dislike the inability to punt, or not being able to dine in.... Those are the only reasons driving you.
I was trying to be polite and can easily accept criticism of my arguments if they are supported by credible facts and reasoned logic. It appears you're beginning to falter now and turning to personal barbs based on a presumed stance. This is not good debating practice as you get consumed by personal feelings and it draws you away from the rationality of the arguments.
The info that I link are from credible medical or govt sources. The fact that they might not fit the narrative that the poster supports is the reason they're there. Surely they must fit into the "widely accepted opinion" you speak of, otherwise they wouldn't be published into the public domain.
The last paragraph is not worth responding to, it's just infantile.
This is the last post I shall make on this thread as others seem to be offended by my contribution.