Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not disputing your claims.

Not because I specifically agree (or disagree) with them. Personally, I also consider myself in a pretty good position to judge this stuff, however I decided a while back that even when I think I'm sure I'm not going to tell it as a fact, especially online where other readers can't easily tell if corin_ or doreenmichele are making great points or deluded idiots. (A quick edit here: I didn't mean that to imply one or both of us are deluded or idiots. Just that neither of us are coming into this thread with "here are my qualifications and/or research to make me more than a random commenter".)

My reply wasn't that you were wrong in your beliefs, however this part in particular:

"And that led to an epiphany for me [...] So I got a pizza and then he felt vastly better. So the whole blood angle is cemented in my mind like "Clearly, this is a hard fact and..."

My point is that even if you are 100% correct about the blood issues and zinc, you have literally described a one day process of epiphany to pizza to fact proven. Whether you're right or wrong overall, that's not how people should be forming opinions on fighting covid.

My point is that even if you are 100% correct about the blood issues and zinc, you have literally described a one day process of epiphany to pizza to fact proven. Whether you're right or wrong overall, that's not how people should be forming opinions on fighting covid.

You are wildly misreading my comment.

A professional researcher stated their opinion that there was something blood related -- that I didn't understand so I asked for clarification -- and then said something about zinc. I then went over our consumption habits, realized that we were eating a lot of zinc-rich foods we don't normally eat in large quantities and felt it was worth betting on "It's the zinc, like the researcher said." And that bet paid off for us -- though me and my oldest son both have a genetic disorder, so I'm absolutely not inclined to generalize from that.

So I'm not recommending anything about how to fight covid. It's a personal anecdote about how this got cemented in my mind so clearly. That's it. Nothing more.

Apologies for misreading your comment, but you did describe a pizza cementing your view.

We all have cognitive biases, including the most intelligent, accomplished people anywhere.

Plenty of research shows that the placebo effect is a very real phenomenon (even when we are told we're being given a placebo pill it can still help!)

I wasn't trying to change your mind on anything covid related; just about how we all let anecdotes convince us of pre-existing beliefs.

And even if you personally didn't need that lesson, I still think it needed to be explained for anyone reading your comments considering their implication that a one off pizza event was enough to impact your views (even if that's not how you intended the comment to mean).

Edit to add: of course, the mechanisms behind cognitive biases can be helpful! If a doctor says X will help and then X does help, it's good that our brains automatically process that as being more likely true than if it hadn't worked. But they can be unhelpful, too.

> And that bet paid off for us.

You don't know that, since you don't know that you have Covid-19, nor do you know that your zinc consumption had anything to do with whether or not you had it, or recovery from it.

I do know that "bet paid off for us."

I know that because it wasn't a one time incident. We continued to consciously and intentionally consume zinc-rich foods at a greater rate than normal and it successfully alleviated symptoms that had us concerned. It did so consistently for some period of time until those symptoms finally resolved. We pay very close attention to our diets because of the medical situation. So I know we were consuming abnormally high levels of zinc for some weeks.

Your framing seems to suggest you think I am saying zinc helped "cure" us of the infection. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it helped mitigate the worst of our symptoms, which is a completely different claim.

You are correct that I don't know for absolute certain that we had Covid-19 because that was never verified by testing. I've already made that clear and also made it clear that I'm not suggesting treatment to anyone else.

I'm aware there are people promoting zinc as a means to cure Covid-19. I'm not remotely suggesting that.

Even if you accept that I'm correct about having it and I'm correct about zinc helping us, the only takeaway here is that zinc may mitigate some symptoms in some populations, especially populations prone to nutrient deficiencies.

If you have any reason to believe you are zinc deficient, zinc is a good thing to take to treat your deficiency. If you aren't deficient, I'm not recommending it for any purpose.

This is a consistent stance of mine and has been for many years: It's a good thing to determine if you have deficiencies and redress those deficiencies. Otherwise, I absolutely don't recommend any kind of supplement at all. I think it's a dangerous practice to take supplements if you aren't deficient.

> successfully alleviated symptoms

Again, you don't know that. You can't establish causation, particularly when N=2, and even more so when you do not know whether or not you had Covid-19.

Yes, I understand you fully acknowledge you may not have had it, but that acknowledgement contradicts that claim that zinc consumption alleviated its effects. What you can say is that you may have had Covid-19, and increased zinc consumption may have helped.

Look, I don't know what the disconnect is here.

I have a genetic disorder. My son has a genetic disorder. We use diet to mitigate health issues regularly.

I do know for an absolute fact what I have stated as clearly as I can figure out how to state: that increased zinc consumption mitigated the unusual problems we were having that aren't typical for us and which we firmly believe were due to Covid-19.

I have stated clearly that we were never tested, so, no, I can't prove we had it. I can still believe we had it and I don't think it should be anywhere near this much drama to say I believe we had it when I've stated clearly that this is a belief unverified by testing, so I certainly cannot prove it.

I have stated clearly -- and repeatedly -- that my anecdote isn't a recommendation for treatment.

I think it did mitigate symptoms from Covid-19. I admit I can't prove it was Covid-19. I've stated that repeatedly.

And whatever was wrong with us, zinc helped.

You are entirely free to think it's worthless data because we were never tested. I've done everything in my power to distinguish as clearly as I can my opinion from verifiable fact. I am telling you "zinc helped" is in the category of fact in my mind and what it helped with was "probably Covid-19" is my opinion.

I'm planning to walk away at this point. It never ceases to amaze me how much other people have some big problem with me having opinions about my own health status like me thinking about my own health is some kind of serious crime on the order of impersonating a surgeon.

The disconnect is that we disagree on how to establish causation. I follow what I believe to be the generally accepted standard that when dealing with only two people, it’s not valid to assume that medical intervention x, later followed by health status y is not enough to establish that x causes y. It appears you do think that’s a valid way to establish causation, hence we disagree.

That's a reasonable position. The problem here is you and other people hound me and insist I must be wrong and have no right to state my opinion about my health, no matter how carefully I qualify it.

That's not a reasonable position.

I get that you disagree. I expect people to not be convinced that I'm right. Skepticism is warranted.

What's not warranted is harassment.

Repeatedly insisting that I cannot possibly know what I believe to be true when I have already agreed with you that my statements are opinion, inference, etc and unverified by testing is harassment.

I have my reasons why I am confident in my conclusions. No one cares to hear those reasons. They just want me to capitulate, admit defeat and announce that I'm wrong and stupid -- both factually and morally -- for engaging in the same behavior many other people engage in on a regular basis without being similarly mistreated. (That behavior being telling an anecdote about my health and stating a personal opinion about my own experience.)

I'm not capitulating. No one is required to agree with me or be at all interested in what I think about my own health or about health generally. But, like any other human, I am entitled to have an opinion about my own health. I'm not going to pretend that I think you are right when I don't think you are right just because you insist over and over again that my opinion is, in your opinion, factually wrong.

You are not more right than me. Just as I cannot prove I had Covid-19, you cannot prove I did not. Thus you cannot prove my opinion is factually wrong anymore than I can prove it is factually right, yet you feel some strange compulsion to try to insist that your unprovable opinion about my life is somehow more right than my unprovable opinion about my own life.

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