Hacker News Reader

Comment by cinntaile | Hacker News Reader

What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ?

People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .

View on HN

Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering.

It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.

Well said! There has been near zero attention by the main agencies in power on therapeutics. E.g. even if ivermectin doesn't work, why can't we focus more on finding what does? It's only been vaccine, vaccine and more vaccine. Not even a mention for lifestyle or diet or supplements

There is focus on therapeutics. Although it's better to prevent than to treat, so a bigger focus on vaccines is expected.

These vaccines don't prevent and barely treat

It's quite effective at preventing serious illness and death, which is the whole point of the vaccines. It's even better if you don't get sick at all, but unfortunately not everyone has that much luck by being vaccinated.

> which is the whole point of the vaccines

Historically the point of vaccines have been to prevent transmission. The covid vaccine is distinct on this.

The covid vaccine is not distinct on this. HPV vaccine, diphteria vaccine, tetanus vaccine... The point has mostly been to prevent (serious) illness. If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.

Ok, you got me there. But -

> If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.

That doesn't make any sense. Mitigating serious illness puts no downward pressure on transmission.

And in fact, if someone's symptoms are reduced and they don't need to test because they aren't required for vaxxed, it may even encourage spread.

I believe that is the case for covid at least. If you don't get as sick then that means the virus didn't manage to spread inside the body as much, so there is less viral material that can be spread to others. Now I'm not saying this relationship is linear, I have no clue. We'd have to ask an actual expert.

You are right that this could be offset because there is no isolation happening in case of an unknown infection.

There are trials for various treatments being run, both with existing and newly developed medication, some making large headlines. If you haven't heard of any of this, that's kind of on you and your information sources.

Vitamin D and healthy eating is not emphasized at all by any CDC or health agency. These two things are significant risk factors for covid. Doctors have widely been prevented from using drugs with generally known safety profiles for emergency cases because Pfizer wants to develop its own new drugs.

If you didn't start healthy eating after decades of public health messaging about it, it's unlikely that you will start now and it'll make any relevant difference - and it isn't as if healthy people being better off isn't being constantly repeated. Vitamin D had it's hype phase, got looked at a bunch and it's still not clear how much it really does, although I'd agree that pushing the existing recommendations more probably wouldn't hurt.

> Doctors have widely been prevented

citation needed I guess. Again, lots of stuff is being looked at (and some integrated in treatment recommendations), not just "Pfizers own new drugs".

There are countless therapeutics in research, testing and admission. I am not sure what you are reading but this is widely available knowledge and you can dig into agency databases to find out more if you are so inclined. Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid.

>Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid.

Lol no, obesity is one of the biggest factors in covid mortality

Sure, and if you have a cure for obesity that works rapidly in the general population - because "please get more exercise" hasn't thus far - have at it.

Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications. I think if they decided to be honest, and call it a "pandemic of the overewight" early on, you would have seen a lot of people using their time off to walk around the block. By ignoring the data, they increased fear, and probably increased people gaining weight by locking themselves in their homes all day.

> Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications.

You said you are in the US in another comment. I took 3 minutes to google some big US news sites. They all had multiple articles on the topic from spring 2020 until now. Your criticism is false. Some random examples:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patien...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/03/04/coronavirus-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-obesity-ri...

https://www.foxnews.com/health/study-links-coronavirus-morta...

https://www.foxnews.com/health/obesity-increase-coronavirus-...

https://www.foxnews.com/health/is-americas-high-obesity-leve...

It's a fact that obese people are more likely to die from a covid infection. Whether or not it's hard to lose weight is irrelevant.

Sorry, I overread that. Obviously obesity is a major danger. Thanks for notifying me about the mistake.

> Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid.

The above statement contradicts most/all studies on the subject. A few randomly selected sources:

- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/excess-weight-can-increas...

- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073853/

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33463658/

- https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...

Thank you, that was a inattentive mistake on my part.

If more people reacted to facts like you just did, the world would be a better place!

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/fda-gives-em...

Doctors have been widely prevented from using off label drugs in literal emergency cases of covid just because Pfizer wants to sell and develop their own new therapeutic

You didn't contrast this with the pandemic playbook and most of it sounds like hyperbole to me so there is not much to respond to I'm afraid?

Maybe instead of ad hominem attacks you should develop an argument. Cheers.

There is unfortunately no substance to reply to. That's what I point out, so maybe you could clarify your argument without hyperbole and by contrasting it to the pandemic playbook?

> We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test.

> Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people

Yes, those are very new. If the previous generations had that capacity they wouldn't think twice about doing it, but they didn't so it's new.

> lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports

Those are right there since ancient Rome times.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com