Fast Eddie
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- Oct 4, 2013
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I agree with everything except your last point. IMO the two groups are those who say:Any student of history will tell you that pandemics rock the world from time to time. As pandemics go The COVID one was mild by comparison. During the Bubonic Plague one third of Europe died as it reoccurred regularly over a number of years. The efforts to combat that disease are a mixed bag and rather inconclusive to this day. They too had lock downs with mixed results. We have the benefit of modern medical knowledge and hindsight and we are still arguing about cause and effect.
In 1918 there was an outbreak of something called the Spanish Flu. My grandfather lost his half brother and half sister. He said "some communities were spared while other had multiple advanced cases. The hallmark of that infection was a pneumonia that seems to effect the most healthy subjects. Fully half of the US solders that died during WWI died of influenza. Many measures were tried, once again with mixed results. There is a brick paved sidewalk in the little town where I lived for over 20 years. Several of the bricks have the words "no spitting" cast into them. This is a result of just one of the regulations implemented during the flu epidemic. They tried various measures and still people died.
I have spent a lot of time in skilled nursing facilities both from my time in medical marketing and from time with my parents and great aunts and uncles. Even a mild infection is a huge risk in a SNF. It's made worse by the very nature of the clientele who are vulnerable to infection but who love to receive visitors and family. Death is a constant visitor even in the best of times.
It's very difficult to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures in a scientific fashion because there are too many variables. We live in a time when the population is aging and we have developed strategies to manage people's specific health needs. It also makes these people vulnerable. There are no easy answers. My biggest concern came from groups that were so sure of their convictions that they were willing to cost people their jobs, their businesses and implement other punitive measures for noncompliance. We had people turning on each other often times based on political affiliation. I think it boils down to a dispute between those that say "we have to do something" and those that say "nothing we do will make much difference."
“we have to do everything, in full, despite the consequences or believed effectiveness or even evidence to the contrary ‘just in case’”
And those who say:
“we need to do the sensible things, that we believe will have results, and do so in balance with other societal needs”.
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