Arguing with Idiots Covid Edition Continued

Timothy Birdnow

In a Facebook argument I and James Doogue tangle with a guy who wants to hide under his bed from Covid. He is bitterly angry at Sweden for showing his pet idea up. Here is the thread:

Lance says:

In Sweden where the never logical, sensible or functional "protect the elderly and medically vulnerable" was attempted as a human sacrifice avoidance of reality, road traffic fatalities have been around 300 a year. Much lower in recent years. Covid fatalities for a little over a year that the pandemic has been raging there. 13621. The covid death toll there in the decade age range 50 to 59 alone exceeds the average road toll.
https:// www.statista.com /statistics/ 438009/ number-of-road-d eaths-in-sweden /

I rebut:

Bear in mind Sweden is the most populous of the Scandanavian countries and so should be more prone to infection. And Sweden has a large immigrant population, and Italy was a top vacation spot for Swedes. These all contirbuted to higher numbers than Norway or Denmark. And at what point do we consider ourselves safe? If we were to live in a bubble we'd be quite safe - untiil an auto-immune disorder got us. The fact is we can either live our lives or hide under our beds. The Swedes chose to live. I for one would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Lance retorts:

Lance Pidgeon you say "Sweden hid under the bed and cowered away from reality by failing to lock out and fight off the disease. " How, pray tell, does hiding away and wearing masks and the like FIGHT a disease? It doesn't. It's hiding from it. The reality is this disease had to run it's course. We may it worse by stretching it out by trying to hide from it. Sweden did the logical thing; we were cowards and paid for it.

Lance, the Swedish approach has been no worse than most of Europe that locked down. You cannot prove otherwise. You are arguing without any evidence for a bad policy that has hurt so many people in other ways - through economic damage, through suicide and depression, etc. The cure was worse than the disease. We would have achieved herd immunity in much of the world if we hadn't locked \down.

"As a result they have severe permanent restrictions and a growing death toll in each successive seasonal wave."

What proof do you have of that assertion? EVERYONE has rising death tolls in seasonal waves; it's why they are called seasonal waves. Permanent restrictions? They still have fewer restrictions than do we.

"Countries that defiantly fought it off can wait for those poor panicked lab rats in such places to show how each vaccination "herd immunity" attempt like Sweden's "natural" human sacrifice fails."

Uh, Lance, they didn't "fight it off". All they did was hide from it and stretch it out. You are falling for the mistake of bad semantics. There is no "fighting off" a virus. You either achieve herd immunity or you don't. It can be helped along with a vaccine, and there are of course palliatives that make the disease less lethal, but you don't fight it off. Or do you suggest Joe Biden put on boxing gloves and go ten rounds with it? The numbers disprove your assertion at any rate, as, say, the UK, which has had a robust pugilistic contest with the virus, is doing no better and in fact is now doing far worse than the Swedes.

New Zealand, being a rather isolated island, is a poor example, btw. OF COURSE with heavy travel resetrictions they were able to slow the virus. But that doesn't mean they aren't primed for a return.

Not sure how these other countries have more freedoms than does Sweden at present.

Your logic is akin to claiming China has a better system than the rest of us because they didn't have to sacrifice any freedoms; they already didn't have them.

Lance we have never done such a crazy, freedom destroying thing as this and in the past we've done fine. We had three pandemics in the 20th century and did not stop the engine of the world for them. The Spanish Flu was far, far worse, and we did have some lockdowns locally. I live in St. Louis, a town that was decimated by the Spanish Flu, and they never fully locked down. There are pictures from a baseball game of people in the stands during the pandemic. We had two other pandemics, one in 1957 and in '68 and we didn't do this. Why not? Because they knew this wouldn't work to prevent anything. It was done now for a multiplicity of reasons of which the public health was only a part. There were serious political interests involved. There was a lot of money to be made. And so these international organizations promoted the idea over the original opposition of the CDC and the good Dr. Fauci, who saw which way the wind was blowing and jumped aboard. It never had any real medical value.

Again, if you want to hide under your bed in fear it is your right, but you should not demand that I or anyone else do so to give succour to your own phobias. The Swedes didn't do that.

And remember how this started; they said "three weeks" to "flatten the curve" so the medical community could have time to get ready. It was never said that this would "fight the virus" and we would be doing it a year later. It was classic bait-and-swtich. At the time they all admitted it was not going to stop anything, just prolongue it.

Which is I am confident what it has done - prolongued something that should have been well over by now.

James Doogue responds:

James Doogue" I'm more of the 'give me freedom or give me death' type of guy." Well go. Put your words into action and travel. I have shown you how in the linked reply to Timothy.
Looking forward to your post card reports from Brazil, Sweden and Poland. Bear in mind the problems are just in the very early phase of beginning. So "It didn't work out as well for Sweden as I had expected," should be: It looks like it is getting bad in Sweden.
"Elimination was never going to work..." No local deaths at all this year in Australia and you say that?
It has already worked and is still working. This claim is like riding in an airplane while declaring they won't ever fly.
"Why lock down the young and the healthy when they are at very small risk of suffering severe illness or death?" Ask me again when you are confident this EuroMOMO line has peaked for the last time.

Dennis O'Brien adds:



Lance retorts:

Dennis O'Brien"It is therefore difficult to see how it can be argued logically that mandatory "hard" measures are in any way effective." They are simply not effective if used for supression. Supression does not work because it only takes one active case to quickly multiply out to the whole planet. If used for elimination, that is to clear a quarantined area of every last active case they have shown success. Success is even hard to argue against.

James Doogue responds:

Lance, well that's one interpretation.

James Doogue

Tim responds:

Lance Pidgeon you say:

"Supression does not work because it only takes one active case to quickly multiply out to the whole planet. If used for elimination, that is to clear a quarantined area of every last active case they have shown success"

What evidence do you have? That a heavily infected area had a big drop in numbers? That is just as likely a result of so many people catching it and getting over it Lance. I don't think you can logically support that assertion.

James Doogue chimes in:

The virus can logically be defeated by an effective vaccine. That vaccine was never guaranteed.

The vaccine is also totally unnecessary to a large section of the population who will have little or no symptoms from catching Covid-19.

That's why an endless hard lock-down for all, is a non-strategy because the only way out of lockdown is a vaccine which may never have come. It was also a deprivation of liberty for many, and destroyed lives and livelihoods unnecessarily.

Sure Sweden and most of the world reacted too slowly to properly protect the elderly and medically vulnerable and help then safely self isolate, or be protected in aged care facilities.

That of course helped panic people into accepting restrictions on their freedoms which would never have been given up is the bodies of the elderly hadn't been mounting up.

Remember back then how the politicians used the panic to lie to the population and tell us everyone was equally at risk?

That was the crap they spewed out to enforce lock-downs. People know that isn't true now because most people around the world have been exposed to enough people who have actually tested positive to the virus who weren't elderly or have significant co-morbidities,

Tim adds:

James Doogue you say "Sure Sweden and most of the world reacted too slowly to properly protect the elderly and medically vulnerable and help then safely self isolate, or be protected in aged care facilities." That is another point; Sweden has one of the highest nursing home populations in Europe. (So did Italy, which was badly hit.) That MUST be taken into account when discussing high early numbers in Sweden. Also, your point about being libertarian and this is a matter of freedom is a good one; nobody wants to discuss the big picture here, which is the purpose of government and the roll of the state versus the individual. What is the purpose of government? To ultimately protect the individual so he or she may live their lives. This does give a role to helping protect against diseases, but not unlimited authority to lock everyone up to so protect. The point of the state having this power is so that everyone may live their normal lives. If the state asks for some temporary suspension of normal lives it must have a very strong justification, and an end game. If it does not it is engaging in despotism. People have a right to live their lives except under exraordinary circumstances. You may say this is extraordinary. Fine. We did the lockdown thing and it largely made little difference. Sweden DIDN'T do the lockdown thing and they are no worse off. In light of this fact the government mandates must be removed, as they were solely for the purpose of protecting the bulk of society. That the authorities are desperate to NOT remove them shows this was not really about the public welfare so much as about power and control

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 06:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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