What’s so depressing is that as a species if we wanted to we could wipe out SARS2 like we did with that strain of flu a couple of years ago. Imagine lifting everyone’s lives up with this one action. But no, better to pretend it’s all fine and keep getting sick while millions are denied any form of a life.
🇳🇱
COVID research scientist here.
We cant and we didnt.
The flu strain from a couple years ago H1N1 is still alive and kicking just like SARS-COV- is
Neither was ever an option to eliminate entirely with current technology, we knew this very early on in our studies,
I suspect the reference was to the Yamagata strain.
Ahh ok, yea in that case the yamagata strain was just replaced with two new active strains.
Nothing unusual about strains being replaced with new strains, that happens no matter what we do and seen several strains of covid be eliminated by that metric.
It wasn’t just that a somewhat obscure strain was eliminated… here in Alberta, we skipped an entire ‘flu season, with 0 lab recorded cases in 20-21. We weren’t “shut down”, we weren’t being locked away in isolation, we weren’t living pathetic lives that were only a shadow of their former selves: we were instead taking very simple common-sense precautions against airborne diseases.
If alberta wasnt in lockdown at a time that most of the world was, sadly thats not a great example either. You were more than likely benefiting off the rest of the worlds lock down and your own commons-sense methods likely helped to keep you further isolated but only protected you to the extreme you did due to worldwide lock downs.
Sorry the world was *not* in ‘lockdown’ during the ‘20-‘21 ‘flu season, especially our largest neighbour to the south …unless by ‘lockdown’ you mean ‘required masks in schools and public places’ in which case we shouldn’t continue this conversation.
In the USA the lockdown was maintained until August 2020. So the lockdown basically existed right up to the flu season. Were you expecting the flu to instantly spike back to baseline levels once lock down ends? It takes time for viruses to start spreading again, it isnt an instant process you know, and with the lockdowns literally ending right as flu season begins means you are going to have a much reduced incident.
Also you are flat out wrong about the 0 flu cases.
> It wasn’t just that a somewhat obscure strain was eliminated… here in Alberta, we skipped an entire ‘flu season, with 0 lab recorded cases in 20-21.
Alberta's 2021 flu season had 2,906 confirmed flu cases resuling in 523 hospitalizations. Anf thats just **confirmed** cases.
From that the website you just linked to…
0 lab confirmed cases from Aug 2020 to Aug 2021
This seems valid, my mistake. I was reading from the wrong column.
However now looking at the correct data it seems, and unspuprisingly, that 2022-023 has been the deadliest flu season on record for alberta. This goes to show the fundemental point, lockdowns will result in decline in numbers but **not** elimination. Once lock downs are removed the rates will come back up and even slyrocket and over time result in no real gains.
To put it in some perspective the 2023 flu
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-flu-season-deaths-1.6797449
I think we’re done.
My point is that when people adapt their movement patterns and take precautions against airborne spread, rates plummet. Maintaining the measures that work for long periods will mean long term reductions.
Continuing to use an inflammatory term like lockdown as a broad and blanket term for responsible measures is misleading.
I have clearly described what i mean by lockdown, and you aking up fictional things I said to win is childish to say the least.
I defined lockdown clearly as:
> Just to be clear, no this isnt what I mean. I am talking about where movement itself is restricted (such as cancelling public events or shutting down non essential workplaces)
The fact that your having a tantrum about lockdown literally meaning restricted public movement and shutting down businesses is laughable.
You are right, we are done here.
Your medical credentials leave me speechless.
I never said I was a medical expert, I said I was a scientist... maybe you should look at my published papers instead, or even my resume.
I just finished inventing a decide capable of detecting covid on ones breath within a few minutes at little to no cost after leading a team of medical (clinical) and chemistry teams at a large lab in Israel.
Maybe you should ask, learn and research rather than accuse, it will go much further.
And for soem background the same team of medical and chemistry scientist had tried for 3 years and failed. I was called in and hired as a specialist and solved the same problem they couldnt in only 3 months.
I have proven myself, and that has been well published and proven by this point.
You are a waste of time, and every reply you prove that more.
@freemo @DavidM_yeg just my 2 cents here but "lockdown" is all things to all people. IMO "lockdown" is what my parents faced in Athens, Greece - they had to stay in their home and if they wanted to leave to go grocery shopping or for a walk they had to send a text message to a number setup for tracking these things. People would be approached by the police when out and it was literally a "papers please" thing.
> People would be approached by the police when out and it was literally a "papers please" thing.
We actually literally had something similar in the USA. We had special vaccine passports you would have to show to be in most public places for a bit. Thankfully that didnt last long.
But yea, there is plenty of room for misinterpritation of what the term means. Thats why I went out of my way to explicitly claim what it **I** meant by the word. So regardless of what it means to anyone else, it was clearly stated what it meant in the context I am using it.
I care very little for semantics beyond someone understanding me when I speak. So once that word was explained any confusion became a non-issue as far as I am concerned. I likely wouldnt care if I were to use some other determine to describe the same thing. But we all know David here cares more about using it as a weapon to derail any productive conversation rather than any actual concerns over semantics and understanding eachother.
@freemo @DavidM_yeg I get it - lets just end this civilly - i didn't intend for this thread to become so contentious.
As far as I am concerned you and me have been perfectly civil, I dont think there is any issue there. David just came in with some toxicity, but thankfully he had the good sense to walk away before he carried on too long.
@DavidM_yeg
I do find it funny though that you ignore all the actual facts when talking to an actual published COVID research scientists.... really showing your colors there.
But yea I'm the one being inflammatory, LOL
@andymoose