COVID vaccine works - we're saved!

You're asking "Are you still beating your wife?" style questions, i.e., questions that imply the person they're addressed to holds opinions that they do not actually hold.No one believes that locking people up is the appropriate general response to epidemics and pandemics, not even close. It does occasionally happen that contagious people refuse treatment and refuse to isolate, and so law enforcement and the legal system have to intercede in the interests of public health.If you actually know anything then why are you posting taunts in message after message instead of telling us what you know?--Percy

That's great! I think everyone here would love to learn something new. Please begin your explanations for how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail and some physics and mathematics and how that is all relevant to the Socratic-style questions you've been asking.--Percy

Kleinman:

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So you think that anyone diagnosed with influenza should be confined?

Percy:

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I think they should follow the standard medical advice, which is to stay home and avoid contact with other people, and to mask if they have to go out. What is it about epidemiology that you don't understand?

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Percy, in my 30 years of primary care medical practice, I've seen thousands of sick patients in a very small examination room. Many of these patients had been diagnosed with influenza by laboratory tests. In that time, as far as I know, never contracted influenza and I never wore a mask. It was very, very rare that I ever contracted any disease or missed a day of work. What I did do is wash my hands and wear gloves before examining the patient. My primary purpose was not to catch something from the patient but to prevent me from transferring some infectious agent to the patient that I may have picked up from a previous patient or by touching something in the room. Another thing I did was to position myself so the patient could not cough, sneeze, or even breath on me when I was close to the patient, for example, when I used my stethoscope to listen to their breath sounds. I did all these things when I was in close or direct contact with a patient.There is something else that you don't seem to understand when it comes to influenza and many other infectious diseases. In the early stages (prodrome), the patient may have minimal or no symptoms but still be capable of spreading the disease. This is why it is so difficult to stop the spread of diseases like influenza. Some people may be totally asymptomatic through the entire course of a disease, yet be spreading the disease to others unknowingly.If it makes you feel better to wear a mask, go for it. Wear a hazmat suit if it makes you feel safe. But, I don't think these things are based on understanding, they are based on fear.

Kleinman:

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This brings us back to the question, should everyone with a contagious disease be locked up? There are over 10 million people with latent tuberculosis in the United States. Should they be locked up?

Percy:

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This brings us back to the question, should everyone with a contagious disease be locked up? There are over 10 million people with latent tuberculosis in the United States. Should they be locked up?

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I don't think that any infectious disease should be criminalized. However, if anyone is known to have an infectious disease and is behaving in a manner that increases the probability of spread, then it does become a public health matter. If a person with an infectious disease does something intentionally to cause the spread of the disease, it becomes a criminal matter.How do you know that a person with latent tuberculosis cannot spread the disease?

Kleinman:

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Should those people [with HIV] be locked up because they might transmit the disease? Which person with an infectious disease should not be locked up?

Percy:

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California just completed decriminalizing HIV a few years ago. Given the unintended negative consequences of criminalization, why argue for recriminalization?

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You are confused Percy, I'm not arguing for the criminalization of any infectious disease. The problem that diseases like HIV and other diseases that can be sexually transmitted is the stigma associated. That stigma doesn't disappear by changing the criminal status.

Kleinman:

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Why don't you show your expertise in vaccination science and explain why when you are vaccinated you can't spread the infection which is wrong?

Percy:

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You're referring to a common public misperception of how vaccination works, not to the understanding of anyone here.

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Are you claiming that your so-called experts were not telling people that vaccination prevents a person from spreading infectious disease?

Kleinman:

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Do that since you won't explain to us how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail. And you won't show us the "dangerous errors" in my math.

Percy:

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You keep coming back to this, but only in the form of asking questions. What do you think the lessons are of drug resistance evolution and failed cancer treatments?

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I do this because drug resistance is part of the problem of the spread of infectious diseases. For example, many STD variants are now resistant to drugs used to treat them. There are now drug-resistant variants to the anti-influenza drugs used. I think many of the so-called experts do not understand the problems that they are supposed to have expertise on.

Kleinman:

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So your plan is to throw in jail only those that intend to spread infections. Those that don't have any intention to spread the infection but spread it anyway should be free as a bird?

Percy:

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You're asking "Are you still beating your wife?" style questions, i.e., questions that imply the person they're addressed to holds opinions that they do not actually hold.
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No one believes that locking people up is the appropriate general response to epidemics and pandemics, not even close. It does occasionally happen that contagious people refuse treatment and refuse to isolate, and so law enforcement and the legal system have to intercede in the interests of public health.
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If you actually know anything then why are you posting taunts in message after message instead of telling us what you know?

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Stop whining Percy. Are you so fragile you can't take a little taunt?I think that people that do things intentionally to spread an infectious disease should be thrown in the slammer. If someone is known to have an infectious disease and is doing something unknowingly to increase the chance of the spread of the disease, it is ok for authorities to do something to stop that person's activity. If the person still does that behavior, then, throw'em into the slammer. But all of this will have minimal effect on the spread of infectious disease. And to shut down an economy is the worst thing that you can do. It makes it much more difficult to do the normal activities of life such as working and obtaining food.

I think everyone here understands the "contagious before symptoms" issue. Covid provided an excellent example. Why do you think anyone here doesn't understand this?In the case of covid we dealt with this by asking people who learned that they'd been exposed to covid to isolate for while, I think a week or so. Last year this happened to me and my wife several times. Research indicates that masking has strong efficacy, but their performance in real life is tempered by the large number of people who don't mask properly. The ways masking can go wrong that I can think of at the moment:

• Wearing a cloth mask
• Wearing a surgical mask instead of an N95
• Wearing the same mask many times
• Not bending the little metal strip around the nose (surgical mask)
• Wearing the mask upside down so that the little metal strip is on the bottom
• Wearing the mask below the nose
• Wearing the mask on the tip of the nose
• Permitting large gaps on the sides

Your personal example of working in a clinical setting for 30 years and never catching influenza is anecdotal and not epidemiological. You're like the smoker who says, "I've smoked all my life and never been sick a day." Yes, that happens. It's statistical. Single examples tell us nothing.If you have some useful information to share I wish you'd just do that instead alternating questions with taunts and insults. How about just be a decent person.--Percy

Kleinman:

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I can explain how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail and you can't. I could plan to teach you some physics and mathematics, but why try to teach an old canine new tricks?

Percy:

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That's great! I think everyone here would love to learn something new. Please begin your explanations for how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail and some physics and mathematics and how that is all relevant to the Socratic-style questions you've been asking.

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Where do you want me to start? Do you want me to explain again how Haldane's frequency equation is simply a conservation of energy equation? The last time I explained that to you, you didn't seem too happy to learn something new. So, tell me where you want me to start.

Kleinman:

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If it makes you feel better to wear a mask, go for it. Wear a hazmat suit if it makes you feel safe. But, I don't think these things are based on understanding, they are based on fear.

Percy:

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Research indicates that masking has strong efficacy, but their performance in real life is tempered by the large number of people who don't mask properly. The ways masking can go wrong that I can think of at the moment:

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• Wearing a cloth mask
• Wearing a surgical mask instead of an N95
• Wearing the same mask many times
• Not bending the little metal strip around the nose (surgical mask)
• Wearing the mask upside down so that the little metal strip is on the bottom
• Wearing the mask below the nose
• Wearing the mask on the tip of the nose
• Permitting large gaps on the sides

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Your personal example of working in a clinical setting for 30 years and never catching influenza is anecdotal and not epidemiological. You're like the smoker who says, "I've smoked all my life and never been sick a day." Yes, that happens. It's statistical. Single examples tell us nothing.

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If you have some useful information to share I wish you'd just do that instead alternating questions with taunts and insults. How about just be a decent person.

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You are confused Percy, it is not just my personal experience, I know many physicians and healthcare personnel. There is not a wave of disease hitting these people despite their close contact with people with infectious diseases. The vast majority of these physicians and healthcare personnel did not wear masks until the past couple of years because of this so-called research.

My wife is a primary care MD and she calls bullshit. She also says that here you would be disciplined because you very well are spreading contagious to your patients. You don't follow science you follow your narcissism.You sound like a very shitty doc.

Because he is not a decent person.

Do you know so little that you're forced to fill your posts with taunts rather than information and discussion? If you're trying to be obnoxious and unlikeable you're doing a great job. As mentioned a couple times previously, in California this approach had the unintended consequence of not improving the HIV infection rate while criminalizing a disease. They're currently taking a "middle ground" approach. Sure, in the interests of public health. This would expose prison populations to contagions. Legally enforced isolation and treatment seems preferred. Since intentional spread of contagion is rare, I agree that in the larger scope of things that the impact is not large. A larger impact might be present in that legal consequences might convince people of the serious consequences of disease spread. Which is worse, temporarily shutting down portions of the economy that contribute most to spread (crowded indoor venues like restaurants, bars, concert halls, etc.) or allowing that spread at the cost of greater illness and death..3% of the US population died of covid. 5% still suffers from long covid. Where do you draw the line? If shutting down all bars and restaurants had reduced the death rate from, just say for example, .4% to the actual .3%, would that have been worth it? I certainly don't know the answer of how to balance life against money.--Percy

Theodoric:

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My wife is a primary care MD and she calls bullshit. She also says that here you would be disciplined because you very well are spreading contagious to your patients. You don't follow science you follow your narcissism.
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You sound like a very shitty doc.

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Ask your wife to explain how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail. She won't be able to do any better than you.

Kleinman:

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And to shut down an economy is the worst thing that you can do.

Percy:

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Which is worse, temporarily shutting down portions of the economy that contribute most to spread (crowded indoor venues like restaurants, bars, concert halls, etc.) or allowing that spread at the cost of greater illness and death.
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.3% of the US population died of covid. 5% still suffers from long covid. Where do you draw the line? If shutting down all bars and restaurants had reduced the death rate from, just say for example, .4% to the actual .3%, would that have been worth it? I certainly don't know the answer of how to balance life against money.

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Just wait until food production is disrupted so that malnourishment becomes widespread. Then you will really have some statistics on death due to infectious diseases to quote.