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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

DOES NOT discriminate based on...weight.

Hate to be the buzzkill science nerd but respiratory illness in general is exacerbated by having more body fat than the median.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990395/ is first result on internet searches.

Influenza A, the common type of seasonal flu, is also made more transmissible for longer when the host has high body fat. So it is worth considering how this might indicate particular vulnerability and contageity for heavier people. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/obesity-extends-duration-influenza-virus-shedding

Covid-19 stats are hard to come by bc its new and not studied, however this doesnt mean you should conclude theres nothing there so dont look into it. If that was how ppl did science we'd conclude lots of erroneous things.

I think the more important thing here is the othering of fat people. Just because you have body fat shouldnt make you be deemed lesser by society, just as having more or less muscle mass is no reason to invalidate or shame someone's body. We should be helping people of all body types feel comfortable in society, and treat the particular health and wellness concerns that might happen to coincide.

But disregarding medical and biological science to make your point, makes the point less communicative and salient. Might be a controversial take

Are you fucking high?

Yeah, are you fucking fat? Am i a fucking tranny? Lol what does this stigmatization rhetoric accomplish. Really gross.

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kore wrote (edited )

might be a controversial take

but I love this take and its also mine. thanks for doing the heavy lifting.

Its also interesting that people think that social distancing is about people not getting the virus at all. like, I've read statistics that say 40%-80% of people will get it regardless.

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

You know what's fascinating to me is, the social distance method? Sure, it "flattens" the curve. But it also results in a higher area under the curve, even if that curve is flat. That means more people die. Bear with me.

When you socially isolate the way most people do, in practice, you are reducing your immune capacity. not only limiting your exercise and reducing nutrition quality, but also reducing exposure to pathogens which might give immunity, and increasing exposure to toxins and practices which immunosuppress (cleaning agents, wearing masks incorrectly/too long, needless consumption of OTC remedies which make SARS worsen).

You can be aware of this and limit it, but epidemiologically this is still going to be a factor on the overall disease progression through that society, making it more deadly. And there are aspects of social distancing which are inherently going to lower immunity and raise the area under the curve: specifically, the reduction of social contact, which allows for less immunity building and sharing within a population, and worsens mental health outcomes which directly impact immunity.

If you had a larger hospital capacity, built by a society which planned in advance for the consequences of globalized/climate changed world, there would be no reason to "flatten the curve". The only benefit that social distancing has, is to delay the number of cases that go into the hospital so they don't get over capacity and forced to deny care to new cases, resulting in most of those new patients (whether they are from car accidents, coronavirus, or anything else) dying while waiting for care. So this distancing does cause deaths to be reduced in our hellscape timeline, but crucially only because society chose to create an utterly inefficient and inadequate system to handle this type of problem. It didn't have to be this way, and we can change it in the future quite feasibly.

It's kind of frustrating to see the "woke" lib crowd blaming average people for not conforming to these ridiculous new behavioral norms, instead of the material conditions which have necessitate this authoritarian dystopia of mandatory curfews. They seem to just uncritically accept whatever the government agencies say as some immutable reality, rather than something shaped by institutions and relationships of social power. So you'll never see most of the people calling out the healthcare system as the main problem, it's always the zoomers on spring break or lazy millenials or burnout, selfish Xers or reactionary boomers or....whatever insult directed at normal/average people is most satisfying in the moment they write the tweet.

Another weird thing going on lately? CDC of USA is saying "dont wear masks, theres no known benefit". Simultaneously you'll see info on their website saying "we have no idea how many people are asymptomatic or how that contributes to Covid-19 spreading through the population, lol no evidence yet -shrug-".

If they made enough fucking masks they would be telling everyone to wear one. Same with the tests. Instead, only the rich and the health professionals "should" get them, they're having regular ass people drop off handmade, DIY N-95 masks at hospitals right now.

(edit: small aside on masks, if there was a push to have everyone wear them, there should also be information on how to use them correctly too. The fact that there isn't a push to generalize mask use, and as a result there is not a push to educate people on mask use, has resulted in me having to let several people know they are literally wearing the fuckers upside down, or otherwise incorrectly, because they've never had to use one before. Mask overuse and incorrect use also creates the conditions for bacterial growth on the mask's fibrous surfaces, which you then breathe in and it directly fucks up your immune system, making you ironically more vulnerable to other infections like COVID-19. So if we had a general mask directive, which actually educated people on how to do it, we would have substantially less transmissibility that I bet you could measure epidemiologically if you had a control group and a treatment group)

And people think these organizations are primarily guided by science! Nope, it really is all about the material conditions and social relationships, baby. It would be funny if we weren't gonna see so much needless death handwaved as "a natural disaster" or the result of "reckless socializing" instead of placed at the feet of our corrupt and utterly feckless socioeconomic elites.

SMH

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kore wrote

do you mind if i borrow heavily from this in my own conversations? I really appreciate this analysis. your discussion of immune response is really cool. yay science.

One thing that I've noticed is the stress on social distancing but not economic distancing. Sure, keep going to work, keep consuming, keep the economy going. all of which involves lots of contact with a myriad of people. But for god's sake don't physically interact with loved ones!!!

I get really pissed off about woke libs and even leftists blaming average people as well.

For what it's worth I have seen some U.S. officials, notably NY governor Cuomo, be pretty clear about the fact that the social distancing is primarily to prevent overwhelming hospitals and not to lessen the death toll or other damages. Obviously there's no materialist critique coming from him, and he is also telling people to stay home and not interact, but it's a lot better than what Trump is doing.

I work in food service and I fully believe that if I do not already carry the coronavirus I will get it very soon and transmit it to a large number of people. It's totally fucked, the mismatch between responses when it comes to buying things vs. loving people.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

not at all, why would I? Glad you found it useful.

What I will say is that you should use your own judgement to parse your own research and sources, and come to your own conclusions informed by the evidence you have available. This is what I'm doing, and people should not trust me simply because I know how to make a convincing case in a short online essay. I am just a science nerd on Raddle, you know?

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masque wrote

I'm not convinced that even an ideal anarchist society wouldn't run into problems with hospital capacity & mask availability in the face of an unexpected & severe pandemic. I don't see how this particular problem is caused by capitalism.

I mean, obviously the extra costs of maintaining unused beds, stockpiling masks, etc. during normal operation in case of a rare event are discouraged in a capitalist system, but even in other settings I think a lot of people would see such things as inefficient and argue against them. This feels like a "hindsight is 20/20" situation.

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

It's not about what's ideal or anarchist, it's about making a calculation that you need to prepare the medical industry for a large workload. This pandemic was not unexpected, SARS-I happened decades ago in a very similar manner (this is SARS-II). We knew the habitat destruction was gonna happen, we knew the wet markets would eventually produce something like this again, and we knew that globalized travel intensifying would spread this disease far and wide. It's a problem that was created by very predictable human institutions, the more that I've learned and studied about this.

Sure, Hindsight is 2020 (lol). but we need to learn from this and demand the medical industry take priority over all these empty hotels and condos, that we train people to give care, that we have a flexible and elastic system which is based not on the construction of physicians' careers and insurance profits but rather that can respond to these problems efficiently. Just my opinion.

I also think we need to rethink the ubiquituous role of international travel and trade, reckon with the horrifying impact we are having on ecological relationships, and compartmentalize industry & commerce rather than regular people going out in their own neighborhoods.

edit: added a word

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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Sure, a lot of that was my own analysis, because everything you see in the news is about the importance of social distancing. Which, again, in our context is 100% the only option at this point to reduce death. But it didn't have to be that way, is my point, and you can clearly see how this will negatively impact immune response over a population.

Let's discuss my points on immunity:

Diet

Toxic cleaning agents

Over The Counter Drugs Increasing COVID-19 Adverse Outcomes

Above, you can see that while pretty much any drug is going to worsen the underlying condition and people should obviously be encouraged not to take anything, governments are giving conflicting and unhelpful advice to encourage people to buy one OTC drug or another. To prop up the market. Search "COVID OTC" on any search engine and you find articles about the markets but not the lack of WHO recommendations or people talking about how suppressing immune response is a terrible idea for a deadly virus with no recognized treatments. Utter disregard for human life.

Immunity & Social Interaction

This part is the most relevant, because it's inherent to the epidemiology of the social distancing recommendation, and can't really be fundamentally eliminated (but perhaps, ameliorated). Everything else is capitalist nonsense that is the result of our social systems not being designed to handle social distancing.

In short, both physical and psychological "touch" and contact is crucial for overall physical immune health, especially in people with preexisting psychoemotional distress (all of us under capitalism? Lol)

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

This is a separate point, but the last thing I want to say right now is:

Insofar as handling the higher point-in-time caseload for hospitals, we would have had to expand capacity by a factor of about 30-40. This is a huge number, of course, and so flattening the curve to some extent would always be necessary as even a profoundly elastic healthcare system kicks into gear, when we have basically no foreknowledge or time spent preparing in advance of the disease arriving in a given sub-population (a new continent or bioregion, for example).

I'll fully acknowledge that. But there are other ways to handle this type of pandemic preventatively, which actually could negate the need to do social distancing for future pandemics if we do it correctly.

We need to support and enable research into identifying these diseases as they emerge. This has the dystopian name "Epidemiological Surveillance" but it's something that's genuinely important to protect our freedom of movement and overal social health. By identifying cases correctly, developing tests early on, and adding access to testing services worldwide in hotspots where these zoonotic disease emerge, we could have prevented millions of deaths this year. Let's learn from that.

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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

If you have critiques of the findings or methodologies, it would be great to talk about them, I really need more conversation and stimulation on intellectual subjects since the lockdown.

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