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by craftinator 1686 days ago
> You can't just spout "but growth curve" and act like you won the argument.

I sure can! I literally just did. It's a poor tactic to refute something that's already happened...

Also, as for growth curves, and transmissible disease has one, because it's, ya know, transmissible. The transmissions curve for obesity is... Not a curve. It's just a line.
2 comments
Izkata 1685 days ago
> I sure can! I literally just did. It's a poor tactic to refute something that's already happened...

Exponential growth doesn't grow forever, when talking about populations the curve is more of an "S" shape due to upper limits. After a point it turns into exponential backoff as herd immunity is approached.

And you're right that overweight/obese doesn't follow either curve, but what you're missing is that it's already really high, and pretty stable at that point.

It's kinda like arguing C * O(n) is worse than C * O(1), but completely ignoring that in practice n < 10 in either case, but C = 1 for the first and C = 100 in the second.

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craftinator 1685 days ago
> Exponential growth doesn't grow forever, when talking about populations the curve is more of an "S" shape due to upper limits.

I'm aware, but wanted to keep this discussion as simple as possible, since there seems to already be a misunderstanding of "transmissible" vs "non-transmissible", and how that effects derivatives.

> After a point it turns into exponential backoff as herd immunity is approached.

I'm not sure this is applicable, considering how many viruses come in yearly waves, such as the common cold. We've already seen one of these with COVID-19...

> And you're right that overweight/obese doesn't follow either curve, but what you're missing is that it's already really high, and pretty stable at that point.

The signal period for obesity is very large compared to virus infection. I imagine most people who become obese do so over at least 3 years, and that's due to consistently unhealthy habits or underlying conditions, whereas a few minutes talking to someone with COVID can cause transmission.

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throwawaylinux 1685 days ago
Ah so you are unable to provide your data or working. That's what I thought.
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craftinator 1685 days ago
I do not have the time to teach you math, I'm sorry. Khan Academy has a really great module [1] on population growth curves that can help fill in the gaps.

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/ecology-ap/po...

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