[Izkata]

> Your comment doesn’t make any sense because how would the absence of an infection ever arrive at a debilitating outcome and thus be a point of comparison?

Base rate in the population in general, which would be a mix of various infections and not. For the no-infection part: those particular ones, for example, could be caused by aging.

> When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong

Those were two different people.

[bugglebeetle]

This is controlled for by the NOS ranking of the studies in the meta analysis, but since you didn’t actually read it and are arguing from your priors, I guess you wouldn’t have observed that.

[Izkata]

Yeah, I responded to what you quoted, which isn't comparing to other viruses. Which is why I said it doesn't answer their question.

[bugglebeetle]

And as I said, the comparison to other viruses is irrelevant and does not pertain to the original claim.

[arp242]

Of course it's not. "Flu causes exactly the same symptoms" is a radically different scenario than "flu doesn't cause any of these symptoms", which is different again than "Covid causes 20% more symptoms than flu". As far as i know, it's mostly likely that last one(?) But I'm not really sure, which is why I asked.

Regardless, it's important to put these figures in context.

[bugglebeetle]

This context is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of whether COVID often results in debilitating outcomes (the original claim), which I provided evidence it does and you have provided nothing to refute. Many viruses often result in debilitating outcomes, but that has no bearing on whether COVID does as well.