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A comment on U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international air passengers. Parent comment

Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by slg on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @11:22PM (#25758085)
I like how you cutoff the my quote at the exact point that shows you how you are wrong. As I said "The only piece of information that matters for that are the aggregate numbers".

Whether there is 1 version, 6 different versions, or 1 million different versions of colds is irrelevant to your odds of having COVID when you show symptoms. What matters is whether there is 1 person, 6 people, or 1 million people with colds. The variety is meaningless. What matters is the aggregate number of cases.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by timr on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @04:28PM (#25768197)
> The variety of viruses is totally irrelevant to the original question of what are one's odds of having COVID based on having cold symptoms. The only piece of information that matters for that are the aggregate numbers and aggregate numbers from previous years are misleading.

It is an essential factor, unless you make the (implausible) assumption that we have essentially eliminated all other respiratory viruses except for SARS-CoV2.

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