Coronavirus
Coronavirus, COVID-19, is spreading exponentially. So far we have seen news reports from countries where there is an organised and rapid response to outbreaks. But what we are beginning to see now is it's rate of infection in countries without such preparedness. Italy and more worrying Iran. Italy is adopting a very strict strategy now, after being slow to tackle the infection. Whereas Iran is in denial, they are refusing to quarantine suspected cases. They have refused to lock down an important religious site which appears to be the epicentre of their outbreak. Also it has been spreading amongst the political class. There is talk of it's spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East.
What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East, the virus will find a breeding ground and develop into a more deadly strain. Similarly to the way that Spanish Flu developed during the chaos of the First World War.
Should we be worried, or should we just wait until a vaccination is developed so that we can irradicate it through a vaccination programme?
Or is this the beginning of a deadly pandemic?
What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East, the virus will find a breeding ground and develop into a more deadly strain. Similarly to the way that Spanish Flu developed during the chaos of the First World War.
Should we be worried, or should we just wait until a vaccination is developed so that we can irradicate it through a vaccination programme?
Or is this the beginning of a deadly pandemic?
Comments (8466)
:up: Darwin Awards (& complimentary presidential pardons) for MAGA-sheeple.
There are millions of healthy people wearing masks, not because they are sick and risk infecting someone, but because they are ignorant of whether they are sick or not. Ignorance, not illness. Conformity, not heroism.
Wow, we agree about something! Now if this was bubonic plague, and everyone who was sick came out in huge pustules, or leprosy, where bits fall off, then we would all know who to socially distance from and so on. That would be much better. But alas it is not so simple with covid, and nobody knows the virtuous from the unclean, except by arcane ritual of swab and test, performed in the holy inner sanctum of science labs. Ah, the good old days of freedom...
But the article says it would be recorded as a Covid-19 death even if Covid-19 wasn't an exacerbating factor. That's a big difference.
Quoting Isaac
The principle is the same as that demonstrated by the president . The author is dissatisfied with the way that something has been counted, and makes exaggerated, deceptive, and arguably false claims, in an attempt to discredit the count.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, but the same principle as Trump arguing for a fraudulent election applies here again. Sure there are going to be some improper ballots, and some wrongly counted deaths, but using a deceptive presentation to create the appearance that if some insignificant mistakes had been prevented, this would have resulted in a significantly different outcome, is simply wrong.
Quoting Isaac
Actually I think this is a very dubious statement. I remember seeing some statistics showing that when the lock down was in effect in the spring, the number of deaths in the US was down sharply from the same period in recent years. In general staying at home is a lot safer than going out.
Autopsies aren't routine in the US. They only do them if the family wants it or there's some other good reason. Nobody wants to examine the body of someone with covid-19 because the body is a disease vector.
If someone had a covid related stroke while driving and subsequently died of injuries from the crash, it's likely that those facts would never come to light. The death would be attributed to the injuries.
Yes. Why would you just prima facie disbelieve this? He's provided sources, and the was good reason to, as John Newton at PHE said
Since then changes have been made to include epidemiological evidence that Covid -19 was indeed an exacerbating factor.
I don't know as much about the situation in America, but I see no reason why it wouldn't have been the same. It was a good decision.
From the UK government's own website
What's interesting here is not the facts themselves, which are as indisputable as it gets, but the way in which, without even researching the article's sources, you've already assume it is
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
...which is just to address the direct correlation - not even touch on the knock on effects...
... but you carry on with your preferred narrative, don't let any of these tricky complications get in the way of your all-American hero flick.
I disbelieved it "prima facie" because it appeared completely unreasonable to me, because of the specific claims which were made, and the way that they were presented. So I placed one of the many dubious claims made there, onto this forum, in the form of an example. And you confirmed that you also believed, as I do, that the reporting practice was not as stated in the article, by saying that Covid-19 must be apprehended as a contributing factor in the death. Remember, the article which I see as deceptive, states that the person merely has to have tested positive for Covid-19 at some prior time in their life, then died, and it is reported as a Covid-19 death. This I see as completely unreasonable, and that unreasonableness, along with other unreasonable claims, presented in a way so as to act as premises toward an implied unreasonable conclusion, is good reason for disbelief.
Quoting Isaac
OK, so at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was only a few people in the population of a given country who tested positive already, there was even less people who tested positive and died. The practice of counting everyone who tests positive and dies would produce a very small number of mistakes, even if it might have been a somewhat significant percentage of the overall count, at that time. Then this practice was changed. Now when there are huge numbers who have tested positive, and large numbers of those who have tested positive are dying, the practice is no longer used. Therefore relative to the overall numbers, the mistakes reported at the beginning when there was a very small number, are very insignificant, constituting a very small percentage of the overall numbers.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, of course, when a deceptive proposal is poorly fabricated, I can readily identify its mal-intent without looking for discrepancies between it and the claimed sources. It's just like when a telephone scammer calls me. Most of the time it is obviously a scam, as evidenced by the unreasonableness of the claims, and the way that the claims are presented, in an unreasonable way, pointing toward mal-intent. For the scammers to get beyond this intuitive, or learned capacity, to identify mal-intent (that you seem to find very interesting), which we all possess in varying degrees, the scammer needs to put some serious effort into constructing the deceptive proposal. But because the intuitive, or learned capacity, varies from one person to another, some are more easily deceived than others, and the ways in which we are gullible also varies.
Quoting Isaac
By "tricky complications" you really mean deceptive speak. Maybe you should try that line on your telephone scam day job, if you have one. "Wait, wait, don't hang up on me, it only appears like a scam because you are not grasping the tricky complications required to make what I'm saying seem reasonable". That's why Trump made that 46 minute speech (highly extraordinary for him) the other night, to present the tricky complications which the professional judges refused to consider, deeming them as unnecessary in making a reasonable judgement; because those tricky complications are smoke and mirrors.
The reporting practice was exactly as stated in the article.
I don't understand how much more clear that can be. It says they used to count anyone who ever tested positive as a Covid-associated death, which is exactly what the article claims. And unsurprisingly, since rather than just writing about whet he reckons might be the case, the author has just quoted the two sources from which he gained the information.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How many cases and deaths were there at the time of the change?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What percentages of the deaths recorded were recorded under the old/new system?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you're going to be that flippant about nearly half a million excess deaths then there's no point talking to you. I don't suppose you give a shit about what we do if you don't even care how many people die. It's pointless trying to talk to someone about strategy whose motives I don't share at all.
Let's say the US would be where Canada is now and wouldn't have the 871 deaths/million, but would have only 334 deaths/million (of Canada), which would mean that there would be only 110 000 deaths until now. That one hundred thousand death mark was reached now in May, by the way. If the US would be in a similar state as my country, it would have only 10% of the total deaths: only roughly 28 000 now. Of course this simply isn't realistic as the US is the third most traveled to country in the World, which is absolutely crucial to why the country could not have realistically kept the virus spreading before the alarm bells went off. Closing the borders well before the WHO considered this a pandemic isn't realistic.
If success would be that the US would have now half or one tenth of the body count, would the discourse be different? I find it very unlikely that Americans would be pleased with a far lower body count, as in any case a "lock down" of some sort would have been implemented.
Prior to the pandemic many studies put the US with it's large resources as the best prepared country to face a pandemic. Now it's obvious that reality is nothing like it. It's not only the structure of the US being literally United States where the States decide what to do themselves, it is also the individualist liberalism at the core of the ideology of the country. Simply Americans abhor "big government" and won't fall into line and follow orders given by "the rulers" as many other countries do. Nope, every man pursues his happiness, or his health in this occasion, by himself. Collectivism is something sinister and this pandemic is just a trick to snatch away those freedoms that Americans enjoy.
The article was concerned with "US Covid-19 Death Counts". You flippantly mention "nearly half a million excess deaths", and accuse me of being flippant.
How could you possibly consider citing an article from The Lancet warning of nearly half a million deaths from TB as a result of Covid strategies whilst we were talking about the statistics used to determine that very strategy 'flippant'. What on earth was 'flippant' about it?
The Lancet article was not referring to the US, so no. But for countries like India, I see no reason to disbelieve an article suggesting as such in such an eminent journal as The Lancet. I cited it here as an example of the importance of getting the statistics right ie, not biasing data gathering approaches toward only one outcome of interest.
We can assume that there has to be at least similar if not larger amount of infections at the spring as now.
In Nordic countries, Sweden hit a new high since last time and Iceland is up also. Only in Norway the number of new infections is decreasing:
Are you serious? What do you base that on, the death rate? The first wave swept through the most vulnerable, and exposed, the nursing homes, where the numbers of vulnerable are concentrated and the virus spread easily. The second wave is sweeping through the general population, where the vulnerable are scattered. The death rate has not reached its peak.
Based on what it says there on the chart: "Limited testing meant that most infections were not confirmed during this wave". I get your point, that partly might be an issue to be noted, but notice that the statistical difference is huge: from April to June there is hardly any correlation, while starting from July the correlation between deaths and infections is obvious.
Then there is the way how pandemics spread: it doesn't come as a rain and influence all parts of the country in a similar way from the start. It might be the deaths in nursing homes in Washington state that are here apart from let's say the nursing homes in South Dakota: the pandemic spread to Washington first when there was non-existent measures taken in nursing homes.
How it looked at the start:
You cannot proceed logically from the premise of a lack of information, to your conclusion of a similar or larger amount of infections.
Quoting ssu
I see a very clear correlation there. What's different in the April-June time frame is a higher proportion of deaths per infections. That's probably due to a combination of the reasons you stated (insufficient testing), and the reasons I stated (rapid infection in the most vulnerable population). But there is nothing to indicate that the actual infections were as high at this time, as you assume. Even multiplying the March-April tested averages by ten will barely surpass the tested rate of today. And we can still assume that there are many infected today who do not test.
Quoting ssu
The increase in test confirmed cases in mid summer might be construed as representing a better testing capacity. However, there is also an increase of deaths at that time, so we might rule that conclusion out as unsupported by the data. Therefore the graphs show three distinct waves of increased infection, each one bigger than the last, spring, mid summer, and fall. The fact that the death rate was extremely high in the spring wave is probably due to the reasons I mentioned.
Yet you say...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which I agree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yet highly less than earlier.
Maybe not. The charts are too complicated to be simply summarized like that. The data included is hidden from view, and the statistics are not uniform from beginning to end but reflect different portions of the potential population. We see three waves.The initial wave culled the most vulnerable portion of the population both from the point of view of first quickly finding those who were open to getting infected and those with the highest mortality rate by age and sex. The nursing home patients.
I've been thinking this too. It's such a weird virus.
So you assume it went through all the nursing homes? It's not like the pandemic has gone through the population, which is obvious when you look at the debate around herd immunity and the Swedish-model (or the first adopted UK-policy).
Quoting Isaac
Well, coming back to the discussion above with Isaac just two months ago: I think we can say that indeed yes, when there is an urge to do something, a concentrated effort to do it and far more resources are put on something than normally, it does have an effect on the timetable:
The vaccine development took nine months, not two to five years. Something worth noting.
That's partly because the mRNA vaccine is a new technology. Future vaccine production will also be sped up due to this innovation. Cool, huh?
People don't like that. Far more trendy and smart looking to be doom and gloom. We're on the Titanic and people are just rearranging the deck chairs. That stuff.
Oh sorry, yes we're all doomed because we didn't sacrifice to Poseidon (I'm rereading the Iliad.)
Those charts are US figures. The US is geographically more spread out, the population is more diverse, and the economic gap between the haves and the have nots is significantly wider. The first wave of the virus only effected the East and West coast which are the hubs of global aviation traffic.
Although in China and Europe the pandemic was under way well ahead of the US, our Leader denied the 'Chinese Hoax' and local politicians, even the political opponents of our Leader, suppressed data collection and medical preparedness efforts. Testing for the virus was not generally available and the hospitals were ill prepared for the first influx of intensive medical emergencies.
By the second wave, a different wider range of patients appeared to be effected. These were the poorer service workers who were forced by the necessities of keeping their families fed to work in supermarkets, small stores, and delivery of goods to those who have shifted to work from home, or can otherwise afford to stay at home in isolation.
The third wave primarily effects, at least to date, the Trumpist Midland and Southern states who have rallied, partied, and mocked the leftist commie facemask-wearing fools.
Just looking at the graphs, The death statistics are much more certain, more reliable, more real than what's reported by biased authorities which should only be used in an indictment. The hospital ICU stats are the ones that I would most like to see for further pandemic speculation.
It should be remembered that there are possibly social or racial differences in addition to socio-economic status on the chronology of the pandemic. All those in isolation will eventually be immunized or become victims as well, but later when the hospitals have become more adept at avoiding deaths.
Two more factors might be the availability of rapid and accurate testing and reporting with medical details, and, and that we might not be just talking about the virus but a family of very similar mutating cluster that should probably survive most of the current vaccines, depending on the vaccines method of attacking their target model.
At what point did I say that the level of investment would not produce a vaccine more quickly?
I think your point was that we don't need a vaccine because we have working therapeutics. What drugs were you talking about?
No, my point was firstly, that a rushed vaccine based on new technology may be either falsely effective, have unexpected side effects (already we're getting allergic reaction that was not anticipated), or too expensive to help poorer countries.
And secondly that a huge proportion of the deaths are in poor communities coupled with poor healthcare services. Investing in core service provision and community healthcare is a far more efficient as it helps not only this pandemic, but also future ones. I've previously cited papers showing how proper ICU care more than halves the mortality rate. The overlap with poorer communities and existing health issues is well documented, but I can cite some if you like.
Thirdly, investment doesn't spring out of nowhere. It's taken from other budgets. I've just cited figures for TB excess deaths which result from only a fractional drop in the availability of frontline services.
Basically if you've already decided that the solution is an expensive vaccine then the investment is great. If your aim is to increase the number of vaccines in the world then this is a big score. If, however, your aim is to look after the immediate and future health of the population with the scarce resources we have available then the fact that a few rich countries have used up years of healthcare investment on a luxury vaccine is hardly the Holy Grail.
Let's have a look at the mRNA trial. Take Moderna's mRNA-1273.
Did the trial include children and adolescents? No.
Did the trial check for ADE reactions? No.
Did the trial include pregnant or breastfeeding mothers? No.
Did the trial include the immunocompromised? No.
Did the trial even check for reduced severity of symptoms? No.
Did the trial test for reduction in transmission? No.
...
Or we could take AstraZeneca's AZD1222... oh no, we can't, because the scale, scope and all failed results in that trial are secret.
In fact have any of the seven major contenders actually trialled for a reduction in transmission? No (qualified with the fact that some of the latest trial data isn't out yet, this was certainly true as of phase 3 trials last month),
Seriously. Would we trust a massive multinational business to act in the interests of the wider community under any other circumstances? Do we need to go through the track record of giant multinationals with social welfare?
It sounds like you don't have faith in the three stage testing system. You're not alone there.
Astra Zeneca's vaccine is expected to be the one poorer countries use because they just don't have the means to store the mRNA vaccine.
Quoting Isaac
Yes. There are a ton of organizations trying to help developing nations. Two of the biggies are Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation.
Quoting Isaac
Bill Gates, who is one the main funders for the WHO, also funded much of the vaccine R&D. Warp Speed was funded by the US's ability to print money and back it up with magic.
Quoting Isaac
That's disheartening.
Quoting Isaac
It's our magic money to spend, though. Wait until there's a world government and then bitch about it. Ya know?
Quoting Isaac
They're in business to make money. Wait until we have a global government and then bitch about it. That's my new motto. :sparkle:
Yep. It's right there in black and white in the company's articles of association. Their objective is to make a profit for their shareholders. Why would we even expect them to produce a product which has a net benefit to society? It's not even on their list.
Quoting frank
What's really worrying is that anti-cancer drugs are now so profitable that it is actually an economic viability to simply run enough trials to ensure at least one is positive simply by chance. Since there's no requirement to publish failed trials, we could soon see companies producing drugs which are no better than placebo but seem so on the basis of one chance trial...if we haven't already...we wouldn't know.
It's astonishing what fear will do. You couldn't make a more archetypal villain than big pharma if you tried, now they're the shining white knights.
Good question. Yet, the FDA has given the mRNA vaccine the big Checkity Check, so defrost that sucker, I'm ready!!
Quoting Isaac
Cancer is big business. No doubt about that.
Quoting Isaac
I expected to you to be more of a nihilist than this. A human is a walking contradiction, huh?
Ah! This would be the same FDA whose paid off officials continued to approve opiods despite clear evidence of the harm they were doing and that they were ineffective?
Or in the UK, perhaps you'd trust the MHRA? The same MHRA whose paid off officials during the breast implant scandal looked at no evidence at all apart from that provided to them by the manufacturer?
Big pharma's lobbying budget is double that of any other industry and over half are former government employees.
So your faith in the FDA comes from...?
It's more that I have faith that neither Pfizer nor Moderna want to deal with the legal downside of giving false info about their testing.
And yes, the more I hear about the British healthcare system, the more horrified by it I get. But that's another story.
Well, it didn't stop them with Neurontin, Genotropin, Bextra, Detrol, Lipitor, or Rapamune...all of which were proven to have been based on false information and marketed illegally. So what makes you think they'd stop now?
Sigh. Who gave false info about their testing (to the FDA)?
Pfizer. 2004 Cereblex, trials showed evidence of elevated risk of heart problems and they withheld them. $894 million in lawsuits. Didn't even break their stride.
Which drug?
Edited
I could list the full rap sheet, but it's common knowledge which has already been publicly written about at great length, there's little point in me reproducing it here. If you're not convinced already, just by being involved in healthcare, then you probably never will be.
Quoting Isaac
At least you said so:
Quoting ssu
Quoting Isaac
The context of 'effect' was the global decease in deaths due to the pandemic and it's collateral damage. Obviously I didn't mean to claim that it would have no effect on the world whatsoever. The entire argument I've been presenting is about the negative effects it will have, for goodness' sake.
Shouldn't be a big deal to identify who gave false info to the FDA about which drug.
Look closer. The heart scare came after the original trials and we now know that Celebrex is not more likely to cause adverse heart related outcomes than other NSAIDS.
Pfizer's lack of honesty was about Celebrex being easier on the stomach. And sure, that's bad, especially for all the people who ended up in the hospital with GI bleeds. It's terrible. I don't see what it has to do with the safety of Pfizer's vaccine though.
There aren't many medical interventions that carry no risk of adverse side effects. I'll no doubt have to sign something to acknowledge all the things that could go wrong when I get the vaccine (up to and including death). Shit happens.
Yes, drug companies are the scum of the earth. I see it all the time, mainly wrt opioid addiction. You're not really broadening my horizons about that.
No. According to the NYT who broke the story...
They outright hid and lied about a negative trial to maintain sales, and it's absolutely not a one off.
And you ask what this has to do with the efficacy of the vaccine they stand to make billions from?
The issue was whether Celebrex is more likely than other NSAIDS to cause heart attacks. It's not.
”A 2013 meta-analysis of hundreds of clinical trials found that coxibs (the class of drugs that includes celecoxib) increase the risk of major cardiovascular problems by about 37% over placebo.[6] In 2016, a randomized trial provided strong evidence that treatment with celecoxib is not more likely to result in poor cardiovascular outcomes than treatment with naproxen or ibuprofen.[26] As a result, in 2018 an FDA advisory panel concluded that celecoxib poses no greater risk for causing heart attacks and strokes than the commonly-used NSAIDs ibuprofen or naproxen and recommended that the FDA consider changing its advice to physicians regarding celecoxib's safety.[9]”. -- wiki
Also note: the Celebrex fiasco was a big deal. There were repercussions for the stomach safety issue.
Well, good to weigh those negative effects. Yet do weigh then them on the fact that now the US has lost daily the equivalent of those lost in 9/11 to Covid-19 and the pandemic has killed more than heart disease kills annually. So what does 9 months compare to two years?
I take it that Pfizer has claimed that they have already tested 12-17 year olds?
I understand that medical-pharmaceutical research is complex and problematic. Therefore, it would stand to reason that it cannot be held to the same rigorous statistical standards as most other sciences where the variables can be minimized before data is collected for statistical analysis. Then all pharmaceuticals developed and released to the public carry relatively high risk to be counterbalanced against vastly greater gain.
The real issue lies in the political pressure and interference coming from the President who treats watchdog agencies like the FDA as worthless bureaucrats. He may well be right about that, I don't know. But public confidence in the process of approvals is eroded if the FDA is threatened and berated.
How does the number of Covid deaths impact on the likely efficacy of the vaccine as a means of reducing them (together with collateral deaths from pandemic-related impacts)? Is there some threshold of deaths at which a previously inefficient approach to reducing them suddenly becomes efficient?
It seems to me the number of deaths only serves to make it all the more urgent that we work out some effective course of action. So an argument about the negative effects of any strategy is not to be 'weighed against' the death rates, it's fully about the death rate.
Thus only works as an argument if you assume the only consequence of 'complexity', as you diplomatically put it, is negative side effects. It's not. Serious short-term negative side effects are, most of the time, very rare. More often if there's side effects they're mild and treatable. Long-term, of course, we can't really know, but there's no general correlation to worry about, so unlikely to be anything there.
The real concern is not side effects, it's ineffectiveness. Most of the cover-ups and pay-offs have been for drugs which simply don't work. That's the worry here. As Peter Doshi (Associate Editor of the British Medical Journal and assistant professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland) put it recently...
I would have said adverse side effects are the bigger concern. 1 out of a million people vaccinated for small pox will die from the vaccine. So if we vaccinate everyone in the UK, we know we'll be killing a bunch of people. Approving a vaccine is a heavy decision because you could hurt people who would be fine otherwise.
Ineffectiveness should have shown up in the phase 3 testing of either Pfizer or Moderna.
Possibly you're right there.
Quoting frank
Do you even read what I write?
Yes. I mean, you could be right. It may be that this vaccine does nothing. The flu vaccine I get every year is only 70 % effective. I was kind of surprised they were saying 95% for the mRNA.
We'll see.
It may well be 95% effective at what it's been tested for, but that's the generation of a sufficient immune response to limit subsequent infection in healthy adults.
What we need, to escape this pandemic, is a way of minimising hospital admissions among the vulnerable and reducing transmission. Two things we have absolutely no idea if the vaccine will do because it's not been tested for either.
What we do know is that investment in critical care, general health improvements, community healthcare and poverty reduction all lower hospital admissions. We also know that contact tracing, social distancing and mask-wearing reduce transmission.
So I remain baffled as to why people have suddenly decided to intern themselves to provide free marketing to the largest industry on the planet when it can't even demonstrate that it's 'holy grail' is any more effective than measures that have been around (and woefully underfunded) for years.
What's going to happen next time (and there will be a next time)? Another million dead while we wait for the vaccine? Rather than just invest in the healthcare services that could have saved the overwhelming majority of those lives?
It's just a colloquial term. We could talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years if we wanted to be more accurate, but generally a 'life saved' in this context just means a reversion to the risk spectrum they were exposed to prior to the threat under consideration.
First of all, Isaac.
Where the corners have been cut in the "race to a vaccine" is that before the approval was gotten, the large scale production of the vaccine was started. This is the multi-million dollar risk here, what was deemed OK. And I guess big Pharma was given a assurances that they wouldn't have to cover the risk all by themselves if the vaccine is a bummer. That's were the millions poured into this come out. In any other situation only now would large scale production of the vaccine would have started, not that the vaccine would be ready for shipping. Hence part reason was what said earlier.
Quoting Isaac
This is YOUR punchline. Multinationational corporations are evil.
Your point has been heard.
Dogs bark and the caravan goes on...
Phase 1 just tests for baseline safety. Phase 2 optimizes dosing. Phase 3 checks again for safety, dosing, and effect.
Once it's approved for use, we can do multi-center randomized double blind what-not to see if it really improves outcomes.
Quoting Isaac
This is simply not true. It eats holes in people's hearts, it destroys brain tissue, it turns lung into concrete.
Yes, Isaac, we need a vaccine.
Quoting frank
You'd both have some evidence to back up these claims I presume?
How are we determining that the only corners cut were in early production?
How are we determining that heath service and critical care improvements would only have saved an insignificant number of lives?
Quoting frank
Where have I suggested that we don't need a vaccine?
Hmm. Peace out zombie. :cool:
Why don't you listen to Faucci?
Or you assume he is a corporate hack? Wearing your tinfoil hat are you, Isaac?
Oh but they didn't have pregnant mothers in the group and children! Do you know just who basically are killed by Covid-19? I think the worst group being killed by Covid-19 aren't actually children and pregnant women. I think that the way the US, the UK, the EU or heck, even Russia are handling this issue with starting the vaccinations is correct. Yes, get those vaccinations out there: you have a system of approving vaccinations so follow it... as has been done.
Sorry, but I'll leave now my tinfoil hat in the cupboard this time. Call me a sheeple or something if you want.
She approached the window and looked out: “what is it?” she asked.
“A double-trailer FedEx.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed with excitement, “maybe it’s full of vaccines!”
“What?” I asked.
“Maybe it’s hauling vaccine; I heard on tv that FedEx was gonna haul the vaccine.”
Now, I was just as surprised by her answer as I had been by seeing the truck, cause she usually doesn’t pay much attention to such tv news or comment on it: I realized she had been secretly watching stories about the imminent distribution of the vaccine, that she was highly anticipating it.
I put my head down b/w my hands and said, in a low voice, “this makes me mad.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You think this vaccine is gonna make you safe and solve all our problems, when you won’t even do the things now that you need to to stay safe until you can get vaccinated!” Cause you see, in 6 days, due to her and her family’s folly, and, frankly, selfishness, we’re gonna travel for Christmas to meet with them, who live in different parts of the state, and live in the same house with them for 2 days and nights.
A wise and benevolent govt would have kept this vaccine a secret until the very first day it was administered, in order to prevent a selfish foolish ppl from being even more of a harm to themselves.
But that’s not the way things work in this day of total transparency.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.....headed by Santa and the Easter bunny!
Sad that you think your girlfriend is foolish and selfish. Maybe let her go on her own while you stay safe in the basement eh. Her and her family can go have a good Christmas, workout their immune systems a bit, and maybe she can meet a guy that sees the world a little more her way. You can meet a mask in your basement and enjoy yourself safely.
Good plan!
Life isn't safe. Adjust.
Ah yes, I cited that most famous of conspiracy theory publishers, the British Medical Journal. Not to mention that hotbed of zealotry that is The Lancet. And I can't think what came over me when trusting sources as obviously partisan as the actual published trial data!
Clearly, what I should have been doing, to avoid this rampant tin-foil hat brigade, is watching videos on YouTube.
I'll leave you with the former head of that famous conspiracy-theory promoting agency the European Medicines Agency
...but I couldn't find a YouTube video on it, only Reuters, so who knows it's authenticity... I'll be sure to check my sources with the relevant arm of Google in future.
But fuck, I don't think Pfizer have quite enough money yet. Perhaps we could shut a few more clinics and rustle up a couple of million more for them.
And what you are talking about, just like above "But fuck, I don't think Pfizer have quite enough money yet. Perhaps we could shut a few more clinics and rustle up a couple of million more for them." and earlier has absolutely nothing to do with any article in the Lancet or the British Medical Journal.
She can’t have a happy Christmas with her family without me, as she told me, and backed up her statement by going on a hunger strike until I relented, and told her I would go. When she had begun to eat her first meal after the strike, she suddenly headed for the toilet, where she vomited up those first couple bites, because she had been so distraught at the prospect of me not accompanying her.
Would you want your beloved girlfriend who was in such a condition to, as you call it, “work out” her immune system?
Well, not 'absolutely nothing', no. It is a political opinion based on solid cited evidence. Are all political opinions that you don't agree with to be branded conspiracy theories now? We've seen that move before.
Being against the political decisions is different to being against the technological or medical aspects here.
Right. But it's the technological and medical aspects that I've provided professional cited sources taking issue with. The political argument is whether the money is being spent on vaccine research at the expense of community health care. The medical and technological issue is that the vaccine has not been tested for efficacy at reducing either transmission or hospitalisation, nor has it been tested for safety on key demographics. So claims that it will do so are without sufficient scientific support. That's not a political opinion. It's just a fact. Those tests simply have not been carried out, end of story.
To further support what @Isaac is saying here, and as I've mentioned before, the vaccine data so far does not exclude simply re-distributing harms rather than reducing harms overall.
The phase 3 trials do demonstrate people don't usually drop dead after getting the vaccine, so this is a good thing. But the reasoning offered by the corporations, government and media that "we'll start to see the end of the pandemic due vaccine roll out" is simply an unsound conclusion based on the available evidence.
It might be true, hopefully it is, but the idea it is certain or has passed standards of scientific validity is simply false. It is a gamble, a really, really, big gamble. It was a gamble to formulate a policy to basically do nothing to contain or mitigate the pandemic in hard hit countries due to mismanagement (compared to the countries that demonstrated competent policies) but rather wait for a vaccine to "solve the issue in the proper corporate friendly way". And it's a gamble now to roll out the vaccine with insufficient evidence that it will actually work to end the pandemic.
There are lot's of ludicrously stupid comments on reddit that claim "yes, there's insufficient evidence of effectiveness and unknown side effects beyond two months of trial data and lot's of population subgroups not represented in the trials, but the vaccine is for sure better than actually getting covid; in otherwords, we can know the risk of the vaccine is less than the risk of Covid".
Obviously, evidence is required to make such a conclusion, and premising any argument on a lack of evidence is the sign of a completely incompetent mind, which we can expect of reddit but hopefully can arrive at a clearer understanding on this forum.
Now, the experts developing and approving the vaccine certainly have reasons to believe their gamble will pay off. And maybe it will, but it is a mistake to believe there isn't a very large gamble being played and that the public has been properly informed about it.
If the gamble succeeds, great.
If it doesn't, there are innumerable potential reasons (due to the complexity and diversity of human biology including our biomes), but it's easy to list a few in addition to what @Isaac has already mentioned, that the experiments simply did not test for reducing transmission or reducing severe disease; some additional ones are:
- Statistical analysis did not include the fact many projects were trying to do the same thing at once and so some projects are expected to simply get lucky. I.e. no one conducted a proper Bayesian analysis of the vaccine development effort as a whole because the people involved are simply corrupt.
- The side-effects of the vaccine changed behaviour (for instance tiredness and lethargy) that was long lasting due to the long tail of degradation of the mRNA (many half life cycles are needed to be completely degraded and even one strand can activate an immune response, as one mRNA can fabricate many spike proteins). Lethargy reduces social interaction and chances of getting the disease compared to the control of placebo or another vaccine with shorter lived side-effects.
- Mutations (that may already exist but are currently suppressed by the dominant strains) can defeat the vaccine and not only spread easily between vaccinated people but the chance of severe disease is actually greater due to having the vaccine. The range of immune response of vaccinated individuals to a different strain is completely unexpected, because mRNA vaccine is new and there's lot's of things that no one thought of. I.e. the assumption that the shear number of virus particles in existence right now isn't an evolutionary advantage that more than compensates the usually slow mutation of this Coronavirus, turns out to be wrong.
- The effects of the vaccine program are benign, not making anything better but not making things overall worse (it simply redistributes the same level of harm rather than reduce it overall), but, other than the wasted money, trust in public health authorities completely collapses due to the failed gamble making it nearly impossible to formulate any new effective policy.
- Significant corners needed to be cut to scale-up production and quality control at scale turns out to be essentially impossible with current technology, and the assumption that "bad mRNAs" resulting from the stochastic processes would have zero effect turns out to be wrong.
Please note, these are not predictions, but a few, of a great many things, that could go wrong that professors for decades will solemnly explain to their classes as an example of the "reasoning mistakes even experts can make even though it's a classic example of X, Y, Z that was well understood already not to do but is now the new poster child of stupid in this category".
Other than the critical policy mistakes of abandoning containment in the early stages of the pandemic (which every country that made a competent effort succeeded in doing), if things do go wrong with the vaccine, we can note the further policy disaster of allowing vaccine developers to issue press releases on their data and work with their media sycophants to create such a hype train that governments basically had to approve the vaccines (not only because they too are sycophants but, in addition, due to the overwhelming pressure and belief created in the media that "over 90% effective and the pandemic will soon be over with these vaccines!! woweee").
Governments should have designed and mandated new trial protocols appropriate for the situation (much larger with much better experimental design and carried out by third parties), and corporations should have been gag-ordered to provide zero information to the press so that review and approval processes were not affected by public opinion and media hype. Simply accelerating the old normal process was not a reasonable policy because phase 3 is not usually followed by massive deployment of a new pharmaceutical, but there is phase 4 of post market surveillance, that is usually many years of "seeing what happens" and only a small percentage of the population gets the intervention every year (i.e. the risk of something being missed isn't so great because few people get the new intervention for many years). A competent medical professional would want a new trial design that would seek to get some of the same insights as phase 4 in an accelerated time line, which (if it is statistically impossible to do) then want direct challenge experiments (exposing trial participants to the virus deliberately, including known mutations) would be the only reasonable course of action; the benefit obviously outweighs the harm in this pandemic situation, and the only reason direct challenge experiments weren't used to get much, much more certainty about efficacy and side-effects in humans is because policy makers and their corporate donors preferred not to know, but to rather roll out a multi billion dollar gamble in a statistical haze.
The die is cast now though, so we'll see what happens.
And if you think policy makers aren't disastrously idiotic and corrupt, just look at the pandemic up until this point in the places rushing to be first to deploy the vaccine. Although past stupidity and corruption doesn't guarantee future stupidity and corruption, I wouldn't personally bet against it.
Which key demographics are you referring to?
And more importantly, I think one should refer here to distinct vaccines, or is it really alleged that all various vaccines now studied have been dealt in similar way? That's what the Lancet article says? (I guess you had a link)
Quoting boethius
Well, looking at just my country, I don't really feel that they have been disastrously idiotic and corrupt when the country is among the least effected countries in the EU. If you want to paint every leadership in such gloom, that's your problem. I don't know then were you draw the line of what then would be an adequate, OK response to a pandemic.
The elderly, the immunocompromised, the chronically ill, ethnic minorities, very young children...
Quoting ssu
Yes. The testing methodology is publicly available - if you haven't even looked at it in all this discussion then that really shows what level of blind faith we're working with. Someone raises an issue with the testing methodology as cited in a reputable medical journal and you construct an argument that no such omission exists without even looking?
Further testing is now being carried out. They will plug the gaps in those demographics eventually, that's not the point. The point is the amount of money going into it without any assurances as to its likely efficacy contrasted with the complete lack of investment (cuts even) in services which have a far better evidence base for reduction in both transmission and severity, for this virus, and all it's future strains, and any future virus.
And you'd like me to believe that the massive investment in an industry which spends more on lobbying than any other, and industry with representatives and shareholders in the highest positions in government, is all just a sound level-headed strategic decision?
I qualified my statement with "in the places rushing to be first to deploy the vaccine". Finland is not such a country. I contrasted incompetent management with the countries that have managed competently and kept cases low through containment (which, at the start of this thread in March, I was advocating for and pointing out the disaster that abandoning containment would create, which is did).
Incompetent governments abandoned containment because "waaa, it's so hard .. and aviation stocks!" and are now the ones trying to fix things with vaccines that do not have sufficient evidence to conclude they will work to end the pandemic.
The competent governments with low cases have no need to rush to deploy the vaccine and get to see how it plays out in other countries, which is what they are doing as it's the competent thing to do. Rollout plans in countries with low cases are also much slower.
Keep in mind that many side-effects cannot be detected without time, in particular any impact on fertility. So just giving the vaccine to a million people in a month doesn't suddenly prove it's safe.
Likewise, since it's a novel pharmaceutical technology it could create disorders that have simply not existed before, which again simply takes time to notice and for doctors to understand. Side-effects are only found quickly if they correspond to a known pathology with clear symptoms and tests. Lot's of side-effects can simply have no symptoms on a short time scale; if the vaccines induce these sorts of pathologies there is simply no way to know at this point (hence phase-4 trials on a limited amount of the population to see what comes up in a usual safety evaluation program).
The assumption that the number of unfortunate side-effects will be "one in a million" is simply an assumption based on nothing. Extrapolating from other vaccines in the market, as people on reddit like to do, has not technical basis as these vaccines are new technology and is all the more absurd because those vaccines passed phase 4 trials.
One must also consider that the disease disproportionately harms the old, but side-effects could be life-long lasting on the young. It is not necessarily reasonable to sacrifice the quality of life of a young person to save the life of someone over 80. Such an analysis is required and simply requires time to have the required data upon which to make a conclusion.
Since this is a philosophy forum, we can also note that (in countries with catastrophic health crisis at the moment) the pandemic is, to a large extent, a self-inflicted harm by the elderly upon themselves, by creating a society designed to spread a pandemic as quickly as possible and tolerating a government incapable of an effective response for so long. Not only must we take age and quality of life into consideration in evaluating the cost-benefit of the vaccines, but there is little moral motivation for the young to take any risk at all to help the elderly in such societies; the old dying of coronavirus are lying in the bed they have made.
Therefore, the young should not be content to know the vaccine is safer than getting covid in a general sense, but should insist it is proven to be safer for their particular risk profile and with enough data to make such a conclusion (which requires even more time and data, as the risk of Covid to healthy young people is very low, so proving the vaccine is even lower is much more difficult statistically).
I'd also like to point out that many people on reddit like to describe the vaccine in an hyper oversimplified 3 lines and then say "so you see, couldn't possibly do anything bad", then they pat each other on the back for a while. These vaccines are extremely complex in their design, manufacturing, deployment and interaction with both human cells and other organisms in the human body, not to mention the coronavirus and existing and yet to come mutations. Some of these mRNA particles will go to places they aren't "supposed to go" within the body (maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it does), the other compounds in these vaccines may have completely unexpected consequences and interactions with other drugs people are taking or other pathogens some people have, human cells don't usually reverse transcribe mRNA but other organism may (maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it does), there will be manufacturing errors and deployment mishaps (to little or greater effect), etc. etc. To make a long story short, there are unknowns we know we don't know, as well as the unknown unknowns we don't know we know, but what we can know is we're about to find out. The FDA approval was not "yep, totally safe" to summarize a summary went along the lines of "a lot we don't know, but whatever, let's do it". Like a gambler putting up the deed to his house to double up and pay some loan sharks, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but what we can be sure of is anyone in such a position is an idiot regardless of the outcome; disaster is simply poetic justice and success we are safe to assume a short lived high before the next catastrophe.
How many hours a day are you on your phone, staring at your computer, your TV, your Xbox, what have you. How many hours are you actually talking to your fellow man face to face, not just talking like you'd do in a line to pass the time or make it less awkward or boring, but socializing, connecting, sharing ideas and feelings, and bonding. Odds are not many.
The fact that this lock down doesn't really interrupt the lives or quality of life of many (people use their phones and the internet, get food and nearly everything delivered anyhow, continue to numb their minds and senses with TV, video games, etc., and when out in public running an errand still rush back home as quickly as possible to get back to the monotony) should be a real eyeopener.
We can speak to anyone anywhere in the world- but can we understand or care for each other or appreciate their company? We can order nearly anything in the world, be it food or goods, and have it delivered to our door the same day- but can we appreciate it or procure said things ourselves without our precious devices? We can annihilate an entire nation in the push of a button or two- but why is even that seemingly not enough to avoid losing what those who came before us had?
What happened to the days of yore where kids would go outside to play until dusk with no problems because everybody knew their neighbors and families would play board games or perhaps watch a good movie before/while preparing a home-cooked meal to discuss their day or other family topics around. What has our species become? Something other than human I fear. Perhaps this is the meta behind the old religious adage of "gaining the world, but losing one's soul."
I am a fire fighter. People run from the burning building, car fire, wildfire etc. I do not expect you to suit up and join me in an interior attack of a burning building. I do however expect that you will allow me to do so, as it is a risk I have accepted as an adult. Your values are not mine, nor should they be. I am not asking anyone to adopt my values, I am however, not interested in adopting theirs either. It is sheer arrogance to impose or mandate values on others. It is, in my opinion, quite evil, robbing people of that which makes them them.
I helped her through cancer, and they were grateful they were relieved of that burden; I have lived with her day to day (as they haven’t: they only see her a couple times a year) for years, helping her get groceries, get things fixed around the house, take out the trash, vacuum the floors, visit doctors, make calls, etc, etc, etc...more importantly, lie with her to keep her warm, willingly sit with her to hear the same old stories of yore, go to church with her, help her elderly friends by working for them, in a word, be her man and companion during the last years of her life...
And how do they honor my service to the matriarch? They ignore me, follow their own selfish interest and encourage her to gather with them at her own peril and my anguish.
This Christmas with her family will be the worst one I’ve ever experienced in my life since I was a wee tot, wearing a mask and sitting in a corner while they laugh and eat and carry on and try to ignore me, and they know that; but do they care?
Book, if our house burned, I would do everything I could to get her and me out. But when my house burns the neighbors’ houses don’t necessarily also burn. In, however, a pandemic, what my neighbor does effects me, cause I might meet him at the grocery store, or at the post office, or the restaurant, and if he fails to wear a mask, and fails to keep his distance, I am put at risk...
Do you really think not wearing a mask makes you who you are?
Yes, she can be foolish...but if we loved only the wise it would be hard to find a lover at all.
You will live your life by your tenets, as you should. Wear your mask if you like. Get the vaccine if you like. However, do not impose your values on to others. We are not you, nor do we want to be. We wish to live life on our terms, not yours, or anyone else's. I have freeclimbed 250 foot chimneys (rock climbing narrow rock cracks without ropes), I have snowboarded in avalanche zones, and stood within petting distance of Wild grizzlies in rivers in Alaska. Most people will never see any of these things, let alone do them. I have driven at excess of 300kph. I ask not that others are mandated to do these things, but I have no interest in begin told I must stop because others are uncomfortable with them.
The mask dehumanizes my patients, my coworkers, everyone. Wear it if you want, but also recognize that others don't want to, and as with any decision you make, someone might mock you for it. Your extended family sound rather horrid. My condolences there. I can not support mandating values onto pother people. Not now, not ever.
Eventually they will demand that I get the vaccine or they will fire me. Too bad really, I like my jobs. But I am not taking the vaccine. Ah well. Career change I guess, no more fire fighting, no more first responding, no more Emergency Department. If enough of us do this...No more emergency services.
Poorly thought through mandate.
I don't understand this position. If you're of the view that people should be left to do as they please (even if that causes problems for other people - in terms of exposing them to a risk they'd rather not take), then how is grouping together, electing a government, and making laws not 'a thing' that people should be allowed to do if they want to, even if it causes problems for other people (you, in this case). You seem to be arguing that you should be allowed to do as you please even if it risks some harm to others, but other people cannot do as they please (in forming governments and laws) because that risks some harm to you (in terms of restricting your freedoms).
I've finally started seeing people of your type getting the virus. I think it was Thanksgiving plus it's just thoroughly present in the environment now.
Good luck to you and all exposed to your speech.
If you do that in a city you might kill someone, so it’s forbidden. Likewise you are more than welcome to not wear a mask when you’re alone in the wilderness, hugging grizzlies, but not in a shop or in an office.
You have demonstrated a high level of "risk tolerance" and (apparently) have competently conducted high-risk activities and lived to tell about it. People vary in their capacity to tolerate potential harm from very risk-averse to very risk tolerant. I suspect this is less a learned attitude and more innate. It may be the case that neither the bold nor the cautious can claim personal credit for their approach.
I have a moderate level of risk tolerance; I do and have done some things that many other people would consider reckless. I don't consider myself irresponsible in the same way you do not (more or less--I don't know you, of course).
I do recognize that sometimes our risk tolerance is irrelevant. Public safety trumps risk tolerance, and I consider this acceptable because we can generally find venues to take risks where public safety is not compromised. You flirting with grizzlies doesn't harm public safety and a grizzly might enjoy devouring you, a win-win. Driving at very high speeds on an isolated road poses little public safety risk. Doing so on a heavily used freeway does pose a public safety risk.
Sometimes the risk to others isn't obvious. Should you deliberately ski in an avalanche zone, and it is known that you were in that area during an avalanche, you may put rescuers at risk--especially since responders don't have the option of saying "He took the risk, so let him die."
Public safety (or national purpose) trumps risk aversion too. I would guess most soldiers sent into battle would strongly prefer to be somewhere else. But public safety, or national purpose, trumps their personal cautiousness.
So, I think we need to balance our attitudes toward risk (tolerance or aversion) with the needs of the collective. What I mean is, find a way of enjoying risk that doesn't endanger others, and accept the consequences (like, if the grizzly overcomes its risk aversion and decides you would make a fine meal).
You should talk to them, ask them how they feel about it. The ones I know looked forward to action, but I make no assumptions that all of them do. However, perhaps being a soldier is a bad idea if one has no interest in being in battle. As with fire fighters that don't want to go to fire calls, they have made a poor professional choice.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I work in healthcare. I know how to read the studies. I know that most of what has been announced by public health has been "spun" to illicit a specific response: "Remain calm. it will be ok" Which is entirely accurate. Remain calm because it will be ok. Having said that, there is no point panicking because it won't help anything. Everything will be ok because it always sorts itself out at some point, just wait long enough.
The government is blaming the "non-compliers" for the spread of the virus; they need someone to blame, so they have. Truth is, it was going to spread like this no matter what we did. The language they are using demonstrates their awareness of this. "Numbers would be so much worse if we had not done this...Numbers would be lower if we had better compliance..." etc. Good thing there are those who are not complying otherwise the party line wouldn't have a scape goat. No way the the government says "this won't do shit, but try it anyway eh, just so you think you are doing something." Despite it being accurate.
South Dakota did not mandate anything. North Dakota jumped on the band wagon. North Dakota is doing worse than South Dakota: infections/deaths. I am not judging them, just looking at the numbers.
Sweden did nothing, their numbers have increased, as did everyone else's. Their curve looks just like everyone else's. Their economy...better. Number of suicides...less. I see these as indicators that they made the right call. I wish my country had had the spine to do the same. Suicide hotline activity has more than doubled, actual suicides have "data unavailable", but locally have more than doubled. "no data available" for domestic violence increases, but if we don't look, I guess it doesn't exist? No data available for the lives lost due to cancelled and postponed medical procedures and tests as a result of our narrow focus on Covid. There is only Covid apparently. It's bullshit. My mask protects me from your bad breath, usually, and that is about it.
I won't take the vaccine, no short term, medium term or long term data exist for it. Hard Pass. If others want it, good for them.
So you came here especially to tell us to leave you alone. That's weird
Now let me challenge you: if I’m bold enough to defy her family, can you be bold enough to dare to wear a mask? To socially distance, to not gather with those who don’t live with you? Let me give you some encouragement: doing those things won’t detract from who you really are. They’re just superficial things. Who you are is deeper than that,...I hope?
Let me tell you a famous local story:
An 18 yr old kid here, some years ago, as young kids are won’t to do, was out on an isolated country road eager to test the power of the engine in his new pickup truck, and gunned it as hard as he could. Unfortunately, a young boy suddenly emerged from the adjoining wood, and ran out into the road, right in front of the pickup. Unable, because of his speed to either stop in time or swerve out of the way, the kid struck the boy, and after he finally stopped, ran back and found the boy lifeless...
...suddenly aware of his folly, and remembering he had his pistol in the truck, he walked back to the vehicle, extracted the firearm, walked into the woods, and shot himself in the head, becoming, as they say, his “own judge, jury and executioner”...
Let me ask you, Mr Book: do you have the balls to so severely judge yourself? If not, you better slow down when you drive.
I am not an an anti-masker, nor am I an anti-vaxxer. I am an ardent pro-choicer. Allow others to make their own choices, or don't, and mandate the issue. But the argument that someone else's values and opinions make them selfish, because they oppose yours, is morally wrong.
I am glad that your girl decided to stay with you, that's great. Mine chose me, and I her, and our extended families can eat it if they disagree with our choices.
As to your question, would I end my life because I took someone else's accidentally? Probably not. I would trade places with them, but ending my life serves little purpose at that time, except to end any remorse I may have at my actions. I am too pragmatic to waste a life, mine or another's, on a pointless gesture.
Have a Great Christmas eh.
People just don't get it, you know? We are only slowing it down. There is no stopping it. No matter what precautions we take, covid will run its course. I loathe the conceit of the present age: to think we can prevent sickness (and on a mass scale), is utterly retarded, laughable at best.
When a person chooses fear, he forfeits all other choice, and nothing is more pathetic than a life spent in fear.
Granted, the stats do not tell a crystal clear story. Neither North nor South Dakota imposed many restrictions on their population. They Sturgis motorcycle rally in SD went on as planned, for instance -- pretty much a free for all. Not surprising, quite a few transmissions were traced to Sturgis. Nothing against motorcyclists. The NYT reported a big biomedical conference during the early stages of the pandemic may have resulted in 200,000 transmissions. Science types breathing on each other is about the same as motorcyclists breathing on each other.
Minnesota imposed state-wide restrictions over a long period of time, and Wisconsin didn't. The population of Minnesota and Wisconsin are pretty much the same demographic. Not much difference in outcomes. South Dakota imposed no state-wide restrictions and has managed to have higher rates per 100,000 than either Minnesota or Wisconsin, and that in a sparsely populated state covering a very large area. For some reason North Dakota got off with fewer cases.
South Dakota 74 cases per 100,000 (population 884,659)
North Dakota 48 cases per 100,000 (population 762,062)
Minnesota 57 cases per 100,000 (population 5.4 million)
Wisconsin 64 cases per 100,000 (population 5.8 million)
When states impose restrictions, positive Covid-19 tests, diagnosed cases, hospital admissions, and (eventually) deaths from Covid-19 all trend downward (not instantly of course).
I agree: without early and nationwide draconian measures, Covid-19 (an airborne disease) was bound to spread. But minimal measures in many states, and a late start everywhere, pretty much guaranteed a higher death toll and a higher percentage of the population becoming infected.
Where did I say anything even remotely like that?
Quoting Book273
Didn't mention that either
Quoting Book273
Nor that
I have literally no idea what you're replying to but it doesn't seem to be my actual post - try again.
I think I can clear this up; he's replying to what he wants your comment to be like, and he does what he wants, so it makes perfect sense really.
Sounds like you've already had it.
I don't know, I'm seriously asking.
It's very different and very new technology.
Any new pharmaceutical can have totally unexpected consequences. It's possible we discover entirely new pathways to mess-up the human body over the long term that no current expert could even dream of today, thanks to this vaccine. Experts may say the risk is small, but the consequence distributed over hundreds of millions of people is extremely big. As mentioned previously, "side-effects" can only be detected in the short term if they have clear symptoms and correspond to something we understand. The purpose of phase-4 trials is to catch the things no one thought was in any way likely or even possible. There can be many 1 in 1000 terrible long term side-effects that no one currently understands and therefore no one currently can check, and that will not appear as a discernible signal in current statistics. 40 000 seems like a lot of people, but if there are lot's of weird 1 in 1000 consequences it's far from sufficient quantity to find these things, even if there are symptoms (doctors will not be able to make a causal inference to the vaccine, and many 1 in 1000 events will simply not appear anyways, just from statistics, not to mention the populations not even represented, or not in any statistically significant way, within the 40 000).
Keep in mind there are many long term problems that have no short term symptoms. If the vaccines cause cancer for instance, it could literally be a decade before that's clear independent of how many people we vaccinate. Likewise impacts on fertility.
Keep in mind also, impacts may not be acute to certain individuals but spread out, and widely distributed affects (not acute in any one patient) are even harder to detect but may have greater consequence.
Of course, western leaders and with no doubt pharmaceutical companies are completely willing to exchange future cancers no matter how many there may end up being against ending the pandemic and fixing the economy. However, this is because they are evil people; there is no rational basis to take such a risk. Not to say some proxy experiments have been made to be more than less confident the vaccines don't cause cancer, but every pharmaceutical that ends up causing cancer had similar evidence (and these kinds of proxy experiments can only be accelerated to a point, keep in mind).
The chance of dying of coronavirus along with developing "long Covid" is on the order of 1 in 1000 or greater for most people (i.e. IFR estimates are in the 0.1 - 0.2 range, including vulnerable populations, so for the healthy populations it can go all the way to 1 in 100 000 risk for young healthy profiles).
Therefore, giving healthy people the vaccine is an extremely big experiment without any assurance that it is smaller risk than actual Covid for the healthy population.
This can just be a catastrophe, leading to more demand on the health system and not less to deal with these problems while the vaccine program may not stop transmission anyways, so the Covid situation maybe unchanged.
@Isaac has good comments on why real effectiveness (at stopping the pandemic) is not proven; to summarize, the phase 3 trials didn't even attempt to prove the vaccines will decrease transmission or decrease hospitalizations. The vaccines may end up increasing both. That governments and the media insist we assume and promote the idea the vaccines are effecting at ending the pandemic is completely absurd as no scientist involved in the trials is even making such a claim (they sometimes explicitly state they basically have no idea if transmission or hospitalizations will end; censorship has officially started of criticizing the vaccines, which would include simply repeating the actual claims of the creators of the vaccines).
The effectiveness numbers are at reducing symptoms, mainly in the healthy population that is at minimum risk anyways. People on reddit like to claim that reducing symptoms reduces transmission, but this is an unverified hypothesis; the vaccine could result in a small number of people having no symptoms but being infectious for extended periods of time (a sort of shingles type situation where the immune system manages but never gets rid of the virus nor stops the virus being infectious; there is currently nothing that would exclude such a possibility). For the vulnerable that are likely to end up in hospitals we may discover the vaccine actually makes their cases worse and not better, causing sever immune reactions (cytosine storms). And of course, not to mention mutations, both present and future, which may not simply defeat the vaccine but outcomes maybe worse for vulnerable vaccinated people and even healthy people; there's an assumption that "oh, well, it maybe like the flu and we must vaccinate each year"; terrible assumption considering vaccinating against the flu doesn't stop the flu, vaccines for the flu are based on historic patterns that don't exist for coronavirus (we have no basis on which to predict the dominant coronavirus strain or strains next season), and coronavirus is nothing like the flu so maybe that strategy wouldn't even work even if it was possible.
Keep in mind (lot's to keep in mind), that without the vaccine statistics makes the dominant strains likely to remain the dominant strain through the network effect. However, put pressure on the dominant strain and other strains that already exist may flourish if they have a mutation that defeats the vaccine. Competent scientists would have collected as many strains as possible to then actually test at least in laboratory (rather than just say there's no reason to assume a new strain will defeat the vaccine and so we shouldn't worry ... yet .. I guess?) while distributing the trials over as wide a range geographically as possible, to at least have some basic tests.
In other words, not only may these vaccines not work they could make the situation worse while collapsing all trust in health authorities and the "gov'ment".
Of course, if we really go deep into the biology we may decide the risks are small (I am not offering any calculations of the risks I'm talking about, just pointing out there are many of them, no evidence they don't happen and therefore it's a big gamble) and so, though even if we conclude risks are small they would remain possible and perhaps still unreasonable when multiplied by hundreds of millions of people and the governing and social consequences if things go wrong, nevertheless unlikely.
In which case, the likely situation is still not "good". The current vaccine programs are too little and too late to affect this winter season; coronavirus has demonstrated strong seasonal tendency and so will anyways go down in the spring and it will be difficult to know if the vaccine is working or not, and if we will be hit by a third wave next season anyways, whether due to the vaccines not working or new strains defeating the vaccine.
The virus is now well mixed in the population and so social distancing no longer really matters. Full isolation would be needed now to significantly reduce cases which was reasonable to do as part of containment strategy (which I advocated for in the spring) but is no longer possible once containment is irrelevant (no where to "contain" the virus to).
The alternative is of course to let the strong do what they will and the weak to suffer what they must (i.e. what is happening now because there is no longer any other alternative). Although it may seem at first reasonable to take a massive risk on the long term health and fertility of the young and healthy population, very quickly it is of uncertain ethical foundation; of course, this is now the policy so we'll see what happens. In any case, getting to the morally wrenching point is due to a large criminal negligence of our leadership. Therefore, whatever happens, Nuremberg type trials should be held and our western leadership hanged.
Abandoning containment was in essence undertaking a genocide against the poor either out of neglect or to protect the stock-market (which has done very well indeed, so the policy has succeeded). If we are better than the Nazi's we will employ the same legal standards and consequences for those responsible.
If we do not, we are no better than the Nazi's, merely their heirs.
If my math is correct, 1 in 1000 over 40,000 results in 40 cases. If it could "simply not appear" in those 40,000 as you suggest, then clearly it cannot be called a 1 in a 1000 consequence. And since these consequences are described as "weird", I think it's very unlikely that no inference would be drawn from the appearance of 40 weird consequences in a case study of 40,000. Therefore I think your proposal of what could be possible from "1 in 1000 consequences" is completely unrealistic. You could boost it up to 1 in 100,000, or 1 in 1,000,000 consequences, but then you're getting into a range of insignificance, which is exactly what the trials aim to do. So I believe that this particular concern of yours is unfounded.
40 cases in 40 000 that aren't clear what they are is a weak signal. You can only find what you're looking for. Obviously we're looking for people dying right away, so 40 people dying right away would be a strong signal and we're looking for that.
Now, if there was 4000 people with unclear but the same symptoms, that would be a clear signal. But 40 people who report feeling "weird" is not going to be easy to detect and differentiate with people feeling weird for other reasons or short-term weirdness (from the immune response that's supposed to happen for instance), and certainly not in a short time period. For longer term things with no short-term symptoms it doesn't matter how many people are in the trial if the consequences are far beyond the time frame of the trial (cancer, pregnancy, smaller but significant long-term symptoms that people themselves assume will go away or are caused by life events, and need to persist for some time for people to notice etc.).
Phase 3 trials are normally quite long, and phase 4 longer still to get confidence difficult to detect things aren't missed. If you asked previous to this vaccine why bother with phase 3 and phase 4 trials a doctor would easily list off all sorts of cases in the past where really unexpected things happened and only detected with a lot of time, sometimes event after phase 4.
So, to pretend now that we can have anywhere near the same level of confidence with short phase 3 and no phase 4 trials, is just absurd.
Maybe it will work great, maybe it will be a Chernobyl scale fuckup.
When looking for side effects in a drug trial, they are looking for "weird" consequences, they are not expecting people to be dying. I think that by the time they are using 40,000 people they are pretty sure that people are not going to be dying.
It was just to contrast signal strength. A person dying is a strong signal.
Many long term side-effects have only "I feel weird" as a signal in the short term, and more severe consequences much later or maybe you just feel weird for the rest of your life.
Many long term side-effects have no symptoms, potentially for decades.
Proper experimental design, previous to these vaccines, was no question for anyone in the scientific community a combination of numbers and time. The idea that this standard, based on a long history of painful lessons, is actually not really needed, is just stupid.
I agree the trials established strong bad signals don't happen, like many people dying right away, and this is definitely a positive thing. But it is far from the end of the story when it comes to side-effects.
My point was, that by the time they're trying 40'000 human beings, they're way beyond your "strong signal" criteria.
Yeah, you'd think so if you have no idea what you're talking about.
In the case of problems that happen beyond the time frame of the trial it doesn't matter what number of people you get to, you have no signal. Cancer the typical example.
In the case of problems that have no clear symptoms, it's very difficult to detect 1 in 1000 events within a sample of 40 000, because there's no test setup to catch those events. If you don't know what you're looking for, you are unlikely to find 1 in 1000 events in any short time-frame (it takes a lot of work to find what you don't know you're looking for). These 40 people may not self report because they themselves can't explain the symptoms and minimize it as caused by something else and assume will go away, those that do maybe ignored as it seems psychosomatic or assumed will go away, and questionnaires and followup etc. don't suspect this kind of problem and so collect no data on it. And even the doctors that do notice "something" may not have a diagnosis to report because it's totally new, so they'll wait and see and certainly won't ring any alarm bells considering how important the vaccine is to get out to people. 40 cases could easily be missed. With a 1000 cases it's much more likely to be an unmissable pattern.
But the basic hypothesis driving the policy is that long-term effects hopefully aren't there, but if they are they will be spread out over a long period of time so a worthwhile exchange to solve the pandemic. However, this is not necessarily a morally sound position if we are exchanging the health of the young against the health of the old.
The other problem with this policy is there's no reason to believe the vaccine will decrease transmission or hospitalization. If we want to learn from history, most medical interventions based on an unproven assumption fail. At each step of development and testing more interventions fail than succeed. It's not the case that "once you pass phase 1, it's easy riding from there" for people who develop medical interventions of any sort. Therefore, extrapolating from history, the reasonable position is these vaccines will fail phase 4 trials once enough data is collected for a robust phase 4 analysis.
Of course, in the wishful thinking framework that has gotten the world into the current crisis: what happened in China can't happen in the west for reasons, what happened in Italy won't be so bad elsewhere for reasons, there's 100 times more undetected infections and so the IFR is super low and we're almost at heard immunity, treatments are getting better and if there's a second wave (... which probably there won't be guys) the death rate won't go up ... like super probably ... well, the logical extension of this pattern is "vaccines with no evidence they will end the pandemic and do more good than harm are like, for sure dude, going to end the pandemic, it's just common sense bro".
Then why use 1 in 1000 in your example, if your other parameter is problems with no immediate symptoms? Why not propose 1 in 100, 1 in 10, or just propose that there is some problem which everyone will have, and it's impossible to detect in the trial because the symptoms will only develop much later. That is a much better representation of your proposal.
You know, a vaccine is basically a one time thing, it's not the same as taking the same drug every day, over and over again for years, which produces a likelihood for things like cancer to develop from long term use.
Yes, for problems with no immediate symptoms, it can be any number. Literally everyone who gets the vaccine could get cancer and we'd have no way of knowing at this point. If the Gaussian curve of cancer diagnosis is around 10 years from now, the small forward tale would be so small in the next year that it would be impossible to differentiate such cancers with other causes of cancer, but the signal will be unmistakable in 10 years.
I picked 1 in a 1000 simply because it's around the estimated IFR rate, and that even if there are symptoms, unless they are obvious, the signal could easily go unnoticed. It's assumed by many commentators on the internet that whatever risks remain are certainly lower than the risk of Covid as they must be below 1 in 40 000, I am pointing out that assumption is false and explaining how it could be false without us knowing yet.
If it is not reasonable to exchange the health of the young against the health of the old, then many age and risk profiles have far lower risk than the general IFR, the basic problems I'm pointing become even harder and harder to detect and so to prove the policy is morally sound (assuming my moral supposition here).
However, I mean not to do any calculations here, just to outline a framework in thinking that we currently have no data upon which to make a robust conclusion (we have no calculations to make that would resolve the issues, we have only hope upon which the rebellion of the upperclass is based: that, whatever happens, we will do nothing to hold them accountable). The framework of thinking is simply why, before these vaccines, all our medical interventions are supposed to pass fairly long phase 3 and even longer phase 4 trials before we'd consider giving something to hundreds of millions, much less billions of people, and that we haven't magically come up with a substitute for numbers and time simply because our leaders wish it to be true.
The pharmaceutical companies have been racing to oblige, but there is a clear subtext to everything they actually say, which is: we have no idea what will happen but give us the money.
OK, that seems like a good reason for you to refrain from getting vaccinated, the possibility of unknown, unforeseen consequences potentially caused by the vaccine. But I think that the possibility of unknown, unforeseen consequences potentially caused by the virus present an even larger risk. And in fact, we can add to that all the known and documented consequences caused by the virus and conclude that the risks involved with getting the virus are much higher than the risks of getting vaccinated. So, it's obvious to me that the risks from not taking the vaccine are far higher than the risks from taking it, therefore it's not a good reason to refrain from getting vaccinated, to me.
Yeah. It all depends on the progress they've supposedly made. Here's Stat on mRNA approaches just a few years ago
Moderna actually pinned almost its entire investment strategy on better mRNA delivery methods. Supposedly it now has them, but the failure to test in the immunocompromised wouldn't guarantee that (especially as heightened immune response seems to have been one of the issues and is coincidentally one of the factors in the severity of covid infection).
The difficulty as I understand it is both in delivering the mRNA, and in the body's potential reaction to the protein thus generated. Both have been implicated in autoimmune disease development. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26728772/
But I'm not an expert in this field, and those that are are heavily invested in the technology. I think the best indication os likely adverse reactions comes from the MHRA (the UK's FDA). In November they ditched their old adverse reaction reporting system because they said it would be unfit to cope with the number of reports that would likely result from the roll out of a vaccine (for balance, here's the Full Fact assessment of that news). Personally, I think the MHRA response is a bit weak, but others may be satisfied with it.
Both Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer have negotiated immunity from prosecution for liability under the Adverse Reaction Compensation Scheme, and the Government have closed off their own compensation routes for Covid vaccines...https://www.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vaccine-liability-idUSKCN24V2EN
Make of that what you will. The explanation given for both is the very large expected take-up. But in terms of impact - both on health sevices and community health robustness - that's no reassurance. We're not judging the vaccine, but the likely global reaction to its rollout.
The main point I want to emphasise though before this gets lost in the weeds of potential adverse reactions is that we are not comparing vaccines vs doing nothing. There are a lot of well-proven methods of reducing both transmission and severity of infection which could be vastly improved on given the same money.
I was under the impression that the basic technology has been around for 50 years. Is that still new in pharmacy? Sounds ancient.
Why would anyone be rendered sterile? I don't see the connection, you're just making up an imaginary scenario. What's the point? God might strike me dead with a lightning bolt when I walk out the door, as punishment for not believing in Him. Do you think that's going to make me believe in Him, or stay inside? Such scenarios are absolutely pointless unless you can demonstrate why the claimed result, sterility, is at all likely.
Mrna produces viral "spikes" to identify the "other". The body's immune system attacks the "other", produced in the body, which is tah-dah! an injected autoimmune disease. The body, no longer able to effectively identify "other" elects to focus on sperm and ova as an "other" as well as the virus. Poof! sterile population and immune to Covid. Version 2.
Bottom line is, they don't know any long term effects. end of story.
And why are you wearing a mask when you go out in public merely because it is mandated, when, as everybody can see, there is no enforcement of these mandates? That’s where you could really display, with no risk, your uncompromising individualism, and teach it to your children who, I presume, sometimes accompany you...
A man who risked his life climbing steep rock-faces without a tether is unwilling to have a vaccine injected into his body because he might become sterile??
What do you mean "no enforcement"? You cannot enter a grocery store, post office, bank, restaurant, courthouse, trainstation, &c., &c. without a mask. Not only are there average civilians surveilling and informing on noncompliers, but security guards are being hired to enforce this measure at the entrance of every public place. This is an early precursor of the surveillance state.
But perhaps it's not being enforced in your part of the world, if so I should definitely move there.
You haven't explained how use of the vaccine could suddenly cause an autoimmune disease. There's no reason to believe that the body would suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other". By your logic, me catching the common cold might cause my body to suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other", and trigger an autoimmune disease.
I, like to proceed dialectically, to do stress tests on ideas to see what results (like Nietzsche's twilight of idols, or a particle collider).
Very postmodern, eh?
&
Permit me to retract my allegory, I am not committed to it enough to sustain any interest in it. Nevertheless, people are self-imprisoned, in the psychological sense, and covid hysteria is just more fodder to heap on the pile of evidence.
Do you have a brain? Has your skull ever been opened so you could verify it? We need some hard evidence here.
Exactly. It would almost be scary if it weren't so interesting to observe happening right before my eyes. And, I'm really excited about the whales succeeding us.
Conformity absolutely. Unfortunately conformity isn't for me, as I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion.
The inconsistency in it all is baffling. There are infinite things that we are ignorant of, which could potentially pose a mortal danger to humanity at large. I wish I could give you examples, but as I said, we are ignorant of these things. We should have think tanks working round the clock, speculating on possible dangers, and devising solutions and protocols to counteract them. I'm really tired of the same lame old bullshit about how covid is a unique case because it is contagious.
I believe explained, just not in great length. Perhaps its brevity is insufficient for you, but it is still an explanation. But seriously, you haven't heard about the correlation between vaccines and autoimmune diseases?
Quoting Paul A. Offit and Charles J. Hackett Pediatrics March 2003, 111 (3) 653-659
You are awesome!
As I said, my knowledge of this only comes from articles in the BMJ mostly (it's been fairly Covid-dominated lately, obviously), but basically the idea of using external mRNA in cells to synthesise proteins is pretty old, but the mechanism by which they are got into the cell and then released, functioning, is what's caused so much trouble. It's that mechanism that's new and it's also that mechanism (or failures in it) that has caused the nasty side effects which kept the technology from being useful in the past. It's a common issue with vaccines. The idea of exposing the immune system to the virus (or preferably just one or more of it's proteins) is the simple bit. Getting that into the body is what the pharmaceutical concoction does, and it's here most problems are going to arise.
Oh, that and the fact that the lizard-men have put nanomachines into it to control the population (we're not sure why yet). People react like a bugger to nanomachines - it's the main reason they haven't done it earlier.
Sodomy, eh?
If we could enable the handicapped to control their prothstetics by will, it would be amazing. But this is veering into transhumanism, and for the simple folk, the implications of implementing such technology (e.g. cyberization of the human brain) is rather stupendous.
I thought the idea that vaccines actually cause autoimmune diseases was debunked a long time ago. Is that baseless hypothesis still floating around? Your quote only says that several ways that vaccines might cause autoimmune diseases have been proposed. Since they are proposing "several" ways which vaccines "might" cause such a thing , I conclude that there is no evidence of any single one way, and the author is clutching at straws.
Book273's "explanation", if you want to call it that, was sorely lacking. Do you think you can do better? And please don't give me several ways that this might happen. I want an explanation of how it does happen.
Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Bell’s palsy, paraesthesia, and inflammatory bowel disease are all routinely checked during trials for new vaccines or new adjuvants. Autoimmune issues are a significant concern. What's been debunked is the idea that any existing vaccines cause such issues (in significant enough quantity to out weigh their advantages). This hasn't just magically made all future vaccines safe, what a ridiculous notion. You'd be arguing that it is impossible for any injected molecule of any sort to cause autoimmune conditions.
What's ironic is that this is coming from someone who thinks every mathematician in the world has made an error, but you can't even conceive of the idea that pharmaceutical researchers might have done. Just goes to show the quasi-religious hold these people have over the population. Fear of death...come to think of it, it's not so different from religion afterall.
You haven't presented any logical relationship between any vaccination and any autoimmune disease. The fact that it is checked for in trials does not demonstrate a logical relationship. What it demonstrates is that some people are afraid that a vaccine might cause an autoimmune problem so it is checked for in trials, in order to demonstrate to these people that it does not.
And, I think it is actually highly unlikely that an injected molecule of any sort could cause a chronic autoimmune condition. These conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes. So, if it were the case that the injection of a molecule into the body could cause such an illness, I think it would not be the case that these conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes.
Quoting Isaac
I don't deny that there are huge evils within the pharmaceutical industry. But I think that connecting vaccines with autoimmune diseases is a case of barking up the wrong tree. Most businesses involve themselves in some goods, along with some evils. If the pharmaceutical industry has some goods along with their evils, why attack the goods as if they are evils?
Fair enough. I feel the same way about all this unsubstantiated propaganda about covid. A bunch of so called experts pulling lame explanations about the dangers of covid out of their asses, and feeding that shit to the public. Mangia mangia!!!
And I don't know if it was debunked (you'll have to provide the data if we are going to accept that assertion), all I know is that correlations have been drawn. Personally, I don't care either way, so I can only promise to do worse.
This 'warp speed' notion...
How can science shorten field trial periods from multiple years to less than a year, and remain confident that any significant, possibly deadly, side effects from a treatment have shown themselves?
If there are side effects that do not show immediately, but rather take years, and a very broad sampling size, to show themselves, then it is literally impossible to know about them over a much shorter duration with smaller less diverse sample sizes...
May I ask what your opinion is on this?
The effects of the virus are unpredictable.
Mass covid-brain. :grimace:
You can walk into the Walmart or Lowe’s hardware, just about any restaurant, any local retail store, Food Lion or Lowe’s Foods or any other grocer or supermarket without a mask...and no one will say a thing to you; cause ‘round here, if you ask someone to wear a mask, they’ll laugh at you; and if you ask them again, they’ll shoot ya.
It is not uncommon to be pushing your cart down the grocery aisle and encounter a redneck family with a brood of crusty-mouthed scantily clad young’uns in tow, crying and screaming, their daddy leading the way accompanied by his pregnant wife, his belly bulging out from the bottom of his tobacco-stained tank top, yellin “yo, Bubba!” at some buddy of his across the way, spewin a heavy cloud of virus up into the air where it floats about, waitin to slip behind some old woman’s mask who follows behind...
You might want to learn a taste for grits, pinto beans and cornbread, half-runner green beans before you come, and practice speaking with the local twang, talkin about hay season and the best scraps to feed pigs, the best way to mix green and cured wood...
...but if you ever mention Nietzsche, I’d suggest you style him as a confederate general (they won’t know the difference), maybe call him “Nick Shay”.
I guess I'm just waiting for the things to normalize next autumn. People assume here the spring is already lost and the same thing will go on for a half year at least.
About European quarantine, travel limitations and The Holidays:
My Mother-in-Law came to visit us from Mexico. After reading just how "forbidden" and "only in special cases" it was allowed to come to the EU from outside, especially from North America, I didn't know how it would go. The papers have told here how much effort has been put especially to surveillance of international flights at the airports. I told my wife to check and double check the procedures with the officials, the flights, ask if my mother-in-law had to quarantine in a hotel before and check that she had that Covid-19 test before leaving. We were prepared to pick her up from a hotel and feared what a hassle it all would be. She came and nothing... No Covid-19 test on arrival at the airport, no covid dogs on stand by. Just like ordinary times: only a Dutch border guard checked his passport in Amsterdam and then for the connecting flight. Here the airport was empty without any officials in sight, as usual for a 11:00 PM flight, just pick your luggage and a cab here to our place. The only thing was that my mother-in-law used a face mask even at home before she noticed that Finns basically use them only at shopping malls and stores.
So no hassle to come to Finland from Mexico, I guess.
Lol. Great post. Sounds like a beautiful place with beautiful people. But, that old woman with the mask should not be leaving her home if she is scared of catching the covid. What a selfish cunt, inconveniencing everyone because she's a cowardly bitch.
I don't trust the statistics at all, there is absolutely no way that covid is as fatal as it is being portrayed.
I have a friend whose wife just died of pneumonia.
Her death was officially attributed to covid. I know someone else that died of heart failure whose death was also attributed to covid.
What the fuck is that about? It's about inflating numbers to support the pandemic narrative. Using dead people to spread propaganda, that is some crooked, disrespectful shit.
I just presumed that you'd have no reason to disbelieve me. I can cite a dozen trial results, but if you've already decided that I'm making stuff up I'm sure you'd just sweep them away somehow too. There's little point in continuing along those lines.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolute nonsense. Pharmaceutical trials are not public relations exercises.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How does it being complex prevent it from being triggered by some molecule. And if not triggered by some molecule, then what is it triggered by? Something from another realm?
Yeah, this is certainly a concern. Having said that, a phase III trial is a phase III trial, if it's come about two years earlier, it's not necessarily a less powerful trial as a consequence. I think the greater concern is that no amount of money can buy expertise (that requires training). We can sequester people from other projects, but those projects were not trivial themselves and don't necessarily have less of an impact, so expert scrutiny will either be lacking here, or we will have drawn such scrutiny away from other live-saving projects. What we can't do is suddenly 'buy' another few hundred expert pharmacologists.
As to the potential long-term effects, we'll probably never know. Beyond a few years, the compounding factors mount up in any cohort making isolation of subtle effect difficult, if not impossible. With a small enough cohort it might be possible, but the more people involved in the first wave of take-up, the more confounding factors become likely to materialise in that group from possibly external sources.
The point is that we fully expect vaccines to have side effects at a low prevalence. Most governments have a Vaccine Adverse Reaction compensation system (I know the UK and most of Europe does). With MMR, for example anaphylaxis occurs at a rate of about 10 per million, seizures about 1 per 1,150 doses, thrombocytopenia at about 1 in 30,000, up to a 1 in 100 risk of Aseptic Meningitis (depending on the strain of the mumps component used), febrile seizures at about 8.5 per 10,000...
...and those are just the acute short-term effects.
The point is the benefits outweigh the risk, not that there is no risk. Vaccination against something like measles remains one of the most cost effective ways of saving lives, but the idea that it has no negatives to weigh this against is a fairy-tale for people who can't handle complexity.
What's wrong here (corona virus) is that without a strong indication that a vaccine will reduce the severity of the disease in vulnerable patients then hospital admissions will probably increase - just at a time when our healthcare services are at breaking point. The vast majority of the side effects I just listed require at least some healthcare intervention, mostly hospital admission. Imagine if the whole country were given the vaccine and it had those rates of adverse reaction (which are really good rates). Tens of thousands of additional hospital admissions.
Monumental recklessness.
Yeah. Statistics isn't your thing, obviously.
That surprises me. How are Finns thinking about the vaccine?
Definitely not covid statistics...its complete bullshit
Thanks for clearing that up.
Firstly, These are legitimate concerns but that's not how the process works. Effectiveness is established in the labs in thousands of test tubes by mass laboratory techniques. Before they ever take a vaccine outside the lab effectiveness is already solidly established.
Biological testing with live animals and humans is different. This is where side effects, persistence, and other unknowns are expected to show up before a vaccine goes for approval.
The vaccines are effective if they say so, but unknown side effects may not show up in the human trials or be known for years or decades. This is partially unknowable, even in theory.
Secondly, Here you are just pushing a political agenda that is completely unrelated to and is ignored by viruses and vaccines. Viruses do not attack individuals or communities or the poor. Viruses attack the entire extent of the human genome anywhere and everywhere even in the most remote regions of Earth, sooner or later. There is no escape. The choice is whether to be infected by the virus or by the vaccine, with no exceptions.
Poverty only comes into play in the speed of the spread of the virus. Poor people are less able to hide to postpone infection because they have to be out there to make enough for food for their families, which makes them more exposed to early unprotected infection. Once infected the virus runs its course and the poor suffer the sometimes very serious side effects of the virus but otherwise gain some immunity, but see below.
Quoting magritte
And it begins, see news from the UK.
Isn't that the reason for long term studies? I mean, isn't it the case that the reason we'll probably never know(this time around) is because we've neglected public safety protocols that have been in place for decades because we already know that such measures are necessary to insure we're doing everything we can to provide the safest possible treatment(s)?
Well then you should have no trouble citing the published results demonstrating this effectiveness.
Quoting magritte
Here is an overview. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7221360/
Again, if this is so obviously false you should have no trouble citing counter-arguments.
Quoting magritte
No. For example people with S-reactive CD4 T cells show significant immunity without having been previously exposed to the virus. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1
This is a highly technical subject, seriously, if you can't even be bothered to provide citations there's not much point in commenting. No one's interested in what you 'reckon' might be the case.
Sort of, but normal safety protocols for new drugs aren't designed to pick up on those kind of long term potential consequences either, it's just too hard. You're right that the longer term the trial is run for the more potential reactions it will pick up, but the differences in trial monitoring periods are small. Longer-term effects are picked up (if at all) at phase 4 when the vaccine is already in use.
This is why a proper risk assessment, including investigation of alternatives is so important, as opposed to the two people spending just three weeks checking a chemical to be injected into half the world.https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/17/did-the-fda-understaff-its-review-of-the-pfizer-biontech-vaccine/
Insanity.
You have it backwards. Science doesn't work your way.
Citations can always be cherry picked from diverse sources to support just about anything, which is what you are doing for your reckoning against other people's reckoning. It's still pure speculation either way.
What matters in science is consensus of experts in a particular specialty. What really matters is accepted secondary sources, like reviews and textbooks. For the current virus there aren't any of those yet, so even experts cannot tell us the answers to some of our questions !
Millions of doses were purchased by the federal government prior to the FDA approval. Should this be concerning?
Larger scale vaccinations are expected to start in the beginning of 2021 with only a symbolic small amount of vaccinations (perhaps 5000) starting from 27th of December with Biontech-Pfizer vaccine, if it is approved. Vaccinations will be free of charge, voluntary and available to everybody. The primary focus groups are similar to other countries: a) medical personnel, b) older age groups and c) other risk groups.
EU has made the following orders for vaccines:
AstraZeneca (300 million doses)
Sanofi-GSK (300 million doses)
Johnson & Johnson (200 million doses)
Biontech-Pfizer (200 million doses)
Curevac (225 million doses)
Moderna (80 million doses)
Of course, as Finns basically trust their government and don't have a similar culture of criticism of the public sector as the US has, there is hardly any discussion about the vaccinations. Naturally there are some commentators who largely mimic the US debate.
Now the debate is about the UK corona scare and the discussion is if the example of the Netherlands should be followed and flights from the UK should be canceled.
How about the stats that there is a shortage of ICU beds in states like California?
(All quite normal?)
Or the stats that funeral homes and morgues are full thanks to Covid-19?
Those also bullshit stats / fake news, Merky?
(Acela Truck Co. has already sold hundreds of pull-behind refrigerated morgues created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet is that for a need or just a consequence of the covid-scare?)
I regret having ever felt familiar enough with you to give you a pet name, by which I will not only never call you again, but I will never deign to respond to you, by any name, at all, and I encourage all other decent members of this forum to follow my example...
So long, sir.
The fact that some people are worried that a vaccine might cause an autoimmune disease, does not constitute a logical relationship between vaccines and autoimmune diseases. Worry does not imply logical.
Quoting Isaac
Tell me another one Isaac, LOL! The product must be accepted by, then sold to the public, as the goal is to make money. Don't you agree? So, how could these trials be anything other than public relations exercises? The goal of the trial is to make the product appear acceptable to the public, so that it will be bought.
Quoting Isaac
If the injection of one type of molecule could cause the disease, then it has a simple cause, and is therefore not a complex disease. I'm quite confident that if the cause of any particular autoimmune disease was the presence of one type of molecule, that cause would have been found by now.
This sounds like science fiction. Where are you getting your info? Since when is the effectiveness of anything is "solidly established" in vitro?
When the Russians claimed that they had won the vaccine race after supposedly observing an immune response in a small human trial, everyone thought they were nuts. But not even they were crazy enough to stake their claim before running a trial.
Well then you should have no trouble cherry-picking some experts who claim that the effectiveness of the vaccine at reducing transmission and symptom severity have already been established in vitro.
None of us here are expert virologists, so the interest is in reading such opposing views, not in pointing out their theoretical existence.
Well, California is a state of whining pussies and hypochondriacs. People there will go to the ER for the most minor inflictions. So I have no trouble believing there is a shortage of beds. I wonder how many people will die in those beds. I wonder, how many of the patients in those beds will die from noncovid morbidities. I wonder how many of those noncovid morbidities will be attributed to covid.
Do you wonder? Or do you just believe what you're told?
Quoting ssu
The funeral homes and morgues are full? Is that a fact?
I suppose I was unaware because I didn't see dead bodies piling up in the streets.
I have a friend that works as a mortician. She's been on unemployment for a year. Ever think that the corpses aren't being processed at the normal rate because the staff has been reduced beneath capacity?
Of course you haven't considered that. It's a tragedy, really.
You know, preparing a body is not like baking cookies. It takes a certain acumen
I wonder where the excess corpses are being held. Is there any information on that?
Quoting ssu
Im sure they sold the trucks. I wonder how many of those trucks are maxed out, or if there are a bunch of empty trucks just sitting there.
But it sounds like they are making a killing. At least someone is benefiting from the covid frenzy.
Yeah, I'm worried.
Research in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found the lobbying expenditures ($248.4 million) and new lobbyist registrations (357) of the health sector represented nearly a fourth of all lobbying activity, across all industries, in the first quarter of 2020.
Health sector lobbying spending increased more than 10% in Q1 of 2020 while non-health sector increased only 1%. Meanwhile, the number of new lobbyists registered in the health sector increased a staggering 140% while non-health sector registrations increased only 63%.
Overall, the top 30 healthcare organizations (16 of which were pharmaceutical organizations) spent almost $100 million on lobbying in Q1 of 2020, which represented a 55% increase in lobbying spending over Q4 of 2019.
from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06085-6
Most worrying, to me, is the conclusion of one of the study authors [my bold] "The return on investment on a dollar of lobbying appears much higher than a dollar of R&D"
Same seems to be the case in Europe where European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) lobbied against a tool designed to facilitate equitable access and pricing for pandemic treatments in Europe and former EFPIA Director Richard Bergström is one of seven members on the EU team negotiating these vaccine deals with pharmaceutical corporations.
That's better. I wondered what had happened to the old MU with all this "I'm sure the experts know best" malarkey. This is much more like it - startlingly egotistical pronouncements of certainty on topics you clearly have absolutely no training or understanding of...the world's back to normal again.
Quoting Todd Martin
:cry:
I have a friend that works as a mortician. She's been on unemployment for a year. Ever think that the corpses aren't being processed at the normal rate because the staff has been reduced beneath capacity?
Of course you haven't considered that. You are too busy with pet names, and worrying about me calling a hypothetical woman a cunt. It's a tragedy, really.
You know, preparing a body is not like baking cookies. It takes a certain acumen
As a result, what we are missing is no discussion on what to do with the economic fall out after the pandemic passes. And again, this is the umpteenth crisis where, the rich still benefit. Just in the US, during the pandemic billionaires wealth increased by 36%. While I'm against having people suffer merely because others suffer, the correlation between the various crises seems to suggest that rich people benefit at the expense of others. If this is the case, then obviously we should remedy this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Bold request since no one really understands auto immune diseases. If I could tell you exactly how it happens I would be up for a Nobel prize and would have a considerable pay raise. In response to your other statement, that a common cold could result in you developing an auto immune disease...Yep, it could. But not very likely. We theorize that auto-immune diseases are triggered by an event, the body's response to that event jumps into a sort of hyperactive, aggressive, law and order group, and then proceeds to run around hassling various, or random, cells they see, and creates a disease response that previously did not exist. A lot like ticket happy bylaw officers harassing people about social distancing or not mask wearing creating dissention and anger where there previously was none. Which supports my global SIRS theory.
Yep. Pretty spot on there eh. If I want to push the evil of smoking I make sure I attribute any lung cancer, heart attack, or stroke deaths as having smoking as a contributing factor. I exclude other factors like genetics and activity levels, unless I can spin them to support my cause. Currently Covid is the push. If you have any underlying condition that is even slightly impacted by Covid, which, if you are positive for Covid, we say will impact your conditions, then if/when you die from one of your conditions, Covid clearly contributed to your death, since your were not dead before you caught Covid, so it's a "Covid related Death". If you crash your car while infected I could probably spin that as "Covid related" because maybe your vision was blurry from covid, or you sneezed and lost control, or your were extra drowsy (Covid induced fatigue). It's that easy. Reassurring eh.
another interesting note.
Montreal long-term care home last week. 95% of residents had their Covid Vaccine. 35% of staff considered getting theirs. So 65% said NO. What's the plan when over half the healthcare staff elect to not get vaccinated? Will we all get sent home? I can see the head line now: "Over capacity hospitals send home 60% of staff due to non compliance. The other staff quit due to workload issues" HA HA HA
That's the malarkey right here. When have I ever said anything even remotely like what you quote me as saying? It doesn't even sound like anything I would think of. So how is that the old MU, "I'm sure the experts know best"? The only position I have taken in this particular discussion is a stand against the notion that there is a direct relationship between taking vaccines and developing an autoimmune disease.
Quoting Isaac
Well, are you ready to show me the evidence then? Where has it been demonstrated that the introduction of one type of molecule into a living human system could cause an autoimmune disease? Or at least clarify as to why you think my statement to the contrary is a startlingly egotistical pronouncement of ignorance. It seems like a statement of what is common everyday knowledge to me.
Quoting Book273
Exactly, that's the point I've been trying to impress upon Isaac here. Autoimmune diseases are extremely complex. Isaac seems to think that they are extremely simple, like a matter of injecting a particular molecule into a body, and boom, there you have it, an autoimmune disease has been caused.
Quoting Book273
I thought the prevailing intelligence was that they are most likely genetic. If this is the case than portraying them as being triggered by "an event" is completely inaccurate. For example, suppose I have a disposition towards anger. Even though it is a true representation to portray any particular instance of anger as being triggered by an event, It's completely inaccurate to portray my disposition toward anger as being triggered by an event. It is a reversal of cause and effect. So your phrase, "triggered by an event" demonstrates that you are trying to portray an effect as the cause.
Quoting Book273
This is exactly why the governments enforce lockdown measures, they haven't the capacity for any type of surge. If the hospitals were sitting empty, and the healthcare staff were idle with no cash flow, we might see them lobby the government to encourage more people to get sick.
Nope. Genetic predisposition has been fielded, however the triggering event theory is applicable in these situations also. Most of the histories that I have taken have the patient claiming that the symptoms were first noticed after some sort of event. Frequently they say "I just felt like something wasn't going right" with whatever sickness or event they had. I had one patient that "felt something off within a minute of getting my flu shot." Her symptoms started shortly after that. Was it flu shot related? No idea. Interesting that the patient believes it is.
What I wonder is just your irrationality. So just because Californians are whiners seems enough of a reason for you to doubt the pandemic or the statistics. Let's take for example excess mortality. The is a thing of a natural mortality rate at a national level. And that something did hit us can be seen from the statistical difference: the mortality rate doesn't normally vary to nearly twice the number as in the earlier month on a national level.
Figure 1: Excess mortality. Percentage differences between 2020 weekly mortality and average weekly mortality from 2016 – 2019. The month labels indicate the start of every month. The x-axis indicates the average mortality 2016 – 2019.
Source: Eurostat
From a study in Nature:
The fact is that health care, as every emergency service starting from the fire department, have usually been trimmed down to meet the ordinary challenges. Hence once something out of the ordinary happens the system is in trouble. If there is a large scale accident, it's typical that resources are hurled to the area even from very distant places. Yet in a pandemic situation, that simply isn't the option.
Hence obviously something has happened, but I guess with Merky's reasoning is that Californians are just whiners.... and that others here talking about a Covid-19 pandemic are victims of big-government propaganda: perhaps done thanks to a sinister plot of the powers in be to take our freedoms away and not to fight a pandemic. But you just tell us how it is, Merky.
Coronavirus disease: unfortunate, but mostly manageable.
Response to Covid: Much worse than the disease, last longer than the disease, affects more than the disease. Generally a terrible idea based on fear rather than logic or science.
Right, the symptoms which are observed are the effect of the underlying condition, and the event is a sort of trigger. The trigger is not the cause, as I demonstrated in my example of anger. The event which triggers my anger is not the cause of my anger. The underlying condition, my disposition is the cause of my anger. When my anger is triggered, that event of anger is the effect of the underlying, internal cause, my disposition, it is not caused by the trigger. Otherwise I could not be held responsible for my actions when I get angry.
So clearly it is not a conventional representation to portray the trigger as the cause. That is a fantasy inconsistent with reality, and you are portraying the effects of the disease as if they are the causes of the disease.
Let's start with the fact that we agree on that an 8% increase is substantial.
There simply is nothing to deny this and this is the fact based on statistics. Mortality rates have little variance usually. There are I think about 3 000 to 4 000 suicides in Canada annually, while there have been over 14 000 deaths due to Covid-19 in Canada. Just to put that 14 000 in to context, it's in the same ballpark as how many Canadians die to drug overdoses annually. In all, about a bit less than 300 000 die in Canada annually, which should put the numbers in the right context (as we have had Covid-19 deaths only this year, basically).
Perhaps if the US would have been among the most successful countries in the prevention of the pandemic, then knowing the American debate the discourse could be on that the whole thing is a hoax (as people have not died). With now a figure that is over the number of all Canadians dying annually, the pandemic cannot be refuted as a hoax.
I myself have theorized that if the US would have been successful in it's pandemic response, the best example to relate to is Canada as the two countries are quite similar and Canada is also large and a very open country to foreigners coming and going especially on the start of the pandemic. The US simply isn't similar to Norway or Finland. Hence if the US would share similar percentages as Canada, it would have now only 125 000 deaths, not 330 000. Hence the simple fact is that policies taken DO MATTER.
To answer to your argument that the social and economic damage isn't worth wile the effort, we really have to look at credible policy alternatives and just how many lives are we are willing to sacrifice and for what. Sweden is the perfect example as it truly has had a different policy, yet people do naturally take voluntary precautions against the pandemic and the health care system in Sweden is advanced just like in Canada. Above all, Swedes are quite OK with their policies. So, just to give a rough estimate, if Canada would have similar amount of deaths than Sweden, about 30 000 Canadians would have died. Hence you would have a double amount of deaths.
Quoting Book273
So basically the question is how much better would it have been for Canada to have less of a hassle, because the global Covid-19 economic bust you could not have avoided. How much worth are 15 000 mainly elderly Canadians that are now with you at least for some years to come, yet you and the economy has had to suffer from the lock downs?
That's your question, to put it bluntly.
Perfectly stated! Unbelievale how convincing popular opinion is for most people. And, yes, it is quite reassuring, it is reassuring that I will never be disappointed at how disappointing the mindless masses are.
I'm sorry, I cannot tell you how it is, I can only how it isn't.
Quoting ssu
Nice graph. Is that suppose to convince me? Even if i accept it at face value, a graph does not constitute evidence (such as covid causing a spike in death rates). You are giving it a groundless interpretation that supports your narrative. But it's ok, just keep believing what you are told if it makes you feel better.
Is that so? Did you ever think that the heterogeneous mortality rates (caused by covid) are due to the various ways in which various countries report causes of death? Of course you haven't, you just accept what you are told and run with it.
Why do I get the feeling you disagree with me on the covid issue?
My cousin says covid has killed more Americans than all deaths in all wars combined. Must be true. :vomit:
Again, I'm supposed to just accept the numbers you regurgitate on covid mortality rates because you believe them? Sorry, I'm not the gullible chump you are looking for. I have substantial evidence that the numbers are being surreptitiously inflated, and good reason to reject the propaganda that you so zealously subscribe to.
Yeah, there aren't statisticians in the World who would notice the differences in the reporting fatalities, Merky. And of course, hundreds of thousands of deaths can be simply reported just how the powers that be want them to be reported as so. As if those doctors don't care what they write down as the cause of death, or those who gather these statistics cannot be relied upon.
How's that tinfoil hat of yours fitting? A bit tight?
Sorry Merky, but I have to say it, either you are just trolling and getting a laugh from it or you are an example of the cultural decadence of our times. Or then you are both.
All I hear is a chorus of whining when I disagree with your bullshit. It verges on par with religious fanaticism. But that's what happens when slave morality meets free thought. I saw with the same nonsense when I opposed the Iraq war back in 02-03, (which people like you were on board with the entire way until it turned out to be bullshit). It is familiar territory for me. But keep with your group-think, at least you won't be alone on the road to hell.
I'd rather be alone on the way to hell. Ya know, mull things over, think about eternal torment without having to deal with anyone else's baggage.
:rofl:
I did not say Covid is hoax. Not ever. I said the response to Covid is fear based, not fact based. Yep, Covid killed over 300000 state side, and just under 15000 in Canada. Those are real deaths. The US number is just more than a months normal mortality rate, and about 2/3 of a months rate in Canada. Inflated numbers or not, still is an increase. Is it worth tanking our economy, our children's mental health, doubling our suicide rates, increasing our domestic violence, doubling our opioid overdoses for? Not a chance. That's the point I am making. Our "abundance of Caution", is excessively cowardly, and far more harmful that doing nothing.
You mean like Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter from Cambridge University who called comparing countries' performances a "completely fatuous exercise"? But of course, I forget everyone who disagrees with you is simply a conspiracy theorist. It's shocking how high up the echelons of academia these conspiracy theorists can get - this one even has a knighthood.
Quoting ssu
Yes, that is exactly the case. The method of recording and counting death is set by either the government or the government agencies in the respective countries. It is exactly true that deaths can be reported how the powers that be want them reported. I've literally just cited the British government saying exactly that - for fuck's sake. It's like you're immune to any contrary evidence. The British government determined how a covid death should be counted, a professional epidemiologist raised concerns that this was doing exactly what is being claimed (inflating the numbers of covid deaths) and they responded by changing the way they counted covid deaths.
Quoting ssu
Caring is not necessarily correlated with any particular method of recording is it?
Quoting ssu
Again, I've just cited cases in which they have made substantial mistakes. It's a complex situation. This Disneyfication of it into a nice childish narrative is positively dangerous.
Quoting Benkei
I cited earlier a couple of reports on the impact of lockdowns on TB which gave estimated numbers of deaths. I can't find a free version, so I'll quote
Quoting Isaac
There's also some work done on behalf of the WHO on deaths from the loss of normal vaccination programmes due to lockdown and supply disruption, no figures yet, but speculation that it could be in the tens of thousands. Here's the briefing note - https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/geneva-palais-briefing-note-impact-covid-19-mitigation-measures-vaccine-supply-and
Polio vaccinations have been postponed in many countries - http://polioeradication.org/news-post/call-to-action-to-support-covid-19-response/
There's no collective numbers that I know of on the impact of lessened access to primary healthcare, but there was a good study done at Leeds on Heart attacks which showed a worrying decrease in emergency care access for heart attacks, putting the figures in the low thousands of potential deaths. If this were extrapolated out to cancers, other heart conditions, etc the figures would be alarming. The WHO have done some research on the extent of disruption, but not the numbers yet -https://www.who.int/news/item/01-06-2020-covid-19-significantly-impacts-health-services-for-noncommunicable-diseases. - These diseases kill 41 million annually
This is a most worrying study from the Lancet on infant mortality - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30229-1/fulltext estimating an additional 253?500 child deaths and 12?200 maternal deaths from disruption to healthcare and food access. This is just infant mortality here.
None of this even touches yet on development aid budgets. Oxfam is closing its operations in 18 countries due to Covid restrictions. The World Food Programme estimates number of children in food poverty will double - https://www.wfp.org/news/covid-19-will-double-number-people-facing-food-crises-unless-swift-action-taken
What really worries me though is the impact on the next generation - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32929399/. As ever, children seem to be treated like lesser citizens whose lives can be interfered with with impunity in service to the older generations.
Which seems counterintuitive. As a parent, I sacrifice for my children's future, I do not sacrifice my children for my future, nor my parent's future. I am baffled why the governments seem to function in direct opposition to this concept. I do not not of one grand parent that would sacrifice their grandkids' future for the chance to live another year.
No problem. Yeah, things look bad either way. We seem to have no good options. What I find difficult to swallow is why, given these hard choices, our governments consistently choose to mitigate the unknown using methods of unknown efficacy at the expense of the known harms of doing so. Personally I'd mitigate the known harms and hope for the best with an unknown, if I was forced into such a choice. We know how much people rely on primary care, aid, and community healthcare, so let's at least keep those going, shut down the rest and hope for the best. But then I don't have to get re-elected.
I think a big part of the problem is social media. There's been significant studies indicating the effect on polarization of views. Because flag-waiving trumptards want to downplay the virus and keep the economy going, the only option for the 'other side' is to say the virus is worse than anything else in the world and all responses are entirely justified. Trying to tread any public line between is like trying to roll a marble on a knife edge, sooner or later it's going to roll irretrievably down one side or the other.
Vested interests lobby hard, as usual, but what's changed is the escalating effect social media has on the narrative they put out there.
Yeah, but policy mostly affects other people's children, especially for the wealthy.
I can't believe you call that logic. Logic is supposed to rule out other possibilities, not simply ignore them. Your premises are sorely lacking. That's like saying exposure to an allergen is logically the cause of the allergy because there were no symptoms prior to that. See, you're sort of missing a premise or two, the false ones which would be required for your conclusion.
Sure, if you follow policy. At some point, I would expect people to say "enough, this is stupid policy and I will do something else." Although, admittedly, I am not so good with understanding people.
I love it that I can learn more about pandemics from quacky blowhards on little forums than I can from vast teams of scientific experts who have spent their entire careers studying the subject in exhaustive detail. Yea, what does the CDC know about facts? They're just a bunch of fearful little twerps, not manly man REAL experts such as ourselves.
I "don't get it" because it's so blatantly illogical, and I can't believe that you could call this logic.
Quoting Book273
I was naively hoping that you might be able to give me something interesting. Actually I was quite certain that you had no such capacity, so I was just goading you. My apologies, I'm sorry, I shouldn't do that.
Yep.
Meanwhile half a million die from preventable heart disease, but not a penny of additional investment in health initiatives or legislation around food and working conditions.
Another half million from preventable cancers. No additional investment in research, no action on known carcinogens in the environment, no action on community healthcare.
Another 150,000 or so preventable respiratory diseases. No action on air pollution, no action on outdoor activities, no action on allergens. No additional research investment.
3 million children across the world die from poverty...every year. No increase in foreign aid, no action on fair trade, no action on modern slavery.
The question is not whether policy matters. The question is why take every measure conceivable to avoid these particular deaths when no one gave a shit about all the other preventable deaths last year.
Building WTC 7 you sheeple!!!
And btw, I remember very well on the old PF the 2003 invasion, the time of Freedom Fries. There were those who saw it as their duty to defend the invasion on PF, yet a lot of people here were totally against it. I made my mind when reading a small memoir of a Iraqi weapons inspector that convinced me the whole thing was bogus and that the war was quite similar to the Spanish-American war. Many people thought here that the US would fabricate the WMD's later, but no, who cares.
You think so? Well, here is Professor Sir David Speigelhalter himself saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you are saying. You can make country comparisons, of course you have to understand how rough those comparison are, which I DO understand. Please listen the following interview to the end.
Quoting Isaac
Where did you give the contrary evidence? I and you have not discussed or if you have given it earlier, so could you give a link to what you are referring to. It's an informative way would give links or simply to give the exact reason why and what is wrong.
Just referring to Spiegelhalter saying completely fatous exercise doesn't give much, but at least I did get the name and the professor has interesting points. What I can find from the net is the statistician Spiegelhalter talking sense about statistics, but I've not gotten the stuff you refer to, that governments can make statistics just what they want. If you can be more specific, I am open to other viewpoints. In my view Spiegelhalter isn't refuting or contradicting the pandemic.
The statistic used to show increased number of deaths during the pandemic doesn't depend upon the subjective classification of the death by the reporting agency. The "excess death rate" is all that needs to be looked at. That is, the data shows that since the identification of covid-19 being present, the US had 300,000 more deaths than would have been predicted based upon prior years' data. https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/20/cdc-data-excess-deaths-covid-19/
Ignoring all subjective interpretation of cause of death, you're left with a huge spike in death. That correlation certainly ought raise eyebrows, especially since we have no other explanation for the spike and we do have on the ground accounts of covid-19 causing death.
We have a statistical anomaly showing a death spike and data supportive of what is causing it. What is your alternative theory explaining this spike?
I told you it was a new strain! I speculated anyway.
I'm getting the big shot tomorrow. Wish me luck (hopefully it won't turn me into a zombie).
Great point. My opinion: such predictive data is unreliable when it comes to something as complex as national mortality rates. It is a fact that people believe what they want, and there is no difficulty in finding and interpreting data that will support one's position. For example, the article you provided admits of shortcomings in the research, saying:
Let that be my alternative theory. Let that count as some other explanation for a spike in deaths in 2020
My new theory: whites synthesized covid to kill off nonwhites.
Don't do it! . . . Nevermind, just do it
:rofl:
Quoting ssu
Damn, your old! Lol. Btw, french fries blow freedom fries away any day of the week.
Let me guess, that s.o.b. Scott Ritter got to you? Me too. After that fiasco, I adopted the law of contrary public opinion as a personal maxim. So then, you see why I am like I am with the covid hysteria?
Ha!!!! Not a chance in hell.
I'm not arguing that no-one thinks inter-country comparisons are useful, so I'm not sure what this interview is supposed to teach me. You were the one arguing that issues around variable recording methods were 'tinfoil hat-wearing' conspiracy theory. I'm just trying to inject a little nuance into this. It's more complicated than that.
Quoting ssu
From the UK government's own website
concerns [were] raised by academics from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine about the original measure, which counted anyone who had ever tested positive as a COVID-associated death.
the numbers of deaths in people who have tested positive have become substantially greater than the numbers of deaths subsequently registered as COVID-19 deaths by the ONS, which is why we are now changing our approach to reporting deaths — PHE
Quoting ssu
Where did I say anything like that?
Quoting ssu
Of course he wasn't, he's a respected professor, why would you even think he would be refuting the pandemic?
I'm not sure why this stupid comment. If the data shows disproportionate deaths to a certain group, the risk factors (e.g. lack of access to health care, pre-existing poor health, genetic factors, occupations typical of the group, etc.) ought be assessed.
Your comment is in fact so non-responsive and such an obvious and poor attempt to inflame, I wonder if your presence in this discussion is in good faith at all.
I can understand you perfectly.
Yes, his little book was published before the invasion of Iraq. He was dutifully also publicly smeared later and made a persona-non-grata, but usually I think that US marines are honest people. And what he said was later shown to be true.
I would just say that do notice that one really has to notice that not everything is a conspiracy theory, even if many things are. The thing is that if people have first trusted the authorities and then find them lying, there is this natural urge to dismiss everything they say or what is said later. Yet that's going a bit too far. The basic way is just a) to inform oneself and have a good general awareness of history, economics and politics prior for those issues become hot topics, b) look for various sources that aren't linked to each other and c) understand just what are the facts and what part is the interpretation of the facts, that can be biased by a political or other agenda. Most easiest way for c) is to listen directly what politicians and professionals themselves say, and not only refer to what some reporters says they said or did. Look how opposing sides comment the same issue and use your own thinking.
It's simply far too easy to get trapped in your own bubble now days. Those fucking algorithms are so hard to change when looking for information. If one bothers to look for that. Yet notice that these things are real.
Just to give an example, I traveled last year with my family to the States and we visited Washington DC & New York (which were great, btw). We visited Capitol Hill and after a lengthy que we went to listen to the House of Representatives. The voting had just finished and there were just some unknown Republican members speaking to basically to an empty audience and few of us of the public. But the conspiracy theory he laid on and how startling accusations he made of the FBI just made me quite clear what Trump has done to US politics and especially the Republican party. It has gone to the absurd.
And the pandemic has huge effects and is real, even if people can criticize of the effectiveness and reasonability of the taken policies against pandemic. The policy issue is totally different from the virus existing.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to you!
I did. I don't feel anything. People who were in the phase 3 trial say the second shot is the one that makes people sick for 24 hours. The advice is to sleep through it.
So I have that to look forward to.
I love a good nap too.
Sorry for that comment. It is obviously a ridiculous theory. It was actually a bad attempt at a good joke, meant to mock all the speculation over these statistics.
Actually God synthesized Covid to kill off the old as punishment for Brexit.
I liked your joke, don't worry about it.
God is such a goofball.
Thanks.
That is good advice. Moderation is good in moderation. But history is too repetitive for me not to feel completely alienated from, and suspicious of anything that is proposed/advocated/mandated/&c. by government, business and media. Each has specific vested interests, the bottom line for each is power, money and influence, none of which take your or my well being into account. As far as they are concerned, you and I are here merely to concede, consume and conform. In it all, I see major problems which call for major change, and I feel excruciatingly novel thought is more effective than moderate thought at effecting such change.
Quoting ssu
I don't doubt the virus exists. It is policy issue (specifically in regard to the overexageration of the severity of the virus) that I have issue with. Of course, I know that I have less fear of sickness and death than most, which explains why I am so dismissive of all those people just falling in line with the policy. Yet I cannot help but notice that there is definitely an element of fascism involved in all the covid hysteria (you either fall in line or you are the enemy), and that is a giant red flag for me. In my study of history, I have seen the safe bet (of falling in line) turn into a nightmare one too many times for me to ever just fall in line because it is what is popular at the time. But that's just me, it's a terrible tragedy.
And merry Christmas to you! May we all be happy and healthy!
You could try, but make no mistake, someone will put you down hard within a minute or two, and likely into a field shortly thereafter. Your comparison is idiotic. Quoting tim wood
There is no war. There is panic, and world class media bullshit, but basically, just panic. As far as head in the sand goes, WHO released a fairly well buried study a few months back about the effects of the lockdowns on TB related deaths: an additional 1.18 million deaths for every 3 months of lockdown, due to non-diagnosis and non-treatment. So from a life for a life, using TB only, for every life lost by Covid we can add another 3.6 due to the life saving lockdown. I feel safer already. Forget the overdose death increases and suicides, and future starvation due to destroyed supply lines. Those don't matter eh.
There's nothing you can do about it tho. Is that frustrating?
It's as beautiful as it is flawed.
As long as you're at peace with it, it doesn't matter.
Then you won't be disappointed.
I don't know what you're talking about, but you can flag posts if you find them offensive.
We are on unprecedented territory. It is pretty bad. That is the topic.
But at least it sucks enough to seem mildly interesting, instead of outright horrifying, as it actually is.
I hate people. The concept of people is completely played out and lame. But nothing is more wonderful than the existing human beings that I encounter directly in life.
You effectively capture a great deal that I dislike about people in one short sentence. 4 out of five items enhance laziness, the other, while beneficial, has also been used as a bludgeon on those who oppose it. Many people, intelligent people, with different values than, presumably, yours, would suggest that nothing you mentioned has a great deal of value to them. Certainly not enough value to be added to the list of things that make this "the best of all possible worlds."
There are more things under heaven than are considered in your philosophy.
It is unfortunate that you seem to look down on those who would do manual labour for the value of it. With respect to freedom from need...where exactly is that? I have never lived there. Freedom from want? Same question. Freedom from early death...define early. Also, where is that again? Incessant labour? North Americans work 2000 hours a year. Feudal serfs worked approximately 1600. So once more, where are you referring to? As for being governed by available sunlight; thanks to the electric bulb we can get in another 400 hours of labour a year. YEAH! of course that shoots your "reduced need for incessant labour" theory to crap eh.
Swing and Miss!
I say this not to give fodder to those with whom you currently spar in this debate, for one of them is irrational, the other sub-human. I only wish to broaden your notion of well-being, for your own benefit if indeed what I have to offer is of benefit.
Nobody's subhuman. They're just boneheads looking for somebody's chain to yank. Think of them as children. They're kinda cute.
Quoting Yaneer Bar-Yam, Unsuccessful versus successful COVID strategies, New England Complex Systems Institute (December 13, 2020)
I actually felt bad about calling Merky subhuman, so much so that, milling it over this morning, I forgot to put a slice of tomato on my egg sandwich, which I always do...
If I had it to say over again, I would call him rather “insufferably vulgar”, and I think his preceptor, who wished for a rejuvenation of civilization like a phoenix from beneath the debris of the Enlightenment would have considered him to be as repulsive as I do...
...but we are justly prohibited from upbraiding others’ children.
Hence the argument that Covid-19 deaths would be inflated seems at least that in Russia have been deflated. Which would be typical to [s]Soviet[/s] Russian authorities.
True. :blush:
Quoting Benkei
What do you mean by this?
I just realised my earlier comment in this respect was in the Brexit thread. See here : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/482007
The evidence the strain is more infectious is that it displaces the previously dominant strain.
Due to the network-effect, the dominant strain in an area is highly likely to remain the dominant strain with respect to equally infectious strains. I.e. that google displaced yahoo was evidence google had a strong competitive edge over yahoo.
That being said, this is only "likely the case" and so on the scale of the whole world we can expect by pure chance novel yet not-more-infectious strains to take the lead in some regions (if this is 1 in a thousand chance ... well maybe there's a thousand regions we're looking at).
So, if a new stain displaces the dominant strain in many regions and ultimately the world, only then that's conclusive evidence it's more infectious.
Right now, from what I can tell the new strain is appearing in many regions, but it's not yet clear if it's really displacing the dominant in these regions.
It's also expected that new strains still spread and are very unlikely to just fizzle out (once sufficiently large for the law of large numbers to be in play). If they are the same infectiousness as the dominant strain it still means that they should grow just as the dominant strain does (there's just less "principal" to grow, so stays much smaller in absolute terms even if growing at the same rate; and indeed, that a new strain needs to catch up to the dominant strain means it's not only more infectious but much more infectious if it does so rapidly).
So simply detecting the new strain all over the place fits both hypothesises. It's not yet clear if it's really headed towards world domination. The recent spike is adequately explained by cold-season > Christmas shopping season > actual Christmas vacations starting.
However, the new strain is still bad news even if it's not more infectious as it provides a more diverse genetic base to get to something more infectious or then that can defeat the vaccines (which, to be clear, there's currently no evidence the current vaccines will actually reduce the harm of the pandemic, but rather, not even mentioning side-effects and the money and credibility invested, data so far is compatible with zero-reduction in transmission and zero-reduction in hospitalizations and death; vaccines could even increase these though vaccinated--super-spreaders, which have yet to be ruled out, as well as the socio-political effect of the media basically declaring victory way ahead of time, which may have both lead to policy makers believing the vaccines would "solve the issue" and no other policy responses were needed as well as regular people losing the anxiety edge required for effective compliance as "it will all be over soon").
As for the increase in cases generally speaking, I agree with your point it's just stupid people, although I would put the stupid label on the policy makers and not the general public (other than voting for the stupid people in charge). The countries that have contained the virus did so with better policy and not more spontaneous individual efforts.
Statistically, perhaps. 50% of one, 30% of another, and 20% more undiscovered. We have lots of black birds, some years more of one kind then in other years more of some other kind. They just come and go due to unknown circumstances, like someone feeding them corn or dry cat food a mile away.
If by "statistically perhaps" you mean "yes I agree" then we agree.
Your bird analogy is dissimilar in some critical regards, as the birds are not growing exponentially, birds are a sexual species, and your only observing your local bird population and not globally.
(And though perhaps you won't make this objection, for the benefit of those that are itching to, all mathematical curves are only followed by natural phenomenon to some approximation over some finite time; nothing "grows exponentially" but nothing grows "linearly", or "logistically" either, other than to some descriptively useful approximation for the time period of interest; all data only follows some curve "for now ... sort of ... enough to make a useful prediction".)
Also this Zizek article didn't age well:
https://www.welt.de/kultur/article205630967/Slavoj-Zizek-My-Dream-of-Wuhan.html
No doubt, mathematical models are projections built upon other numbers, data which originally had reasonable connection to the real world at the time these were collected. But things can change.
For Covid, I found a description for mutations history in Nature, Sep.2020
Mutations are random and all viable versions of the virus will continue to spread into the foreseeable future. If one mutation spreads faster then it will become statistically 'dominant' but the others are still around. For comparison, influenza doesn't go away and flu vaccines are updated and re-administered each year.
Unprecedented territory is a reference to ground that has never been covered and is unmapped. It would take the greatest of fools to assume one could navigate an unkown space by referring to apparent commonalities with previously known spaces.
Quoting tim wood
You said: "By any reasonable comparison ours really is the best of all possible worlds, or at least of those already sampled."
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
-Of those already sampled from history: it is all garbage
-of those that are possible: you really believe that "ours really is the best of all possible worlds"? Really?
The naivete of a child is always charming. How old are you? Eight?
Voltaire was misunderstanding Leibniz in that work.
I think the main takeaway is that it's appropriate to be a condescending ass about Candide when Voltaire was being a condescending ass when he wrote it (and misinformed on top of that).
This article is childish and understates by far the shallow, callous, conservatism of Europeans, but in the main it is exactly right:
"America became obsessed with free-dumb: the idea of freedom as the removal of all restraint, the right to harm others, the ability to do anything you please, no matter how destructive, toxic, foolish, or inane. Covid’s a jaw-dropping example of it ... The logic of why Canada and Europe provide basics to all goes like — it’s about freedom, but in a much, much deeper, more elegant, thoughtful, sophisticated, and beautiful way than Americans understand. If I am fighting for the basics — bitterly battling everyone else for the food, water, money, medicine, to survive, what does that make of me? I become embittered, hostile, angry, resentful. I grow callous and cruel. I become suspicious and distrustful and isolated and alone. I don’t grow as a person — I shrink and wither into my worst self. The Greeks would have said: I grow weak, morally, intellectually, socially, culturally. And people weak like that are not capable of sustaining a democracy.
What happens, on the other hand, if I do have the basics? Then I’m free. Not just free in the superficial, narrow American way: free to have stuff. I’m free in an existential, social, emotional, cultural, human way. I’m free to cultivate, develop, nurture higher values and virtues. I can be trusting, kind, generous, empathic. I can be thoughtful, critical, reflective. I can be humble and warm and appreciate beauty and truth. I am free to be a genuinely good person. Human goodness has been freed in me.
...Why are Americans so violent, cruel, ignorant, destructive, thoughtless, selfish, careless? Because Americans are not free to be the kinds of people Europeans and Canadians are. Europeans and Canadians are free to be thoughtful, kind, gentle, wise, loving, concerned, considerate people because they enjoy the basics of life. Therefore, they are not consumed with the desperate battle for survival. But American do not enjoy the basics. For them, life is a constant, perpetual battle for self-preservation and survival. Not just for the poor, but for more or less everyone now, because America is effectively a poor society, made of one giant underclass. ... In short, we’d expect people to become violent, stupid, selfish, as they grow poor — not because they are such things, but because that is what poverty does and is. Intellectual poverty is ignorance and superstition. Social poverty is mistrust and hostility. Cultural poverty is cruelty and aggression. Americans are poor in all these ways now".
It's just interesting already to read through the press releases of the World Food Programme and compare December 2019 and December 2020: https://www.wfp.org/news?text=&page=11
Quoting StreetlightX
Oi. We're not callous just... cavalier. Also, our economy is tanking so who cares about a bunch of nobodies dying of hunger in a place I can't even correctly point out on a map?
Yes. It's shocking. I don't know if you keep up with UNICEF as well, but this was one from this month...
And yet the UK Government is set to cut £2.9billion from it's overseas aid budget to pay for their Covid response whilst giving billions to the pharmaceutical industry for a vaccine which, according the WHO...
It's a simple unavoidable fact that millions die each year from conditions which are preventable using less money than has been spent on preventing millions of deaths from Covid-19. Those people are mostly poor, young and non-white. Anyone who thinks that's a coincidence is deluding themselves.
I could say that I have seen this type of freedom in action. In truth I have, in very isolated instances, and unrelated to nationality. I have seen it in those who are able to look past themselves and seek a greater understanding of the world around them, seeking to find the balance and harmony within the chaos of the everyday. It is there, and once one know what to look for, easy enough to find. However, I have not identified any substantial increase in enlightened types based on geographic region ( granted I have not spent much time in monasteries. Too bad really). I have also found the enlightened in mean regions and exceedingly poor neighbourhoods, where the basics are not so common. I would suggest that those with the least to share are often the most generous and understanding towards others.
Your version of Canadians is flattering. Mostly wrong in my experience, but flattering all the same. Thanks eh!
That's what statistics is about: drawing conclusions from available data, which become projections that can change with new data.
I'm not sure you even bothered to read my posts your replying to, as I go to some length in my response to Benkei to explain that a new viral strain becoming dominant in a single region can indeed be due to random variation.
However, if that strain spreads and dominates in every region then it's extremely conclusive that it's more contagious; that's basically the definition of "more contagious": it does better.
Exactly when between dominating in one region and "world domination" we have enough data to calculate the difference in contagiousness is a complicated statistical problem.
Bayesian statistics deals with our limited knowledge about the real world (as opposed to classical statistics which analyse outcome of random processes in which the context is specified and the unknown variables clearly understood). The best way to understand this difference is that the probability of drawing certain hands in poker requires only classical statistics to calculate, but the probability of one being cheated by a sophisticated criminal (who doesn't blatantly violate classical statistics outcomes, such as drawing 5 aces in a hand) requires Bayesian statistical approach. To catch a sophisticated cheat we must have a model of what we expect in a fair game and unfair game, including betting patterns and other behaviour and what we know about the other players, and with every new event we update our model. Of note, there is no solution to this problem with a "sophisticated enough" player who has exactly the same model and simply ensures victory without ever supporting a conclusion of unfair play.
For the subject at hand, what we expect from a more contagious virus strain is that it displaces less contagious virus strains, that's what being more contagious means. Everyday now the events we would expect under the "more contagious" model seem very much to be happening: appearing in new regions and growing faster than existing strains. Numerical models of processes involving the entire globe are extremely crude, so there is not, and cannot be, one agreed methodology, but when different methodologies start supporting the same conclusions we tend to increase our confidence (even if there is "heard bias" of modelers tweaking their models to reflect the same conclusions as existing models as that basically "feels better"; the scientific community could easily solve this issue, but chooses not to; because scientists are mostly pretty stupid people without critical thinking skills; they claim to have critical thinking skills, but don't bother to review this claim critically, resulting in the worst possible and easily identifiable idiots). And the results speak for themselves: the scientific community has failed humanity (the pandemic being one of many examples), and yet they believe it is the other way around. Pure insanity.
Quoting magritte
This is also a great example of the scientific community failing to both understand and, the ones that do, bother to communicate it to other scientists and society.
The mutation rate you're talking about is an "apples to apples" comparison given equal context, such as the chance of a single infection creating a new strain; a variable that is needed for further analysis. However, change the context, such as far more concomitant infections of one over the other and this changes the mutation rate of what is happening in the real world. In other words, each infection has a certain chance to result in a new strain, but to complete the equation we need the total number of infections. If there are far more Covid infections than that of the flue, the capacity for adaptation can easily surpass the flu. The flu has animal reservoirs critical for it's adaptation success ... but Covid has also passed into animal reservoirs.
From this basic overview, the analysis can go even further. For instance, a high mutation rate in itself does not actually mean a higher capacity for adaptation, there are advantages for a more stable genome in that "what works" is better remembered and transmitted to the next generation.
Indeed, the emergence and domination of DNA based organisms is because the previous RNA based organisms had too high a mutation rate. The disadvantage of too high mutation rate is that the "good new things" are easily lost in early replication chains and, of course, since the vast majority of mutations are a disadvantage this is a large energy cost. The best way to visualize this is that an organism mutates an advantage but then too quickly offspring mutate disadvantages and die out, so the new thing never integrates into the genetic base. Therefore, we cannot assume simply because Covid has a lower mutation rate that it has a lower adaptation rate. If we compare to other coronaviruses, such as cause the common cold, they have been with us a long time demonstrating a good capacity for adaptation (perhaps better than the flu, but just not as lethal so we have been unconcerned about it).
From here, we could analyse the particularities of Covid and the flu and maybe have some reasons to believe Covid cannot, even with larger numbers and some advantages of lower mutation rate, compete with the flu in adaptation.
Quoting magritte
I've already explained that any new strain that has a similar replication rate as the dominant strain, will still grow in number, at the same rate, just not to anywhere close in absolute terms. Both a 1 thousand Euro investment and a 1 billion could both be in the same fund and get the same return in terms of rate of growth, but the 1 thousand investment will be and stay far smaller than the 1 billion Euro investment. The new strain simply continuing to exist and replicate is not in itself evidence it is more contagious; it must start to displace the existing strains if it indeed has a competitive advantage.
However, at some point actual success in the real world we must conclude is due to more successful characteristics. If Player A consistently beats Player B, at some point excuses and whining and irrelevant pedantic analysis and hypothetical considerations no longer form any plausible basis to assume Player B is as good as Player A, no matter how much Player B wants it to be true.
Let me just point to a clearly written CNN article on COVID mutations which may not be entirely exhaustive but is still relevant to what we're discussing.
I used this forum a lot to decompress, so I knew I would look at it too.
I'm getting the second Pfizer vaccine shot on Tuesday!
Yay!!!
Nice. Had a heads up from a friend about the Oxford vaccine, it seems if your body already recognises corona your immune system goes nuts for a day or two and it's horrible. He was mostly fine after the first day he was ill.
Similar with the second Phizer shot. They say schedule it for when you have a day to sleep through it in case it's bad.
When will you be able to get it?
I could still be run over by a bus, but hopefully not covid. :blush:
Not expecting to any time soon. September last I heard.
Interesting, the specimen devours its own feces.
Not sure what they read, but I'm shivering under a bunch of blankets right now waiting for this conspiracy covid fever to pass.
Shit. Take care, fella.
I heard the worst of it is over in about a week with lingering fatigue. Are you feeling any better yet?
God help us my friend :heart:
I'm not the only one that would not be the same without you in my life but I might be the only one here to say it out loud.
May the Wings of Angels surround you and keep you and your family safe and from my lips to God's ear that he understands our need and nurses you back to good health. :flower:
Sinovac: Brazil results show Chinese vaccine 50.4% effective - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55642648
Doubt 'Sputnik' is much better.
https://archive.is/SUIHK
You might try some Datura then---when you're feeling better.
I got em for free.
It's concerning to me that I don't work there.
Now the government is deciding to ignore the manufacturers recommendations and go with the "do whatever you like approach" for vaccine administration. Bunch of fools. I can believe to what public health and the government has been saying since mid April or I can believe my 4 years education and additional 11 years experience in critical care. However, as they are very nearly exactly opposed...I cannot do both. Going with what I know, what I have seen, and what will ensure I keep my license to practice.
Taken from today's news headlines. So, loosely translated, the Canadian government is tracking our cell phones....awesome. I feel so safe, with my government tracking my movements.
On a different note, the next headline will read "travelers leave cell phones at home while on vacation".
What's the process to immigrate to the US? anyone....?
I wouldn't recommend it at the moment.
Why not recommend it? The civil unrest or the virus?
That's nothing new, they've always tracked phone records. Wait until they suspect you of committing a crime, they'll be all over your phone records. The public airwaves are not private, it's much wider transmission than going outside and shouting at the top of your lungs. If you can't handle it don't use a phone. And I don't think the US will give you anything better.
So, yea.
This is a graphical representation of the progress of the disease in Australia. FOlk may find it interesting.
Lock down hard and early.
Exactly. This is what I hate about our current government because they appear incapable of doing that. Our current lock down started with 10k positive tests per day. We are now at 5k, which isn't good enough because we remain in lock down. Then why the fuck didn't we go in lock down at 5k in the first place? We would've been back to loosening of restrictions already instead of a curfew causing riots throughout the country, which are super spreader events themselves. :rage:
Smart man. Especially avoiding damning Trump. He needs to be seen at independent if he wants to have maximum appeal to convince people to follow his advice and get vaccines, instead of appearing as another partisan player.
"Lock down hard and early" is a future principle that I don't think anyone sensible could now deny. But it unfortunately doesn't help us decide the best course of action now, when those lock-downs haven't happened or have been insufficient. As Banno's data shows, once the virus is endemic in the community lock-downs have a significantly smaller impact on the progression of the virus, partly because the baseline numbers are bigger, but mostly because, as the scientist quoted says, the centres of spread are often "the very places that you can’t shut down, even in the strictest of lockdowns"
Lock-downs are still an important part of the solution, but to treat them (as our government here in the UK are doing) as it's only weapon is beyond reckless. We need massive investment in healthcare and community services and we need it yesterday, yet it is almost completely absent in the Hollywood version of events being portrayed by the majority of the media.
On a related note. There's finally some kickback from the medical community over this childish narrative of the big evil virus and a disobedient public being responsible for all the worlds ills...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/23/covid-dont-blame-public-overloaded-hospitals-icu-medics-tell-nhs-staff
Capitalism creates a situation where every single service is cut to very bone, without a shred of (inefficient) capacity built in. Creates a population strung out on junk food and TV. Puts minority groups into poverty that the Eastern block would have been ashamed of. Packs children into classes with barely enough teachers to stop a riot, let alone manage a pandemic. Packs the elderly into homes with the bare minimum of services to keep them alive. Packs the workforce into jobs which extract every ounce of effort out of them for as little return as possible... And then when a virus comes along and knocks the whole precarious structure over we blame the fucking virus. and who do we laud as the saviours of this debacle. The very capitalist industries who created the whole fucking thing in the first place.
We are fortunate that we have a gormless conservative Prime Minister who has been sidelined by State Premiers.
Brisbane locked down hard for three days after one case. Long enough for tracing to be done, End of outbreak.
Indeed. It's only that I see a lot of talk about the former and very little about the latter.
Quoting Banno
Brilliantly done. Fast, hard and accompanied by tracing. A good example of a working tool being used properly.
I'm sure Australia doesn't do that with every new organism that passes through. They did it because they had the benefit of knowledge gained from countries that learned it the hard way, the first one being Italy.
So the story is: conquer the pandemic by being in the middle of nowhere with your radio on.
Nonsense.
Here's an article from 1988 warning of the risk of pandemic diseases.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/373248
The world was famously pre-warned of this one
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/3/210
And yet why were emerging virus programmes like the USAID programne, or the global virome work cut back to the point of barely functioning...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/health/predict-usaid-viruses.html
...money.
The glint of a few pence off the tax bill. It's really not that hard to explain why Italy was so unprepared. It costs money to be prepared and people were not willing to pay it.
But hey you can stick to your narrative of the big bad virus coming out of nowhere with no-one to blame for its spread but the tinfoil-hat wearing anti-vaxxers. I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry will be along soon on their white chargers to save us all, and then we can get back to business as usual... killing 22,000 children a day from poverty and no-one giving a shit because they're not white middle class taxpayers.
Why don't you do something to help? I've been working on ways to get inhaled medications to poor kids with asthma. I've learned a lot, especially about how my half-assed efforts to network with local charities would become superfluous if my state would make one little change in how medicaid funds are routed. Right now, the funds go to the federal government, but there's a way to get my state's funds to come back to my state. And that would help. There's also an Obamacare angle.
Knowing these things helps me become one of those people who tells others which officials they should vote for and why.
Are you doing stuff like that?
Having said that I am overcoming a lot of resentment when my youngest tests Positive for COVID when he has followed every rule of the virus mitigation a available. NicK was out with two friends, having a beer to ward off his depression who both tested positive for Covid-19. My immediate feeling is why? Why the fuck would you put yourself at risk having almost died in May from an Aortic dissection? You KNOW what the fuck happens to you on a ventilator!
Nothing just a fuck off attitude and I am left to come to terms with one person's choice of action and ALL of us facing the consequences.
Correlation? Causation? Fuck, I don't know, no one knows.
I'm testing negative even though I have been the one exclusively caring for my Indian. He is recovered.... recovering.... he is very afraid of the long term damage to his organs. He didn't want me to get it because he said he would know if I got it from him.
I apologised for getting upset about NicK increasing the risk and we don't know our indian contracted Covid-19.
Just curious:
How would you handle the virus mitigation going forward in a house with differing opinions about COVID?
I think that's the question for Nick and the Indians: How do they see it going forward when you want to social distance etc.?
Edit: and I get it the other side in this. I'm fucking done with the lock downs myself. I have a depressed family member that I see deteriorating every week. I've got a kid who is not playing enough with kids her age because her school is closed. I used to be out and about every day and I look like a ghost. I have met 5 of my new colleagues in person in the last year when I started a new job in May. I miss office banter, talking at the coffee corner, seeing my friends to play a board game etc. It's totally worthless living like this and I have fun kids and a wife for company. And I'm pretty stoic about this sort of stuff. So for a lot of people it's basically hell.
And yes, Australia locked down because it understood the science; is that a problem for you? It was more from having worked with Singapore and South Korea on SARS than from watching Italy; that was too late.
Don't be taken in by Trump's "Who knew?" That bloody fool knew; he did exactly what @Isaac describes.
Quoting frank
Why do you assume Isaac isn't?
And Australia should be really proud of those who took the initiative to do that. They saved a lot of lives and a lot of heartache.
Still, they were lucky. While Europeans were still working off of false information coming out of the WHO, the virus was spreading and mutating into a more transmissible form.
NYC did lockdown and try to trace, but by the time they did, it was already out of control.
It could of been Australia that gave the rest of the world a heads up. It just wasn't.
Quoting Banno
I asked him if he was.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Resentment is highly contagious, but fortunately, dogs are immune. Knitting is also said to be therapeutic. Don't panic, Mum. I know its your job, but you can't expect perfection from a man.
It may be that people will later look at awe at the luxury of the pre-Pandemic airline business.
Good for you, well done. I'm not sure what that has to do with what I was arguing about though. Maybe I've not been clear. What I'm talking about is the narrative we allow to develop. Everyone interprets the world through a narrative (by 'interpret' here, I mean to make rough and ready decisions about appropriate responses) and that narrative is largely socially constructed. As you said yourself, our individual actions are just a drop in the ocean (no less worthy for it, though), but one of those individual actions is to be part of forming the social narratives that are available. That people can read about 22,000 children a day dying and yet think an appropriate response is to carry on as normal is allowed them by one of the available narratives - "it's too complicated", "I'm doing my bit in giving x to y", "there's more important issues right now", "it's naive to think we can do anything"...etc.
The point I'm making here is about the methods being employed to silence the dissenting voices regarding the pandemic response. Don't get me wrong, I'm no free-speech fundamentalist, nor am I an anti-masker or anti-lockdowner, so I have absolutely no concerns about the fact that these people need to be silenced. But the method matters, a lot. Because once this crisis is over 22,000 children a day are still going to be dying from poverty. We don't, ethically, get to absolve ourselves of responsibility for those people just because there's another crisis around which is also killing 10,000 or so a day.
The narrative being used is dangerous.
The few nutjob anti-maskers are not to blame for the overburdening of hospital services (all societies have nutjobs and failing to plan for them is our fault - as non-nutjobs, not theirs) - decades of chronic underfunding is to blame.
The Disney-esque nastiness of the virus is not to blame for the number of deaths - chronic failures in community healthcare, poor working conditions, junk food manufacturers, urban slums, poor geriatric care, racist housing policies and, again, chronic underfunding of hospital services are.
It is not an unfortunate shock that this virus emerged and took us by surprise - it is the direct consequence of stripping global monitoring services to the bone in order to present tax cuts as an electoral bribe to greedy voters.
The pharmaceutical industries are not saviours, in it with the rest of us - they spent billions lobbying to get this exact result with immunity from any responsibility despite not even testing the vaccine properly and stand to make billions out of the roll-out of a product which has not even been proven to help reduce the transmission, or hospitalisation, delivering protection overwhelmingly to wealthy countries while the poorer ones can go hang because there's no profit in helping them.
And after all this is done, after the vaccine has finally had an effect (presuming it can keep up with mutations and can eventually get to the poorer countries - two big presumptions)...what are we left with as a narrative for the population to reach for when reading about the 22,000 children a day dying of poverty. The 22,000 that have been dying still every day throughout this crisis and will continue to do so afterwards?
We have a narrative which says that global catastrophes just come out of the blue, there's nothing we can really do about them, the few dissenting individuals who don't comply are largely the ones responsible if government plans don't work out and our best course of action is to wait for one of the giant multinational industries to find a solution.
So now - really - how do you think people's response to hearing 22,00 children a day die from poverty is going to have changed?
These children largely die from some disease or other - well diseass just spring out of nowhere don't they, and there's nothing we could have done about that, was there?
These children largely die as a result of failures in government policy - well, governments make good plans, but it's mostly a few nutjobs not complying that spoils them isn't it?
The diseases they die from are largely a result of the poor living conditions they are forced into - but no, living conditions don't affect your vulnerability to disease anymore , diseases are caused by the lack of a profitable pharmaceutical remedy, aren't they?
Their poverty is often the direct result of multinational companies resource-stripping - but hey the big multinationals saved us from coronavirus didn't they, their involvement here can only be a good thing, let's see if they can come up with a solution to this one.
It matters how we talk about things.
I guess pandemics produce a healthcare immune response. Everyone learns where the weaknesses were and what we should have done.
Quoting Isaac
Your attitude toward the vaccine perplexes me. It's multi-pronged. If I address one of your concerns, you bring up another. If I address that one, another pops up. Eventually, we get back around to your original concern like a game of wackamole.
Quoting Isaac
Who cares? Do something about it. You might be interested in this.
Really. You work in healthcare, right? Are you seriously suggesting that neither you no any of your colleagues had the faintest idea the ICUs were working at near capacity before the pandemic? Did you all look at your stock of ventilators and think "plenty there to handle a pandemic"? Did anyone working in emergency care feel they spent a good deal of their time twidling their thumbs because their units were ever so slightly overstaffed?
I know you have it slightly different over there, but honestly, I've not heard a single story from any health professional across the world who says their healthcare services are fine as they are. We all knew.
Quoting frank
Yeah I know. A multinational conglomerate that has a documented history of lying about its products, plans to make billions out of injecting half the world with a chemical that's had one tenth of the testing and one fiftieth of the approval checks given to medicines normally administered to less than one thousandth of the target population, to alleviate the spread and hospitalisation rate of a virus despite no evidence whatsoever that it will do either, and despite knowledge of proven alternative approaches which are cheaper and will definitely do both. And I'm bothered about it. I guess I'm just funny like that. We all have our quirks I suppose.
Quoting frank
Well, I do. Obviously. The possibility that people might be made less likely to help prevent the deaths of thousands of children is another one of those little things that just bothers me.
At my hospital they stopped doing elective surgeries during the blitz and devoted surgical ICUs to COVID. We just started doing that again. Space isn't an issue for us because we're gigantic. Staffing limits our capacity. That's true across the country.
Quoting Isaac
Ventilators aren't an issue any more. We try to stay on a high flow O2 delivery system. Get people to self-prone. We're prepared to use our ventilators as high flow devices, but we haven't needed to yet.
This is one of the problems with trying to prepare for a pandemic. You can stock basics (although we use plastic, which means all that stuff has expiration dates), but we learn from the disease what we need in terms of supportive equipment. If ebola evolved into something less deadly and more transmissible, we don't know if we would need ventilators. We'll have to find out if it happens.
Quoting Isaac
So this is mostly wrong, but I've talked to you about it before, and I don't see any reason to go through it again.
So, yes then. You were at capacity. It doesn't matter if it's staff, space, equipment, or specialists. The details are not the point. The working to capacity is. Maybe the nature of the capacity is different in America (over here it's all four), but the point of being at or near capacity in some respect is all that's relevant.
Quoting frank
No. You can stock anything and replace it at expiry if need be. Again, the details aren't the point.
Quoting frank
Not if you paid for an emerging disease monitoring service, had an efficient manufacturing chain on standby, had excess staffing in both medical services and medical supply services, had a contingency plan to cover all this (oh, and avoided having a clown for a president). Then you might stand a chance of finding out just before it happens (in your country).
Quoting frank
No, you spouted off a load of ad hoc guesswork without a single citation to support your assertions, whilst I posted papers from the bmj, the lancet and the manufacturers own testing facilities...is actually what happened.
Yes, the US screwed up. Thanks for letting me know.
You my friend are not charged with taking any flack about how "we" handled it. As always, I believe we do the best we can until we know better. When we know better we do better.
You are an Angel that lacks recognition for having to sacrifice your own safety to help others.
It is not something that I will ever forget not take for granted.
Thank you for caring for those who need care. It's really that simple, Thank you from the bottom of my heart :heart:
I don't know what to say! Thank you. :hearts:
Nothing to argue about there.
A pandemic with number of deaths in the top ten in all of history and with the lockdowns, political turmoil and the economy depression, this is surely something for the history books.
Bit morbid, but since there's been a pandemic of greater than 1 million fatality about every fifty years since at least early nineteenth century, this is going to be the case for almost everyone.
...Oh no, I forgot. This came completely out of the blue, without precedent and there's nothing whatsoever we could have done in preparation. All those previous pandemics must have been something else.
Prior to Covid-19 history books hardly ever mentioned the flu pandemic when talking about the tumultuous year of 1968. These prior diseases fell into the category of "nasty flus". The last pandemic that history books or school books mentioned was the Spanish flu.
Russian Flu, 1890, killed a million.
Spanish Flu, 1919, killed 50 million.
Asian Flu, 1957, another million.
Hong Kong Flu, 1968, another million.
HIV/AIDS from 1981, killed about 25 million so far
Swine Flu, 2009-2010, 200,000.
Covid-19, now, 1-2 million (depending on sources).
It's a completely predictable part of living so close together. That we weren't prepared is nothing short of criminal.
Let's remember the comparison, the one argument made many times at the outbreak of this pandemic:
Quoting Isaac
Think of it from another viewpoint: We had SARS, MERS, swine flu and an Ebola outbreak. And those were contained, even if Ebola caused much death in West Africa and did spread to the US. What I remember, a lot of people were making the alarms about them too.
I remember that the view was that it was "only a matter of time" that we would get a pandemic that wouldn't be so easy to contain. You can read dozens of articles and many documentaries that were done prior to Covid-19 warning about what could happen.
Who are the criminals, the doctors, scientists, or those ignorant politicians? Maybe viruses are just too smart for us, they can mutate in a day but it takes the best science much of a year to fight back. Viruses aren't as smart as large asteroids or supervolcanoes but definitely smarter than global climate change.
My point exactly. Yet at the same time global monitoring programmes were being shut down, hospitals were being run to capacity, community healthcare facilities were being closed, public health initiatives underfunded, social care driven to near breaking point... all with a known public health threat just waiting to happen.
Quoting magritte
The population in general really. They vote for the politicians. The doctors and scientists were generally the ones telling everyone we need to be more prepared (though not exclusively). Being prepared costs money and effort - a few pence off the tax bill is ultimately a more attractive option - hence we get the politicians who promise that.
Quoting magritte
No it doesn't. This is just the Hollywood myth that's being peddled here. Read the actual scientists I've cited. Proven defences against viruses include - better quality social care, better public health, better urban environments, better primary healthcare facilities, better intensive care facilities, more availability of primary care, early and strict lockdowns, early closure of borders, efficient tracing of contacts, wearing masks, maintaining a social distance, hand washing...and most importantly, having a plan in place which includes these things.
None of that requires us to know the exact molecular signature of the virus concerned. There's only one response which requires that and that's the creation of a vaccine. Creating a vaccine is never, ever, going to be a first line of defence and so is completely irrelevant to the issue of preparedness.
Well you'd f*cking hope so...
How long do polar bears stay in touch with their offspring?
It's worth noting that the state had been free of community transmission for ten months, and the rest of Australia currently has no known community transmission.
Here's an NYT article about it as well:
Quoting One Case, Total Lockdown: Australia’s Lessons for a Pandemic World
https://www.bndestem.nl/dossier-coronavirus/kabinet-treft-voorbereidingen-voor-verlengen-avondklok~a6f9cc9b/?fbclid=IwAR3gH_Q8digHX_JqIoWbn2MBE42E3T7dspbMZCpd2O0_DMQjbnDXMpqpuzo&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F
It's taking it's toll mentally and emotionally and it's not good for relationships to be in each other's face basically 24/7 for months on end.
Apparently Perth's lockdown worked. No new cases, lockdown finishes in a few hours.
https://davidkatzmd.com/coronavirus-information-and-resources/
base restrictions on level of risk
anyone care to point to flaws in this approach?
I can;t see any and think it would work well, I don't see it ever actually being followed due to its complexity.
There's probably going to be different plans for different regions depending on local priorities and capabilities, heavy on the capabilities.
Yep. Australian states have a clear objective, which is to get community cases to zero and keep it that way. Then life returns to normal.
If they can improve hotel quarantine procedures, then they may be able to avoid the need for lockdown altogether. For example, to quarantine in less populated areas and/or have permanent on-site (or fly-in/fly-out) quarantine workers.
The issue I foresee is a relaxation of restrictions during the long process of immunising the population. Given that there is so far little evidence of immunisations affect on the spread of the virus, I would not be surprised by further community transmission, especially as we move into winter.
It's been obvious for a few weeks that he UK variant is airborne; government officials are yet to acknowledge this, which I put down to the need for bureaucratic omnipotence: don't acknowledge a problem until you have at least an apparent solution.
If a plan is complex, then it will have many potential points of failure. Consider a complex piece of software that has never been tested. Would you risk your life on it working?
In contrast, consider Australia's and New Zealand's COVID strategies. Those countries had a clear objective, which was zero community transmission. People understand the strategies needed to get there, and it has been demonstrated to work.
These countries adopted a precautionary strategy from the start, versus a "let's try what we think might work and see what happens" strategy. The latter is fine when people's lives and well-being don't depend on the plan working. But a precautionary strategy is necessary when they do. It's always possible to adjust that strategy as new data comes in, as Australia and other similarly situated countries are doing.
:100:
The previous version is also airborne.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-16/hotel-quarantine-gap-prevent-airborne-spread-of-covid-19/13057644
This may be true, but the situation in the US and the UK is not like that in Australia and New Zealand (largely because of gross negligence in the early stages). We now have a much larger community source and that changes the variables considerably. Lockdowns would have to be much longer to work (months not days), and lockdowns will be less effective (zero cases is literally impossible to achieve, the target is lower hospital admissions).
So rather than comparing days of disruption to avoiding a local epidemic, we're comparing months of disruption to avoiding potential hospital over burdening. Considering the serious consequences of lockdowns, this is no easy decision. The consequences are much higher (I've already cited the papers on this) and the achievements much smaller and more unpredictable.
I think Australia and New Zealand are excellent examples of what we should have done. They're of much less help now we are where we are.
You're misunderstanding that. It's more airborne transmissible because it's more transmissible, not because it's more airborne.
The previous version (from Europe) is very transmissible in all ways including bloodborne.
So no one has really pointed out flaws in the risk based covid policy approach suggested by Katz?
I do wonder why no region has actually tried this approach. Sweden did sort of, but they didn't properly protect the vulnerable. Thinking about it more, it's really not all that complex. If we really made the vulnerable and those who come into contact with them shelter in place and let the rest of the population live normally, there is no question in my mind that we would better off. The collateral damage of the restrictions would be immensely diminished.
The virus would spread through the non-vulnerable and eventually play itself out as immunity across the healthy population increases. The vulnerable would be protected from the virus as they isolate and avoid contact.
The only tricky part of this plan is making sure those who come into contact with the vulnerable also shelter in place and stay locked down. It may well be that the impracticality of this is the barrier to implementation...
The other barrier to this plan is of course those who say "you never know how it might affect one individual" which is where I get exasperated, we do know that the odds of a healthy person under 70 having serious implications from covid is about the same as winning the lottery, you can't plan social policy to avoid such an unlikely event.
I actually meant my reply to be at you, I don't think it actually is all that complex....
To fail is to lose at the unwinnable game.
I've been saying this from the start and I seem to remember you criticising me for it. Am I confused or have you changed your mind or what?
Yes, but the rest of us knew about the virus in time to take action. Politicians dithered and fucked about. E.g. In Ireland, we didn't cancel Paddy's day until the last minute. That was in March. Pubs still open that month. Stupid.
This is true and also a factor in Europe's struggles. As was the initial cover up in China due to the CCP's corrupt system of governance plus the WHO's subsequent confusing and contradictory advice.
For an alternative point of view:
Quoting Richard Horton, Lancet editor-in-chief (January 30, 2021)
The discussed paper:
Quoting A proactive approach to fight SARS-CoV-2 in Germany and Europe
Also the five week CovidZero plan from Yaneer Bar-Yam at the New England Complex Systems Institute:
Quoting Yaneer Bar-Yam, CovidZero: How to end the pandemic in 5 weeks, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 8, 2021)
Bar-Yam (along with Norman and Taleb) stressed the need to reduce mobility right at the beginning of the pandemic, which is just as necessary today:
Quoting Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 26, 2020)
It's an important point. Bar-Yam addresses it here:
Quoting Yaneer Bar-Yam, CovidZero: How to end the pandemic in 5 weeks, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 8, 2021)
Yes. I've always been in favour of early decisive lockdowns.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
What I took issue with earlier, with you, was the assumption as to the causal relationship between lockdown strategies and death rates in two countries (Ireland and Sweden). Effective response to emerging viruses is complex and multi-faceted, it's an oversimplification to assume all progress is made by lockdowns alone. The 'anti-lockdown' crowd are as much to blame for this as anyone else, but It is an all too common trend in the face of conspiratorial scepticism of any government or scientific intervention to respond by painting it instead as a panacea sine qua non, without appurtenant effects.
You've either misunderstood those papers or misunderstood my comment. It's not clear which. Neither of those papers are suggesting we will end up in a situation where it is no longer necessary to respond to outbreaks of covid-19. The green zone type responses are about local elimination - shutting down outbreaks quickly and decisively, not about creating a world in which there are no such outbreaks.
As Professor Heymann said in the last WHO briefing...
Or Dr Ryan
I admire some of the work coming out of the New England Complex Systems Institute, but you have to recognise that this is a cutting edge application of novel statistical models to an emerging situation. Taleb and co are pushing a very new and untested methodology. I think it's got a tremendous amount of potential, but we should not be treating it as if it were rock solid evidence.
Will y'all shut up about Covid? What more could there possibly be to say?
Mask, Wash, Space, Jab - done!
How does it fit into your theory of European supremacy that Europe was hammered by the virus?
Yes. Be an island in the southern hemisphere and be so lucky that the virus didn't reach your shores when COVID-19 still was "under the radar" as a peculiar flu. That's a great policy what to follow! :razz:
Huh? I think you got the wrong fella, fella!
But, rather proves my point there's nothing left to say about Covid!
Oh good.
Quoting ssu
It's a subcontinent, isn't it?
It'll be summer before you know it. It'll be better then.
Indeed, and there is little room for error:
Quoting COVID-19: Great Debates, Sweden and Herd Immunity
As I see it, Katz fails to acknowledge the unknown risk in pursuing herd immunity. Maybe it will work out for the best, as Sweden hoped for early on. Or maybe it will be an unmitigated disaster.
Faced with unknown risk, one should take a precautionary approach. As it turns out, those countries that did so - such as Australia, NZ, Vietnam, Taiwan and others - are the countries that have been the most successful at minimizing harm.
So far. This collection of viruses is with us long-term now. It's easily conceivable that from the vantage point of a century, it will make little difference which route was taken by whom.
Could be. It's also easily conceivable that a much more deadly pandemic hits us in the future, and nothing was learnt from this one...
Super lethal organisms and viruses don't blow up into pandemics because they kill off hosts too fast to spread. You need a moderately deadly super transmissible pathogen that people can carry around with no symptoms. Like the ones we've got.
The NO-COVID/CovidZero strategy outlined by those papers is a multiscale approach - applicable to large geographical regions such as the US and Europe as well as smaller states and communities. That outbreaks can still subsequently happen after a geographical region gets to zero due to imported cases is, of course, true - it's the reason why Australia and NZ have experienced outbreaks at all in recent months.
Excerpting from your provided quotes:
Quoting Isaac
That is indeed the goal and expected outcome of the usual "mitigation" strategy that most countries employ, and is exactly what the NO-COVID/CovidZero strategy is an alternative to. As Bar-Yam says:
Quoting Yaneer Bar-Yam, CovidZero: How to end the pandemic in 5 weeks, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 8, 2021)
Quoting Isaac
The results achieved in Australia and NZ are successful tests of it at that scale, and so are instructive for what could be achieved in other regions. Their methodology has also been successfully applied to Ebola epidemics in West Africa:
Quoting Yaneer Bar-Yam, How community response stopped Ebola, New England Complex Systems Institute (July 11, 2016)
So all you have to do is ignite the boosters and blast spaceship Australia and NZ into space. Then you'll be free!
It can be Elon Musk's next project...
We need someone to terraform mars. It could be a global initiative.
Make Mars great again!
:grin: Mars: where the greenhouse effect is a good thing!
Other one is a continent, but the other a chain of Islands.
But as both are quite able to restrict and survey those coming and going from there, it's a more easier task. Just notice how strict these countries are about foreign species into their country with requirements that you have not visited a farm somewhere else before you come to Australia or New Zealand. Bit more difficult to close instantly the borders in Central Europe, for example.
And, better yet, no Democrats, RINO's or CNN!
Make your alternative reality come true. Donate here!
Matt O'Dowd calls Australia "the event horizon"
Quoting Andrew M
This is giving me an idea.
No they're not. They're examples of success in regions with a low community infection source, which is the one type of environment we already know these approaches work well in (why we all should have done them to start with). Neither give an example of the approach working in an environment with a high seroprevalence.
You were earlier advocating a 'precautionary approach', now you're suggesting we dismiss the view of the World Health Organisation and instead pursue a policy devised by some fringe data scientists? Why the change of tune?
Actually I think we have a good sense of what would happen if we are able to properly and fully insulate the vulnerable (and those who choose to identify as such) from those for whom the threat poses no real risk (i.e. 99% of the population)...there would be no great disaster, the virus would eventually become endemic for 99% of the population and the vulnerable will be protected once they are all vaccinated.
The only tricky part to this solution as I see it is:
How would enforcement of isolation for those who COULD have contact with the vulnerable be maintained? Would the health workers and others who might have contact with the vulnerable be required to have a tracking device such that if they moved outside of certain parameters at certain times enforcement would occurr?
I
This is beginning to sound more like the usual winter influenza where a newly mixed vaccine needs to be administered annually just to keep the serious cases down to manageable numbers.
But periodic lockdowns would slow if not eliminate both.
Also need to factor in long COVID, length of immunity and the potential effects of emerging variants (for example, the new B117 variant appears to be 30% more deadly).
Quoting dazed
So the issue is whether this or any other proposal is robust enough to stop the virus leaking through. If it is not, then vulnerable people will die. If there is a chance that the virus can get through then, sooner or later, it will get through. As we've seen with the recent outbreaks in Australia, despite hotel quarantine.
So a precautionary approach is necessary. Such as the multilayered, or "Swiss-cheese," model of pandemic defense mentioned here. Implementing that model means the virus may get through one or two layers, but can still be stopped by other layers. It is much more robust to human error.
My comment was ambiguous. They were successful tests at the scales of infection in Australia and NZ, and therefore instructive (i.e., useful and informative, not proof) for what could be achieved at larger scales of infection.
So here's the argument.
We've seen that lockdown and border controls have been effective at significantly reducing case numbers in regions with lots of daily cases. The point at issue is that almost invariably, once they feel they've "mitigated" the effects of the virus, they stop. And so the cases soon ramp up again and the cycle continues.
During August last year, Australia's state of Victoria (population 6.6 million) was getting around 400 new cases a day yet Australia was subsequently able to achieve elimination. That's a significant test.
More than half of the states in the US had less than 1000 new cases yesterday - they are comparable circumstances to Victoria's in August last year (including the same season - end of Winter).
At different points in time, many US states have been able to significantly reduce daily case numbers if they've tried. For example, daily cases in New York fell from 10,000 during April to under 900 through the summer. So they ended up in comparable circumstances to Victoria's.
That same analysis can be applied to Europe. If mobility is reduced, the daily cases rapidly fall.
Quoting Isaac
If a fire is spreading, you don't mitigate it, you put it out. That's the precautionary approach.
I'm not dismissing what the WHO says. I'm making the case for an alternative strategy. And it's a strategy that people have been seen to get on board with.
There's no mention of the disadvantages of lockdowns. One cannot make an argument in favour of an approach by only looking at the advantages of it. It's obviously going to look like the best option that way.
Quoting Andrew M
I'm not fond of arguing by analogy, but even this doesn't work. we fight factory fires by showering them with water. When we meet something on the scale of a bushfire, we change tactics. It's too big to fight by showering it with water and it would be dangerous to rely on that. We cut firebreaks, make strategic burn, evacuate people from areas that we've lost...
You're just presuming one factor and so obviously 'precautionary' seems to be limiting that factor, but human systems are complex and focussing only on one factor is never an appropriate precautionary approach.
Quoting Andrew M
That's the same thing. The WHO are advising we prepare for endemic status, you're advising otherwise. That's about as close to 'dismissing' as one can get.
But I'm not here to dissuade you, that boat's clearly sailed, I want to know what attracts you to the position.
Up until last year, what was your position on the world's response to TB? HIV/AIDS? Poverty related food shortages? Suicide? Motor vehicle safety? Were they all similarly single-issue, elimination-focussed?
We actually did eliminate smallpox, polio, in some places, cholera, measles, mumps, almost pertussis except it's trying to make a comeback.
Were these measures mistaken?
I don't see any reason to think they were, no.
Yes, so it's totally doable. It's a matter of will and means.
Yes. I would have thought that much was pretty unarguable because it's been done. It's also not been done with Influenza, HIV, Malaria, Dengue, Tuberculosis... Demonstrating that some viruses/bacterial infections have been effectively eradicated is irrelevant here. Demonstrating that Covid-19 is in the list of ones which can be and not in the list of ones which can't be is the relevant point. At the moment, the opinion of a large majority of virologists and epidemiologist, including the WHO is that it is most probably in the list of ones which can't be, so treating it as if it wasn't is potentially risky.
Quoting frank
No, It's a matter of will, means and the absence of severe disadvantageous risks which outweigh the chances of success. As I said to Andrew, if you only look at the advantages, everything is going to look like an attractive course of action. Unfortunately, in a complex world, most courses of action have a wide-reaching set of consequences, the risks from which may well outweigh the chances of success.
My argument was that elimination is possible (i.e., what could be achieved at larger scales of infection) as against your claim that "zero cases is literally impossible to achieve".
I expect we agree about the disadvantages of lockdowns. The choice though is not between lockdown and no lockdown. It's between targeted, quick lockdowns (used in conjunction with other measures including border controls and contact tracing), or enduring repeated lockdowns every time cases (and deaths) spiral out of control.
Quoting Isaac
... and finally extinguish it. The point is that COVID spread is a multiplicative process just as bushfire spread is.
Quoting Isaac
No, of course we should prepare - that's the direction things are currently going. But endemic status is neither desirable nor inevitable. The outcome is a choice, not a fate.
Quoting Isaac
The coronavirus pandemic is a systemic risk - unchecked, it grows rapidly, mutates and is highly unpredictable in terms of eventual deaths, health, and economic costs. So the precautionary principle applies.
There's no comparable risk with motor vehicle accidents. Outcomes are fairly predictable.
Now for a country experiencing an HIV epidemic or food shortages where they face an existential threat, they also should apply the precautionary principle.
Right, but we've just established that you didn't really mean 'elimination' in the sense of zero cases, so we're on the same page there. Your remaining argument hinges entirely on the means and the size of the small-but-non-zero target we both agree on.
Quoting Andrew M
As I've said, it's yet to be demonstrated that such quick lockdowns can be effective in countries where the endemic load is as high as it is in the UK, US and most of Europe.
Quoting Andrew M
Again, the later is yet to be demonstrated. We can hope, but hope is not an empirical observation.
Quoting Andrew M
It's neither. It's highly predictable in the wider scheme. As @frank has already mentioned, communicable viruses cannot really maintain high fatality and longevity, it's one or the other. Hosts need to be mobile and even relatively active in order to spread the virus to new hosts. It's been the fate of all such viruses that they eventually become something widespread an mild. covid-19 may well buck that trend somehow, but that;s far from a claim that it's 'highly unpredictable'.
Quoting Andrew M
Yes. Predictably one of the single largest causes of death, next to suicide usually. So if it's " eventual deaths" you're concerned to act against, then what is your policy towards these issues -all of which kill many more people than Covid-19 many times over and have done for decades if not hundreds of years. Why the focus on eliminating this particular risk?
Edit - Let me give you a couple of examples.
1.35 million people a year are killed in road accidents. Modern cars are 25% safer than older cars (according to NHTSA data), so a massive investment to allow poorer people to upgrade to more modern cars could save something like a third of a million deaths every single year.
According to the UN just two days of US military spending could save 2.3 million lives through poverty reduction.
Air pollution, vaccine programmes, safety measures, hospital building, affordable care, social housing, geriatric services...do I really need to list the number of issues where massive investment of money and will power could save millions of lives?
This particular one (Covid-19) just happens to be in the media at a time where social media polarizes issues making extreme responses more attractive. It's the effect of this we're seeing here, nothing more.
True. I think the generation that conquered smallpox was more youthful, ambitious, and optimistic.
I don't know if It's just me, but I feel some heavy pessimism in the air these days.
That may well be, but ambitious optimists don't make good consumers. Miserable, passive, idiots with negligible self-esteem generally buy more crap.
I thought it was just richer people who buy lots of crap.
Well yeah, that too, to a point. At a certain level, richer people can afford to make larger single investments of higher quality items, so they end up buying less (only paying more for it). The poor buy more because they can't afford to make more robust long-term investments. You pay £1.50 for a torch how long do you expect it to last?
Where I live, a torch is a piece of wood with oily rags tied on one end. The peasants use them to burn down the governor's mansion.
Yes, but have you tried the i-torch 8, with new splinter-free wood and lavender-scented oily rags (all emblazoned with your favourite Disney character)? It shines 10% brighter (in tests carried out by independent firm 'i-testing ltd') and it really tackles all 7 scientifically-proven signs of being under the yoke of an oppressive governor, which other torches just can't reach.
Not yet. I'm waiting for the i-torch 9, they say it has a better camera.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56054468
Keep in mind that both Australia and New Zealand have low community infection precisely because they locked down heavily and quickly. IF 'merica or the UK were to lock down now, they could do the same.
Fucksake, the UK is only now thinking of isolating international travellers.
Absolutely.
Quoting Banno
Well that's the matter in question. I'm not overly wedded to one position or the other on this, but from the WHO briefings alone, this is definitely a moot point. The trouble is the we can't lockdown everything. Lockdown just means lock down unnecessary stuff, if there's sufficient endemic load that even those essential services represent vectors along which the virus can travel (without meeting a dead end), then there will be no less a source population after the lockdown than there was before.
In order to eliminate a virus locally all current live host populations have to be unable to reach a new viable host before the time either their host dies, they are eliminated by their host, or they are killed by environmental conditions outside the host.
We can do this by reducing the number of viable hosts (immunity, vaccination), or by reducing the chance of a potential host passing by a current host's vicinity within that crucial time window (lockdown).
The problem is that the time window gets reset every time the virus moves to a new host, it gets to start the clock again, If the original endemic population is small, the total number of successive successful moves (moves where the virus does meet a new viable host in that time window) prior to a failed move (one where it doesn't and so dies out) is small.
In a high endemic load the total number of successful moves a virus population makes before finally making an unsuccessful one is much larger because not all current hosts are going to recover/die at the same time, so their windows of opportunity are offset slightly.
At some point in endemic load, especially within essential services which are not locked down, the sum total of all those offset time-windows adds up to more time than the lockdown can feasibly last.
Which brings us back to the point I made to Andrew originally. If you only look at the advantages of an approach it's obviously going to appear attractive. Lockdowns in populations with high endemic loads have to be much longer to have any effect (for the reasons I've outlined above). Lockdowns have serious life-threatening consequences (as I've shown with my previous citations about TB, vaccine programmes, access to development aid, medical services, community health services etc.). So at some point there will be a threshold where the endemic load is sufficiently hight that the duration required to achieve elimination would cause more harm than the elimination would prevent.
Quoting Banno
Yes. Not just shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but after it has bolted, reached a new farm, settled down, had foals, gone lame and been turned into glue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56137597
@StreetlightX@Banno
My Mom surprised me early by asking me out for my birthday in March! An in person lunch celebration :party:
A year ago is the last time I had a chance to sit with her face to face and love each other and never expected it to be a FULL year before seeing her again. I am impatiently, patiently waiting for my vaccine but I am estatic to see her again!
:flower: :flower: :flower:
How did it go? I'm finding that getting back together with people is kind of strained, like we don't remember how to do it.
I guess all that's left is to wonder what China will do living in a world where this virus is endemic.
You put it out if you can. If you can't put it out (like we can't) you admit that shit early, pull your men out, and let that bastard burn out on its own.
Risk a lot to save a lot, risk nothing for what cannot be saved: Firefighter's credo.
Even if the WHO report does state what China wants to hear, that a leak from the Wuhan lab does not warrant further investigation, this possibility hasn't gone away, even if at first was aggressively shouted down. Quite credible people thinking about the possibility, lastly a former head of the CDC Director Robert Redfield:
Of course this possibility, the lab-leak hypothesis, from a highest level of biosafety BSL-4 laboratory at Wuhan, which had bats and had studied SARS corona viruses and was the first of it's kind in China, doesn't seem so far fetched. Yet it's politically, both domestically and internationally, the worst kind of scandal that nearly any government would want to hide. Hence I think the Chinese will deny it as it tried to downplay first the whole outbreak from the start, even if the hypothesis would be true.
Oh good, I guess we can then tax any profit with 97% as well then since we paid for it? Wtf...
We can do that regardless, if we only wanted to...
This seems like a good place to vent about the utter collapse of the German Coronavirus policy. Wtf has happened? After doing somewhat well during the first wave, Germany's policy in the last couple of months has been nothing short of disastrous. Everyone knows it, everyone is angry, but not a single high ranking politician seems able to do something about it. Even Merkel looks powerless, which is really absurd. Utter incompetence unveiled for all to see.
Is it the same in the other European nations? France seems to have similar problems, but I'm not really aware of the internal politics.
(By this stats, even Chile is beating the EU at this time)
So finally the US has gotten it's act up!
https://twitter.com/akashstronaut/status/1385645544932929539?s=20
It's another variant.
The question is whether a populace brought up to obey and admire science can continue to do so. On the one side are the forces of governmentally supported scientists and mega-companies and mainstream celebrities promoting universal vaccination; on the other are religious entities and news outlets and conservative pundits arguing for freedom and liberty, and against hurried science and depressed economies, etc...
...after all, economists are scientists too...aren’t they?
There are people dying in the streets, cities with populations of millions where hospitals are in a state of collapse. Oxygen supplies all but exhausted. A black market for drugs which might help, etc.
Matt Frei is an excellent investigative journalist on Channel 4 news.
However, I have been avoiding in-depth news recently.
It is all too dreadful. My heart goes out to all during this global pandemic.
Quoting Punshhh
Words fail.
Matt Frei warns: there are distressing images from the start of this report.
https://www.channel4.com/news/indian-hospitals-running-out-of-oxygen-as-covid-cases-rise
We have a long way to go. Where are you from, Finland?
Yep. It's not like a refugee crisis or war. It's worse because of the shortage of resources when everyone else is also short.
Stay well, stay healthy
4 minutes of awfulness - just a drop in the ocean. Wouldn't have gone there if not for @Punshhh. :pray:
On the other hand, the pandemic has been for us rather easy (compared to our western neighbour): the health system hasn't been under serious stress at any time during the pandemic. Now we are starting to easing off the restrictions.
(Knocking wood...)
Here in the Netherlands they're gonna open up the terraces again on Wednesday. I think it will be crazy. I just took a short train trip. The country is nice when it's quiet (sigh).
Really looking forward to a brighter future. Also for Europe. Maybe I'll start a thread one day about the EU. I have been thinking about it for a while. It's a bit too heavy for now.
Veel sterkte (Take care)
Most people here are quite vocal. Unfortunately it's the nasty ones we remember.
I met a lot of friendly people today.
True. It's better to remember the friendly ones though. Then when you get bitter about humanity, you can say, "oh yea, there was that guy..."
Well count my first responses in that category! Benkei, like in and others put me into line that this was something serious and I was downplaying the risks. Yet that was on page 4, so it wasn't yet the age of the official pandemic and lockdowns.
I've always appreciated the intelligence and awareness of my fellow PF members. :up:
That's a breath of fresh air. So many folks like to double down.
If it turns out to be a Deep State Q plan to get us lined out with social passports, opening the door to gun control, I would hope I have the integrity to say I was wrong. On the other hand, I don't really know what the hell is going on. I threw my lot in for the brand and I'm riding for it. So far it seems like a fair call.
A pleasure and thanks for keeping your finger on the pulse (Brexit too).
Ch4 News online is an easy way of keeping in touch with its short vids from the programme itself.
https://www.channel4.com/news/
Just looked - and there are 3 x 4 min ones concerning India.
1. https://www.channel4.com/news/500000-to-900000-covid-cases-a-day-in-india-virologist-shahid-jameel
2. https://www.channel4.com/news/indian-government-hellbent-on-hiding-real-numbers-says-investigative-journalist-rana-ayyub-on-covid-19-carnage
3. https://www.channel4.com/news/whats-happening-in-india-can-happen-anywhere-in-the-world-whos-dr-margaret-harris
One of 5 mins which I will avoid - thinking of my high blood pressure.
https://www.channel4.com/news/boris-johnson-denies-covid-bodies-pile-high-comment
More to come for sure. But I will leave the links here for now.
Others interested can follow Ch4 as and when...
Thanks again @Punshhh :sparkle:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html
(With or without a vaxx) *Mask it or Casket it*, peeps.
:mask:
p.s. My condolences to those bereaved by the unnecessary ongoing atrocity abetted by the elites and governments of South Asia, particularly India. (Modi & Bolsonaro, Bojo & TR45H, Xi & Putin should be hanged by the neck till they are dead in broad daylight asap.)
See Covid: Biden orders investigation into virus origin as lab leak theory debated
I think a lot of people in the media dismissed too easily the lab leak hypothesis because Trump had floated the idea. Now some media outlets are backpedalling for the hypothesis to be a "genuine possibility". Interesting to see what happens. What is sure is that it won't be an easy case to solve China will deny it in any case. Likely it will end up as a myth and historians perhaps 100 years from now will be in agreement about the issue.
(Perhaps a country like Norway might be so honest that if it would have been their laboratory where the virus broke out, they would would say: "Ooops, sorry about that." And, oh boy, the demands and the trials for compensation from the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth funds!)
There are related questions such as whether the research was being done to understand viruses or to create and protect against biological or biochemical weapons.
(Unit 731: These Japanese were really up to no good during WW2)
More likely alternative is that this is just gain-of-function research, as corona-virus was studied at the Wuhan lab and China has had it share of corona outbreaks before, so it's obvious to prepare for corona outbreaks:
And with a twist that got the US politics involved:
See article here
If we just remember that the lab-leak is only a hypothesis, but a very credible one, the most likely issue is totally accidental outbreak, which may even have gone unnoticed. Corona-virus isn't like the bubonic plague: that might too start with a fever, but when those swollen lymph nodes, you know it isn't "just a flew" and for any doctor will observe that. Remember how long lasted period when there was a "strange flew" going on?
Let's say you are a lab worker that has children in the daycare or school and you get a cold and it's flu season, do you first suspect a lab leak? Only when people are dead sure they have gotten infected, will the immediate exclusion start. How would the case number 1. know, if he or she didn't even have symptoms or very mild ones?
And of course there is the Wall Street article:
The whole Covid-19 case seems very strange. I've just read in the news that many scientists are doubting China's official view of events but prefer to remain silent for fear of being associated with "conspiracy theories".
Even if the virus was not engineered it is still possible that it escaped from the lab. The regime's reaction by arresting scientists, lawyers, doctors, and pretty much anyone that merely talked about it evidently suggests that it has something to hide.
Even the WHO (normally pro-China) said that all possibilities are still being considered. And Dr Faucci who has been denying it all along has now apparently changed his mind. I think Biden is acting on pressure from the media and the scientific community, but there may also be political motives.
I think the reason is that one of the leading medical journals, The Lancet, published a condemnation of all "conspiracy theories" of possibility of a lab leak. Of course, the those totally rejecting one hypothesis at that moment when we don't know much, likely have something to hide. From the article Origin of Covid — Following the Clues by Nicholas Wade in New York Times :
Quoting Benkei
Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis.
Quoting Benkei
Yep, putting corona-virus into humanized mice. Thanks to the Chinese asking for money from the US, they had to say just what exactly they were going to do. Hence I believe what Nicholas Wade writes in the article is true:
In addition to this, simply evolving a pathogen in different hosts is also engineering, and can't really be distinguished between just natural evolution.
Weapons tech we can also presume is far ahead of what is known about by civilians, so civilian scientists commenting on what weapons labs can and can't do (unless it is breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something) is simply foolish.
The simple truth is, @Benkei, the establishment downplayed potential lab origins (weapon or accident) because saying otherwise would benefit Trump and the right wing insane conspiracy machine that fueled things up to and including storming the US capital looking to capture and hang US senators.
Now that an establishment politician is in the white house, the great game must continue and it is in the establishment's interest to up-play the lab origin to create tensions with China.
However, what is true is independent of what is good/bad for Trump or what is good/bad for the US establishment.
It's potentially true the virus did come from a lab, by accident or then even on purpose: by China in a classic "start the pandemic in China" fake out (the ol' burn my own house down to start a neighborhood fire because I'm a maniac, to both seem innocent as well as immediately deploy the next phase of the 1984 totalitarian state technologies to "fight" the virus; deflect from their genocide, deflect from Hong-Kong, which both mattered before the pandemic, but no one gives a shit about nowadays), or some adversary trying to harm China thinking they'd be particularly harmed with high population densities (if you told me an insane general or intelligence officer got 5 minutes with Trump in a Helicopter or wherever and asked him to quickly sign a paper authorizing releasing a bio weapon on China, not realizing the potential blow-back because their an insane idiot, that is definitely something I'd be surprised Trump not signing; and if you agree, then the system in place to prevent this sort of crazy shit happening was prevented for 4 years by aides who couldn't even stop Trump tweeting even with measures like hiding his phone from him) which didn't work as expected, or then to frame China for the pandemic and make it (eventually) appear like a classic fake out, or perhaps it was made (/ found and released) by some billionaire, or mere multi-millionaire, and was started in multiple places and simply went exponential first in China, etc (perhaps such a plan isn't expected to work, but plenty of crazy rich people have tried over the years and this one happened to work). Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time.
However, if it was one out of any number of defense departments or intelligence agencies that did it by accident or on purpose, the only thing we can be sure of is that it's some crazy tale involving macho off-the-cuff global strategic improvisation and many goose-bumpy moments that their having a good laugh about now (now that the evidence is buried pretty deep and we're unlikely to ever know the truth anyways).
People.
I don't think any rational person would ever trust the Chinese government, to be honest. But I think what tends to happen is that many research universities, think tanks, and medical institutions are funded by China. So, obviously, you'll get scientific organizations siding with China. That's how science becomes an extension of politics and foreign interference.
Whereas most governments, or special god blessed governments at least, would be trusted by any rational person. (irony alert)
On what basis can they determine that zoonotic transmission is "much more likely"?
A study led by scientists Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao of South China University of Technology concluded that “the killer coronavirus probably originated in a laboratory in Wuhan”. They also pointed out that at that time of the year wild bats would be hibernating and unlikely to be spreading diseases to anyone, especially in an urban centre of 9 million people like Wuhan.
And why did the regime arrest 5,000 people including doctors, scientists, lawyers and journalists? This was a massive cover-up operation that even the Chinese think was highly suspicious and suggests some dodgy goings-on. I think the Chinese know their own government better than anyone else.
That wasn't what I said.
What would be the point of replying? You've shown elsewhere that you accept contradictions. Logic has no place in your schema. The reasons are given in the article I cited above, but your eccentricity prevents your seeing them.
A good rule of thumb is not to ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
Is that really the case? Where exactly are the "reasons"???
Your article says:
"Our investigations concluded the virus was most likely of animal origin. It probably crossed over to humans from bats, via an as-yet-unknown intermediary animal, at an unknown location. Such “zoonotic” diseases have triggered pandemics before. But we are still working to confirm the exact chain of events that led to the current pandemic. Sampling of bats in Hubei province and wildlife across China has revealed no SARS-CoV-2 to date."
"The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins."
"Then there was the “cold chain” hypothesis. This is the idea the virus might have originated from elsewhere via the farming, catching, processing, transporting, refrigeration or freezing of food. Was that food ice cream, fish, wildlife meat? We don’t know. It’s unproven that this triggered the origin of the virus itself. But to what extent did it contribute to its spread? Again, we don’t know."
These are the statements that hold the article together:
"Probably", "unknown intermediary", "unknown location", "still working to confirm the exact chain of events", "no SARS-CoV-2 in Hubei bats", "we need to look elsewhere", "there was the hypothesis", "we don't know", "it's unproven", "again, we don't know", etc., etc.
There are more unknowns than knowns there. And even the "known" is just speculation. This isn't a scientific paper, it's whitewashing propaganda copied and pasted from official Chinese papers.
The fact is that the WHO team “lacked access to the complete data”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has admitted that “data was withheld from the investigators”, “China refused to provide raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team”, one of the team’s investigators has already said.
U.S., 13 countries concerned WHO COVID-19 origin study was delayed, lacked access - statement
So, on what basis do they reach a conclusion when the data on which a conclusion could be drawn is missing?
So It's pretty odd replying to @Apollodorus that there is "no logic" in the schema and that the article you linked (see ) has all the answers.
It doesn't.
The simple problem here is that China has already jailed doctors for raising alarm in the pandemic and IS a totalitarian country. mentions more statements that not everything was given. Hence it could be a possibility that the Chinese officials erased or kept any kind of data on the Wuhan lab people having had Covid-symptoms etc. In a country like in the US, similar secrecy likely would backfire. So great, no traces indicated to the WHO team (that had as it's members people who had links to the Wuhan lab and a motivation for not finding a leak). What I find from the article that you linked is only that the author says it's extremely unlikely been a lab-leak (even if they sometime happen). And I guess that is it for you. Yet, even the WHO Director didn't rule out the hypothesis and admits that not everything was given, which does make me think it's a genuine possibility. If it really would be so extremely unlikely, why would he mention it?
So I don't understand your logic here, actually.
What I think is that likely we won't know either ever or for a very long time. Likely the whole discussion will be tried to be tarnished just as propaganda. Smoke and mirrors and accusations... Likely it's only historians a hundred years from now, who might come into agreement on what happened. Not it's too much of a political hot potato.
The bit leading up to
I'm nonplusses. Basic literacy.
The Chinese culture exudes wisdom and grace from a western perspective. They're screwing up the stereotype.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/reports-of-incidents-at-bioterror-select-agent-labs/14140483/
There were hundreds of reports of potential releases of dangerous pathogens per year, in one country alone.
I suppose this is why, in 2012, the bulletin of atomic scientists released this warning:
https://thebulletin.org/2012/08/the-unacceptable-risks-of-a-man-made-pandemic/
"Extremely rare" is relative and in this case totally misleading. There are viruses escaping from labs every now and then:
1 H1N1 Influenza in 1977
3 Smallpox from 1963 to 1978
1 VEE in 1995
6 SARS since 2003
1 FMD (Foot and Mouth) in 2007
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-terrifying-times-pandemics-escaped-from-laboratories-2014-7?r=US&IR=T
And if you don't have all the necessary data to measure the probability against, then "most likely" becomes pretty meaningless.
Of course. The Australian article is obviously pro-China propaganda.
It's right in my list of possibilities that it could be:
Quoting boethius
The point of my narration of other possibilities is that they are possible.
"What's more likely?" assumes some model in which we can calculate likelihood. I have already written many months ago why making a model of the globe and relevant phenomena (including what intelligence agencies may or may not be capable of, might be willing or not to do) is basically impossible.
Without solid direct, verifiable evidence, "it's more likely it was natural" is just hand-wavy bullshit.
The narration in the media was never attached to some sort of factual basis, but political expediency.
It was politically expedient to downplay (without any factual or theoretical basis) a lab origin (accident or intentional) as that would help Trump with whom the establishment media was at war with.
Now, Trump is an incompetent buffoon, incapable of managing the crisis and so a scapegoat would have deflected attention from obvious mismanagement (that had nothing to do with where the virus came from anyway) and that could only help Trump in many ways.
However, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon, the (potential) last year of his presidency is the optimum moment to carry out a strategic bioweapons attack.
There's lot's of intelligence agencies on the planet with all sorts of agendas and employing all sorts of crazy people without any moral limitations (nor real intelligence, let's be honest here).
Causing a pandemic is so attractive precisely because it can be made to look natural, look like an accident, and so easily started anywhere on the planet (to support whatever narrative you'd want to establish; if you want to eventually blame China, just start the pandemic near a lab that has worked with the same kinds of viruses, which you expect a potential link China will try to cover up as a matter of course and look guilty anyways; if you're China and want to start the pandemic (to institute next level mass surveillance, crush Hong Kong protests, deflect from the casual genocide concentration camps things etc.) but have a plan B of saying it's "an oopsie" just start it close to your lab anyways as an eventual fallback explanation).
If you look at the history of clandestine operations (that we know about), completely insane things are done all the time in the past. The narration that crazy shit doesn't happen today, all the intelligence agencies (including fairly powerful extra-national private contractors nowadays also) are now all just wise old men who wouldn't harm a fly or disrupt public order in anyway, is just fantasy.
The possibility can't be excluded based on the opinion of a few civilian experts. We don't even know what the state of the art in bio-engineering even it.
Compare this to the argument that the US Airforce has a flying saucer, kept in a secret facility. Consider how the Airforce could disprove this.
If the Airforce gave access to every document and to every facility, there are those who would continue to say that there are other documents and other facilities that are still being kept secret.
The Airforce simply cannot prove that it has not captured a flying saucer.
Nor can it be proven that the virus did not escape from a lab. That's built into the logical structure of the accusation.
So it will come down to levels of (in)credulity.
The question that needs to be asked is cui bono?
Obviously, in a dictatorship like Communist China, the state has the means to keep an epidemic under control. In liberal democracy, it's a different story.
So it's a calculated risk worth taking.
China has been building up its military capabilities, massively expanding its worldwide intelligence networks, infiltrating Western universities, think tanks and research institutions, and tightening its grip on our economies.
What are you talking about?
I said pretty in my list of possibilities "Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time".
I didn't provide much analysis of why this possibility is possible because we agree it is, and if it's just some random natural variation, then there's not really any scenario to develop.
Not at all.
The argument is that the possibility can't be excluded, therefore it shouldn't be excluded.
The counter-argument is "it happens rarely, therefore it didn't happen".
Which of the two arguments is the most rational one?
...which is exactly what the article said. So what is your point?
We're all relying upon sources with far more evidence and expertise than us for our information here. These sources told me the virus was most likely from bats, so then I accepted that. Now they're waffling, so so am I. I have no vested interest here other than finding the truth, and what I'm told today is different from yesterday.
Perhaps it pains you to have to deal with the fact that Trump's claims it came from his boogeyman the Chinese might be correct, but that only proves a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn. I'm still not going to gargle Clorox.
That it is "Extremely unlikely the virus escaped from a lab", as the cited article says.
It's a possible scenario (and my fellow leftists saying a regime doing concentration camps in the broad daylight of the international press, is too pure and innocent to contemplate such a move, I don't get; I don't think there are moral limitations on China's current policy), but the problem with cui bono on large scale events is that there are many parties that are going to benefit. Amazon has also benefited, as the other tech giants. Various other countries also can be argued to have benefited.
One must also take into consideration that complex global events are not predictable and often people are extremely stupid. Someone may have attacked China not realizing they would be able to contain it and the West would do everything possible not-to-contain it. I don't think this was a foregone conclusion at the time.
Likewise, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon he may have authorized some crazy general, colonel, what-have-you to carry out an attack on China.
There was no Trump attack on China though, was there?
The fact is this, there were at leas 12 (twelve) virus lab escapes from 1963 to the present.
That makes an average of one escape every 4.8 years. Is that "extremely rare"? I don't think so.
Ergo, @Banno's article is misleading to say the least.
My points have been in response to your claim:
Quoting Banno
You say it's "much more likely notion".
I have actually studied maths, and if you bring up the idea of "likely" you need some way to calculate that. If I say I'm more likely to get a pair of kings than a straight flush, that's only true based on some model of how the cards and game work which will allow me to make that calculation.
Months ago I've already explained anyone talking of "likely" in the cause of the pandemic will need to do a lot of work to actually make probabilistic claims.
And, on both sides of the narrative battle: for instance, is it even an "unlikely" event the pandemic would first emerge near a lab? To say so one would actually need to map out where such labs are, where a natural pandemic would likely emerge, consider the fact a disease is more likely to be detected near a place capable of detecting disease etc.
You're the one claiming you know what's a more likely notion, please explain how you know.
How do we know?
I'm pretty confident Trump is capable of signing a paper authorizing a strategic bioweapons attack and not even remember doing so, if he even understood vaguely the general subject matter at the time.
lol But he didn't, did he? Is that your "evidence"?
I don't understand your scepticism. I cited an article that summarises the analysis of "a joint exercise between the WHO and the Chinese health commission. In all, there were 17 Chinese and ten international experts, plus seven other experts and support staff from various agencies."
Doubtless they have "actually studied maths", too.
On the other side, we have politically inspired conjecture.
You choose. I'll not be commenting further.
Unfortunately, this isn't how science works, it's how politics works.
Can we do any reproducible experiments to verify these claims for ourselves?
Can we examine their statistical model (that includes the cutting edge of bioweapons research and capabilities/intentions of various state and non-state actors with varying degrees of proficiency relative the cutting edge)?
China investigating itself and finding no wrong doing isn't very convincing. The WHO is a small organization with limited resources and politically constrained and isn't going to conclude anything politically disruptive (i.e. is not going to carry out any honest intellectual exercise of analysis and call a media armegedon onto itself / start international tensions (that's not it's job, countries respective intelligence agencies have that job; WHO's job is to reassure the public in this situation, which it has been doing). Civilian experts are, in anycase, simply not useful in this case.)
The best analysis that currently exists has been done by bio-weapons experts (who's job it is to do things like model pandemics, see what statistical signatures a bioweapon may leave compared to what's expected naturally etc.) and such analysis is not available to us. Actual analysis of actual experts on what is the cutting edge (assuming their opponent doesn't outclass them) are state secrets currently.
I said he's capable.
The evidence is his erratic, irrational, obvious poor grasp of new concepts, and morally void behavior.
Absolutely wrong.
A possibility is a possibility. You are the one making the argument that a person in one article says that it's extremely unlikely, so other people here have no logic.
I genuinely don't understand such rejection of a possibility when the pandemic started from a city with a lab that not only researches coronaviruses, but genetically engineers coronaviruses to attack human cells...and then when we have not found the trace from the market to an animal (as the natural cause).
Bit of a coincidence. And actually gave a great article back from 2012 when Trump wasn't yet in politics etc. Here's a quote about the probabilities of lab leaks happening:
But somehow Dominic Dwyer saying that the risk is extremely low, then people ridicule others that say that it still is a possibility.
I have not rejected the possibility.
I can change my views if new information comes to light.
Quoting ssu
And that's all you two are gonna get. The CCP are not imparting shit.
As I said, a positive outcome would be that historians later are in agreement what happened in 2019 in Wuhan.
The misinformation and censorship regarding the lab theory is quite the scandal. Facebook went so far as to ban any discussion of the theory on its platform, ironically to protect the public from misinformation. And these measures were all based on poor science. One has to wonder what sort of information and evidence has been lost during that time.
Don't let the origination issue inform the wearing of masks, distancing, cleaning, or vaxxing. Even if a bad actor was a vax company who released it to make sales, take the vax and deal with the perp later. Likewise a lab release or other nefarious activity.
As to the Facebook thing, what were the lab theory people saying that would slow the roll on masking, distancing or vaxxing? Or was it just an environment so polluted with BS from the likes of POTUS that FB over-reacted and started shutting down everything out of an abundance of caution? If the latter, then, while calling out FB, it might be a good thing to remember what might happen when slinging shit in tweets.
British intelligence or at least former bosses have always viewed the lab scenario as realistic.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-chinese-laboratory-wuhan-mi6-richard-dearlove-conspiracy-theories-a9547851.html
According to the Sunday Times they now believe the theory is "plausible."
But intelligence agents, according to the report, have few human sources of information in China, so they are trying to recruit them on the darknet, where they can speak anonymously without fear of reprisal.
In recent weeks information has emerged suggesting that the virus, which has spread across the globe, killing more than 3 million in the worst pandemic for generations, may not have developed from nature, as scientists initially believed.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uk-spies-say-theory-covid-19-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-is-plausible-2021-5?r=US&IR=T
Humanity in general. It makes a fascinating plot. The mind zeroes in on it like a moth to a flame.
True. However, just as interesting is considering who desperately wants it not to be true and why.
China would be one possible answer that comes to mind. I tend to doubt that the regime arrested 5,000 scientists, doctors, lawyers, journalists and others for no reason.
"The Chinese government has engaged in disinformation to downplay the emergence of COVID-19 in China and manipulate information about its spread around the world. The government also detained whistleblowers and journalists claiming they were spreading rumors when they were publicly raising concerns about people being hospitalized for a "mysterious illness" resembling SARS."
COVID-19 misinformation by China – Wikipedia
:100:
When a and b weren't known yet I gave the lab theory only a 1% probability but that certainly has gone up in the meantime.
According the the writers at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2012, it was quite likely.
https://thebulletin.org/2012/08/the-unacceptable-risks-of-a-man-made-pandemic/
Yes, there was (is) this narrative going on that to utter the Lab-leak hypothesis, you were racist pizzagate-level conspiracist Trump-supporter and only now thanks to "new" information is this is a respectful hypothesis. This is a way for some parts of the media to start looking at the possibility (and forget how they wrote about it in the past). That the hypothesis has always been plausible, just like and others remarks, is denied. Just as talking about the possibility didn't make you a Trump supporter in the first place.
The unfortunate issue is that this isn't going away. Misinformation and disinformation are far too easy to use in this time of age and they are very effective. In fact, a clever actor can quite discreetly gain his objectives without being noticed. My concern is that the whole discourse will simply be smudged over to such level that any person, especially medical professional or academic, won't touch it with a ten foot pole. In order to make an issue simply undebatable, you will have to create the so-called "alternative-facts" and an alternative universe where the opposing narratives simply don't meet. That confuses people. Deny everything and make counteraccusations. That's the way the Chinese likely will respond, because it's an effective response.
1. WHO reports have suggested that the first Covid-19 infections may have occurred in November 2019
"The virus could have been introduced into the human population from an animal source in the market or an infected human could have introduced the virus to the market and the virus may have then been amplified in the market environment. Subsequent investigations into the first human cases have determined that they had onset of symptoms around 1 December 2019. However, these cases had no direct link to the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market and they may therefore have been infected in November through contact with earlier undetected cases (incubation time between date of exposure and date of symptom onset can be up to 14 days). Additional studies are ongoing to as whether unrecognized infections in humans may have happened as early as mid-November 2019. "
Origins of SARS CoV-2 WHO
2. Researchers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized in November.
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China became sick with a flu-like illness and sought hospital care in November 2019, according to a U.S. intelligence report obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin – WSJ
3. Scientists are saying that a lab escape "would be no surprise".
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says: “For the lab escape scenario, a Wuhan origin for the virus is a no-brainer. Wuhan is home to China’s leading center of coronavirus research where, as noted above, researchers were genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. They were doing so under the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 lab. If a virus with the unexpected infectiousness of SARS2 had been generated there, its escape would be no surprise”.
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
4. In the past few decades, dangerous viruses have escaped from labs around the world, including China, every few years which obviously isn't "extremely rare" as suggested by some.
5. China has been engaged in a massive disinformation campaign including the spread of conspiracy theories and the arrest of doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists and others.
If we put all the facts together, how likely or unlikely is the lab escape?
It's their job to decide whether there are actual clues that the lab escape theory can be true. And if there are clues then they should hold a formal inspection at the lab. If those clues aren't there, then they need to stop bringing it up.
We see that it's US intelligence that mostly fuels the "lab escape" hypothesis, China denies and meanwhile nobody gets to see the US intelligence. There won't be any progress on the matter like this.
I doubt there will be any progress. We'll never know. That's unfortunate because if it was a lab leak, it would be an opportunity to review protocols for all labs (like the ones that have small pox).
Well, if you consider everything that any intelligence service says to be total propaganda.
I think the real debate ought to be on the safety of the gain of function research, which was earlier prohibited. Then the ban was ended, and now a permanent ban is pushed forward. This research has really been put on and off quite many times.
Let's remember what happened in 2017 with the ending of the gain of function research ban, which specifically was about corona-virus research:
(See The Lancet (February 2018), Ban on gain-of-function studies ends)
And what is now happening?
Thank you again for your staying present through this pandemic. You and your fellow Super Heroes did a phenomenal job against the worst our world had to throw at us this time.
Rest dear friend and know that we are working together to make sure we are better prepared for the "NEXT" because we know there will be another.
Thank you and seeing you make it out the other side is a blessing to me. :flower:
thanks. compliments make me choke, though. :grimace: can't handle it
Gain of function research seems to now be the central argument. Even leftist papers like the Guardian are now beginning to concede (1) that they may be some truth in it and (2) that this time it isn't coming from the Trump camp.
Obviously, if it turns out to be true, this will have serious political and social implications, one of which will be that people will be even less inclined to trust politicians - or the media.
1. Lab leaks happen all the time.
2. In China the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn't disclose that it came out of the lab.
3. There is evidence that the lab in question, which studies bat coronaviruses, may have been conducting what is called “gain of function” research,
4. There seem to have been astonishing conflicts of interest among the people assigned to get to the bottom of it all
5. The news media, insisted that the lab-leak hypothesis was false false false, and woe unto anyone who dared disagree.
6. The social media monopolies actually censored posts about the lab-leak hypothesis.
7. A new study claims that researchers have found ‘unique fingerprints’ in Covid-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.
8. Dalgleish and Sorensen wrote in their paper that they had prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China for a year, but were ignored by academics and major journals,
etc.
If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake - Guardian
Covid-19 created in Wuhan lab, has no ‘credible natural ancestor’, says new study
Transcript: Scott Gottlieb on "Face the Nation," May 30, 2021 - CBS News
Allow me to reiterate Tiff's words of appreciation. :hearts:
What I've read concerning the genetic make-up of the disease. I could look it up but tbh, I'm not so interested in debating this aspect of it in the absence of further evidence because a) We have, as yet, no reliable or scientific way of apportioning probability here b) it doesn't particularly matter to me, and c) it's not as if I would put anything past the Chinese government.
Foiled again.
Interesting. The "prima facie" is a disclaimer on their evidence though and after the study that said it couldn't have been engineered I'm going to say, let's wait and see.
Yes. Different scientists seem to interpret the same data differently. But it's interesting to see the shift in the way the issue is being reported. It isn't "conspiracy theory" anymore but "maybe there is some truth to it after all". Quite possibly, they know more than we do. Or maybe not.
Fair enough, but there seems to be an inconsistency between thinking it unlikely and stating that "we have, as yet, no reliable or scientific way of apportioning probability here".
Why? Haven’t you ever thought something unlikely without recourse to scientific method?
Sure, based on an intuition or personal feeling, but not usually about things I consider there to be no reliable evidence or that I know every little about. This seems like a stronger assertion
Quoting Baden
and judging from that it seemed. at least to me, that you thought there was good evidence that justified thinking it was unlikely. And we're talking here more properly about empirical evidence, not strictly scientific evidence.
[i]David Gorski
Science-Based Medicine
May 2021[/i]
Bit long, but, anyway ...
I highly doubt there will be evidence to sufficiently prove that the virus came from a lab. The Chinese government has a vested interest in not letting the truth come to light and control of all the documentary evidence.
Even if it was the result of a lab leak, and China was aware of it and said nothing, I don't see long term changes. At the end of the day, people are still going to pick the cheaper plastic item at the store, and that means the supply chains of the world will still be hopelessly dependant on China.
If the much greater threat of global warming couldn't mobilize support for shorter supply chains, I doubt this would.
Also, that Guardian article... WTF happened over the past decade? Weren't Right wingers supposed to be tough guys, celebrating strength. You know, 300, "this is Sparta!" The incredible victim complex they've all put on is totally off brand. I feel like I'm reading the work of hysteronic Chomsky addled teen activists half the time.
1. Negligent animal to human;
2. Negligent weapon research lab to human;
3. Negligent health research lab to human;
4. Intentional weapon research lab to human;
5. Intentional false flag operation;
6. Other?
I can understand why people might be concerned about an intentional release, but other than a change in animal-market or virus lab protocols to prevent this from happening again, why would anyone care? Is this all about finger-pointing? I have not followed this and really don't know what the scoop is. I just see a lot of people discussing it. That's cool, I guess, as long as it doesn't take any wind out of the health care response.
Perhaps this tells in short the opinion of the author David Gorski:
And that's the problem. Indeed there has been a conspiracy. The one where China wasn't open and truthful about the epidemic at the first place. And isn't now and won't be truthful in the future. And that was the first conspiracy which likely even Gorski won't deny.
Just to create a viable picture of the events is difficult...thanks to Chinese officials. An article explains this:
See Inside the Early Days of China’s Coronavirus Cover-Up
Then there was the way doctors were dealt:
- Physicians were told by hospital heads not to share any information at the beginning of the outbreak.
- Doctors were not allowed first to wear isolation gowns because that might stoke fears.
- Provincial health commission began actively suppressing scientists’ knowledge about the virus as early as January 1.
- By January, according to Caixin (who wrote an article, "Tracing the Gene Sequencing of the Novel Coronavirus: When was the Alarm Sounded?"), a gene sequencing laboratory in Guangzhou had discovered that the novel virus in Wuhan shared a high degree of similarity with the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003; but, according to an anonymous source, Hubei’s health commission promptly demanded that the lab suspend all testing and destroy all samples.
And of then the typical Chinese censorship of anything that could look bad. And journalists etc. have been arrested for covering the pandemic. The usual Chinese stuff.
In all, it's highly doubtful that we can create clear picture of events now. Hope that historians later can do that.
Add to the fact that creating the timeline how a disease broke out would be difficult even without the all above.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/06/07/viewpoint-why-the-wuhan-lab-escape-theory-explaining-the-origin-of-the-global-pandemic-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon/
I don't think that's the case about it being partisan. Many apolitical and Democrat friends and family of mine believe the lab theory. They no longer have Trump to point to them which ideas to oppose.
Watch this recent exchange between Jon Stewart and Colbert. Colbert is still wedded to partisanship and anti-Trumpism and must keep up that charade, but Jon Stewart isn't chained to the myths of the last half-decade and is able to give a fresh voice to the lab-theory. Anyone who still opposes the lab theory at this point is just digging their feet in the ground and head in the sand.
It's also possible it wasn't engineered and escaped the lab all the same.
And it's also still possible it came about naturally.
As I noted earlier, one of the problems is undisclosed Intel is supposed to support the lab theory and it's flatly denied by China. It's likely we'll never know because we're not getting all the available information to begin with.
It wasn't too long ago the very mention of the theory would result in censorship on social media, and those who did believe it were derided as deluded conspiracy theorists. At any rate, we were not really allowed to talk about it wherever people controlled the discourse.
I’m not aware of the Lancet study, but the one article in The Lancet that condemned the theory immediately raised my own suspicion.
I find that scientists who rails against misinformation, dissent and wrong-think are worried more about their politics and power than any science. But put simply, their theory was yet to be proven.
From the BBC, 5/1/20:
This is typical Trump bullshit - "I know but a can't tell you". He does not go so far as to claim it was released on purpose, but by raising the question he suggests it was. If he really did know what happened then it seems likely he would know whether or not it was released intentionally.
This is a very different picture than simply inquiring about its origin and denying the lab origin based on the evidence available at the time.
All that you describe here is a typical reaction to anything out of the ordinary in China. Assuming the prevailing natural origin hypothesis, this is exactly how you would expect authorities there to act. This is no evidence or even a cause for suspicion, one way or another. And all this has been known and documented, there haven't been any significant new revelations emerging lately.
Quoting ssu
Yes, unfortunately, everything about the pandemic has been highly politicized right from the start. And outside politics, you can see how the depressingly predictable dynamics unfolds: people get into arguments on- and offline, stake out positions, which then polarize and harden to the point where no evidence or reason has any chance of changing minds.
It's be over now.
If you would just erase away the US debate and just focus on what it has been in other Western countries (and somehow they wouldn't be influenced by the vitriolic US narrative), that would be a healthy start. Trump messed so much up (which was actually what many of his voters wanted him to do).
But yes, the problem then can become that people simply have separate narrative which are based on separate totally opposite data, which makes it hard to know just what the facts are. And that might be an objective for some. And political incentives create a base why there is no reason to try to reach an objective truth on the matter.
I learnt this following the debate around nuclear energy in Europe. The totally different realities could be seen from things like asking just how many people died in the Chernobyl accident. If the UN states that it caused 4 000 long term deaths and Greenpeace argues that it caused over 1 million deaths...
Should be ok. The most vulnerable are already vaccinated. Every now and then it takes out an otherwise healthy young person. That info should go out to light a fire under those delaying vaccination.
A lab leak happening in the Soviet Union (or China) will automatically create a discussion on how safe our laboratories are and if they ought to study such things. And some will think this will be very bad and assume people cannot fathom that safety-cultures really differ from place to place. So there is a reason why to go along with the official line, even if privately you are suspicious about it.
With for example the public discussion around nuclear energy, I do understand these fears.
Nuh. Melbourne got it right. It's getting away from Berejiklian. She fucked up.
Israel had 80% of their population vaccinated, so they opened up to tourism and immediately had an outbreak of the delta variant. Even vaccinated people got it, but they didn't get very sick.
I hope it doesn't get bad in Australia, but those people need to get vaccinated.
Both the result of adherence to Liberal ideology.
No; Fucking Liberals.
Edit: It's not liberal philosophy that is to blame here. Liberal philosophy could have quite happily followed the science and vaccinated as many as possible and locked the city down ten days ago. What is to blame is the Liberal Party of Australia's adherence to an ideology.
They're like Trump supporters?
https://financialpost.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-canadian-forces-have-right-to-know-if-they-got-covid-at-the-2019-military-world-games-in-wuhan
Getting vaccinated doesnt keep you from spreading the delta variant. It just lowers your risk of death.
It's survival of the fittest time in the US.
A secondary weakness, I think, with this defense is...it leads to more distrust. If all this was a kind of noble lie, and the people arguing that (thinking more of any government official arguing it rather than someone like you) the have to take some serious responsibility for conspiracy theories. You can't sell bat soup as a well grounded, rational hypothesis while not only immediately the Wuhan lab hypothesis as mere conspiracy theory AND do this with either your request or tacit expectation that digital media will remove posts and videos about the lab hypothesis AND publish fact checker denials that this is a mere conspiracy theory
and not consider yourself responsible, in part, for many conspiracy theories to come.
From them, and not from you, this becomes a kind of 'hey, I had to lie, because you are irrational excuse. But then since rational arguments and statement were treated as irrational. Fact checkers used faulty logic and acted as if they knew for sure that this had been debunked, you have undermined a fundamental trust on many levels. It would be short term gain for long term losses. which of course is a pretty common formula in politics and business.
The last point I would make is this defense assumes it knows the motives of the people involved. Which at this point would be mind reading. Kind of a reverse conspiracy theory. These people meet in secret and make benevolent decisionsl. Or email in secret. There's no need for smoke filled rooms anymore.
I was talking specifically about the delta variant. Our experience so far suggests that herd immunity doesn't exist for this variant. Both the previously infected and vaccinated can carry it.
Does vaccination help by reducing the viral load people are exposed to? I think it would have to.
This is the problem. And that those who have a lot to lose (who even might face legal suits) then being on the WHO team looking at the Wuhan lab possibility doesn't raise the confidence.
The confidence can be also lost by the totally absurd line when the pandemic erupted that "masks don't work". That was the low point of trying not to have people hoarding them when even health care workers had problems to get them. A far better line would have been: "Masks work, but now there is such a bottleneck in the production that we advise ordinary people not to use them before the supply issues are resolved". Face the truth, say how things are. (And btw, market mechanism did work and now there are enough masks)
This isn't helping much as there are so many totally bonkers views spreading distrust about vaccination and about modern medicine in general. Unfortunately public discourse is totally incapable of separating the loony from the more credible arguments and the typical line today is to censure everything by simple algorithms.
It looks like the US will be quite ugly given 6 weeks or so. Damn, this is very long...
That's the problem. And I understand that people want a life and are tired of confinement and local business are having a horrible time. That's to be granted.
But it's as you say, the carelessness of other people can cost the life of me or my loved ones. And the damn virus would be much weaker by now if everybody got a vaccine.
As long as many people continue to resist vaccination, the longer this will go, quite apart from the severe problems of vaccine distribution in developed vs developing countries, which all but guarantees this will go on for quite a while.
I guess a compromise would be best: keep things partially open, no masks in OPEN places in which other people are far away, that kind of thing. But to have sports stadiums full of people, or in door restaurants, is quite risky.
I also believe it would have disappeared without the vaccine if everyone would have done what they were told. I know damn well how offensive that phrase is, and I hate it myself: "do what you're told." But once you politicize something, all bets are on: on your life, your neighbors life, etc. All you have left is karma and I don't even have a clue if that is something I even believe in. Oh well, the toothpaste is out of the tube.
An example of the conundrums: Fauci says "don't were a mask" when he really means "save the masks for the health care workers" because he doesn't want a run on masks (ala shit paper). He knows that if he said what he meant, every mask would disappear, ala the tragedy of the commons. In other words, he is correctly anticipating the stupid people. But then, later, when masks are spun up, he says wear them. Then all the stupid people think they caught him in an inconsistency. And we fight over shit like that, and where it came from, blah, blah, blah. I know civilians aren't subject to the ethos of the military but when the Sgt. says this and you want to argue with him, you get your head shot off or you get someone else' head shot off. I love to question authority but I try not to do it at someone else' expense. And I try to believe the Sgt. isn't out to get me.
Yeah, Fauci could have said what he should have said, but it wouldn't have made a difference. Only Trump could have done that to an extent, in relation to the stupid people. Problem is, outside the US, lots of countries in Europe listen to Fauci, and that could have well helped the deniers.
But outside of totalitarian countries and a few exceptions in Asia and Oceania, there is a segment of the population who just don't listen. I don't know when such attitude could lead to charges of second degree murder.
And who knows if the mutation after the Delta variant will be much worse. Just mind-boggling.
:100:
I know what Trump could have done with a PSA, a white mask of any caliber, and a cigarette. But no, just be Trump.
:roll:
Good riddance. He murdered several hundreds of thousands of his countrymen/woman and yet they are the ones that riot against him losing an election.
But he was not alone, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, Johnson in Britain, etc.
And we all pay the price for such sycophants.
I did not read the article, but I saw a headline suggesting that maybe Trump gave courage to those guys instead of the other way around, or even as convergent stupidity. I always just assumed they were following dummy, but that could just be my "Merica First!" training. LOL!
Posters from the UK here can say if this is the case. I suspect that Trump didn't help in the cases of Brazil and Britain.
Not sure about India.
But when it comes to places like Germany, France and the like, I think they're rebelling despite what Trump said.
I was just looking at some live streams on RT and in France some people are nuts. These anti-vaxers are insane. I understand a small minority of people have legitimate issues with vaccines, but this is overblown.
Yes. And to think, those who are just now at the end of their rope with lock downs and whatnot, well, they'd still have plenty of rope left had their predecessors played ball. Anyway, we're preaching to the choir. I'm just glad my family and I are "relatively" well situated, remote and self-sufficient.
:100:
Admitting that you were earlier wrong is a sign of strength in my view.
This got China to be shocked and angry:
Interesting to see what the outcome is of this...
And it may be true, that is it may be what really happened. It's unlikely we'll know, though who knows if some information leaks. It's also a good way to beat on China. I'm not defending them here, not Pro or Anti - but with the situation in Taiwan being so delicate, I think other countries ought to be careful here in making accusation, even if they are true.
The thing is, would any state ever admit that they're the ones responsible for a pandemic?
I guess Norway could... and then lose their Sovereign Wealth Fund (from Oil Revenue) by paying Corona-related indemnities.
And unfortunately for finding at how the Corona-pandemic broke out will not be helped by the following kind of discourse in the US:
Nevermind how wrong Trump was about the pandemic and how disastrous the response of his administration was at the pandemic outbreak.
Americans, as usual, make everything a domestic political issue. They do that even with things that happened in another country on another continent. And if you then try talk about that event (that happened in Asia) you are either a Trumpist Republican or a liberal supporter of the Democrats. :roll:
Yes. That is a problem with many Americans which is quite unfortunate. Obviously the US is far from "a city on a hill", nor paradise, it has serious problems with poverty and violence and it is also a big country.
But many Americans just really don't seem to care about the world outside the US. What happens in Europe, South America, Asia or wherever else just doesn't matter much. It's as you say, only if it directly affects domestic politics that many get riled up.
It's not that anybody should know European or Japanese politics inside out or anything like that, but to have a general interest in the world should not be seen as exotic.
Of course, there are exceptions to this, but I think it is broadly speaking true. And getting confrontational with China can literally be suicidal. Let's hope things don't get completely out of hand...
This sounds like something you heard and now you're repeating it.
American private aid
No, it's been my experience.
This is probably more accurate:
https://www.cfr.org/news-releases/americans-lack-knowledge-international-issues-yet-consider-them-important-finds-new
Oh. That's because they don't need to know.
Well, we should add that many people don't care what happens outside their imminent neighborhood. Americans aren't the only example of this.
Yet a lot people do care what happens in other countries. But then, be you an ardent supporter of Noam Chomsky (and criticize what the US government does) or an ardent Republican (and criticize only what a Democratic US administration does), the main focus is on the US. Thus sometimes the Noam Chomsky type criticism goes simply overboard. The US isn't a culprit in everything bad that happens in the World.
When it comes to the Corona-virus the global response is important. At least with the Biden administration global cooperation is important. I should also add that for example the discussion in the US Congress about the pandemic (or the origins of the pandemic) is very important. A similar discussion in let's say the European Parliament would be quite meaningless: the member states do in the end decide themselves the policies and are far more independent in their actions as various states of the US.
Yes, you're right, I didn't express myself as clearly as I should have.
I get the impression that the average US citizen knows less about the world than a Canadian or European, but I could be way wrong and there are exceptions, of course. Most people mostly care about things around them.
I do notice, however, that news in other countries outside the US have much more info on world affairs than US news does.
I am very much a Chomsky type, but I'm also interested in how other powerful actors wield power.
States are responsible in so far as they are powerful actors in international relations. The US is the most powerful state but that doesn't mean that China or Russia aren't powerful too. This isn't a good guy bad guy view, I think it's just factual.
The current EU is quite a mess. It's not democratic in any meaningful sense of the word and if it doesn't find a way to unite politically I fear it may crumble. Once Biden came in the US was far more effective than many European countries in administering the vaccines. As long as developing countries are significantly behind in vaccinations rate, this will go on and on.
The coronavirus, though it itself doesn't discriminate races, has become a reason to discriminate races.
You see, discrimination is an action done by people on other people. Yet the obvious fact is that every country will address first risk groups. Is that discrimination? If it is according to you, what is wrong with that? Every nation started with the oldest people and left children out (at first). It would be totally different (and horrifying) if COVID-19 would kill infants and little children, but older people would survive it well. Think about how that lockdown would be. The fact is that poorer communities have worse health care services available and poor people have more health issues, which is a major issue with COVID-19. I think that is an universal fact.
As this study put it last year in June 2020:
In the US povetry and class have this race element in them. And that's why on issues that in other countries would be about wealth and income or class, in the US they become about race. Yet discrimination by race means that the skin color is the primary or sole reason to choose who to care, who to vaccinate, irrelevant of other factors.
To look further into this, here's an investigation about this by the CDC from this July. It tells now that the earlier above study from last year was spot on:
Such numbers in deaths does in my view show that you are talking about a risk group. And hence the paper continues:
And do note that after increased efforts the vaccinated increased "approaching the population portion".
So it's quite likely that in the case of any country, also here in Finland, with similar findings that one segment of the population is hit worse than the other, naturally the health officials would (and did) make the same kind of targeting. That targeting, or "discrimination", naturally wasn't done here by race because this country is racially far more homogenous than the state of Maine. There are only a few percent of people of "persons of colour" here. (And with a still working universal welfare system, the differences between the regions isn't so stark as in the US.)
And it should be noted that the when officials had to respond to accusations of "systemic racism", it's no wonder they talk about focusing on Blacks and Hispanics, not just "risk groups" in general. Blame it on the public discourse, if you want.
[quote=Horace]Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings.[/quote]
Not so. Any animal documentary on predator-prey dynamics show that the weak and the sick are the first to go if you know what I mean. The same is true for humans - the poor, the very young and the elderly, those at the bottom rung of the social ladder bear the brunt of catastrophic events.
The philosophers who might help us through COVID's dark days of lockdown
Excellent read and so to the point, loved it :sparkle:
Didn't hurt to have George Harrison starting and finishing it. Stan Grant :cool:
Plants?
Oh hogwash!
@Banno
Has been clear that it is a three day lockdown and then they get on with life.
It sounds like NPR might not be in the know.
Fake news? Only Americans are that naive.
Muttering.....
As we go back to facemasks for the "fully" vaccinated.
I am really getting tired of those saying that Americans did ABC wrong but we (insert desired county other than the USA) did it right!
My position has not waived on this why I say
"Remain humble my friends."
Rant over :sparkle:
Because it works better. It was inevitable.
:up:
But worse, Our pathetic PM failed to procure enough vaccine.
Again, a hard lockdown, early, is effective.
Here the politicians, especially those from the Green party, are avid supporters of a corona-passport. Without it you could not go to a restaurant or participate in public events. Only the conservative party has been against it (but they are in the opposition and not in the administration).
Yet a Big problem for the social democrats and Sanna Marin... Finland has a constitution and this legal system that makes it so difficult for the social democrats to pose all the limitations they want! They have had to go back on their restriction on at least two occasions, because certain policies have been deemed unconstitutional or against the law.
Definitely. It's effective for buying time to get vaccinated. I wish I could say the US learned something from this. I think some states could pull it off, but being connected to all the others brings everyone down. Totalitarianism. That's what's needed.
If the virus can spread easily among the vaccinated, the vaccine passports are redundant, as was the moralizing and finger-wagging surrounding the idea. What we know, though, is that governments are willing to treat others as second-class citizens out of fear.
Seems that vaccinated people have less probability to die, but otherwise it looks bleak.
From CNBC:
From Boston.com:
Have to say it.... fuck.
At least the mask makers are happy.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm
The upshot? Even if you are vaccinated, wear a mask at large public events.
That's all. Nothing new.
I’m sure vaccination helps. From what the news tells me, those who are hospitalized with the disease are largely unvaccinated. What they never mentioned was how quickly the virus can circulate among the vaccinated. In any case I much rather assume the risk of living than let governments, all of which failed to contain the virus, continue to contain human beings.
Isn't that why we have governments in the first place? Containing us?
Quoting Banno
As this mask wearing, avoiding shaking hands and a two meter distance is staying for us for years now, I start to fear that this will have an effect how we behave in the future. Work culture has already changed, that's for sure.
Sure, it's very easy for a Finn. But I do miss the Latin way of women you know giving a kiss on the cheek.
Very few get significantly sick or are hospitalized. https://www.yahoo.com/news/eight-hundred-cases-seven-hospitalizations-and-no-deaths-the-provincetown-outbreak-shows-vaccines-work-125324207.html
This is a pandemic for the unvaccinated. It's just an annoyance for the vaccinated.
When the vaccines were introduced, they made clear the efficacy against the spread of the disease was not certain. Its protection against its effects was. The idea was that if enough people would be vaccinated at least they wouldn't end up in hospitals and cause an overload of the hospital system. When has this aim changed?
In other words, you are complaining about something nobody ever said would be the result of vaccination. Why? Because of your confirmation bias. Thank you for playing.
When the matter became so politicized, so ideologized that the public opinion became "Vaccinated people are perfectly safe."
Come forward with a more nuanced opinion, and you're branded as an antivaccer.
True, but...
Quoting Benkei
What sources are you using for your impression of institutions being clear that the efficacy of the vaccines at reducing transmission was uncertain? I remember a couple of articles in Stat and The BMJ making that point (both of which I believe I posted here at the time), but both articles were warning against what they saw as the strong trend toward panacea narratives. Were they just jumping at shadows, do you think?
Official statements by Pfizer and Moderna at the start of vaccination. I'm not aware of any other communication. And then came the good news that it reduces the rate of transmission of the alpha variant but that came again with the warning that is no guarantee for future variants.
You don't happen to have those to hand do you? I'll Google if not, so don't go to any effort. It just clashes with my memory of the way that issue was dealt with at the time, finding old news is never so easy as finding latest news on search engines, I never now how to get them to tell me what was said, not what is being said.
The original data showed that the vaccines had an effective rate in the 90+%, J and J slightly lower. Had enough people vaccinated, covid as it existed then would have been eradicated.
The effectiveness change occurred with the Delta variant. The vaccine protects against its effects, but not from its spread.
The reintroduction of masks and threats of shut down are caused by the irrational decision of the anti-vax people, who have convinced themselves that their right to die of the delta variant is sacred. If I were permitted to let you die and not be forced to heroically exhaust common resources to treat you, I'd buy into your Randian libertarian wet dream and let God sort out your bad decisions. But we don't live by that ethic today. If today's ethics require I protect against Darwin, they require you play along too.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-evidence-covid-vaccines-transmission.html
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/may/02/vaccinated-people-less-likely-to-pass-covid-on
It reduced transmission but didn't stop it.
Thank you for getting it and for letting us know how difficult it is to stay protected or not.
I went to the grocery store and wore a mask because NicK hasn't gotten his vaccine. I also had a heart to heart talk with the store manager.
I told him why I am wearing a mask but I in no way want his staff to go back to mandatory masks because of my position. He explained why he was wearing one and said he doesn't want it mandatory either. I told him I thought that his staff deserved compensation for working through the pandemic. He said they had been. I said it sounded like it was being handled the way I would want it to. I also told him that he knows that I shop there because of their staff and they are still sanitizing their carts, one chain of 4 I used to shop at and the staff. I told him if you mandate masks again you are going to lose your best employees. So if you hear that it is coming down from "corporate" please let me know and I'll let my thoughts be known. I'm not afraid of advocating for employees, who have been loyal as fuck, especially at a place that I spend tens of thousands of dollars every year.
The manager appreciated my concern and assured me that if he needed customer's requests he would reach out to me.
I am not sure what is the right way is a other than everyone doing what they think is best for them.
Is that being part of the problem?
Have you come across this Lambada variant?
I've been wearing a mask because 1) I could be a carrier, and 2) I want to help destigmatize mask wearing.
I pay close attention to hand sanitation and distancing to try to protect myself.
Would mandating masks help at this point? I don't know. I think somebody out there is having fun making up bullshit about the vaccine and posting it. It becomes almost a religious thing for some people to defy all the medical advice.
So I guess like 60 percent of Alabama will go into infection unvaccinated. :grimace: 1 or 2% of them will die.
Thanks, those are form a bit later than the time period I was thinking about, but I can't find anything from back then, so I will take your word for it, my memory is not what it used to be.
Why do I always read your words with a snivelling, high-pitched tone?
I haven’t heard anywhere that the virus can spread easily among the vaccinated, and your nasally diatribe failed to inform me of the contrary. One quote of some expert will suffice.
Your comment shows exactly the attitude which makes the problem worse.
The belief that we could control a virus by controlling human beings is only the most recent mistake of man’s hubris.
I'm not sure which problem you mean.
The problem of people resisting vaccination, mask-wearing, hand-washing, social-distancing...
Firstly, it's not medical advice, it's public health advice, you of all people should know the difference.
Secondly - the public health advice from the experts -
Quoting Stefan Baral, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, writing in the BMJ
People have legitimate reasons to be wary of both government advice and public health advice. Both have been wrong in the past, both have been shown to be swayed by monied interests, both have shown a shocking lack of transparency and a roundly condemned failure to properly gather and respond to the emerging data, both have been mired in controversy and not a single panel, nor advisory body isn't replete with those either lobbied by or directly invested in the pharmaceutical industry.
People may well be wrong about resisting these policies, but it's absurdly naive to suggest it's similar to religious dogma.
Of course. I was talking about people who believe Bill Gates engineered the virus to make a profit off the vaccines. They're living in an alternate reality. I don't think there's any way to reach them. Apparently you haven't met any of them. It's really kind of astonishing how numerous they are.
I think it's because a lot of vaccines do result in herd immunity that a lot of people assumed this would be the case as well.
Pretty cool that you are personifying me in your head. I didn't realise I'm that important to you. Alas, you just sound like me reading text. Anyhoo, as to the subject, you're turning it around. Show me one expert that claimed the Pfizer vaccine would halt transmission. There aren't any.
I only said that they never mentioned how quickly the virus can circulate among the vaccinated, specifically as it pertains to vaccine certificates, which are rolling out across the globe. In fact, such a scenario was only recently modelled and released just yesterday.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95025-3
So much for vaccine certificates.
Who are they? Pfizer and Moderna did mention it: they didn't know what the effect was so that would be somewhere between no effect to herd immunity through vaccination and every possibility in between. If by they you mean governments, well, not the first time political decisions aren't fact based, or as I suspect in this case, incorrectly interpreted with a large serving of wishful thinking.
I'm not in favour of vaccine passports by the way but I wouldn't be even if vaccination would lead to herd immunity.
I see. It's a serious issue, but glad to hear you're on the right side of it.
Quoting frank
No, not really. It's something of an urban legend over here that such people exist in America... you guys do everything so much bigger over there, even your version of stupid is bigger than ours.
You can't attend school without vaccinations.
What's so special about covid that it in particular violates our rights when it is required?
The primary difference between the measles vaccine and the covid vaccine is that the former was developed during a time when we believed in medical science and not in unsupported conspiracy theories. We'd be stuck with measles today if the vaccine were developed today.
I’m just a layman and am relaying my own, admittedly limited knowledge, as conferred to me by everyone from public health officials, journalists and politicians. From here forward I’ll be sure to include pharmaceutical companies.
You have no idea. Some Americans believe the vaccine has a nano tracking device in it. Like, they really believe that.
It's not that recent as disease and pestilence have been the norm in human history. To have ships on quarantine for example is an age old way fight diseases.
Interestingly Stephen Pinker has remarked that Xenophobia is an evolutionary defense against epidemics.
Yeah, I think you're right, it was more a media (or possibly even just social) narrative than anything specifc. The pharmaceuticals were clearly more circumspect about their claims than I recalled.
One thing I do remember from the time is epidemiologists actually asking the pharmaceuticals to test for reduced transmission whilst they were doing the Ps III, they wouldn't do it. Not a 'valuable endpoint' apparently (meaning there's no additional income they can make from knowing that, on top of knowing the vaccine is safe and effective).
Gotta love a public-private partnership, but at least that work was done eventually...
You guys are so cute. We don't mention David Icke though, he's one of ours, sorry.
Enough people couldn't have vaccinated early on, even if they wanted to, because there wasn't enough of the vaccine, and in many countries, there still isn't. Like India, where Delta is from.
Oh god. Millenia of philosophy down the drain.
Mankind will probably recover from covid, but less likely from the stupidity and hostility with which so many people respond to it.
I can't speak beyond the US, but vaccines have been available for all since April. You've also been able to walk in without an appointment for well over a month and get vaccinated for free. There is no excuse for anyone from California to New York to be caught up in this wave and get sick from Covid.
So sure, I have a different view of those in India, but that's not who I was referring to.
Quoting baker
And yet you provide no philosophy at all, just a lament your excuses aren't taken seriously.
What excuses? Copy-paste them.
Quoting baker
Oh dear.
Alas, philosophy provides little protection from viruses.
Really??? I wonder... :chin:
That is, the very people hell bent on keeping the economy going and whining about masking are the cause of the interruptions with the economy and the cause for increased masking.
This isn't a right versus left battle. It's an irresponsible/ignorant versus responsible/informed battle, with the former wanting to protect their right to be irrational.
The one glimmer of hope is that the 65+ numbers are truly impressive, in some states at 100%, even Alabama at 84%. https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker
Oh, Alabama is higher than I thought. That's encouraging
Assuming that physical threats are primary, which ones take precedence? Are deaths by automobile to be taken slightly? How about death due to gun violence? How about drug overdoses?
But you can’t separate the two, for a spate of gun violence might erupt from an increase in the divorce rate, or from an increase in drug use by parents despairing over the loss of their children...
...society has, however, learned to deal with these problems in a general way: when there is a “mental health crisis”, we never hear of therapists not having enough couches to accommodate all the new patients overflowing their offices, like we hear of hospitals not having enough beds to accommodate all the Covid patients coming in. The measure, therefore, of a health crisis, mental or physical (and it’s never mental), is how much stress it places upon the resources of the hospital to accommodate all the incoming patients in a way that accords with standard proceeded: if you have to triage, put ER patients under a tent without immediate access to a ventilator in the parking-lot, then it is a crisis.
The only exception is the very rare corner cases of people who legitimately cannot do either, or kids in the case of the vaccine.
The actual "freedom" under debate is the freedom to display tokens of allegiance to Der Clownen Fürher. Such displays, to such a baleful lord, must come at a price.
It is an imposition on civil liberties, and governments should and sometimes do acknowledge that.
But freedom of choice is not really a criteria. If your not wearing a mask only affected you, then it would be much more straightforward, but if your not wearing a mask causes others to fall ill or die, then that ought to overrule the freedom of choice argument.
Where I am, mask wearing is compulsory in shops, you can be fined, I think it's $500.00 for breaches, but myself and everyone I know just goes along, for those reasons.
The lunatic anti-vax, anti-mask fringe have blood on their hands in this matter.
It's telling how readily 'expert' opinion is wielded and dropped depending on it's correlation with current social group ideology. Experts from public health tell you to mask and vaccinate - anyone who doesn't is an idiot. Experts from public health tell you that blaming the people themselves has no part in a public health response - fuck 'em, they don't know what they're talking about.
Even if it were true that masking protected the unvaccinated (which it isn't - masking protects the vaccinated too, some 15-35% of whom will not be adequately protected by the vaccine they took), are we to similarly resent protection for other lifestyle choices? Should we rail against treating the ailments of smokers, the overweight, those who don't exercise enough, those whole eat too much bacon...?
Are you a semi-vegetarian, never-smoker, low alcohol consuming, frequent runner in a stress-free job? Why is choosing not to have the available antibodies and so putting oneself at higher risk any different to choosing any of the above lifestyle choices, all of which have been demonstrably linked to diseases which put more ten times more pressure on health services than the pandemic has, hell, all of which have been implicated in the severity of Covid.
Only one lifestyle inflicted weakness is railed against - not having the antibodies to one variant of covid-19. One could be overweight, have type II diabetes, have cancer-risking polyps from poor diet, have lung fibrosis from smoking, have high cholesterol from poor diets and lack of exercise, have a weakened heart from a sedentary lifestyle, have lowered immune response from poor exercise and stress management... All are choices one made which left one more at risk of diseases which the public health services have to manage.
One particular lifestyle choice which has become the badge of choice for the 'right-minded' gang is the only one railed against. Can you explain why?
Who's 'we' in this?
I'll repeat the advice from the experts I posted in the main coronavirus thread.
Quoting Monica Gandhi, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral writing in the BMJ
The blood is on the hands of the people whose responsibility it was to pay for the monitoring which should have caught the emergence early, but didn't due to tax cuts. It's on the hands of the people who delayed in shutting borders and locking down hotspots. It's on the hands of the authorities whose mixed messages have sown this confusion in the first place. It's on the hands of organisations like Facebook, whose draconian banning of alternate opinion which later turned out to be perfectly valid has, without doubt, put faith in media messages back by a hundred years. It's on the hands of the virologists who signed Daszak's letter and allowed him to lead the enquiry into the lab leak despite the glaring conflict of interest, putting trust in 'the science' at it's lowest point in the pandemic, just when it needed a real boost.
At very bottom of the list of the bloody-handed, are the few people caught up in all this mess without enough knowledge and intelligence in these matters to find their way through it.
I think safety comes first. If we allow people act so freely they will not respect public rules and spaces because most of them do not care at all.
Wearing a mask should be as important as a security car belt as you explained. Delta variation appeared due to the big and quick infections among the people. The only way of preventing this issue is more responsibility...
Do the most of the people have responsibility? No so we have to act applying the law
Yeah. Worse still, as Baral and dozens of others in public health have pointed out (to stony silence from the media), it draws attention away from the very thing we need the spotlight firmly pointing at - which responses worked and which didn't? What needs doing better next time? Those suggesting that the main improvement would be 'have a population who unquestioningly do as they're told' should stop and think about what they're suggesting for a minute.
It's not even necessary for everyone to be vaccinated, so blame-shaming those that aren't is even more ridiculous. As a public health intervention, one of the reasons why mass vaccinations are such an excellent policy is that they don't need 100% compliance to work - people can continue to be stupid, or rebellious, or individualistic, or untrusting... whatever, as people always will be. It doesn't matter, the policy will still work pretty well.
What doesn't work is shutting down emerging disease monitoring to save a bit of cash, or closing community health services just as they're needed most, or promoting lifestyles which make one more vulnerable to diseases like this, or providing little to no support for those needing to isolate...etc. I'm ranting, but it pisses me off that people have become so obsessed with the inevitable handful of resistance when there's good solid targets of blame available. We're at over 70% take up in England. That's really good for a first time vaccine, we couldn't realistically expect better than that.
In England we are still wearing masks and there is still talk of people having to have Covid_19 passports to show that they have been vaccinated to enter some venues.
As far as mask wearing, I think that most people are accepting it but if it becomes like wearing a seat belt it would be a problem. That is because many people find it hard doing things while wearing a mask. Personally, I have tripped over a couple of times, got knocked down by a bike once, and knocked over items on shelves because I can't see what I am doing. That is because the mask steams up my glasses. I even sometimes stop wearing my glasses in shops because it becomes so hard to see.
Also, we don't know how much protection masks provide really. They only protect others rather than the wearer and it is not as if there have been scientific studies to show that masks have stopped transmission of the virus. It probably only stops the spread of germs if people cough.
As far as enforcing vaccines, I think it is starting to happen. If people are forced to show proof that they have been vaccinated to do many activities, I think that this would be going too far, and would restrict civil liberties. On the other hand, if loads of people choose to not be vaccinated there is no end to the spread of the virus, so it will go on indefinitely. Another problem is that even people who have been vaccinated can still get the virus, but it definitely does offer some hope.
So, generally, I would argue that mask wearing may be useful for stopping some transmission but it should not be enforced in the same way as seatbelts. Also, it will help if most people have vaccines but I am not sure that it can be enforced through people being only allowed to enter public places through proof of having been vaccinated.
On the other hand, we will probably get to the point where people can't get jobs in health care without agreeing to being vaccinated and, perhaps, that may be acceptable because it is to protect the public. This may be acceptable as a way of risk minimization in the same way as it being necessary to agree to police clearance in order to work with vulnerable people.
This aged well.
One Year After Coronavirus Pandemic Declared, How Many Deaths From Covid-19?
And that was with all the various rules re. masks and lockdowns. Imagine if we'd have just carried on as if it were the flu.
***** Please take OFF your mask to save grandma! *****
--This message is intended for our 'healthy vaccinated' people. If you are vaccinated but have an underlying condition (susceptible to the ill effects of covid), then this message is NOT for you.--
Q. -- What happens when the virus encounters an 'unmasked' healthy vaccinated person?
A. -- The virus (viral particles) dies, and is permanently removed from the environment, thereby making the environment less virally contaminated and safer for vulnerable people.
C. -- This is a GOOD thing. Cleaning up (removing) the virus from the environment helps save the lives of those people that are too vulnerable to get vaccinated.
Q. -- What happens when the virus encounters a 'masked' healthy vaccinated person?
A. -- Nothing. The virus (viral particles) continues on its way, keeping the environment virally contaminated, thereby increasing the likelihood of "killing grandma", and prolonging and perpetuating this pandemic.
**********
Be rational. Don't adhere to the irrational game of "let the rare exceptions dictate the general rule". This only results in more harm than good.
Demanding that lifeguards no longer jump into the pool to save an infant who fell in the deep end for fear that the lifeguards themselves might drown (or accidentally drown the infant) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.
Demanding that ambulance drivers no longer respond to the home or scene of an accident for fear of getting in an accident themselves (or accidentally killing someone) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.
Demanding that healthy vaccinated people put on masks for fear of dying themselves (or killing someone else) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.
***********
What say you?
That this kind of bullshit is one of the reasons why serious debate is next to impossible. Laymen weighing in with a superficial understanding of the science and no references or citations to back up their outlandish claims. If you can't present either your own credentials or a scientific paper to back up your assertions then please just stand down. It really shouldn't need to be pointed out that the situation is extremely serious with millions dying, we don't need armchair speculation, we certainly don't need imbeciles imploring people to take action against all scientific advice.
If you don't want to wear a mask, don't wear a mask. You need more than your ad hoc opinion before imploring others to do likewise.
Not once in your emotional rant did you refute my logic. -- can you? -- can you find a logical flaw in my words (other than just saying they are wrong)?
How about putting aside the emotion, ad hominems, and the irrationality (comitting an appeal-to-authority fallacy) and just simply point out the error you believe I am making.
Fair enough? Or are you not capable of a rational discussion? I'll wait...
Remember: Science that disregards logic is BAD Science.
You've had the errors pointed out to you in the last thread in which you made this same appeal, there's no point in doing it again.
To be fair the pickings are slim here.
The virus doesn't live long outside a host.
So let's keep this philosophical. This explanation is a classic example of the psychology fallacy. https://effectiviology.com/psychologists-fallacy/
You are suggesting that you are immune from the tribal mentality of the groups you describe and that you have figured out why I'm believing as I am. You have no way of observing me objectively if our psychology (yours included) dictates our positions.
It's also obvious that those in favor of the vaccinations will have certain group characteristics in statistically higher percentages than those opposed to vaccines, but it is illogical to assume that any particular member of the group holds to any particular ideology. To do so is the flaw of stereotyping and is the definition of prejudging (i.e. prejudice in the non-prerogative sense). It might interest you to know that if a meeting is divided into an area with maskers and non-maskers, I'd most certainly be in the non-mask section. I also voted 100% Republican last election, except for the presidential race, which I abstained from. This is just to say that your psychoanalysis is incorrect, your grouping theory is incorrect as it relates to individuals, you are doing nothing but stereotyping, and you have no way of removing yourself from the rigid groups you've created in order to declare yourself objective.
I've also not suggested telling people they're idiots will help the situation, but I also don't think it will hurt. I don't live under the illusion I'm being listened to in any meaningful way. If I were a public health administrator, I'd probably talk to my marketing department and arrive at the best way to get my message across.
Quoting Isaac
This strikes me as an extreme conflation of categories. When did vaccinations participation become a "lifestyle choice"? I take lifestyle choices to be things like what we eat, our forms of recreation, and things that meaningfully affect our day to day lives. If you want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet to feel the wind through your hair and you ride to live and live to ride, that could be characterized as a lifestyle choice, even if it's extremely risky. Whether to spend 5 minutes getting a vaccine isn't a lifestyle choice. I'd call that "getting a vaccination."
At any rate, my question back to you is why do you single out the Covid vaccination as the single vaccine we can avoid and proclaim it's off limits, but as to measles and whooping cough you allow that we can impose these on our children? Why can't I proclaim those vaccines as "lifestyle choices" so that I can take those too outside the purview of societal control?
Quoting Benkei
A couple of things to this. The first is as noted above that vaccine choices are not akin to choices not to exercise and to eat poorly. I think a more apt analogy is my requirement you wear a seatbelt when you drive. We can't create a slippery slope where we must declare every simple act of social responsibility a violation of individual rights such that we can ask nothing of our citizens. My question is why can the measles vaccine be required, but not Covid. Are you willing to do away with all vaccine requirements?
Second, I think your argument is a steelman, and if fails for the same reason as would a strawman. Both are hypothetical arguments that your opponent would never submit. As in the case of the strawman, it's an argument so weak it would never be made. In the case of the steelman, it's a contrived argument and would never be suggested. That is, the anti-Covid vaccine folks are not arguing that they have the right to be stupid. That might be the case with those who go hang gliding, ride motorcycles without helmets, or who rock climb, but not so with anti-vaxxers. So, perhaps if (and this is a very big if) the anti-vaxxers argued they knew they were idiots and they had the right to be, just like the guy filling his belly with donuts, I would respond as I did that the analogy is not apt. But that's not what they're arguing. They're arguing that the vaccines are dangerous, they don't work, and they are part of a government conspiracy to control a gullible public, etc. It's the difference between arguing that I have a right to ride a motorcycle without a helmet because it's my life to live as I see fit versus arguing I have a right to ride a motorcycle without a helmet because helmets are dangerous and cause brain injury.
The first admits to one's own bad choices and asks to be left alone. The second is based on a lie, misinformation, gullibility, and it will likely result in others being drawn into that bad choice.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Roger Gregoire
I'm with Isaac on this one. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that a significant proportion of the viral load in the atmosphere would be removed by the lungs of people not wearing masks. I looked, but couldn't find evidence either way on the web. My conclusion - the scenario described in Roger Gregoire's post is unsupported unless he can provide evidence. This isn't a matter of "logic." It's a matter of fact. As far as I can see, RG has his facts wrong.
The evidence for masks is lacking, but not so for the vaccines. There is no argument as far as I can see that people shouldn't vaccinate. The masks are rearing their head again because of lack of vaccinated, and if they can't mandate the best choice (vaccinations), they'll mandate the distant second (masks). Masks are easy to enforce because they're visible.
I agree. I'm not really interested in the effectiveness of wearing masks. I wear them when I'm told and don't when I'm not like all good subjects of our corporate overlords. My typical response to someone who objects to wearing masks when it is recommended by public health authorities is very logical - Just shut up and put on the mask, asshole.
@Roger Gregoire went a step further in his argument then typical mask deniers. He claims that, if vaccinated people don't wear masks, it will actually remove a significant portion of the virus from the air, thus helping protect the unprotected. That was the argument I was responding to.
I don't see anywhere me claiming to be immune or objective. As for figuring out why you believe what you do, it wasn't my intention. The part of my post you're quoting here simply claims that you followed expert advice in one case where it tallied with a popular social identity and yet reject it in another where it does not. I haven't really gone as far as to assess why.
Quoting Hanover
Social groups overlap political ones.
Quoting Hanover
It will.
Quoting Hanover
Why? It takes five minutes to get a tattoo, but doing so is a lifestyle choice, so it's not the time. Why wouldn't getting a vaccine be a lifestyle choice? Not doing so certainly seems to be something people use to define themselves certainly no less than helmetless-biker, or solo-climber. You have faith in the medical establishment, you don't see it as a threat, so to you it's nothing. To others it defines them. That's the whole point. Your 'lifestyle choice' is that it's a nothing event.
Quoting Hanover
You can. As I said in my response to @Benkei above, the great thing about vaccinations as a public health response is exactly that we don't need everyone to take them for it to work. With measles is high (95%), with polio only 80%, with Covid it might be two thirds of the population to get the R0 to less than 1. Making a lifestyle choice to not have a vaccine is fine. If the number of people making that choice ever breaches the thresholds, then there would need to be a public policy change, but until then a few people not taking it is fine. Beyond that, not all vaccines are the same. The flu vaccine, for example, is still not widely regarded as necessary and there's arguments about what groups should and should not have it. The MMR vaccine, by contrast is almost universally agreed on. The covid vaccine is not even out of its testing period yet, so the approval of it's use for all cohorts is moot. (note, this is not the same as the decision that it's the best strategy to deal with the crisis, which is a different decision, on which there is widespread agreement).
Quoting tim wood
It's like talking to a brick wall here. Do you understand the very simple concept of other people not believing the things you believe. Is that just too complicated for you? Other people do not believe the danger of the vaccine is less than miniscule against the real hazard of Covid. Why would you expect them to make decisions based on what you believe and not on what they believe?
Furthermore, you're simply conflating prevalence with risk (something of a bugbear of mine). The prevalence of side-effects of the vaccine is lower (by miles) than the prevalence of harms from covid. This only informs the risk, it does not constitute the risk as anyone with above a secondary school education should know.
Quoting tim wood
We've just got though discussing the effect on other people. If you have some data to share on the ability of the vaccine to reduce transmission rates to lower than those of healthy, asymptomatic carriers, then I'd be very interested to read it because I've not seen anything to date. Absent of this data, I don't see any justification for suggesting taking the vaccine is a public benefit if you're fit and healthy and live in a relatively isolated area. As things stand, there's a very low chance you'll get a develop a more severe viral load than a vaccinated person, especially in the nasal mucosa which are hardly affected by the vaccine and yet are a primary site for transmission. Social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing are, however, effective barriers to transmission. From Dr Paul Offit (one of Americas' most strident pro-vaccine advocates, by the way)...
Now tell me how the vaccine is a public duty for someone committed to a strategy that one of the country's leading immunologists suggests provides a virtually zero chance of transmission, whilst to date there's no evidence at all that the vaccine even reduces transmission lower than a healthy immune response would.
Review our posting history on this topic (a topic of science primarily). Who do you think would exceed whom in a count of the number of scientific papers cited and experts quoted per post? If you deal in facts (but I only beliefs) then you should have no trouble in citing them.
We'll start with your evidence that in every single case "any danger the vaccine itself presents... is less than miniscule against the real hazard of Covid and its ability to mutate and spread". Not just on average - that would be the prevalence rate sensibly used to determine public policy - but in every single case - which is what's required for your sycophantic moralising about each and every person who does not want to take the vaccine.
Then we'll have your evidence of the relative transmission rates of viral loads from the vaccinated vs. the healthy asymptomatic carrier across all variants.
Then we'll have your evidence for vaccination exceeding non-pharmaceutical interventions in reducing transmission.
I presume, from your dogmatic level of certainty, that you simply have this data to hand, yes?
People without the virus won’t spread the virus. So why would we force them to wear masks? Why would we force them to do anything? Because we are ignorant and scared, two frames of mind that should never set policy.
Depends entirely on where you're standing, what protection you're wearing, how good you are at seeking cover, your chances of disarming said gunman... On average, poor. A fully armoured and trained Special Forces operative, pretty good. That's the whole point of differentiating between prevalence and risk.
Quoting tim wood
As public policy, yes. As a moral requirement, why? If one is sufficient then one has absolved one's moral responsibility to others by adopting it.
Quoting tim wood
Again, you've cited no evidence at all that avoiding vaccination in all cases will either make me sick or make others around me sick. It is only true on average as a matter of public policy.
Quoting tim wood
Why on earth would you do that? I mean, disregarding your inability to tell the difference between prevalence and risk, this doesn't even make sense from either. You have around a 1:100 chance of getting to that point even if you catch covid, and that's assuming you're of exactly average health.
Do you run? Do you smoke, drink, eat red meat? Do you work a stressful job? Spend a lot of time sitting down? Do you eat plentiful fruit and vegetables? Do you live in a city? - What do you think people who are suffering from preventable cancers and heart disease 'wish to God' they'd done about these entirely demonstrable factors? Do you "take a lesson from published reports" on these conditions too?
Quoting tim wood
That prevalence is relevant for public policy, but it is risk that's relevant for carrying out one's own moral duty.
That’s not what I said.
Hi T Clark, to help better understand the profound effect (safety) that this would create, imagine a fixed number of viral particles floating around in a given environment. Further imagine Person A (who is a vulnerable non-vaccinated person; i.e. an elderly person who is too vulnerable to receive the vaccine). She is at great risk here in this environment, wouldn't you agree?
Now imagine a healthy vaccinated 'unmasked' Person B walks into the same room/environment as this poor lady.
Q. Is she now 'less safe' or 'safer'?
A. She is now at least 'twice' (if not much more) safer! Not only is the viral load (within this room) shared by another person, this other person is actually removing viral particles from the environment.
So, now imagine 5 healthy vaccinated 'unmasked' people (C, D, E, F, G) walk into the room. Can you now see the protective effects on our vulnerable population by unmasking our healthy vaccinated population?
The mechanism you describe seems very, very unlikely to me. I certainly won't accept it without evidence.
Hopefully the successful enaction of said policy among exactly the number of people the policymakers are relying on. Policymakers make policies which apply to the average (or sometimes broad categories). The success of those policies depends on whether they're right about the science, obviously, but also in whether they're right about the average. None of this has any bearing on whether the success of the policy in in any way dependant on the compliance of the non-average. That is a factor that can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. It's not unreasonable even, in some cases, to assume that the compliance of the non-average with a broad policy actually hampers the objective. Policy-makers will, for example, often not specify each and every at-risk group, but will instead rely on those groups knowing who they are and seeking advice accordingly.
Those responsible for public health policy are mostly united in saying that one of the main lessons learnt from the response to covid is to separate promotion of current policy from the discussion of future policy. Moralising the following of current policy in all cases is damaging to the need for dynamic, responsive and data informed response management.
It is simple statistics and simple logic.
1. The more people that share a viral load within a given environment, the less the risk to any individual within that environment.
2. People removing the viral contamination means there is less viral contamination; less risk.
There is no rocket science implied here, just straight simple logic.
As for masks, if you're in your house or in your car or in a park with ample room between people, you should be ok, most of the time. In closed spaces with strangers, wear them. If you have breathing problems or a panic attack or something like that, I don't think taking it off at that moment will be a massive scandal.
Otherwise, this is going to last much longer than it should.
And again, vaccine availability for all countries should really be priority no.1 for almost everybody.
The need for law will be part of the policy decision. Something on which 100% compliance is required and advisable might be best made law.
Quoting tim wood
The claim isn't that people know exactly their personal circumstances and how they might impact a broad policy, it's that policymakers don't know this, nor assume to.
Quoting Isaac
Ah. Yeah. It's not always easy to keep one's cool about when people say really crazy stuff regarding vaccines and such, but moralizing is usually a bad idea.
So far as I see, however, I don't see a disagreement about the use of vaccines per se. Mask wearing can be nebulous, sure, but if you're in agreement about the important stuff then rest doesn't seem to matter as much.
I understand the frustration.
My point was that my position does not correlate with my social identity, nor does the data suggest that for any particular person it must. The data set simply states that certain types of people often do certain types of things, but your attempt to directly causally link them isn't based upon any data. Ergo, your suggestion I believe as I do due to social club doesn't hold. Quoting Isaac
You're doing some torturous disservice to the phrase "lifestyle choice" if you're now using it to describe an adherence to evidence based science. But sure, if you mean some choose to be irrational and some not, and it's all a matter of which sort of life you want to live, then use the term however you want, but at least appreciate you're just creating a euphemism that means "irrational." When you say I'm in Club Rational and that's the reason I scoff at the mumblings of Club Irrational, I can live with that.
Getting a tattoo doesn't bother me because it doesn't affect the commons. People not getting vaccines puts us on the brink of another shut down and another requirement to wear masks.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, if 95 people are needed to put out a raging fire and there are 100 in the room, you can sit it out and wait for everyone else to throw water on it and claim you're just as good as all those who helped out.
But, if more than 5 of you happen to choose not throw water on the fire, the 6+ of you can say "watching fires, not extinguishing fires, is my lifestyle choice, so stop being so judgey."
It's my lifestyle choice to be judgemental, (so stop being so prescriptive.) especially judgemental of people who don't help out when helping out is easy and important.
I believe it does. You're just confusing social identity with political affiliation. They're not the same thing.
Quoting Hanover
How so? Is rejection of societal norms not a lifestyle choice? Beatniks, anarchists, Protestants...all seem to be lifestyle choices. Rejecting the authority of the state, the church, the establishment, 'da man'...are all lifestyle choices, but rejecting the authority of medical sciences is not? Why not?
Quoting Hanover
What's a 'rational' decision about who to trust? What's the logical algorithm we put in place here, whereby we can say "you ought to trust X, it's the rational thing to do". Or are you seriously suggesting that people have no grounds at all to not trust governments, government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry?
Quoting Hanover
Again, you'd need to present some evidence for this, I've not seen any.
Quoting Hanover
That's not what's happening here at all. The fire actually needs 95 people to throw water on it, but 5 people don't agree, they think throwing water on it will make it worse. That's OK because only 95 people need to throw water on it. Public policy doesn't need to do anything to compel those 5 to act against their sincere beliefs, moralising flag waivers don't need to either.
What goes wrong here is that the situation is changing rapidly as new data gets analysed. There's been genuine uncertainty among the vaccine experts about who should and should not have the vaccine. There's still disagreement about the under 12 age group, there's disagreement about intervals, about boosters... the one thing that makes it difficult to enact public policy in that environment is not the handful of malcontents who aren't going to follow anyway (we factored them in from the start, they're a known quantity) it's people treating interim guidance as if it were the 11th commandment. It makes changes much harder to implement and sets up strongly polarized groups which are then hard to reach out to even if they might otherwise have been responsive to new developments.
Not usually, no. Usually stupidity is a mob rules kind of thing. And mobs are fairly easily led, provided you use the right tool. Fear is the best tool. As fear increases, rational thought decreases, and people are more easily led. We have fear by the truck load now, every t.v, every radio, and every newspaper is just spewing it all over. The internet is awash with it. Currently the touted solution to the fear, that which will save us all, is the vaccine. And woe unto any that dareth counter that claim. They are the heathen, the non-believer, to be vilified and reviled at every opportunity. Wait a year or two, then the non-believer will be placed into camps via the train load by the enlightened mob.
There isn't much chance to defend oneself against that level of stupid. But everybody has to die sometime eh, so no worries. It'll all end the same way eventually.
Firstly, imagine a fixed number of viral particles floating around in a given environment/room. Further imagine a 'masked' vulnerable un-vaccinated elderly lady (who was too vulnerable to receive the vaccine) is within this room. I think we all agree that this poor lady is at great risk here in this environment. So now imagine that an 'unmasked' healthy (w/ strong immune system) vaccinated young man walks into the same room as this poor lady. What happens now, is this lady now "more safe" or "less safe"?
I would like to see where everybody stands on this. My vote is obviously E, ...but what say you?
Quoting Roger Gregoire
Both show the same fundamental misunderstanding of his viruses work which you were told the last time you posted this crap.
The viruses in the environment are ephemeral and so of trivial importance in long term public health policy. Viruses multiply rapidly in people. So the only population we're remotely concerned about in your scenario is that inside the woman and inside the man. The population outside either is tiny by comparison and will all become inactive soon anyway.
So the woman is at greater risk because the unmasked man has exposed her to his population in addition to that which is in the environment. The amount he removes from this environmental population is trivially small compared to the amount he sheds.
Isaac, does this include healthy people with strong immune systems that have been vaccinated???
From what I've read, the amount of viral replication within the body is dependent on one's immune system. In other words, those with weak immune systems will replicate more than one with a marginal immune system, and those with strong healthy immune systems will have little to no replication.
Yes.
Quoting Roger Gregoire
Correct. All of which are still much much larger than the quantities they remove from any environment (which, don't forget, were going to become inactivated anyway within hours).
Isaac, so are you saying that the lady would be 'safer' if she were all alone (socially isolated/distanced), within this contaminated room?
That's correct, yes. The numbers of virus particles in that room is smaller than the population in the vast majority of even asymptomatic carriers and, more importantly, they'll all be inactivated within a few hours anyway. The main risk to the woman in your scenario is if someone continually replenishes the environmental population from their own.
So in general (disregarding this particular room example), do you believe that surrounding a vulnerable person with immune (vaccinated) people makes it 'more safe' or 'less safe' to this vulnerable person?
Less safe, obviously. The main source of viruses for the vulnerable person is other people. If there are no other people around her the viruses in the environment will rapidly be inactivated and she'll be completely safe from infection.
To be abundantly clear -
Being isolated is best, within a few hours they'll be no more viruses at all for you to pick up
Being surrounded by immune people is second best as they'll be replenishing the surrounding air and surfaces, but not by much.
Being surrounded by asymptomatic people is next best as asymptomatic people shed fewer viruses.
Being surrounded by symptomatic people is worst as they will be replenishing the environmental population, possibly even faster than it is being inactivated.
Removal of virus particles from the environment via breathing them in is completely irrelevant. The rate at which a person breathes in viruses and then inactives them with their own immune system is considerably slower than the rate at which they're inactivated anyway by UV and dehydration.
So you don't believe in "herd immunity"? ...in other words, so you don't believe there is protective effect to the vulnerable by integrating immune people within the herd?
I just said, being surrounded by immune people is better than being surrounded by non-immune people. Are you having trouble reading?
And also - 'herd immunity' isn't "protective effect to the vulnerable by integrating immune people within the herd" it is explained here https://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vk/herd-immunity. It's about reducing the wider population of the virus by limiting it's ability to reach new hosts before it's current host kills the population in their own body.
That wasn't my question. My question was not about immune versus non-immune, for that's a no brainer (we all agree immune is safer than not immune).
No, of course not. Surrounded by immune people the person's environment is being replenished with live viruses (albeit at a slow rate), surrounded by no one their environment will be devoid of live viruses within a matter of hours.
So then you believe immune people provide no protective effect to the (vulnerable within the) herd?
No, they just don't provide better protection than spreading everybody out six foot apart, which would be far and away the quickest way of killing the virus population off.
Yes. The most flagrant sign of stupidity is people silencing all those who disagree leading to echo chambers. Both can be found in COVID conspiracy theory communities.
Quoting Book273
Who's more scared, someone who believes that there is a pandemic and that it can be stopped or someone who believes that there is a massive conspiracy by the elite ? Which threat is the hardest to stop ? An important component of fear is the feeling of powerlessness.
Also, emotions evolved for a reason. They often point to a problem to solve. Granted, accepting someone else's solution without thinking is bad, but pretending there's no problem at all is bad too.
This expression is too often misused. 'Silencing' would mean the we don't get to hear from them. Many groups have had the dissemination of their views restricted during this pandemic, but few have been successfully 'silenced'.
What worries me considerably more than the issue of whether nutjobs are allowed to post on corporate hosted vanity projects, is the restrictions on scientific research. Here we'll run into actual silence, as in we'll never hear, by any source, that which might otherwise have been known.
Things like
Covid-19: Sweden vows greater protection for academics as researcher quits after aggressive social media attack
and...
Quoting in Bragazzi NL, Watad A, Amital H, et al.Debate on vaccines and autoimmunity: do not attack the author, yet discuss it methodologically. Vaccine2017
Back in 1995, Susan Wilson did a survey of Australian environmental scientists asking if they believed that they could jeopardise their career prospects or research funding success by speaking out on environmental issues, 50% said 'yes'
In fact in a parallel study of information suppression from scientists, the number one cited reason for self-censorship was "concern about how I may be represented by the media".
As Charles Mills famously said "the deepest problem of freedom for teachers is not the occasional ousting of a professor, but a vague general fear - sometimes politely known as ‘discretion’, ‘good taste’, or ‘balanced judgment’. It is a fear which leads to self-intimidation and finally becomes so habitual that the scholar is unaware of it. The real restraints are not so much external prohibitions as control of the insurgent by the agreements of academic gentlemen."
Honestly, I couldn't care less if the clearly insane conspiracy theorists are given a slot on Farcebook or not. Any restriction on actual scientific research is a hundred times more worrying than the media circus platforms of a few tinfoil hats.
Let's first acknowledge a truth here and that is that water does put out fires. The Covid vaccine works. There is no evidence to the contrary. I mean truth does matter here, right? Why we need to now start asking ourselves about hurting the feelings of those who insist water doesn't stop fires, or the vaccine doesn't work, I'm not real sure. I do have a problem with 5% of the fire stations not having water in order to satisfy the anti-waterers.
Let's also acknowledge that we don't have 95% of the people in agreement here so that we can now leave the loony toons to themselves. If 40% of the people are getting vaccinated and we need that number to be 80%, we're going to have to force 40% in the other direction. It's not as if our anti-vaxxers are this tiny insignificant number.Quoting Isaac
This seems like a non-sequitur false dichotomy. I'd rather murderers be imprisoned than nutjobs be silenced, but I'm not real sure why I'm being given such a strange choice. That is to say, can we not protect our scientists from being silenced and do what is necessary to shut down the persuasiveness of the nutjobs so that we don't get political pushback for rational societal decisions?
I was skeptical about this news but after reading this: I changed my perception.
Yes, I am happy that amount of money lands on wisdom and responsible hands.
Yeah, cool story. It's more likely that she'll become a social worker and get super burned out by her 40s from working with crazy people and drug addicts, so hopefully she'll save some of the money for vacations.
:rofl: :death: That's a pretty Kierkegaardian point of view but I am agree because life tend to be pity and dreams are just dreams.
Or maybe every rose has its thorns? :worry:
Well, I hope so, but that's not what the authors I've cited see happening (nor my own personal experience - but that counts for little in public debate).
The problem is that the nutjobs are being 'silenced' by checking to see who's following 'The Science'™. The trouble is there's no such thing as 'The Science' yet if by the term we simply mean prevailing scientific opinion, then it is not only allowable, but in fields such as medicine, absolutely essential that actual scientists do question 'The Science' it's their job to do so.
As Dr Thana Cristina de Campos-Rudinsky wrote in the JME recently
What's happening in academic establishments and publication media is that researchers questioning the prevailing scientific view, as is their job, are being targeted by the same Twitter and Facebook vigilantes who think they're helping by ostracising the nutjobs. The trouble is the most are not scientifically literate enough to tell the difference.
It's a perfect storm, unfortunately, as the prevailing scientific opinion just happens, right now, to coincide with the vested interests of the world's largest and most powerful corporate bodies. It's hard, but not impossible, to research and publish areas which clash with these interests in normal times. When they have a small home guard of laymen patrolling the borders it's basically impossible.
Quoting Hanover
And this is an example...
It's not the truth that the Covid vaccine works. The Covid vaccination programme is unquestionably an excellent public health initiative, as most vaccination programmes are, there's barely a scientist in the world who would disagree with that. But that's not the same as it being true that it works (where by 'works' I assume you're referring to some amalgam of efficacy, safety, and prospect of reducing the viral population).
Does it reduce symptoms in the full range of vulnerability? Will it reduce transmission below that of a healthy immune response? Will it reduce the wild viral population as a genotype? Is it suitable for children? Is it more or less effective than other available strategies? What are the long term effects beyond the five year mark?
You'll find 'the science' is not anywhere near sure about any of those things, and of course it's not, it's not even meant to be. The drug's not even past it's final testing stage yet, the FDA have yet to even approve it. Their emergency approval is
...i.e. as I said - an excellent public health strategy, not a validation of any and all scientific claims about the vaccine itself. But even after full approval, the science continues. Only last year scientists discovered that Roaccutane worsens depression and has been linked to increased suicide rates, it's been prescribed to teenagers for years, passed all of it's safety and efficacy trials at the time, a fully approved drug, but the depression link was something which took longer to develop than the trial period tested for. Fortunately, scientists continue to question, test, and refine treatments, as they should. Another example is the efficacy of the HPV vaccine in preventing cervical cancer, promoted heavily at the time (again, an excellent public health initiative), but later reviews only last July have shown substantial flaws in the trial methodologies leading the reviewers to conclude that "It is still uncertain whether human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination actually prevents cervical cancer".
It is unnecessary and unhelpful to create (worsen really) an environment which is so hostile to any questioning of the prevailing scientific opinion that actual scientists doing their job in questioning it feel they will be demonised for doing so.
Meh.
Quoting experimental evidence that payments do not increase willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 - JME
Quoting Persuasion, not coercion or incentivisation, is the best means of promoting COVID-19 vaccination - JME
Quoting Ana Wheelock in Vaccine confidence, public understanding and probity: time for a shift in focus? - JME
A fairly comprehensive review by Nancy Jecker at the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, University of Washington School of Medicine concluded against payment incentives, saying that "people who, for a variety of reasons, are reluctant to vaccinate should be treated like adults, not children."
The overwhelming majority of people opposed to vaccination are opposed to it because of a lack of trust in the authorities responsible for creating, administering, and promoting it. Payments are just going to waste precious resources on people who were probably going to take the vaccine anyway, and further erode the trust which is vital in recruiting the people who are currently opposed to it.
An excerpt from a post I wrote back in April and it's still my position (until the Pfizer vaccine is approved by the FDA next month as forecast):
Quoting 180 Proof
You're highly fixated on research. Did you know the vast majority of medical decisions are not based on research?
Yes. I'm not sure what difference that makes to an evaluation of whether incentives are a good thing or not.
Smh
She has been hospitalized since 8/25 with COVID-19. Difficulty breathing required intubation, collapsed lung, able to be reinflated and off the vehnilator as of yesterday, hence the string of letters as she got her phone back.
ICU Psychosis is what she is working on now. Getting her brain back online without corruption.
Rough times for her family and especially scary for her son who cares for his Mom and is terrified of losing her.
Remain humble my friends :sparkle:
Right. Such ulterior motives for (not) publishing ain't cool.
There's a separate problem involved, let's call it tunnel vision.
Say, if 90 studies show the veracity of a vaccine, and 10 show downsides, then weighing all available evidence is equally warranted. That's not always what happens, though, since skeptics/deniers/clowns might just see risks, where subject matter experts acquire a better, more relevant overview.
Sure, "doing your own research" is fine, as long as you know what that means. No tunnel vision, context, bigger picture, overview, histories of similar events, don't just dismiss subject matter experts and turn to deniers. Especially in quarrels/preaching.
Indeed.
Quoting jorndoe
I'm not sure if this is directed at anything I've said here, but the journals I've cited are mainly the JME, which is one of the world's most respected journals of medical ethics. I don't think any of the authors there are 'doing their own research' in the manner you suggest.
If the vaccines are 90% effective as claimed, and 100% of your population is vaccinated then 100% of the people in hospital and ICU will be vaccinated. Moving towards that situation is probably why we see in some areas more vaccinated people in hospital than unvaccinated. In New South Wales 100 % of people in hospital are unvaccinated according to the official figures I last saw (a couple days ago)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/paoneantony/status/1424730996738568195?s=21[/tweet]
Do you have any idea of how addicts are being treated for Covid-19 in the hospital?
I ask because my internet friend who is typing out babble from within the hospital, has a long history of Migraines and likely had an addiction to the pain meds she has been on, is not progressing the way that the are expecting.
The only thing that makes me ask this is because the family is trying to get the pharmacy to talk to the hospital care team.
I realize I am likely asking a question that may not have an answer....
But I know the thinking when NicK was in the ICU, intubated and started having DTs was that they ride them out. Where 15 years ago the thinking was ICU is not the place to go through Detox.
Any ideas?
When infected with Covid the inside of the lungs develop a relatively thick secretion which makes it more difficult to process oxygen and maintain reasonable tidal volumes, hence the shortness of breath associated with Covid. Ventilated patients are given medication treatments to dry up these secretions, thereby reducing the dampness, and viral load, of the exhaled breath. Initially it sounds like a reasonable step, until you consider what effect this will have on the lung tissue: We dry out the slightly thick secretion...and still need it to be permeable, and flexible, to allow for oxygen exchange and proper lung inflation. No wonder only 3% of ventilated patients survived initially. There have been some improvements since then ,but still based on reducing exhaled virus, not patient care.
Changes to the resuscitation process are the same. Old approach: Patient down in cardiac arrest. Call for help, begin chest compressions, help arrives, attach defib pads, continue compressions, shock, etc. New Covid approach: Patient down with cardiac arrest. Leave room, go get isolation cart and place it at the door of patients room, call for help, get dressed in appropriate isolation gear, enter room, begin chest compressions, await other staff (who also must dress for isolation prior to entering room), when staff arrive and are dressed, run code as usual. Please remember, brain death begins at 4 minutes with no circulation. The old way wasn't that successful as the patient had usually been down a few minutes before someone noticed, but it had successes. The new way, which opens with LEAVE THE ROOM, means that the patient will have no one even attempting CPR for at least five minutes, likely closer to eight. So essentially the Covid resuscitation technique is: Patient in cardiac arrest, leave room, go for coffee, notify doctor that family needs to be made aware that patient died due to Covid.
And no, I would not recommend treating the DT's in ICU. Not that ICU can't handle it, just that it is an inappropriate use of resources. Also, to avoid DT's the patient just needs the proper medications, all of which can be administered via IV, in the ICU, or any other floor. As far as "letting them ride them out", your buddy got a nasty ass care team. There is no reason to do that, not best practice, not even inconvenient to treat, just plain old mean.
I was recently in the Regional burn center and I witnessed exactly what you described about everyone leaving the room, the cart in front of the door because the patient that was medivcaed in from a remote town was Covid-19 positive. They moved me to the hall (I burned my eye with a curling iron) and I was able to hear the conversation with the staff and they announced the incoming patient's ETA with the pilots over the ER speaker system.
A male, 65 yrs old had a burn down his throat and mouth (suspected meth consumption.
When he arrived they were questioning him about drinking, he said yes, have you gone through DTs, yes and you know you are Covid-19 positive, yes, any symptoms, yes tightening of his chest and throat. They asked him for family they could call to let them know where you are and that you are going to be intubated, he gave his daughter's name and number.
They got back to me and I don't know what happened to that man but I have a feeling it didn't have a positive outcome.
I am sorry that I didn't explain that NicK who was in ICU for 23 days and intubated/tracheostomy and had the DTs was at the hospital because he had an Aortic dissection both ascending and descending May 2020.
Not that I haven't heard and seen patient's get crappy treatment, I saw it all the time in the emergency department, and still do, but I never really understand why. I am able to still treat my patient properly, even if he is an asshole, although I won't stick around to chat if he is.
I'm a naysayer. The exit path for virus leaving the lung of an intubated patient would be into the ventilator circuit and splat onto the viral filter the protects the exhalation valve. The other path would be around the ETT cuff into the room and then out the window because it's a negative pressure room.
The ventilation strategy they use is tailored to the patient's condition. Lung protection is the most important factor because the patient's lungs are being shredded by the virus.
My first thought is that your friend's brain was affected by the virus. I'm guessing they've already done a head CT to see if she's had a stroke. If it's not that, there's a condition we call covid-brain, and I don't really know what causes it. It's characterized by happy confusion. It should get better eventually.
Hospitals deal with addiction issues every day. An acute setting us not the best place to help a withdrawing patient. So they just give them narcotics to put withdrawal off until the patient is out of danger.
I'm assuming your friend's family has expressed their concerns to the doctors?
Nice thought, and wrong. Ordinarily I would say absolutely correct, but not for Covid. Your position presupposes that the patient is still the most important factor; it isn't. Controlling spread is. Which brings up your earlier points...
Quoting frank
Maybe your ICU has negative pressure rooms. Mine generally have one, which isn't useful when the ICU is full of vented Covid patients. so no negative pressure rooms, although that would be nice. Also, ICU windows here don't open, controlled environment and all that. Perhaps your ICU's are different, I can't speak to your region.
I did not write the algorithm for Vented Covid patients but it seems about as effective as the Covid Resuscitation algorithm for maintaining life.
The advantage to telling what you have seen/done is that it is easy to recall and one can brush off anyone that says "I don't think so".
It's what I do for a living. Yes, measures are taken to limit the spread of the virus,. but that has to do with PPE and blocking off the ICU to through traffic. It's not a factor in ventilator strategy.
Quoting Book273
During the blitz, every ICU room in our hospital was negative pressure. Like overnight they installed HEPA filter blowers and modified the windows with plexiglass. Out hospital was spewing coronavirus out the windows 24/7 :grin:
My neighbour is an anesthesist and he's calling this bullshit.
I'm truly grateful for each of you, even if you differ in approaches to the details of a shot in the dark, for even I am only able to view this from a distance.
With her son having access to her FB account, they may not be sharing all the details as one would expect.
At the beginning of this shit show called a pandemic, I was very concerned that President Trump would not be able to cut enough red tape, around the world, to actually make Operation Warp Speed happen as he suggested he could.
I believe it was in April of 2021 when I was eligible for a COVID 19 Vaccination and did so.
I knew we would need boosters as it evolves but I truly expected to be sending kids to school without mandatory masks but that is not the case.
I'm slowly losing faith in my fellow man my friends and I am starting to understand why.
"So make the best of the test and don't ask why
It's not a question but a lesson learned in time"
Good Riddance by Green Day
One doctor who I know said something that I agree with, unfortunately.
"Likely we will start getting annual vaccinations for COVID as we get annual vaccinations for the flu. Some will take them, some will not (just as with flu vaccines)."
Masks will asked to be used for a while... until people don't wear them anymore. Some likely will and some places limitations and regulations will continue. Likely in few more years we are back in the ordinary. The scare of dying to Covid will last for just so long until it's the new normal.
(Influenza regulations back during the Spanish Flu)
Notice that I did not jump up and call all the naysayers full of shit? I have no idea how accurate their information is. I assume, as they have said they work in the business, that their data is as accurate as mine as we all do it for a living.
I also notice that no one has said anything about the Covid Resuscitation procedure...
...I guess that's another thing we aren't supposed to talk about?
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/another-500-australian-defence-force-personnel-to-hit-sydney-streets-as-part-of-nsw-covid-19-compliance-crackdown-c-3656569
I love knowing I upset you more than the jackboot.
What's a jackboot?
I was talking about military knocking on people’s doors, enforcing compliance orders. You’re talking about…me.
• 'Take This Serious': Bus Driver Dies Of COVID-19 After Calling Out Coughing Rider (NPR, Apr 2020)
• 11 Days After Fuming About a Coughing Passenger, a Bus Driver Died From the Coronavirus (NYT, Apr 2020)
• Detroit bus driver who complained about a coughing passenger dies of coronavirus days later (WP, Apr 2020)
Understandable if his family/friends are p!ssed at contrarians/anti-vaxxers. :angry:
• The vaccinated are angry. That's understandable but unproductive, health experts say (USA TODAY, Aug 2021)
(FYI, I have a short page elsewhere with some lessons learned from the pandemic; doesn't inspire much general trust in fellow humans.)
In this case the soldiers are there to enforce the state’s orders.
The police minister said, “As I have said previously, support from the Army will add another line of defence to the NSW Government’s crackdown on COVID-19 compliance.”
You may evoke euphemisms about keeping me safe, but it’s untrue.
Interesting that you mention my speaking like a street thug yet you started swearing first and I am the most accepting of other peoples experiences. You don't actually work in a hospital do you? I have never actually heard any doctor mention the hippocratic oath, let alone worry about breaking it, unless in a theoretical discussion. You sound idealistic and very short on practical, actual experience.
What is your prefered method for putting a body into a shroud?
...meanwhile the US, the UK, Germany France and Israel all start their rollout of boosters.
Following the fucking science, my arse...
The WHO, the world's leading epidemiologists, their own fucking advisory board, the very organisation set up to advise on vaccines, and the university which invented the bloody vaccine all tell them not to roll out boosters...they roll out boosters.
In completely unrelated news...
Quoting https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/13/drug-firms-billions-dollars-covid-booster-jabs-sales-biontech-moderna-pfizer-drugs-flu
Boosters :up:
That's exactly the problem isn't it? The science fails to prioritise my arse in line with its value to me. Overall, nobody's safe until we're all safe, but in the meantime, Johnny Foreigner has a variant and I need a booster to go on holiday.
:rofl: :lol:
Should be the WHO strapline!
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, that's about the size of it. Partly it's good old fashioned selfishness, but partly it's the result of filtering a serious fucking crisis through a corporate advertising campaign like Facebook and Twitter with all the subtlety and nuance of a swastika. You see, these arse-saving xenophobes are the good guys. They must be, they're getting the vaccine.
Ah, the formidable strength of open research and not having peer review (or something like that). Every alternative is researched, every stone turned!
If you find some viruses in Mars that are older and are similar to the ones here, that might be the "smoking gun". Otherwise it's difficult.
:victory:
What does philosophy have to do with this? Isn't it a medical issue???
Selfish bastards.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/world-has-entered-stage-vaccine-apartheid-who-head-2021-05-17/
Quoting https://www.independent.co.uk/news/britain-charity-canada-africa-european-union-b1902578.html
Why we have to donate? Didn’t say they do not want anything from Spain anymore? Aren’t we supposed to be the bad persons due to conquista?
Spain has not obligations towards Latin America
Aren’t we supposed to be poor according to literally all the world?
How ironic this article was!
Even anti-vaxxers (are forced to) pay for collective healthcare their entire lives, and you wish to "let them die" because you disagree with how they wish to exercise the right to their own body?
OK
:grin:
It.s not only selfish, it's shortsighted. If covid infections run rampant in poorer countries due to lack of vaccine supplies there will be greater chance of mutant strains arising, which then may then go on to spread to the "developed" nations.
.
Also, what is your profile picture?
Which is why it's a priority to stop it in the US. We do more replication of the virus than anyone else, so we're the danger to the world.
I only know one person who got infected at the beginning - she and her husband had retired and bought a yacht, and were moored in Barcelona when the Spanish contagion broke out. She self-isolated for a month in a cabin in the yacht, which, she said, was hellish. There was no way to even get tested, and the hospitals would only admit those who were literally on death's door. They made it back to Sydney in June 20, and she did recover, but is a COVID long-hauler, it's had a very long term effect on her respiratory system which even now, eighteen months later, she's still suffering from. The point being, even though there are asymptomatic cases, it can be an extremely nasty disease, and it can kill.
It would tear a new butthole for Sydney if they ended the lockdown now. They'll have to meet it in the middle: infections and vaccinations will both increase until they reach a new normal, which is the way it has to be if you think about it. Vaccination rates will be low as long as people aren't fearing for their safety. This surge is mild, but enough to wake people up to the reality.
This is not a failure of your government.
Well, none of the VOCs have come from the US thus far.
Look at where the cases are rising most, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#weekly_table, It's not the US.
US stands at 106 doses per person, India (with about the same number of cases) has managed just 39. Places like Botswana, which have nearly double the per capita cases than the US have just 16, and with COVAX being stingily thrown the scraps and drug companies deliberately throttling new developments, it doesn't look like they're going to get much more... But hey, I'm sure it's all the fault of those damn anti-vaxxers somehow...mustn't let any actual complexity or nuance spoil the nice little Disney movie they'll make of this next year...I'm picturing Chris Hemsworth as Pfizer CEO, tirelessly [s]making money[/s] saving lives by stockpiling vaccines in the countries that [s]can afford to pay for them[/s] need them most... such a shame Alan Rickman is no longer with us to play the evil anti-vax leader...so difficult to cast a good villain these days...
They have been.. I think the AZ vaccine is the best option for developing nations because it doesn't have to be frozen and it's substantially cheaper than Pfizer or Moderna.
I think that's just accidental.
Your source...
The question was over how many the US actually have shared, not how many they promised to.
Quoting frank
So you think abandoning less developed economies in a drive to get ever higher vaccination rates in the US is a good policy because you 'guess' the US might yield a new variant?
Wait. Aren't you skeptical about the value of vaccines? If not, when did you change your mind? You sure as hell were a few months ago.
Despite the fact Madrid changed the plan and now you can go at any hour of the day, I did not see a lot of people in queue as in June and July (probably due to holidays...). I wish, in September we can already get the 70 % (we are in 63 %) of the population vaccinated, but due to Delta variation we can't know what the future holds and it frustrates me a bit...
Stay safe, you and your family and friends :up: :flower:
Where did I say that? My last comment on the matter...
Quoting Isaac
I don't see them as manna from heaven to be lapped up enthusiastically at every opportunity. That's hardly the same thing as the sort of skepticism we're talking about here. Vaccines undoubtedly save millions of lives and for the vulnerable, the risk/benefit analysis, in the case of this particular vaccine, seems indubitable.
The point is actually well made by your response. The problem is the polemicisation of the issue. Vaccines are neither useless nor panaceas. They're neither good for everyone, nor good for no-one. They're neither brilliant solution to all our problems, nor propagators of the next armageddon.
It baffles me why complexity must be purged from discourse all the time.
Well let's not do that then. It's not a Disney movie. It's more of an Ingmar Bergman film. Or maybe Nicholas Cage's version of Color Out of Space.
Do you see much awareness of that here? Is there a narrative you can point to here that extends beyond our flawless pharmaceutical saviours delivering us from the twin evils of nature (the virus) and the immoral unenlightened (the anti-vaxxers)? Anything at all?
Oh. Then I've misjudged you and I apologise.
So in your response to @Janus's concern about vaccine distribution, you seemed to be saying that there wasn't a problem because the US needs all those vaccines to tackle its own outbreak (for the good of everyone). Did I misjudge that too? Because if not, it does come across a little like post hoc rationalisation to support the narrative you've just said you're suspicious of... the vaccines just so happen to be needed most in the one country that can most afford to pay for them. Does that not strike you as even a little suspicious?
All here seem acquainted enough with viruses and how they work. Nothing more than the basics is required for what I have to say.
A book is, all said and done, a message and when the message is/feels good, we like to copy the message/book. In short, the message/book has to have some value in order that we might want to make copies of it.
Now, the Covid-19, like all other viruses, is a book that contains the message COPY ME! - that's all there is in the Covid-19 book. At first, we're deeply puzzled by this because there's nothing about the Covid-19 book that moves us, inspires us, to make copies of it. It just says, COPY ME!.
Here's where it gets interesting. Remember what I said in the 2nd paragraph about a book needing some value so that we feel like making copies of it. It turns out that whatever value we might think a book has ultimately boils down to how it ensures copying is enhanced/successful. Good books are copied but good books are good because they boost copying.
In other words, the Covid-19 virus is the last word on life - COPY ME!. That's life! The rest is all bullshit!
Janus was saying that people in developing nations should be vaccinated because otherwise new strains will evolve there that will subsequently threaten core nations. My point was that it's amazing that the US hasn't produced a VOC yet. And cases are surging here again.
The state of Mississippi, the least vaccinated state in the US, just put up two field hospitals as they struggle with the delta variant which, as I can testify, is giving us younger patients whose course evolves very similarly to what we saw in adults with earlier strains.
As some health official said, we were seeing women burying their parents, husbands, and brothers. Now they're burying their children.
Those are just the facts. Americans should definitely receive boosters. Since we mainly use Pfizer and Moderna here, that shouldn't impact places like Bangladesh where the AZ vaccine would be a much better choice.
2,000 children die every day just from diarrhea. No one gave a shit. No media storm, no hysteria, no moralising those who fail to act...nothing. A thousandth of that and suddenly billions are spent, anyone who doesn't help has "blood on their hand" and you're trying to tell me this isn't a narrative, just the facts?
So if you're no longer following the scientific advice, what are you following?
I don't need any science to tell me that if you buy a new garden hose, it will rain everyday for a week straight. It's the nature of reality.
Says it all. When science backs the corporate agenda it's all "follow the science", as soon as it opposes it, "We don't need science...". Pathetic.
Are you saying buying garden hoses has nothing to do with the weather? Citation?
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=buying+garden+hoses+causes+rain&btnG=
Well this is troubling. I'll have to change my entire outlook on life now. Thanks a lot.
.
Seems unlikely...
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Frank+changes+his+entire+outlook+on+life&btnG=
:rofl:
Rescue dogs shot dead by NSW council due to COVID-19 restrictions.
That news completely pissed me off... When public workers or representatives are so damn useless they tend to spread their incompetency to others and even make risky actions which put people's or animal's lives in dager. This time was a poor humble dog which are the most honourable animals ever. Australia should punish so hard that NSW council as a pay back for the poor dog!
They're killing dogs because they're scared shitless.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-grants-full-approval-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-2021-08-23/
In anticipation of this approval (in mid-September) I went ahead and got my first dose five days ago. Still feel like a guinea pig but, living as I do in the stupidest, trumpiest region of the US, the growing risk of contracting the more infectious and severe delta-variant 'persuaded' me not to wait any longer. Bring on the passports & mandates! :mask:
I'm glad you didn't wait. It's surging again.
They're killing dogs because they are callous shitheads. Unfortunately many country people see dogs as nothing more than a "standing (or more accurately running) resource"; it's truly horrifying to think of the kinds of lives many dogs must have in the country.
Ewwww :vomit:
:mask:
How wrong you were...
How far away is it? A serious flu is one from which you die?
We won't really know unless recording changes.
Meh, who gives a shit. That sounds like the investigation into whether this was a wild bat release, or a lab release (intentional or otherwise) or a Jewish Space Laser release. Those may be important questions but it's like wondering about whether you should be in a firefight while you are in it. "Oh, gee, the geo-political complexities of international trade, and the influence of the MIC dictate that we shouldn't be in this shit-hole getting overrun by guys with bayonets. What say you, Bob?"
:lol:
I have to admit. You make me laugh (not at you)!
:rofl:
NSW (Australia) is about to hit 1,000 daily cases, probably (today's number was 919). Still, Florida USA, similar population, is hitting around 21,000 per day, with 42,000 deaths (Australia has had 924 fatalities to date.) I guess the libertarians think that the Florida numbers are better, on account of death and serious illness is nobody's business, or that lockdowns are bad for busines. Or something of the kind. But it does seem to me that many on the 'right' are indifferent to human suffering and that trying to prevent it should always take a back seat to individual rights. (There's a comparison here.)
That said, the Delta variant genie is not going to go back into the bottle anytime soon. The country is going flat-strap to get to 80% full vaccination rates. Attitudes have shifted hugely in the last two months, folks are queuing around the block to get a shot. The country can't stay locked down forever, but 'living with COVID' is going to pose some challenges. I'm now vaccinated but it's not 100%, and I have many friends and relatives in various stages of vaccination. And I can't see it going away any time soon.
With regards to origins, if anyone has seen Contagion, the closing scene is spookily realistic.
I fully agree: infections mean nothing for a virus that cause little to no effects in the vast, vast majority of people. Here too, much has been said of covid-19 being noted as the cause of death even if it did not contribute to the actual death of the patient. What is true of all this, I honestly do not know.
However, I prefer to use numbers that are official, and even then I prefer to use high estimates, so as to give people no excuses to ignore them.
A year or so ago, rather than go down a rabbit hole on co-morbidities, and whether this or that person would have died anyway, and whether reporting was accurate (under or over), and all the other nuances, I looked at annualized death rates and saw a large jump, even though people were off the roads and staying at home. I can't remember if the jump mirrored the alleged Covid death numbers but the figures were a routine thing, unrelated to Covid. That told me there might be a there there. Also noted that flue deaths were in the toilet.
Regardless, it seems academic if your loved one is dead or dying. Kind of like gun control: when it's your kid that get's shot, the Second Amendment may not mean shit. Covid is killing people. What are the numbers? Compare that question with the inconvenience of distancing, masking and vaxxing.
Very good observation! There was (is?) indeed a form of mass hysteria going on! Always advantageous for the the people with power.
However sad that may be, policy should not be determined by emotions.
Quoting James Riley
Much has been said about the effectiveness, side-effects and potential dangers of those things.
The body needs contact with others to maintain a healthy immune system, for example. The thing that ensures the vast majority of people are absolutely safe from covid AND other diseases.
Further, masks were never made for prolonged and daily use and ironically the way they are being used now also forms a potential risk to the immune and respiratory systems.
This discussion has been had probably a dozen of times in this thread alone - lets not have it again. I understand your part of the argument, and I have hopes you understand mine. My bottomline is, people need to decide for themselves in this uncertain time what risks they are willing to accept and which ones they aren't.
:100: :clap:
Quoting Tzeentch
I'm sure that if people paid attention to directions on how to do it, any adverse side-effects would be ameliorated. Especially if everyone played ball. The time would be short. But yeah, I get it. You can't get people to distance or use a mask properly if you can't get them to participate in the first place.
Why not?
VERY subjective? (sorry for the capital fonts, I still have to figure out Italics). Arent rational thoughts subjective too?
Then why base your policy on rational thoughts?
Cant you maintain a degree of decency when you base your policies on love?
Maybe we are drifting a bit off-topic.
There is indeed little love involved there. :heart: But now we are indeed drifting off. How much I like drifting off I dont think its appropiate...
So policy is based on whether, on aggregate, we give more of a fuck about Granny staying alive, or going to the disco.
And other emotional considerations.
Trouble is though...
https://youtu.be/kgAJntmfdGo
Emotional policy-making doesn't have any means of separating the immediacy of an image of a dying Granny from the dry, almost bureaucratic, listing of the next thousand child deaths in Africa.
Hence billions on boosters, and an unprecedented cut in foreign aid.
There is indeed a deal of trouble - the troubled feelings are widespread.
People have the wrong emotions, obviously. 'Wrong' rationally, that is. I call it "irrational self-interest" My granny is more important than your Granny; indeed my night out is more important than your granny. But if rationality thinks it has a handle on something other than what people feel is important - something objective and rational then it is mistaken. One might feel that child deaths are more important than granny deaths, but try telling Granny that! One might have recourse to abstractions like 'equality' and 'justice', but the privileged tend to have recourse more to 'freedom'. if there were some arbitration available, or some god...
:death: :party: :100:
"Caused" is a fun word.
Our world has people in it with conditions that, should they contract the virus, will kill them -- not the virus, but the "co-morbidity". Obesity. Diabetes. Respiratory illnesses.
Of course, if they don't get Covid, maybe those things don't kill them. Not this year, anyway.
Cause of death? In a vacuum? Or in the actual world where there are people for whom Covid is more dangerous than it is for others?
Excess mortality is excess mortality, whatever the mechanism between here and there.
I disagree (surprised?). The mechanism is where we direct our response and as such our analysis of things like cost-effectiveness and plausibility. At what cost 7 million boosters? At what cost a tax on sweet and fatty foods?
It matters a lot which of the contributory factors we try to eliminate. Could you really say that an efficient way of handling public health is to maintain a population with a very high level of completely preventable life threatening diseases and then have to commit to mass vaccinations of every novel virus to keep them alive? Or is it more efficient to invest in community healthcare, sporting facilities, restrict sales of unhealthy foods etc and next decade not have such a vulnerable population in the first place?
:100: As I said a long time ago, it doesn't matter which straw broke a camel's back.
Should some of those other straws not been on there? Maybe, but we have the freedom to put them on without having to worry about some other turd throwing his on too.
P.S. As we say in the law, "You take your victim as you find him."
So your freedom to eat junk food trumps my freedom to avoid prophylactic medicine as I choose? Why?
Because people smarter than you say so.
Then the flu must be included too. And weak résistance. Vaccinations in the past have reduced that resistance.
Belay my last. Here's a better answer to your question: You are free to avoid prophylactic medicine all you want: just keep your filthy fucking virus off my ass if you get it. How's that? Oh, and the burden of proof on what broke my back is not on me. Society has placed it on you. Now go get a shot or whine like a little bitch when you are treated like a pariah.
I'm not Fauci with his polite "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." I'm more of the rage guy when dealing with inept incompetent hucksters peddling shit on the internet.
No, it's not. I will try to tone it down. Thank you for the reminder.
I fully intend to. I mask, I socially distance, I wash my hands. I don't see what that's got to do with the question of public health policy. The question was why should your right to fast food trump my right to avoid prophylactics? If you do in fact revert to your previous answer I'd need some citation to support it, unless, of course, you're just some inept incompetent huckster peddling shit on the internet.
It doesn't. As I said, you can avoid all you want. But you do NOT have the right to spread your filthy disease to me if you get it, especially when you're avoiding government requests from people that are smarter than you. You don't get to absolve yourself of murder just because I have a comorbidity, self-induced or not.
I will add this, regarding the prophylactic issue: Society, and people in it that are smarter than you, with infinitely more experience than you will ever have, have determined that, while it is entirely possible that you could drive under the influence of alcohol, you are, prophylactically, forbidden from doing so. You may not like it. You may think everyone else would be fine if they just stayed out of your way. But society has decided to make the pariah. That's what we do.
Good job dialing down the rage.
Same apply to all avoiding these measures?
Or these https://www.gov.uk/government/news/healthy-eating-guidance-published-for-the-early-years-sector
Or https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng70/chapter/Recommendations
All recommendations by people smarter than you for behaviour to avoid potentially fatal risks to others.
They all murderers too?
Do you honestly think your life is so saintly I couldn't find a half dozen things you do which risk others and which people smarter than you have recommended to avoid?
Can we say that it is myopic? Perspective is what makes things that are close seem bigger than those that are far away; folly, is thinking it is really so. Selfishness presumes it is so. Selfishness is folly.
I know that society, and people smarter than you, make the call. There was a day, a long time ago, where drinking and driving was not taboo, or as taboo. People were advised not to do it by people who were smarter than them. But, because some inconsiderate, disrespectful, selfish people refused to take the advice and continued to drive drunk and kill people, society, and people smarter than you, decided to drop the polite request and make it a law. Even then, it was downplayed until MADD and victims of the selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful drunks turned up the heat and made pariahs out of the drunks.
So here's the short answer to your question: There are X number of things that society says are acceptable, and Y number of things they say are not. Society says avoiding the vax is not acceptable. Granted, they have not done what they can, and probably will do if people like you don't step up, but that does not mean they are wrong just because you, a non-expert, can poo poo their efforts on the internet.
As a selfish, disrespectful, inconsiderate person, you obviously don't have the inclination to actually go to school, get the creds and the experience to know what the CDC knows, and then engage them on the merits of the issue. That wouldn't be a bad thing if you weren't running around pretending that you know and understand the issue better than they do, and then you dissuade folks from playing ball. You are playing a doctor on the internet. You are a charlatan. A snake oil salesman.
It all depends on where you place the baseline. The baseline is participating in public life. Discos didn't come along until much later. Nor are they a right. They are, instead, a privilege.
That wasn't the question. The question was whether you avoid all things that people smarter than you recommend you avoid for the benefit other's well-being? I'm aware society thinks one of those things is getting vaccinated, I'm asking you about the others, do you feel the same way about all of them, do you comply with all of them?
Health and safety regimens at work?
Good dietary advice for children and dependants (if you have any)?
Advice on reducing your waste, pollutants and energy consumption?
Advice on product selection to avoid conflict minerals, modern slavery and other harmful practices?
I could go on... All recommendations by people smarter than you to prevent harm to others. do you comply with them all?
A small bit of information from the country I live in was recently released: a report done for the government to evaluate the effects of a lockdown estimated the amount of healthy life years to be saved by the covid measures to be 100,000. The amount lost was estimated around 520,000.
Perhaps not directly related, but something to think about.
I do. I not only use my own intelligence, experience and wisdom in an effort to avoid harming others, but I likewise take the advice, requests, recommendations and outright legal demands of the state into consideration. I know there are others, smarter than me, that say I should slow down when approaching this or that curve that I am not familiar with. But I will use my own, commensurate judgement when approaching a curve that I know well. And, as an occasional risk-taker, I often do this only out of consideration for others. I might risk myself, but I try to respect others.
Let's try an example: While I don't smoke, I could. Society says I can. But they place limits on it. They don't place those limits for my own good. They place those limits due to expenses incurred by others due to my selfish acts. But I can still smoke. I just have to keep my smoke out of other people's lungs. And I have to pay a shit ton of taxed to try and cover the added burden to the healthcare system. Yet I get to drive and pump poison into the air with my car. I breath it and so do asthmatics I don't even know. Now you might come along with your awesome intellect and try to dissect the science and prove how the state is all wrong on this or that. But your opinion doesn't matter. You aren't among the scientist that know, or who inform policy.
Because anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists and other experts have shown that man is a social creature. A pack animal, if you will. Public life has been there since the cave and before. Discos, not so much.
Quoting Tzeentch
That is something for you to think about. However, it's like the information that Isaac might try to school me with. It's out of my wheelhouse. Here's my wheelhouse: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html Could they be wrong? Oh hell yes. Government is often wrong. But unless and until peer professionals take them down, I'll roll with them.
I've no idea. I didn't think that was the case. Do you have a problem distinguishing selfish and unselfish?
Bullshit. Unless you're Greta fucking Thunberg, you do not comply with every single recommendation made to limit risk of harm to others. If you're just going to brazenly stand by that claim there's little point in continuing.
Quoting James Riley
Society says I can avoid getting vaccinated, there's no law against it. It's just recommended that I do. It is recommended that you don't smoke.
Quoting James Riley
I don't need to, I can cite the state's recommendations on the matter of air pollution, car choice, driving choices, and all manner of other stuff you routinely do. We're talking about recommendations here, not laws.
I think taking it is myopic. It gives weak future offspring. When not dead...
"It" what? Evidence? Reasoning? Any justification or support at all?
Apparently you are incapable of understanding argument. Let me try to dumb it down for you one more time. Here, hold my hand: Society has made judgement calls about what is suggested, what is requested, what is required, and what is demanded. I play ball within those confines and use them for guidance in my consideration of others. I also understand that if I don't, those steps the state uses can, and most probably will be stepped up. Do you see the answer to your question yet? I do risk others within the confines of the law, and my own respect and consideration of others.
I risk others when I get behind the wheel. But society has said that the risk my driving poses to other people is an acceptable risk. Society has NOT said that you not vaxing is an acceptable risk. Get it? No? Sorry, I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people.
Society will allow smoking and drinking to protect the interests of those who work in the tobacco and alcohol industries and to respect the freedom of individuals to smoke and drink. Society makes that call, knowing full well that innocent lives will be adversely impacted or even lost. And taxpayers will often have to pick up the bill, or insurance premiums will increase. So, if society tells me that smoking harms not only me, but others, they still let me smoke becausethe calculation was made that I could. I can't, however, exhale my smoke into your face. I suppose I could pull some science paper that says it's okay for me to blow smoke in your face, but I'm not that kind of person.
So, in this gradient, with vaccines, we are at the request stage. You don't have to vax. Happy? But if you don't, don't be surprised if the state starts climbing up the ladder. And don't be surprised if people start treating you like a POS.
Gut feeling
Exactly. So all your moralising about people smarter than me was all bullshit. You don't listen unconditionally to the people smarter than you either. We could agree here, but then you say...
Quoting James Riley
So do you think all people, including yourself, who don't comply with state recommendations (not laws yet, just recommendations) should be treated like POS's
Here's some examples of state recommendations for your country.
Here are the EPA recommendations on recycling - comply with all of them?
Here's their green vehicle guide - got the full set there too?
Here's the guidance of chemical use - another full house I assume?
Here's energy use - you ought to get some sort of prize.
Environmental issues not deadly enough for you?
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
https://www.who.int/health-topics/environmental-health#tab=tab_1
I'm not sure where the idea of totalitarianism as a life-saving mechanism came into the public consciousness, but it appears to be regnant in some circles. Granted, it makes sense that if we put everyone under house arrest and turn a nation into a hermit kingdom they get the benefit of being protected from an infectious disease, but the adverse effects of restricting life, many of them as yet unknowable, will also have far-reaching and dire implications, especially among those who are not wealthy enough to retreat into a comfortable Netflix/Amazon livelihood whenever they choose.
So while you can say I am indifferent to suffering resulting from an infectious disease, I can say that you're indifferent to the effects of totalitarianism on children, the poor, mental health, human rights, the abused, and so on. I don't think we should play that game, personally.
It is difficult to argue with those (you, for example) who love the illogical, two-valued, dualistic thinking. My moralizing about people smarter than you is not bullshit. As I taught you some time ago, but you forgot your lessons (take notes and pay attention, son) Society (and politicians) formulate health policy based on evidence and science. I do listen to people smarter than me. I also use my own experience in guiding my daily interactions with my fellow man. I don't know what point you think you scored, but you just stepped on your dick again. LOL!
Regarding some of the examples you provided, particularly those that involve the environment, I would like to take this opportunity to teach you another lesson. Pull up a chair.
I want clean air. I want government to force people to stop using petroleum hydrocarbons. I make the argument. Someone who disagrees with me (you?) says I am a hypocrite, and should be marginalized, and not listened to, because I, myself, drive a car. At first blush, I think that sounds persuasive, at least to stupid people who don't understand markets.
So, in order try and be "consistent" I conserve a gallon of gas by not driving. Good so far, right? The problem is, I just increased the supply of gas, which lowers the price, which stimulates demand, which encourages people like you to drive more, defeating my goal. Hmmm. What to do, what to do?
Well, we do what we always do when something requires government to get something done; something where individuals, and the private sector can't handle it alone. We ask, we plead, we cajole. But if the public (as expressed through their government) want something done and you stand in the way, you must learn to accept personal responsibility for your own actions, or inactions. Part of that could be ostracization and marginalization. And it could also result in a stepping up of government efforts to get the job done.
You may very well be treated like a POS. But again, since you can't seem to handle nuance, let me try to simplify it again for you: There are gradients and some things are tolerated with more forbearance than others, based on the judgements of people that are smarter than you. I won't fall into your "poor eating habits" vs vax straw man. It is irrelevant. Society will determine if and when you get treated like a POS and for what reasons. You just have to take personal responsibility for your own actions, whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, others might likewise suffer. Hence the treatment you get.
Yeah, "I feel that ..." is a common locution. But in the context of a discussion that is distinguishing feeling from reason, it's a cop-out and confusion. So you ought to distinguish the gut feeling of confidence, approval, happiness, or whatever it is, from the fact that the feeling is about.
I just listed a whole load of policies which you clearly don't take their word as gospel. I do exactly the same with vaccination guidance, yet you think that's immoral, you've yet to explain why.
Quoting James Riley
Defying government advice by using some half-baked idea about markets. Are you a fully qualified government employed economist? If not, then why are you making judgements contrary to those people smarter than you have made?
Quoting James Riley
So now 'society' is right no matter what their reasons? Your ethics are intriguing to say the least.
Allright. If the defense system is fooled by a vaccine it says: WTF? Next time she wont be so cooperating.
Gut feelings, by their very Nature, are not based on conscious rationality. There are no arguments, no reasons, no ratio, no whatever consciohs aspects behind it. Therd are multiple unconscious foundations though.
First, I'd rather you think on your own two feet. One wag on this site once linked an article that went on forever, I read it, and found it had nothing to do with the subject at hand. You can just say "X" and we'll take it from there. I did see one of links headlines said something about air quality, so I ran with that and made a point without having to read the thing. If you are capable of saying that I don't take their word as gospel, then just use your own typing skills and say what it is that I don't take as gospel. Here, let me give you an example: "James, society says X and you clearly don't do X." Then we can argue whether you are correct or not. As it stands, your empty, balled face statement that "clearly you don't" is meaningless. Especially given the gradients of social risk balancing that I taught you about.
Quoting Isaac
I'm not! That's the point! Stop, think, you are on the verge of a breakthrough, Isaac! I can see it! Keep cogitating on what you just said, then apply what I actually said. There you go! Whew, what a long slog this has been.
Quoting Isaac
LOL! Oh, hell no! I've got more truck with society than Carter has pills. But I don't go around advising people to do, or not do things which experts say will place others at risk. Especially when I can't hold a candle to the experts or their counsel, upon which society has based it's policy. If I want to be a BTDT, then I'll go there and do that. I won't be a poser.
Well, even someone who doesn't partake in public life can still be social, but in their private lives.
True that. I think those that don't want to vax, and all those they socialize with, should do just that. If any of them want to come out and mingle with the pack, they should abide the pack's polite, simple, non-impositional request. Simple courtesy.
First of all, we'd have to define "miniscule." 600k dead in the U.S alone, not including those who just get sick, and the tapping of health care resources, and those who died "off the grid" and those who died or suffered because they couldn't get a bed. That can all raise the anti. Further, we could consider an unknown number of lives saved by those who did distance, mask and vax. How many of them would be added to the tally?
I don't think so. Neither does the ADA, etc. We err on the side of caring for other people, especially the sick, lame and lazy.
Could we roll with the disco? Hell yes. We did it during the Spanish Flu. The bubonic plague, etc. But even then, the rich would social distance to protect themselves. We're trying to be a little more egalitarian here. Besides, all we're asking is to avoid the disco for a while. Had every one done that from the get-go, we would not be in the pickle we are in now. We'd all be back in the disco, if that's your thing. Hell, it's just a small ask.
I'm just not prepared to do that. The point of the citations was to point out the clear insanity of the claim that you comply with every single state recommendation. I really wasn't expecting your craziness to stoop to doubling down on the claim. That's why I said before, if you're serious about defending the claim that you adhere without question to every single government recommendation then this conversation is over. I've nothing to say in the face of such brazen delusion.
Quoting James Riley
That's exactly what you're doing. You gave a pseudo-intellectual economic argument which you obviously don't understand as to why you needn't comply with a particular government recommendation. You're not an expert economist so why present the argument as if you understood it... smarter minds than you an' all... Just shut up and follow the recommendations.
Quoting James Riley
You just did. Experts say cut down in gas use, you present some neolib, half-cocked pseudo-economics denying you ought to.
What position is this argument in support of? "We should have behaved differently in the past" is not a policy, not even a public health policy. Whether we should do something about other issues plaguing the health of Americans is not a question -- it's what public health officials spent their time doing before the novel coronavirus came calling. What should they do now?
You're not arguing that "coronavirus isn't that bad", despite trotting out the co-morbidities.
You're not arguing that we should do nothing -- you mask and distance and so forth.
You're not arguing that vaccines are ineffective or worse, and in fact richer countries should be sending more to poorer countries, and so not arguing that no one should get vaccinated.
You're only arguing that not everyone needs to get vaccinated, is that right? Not even that no one needs to get vaccinated, only that not everyone needs to.
But I suppose we all more or less agree on that, right? Public Health officials have (mostly) been setting targets somewhat below 100%, informed I presume by what epidemiologists tell them, so what's the beef?
Anyone who gets vaccinated contributes to their community reaching the threshold set by the relevant public health agency. As far as I can see, the only question that interests you is whether that entails that:
in order to help their community reach its vaccination goal, and leaving aside whether that moral obligation trumps other reasons an individual may have for not getting vaccinated.
A broader view might not look just at individuals but at communities, worldwide. For Peoria to go from 0% to 70%, it must pass through all the sub-goals in between. Perhaps we could say the same for American states or counties: the goal is not to get to, say, 70% overall, which could mean 100% in California and 20% in Arkansas, but first to 10% in every state, then 20% in every state, and so on. Similarly for the whole world: our goal is not to get Canada to 100% while Nigeria is at 10%.
That's reasonable. It's probably the right policy, I don't know. It's also not clear it connects to (M) up there. Are you only morally obligated to get the vaccine if your community has not yet hit the current all-communities target? Only if your community is behind the current average? What if you're ahead of the average in progress toward the goal but not there yet (almost everywhere, the United States, for instance)? Should whether you're obligated depend so much on time? That is, maybe your community doesn't need you to step up now, but they will in a few weeks; are you under no obligation currently but will be? now under a future obligation? what?
This all seems sliced a little thin. For an individual, getting vaccinated if you have the opportunity to do so unquestionably helps your community reach its goal, so the simplest thing to do, if you support that goal, is get vaccinated.
But
Is an individual under a moral obligation to take action to further goals they support?
People don't usually need much prodding, moral or otherwise, to do what they want, so there must be something else going on here. There's garden-variety hypocrisy, "talk is cheap", that sort of thing. You may say you want something or other to be different but you do nothing about it, and in fact behave in a way that props up the status quo. That doesn't look all that relevant here.
I think you might want to answer "no" there, but I don't know why, and I don't know why it's even a question. It feels like "no" is actually the answer to a different question, namely:
Are there circumstances in which an individual is under a moral obligation to take action to further goals they do not support?
Because in between there's a step:
I support this goal, but not this way of reaching it.
which is not so unusual.
"I support making our society more just, but not if the means of getting there is unjust" (so many ways to fill that one in, I'm punting)
"I support winning the war, but I do not support me fighting in it"
"I support worldwide herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2, but not me getting vaccinated"
Is any of this in the neighborhood of your thinking?
Roughly 0.2%, no?
I don't know, I haven't done the math. But I know it's way more than those killed by guns. Regardless, you cherry picked the 600k without factoring in all the other shit I mentioned.
And 0.2% of the world's population would be roughly 15.4 million dead.
0.2% of a large number is a large number.
It's in support of the focus of future efforts which are at at risk of being subsumed by the current Disney version of events. Some very, very serious mistakes were made, the more talk there is of anti-vaxxers being to blame, the less there is about these massive government and societal failings which made us so vulnerable. Space in public fora is finite, it matters what we fill it with.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Look at the responses. Do you see much agreement with what I've been saying? You've read a handful of my posts and you've already got a near perfect summary so it's not that people haven't understood. Literally no-one has agreed.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No they don't. If their community are above that threshold then people getting vaccinated no longer contribute to meeting it. See booster issues between the WHO and America.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, it's the position relative to these other reasons I'm interested in.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It connects thus. If you create a social narrative where everyone vaccinated is good and everyone not vaccinated is bad you create a strong individual demand for vaccines, not a community based one. Add that to a profiteering enterprise which makes money from such a demand, and a democratic government system which must respond to such a demand and you undermine your project of equitable distribution. We're seeing exactly that with boosters in the US.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
True. But there are vulnerable people who need the vaccine first. I've other issues, but on this matter alone it would be about doing things in the right order.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Broadly, yes. I fully support the goal of getting 70% of the population vaccinated (I'd prefer to check natural immunity further first, but it's not a big deal). I think whipping up moral hysteria, exaggerating threats, underplaying risks (such as with children), and allowing rampant profiteering all the way, is so much the wrong way to do it that I think it's possibly more harmful than the end goal.
If you can't do that on your own, they you can't think for yourself, not withstanding the fact that is what you accuse me of not being able to do. LOL! I tried to teach you that I don't comply with every single state recommendation because the state itself has created exceptions (remember the lesson about air pollution from cars? No? I didn't think so).
Quoting Isaac
No, I did not. I gave you an example of the exceptions that the state provides, as stated in the last paragraph, and my continued schooling of you.
Quoting Isaac
I do. That's why I still drive. Because the state says I can, even though I generate pollution. I'm not questioning their math as to why. They do it with corporations, too. Shareholders are given protection from having to take personal responsibility for their own actions (cost externalization) because the state deems it worth it to get cowards to come out from under the fridge with their money, invest it and stimulate the markets that we all benefit from. Sure, they are supposed to pay taxes on the profits they glean from this state largess, but that's another matter. The point is, the state sanctions all kinds of bad behavior. But they haven't sanctioned your arguments. Their experts, the experts, disagree with you.
Quoting Isaac
No, I did not.
Quoting Isaac
And I follow their advice. But I don't quit driving altogether because the state, and their experts don't want me to. They have deemed the risk worth it. Besides, remember the lesson I taught you about the futility of trying to do anything alone? No? I didn't think so. Remember what I taught you about state experts and recommendations, and gradients? No? I didn't think so.
Sacrifices? Distancing, wearing a mask, washing your fucking hands and getting free shot? Oh, here, let me shed a tear. I guess folks these days have gone soft. Besides, had they done what they were politely asked to do, the "sacrafices" (LOL) would not be permanent. Indeed, this shit would probably be over by now. But no, too many inconsiderate, disrespectful, selfish people couldn't put their fun on hold for the sake of others. Good thing we aren't storming the beaches of Normandy. Somebody might break a nail.
Because of my familiarity with Americans, particularly Trump supporting Republicans and their ilk.
Quoting Tzeentch
There are a few people who are vax-hesitant with good cause. Take some blacks, for instance. The U.S. has used them, unknowingly, for experiments to benefit white people. There are probably a few others who are peers of, and even experts themselves. But I don't pretend to engage them. I'm not one of them. I'm mainly just poking a stick in the eye of those who's motives I find suspect because they are not experts and seem to advice against expert counsel on matters of public health in a pandemic.
Quoting Tzeentch
Oh, no doubt! Take me and TPF for example: nothing could better demonstrate my inability to teach than my participation here. If I were a teacher, then you'd think I'd make more headway. LOL! So why am I here, pretending to be a teacher? Good question. Maybe folks should ask why non-scientific peer experts are here pretending to pontificate on the vax? It's my understanding that one should pursue knowledge by asking questions. Not by pretending to understand shit they don't understand. But I would never advise anyone to ask questions of a charlatan on the internet spewing advice that contradicts what the real experts say. You'd have to be a fool to ask me how to teach. Watch this:
I am to teaching as Isaac is to infectious disease, immunology, and physician science.
I suppose I could read a few papers from UNC, find a teacher who's opinion confirms my bias, and then come back and claim an understanding, but I don't think I'd have the cred.
I don't know why you're still banging on about exceptions. The state has provided an exception to it's recommendation on vaccination too, I don't have to get vaccinated. You think, in that case, that those taking the government up on its exception are murdering pieces of shit. I'm wondering if you feel that way about yourself when you choose to take the government up on one of its exceptions to their environmental recommendations.
Oh come on! Moral obligation? Maybe its best for the community if the major part dies first!
I'm not banging on about exceptions. You asked if I did anything that risked others and I said I did, within the scope of recommendations. They recommend you don't pollute the air. But they allow you to drive and smoke and drink. There are limitations, however.
Quoting Isaac
Wrong. The recommendation is to get the Vax. While there are exceptions, those are limited to certain medical conditions which you are not hanging your hat on. You are talking about the need for vax overseas or other nuanced arguments that are over your head and/or not supported by government recommendations. The recommendation is that you get a vax. The fact that it is merely a recommendation and not a mandate does no make the recommendation an exception. You just think you're special. That's because you're selfish, inconsiderate and disrespectful. But we've been over that.
Quoting Isaac
No. Those who have an exemption are not murdering POS. Those who don't have an exemption and refuse are, or could be the cause of the death of others. So yeah, murdering POS. They are lucky that the general situation is such that it can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that any single POS was the one who pulled the trigger. Though, hogging up hospital beds resulting in the death of another comes pretty close.
Quoting Isaac
Good question. Asked and answered. But I'll answer yet again: I do feel bad that my driving a car inures to the detriment of those with asthma and other conditions, not to mention the impact it has on the Earth. But I also remember what I taught you before: Some problems can only be solved if a gun is placed in the mouth of every recalcitrant POS and they are forced to play along. If I try to go it alone, it actually ends up working against my goal. Of course, maybe the markets can solve it. Like all the horseshit, all over city streets, went away when the car took over. But then we get air pollution. If the markets would solve that, please do. But if they don't, government may well have to step in. And I will support it when it does, just like I vax when they asked me to. And joined the service, and refrain from drinking and driving, or blowing smoke in peoples faces, etc.
Is the same as...
They recommend you get vaccinated by they allow you to not.
No. The exemptions from the recommendations are specified. You're just saying that because it's a recommendation it must be an exception. That's illogical.
OK, then we're back to the insane claim. If you're using 'alllows' to mean only the exemptions they actually specify within the recommendations (and not just anything that isn't mandated by law) then there's no way on earth you stick to all the government's environmental recommendations only veering from them in cases of specifically allowed exceptions.
I usually don't do this, but give me an example. We've talked about air pollution. I already defeated you on that. Give me another.
Oh, wait, I found it! You are right:
"All Americans should get the Covid Vaccine with the following exceptions:
1. Those who's doctor advises they should not get the vaccine for a medical reason;
2. Those who don't feel like it;
3. Those who are selfish;
4. Those who are inconsiderate;
5. Those who are disrespectful;
6. Those who think Fauci is wrong;
7. Those who are smarter than the CDC;
8. Those who are "special";
9. Those who don't trust gubm't;
10. Those who are afraid of needles;
11. Those who are afraid of free gubmn't medical vaccines;
13. Those who wear MAGA hats;
14. Children;
15. Adults who act like children;
16. Any fucking reason you can pull out of your ass;
17. Your name is Isaac on the internet;
18. Never mind, government hereby withdraws the recommendation;
19. Party hardy, Garth.
Uh huh. It's been a hoot, but I think were done.
:up:
A short piece that goes beyond the obvious to ask if asking you to wear a mask is an act of tyranny:
Of the 40,000 people who have died in Florida, there's bound to be a fair number of children who have lost parents. That'll hurt them a lot more than being made to stay at home during an epidemic.
Quoting Banno
It's just complete rubbish. It's a practical step to avoid the spread of infectious diseases. It's a shame the spread of moron ideology is not as easy to prevent.
:100:
:100:
I've emphasized the word I take to indicate uncertainty, and I endorse your uncertainty. None of us can be certain.
But, as you might expect from me, here's the problem: getting kinda vaccinated, or vaccinated to a degree that matches your subjective confidence, is not an option [hide="*"](alright, technically, if you squint, it kinda is, but not really, if you get a single dose of a two-dose regimen, skip the booster, details, details)[/hide], any more than kinda placing a bet.
The whole point of betting is choosing (i.e., acting) under uncertainty: you behave as if your confidence in the outcome you bet on is 100%. The bet of the man who believes with all his heart pays out the same as the bet of the man who closed his eyes and pointed.
You have chosen, and your choice matches a confidence level of 0 in the vaccine and the goals of getting vaccinated. Those of us who have gotten vaccinated may not have, and I'd guess mostly do not have, a certainty of 1 that getting vaccinated is the right thing to do, but we behave as if we have perfect certainty. That's how betting works, that's how acting under uncertainty works, and that's how honoring the social contract works. If you want your community, through exposure and through vaccination, to reach herd immunity, but you have not been exposed and refuse to get vaccinated, you are not doing your part while expecting others to do theirs. That's just the tragedy of the commons and you should know better.
:100:
Not even Descartes would have doubted to take the vaccine. :snicker:
Case in point.
As you sow.....
It would have been the best if everybody was forbidden to take it. With the force of the gun!
I trust Darwinian selection will winnow you out before too long....let's hope you don't take too many others with you....
could you maybe get a little more bitter about the whole thing?
I see. It's just that when you say things like 'I trust you'll die soon' it makes you sound more bitter than annoyed.
Didn't say that. I made an admittedly sardonic appeal to 'the principle of natural selection'. The fly in the ointment being that refusing vaccination can also affect other people; you can get the virus, have no symptoms, but then transmit it to someone else who might die from it.
Yeah. But a good deal of Floridians must not care. Maybe half. They've had a string of bat shit crazy mayors. It doesn't get much weirder than Florida so far as the US goes, most of the time anyway.
But the difficult question is precisely this, presenting a hypothetical: what the heck do you do if say, half the people - or maybe even a slight majority - don't want vaccines? Would it not be anti-democratic to make people take vaccines in such a situation?
I know, this isn't what's happening, but it's a tough question, I think. But even in an extreme case like this, people who have no good reasons not to take vaccines are potentially murdering people.
I suppose you're right - it's a very tough question. Has parallels to climate policy, doesn't it? in that case also the greater good requires making sacrifices which the American Right seem to regard as impositions.
Could both of these be symptoms of the degeneration of public policy debate in America, under the corrosive influence of what passes for Republicanism at this point in history? (O oh, now I've done it :groan: )
Absolutely. No doubt. It also mirrors a rightward shift in all developed countries since the 1980's, with the rise of neoliberal dogma.
So, as you've mentioned Australia also has pretty astonishing right wingers, not like Q perhaps, but you see it. And Europe has outright fascist parties in most democracies.
Then you see Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Modi and it isn't a pretty picture.
But absolutely. In the US, it's magnified, not helped by the religious extremist strain that runs in large parts of the population. But how it reaches to this level of saying that getting a vaccine infringes on your "freedom", when that very freedom permits you to kill another person, is difficult to believe.
Quoting Wayfarer
And this is what you previously posted:
Quoting Wayfarer
You should understand that post vaccination, you can easily be carrying the delta variant. Yes, vaccination helps, but you'll need to behave as if you are a carrier around vulnerable people, which includes vaccinated elderly, diabetics, and cancer patients.
Read about what happened to Israel when the delta variant reached them to get a sense of that this variant is capable of.
(One irony is that, as you know, I'm a very staunch critic of 'scientism' and 'scientific materialism' on this forum, but when it comes to public policy I'm completely 'pro science'. I would never think of denigrating public health officials or the expert opinion of scientists when it comes to matters of health (or climate science) which sadly seems the norm in right-wing politics. But then, most of the proponents of scientific materialism are not actually scientists, but (often second rate) public intellectuals. Anyway, it's a distinction I wanted to call out. One of the reasons Australia has been *relatively* successful in controlling COVID-19 is because of the respect accorded to public health officers in this country, in contrast to those disgraceful 'fire Fauci' placards we saw in the US under Trump.)
Quoting frank
Of course, 100%. I expect to be wearing masks in public places and taking the related precautions for the forseeable future
Good. You understand that when you folks come off lockdown, the delta variant will become endemic there. It will be all over the place. People will die of it every year.
You yourself may eventually die from it. Therefore, don't talk about the deaths of others.
Sure. I mean Australia has a relatively rational government. As far as I know, I do remember that global warming denial was somewhat higher in Australia than in other comparative countries, due to industry interests in coal if I don't misremember.
But for the rest, your country has done remarkable well, all things considered.
Na man, I've never thought you were anti-science at all. I think you enjoy it, like anyone interested in philosophy should. Scientism is something I dislike too, it's an excuse for lazy thinking. I would maybe put different emphasis than you in some topics, but nothing massive.
It's a shame that bad ideas form the US get copied in other countries. But I suspect denialism will eventually whimper down, IF this doesn't continue for more than say, a year.
No. Darwin's evolution will winnow out the future offspring of the vaxxars. Thats why they are selfish.
Yes that is a huge blot on our international reputation. There was completely bi-partisan, if very cautious, consensus until 2010, when the most obnoxious of the Right in this country seized on the issue and politicized it. We had, at one point, a functional carbon tax which was working exactly as intended and would have been a major step forward in mitigation, it was dismantled for purely party-political reasons in one of the greatest acts of bastardry this country has ever suffered. (Different topic, but thanks for the venting opportunity.)
Quoting Prishon
How could I ever hope to match such rhetorical excellence?
America's mullet.
Florida Man does some crazy shit. :wink:
I can't make any sense of this last in the light of your prior assessment.
If I've justified uncertainty about whether the harms of the means outweigh the goods of the ends, but must place my bet either pro or con (no half measures), how is it the placing one way neglects my social duty but the other doesn't. Both ways concern the harms to society, one from the means, the other from the ends.
I trust God to have mercy on you.
Yeah. like most woo merchants, one whiff of death and you'll prostitute yourself to anyone with a 'sciencey' sounding cure, grab a flag and join the parade. Once the mortal threat's gone, it's back to the woo.
It's an odd thing how many of those who cite things like the replication crisis to deride science (particularity my profession, in fact) are the same folk who treat questioning the medical establishment's claims as tantamount to tinfoil-hat wearing.
You know they've got about the same replicability ratio - medicine and psychology? That's what the famous Ioannidis article was about. Ioannidis was in the department of epidemiology at the time.
Of course Ioannidis has now been thrown under the same bus as anyone else questioning the prevailing science now, in our new era of scientico-religious fervour.
Just the sort of dogmatism you'd be all over in matters of cosmology, psychology, neuroscience, biology... literally anything except health, in fact.
Got any documentation on that?
Nah, I just make this shit up, everyone knows that.
Sorry, a little more cantankerous than usual this morning (and 'usual' is not always up to standard either)
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-john-ioannidis/
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/05/wtf-happened-to-john-ioannidis/
If you're interested, here's the same happening to Pete Doshi, the editor in chief of the BMJ and a respected professor of pharmaceutical health services in his own right.
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/05/21/why-is-peter-doshi-still-an-editor-at-the-bmj-rfk-jr-version/
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/peter-doshi-anti-vaccine-false-authority/
Apparently for an expert in the effectiveness of pharmaceutical interventions, questioning the effectiveness of a pharmaceutical intervention is a sacking offence now.
Written in March this year. I don't see anyone being 'thrown under a bus', simply a regular piece of critical commentary about a very dynamic public health issue.
The title is "What the heck happened to John Ioannidis?", not -"a response to some of John Ioannidis's claims". The tone is what I'm criticising here. Debate in science is healthy, necessary. Questioning the integrity ("what the heck happened to...") of those presenting alternative views is a failure to understand how science works.
I'm aware the two articles are the same, I was trying to give a flavour of the coverage, it's not a lone corner of the internet.
What's happening with Doshi and Ioannidis, is part of this shift. In one article (cited here recently, in fact) Doshi is aligned with some crackpot doctor claiming the vaccine will kill us all - as if both of their claims were of the same ilk simply because both are not widely agreed on (despite the fact that Doshi's are well-sourced, researched and founded, whereas the doctor's are plucked out of thin air). We simply can't practice science at all under these conditions.
The proper distinction between crackpot and scientist is the extent to which one can justify one's claims with proper scientific rigour, not the extent to which one's peers currently agree.
I;d say he's biased. If he wasn't he would have said "numbers that actually might not translate into disease burden (since he is speaking about studies that he thinks we should do but have not yet done).
Oh. It doesn't stand for anything anymore. It used to stand for the British Medical Journal, now it's just 'BMJ'. It's one of the world's leading medical journals... or just a crackpot rag, depending, it would seem entirely on how critical articles within it are of the pharmaceutical industry...
It depends. Are you specifically referring to traffic light mandates or child-proof cap passports?
Whatever the case, the exclamation: Quoting 180 Proof it sounds very soviet, and that is a disgusting idea for me.
He's talking about a known entity - the numbers of people recorded on the database whose admission to hospital was for a cause unrelated to any covid symptoms. He's not predicting future studies, he's talking about current case recording techniques. The exact same issue occurred at the beginning of the pandemic when the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine had to tell the government to change the way it recorded deaths. The government finally agreed (though several reports use the older method).
It's not a trivial issue. There's still hundreds of very serious medical conditions which need to be monitored and the mismanagement of admission data confuses the picture to no benefit.
Quoting Isaac
Of course. But the whole concept of objective fact is under challenge today, particularly in the USA.
//ps - although I should add, peer review and agreement has to be part of it doesn’t it? If nobody can replicate or agree with a particular scientists findings, then how can they stand?
Yes, they changed it a few years back, don't know why, now it's just BMJ. Sounds more like a music magazine, by hey ho, we've got to move with the times...
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I think people have failed to realise the effect this shift is having on actual science.
Quoting Wayfarer
Absolutely, but in the examples I gave we're not talking about lack of peer review or replicability. We're talking about interpretation of data that comes from those studies (or less rigorous studies sometimes, we are in something of a hurry at the moment!). Agreement here is not a measure of rigour. There might well be one lone voice interpreting the data one way and the isolation of that voice would have no impact at all on the statistical rigour of the data it is interpreting.
We simply don't measure scientific interpretation by vote, never have done...until now, it seems.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94074
Everyone feel free to rip it to shreds, but do read the article if possible. Extra marks for a really vitriolic reply which uses all seven cognitive distortions.
Any reason why you've used the age-adjusted rates?
Yes, I know what age adjustment is, I was wondering why they'd adjusted (or more specifically what they've adjusted). I suspect it's adjusted for variation in vaccination rates, but without the data source, it's not clear. I thought you might have such information, since you posted the data.
I didn't think the point was all that subtle: you explicitly support your community's goal of reaching herd immunity; you just aren't willing to help -- at least not in the way you've been asked to.
Of course, I suppose you could help in other ways besides getting vaccinated; you mentioned somewhere that you've done some consulting work that's related...
We know what you've done not to help -- not gotten your jab and spent time here justifying that choice -- maybe you could tell us what you've done to help advance the goal you've said you support.
If your answer is that the data suggest we'll reach herd immunity, and SARS-CoV-2 will join the other coronaviruses as endemic, without you ever getting vaccinated, that's a textbook case of the tragedy of the commons: your choice is for lots of other people to do their bit and for you to free-ride.
I only finally got vaccinated recently -- no excuse for the delay, really, just that daily life is a little complicated and the days I planned for doing it kept falling through. But even though I've gone this long without getting sick or even knowing anyone who got sick, despite the fact that I work in retail, it never occurred to me to refuse or just not bother, anymore than I would consider refusing or just not bothering to vote.
Google "Covid-19 associated hospitalizations among unvaccinated and fully vaccinated" and you can review page after page of the analyzed data, all with the statistical methodology you're looking for, as if the jury is still out on this question.
Maybe fight a good fight, like try to convince expectant mothers to maintain proper nutrition or something like that as opposed to whatever you're trying to do here.
Yes, that's about it. What I really wanted you to answer was why you thought that a selfish decision (tragedy of the commons reference). The reason I'm not willing to help in the way I've been asked is because I think the way I've been asked might well do more harm than the laudable goal it's aiming at. Harm to others, that is. How is avoiding harm to others selfish, or in any way related to the tragedy of the commons? My understanding of the tragedy is that in each person looking only to their own gain, they spoil things for everyone.
All my examples, issues and concerns have related to everyone, not to me. I've raised concerns about vaccinating children, about vaccine distribution to poor countries, about losing focus on community healthcare, about rising wealth inequality, about profiteering pharmaceuticals... None of which affect me directly in the slightest.
So I'm still not seeing how it applies. I'm not gaining anything at all from doing any of this. Gods, I've colleagues who won't speak to me. In what way, exactly, is my position supposed to be benefitting me?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think that would be either relevant, nor appropriate. I could be a complete hypocrite and my argument's qualities remain undented. Detailing my consultancy work online is, in any case, completely out of the question.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Again, you've not really made clear what kind of free-ride I'm getting out of this. I could simply not get vaccinated and lie about it, easy. What am I getting out of the approach I'm taking here which relates to the tragedy of the commons example?
No objections at all. I just asked since age adjustment is done for comparative purposes and involves at least one variable. The variable was not listed so the data incomplete.
If there's a complaint in there it's that I suspected that you posted data you didn't even understand the stats behind it but posted it because it showed a good looking line going up. The entire essence of the problem here in a nutshell.
I realise my anecdotal speculations will be of no interest to you (nor maybe anyone at this stage), but... @Banno asked if I had a theory as to why vaccine hesitancy was highest among the PhD educated (but other higher education levels showed the lowest). My guess is that only at PhD level do you start realising what can be done by 'managing' your statistics, it changes the way one looks at data supposedly proving some point or other. That or we're all grumpy selfish bastards who no longer care because we're going to die soon anyway.
Sorry, yes, there's been a misunderstanding. I'm not interested in what you gain by posting here, etc.
I'm also not making the case that you benefit by your community, local or global, reaching herd immunity; I think that's true but it would only be relevant here if that's why you support it as a goal, and even then, whatever.
The point is that herd immunity is a goal of yours, for whatever reason, whether you derive any benefit from it, whether you know you derive any benefit from it. It's a goal of yours; if something you want to happen happens, well, then you're getting what you want, and is the simplest possible way of judging success.
You have decided that to reach this goal, of yours, lots of other people should do something, just not you. Hence you are free-riding. Or you're going down with the ship, if the goal is not reached, whatever. The point is only that you have a goal you believe other people should take steps to reach.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, of course. We can treat this all hypothetically. It's of no interest that you haven't gotten vaccinated. For all I know you have and this is all "for the sake of argument". I believe I understand the question you wanted to raise -- are individuals obligated to get vaccinated, and if so is that a specifically moral obligation? -- and while it does streamline the conversation for you to take the part of Vaccine Refuser, it's not actually relevant.
For comparison, you could defend conscientious objectors by saying something like: there are other ways to contribute to defeating the Nazis than shooting them -- running your neighborhood watch, collecting steel and rubber scraps, working in a hospital, and so on.
In this case, it's not perfectly clear what that might be. I suppose you could volunteer to drive the transportationally-challenged to a clinic -- hell, I suppose there are lots of things besides the obvious that you could do. (Oh yeah, and didn't mean to suggest you share details about your work -- but it should be clear now where something like that might slot in, as an alternative contribution.)
At any rate, that's the shape of my intended answer to your specific question: expecting others to take steps to reach a goal of yours while taking no steps yourself is not okay, and I don't think you'd have any trouble digging up studies to confirm that people generally frown upon free-riding. College sophomores everywhere agree.
On the other hand, are you under an obligation specifically to get vaccinated? This argument says no; you're only obligated to chip in somehow, not necessarily in the obvious way.
It's not obvious to me yet that the argument could be strengthened to require specifically that you get vaccinated, but it's not out of the question. I'll mull it over some more.
The PhD hesitancy rate is curious, but it's still only about 25%, meaning it remains a minority position. That study doesn't identify which PhDs were represented, nor was there any confirmation of the PhD. it would be more concerning if medical based PhDs were highly represented among the skeptics, but we just don't have that information.Quoting Isaac
Well, you've now been provided all the data you could possibly need to sort through.
Hmmmm.
Trouble is, you really do need some people, a lot as a matter of fact, specifically to get vaccinated. It wouldn't do for everyone to make alternative contributions -- say, everyone vocally encouraging everyone else to get the jab but no one doing it themselves. So that looks like we've only pushed the asymmetry back a step.
To make this clear: suppose you didn't want to get vaccinated because you thought the chances it's not safe were too high for your taste -- doesn't matter what, even 5% or something, just enough that it's not a risk you're comfortable taking. Would it be okay for you to encourage others to get vaccinated? That doesn't look quite right, does it? Encouraging others to take a risk you wouldn't, if you would benefit should they be successful -- that's not likely to find approval among college sophomores.
BONUS section!
Similarly, I don't want to support Big Pharma or Big Government but I want others to, also not cool.
Dimes to donuts it isn't epidemiologists. My money's on physicists, but really any hard science outside the actual field at issue. You know how those guys are.
Fact check in PhD hesitancy
It’s the same with children in New York, who have had more deaths along with more stringent lockdowns. Compound the deaths of their parent with the negative effects of totalitarian, nanny-state lockdowns and you could hardly have it worse as a child.
Nonetheless, comparing a sparsely populated, island continent to a densely populated state is an odd choice, even if I assume political motivations.
Yes, but I have other goals too. Remember this is a conflict between ends and means. Two goals (at least).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not 'whatever' though. Not as far as my morality is concerned. Free-riding and 'going down with the ship' are not anywhere near morally equivalent positions. I don't think other people see it that way either. Compare "the captain was just free-riding the voyage and let his first officer do all the work", to "the captain went down with his ship".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, but it's not quite like that. Expecting soldiers to fight, expecting nurses to heal...this is quite normal. We're all different so we need not all play the same part, especially if there are other factors at stake.
I'll simplify something I think is not far from the position (which is a bit more complex)...
We've two goals. 1. vaccinate 70%, and 2. minimize inequality in vaccine distribution.
To achieve both we want 70% of people to be vaccinated but no more. Any more would interfere with equitable distribution.
So who should be the 70%? Well, obviously everyone for whom the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. Who should be in the 30%? Anyone who's most likely to be able to reach and maintain immunity themselves. Soldiers and nurses...
This is a very simplified version to get the framework I'm working from across. Basically we're working towards more than one goal and not everyone has the 'get vaccinated' role to play.
Think that answers your bonus question too. We want two things (one of which is not support big pharma, in your example). How do we get both? Arrange it (as a community) such that we use the smallest amount of big pharma product required to achieve our other goal.
Yes, thanks.
Link's not working for me (something about EU laws!) Can you summarise?
Actually most of the people I've cited opposed to the current policies are epidemiologists. Also my personal experience. It's primarily epidemiologists, statisticians, paediatrics, and the odd few economists. But that's primarily to do with who I'm hanging around with recently. Not much call for experimental physicists in my work! That would be some very long term risk planning!
This study came out tomorrow, August 27, 2021, so you know it's recent.
No. The unvaccinated hospitalised are 29.2 times more prevalent than the vaccinated hospitalised. Your likelihood would only be the same as the prevalence if hospitalisation/vaccination combinations were random, and we already know they aren't. See what I mean about statistics?
Oh, and while we at misuse of stats, your chances if you're a healthy young adult are so small that multiplying them by 29.2 is irrelevant.
Have you considered you might have a problem with confirmation bias here, considering you call into question basic statistical methodologies when evaluating reports submitted by the scientific community, but you treat as gospel an opinion poll posted on Facebook where people responded to questions and then self-identified their level of education? That is, we have no idea whether people voted 2, 3, or 55 times and whether they were truthful when asserting their level of education.
And even should I accept your data as truthful, do you propose I shrug off the mountain of evidence being accumulated supporting the efficiency of the vaccine reducing the Covid symptoms just because 25% of the US PhDs express some hesitancy about its efficiency?
I haven't relied on that poll for evidence of anything on which my arguments hinge. I only brought it up in response to others making equally spurious, unsupported claims about the intelligence level of the vaccine hesitant. I would not rely on it.
And what is the uncontrolled variable you hypothesize that exists within the vaccinated community that has resulted in this deceptive data? I'd think the vaccinated would consist of the most vulnerable to the disease. The vaccination rates tend very high among the elderly, in many states in the high 90%.
Lovely. I'll strike out all prior references to it now that you withdraw it.
No. I'm not asking you to do anything. I haven't once made any request of anyone here nor have I judged them in any way for their choices. In fact I think you've made the right choice given what you know.
I'm defending my choice against some pretty nasty judgements.