Coronavirus

Reply to Isaac, don't put words in my mouth. Add don't forget to mask up appropriately, where appropriate. :mask:


On a different note, someone out there posted this:

Quoting jorndoe

don't put words in my mouth

Well, let's make it simple. Do you think that the suppressing of dissenting scientific opinion was justified or not? If you do, on what ground?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Why do you complain about the self-evident truth, and insist that it's somehow "wrong"? What qualifies as a "crime" is what the government dictates is a crime. Isn't that self-evident to you? And that dictation must be allowed to change with an evolving society. Or do you think that the original laws, those of Draco or something like that, should persist unchanged, forever and ever, dictated to never be allowed to change?

I think you have things backward. To make a "charter" which forces the government to adhere in a fixed way, to some dictate which would cripple its capacity to "invent crimes" is what is tyrannical. In reality, the government needs to be able to "invent crimes" faster than the criminals can act them out. But as you correctly indicate, giving a government the power which it needs, to properly govern an evolving society, is fraught with disagreement, therefore very problematic. And it's a problem which obviously has not been solved.

It’s evident to me that laws can be either just or unjust, right or wrong. There is no human right the government has not violated. The government murders, steals from, and enslaves human beings, all of which would subject you or I to swift punishment, and rightfully so.

Defining the limits of the state is not tyranny, at least in theory, but a check on arbitrary power and the monopoly of violence. The expansion of this power should be crippled at every instance, and in my opinion, removed entirely.

Unfortunately, Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms has served only as a small hurdle to its tyranny. Rather than outright prohibit people from freedom of movement, it forces the airlines to enforce rigid restrictions, and travellers to undergo harsh quarantine measures at their own expense. Rather than enforce its discriminatory policies against those who refuse Pfizer vaccines, it forces the private citizen to do it. Rather than freeze and steal the contents of someone’s bank account, it forces the banks to do it. It gets around violating its own charter by forcing those who are not beholden to it to do it for them.

Reply to NOS4A2 I think that the Canadian government is noticing that Canadians are not what they are stereotypically portrayed to be.

But anyway, any Western government going with mandatory vaccinations is just asking for it and deserves the consequences it gets. Few if any are like the Austrians. It's just stupidity.

Quoting NOS4A2

Unfortunately, Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms has served only as a small hurdle to its tyranny. Rather than outright prohibit people from freedom of movement, it forces the airlines to enforce rigid restrictions, and travellers to undergo harsh quarantine measures at their own expense. Rather than enforce its discriminatory policies against those who refuse Pfizer vaccines, it forces the private citizen to do it. Rather than freeze and steal the contents of someone’s bank account, it forces the banks to do it. It gets around violating its own charter by forcing those who are not beholden to it to do it for them.

I don't understand any of your concerns here. Laws of self-regulation exist for many industries, especially concerning safety issues. The government passes the safety rule and makes the companies enforce it within, often requiring a report to the government. So in an industry like the food industry, which has enormous safety implications, instead of having a massive army of government inspectors, the dairies, packing plants, and places like that, must hire their own inspectors. It is a far more efficient way of handling the enforcement of safety standards, to have the ones engaged in the activity enforce the regulations upon themselves. But we can still be critical of these practices, and some of the effects. For instance, it is overwhelmingly unfair to small businesses, to force them to have an inspector on the payroll. Likewise, it is unfair to a person who owns one truck and moves goods for a livelihood, to be subjected to the exact same fines for safety violations, as a multimillion dollar transport company, if the fines become similar to a tax on the industry.

But I don't see that you've expressed any valid objections to the idea of mandating airline companies, and individual travelers themselves, to self-enforce specific safety standards. And it is not in any way comparable to prohibiting people from the freedom of movement. Telling people that they can only move if they take the necessary precautions not to jeopardize the safety of others, is like telling them that if they drive their cars and trucks they must be careful not to run over pedestrians, and this is in no way comparable to outright prohibiting the freedom of movement. And the fact that this might be an added expense to the traveler is completely irrelevant. To exercise one's freedom of movement has always been something which requires expenditure. If to do so in a way which the government decrees as necessary to protect the safety of others, requires an even greater expenditure, then of course we must accept that expense if we want to engage in those forms of movement. Whether or not you agree with what the government decrees as necessary to protect the safety of others, is a different argument from the argument as to whether the government ought to make such decrees.

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Banned/suppressed, Reply to Isaac? No; well, I'd prefer not to. (Might start talking about free speech for that matter I guess.) Discourse is part of figuring things out.

On the other hand, dissidents crippling moving forward is irresponsible, especially in public health, especially with a situation on our hands. (Some dissidents stop listening to others, while insisting that others must hear them.)

Had some careless anti-masker infected my aging parents, then I'd be rather unhappy. Wouldn't you be? And I wouldn't care if they waved a couple of hand-picked articles, while ignoring many others (or ignoring common sense, or being respectful, for that matter). That's what it looks like here in real life.

something like: masks can help (when used right).

Quoting jorndoe

On the other hand, dissidents crippling moving forward is irresponsible, especially in public health, especially with a situation on our hands. (Some dissidents stop listening to others, while insisting that others must hear them.)

I agree entirely with the sentiment, but I suspect you're thinking of different people to me. Are you prepared to name names? Who are/were these dissidents who crippled moving forward and stopped listening to others?

Quoting jorndoe

Had some careless anti-masker infected my aging parents, then I'd be rather unhappy.

How on earth would you know? The whole point of these articles is that the jury is still out on whether the mask would have helped or not. It depends on the circumstances, including factors which haven't been tested yet.

See this is the problem. You want to turn believing in one specific scientific opinion into a moral duty. It's no longer sufficient that I show due concern for these hypothetical parents, I must additionally believe what you believe about which actions risk their well-being and which don't.

Mandating thresholds of care is fine, foundational to a functioning society. Mandating thresholds of epistemic responsibility I'd also say made sense (if your actions are likely to impact others you ought find out how). But assigning moral blame because I don't agree with the scientists you happen to agree with...?

I'd even go as far as to say that if a person is concerned for their health and they really believe my wearing a mask will protect them, I'm going to wear the mask, it'd be mean not to, but mandating masks on kids, nothing but a 'hope for the best' that it won't do them any harm? How's that 'respectful' exactly?

Quoting Isaac

How on earth would you know?

Not going to go over your seemingly epistemic relativism once again, apparently cool with carelessness, in particular not if it could put my aging parents at risk.

Quoting jorndoe

Had some careless anti-masker infected my aging parents, then I'd be rather unhappy. Wouldn't you be?

Well?

Quoting jorndoe

Well?

You can hardly expect me to answer your questions after refusing to answer mine. I came for a discussion, not a lecture.

Quoting Isaac

Since when did public health policy become - "we'll mandate something and if anyone happens to turn up some data that it's harmful we'll stop". what on earth happened to 'Do No Harm'?

It's been like that for as long as I can remember. Vaccinations, hormonal contraceptives, use of plastic, cutting down forests, failing to start building a retirement fund early on, incarcerating 10-year olds with the general population (yay, America thou wonderful!) ...

People tend to be this way: if some measure or other action doesn't have 1. immediate and 2. massive bad consequences, we should go through with it, and whatever negative consequences there are, find a way to blame them on the individual people who experience those consequences.
If the consequences are not immediate and massive, people generally take little heed.

Reply to Baden, invites to discuss:

Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’ (Apr 11, 2018)

One of those things where unchecked capitalism can go awry (say, the tragedy of the commons being another example)?
@Isaac, for one, has aired industry scandals.
How to respond?

Quoting jorndoe

capitalism

Capitalism? What are you describing as Capitalism? And how does Capitalism relate to the tragedy of the commons, given that perfect order within productive systems are emergent as a result of individuals in voluntary co-operation in pursuit of mutual benefit, which is an element of Capitalism?

Quoting Garrett Travers

co-operation in pursuit of mutual benefit, which is an element of Capitalism?

Co ops and Mutuals? No, mate, that's socialism. That's the stuff Margret Thatcher was concerned to privatise. Remember it well.

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Reply to jorndoe

I suspect there was a reason that was buried in the Shoutbox and not attached to the Coronavirus thread. As we've heard ad infinitum from the many contributors here, Covid vaccines are an exception to the rule, the one time that the pharmaceuticals acted for the good of mankind in a rare burst of humanity, they must've been watching Disney's Christmas Carol just beforehand. All lobbying was suspended for a year, no-one was paid off, they stopped funding research academies, stopped being the major donors to the top ten media companies, removed all their CEOs from the boards, reneged all their 'revolving door' offers of plush consultancies to FDA and NIH officials. Their main investors stopped funding the WHO, severed all ties with government policymakers, and social media platforms.

So everything was totally above board and not at all unduly influenced at all in their favour.

Back to business as usual now though. Grrr!

Quoting unenlightened

Co ops and Mutuals? No, mate, that's socialism. That's the stuff Margret Thatcher was concerned to privatise. Remember it well.

No, actually it's Epicureanism, from whence socialism plagiarised, perverted, adapted from Christendom induced historical influence, and has thereby turned into a murderous anti-human concept. The original communes we voluntarily participated in, anarchic, eductaional institutions of philosophy and empirical induction, that were characterized by property respecting, pleasure pursuing, mutually co-operating people interested in maximizing individual happiness as a matter of ethical imperative. In other words, what people would refer to today as "Anarcho-Capitalism." These communes sprung up right at the beginning of the Hellenestic era, and lasted for the next 500 years until the emperor Constantine's Council of Nicea which gave Chriatianity state power, culminating in the rape of Greek philosophical tradition, including the murder and opression of these Epicurean societies, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands by that time, and constituted the happiest, most harmonious, most intellegent, most literarily prolific, most non-violent independent sub-communities of which I've ever discovered any information on in the history of the world. Christendom stole their communes, turned them into monastaries, and when the concepts were redisocveredduring the Enlightenment, the anarchists and socialists, particularly Marx, plagiarised the concepts and transposed them over a pagan-formulated historical model of such striking similarity to Biblical structure that one can only roll their eyes at.

This all to mean that, what we all regard as "socialism" and "capitalism," are completely perverted, non-existent, ignorance induced representations of amorphic nonsense that the Dirgist controllers, like your Thatcher or Obama, or any other scum bag tyrant, are all using to keep you ignorant and hating your fellow citizen cuz "exploitation, bruh." Have a look, Marxism.org even has a full page on Epicurus, that is mostly accurate, up on their website if you go look. Here's something a bit more academic. I think you'll like the whole history, it's quite amazing:

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Spinoza/Texts/Epicurean%20History.htm

With the Ukraine crisis in effect, it looks like covid is becoming phased out as "the greatest threat of our generation". I suppose we can finally close this God forsaken thread. :hearts:

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe.

Yes, it is unbelievable. Two years ago everything was messed up due to Covid. In just 24 months we normalize the situation and it looks like is no longer a problem

Quoting javi2541997

Yes, it is unbelievable. Two years ago everything was messed up due to Covid. In just 24 months we normalize the situation and it looks like is no longer a problem

It is unbelievable. I come away astounded at how insatiably and incredibly desperate the masses are for something exciting in their lives, a crisis, a reason to live...to the extent that they are willing to abide with some of the stupidest and most ridiculous rules ever imposed on adult humans. Looking back on it all, it is painfully hysterical. Remember when the lunatics mobbed the stores and horded all the toilet paper and water?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Remember when the lunatics mobbed the stores and horded all the toilet paper and water?

Oh yes... We were run out of stock because of their negligence. When I saw this situation I thought: "the humans are not ready to face a catastrophic situation"

Quoting javi2541997

Oh yes... We were run out of stock because of their negligence. When I saw this situation I thought: "the humans are not ready to face a catastrophic situation"

Indeed :blush: The humans have a long, long long way to go.

Analysis: Future infectious diseases: Recent history shows we can never again be complacent about pathogens (Mar 2, 2022)

Either learn better to avoid, or learn to suffer better?

Now that Covid is endemic here in the U.K. and May we’ll be in other countries by now. Perhaps it’s time to consider if there is likely to be a deadly variant, or whether covid will fade away into fairly harmless variants.

A new variant has recently emerged in U.K,

A new Omicron variant has been found in the UK. XE is a "recombinant" i.e. a mutation of BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains.

Reply to Punshhh
I think Omicron ended up being the universal immunity maker.

Where I am, covid is practically gone. A few stragglers is it. Everybody's heads are spinning from it.

What's left is that people who are vulnerable still need to get vaccinated. Cancer patients, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and people of color definitely need to be taking D3 supplements.

Quoting frank

obesity

How sizable is that in the USA nowadays? It's 14% here nowadays. When I was a teenager it was 8%.

Reply to Benkei They're huge. It's awful.

I got off of processed foods a while back and then discovered how the whole American scene is geared toward obesity.

As always, it's corporate interests vs the health of the people. In this case the sugar industry. :groan:

Reply to frank Hopefully you’re right, perhaps any scary variant which does emerge will not be all that bad as we become immune. I notice China is having a bit of a mare at the moment.

China's finally got it.

It looks like the commies are having a tough go of it.

“As well as the footage from Zhangjiang, other videos have captured “big whites” wrestling people to the ground and kicking them; screaming, yelling and even throwing things at residents who refuse to comply with instructions; and beating a dog to death after its owner was sent to isolation.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-shanghai-residents-pleas-for-help-in-covid-19-lockdown-result-in-their/

China has 370 million people on lockdown. :grimace:

Quoting frank

China has 370 million people on lockdown. :grimace:

Bunch of suckers.

It looks absolutely crazy:



I don't think this has now anything to do with the pandemic. This is simply riot police clothed in hazmat suits. I think this the Chinese leader using the old pandemic now as a political tool when otherwise the economy would already be wobbling under the global inflation etc. Actually when people here protest about what totalitarian system Covid has brought to us, perhaps a good reality check is to look at what's that actual totalitarian response like.



Here on the other hand, even the official line is that Covid (especially the omicron variant) is not a problem anymore. If you get Covid, stay home for 5 days and if you don't have serious symptoms, it's fine to go to work. And after 10 days, go to work even if you still are sneezing.

Reply to ssu
I don't understand what they're doing. Omicron is unstoppable. Plus it's not as dangerous as the others, so protecting vulnerable people and vaccinating should be the focus, not trying to remain zero-covid. Nature is going to win this battle.

Quoting frank

I don't understand what they're doing.

The only thing understandable is that this is some kind of power play from the leader Xi Jingping.

Reply to ssu
But it's hurting his economy. That can't be right.

Quoting frank

But it's hurting his economy. That can't be right.

Economy isn't as important as it is in American or Western politics.

Quoting ssu

Economy isn't as important as it is in American or Western politics.

That does not compute.

Quoting frank

Economy isn't as important as it is in American or Western politics. — ssu


That does not compute.

I think he means to say economy is not as important to them as, say, control.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I think he means to say economy is not as important to them as, say, control.

I see. The American southeast was like for decades after the Civil War. Maybe it's a side effect of catastrophe.

I wonder if those who see Russia as an imperial state remember that. Russia went through a large scale catastrophe just 30 years ago.

New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest

It ain't over yet! :fear:

COVID: China's Shanghai says new Omicron subvariant found (Jul 10, 2022)

With more data and studies coming through, more preprints are becoming available:

Effectiveness of vaccines in preventing hospitalization due to COVID-19: A multicenter hospital-based case-control study, Germany, June 2021 to January 2022 (Jun 29, 2022)

The decline of COVID-19 severity and lethality over two years of pandemic (Jul 2, 2022)

Understanding the impact of disease and vaccine mechanisms on the importance of optimal vaccine allocation* (Jul 3, 2022)

Inferring the differences in incubation-period and generation-interval distributions of the Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 (Jul 5, 2022)

Quantifying the impact of vaccines and booster doses on COVID-19 in the U.S. (Jul 6, 2022)

Overall, there are a few lessons learned; I'm sure there will be more.

Some evidence pointing at the wet markets:

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic (Jul 26, 2022)

The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2 (Jul 26, 2022)

Jane Qiu, National Geographic, adds some perspective:

Debate deepens over Wuhan wet market's role in kickstarting the pandemic (Jul 27, 2022)

Reply to jorndoe Thanks, this is interesting.

What’s missing, of course, is that we don’t yet know exactly which animals were involved in the transfer of SARS-CoV-2 to humans. Live wildlife were removed from the Huanan market before the investigative team entered, increasing public safety but hampering origin hunting.

The opportunity to find the direct animal host has probably passed. As the virus likely rapidly spread through its animal reservoir, it’s overly optimistic to think it would still be circulating in these animals today.

...and furthermore:

The lab leak theory rests on an unfortunate coincidence: that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in a city with a laboratory that works on bat coronaviruses.

Some of these bat coronaviruses are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. But not close enough to be direct ancestors.

Sadly, the focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology has distracted us from a far more important connection: that, like SARS-CoV-1 (which emerged in late 2002) before it, there’s a direct link between a coronavirus outbreak and a live animal market.

Conveniently (and some would say too conveniently). the research community can sigh of relief. Hopefully they found which animal it was.

FYI, should anyone still be interested, a handful of recent articles:

Sep 26, 2022 Association of Primary and Booster Vaccination and Prior Infection With SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Severe COVID-19 Outcomes
Oct 10, 2022 Pandemic origins and a One Health approach to preparedness and prevention: Solutions based on SARS-CoV-2 and other RNA viruses
Oct 12, 2022 Immune Imprinting and Protection against Repeat Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2
Oct 13, 2022 How SARS-CoV-2 battles our immune system
Oct 13, 2022 Epidemics That Didn't Happen

As of typing, the virus has spread more or less everywhere with impressive success.

Fortunately, it hasn't been as dangerous as the 2003 outbreak, which had a 10% fatality rate, and we're fortunate that such a deadly mutation hasn't emerged in this round.

Just thought I'd drop this little gem in here:

Reply to Tzeentch Interesting video and analysis. In the description of the video the doctor warned: The risk of COVID-19 also varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of covid infection. and then he shows some evidences related to the number of taken vaccines and the correlation of percentage of people testing positive.

Well, it is obvious, right? Whenever you put vaccines on the population the people tend to start relaxing towards the precautions. But the vaccines are not there to "prevent" infections but to saves us from death. My parents and I have taken two vaccines and we were infected by Covid. We didn't get close to death thanks to the vaccines but it is obvious that sooner or later we would be infected. It is impossible the opposite.

I respect the analysis and evidences of the doctor of the video. But in my humble opinion, I think they are not related to the main cause of massive vaccination.

Reply to javi2541997
Or it could be that naturally acquired immunity is just better for some reason.

We've learned that locking down has a downstream cost in terms of flu and other viral outbreaks. Hopefully someone in China will pay attention to this and start thinking in post-lockdown terms. Lock downs can't stop the pandemic. All they do is preserve healthcare capacity.

Quoting frank

Or it could be that naturally acquired immunity is just better for some reason.

It could be. But we suppose to save the most possible lives. If we only use the naturally immunity there would be a lot of weak people dying just for an experiment and I see it unfair... I think everyone deserves to be safe from covid.

In the other hand, China has two main issues related to their current crisis: 1. Opaque data so we don't truly know what is going on there. 2. The Chinese vaccines are not good enough so these are not helping the citizens. I think that with European/American vaccines the context would be different.

Quoting javi2541997

It could be. But we suppose to save the most possible lives. If we only use the naturally immunity there would be a lot of weak people dying just for an experiment and I see it unfair... I think everyone deserves to be safe from covid.

Vaccinated people don't get as sick as unvaccinated, so it definitely is a life saving measure for many.

Quoting javi2541997

In the other hand, China has two main issues related to their current crisis: 1. Opaque data so we don't truly know what is going on there. 2. The Chinese vaccines are not good enough so these are not helping the citizens. I think that with European/American vaccines the context would be different.

I don't really understand what they're doing. No one thinks lockdowns can stop the Omicron strain. It's just too contagious.

Quoting frank

I don't really understand what they're doing. No one thinks lockdowns can stop the Omicron strain. It's just too contagious.

I wish China will be more cooperative in the following weeks... It will be better for all of us. Like it is a country you necessarily depend with. Most of the products and technology industries comes from there... That's the reality. We depend on Chinese enterprises.

We know that the vaccines likely were never meant to stop transmission, and now we also learn that, as far as this study goes, vaccination for some reason might increase the chance of infection.

Government narratives that focused on pressuring people to get vaccinated to protect others are getting more far-fetched by the day, yet the adverse effects and even deaths they caused are very real.

Governments basically under false pretenses pressured people into taking vaccines that had a non-trivial chance of severe adverse side-effects.

I hope this once again underlines the importance of respecting people's right to choose what they inject into their own bodies, and the dangers of giving governments who believe they have a monopoly on wisdom carte blanche to force their policies on their citizens.

Reply to Tzeentch, immunization can prepare the body to do away with the invader — the sooner the better — and hence
can decrease chance of mutations
can decrease transmission (showering/sanitizing can help too :gasp: oh and decreasing your exhaust on others)
can prevent death

But of course there's no magic bullet, no guarantees or certain stoppage, it's life, bathed in organics and other hazards. I guess every bit helps (if done (right)).

Quoting Oct 19, 2022

Fortunately, it hasn't been as dangerous as the 2003 outbreak, which had a 10% fatality rate, and we're fortunate that such a deadly mutation hasn't emerged in this round.

Some mutations in this round have proven wickedly good at getting around.

Investigations into origins have come up again recently. We'll see what comes of it.

Quoting jorndoe

But of course there's no magic bullet, no guarantees or certain stoppage, it's life, bathed in organics and other hazards. I guess every bit helps (if done (right)).

:up:

Anyway, I think China needs to start being more sensible and cooperative. It will be better for Chinese citizens and the rest of the world. I still do not understand why Xi Jinping acts in suck way. We are not debating on economics and digits but human lives.

China’s neighbors wary of dubious Covid data as they brace for influx of travelers

The official Covid-19 data released by China is proving to be unreliable. In December, internal documents were leaked that put the number of infections for that month at 248 million, but only 450,000 were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). In other words, China only reported one of every 550 cases.

It is official: we no longer have to wear masks in public transport after three years since this pandemic started!

No more masks on public transport in Spain from February 8.

The Minister of Health Carolina Darias confirmed today that the requirement to use masks on public transport was no longer necessary from Wednesday, February 8.
The change means that from tomorrow no masks will need to be worn on aeroplanes, buses and trains although everyone retains the right to do so. Masks, however, remain mandatory in health centres, hospitals and pharmacies.

We forget, we suffer!

Reply to javi2541997

The Cochrane review finally out on masks...

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full

A few highlights...

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza?like illness (ILI)/COVID?19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate?certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory?confirmed influenza/SARS?CoV?2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate?certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low?certainty evidence).

There is a need for large, well?designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs.

Oh...I forgot to cheerily sign off...

:mask: :mask: :mask: :mask:

Reply to Isaac :up:

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory?confirmed influenza/SARS?CoV?2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate?certainty evidence).

We all were agreed in this point but you know, politicians tend to be stubborn and egocentric. They lasted three years to admit that wearing masks in the public transport is worthless...
They are happy living in their lies and fantasy worlds, while the rest of us were tired of wearing masks :mask:

Reply to javi2541997

Yeah. To be clear, I think a general policy of mask wearing was a sensible public health precaution in the face of uncertainty.

I think screaming about non-maskers "murdering" innocents and equating dissent over their value with tinfoil-hat wearing flat-earthers was not only unhinged but positively dangerous.

It's one thing for a government to make difficult decisions with limited data. It's quite another for a whole section of the population to treat those decisions as if they were the word of God and all dissent as the work of Satan.

What the Cochrane review shows is not that masks are useless, nor that governments were wrong to mandate their use. It shows that those who disagreed with the government's policy were normal, rational people who simply had legitimate and well grounded differences of opinion about the best way forward.

Reply to Isaac Exactly.

I remember when the pandemic was in its hardest moment, the accusations against people who were against the decisions of the politicians or they simply had a different opinion or argument towards the "plan" of facing Covid. If you weren't part of the "mass" they treated you as a criminal.

Interesting fact (and I don't want to bore you): our constitutional court ruled that our government was against both Constitution and the rest of laws because of the way they were facing the pandemic. They promoted laws avoiding the free access to different regions and even some politicians didn't had the right to go to Congress. Randomly, our government decided to act so badly and it looked like a dictatorship. Fortunately, this happened years ago and now I see it far away...

Quoting javi2541997

our constitutional court ruled that our government was against both Constitution and the rest of laws because of the way they were facing the pandemic.

What happens in an ideal world is that a government rapidly (and proactively) makes public health decisions on the basis of listening to a range of different scientific opinions (with regards to the facts) and a range of different public opinions (with regards to values), and obviously a constitution fits in here too. Debate then continues in a relatively balanced way with the scientific arena discussing the facts as they are discovered (in their journals and conferences), and the public discussing their values in newspapers and social media. These discussions then change (or not) the data the government is using, which then changes (or not) government policy.

Obviously in the real world this doesn't happen because our system is imperfect.

What's been different this time is that the people who's role it is to push for a better system (activists, journalists, opposition...) were the ones most vocal about actively making the system worse. Actively limiting the full range of experts to be included in the debates over fact, actively removing dissenting voices from the public discussion over values, and actively campaigning for the government to ignore opinions which differ from their previous decisions.

It's not the government's behaviour that's been most reprehensible in this case (though it has been reprehensible), it's the activists, the community leaders, the journalists, the ordinary people... The ones who've not only willingly, but aggressively, pushed for a social world where questioning power is seen as a social taboo.

@Isaac

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza?like illness (ILI)/COVID?19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate?certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory?confirmed influenza/SARS?CoV?2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate?certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low?certainty evidence).

This is about outcomes for those who contracted the disease. It's saying that if you contracted the disease, your outcome is not changed by whether you wore a mask in public or not.

It's not examining whether requiring mask wearing impacts the spread of the disease.

Reply to frank That's true but the main problem (I guess) is not about the scientific research or the probabilities in infecting of coronavirus with/without mask wearing, but how the governments (at least in my country) lack of effectiveness. As you pointed out, this is about outcomes for those who contracted the disease, but the minister of health didn't even make a difference and we kept the wearing maks mandatory until today.
Why? Because is easier to rule with general plans rather than specific solutions.

Reply to javi2541997
For vulnerable people like the elderly and chronically ill, it makes sense to keep wearing them. For everyone else, probably not.

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza?like illness (ILI)/COVID?19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate?certainty evidence

At an individual level, the difference may be too small to justify a recommendation to wear a mask, but in a social setting, even 1 person protected means a chain reaction of infections has been forestalled (think, I suggest, in terms of a geometric progression).

Quoting frank

For vulnerable people like the elderly and chronically ill, it makes sense to keep wearing them. For everyone else, probably not.

:up:

Quoting frank

This is about outcomes for those who contracted the disease. It's saying that if you contracted the disease, your outcome is not changed by whether you wore a mask in public or not.

No it isn't. The review is entitled "Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses"

It's objective is...

To assess the effectiveness of physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of acute respiratory viruses.

It goes on to say...

Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu?like illness/COVID?like illness

... and ...

The observed lack of effect of mask wearing in interrupting the spread

Honestly, Frank, if you can't even read simple article before commenting I think it's best you just don't comment at all. You're just embarrassing yourself.

Reply to Isaac
Isaac, the portion you quoted was about outcomes. Pay attention to what you're quoting.

Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu?like illness/COVID?like illness

It might not, but it may. I think most people get the flu from close contact indoors. It's spread by droplets. COVID-19 is airborne.

Quoting frank

the portion you quoted was about outcomes

Yes, and the 'outcomes' were, in that case, catching an ARI, not the course of that ARI once caught.

Only 3 studies out of the 12 had adverse affects as the outcome, all the rest had the mere contraction of an ARI. It was the summary of those that the quote referred to, as you would know if you had even a modicum of humility, and actually checked first before you blurt out whatever you 'reckon'.

Quoting Isaac

No, Isaac

[quote]Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory?confirmed influenza/SARS?CoV?2 compared to not wearing masks

Here outcome means whether you lived or died.

Quoting Isaac

you would know if you had even a modicum of humility,

What I need for you to understand is that nobody cares about your well crafted insults. This forum has practically no audience. It's just a few posters. There are more moderators on this forum than posters on any given day. Nobody is hurt by your acidic tone. Nobody cares.

Reply to Isaac I am not an expert in these matters, but there are other highly qualified folks out there who are pointing out significant issues with this study:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-masks-covid-dont.html

Also there are numerous studies indicating that masks are effective:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html#anchor_1634654801820

Again - I'm not saying this study is wrong, but it seems premature to draw any conclusions from it. In fact, on the Cochrane website we can see this:

Lisa Bero, Cochrane Public Health and Health Systems Senior Editor and an author on an Editorial published to accompany this review said, “The results of this review should be interpreted cautiously, and the uncertain findings should not be taken as evidence that these measures are not effective.

Quoting frank

Here outcome means whether you lived or died.

It doesn't. The studies involved are summarised for you in tables 1, 2, and 3. None of them measured the outcome of the course of the ARI, they only measured contraction.

Quoting frank

This forum has practically no audience. It's just a few posters. There are more moderators on this forum than posters on any given day.

Hey now.

Quoting EricH

there are other highly qualified folks out there who are pointing out significant issues with this study:

I don't doubt it, especially given the vitriol with which the advice was promoted. there's going to be every incentive out there to find every flaw possible. Odd that no such flaw-finding zeal was applied to the studies showing even the vaguest links between mask-wearing and disease reduction, or the extremely flawed studies on myocarditis, or the sketchy trials for the original vaccine, or the barely existent trials showing any benefits to the interminable 'boosters'...

One can always find flaws. No trials are perfect. As I said earlier here...

Quoting Isaac

What the Cochrane review shows is not that masks are useless, nor that governments were wrong to mandate their use. It shows that those who disagreed with the government's policy were normal, rational people who simply had legitimate and well grounded differences of opinion about the best way forward.

Reply to EricH

Also, the government in America mandated masks for children against the advice of the WHO. Since when did it become OK to mandate an un-trialled intervention, on children, on the basis of "no evidence that it's not effective"?

There's currently no evidence that slapping children repeatedly round the face is not effective. Should we mandate that too?

Reply to Isaac
Not sure where you got that info about WHO, here's what I'm seeing:

"[i]Some countries and regions may have specific policies or recommendations in place. As always, follow the guidance provided by your country or local health department or ministry.
WHO and UNICEF recommend the following:

1. Children aged 5 years and under do not need to wear a mask because in this age group, they may not be able to properly wear a mask without help or supervision.

2. In areas where SARS-CoV-2 is spreading, children ages 6-11 years are recommended to wear a well-fitted mask[/i]"

etc, etc

Quoting Isaac

It doesn't. The studies involved are summarised for you in tables 1, 2, and 3. None of them measured the outcome of the course of the ARI, they only measured contraction.

Isaac. Read the sentence:

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory?confirmed influenza/SARS?CoV?2 compared to not wearing masks

The outcome mentioned there is not whether they contracted it. We already know they did by laboratory confirmation. "Outcome" in this case means the same thing it always does in research about healthcare.

Quoting Isaac

Also, the government in America mandated masks for children against the advice of the WHO. Since when did it become OK to mandate an un-trialled intervention, on children, on the basis of "no evidence that it's not effective"?

The vast majority of healthcare decisions are not research based. There just isn't enough research to do that.

Occasionally we all find out that a hard rule, based on good logic, isn't actually the best course. I've seen that a couple of times. It's weird.

Reply to EricH

Quoting https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19

Children of this age should not wear masks for a long duration or without supervision. 

It's in the very article you cited. The US mandate went against this advice.

Quoting frank

The outcome mentioned there is not whether they contracted it. We already know they did by laboratory confirmation. "Outcome" in this case means the same thing it always does in research about healthcare.

Which of the studies tested for these outcomes?

Quoting EricH

Some countries and regions may have specific policies or recommendations in place. As always, follow the guidance provided by your country or local health department or ministry.

This was the main problem and the worst thing to do because it created two extreme scenarios: Countries with ministries which were obsessed with pandemic and we were in the risk of being treated as a criminal just for not wearing a mask or countries where the state gave zero attention or interest (like Brazil) and many citizens died in the streets.
Conclusion: The world was not ready for such complex scenario and most of the countries were just improvising.

Quoting frank

For vulnerable people like the elderly and chronically ill, it makes sense to keep wearing them.

Quoting Agent Smith

in a social setting, even 1 person protected means a chain reaction of infections has been forestalled

Neither of these suggestions make sense.

Vinay Prasad - Associate Professor Epidemiology and Health Policy:Sars cov 2 is so contagious your best efforts will not keep the virus away . It's not a question of if you can avoid the virus, it's only a question of when you get it.

There are still people who believe wrongly that if they mask, if they test religiously, they can prevent their loved ones from getting COVID. That's not true. It's setting them up for disappointment. One day, someone will infect their loved one. It might even be them. The test will be falsely negative. The mask will fail, which is what masks do.

There are various factors at play.
You don't want to wait a couple of years for studies to come out when there's an outbreak. Besides, masking up isn't exactly detrimental.
Often enough you'd see someone only covering their mouth (including on broadcasts/TV). Don't know what studies tried to account for masking up wrong, but people ought to know better.

Quoting Oct 19, 2022

Fortunately, it hasn't been as dangerous as the 2003 outbreak, which had a 10% fatality rate, and we're fortunate that such a deadly mutation hasn't emerged in this round.

By the way, there are influentials that some contrarians/fools/whoever will listen to.

How a Kennedy built an anti-vaccine juggernaut amid COVID-19
[sup]— Michelle R Smith · AP News · Dec 15, 2021[/sup]

Reply to Isaac

Quoting https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19

Children of this age should not wear masks for a long duration or without supervision.

This only applies to children under 5. If we're using WHO as a guide (which you appear to be doing) then you're fine with masks being required for children above 5. So we're only talking about children between 2 & 5 here as CDC said children under 5 did not have to wear masks..

I did not do an extensive web search so maybe I missed something, but I'm not aware of the CDC or US government mandating masks for children between 2 & 5. Recommended yes, mandated no.

But beyond that. given the numerous crises going on in the world, the issue of whether mask wearing was the best strategy for preventing COVID transmission (or minimizing the effects) is wa-a-ay low on my list of things to obsess about.

I'll give you the last word here (if you want tit)

Reply to Isaac I disagree with whoever this Vinay Prasad. Plus we need to be careful about interpretation. Masks don't fail 100% of the time. Even if the failure rate is 99%, 1 out of every 100 will be protected. Now consider the fact that the chain reaction that could've been initiated by this one person has been avoided and you'll get an idea of how useful masks are. The objective of masks is not to save the wearer from infection, but to stop the geometric progression of transmission.

Quoting Feb 7, 2023

Something odd about the US...

Median price of hepatitis C drug Harvoni (Statista)

Cost of Insulin by Country (World Population Review); insulin was developed by a Canadian and a Scotsman a century ago, not new or anything, some will die in a month or something without insulin

Xarelto Prices (PharmacyChecker)

Per capita prescribed medicine spending (OECD)

Quoting ASPE

Prices in the United States are higher than those in all comparison countries

What's the deal with those prices anyway? I guess they affect health care. Apparently, there are other things where the US stands out moneywise.

Quoting EricH

'm not aware of the CDC or US government mandating masks for children between 2 & 5. Recommended yes, mandated no.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/02/world/with-cases-rising-mayor-eric-adams-is-keeping-new-york-citys-preschool-mask-mandate.html

Quoting EricH

given the numerous crises going on in the world, the issue of whether mask wearing was the best strategy for preventing COVID transmission (or minimizing the effects) is wa-a-ay low on my list of things to obsess about.

High enough to chime in when you thought you could exculpate your government, but as soon as it comes to actually holding power to account it suddenly becomes boring and low priority. And you wonder how they get to walk all over you...

Quoting Agent Smith

Now consider the fact that the chain reaction that could've been initiated by this one person has been avoided

It hasn't. It will happen at some point in time over the near future. That's the point. Everyone (who's within that cohort) will get Covid. So any effort to stop them getting Covid now is pointless because they will get Covid at some point. What you can do, if you have loved ones who are vulnerable, is get them vaccinated. Vaccination reduces the severity of the symptoms they will suffer when (not if) they get Covid. Beyond that, I suggest you direct any remaining vitriol to your atrocious healthcare provision so that when people get Covid they are better cared for than the third-rate slum that modern healthcare has been degraded to.

Reply to Isaac Well, if that's what you think & believe, I can't stop you. :up:

Quoting jorndoe

masking up isn't exactly detrimental.

There are a large number of child psychologists and paediatricians worried about the effects of masks on children's development. For example...

https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/article/mandatory-masking-of-school-children-is-a-bad-idea/

https://theconversation.com/clear-masks-for-caregivers-mean-young-children-can-keep-learning-from-adults-faces-139432

https://www.cugmhp.org/five-on-friday-posts/why-a-mask-is-not-just-a-mask/

And since when did we start major mandatory interventions on the grounds that they "probably" don't do any harm?

Besides which you're simply attempting your usual switch. The issue here is the extreme vitriol with which anyone opposing mask-wearing was treated. People were screamed at, called 'murderers', physically assaulted, banned from public platforms, sacked from their jobs... all for disagreeing with a policy which had little evidential support, some risk of harm and now transpires may have been pointless.

The point of all this is not about health policy. It's about how we dealt with rational dissent.

Reply to Isaac The topic of maskwearing was also quite hot in the Netherlands.

Somewhat amusingly (but not really) Dutch government officials went on record first stating on several occasions that maskwearing was completely nonsensical and ineffective, only to make a u-turn a few months later making them mandatory for everybody (after the WHO had already advised against it).

Later inquiries were made into the governmental record to see how these decisions came about. Something that was repeatedly brought up, was how it was believed that maskwearing could cause behavioural changes among the population.

In less euphemistic terms, those in charge believed maskwearing could cause people to become more fearful of the virus.

Reply to Tzeentch

That's really interesting, we had the same in the UK with the behavioural scientists in SAGE being instructed pretty much to find ways of amping up the fear.

Perhaps they were concerned that Pfizer's profits might dangerously dip below that $20 billion threshold we all know is, for some reason, crucial to human well-being.

Reply to javi2541997
I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that WHO relies on the member countries for information and funding. As such they have to defer to to each country to implement their recommendations as they see fit.

As a US citizen, what irks me is the vitriol that people hurl at the CDC for simply doing the best they could to keep everyone healthy and alive in a confusing rapidly evolving situation.

Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, the two cut from the same cloth I'm afraid. Nevertheless, we do need to study the side-effects of wearing masks, but something tells me the benefits outweigh the harms.

Reply to EricH
You are not mistaken and I am aware of what is the role of WHO towards facing an epidemic. But I wasn't balming the WHO, or European Medicines Agency, FDA, etc...
Those are institutions where many professional scientists work and their resolutions or recommendations are important to follow.

My claims were against the ministeries, governments, prime ministers, or whatever depends on political parties. Probably, I am mistaken, but as much as I remember, I cannot recall a government doing a clever plan against Covid.
I guess Australia was one of the effecientest when they locked down all their frontiers, for example.

Quoting EricH

As a US citizen, what irks me is the vitriol that people hurl at the CDC for simply doing the best they could to keep everyone healthy and alive in a confusing rapidly evolving situation.

Why on earth would you think that? What is it about the history of government institutions that could possibly have given you the impression that they are ever just "doing the best they could to keep everyone healthy"?

Is it, perhaps, the major funding they receive from pharmaceutical and other industries?

https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2362

Or is it the effect of that industry pressure on their policy?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/17/cdc-accused-opioid-guidelines-drug-industry-pressure

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/301432-the-cdc-is-being-being-influenced-by-corporate-and-political/


Or is it the revolving door employment opportunities the CDC offers?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gerberding-idUSTRE5BK2K520091221

https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/27/fda-biopharama-revolving-door-study/ (FDA primarily, but talks about wider government body practices).

The US is still in the grip of an opioid crisis which has killed around 100,000. Nearly half the population is obese, and life expectancy is going down.

I cannot make sense of your blind obsequience.

Reply to Agent Smith

This is pretty much sums up the state our critical facilities have reached now.

We're discussing the peer-reviewed results from one of the most respected scientific establishments in the world.

But the view which prevails is based on "something tells me", and blind faith in a provably industry-biased government institution.

Quoting Isaac

This is pretty much sums up the state our critical facilities have reached now.

We're discussing the peer-reviewed results from one of the most respected scientific establishments in the world.

But the view which prevails is based on "something tells me", and blind faith in a provably industry-biased government institution.

Every great discovery starts as a hunch! :lol:

Reply to Isaac Wait a minute - you mean to tell me that government institutions are not perfect and that individual people can exploit these institutions for their own personal gain? I'm shocked, I had no idea, Thank you for enlightening me. I will have to re-think everything I ever thought.

Reply to javi2541997

Quoting javi2541997

I cannot recall a government doing a clever plan against Covid.
I guess Australia was one of the effecientest when they locked down all their frontiers, for example.

From a distance it seems that New Zealand did a pretty decent job of handling things. Of course it's much easier to isolate if you're an island nation hundreds of miles away from anyone else.

I don't know if there was/is any perfect plan. It's a highly complex situation with many moving parts - and any action you take will have some secondary effects. You mask up and that slows down transmission - but then that potentially affects childhood development. You lock down, but then everyone is out of work. You come up with a vaccine, but there will inevitably be some negative reactions. Etc, etc.

Quoting EricH

I don't know if there was/is any perfect plan.

Here's an idea for one.

If a situation is a...

Quoting EricH

complex situation with many moving parts - and any action you take will have some secondary effects

...perhaps don't make all other approaches illegal, sack people who disagree, ban the discussion of alternative directions, take away travel, work, family visting, and the outdoors from people who disagree, steal finances from dissenting campaign groups, and whip up an almost pathological hatred of anyone who doesn't follow your dictats...


Just an idea of how a grown-up version of government might act in the face of huge uncertainty.

Quoting Isaac

Besides which you're simply attempting your usual switch. The issue here [...]

... isn't up to you to decide on others' behalf. :grin:

Ordinarily, people, including children, would mask up in public social settings, not at home for example (bubble), while learning more.

Quoting Isaac

People were screamed at, called 'murderers' [...]

... and there was "child abuse" screamery (which it isn't, but evokes other things), and some made a fine buck on masks (the :mask:-industrial complex), and elsewhere masking up turned into a mini-trend because then they'd worry less about pimples lipstick whatever. I guess you could schedule a study for when those kids are post-puberty to figure out how many turned into monsters or something. Did past :mask:'ing produce damaged years/generations?

Quoting Isaac

And you wonder how they get to walk all over you...

Quoting Isaac

I cannot make sense of your blind obsequience.

Hmm So that's what you made out of @EricH's comments.

Reply to Agent Smith, something Prasad got right was that the ?-mutants became wicked at spreading, found fertile ground, but, fortunately, became less dangerous. :phew: ? need icon

On another note...
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DewormerHorse/status/1435761385070383113[/tweet]

Quoting jorndoe

need icon

:sweat: On point. Good job Vinay Prasad!

Quoting jorndoe

... isn't up to you to decide on others' behalf. :grin:

Well, if you want to have a conversation about something else, then I suggest you you do so by posting something independently. Replying to my posts to make unrelated points seems a bit eccentric at best.

Quoting jorndoe

Ordinarily, people, including children, would mask up in public social settings, not at home for example (bubble), while learning more.

Why? Why would the default be to mask first, check later? And how exactly do you propose people learn more when doctors and health professionals presenting the alternative position are banned from public discourse?

Quoting jorndoe

and there was "child abuse" screamery (which it isn't, but evokes other things),

Indeed. But "they did it too" is hardly a grown up defense for reprehensible behaviour is it?

Quoting jorndoe

Hmm So that's what you made out of EricH's comments.

Yep. He referred to the first slightest criticism of the CDC as "vitriol". Not sure what else to make of that.

Reply to Tzeentch I haven't followed it but I vaguely remember they thought people would get a false sense of security wearing masks and increase risky behaviour?

Reply to Benkei I think that is the explanation they eventually settled on when maskwearing didn't seem to yield the results they were expecting.

As to the efficacy of masks, any schoolkid could do the math - they do block droplets of a certain size and larger? Evidence? Try coughing & sneezing with a mask on. Does it feel wet? In the world of microbes, there's a minimum infective dose (MID) and this is where masks come in. By reducing the volume of respiratory infective material what masks do is prevent microbes like viruses from achieving the MID to cause an infection and setting off a chain reaction i.e. they stop epidemics, pandemics from occurring.

Quoting Benkei

I haven't followed it but I vaguely remember they thought people would get a false sense of security wearing masks and increase risky behaviour?

:up:

Reply to Tzeentch

You can read the UK's version here.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887467/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf

It's quite disturbing.

Worse, for NHS staff, the advised wording for communicating to children was "normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination.” from https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Vaccination%20do%20and%20donts%20by%20audience%20cohorts.pdf

Even the sage members regretted it...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit-totalitarian-use-fear-control-behaviour-covid/

“In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.

“The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

Reply to Isaac Absolutely stomach-churning stuff.

I'm glad some people seem to have finally had their "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

Also somewhat reassuring that the mainstream media are calling this episode for what it is: dystopian, totalitarian stuff of nightmares.

The second link isn't working, by the way. But I was able to find what you referred to via Google.

Quoting Tzeentch

Absolutely stomach-churning stuff.

I'm glad some people seem to have finally had their "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

Yeah, though as you said before, mostly conspicuous silence. The scientists who engineered the programme admit it was a "dystopian" experiment and what we mostly get from the so-called 'progressives' is studious self-gagging.

One of the "Covid moments" I hated the most. Why were they doing these things? It is unfunny and it looks like they were joking in pandemic and covid deaths.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1624161731181174817?s=20&t=je6Z4SZSgaOGH9Xdp8vElA[/tweet]

Quoting javi2541997

Why were they doing these things?

Because everyone who follows the rules is part of a cool, happy group who do fun stuff together. You wouldn't want to be left out of their gang would you?

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers.

Quoting Isaac

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers.

:rofl: :100:

It's a little crazy how quick things seem to be moving in the background, and how little of it reaches you unless you go looking for it.

Practically everything governments have done with regards to the pandemic has been brought into question.

Next on the list:



Good ol' vitamin D. Safe and effective. Who knew?

Well, we all did. Doctors, medical experts, my old granny and my hypothetical 6-year old brother.


Literally everybody knew this already, but so dependent on "experts" have we become that we need to wait until they tell us we can rely on our common sense, intuition and past experience again.


During the pandemic there was an effort to keep people indoors, away from the sun. Lockdowns, a bans on grouping, etc.

Scarcely a word about vitamin D supplementation from mainstream media or the political establishment (though political opposition seemed more aware of alternatives).

Is it really feasible to think that mankind forgot something so simple? What are we really looking at here? Incompetence bordering on the criminal, or was vitamin D simply not lucrative enough? Was it deemed "unhelpful" to give people the sense that they themselves held the key to their health by getting out in the sunshine or supplementing vitamin D?

Quoting Isaac

Because everyone who follows the rules is part of a cool, happy group who do fun stuff together. You wouldn't want to be left out of their gang would you?

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers.

When the extra danger money we have to cough up burns giant holes in our pockets, we'll find out who the real winners are! :grimace: Not much of a choice there, eh? Poverty or Masks? Conservatives, are y'all listening? Keep at it and you'll be free alright, but also poor, very poor. :cool:

Well, the good doctor is quite careful in his wordings, but this just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it?

Also, why is it so quiet in this thread? :chin:

Quoting Tzeentch

why is it so quiet in this thread?

Embarrassment.

Quoting Isaac

Embarrassment

Who's embarrassed?

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe

Professor Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, previously Scottish Covid-19 policy advisor:We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt...

... We were mesmerised by the once-in-a-century scale of the emergency and succeeded only in making a crisis even worse. In short, we panicked. This was an epidemic crying out for a precision public health approach and it got the opposite.

Member of UK SAGE - wishing, quite rightly, to remain anonymous talking to the Telegraph:The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared

Fault lines: An independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19:implementation was often too harsh, too inflexible, too slow to adapt and too dismissive of basic rights...

... the balance between the costs and benefits of lockdowns swung towards costs long before governments were willing to lift them.

... Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions. This had a negative effect on economic activity and national morale. Leaders routinely claimed to base policy on expert advice. It is true that some CHOs favoured harsher measures. But it became clear that experts (both within and outside government) often differed in their advice

Quoting Chis Whitty, UK Chief Medical Officer in leaked Whatsapp message

No strong reason against [masking children] in corridors etc, and no very strong reasons for. ...not worth an argument

Quoting Patrick Vallance, the UK chief scientific adviser in leaked Whatsapp message

In reality we haven’t found shielding easy or very effective first time round and I don’t think anyone else has either.

Quoting Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference

Quoting https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

A large study in the UK and another that surveyed people internationally found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.

Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.

Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells. “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”

Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former chair of AMA:Vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about... Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration

British Heart Foundation:Since the pandemic began, there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths involving heart disease - on average over 230 additional deaths a week above expected heart disease death rates.
...
, Covid infections are no longer a driving force behind the excess heart disease death rate.

...significant and widespread disruption to heart care services has driven the ongoing surge in excess deaths involving heart disease in England.

Quoting World Health Organisation

The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of global progress in tackling tuberculosis and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths have increased, according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report.

In 2020, more people died from TB, with far fewer people being diagnosed and treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019, and overall spending on essential TB services falling.

The first challenge is disruption in access to TB services and a reduction in resources. In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from tackling TB to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services.

The second is that people have struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns.

...and in case anyone was thinking this was an unexpected side-effect...

The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tuberculosis epidemic a modelling analysis - The Lancet:
Even temporary disruptions can cause long-term increases in TB incidence and mortality. If lockdown-related disruptions cause a temporary 50% reduction in TB transmission, we estimated that a 3-month suspension of TB services, followed by 10 months to restore to normal, would cause, over the next 5 years, an additional 1?19 million TB cases (Crl 1?06–1?33) and 361,000 TB deaths (CrI 333–394 thousand) in India, 24,700 (16,100–44,700) TB cases and 12,500 deaths (8.8–17.8 thousand) in Kenya, and 4,350 (826–6,540) cases and 1,340 deaths (815–1,980) in Ukraine. The principal driver of these adverse impacts is the accumulation of undetected TB during a lockdown.

... does that give any clues as to who might now be too embarrassed to comment retrospectively on how we handled the pandemic?

This thread has become an embarrassment. :)

So, the 2002 SARS outbreak was contained somewhat effectively. The outbreak was first detected in late 2002, and was more or less said to have been stopped by 2005, with something in the range of 10,000 known cases (10% fatalities). Determining infection with the virus was largely by symptoms, followed by testing, tracing.

The 2019 outbreak was different, no similar stoppage (or control), including the subsequent mutations. What went wrong? Was the later COVID-19 virus that much more effective in spreading across the globe, perhaps especially the subsequent ?-variant? Higher survivability outside of infectees? Indifference/complacency/obstruction? Too much politicizing? (Frump culture? :smile:) Something else? Multiple factors seem likely as of typing.

Surely we want to learn. We've learned some things, with likely more to come. Maybe it'll be a case study sometime in the future. Fortunately, the fatality rate is also lower. Are we prepared for the next one?

I came across someone saying something like ... tinder is still catching fire (tinder being the more vulnerable). Some say that nothing in particular should be done in case of outbreaks (altogether), others say "safety first caution", others still ... You name it, someone said it.

Lessons learned so far?

Quoting jorndoe

Lessons learned so far?

If you put your fingers sufficiently far in your ears and squint enough that you can't read properly, you can continue to believe whatever your Facebook feed tells you. Good lesson.

Reply to Isaac Or... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress?

Quoting Benkei

Or... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress?

Sure. Maybe.

Can you think of a compelling reason why I ought to accept one possible interpretation over another?

Reply to Isaac I can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself!

Also on masking: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

Quoting Benkei

I can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself!

Nothing's coming to mind, no.

Sometimes people having fun is just that, other times it's an unhealthy expression of ingroup/outgroup exclusory reinforcement.

I'm not seeing this compelling reason to always assume the former over the latter.

Quoting Benkei

Also on masking:

Do you understand what a meta-study does?

Reply to Isaac Yes, that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways. I just linked one of the few studies specifically dealing with masking and covid and a large n-value. I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results.

Quoting Benkei

that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways.

Indeed.

And here are the flaws in the Bangladesh study you cited.

https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-022-06704-z

Upon reanalysis, we find a large, statistically significant imbalance in the size of the treatment and control arms evincing substantial post-randomization ascertainment bias by unblinded staff. The observed decrease in the primary outcome is the same magnitude as the population imbalance but fails significance by the same tests (see Fig. 1 and Table 1). This reanalysis thus complicates drawing any causal link between masks and the observed decrease in population-rate of symptomatic seropositivity.

Do you see what's happening here? Scientists are disagreeing.

Quoting Benkei

I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results.

Is anyone suggesting you should? I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory. I don't see anyone accusing mask-wearers of having 'blood on their hands'. I don't see anyone associating mask-wearing with conspiracy theory...

You, it seems, are quite free to believe the Bangladesh study. It is those who believe the Cochrane study who are constrained.

Quoting Isaac

I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory.

Not since the ban the burkha thing.

The general venal awfulness and total incompetence of the UK government has been rather a theme in my general posting here for some time. The idiotic waste of the expertise and resources of the NHS track and trace system already in place for sexually transmitted diseases, and the emptying of hospitals of elderly patients back into the care homes that were supposed to be ring-fenced were just the beginning. But the problem is bigger than that. There needed to be a global response, and there was none. Containment isolation and eradication could have worked in the early stages, but there's no point in half the world containing and eradicating. So we had the unedifying scramble for vaccines, and let it rip amongst the poor.

We vote for self-serving politicians because they represent us, unfortunately. The bald monkeys are throwing their shit at each other as usual.

Reply to Isaac Yes they are. So one wonders why you consistently only air one side of the debate.

Quoting unenlightened

Containment isolation and eradication could have worked in the early stages, but there's no point in half the world containing and eradicating. So we had the unedifying scramble for vaccines, and let it rip amongst the poor.

A fair summary. One of the issues with policy here (masking is a good example) is how policymakers deal with the absolute known fact that the policy won't be enacted flawlessly. One of the main criticisms leveled by Peter Shergold at Australia's policy was an inability to adapt to the situations where early containment failed. People are flawed. Policies which assume they're perfect are destined to fail.

That said, I think policy failures had a lot more to do with lining wealthy pockets than technical errors. To think otherwise would require us to believe the powerful got richer by coincidence.

The issue goes beyond government though. There needs to be some account of the effect social media trends had on influencing policy. We can see from the leaked communications from Matt Hancock that ministers were implementing policies they themselves didn't even believe in, so the question is what social environment made them think such policies would be politically astute.

Quoting Benkei

one wonders why you consistently only air one side of the debate.

That's very simple. One side of the debate is responsible for enriching the most powerful people in the world in the largest transfer of wealth ever recorded. I really don't think it needs any more air, and I find it, by default, less compelling on those grounds alone.

When speaking to power one only need oppose that which seems wrong. That which seems right (but aligns with the objectives of the powerful) is happening anyway and needs no help from us.

Quoting Benkei

So one wonders why you consistently only air one side of the debate.

Only one side of the story is repeated over and over, and those seeing something wrong with this highlight the other side in an attempt to restore some semblance of balance back to the discussion, and are then asked "why they so consistently air only one side of the debate?"

Oddly reminiscent of the Ukraine situation.

Reply to Isaac How are healthcare workers dancing aligned with big-pharma (presumably powerful people you're talking about) because there we don't know but you opt to choose one-side and see nothing wrong with? And why make it appear as if you hold a particular opposing view, when in fact your view is "we don't know"? And if we don't know, why is a risk-averse and low impact policy such as mask wearing the wrong thing to do? Not all cases of "we don't know" is an argument for doing nothing?

Quoting Tzeentch

Only one side of the story is repeated over and over, and those seeing something wrong with this, highlighting the other side in an attempt to restore some semblance of balance back to the discussion, are asked "why they so consistently air only one side of the debate".

Oddly reminiscent of the Ukraine situation.

From a casual reading of the last few pages of this thread the story being repeated over-and-over is not what you think it is. Things have quieted down significantly with regard to Covid-19 which I would think would finally give room for more balanced discussions but instead it's like a pendulum swinging the other way. It's not very pretty to be honest.

Quoting Benkei

How are healthcare workers dancing aligned with big-pharma

Social media creates narratives which tribalise groups dissenting from the preferred narrative that presents covid as a very, very dangerous thing that require extreme measures to combat which directly benefits those corporations poised to profit from the extreme solutions. In this case, big pharma.

Healthcare workers dancing perpetuates that narrative by telling a story about uniquely extreme circumstances, coming together (but only of those who don't dissent), and overcoming (but only using profit-making solutions).

Quoting Benkei

why make it appear as if you hold a particular opposing view, when in fact your view is "we don't know"?

I've already explained, we speak against power. Balance just serves the interests of the powerful. "We don't know" is useless if powerful agencies are pushing in a direction which might be wrong. "Don't know" is performatively the same as consent in those circumstances since the objectives of the powerful will be met absent of equally powerful opposition.

Quoting Benkei

if we don't know, why is a risk-averse and low impact policy such as mask wearing the wrong thing to do?

Mask-wearing is neither risk averse, nor low impact. But it's not about the policy. It's about the debate. If scientific debate is stiffled by political tribalism then we will make mistake after mistake. Scientists opposed to masking were literally banned from taking part in the scientific debate. Even now, there's smearing and aspersions which artificially weigh one side above that which there is good statistical evidence for.

If you seriously can't see how the intense polemicism of the covid policy response debate harmed scientific progress then I doubt there's anything I could say now that would persuade you.

Quoting Benkei

Things have quieted down significantly with regard to Covid-19

So we just forget about it? Don't look, don't learn any lessons?

Quoting Benkei

Things have quieted down significantly with regard to Covid-19 which I would think would finally give room for more balanced discussions but instead it's like a pendulum swinging the other way. It's not very pretty to be honest.

The difference between then and now is that no one is being censored.

If people don't want to speak in favor of the old narrative that's their prerogative.

I guess the part that isn't very pretty is how little the old narrative is supported now that the propaganda machines have ceased churning, at least on the topic of Covid.

Reply to Isaac I think I said: "would finally give room for more balanced discussions" not "let's forget about it".

Quoting Benkei

more balanced discussions

On one side, there is a lesson to learn that the world needs a coordinated response, if containment is to be effective, and any quarantine measures or zoning needs to be globally instituted, and enforced.

But against any such measures we have the danger of suppressing debate in order to achieve that coordination, particularly when global companies with friends in high places have financial interests that might override their, ahem, natural humanitarian concerns.

A post-moral world is a post-truth world, and in a post truth world there is no trust or honour, so in the end no lesson can be learned at all. Next time, it will probably be much worse, and the response more fragmented and self-serving than ever. "Let's forget about it" follows from the inability to take what is said by politicians or medics as honest and truthful.

[quote=Bonnie Dobson via The Grateful Dead]I'll walk you out in the morning dew, my honey; I guess it doesn't matter, anyway.[/quote]

Quoting Tzeentch

The difference between then and now is that no one is being censored.

Who has been censored here? Seems like a bit of an exagerration.

If people don't want to speak in favor of the old narrative that's their prerogative.

I guess the part that isn't very pretty is how little the old narrative is supported now that the propaganda machines have ceased churning, at least on the topic of Covid.

Or maybe people are just done with Covid and tired of it? That's mostly it for me to be honest. Just noticed the last few pages and thought I'd share some other views. And yes, it's everybody's prerogative to only talk about one side of an issue but it's weird to me when someone's actual position is "we don't know" to then come across as "everything governments did was wrong". Hardly conducive to figuring out what went right and what went wrong.

I was a proponent for lockdowns; in fact I thought they happened too late and were too weak in the Netherlands and would've preferred them to be employed earlier and then, as a result, for a shorter duration. And I didn't need evidence for that because I think it's common sense that if you limit contact moments, the likelihood of passing on an infection goes down. Even so, almost all governments failed to ask the question: at what cost? And I don't mean economic cost but mental health, loss in education and social development for kids, etc., which were never taken into account.

I was also in favour of masking and still am if another pandemic would arise (next bird flu?) where it can spread via aerosols. Again common sense would indicate that since the airflow is disrupted the spread of aerosols will decrease and lower the likelihood of transmission. PPE were introduced for hygiene reasons around the 1900s based on our understanding of how diseases transmit. For me it's weird how research we did 100 years ago in these issues are no longer relevant and we have all this statistical research showing both sides of the debate while we have experimental data from the 1900s proving the efficacy of hygiene against the transmission of diseases. So yes, if you can't cough on things, they won't get contaminated and if they don't get contaminated, you can't contract if from those things.

What I didn't agree with was the fearmongering and the complete absence of an exit strategy (at least in the Netherlands). The lack of respect by paying healthcare workers a pittance and generally gutting our healthcare in the previous 20 years. And now again, for those healthcare workers that got long-Covid it's insane they're not properly compensated.

Reply to unenlightened I saw more proof for the moral bankruptcy of capitalism and neo-liberal me-me-me. But hey, I know people blamed everything on the socialist government even when it's run by liberals/conservatives.

Reply to Benkei I blame Nietzsche.

Quoting Benkei

Who has been censored here? Seems like a bit of an exagerration.

Wake up, man.

Have you seen a single piece of mainstream media coverage that was critical towards the government's covid strategy during the pandemic?

The only place I found those was on independent media outlets. You might say, "Well then it's not censorship", but what you'd be skipping is the fact that actively preventing critical voices from being heard by wider audiences is censorship, especially in today's day and age. I'd go as far as saying that providing critical voices a platform is a fundamental duty of legitimate governments.

And this didn't extend only to opinions. When research was done that showed results at odds with the narrative - voided, or simply swept under the rug by barrages of sweet nothings like "99% of doctors agree..."

My impression is that people who do not consider that censorship, in fact just thought it was fine for critical voices to be silenced.

Quoting Benkei

I think I said: "would finally give room for more balanced discussions" not "let's forget about it".

I wasn't necessarily only using what you said in judgment. As you've pointed out in my analysis, my singular focus on the negative would belie any claim to balance I might make verbally.

Lots of things went badly wrong and thousands are now dying, or in desperate poverty as a result. I don't think the minor, and very obvious successes really need any amplification, but if need be...

An excellent vaccine was created in really short time which worked to reduce symptom severity.

Some places, like Australia closed borders quickly and gave health services vital breathing space.

... That's about it.

Then there's...

Scientific dissent was censored and where not actively censored, severely disparaged to the point of ridicule. The effect has been devastating on academic research in many fields, including my own.

Lockdowns were pursued even when they could be shown not to work and cause tremendous harms to the most vulnerable in society - but, more important than that mere policy mistake, they were pursued because of a social media induced hyperbole in favour of them among key demographics.

Masking was mandated without doing any randomized control trials even through the second year, children's vulnerability during language acquisition and learning was ignored, mental health effects were ignored, again, not just because of policy error, but because of social media driven tribalism creating a big political incentive to pander to extremest groups.

The vaccine was advised (and in some cases mandated) for people who it is absolutely clear now did not need it. This kept supplies short for the most vulnerable and risked not only an increase in side effects (and associated hospital pressure), but a concomitant loss of faith in vaccines in general which may still have a considerably greater impact on health (Measles particularly) than Covid ever could.

And again, this wasn't a simple policy error, but a policy driven by pharmaceutical corporations and social media campaigns who we allowed to dictate policy above general scientific consensus building.

And all of this has resulted in a social environment which now either distrusts health institutions (with good reason), or treats government sanctioned views as the word-of-God and everything else as 'disinformation'.

And we're now so much in debt that poverty reduction has been set back by decades, millions more are on the brink of starvation and no-one is interested in doing anything about that because the social media tribes created to service this crisis are too easily distracted from anything which doesn't serve corporate interests.

We lurch from one crisis to the next because corporations have seen how profitable crises are and how easily they can create and manipulate sufficient social media movements to sway any politicians they haven't already paid off.

__

There.

How's that for balanced?

Quoting Tzeentch

actively preventing critical voices from being heard by wider audiences is censorship, especially in today's day and age.

And this didn't extend only to opinions. When research was done that showed results at odds with the narrative - voided, or simply swept under the rug by barrages of sweet nothings like "99% of doctors agree..."

My impression is that people who do not consider that censorship, in fact just thought it was fine for critical voices to be silenced.

Exactly. Saying "Oh well, they got a slot on Tucker Carlson" is not the same as a lack of censorship. Many eminent, qualified, and well respected academics with dissenting views were driven to independent publishing and right-wing media platforms, just to get a voice.

Letting your opposition speak, but only on platforms which make that speech seem less authoritative than it deserves (according the the qualification of the speaker) is censorship by another name, if not censorship proper.

And indeed, it's no surprise that we see the same tactics used in relation to Ukraine, as you mentioned. Once something has been shown to work...

Quoting Benkei

I would think would finally give room for more balanced discussions but instead it's like a pendulum swinging the other way. It's not very pretty to be honest.

Oh, and this from my first comments in this latest instance...


Quoting Isaac

To be clear, I think a general policy of mask wearing was a sensible public health precaution in the face of uncertainty.

Quoting Isaac

What the Cochrane review shows is not that masks are useless, nor that governments were wrong to mandate their use.

Not sufficiently prostrate for you? Do I need to wax any more lyrical about how amazing our governments were in order to qualify as 'balanced' in your eyes?

Perhaps I should have recommended Matt Hancock for a knighthood...

Reply to Isaac
It all just dissolves back into the mud from which it came.

Reply to frank

Yeah.

This is how it's gone since Covid. Literally any criticism of government policy (that isn't saying they ought do even more of the brilliant stuff they're doing) is labelled as arising from some unhinged anti-government ideology. It instantly pours cold water on any genuine criticism of government or corporate agendas, basically leaving them unopposed.

It's a masterstroke of social control

Remember when the Democratic party actually spent millions promoting Trump because they thought he was so ludicrous he'd guarantee a Republican loss? That's the policy ever since. Set up an obviously ludicrous clown who'll take up any policy opposed to yours. Associate all of your opponents with that clown (who are obviously also opposing your policies) and suddenly all opposition looks less serious.

My hat goes off to whomever came up with it. Sociopathic, but brilliant.

On an unrelated note, anyone know what the old Cambridge Analytica team are up to now...?

Reply to Isaac I apologise for missing that. I jumped back in after that apparently.

Reply to Tzeentch I thought you were talking about this website in particular in the previous comment. But yes, I agree, stifling of dissenting opinions has been a problem in various shapes and forms lately. I thought this was less obvious during Covid then now with the Ukraine war. Dissent on Covid lockdowns and government mandates was vocal and reported on. The dissenters were framed as "wappies" though; which often worked due to them having idiotic opinions on unrelated issues (like Chemtrails, WEF reset conspiracy and other crap).

Quoting Benkei

I thought you were talking about this website in particular in the previous comment.

No, no. I haven't seen any form of censorship on this forum. Having voiced skeptical views throughout the pandemic I was met with some hostility, but that's the price of going against the grain, I suppose.

Quoting Benkei

The dissenters were framed as "wappies" though; which often worked due to them having idiotic opinions on unrelated issues (like Chemtrails, WEF reset conspiracy and other crap).

I genuinely wonder what percentage of skeptics truly held extreme views, on how much of that was simply framing along the lines of the same strategy that Reply to Isaac mentioned.

Reply to Benkei

I appreciate the apology for missing my moderation. I might have preferred a charitable assumption it was present in the first place... but we take what we can get.

Quoting Benkei

The dissenters were framed as "wappies" though; which often worked due to them having idiotic opinions on unrelated issues (like Chemtrails, WEF reset conspiracy and other crap).

Exactly. Only they didn't did they. Because Vinay Prasad dissented, and last I checked he had a fairly normal view on chemtrails. Jay Bhattacharya dissented, and I'm pretty sure he's as convinced as the next man that the earth is round. Mark Woolhouse dissented and I'm 99% convinced he's happy with the government explanation for 9/11. Martin Kuldorff dissented, and I haven't heard much from him about UFOs. Paul Offit, Norman Fenton, Wes Pegden, John Ioannidis, Pete Doshi.... All experts in their fields, none (to my knowledge) with the slightest trace of tin-foil in their headgear, but every single one vilified for their views and every single layman repeating them treated like a flat-earther.

And yes, exactly the same is happening with Ukraine. Legitimate, qualified experts treated like lunatics because they disagree with mainstream narratives.

What scares me about all this is that what's being undermined here is faith in the scientific process (the one which brought us the vaccines in the first place). We have a system in place which, although flawed, is pretty good at ensuring that if you have the qualification (doctorate, usually) you are at least competent enough to be taken seriously in public debate over policy in your field. If we lose that, we just have rule by social media algorithm.

@Isaac, those people weren't shut up or their stuff wouldn't be around for all to see. (Thinking of Russia? :grin:) What you label "Dissent" is how things work. Then there's the rest of the community, too many to list I guess. (Have you scoffed at some of their interviews or whatever, manipulated/imposed by mass media / government narratives?) Casting it as dissent versus mainstream story-telling like so is politicizing it or enabling (political) misuse, ripe for en vogue toxicity.

[sup]Returning to my earlier comment, no calls for masking up, :mask:-industrial complex begone, saving the kids, no occasional lock-down, which would be fascist authoritarian anyway, no vaccine coverage, the evil Big Pharma to be purged, no travel or gathering restrictions, more authoritarian control done with, WHO and the CDC were once wrong, hence never to be trusted, ... Kind of business as usual, I suppose partially in the name of dissent (well, at least until there's harmony among all it would seem). Whichever of the above, and wherever outliers/disagreements can be found. Besides, it's up to every individual alone (freedom guaranteed by law), right? Thus, laissez-faire it is. ... Is ? ? that it, then, or ...? (Or, I'd hope.)[/sup]

Quoting Mar 12, 2023

... You name it, someone said it.

Sometimes we have a situation on our hands that we still have to deal with. The problem here isn't whatever an individual says in particular, it's a matter of taking all of it into consideration to get it dealt with, and there are experts doing that as well. (Are you one of them?) Are we ready for the next one?

Quoting jorndoe

those people weren't shut up or their stuff wouldn't be around for all to see. (Thinking of Russia? :grin:) What you label "Dissent" is how things work.

If you have anything more than simpering apologetics to contribute there might be more to discuss. As it is I don't know what can be added. You're wrong. It's not just 'how things work' and I've above cited the evidence of several of the respective countries' top scientists, lawyers, and public servants saying exactly that.

If you seriously think just saying 'it was fine' is some kind of stunning coup de grâce, I don't know of a more gentle way to let you down I'm afraid.

Quoting jorndoe

The problem here isn't whatever an individual says in particular, it's a matter of taking all of it into consideration to get it dealt with

Yes. Which is exactly what the people I cited above have concluded did not happen. Did you even read them?

Quoting jorndoe

there are experts doing that as well

The experts aren't the problem. Most experts have already recognised the mistakes and plan to learn from them. It's the public that are the problem. Morons like you who can't handle the fact that they were played by social media algorithms and so double down on their fanaticism which makes it harder for politicians to actually act on the more sound advice the experts are now giving them. You're the problem now.

I'm breaking a superstition to say this, but I've never had COVID-19. I've been up to my eyeballs in it, but somehow never contracted it. Most people I know have had it at least once, one person has had it four times even after vaccination.

Have you had it?

Reply to frank Quoting frank

I'm breaking a superstition to say this, but I've never had COVID-19.

Quoting frank

Have you had it?

I haven't had it either. My father had Covid twice, and my mother once.I live with them, and I don't know why I never got infected...
I've even taken public transportation and nothing has ever caught my eye.

I guess our immune system is strong and good, Frank. :up:

Quoting javi2541997

guess our immune system is strong and good, Frank. :up:

I don't think that coronavirus cares about strong immune systems. Sometimes a person can have some weird genetic thing that makes them immune to certain diseases.

Reply to frank I don't know what would have happened if I have never taken the vaccine, maybe a hard experience. But it is interesting that I never got infected despite the fact that I was surrounded by infected ones. :chin:

AstraZeneca has been banned in Australia due to causing severe, sometimes deadly, side-effects.

Considering a lot of people were misinformed about the risks of vaccination, and in some countries people were put under heavy societal pressure to take the vaccine against their will, at what point are we going to start calling this for what it is: murder.

Quoting Tzeentch

Considering a lot of people were misinformed about the risks of vaccination, and in some countries people were put under heavy societal pressure to take the vaccine against their will, at what point are we going to start calling this for what it is: murder.

Australia has been one of the most intelligent countries in its approach to combating COVID-19. They were clever to block down their territory, and now they ban AstraZeneca. Good for Aussie people, they have a sensate government. 

On the other hand, yes, as you explained: This is a murder. Forcing people to take a vaccine that is dangerous to their health should come with some public responsibilities. Our backwards ass government showed off the amount of vaccines that have been taken by the citizens. These news make me wonder:

1) Will the governments be responsible for this negligence?
2) Will AstraZeneca pay the price for these issues?

Quoting javi2541997

1) Will the governments be responsible for this negligence?
2) Will AstraZeneca pay the price for these issues?

I suspect that the producers of the vaccines have signed agreements that make them non-liable in case the risks they knew might be present turned out to be significant.

As for the governments themselves being held responsible - a part of me doubts it, because the people responsible are in many places still in power today. Things like these have a tendency to only be resolved years, even decades after the fact.

Quoting Tzeentch

Things like these have a tendency to only be resolved years, even decades after the fact.

If at least those issues would be resolved one day... governments tend to be opaque and hide their shames under the carpet. 

What's up in Idaho?

Committee introduces bill on prohibiting ‘vaccine materials’ in food
[sup]— Ruth Brown · Idaho Reports · Jan 24, 2023[/sup]

Idaho bill would criminalize giving an mRNA vaccine: ‘It feels like an attack on our profession’
[sup]— Don Sapatkin · Managed Healthcare Executive · Mar 27, 2023[/sup]

Survey shows Idaho’s maternal health doctors are leaving the state, or soon will
[sup]— McKay Cunningham · Idaho Capital Sun · Apr 7, 2023[/sup]

Reply to Tzeentch This is a misrepresentation; Astrazeneca has been discontinued in Australia due to other vaccines being found to be more effective against new variants and also due to lack of ongoing demand.

Depending on the particular vaccine batch, individuals may have been exposed to a risk of adverse effects as high as 1/20, a Danish study concludes.

Deer spread COVID to humans multiple times, researchers find
[sup]— Alexander Tin · CBS · Jul 11, 2023[/sup]

DOI 10.1038 s41467-023-39782-x

Reply to Tzeentch The rebuttal:

Quoting Hanover

The rebuttal:

First. That was physically painful to watch. Anyone comparing the two and considering the former to be the one with the 'agenda' has clearly never met ... anyone, ever.

Second. Even if we ignore the horrific smarm which drips from the screen when watching the second video, it misses the point raised in this thread since its inception... These are scientists arguing. The paper was written by scientists, the commentary was written by scientists, they were both in a scientific journal (though only the former was peer reviewed, your commentator here "conveniently forgets to mention that").

Two groups of scientists arguing about the implications of some findings. Not one group of redneck conspiracy theorists struggling to argue against The Science™ who must be silenced by disinformation experts for the sake of humanity.

Remember, the risk of batch-related variation in adverse affects was not a discussion held in public to inform a populace in their choices. It was banned from social media. The discussion was wiped out by governments and corporations deliberately eliminating dissent.

The point is not that there's no alternative take. The point is that treating science as a battle of the exasperatedly well informed vs the stubbornly stupid is a gross misrepresentation of how it works.

Quoting Isaac

can you really not see a problem with creating a system whereby a government and/or a private corporation can inject the entire population of their country with a chemical which is only intermittently batch tested?

Me from two years ago. Called it.

Quoting Isaac

The point is not that there's no alternative take. The point is that treating science as a battle of the exasperatedly well informed vs the stubbornly stupid is a gross misrepresentation of how it works.

Reply to frank

Aww, poetry. I'm charmed, but we can't be publicly exchanging poems, people will talk.

Reply to frank

Oh, go on then just one...

Through every nook and every cranny
The wind blew in on poor old Granny
Around her knees, into each ear
(And up her nose as well, I fear)

All through the night the wind grew worse
It nearly made the vicar curse
The top had fallen off the steeple
Just missing him (and other people)

It blew on man, it blew on beast
It blew on nun, it blew on priest
It blew the wig off Auntie Fanny-
But most of all, it blew on Granny!

Reply to Isaac
Oh yea! Let's party old school!

What to make of crap like this, coming from a prominent politician?

RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews
[sup]— Jon Levine · New York Post · Jul 15, 2023[/sup]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: COVID-19 was specifically engineered to avoid harming Jews
[sup]— The Jerusalem Post · Jul 15, 2023[/sup]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. answers question about anti-vaccine views | Conversation with the Candidate
[sup]— WMUR-TV · Jun 23, 2023 · 7m:15s[/sup]

Reply to jorndoe Here's what Kennedy himself had to say about it:




Is Kennedy secretly anti-semitic, or is this just a well-coordinated smear campaign to dispose of a threatening political opponent?


Let's be real. 'Dumpster fire' doesn't begin to describe American politics and the buffoons you people put in the White House. Think what you will about RFK, but he's a decent common sense guy, and common sense is something that is deeply threatening to the American elite.

Quoting Tzeentch

'Dumpster fire' doesn't begin to describe American politics and the buffoons you people put in the White House.

If "you people" means US voters, then, sure, a few US politicians are clowns, including RFK Jr. Clowns electing clowns? Let's get real. Democracy has room for circus politic(ian)s (as it should). And could get...interesting when voters fall for it.

Quoting Tzeentch

Here's what Kennedy himself had to say about it:

Kennedy himself! What are you thinking?

We have an editor's cut of what a newspaper journalist's summary of a reported speech possibly implied... what more evidence to you need man!

Quoting jorndoe

If "you people" means US voters, [...]

Of course that's what I mean.

Quoting jorndoe

[...] a few US politicians are clowns, including RFK Jr.

And I suppose that is your excuse for participating in said smear campaign without even bothering to see what was actually said?

Reply to jorndoe

Ignore the bizarre defences of Kennedy. The best thing to do is to direct people to his Wikipedia page which gives a good summary of this disturbed individual's life and has lots of links to his books, articles, and interviews where people can read firsthand his promotion of ridiculous and dangerous anti-scientific conspiracy theories, listen to his vicious attacks on Fauci and other health professionals, and generally experience the deeply twisted mind of an irrational propagandist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.

As for the latest stupidities, of course the actual quote, his exact words, are contained in the news articles as well as on the Wiki page and the excuses of his apologists are absurd (ignore them). Anyhow. it's not surprising a privileged rich dude living off and exploiting his famous heritage thinks he can get away with stuff like that when he's been getting away with it his whole life.

Imagine spinning apologetics for smear campaigns falsely accusing someone of anti-semitism.

@jorndoe I'm not going to engage with his fellow conspiracy theorists on this. But I'll add that it's a good thing that the individual in question, who is deliberately mendacious or mentally ill or both, is finished and out of the race. His latest comments (regardless of whether the intention behind them is anti-semitic) are a hardly necessary addition to prove his unfitness for any kind of public responsibility whatsoever. It's a real pity he had to ruin himself on vaccines when he actually has good positions on other stuff and that the Dems can't come up with a decent candidate to challenge Biden, who is awful.

Quoting Baden

Ignore the bizarre defences of Kennedy.

The defence is of a politics that rises above petty slandering and appeals to cliché as substitutes for substantive argument. The reason why we might have any concern about someone like Trump of DeSantis gaining support is because there's a mass of disaffected voters out there they can tap into who are (quite justifiably) pissed off at this kind of supercilious sneering. Like you don't even have to bother presenting arguments any more...

I mean, ...

Quoting Baden

attacks on Fauci

...? What is he, fucking Mohammed? Since when has the act of attacking an authority figure become something worthy of condemnation simply by its very nature?

And yes, the quotes are available. We can all read what was said and none of was "the Jews created the covid 19 virus" which is what is heavily implied by the accusations of anti-semitism.

Here from the Jerusalem Post article...

Kennedy, the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy, claimed that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that had been specifically engineered to impact white and black people

Literally the next paragraph...

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,”

In what twisted world does "We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not” become "It was specifically engineered (by Jews) to target white and black people"? He literally said the exact opposite and is quoted as doing so in the actual article.

It's pathetic journalism lazily relying on a nod and a wink toward what "we all know, don't we...?" instead of actually doing the fucking legwork.

@jorndoe tell @Baden I'm not talking to him either, but tell Baden that if he wants a candidate who's better than Biden he might want to think about not treating the electorate as if they were a bunch of schoolchildren who won't sit down and be quiet when they're told.

Quoting Baden

Anyhow. it's not surprising a privileged rich dude living off and exploiting his famous heritage thinks he can get away with stuff like that when he's been getting away with it his whole life.

There were all kinds of conspiracy theories about Bill Gates too: that he engineered the virus so he could get rich from it. People really believe that stuff. They aren't trying to be jerks. I think it's an expression of the fear of being deceived. There's a kind of horror to it. We're drawn to horror.

Reply to frank

Yeah, 'cos rich people never engage in nefarious behaviour in order to profit from it...

Where do these people get their ideas from, eh?

Must be some pernicious mental illness or something.

Honestly, it's hilarious watching you champagne socialists tying yourselves in knots to come up with explanations for why so many people think the wealthy are conspiring against them and don't trust the major institutions... The mental gymnastics required is truly impressive.

Of, course (just a conspiracy theory from left field here), it could be because the wealthy do in fact engage in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth, and that institutions have in fact demonstrated themselves again, and again, to be untrustworthy pawns of corporate power...

But of course we can rule that option out because of some reasons.

We don't know whether Kennedy is deliberately exploiting conspiracy theories or not.

He says, as if he might want later to deny that he has anything against Kennedy at at all, whilst raising the spectre in everyones mind that the guy is either a nutcase or an exploiter of nutcases.

Quoting Isaac

the wealthy do in fact engage in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth

Isn't RFK Jr's net worth $50 million?

Quoting RogueAI

Isn't RFK Jr's net worth $50 million?

If you say so. Your point?

Quoting Isaac

Isn't RFK Jr's net worth $50 million?
— RogueAI

If you say so. Your point?

Shouldn't we suspect RFK (and Trump) of "[engaging] in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth"? That's what wealthy people do, right?

Quoting RogueAI

Shouldn't we suspect RFK (and Trump) of "[engaging] in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth"? That's what wealthy people do, right?

Yes.

Reply to Isaac So it would be fair to say that it's kind of strange that people who distrust the wealthy support wealthy candidates? Esp. ones like,

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-court-approves-25-million-trump-university-settlement-n845181

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/donald-j-trump-pays-court-ordered-2-million-illegally-using-trump-foundation

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/

Reply to RogueAI

Yes. Very strange. Can you think of a non-wealthy candidate they should have been supporting instead?

Reply to Isaac

How about this guy?

Reply to frank The Termitinator for president! So much better looking than than the average average.

Reply to unenlightened :up:

Quoting RogueAI

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/

Good read. Shows what real lies and distortions look like. All in the service of attempting to thwart proper healthcare for e.g. kids to the extent that could cause their deaths. It's great that he's binned himself now and a nice irony that he's complaining about being misquoted in the process. Essentially a parasite that used his wealth and family connections to manipulate the gullible and ignorant into supporting him on an issue he helped manufacture.

@jorndoe Ask @Baden if he sees even the slightest hypocrisy in his now lauding an article condemning a man for taking quotes out of context and stringing them back together to insinuate something the sources did not originally intend.

Reply to Isaac
I asked Baden. He said you need to watch this video.

Reply to frank

:lol:

Reply to Isaac

No, as, for one thing, I never "lauded" the articles you criticized. Also, I (charitably, considering the context) expressed agnosticism on anti-semitic intentions. And @unenlightened exposed Kennedy's tactic neatly. So, there's nothing left to say except he did it to himself and it's a good thing he did.

Reply to Isaac Are you defending RFK and/or his supporters? It sounds like you are.

Reply to RogueAI

Here's a game we can play. You know the black squiggly stuff that fills the space between emojis in people's posts? Why don't you have a crack at reading that, see if you can work out what it means and if that's not too hard we could have a little conversation about the things I've actually said? Sound fun?

Reply to Baden

Careful! You know actual discussion with those who disagree with you can lead to a number of serious health conditions, are you sure we're ready...

Quoting Baden

I never "lauded" the articles you criticized

...

Quoting Baden

Good read.

Hardly a glowing review, I know, but...

Quoting Baden

Also, I (charitably, considering the context) expressed agnosticism on anti-semitic intentions.

So if you're charitable enough to express agnosticism on the matter, you're suggesting that a good way for Politics to proceed is to smear a person for something they possibly thought or didn't think because we disagree with them on some other policy which we can't argue directly against because...?

I'm having trouble following your reasoning here. It's a 'good' thing that a paper engage in slander on some unrelated topic rather than just address the politician's actual policies that it disagrees with?

Reply to Isaac

The scientific American article was a good read, yes. I don't have anything to add on the other articles as I only read Kennedy's words there, and confirmed them in Wiki. His words themselves are enough to justify the criticisms of him. That's my last comment on this.

Reply to Baden

Right...

So you think was a good read, whilst also not lauding it?

And you think accusations of antisemitism are justified whilst also remaining charitably agnostic about it?

Got it.

A recent Swiss study done on the risk of side-effects of mRNa vaccines, this time producing a 1 in 35 risk of developing myocardial injury.

Quite stunning numbers, considering the vaccines were marketed as being completely safe.

As this and other recent studies are pointing out, the risks may have been considerable.

Reply to Tzeentch Thanks for sharing. Another important and informative video. Some points to consider of:

I will never be enough grateful to all of those scientists and researchers who do this to open our eyes, and escape from lies and corruption from governments.

Yes, it is important to point out that most of the researchers are independent. He said that the paper is important because is not made by "money searchers"

Minute 9:16. Yes, I would be furious too if I were not well informed about the risks of the mRNA-1273 Booster vaccine. Completely unacceptable.

Minute 11:46. An informed consent statement is usually a trap. But this is the subject of another thread.
I agree with him. Let's get legal implications.

A thought experiment, if you will, turning the heat slightly up.

Suppose some mutations occur that are about as contagious/transmissible as the Omicron variant, about as dangerous as SARS-CoV-1 (the 2003 outbreak), where symptoms appear after 4-5 weeks, though some 25-50% turn out asymptomatic.

While this stuff remains unknown in the thought experiment, at first at least, what might we reasonably expect?

We have some data (including historical and also new) regarding propagation, medical establishments, medicine industries, general populace reactions, (emerging) policies, etc. These would be among the things where we could expect something.

I'm thinking the scenario is realistic enough, so, what might we expect, and how best to tackle such a situation (with partial/gradual knowledge along the way)? Say, what's a(n) (un)favored response/policy?

Personally, I wouldn't expect a tenth of the population wiped out, nor "1984". Tackling...not quite sure. (Looking to WHO guidelines is a starting point.)

EDITORIAL: Preparing for the next pandemic
[sup]— Toronto Sun · Jul 27, 2023[/sup]

? has comments

Reply to jorndoe
They'd have a vaccine pretty quickly: that's the cool thing about the mRNA technology.

Peripherally (measles, not sars) ... London, UK ...

Unvaccinated pupils face 21-day isolation as measles cases rise
[sup]— Daniel Keane · Yahoo · Sep 15, 2023[/sup]
Unvaccinated children face 21 days in isolation after rapid rise in measles
[sup]— Sara Odeen-Isbister · various via MSN · Sep 15, 2023[/sup]

Reply to jorndoe

The stupidity of the anti-vax movement emerges yet again. Eventually we should prosecute these people for child endangerment— or at the very least not allow them to infect others.

Stupidity should have consequences beyond natural consequences.

Quoting Isaac

"We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt...

"... We were mesmerised by the once-in-a-century scale of the emergency and succeeded only in making a crisis even worse. In short, we panicked. This was an epidemic crying out for a precision public health approach and it got the opposite."
— Professor Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, previously Scottish Covid-19 policy advisor

"The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared"
— Member of UK SAGE - wishing, quite rightly, to remain anonymous talking to the Telegraph

"implementation was often too harsh, too inflexible, too slow to adapt and too dismissive of basic rights...

"... the balance between the costs and benefits of lockdowns swung towards costs long before governments were willing to lift them.

"... Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions. This had a negative effect on economic activity and national morale. Leaders routinely claimed to base policy on expert advice. It is true that some CHOs favoured harsher measures. But it became clear that experts (both within and outside government) often differed in their advice"
— Fault lines: An independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19

"No strong reason against [masking children] in corridors etc, and no very strong reasons for. ...not worth an argument"
— Chis Whitty, UK Chief Medical Officer in leaked Whatsapp message

"In reality we haven’t found shielding easy or very effective first time round and I don’t think anyone else has either."
— Patrick Vallance, the UK chief scientific adviser in leaked Whatsapp message

"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference"
— Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

"A large study in the UK and another that surveyed people internationally found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.

"Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.

"Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells. “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”"
— https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

"Vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about... Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration"
— Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former chair of AMA

"Since the pandemic began, there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths involving heart disease - on average over 230 additional deaths a week above expected heart disease death rates.

"...Covid infections are no longer a driving force behind the excess heart disease death rate.

"...significant and widespread disruption to heart care services has driven the ongoing surge in excess deaths involving heart disease in England."
— British Heart Foundation

"The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of global progress in tackling tuberculosis and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths have increased, according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report.

"In 2020, more people died from TB, with far fewer people being diagnosed and treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019, and overall spending on essential TB services falling.

"The first challenge is disruption in access to TB services and a reduction in resources. In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from tackling TB to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services.

"The second is that people have struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns."
— World Health Organisation

...and in case anyone was thinking this was an unexpected side-effect...

"Even temporary disruptions can cause long-term increases in TB incidence and mortality. If lockdown-related disruptions cause a temporary 50% reduction in TB transmission, we estimated that a 3-month suspension of TB services, followed by 10 months to restore to normal, would cause, over the next 5 years, an additional 1?19 million TB cases (Crl 1?06–1?33) and 361,000 TB deaths (CrI 333–394 thousand) in India, 24,700 (16,100–44,700) TB cases and 12,500 deaths (8.8–17.8 thousand) in Kenya, and 4,350 (826–6,540) cases and 1,340 deaths (815–1,980) in Ukraine. The principal driver of these adverse impacts is the accumulation of undetected TB during a lockdown."
— The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tuberculosis epidemic a modelling analysis - The Lancet

... does that give any clues as to who might now be too embarrassed to comment retrospectively on how we handled the pandemic?

Reply to Tzeentch Campbell is an idiot.

From the study he cited:

Hospital employees scheduled to undergo mRNA-1273 booster vaccination were assessed for mRNA-1273vaccination-associated myocardial injury, defined as acute dynamic increase in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T(hs-cTnT) concentration above the sex-specific upper limit of normal on day 3 (48–96 h) after vaccination withoutevidence of an alternative cause. To explore possible mechanisms, antibodies against interleukin-1receptor antagonist(IL-1RA), the SARS-CoV-2-nucleoprotein (NP) and -spike (S1) proteins and an array of14 inflammatory cytokineswere quantified. Among 777 participants (median age 37 years, 69.5% women), 40 participants (5.1%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.7–7.0%) had elevated hs-cTnT concentration on day 3 and mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was adjudicated in 22 participants (2.8% [95% CI1.7–4.3%]). Twenty cases occurred in women (3.7%[95% CI 2.3–5.7%]), two in men (0.8% [95% CI 0.1–3.0%]). Hs-cTnT elevations were mild and only temporary. No patient had electrocardiographic changes, and none developed major adverse cardiac events within 30 days(0% [95% CI 0–0.4%]). In the overall booster cohort, hs-cTnT concentrations (day 3; median 5, interquartilerange [IQR] 4–6 ng/L) were significantly higher compared to matched controls (n=777, median 3 [IQR 3–5]ng/L,p<0.001). Cases had comparable systemic reactogenicity, concentrations of anti-IL-1RA, anti-NP, anti-S1,and markers quantifying systemic inflammation, but lower concentrations of interferon (IFN)-?1(IL-29) andgranulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) versus persons without vaccine-associated myocardial injury.

Conclusion: mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient, and more frequent in women versus men. The possible protective role of IFN-?1(IL-29) and GM-CSF warrant further studies.

Big fucking yawn.

Reply to Benkei You're looking at it the wrong way.

The study concludes a significant amount of people are developing adverse effects within 30 days of their injection and somehow these effects weren't known beforehand?

The implication is you've either been lied to, or they've basically done no testing at all.

Quoting Benkei

Campbell is an idiot.

Classy opening, by the way. Yea, I'm sure Campbell is the idiot here. :roll:

Reply to Tzeentch Oh, that must be why the clinical trials of Novavax already showed "an increased risk of myocarditis".

Quoting Tzeentch

Classy opening, by the way. Yea, I'm sure Campbell is the idiot here. :roll:

I'll correct my statement. He's an immoral asshole who goes on youtube telling lies. I hope he dies sooner rather than later.

Quoting Benkei

Oh, that must be why the clinical trials of Novavax already showed "an increased risk of myocarditis".

I'm not sure who you think you're fooling if you are seriously arguing this was all common knowledge when people were being vaccinated en masse. Yourself, perhaps?

Quoting Benkei

I hope he dies sooner rather than later.

I think you got out of bed without taking your medication.

I get that this makes you angry, because you seem to have bought into it yourself.

Quoting Tzeentch

I'm not sure who you think you're fooling if you are seriously arguing this was all common knowledge when people were being vaccinated en masse. Yourself, perhaps?

The clinical trial reports were publicly available and there was no actual risk. Why report on something that wasn't a risk? Or are you actually thinking myocardial injury equates with a heart attack?

Quoting Benkei

Why report on something that wasn't a risk?

You really need me to answer that?

When you read a medical label and it says "may cause headaches", did the company put that there because they thought headaches were a major health risk, or because people ought to be informed of all the adverse effects they may suffer as a result of the medication.

Reply to Tzeentch it's in Dutch so maybe you understand this "bijsluiter". This is for Cominarty. Maybe next time do some research before believing that asshole shill. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/comirnaty-epar-product-information_nl.pdf

Reply to Benkei I think this bit, coming from the site you probably plucked that link from, is a fair representation of what people thought of the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis:

Quoting CBG

Een zeer zeldzame bijwerking op het vaccin is een ontsteking van de hartspier (myocarditis) of ontsteking van het hartzakje (pericarditis). Deze bijwerking komt bij minder dan 1 op de 10.000 mensen voor en is daarom zeer zeldzaam. Klachten zijn kortademigheid, pijn op de borst en hartkloppingen die soms onregelmatig zijn. De klachten gaan meestal vanzelf over of zijn met medicijnen goed te behandelen. Ervaar je deze klachten? Neem dan contact op met jouw (behandelend) arts of zorgverlener.

Does the discrepancy between 1:10,000 and 1:35 not seem alarming to you?

I think it's downright disingenuous to suggest that this risk was always known (or publicly known), and freely spread in the public. Politicians and medical professionals that asked questions about the risks were met with oneliners along the lines of 'safe and effective'.

The fact that these risks weren't fully acknowledged is reinforced by the fact that reports of myocarditis caused medical research centers to initiate research into this phenomenon - so clearly this wasn't common knowledge in the way you're suggesting it was.

You seem to be extremely agitated at the idea that a medical professoinal asks critical questions when such a discrepancy is brought to light. Why is that?

Reply to Tzeentch Myocarditis and myocardial injury aren't the same.

Myocarditis is an inflammatory disease of the myocardium diagnosed by established histological, immunological, immunohistochemical, and molecular criteria; endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) is necessary to achieve a diagnosis of certainty and identify its cause.

Myocardial injury is defined by only one criterion: the elevation of cardiac troponin, with at least one value above the 99th percentile upper reference limit.

Only one of these is actually dangerous, the latter is a measure of myocardial damage but obviously if it's transient, there's no actual damage.

Quoting Tzeentch

You seem to be extremely agitated at the idea that a medical professoinal asks critical questions when such a discrepancy is brought to light. Why is that?

Because he's not a professional, just a former nurse whose bullshit I can even unravel as a total layman with the ability to read. He's a sack of shit.

Quoting Benkei

Only one of these is actually dangerous, the latter is a measure of myocardial damage but obviously if it's transient, there's no actual damage.

Whether something is dangerous or damaging has never been the sole criterium for why things ought to be listed on the label as potential adverse effects.

Your suggestion seems to be that myocardial injury is nothing to be worried about. It's so insignificant in fact that even running a great risk of it is not something that people ought to be informed of.

I don't find that very compelling. Furthermore, I suspect this was intentionally kept from the public, because 'bad for business'.

The people who carried out the research apparently thought it was worth specifically investigating.

The concept of relative risk is poorly appreciated by the lay public. As if there is a risk-free option.

Quoting Tzeentch

I don't find that very compelling.

No, you rather not figure things out for yourself and prefer to listen to some dipshit on youtube because it fits your preconceived notion of bad government.

Reply to Tzeentch By the way, you realise that heavy exercise will show the same levels of myocardial injury? Because that's what you're arguing about at the moment. John Campbell is an idiot or a lying sack of shit. The sooner you realise this, the better.

The question really is now why you're married to his false statements that you've been arguing in favour of it this entire day.

Reply to Benkei A lot of angry raving, but your suggestion that adverse effects don't have to be included on medical labels simply because they may not be dangerous or damaging remains phoney, and you know it.

Reply to Tzeentch Myocarditis is included. Transient myocardial injury is automatically included under myocarditis. Transient myocardial injury isn't an adverse effect. Otherwise the consequences of exercising would be too. Myocardial injury can be an adverse effect If it isn't transient.

Quoting Benkei

Myocarditis is included.

Yes, it is listed as being very rare, whereas myocardial injury is apparently very common. To list one and omit to other I find misleading. Period.

Quoting Benkei

Transient myocardial injury isn't an adverse effect. Otherwise the consequences of exercising would be too.

You equated it to heavy exercise. Heavy exercise can definitely be a health risk to certain people.

But ultimately it is not up to the pharmaceutical company or relevant institutions to determine for the patients what risks they deem acceptable. It's up to the patient. And the patient can only make an informed decision if they are aware of the adverse effects a certain medication has.

This has always included things which are mostly harmless. Headaches, nausea, dizziness, etc.

Again, it's not up to the makers of the product to decide whether those things are important enough to list.

Quoting Tzeentch

Yes, it is listed as being very rare, whereas myocardial injury is apparently very common. To list one and omit to other I find misleading. Period.

No it isn't. Campbell is the one misleading here and you're too stupid to realise it even after I spoonfeed you why. Headaches, nausea etc. aren't harmless as they could indicate much worse conditions and are actually effects people notice. The worse condition that myocardial injury could indicate is myocarditis or pecocarditis, which are included. Transient myocardial injury in itself (eg. an elevated level of substance) is harmless and therefore not an adverse effect.

Reply to Tzeentch come to think of it. You can also get a shot of stress of hold your breath really long and you'll get the same level of troponin too. Ooihhh, adverse effects! Fuck of man and get real.

Quoting Benkei

Transient myocardial injury in itself (eg. an elevated level of substance) is harmless and therefore not an adverse effect.

Nonsense. You yourself equated the damage to heavy exercise. There are plenty of people from whom heavy exercise would be potentially dangerous, so you're just contradicting yourself at this point.

Quoting Benkei

Fuck of man and get real.

You're welcome to leave the conversation whenever you like, angry little man. :lol:

Quoting Tzeentch

Nonsense. You yourself equated the damage to heavy exercise. There are plenty of people from whom heavy exercise would be potentially dangerous, so you're just contradicting yourself at this point.

You're equating it. I said heavy exercise causes myocardial injury. These are different things but as usual you're being an idiot.

Quoting Benkei

No, you rather not figure things out for yourself and prefer to listen to some dipshit on youtube because it fits your preconceived notion of bad government.

Bingo. :up:

Everything ultimately comes back to this stupid, simplistic, perception-warping belief.

Quoting Mikie

Everything ultimately comes back to this stupid, simplistic, perception-warping belief.

There's nothing so simplistic as believing reality begets only one interpretation.

Reply to Tzeentch

Quoting Benkei

your preconceived notion of bad government.

And then there are preconceptions of good government. Is it possible to remain impartial and open minded, and observe which descrpition fits best? Or, regardless of our best efforts, do preconceptions always warp into biased conclusions? I wonder?

Quoting Tzeentch

There's nothing so simplistic as believing reality begets only one interpretation.

I can see why you'd think that, with the exceptions being...everything I've ever written.

I'm quite aware it's an interpretation. Not every interpretation is a serious one. Some are just stupid and simplistic.

There are some interesting takes about the virus and the vaccines. Some have changed my mind. When people point to ignoramuses and frauds -- like RFK JR -- regarding this issue, I think it's safe to conclude they're not serious.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe, well, in democracy, government is part of voters (or in voters' employ if you like). For that matter, voters could run for government, make a good enough case to "do the right thing" to get enough votes, or otherwise vote for someone who has done so.

FYI, Haugaard was in the Danish government 1994-1998:

Quoting Jacob Haugaard (Wikipedia)

Among his pointedly absurd campaign promises were: 8 hours of free time, 8 hours of rest and 8 hours of sleep; more tailwind on bicycle paths; promises of better weather; right to impotency; Nutella in field rations (which was actually implemented); and shorter queues in supermarkets

(Incidentally, Reply to Mikie brought up Sortition, which seems a neat idea, sort of.)

Reply to Tzeentch

There's nothing so simplistic as believing reality begets only one interpretation.

Not only that but there is nothing worse than official truth. The institutions that most wish to police misinformation have historically produced misinformation on an industrial scale.

For those who seek to shape public opinion, the veracity of the information appears to be of a secondary or even tertiary concern. The censorship of the Covid lab-leak hypothesis, for example—a valid theory—reveals that the charge is often used simply against information that they do not like. The shape of public opinion is paramount to whether the information is actually true or false. It’s the only reason one would get upset about dissenting opinions, really.

Quoting jorndoe

Incidentally, ?Mikie brought up Sortition, which seems a neat idea, sort of.

Quoting jorndoe

well, in democracy, government is part of voters (or in voters' employ if you like).

My preconception is that government always stands against the people, even a democratic one. And although a government might arise from time to time that genuinely serves the people, this is the rare exception. All government in all cases inevitably defaults to tyranny (attributable to human nature in relation to power, in addition to advents in thought and technology).
The big questions are: how do those benevolent governments arise, and how are they preserved?

I think the constitutional republic has demonstrated great potential that warrants further exploration before we abandon it for sortism. I am very cautious about direct democracy, which sortismm appeals to on face value. How many weak souls would bow to public pressure before standing on personal principle? Not many? Maybe?

Quoting NOS4A2

official truth

You mean to say: "official narrative": the bastion of conspiracy theorists.

Quoting NOS4A2

—a valid theory—reveals that the charge is often used simply against information that they do not like.

You fucking idiot, with your skeptical conspiracies. You can go to hell for not going along!

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe Reply to NOS4A2 When governments can no longer be seen as honest brokers of information it puts a bomb underneath the narratives concerning a wide variety of social and political issues. That's why people are getting so cramped about it.

Reply to Tzeentch

People get “cramped” about having to hear nonsense being repeated over and over again.

You and your two buddies are just ignorant and irritating. But by all means make up an elaborate story about it — because it can’t be as simple as that.

Reply to Mikie Yet here you are. :chin:

Quoting Tzeentch

When governments can no longer be seen as honest brokers of information it puts a bomb underneath the narratives concerning a wide variety of social and political issues. That's why people are getting so cramped about it.

Exactly. My entire political orientation has been completely revolutionized in the past 3 years because of exactly this. It is interesting to see how the left and right are constantly worked into irreconcilable conflict over these "official narratives", while the "brokers" sit back and consolidate more power and wealth into their own hands.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Exactly. My entire political orientation has been completely revolutionized in the past 3 years because of exactly this. It is interesting to see how the left and right are constantly worked into irreconcilable conflict over these "official narratives", while the "brokers" sit back and consolidate more power and wealth into their own hands.

A large number of people actually did die from COVID-19. Is that the part you didn't believe? Or what?

Quoting frank

A large number of people actually did die from COVID-19. Is that the part you didn't believe? Or what?

That is believable. Imagine how many more would have died if it weren't for the masking, vaxing and distancing. :chin:

The thing that I don't buy is the policy that was enforced worldwide was the best option we had. I'm also suspicious of how hard it was pushed into a frenzy amongst the multitudes, the unreasonable suspension of constitutional rights, and the hyper-censorship involved in propagating the official covid narrative, not to mention those who benefited greatly (politically and economically) from that very covid policy. It reminded me a lot of the anti muslim extremist fervor that predominated US following 9-11, which allowed it to be dragged into a prolonged war based on a lie. Or did that not occur?

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe

I also believe there's ginormous room for improvement in the way things were handled. My list reflects my time working in the hospital.

You remember public frenzy, I remember the dying old man who doesn't believe it when people tell him he has covid. I think his words were: "You just hear so many different things", or something like that. He's dead.

Quoting frank

You remember public frenzy, I remember the dying old man who doesn't believe it when people tell he has covid. I think his words were: "You just hear so many different things", or something like that. He's dead.

I suppose the covid policy that we were all forced to comply with did him no good.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I suppose the covid policy that we were all forced to comply with did him no good.

All spin, no substance. That's our world!

Quoting frank

All spin, no substance. That's our world!

We all maxed, vasked, and locked down, what else can we be expected to do?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

We all maxed, vasked, and locked down, what else can we be expected to do?

Nothing. As soon as the virus went AWOL in NY it was a foregone conclusion that we were headed for herd immunity. All over America, hospitals adjusted to devote all their resources to dealing with covid, and we still ran out of room and equipment.

You locked down to try to slow the spread so the hospital system wouldn't be more overloaded than it was.

Without the lockdowns, you would have gone outside in the morning to see what the people in 1918 saw: dead people laying in their yards.

I understand why nobody gets this. You didn't see what was happening in the hospitals. How could you know?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I suppose the covid policy that we were all forced to comply with did him no good.

Presumably countless others like him were saved.

Reply to frank Anybody who saw what happened in Italy could've known. And I remember images from NY where people were stacked in the corridors needing ventilators but there obviously were not enough around.

Governments had let slide pandemic reserves, tossed their playbooks when it did happen (if they had one) and most of them didn't define exit strategies. They (western European countries) screwed over healthcare personnel to boot (we'll applaud you but fuck your raise after we've cut your budget in the past 2 decades), who understandably left in droves, leaving healthcare in shambles in many countries. Waiting lists are the longest ever in the Netherlands.

Quoting frank

Without the lockdowns, you would have gone outside in the morning to see what the people in 1918 saw: dead people laying in their yards.

That would be pretty grim.

Nowadays people are at least dying out of sight, part of the pool of 'unexplained' excess deaths.

Quoting frank

You locked down to try to slow the spread so the hospital system wouldn't be more overloaded than it was.

Without the lockdowns, you would have gone outside in the morning to see what the people in 1918 saw: dead people laying in their yards.

I understand why nobody gets this. You didn't see what was happening in the hospitals. How could you know?

:100:

Quoting Benkei

(we'll applaud you but fuck your raise after we've cut your budget in the past 2 decades)

:up: :clap:

Quoting Benkei

Waiting lists are the longest ever in the Netherlands.

Here too. The waiting list for whatever takes more than one year. My father needs to check his prostate periodically, and the last check was in July 2022. We have been waiting for the next check since then. Luckily, we can have an appointment with the doc in December 2023 or February 2024. :roll:

Quoting frank

You locked down to try to slow the spread so the hospital system wouldn't be more overloaded than it was.

Without the lockdowns, you would have gone outside in the morning to see what the people in 1918 saw: dead people laying in their yards.

That's the excuse they used on us all. But that wasn't the case in the hospitals in my area, which is what made the blanket policy so dumbfounded.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

But that wasn't the case in the hospitals in my area

It happened everywhere in the US. We talk to each other, you know. :razz:

Quoting frank

It happened everywhere in the US. We talk to each other, you know. :razz:

You didn't talk to everyone. And I imagine, given the hyper-sensorship and public stigma towards anyone who might have opposed the official narrative, it would have been practically impossible to talk to everyone.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

You didn't talk to everyone. And I imagine, given the hyper-sensorship and public stigma towards anyone who might have opposed the official narrative, it would have been practically impossible to talk to everyone.

I meant we healthcare workers talk to each other. There wasn't any official narrative that conflicted with what was happening on the ground as far as I'm aware. I didn't realize how deeply suspicious a large chunk of the population had become until I talked to one of my friends and found that he'd escaped to a dystopian nightmare. I'm not really sure what accounts for that belief that those in leadership positions are perpetrating a giant fraud. I mean, when they give massive tax breaks to the rich, it's wide out in the open. They aren't trying to hide it. They don't have to.

Quoting frank

I'm not really sure what accounts for that belief that those in leadership positions are perpetrating a giant fraud. I mean, when they give massive tax breaks to the rich, it's wide out in the open. They aren't trying to hide it. They don't have to.

You can't think of anything?

Regardless...those in leadership positions did not hide their covid scam. They publicly censored and rebuked anyone who opposed, right out in the open, for everyone to see. Also, the massive transfers of wealth, as well as the outright dismissal of constitutional law, were in no way concealed from anyone. No...they didn't have too hide much, they stirred up such hysteria with the mindless mob, and It took care of nearly all would be dissidents that could have otherwise proved troublesome to the agenda of our outstanding leadership. A round of applause for the amazing job they did, are doing, and will probably continue to do.

I wonder how many of those (in US), who have been bought and sold over the covid policy, were opposed to the Iraq War back in 2003? My guess...not one.
[I only mention it because it is the only other time in my life that I witnessed a such a concerted media campaign, backed by the government, which subsequently caused mob madness to take hold on such a massive scale.]

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Regardless...those in leadership positions did not hide their covid scam

That damn covid scam! It's still killing people! Not as many as it used to tho. It doesn't really rate much higher than flu these days. I'm taking a break from this forum for a while. Thanks for the discussion. :smile:

Quoting frank

That damn covid scam! It's still killing people! Not as many as it used to tho. It doesn't really rate much higher than flu these days. I'm taking a break from this forum for a while. Thanks for the discussion. :smile:

I wish you well :blush:

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I wish you well :blush:

thank you!

Nobel prize went to researchers who were ridiculed and ignored prior to COVID-19.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-bethany-mclean-book-excerpt.html

A good article about the lockdowns. As much as I hate Trump, he was right about reopening schools. The classes I've taught since schools reopened have been the lowest I've ever seen. That's anecdotal, but the research also bear that out. I teach in a low income area, and that demographic was especially hard-hit by the school closures.

Reply to RogueAI yup. It was all a bunch of tyrannical fuckery. The more time passes, the more it will become apparent. For instance: the fuckery over covid-vaccine-injury-claims.

[...] pandemic-era emergency declarations bar the vaccine injured from suing vaccine manufacturers in civil court. Those with a COVID-19 vaccine injury are also prohibited from pursuing compensation through the standard Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)

CNN commentary on the comparative mortality rates in Australia v Florida as of September 2021 'peak pandemic'. Australia and Florida have roughly similar populations (the illustration shown is at 5:49). In the preamble DeSantis is seen saying that Australia is more or less on par with the People's Republic of China for enforcing prevention measures. So when he says 'live free or die', I guess he really means it.



(Or is it live free AND die? :chin: )

Reply to RogueAI
"

CICP is designed to provide compensation to individuals who suffer serious injuries as a direct result of the administration of certain countermeasures, such as vaccines, drugs, or medical devices, used to respond to public health emergencies. It covers injuries resulting from pandemic vaccines and other countermeasures.

VICP, on the other hand, specifically focuses on compensating individuals who experience injuries or adverse reactions caused by vaccines covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. This program primarily deals with routine childhood vaccines.

How fortuitously convenient that the live public covid vaccination experiment falls within protected cicp guidelines. So very convenient for those pharmaceutical companies that suffered so much under the weight of record profits during the pandemic.

Covid could have been a great opportunity to reconsider our relationship with our health.

But no, better grind society to a halt and stake our lives on 'quickfix' experimental vaccines the next time we fear being knocked over by a stiff breeze.

Quoting frank

Without the lockdowns, you would have gone outside in the morning to see what the people in 1918 saw: dead people laying in their yards.

I'm not so sure about this. Even if nearly 7 million deaths is a lot.

You see, even if covid would be as deadly as spanish flu, medicine has improved quite a lot in hundred years. The closest you now came was the NY officials burying "John Doe's" in a ditch. Modern medicine has improved quite a lot. The truth is that modern society, however it goes against the views of it's critics, is far more immune for pandemics when they hit than people were hundred or hundreds of years ago.

Quoting Tzeentch

'quickfix' experimental vaccines

I partially agree with you, but without those 'quickfix' experimental vaccines, everything would have ended up in a disaster. At least, considering those weak and sick citizens who were more vulnerable when they were infected by Covid...

Reply to javi2541997 What people want to inject into their bodies is none of my business (and what I inject into mine should be none of theirs, but alas the latter was not self-explanatory during covid...)

The weak and the sick should be accomodated in some way, but not by having everybody put their lives on hold. The damage done by this is immense, but it is less visible than covid deaths (the media plays a large role in that, but I digress). "Unexplainable" excess deaths, etc.

In the Netherlands (where I live) it was a political choice, in my opinion. Politicians felt it would reflect badly on them if IC capacity was below what it needed to be as a result of their policies. Better smear it out over the entire population and play coy. By their own estimates, they knowingly accepted as much as threefold the damage by choosing this approach. It was criminal. I have no other word for it.

Also, at what point do the people who voluntarily partake in unhealthy lifestyles get to take responsibility?

Let's be graceful and treat year one of covid as a wake-up call where we don't go too hard on this group. As far as I am concerned, when year two hits they've had a full year to get their shit together and at that point why should I care about their health if they evidently don't care about their own?

Quoting ssu

You see, even if covid would be as deadly as spanish flu, medicine has improved quite a lot in hundred years.

Covid pushed the American healthcare system a little beyond its capacity, in some places worse than in others, but everywhere, hospitals converted to focus almost exclusively on covid. There were supply shortages that affected every hospital, but in Texas, for instance, it was insane. Without the lockdowns, there just wouldn't have been any healthcare for a section of the sick population. They probably would have come to the emergency room and died in tents. So there probably wouldn't have been a whole lot of people dead in their front yards, but there would have been some.

Reply to frank What would be good now is to have a frank 'lessons learned' study of this pandemic for the next pandemic. Unfortunately that may be or become too political.

Yet it's obvious how usually the covid-scare went: people didn't know how lethal it would be, hence governments were forced to react someway. It was great to see totally different approaches: Sweden went it's own way and didn't lock down. And Swedes were happy.

Yes, Americans with their high hopes of being so independent and free will have debate long afterwards about this.

It's humorous observing the rewriting of such recent history now that the pandemic has been over for a year and a half.

Quoting ssu

Unfortunately that may be or become too political.

I wasn't being political. I work in a hospital. I saw what happened.

Quoting ssu

Yes, Americans with their high hopes of being so independent and free will have debate long afterwards about this.

Probably not. Americans don't give a flip.

Quoting frank

I wasn't being political. I work in a hospital. I saw what happened.

So has your hospital learnt as an organization something when the next lethal pandemic hits?

I fear that health care sector is usually just barely coping with the 'normal' and thus the organizations give no real effort to plan for real emergencies outside of the normal. Basic reason for this is the lack of money for this, of course, but I think there isn't much mental effort for preparing for something that could hit next year or 50 years from now.

When covid hit Finland, the only government department that didn't cry for help was the Border Guard: suddenly when asked to close the Swedish border (which has basically border controls since the 1950's), the reply was "No problem, we have a plan for this!" and hundreds of border guards moved hundreds of kilometers from their homes. Similarly when the army was called to quarantine the Capital region and the Uusimaa district from the rest of the country, in no time were conscripts manning traffic stops on small roads and trying to keep warm.

The health care sector simply isn't organized like this. Usually made up of either private enterprises or controlled by municipal authorities there doesn't exist a centralized command that a nation would need.

Quoting Tzeentch

What people want to inject into their bodies is none of my business (and what I inject into mine should be none of theirs, but alas the latter was not self-explanatory during covid...)

Vaccination and vaccination mandates are not new concepts. Why was the realisation that your actions affect others such a problem during COVID?

Also there seems to be tension with this other thing you write:

Quoting Tzeentch

Also, at what point do the people who voluntarily partake in unhealthy lifestyles get to take responsibility?

Is not refusing a vaccine also "partaking in an unhealthy lifestyle"? Or is there some qualitative difference?

What is also remarkable, I think, is that both vaccination "camps" adopted a rhetoric that displayed the other side as a threat to their health and freedoms.

Our western societies seemed ill equipped to deal with the basic tension of individualism vs collective actions.

Quoting ssu

The health care sector simply isn't organized like this. Usually made up of either private enterprises or controlled by municipal authorities there doesn't exist a centralized command that a nation would need.

It might also be a symptom of adopting the business approach to healthcare. Neither the army nor the border guards are set up as a business. We accept that they have to provide a specific result, not just be efficient.

With medicine we followed the neoliberal line that market principles create efficiency, and efficiency is always good. Only we do actually care about getting specific minimum results in healthcare.

Quoting Echarmion

Why was the realisation that your actions affect others such a problem during COVID?

The vaccines weren't designed to stop the spread. That story used to be perpetuated by politicians who tried to guilt trip their citizens into taking a vaccine that they didn't trust.

Quoting Echarmion

Is not refusing a vaccine also "partaking in an unhealthy lifestyle"?

No, of course not. Normal, healthy people didn't have anything to fear from covid.

Quoting Echarmion

What is also remarkable, I think, is that both vaccination "camps" adopted a rhetoric that displayed the other side as a threat to their health and freedoms.

The decision to take a vaccine is bound to a human right of bodily autonomy.

To me, that means something. If that means nothing to you, then I have nothing to say to you.

Also, the idea that not taking the vaccine somehow turned one into a health hazard is completely made up.

Quoting Echarmion

Our western societies seemed ill equipped to deal with the basic tension of individualism vs collective actions.

Ill-equipped in the sense that it allowed mass hysteria to take hold for several years.

Quoting Tzeentch

The vaccines weren't designed to stop the spread. That story used to be perpetuated by politicians who tried to guilt trip their citizens into taking a vaccine that they didn't trust.

They were designed to create antibodies. Not sure at what point it could have been predicted that this would not confer sterile immunity.

Quoting Tzeentch

No, of course not. Normal, healthy people didn't have anything to fear from covid.

Unfortunately for some people, they found out too late that they weren't in fact healthy.

But this cuts to the heart of the issue: that this is somehow a conflict between the "healthy" and the "unhealthy" rather than a communal problem requiring a communal solution.

Quoting Tzeentch

The decision to take a vaccine is bound to a human right of bodily autonomy.

To me, that means something. If that means nothing to you, then I have nothing to say to you.

Sure. But does that mean we can ignore whether someone is vaccinated (not just against COVID)?

Quoting Tzeentch

Also, the idea that not taking the vaccine somehow turned one into a health hazard is completely made up.

Well as I indicated I think the framing was bad. It seemed to be the framing that came naturally to everyone though. It was about the individually good people vs the individually bad people. Very similar to how the US gun control debate ended up. Encouraging people to look at themselves as the expression of some basic virtue rather than as part of a greater whole.

Quoting Tzeentch

Ill-equipped in the sense that it allowed mass hysteria to take hold for several years.

Well, once we collectively write off one side or the other as "hysterical", we made sure that further communication is impossible.

Quoting Echarmion

Unfortunately for some people, they found out too late that they weren't in fact healthy.

Which is why I stated specifically we should go easy on this group during the first year. Give them a year to get their shit together. If they don't, then that's their responsibility and not mine.

The minority who is chronically at risk can be accomodated.

Quoting Echarmion

But this cuts to the heart of the issue: that this is somehow a conflict between the "healthy" and the "unhealthy" rather than a communal problem requiring a communal solution.

No one gave a fuck about healthy people who did not want to take vaccines - at no point during the hysteria were their concerns taken seriously, so I don't buy any allusions to community.

It was 'us vs. them', and healthy people were on the receiving end of it. Critical voices were silenced, people treated as second class citizens, etc. , European leaders went on national television overtly threatening healthy people who refused the vaccines.

There was no community. It was tyrannical one-way traffic and the damage this has done is enormous.

Quoting Echarmion

Sure. But does that mean we can ignore whether someone is vaccinated (not just against COVID)?

Yes. Vaccines are there for people who feel unsafe to protect them. This is how vaccines have always functioned. It's a personal choice.

Quoting Echarmion

Well as I indicated I think the framing was bad. It seemed to be the framing that came naturally to everyone though.

I can't speak for other countries, but in the Netherlands where I live the framing was one-way traffic. I wish there was more of a platform for critical voices, but this was systemically suppressed, disregarded as 'misinformation' - there were literally cases of the Dutch government communicating with social media platforms to censor certain people. It was their policy.

Of course, in the end it turned out the Dutch government itself was the main peddler of misinformation as almost everything that came out of their mouths turned out to be false.

This has nothing to do with framing on my end. I don't have a problem with people who disagree with me at all. The problem is that there was never any discussion. This is why I call it a hysteria.

Quoting Echarmion

Very similar to how the US gun control debate ended up.

I don't agree that the two can in any way be compared.

Quoting Tzeentch

Which is why I stated specifically we should go easy on this group during the first year. Give them a year to get their shit together. If they don't, then that's their responsibility and not mine.

Quoting Tzeentch

No one gave a fuck about healthy people who did not want to take vaccines - at no point during the hysteria were their concerns taken seriously, so I don't buy any allusions to community.

It was 'us vs. them', and healthy people were on the receiving end of it.

But you seem to be simply perpetuating the "us vs them". You're merely placing yourself at the other side of the debate, not asking why it's that way in the first place.

Quoting Tzeentch

There was no community.

There is a real world community though, and it is inescapable.

Quoting Tzeentch

Yes. Vaccines are there for people who feel unsafe to protect them. This is how vaccines have always functioned. It's a personal choice.

Is it? I think vaccines have usually been considered a weapon against disease more generally. In the best case, a means to wipe out dangerous diseases completely.

Quoting Echarmion

It might also be a symptom of adopting the business approach to healthcare. Neither the army nor the border guards are set up as a business. We accept that they have to provide a specific result, not just be efficient.

Or simply that the armed forces are an organization where future hypothetical plans have great importance. In every army there are multitude of officers all the time fighting and planning WW3. Operational Plans (OPPLAN) are most important to armies and it's armies are organizations perfected to issue commands and execute them in an coordinated fashion. The best example is this is that the US Army really made a plan to fight a zombie attack (see Counter-Zombie Dominance)! Yes, they say it was for training, but you never know...

In healthcare it's basically reacting what patients come in from the front door or into the ER. And that's basically it. If 20 patients arrive in a hour usually, then that's the volume to what everything is set up. If that becomes 200 patients in an hour then the doctors have to do a lot of triage and the waiting areas become quite ugly.

Quoting Tzeentch

No one gave a fuck about healthy people who did not want to take vaccines - at no point during the hysteria were their concerns taken seriously, so I don't buy any allusions to community.

It was 'us vs. them', and healthy people were on the receiving end of it. Critical voices were silenced, people treated as second class citizens, etc. , European leaders went on national television overtly threatening healthy people who refused the vaccines.

There was no community. It was tyrannical one-way traffic and the damage this has done is enormous.

We were able to see just how many people (the vast overwhelming majority of people) are willing to throw away their basic rights simply because they are told to. We also saw how they will defend their choice to abandon their basic rights with the weakest, flimsiest bullshit, and then go on to indiscriminately impose the same upon everyone else.

It is pathetic that these sheep continue to double down on it all, despite the fact Coronavirus-2020-hindsight has proven lockdown and vaccine policy to be an absolute disaster. It is a case of too much pride and zero dignity.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe That about sums it up. I can safely say that it has changed my outlook on humanity as a whole. Perhaps worst of all is the deafening silence afterwards. As all the lies were exposed and myths dispelled, there is still scarcely a sign of any reflection.

You say sheep, but I'm more reminded of stampeding wildebeest who don't care whom or what they trample in their blind panic.

Quoting ssu

So has your hospital learnt as an organization something when the next lethal pandemic hits?

I don't think so. With this one, the pathogen was airborne. They gave maintenance the job of making every ICU room a negative-pressure room (to vent the virus out the window through a hepa filter.) This daunting job was done, and done really well, practically overnight. That demonstrates that the maintenance people had capable leadership and the commitment to excellence.

On the other hand, when it came time to start vaccinating the staff, I had to stand in line for four freakin' hours to get my dose. That shows that whoever was in charge of vaccinating was a moron, which was eventually admitted. It's not like War and Peace where no one is allowed to point out fuck-ups.

With Covid19 there was a huge amount that we learned in the first month. We radically changed strategies as people from around the world put their heads together about what worked and what didn't. It will be the same thing the next time around. We don't know exactly which supplies we'll need, what kind of transmission to plan for, and so on.

But it's not true that healthcare can't respond to emergencies. Every American hospital has a disaster coordinator and everybody knows what they're supposed to do if there's an industrial or weather disaster, or the ubiquitous mass shooting.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe I don't buy that it was some nefarious plot by government to tyrannize citizens. I think the lockdowns were was just an overreaction, and if we had to do it all over again, with the facts we have now, we wouldn't do lockdowns.

Quoting frank

But it's not true that healthcare can't respond to emergencies. Every American hospital has a disaster coordinator and everybody knows what they're supposed to do if there's an industrial or weather disaster, or the ubiquitous mass shooting.

And those mass shootings are unfortunately quite frequent on the national level. And earthquakes and hurricanes can be anticipated to hit certain places. Yet as you said, usually there's that one disaster coordinator, and likely he or she has some other admin work too.

But you did mention quite a lot of issues that make our society far more prepared to any other era. Information travels quickly and new practices can be adapted very quickly.

Quoting ssu

Yet as you said, usually there's that one disaster coordinator, and likely he or she has some other admin work too.

You shouldn't have more than one disaster coordinator. You need one voice in command.

Quoting ssu

But you did mention quite a lot of issues that make our society far more prepared to any other era.

Absolutely.

Reply to RogueAI

I wouldn't even necessarily call the lockdowns an [I]over[/I]reaction. When states felt that infection rates went beyond what could be handled, the lockdowns were reasonable as a short term solution imo. Perhaps they were even a bit late overall.

The problem came with the extension of limited, partial lockdowns and the proliferation of a bewildering array of contact regulations afterwards. A simple set of advisories, robust contact tracking as well as avoiding large (indoor) gatherings might have been just as effective and lost less trust.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

It is pathetic that these sheep continue to double down on it all, despite the fact Coronavirus-2020-hindsight has proven lockdown and vaccine policy to be an absolute disaster. It is a case of too much pride and zero dignity.

Obviously if you call someone an undignified, prideful sheep they'll not make a very great effort to second guess their choices. They'll just label you an anti vax conspiracy nutjob and ignore you.

The politicisation of the issue has made it very difficult to analyse the successes and failures.

For example, there's lots of criticism of the mandates on the "experimental vaccine", but little discussion on other issues with the vaccine policy. Like private firms holding patents for vaccines that were essentially publicly funded. Or the hoarding of doses by the richer countries which not only left poorer nations out in the cold, but also decreased the effectiveness of the program overall.

Reply to Echarmion Yes, it's ridiculous to claim that vaccines were any kind of "government plot"; here in Australia, Scott Morrison's government was criticised for not securing the vaccines quickly enough; it was apparent that very many people felt that he was not taking the job of protecting the populace seriously. The third world countries were complaining because they were last in line to receive the vaccines; another example of the wealthier, privileged nations being prioritised.

Quoting Echarmion

Obviously if you call someone an undignified, prideful sheep they'll not make a very great effort to second guess their choices. They'll just label you an anti vax conspiracy nutjob and ignore you.

It is also obvious that if someone is an undignified, prideful sheep, they will possess zero capability to second guess their choice to do what they are told. There is absolutely nothing that anyone can do or say to change this. And part of their programming requires them to label people anti vax conspiracy nutjobs when a person does not fall in line. Pathetic

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Pathetic

Is what I call people that summarily declare large amounts of other people essentially subhuman.

Quoting Echarmion

Is what I call people that summarily declare large amounts of other people essentially subhuman

Maybe so. Perhaps it is also pathetic to declare Nazis and Soviets subhuman. Nevertheless, it is certain that if one is born homo-sapien and proceeds through life as an undignified, prideful sheep, what else is one but subhuman.

Quoting Tzeentch

I can safely say that it has changed my outlook on humanity as a whole. Perhaps worst of all is the deafening silence afterwards. As all the lies were exposed and myths dispelled, there is still scarcely a sign of any reflection.

For me as well. Prior to this, I always suspected a portion of humanity was highly susceptible to such a charade, but in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined that it was this widespead. It is unnerving seeing the absence of any reflection or remorse over the lies and manipulation, it is very likely to happen again, and next time they may be more aggressive towards any who fail to comply.

Quoting Tzeentch

You say sheep, but I'm more reminded of stampeding wildebeest who don't care whom or what they trample in their blind panic.

:lol: very true

Quoting RogueAI

I don't buy that it was some nefarious plot by government to tyrannize citizens. I think the lockdowns were was just an overreaction, and if we had to do it all over again, with the facts we have now, we wouldn't do lockdowns

It it a hard thing to prove, indeed. The initial lockdown was more than likely an overreaction. However, the later lockdowns combined with mandates of an experimental vaccine wreak of coordinated corruption more and more as time passes. I disagree about doing it over again, I believe next time it will be just as easy to get people to willingly comply, and this time noncompliance will be met with real violence from the state (arrests, workcamps, guns pointed at citizens, &c).

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe I think a lot of things came together.

On one hand there are people in high places who probably felt they should "never waste a good crisis" - people like Schwab, Bill Gates, etc. - they've long had some funny ideas about what the world should look like. There's little hard evidence to implicate these people, but I have no doubt they have major influence on politicians on the national level. Schwab famously called the pandemic a "window of opportunity" to roll out his ideas. At that point, hard evidence or no, I know enough.

Then there's big pharma, which clearly had perverse incentives to contribute to the media storm, and did so on a gigantic scale.

Finally there are politicians on the national level, who probably realized at some point that they had made a grave error, but did not want to take the fall politically, and instead doubled down on the narrative.

The people themselves are simply not equipped to deal with this kind of fuckery. Under normal circumstances people are reasonably capable of critical thought, but not when the information landscape is thoroughly poisoned on this scale, from places of authority no less (WHO, national governments, etc.).

A perfect storm of all the worst elements of humanity.

Quoting Tzeentch

On one hand there are people in high places who probably felt they should "never waste a good crisis" - people like Schwab, Bill Gates, etc. - they've long had some funny ideas about what the world should look like. There's little hard evidence to implicate these people, but I have no doubt they have major influence on politicians on the national level. Schwab famously called the pandemic a "window of opportunity" to roll out his ideas. At that point, hard evidence or no, I know enough.

Too little hard evidence is what makes it all so murky. That's what gives the herd the right to deem anything that does not conform to the official narrative as wackadoodle conspiracy theory. However, there are indeed super elites with massive stake in the Game, and unimaginable influence over ngo's, igo's, io's, and mnc's, They are out there in public making their intentions known, it is no secret. Why can't people see that something is afoot?
It is obvious that they are unelected nonofficials pulling strings on national and global levels, with far more leverage and fewer restraints than any existing government. Perhaps they are completely altruistic and are genuinely concerned about everyone's best interest. But what have they ever done to show that is the case. They just keep shitting out these weird ideas and agendas, which by the way, seem to only apply with a double standard to the Modern West, and never to anyone else. Peculiar. Luckily it is all just a bunch of wackadoodle conspiracy theory, we can all rest easy that there is no fuckery going on with the most powerful men in the world.

Quoting Tzeentch

Then there's big pharma, which clearly had perverse incentives to contribute to the media storm, and did so on a gigantic scale.

Ill repeat what I posted about the fuckery over covid-vaccine-injury-claims.

[...] pandemic-era emergency declarations bar the vaccine injured from suing vaccine manufacturers in civil court. Those with a COVID-19 vaccine injury are also prohibited from pursuing compensation through the standard Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)

CICP is designed to provide compensation to individuals who suffer serious injuries as a direct result of the administration of certain countermeasures, such as vaccines, drugs, or medical devices, used to respond to public health emergencies. It covers injuries resulting from pandemic vaccines and other countermeasures.

VICP, on the other hand, specifically focuses on compensating individuals who experience injuries or adverse reactions caused by vaccines covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. This program primarily deals with routine childhood vaccines.

WHY????

How fortuitously convenient that the live public covid vaccination experiment falls within protected cicp guidelines. So very convenient for those pharmaceutical companies that suffered so much under the weight of record profits during the pandemic.

Quoting Tzeentch

Finally there are politicians on the national level, who probably realized at some point that they had made a grave error, but did not want to take the fall politically, and instead doubled down on the narrative.

They are a bunch of flatterers. I believe it was Diogenes that said the flatterer is the beast with the sharpest bite. They follow the sheep as much as the sheep follow them. Mostly a bunch of useless swine that need to be held to account with strict penalties by the sheep. One can dream.

Quoting Tzeentch

The people themselves are simply not equipped to deal with this kind of fuckery. Under normal circumstances people are reasonably capable of critical thought, but not when the information landscape is thoroughly poisoned on this scale, from places of authority no less (WHO, national governments, etc.).

It was to become the best funded, and most effective propaganda campaign in world history. And it directly targeted our basic rights as the enemy to the greater good of humanity. Freedom of speech and press were met with censureship everywhere...Everywhere. Freedom of assembly met with massive home confinement and social distancing. Freedom of petition met with ridicule, cancelation and blacklisting. Freedom of religion met with lockdown of churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, &c.

As you say:Quoting Tzeentch

A perfect storm of all the worst elements of humanity

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

We were able to see just how many people (the vast overwhelming majority of people) are willing to throw away their basic rights simply because they are told to. We also saw how they will defend their choice to abandon their basic rights with the weakest, flimsiest bullshit, and then go on to indiscriminately impose the same upon everyone else.

It is pathetic that these sheep continue to double down on it all, despite the fact Coronavirus-2020-hindsight has proven lockdown and vaccine policy to be an absolute disaster. It is a case of too much pride and zero dignity.

I can't help but laugh at the lack of self-awareness here. The exact same attitude present in those who went gung-ho and demonized those resistant to public health protocol is present in this dismissive, inhumane reading of the other side. You also can't (No, you can't) be sure that those public health protocols didn't ensure a far-less intense negative outcome from the pandemic than without.

That said, I think your screed DOES apply to those who are, since let's say last August, still making the claims made two years ago, and still expecting people to behave in what are (regardless of the previous ssituation) definitely absurd and pointless ways now.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

wreak of coordinated corruption more and more as time passes.

maybe this is true if you've been predisposed from the jump to leap to this conclusion. In actual fact, all it reeks of in hindsight is more-than-initially-assumed incompetence. Which is, let's face it, the norm. There is no such thing as a competent government, and least of all when it comes to public health. We don't need to invoke any intent to get the results we got.

Quoting AmadeusD

You also can't (No, you can't) be sure that those public health protocols didn't ensure a far-less intense negative outcome from the pandemic than without.

Indeed! It is like disproving God. The fact that we will never know the possible outcomes to alternate strategies is a testament to its irreproachability. We survived, and the policy saved us all. What else do we have to go on.

Its just...I can't stop thinking about how the process of law was so rapidly abandoned as the fundamental liberties of citizens in "so-called" free societies were blatantly trampled upon. People lost their livelihoods over vaccine mandates - experimental vaccines which turned out to be quite ineffective.

Whatever...We survived, and the policy saved us all. What else do we have to go on.

Quoting Tzeentch

people in high places [...] Schwab, Bill Gates [...] big pharma [...] politicians on the national level [...] WHO, national governments

:D

Quoting Tzeentch

I have no doubt they have major influence [...] people themselves are simply not equipped to deal with this kind of fuckery

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Too little hard evidence is what makes it all so murky. That's what gives the herd the right to deem anything that does not conform to the official narrative as wackadoodle conspiracy theory.

Yeah, Mar 12, 2023.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

s just...I can't stop thinking about how the process of law was so rapidly abandoned as the fundamental liberties of citizens in "so-called" free societies were blatantly trampled upon.

As a legal professional, yep. Fully agreed. Regardless of the possibility that it was, in hindsight, right, there’s always a niggling Kantian asking whether that matters

Quoting AmadeusD

Regardless of the possibility that it was, in hindsight, right, there’s always a niggling Kantian asking whether that matters

Goddamn Kantian n********, all concerned about things that may matter :gasp:

Reply to jorndoe thanks

Quoting AmadeusD

We don't need to invoke any intent to get the results we got.

Of course. The results was that the covid pandemic was declared over. Everything was peachy, and worked out perfectly. Any perceived fuckery throughout the whole scenario is kooky talk.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/students-world-suffered-huge-learning-setbacks-pandemic-study-105380696

This dovetails with what I've seen with my own students.

More fuckery surfacing over vaccine trials.

"Pfizer intentionally misrepresented the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine and censored persons who threatened to disseminate the truth in order to facilitate fast adoption of the product and expand its commercial opportunity"

Quoting https://www.reuters.com/legal/pfizer-is-sued-by-texas-over-covid-19-vaccine-claims-2023-11-30/

Paxton said it was misleading for Pfizer to claim its vaccine was 95% effective because it offered a "relative risk reduction" for people to who took it.

Paxton said the claim was based on only two months of clinical trial data, and vaccine recipients' "absolute risk reduction" showed that the vaccine was just 0.85% effective.

He also said the pandemic got worse even after people started taking the vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech (22UAy.DE).

It just keeps coming.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe :rofl: Your egregious confirmation bias is hilarious! This is merely a claim, not established fact.

Texas lawsuit claims Pfizer exaggerated effectiveness of Covid vaccine
State attorney general Ken Paxton files suit despite medical consensus that vaccine prevents severe infection and death.

The attorney general of Texas is suing the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, alleging that it exaggerated the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine and deceived the public.

Ken Paxton announced the lawsuit on Thursday after filing it in Lubbock state district court in north-west Texas, the Texas Tribune reported.

Greg Abbott, who was previously vaccinated and also later tested positive for Covid-19, said in his order that ‘vaccines are strongly encouraged for those eligible to receive one, but must always be voluntary for Texans’.

Paxton’s suit comes as a consensus of health experts and scientists have said that the vaccine prevents severe infection and death from Covid-19.

Paxton accused Pfizer of “[engaging] in false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices by making unsupported claims regarding the company’s Covid-19 vaccine in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act”, according to a press release shared to X, formerly known as Twitter.

Paxton argued that Pfizer’s claims about effectiveness implied that it would effectively end the Covid-19 pandemic, and that it failed to do so within a year of being introduced.

The lawsuit also added that claims the vaccine was 95% effective were not accurate, and that Covid-19 infection as well as death rates worsened as the vaccine became increasingly available.

Pfizer released results on the effectiveness of Covid in November 2020, finding that the shot was 95% effective in the first 28 days after receiving the vaccine.

The suit also claims that Pfizer “[conspired]” to silence those who were critical of the shot, common arguments made amid other anti-vaccine figures.

Paxton’s suit asks that Pfizer be prohibited from “making representations about the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine”, the Hill reported.

The attorney general is also requesting $10,000 for every alleged violation by Pfizer, in addition to other financial restitution. The total civil penalties against Pfizer total up to more than $10m, according to Reuters.

In a statement, Pfizer said the “state’s case has no merit”, adding that the vaccine has been administered to 1.5 billion people “and helped protect against severe Covid-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death”.

“The representations made by the company about its Covid-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based,” it read.

The lawsuit is Paxton’s second against Pfizer in November. The attorney general previously sued the pharmaceutical company and an additional supplier for allegedly altering quality-control tests on ADHD medication for children.

From here

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe Have you seen this letter from the European Medicines Agency to members of the European Parliament in response to an inquiry?

As all these institutions are scrambling to cover themselves, they're starting to spill the beans.

I foresee more lawsuits in our future, but chances of success are low.

Big pharma and national governments clearly engaged in some sort of unholy pact that made the industry non-liable in case of damages due to off label use, in exchange for rapidly developed vaccines. Rampant off label use is what governments all over the world (including my own) engaged in.

From the letter:

Quoting European Medicines Agency

You are indeed correct to point out that COVID-19 vaccines have not been authorised for preventing transmission frome one person to another. The indications are for protecting the vaccinated individual only.

This is diametrically opposed to the story which many governments told their populations, and which they used to justify their actions.

It was not authorized for use to prevent the spread of the virus, and it was not authorized to protect anyone besides the vaccinated individual. In other words, getting vaccinated to "protect grandma" was nothing but emotional blackmail on a national scale.

Quoting Janus

This is merely a claim, not established fact.

Oh really, you don't say. how in the world were you able to come to such a conclusion

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe Not by reading your post. :roll:

Quoting Janus

:roll:

Hey, I was going to use the eye roll on you in my previous post, but it seemed lame

Reply to Janus why are you so quick to defend Pfizer? Do they pay your grandmother's pension or something?

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe I'm not defending Pfizer.

Quoting Janus

I'm not defending Pfizer.

Sorry, it sounded like you were. I was taking a pot shot at Pfizer.

Quoting Tzeentch

Have you seen this letter from the European Medicines Agency to members of the European Parliament in response to an inquiry?

I have not. Thank you for sharing.

Quoting Tzeentch

Big pharma and national governments clearly engaged in some sort of unholy pact that made the industry non-liable in case of damages due to off label use, in exchange for rapidly developed vaccines. Rampant off label use is what governments all over the world (including my own) engaged in.

I'm amazed at the lack of skepticism from the average person towards both big pharma and government. It's not like they do not have clear record of nefarious and outright deceptive behavior. Why do people so easily keep trusting them with so much shit? Where is a speck of suspended judgment to be found? It is insane.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe Authority is a powerful thing and people are simple creatures: the government says it, the institutions say it, the news says it, everybody seems to believe it - it must be true.

Not to mention, all the common information sources I named have teams of experts that advise them on exactly what their messaging should look like to manipulate people into exhibiting the desired behavior or copying the desired beliefs. People who aren't aware of how this type of manipulation works are basically chanceless against it.

Even if you have a natural distrust for the first three, being confronted with an apparent majority of people who speak and act as though what's being presented is truth will seriously test one's trust in their own observations and intuition.

Quoting Tzeentch

From the letter:

You are indeed correct to point out that COVID-19 vaccines have not been authorised for preventing transmission frome one person to another. The indications are for protecting the vaccinated individual only.
— European Medicines Agency

getting vaccinated to "protect grandma" was nothing but emotional blackmail on a national scale.

Blackmail is still as despicable as the experimental vaccine mandates which turned out to be quite ineffective... and detrimental to the livelihoods of those who did not want to risk their health or dignity with a relatively untested experimental drug. And now there are cases of people claiming vaccine injuries all over the world who face an industry that has been protected by law in case of damages due to off label use. It is sickening how corrupt it all is.

The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the authors wrote.

Quoting Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection provides strong, lasting protection against the most severe outcomes of the illness, according to research published Thursday in The Lancet — protection, experts say, that’s on par with what’s provided through two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

And now there are cases of people claiming vaccine injuries all over the world who face an industry that has been protected by law in case of damages due to off label use. It is sickening how corrupt it all is.

I would like mass lawsuits to provide justice, but I doubt it.

The industry has covered itself, and will not take responsibility for off label use. To whatever degree states will take responsibility - guess with whose tax money they will be paying the damages?

Ideally, the politicians who for whatever reason chose to completely ignore medical guidelines in both a narrow sense (the vaccines) and broad sense (our general knowledge of epidemics and immunity) should be tried seperately. But I guess the chances of that happening are almost zero.

Quoting Tzeentch

Authority is a powerful thing and people are simple creatures: the government says it, the institutions say it, the news says it, everybody seems to believe it - it must be true.

Not to mention, all the common information sources I named have teams of experts that advise them on exactly what their messaging should look like to manipulate people into exhibiting the desired behavior. People who aren't aware of how this type of manipulation works are basically chanceless against it.

Even if you have a natural distrust for the first three, being confronted with an apparent majority of people who speak and act as though what's being presented is truth will seriously test one's trust in their own observations and intuition.

Well said. That pretty much breaks it down. The funny thing is that everybody (particularly those in liberal societies) already have authority over the most important aspects of their lives. And still the majority seems to have no problem relinquishing it all to entities whose existences are entirely based on power and control. The scariest thing (as you so aptly bring up in the third ¶) is how the majority tends to behave like the blob once it becomes mobilized - assimilating anybody it can get a hold of into its mindless mass.

Quoting Tzeentch

I would like mass lawsuits to provide justice, but I doubt it.

The industry has covered itself, and will not take responsibility for off label use. To whatever degree states will take responsibility - guess with whose tax money they will be paying the damages?

Ideally, the politicians who for whatever reason chose to completely ignore medical guidelines in both a narrow sense (the vaccines) and broad sense (our general knowledge of epidemics and immunity) should be tried seperately. But I guess the chances of that happening are almost zero.

Unfortunately, you are most likely correct. When have we ever seen accountability for anything. It is always a bunch of cover-ups, persecution of undesirable voices, and covering-up the cover-ups.

I would like to see one, tiny, isolated lawsuit. Don't know if that is possible though

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

The scariest thing (as you so aptly bring up in the third ¶) is how the majority tends to behave like the blob once it becomes mobilized - assimilating anybody it can get a hold of into its mindless mass.

Flemish psychology professor Mattias Desmet has written a book about this in 2022, called 'The Psychology of Totalitarianism'. It discusses this exact subject in relation to the pandemic. He was subsequently invited to a lot of podcasts, and you can find plenty of interviews of him on YouTube.

In addition to providing a very lucid take of the whole ordeal, I also thought he was an inspiring human being. It's worth checking out.

Funny that in America at least, the politicians who are the most 'anti-vax', are also the ones most totalitarian leaning.


Or maybe it's not funny.

Reply to Wayfarer

Well the Antivax bit is just another arrow in the quiver for people like Bannon. What exactly one believes about any particular issue is not so important. What's important is that one accepts the fundamental creed: Something evil is going on, outsiders cannot be trusted and the people "in the know" have to act.

Interestingly these people use the language of anti-authoritarianism to further their own authoritarian control of the narrative. But this is of course not a new phenomenon.

FYI, here are some grim trackers:

• HermanCainAward (w)
• sorryantivaxxer
• CovidiotDeaths

Somewhat akin to the Darwin Awards (w). Similar lists have appeared here and there in newspapers/publications.

Conspiracy theorists (and some others) tend to not get it. Can/should anything be done?

Reply to Tzeentch https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/573763

None of the vaccine makers have made any claims with respect to transmission, only the reduction in severity as I already pointed out 2 years ago when this first became a thing. Many people assumed it would because most vaccines also reduce transmission (and it did).

Quoting Benkei

None of the vaccine makers have made any claims with respect to transmission, only the reduction in severity

Vaccine makers may not have, but the government and media certainly did. Slowing transmission was certainly the excuse wherever we saw vaccine mandates.

Reply to Tzeentch going to be looking it up. Thanks for the reference.

Apparently more fuckery being exposed that is pretty relevant to this thread. Turns out SV40 is a key ingredient in the covid vaccine.

Quoting Lawyer: Pfizer COVID-Related Lawsuits Allege ‘Willful Misconduct’

Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine was found to contain a Simian Virus 40 (SV40) DNA sequence, not disclosed to the public.

Combined with an isolated study from Clinical Microbiology Reviews:

Persuasive evidence now indicates that SV40 is causing infections in humans today and represents an emerging pathogen.

Quoting Emergent Human Pathogen Simian Virus 40 and Its Role in Cancer

Mounting evidence indicates that SV40 is a human pathogen, and current molecular biology, pathology, and clinical data, taken together, show that SV40 is significantly associated with and may be functionally important in the development of some human malignancies. 

But they ensure us that it's completely harmless. Everything is totally fine. We can all rest easy.

Quoting No evidence that DNA sequence used in Pfizer shot leads to cancer and other health issues

No evidence has been found to suggest DNA fragments used in the development of the coronavirus vaccine -- such as a portion of SV40’s DNA sequence -- are causing health problems in people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe I'm reminded of a documentary I watched a little while ago. It's worth a watch - if I am not mistaken SV40 played a key role in the search for polio vaccines in the '50s and '60s and the link of those vaccines to the emergence of HIV.

Here's another blast from the past: a 2015 documentary about the pharmaceutical industry and its rotten business practices. Rather uncanny parallels can be drawn.





The bottomline is, politics, pharmaceutical companies, the science, even the doctors themselves - it's all compromised by lobbyists who are bought and paid for, and has been for years. Not a word from these people can be trusted.

There was a time when institutions had integrity and could be trusted to act in favor of public health. We are no longer living in such times. I wonder when people will wake up to that fact.

Reply to Benkei Perhaps interesting for you as well. It's from Zembla.

Reply to Tzeentch Watching it now but without watching it I already now pharma is not to be trusted.

Reply to Tzeentch

Eh, not really news.

Don't get me wrong, the pharmaceutical industry is NOT inherently trustworthy, I agree. But then again no industry is inherently trustworthy... because they're industries, ie they are driven by profit. So Big Pharma is no more or less trustworthy than Big Oil, the Military Industrial complex etc.

Actually the fact that there is some governmental oversight (the FDA) actually separates Big Pharma from most other industries, in a good way.

Quoting LuckyR

Actually the fact that there is some governmental oversight (the FDA) actually separates Big Pharma from most other industries, in a good way.

The FDA has a questionable history of its own. It would be foolish to think it is a reliable source of protection against possible malfeasance by big pharma. After all, there is no question that the big pharma lobby is capable of influencing the presidential appointment of FDA officials. Don't be so certain that the FDA doesn't have greater interests that far outweigh the health concerns of American citizens.

Reply to Tzeentch awesome video. Must watch for anyone who has posted to this thread.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe

But aren't you alive because of antibiotics? I am.

Quoting Benkei

Watching it now but without watching it I already now pharma is not to be trusted.

None of it should be trusted. Not big pharma, not government, not mass media, not the church, &c, &c. They all should be groveling at our feet to prove their trustworthiness. But they have a record of doing nearly everything to shatter our trust followed by excuse after excuse for why we should continue trusting them. The big question is why there are so many people that continue to so easily trust all the obvious bullshit after endless betrayal?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

None of it should be trusted. Not big pharma, not government, not mass media, not the church, &c, &c.

Maybe neither should ? this

Quoting jorndoe

Maybe neither should ? this

Why are you so quick to defend big pharma. Does your grandmother receive her pension from them?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Why are you so quick to defend big pharma. Does your grandmother receive her pension from them?

Who said I am? Just pointing the childish generalization at itself. :D

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe Which of the two? I think they're both pretty strong, but in the case of the AIDS video, it's almost like the reporters managed to find the smoking gun.

The FDA has a questionable history of its own. It would be foolish to think it is a reliable source of protection against possible malfeasance by big pharma. After all, there is no question that the big pharma lobby is capable of influencing the presidential appointment of FDA officials. Don't be so certain that the FDA doesn't have greater interests that far outweigh the health concerns of American citizens.

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe

In a conversation about the relative ethical standards of the pharmaceutical industry to other industries, the FDA isn't evaluated against how good it might have been, it's evaluated against other (lobbyist prone) agencies and against no regulation whatsoever (in certain industries).

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe I've pointed out before in this thread this is just a heuristic with little value as an actual argument in specific cases.

Quoting jorndoe

Who said I am?

You insinuated you were. :joke:

Reply to Tzeentch the aids doc. Incredible stuff there

Quoting LuckyR

In a conversation about the relative ethical standards of the pharmaceutical industry to other industries, the FDA isn't evaluated against how good it might have been, it's evaluated against other (lobbyist prone) agencies and against no regulation whatsoever (in certain industries).

Not a very high standard. But fair point.

Quoting Benkei

I've pointed out before in this thread this is just a heuristic with little value as an actual argument in specific cases.

Obviously. This is tpf. But it is always fun to generalize. I just have a hard time trusting any of those classic institutions of oppression. The slightest critique reveals just how mendacious they can be. What has big pharma done to earn your non-critical trust?

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I just have a hard time trusting any of those classic institutions of oppression.

I think you've probably been trusting the FDA all your life. How many medications are you on right now?

Quoting frank

I think you've probably been trusting the FDA all your life. How many medications are you on right now?

Rhetorical question :wink: Probably. Even to this day. However, they have have certains ways of doing things that seem trustworthy, and those that are suspect...for example, the full approval process versus emergency use authorization for vaccines.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

Rhetorical question :wink: Probably. Even to this day. However, they have have certains ways of doing things that seem trustworthy, and those that are suspect...for example, the full approval process versus emergency use authorization for vaccines.

They actually did go through the whole standard testing procedure. What was sped up was the paperwork part, which sometimes takes years. Still, this was a radically new technology. It goes in and makes your own cells create features of a lethal virus. I joked to myself when I took it that this is how zombie apocalypses start. I was a little nervous, but I took it because I had spent the previous year planning how I would spend my last functional days if I got covid. I was making little videos of family and friends doing normal things, planning to watch it at the end.

Quoting frank

They actually did go through the whole standard testing procedure.

Quoting fda.org

FDA Takes Key Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for First COVID-19 Vaccine

An EUA is most definitely not the same as the the normal full approval process.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

An EUA is most definitely not the same as the the normal full approval process.

The FDA's approval process is mostly paperwork. All the vaccines went through the standard 3 phase clinical trials. These phases check for safety and efficacy. The clinical trials were the reason it took so long to get the vaccine to the population. The actual vaccine was produced in a couple of weeks. That's one of the advantages of the new technology.

Quoting frank

The FDA's approval process is mostly paperwork.

Yes, it's mostly paperwork, except for the majority of the process that isn't paperwork. You really think they are spending 8 years on "mostly paperwork" to approve vaccines?

From Yalemedicine.org:

"According to one study, over the past decade, the FDA approved 21 vaccines, mostly for flu or meningococcus. The median clinical development period (meaning from a Phase I trial to approval) was just over 8 years, including a median FDA review period of about a year. 

"For comparison, the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, which was the first to receive an EUA, was under clinical development for six months before it submitted its EUA. An EUA was granted in less than a month; full approval was issued eight months later."

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe
The quote from Yalemedicine is not in disagreement with what I said.

Quoting frank

The quote from Yalemedicine is not in disagreement with what I said.

Compared to the usual 8 or so years it takes for fda vaccine approval, it took virtually no time to release the covid vaccine to the public - 15 months according to the study. I'm no mathematician, but that is over a 6.5 year difference. But im sure it went through all the rigor of normal testing to ensure its safety for public use.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

But im sure it went through all the rigor of normal testing to ensure its safety for public use.

:up:

Reply to frank my apologies, my math was off.

The 8 years is not the median duration for the full approval process, but only for phase I of the clinical development. In the full approval process it takes another 3-7 years to clear phases II &III.

I'm no mathematician, but according to my calculations, that amounts to 11-15 years for required clinical development. But im sure my math is off here as well. Ive read it can take anywhere from 5 to 17 years.

Covid vaccine went through all three phases in only six months. That has to be the world record.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

The 8 years is not the median duration for the full approval process, but only for phase I of the clinical development.

Phase 1 takes a few months.

You know, you have a right to refuse any kind of medical intervention. It's a federal law. :cool:

Quoting frank

You know, you have a right to refuse any kind of medical intervention. It's a federal law. :cool:

Join the big experiment or let your children starve. It's not the easiest choice to make when your job is on the line because of a mandate from your employer. But yes, you do have the right. Its pretty cool

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe
I think everyone who didn't want to get vaccinated just got a religious exemption. Of course there were those who just decided to let their children starve. So sad.

Quoting frank

Phase 1 takes a few months.

Let's say it takes 2 years for the full process of clinical development of a drug. That is still a lot more than the six months it took for the covid vaccine to clear clinical development. The polio vaccine took 20 years to clear.

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

According to one study, over the past decade, the FDA approved 21 vaccines, mostly for flu or meningococcus. The median clinical development period (meaning from a Phase I trial to approval) was just over 8 years, including a median FDA review period of about a year.

Quoting frank

Of course there were those who just decided to let their children starve. So sad.

:rofl: sorry for the insensitivity. You just have a comical way of saying things

Quoting frank

I think everyone who didn't want to get vaccinated just got a religious exemption.

Conscientious objectors. I am torn over them. I admire the objector, but I loathe the conscientious

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

I admire the objector, but I loath the conscientious

Just leave your shoes untied.

Quoting frank

Just leave your shoes untied

:rofl: The nonconcientious objector would deeply oppose the fact that they were untied, but refuse to do anything to rectify it. I would trip

Quoting Merkwurdichliebe

The nonconcientious objector would deeply oppose the fact that they were untied, but refuse to do anything to rectify it. I would trip

Don't do that. Leave your hair uncoiffed.

Quoting frank

Don't do that. Leave your hair uncoiffed.

You are a wise man...a fount of wisdom

Reply to Merkwurdichliebe :lol:

There's a fair roundup over here, though the latest may not have made it in:
? Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (Wikipedia)
Collaboration, mRNA/protein technology, etc.

FYI, for a simple overview, I think this will do:

Incidentally just scrolled by:

Comparison of mild physiological effects of surgical masks and N95 respirators over 60 min at rest
[sup]— Valerie C Cates, Anthony L Marullo, et al · Mount Royal University · Jul 5, 2023[/sup]

According to this research, masking up has inconsequential negative effects.

Study and media summary

The Effects of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions on COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Mortality: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-analysis
[sup]— James A Peters, Mohsen Farhadloo · American Journal of Preventive Medicine · Jun 14, 2023[/sup]

Montreal university study describes COVID-19 sanitary measures as 'generally effective'
[sup]— Laurie Trottier · CBC · Jan 21, 2024[/sup]

Reply to Tzeentch, instead of posting a 33m:12s youtube by Campbell showing a talk by Bridgen, why not post whatever studies Bridgen was referring to? (There are better sources than either, in any case.)

Reply to jorndoe If you have Karenitus as comorbidity it's allegedly lethal by suffocation.

Once again, the lab leak. If only we would have used Occams razor, but no.



But, make it part of the culture war.. and it's just an opinion.

Reply to ssu But how can this be? I thought this was a conspiracy theory!

Reply to Tzeentch When there's one lab in China working on the disease and then, it just happens to happen in that City, it's a questionable start. And then those who say the possibility of a lableak is TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE have also links to the work in the lab...

Thus when those who are guilty are also the "experts" that are referred to answer what caused this, I imagine they have an incentive to deny any responsibility. These circles are tiny, I know this: my father was a virologist professor and these circles are small surprisingly small: the amount of scientist working on some speciality aren't counted in the thousands globally, but perhaps in a hundred or so globally forming the "cutting edge". He past away (not from COVID) and his fear was that it truly was a lab leak and what kind of effect would it have on medical research in general.

Perhaps only the Norwegians could have the integrity and honesty to admit that "Oops" and then pay from their Sovereign Wealth Fund billions and billions in lawsuits.

COVID-19 vaccines and adverse events of special interest: A multinational Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN) cohort study of 99 million vaccinated individuals

[sup]— K Faksova, D Walsh, Y Jiang, J Griffin, A Phillips, A Gentile, J C Kwong, K Macartney, M Naus, Z Grange, S Escolano, G Sepulveda, A Shetty, A Pillsbury, C Sullivan, Z Naveed, N Z Janjua, N Giglio, J Perälä, S Nasreen, H Gidding, P Hovi, T Vo, F Cui, L Deng, L Cullen, M Artama, H Lu, H J Clothier, K Batty, J Paynter, H Petousis-Harris, J Buttery, S Black A. Hviid · Vaccine · Feb 12, 2024[/sup]

62-year-old manages to get a couple hundred shots over two and a half years...?
More than one a week on average?
Criminal charges weren't filed against him, though likely fraudulent.
Anyway, doctors studied him:

Scientists Studied Man Who Claimed To Have Had 217 COVID Shots. Here’s What They Found.
[sup]— Nina Golgowski · HuffPost · Mar 7, 2024[/sup]

There's a major OP in today's New York Times presenting evidence for a laboratory-based origin of COVID19. Authored by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.” Gift link. I am still going through it, but most of the information it contains is new to me.

Previous review of the above author's claims, saying she has an ax to grind. The review in question is of a book she co-authored a couple of years ago. The reviewer calls into question some of Chan's key claims.

It's a highly technical subject. :fear:

And another

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/covid-origin-wuhan-lab-leak-alina-chan-mit-harvard/

[Deleted. I know I am stupid]

There has been a lot of evidence supporting the lab leak theory for years, so much so that I figured it to be accepted fact by now. I guess I was wrong, and apparently this is still a surprise to people.

Given the fact that the US likely shared in responsibility through their funding of the very lab where Covid is said to have originated, it's rather rich they're now trying to shift all the blame on China.

And the cover-up attempt is still in full swing, by the way:

Fauci denies suppressing COVID lab leak theory before US House panel

Waiting for the next avian flu with all the cows infected in the USA. We can rename this thread to "avian flu" so it stays relevant.

Reply to Benkei If the lab leak theory is correct, which seems likely, then the US and China have the blood of millions on their hands. How exactly is that not relevant?

[Deleted. I know I am stupid]

Reply to Tzeentch I can see why you thought that was a reply to you but your post simply reminded me of my own big worry that the next avian flu pandemic seems to be right around the corner.

I haven't followed it closely recently. I do recall there was an original Lancet study that said it couldn't be engineered. That turned out to be false but was widely reported in the media which had many people dismiss the lab leak theory as unlikely (myself included, I thought 1% chance). Then the Lancet study turned out to be wrong and the lab leak became more possible. I still gave it lower odds because transmission at a wet market would be more likely than a lab leak, which would at least have some controls against transmission. I also thought we would never really find out because it's an intelligence issue and this information wouldn't be shared.

What new evidence was revealed that this is current?

Reply to Benkei Ah, gotcha.

Well, the interesting development is that big US media outlets are now pushing the lableak theory and seem to be pointing their arrows at China, even though the US has obviously been implicated as well.

It smells of the US trying to exculpate themselves, probably because evidence is starting to pile up in the background. (Some compilations of which were shared a few posts above)

I thought the smoking gun was the fact they found big jumps in the development of the Covid strain - gaps in the natural evolution process, so to speak - that are the hallmark of biological tampering. The phases of the evolution that can't be retraced are then thought to have been carried out in an isolated lab environment.

Reply to Tzeentch I just read the NY piece. Jaw dropping on various levels. I think the most important thing we (the Dutch) need to think about it how to include the risk we're being lied to next time something like this happens. What a difference it would've made if everybody knew this could've been specifically engineered to infect humans.

Quoting Benkei

?Apollodorus I wasn't aware it was still in doubt such research was done there. So nothing new to me at least. The second part I'll ignore at the useless speculations of a layman. Especially since actual experts now think it's more likely there is a natural origin instead of a lab leak based on the find in Laos. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2

I suppose that's what you get from reading the Telegraph. :vomit:

Well, that comment certainly didn't age well. Ouch. :chin:

We truly live in the most stupid timeline.

Reply to fdrake You really need to expound on that because I have no clue how to interpret that sentence!

Reply to Benkei

Oh it's not an insult at you. I read the NY article. My post was just exasperation with how much of a clusterfuck reality is.

Reply to fdrake Reply to Benkei

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

And somehow it just keeps getting worse. :lol:

Reply to Tzeentch

Is there an equivalent to going afk from existence? Can I do that for a few years?

Apparently, the HLA-DQA2 gene might give natural immunity, at least it seems common to people less (or not) affected by the virus.

Human SARS-CoV-2 challenge uncovers local and systemic response dynamics
[sup]— Christopher Chiu et al · Nature · Jun 19, 2024[/sup]

Some people never get COVID-19: researchers say a specific gene could be why
[sup]— Christine Birak (Akiko Iwasaki, Dawn Bowdish, Donald Vinh) · CBC · Jun 27, 2024 · 2m:1s[/sup]

Reply to jorndoe
That's interesting. I've never had it (knock on wood) in spite of being exposed to it quite a few times. Maybe I have that gene!

Reply to Tzeentch Jesus. How callous and depraved. It directly targets civilians and disproportionality affects the weak. Horrible.

Reply to Tzeentch

Vicious and awful. Though sadly unsurprising.

Quoting Tzeentch

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

And somehow it just keeps getting worse. :lol:

The US was responsible for why the Covid pandemic IN THE US happened

Oh yeah, that too. :sad:

Quoting Tzeentch

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Just thegreatsatanthings :sparkle: :hearts:

Officials confirm human case of plague in Colorado (— Maya Davis · CNN · Jul 9, 2024)

[i]I'm ba-ack[i]

Anyway, are we (people, societies) ready for the next one?

Quoting jorndoe

Anyway, are we (people, societies) ready for the next one?

No. The next one might be a variation of Ebola. We'll see.

Very spooky. Maybe we should stop producing them then, eh?

Quoting frank

No. The next one might be a variation of Ebola. We'll see.

The "problem" with Covid-19 was that it wasn't deadly enough. It ended up in this middle ground in which people could just brush it off as "just another cold" while others got seriously ill and died or contracted long covid symptoms.

And since the public operates on whatever bubble of convictions that each individual lives within, the seriousness of the pandemic were never truly taken seriously.

But a larger and more deadly pandemic would drive the point home and get people to demand their governments to do precautions for it to never happen again. It's unfortunate that the only way society can truly change is if it gets hammered to inches of death, otherwise it would just create a polarized white noise that erodes any intellectually sound and proper precautionary practices to prevent a new outbreak.

It's the same for nuclear annihilation. People think that governments will press a button and send everything they got, but it would be more likely that a tactical nuke is set off on the battlefield or an already destroyed city (that's occupied) and the act would be so shocking that it would shake the world into reducing nukes.

The problem is that everyone rationalize based on hypotheticals that are filtered through fictional narratives all the time. And the subsequent hyperreality it creates makes progress slow down and precautionary and constructive actions and plans to be reduced over time.

In Sweden during the 90s, the fall of the wall made our governments think that we don't have to be ready for war anymore and the cost of having a big military defense was irrational seen as we could use those funds to fund necessary things in society instead. We didn't need Nato, we didn't need much of our own defense etc. And nothing happened when Russia first invaded and annexed part of Ukraine in 2014 because it seemed (in the public) as some minor shenanigans by that Putin clown.

But with a pandemic and a full blown invasion that shook the world, all of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, the public supported a massive increase in rebuilding our defenses and joining Nato.

What changed was the perception, the narrative, being hit by actual reality. It's only this sledgehammer that moves a society to take action, nothing else is as effective.

So, whenever something more serious than the recent pandemic happens, it would quickly reprogram the population into supporting actions to mitigate, fight back and create precautions for future risks. But Covid-19 wasn't enough, so we will probably be unprepared for something more deadly and only after something like a billion deaths will people create demands that can move elections.

Just think of all the elections going on this year. Has any politician, anywhere, had any election point around preventing new pandemics? No? Or course not. Covid-19 is treated like it's over and that it "wasn't that bad". So there's no interest from the public, they just want to move on to other stuff. But if something really deadly starts a new pandemic, it would be at the top of the list for elections and push politicians who speak of necessary changes to global society.

Quoting Christoffer

So there's no interest from the public, they just want to move on to other stuff.

I hear you. I recently spoke with a doctor in private practice and he expressed the opinion that all the hype was for nothing, that we damaged our economy out of hysteria. The problem he has is widespread: nobody saw what was happening inside hospitals, so they don't understand how close we were to losing control and having people dying in their front yards like in 1918. We limited the effect with lockdowns, drugs, and vaccines (and huge amounts of oxygen).

The thing about a more severe pandemic is that it might shake the foundations of society so that what comes out the other side is not the same entity that went in, you know? Like the Bubonic plague created a middleclass because of labor shortages.

I think the US is tipping toward authoritarianism, so another pandemic might be the final ingredient.

In principle, it comes down to doctors·nurses·researchers·specialists to figure out what (not) to do, while learning/improving along the way.
It starts as a medical problem that would inform subsequent political decisions, etc.
Too bad that the implementation of the whole process has proven fragile/vulnerable; pathogens don't care about human crap.

Quoting jorndoe

Too bad that the implementation of the whole process has proven fragile/vulnerable;

But another thing people forget is that the vaccine was revolutionary. The massive pile of cash coming in to fund it from governments and rich guys was amazing. I really wonder what a socialist world would have done. I'd like to think the freedom to go with a crazy solution would exist there, but I don't know.

Reply to frank A socialist world wouldn't try to weaponise viruses for profit. It wouldn't have a shortage in PPE because getting your dick up wouldn't be favoured over pandemic preparedness because the first is profitable and the other just a cost. The first policy wouldn't be to save the economy but to save people.

History’s Seven Deadliest Plagues
[sup]— Maya Prabhu, Jessica Gergen · Nov 15, 2021[/sup]

They should have used a color to indicate lethality (risk after infection), perhaps some indicator of how easily the malady spread.

But another thing people forget is that the vaccine was revolutionary. The massive pile of cash coming in to fund it from governments and rich guys was amazing. I really wonder what a socialist world would have done. I'd like to think the freedom to go with a crazy solution would exist there, but I don't know.

Reply to frank

The AstraZeneca vaccine was funded by the U.K. government and charitable organisations. This would have been the same under a socialist government.
It’s true that research into RNA vaccines has been funded by investment capital around the world for decades. But that is just how the pharmaceutical systems we have, have developed. In a socialist world, there might have been more money invested in more cost effective ways rather than as a means to generate vast profits for shareholders etc.

Quoting Punshhh

In a socialist world, there might have been more money invested in more cost effective ways rather than as a means to generate vast profits for shareholders etc.

I live in a socialist country, and the government is not investing in the most cost effective ways. It collects a lot of taxes, but a big percentage goes to reduce the big external debt with the European Union. When we were in the coronavirus pandemic, it was a total chaos by the public administration to provide sanitary products (such as masks or COVID tests, for instance). The central government had to sign agreements with pharmaceutical enterprises to reinforce the supply.

I personally don't get upset if a company and its shareholders get rich because sanitary products are providing them benefits. The same happens with Nordesk and Saxenda (Orzanpic) products. They put assets in a long-term project, and now they are experiencing good dividends.

Reply to javi2541997, Spain, right? (Portugal?)
Reply to Punshhh, aren't both the UK and Spain labeled "socialist democracies"?
Some funding came in via the EU.
Pfizer and BioNTech received a good lot from the US, the EU, Germany, Canada, ... (From memory, the Gates Foundation and others also tossed a fair bit in.)
In retrospect, the project was quite something. So was the noise, by the way. Yet, the cooperation/collaboration and (prior) mRNA/protein technology came together nicely.

Quoting Benkei

A socialist world wouldn't try to weaponise viruses for profit

Well, maybe not a socialist world, or better an ethical world.

Quoting jorndoe

Spain, right?

Sí.

Quoting Punshhh

The AstraZeneca vaccine was funded by the U.K. government and charitable organisations. This would have been the same under a socialist government.

The UK had the funds because they draw off of a capitalist economy that expands and contracts. During expansion, there is an abundance of virtual capital that funds things like R&D. How would a socialist economy do that?

Quoting Punshhh

It’s true that research into RNA vaccines has been funded by investment capital around the world for decades. But that is just how the pharmaceutical systems we have, have developed. In a socialist world, there might have been more money invested in more cost effective ways rather than as a means to generate vast profits for shareholders etc.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't know how a socialism would handle a pandemic. Socialist economies don't expand and contract. They're stagnant. That makes me think they would be less financially flexible compared to capitalism. Actually, much less flexible.

Reply to frank Socialist countries have capitalism and investment capital too. Or are you thinking of Communism?
Anyway I’m just saying they can do it too, just in a different way.

Reply to javi2541997 Yes southern European countries are in a bind right now, I don’t think left, or right governments make much difference to be fair.

Reply to jorndoe If Thatcherism is socialist, then yes. But that’s not my reading.

Quoting Punshhh

Socialist countries have capitalism and investment capital too. Or are you thinking of Communism?
Anyway I’m just saying they can do it too, just in a different way.

Ah. We weren't thinking of the same thing. Where there's capitalism, that's actually the foundation of the society's wealth. The kind of socialist economy I was thinking of operates by central planning. I don't think there are any economies of that kind anymore.

Reply to Punshhh
As a tidbit, the mRNA vaccine was originated by a woman who found it difficult to find funding because all except one of her peers scoffed at the idea. Capitalism just does better with innovation because stray, crazy ideas have better survival chances. Central planners tend to be thud-heads who resist change due to the risks involved. Usually.

Yes, I see where you’re coming from now. However if you take a look at France, one of the most socialist Western countries. There are maverick’s studying and developing their own unique ideas everywhere. One only needs to look at their culinary diversity. Chefs strive to come up with new novel recipes, breaking the mould, pushing boundaries to win their Michelin star. Also in the arts, artists are given a stipend by the government allowing them to experiment and diversify to their hearts content. I travel around France a lot (I’m going there on Saturday, can’t wait), there are institutions, societies, venues, creative people everywhere. Often supported in their endeavours by the state.

Quoting Punshhh

Yes, I see where you’re coming from now. However if you take a look at France, one of the most socialist Western countries. There are maverick’s studying and developing their own unique ideas everywhere. One only needs to look at their culinary diversity. Chefs strive to come up with new novel recipes, breaking the mould, pushing boundaries to win their Michelin star. Also in the arts, artists are given a stipend by the government allowing them to experiment and diversify to their hearts content. I travel around France a lot (I’m going there on Saturday, can’t wait), there are institutions, societies, venues, creative people everywhere. Often supported in their endeavours by the state.

I agree. You definitely don't need capitalism for innovation. I just think it helps. But there's an example from France about how authoritarianism can work out: an invasive plant was released into the Mediterranean from an aquarium in France. One guy noticed that it was an ecosystem destroyer and notified the brass at the aquarium. He was told that it's natural and don't worry about it. It turns out he was right. The plant crowds out other plants and it doesn't provide food for sea animals, and it's naturalized all over the Mediterranean now. In other places in the world where it appeared, it was eradicated before it could do any damage. That's just the kind of thing I've come to expect from authoritarian situations. Inevitably the decision maker has to be an idiot. Where there's more of an open forum for ideas, there's a greater chance that the puny, but correct opinion can make a difference.

Reply to frank Yes, the French bureaucracy, painfully slow. Whereas on the other side of the spectrum there are corporate giants like DuPont and Boeing over the pond.

Quoting Punshhh

on the other side of the spectrum there are corporate giants like DuPont and Boeing over the pond.

True

Reply to Punshhh
hah! That's still a thing in the UK? :)
My impression (which may be wrong) is that lots of things are covered well by taxes, like health, some education, public infra, the usual. Also (which may be wrong), my impression is that the UK has become more progressive since, at least in some ways. The Randians and evangelicals, for example, don't seem to have the same foothold as in the US. But I could have the wrong impression.
Then again, maybe Brexit was seeded by Thatcher (1988).
(Not sure what to make of all the public camera coverage.)

Reply to jorndoe
The UK is a neoliberal power player due to having the largest financial markets in the world. They eclipse NY. Yes, they do offer bread and circuses. That's great, but let's not confuse that with socialism.

Holy cow... @Benkei :yikes:

Boris Johnson's secret plot to invade The Netherlands with British forces and seize Covid vaccines

Disgraced and humiliated former Prime Minister Boris Johnson drew up a half-brained secret plot to invade The Netherlands and swipe Covid-19 vaccine supplies, he happily reveals in his ludicrous new memoir.

The brazen ex-PM’s shameless memoir, titled ‘Unleashed’, details just how detached from reality the ludicrous Tory leader had become during one of the worst crises to ever befall the UK. Johnson claims he devised plans for the UK armed forces’ elite units to covertly raid canals in The Netherlands and seize vaccines, following what the bumbling toff claims were months of “futile” negotiations with European Union leaders to release five million Covid jabs.

Reply to javi2541997 It's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. Especially if it's the Netherlands.

Reply to javi2541997 :rofl:

The 1665/6 history of Eyam (Derbyshire Dales, UK) is kind of inspiring.
Their actions during the Plague likely saved a large number of lives.

Eyam » 1665 plague outbreak
Eyam Village in the Peak District » Plague

Idiotic mask-refusers of today could learn a thing or two, but they likely won't.

212,000 lives, $105 billion ...

Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
[sup]— Alison P Galvani, Alyssa S Parpia, Abhishek Pandey, Meagan C Fitzpatrick · PNAS · Jun 13, 2022[/sup]

Study: More Than 335,000 Lives Could Have Been Saved During Pandemic if U.S. Had Universal Health Care
[sup]— Jenny Blair · Yale School of Medicine · Jun 20, 2022[/sup]

3-year-old data from the UK remains consistent with US data from 2022

Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021
[sup]— Charlotte Bermingham, Jasper Morgan, Vahé Nafilyan · Office for National Statistics · Sep 13, 2021[/sup]



The Vaccination Effect on Covid-19 Deaths
[sup]— Martin Armstrong · Statista · Sep 13, 2021[/sup]

Reply to jorndoe

"At least six studies have reported T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in 20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus." -- BMJ

With Germans, it's 1/3. In the middle of the epidemic everyone (including German doctors) wondered why Germany was having an easier time with the pandemic. A few speculated native immunity, which seemed nuts at the time because how would they have ever been exposed to this virus? Now we have a mystery to solve because it's confirmed that a significant portion of the human population is naturally resistant to COVID19.

Reply to frank How is that a mystery? T-cell reactivity to a virus can be learned from an infection of a different virus, a phenomenon known as cross-reactivity or heterologous immunity. Such cross-reactivity has been observed with regard to SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza A: https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/158308

Quoting Benkei

How is that a mystery?

Unfortunately, we don't know how it works. If pre-pandemic, you had an infection with one of the old coronaviruses, what are your chances of having resistance to one of the COVID-19 strains? If you had a flu shot, what are your chances? We don't know because that data isn't available.

Reply to frank What do you mean, we don't know how it works?

If viral strains are sufficiently similar in their immunodominant epitopes, then populations of cross-reactive T cells may be boosted by exposure to one strain and provide protection against infection by another at a later date. This type of pre-existing immunity may be important in the adaptive immune response to influenza and to coronaviruses. Patterns of recognition of epitopes by T cell clonotypes (a set of cells sharing the same T cell receptor) are represented as edges on a bipartite network. We describe different methods of constructing bipartite networks that exhibit cross-reactivity, and the dynamics of the T cell repertoire in conditions of homeostasis, infection and re-infection. Cross-reactivity may arise simply by chance, or because immunodominant epitopes of different strains are structurally similar. We introduce a circular space of epitopes, so that T cell cross-reactivity is a quantitative measure of the overlap between clonotypes that recognize similar (that is, close in epitope space) epitopes.

source= https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8472275/?utm_source=perplexity

Quoting Benkei

What do you mean, we don't know how it works?

Quoting frank

If pre-pandemic, you had an infection with one of the old coronaviruses, what are your chances of having resistance to one of the COVID-19 strains? If you had a flu shot, what are your chances?

Reply to frank That's equivalent to asking why some people get sicker then others. But there are models available to predict this. So again, not very mysterious just difficult to predict as there are a lot of confounding factors aside from immunilogical imprinting.

Quoting Benkei

But there are models available to predict this

Where? I've been looking into this for a while because I've been exposed countless times and never got it. I'd like to know if someone has done some substantial work on it.

Reply to frank https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1108303/full

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1377259/full

Reply to Benkei
Are you serious?

Reply to frank Sorry, I'm researching some things on cancer at the same time and chatgpt got confused offering examples. IEDB.org is an option if you can figure out how to use it.

Frontline healthcare workers do appear to have a higher likelihood of cross-reactivity even for viruses they never had before.This is suggestive but not definitive: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55989-4

Reply to Benkei Cool :up:

Well that sucks

Long COVID: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation Linked to Long-Lasting Brain Effects
[sup]— Helmholtz Munich · Nov 29, 2024[/sup]
Persistence of spike protein at the skull-meninges-brain axis may contribute to the neurological sequelae of COVID-19
[sup]— Rong, Mai, Ebert, Kapoor et al · Helmholtz Munich & Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität · Dec 11, 2024[/sup]

Animation (— Ali Max Erturk · Nov 29, 2024 · 1m:33s)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/erturklab/status/1862524693640564871[/tweet]

A bit more fatigue after infection it seems:

Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study
[sup]— Suzanne D Vernon, Tianyu Zheng, Hyungrok Do, et al · NIH · Jan 13, 2025[/sup]

About 5 years ago I wrote that the pandemic was China’s Chernobyl, one of the worst industrial disasters ever.

But virtue-signalling even into death and tyranny is the modern impulse. For some reason officials wanted us to believe the virus came from a market, even though there was a coronavirus research lab just down the street. I recall they blamed the innocent pangolin. For some reason many of us believed it.

Remember that those institutions who cry most about misinformation are greatest historical purveyors of it. Here’s another example we can add to the list. The German, British, American, and the Chinese governments knew about the origin of the virus but spread misinformation instead.

A classified dossier compiled by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, was passed to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the start of the outbreak in March 2020 which stated: 'It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology'.

The file, marked 'Secret – Recipient's Eyes Only' argued that Beijing was pushing a fake narrative that the virus had originated in an animal market. The dossier, compiled by a group of eminent academics and intelligence experts and seen by The Mail on Sunday, said China even retrospectively manipulated viral samples to give credence to the deception.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14503159/Labour-Wuhan-lab-leak-pandemic-Boris-johnson.html

Now we know for certain that influential scientific journals, the “experts” and authorities whom we are taught to listen to, privately believed the lab-leak theory but publicly refuted it.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1901273799942688784?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]

[URL= https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o.amp]German spy agency believed COVID started in a lab[/url]

Reply to NOS4A2 Let's say China is to blame. What is Trump going to do about it?

Reply to RogueAI

Which theory did you believe, and why?

Reply to NOS4A2 I thought there was a 50/50 chance it came from a Chinese lab when it first hit. Now I think there's probably a 70% chance it came from a lab.

Reply to RogueAI, the theories, speculation and available evidence sure have pointed in whatever directions over time. Fifty/fifty seems as good a guess as any. Or 33% with a third possibility.

Reply to RogueAI

Let's say China is to blame. What is Trump going to do about it?

Trump always said it was the China virus, in a snide way. Implying that it was a Chinese plot, dastedly deed, or something. The lab theory is right up his street.

Reply to NOS4A2 They’re called the security services for a reason. And what you are doing posting articles from the gutter press here, I don’t know.

After five years of one of the worst pandemics we humans faced, I still meet people who suffer from 'long COVID' or 'long-haul' COVID.

Long COVID comes after the initial infection. The main consequence is that when the symptoms disappear, then they appear again. Most of the symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, and sleep disorder. Long COVID can last years, or possibly lifelong...

According to Long COVID science, research and policy, the cumulative global incidence of long COVID is around 400 million individuals.

Main issue and inconvenient: There are no standardised tests to determine if symptoms persisting after COVID-19 infection are due to long COVID. It seems difficult to determine the causes and how to approach it. We only have one area in a hospital in Barcelona that takes care of it. How does it work in your countries?

Work-related impacts: The impact of long COVID on people's ability to work is large. But it is not recognised as a paid sick day (at least here) yet...

COVID is still an issue, even though we are no longer talking about it...

Quoting NOS4A2

Now we know for certain that influential scientific journals, the “experts” and authorities whom we are taught to listen to, privately believed the lab-leak theory but publicly refuted it.

Those pushing for gain of function research and involved even distantly to the Wuhan lab had the most incentive to hide it. So for a long time the media went with it.

The most likely explanation is simply a lab accident.

Exclusive: NIH suspends dozens of pathogen studies over ‘gain-of-function’ concerns
[sup]— Jon Cohen, Jocelyn Kaiser · ScienceInsider, Science/AAAS · Jul 11, 2025[/sup]

If we won't learn, we deserve what's comin', right? :)

Back to the Future: Lessons Learned From the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
[sup]— Kirsty R Short, Katherine Kedzierska, Carolien E van de Sandt · Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology · Sep 10, 2018[/sup]

Apparently, anti-vaxxers have been making noise about these:

Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different COVID-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England (article)
[sup]— Samantha Ip, Teri-Louise North, Fatemeh Torabi et al · Nature Communications · 2024 Jul 31[/sup]

Lower risk of dementia with AS01-adjuvanted vaccination against shingles and respiratory syncytial virus infections (article)
[sup]— Maxime Taquet, John A Todd, Paul J Harrison · npj Vaccines, Nature briefs · 2025 Jun 25[/sup]

I got infected with coronavirus. It is not the first time, though. Nonetheless, I feel this time it hit me stronger. There was a small wave of infections in Madrid for the last few weeks. I was exhausted as never before, and my muscles ached and cramped.

I thought: Fortunately, I am vaccinated. Otherwise, with this "new version" of Covid, I would be in serious trouble.

I will never understand anti-vaxxers. Do they wish to die from the coronavirus?

When the test marked that I was infected with coronavirus, I remembered all the people who sadly got infected before the vaccines were launched. What a complete tragedy the people suffered in 2020.

Reply to javi2541997
Good to know you're out of it and doing well.
It hit people differently. Many did not show obvious symptoms that they have covid.

Reply to L'éléphant

Exactly. My granny is 91 years old, and it seemed that the covid didn't even approximate to her. It is crazy how this virus works. Hopefully, we live in a very modern era, and scientists can overcome this virus quickly.

Quoting javi2541997

Hopefully, we live in a very modern era, and scientists can overcome this virus quickly.

Medical researchers work nonstop. Even while the world sleeps.

Quoting javi2541997

My granny is 91 years old, and it seemed that the covid didn't even approximate to her.

She is a super granny!