Science etc.

[stanky]

Fauci slowly back-pedals his b.s.:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lab-leak-not ... 33115.html

I've lost my standing as a conspiracy theorist.
Expect all of this to come out in an excruciatingly slow and painful way.
Imho, what people should be appalled at is the censorship that happened.
Dissenting voices in the science community were silenced regarding covid.

[President Bush]

FL and I were in Liwan/Guangzhou, China, for two weeks mid-late December, 2019, right before the shit began. Vaguely recall stories in South China Post about outbreak of respiratory illness in Wuhan, my sister says I told her about it at the time.

Said ¨see you in July¨ to all the folks we did biz with there, sure as fuck never guessed we wouldn´t be back.

thumbnail - 2024-01-12T111712.045.jpeg (145.11 KiB) Viewed 2553 times

[arthwollipot]

Since when has the lab leak hypothesis been a conspiracy theory, as opposed to a serious consideration that was given more prominence than it warranted by conspiracy theorists?

[Admin]

Fauci slowly back-pedals his b.s.:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lab-leak-not ... 33115.html

I've lost my standing as a conspiracy theorist.
Expect all of this to come out in an excruciatingly slow and painful way.
Imho, what people should be appalled at is the censorship that happened.
Dissenting voices in the science community were silenced regarding covid.

From Reason.com

The time at which you start linking to Alex Jones draws closer by the day.

Hey, did you know our leaders are actually alien reptiles in disguise?

[stanky]

gee...

that's really clever.
Maybe you could be an intern for Colbert's show.

[stanky]

I guess down under isn't as distrustful of government as America is.
(We have decent reason to be, of course, based on history.)
We also don't trust our elected congress. Or Big Medicine. Or big insurance. Or Big Ag. Big Oil. Big entertainment. Big Tobacco, Booze. Firearms.
My distrust of the overall 'show' in no way expresses fondness for woo. Or Trump.
Biden's dropping bombs, as he's told. Or, I guess he thought of it? With his team of experts?
We're so resigned to it, there's barely a whisper of opposition. Party doesn't effect this. Both parties give more than the Pentagon asks for, year after year. Even Bernie will vote for the raise. Nothing to do with the covid shot. My problem there is one of censorship, powered by zeal, flavored with .propaganda. Whether the vaccine was good or bad is a different debate. This was a new social experiment. New medically too. Most of America, me thinks, ain't havin' more of it, regardless how i feel. Weird to be aligned with a majority of anything. But i seem to be in another one that doesn't want Trump or Biden. Or war.

Here's a consolation prize:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/planet- ... 00911.html

find out what planet is closest to Earth, on average, over a 10,000 year span.
amaze your friends.

[Meadmaker]

What I find appalling is that these issues are political in nature at all. Science isn't supposed to be about politics.

Were the lockdowns a good idea? Should I get a booster?

Well, the first part involves asking how many people would have died without the lockdowns versus the number who died with the lockdowns. That part isn't political, or it shouldn't be. That should just be science.

As for the booster, what's the chance I will die if I get the booster versus what's the change I will die if I don't. Repeat for serious illness.

It ought to be possible to find answers, or at least estimates to those questions.

And I'm not even sure who to blame. Trump, obviously, is part of the problem. He manipulated evidence and suppressed information, telling the CDC how to say a bunch of things. However, Biden hasn't exactly been a great leader on this disease either. He handed out a bunch of money when he came into office, rolled out the vaccine, and then pretty much acted like it's over.

Sadly, it isn't. Today, we got That Call. One of our friends died from Covid. 61. No underlying risk factors other than old and fat, but not morbidly obvese. We were with her at a party on New Year's eve and she was perfactly healthy.

To be honest, she was much more friends with my wife than me. I cant say I'm all broken up about it, but it did just remind me that the disease isn't over. It's still out there. People are still dying. And our government has decided it's not really worth talking about anymore.

It makes me question whether all the original hype was worth it.

It seems like it was. 1,000,000 dead is a lot of dead, and the vaccine seems to have worked, mostly. I just wish it was easier to find out the real information.

[Admin]

What I find appalling is that these issues are political in nature at all. Science isn't supposed to be about politics.

Money means that it becomes politicisied, but it is sad. I don't see an answer to it.

Were the lockdowns a good idea? Should I get a booster?

Short answers: yes & maybe.

NZ is a perfect case of lockdowns and saving lives. We have two very vulnerable populations - Maori and Pasifika. Both massively obese, both with lower life expectancy and both hard to reach medically. If we look at countries with similar populations to NZ (5M) with reliable data, we see that Ireland and Finland had 10k deaths and Slovakia 21k. Given the much more vulnerable population here compared to Ireland and Finland, I think 15k dead would be bang on, and we only lost 5000. That doesn't count for the far lower influenza deaths during lockdown as well, so it's clear they were a success.

The booster depends which one it is. The latest monovalent vaccine is good protection against the dominant JN-1 variant, so well worth getting. The problem is the virus is mutating so fast we may not be able to keep up, but right now, we're ok as long as you get the latest version. NZ idiotically, is saving the monovalent booster until April, still using the bivalent booster that is worth 1 cup of tea in protection.

As for the booster, what's the chance I will die if I get the booster versus what's the change I will die if I don't. Repeat for serious illness.

It ought to be possible to find answers, or at least estimates to those questions.

It is, but things change so quickly it's hard to be sure. I think a good rule of thumb is that the newest vaccines seem to give about 80% protection, so you're 4 times more likely to be hospitalised or die without one.

Sadly, it isn't. Today, we got That Call. One of our friends died from Covid. 61. No underlying risk factors other than old and fat, but not morbidly obvese. We were with her at a party on New Year's eve and she was perfactly healthy.

That's reasonably rare right now for people who have been vaccinated. Over here, almost nobody under is dying, but some people have factors we're not aware of, which is why anyone over 60 should get Paxlovid as soon as you test positive.

It makes me question whether all the original hype was worth it.

We forget so fast.

Remember this scene, from Russia?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kbNGR7XjrY

Even the Mad Monk Putin was forced to take measures because so many people were falling ill.

If we'd have let the virus take its course, every part of societal infrastructure would have broken - no police, no ambulances, no fire brigades, resulting in a beautiful anarchy. It's a lesson that won't be remembered next time and I'll be heading for the hills.

[Meadmaker]

If we'd have let the virus take its course, every part of societal infrastructure would have broken - no police, no ambulances, no fire brigades, resulting in a beautiful anarchy. It's a lesson that won't be remembered next time and I'll be heading for the hills.

I'm inclined to agree that it was worth it, although I think it wouldn't have been quite as bad as you described, and there is also a question about just how tight we should have locked down, and how long we should have kept it going. For me, personally, I kept up pretty strict isolation and masking up until I was vaccinated. I did end up getting Covid a year later, but it was mild. Not nearly as bad as the flu I got six months after that.

Using American numbers, I see a million people died of the disease. That's a lot of people, and that's with the lockdowns. It's several times worse than any flu since 1918. I can only assume there would have been a hell of a lot more with no lockdowns. The problem I see now is that our government, specifically our President, has been so silent about it that it gives rise to doubt. It's practically an article of faith on Republican news sources that the lockdowns caused more harm than good. I doubt that's true, but if someone tried to convince me that the lockdowns were too much, I wouldn't have anything at had to refute them beyond, literally, the first part of this paragraph.

I love Bill Maher, usually, but this is one issue that I think he's awful about. He will insist that the million deaths were not people who died of Covid, but people who died WITH covid. There are tens of millions of people in America who would tell you that people who test positive and who died of heart attacks or even auto accidents were counted as Covid deaths. I assume that's false, but I couldn't point to a source to prove it wrong, because there just hasn't been much interest in even talking about it.

[Admin]

I'm inclined to agree that it was worth it, although I think it wouldn't have been quite as bad as you described, and there is also a question about just how tight we should have locked down, and how long we should have kept it going.

What you need to factor in is the vast numbers of people who would have died due to the breakdown of everything. There would have been 50% absentees at the peak of an unchecked outbreak and the results would have been worse than anyone imagines.

I love Bill Maher, usually, but this is one issue that I think he's awful about. He will insist that the million deaths were not people who died of Covid, but people who died WITH covid. There are tens of millions of people in America who would tell you that people who test positive and who died of heart attacks or even auto accidents were counted as Covid deaths. I assume that's false, but I couldn't point to a source to prove it wrong, because there just hasn't been much interest in even talking about it.

He's partly right, but wrong overall.

There were definitely people who were counted as covid deaths who actually died with, not from, covid.

On the other hand, there were large numbers of excess deaths not counted as covid deaths. I know many care home deaths in USA weren't counted as covid deaths, but they almost certainly were.

The best estimate of the world total deaths is 10 million more than the official numbers show, and that's pretty easy to compute. India shows this up, with 4 times the population of USA, infinitely weaker healthcare systems and they only show half as many deaths as USA.