Dr. Fauci “not convinced” coronavirus developed naturally

Dwarvenhobble

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So I've already put this in the other Coronavirus thread but new info possible.
A video purported to show live bats having been kept at the Wuhan institute

 

Phoenixmgs

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Cool, I agree, we have no reason to trust her.

So what was the proof? Because that's a different claim.
We have no reason to not trust Florida's numbers. Where's the proof that every state didn't massively fudge numbers and it's some conspiracy either blowing covid out of proportion or hiding tons of deaths?

You must be able to see how weak this is. Must be.
I literally have no idea what you're even going on about here. We have no data on under 12 years with regards to the vaccine and if you're saying kids should be mandated to get the vaccine that includes kids under 12. We don't even know what dose to give teenagers yet as it's hypothesized they don't need the 2nd dose and that's what's causing the heart inflammation. So to mandate even just high schoolers to get the vaccine isn't a good idea either, let alone the group we know nothing about.

That's not what happened, though. You didn't "remove Marty from the question"; Agema responded directly to a post that mentioned Makary, calling him a "media-friendly doctor", and then you responded to that defensively acting as if Agema could only have been talking about the CDC director.

It's so transparently obvious that you just forgot, dude. I don't understand why you're fighting on this molehill.
I mentioned the CDC director and Marty both said the lab hypothesis was most likely scenario in their opinions. Agema said I overrate media-friendly doctors (plural) and thus I asked about the CDC director as Agema implied that the CDC director is merely a media-friendly doctor. That is literally how it went, you can look back at the posts.

He's probably a perfectly able surgeon. He's also a media talking-head on topics completely outside his area of study or professional expertise, such as epidemiology.
He's more than just an able surgeon, he also talks to the experts outside of his expertise to form his opinion on other matters, he literally cites other doctors as sources in his opinion articles.

And yet despite you claiming they couldn't, a load of them did. Reality beats your claims.
And what big journals did these studies get published in that would be picked up by major news channels/articles that would allow the conversation to continue in the public space? You don't have to silence literally everything to have conversation to go the way you want it. Again, Facebook blocked all discussion of it, it takes some pretty big influence to accomplish that.

No. The study looks at a number of transmissions and reckoned there is only one it can reasonably confirm was from outside. In fact, the vast majority of the cases could not be confirmed one way or another. Furthermore, contextually, if I remember rightly this study was done in China at a point where China had heavily restricted outside gathering and activities, therefore a lot of the opportunity for external transmission was limited.
No. They traced back all the infections they could and one only traced back to an outdoors encounter. Ireland also says outdoor transmissions only account for 0.1% of transmissions and the article also cites studies from China and Japan BEFORE lockdowns there. The number of cases associated with outdoor transmission was “so small to be insignificant”

Just about everyone is now saying outdoors is extremely safe, you're acting like this is some fringe opinion. There's also been lots of outdoor sporting events attended by massive crowds and no reported super spreader events.

The CDC already has vitamin D recommendations; these existed prior to covid-19 and are suitable for it according to the evidence.
Where is the recommendation specifically for covid? Why recommend masks for covid and not vitamin d when vitamin d data is better than mask data?

Firstly, part of what you're looking at there is actually difference in terminology between different fields: medicine / virology and physics (aerosol science).

The CDC has definitions for the terminology it uses. You can go away and read them and if you want to make any sort of useful criticism, you should. Instead, you'd rather bug everyone here will ill-informed bullshit.
The virus being airborne has been known before it even came to the US. Who (pun intended) is saying the virus is not airborne currently?
 

Silvanus

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We have no reason to not trust Florida's numbers. Where's the proof that every state didn't massively fudge numbers and it's some conspiracy either blowing covid out of proportion or hiding tons of deaths?
Nowhere. There is no such proof. Thankfully I, unlike that other thread, never claimed there was.

I literally have no idea what you're even going on about here. We have no data on under 12 years with regards to the vaccine and if you're saying kids should be mandated to get the vaccine that includes kids under 12. We don't even know what dose to give teenagers yet as it's hypothesized they don't need the 2nd dose and that's what's causing the heart inflammation. So to mandate even just high schoolers to get the vaccine isn't a good idea either, let alone the group we know nothing about.
Firstly, I am not advocating "mandating" vaccines for under-12s.

Secondly, my point was that you shifted your focus. You weren't initially talking about under-12s; you were initially talking broadly about "kids". Then, when data was provided showing secondary school kids actually have been quite badly affected and secondary schools have suffered outbreaks, then you shifted to talking only about under-12s.

It is not a very strong defence of that shift to say, "yeah well, most kids are under 12".

I mentioned the CDC director and Marty both said the lab hypothesis was most likely scenario in their opinions. Agema said I overrate media-friendly doctors (plural) and thus I asked about the CDC director as Agema implied that the CDC director is merely a media-friendly doctor. That is literally how it went, you can look back at the posts.
So this is all due to the pluralisation of "doctors" in Agema's post?

Bollocks was it. You claimed afterwards that you hadn't mentioned Makary in the post. Because you forgot. Just be honest.


He's more than just an able surgeon, he also talks to the experts outside of his expertise to form his opinion on other matters, he literally cites other doctors as sources in his opinion articles.
Then why are you posting Makary (a non-expert) rather than the experts in the field?

I suspect, as usual, it's because those experts actually don't come to conclusions that you find helpful.
 

Agema

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And what big journals did these studies get published in that would be picked up by major news channels/articles that would allow the conversation to continue in the public space? You don't have to silence literally everything to have conversation to go the way you want it. Again, Facebook blocked all discussion of it, it takes some pretty big influence to accomplish that.
No, Facebook blocking content merely requires the decision of a small number of people - potentially even just one person - at Facebook, who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions without being told what to do by the secretive cabal that conspiracy theorists are trying to magic up.

I think you need to contextualise "big journals". Big journals tend to print big discoveries, and speculating stuff without good evidence does not tend to get into in big journals.

No. They traced back all the infections they could
Uh-huh. Now think about that for a minute - which would evidently be a minute longer than you have spent so far.

Just about everyone is now saying outdoors is extremely safe, you're acting like this is some fringe opinion. There's also been lots of outdoor sporting events attended by massive crowds and no reported super spreader events.
Outdoors is safe depending on how people interact outdoors.

Where is the recommendation specifically for covid? Why recommend masks for covid and not vitamin d when vitamin d data is better than mask data?
Because it's not better than the mask data, except in your hopelessly addled mind. Never mind that masks help everyone, but vitamin D looks very much like it's only going to only help the people deficient in vitamin D. And there are already public health recommendations around vitamin D.

The virus being airborne has been known before it even came to the US. Who (pun intended) is saying the virus is not airborne currently?
It's like you simply don't understand the point, despite it made several points, which is that the term "airborne" as you are employing it is not the same as the CDC.

The ignorant can make decisions on incomplete data and tell themselves what geniuses they are on the occasions they luck out. The CDC, however, has a duty to make its claims evidence-based.
 
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Seanchaidh

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Outdoors is safe depending on how people interact outdoors.
Hardly anyone ever gets struck by lightning, so I'm just going to climb the tallest tree in this prairie during a lightning storm
 

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Firstly, I am not advocating "mandating" vaccines for under-12s.

Secondly, my point was that you shifted your focus. You weren't initially talking about under-12s; you were initially talking broadly about "kids". Then, when data was provided showing secondary school kids actually have been quite badly affected and secondary schools have suffered outbreaks, then you shifted to talking only about under-12s.

It is not a very strong defence of that shift to say, "yeah well, most kids are under 12".
Then, what the fuck are you even advocating? My whole thing in THIS discussion is that you can't mandate kids getting vaccinated (whether all kids, whether kids under 12, whether just high schoolers). So what the fuck are you disagreeing with?

I quoted my post for 4 months back saying maybe high school isn't safe to re-open but you have to consider all benefits/harms from it being closed or open and decide what is most beneficial overall. Opening schools and vaccinating kids are 2 different discussions. And, no the study didn't say high schools have been "quite badly affected". You keep exaggerating everything to make covid the most dangerous thing in human history.

So this is all due to the pluralisation of "doctors" in Agema's post?

Bollocks was it. You claimed afterwards that you hadn't mentioned Makary in the post. Because you forgot. Just be honest.
I didn't fucking forget, I removed Marty because I was asking squarely about the CDC director in that post. And much like Fauci, Agema likes avoiding answering the actual questions I ask.

Then why are you posting Makary (a non-expert) rather than the experts in the field?

I suspect, as usual, it's because those experts actually don't come to conclusions that you find helpful.
Marty is a public health expert.

No, Facebook blocking content merely requires the decision of a small number of people - potentially even just one person - at Facebook, who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions without being told what to do by the secretive cabal that conspiracy theorists are trying to magic up.

I think you need to contextualise "big journals". Big journals tend to print big discoveries, and speculating stuff without good evidence does not tend to get into in big journals.
Why would anyone at Facebook block discussion of something that wasn't told to them by highly reputable scientists or officials saying talking about something is either just plain 110% wrong information or dangerous? When has Facebook in the past just banned discussion of something just because say Mark Zuckerberg didn't like it?

Fauci and NIH is also basically the king of funding. So if you're a researcher, are you more likely to research something that Fauci says is 100% wrong or are you gonna research something else when your money is controlled by Fauci? That's not some conspiracy, that's how things just work regardless of your job.

Big journals also like printing stuff people want to read like newsworthy things and the coronavirus is newsworthy. I wonder why bullshit studies like finding covid on cruise ships after a month gets news articles, that's hardly some big discovery and it's even expected. Also, calling the lab leak theory racist is just another tactic to get discussion and research looked down upon when it literally makes no sense on why a lab leak would be more racist than blaming China's wet-market that is already very heavily looked down upon already.

Also, decent 60 Minutes piece with Peter Daszak being interviewed and the interviewer says "but you're just taking their work on it". Hardly sounds like something that could be proved 100% false and banned from public discussion.

Uh-huh. Now think about that for a minute - which would evidently be a minute longer than you have spent so far.
And that proves all the infections they couldn't trace involve the outdoors? You act as if people don't carry around tracking devices that show a history of where they've been.

Outdoors is safe depending on how people interact outdoors.
No, outdoors is very safe period. Less than 0.1% chance of getting covid outside (per Ireland numbers) coupled with a less than 0.02% of dying (if you're 49 or younger per CDC data) is very fucking safe. Yes, it's not no-risk but being safe doesn't mean there's no-risk. This whole "no-risk" stuff is bullshit, it's not no-risk driving to the grocery store either.

Because it's not better than the mask data, except in your hopelessly addled mind. Never mind that masks help everyone, but vitamin D looks very much like it's only going to only help the people deficient in vitamin D. And there are already public health recommendations around vitamin D.
And the people deficient in vitamin d are the ones being hospitalized and dying from covid. Again, it's cheaper than masks and why not "better safe than sorry"? You say you gotta wear a mask outside because "better safe than sorry" while vitamin d can definitely help more people than having people wear masks outside but "no, don't do that, that makes no sense whatsoever".

It's like you simply don't understand the point, despite it made several points, which is that the term "airborne" as you are employing it is not the same as the CDC.

The ignorant can make decisions on incomplete data and tell themselves what geniuses they are on the occasions they luck out. The CDC, however, has a duty to make its claims evidence-based.
And frontline doctors were saying since the start that the virus is airborne. Doctors and nurses know what contact, droplet, and aiborne precautions are (the signs are on every patient room at hospitals) and if they are getting infected when abiding by droplet precautions, guess what? It doesn't take a year+ of investigation to figure it out. You go with, AT THE TIME, what the evidence is pointing at and make any adjustments based on new evidence. It's super great that the CDC finally said the virus is airborne after reaching herd immunity!!! That's how public health is supposed to work!!! Our system is working perfectly and there's no problems with it whatsoever!!!
 

Agema

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Why would anyone at Facebook block discussion of something...
Because Asian people are being assaulted in the streets? Because there's a tidal wave of misinformation about vaccines, 5G masts, masks, HCQ etc. and they just decided to job lot block the lot? Or the one that just happens to conveniently fit your conspiracy theorising? Mm...

Fauci and NIH is also basically the king of funding. So if you're a researcher, are you more likely to research something that Fauci says is 100% wrong or are you gonna research something else when your money is controlled by Fauci? That's not some conspiracy, that's how things just work regardless of your job.
There's a lot wrong here, which comes from you not really understanding what scientists would be doing.

1) Fauci does not decide funding. I don't know exactly how the NIH does it, but typical methods are that peers review and "mark" grant applications and the applications are then decided by a board/panel of researchers.
2) Someone applies for a grant to look at the origins of Covid-19 - no problems there. They find what they find, whether it's a lab leak or not. Or they apply to examine SARS-CoV-2: something might shake out about its origins - no problems there.
3) The key questions about the origins of Covid-19, however you want to look at it, require the co-operation of China. That's a much bigger issue than getting a NIH grant.

Big journals also like printing stuff people want to read like newsworthy things and the coronavirus is newsworthy.
Newsworthy stuff still needs data. So big journals printed big stuff available. Science prints the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2; these are what the proteins do; compare SARS-CoV-2 to other coronaviruses; epidemiology; immunity studies etc. They may accept opinion letters, but there are few meaningful studies on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to publish because there's no relevant data to make meaningful conclusions.

Also, decent 60 Minutes piece with Peter Daszak being interviewed and the interviewer says "but you're just taking their work on it". Hardly sounds like something that could be proved 100% false and banned from public discussion.
Correct! Peter Daszak does not have an argument to end the issue or the power to ban things from discussion. Maybe in that case Daszak and anything he said is a stupid red herring cooked up by conspiracy theorists, that in the cold light of the real world Daszak saying stuff explains the sum total of fuck all. He's just a not very important scientist with an opinion.

And that proves all the infections they couldn't trace involve the outdoors? You act as if people don't carry around tracking devices that show a history of where they've been.
It means they can reliably trace some infections to indoors and some to outdoors. And then there's a huge number where they don't know. Thus to say "1 confirmed outdoors case out of x thousand" does not actually give us any accurate indication of risk.

No, outdoors is very safe period. Less than 0.1% chance of getting covid outside...
Unfortunately, you have no fucking idea what these papers are really analysing and why these results do not actually translate to what you think they do.

And the people deficient in vitamin d are the ones being hospitalized and dying from covid.
This is either partially or not true. There is a complicating factor that certain morbidities and old age tend to cause lower vitamin D levels. So it is completely unclear whether someone is struggling with covid because they are diabetic / hypertensive / old or because they have lower vitamin D. Firstly, the fact that studies where they shunt people a load of vitamin D and it seems to have not much effect on covid suggests the former may be more likely than the latter. Secondly, we have numerous studies like this suggesting vitamin D does not make for a deciding factor whether people are hospitalised.

So, in short, you suck at interpreting science.

And frontline doctors were saying since the start that the virus is airborne...
This is a made-up, garbage complaint of no value.
 
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Silvanus

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Then, what the fuck are you even advocating? My whole thing in THIS discussion is that you can't mandate kids getting vaccinated (whether all kids, whether kids under 12, whether just high schoolers). So what the fuck are you disagreeing with?

I quoted my post for 4 months back saying maybe high school isn't safe to re-open but you have to consider all benefits/harms from it being closed or open and decide what is most beneficial overall. Opening schools and vaccinating kids are 2 different discussions.
It's mostly an objection to your incautious approach in general: reopening schools as soon as we can; reopening other venues before young people have been widely vaccinated; not bothering to focus on vaccinating young people once the at-higher-risk categories have been done.

And, no the study didn't say high schools have been "quite badly affected". You keep exaggerating everything to make covid the most dangerous thing in human history.
It identified outbreaks connected with high schools. It's not an exaggeration to say that's "quite bad". It is, however, a massive exaggeration to say I'm describing it as "the most dangerous thing in human history".

I didn't fucking forget, I removed Marty because I was asking squarely about the CDC director in that post. And much like Fauci, Agema likes avoiding answering the actual questions I ask.
OK. So, if that's the case, when Agema said he specifically meant Makary with the "media-friendly" comment, why did you fib and said you didn't bring Makary up? Why didn't you say something like, "what about the CDC director?"

Marty is a public health expert.
He has very little professional experience in public health, and zero professional experience in virology or epidemiology. I don't see any reason to place his authority on this above that of any other surgeon or doctor from an unrelated field, let alone the consensus among virologists and epidemiologists.

Let's look at a specific disagreement: Marty Makary and Anthony Fauci, who disagreed on how much immunity exists already in the US. Fauci has worked in public health for five decades. He's worked as an immunology researcher and advisor for over four decades. He's got professional public-health-policy experience from at least three past public health crises: swine flu, HIV, and Ebola. He's specifically done research on immunodeficiency, vaccination, and crisis response which has been cited by other medical professionals more than almost any other researcher, and has been used by official institutions since the eighties.

That is an expert in a relevant field.

Makary has held precisely one professional role related to public health: professorship at Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins' own bio for him solely lists surgical and advisory accomplishments. He has never researched immunity, vaccination, health policy, epidemiology, or viruses in a professional capacity. He has never been involved in an actual public health campaign.
 
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Seanchaidh

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Unfortunately, you have no fucking idea what these papers are really analysing and why these results do not actually translate to what you think they do.
Being outdoors makes 99.9% of people immune, so it's fine to make out with a coronavirus patient as long as you're outside.
 

Agema

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Being outdoors makes 99.9% of people immune, so it's fine to make out with a coronavirus patient as long as you're outside.
I know. You spend 7-8h a day 5 days a week indoors with your colleagues in an office job, and most of the other hours in your house with your family. How long do you spend in any outdoors activity in close proximity to people? It's a tiny fraction of your working week, if any at all. People interact with other people mostly indoors; "outdoors" is largely just people walking past each other in the street, or some other activity usually with distance. So when doing an observational study on spread, it makes a lot of sense that there's a massively higher amount of indoors transmission found because the higher risk outdoors situations are such a tiny proportion of total time spent.

However, if you do stick people in a tightly packed outside environment for hours, especially with little air flow, risk goes up a lot. And let's face it, when covid-19 hit, everyone was advised to minimise contact and events were cancelled, so environments of closely packed people outdoors became even rarer. And this also contributes to rarity of outdoors transmission: whilst they still need to go into buildings with other people, like shopping or work.

In other words, the extremely low incidence of confirmed outdoors transmission is not that "outdoors is safe, period", it's that we spend an extremely small amount of time doing higher risk outdoors activities.
 
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Seanchaidh

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I know. You spend 7-8h a day 5 days a week indoors with your colleagues in an office job, and most of the other hours in your house with your family. How long do you spend in any outdoors activity in close proximity to people? It's a tiny fraction of your working week, if any at all. People interact with other people mostly indoors; "outdoors" is largely just people walking past each other in the street, or some other activity usually with distance. So when doing an observational study on spread, it makes a lot of sense that there's a massively higher amount of indoors transmission found because the higher risk outdoors situations are such a tiny proportion of total time spent.

However, if you do stick people in a tightly packed outside environment for hours, especially with little air flow, risk goes up a lot. And let's face it, when covid-19 hit, everyone was advised to minimise contact and events were cancelled, so environments of closely packed people outdoors became even rarer. And this also contributes to rarity of outdoors transmission: whilst they still need to go into buildings with other people, like shopping or work.

In other words, the extremely low incidence of confirmed outdoors transmission is not that "outdoors is safe, period", it's that we spend an extremely small amount of time doing higher risk outdoors activities.
Damn, I was looking forward to the outdoor plague parties.
 

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Because Asian people are being assaulted in the streets? Because there's a tidal wave of misinformation about vaccines, 5G masts, masks, HCQ etc. and they just decided to job lot block the lot? Or the one that just happens to conveniently fit your conspiracy theorising? Mm...
The lab theory being racist is a fucking joke.

There's a lot wrong here, which comes from you not really understanding what scientists would be doing.

1) Fauci does not decide funding. I don't know exactly how the NIH does it, but typical methods are that peers review and "mark" grant applications and the applications are then decided by a board/panel of researchers.
2) Someone applies for a grant to look at the origins of Covid-19 - no problems there. They find what they find, whether it's a lab leak or not. Or they apply to examine SARS-CoV-2: something might shake out about its origins - no problems there.
3) The key questions about the origins of Covid-19, however you want to look at it, require the co-operation of China. That's a much bigger issue than getting a NIH grant.

Newsworthy stuff still needs data. So big journals printed big stuff available. Science prints the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2; these are what the proteins do; compare SARS-CoV-2 to other coronaviruses; epidemiology; immunity studies etc. They may accept opinion letters, but there are few meaningful studies on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to publish because there's no relevant data to make meaningful conclusions.

Correct! Peter Daszak does not have an argument to end the issue or the power to ban things from discussion. Maybe in that case Daszak and anything he said is a stupid red herring cooked up by conspiracy theorists, that in the cold light of the real world Daszak saying stuff explains the sum total of fuck all. He's just a not very important scientist with an opinion.
Within a few weeks Andersen and a team of highly respected scientists, including Holmes, published their analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, first on a pre-print site, then as a letter in the journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020.

The letter, titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” has been hugely influential and is among the key reasons that any kind of lab-related hypothesis – involving either a natural or man-made virus – was dismissed by so many for so long.

“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the letter said, before detailing the group’s findings. The letter concludes by saying that since notable features of the virus are observed in related coronaviruses in nature, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”


---

“A small group of scientists, and a larger group of science journalists, established and enforced the false narrative that scientific evidence supported natural spillover, and (also) the false narrative that this was the scientific consensus,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

There were other views out there, they just weren’t given much coverage as being credible.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/06/17/covid-19-fauci-lab-leaks-wuhan-china-origins/7737494002/

“We felt motivated to say something because science is not living up to what it can be, which is a very fair and rigorous and open effort to gain greater clarity on something,” he says. “For me, part of the purpose was to create a safe space for other scientists to say something of their own.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/13/1024866/investigation-covid-origin-wuhan-china-lab-biologists-letter/

---

NIH controls a lot of funding (over $40 billion a year) for research scientists that obviously need funding to continue their research. Scientists that went "against" Fauci are gonna get the opposite of preferential treatment obviously. Just like going against your boss, you'll have trouble getting time off in the future, it's literally how politics work everywhere.
 

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It means they can reliably trace some infections to indoors and some to outdoors. And then there's a huge number where they don't know. Thus to say "1 confirmed outdoors case out of x thousand" does not actually give us any accurate indication of risk.
We'd have spreader events linked to outdoors by now if it was spreading outdoors at even like a 5% or 10% clip. Outdoors is extremely safe and far within what people deem to be acceptable risk.

Even the NY Times called the CDC on their "less than 10%" bullshit stat for outdoor transmissions.
That benchmark “seems to be a huge exaggeration,” as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation.

Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving.

This isn’t just a gotcha math issue. It is an example of how the C.D.C. is struggling to communicate effectively, and leaving many people confused about what’s truly risky. C.D.C. officials have placed such a high priority on caution that many Americans are bewildered by the agency’s long list of recommendations. Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina, writing in The Atlantic, called those recommendations “simultaneously too timid and too complicated.”

They continue to treat outdoor transmission as a major risk. The C.D.C. says that unvaccinated people should wear masks in most outdoor settings and vaccinated people should wear them at “large public venues”; summer camps should require children to wear masks virtually “at all times.”

These recommendations would be more grounded in science if anywhere close to 10 percent of Covid transmission were occurring outdoors. But it is not. There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html

Unfortunately, you have no fucking idea what these papers are really analysing and why these results do not actually translate to what you think they do.
I guess epidemiologists don't know how to analyze the spread of the virus either. As linked above epidemiologists have said that transmission outdoors is below 1% and may be below 0.1%. You keep thinking I'm the one that is saying these things, I'm saying these things because other experts are saying these things.

This is either partially or not true. There is a complicating factor that certain morbidities and old age tend to cause lower vitamin D levels. So it is completely unclear whether someone is struggling with covid because they are diabetic / hypertensive / old or because they have lower vitamin D. Firstly, the fact that studies where they shunt people a load of vitamin D and it seems to have not much effect on covid suggests the former may be more likely than the latter. Secondly, we have numerous studies like this suggesting vitamin D does not make for a deciding factor whether people are hospitalised.

So, in short, you suck at interpreting science.
Oh my fucking god, that's literally what I said about masks when you asked me if I knew what the word "correlational" meant. I compared mask studies being correlational to the vitamin d studies I posted. I'm super fucking aware of the vitamin d studies being correlational. There's as much or more "good" data for vitamin d as there is for masks, either both should be recommended or neither. There's a much bigger study showing masks don't work than there is that vitamin d doesn't have an effect.

This is a made-up, garbage complaint of no value.
Michael Osterholm said it was airborne over a year back and same with that letter of 239 scientists.
 

Phoenixmgs

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It's mostly an objection to your incautious approach in general: reopening schools as soon as we can; reopening other venues before young people have been widely vaccinated; not bothering to focus on vaccinating young people once the at-higher-risk categories have been done.
So you just don't like my approach vs actually have any data against it? We've had schools open in many places during the pandemic (just look at Florida), schools are safe. We've had the Indy 500 with over 130,000 people, we've had completely filled baseball stadiums. Where is the data of covid spreading from these events? I never said young people shouldn't be vaccinated (outside of under 12 since they can't be), I just said vaccination shouldn't be forced (since about half the country already had been infected).

It identified outbreaks connected with high schools. It's not an exaggeration to say that's "quite bad". It is, however, a massive exaggeration to say I'm describing it as "the most dangerous thing in human history".
Just because infections increased doesn't mean "quite bad". It's also a massive exaggeration when I state what is most likely to happen and you say it's the most optimistic.

OK. So, if that's the case, when Agema said he specifically meant Makary with the "media-friendly" comment, why did you fib and said you didn't bring Makary up? Why didn't you say something like, "what about the CDC director?"
Again, I said what about Marty and CDC director? Agema said something about media-friendly doctors. Then I specifically asked about the CDC director just being a media-friendly doctor? Where is the lie at?

He has very little professional experience in public health, and zero professional experience in virology or epidemiology. I don't see any reason to place his authority on this above that of any other surgeon or doctor from an unrelated field, let alone the consensus among virologists and epidemiologists.

Let's look at a specific disagreement: Marty Makary and Anthony Fauci, who disagreed on how much immunity exists already in the US. Fauci has worked in public health for five decades. He's worked as an immunology researcher and advisor for over four decades. He's got professional public-health-policy experience from at least three past public health crises: swine flu, HIV, and Ebola. He's specifically done research on immunodeficiency, vaccination, and crisis response which has been cited by other medical professionals more than almost any other researcher, and has been used by official institutions since the eighties.

That is an expert in a relevant field.

Makary has held precisely one professional role related to public health: professorship at Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins' own bio for him solely lists surgical and advisory accomplishments. He has never researched immunity, vaccination, health policy, epidemiology, or viruses in a professional capacity. He has never been involved in an actual public health campaign.
Marty has worked in public health for years. Also, Marty has been right far more often than Fauci has during the pandemic most likely because he doesn't give 2 shits about politics like Fauci. You have to care very much about politics to last 4 or whatever presidents Fauci has lasted. Marty is literally right about herd immunity because we have the real-world data, it's not an opinion anymore.
 

Silvanus

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So you just don't like my approach vs actually have any data against it? We've had schools open in many places during the pandemic (just look at Florida), schools are safe. We've had the Indy 500 with over 130,000 people, we've had completely filled baseball stadiums. Where is the data of covid spreading from these events?
This has already been provided multiple times in this thread. You don't pay attention.

Just because infections increased doesn't mean "quite bad".
I would consider outbreaks of dangerous pathogens to be quite bad, actually.

Again, I said what about Marty and CDC director? Agema said something about media-friendly doctors. Then I specifically asked about the CDC director just being a media-friendly doctor? Where is the lie at?
It wasn't a lie; it was a shifted goalpost.

Agema said something about media-friendly doctors, in response to a post which specifically named both Marty Makary and the CDC director. You then responded as if Agema's comment must be referring to the CDC director.

Agema then clarified that he meant Makary specifically, and then you said you hadn't mentioned Makary, because you forgot that you did.

Marty has worked in public health for years.
No, he's held one position related to public health in his professional life (a teaching professorship, not anything to do with actual practice).

What public health campaigns has he worked on? What areas of virology or immunology has he researched? It's quite easy to find long lists of practical past experience for Fauci.

Also, Marty has been right far more often than Fauci has during the pandemic
Only if you assume the truth of everything else you're spouting, which I do not.
 

Agema

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I guess epidemiologists don't know how to analyze the spread of the virus either. As linked above epidemiologists have said that transmission outdoors is below 1% and may be below 0.1%. You keep thinking I'm the one that is saying these things, I'm saying these things because other experts are saying these things.
Yes, but you and those epidemiologists aren't quite saying the same thing. Why has been explained to you multiple times already, unfortunately you just don't seem to able to process it.

Let me try this analogy for you. In the average year, not that many people are stabbed, and the average person should have no significant fear walking around doing their daily business that they could at any moment be stabbed. However, a person that decides to go into a dangerous area of town and challenge some of the local kids to a fight needs to radically revise their assessment of stabbing risk, because the argument that almost no-one gets stabbed doesn't actually hold so much weight in those circumstances. Thus it is both true to say your chance of being stabbed is very, very low, and also to say that there are situations where you would be very strongly advised to take precautions against being stabbed.

Oh my fucking god, that's literally what I said about masks...
Remember when I said that covid-19 is not chickenpox? Well, in much the same way, vitamin D is not facemasks.

There is not a rule "X is correlational and false therefore Y is false because it is also correlational", because the data that supports X and the data that supports Y is different data. You are trying to draw this sort ridiculous logical parallel between two different things instead of accepting that they are different things with different evidence bases. The rest of it is just cherry picking your data to defend what you please.

Michael Osterholm said it was airborne over a year back and same with that letter of 239 scientists.
That letter of 200+ scientists (6th July) says stuff like "It is understood that there is not as yet universal acceptance of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV2; but in our collective assessment there is more than enough supporting evidence so that the precautionary principle should apply." This roughly translates to "it might not be certain, but it's very likely".

And indeed, policy for infection control was already designed on the assumption of spread through the air (social distancing, masks, etc.)

Your complaint boils down to the CDC offering an official scientific judgement on airborne spread when they thought the evidence put it beyond any reasonable doubt, rather than just when it was very likely. Given that it was already recommending policy on the assumption of airborne spread well before then, your complaint amounts to a whole heap of nothing much.
 
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Phoenixmgs

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This has already been provided multiple times in this thread. You don't pay attention.
Can't roll eyes hard enough.

I would consider outbreaks of dangerous pathogens to be quite bad, actually.
Infections increasing in a group of people that are far less deadly and dangerous than the flu makes the pathogen dangerous and quite bad? The covid fatality rate is basically what the flu fatality rate is now. So why isn't the flu considered a dangerous pathogen?

It wasn't a lie; it was a shifted goalpost.

Agema said something about media-friendly doctors, in response to a post which specifically named both Marty Makary and the CDC director. You then responded as if Agema's comment must be referring to the CDC director.

Agema then clarified that he meant Makary specifically, and then you said you hadn't mentioned Makary, because you forgot that you did.
Nope, there were 2 goalposts. If Agema doesn't like Marty (goalpost #1), fine. But what dismissing the CDC director (goalpost #2). Unless Marty and the CDC director is married together for some reason. I wonder why the CDC director got death threats for just stating his opinion.