Just piggybacking off of Avnger, but it's both in my mind.
Propaganda is a powerful tool that can and has been used for good
EDIT: We're also pre-supposing that Phoenix's version of events is 100% accurate, which...
Our Covid Response
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Propaganda is a powerful tool that can and has been used for good
EDIT: We're also pre-supposing that Phoenix's version of events is 100% accurate, which...
I'd heard that, but my experiences including the one I describe told me something was wrong here. And early on, we didn't really know exactly how it spread. Breath could be enough. We were wiping down surfaces with disinfectant in case you can get it from surfaces. Studies done on these masks over the years were not encouraging, mostly because people would be of limited compliance sometimes by accident, like when Biden coughs and pulls down his mask just when it actually might have helped, or wearing one too long, making themselves sick. Etc.
On balance, I think the public is coming to realize our Covid response has been a massive over-reach, much of which seems intentional as it added wealth and power to some people.
Hence I think this Atlantic writer felt the need to ask for an Amnesty.
EDIT: Link from my post above https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/
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It's true that we didn't know exactly how it's spread, but droplets in breath was a pretty educated guess-- numerous very similar viruses spread that way, and it turned out to be correct.
We were indeed pretty wrong about fomite (surface-based) transmission. A lot of those early responses were just trying whatever we could, and ended up damaging public confidence.
Masks do help. Studies show their effectiveness is limited but not insubstantial. Its hardly overreach to introduce them-- the inconvenience is utterly minimal.
Just have to disagree on that one. I felt like I was wearing a Jewish Star to show my obedience and compliance in the hope that others won't harm me. Not a good time.
This might be the single most offensive and out-of-touch thing you have said yet.
That study found that for a very small 25-person group, XYZ was true FOR THAT GROUP. That does at all mean it will extend to the overall population at all. We have no data on whether covid causes long-term symptoms at any more frequency or severity than any other similar type virus already does. There is literally no valid reason to tell people they should avoid covid infections because of a possible long covid outcome (any more than we do for say the flu). We already know ways of being less susceptible to long-term symptoms from infections, you can tell people to do those things and be proactive instead of avoiding something that really isn't possible to avoid.
2 - My one friend got mad at me for complaining about a video he posted about them calling covid an existential threat. That's a completely erroneous word to use regardless if you thought covid was going to cause death and disease at the highest possible estimations or not. The much more deadly Spanish Flu was not an existential threat either. It's like people don't know the meaning of words.
5 - Fauci says he said masks don't work to make sure medical staff had masks but I'm pretty sure when he said masks don't work, he was referencing the fact studies prior have never shown masks to do much. Social distancing kinda a stupid name (should just be physical distancing) works because staying away from people works in not catching colds and whatnot, the question is how far away do you have to be, which I'm sure varies depending on the situation, and the 6 foot thing was just pulled from someone's ass.
6 - Just about everywhere else in the world acknowledged natural immunity. Paul Offit here who votes on vaccine authorization and everything always recognized natural immunity. All the cases against the mandates are being won because when you're actually in a forum that requires evidence to back up claims, the mandates easily fall apart.
9 - For most kids (I forget the exact groups), the vaccine presents more risk than it does benefits. And like 90% of kids have already been exposed so the mandates are completely pointless.
10 - I don't recall the numbers but there was a poll of the chances you'd need hospitalization and people thought covid was way way way worse than it actually was because actual factual communication was nonexistent.
11 - Getting continuous jabs doesn't really help much, the data shows that. Sure, you'll probably be immune for like a month afterward (like how you can't get a cold/flu again for a month or so when you've just been sick) but it's not like you can predict future encounters when you'll be exposed.
Why does blocking what is allowed to be discussed matter? You're seriously asking that question? If they are stopping people from talking about stuff that doesn't matter, what do you think they'll do for stuff that does matter?
The new booster doesn't even work better than the original booster because the doses are too low (2 half doses for each strain) and the dose for the new strain does nothing because of original antigenic sin. There's no data saying the new boosters do anything better than the old boosters, a study showing the old boosters are literally better, and the actual science behind it all says it probably won't work. That's why Paul Offit voted no to authorize the new booster. Saying the new booster is the best way to protect against covid this holiday season is literally misinformation, yet it's allowed to be on Facebook while factual information is not. This is why you can't have a "misinformation police" because stuff like this will constantly happen.
Getting the old booster yields better results.
Taiwan went to China early on (before it was even here) and they knew how it spread by basic common sense (how did so and so get it with no contact... pretty basic logic). One reason nobody wanted to officially say it was airborne was because the PPE requirement for that and we didn't have the PPE supplies. And, again, China did the study showing it wasn't transmitted on surfaces as a relevant transmission method BEFORE IT EVEN GOT TO AMERICA. That's why I declined all the safety recommendations at work (hospitals) like gloves and hand sanitizer because I knew it didn't do anything (plus natural immunity to boot).
The mask studies with the best methodology show they don't do anything. It's legit super hard to do a mask study because there's just so many confounding factors like say you compared NYC to a city in Texas where NYC had the mandate and you saw less infections in NYC, concluding that it was the masks that did that is very misguided because the 2 groups you're are comparing are very different and behaving very differently to conclude it was masks vs just some other behavior(s). Then you have the whole thing where the south and north infection curves in the US vary greatly by time of year so the south city/state getting more infections of a specific time can just be down to the summer boom of covid the south naturally gets. A lot of early mask studies were looking at infection rates between places that had mask mandates and didn't and obviously the northern places had more mandates than southern places and these studies were done heading into summer 2020 where cases naturally rise in the south (which wasn't know at the time yet obviously). Thus, when you pick small windows of time to compare places in the US, there's just so much confounding factors. If you look at a northern city in the fall to a south city, you'll see north city's infections are booming and the southern city's are declining. Saying the covid restrictions that the north city has that the south city doesn't are causing the covid infections is the same bad logic when you say masks lowered a north city's infections heading into summer.
The Spanish did a regression study since they had an age cutoff point in schools. Say it was 10 years old+ had to wear masks. Well, guess what, there was no difference between covid transmissions in 9 and 10 years olds.
You're totally dismissing how much kids need to see faces for their development and how overall important facial expressions are to human communication in general. Are the very minimal at most benefits of masking more than the harms of masking?
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This is, yet again, just citing a small sample size as a limitation. Although the sample for one was ~140, which is more than enough and is quite standard for this kind of in-depth personal follow-up study.
The studies have limitations. So does yours. Yours had a poorer selection criteria than any of Kwak's, but because it shows you what you want to hear, you're unconcerned.
You've been given several studies that have specifically identified symptoms, and have specifically shown they're more likely to occur in people who had Covid.
The fact that you have dismissed those studies doesn't mean there's "no data". It means you refuse to acknowledge the data.
I'm not interested in discussing public health policy right now. That's not what we were discussing. All I'm trying to do right now is to get you to acknowledge the existence and validity of some studies with which you've been presented but insist on wholly discounting because of some limitations.
...so you work in hospitals and refuse to take basic hygiene safety precautions?
Because you'd been primed to think that way by the rightwing paranoid persecution media sphere.
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Unless you are willing to take the same stance on pants on the supermarket then I think you are full of it.
No, that was a 40 person study (15 control, 25 with long covid). And 40 people is not enough. Why don't you just based the midterms on a 40 person survey?
Covid out competed all other respiratory infections so most studies will be with people that got long-term symptoms from covid because that was the only thing to catch. That's why the 26,000 person French study for the 1st wave (before covid became completely dominant) is so important because it showed covid itself was not responsible for long covid. We've had this phenomenon forever, and may be exactly what chronic fatigue syndrome is as we've never figured out much about it.
No [good] study has shown long covid happens any more than it does for any other similar virus or at more severity.
I do the things that make sense to do vs the things that don't make sense to do. Since most people here at least dabble with computers, do you (or would you) wear an electrostatic wrist strap and stand on a rubber mat when adding RAM to your computer? Because that's the official safety precautions for doing that and literally no one that works in IT actually does that (and we all literally laugh at the stupid required CBTs telling you how important it is) because it's rather pointless and there's much faster and efficient ways getting rid of any static electricity you might have.
You were presented with three studies. 2 were very small group sizes, but were in-depth with those groups-- which is how a lot of medical research is done. The other was 140 strong.
Why should I believe your take on the reasons for the symptoms, rather than the experts? They found biological indicators linking it to covid, and they also compared it with other non-covid infections and found a difference.
Dude, this isn't about covid. There's a very real risk of spreading infection if you refuse to take basic hygiene measures in a hospital. This is universally understood among medical professionals.
If the origin point doesn't matter, but you have political operatives spreading hate and xenophobia based on the need for revenge, why let it run?
I actually like this Paul Offit guy when he's making his own arguments instead of what you claim he says
New Covid boosters aren’t better than old shots at neutralizing omicron BA.5, early studies find
Two independent studies suggest the new Covid booster shots don't protect better against omicron BA.5 than the original vaccines.
www.cnbc.com
Opinion | Faust Files: Paul Offit on His Vote Against Bivalent COVID Boosters
FDA's vaccine advisor also discusses why the 'boosters for all' argument is a flawed one
www.medpagetoday.com
It aint just paranoia if they're really out to get you.
Even Gavin Newsom has to wear pants in supermarkets. Masks? Not so much.
And pants have a real, material benefit. Masks? Debatable. EDIT: My own position is that they did too little to justify imposing their use.
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Pants do nothing to benefit the user in summer, they even may be detrimental since they warm up the nethers which can result in a lower sperm count. You should be rallying against the tyranny of government mandated pant usage. We wouldn't have seen a strain of the flu die off if masks did nothing, pants on the other hand, unless its cold, are just tyranny.
You mean the 140 person study that literally told us nothing about what we are discussing? The study doesn't do or say what you think. I explained 2 or 3 times why that study doesn't pertain to the debate.
That's not my take, that's literally the take of the experts, I'm literally just parroting what they said. What study (that's actually fucking relevant) has linked long covid squarely to covid? This article is literally saying what I've been saying. You act like I've ran some shitty experiment at my place and came up with some wacky conclusion when I'm literally just parroting what other experts have said. It's not MY TAKE.
Will Long COVID Research Provide Answers for Poorly Understood Diseases Like ME/CFS?
ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) is a highly disabling, severe condition that has been largely overlooked and even questioned as an
medicine.yale.edu
So taking in laptops from remote users and not using gloves to inventory them is spreading infections to others in a hospital? We were advised to use gloves because the laptops might have covid on them when the chances of that is so ridiculously small it isn't even funny. I had far far far far far far more chance of getting covid from the users that came in to hand the laptops to us than the laptops themselves. And if I did wear gloves how is that stopping me from spreading covid to others, it would be then on the gloves, would it not? Again, I don't do things that are asinine to do.
Pro-tip: just touch a piece of metal like the power supply before touching any type of circuit board and you won't static discharge onto the circuit board.
I do wash my hands, washing them after #1 I doubt has much effect though if you did the science on it (I'm guessing there's probably on a study on that if you search around).
Really? You're still going with that narrative that the lab leak theory is racist? The wet market explanation is far more racist. You talk about xenophobia but I've yet to see you complain about how affirmative action is extremely xenophobic to Asians.If the origin point doesn't matter, but you have political operatives spreading hate and xenophobia based on the need for revenge, why let it run?
I actually like this Paul Offit guy when he's making his own arguments instead of what you claim he says
New Covid boosters aren’t better than old shots at neutralizing omicron BA.5, early studies find
Two independent studies suggest the new Covid booster shots don't protect better against omicron BA.5 than the original vaccines.Opinion | Faust Files: Paul Offit on His Vote Against Bivalent COVID Boosters
FDA's vaccine advisor also discusses why the 'boosters for all' argument is a flawed one
What did Paul say in those links that differs from what I said? The Faust Files interview he says exactly what I remember him saying in another interview I listened to. I don't quite remember to the T what he said in the interviews I've listened to as I don't re-look them up every time to make sure I've perfectly restated his view, but I don't think I've been off with the general gist of what I said that he said. He voted no on the bivalent booster because there's no data saying it's better and scientifically there's no reason to think it's better based on the things we do know. Paul himself isn't getting the booster and he's over 70, how is that anything other than an endorsement that most people don't need it?
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Dude, no. You either haven't bothered to read it or you're shifting the conversation again.
The 147-person study specifically found that those who did have covid experienced the LC symptoms at a greater rate than those who had non-covid infections-- and it found biological indicators. It found everything you're claiming hasn't been found. It's directly relevant.
No, it's not, though. Every study you've posted has merely said there are uncertainties, things we don't know, etc-- not a single one has actually said covid isn't linked to long covid, but you've run away with that as a certainty.
You've been given three. They found biological indicators. They found differences in the rates of the symptoms depending on whether people had covid or non-covid infections. They found everything you're claiming hasn't been found, and all you've done is complain that they've had limitations.
...
Apart from the state telling you to do something (and it having to do with clothes, I guess), there's no way that's comparable.
I bet it's a real hoot when someone rolls that one out on open-mic night. "He's going to tell the wrist strap joke! He's really going to go there! OMG, he went there! ROFL."