They're Democratic partisan, boomer and geriatric gen-X, liberals. They're Republican in all but name, and that includes all the goofball conspiracy theories and perpetual victimhood mentality. Bear in mind these are all people who cheer for Biden continuing all of Trump's policies, further demonstrating they're aesthetics voters who are simply mad Trump got his name on a sweeping right-wing agenda and not Hillary.
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
When people drove less miles and accidents were down by over 20%, why do you think more car deaths happened?
Are you talking about excess deaths? Because that's the point, it includes all deaths. Yeah, you'll have some error in random, luck-based deaths but those probably don't even add up to 1% of deaths in a given year anyway. It's like the fact that increasing airplane security and making it super annoying to fly killed more people than it saved. Since airports were super annoying to go to after 9/11, people choose to drive more to go on vacation and whatnot, and driving is more deadly than flying so increasing airport security caused people to drive more, which caused more deaths since driving is more dangerous than flying. Same thing probably happened to electrocutions (though probably a super small number still) with people working from home and doing home offices and kids staying home and more people remodeling their houses, it makes sense there would be more electrocutions because more interactions electrical wiring in 2020 than 2019. I'm personally more concerned with the longer term deaths and earlier deaths lockdowns will cause. The fact that Sweden did so well in excess deaths during the actual pandemic is basically an indictment on lockdowns because lockdowns should have immediate reduction on deaths during a pandemic and if they can't even do that, then they are even more ineffective than even I thought they would be.
I am honestly bored to death with this tepid piss of reasoning.
There are no meaningful conclusions that can be drawn from Sweden's excess deaths in 2020-2021 without a whole fuckton of context you haven't even begun to scratch. You don't want to scratch. You don't care what the whys are. You just want to mindlessly repeat this as if it means something big, like a zealot who who has set eyes on a statue of Christ and thinks that gives him knowledge of the innermost thoughts of God.
Sure, all the researchers and scientists that use excess deaths during the pandemic are just straight idiots according to you. It is the best STARTING POINT. Just giving covid deaths is hardly reliable either, but you use that.
Oh, and you gonna admit your math was garbage in, garbage out because you assumed vaccines reduce mortality by 90% for every single group? See how you kept leaving stuff out when you're wrong and never reply? But I'm sure the scientist that came to that conclusion is wrong because you know more than everyone about everything. I couldn't even get you to admit wearing a mask outside was asinine? If you think that, then you just can't objectively look at anything.
And you know this because... it's conveniently in line with what you're arguing?
Excess deaths fluctuate from year to year anyway-- and routinely by more than 1%. They did so before Covid, for myriad reasons-- policy, diet, cultural shifts, aging demography, and a hundred others varying by country. Yet your source wants us to lump them all together and use that to critique a single public health response. It's fucking absurd.
In addition, I recall that you yourself were complaining about non-Covid deaths being potentially counted amongst Covid deaths, even though that accounts for a minuscule number. Yet here you're happy to count all deaths, related and unrelated, when it suits you. You're essentially endorsing the same approach you endlessly moaned about before.
You're only saying excess deaths are the "best STARTING POINT" because the numbers happen to be in your favour. You actually need to provide a concrete rationale and be aware of the complications. Which of course you aren't.
Sweden's excess deaths record in contast to its covid deaths is interesting. However, there are of lots of potential reasons why which are nothing to do with lockdown. For instance, there are fluctuations in annual deaths. That's why an excess deaths rate measure takes the average of several preceding years for its baseline, to try to even out fluctuations. It is of course entirely possible that by dumb luck Sweden, had there not been covid, would have had mortality several percent below the preceding norm. Sweden also has had a trend of decreasing mortality over the last ten or so years. Because of this trend, the "baseline" which 2020-2022 is compared against might be high and flatter their covid years.
The quick answer, we don't know. That's why asserting the conclusion you do is, as I said, "tepid piss".
Researchers and scientists are much clever than you, because they understand this sort of thing and discuss them in their studies. But you aren't reading scientific studies because you would demonstrate some awareness of this. You're getting your info from YouTube, dilettante twats, and right-wing / libertarian media because they're saying what you want to hear.
No, I'm not going to admit that because there is plentiful support that the covid vaccine reduces mortality ~90% (at least initially, and lower for later variants like omicron), e.g.
COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness estimated using Census 2021 variables, England - Office for National Statistics
Estimates of the risk of hospital admission for COVID-19 and death involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, overall and by age group. Experimental Statistics.
www.ons.gov.uk
It never ends well when you try to bullshit me. Why do you still do it?
If excess deaths were such a bad metric, then it wouldn't be used. The point is to see a significant difference and then figure out why there's a significant difference. If lockdowns work so well, then a country during a pandemic that locked down should have done significantly better in excess deaths than a country that didn't, especially the 1st year or two. Do you not agree with that basic logic?
Sweden did count covid deaths as died from covid or just with covid as covid deaths, that's what they officially did. So then comparing Sweden's covid deaths with a country that counted covid deaths differently will be a poor comparison. Whereas if you compare excess deaths, countries didn't change how they count deaths during the pandemic.
I stated why excess deaths are a better starting point right above.
What right-wing person have I ever sourced? You guys all do ad-hominem attacks and don't actually attack the arguments. Even if someone is right-wing doesn't mean they are wrong. Also, Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi are very much on team blue it's not even funny, Gandhi has a Bernie sticker on her car. Lastly, Paul Offit is right-wing?
The 1st sourced study from your ONS link (that includes mortality) says:
We observed limited waning in vaccine effectiveness against Covid-19–related hospitalization and death at 20 weeks or more after vaccination with two doses of the ChAdOx1-S or BNT162b2 vaccine. Waning was greater in older adults and in those in a clinical risk group.
The 2nd sourced study from your ONS link (that includes mortality) says:
In the case of protection from death the model estimated for BNT162b2 a decrease from 92% (95% CI 90–93) at 0–2 months to 83% (95% CI 81–86) at 7–8 months.
Protection provided by vaccination, booster doses and previous infection against covid-19 infection, hospitalisation or death over time in Czechia - PMC
Studies demonstrating the waning of post-vaccination and post-infection immunity against covid-19 generally analyzed a limited range of vaccines or subsets of populations. Using Czech national health data from the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
So how is mortality for all groups to be 90%? And how is it 90% on average when this 90% mortality number only exists in the first couple months? It's already down to 83% for all groups (which means the vulnerable is even less than that). How is your math based on 90% lowered mortality when that's only true for a very small amount of time?
You're trying to act like you're so much better than me at this stuff and you can't even come to basic conclusions like masks outside are stupid or the time you tried to prove Florida didn't protect their elderly well by using the logic that the states with the lowest percentage of elderly covid deaths did the best when all the states that did the best in that metric were red states because the younger population was the least healthy and had more deaths thereby making the elderly death percentage smaller.
Deadspin | The NFL Must Ban Native Headdress And Culturally Insensitive Face Paint in the Stands (UPDATED)
Deadspin | The NFL Must Ban Native Headdress And Culturally Insensitive Face Paint in the Stands (UPDATED)
deadspin.com
Hilarious article complaining about a kid wearing face paint and Native American headdress to support his favorite team. Somehow it's racist against both black people and Native Americans. Oh, and the kid is a Native American... I guess you can't even appropriate your own culture now...
Uhrm, lol? You've been arguing that metrics that are in-use are bad for months. If they were bad, they wouldn't be in use either, i guess!
No, I don't, because it ignores all other factors. A landlocked country with poor pre-existing health infrastructure may have a higher excess death toll than a wealthy island nation with a robust health service.... even if the pandemic-response in the former is better than in the latter.
Yet the factors that drive those excess deaths may be massively different between the two countries.
Doctors care about cholesterol numbers... They put how much cholesterol is in food on the label for literally no reason.
And? The nation with worse healthcare would have the worse excess death rate beforehand. I wonder why then Africa with worse healthcare did better against covid? Then when I go to adjust for factors like age, I get accused of counting old people less. You guys are beyond ridiculous. Let's adjust for factors (that really only suit my narrative)! It's why I'm been asking for a cost-benefit analysis that literally accounts for all factors.
Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates (Published 2022)
The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.
What is the main factor that significantly changed? Perhaps, a pandemic?
I have no idea what you're trying to say with this non-sequitur.
...Which your source would disregard, since it only looks at absolute numbers and ignores pre-existing trends and other influences.
Because the 'adjustment' you were making was just caring less when the people were older. That's not a meaningful statistical weighting adjustment, it's just a callous value judgement.
Ooh, well let's look at that in more scientific detail!Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates (Published 2022)
The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.www.nytimes.com
What is the main factor that significantly changed? Perhaps, a pandemic?
The Conundrum of Low COVID-19 Mortality Burden in sub-Saharan Africa: Myth or Reality? - PMC
The demographic age structure of sub-Saharan Africa contributes significantly to the low morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 compared to other regions in the world.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
So, we have myriad external factors affecting the relatively low mortality rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, including a different demographic burden, possible undercounting due to poorer infrastructure, and existing cross-protection from prior coronaviruses.
Now, plenty of Sub-Saharan African countries did implement lockdowns. And if we were to follow your line of logic, we would have to conclude that the better performance against Covid in SSA was down to their public health initiatives-- including lockdowns-- and disregard all those pre-existing factors. So if anything, utilising your own approach to this would be shooting yourself in the foot.
Oh god, where to start.
Firstly, if the protection for mortality is down to 83%, bear in mind that the people who do the dying are the vulnerable ones. Therefore, vulnerable people have a hugely disproportionate effect on the overall death rate. Therefore, the 83% overall de facto represents the most vulnerable people.
Secondly, vaccine boosters have been available and encouraged for the vulnerable every six months. It's a safe assumption most are using it.
Thirdly, you cite a paper which states that after 20 weeks, the protection from death offered by the vaccine remains at over 90% in the over-65s. (Bear in mind we're discussing the USA, and it did not approve the Oxford vaccine where the protection is 82% at 20 weeks). Once again, you have failed to read a scientific paper properly.
Thirdly, to draw your attention back to the scenario, the IFR you argued mathematically suggests everyone has been infected with covid 9 times. Therefore, their immune systems have theoretically been "refreshed" with a "booster" (of infection itself) every few months - and that's even if they don't also have vaccines, so the waning of those papers doesn't apply.
Fourthly, I'm also just overjoyed to see you arguing that the effectiveness of immunity to covid declines over time, because this is another area where you claimed it wouldn't happen and we'd remain blissfully protected years into the far future, and you regularly dissing boosters as unnecessary, etc. Also that you repeatedly argued infection was more effective than a vaccine, which - by your logic - also means that vaccines are an underestimate for protection. This is of course funny for you abruptly turning on your own claims when they've suddenly become inconvenient for you to hold. And also what I mean when I say you do not have a coherent overview of the topic, just a lot of independent little claims that don't really fit together.
We are better than you at it. You are merely delusionally overconfident and obstinate.
Utter nonsense.
All measurements in this regard are estimates. The point here is to take different measures, all of which are flawed, and compare them to try to get a more accurate picture of what is going on. Excess deaths is not necessarily a "bad", "better" or "worse" measurement. It and others serve a valid function, but should be used with a clear grasp of their limitations and wider context. One of the simplest arguments here is that if excess deaths is roughly similar to official covid deaths, then it is more likely that the official covid deaths measure is a realistic representation of actual covid deaths.
And your statement is just garbage without wider context and understanding of limitations and possibility of error, of which you have demonstrated no awareness at all.
nowt but hallowed ground o'er here, I regret to be informing ye. bestt turn away if ye value hope and life, traveller
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Yeah, well, Starmer actually has to win an election, though, doesn't he? Sometimes good ideology is bad politics.
Thatcher trashed Labour in the elections back in the 80s. She even overcame Labour amongst certain key voter groups, including the skilled working classes - and one of the reasons was precisely that she opened up the economy and provided them opportunities. Lots of these older voters still admire Thatcher, their votes are up for grabs, and Labour pissing on their heroine doesn't win hearts and minds.
Furthermore, the Tories are known to have done some research showing their best chance is trashing Labour as left-wing extremists. Labour therefore want to appear moderate and reasonable. Back in the 1980s, Labour was viewed as extreme left-wing - it's later electoral recovery was heavily based on shedding that image. Picking a fight with Thatcher plays straight into the Tory election plan by reminding people of when Labour were extreme and why they voted Conservative. Labour lost that war decades ago. This isn't the time and place to stage a re-enactment.
Surely there's also a case to be made that if one party merely spends its time praising its opponents' ideology and denigrating its own, its hardly going to engender genuine or lasting support. It may win an election if those opponents are monumentally incompetent. But after an election cycle or two-- what's left? A voterbase wholly convinced that conservatism is the only viable approach, because no credible political party has done anything but reinforce that message.
If Labour's approach to winning elections is merely aping their opponents but being more competent, that's some hollow support they're building. Look at the recent Netherlands election: in an effort to blunt criticisms from the PVV, the VVD took an approach of agreeing with every talking point the PVV put forward and ceding the argument to them. Then came the election, and voters voted for the PVV in droves. Because their anti-immigrant dross had been fully legitimised and unchallenged in public discourse, but people don't vote the for pale imitation (the VVD), they vote for the ones who were making those arguments longer and louder (the PVV).
So Starmer might briefly win some disillusioned neocons and traditionalists tired of the Tories. They'll flock back to the Tories as soon as they rebuild the tiniest shred of their credibility veneer. And in the meantime, Starmer will have alienated the longer-lasting Labour voterbase, and helped convince the British public that conservatism is unrivalled wisdom.
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I honestly don't know why he'd say that. We're at a time were everyone is sick to death of neoliberalism so its not like he'll get any votes for that. Even the biggest proponents of keeping or expanding Thatcher's policies don't promote those policies. They just play on racism and nationalistic sentiment in the hopes of distracting from the fact they're implementing those policies.
The odd comment in a right wing rag no-one under the age of 50 reads disappears like a pebble thrown into the ocean.
I agree in a sense that Labour needs to build a new narrative. But it does that by winning an election and governing. As long as there people who feel fondly for Thatcher still alive and voting in strength who are never going to change that view, a spot of rhetoric to keep them happier to win that election is neither here nor there. And eventually they'll die of old age and such lip service can end.
If Labour's still talking up Thatcher after it wins an election, then I'll be bothered.