Motherfuckers won't take an FDA approved vaccine but they'll all jump at the chance to take FDA Emergency Use Authorized experimental synthetic anti-bodies.
Make it make sense
Funny events in anti-woke world
- Thread starter Agema
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Motherfuckers won't take an FDA approved vaccine but they'll all jump at the chance to take FDA Emergency Use Authorized experimental synthetic anti-bodies.
Make it make sense
First, you didn't answer the question. I asked what the top 10 most important were, not what 3-4 decent/good ones were...
Second, how did you determine that that particular criminal justice reform petition was better than the other 5000 (severe underestimation here) criminal justice reform initiatives? What makes it better than the justice for Breonna Taylor initiatives or Black Lives Matter initiatives? How much time do you have to devote to actually reading these to find out? How did you filter out the most legally well written with the most effective enforcement and least number of loopholes and unintended consequences?
Oh sure, let me crack open Archibald's Guide on the Objective Scaling of Policy Importance (3rd edition). Come back with a better question.
That wasn't the question, so I didn't really look to see how effective it is, but in the generic I would see if there is some legal language attached and compare it to the national conversation on the topic.
So you can't? Representative democracies do it literally daily with a nifty thing called an agenda. It generally helps when each of the 360+ million citizens aren't clogging the space with 'please let me borrow your xbox' submissions though...
So you would do that for each of the millions of petitions on the site (or thousands on any given topic)?
Oh really? What are the 10 most important topics in the world, objectively?
You likely wouldn't have to since many are copies or redundant, which is why earlier I mentioned filtering spam as being okay.
It's either one way or the other. Either studies which extrapolate based upon self-reporting data count or they don't.
If they do, you must contend with the Lancet study. Otherwise, neither does the PLOS study.
Yeah, I did. I've also known the ideologies and association with which many who took issue with the report had, and duly discount them as they were almost exclusively neocons whose vested interest was in swiftboating the Lancet study. The single most inculpatory problem critics found with it, after all, was using survey sheets with corrected typographical errors, absent IRB re-review.
Beyond that, it's quibbling based on whose estimates of pre-invasion mortality rates are correct. Just, never mind how a lot of those folks who so-readily embraced the UN's estimated mortality rate of 10 per 1,000 during the sanction era, only did so after the Lancet study's publication...whilst previous to it, John Hopkins' estimate of 5.5 per 1,000 was held as a standard.
And laughable griping by people who temporarily abdicated their capacity to do basic arithmetic, arguing shit like the impossibility of interviewing 12,000 respondents in 47 household clusters. Or that interviewers were incapable of labor division.
And indeed, puzzlingly enough, one of those arguments being Lancet underestimated infant and child mortality rates post-invasion...but more on that later.
That would be the PLOS study I mentioned earlier, if I recall correctly. And, well, they estimated a pre-invasion mortality rate of 2.89 per 1,000 and a post-invasion mortality rate of 4.55 per 1,000. So...apparently, Iraq had one of the best health care systems on the planet during the UN sanction era, and somehow managed to preserve that health care system in the middle of an invasion by a coalition led by the world's sole remaining superpower, the doctrine of which was to target and destroy critical infrastructure such as its health care system.
Many of those, such as the Iraq Body Count, draw their estimates from government disclosure of casualty reports, media reporting on civilian casualties, hospital and morgue reports, and NGO reporting. At least two of those sources -- government and media -- should be regarded as suspect at best, due to vested interest in under-reporting civilian casualties. And, those sources don't rely on extrapolation -- they report what is confirmed. In other words, deaths that occurred but may not have been reported or disclosed, or excess deaths associated with the conflict (or for that matter, nonviolent deaths in AO's regardless of cause), aren't accounted.
So long as we're doing shit like failing to account for chronic and terminal illnesses, cancer clusters, and infant mortality rate spikes in areas like Basra or Fallujah, directly attributable to the use of depleted uranium rounds, and chemical and incendiary munitions, by coalition forces during the invasion, insurgency, and resulting civil war.
Uh-huh.
"As a scientist..."
Nah, I believe I made my point merely dropping Kehoe's name in here.
The health secretary is elected by his constituents, and is then appointed by someone who has also been elected to decide on a cabinet.
And it's extremely relevant that under the current system, it's someone's official job to ensure we don't run out of fucking vital resources, and that under direct democracy that position would be abolished and replaced with hoping 51% of the country's population keeps on top of it.
Alright. If you don't believe that it's the government's job to maintain resource supply chains, I can't convince you. It's... like one of the basic functions.
Please, please tell me what the meaningful difference is between 1) a country voting somebody into a position in order for them to do a job and 2) electing that person to do said job.
I'm asking the person who has spent far more pages defending the proposition he made.
Cool. I'm sure they constitute the majority of American citizens.
Sorry, this changes with direct democracy... how, exactly? The people who voted for something aren't the only ones who have to live with it. So are the minority.
More than 51% of people vote for an abortion ban under direct democracy-- and that 51% is composed primarily of men? They don't have to live with it. They vote to restrict gay rights or trans rights etc? The straight people who voted for it don't have to live with it.
As fucking if direct democracy is a guard against the tyranny of the majority.
"It's bullshit", you say with apparent certainty, based on an article regarding one study with a sample size of 219. Didn't do much for Raymond Zack, did it?Ah haaaa, the bystander effect? Have you looked into the studies?
Bystander effect in street disputes disquestioned » NSCR
For fifty years, psychologists have assumed a bystander effect: in an emergency situation the crowd looks, but nobody intervenes. The higher the number of bystanders, the more anonymous we feel and the smaller the chance that somebody intervenes. ‘But that is not at all what we found’, says...nscr.nl
Because it's bullshit, just like Stockholm syndrome.
The term "NGO" might be a bit distracting here. Although it has no formal definition, it's most commonly used to describe charitable organisations, which weren't the kind I was originally talking about.
I would be referring to bodies like the IFS, which does indeed receive government funding, and also provides both data and research frequently accessed by the government.
Your continued faith in your fellow man's complete knowledge and interest in every topic of necessity to a functioning state is inspiring.
It looks like to me that the NHS functions as most socialized medicine in the western world, which is to say that calling socialized medicine is a bit misleading, it's socialized insurance that establishes a fund for hospitals and such to draw from in response to expenses for providing service.
What I further suspect then is that it's the hospitals that buy medicine, not any NHS bureaucrat as that would be a hilariously inflexible top-down system I would see more at home in the PRC or Soviet Union. Instead I would think, the figure of used doses is kept by NHS bureaucrats both for record keeping and as a negotiating bludgeon to keep drug prices low, but the bureaucrats don't touch the stuff themselves.
Interesting opinion as we look out at massive supply chain issues thanks to COVID and see how little any government can actually do to deal with the problems directly. Blaming the government for supply chain issues is what Trumpers are doing now to bemoan the cost of gasoline and wood.
Ask if that's what Gerger means when he says what he says, I'm not speaking for him.
I'm not, I'm arguing against your misanthropic based opposition to the blanket idea of direct democracy in general. If you're looking to nitpick interpretations, critique Bookchin.
I feel confident in saying so.
As opposed to the tyranny of the minority that is representative democracy, where not even 51% of the population has to agree with restricting abortion rights to restrict abortion rights and where you can delay equal rights long after it becomes popular.
Sorry, I'm not moved, the beginning of this conversation was me pointing out how direct democracy has frequently sped past representatives in providing rights.
"Your real world study has no power against my SINGLE ANECDOTE! HA, GOTTEM!"
It's to my knowledge the only real world study of the phenomenon. Every other study has been off the street and asking random people hypotheticals.
The IFS is an NGO and while it does receive government funding, it also gets a huge bulk of it's money from outside the government.
Your myopic and contradictory cynicism in assuming people are too stupid to make decisions while simultaneously glossing over their need to understand policy in order to choose a representative properly continues to astound.
So, fascist propagandist Andy Ngo was recently in Poland, where he commemorated his trip by having his fascist friends take a picture of him posing next to fascist graffiti
He's since been falsely DMCAing people sharing the picture, which isn't helping much
He's since been falsely DMCAing people sharing the picture, which isn't helping much
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Here's one for you
www.businessinsider.com
Florida school saying kids who are vaccinated could infect others via spike protein shedding
A Florida school says vaccinated students must stay home for 30 days after each shot, citing a false claim that they'll infect others
School officials said that the quarantine mandate exists because they believe vaccinated students can infect unvaccinated students. That's false.
www.businessinsider.com
Florida school saying kids who are vaccinated could infect others via spike protein shedding
As I expected, you don't really know how the NHS works, then. A rejection of the insurance principle was one of its founding characteristics and you do not need to be insured.
It's a lot more than a "fund". Policy is directed by the government. Contracts are negotiated by the government. The trusts that run hospitals answer to the government and are audited by it. And it is explicitly the government's responsibility to ensure supply chains, regulations, and resource availability on a national scale etc.
A failure to fulfil a job to a satisfactory standard doesn't somehow mean it was never their job to begin with.
But you are still talking about getting people to vote somebody into a position to do a job, but also not calling that an election?
*Full direct democracy. I've stated over and over again that I have no issue with confirmatory referenda existing. I have been arguing, from the very start, against a system of full direct democracy replacing elected government.
Yes, some forms of representative democracy-- such as FPTP-- end up with governments who have not been voted into position by a majority (or sometimes even a plurality). It's a grotesque distortion. Thankfully there's quite a few alternative voting systems.
Formal study on the issue has been woefully lacking (including yours, which was based primarily on watching CCTV). This is kind of unavoidable, given the ethical considerations and observer effect.
But instances are hardly difficult to come by. Wayne Couzens had a despicable reputation long before he murdered somebody, but nobody saw fit to report concerns. Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted someone, and nobody at the party saw fit to report it. EDIT: Huh, another prime example popped right onto the Current Events page only a couple of hours after I posted this.
OK, question: what NGOs, institutes, research bodies etc do you think 51% of the population would vote to keep in official funding, if any?
Probably because the latter requires understanding of policy usually just in terms of broad principle, not detail, practicality or implementation. The requirements placed on the average person are obviously not equivalent.
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Which is a cute way of trying to pretend that there weren't very substantial criticisms from a lot of people without ideologies and associations that would predispose them to reject it.
No, there's more wrong with it than that, regarding the adequacy of their surveying protocol - I suggest you do a more thorough reading-up on the topic. Again, bear in mind that similar techniques albeit better done have turned up broadly consistent data with much lower values, plus also being more consistent with other data collection methods.
Even then, one of the most basic principles of research is not to put all your eggs in one basket and overrate one paper - or at least, to cite a representative paper. If there are multiple reasonably consistent studies coming to similar values, if you pick an outlier on which to base your case, you'd better have one hell of a good justification. You have pretty much not provided any except for handwaving vague claims that everyone else is biased.
And this is another classic data distortion tactic. It's attempting to subject studies that you don't approve of to specific criticisms whilst not extended the same precision and rigour to the ones you are relying on. The point is not that any study is perfect, but assessing the overall balance of quality.
The likelihood of under-reporting is widely known and accepted by many of these groups, such as the Iraq Body Count Project - hence also my example of the 30% underreporting in a previous comment. This still cannot readily justify figures as hugely inflated as the 2006 Lancet study.
Yes, but I provided a rationale for looking at the data derived from my professional expertise. You just nebulously claimed the right to dismiss data as biased.
I accept that you believe that you made a point.
Was it, now?
Who broached the issue of selection bias in cluster assignment in the Lancet study, you or I?
Who broached the issue of labor division among surveyors in the Lancet study, you or I?
Who broached the issue of pre- and post-invasion mortality rates in the Lancet study, you or I?
Who broached the issue of assumptions about infant and child mortality rates in the Lancet study, you or I?
Who broached the issue of correcting typographical errors in data collection sheets without re-submitting them for IRB review in the Lancet study, you or I?
I mean, it's awfully funny you're saying I'm disregarding potential methodological or ethical issues with the Lancet study, when thus far I'm the only one actually discussing them whilst you're resisting that discussion. Pick a lane, dude.
...whilst making facially questionable assumptions about variables that drive estimates downward. The notion Iraq, a country suffering under UN economic sanctions third only to Cuba and North Korea at the time, had a mortality rate comparable to petrodollar-fueled GCC countries with first-world infrastructure and health care, or indeed the actual first-world, is nothing short of laughable.
Of the two of us, I'm the only one actually citing papers and projects rather than obliquely referencing them.
The irony is palpable, considering thus far I'm the only one to mention the controversy over the Lancet study's assumptions of mortality rates pre- and post-invasion as compared to the PLOS study. That's the literal definition of extending the same precision and rigor to these studies.
And they merely disclaim it, they don't create projections or estimates based upon it. Because that isn't within the scope of their respective projects or studies, which is absolutely fine. What isn't, is acting as if the limited scope of those projects and studies is representative of the sum fatality count of the war...least of all for how people are still dying because of a war that "ended" a decade ago, due to violence and medical issues that were caused by it.
Because it ain't about you. It's about those who may read that post, unawares of either controversy. Words like "peer review" and "scientific rigor" hold power and authority, to be sure.
But it's also power and authority appropriated and subverted by those with vested political, social, or vested interest to propagandize by way of publications that appear to be scientific, but are in reality anything but. Like for example, automotive, chemical, and fossil fuels industry-funded bunk studies churned out of think tanks to misinform policy-makers and the public about the genuine hazards and cost of those industries' operation...a pattern that repeated itself in the use of tetraethyllead as a fuel additive, the acid rain crisis, the ozone crisis, "clean" coal and natural gas, fracking, and above all else, climate change.
And exactly how right-wing-funded neoconservative think tanks churn out bunk studies to misinform policy-makers and the public about the genuine hazards and cost of the defense industry, military-industrial complex, US role in geopolitics, and American interventionism across the globe.
He's such a fucking weenie. Seems he got tired of his fake medical grift, too.
I'm not resisting it, but it is pseudocriticism. It's waffling stuff, and then singly failing to do the most rational thing with that stuff. If a study has deeply problematic methodology, you therefore question the validity of the study, rather than claim it's God's own answer. It is form over function. It's trying to appear clever and informed by spamming stuff, but then giving someone a conclusion at odds with the information in the hope they're a little too bored or dense to notice and disagree. Don't blame me for just cutting to the chase.
The aim here is to compare two conditions of Iraq, pre- and post-invasion. It is desirable to minimise inconsistencies in those two conditions where possible. Given the inherent uncertainty of reported official mortality statistics both pre-and post, the most sensible thing to do is take a consistent way of measuring deaths and construct their own morality rates, because that ensures consistency before and after for comparison. This is evident in the study. Thus your argument here suggests you don't really understand what they did and why.
Incidentally, it also appears very likely that sanctions had relatively little effect on Iraq's mortality rate: there's evidence Saddam fiddled the figures to make it appear much worse than it was in order to exert pressure against the sanctions.
Emptily, with form rather than function, as above.
But the Lancet study is accurate and the PLoS isn't, because you say so and only neoconservatives say otherwise, amirite?
Assessing Iraq's metrics in terms of things like life expectancy and mortality rate would suggest that excess deaths have long since levelled off and returned to historical trends.
Sure. But it's attendant upon you to demonstrate that the specific studies in question are appropriated and subverted, not just saying that they are and claiming as proof that it happened a century ago on a completely different topic.
Subjecting the criticisms over the study's methodology to basic skepticism?
When the criticisms are actually points of "contention" like...there was no way a team of surveyors could interview forty households per day, as if the notion of a team of surveyors were incapable of labor division? Or, that Lancet's clustering of households negates the validity of the study because they didn't survey literally every back alley no matter how small, secluded, or unsafe in metropolitan areas?
I question the validity of those criticisms first, and whether those criticisms actually impact the end result of the study. And as it turns out, most of those criticisms were pretty fuckin' stupid. I keep saying the most serious methodological infraction committed by the Lancet team was failing to re-submit their data collection sheets for IRB review, after correcting for typographical errors, for a reason.
Here you're just trying to distract from my point. Finding such a low mortality rate pre-invasion itself is suspect, given how wildly inconsistent it is not just with Iraqi self-reporting during Hussein's regime, but also independent UN estimates, NGO estimates, and external academic estimates. Johns Hopkins' own estimated mortality rate, "now" (after the Lancet study) considered to be a highly conservative estimate of Iraqi mortality rate pre-invasion, being nearly twice that of the PLOS study.
And, how inconsistent it is with not just regional comparative analysis, but comparative analysis with countries with equivalent levels of economic development.
The irony of this, is among the key criticisms you cite of the Lancet study, is the Lancet study went with the 5.5 per 1,000 pre-invasion mortality rate contrasted against a 13.3 per 1,000 mortality rate. Using the same metrics. As opposed to the UN's estimated mortality rate of 10 per 1,000. It's almost as if critics wanted to highball the pre-invasion mortality rate (thereby committing the exact same sin you lay on Hussein's shoulders) to obfuscate the excess post-invasion death rate as found by the Lancet study, rather than attack their findings directly.
"You see, the Iraq invasion couldn't really have killed that many people, because they were already dying by the thousands due to UN sanctions!" is a hell of a hill to die on, I'll give you that. Because that was exactly the criticism levied against the Lancet study, boiled down to its most basic level.
You want to warn against citing outliers as the norm, then cite the PLOS study's findings, when the reality is PLOS's findings are the outlier.
He must've kept the real mortality rates in the place he kept his WMD's and the Rolodex with all his al-Qaeda contacts.
I mean, other than that whole chronic illness, cancer cluster, and birth defect thing...but I mean, why pay attention to locales where fighting was heaviest and chemical/radiological weapons used the most, when national averages are more politically expedient, am I right?
I...need to specifically identify the biases of the US government, the installed US-friendly puppet regime in Iraq, defense industry trade journals, and conservative media outlets?
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Wasn't I told that nobody considers vaccinated to be dangerous?Here's one for you
A Florida school says vaccinated students must stay home for 30 days after each shot, citing a false claim that they'll infect others
School officials said that the quarantine mandate exists because they believe vaccinated students can infect unvaccinated students. That's false.
Florida school saying kids who are vaccinated could infect others via spike protein shedding
The one tightly woven common denominator through it all for the rest of humankind - the uberwealthy refusing to compromise their obscene financial growth
www.businessinsider.com
Wow that paywall...only the annual sub removes ads?? BEGONE!
The roots of denialism: How the birth of smog in 1943 led to Trump and QAnon
Industry has long profited by casting doubt on science. But how did conspiracy theories and lies come to supplant America's faith in reason and truth?
www.businessinsider.com
Selecting out the criticisms of a paper for skepticism, and even then which criticisms you want to be skeptical about, is hardly rigorous.
No, I'm exposing your failure to understand what the study did and why it did it. But getting this sort of thing right is the basis of how we should trust your judgement about other analysis too, like how strongly we should value your opinions on criticisms of the Lancet 2006 study.
Did "I" cite that as a criticism of the Lancet study? I think you brought it up yourself, and I said there were more problems than that.
We've covered this already. There are numerous estimates of casualties, and the Lancet 2006 study is clearly an outlier. It's only companion out there is the ORB study, which was widely regarded in the field as extremely poorly conducted, so is barely worth bringing into consideration.
A national average done properly should capture regional effects and reflect the nation.
If you only examine the places where the violence was highest and then extrapolate that to the whole nation, you'll get a huge overestimate, surely. Actually, that's kind of one of the criticisms of the Lancet 2006 study, isn't it?
You need to stop bullshitting so hard and then throwing it at the wall to try and make it stick.
Either explain why all the other casualty estimates are necessarily contaminated with the biases of such entities, or that the criticism of the higher end studies you want to believe entirely comes from entities with those biases. After all, there are a great deal of demographers, statisticians and other professionals with little obvious bias who have severe doubts about the accuracy of the 2006 Lancet study who you're trying to brush under the carpet. Furthermore, numerous of these other studies are done by such people. You are persistently trying to pretend otherwise, hence this line.
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