You can say it a million times more if you like; it won't make those points any more relevant. They've already been comprehensively addressed. Refer back to earlier answers.
Oh no, stuff is hard! Might as well give up, then.
Our Covid Response
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
You've just been supplied an article explaining the risk of myocarditis, go compare against an article on the risk of hospitalisation and death from covid. Hint: it's not even close.
You sound like you're in a cult the way you keep writing things like "following the data". The cult of Prasad... intone the ritual words!
It would have been a lot quicker just to say you didn't read the links I provided. But then, that's what being in a cult is like, isn't it?
Shit, I can't possibly imagine why US citizens might distrust their own government to establish or operate a system capable of national contact tracing, through geolocation tracking and metadata analysis. The US government would never abuse such a system, or mission creep it beyond the scope or scale of the crisis that precipitated it to infringe on basic civil rights or liberties.
We resolve conflicting results regarding mask wearing against COVID-19. Most previous work focused on mask mandates; we study the effect of mask wearing directly. We find that population mask wearing notably reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission (mean mask-wearing levels corresponding to a 19% decrease in R). We use the largest wearing survey (n = 20 million) and obtain our estimates from regions across six continents. We account for nonpharmaceutical interventions and time spent in public, and quantify our uncertainty. Factors additional to mask mandates influenced the worldwide early uptake of mask wearing. Our analysis goes further than past work in the quality of wearing data–100 times the size with random sampling–geographical scope, a semimechanistic infection model, and the validation of our results.
He's just going to ignore it though, isn't he?
One of Phoenixmgs's problems here is that he's watched a bunch of YouTubers saying what he wants to believed in, and has just borrowed their lines of argument wholesale. He has therefore hitched his wagon to "evidence-based medicine" fanatics.
Evidence-based medicine is a system for evaluating best practice in medical treatment. However, it comes with a specific epistemological approach which, whilst well-intentioned and capable of getting good results in certain ways, also has limitations and is strongly criticised by many scientists and physicians, for instance:
Evidence-based medicine: is it a bridge too far? - Health Research Policy and Systems
Aims This paper aims to describe the contextual factors that gave rise to evidence-based medicine (EBM), as well as its controversies and limitations in the current health context. Our analysis utilizes two frameworks: (1) a complex adaptive view of health that sees both health and healthcare as...
health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com
What “Evidence” in Evidence-Based Medicine? - Topoi
The concept of evidence has gone unanalysed in much of the current debate between proponents and critics of evidence-based medicine. In this paper I will suggest that part of the controversy rests on an understanding of the word “evidence” that is too broad, and therefore contains the...
link.springer.com
Why... would you think people are just listening to the US government? Not just over Covid, but most things?
There's a difference between "distrusting authority" and "doing the exact opposite they recommend on everything because they're so obviously trying to murder you". Unfortunately a great many people are too busy drinking their own urine and blasting their scrotums with infrared light to notice.
This: watch what they do and compare what they say. EPA guy says the water is safe but only drinks bottled? Maybe give it a bit. CDC says Covid is over but their experts aren't meeting in person? Covid isn't fucking over
Or, quite possibly, they aren't meeting in person because covid drove a change in working practices which has become permanent. My employer ended to requirement to be in the office every working day: most of the staff now work from home about 2-3 days a week. Especially if your staff may be spread around a large geographical area, why physically meet any more unless absolutely necessary?
To convince us proles that hanging out in poorly ventilated stores and offices is fine and safe
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Also not possible.... unless you goal is like a 0.0001% benefit. It was just a sheer logistical nightmare with that needs tools and technology we don't even have today let alone in 2020.
Carl Heneghan: Why did we spend $37 billion on testing and tracing in the UK when it was very clear it wasn't going to work?
@~1:16:45
Apparently you know more than these experts...
No, you haven't...
You mean this that says the following? And that also doesn't narrow the group much either... There's also a cost benefit analysis for teenagers that says the vaccine provides no benefit even in those (that aren't vulnerable) that never even had covid beforehand and thus have no immunity let alone those that already did have covid.
"In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (97 [95% CI, 91–99] versus 16 [95% CI, 12–18]). In women younger than 40 years, the number of excess events per million was similar after a second dose of mRNA-1273 and a positive test (7 [95% CI, 1–9] versus 8 [95% CI, 6–8])."
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You still haven't provided data showing you are right... It's pretty easy to convince me with actual legit data. The second the good ivermectin study came out, I accepted it.
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Sure thing... I read even more than you provided and clicked on the link in that article that links to the following that uses horrible observation studies and lab studies to say masks work. He even uses the completely asinine logic of look how the flu disappeared and it must have some link to masks and other covid measures. Funny that the consensus before covid was that masks didn't work and yet we hardly did any good studies during covid, now somehow the evidence is that masks 100% work?!?! You do realize that if you are for this type of weak evidence as proof something works, you have to be for tons of stuff that everyone is in agreement that don't work, right?
One More Time – Masks Work
The evidence supports the conclusion that mask-wearing policies are effective and justified.
sciencebasedmedicine.org
Here you go, an interview with Cochrane's Tom Jefferson. Yep this guy totally comes off as being in a cult...
Extremely weak evidence (not random, not controlled). Funny how the the author comments on the fact that the RCTs have considerable issues; well, guess what, non-RCTs have even bigger considerable issues. Then, you have some very apparent pie-in-the-sky numbers like "ideal" surgical masking reduces covid transmission by 65-75%. Humans have so much hubris to think a simple surgical mask would've essentially stopped the covid pandemic because with that reduction in transmission, it would've effectively stopped covid in its tracks. The thing is that if you wanna take this as evidence masks work, then your (and our) standard of proof for something working has just took a massive nosedive.
Lol, if you are still scared to meet together, you'll always be scared to meet together. This is literally the rabbit hole Howard Stern has gone down and it's not healthy at all. If they ain't meeting together just because they merely find it a waste of time to commute to an office (like people in NYC and the mayor b!tching about it), then that's a different story. Covid isn't over but it's just an endemic cold that will be going around forever.
Its already successfully been done for past outbreaks, and had significant success in reducing transmission.
It is possible. Its benefit is not unsignificant. The only reason you're exaggerating its difficulty and understating its potential is because you don't like public health initiatives for generally selfish reasons.
Dude, the contact tracing system in the UK was handed to a Tory party ally as a method of funnelling cash to their allies. Even I didn't download the app.
That is just a circle jerk where like-minded
You do realise I already cited that study and pointed this out already, just a few days ago, #1991?
It's like you don't actually read what anyone posts.
And yet you apparently skipped all the argument about why these are valid lines of argument, because Prasad has inducted you into the evidence-based medicine cult. Leave your brain at the door and let the dogma do the talking.
Oh really, now? You never said anything of that kind? Your exact words: "This is probably the least deadly pandemic ever. Also, the cure is literally just Vitamin D!!!", immediately followed by you claiming that the mortality rate was massively inflated, and that our attempts to slow the spread of the disease were a massive overreaction. This was followed shortly by you once again trying to claim that not only was Vitamin D the obvious cure, but that you'd always known it and therefore you were ahead of the curve. "I always thought Vitamin D was the key ever since those stats of like 90% of deaths were people with deficiency... I don't know why the media has never been on top of these kind of things during the entire pandemic, they could've helped save thousands of lives too." Gee, those sure sound like those arguments you just claimed to have never made, don't they?
Note that even then people were calling you out on pushing a bullshit argument predicated on your utter failure to understand the sources you mistakenly believed supported your uninformed opinion, resulting in you egregiously misrepresenting them. Three years later, you are still doing that. And by all appearances you don't give the slightest fuck, because you never actually read the damn things and only see them as worth mentioning when somebody feeds you a soundbite that you think validates your opinion. You've never even cared enough to check the actual papers to be sure they'd been represented to you correctly, and then you have the gall to lie about it and accuse the people pointing out your error of clearly not reading the papers because they dared to tell you that you were wrong!
Glad you asked. That's actually a great example against your point. The answer is because, per usual, your premise is built on a false premise derived from your ignorance. The two are not the same. Testicular Cancer affects 1 in 250 biological males, representing about 0.5% of new cancer cases. The five year prognosis is 95% survival, and testicular cancer accounts for 0.1% of cancer fatalities. Breast Cancer affects 1 in 8 biological females, representing a whopping 15% of new cancer cases. The five year prognosis is 90% survival, and breast cancer accounts for 7.1% of cancer fatalities.
Once again, you appear to be doing little more than looking at the 5-year outlook and thinking "90% and 95% is practically the same, so why are we more concerned about one than the other?" And once again that's an argument that you have to squint really hard to make, to the point of functionally quote mining. So let's make this a bit less abstract. As a point of direct comparison, last year in the United States, there were 9,910 new cases of Testicular Cancer, and it killed 460 people. Meanwhile, there were 287,850 new cases of Breast Cancer, and it killed 43,250 people.
1 in 8 women vs. 1 in 250 men. 287,850 vs 9,910 new cases. 43,250 vs 460 deaths. While on an individual level, the prognosis of both are roughly equivalent if you catch them soon enough, the fact of the matter is that Breast Cancer occurs at 30 times the frequency of Testicular Cancer, and kills 94 times as many people. That's why we make so much more of a big deal about Breast Cancer than Testicular Cancer. To do so does not make light of Testicular Cancer (for goodness sake, your doctor probably checks for it every time you have a physical, and you're supposed to perform a self-exam monthly), it's just an acknowledgement that even with all of our efforts to raise awareness about it and ensure early testing, Breast Cancer still affects and kills many more people than Testicular Cancer does. This is rather like how I've been explaining to you how concerns about Covid don't focus purely on its raw lethality, and instead is based on a synthesis of multiple factors - including both prognosis and how many people can be expected to be affected by it - and what that synthesis of factors translates to for the population at large. Point of fact, the exact same criticism applies: You're trying to make a ceteris paribus argument when ceteris paribus does not apply.
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I'm going to be blunt here Phoenix. For three years now, you've done precious little in these threads other than trying to downplay covid - and as recently as the last few pages trying to argue that it's less dangerous than the average flu season - all because, like any other conspiracy theorist, you want to think you're clever. And don't lie to my face again and pretend that isn't exactly what this is. For three years now, people with more relevant experience than you have been telling you that your takes are ridiculous, misrepresent what you're claiming to reference, and are in no uncertain terms painfully stupid, and you simply refuse to hear it.
Medical professionals have been telling you that you have not understood the data you're citing and that your medical takes have been so uninformed as to be borderline bizarre. Data analysts have been calling you out on bastardizing the papers you've been touting, flat out misrepresenting their results, and generally failing to understand the scope, limitations, and actual conclusions of the data you've posted. The general pattern we've been seeing is that, when you make a claim, someone else who actually has an education and background in the subject tells you that you are very clearly talking out of your ass and are coming to downright absurd conclusions that are in no way reflected in the data you're trying to claim supports your ignorant opinions.
And yet rather than doing the smart thing and acknowledging that - as this is outside your wheelhouse - there might very well be some gaps in your knowledge and you might have run your mouth off, you've instead (almost nonstop for three years running) consistently done the pretentious thing and doubled down, insisting that you know better than the professionals telling you that your claims are so removed from reality as to make your insistence upon them actively insulting. You just turn around and say that because you skimmed something (usually a youtube video or an editorial) that [you think] agrees with you, that means that you're more informed than they are. You aren't being clever, you're just acting like all those 9/11 "Truthers" who condescended to everyone else that the World Trade Center's collapse could only be explained by a controlled demolition because - like yourself - they thought that watching a youtube video made them experts on the topic.
Your stubborn pride is blinding you to the self-evident fact that the people with backgrounds in medicine and biology might just have a better understanding of both virology and the sources you're bastardizing than an IT professional like yourself would, or that people with a background in research, data collection, and analytics might know more about conducting, reading, and interpreting studies than you do, to say nothing of having a better grasp of the strengths, weaknesses, and utility of different forms of data. You're still trying to insist that their disagreement with you (which you attempt to mask as disagreement with the sources that you've been repeatedly told do not say what you claim) is necessarily absurd and that therefore their disagreement with you means that they must be wrong.
Your performance has been little but childish pretentiousness, trying to pass yourself off as more informed on the topic than the relevant professionals who you are condescending to. You're not a debater, you're a bullshitter, and a sub-par one at that.
You say that X paper says <outlandish claim>. We read it, and point out that it says nothing remotely resembling what you claim. You respond "nuh-uh" and pull up the out-of-context quote that you were fed and then - in the height of hypocrisy - declare that we must not have read the paper. We explain the paper in depth, directly cite and explain how the results differ from what you claim, explain the methodology they employed, note how your claim goes beyond the scope and limitations of the study, and how none of it aligns with the conclusions you're attributing to the paper. You say that's obviously wrong and doesn't count because you found a youtuber or editorial that told you otherwise and therefore declare that if we had actually read the paper we'd agree with you. We again point out that it very clearly doesn't say what you're claiming, and you keep stonewalling, say"nuh-uh" again and repeat the prior steps, before finally claiming that none of that matters and that the paper (or more accurately, the conclusion you're falsely attributing to it) is still better than any study that disagrees with the conclusion you're pushing, and that we should just take your conclusion as a given anyways.
That's not arguing based on the data, that's just being a stonewalling contrarian. By all indications, you never so much as glanced at the actual studies that you demand we accept as evidence of your claims, and you certainly have not understood them. You only name drop them and falsely credit your uninformed opinions to them in an effort to give your ignorant positions an illusion of credibility. It amounts to little more than you claiming "see, this researcher/study agrees with me", and then refusing to accept it when everyone else explains - often at length and repeatedly - how and why that the studies do not say anything remotely resembling what you claim.
And frankly, at this point I see no purpose in further wasting my time with you when you can't even be bothered to so much as read your own sources, much less argue in good faith. You don't outargue people, you just outlast them through the sheer obstinacy of your willful ignorance and the frustration that inspires. Good day. I would appreciate it if you grew up before we speak again.
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Each disease is different. Vaccines stop measles in its tracks, that obviously isn't true for covid or the flu. Also, each country is different with different cultures and obviously different state of the virus itself. What works in one country doesn't equate to it working in every country. What works for covid might not work for whatever the next outbreak will be. Also just because Country_A did something and did great doesn't mean what they did actually worked much. For example, Africa did well because that continent has world's youngest population vs whatever they did being the key to slowing covid. Same with Japan, which most likely did great because their population is much healthier vs whatever they did differently. Even when you look at all the countries in Europe (or wherever), you had all these countries doing different things and they all did somewhat similar in the end. It's the same with the states in the US. If "blue" policy was indeed massively slowing covid and "red" policy was just dumb and stupid, you'd have obvious massive differences between states with different policies but you don't. When the south would get a spike in covid, the media narrative was literally they deserved for not wearing masks and stuff, then when the virus spikes in the north (with the south be relatively covid free), it was basically "there was nothing we could do" vs just maybe the force of nature that is covid isn't nearly as easily controlled as we humans think it can be.
I am for any public health initiative that actually does more benefit than harm. Not many covid public health initiatives passed that basic test. Covid wasn't the only public health issue in 2020. Also, you have to remember the US itself is different from other countries in that health insurance is tied to employment so doing a nationwide stay-at-home order is gonna cause people to get laid off / furloughed (I was furloughed for 4 months IIRC) meaning they don't have health insurance for catching covid and then possibly needing hospital care or any number of other things one would need hospital care for. The normal person will probably wait longer to see a doctor without insurance vs with insurance (thinking it'll get better and save thousands upon thousands of dollars) and obviously many medical issues are time sensitive (e.g. chest pain leading to a heart attack). How can you not see the many many harms of covid lockdowns, especially in the US. Canada itself found that covid lockdowns were possibly the worst peacetime government policy in history.
They also have convincing data to back up their stances...That is just a circle jerk where like-mindedcultists"experts" congratulate themselves on how awesome they are.
You do realise I already cited that study and pointed this out already, just a few days ago, #1991?
It's like you don't actually read what anyone posts.
And yet you apparently skipped all the argument about why these are valid lines of argument, because Prasad has inducted you into the evidence-based medicine cult. Leave your brain at the door and let the dogma do the talking.
I read the post.. It doesn't say what you claim it does or what you think it does. For several younger groups, the covid vaccine actually causes more harms than benefits. Covid is very very very very unlikely to cause harm for very young (less than 20, less than 30 perhaps) healthy people, especially those that already had covid before vaccination was even available. This is generally known, it's why uptake for kids vaccines is so low across the board, not even the average left leaning parents are getting their kids vaccinated, they know it's rather pointless.
What's funny is that the ivermectin studies you so vehemently said didn't prove anything are actually higher quality data than the shit data you're going off of that say masks work. Ivermectin actually did help for most populations in the world, but not because it did anything against covid. Also, if you wanna use lab studies of particles with dummies and masks as why masks work, then I got some ivermectin studies showing it kills covid within 48 hours in cell cultures.
Observational studies aren't good arguments for anything working besides like parachutes. Sorry if I require evidence for anything regardless if it's medicine or whether elections were stolen or not. I'm gonna lean on the side of evidence being important in like anything.
That was an exaggeration due to the what I was replying to being a gross exaggeration. Everyone knows the early mortality rate estimates were way too high, how is this a "gotcha" moment? That vitamin d trial was an RCT, it wasn't complete observational BS that all of you keep giving me for why masks work when the RCTs show that they don't. I still think vitamin d definitely has a better health effect than masks. There's a flu study showing vitamin d did better than the flu vaccine in flu cases. Do you actually think masks have a better health effect than vitamin d? Because there's no evidence for that. Why would you ignore data for one thing that shows good results vs something that literally no data showing good results? Vitamin d had more potential than masks against covid. If you go back far enough (in the old Escapist forum with the original covid thread that is archived on this forum), you'll see I was for masks so why would I search out for stuff that invalidates my opinion if all I want is my opinion validated?
Also, yes, I did overestimate certain studies because I was new to looking at them. Now, I'm much better overall. I'm still asking for GOOD data that masks work, lockdowns overall were beneficial to health, vaccine mandates ever made any sense, closing schools for 18 months made any sense, etc. Where is actual legit proof of any of these things? Where is there any proof that doing anything other than not gathering indoors outside your core family and friends (the one thing I always advocated for) did anything to help less the harms of covid?
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The cancer thing (breast vs testicular) was a hypothetical, that's why I said with the SAME DANGER. I know breast cancer is more dangerous than testicular cancer, but if they were effectively the same, then why would you care more about one than the other? There's no data saying there's more long covid/myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome/'whatever name you wanna give it' than there was before covid so why should we be any more concerned about it than we were beforehand?
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Any "medical professional" claiming masks work is not looking at the actual good data and studies. There's literally better data saying ivermectin works than there is saying masks work.
(People don't use masks correctly or at all) Wow, I guess masks don't work
So in comparison to that very very very very unlikely harm from covid, are vaccines very very very unlikely to cause harm to that group, or very very very very very very very very unlikely? How many scientifically proven 'very's?
Then LITERALLY post that both so you can LITERALLY prove that.
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