As for "overwhelming consensus of medical advice", consensus isn't the same as evidence. For that matter, even the "consensus" manufactured by aggressively censoring disagreement is itself constantly changing.
It is evidence based opinions by professionals who understand the fine details, read the current relevant literature and arrive at conclusion that are the same or very similar to what other knowledgeable individuals concluded. It's a large informal version of peer review. I'll go with that consensus every day of the week over obscure one-of "evidence."
As to censoring disagreement, that's not what's happening. Shouting down potentially harmful misinformation, yes, that's happening as it should be and not vigorously enough, IMO, since social media can disseminate irresponsible and harmful misinformation very quickly and very widely.
At the end of the day, you know stuff about computer HW and software so your opinions on those subjects have credibility and respect. Why don't you try extending the same courtesy to medical professionals who are in fact overwhelmingly messaging the same message instead of thinking that your superior intellect and googling skills makes what you have to say equal to what they're saying.
That's not just disrespectful to the knowledge of professionals in other fields, it's also mildly delusional and arrogant although pretty well the sign of the times in which we now live..
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
If they have to decide already that they're going to cancel an event that would have been in June, even after the COVID crisis is over, then it's time to question whether there will ever be another in-person E3 ever again. COVID is never going to go away entirely, and now that we have vaccines, treatments, and a milder variant, there probably isn't going to be any future change in the disease that causes an in-person E3 to make more sense than in 2022.
Mild variant that seems to be packing hospitals once again. The cognitive dissonance is real.
Right now, we've got a mix of Delta and Omicron, and Delta is dangerous. By June, Delta will probably be about as thoroughly gone as Alpha is today. If CES were scheduled for next week, then going online only would make sense. But this is June that we're talking about.
I hear your point. We're scheduled to attend HIMMS and that is not cheap and they don't do refunds at all. My boss thinks it will all blow over by March, or at least we'll be in a sharp decline so it won't matter. I'm skeptical because in the last two years we've only seen a slowdown last summer for a couple months and then surge again.
We'll see I guess, but it seems prudent to take a conservative and proactive approach to the spread or we'll end up spawning further mutations.
I don't see anything wrong with the caution in the UK so far, indeed I could see no reason for us relaxing the rule that customers (not staff) should wear face masks on public transport and in stores this year. Which in turn would have meant the public was not advised to work from home if they can as soon as they were in the run up to Xmas.
But I do note the moving of the goalposts. Earlier this year we were hearing the media reporting deaths, now without missing a stride they are reporting hospitalisations which is quite misleading. Drama and fear are the only way now that broadcasters report anything. I was just watching a natural history programme where fear was injected into the lives of the wildlife, beyond ridiculous.
I think long term we need treat this like normal flu, regular vaccination but far less restrictions. We may need to be tougher on those who don't get vaccinated, I think the patience of the wider public may wear thin there.
When they're already trying to fire people who don't get vaccinated and then subsequently make them unemployable, I'm not sure how much tougher you want to be on them. Imprisonment? Execution?
And for what? To reduce the chance that they'll personally get sick, and nothing more. In terms of harm to society, declining to get vaccinated is less severe than driving 75 in a 55 zone. The proposed punishments are way out of line. Maybe you could make a case for prioritizing COVID treatment of vaccinated people over unvaccinated in the rare cases where a hospital is overwhelmed by COVID patients, but the gratuitous punishments already in place in some places are already massively overkill.
For that matter, the COVID punishments are already messing with the economy. When you've got a labor shortage, trying to forcibly prohibit a few percent of the good workers who are already employed from continuing to work only makes it worse. That's bad for everyone, whether vaccinated or not.
Currently the UK has not fired anyone because they are not vaccinated and plans only exist for health personnel. My feeling is that may not even happen.
The economy is suffering, if everyone over 15 (I am still not sure about children) was vaccinated we might not need lockdowns. Some of your arguments are quite valid, but there are no alternatives. Yes, being in doors puts you at more risk, but being indoors in an office would be a greater risk. Also if people were not at home they would be at home, outside, on public transport and at the office, that would be worse.
We are turning this thread into a political one, so I will leave you to have the last word.
Covid argument is the same as abortion argument imo. Everyone has their own opinions and couldn't care less what anyone else thinks. No one is going to change their mind so why argue? Do what you think is best for you and yours and move on.
As far as E3 being online only, I'm good with that. I was never able to take time off and make it in person so having everything virtually makes it much better for me personally.
We know that COVID isn't about one person getting sick. Right now we are dealing with a disease with the highest spread rate in history of viral infections. It is true that you would still spread the disease when you are vaccinated, but again, at lower rates. If someone chooses to not get vaccinated, for no good reason whatsoever, because there are no good reasons whatsoever, you are choosing to increase your potential risk deliberately.
When you are living in a society you have agreed to a social contract by default. We can argue this on a philosophical level. But this is the way it is. And you are enjoying all the benefits from the said society. You can't just cherry pick.
When you become a liability, a risk to others, harm others, put others in risk, increase your potential harm to others, by CHOICE, in ANY way imaginable, then you are breaking your social contract.
Now, I am all in for conspiracies. I don't trust most governments, and the ones I do trust, are not always doing their best. I don't trust big pharma neither. Of course everyone is taking advantage of this situation in any way they can. But none of the evidence suggests that taking a vaccine is a bad thing and not taking it is a good thing. All evidence, by any party, independent, from any country in any continent, suggest taking the vaccine reduces the infection, the mortality rate, the hospitalisation rate, and the spread rate.
Just because the vaccines don't completely eliminate everything, doesn't mean they are useless.
If someone has any evidence to prove, nay, even suggest otherwise, I will stand with you. But I haven't seen anything to this point.
So, all that said, when someone chooses to not get vaccinated, is breaking their social contract. And should be treated as such.
Arguing personal freedom in this case is like arguing showing your dick to school children or yelling fire in a crowded closed space and citing your personal freedom.
The world has changed, for the worse. It is time for people to accept it, try to make it work for the better, and help finding solutions instead of banking on sheer selfishness.
So yes, people who break their social contract usually end up in jail. If someone doesn't want to live by the rule of the law, doesn't want to accept the social contract, then they should leave the society. Like any other case.
You can't just break it and expect no consequences. I don't agree with many laws, but I still have to comply.
If something thinks it is wrong, then they have to fight to change it, provide evidence, campaign, whatever, people can't just break the contract and play fucking dumb.
"If someone chooses to not get vaccinated, for no good reason whatsoever, because there are no good reasons whatsoever, you are choosing to increase your potential risk deliberately. "
Well of course there are good reasons not to get vaccinated. For starters, some people know that they are very allergic to a key ingredient in vaccines. That's estimated to be about 1000 or so adults in the United States, which isn't very many, but even one is enough to destroy your claim that there are no good reasons not to get vaccinated. More broadly, someone who has a very nasty reaction to one shot of a vaccine probably shouldn't get another shot of that same vaccine.
The studies of the effects of vaccination generally exclude people who have previously had COVID and recovered. We know that vaccination helps a lot if you don't have any previous source of immunity. Vaccination may still help a little in that case, but natural immunity already provides about what you were hoping to get from being vaccinated, and studies to determine whether vaccines work have tended to conspicuously exclude people who already had COVID. People used to know this, which is why, for example, people who have actually had measles are told not to subsequently get vaccinated for it.
There's also the issue that the COVID vaccine has relatively nasty side effects as vaccines go. Meanwhile, the marginal benefit of additional doses drops off very sharply. For example, in the big Pfizer study of the effects of booster shots, among people under the age of 30, there were zero people who got a booster and were hospitalized for COVID. There were also zero people who got a placebo (previously vaccinated but no booster) and were hospitalized for COVID. But there was one person who was hospitalized for a reaction to the booster shot.
If the goal is specifically to reduce COVID-related hospitalizations, then teenage boys with prior immunity (whether natural immunity from a COVID infection or vaccinated and considering a booster) would be banned from getting the mRNA vaccines. The risk of being hospitalized for myocarditis as a reaction to the shot is only one in a few thousand, but that's much greater than the change in hospitalization chance from a COVID infection that a booster shot makes in that demographic.
Certainly, a lot of people should get vaccinated, and that's why a lot of people have been. But not everyone. There are exceptions.
"When you are living in a society you have agreed to a social contract by default."
No, we are not. We have written laws that you have to obey. But an unwritten social contract is an arbitrarily malleable rhetorical device that can be claimed to say whatever the person appealing to it finds convenient that day. Charlatans and demagogues sometimes like to appeal to a social contract because it sounds better than saying "you have to do this solely because I said so", but it's not at all similar to a contract, and the name is an intentionally deceptive misnomer.
"When you become a liability, a risk to others, harm others, put others in risk, increase your potential harm to others, by CHOICE, in ANY way imaginable, then you are breaking your social contract. "
Okay then, whenever you drive a car, you're creating a risk that you could hit someone. Even if you don't, you're creating more traffic for other drivers. So you're hurting other people and should stop. Buying any product at all could mean that a store runs out and someone else can't get the product that he wants because you bought it. So you should never buy anything because that could hurt other people.
Serious decision making is about trade-offs. You have to weigh the costs of something against the benefits. Focusing only on one side of the ledger and ignoring the other is a way to make all sorts of insane decisions.
If they have to decide already that they're going to cancel an event that would have been in June, even after the COVID crisis is over, then it's time to question whether there will ever be another in-person E3 ever again. COVID is never going to go away entirely, and now that we have vaccines, treatments, and a milder variant, there probably isn't going to be any future change in the disease that causes an in-person E3 to make more sense than in 2022.
Mild variant that seems to be packing hospitals once again. The cognitive dissonance is real.
Right now, we've got a mix of Delta and Omicron, and Delta is dangerous. By June, Delta will probably be about as thoroughly gone as Alpha is today. If CES were scheduled for next week, then going online only would make sense. But this is June that we're talking about.
I hear your point. We're scheduled to attend HIMMS and that is not cheap and they don't do refunds at all. My boss thinks it will all blow over by March, or at least we'll be in a sharp decline so it won't matter. I'm skeptical because in the last two years we've only seen a slowdown last summer for a couple months and then surge again.
We'll see I guess, but it seems prudent to take a conservative and proactive approach to the spread or we'll end up spawning further mutations.
I don't see anything wrong with the caution in the UK so far, indeed I could see no reason for us relaxing the rule that customers (not staff) should wear face masks on public transport and in stores this year. Which in turn would have meant the public was not advised to work from home if they can as soon as they were in the run up to Xmas.
But I do note the moving of the goalposts. Earlier this year we were hearing the media reporting deaths, now without missing a stride they are reporting hospitalisations which is quite misleading. Drama and fear are the only way now that broadcasters report anything. I was just watching a natural history programme where fear was injected into the lives of the wildlife, beyond ridiculous.
I think long term we need treat this like normal flu, regular vaccination but far less restrictions. We may need to be tougher on those who don't get vaccinated, I think the patience of the wider public may wear thin there.
When they're already trying to fire people who don't get vaccinated and then subsequently make them unemployable, I'm not sure how much tougher you want to be on them. Imprisonment? Execution?
And for what? To reduce the chance that they'll personally get sick, and nothing more. In terms of harm to society, declining to get vaccinated is less severe than driving 75 in a 55 zone. The proposed punishments are way out of line. Maybe you could make a case for prioritizing COVID treatment of vaccinated people over unvaccinated in the rare cases where a hospital is overwhelmed by COVID patients, but the gratuitous punishments already in place in some places are already massively overkill.
For that matter, the COVID punishments are already messing with the economy. When you've got a labor shortage, trying to forcibly prohibit a few percent of the good workers who are already employed from continuing to work only makes it worse. That's bad for everyone, whether vaccinated or not.
Currently the UK has not fired anyone because they are not vaccinated and plans only exist for health personnel. My feeling is that may not even happen.
The economy is suffering, if everyone over 15 (I am still not sure about children) was vaccinated we might not need lockdowns. Some of your arguments are quite valid, but there are no alternatives. Yes, being in doors puts you at more risk, but being indoors in an office would be a greater risk. Also if people were not at home they would be at home, outside, on public transport and at the office, that would be worse.
We are turning this thread into a political one, so I will leave you to have the last word.
In the US, the state of Rhode Island fired a bunch of medical workers for refusing to get vaccinated. And then the state told the remaining medical workers that they had to continue to work even while they had active cases of COVID because they were short on people. I say that the state did not handle that situation optimally.
The question of whether to have lockdowns or mask mandates or vaccine mandates or whatever is a political question, not a medical one. It is disingenuous to say that we "needed" to do this or that. No, we didn't need to, and some places didn't. And places like Sweden and Florida that rejected lockdowns didn't face apocalyptic consequences as a result, no matter how much left-wing media screamed at them about it.
If you want to compare states in the United States, we've effectively done an implicit experiment with some states having strict lockdowns and others little or none at all. There are some states where basically everyone wears masks in public, and some where hardly anyone ever wears a mask. And it doesn't make much of a difference to COVID case rates, hospitalizations, or death rates.
In the UK, most of the people who are dying of COVID are vaccinated. That's how it goes once a high enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. If 95% of high risk people are vaccinated, and 70% of COVID deaths are vaccinated, then that's good evidence that the vaccine does a lot of good. But the marginal effect of getting that last 5% vaccinated wouldn't be that huge.
As for "overwhelming consensus of medical advice", consensus isn't the same as evidence. For that matter, even the "consensus" manufactured by aggressively censoring disagreement is itself constantly changing.
It is evidence based opinions by professionals who understand the fine details, read the current relevant literature and arrive at conclusion that are the same or very similar to what other knowledgeable individuals concluded. It's a large informal version of peer review. I'll go with that consensus every day of the week over obscure one-of "evidence."
As to censoring disagreement, that's not what's happening. Shouting down potentially harmful misinformation, yes, that's happening as it should be and not vigorously enough, IMO, since social media can disseminate irresponsible and harmful misinformation very quickly and very widely.
At the end of the day, you know stuff about computer HW and software so your opinions on those subjects have credibility and respect. Why don't you try extending the same courtesy to medical professionals who are in fact overwhelmingly messaging the same message instead of thinking that your superior intellect and googling skills makes what you have to say equal to what they're saying.
That's not just disrespectful to the knowledge of professionals in other fields, it's also mildly delusional and arrogant although pretty well the sign of the times in which we now live..
So would you then consider the Great Barrington Declaration, which was written by respected epidemiologists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, to be misinformation that needed to be censored? Because recent FOIA requests revealed that Fauci and his thugs aggressively tried to get it buried and killed. If you're not familiar with the Great Barrington Declaration, then that's kind of the point. Just because you don't notice censorship doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
What can often happen is that among experts in some field, 70% think that A is better than B, and 30% think that B is better than A. But the former group feels strongly enough about it to try to punish anyone for saying that B is better. The people who think B is better mostly figure out that saying so is bad for your career, so they keep their mouth shut. Maybe only 3% of the experts are willing to speak up and say that B is better than A. But that doesn't mean that there's an overwhelming consensus that A is better than B. All that it means is that experts disagree, but the claims that B is better are being censored or otherwise penalized.
More fundamentally, science isn't about consensus. It's about evidence. There has at various times in the past been a consensus around all sorts of things that weren't true. If you've got the evidence to back your claims, then consensus will usually follow. But there are a lot of things that we simply don't know because getting the evidence that would prove things one way or another is too hard. In such situations, the only scientifically honest thing to say is that we don't know.
As for "overwhelming consensus of medical advice", consensus isn't the same as evidence. For that matter, even the "consensus" manufactured by aggressively censoring disagreement is itself constantly changing.
It is evidence based opinions by professionals who understand the fine details, read the current relevant literature and arrive at conclusion that are the same or very similar to what other knowledgeable individuals concluded. It's a large informal version of peer review. I'll go with that consensus every day of the week over obscure one-of "evidence."
As to censoring disagreement, that's not what's happening. Shouting down potentially harmful misinformation, yes, that's happening as it should be and not vigorously enough, IMO, since social media can disseminate irresponsible and harmful misinformation very quickly and very widely.
At the end of the day, you know stuff about computer HW and software so your opinions on those subjects have credibility and respect. Why don't you try extending the same courtesy to medical professionals who are in fact overwhelmingly messaging the same message instead of thinking that your superior intellect and googling skills makes what you have to say equal to what they're saying.
That's not just disrespectful to the knowledge of professionals in other fields, it's also mildly delusional and arrogant although pretty well the sign of the times in which we now live..
So would you then consider the Great Barrington Declaration, which was written by respected epidemiologists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, to be misinformation that needed to be censored? Because recent FOIA requests revealed that Fauci and his thugs aggressively tried to get it buried and killed. If you're not familiar with the Great Barrington Declaration, then that's kind of the point. Just because you don't notice censorship doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
What can often happen is that among experts in some field, 70% think that A is better than B, and 30% think that B is better than A. But the former group feels strongly enough about it to try to punish anyone for saying that B is better. The people who think B is better mostly figure out that saying so is bad for your career, so they keep their mouth shut. Maybe only 3% of the experts are willing to speak up and say that B is better than A. But that doesn't mean that there's an overwhelming consensus that A is better than B. All that it means is that experts disagree, but the claims that B is better are being censored or otherwise penalized.
More fundamentally, science isn't about consensus. It's about evidence. There has at various times in the past been a consensus around all sorts of things that weren't true. If you've got the evidence to back your claims, then consensus will usually follow. But there are a lot of things that we simply don't know because getting the evidence that would prove things one way or another is too hard. In such situations, the only scientifically honest thing to say is that we don't know.
Yes I'm aware of it and also how Sweden tried to do that and failed miserably at it compared to their Scandinavian neighbors. It's also not censored and is readily available for anyone to read as it has always been.
Not aware of "Fauci and his thugs" though but then I stay far away from Trumpist propaganda.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
We know that COVID isn't about one person getting sick.
"If someone chooses to not get vaccinated, for no good reason whatsoever, because there are no good reasons whatsoever, you are choosing to increase your potential risk deliberately. "
Well of course there are good reasons not to get vaccinated. For starters, some people know that they are very allergic to a key ingredient in vaccines. That's estimated to be about 1000 or so adults in the United States, which isn't very many, but even one is enough to destroy your claim that there are no good reasons not to get vaccinated. More broadly, someone who has a very nasty reaction to one shot of a vaccine probably shouldn't get another shot of that same vaccine.
The studies of the effects of vaccination generally exclude people who have previously had COVID and recovered. We know that vaccination helps a lot if you don't have any previous source of immunity. Vaccination may still help a little in that case, but natural immunity already provides about what you were hoping to get from being vaccinated, and studies to determine whether vaccines work have tended to conspicuously exclude people who already had COVID. People used to know this, which is why, for example, people who have actually had measles are told not to subsequently get vaccinated for it.
There's also the issue that the COVID vaccine has relatively nasty side effects as vaccines go. Meanwhile, the marginal benefit of additional doses drops off very sharply. For example, in the big Pfizer study of the effects of booster shots, among people under the age of 30, there were zero people who got a booster and were hospitalized for COVID. There were also zero people who got a placebo (previously vaccinated but no booster) and were hospitalized for COVID. But there was one person who was hospitalized for a reaction to the booster shot.
If the goal is specifically to reduce COVID-related hospitalizations, then teenage boys with prior immunity (whether natural immunity from a COVID infection or vaccinated and considering a booster) would be banned from getting the mRNA vaccines. The risk of being hospitalized for myocarditis as a reaction to the shot is only one in a few thousand, but that's much greater than the change in hospitalization chance from a COVID infection that a booster shot makes in that demographic.
Certainly, a lot of people should get vaccinated, and that's why a lot of people have been. But not everyone. There are exceptions.
"When you are living in a society you have agreed to a social contract by default."
No, we are not. We have written laws that you have to obey. But an unwritten social contract is an arbitrarily malleable rhetorical device that can be claimed to say whatever the person appealing to it finds convenient that day. Charlatans and demagogues sometimes like to appeal to a social contract because it sounds better than saying "you have to do this solely because I said so", but it's not at all similar to a contract, and the name is an intentionally deceptive misnomer.
"When you become a liability, a risk to others, harm others, put others in risk, increase your potential harm to others, by CHOICE, in ANY way imaginable, then you are breaking your social contract. "
Okay then, whenever you drive a car, you're creating a risk that you could hit someone. Even if you don't, you're creating more traffic for other drivers. So you're hurting other people and should stop. Buying any product at all could mean that a store runs out and someone else can't get the product that he wants because you bought it. So you should never buy anything because that could hurt other people.
Serious decision making is about trade-offs. You have to weigh the costs of something against the benefits. Focusing only on one side of the ledger and ignoring the other is a way to make all sorts of insane decisions.
I could not find a source regarding a person being allergic to all types of vaccines. But if you say so, alright, those 1000 people are not the current problem. That was really a strawman on your part. Because it is obvious the problem that I am addressing isn't about 1000 people in 341m population. But fair enough. I'm sorry. We shall exclude those people obviously, if they are allergic to all types of vaccines. Also we need to know what kind of allergy are we talking about. Would the vaccine kill them or they get a rash? Because that matters a lot.
Excluding people for vaccination depends on a lot of things. But your argument only postpones vaccination, which in most guidelines, you cannot get a jab right after you got COVID anyways even if you wanted to.
Again, there are more than one type of vaccine to choose from. Also such calculating for such measures must be done on a large scale, it isn't something that one person can predict personally.
We have agreed on a social contract. You can deny it all you want. But this debate has been done to the death in philosophy for the past 2500 years or so. There is nothing new to add to it. As I said, you can debate it again on a philosophical level. But most of the things people do are because they are part of the society and they respect the contract not because they are afraid of getting caught by the police. The reason you have agreed is because you are already benefiting the contract. You can't have it both ways.
Good analogy with the car. We do put people in danger. That's why we don't get to decide what the rules should be on an individual level. You can't say I am an excellent driver hence the speed limit doesn't apply to me. Or I have very strong lungs so my car can pollute more than the standard.
These trade offs can't be set on an individual level. Different governments have taken different measures. The data is available. None so far have suggested not getting vaccinated is better.
This is the result of anti-vaxx movement that predates COVID. It is as logical now as it was before, only with much direr consequences.
Conscience does not merely tell us what is right or what is wrong; conscience fulfills a much more fundamental, much more important role: conscience is our awareness of responsibility.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
If they have to decide already that they're going to cancel an event that would have been in June, even after the COVID crisis is over, then it's time to question whether there will ever be another in-person E3 ever again. COVID is never going to go away entirely, and now that we have vaccines, treatments, and a milder variant, there probably isn't going to be any future change in the disease that causes an in-person E3 to make more sense than in 2022.
Mild variant that seems to be packing hospitals once again. The cognitive dissonance is real.
Hospitals go where the money is... just like climate scientists. Bogus climate data, bogus hospital admissions data.
We are turning this thread into a political one, so I will leave you to have the last word.
Indeed. I'm not responding anymore because I'm not interested in pointless arguing. Not sure about the UK, but in North America we've becoming politically entrenched and socially divided. Discussion, consensus, compromise, and common ground are nearly impossible on all but the shallowest levels. Sadly I see us as a fractured society divided and don't think healing is coming anytime soon.
This is political, but a different subject so I will post gain. I see us as more divided here, how much do you feel the changes we are seeing in our societies are down to social media? We have also had a move over the past twenty years to less impartiality from all our broadcasters and indeed more "worry" as news. To me it seems to have led to more dissent and anger from all sides, including those I would not characterise as having a "side".
As for "overwhelming consensus of medical advice", consensus isn't the same as evidence. For that matter, even the "consensus" manufactured by aggressively censoring disagreement is itself constantly changing.
It is evidence based opinions by professionals who understand the fine details, read the current relevant literature and arrive at conclusion that are the same or very similar to what other knowledgeable individuals concluded. It's a large informal version of peer review. I'll go with that consensus every day of the week over obscure one-of "evidence."
As to censoring disagreement, that's not what's happening. Shouting down potentially harmful misinformation, yes, that's happening as it should be and not vigorously enough, IMO, since social media can disseminate irresponsible and harmful misinformation very quickly and very widely.
At the end of the day, you know stuff about computer HW and software so your opinions on those subjects have credibility and respect. Why don't you try extending the same courtesy to medical professionals who are in fact overwhelmingly messaging the same message instead of thinking that your superior intellect and googling skills makes what you have to say equal to what they're saying.
That's not just disrespectful to the knowledge of professionals in other fields, it's also mildly delusional and arrogant although pretty well the sign of the times in which we now live..
So would you then consider the Great Barrington Declaration, which was written by respected epidemiologists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, to be misinformation that needed to be censored? Because recent FOIA requests revealed that Fauci and his thugs aggressively tried to get it buried and killed. If you're not familiar with the Great Barrington Declaration, then that's kind of the point. Just because you don't notice censorship doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
What can often happen is that among experts in some field, 70% think that A is better than B, and 30% think that B is better than A. But the former group feels strongly enough about it to try to punish anyone for saying that B is better. The people who think B is better mostly figure out that saying so is bad for your career, so they keep their mouth shut. Maybe only 3% of the experts are willing to speak up and say that B is better than A. But that doesn't mean that there's an overwhelming consensus that A is better than B. All that it means is that experts disagree, but the claims that B is better are being censored or otherwise penalized.
More fundamentally, science isn't about consensus. It's about evidence. There has at various times in the past been a consensus around all sorts of things that weren't true. If you've got the evidence to back your claims, then consensus will usually follow. But there are a lot of things that we simply don't know because getting the evidence that would prove things one way or another is too hard. In such situations, the only scientifically honest thing to say is that we don't know.
Yes I'm aware of it and also how Sweden tried to do that and failed miserably at it compared to their Scandinavian neighbors. It's also not censored and is readily available for anyone to read as it has always been.
Not aware of "Fauci and his thugs" though but then I stay far away from Trumpist propaganda.
Also, 70% itself is a pretty good consensus. If 3% want to continue trying to convince the 70%, so be it. But 70% is the very poster-child of a supermajority, and any plan of action endorsed by 70% of the applicable experts, in such a complex case, makes a very strong case for said plan being the most appropriate.
I think this situation is crappy, but we can do nothing. These protection measures are for all of us. In 2020 before the Covid started, I was in Italy at a festival. I got very sick and found out later that I had Covid. I panicked and soon got into the hospital. I was counting my last days until my doctor changed my medicine. I started taking anti-inflammatory capsules and got better in 5 days. I continued my treatment home. I was buying my medicine from niclosam.com. I am happy I got better, and I recommend it with trust.
In Singapore they make you pay more for medical care if you are not vaccinated. Seems to work wonders people always let their principles fly out the window when they get hit in the pocket.
Comments
As to censoring disagreement, that's not what's happening. Shouting down potentially harmful misinformation, yes, that's happening as it should be and not vigorously enough, IMO, since social media can disseminate irresponsible and harmful misinformation very quickly and very widely.
At the end of the day, you know stuff about computer HW and software so your opinions on those subjects have credibility and respect. Why don't you try extending the same courtesy to medical professionals who are in fact overwhelmingly messaging the same message instead of thinking that your superior intellect and googling skills makes what you have to say equal to what they're saying.
That's not just disrespectful to the knowledge of professionals in other fields, it's also mildly delusional and arrogant although pretty well the sign of the times in which we now live..
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Do keep us up to date on the show or lack of it mind you.
The economy is suffering, if everyone over 15 (I am still not sure about children) was vaccinated we might not need lockdowns. Some of your arguments are quite valid, but there are no alternatives. Yes, being in doors puts you at more risk, but being indoors in an office would be a greater risk. Also if people were not at home they would be at home, outside, on public transport and at the office, that would be worse.
We are turning this thread into a political one, so I will leave you to have the last word.
"Oh darn, I have these E3 plans and I don't want to talk to people. Better blame covid."
Well of course there are good reasons not to get vaccinated. For starters, some people know that they are very allergic to a key ingredient in vaccines. That's estimated to be about 1000 or so adults in the United States, which isn't very many, but even one is enough to destroy your claim that there are no good reasons not to get vaccinated. More broadly, someone who has a very nasty reaction to one shot of a vaccine probably shouldn't get another shot of that same vaccine.
The studies of the effects of vaccination generally exclude people who have previously had COVID and recovered. We know that vaccination helps a lot if you don't have any previous source of immunity. Vaccination may still help a little in that case, but natural immunity already provides about what you were hoping to get from being vaccinated, and studies to determine whether vaccines work have tended to conspicuously exclude people who already had COVID. People used to know this, which is why, for example, people who have actually had measles are told not to subsequently get vaccinated for it.
There's also the issue that the COVID vaccine has relatively nasty side effects as vaccines go. Meanwhile, the marginal benefit of additional doses drops off very sharply. For example, in the big Pfizer study of the effects of booster shots, among people under the age of 30, there were zero people who got a booster and were hospitalized for COVID. There were also zero people who got a placebo (previously vaccinated but no booster) and were hospitalized for COVID. But there was one person who was hospitalized for a reaction to the booster shot.
If the goal is specifically to reduce COVID-related hospitalizations, then teenage boys with prior immunity (whether natural immunity from a COVID infection or vaccinated and considering a booster) would be banned from getting the mRNA vaccines. The risk of being hospitalized for myocarditis as a reaction to the shot is only one in a few thousand, but that's much greater than the change in hospitalization chance from a COVID infection that a booster shot makes in that demographic.
Certainly, a lot of people should get vaccinated, and that's why a lot of people have been. But not everyone. There are exceptions.
"When you are living in a society you have agreed to a social contract by default."
No, we are not. We have written laws that you have to obey. But an unwritten social contract is an arbitrarily malleable rhetorical device that can be claimed to say whatever the person appealing to it finds convenient that day. Charlatans and demagogues sometimes like to appeal to a social contract because it sounds better than saying "you have to do this solely because I said so", but it's not at all similar to a contract, and the name is an intentionally deceptive misnomer.
"When you become a liability, a risk to others, harm others, put others in risk, increase your potential harm to others, by CHOICE, in ANY way imaginable, then you are breaking your social contract. "
Okay then, whenever you drive a car, you're creating a risk that you could hit someone. Even if you don't, you're creating more traffic for other drivers. So you're hurting other people and should stop. Buying any product at all could mean that a store runs out and someone else can't get the product that he wants because you bought it. So you should never buy anything because that could hurt other people.
Serious decision making is about trade-offs. You have to weigh the costs of something against the benefits. Focusing only on one side of the ledger and ignoring the other is a way to make all sorts of insane decisions.
The question of whether to have lockdowns or mask mandates or vaccine mandates or whatever is a political question, not a medical one. It is disingenuous to say that we "needed" to do this or that. No, we didn't need to, and some places didn't. And places like Sweden and Florida that rejected lockdowns didn't face apocalyptic consequences as a result, no matter how much left-wing media screamed at them about it.
If you want to compare states in the United States, we've effectively done an implicit experiment with some states having strict lockdowns and others little or none at all. There are some states where basically everyone wears masks in public, and some where hardly anyone ever wears a mask. And it doesn't make much of a difference to COVID case rates, hospitalizations, or death rates.
In the UK, most of the people who are dying of COVID are vaccinated. That's how it goes once a high enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. If 95% of high risk people are vaccinated, and 70% of COVID deaths are vaccinated, then that's good evidence that the vaccine does a lot of good. But the marginal effect of getting that last 5% vaccinated wouldn't be that huge.
What can often happen is that among experts in some field, 70% think that A is better than B, and 30% think that B is better than A. But the former group feels strongly enough about it to try to punish anyone for saying that B is better. The people who think B is better mostly figure out that saying so is bad for your career, so they keep their mouth shut. Maybe only 3% of the experts are willing to speak up and say that B is better than A. But that doesn't mean that there's an overwhelming consensus that A is better than B. All that it means is that experts disagree, but the claims that B is better are being censored or otherwise penalized.
More fundamentally, science isn't about consensus. It's about evidence. There has at various times in the past been a consensus around all sorts of things that weren't true. If you've got the evidence to back your claims, then consensus will usually follow. But there are a lot of things that we simply don't know because getting the evidence that would prove things one way or another is too hard. In such situations, the only scientifically honest thing to say is that we don't know.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Not aware of "Fauci and his thugs" though but then I stay far away from Trumpist propaganda.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Excluding people for vaccination depends on a lot of things. But your argument only postpones vaccination, which in most guidelines, you cannot get a jab right after you got COVID anyways even if you wanted to.
Again, there are more than one type of vaccine to choose from. Also such calculating for such measures must be done on a large scale, it isn't something that one person can predict personally.
We have agreed on a social contract. You can deny it all you want. But this debate has been done to the death in philosophy for the past 2500 years or so. There is nothing new to add to it. As I said, you can debate it again on a philosophical level. But most of the things people do are because they are part of the society and they respect the contract not because they are afraid of getting caught by the police. The reason you have agreed is because you are already benefiting the contract. You can't have it both ways.
Good analogy with the car. We do put people in danger. That's why we don't get to decide what the rules should be on an individual level. You can't say I am an excellent driver hence the speed limit doesn't apply to me. Or I have very strong lungs so my car can pollute more than the standard.
These trade offs can't be set on an individual level. Different governments have taken different measures. The data is available. None so far have suggested not getting vaccinated is better.
This is the result of anti-vaxx movement that predates COVID. It is as logical now as it was before, only with much direr consequences.
Conscience does not merely tell us what is right or what is wrong; conscience fulfills a much more fundamental, much more important role: conscience is our awareness of responsibility.
Hospitals go where the money is... just like climate scientists. Bogus climate data, bogus hospital admissions data.
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
By then we'll just have another more stronger virus to worry about, enjoy that thought!
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
Which way to the sex room?