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Author Topic: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!  (Read 199089 times)

Reckall

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #30 on: August 04, 2021, 06:05:06 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
The alternative is not treating science as a belief system, with priests and holy dogma, but instead treating it as what it is, a highly effective set of systems for developing knowledge.

I could have answered you earlier, but I decided to see others' reactions.

Notice how my very first line was:

"The problem is not "referring to science" by itself. Science is not monolithic: it learns, changes and evolves everyday. There is a reason as why they had propeller planes in WWII and we have jets today."

But I also added:

Planes, however, tend to stay up.

It was funny to see, out of the gate, Shrieking Banshee trying to shoot down my idea that, today, having faith in science gets you derided without any alternative being offered - with a derisive post lacking any alternative, but... OK 😂

However, we live in times were choices must be made. "Important Discourses About Science" cannot anymore hide themselves behind the finger of "We will never be taken to task anyway". Today what you choose to believe in will have practical, possible life-and death, results on yourself and others.

Since this pandemic exploded I choose to follow the best scientific opinion. I didn't wear a mask at the beginning, going against the grain, because they suggested that it was actually dangerous. Then they changed their tune and I changed my behaviour. It didn't surprise me, however, that there was a learning process about COVID and the best way to protect yourself and those around you.

Eirikrautha called the examples I made "strawmen" without putting any effort in debunking a single one. I guess the knowledge that they are strawmen comes from throwing bones and consulting the Loa - the very pinnacle of how human's doubts are answered. Yet, two words about why Voodoo is a better alternative would have been welcome.

I'm still curious about how many people know that virii work by injecting their own DNA or RNA into cells - so you risk to get a dose of that from them anyway. No one tackled this question. Maybe the Loa were busy.

I lost my father to COVID. Due to sheer misfortune, my 85 years old mother had to undergo emergency surgery two days after my father died. She spent two weeks in the hospital at the height of the pandemic in Northern Italy. When she came home I had to worry about her, myself and my girlfriend.

I hadn't the luxury to be able to deride this pandemic. While people like Spinachat laughed about the "Kung-Flu" (*) I had to choose how to navigate an unprecedented, dangerous event that already had revealed itself as deadly. I choose to follow the best scientific advice, paired with my own knowledge of the matter (knowledge born from reading a couple of books during the years, out of sheer curiosity about the matter, nothing more). I see many dissenting voices. Most of them come from the country that had 25% of the dead with only 4% of the World population - so maybe these voices can be useful as an explanation, for sure not as an example to follow. They also show how absolutely nothing was learned.

I and my family avoided COVID and now we all had our second shot. Were we lucky? Maybe. Some friends got it. One got "long-COVID" last Summer and, after one year, he is still listless (BTW, that the impact of a pandemic on the individual and the society as a whole is wider than the simple count of the dead is another topic seldom touched by the "Science is imperfect!" warriors from the Captain Obvious ship).

I don't wish COVID to the unvaccinated. It is petty and vulgar (what I actually hope for is that they get COVID without me wishing for it). I can only point out how, for every single negative answer here, there isn't a single answer to the question "So, what you think should be done during a pandemic? And why it should be a better solution?

(*) Just to be clear: Spinachat and the like are a boon to the society; they give a summary of all the current idiocy surrounding an event in a single post, allowing you to understand how not to think without losing precious time scrounging the internet. Twitter is another good place to find people who will never be in line to be the next who will split the atom.
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Reckall

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #31 on: August 04, 2021, 06:09:39 PM »
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.

We dealt with trivial respiratory viruses long before 2020.

True. The way we dealt with the trivial Spanish Flu became something for the history books.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

Pat
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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #32 on: August 04, 2021, 06:33:26 PM »
I could have answered you earlier, but I decided to see others' reactions.

Notice how my very first line was:

....

But I also added:
Your whole post was pretty unclear.

Since this pandemic exploded I choose to follow the best scientific opinion. I didn't wear a mask at the beginning, going against the grain, because they suggested that it was actually dangerous. Then they changed their tune and I changed my behaviour. It didn't surprise me, however, that there was a learning process about COVID and the best way to protect yourself and those around you.
There was a learning process, but you got it backwards.

I thought a mask was reasonable at the beginning. Not because there was a lot of evidence, because there wasn't. The number of mask studies in early 2020 was small, very low on the tiers of evidence-based medicine (small sample sets, not randomized etc.), focused on clinical environments not use among the public, and mostly involved N95s or occasionally surgical masks, and even then the results weren't strong. But in a crisis, you can't wait for conclusive evidence. You have to act, before all the information is in. So it would have been reasonable, but they were recommending against it.

But it didn't take long before it became clear covid-19 was primarily spread via aerosolization, not droplets or fomites. This explained how people on busses in China could catch the disease, even though they were facing the other way and many rows behind the infected person. It explained all the viral particles they detected, hours or days later, in ventilation systems. It explained the superspreader events, where almost every infection occurred indoors. It explained the association between talking and catching the disease. Among other lines of evidence.

This destroyed the rationale behind masks, because even N95 masks can't stop the typical aerosolized particle. It also destroyed the rationale behind cleaning surfaces and cleaning hands, and made things like plastic barriers counter-indicated. If the primary method of transmission is tiny particles that can stay airborne for hours and days in areas with limited airflow, and that build up over time, particularly when people have their mouth open when singing or talking, and which can pass through masks as if they weren't there, then we should have switched gears and started to worry more about things like ventilation. But that remained a secondary concern.

And then the Danmask study came out, the first large randomized trial of cloth masks worn by the general public, and it showed no effect. And the numerous statistical analyses of countries, regions, and cities before and after mask mandates, which in toto didn't show any effect. (Sure, with hundreds of natural experiments, a few showed significant results if looked at in isolation, but that's how statistics work. If you throw a 1d20 once, there's only a 5% chance of rolling a 20. But if you roll a couple hundred times, then you'll probably roll a few 20s.) These were just nails in the coffin of the idea that masks worked.

But politicians and bureaucrats kept imposing mask mandates, against all the science. They keep advising people to wear them, even when there are known adverse effects, like inhibiting the development of basic social skills in children. It took until this April for the CDC to finally admit that covid-19 was primarily spread via aerosolization, but then we were talking about multiple masks.

Mask mandates are based on Science!, the religion. Real science is looking at the evidence.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2021, 06:36:47 PM by Pat »

HappyDaze

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #33 on: August 04, 2021, 06:36:30 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].

But rather than being purely information-oriented, they seem to have been mostly goal oriented, primarily aimed at changing people's behaviors. Even when they don't lie (and they eventually do lie; it's a natural consequence of this approach), they often convey a higher degree of certainty than is merited, because "this is absolutely effective" makes a more compelling case for action than "here are the caveats".

The problem is that's short-term thinking. Yes, pretending the world is ending unless you do X is a great way to convince people do X -- but only the first time. The second time, people will start to be more skeptical, and it will just get worse from there. It's the boy who cries wolf problem. It creates a vicious cycle where they have to keep upping the rhetoric, and the truth becomes more and more of a casualty.

If they saw their mission as simply conveying information, and relying on people to make the best choices on their own, things would have been very different. In that case, they would have built a lot of credibility. Being uncertain may discourage people in the short term, but in the long term, when they see how the science changes[1], they'll come to appreciate that they weren't sold a bunch of absolutes. People will develop trust in the information presented, and end up making better decisions.

Ironically, public health would probably have been able to accomplish more of their long term goals by not focusing on those goals, and just being honest about what they know and don't know instead.

[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".
Well, that's because the goal isn't "public health" (which is a nonsense phrase, anyway, as health is a feature of individuals).  It's control.  The people who are on TV making these pronouncements aren't doctors (despite the fact that they have Ph.Ds in medicine) or scientists; they are career bureaucrats.  I've seen as many patients in the last 20 years as Anthony Fauci (hint: it's zero).  So their number one goal is to make you do what they want.  Your actual health is secondary, at best...
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.
I know what the people who would like to use human interaction as a justification for totalitarian control consider "public health" to mean.  I just reject their arbitrarily asserted definition.  If the fact that every action we take effects others is a justification for interference in personal liberty, when are you going to stop breathing so the oxygen you are using can be better used by the many, many people smarter than you are?
You have my pity.

Eirikrautha

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #34 on: August 04, 2021, 06:41:59 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].

But rather than being purely information-oriented, they seem to have been mostly goal oriented, primarily aimed at changing people's behaviors. Even when they don't lie (and they eventually do lie; it's a natural consequence of this approach), they often convey a higher degree of certainty than is merited, because "this is absolutely effective" makes a more compelling case for action than "here are the caveats".

The problem is that's short-term thinking. Yes, pretending the world is ending unless you do X is a great way to convince people do X -- but only the first time. The second time, people will start to be more skeptical, and it will just get worse from there. It's the boy who cries wolf problem. It creates a vicious cycle where they have to keep upping the rhetoric, and the truth becomes more and more of a casualty.

If they saw their mission as simply conveying information, and relying on people to make the best choices on their own, things would have been very different. In that case, they would have built a lot of credibility. Being uncertain may discourage people in the short term, but in the long term, when they see how the science changes[1], they'll come to appreciate that they weren't sold a bunch of absolutes. People will develop trust in the information presented, and end up making better decisions.

Ironically, public health would probably have been able to accomplish more of their long term goals by not focusing on those goals, and just being honest about what they know and don't know instead.

[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".
Well, that's because the goal isn't "public health" (which is a nonsense phrase, anyway, as health is a feature of individuals).  It's control.  The people who are on TV making these pronouncements aren't doctors (despite the fact that they have Ph.Ds in medicine) or scientists; they are career bureaucrats.  I've seen as many patients in the last 20 years as Anthony Fauci (hint: it's zero).  So their number one goal is to make you do what they want.  Your actual health is secondary, at best...
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.
I know what the people who would like to use human interaction as a justification for totalitarian control consider "public health" to mean.  I just reject their arbitrarily asserted definition.  If the fact that every action we take effects others is a justification for interference in personal liberty, when are you going to stop breathing so the oxygen you are using can be better used by the many, many people smarter than you are?
You have my pity.
Having pity suggests a superiority not in evidence.  You have my contempt.

Shasarak

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Ratman_tf

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #36 on: August 04, 2021, 06:54:08 PM »
I don't wish COVID to the unvaccinated. It is petty and vulgar (what I actually hope for is that they get COVID without me wishing for it). I can only point out how, for every single negative answer here, there isn't a single answer to the question "So, what you think should be done during a pandemic? And why it should be a better solution?

Finally an interesting question.

For myself, there are too many questions to give a solid answer. This is a novel virus, with a sudden spread all over the planet. I think it's safe to say this is the first time we've had quite this kind of pandemic, and times and politics and medicine and technology have changed since previous pandemics.
Notice that in the first few months, people were generally willing to do what seemed prudent. We didn't have much data on the virus and so extreme measure like lockdowns were accepted without too much fuss.
But as the months dragged on into over a year, the details started to come together. People started to question the severity of the restrictions versus the risk of infection. It's nearly impossible to control every single human. Some doink is going to go to work with a sniffle, or break lockdown to attend a wedding. That's the power of viruses. They spread because humans are social creatures and sooner or later we're going to socialize again. Unless we practice some crazy super-lockdown where no one interacts with anyone else for ever.
If Covid was more like Ebola, I think there would have been much less pushback, but it's not. People aren't exploding in the streets.
An important point. During any other epidemic, we quarantied the sick. With Covid, we tried to quarantine everyone. It didn't work because it's just not feasible.

So, I think we're at the point where individuals need to make their own risk assesment. They need to use their best judgement on when to lock down whether to get vaccinated, etc.

I have a question for you. What should be done if it does turn out that there are serious, long term health issues with the vaccinations?
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HappyDaze

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #37 on: August 04, 2021, 06:56:15 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].

But rather than being purely information-oriented, they seem to have been mostly goal oriented, primarily aimed at changing people's behaviors. Even when they don't lie (and they eventually do lie; it's a natural consequence of this approach), they often convey a higher degree of certainty than is merited, because "this is absolutely effective" makes a more compelling case for action than "here are the caveats".

The problem is that's short-term thinking. Yes, pretending the world is ending unless you do X is a great way to convince people do X -- but only the first time. The second time, people will start to be more skeptical, and it will just get worse from there. It's the boy who cries wolf problem. It creates a vicious cycle where they have to keep upping the rhetoric, and the truth becomes more and more of a casualty.

If they saw their mission as simply conveying information, and relying on people to make the best choices on their own, things would have been very different. In that case, they would have built a lot of credibility. Being uncertain may discourage people in the short term, but in the long term, when they see how the science changes[1], they'll come to appreciate that they weren't sold a bunch of absolutes. People will develop trust in the information presented, and end up making better decisions.

Ironically, public health would probably have been able to accomplish more of their long term goals by not focusing on those goals, and just being honest about what they know and don't know instead.

[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".
Well, that's because the goal isn't "public health" (which is a nonsense phrase, anyway, as health is a feature of individuals).  It's control.  The people who are on TV making these pronouncements aren't doctors (despite the fact that they have Ph.Ds in medicine) or scientists; they are career bureaucrats.  I've seen as many patients in the last 20 years as Anthony Fauci (hint: it's zero).  So their number one goal is to make you do what they want.  Your actual health is secondary, at best...
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.
I know what the people who would like to use human interaction as a justification for totalitarian control consider "public health" to mean.  I just reject their arbitrarily asserted definition.  If the fact that every action we take effects others is a justification for interference in personal liberty, when are you going to stop breathing so the oxygen you are using can be better used by the many, many people smarter than you are?
You have my pity.
Having pity suggests a superiority not in evidence.  You have my contempt.
There's a lot of evidence you choose to ignore (or cannot comprehend). Thus, I pity you.

Eirikrautha

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #38 on: August 04, 2021, 07:03:48 PM »
Eirikrautha called the examples I made "strawmen" without putting any effort in debunking a single one. I guess the knowledge that they are strawmen comes from throwing bones and consulting the Loa - the very pinnacle of how human's doubts are answered. Yet, two words about why Voodoo is a better alternative would have been welcome.
Why would I put effort into rebutting something that neither I nor anyone else I have seen on this thread have asserted?  That's the point of strawmen.  It is an rhetorical strategy to reverse the burden of proof by arguing against something no one has said.  Quote a post of mine or that I've supported you'd like me to defend.  Otherwise, your entire post was verbal masturbation, as it doesn't address any of the actual objections to the handling of this pandemic.

Covid 19 is a virus-caused disease that can be deadly to a small percentage of the old, infirm, or otherwise unhealth people.  Anyone under 70 years old without a serious health issue has a better then 99.5% chance of surviving.  Even those in serious danger because of age or health have a better then 95% chance of survival, at worst.  Rational risk assessment starts with those facts.  Though, while understandable, people who are affected by one of those particular deaths are hardly the people to look to for rational evaluations.  You have my sympathies, but your pain does not trump reality.


HappyDaze

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #39 on: August 04, 2021, 07:24:23 PM »
Eirikrautha called the examples I made "strawmen" without putting any effort in debunking a single one. I guess the knowledge that they are strawmen comes from throwing bones and consulting the Loa - the very pinnacle of how human's doubts are answered. Yet, two words about why Voodoo is a better alternative would have been welcome.
Why would I put effort into rebutting something that neither I nor anyone else I have seen on this thread have asserted?  That's the point of strawmen.  It is an rhetorical strategy to reverse the burden of proof by arguing against something no one has said.  Quote a post of mine or that I've supported you'd like me to defend.  Otherwise, your entire post was verbal masturbation, as it doesn't address any of the actual objections to the handling of this pandemic.

Covid 19 is a virus-caused disease that can be deadly to a small percentage of the old, infirm, or otherwise unhealth people.  Anyone under 70 years old without a serious health issue has a better then 99.5% chance of surviving.  Even those in serious danger because of age or health have a better then 95% chance of survival, at worst.  Rational risk assessment starts with those facts.  Though, while understandable, people who are affected by one of those particular deaths are hardly the people to look to for rational evaluations.  You have my sympathies, but your pain does not trump reality.
Survival does not mean unharmed. Not all that survive fully recover. This reality trumps your lack of empathy.

Mistwell

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #40 on: August 04, 2021, 09:41:00 PM »
Residents in San Diego, California (nominally still part of the USA) happily sign a petition to IMPRISON anyone who refuses the Chyna Virus jab.

Hahahah that's not going to happen! What's probably going to happen is something similar to that Obama Care rule, if you can afford health insurance and chooses not to, than you'd be paying a little extra on your taxes. Giving these tweets the benefit of a doubt only feeds the paranoid and increases the divide. We got enough misinformation as it is, and that's just silly.
You know the mandate got overturned, right?

The breadth and depth of the topics for which you're completely full of shit knows no bounds.

No, it did not.

Mistwell

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #41 on: August 04, 2021, 09:43:22 PM »
The vaccinations aren't even FDA approved, for crying out loud.

They have emergency approval and will gain final approval next month.

Mistwell

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #42 on: August 04, 2021, 09:45:03 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.

It was never sold as a 100% cure. They accurately reported the percentage effectiveness against each strain as it arose and none of those were 100%.

Zelen

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #43 on: August 04, 2021, 09:45:08 PM »
Masks were tried in pretty much every country / locale in the world. They didn't stop the spread anywhere.
Shutdowns were tried in pretty much every country / locale in the world. They didn't stop the spread anywhere.

In the US, cases fell naturally in spring following the seasonal variation. The vaccines had nominal (~5%) penetration into the overall population during the period of greatest decline.

Now here we are 6 months later, with the South US experiencing normal seasonal variation. In most places we are looking at 80-90% vaccination rates among the vulnerable (65+) population. Most locations in the US are similar.

Israel is more than 90% vaccinated and going into full masking both indoors and outdoors(!). Lockdowns are coming soon.
Iceland has the world's 3rd highest vaccinations and currently has more cases than they've ever had. They are saying restrictions for the next 15 years.
Australia is on complete military-enforced lockdown and still experiencing a spike in "cases" because 13 people 80-90 years old died.

Knowing mask mandates didn't work before, should we advocate for them?
Knowing lockdowns didn't work before, should we advocate for them?

Are we okay with physically assaulting people, and killing them, to enforce these policies? Because that's what it takes.

In the past century we had a number of evil governments that used human test subjects to experiment on. In many cases, these experiments provided valuable insights that could save a lot of lives. What's the argument for why we don't do that today?

At what point is it too much? Because it seems like a lot of people only care about this one metric and really aren't considering anything beyond escaping from a current campaign of psychological torture.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2021, 10:00:41 PM by Zelen »

Ratman_tf

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Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #44 on: August 04, 2021, 09:59:42 PM »
The vaccinations aren't even FDA approved, for crying out loud.

They have emergency approval and will gain final approval next month.

Good for them. One hurdle down, assuming everything goes well.

But that doesn't change the fact that the government has encouraged mass vaccinations with a vaccine that still only has emergency approval, has immunized themselves from legal responsibility for unforseen side effects, and has discouraged reporting of vaccine side effects.

They've got a long way to go before I even consider getting one of these vaccinations.
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