Negatory

Careful trying to use math as your high horse, because there is actually validity in what Ratner is saying from a mathematical perspective. Marginal changes in R0 for an extremely infectious disease do not significantly affect the ultimate end state. This is because a population is limited, so exponential growth is ultimately only possible at the beginning. And logistic limiting effects are basically unimportant until a huge amount of society has been infected. This is due to the fact that, even with masking and vaccines for the entire population, the vaccine would spread with an R0 well greater than 1. That’s what actually matters. None of this feel good, I have less likelihood to give COVID to my kids when they are at home, bs. The truth is, they’ll just get it in the future. In reality, with an R0 estimated around 5, with vaccines that are 50% effective (many studies dispute this and estimate it closer to 10-30%), you’d still need masks and social distancing to be close to 60-70% effective. Good thing the CDC, in internal modeling, estimates masking effectiveness around 20-30%. For a good summary, just read the delta predictions on the last source below. Bottom line is that it is nigh impossible to stop this with the vaccines we have. Sources: R0 of Delta: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34369565/ Vaccines are not that effective after a short period of time: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y Masking efficacy is estimated at 20-30%: (page 20) In reality, all that these mandates do (for a shot that is not as effective as we wish it was) are draw out the inevitable - most of the population will get infected at some point. If hospitals are fine - and they ARE right now, from a national perspective - what’s the benefit to society of the blue curve vs the red one? Yeah, people are going to die. But there actually isn’t much you can do about it, and most of it really is their own choice as to whether they want to be vaccinated or not. We should do what we can to “flatten the curve” to a level that is sustainable from a healthcare perspective. The vaccine has been extremely effective in reducing hospitalizations and death for society to a sustainable level. Curve: flattened. If we’re sustainable now, then we have won. Mandates aren’t going to help society any more, and instead will only serve as a tool to continue politicization of the masses. The only thing that would actually work is having people stay home and actually limit contact - a la China - but we’ve seen the disastrous effects of that policy on both the economy and society. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

To be clear, a 38% vs 25% is more like 50% more likely to be infected. Just like if it was 10% vs 1% it wouldn’t be 9% - it’d be 1000%.

Yep, sure have. Basic training and tech school. More to follow, probably. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-11-02/how-the-military-is-handling-troops-who-refuse-coronavirus-vaccines?context=amp

Yeah. When you put it that way, f$&% that. I’m not interested in being a pawn in another failed war like Vietnam. At the same time, if we don’t use our military for things like this, it begs the question as to what’s the point of even having the military we have? Do we only exist to police Iran/N Korea/etc?

That is like 5% of the total force. Time to do more with less I guess.

I think you really only need to look at the USS Theodore Roosevelt to invalidate almost all of these arguments. They can just apply the lessons learned from that experience to basically any potential combat scenario and, bam, everyone in the military must be vaccinated. In this case, does nuance of one's opinion really matter?

I can agree with this for children. At least I can agree that the evidence supporting the need to get vaccines for healthy youth is shaky. But do you guys support boosters for those over the age of 50 or 60? Boosters for those with BMIs > XX? Maybe boosters for those with certain immune issues? Because there are very little actual analytical or data based reasons not to other than political propaganda says to be a pain in the ass to the “liberal” branch of society. Thats the main issue with a lot of this conversation. Many folks on here are taking absolutely indefensible black and white stances (no boosters whatsoever, no shots whatsoever!) with no justification other than their political circle wouldn’t like it disguised with an “I don’t feel like it.” Also, it’s a fallacy to say that an argument is incorrect (some people should get boosters) just because they said something else that may not be true (it’s imperative for children to be vaccinated). You don’t get to conveniently ignore all of the evidence of science or experts or whatever just because you disagree with one conclusion.

I talked personally with Gen Moseley about this ~10 years ago and think it was genuine. But everyone is entitled to their opinions. Agree with everything you said about Bob.

One example: Gen Moseley fell on his sword for the F-22.

Duh, it’s to defend your god given right to buy an iPhone for $1000 as opposed to $2000. The price of outsourcing important manufacturing.

After Crimea, I think we can pretty much say we can do nothing. Taiwan will also fall with nothing more than a sternly worded letter from the UN.

To be clear, vaccination does reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by on the order of 90%. I mean, check out the percentage of people who are vaccinated in Scotland - virtually everyone at risk/over 60. But you end up with 30% of hospitalizations and 15% of the deaths in the unvaxxed groups - which are extremely small portions of the at risk population. It’s not like 30% of the population is unvaccinated. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58548727.amp A better argument is that we have reached the point of diminishing returns with vaccines and should stop. We have protected the at risk population - CDC reports that 99% of those 65+ are vaccinated. And as has been pointed out, transmission isn’t effectively curtailed, so getting a relatively healthy 25-50 year old to take the shot doesn’t help the population almost at all.

I think we’ll agree to disagree. Plenty of things the US gov does only provides benefit to a portion of society. The argument against your points will circle back to 2 things: 1) vaccine mandates in the past have been extremely effective with no issues, so prove this is different 2) you get value first by not having to use taxpayer money to take care of a lot of dying people and second by having a more effective healthcare system with excess capacity. Also, I’d be careful with the it’s justified because “taxpayers agree via their representatives” argument. Because that’s exactly what’s happening now. Dems were elected and now are pushing policy. It doesn’t intrinsically make it right. All this to say, I’ve already explained that this particular vaccine mandate doesn’t make sense to me because it doesn’t appreciably affect transmission/infection. I just take issue with not including nuance.

I mean, this gets deeper than this simplification. There’s plenty of counter examples in our society. Is public education a transactional relationship? How about fire departments? What about the military, even? I find the libertarian views you’re describing to be a little overly idealistic. If society was purely transactional you wouldn’t be able to have a lot of things you enjoy in America.

That’s probably an overly simplistic mindset. I’d venture that no one on these forums is capable whatsoever of meeting all their needs on their own. You rely on society for food, transportation, protection, healthcare, etc. Society and each of us must have some amount of cooperation to function. Or you can choose to go fully “into the wild,” at which point I agree your and societies decisions would actually not interact. This is not to say I agree with any more mandates. The point is black and white isn’t an effective way to argue in my opinion.

Can you link the data? Also, how can a death rate be 2-4 times higher than hospitalization for those 50+?

I bet there will be a Covid vaccine, maybe not C19, but I don’t see this thing just disappearing

If I recall correctly, 5 looks isn’t official yet and there is not a date it will be as of now, although they’re targeting a couple of years from now.

Dissolve the Fed, bring back normal economic cycles.

Correcting errors I made. My data comparison on COVID vs the Flu was bad. I presented COVID case rates / 100k over a 4 week period (the UK study) compared to case rates / 100k over a 52 week period (CDC flu season data). That means, if you actually want to make an apples to apples comparison of the two, you have to multiply the infection/hospitalization/death rate of the 4 week study by 52/4 or 14. Turns out when you do that, for kids <18, yeah, COVID = the flu. But for populations older than 18, COVID actually is an order of magnitude worse. Here's a good source for cumulative hospitalization rate for COVID. Check out any 1 year timeline (I pulled from 7 Mar 20 to March 6 21): https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html 0-4: ~45/100k 5-17: ~28/100k 18-49: ~275/100k 50-64: ~690/100k 65+: ~1500/100k Again, the CDC data on 17-18 flu: Still not as different as some sources have led you to believe. For hospitalizations, flu is actually worse for ages 0-4 and 5-17. But COVID is significantly worse in the 18-64 year group, ~3-5 times worse. Strangely, COVID is only about 50% worse for the 65+ age group. Also, I couldn't find a really clean source to present death rates. But rough looks show that those do seem to be significantly higher for COVID than the flu (on the order of 10 times higher for 18-65+). Don't want to present that without having a good source, so I'll just defer that discussion. With that being said, combined evidence that transmission is significantly less impacted by vaccination than originally thought, I still wouldn't push for children to get mandatory vaccinations. And I still am leaning towards not making vaccines mandatory for anyone. I stand by my belief that herd immunity is a dumb myth. Still haven't seen anything convincing me that transmission is affected enough to warrant mandates. And recent masking studies point to masks only being between 10-20% effective. We should stop wearing those now. Sorry for bad data.

Death rates are less susceptible to selection bias. If you die, there is a high chance that you will be counted in the data. If you get COVID but don't go to the hospital, it relies on you getting tested on your own (for the most part).

Have to point out a flaw in my analysis. The rates of infection between vaxxed/unvaxxed could easily be biased by "anti-vaxxers" being significantly less likely to get tested for COVID. That means that the actual rate of cases per 100k could be significantly higher than just a population analysis. Would need to see results from a random sampling of the population to get a more accurate view.

Sure, totally agree. I think a big portion is not just labeling yourself or another person simply a liberal or a conservative. It’s too constraining and causes you to prejudge everything they say. I won’t devolve this thread further, but if we cherry-pick outlier opinions out of every year we can find some pretty wild variations for every single issue that exists. Be happy to debate this somewhere else.

I agree with almost everything you said prior to this point in your response. But, as feedback, I think arguments like the ones I quoted above reach too far. They debase the rest of your valid points, my brain turns off, and I have a hard time getting on board with your other reasonable points. The big picture reason is that these points are not based in evidence; they are based in a comparison to the democratic party/liberals or anecdotal feelings. I know the liberals suck. But just because liberals suck doesn't mean that conservative are doing anything correctly. If your point is that both have issues, then I'm fully on board - I just didn't get that through your argument. - Data shows that global warming models have actually been very accurate. Yes, you can cherry pick one off studies that were wrong. But large aggregate studies commissioned by places such as the IPCC have done a very good job of predicting the changes that have actually occurred over the last 50 years. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming Why do conservatives argue global warming is not a threat? Because I have never seen any data that actually supports their viewpoint. It's all feelings reminiscent of the folks who said COVID would clear up in Apr 2020 when the weather got warmer. The facts are that the climate is warming, weather events are increasing, and local weather is going to shift significantly. I have absolutely no faith in the ability for national or global capitalistic society to peacefully and effectively rotate where agrarian lands are in the world, so I think that we are in for a bad time. The refusal to engage on the global warming issue from the republican party makes no sense to me. - Data shows that republicans support nuclear power ~2:1 whereas dems oppose it as a whole. This is a huge issue with the democratic party. But why then do republican controlled governments never produce meaningful legislation, infrastructure, or change? - Feeling about the president are purely anecdotal. Joe Biden may very well be senile and fragile; in fact, many liberals I know wouldn't argue with that. But it just rings really hollow when conservatives chose not to criticize Trump as a narcissistic, absolutely uncharismatic bully who had similar guffaws when he was in power. And they still don't, in many cases. I don't understand it. I think conservatives would do well to gain support if they would denounce the previous administration's flaws more resolutely. But you probably can't, as it would split party support. Catch-22, I guess, but doesn't make it better. As a bipartisan measure, I would support age limits for office. - Data shows that inflation is not a single party issue. The only reason the economy didn't collapse during the pandemic in the Trump admin was quantitative easing. $3T in 2 months. Fucking criminal, but maybe it was worth it so that his voters could say that republican policies = "good economy." A huge contributor to current inflation. Inferring that the dems are the root cause behind inflation is dishonest. Biden has put in about $1.2T in the last 9 months, so I'm not saying the democrats are not contributing to the problem. Plus, it all started with Bush with $2T right at the end of his presidency, so does blame for starting these false economies lie there? It would be helpful if we could recognize that both sides, conservative and liberal, contribute to this problem when they use things like QE. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm I think what it really comes down to is what I've said all along: It's hard to have meaningful discourse in a two party system where you have to pledge allegiance to one side. I don't think anyone can reasonably support all the views of one of the parties without compromising some personal values or beliefs. That leads to people unfairly judging other folks based on just a few of their beliefs. This, in turn, only reinforces tribalism which leads to us resorting to emotional arguments.

I dunno. I looked at data and it didn’t align with my previous beliefs. When I looked into it more, it seemed like some of those beliefs may be incorrect. So now I’m adjusting my beliefs to fit reality. I still believe some past beliefs were justified. I think there was evidence that the vaccine was effective from a transmission standpoint against non-Delta COVID. And initial evidence of mortality/hospitalization pointed to COVID being worse than it has been recently (1-2% mortality estimates). I am aware that some of those sources could have been biased. But even looking through that lens, I think I still support vaccination in the Dec-Apr timeframe. What really did it for me, though, was when I was talking to one of my buddies. He is very pro vax, in the medical field as a nurse. We have often talked about anti-vax misinformation. I was pointing out some studies that said that herd immunity may be impossible with delta. And his response was not to actually engage with my points. It was to call me a conspiracy theorist idiot. It was absurd. It probably is similar to experiences you guys have had. Maybe even reminded you of experiences you’ve had talking to me on this forum lol. I hope not, because that attitude that you have to comply with the mainstream viewpoint or you are labeled an idiot is absolutely maddening. I don’t know. I will say the Conservative branch of politics usually does themselves a disservice. They don’t usually present reputable studies. They don’t usually present data in a coherent manner. They rely too much on anecdotal evidence. I think they would have a much better time convincing moderates if they would try to craft more intellectual and less emotionally charged arguments. But, again, that’s coming from months of bias, so I’m probably missing something. I am looking at many statistics presented from “liberal” perspectives with much more scrutiny.