COVID-19 (Aka China Virus)

[Lord Ratner]

11 minutes ago, DosXX said:

Hospitalization/death rate with no countermeasures less than or equal to the flu rate is an clear line you could point to. Suspect next variant will be there already.

Which implies that the flu has always existed at the literal edge of contagions that require a federally-mandated response. 

 

I doubt most Americans would have accepted that characterization of the flu before everything became a political battle.

 

But that would at least be *something.* We have been given nothing.

[Negatory]

To play devils advocate, you don’t get to ask that question and not have the same thrown back at you. You’ll find it’s equally difficult to answer.

What level of annual mortality risk are you willing to accept? Are you good with a 5-15% mortality risk for a highly contagious disease for those over the age of 70ish? If not, what mortality risk do you think is good? Should we let the disease spread freely throughout our society? Or do you think there should be any attempt to slow the spread? Is a 1-2% risk of mortality for those over 60 okay? What level of hospitalization of Americans are you comfortable with? How many months of cancelling elective surgeries and minor medical care are you comfortable with?

I think most people went into this with good intentions. Decrease the absurdly high risk that some demographics would be literally decimated, somehow. I think we’ve now effectively done that and should call this complete, but my point is that it’s not easy to put an effective bounds on what the goals should be from either viewpoint. As absurd as it is that Fauci is arguing he thinks we should potentially wear masks ad infinitum, it’s also absurd in my view that some people - some of them on this forum - think we should have done nothing ever. There’s a balance.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Negatory

[VMFA187]

55 minutes ago, Negatory said:

To play devils advocate, you don’t get to ask that question and not have the same thrown back at you. You’ll find it’s equally difficult to answer.

What level of annual mortality risk are you willing to accept? Are you good with a 5-15% mortality risk for a highly contagious disease for those over the age of 70ish? If not, what mortality risk do you think is good? Should we let the disease spread freely throughout our society? Or do you think there should be any attempt to slow the spread? Is a 1-2% risk of mortality for those over 60 okay? What level of hospitalization of Americans are you comfortable with? How many months of cancelling elective surgeries and minor medical care are you comfortable with?

I think most people went into this with good intentions. Decrease the absurdly high risk that some demographics would be literally decimated, somehow. I think we’ve now effectively done that and should call this complete, but my point is that it’s not easy to put an effective bounds on what the goals should be from either viewpoint. As absurd as it is that Fauci is arguing he thinks we should potentially wear masks ad infinitum, it’s also absurd in my view that some people - some of them on this forum - think we should have done nothing ever. There’s a balance.

The annual mortality of people over 70 is > 4%. Without whatever you want to add for covid. For your SA. 

That "balance" should have ended long ago. Having the White House tell its citizens they and their families are facing death is far from that when we all know better. 

[VMFA187]

Here is my question, maybe it is a year early... But how do we hold those accountable who made this a farce? 

[Negatory]

Here’s a more pointed devils advocate question, because you’re not actually answering my questions. Let’s imagine there is a new disease that just came out. You’re in charge of figuring out the response. Here’s the question:

How many excess deaths should we accept? And the answer is not any unless you’re an anarchist, because I’ll just pose a hypothetical illness that kills 320M Americans as my example. Where obviously something like that would necessitate an extensive government reaction to stave off total societal collapse.

The questions get a lot harder when they’re posed like this, which is why skeptics love to do it. Is it 1M excess deaths? Because we just got there. Is it 10M? Is COVID specifically okay because it just doubles to triples the mortality of old people? They are unanswerable, and asking people to describe very specific “lines in the sand” is unreasonable.

When it comes down to it, it’s all based on feelings on both sides.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Negatory

[Lord Ratner]

2 hours ago, Negatory said:

To play devils advocate, you don’t get to ask that question and not have the same thrown back at you. You’ll find it’s equally difficult to answer.

What level of annual mortality risk are you willing to accept? Are you good with a 5-15% mortality risk for a highly contagious disease for those over the age of 70ish? If not, what mortality risk do you think is good? Should we let the disease spread freely throughout our society? Or do you think there should be any attempt to slow the spread? Is a 1-2% risk of mortality for those over 60 okay? What level of hospitalization of Americans are you comfortable with? How many months of cancelling elective surgeries and minor medical care are you comfortable with?

I think most people went into this with good intentions. Decrease the absurdly high risk that some demographics would be literally decimated, somehow. I think we’ve now effectively done that and should call this complete, but my point is that it’s not easy to put an effective bounds on what the goals should be from either viewpoint. As absurd as it is that Fauci is arguing he thinks we should potentially wear masks ad infinitum, it’s also absurd in my view that some people - some of them on this forum - think we should have done nothing ever. There’s a balance.

Actually it's very easy for me. No mandates.

 

I do not believe they work, because humans don't work that way. If the mortality rate is sufficient to justify a lockdown, the society will lock down on their own. Again, and to be crystal clear, it has nothing to do with what makes the most sense. It has to do with what is possible, and it is not possible to lock down a population of humans without a true threat. And this was not a true threat.

 

Do I wish that humans were more rational? Not really. I accept humanity for what it is and I am continually amazed triumphs. Those who spend their days lamenting the shortcomings of our species are fantastically myopic.

 

As for mortality rates, I find them equally uncompelling. Which old people are you considering? How about the millions of people over 60 that have no interest in lockdowns, or being protected against their will? There are perfectly acceptable ways to protect yourself from the vaccine that do not require everybody else to stop going to TJ Maxx, or getting a shot they don't want. Since, as you well know, the vaccine does not stop the spread, exactly what is the mandate accomplishing?

 

I think there is at least a debatable premise pre-vaccine, but once the vaccine exists and is accessible, we go back to letting people make their own decisions. Two weeks to stop the spread was reasonable. It would have been equally reasonable to say "we will lock down until there are available hospital beds." 

 

But we have had available hospital beds now for over a year. So no, it's not particularly hard at all to come up with a reasonable metric. But the time for reasonable metrics passed over a year ago. Everything we're doing now has nothing to do with the disease and everything to do with a battle of ideologies.

[Lord Ratner]

50 minutes ago, Negatory said:

Here’s a more pointed devils advocate question, because you’re not actually answering my questions. Let’s imagine there is a new disease that just came out. You’re in charge of figuring out the response. Here’s the question:

How many excess deaths should we accept? And the answer is not any unless you’re an anarchist, because I’ll just pose a hypothetical illness that kills 320M Americans as my example. Where obviously something like that would necessitate an extensive government reaction to stave off total societal collapse.

The questions get a lot harder when they’re posed like this, which is why skeptics love to do it. Is it 1M excess deaths? Because we just got there. Is it 10M? Is COVID specifically okay because it just doubles to triples the mortality of old people? They are unanswerable, and asking people to describe very specific “lines in the sand” is unreasonable.

When it comes down to, its all based on feelings on both sides.

Even the framing of your question is wrong. It implies that people can't take care of themselves. They can, and they do all the time. In fact anybody who's involved in the government is we are should be see me aware that the government is largely incapable of accomplishing anything on a grand scale. It's not just an argument of Liberty, it's an argument of Lost causes. And sacrificing Liberty for a lost cause is a double whammy.

[Negatory]

Meh, don’t play because you don’t like the framing of the questions. That’s fine. It’s wholly impossible to engage in debate of merits of ideas or philosophy when you quadruple down on an intentionally absurd black and white stance.

[Negatory]

2 hours ago, VMFA187 said:

The annual mortality of people over 70 is > 4%. Without whatever you want to add for covid. For your SA. 

That "balance" should have ended long ago. Having the White House tell its citizens they and their families are facing death is far from that when we all know better. 

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Doesn’t get to 4% until age 78. At age 70 it’s closer to 1.5%. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Negatory

[Lord Ratner]

11 hours ago, Negatory said:

Meh, don’t play because you don’t like the framing of the questions. That’s fine. It’s wholly impossible to engage in debate of merits of ideas or philosophy when you quadruple down on an intentionally absurd black and white stance.

No dude, it's like asking "when is it okay to lock all the Japanese citizens up on internment camps."

Besides, I already have an example of a plausible metric. While hospitals are out of beds.

 

But the entire point of our system, which works better than any other, is that *no one* gets to arbitrarily choose the metric. 

 

When you let people decide for themselves, they generally decide correctly. To imply otherwise is to deny a few hundred years of post-enlightenment human flourishing. How quickly we lapse back into centralized control as a means to solve our problems. And look, we tried it again and it failed. But I'm supposed to accept a faulty premise or it's "black and white" thinking? Nah.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Lord Ratner

[Lord Ratner]

4 minutes ago, Negatory said:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Doesn’t get to 4% until age 78. At age 70 it’s closer to 1.5%. 

That's not how averages work...

[DosXX]

7 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Which implies that the flu has always existed at the literal edge of contagions that require a federally-mandated response. 

 

I doubt most Americans would have accepted that characterization of the flu before everything became a political battle.

 

But that would at least be *something.* We have been given nothing.

I agree and don't think the line is there, just wanted to give an example of one where mandates would clearly not make any sense since you said nobody had ever given one. 

[pawnman]

8 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Which implies that the flu has always existed at the literal edge of contagions that require a federally-mandated response. 

 

I doubt most Americans would have accepted that characterization of the flu before everything became a political battle.

 

But that would at least be *something.* We have been given nothing.

And yet I've never seen medical professionals or the military protest flu vaccine requirements...

[BashiChuni]

[Negatory]

11 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

That's not how averages work...

Please do enlighten me, how do averages work? And what is your point? Also, remember that I specifically was talking about folks with a COVID death rate from 5-15% when this reply was created, so make sure to include only the ages that that statistic applies to. Show your work.

Oh and if your point is that the death rate for each age is actually lower because there are fewer males than females at those ages, then I totally agree. Thanks, I just figured that would be lost so I just halfed it for y’all.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Negatory

[Lord Ratner]

48 minutes ago, Negatory said:

Please do enlighten me, how do averages work? And what is your point? Also, remember that I specifically was talking about folks with a COVID death rate from 5-15% when this reply was created, so make sure to include only the ages that that statistic applies to. Show your work.

Oh and if your point is that the death rate for each age is actually lower because there are fewer males than females at those ages, then I totally agree. Thanks, I just figured that would be lost so I just halfed it for y’all.

You can't take the minimum percentage for a group of people and cite that as the percentage. The statistic was that people over the age of 70, as a group, experience a 4% fatality rate per year. That means that some significant portion of that group is going to experience a lower fatality rate, well another portion experiences a higher rate. 

 

He didn't say "people above the age of 70 have a rate of death within their one year age range of 4% or greater.

 

People over 70 is the group. You have to take the mortality rate of the whole group.

Using your own citation, at 60 years old you already have a probability of death of 1.1%. so in this case I think you are misreading the statistics.

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Lord Ratner

[ViperMan]

14 hours ago, Negatory said:

Here’s a more pointed devils advocate question, because you’re not actually answering my questions. Let’s imagine there is a new disease that just came out. You’re in charge of figuring out the response. Here’s the question:

How many excess deaths should we accept? And the answer is not any unless you’re an anarchist, because I’ll just pose a hypothetical illness that kills 320M Americans as my example. Where obviously something like that would necessitate an extensive government reaction to stave off total societal collapse.

The questions get a lot harder when they’re posed like this, which is why skeptics love to do it. Is it 1M excess deaths? Because we just got there. Is it 10M? Is COVID specifically okay because it just doubles to triples the mortality of old people? They are unanswerable, and asking people to describe very specific “lines in the sand” is unreasonable.

When it comes down to it, it’s all based on feelings on both sides.

Dude, this is the prototype of an ill-formed hypothetical, meaning: it has to intentionally side-step and ignore other 2nd and 3rd order things that would happen in such a situation in order to produce its "point."

Ok, so in your construction here, you posit a virus that will kill 320M Americans? Meaning it is going to both infect, AND kill EVERYONE? Ok, I can roll with that. Mandates still aren't required. If such a disease arrived on set, you'd have people locking themselves down, and killing each other to get the vaccine. You think you'd need to mandate it at that point? Lol. Move down the continuum from there, and people's collective behavior appropriately balances it all out. No one is "accepting" any excess deaths.

[pawnman]

13 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Dude, this is the prototype of an ill-formed hypothetical, meaning: it has to intentionally side-step and ignore other 2nd and 3rd order things that would happen in such a situation in order to produce its "point."

Ok, so in your construction here, you posit a virus that will kill 320M Americans? Meaning it is going to both infect, AND kill EVERYONE? Ok, I can roll with that. Mandates still aren't required. If such a disease arrived on set, you'd have people locking themselves down, and killing each other to get the vaccine. You think you'd need to mandate it at that point? Lol. Move down the continuum from there, and people's collective behavior appropriately balances it all out. No one is "accepting" any excess deaths.

In your opinion, does this mean we should lift all the other health mandates? Polio, MMR, etc vaccines?

Would you go further... no FDA did inspections.  If a company makes tainted goods, people just won't buy them? 

 

[TheNewGazmo]

And yet I've never seen medical professionals or the military protest flu vaccine requirements...

The flu "vaccine" has been around for decades using traditional vaccine technology, historically has only had a 40-45% national take rate evem to this day (mainly by the elderly), and it has always been publically known and accepted that it only has a 40% efficacy, which ironically is turning out to be very similiar to the COVID vaccine.

[Lord Ratner]

12 minutes ago, pawnman said:

In your opinion, does this mean we should lift all the other health mandates? Polio, MMR, etc vaccines?

Would you go further... no FDA did inspections.  If a company makes tainted goods, people just won't buy them? 

 

Depends on the vaccine and the affected group.

 

For example, measles is really bad news for small children, and they can't just get the vaccine early enough to avoid it. Vaccination for measles unquestionably stops transmission, so in that case herd immunity and mandatory vaccinations is a justified goal. 

 

But I've never been against all vaccine requirements, just the ones that aren't logically it scientifically justified.

 

Similarly with inspections. Would a reasonable person taking reasonable precautions be at risk of irreversible damage without the inspection process? That can be justified, and obviously drugs fall into that category.

 

But hair stylists should not have inspection/certification, because a bad haircut or a nicked ear is not irreparable harm.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Lord Ratner

[ViperMan]

49 minutes ago, pawnman said:

In your opinion, does this mean we should lift all the other health mandates? Polio, MMR, etc vaccines?

Would you go further... no FDA did inspections.  If a company makes tainted goods, people just won't buy them?

No, to answer your question directly, but please don't miss the point of mine. There is an important distinction to be made here.

All those vaccines have been around for years (decades), they are well-understood, old technology, and most importantly, they have become part of the array of things the public accepts (see: seatbelts, no-smoking in public places, airplanes, catalytic converters on your car, etc.). There is a long list of things the American public finds acceptable that could be construed as restrictions on muh'freedom. For some reason, all those things are cool. The difference, though, is that our government has done an absolutely first rate job over the last two-ish years, giving people all manner of reasons to be suspy of what the hell is going on and in many cases to not accept the COVID vaccines as part of that "array" of things.

For example:

• Democrats feigning suspicion of a vaccine having anything to do with Trump
• Republicans feigning suspicion of a vaccine having anything to do with mandates
• Our whole-of-government response to any discussion surrounding the origin of COVID (i.e. our attraction to the natural-origin story sans evidence)
• The PTB labeling anything suggesting a lab-leak to be "conspiratorial"
• Our holyamazeballz! response to the initial reports of 94-95% vaccine effectiveness!
• Our subsequent lack of an accountable discussion that recognizes these vaccines function more as therapeutics, rather than as vaccines as we all traditionally understood them
• Our initial government response to call travel restrictions 'racist'
• Our later governmental response to not call the same travel restrictions 'racist'
• The initial edict to not mask up - the later mandate to do so
• The encouragement to go eat out in China town, followed by silence two weeks later when COVID exploded in NYC
• The focus on passing BBB with all manner of social hand-outs and goodies, as opposed to you know, focusing on this disease that is supposedly going to destroy the world
• The contrast between what was considered "ok" last year (BLM protests, tearing down statues, rioting, calling racism a 'public health crisis, etc) and what "wasn't ok" (going to work, going to school, going to visit your family at Thanksgiving)

In short, our collective response to this situation has been fully inept from the word "go" and it has continued to be inept. Worse yet, in the backdrop, there has been a constant drone of misinformation and a steady unwillingness of people on both sides of the isle to fairly address critiques coming from the other. All that to say I'm not anti-vax. I'm merely saying that when you take the sum total of the above self-contradictory set of environment variables, you are creating and enhancing the conditions that give people legitimate reasons to push back - and not all of those people are tin-hat types. Moral of the story, we screwed up, and now we need to eat our humble pie. Which in this case, means you encourage people to get vaxxed, while the rest of us move the F on with our lives.

/////////

And as far as the FDA is concerned, they have a very important role to play, but I also think their function has been largely co-opted by other industries in our corporatist society. For example, in order for something to be considered "food" in America, it can't be shown to cause harm. For something to be included in food in European societies, it must be shown to contribute nutritional value. Forgive me, because that is a complete paraphrasing of something I was made privy to a long time ago, but it stands out in my mind as an important contrast between how our society functions vs how others' do. Why is our system like this? Probably because our governmental organizations are run by industries that write rules to benefit themselves (see Agit Pai as the FCC chairman). That's a huge problem. So yes, while a properly sanctioned FDA would and can serve a vital public health function in the USA, ours currently is functioning sub-optimally. For example, we should probably have laws that preclude high-fructose corn syrup from being in everything, but we don't.

Edited December 26, 2021 by ViperMan
missing 'not'; meaning

[Sim]

Some here taken this video quite literally. 

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/how-an-experienced-medical-professional

 

[Lord Ratner]

24 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

For example, we should probably have laws that preclude high-fructose corn syrup from being in everything, but we don't.

And yet, without any law, HFCS is rapidly becoming a relic of the past.

 

Good post.

[arg]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

And yet, without any law, HFCS is rapidly becoming a relic of the past.

 

Good post.

I second that was a good post.

One reason HFCS is becoming a relic is stuff doesn't taste as good. For example, those of us that remember when Coca cola, and other things, were made with real sugar. HFCS ruined american made Coke.

 

[Lord Ratner]

4 minutes ago, arg said:

I second that was a good post.

One reason HFCS is becoming a relic is stuff doesn't taste as good. For example, those of us that remember when Coca cola, and other things, were made with real sugar. HFCS ruined american made Coke.

 

Yes, but partially hydrogenated oils are also on their way out, and those are f'n delicious.