I have heard (frequently and for many years) that no virus has ever been isolated. I’ve even read a story years ago about one scientist that offered a million dollars to anyone who could isolate a virus, and that this challenge remains unanswered. And I also read that the mRna gene therapy (not “vaccine”) used for Covid was produced without the scientists ever having a sample of the actual virus itself.
Citations please. Maybe you should read up on logical fallacies? Start here:
I’m sorry Mikey, but this is where things get personal. This is not just stubborn wilful ignorance, it is selfish and narcissistic stubborn wilful ignorance.
Do you know what it’s like to be permanently disabled? Do you know what it is like for those around you for you to be permanently disabled?
As someone who has been the primary carer for a permanently disabled family member for the past seventeen years, I know that all too painfully well.
To have that described as “buying that bubble wrap” and “making yourself look ridiculous” and being told to “get real, dude,” is probably the most insulting and offensive thing I have ever heard said on this forum.
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@mikeboll thanks for the support! Made me smile.
I’ll take this one. Yes, scientists do isolate and study viruses. Covid is fully sequenced as is each variant.
But please, let’s stick with covid on this thread, possibly move some of this other stuff to another thread.
Well… sorta. I see a little logic in this policy (since you can’t eat with mask on anyway) that while you’re standing, exhaled droplets would travel further. Kind of a compromise vs shutting all restaurants down. But now we know the masks were mostly performance art anyway.
Well, thanks for giving me the party line! Apparently it’s “immunological naivety…” and all those other buzzwords you tossed out. Never mind that the R0 of covid is not even close to high enough to account for the those numbers. But don’t let the actual data get in the way of your narrative!
You wrote that one sentence as an example of the abuse of science. I chose to address that particular accusation out of multiple ones that were problematic. As I wrote earlier, SARS-CoV-2 does not die as soon as it dries out, and researchers did not delay studying precisely that question, which means your understanding of both the science and the history. I’m not obsessed with the first week. I’m pointing out that the supposed failure you cited did not occur and that the truth about how long the virus survives is not what you thought.
I was there, too, and I think you have this exactly backwards. The study was done immediately (and published promptly in the most widely read medical journal in the world, incidentally). The problem was that result was ambiguous as far as the public health implications were concerned: just because viruses can survive, it doesn’t mean that viruses on surfaces are a major mode of transmission. By now, it’s become clear that most transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is through the air, but that wasn’t known then, and it’s still not clear exactly how much transmission occurs via surface – it’s not an easy thing to determine. Nobody knew what the implications were at the time. I certainly didn’t, and I read the study in question when it appeared. So there was no obvious insight to communicate to the general public.
The way that ambiguity, as well as subsequent developments, was handled, however, was a major failure of public health guidance in my view. Yes, you can get infected by touching something, so you should wash your hands before touching your face (still very true), and disinfecting surfaces is not a bad thing to do. But focusing on surfaces provided a kind of public health theater to reassure the public, something that made it look like precautions were being taken (and hey, they were pretty easy) even though the real threat was very different. A real public health campaign could have been launched, based initially around masking (whose effectiveness is one of the things you’ve been misinformed about). The government could have spurred the production of high quality masks, provided good masks for free to the public, and instructed them in their use. That would primarily be a stopgap measure, however. In the long run, investment in air purification and ventilation should have been the focus. But they were downplayed because they’re harder, mostly more expensive, and more alarming to the public. Instead, we got health theater.
I know it’s hyperbole, but no one said that we were all going to die. What they (or we) said was that lots of people were going to die. And lots of people have: more than a million in the US alone, many thousands of whom died needlessly because of botched public health response and politicized spread of misinformation.
Marty, you’re a nice guy and I wish you well, but the feelings of you or anybody else is way down my list of priorities. My overriding concern here is telling the truth, to the extent I can discern it and based on a lot of professional experience, about a serious public health threat. When you get something wrong – and you have gotten quite a few things wrong in this thread – I will correct you. When the CDC gets something wrong – and they’ve gotten lots of things wrong, too – I point that out as well.
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Where are you getting this stuff? Since 1935, viruses have variously been crystalized, filtered, imaged by x-rays, electrons, optical light, atomic force microscopy, and tagged immunologically and radiologically, just for starters.
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I don’t know where you’re getting this, but it’s wrong. R for seasonal flu is about 1.3, while R for early covid was about 3.0 (likely more for later variants). If various changes to human behavior – masking, closing schools, people distancing themselves from one another – reduced transmission of respiratory viruses by, say, 40%, covid would continue to spread rapidly while flu would disappear almost as rapidly. That’s how exponential growth or decline work. (To be specific, a couple of months after a 40% reduction in spread and with everything else being equal, flu cases would drop by 90% while covid cases would increase by something like 40,000%.
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Marty, we do care about your feelings, but your feelings aren’t what determines what is real and what isn’t. That is determined on the basis of facts and evidence, assessed according to basic principles of logic and mathematics. If you think that “mainstream narratives” are wrong, you need to provide evidence to support your case and to demonstrate sound reasoning in the way you argue it.
NO.
It’s nothing to do with being “elitist” or “holy orthodoxy.” It’s a matter of getting your facts straight, having accurate and honest weights and measurements, and approaching things in a logically and mathematically coherent manner. And science doesn’t progress by “suppressing questions and trying to antagonize questioners.” The only thing that science suppresses is sloppy thinking, falsehood, unsubstantiated assertions, and fallacious reasoning.
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@glipsnort I really appreciate this nuanced and balanced history, acknowledging uncertainty, that some things were done wrong, and being specific about what it was. Thank you! Seriously. Well done, my friend. This kind of dialogue is absolutely what is necessary to get the truth out.
Well… Here’s a mocking video quoting how covid was typically reported: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U (Trigger warning: anyone who has lost their sense of humor, don’t watch).
Of course! But look at the context (also @jammycakes). My “FEEEELings” response was to a post which asked me about them, as if the author cared. Though I appreciated some of that post, I was just dishing it back. That’s all.
Regarding R0 for other flus in the 20-21 season, you are arguing it went below 1.0. I find that hard to justify. Most people were not doing the full dance with all the precautions, and there were financial incentives for every ILI to be called covid. So it seems like either side of this can be argued, since there is no definitive data. But your post does clarify. Again, thank you.
You mean like when “I am science” Fauci didn’t suppress the lab leak theory? Oh, wait… he did. Or vaccine immunity is 5.49 times better than natural immunity? No “sloppy thinking, falsehood, unsubstantiated assertions, [or] fallacious reasoning” there!
It would help your case, Marty, if you were to actually explain where you are getting the idea that Fauci “suppressed” the lab leak theory. In other words, cite your sources.
Oh, and bear in mind that there is a difference between suppressing theories and disputing them. Suppressing theories means suppressing evidence. Exactly what evidence did Fauci suppress?
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Wow, that was certainly dramatic. Did you happen to notice what we were discussing? I said that not wearing a motorcycle helmet is my right, because it doesn’t hurt anyone else. He said that I might cause his insurance premiums to go up. So I told him that he should encase himself in bubble wrap so he doesn’t fall and hurt himself, causing my insurance rates to go up.
How you turned this into me somehow laughing at or making light of any permanently disabled person is beyond me.
It has to do with following the logical conclusions of what you are espousing, something which we already know you don’t do.
Covid vaccines made without sample of virus.
I’ll keep looking for the million dollar challenge - but the current state of internet censorship makes finding certain things very hard and time consuming.
Yes I jolly well did notice what we were discussing, Mikey. And my point was that your claim that not wearing a motorcycle helmet does not hurt anyone else is wrong for the simple reason that if you were to end up in a wheelchair having suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result, you would be creating a whole world of pain and suffering not just for yourself but for your loved ones who would have to look after you as well.
Having experienced something of that pain and suffering myself, all I can say is that what you are saying here is selfish, narcissistic, and quite frankly disgusting. And the fact that you quote mined me to eliminate my reference to the fact that I’m the primary carer for someone in that kind of position is even worse.
Is it possible for me to wear a helmet and end up permanently disabled anyway? Should we just eliminate motorcycles altogether for the better good of society? Could I become permanently disabled in a car crash while wearing a seat belt? Should we eliminate driving cars altogether?
This is silliness, and I will not participate any longer.
Okay.
It was all performance. I could have just as easily spread some spittle to the people sitting 3 feet away from me in the booth across the aisle as I could walking to my seat. Besides, dining out has never been an essential part of life, and never will be.
My mindset throughout this entire charade has been: If you’re scared, then stay home, wear a mask, wash your hands 50 times a day, whatever. Just leave those of us who aren’t scared alone.
The good news is that this ordeal has caused millions to wake up to the fact that our governments don’t actually have our well being in mind, and that they outright LIE to us on a constant basis to control us.
I see you quoting this a lot, so went back to remind myself of the origin of it. The original study is here: Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 Among Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19–Like Illness with Infection-Induced or mRNA Vaccine-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Immunity — Nine States, January–September 2021 | MMWR
While newer data has better defined what is going on, the actual data seems to have been accurate and well done, with no retractions or corrections that I can see. However, it was limited, and subject to a lot of potential limitations, making the conclusions reached by many from it being too broad, though the recommendations still valid. Ironically, one of the limitations noted was that of potentially more risky behavior on the part of the unimmunized individuals, leading to their much higher rate of hospitalization. In other words, they may well have been also not masking, attending high risk public events, and not social distancing, leading to their increased hospitalizations. Human research is fraught with pitfalls, and oftentimes we have to do the best we can with the information we have available. To the CDCs credit, when additional studies came out regarding natural immunity, they published them as well, and changed recommendations to reflect the new information. By that time we were also in a new stage of the pandemic, where many had been previously infected, as well as having new variants, so you would expect that to take place from thoughtful people trying to do the best job possible to protect the public from death and disability.
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Just in case you are under the impression that I am sycophantic to the “official narrative” on covid, you might not entirely disagree with my posts here:
They all lied and patronized the public.
and here
The political messaging though out this pandemic, from the WHO and CDC down the local health authorities, has not followed the science so much as expediency.
All of it was transparently driven by policy priorities and objectives of the body politic designed more to manipulate than inform the public. If no one believes anyone anymore, they have it coming.
So I think there is room for criticism of the public health response, but in this polarized political climate the focus will be on affirmation rather than enlightenment, and retribution rather than improvement.
Personally, where the data is cloudy or policy is actually driven by economics, I favor honesty over clarity, and forthrightness over manipulation, even if that leads to public non-compliance.
Natural immunity is a case in point - for all the discussion over the level of immunity provided, the real issue is that public health authorities had no practically feasible way of certifying population scale natural immunity for millions of individuals each with their own personal story why their claim to having had covid was solid. On the other hand, vaccination is definitive and comparatively super easy to verify on a mass scale, so for expediencies sake, public health did not want to deal with natural immunity for passports or employment or anything else. Besides, vaccination on top of infection was deemed to be better protection yet, although your mileage may vary there. This policy may have been justified, but it was not driven by real data on natural immunity. It would have been more candid to state, “we are mandating vaccination for all without exception, because we have no way of tracking natural immunity even if it is effective”.
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Yeah, Marty. Look at who you are getting “support” from. Should make you wonder.
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