1539 replies to this topic

[DanCG]

And what is the difference between that and the anti-establishment anti-science individuals here using their quack web sources to support their views?

 

You are criticizing the use of Media Bias/Fact Check, but you do not criticize people posting dubious articles from non-authoritative sources to back up their particular arguments. So your criticisms seem rather inconsistent and partisan. 

 

 

 

If you don't like appeals to authority, don't get involved in science, 

 

Of course we all rely on opinions expressed by others to help form our own opinion. None of us here are generating our own data. The problems come from the steps between the actual data and the formation of an opinion.

 

Scenario:

 

Source 1 says ‘A’.

Source 2 says ‘Not A”

 

Longecity commenter 1 says “I believe ‘Not A’ because Source 2 said so, and Source 2 is more reliable than Source 1. And the reason I know Source 2 is more reliable than Source 1 is because Source 3 agrees with me.

 

Longecity commenter 2 says “I believe ‘A’ because ‘A’ fits with scientific principles and facts that I am aware of and Source 1 gave references and data to support A.

 

Commenter 1 committed the genetic fallacy and supported it by an appeal to authority. (sound familiar?).

Commenter 2 might be wrong about ‘A’ and the evidence to support ‘A’, but at least we all have something to work with and think about. Now do you see the difference?

[Hip]

So in your view, DanCG, you believe all sources are equal.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the apex of a pyramid of tens of thousands of climate scientists, are no better at understanding the climate trajectory of the Earth than your mate Jim down in the local pub, who is a painter and decorator, but reckons he knows more about the climate than the IPCC, and when he gets drunk he tells you that all these scientists are wrong.

 

You think Jim's views, and the views of the IPCC should be given equal weight. 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 11 January 2022 - 01:12 AM.

[Daniel Cooper]

If you don't like appeals to authority, don't get involved in science, keep to the humanities or stamp collecting, because the whole edifice of the scientific method is based on the authority of knowledge and fact. Not the sort of authority you have in politics or the military, but an authority based on established proven fact, on peer view journals, on institutions and careers in which people ascent to the top based on their brilliance, deep scientific understanding and achievements.

 

You're kidding right?

 

You understand, we don't believe General Relativity because "Einstein Said It", we believe it because it made predictions which were verified by experimental data, right?

 

In fact, science is supposed to to function in exactly the opposite fashion from what you've stated.

 

I know they don't teach the Socratic method anymore, but do they teach the fundamentals of the scientific method?

 

 

 

 

 

[DanCG]

So in your view, DanCG, you believe all sources are equal.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the apex of a pyramid of tens of thousands of climate scientists, are no better at understanding the climate trajectory of the Earth than your mate Jim down in the local pub, who is a painter and decorator, but reckons he knows more about the climate than the IPCC, and when he gets drunk he tells you that all these scientists are wrong.

 

You think Jim's views, and the views of the IPCC should be given equal weight. 

Your scenario does not match the distinction I laid out. Did what Jim said fit with scientific principles and facts that I am aware of? Did Jim cite pertinent references that I can check? If no, then I can't be convinced by his argument. He failed not because he is Jim the painter, he failed because he did not make a convincing argument.

[Hip]

You understand, we don't believe General Relativity because "Einstein Said It", we believe it because it made predictions which were verified by experimental data, right?

 

Exactly, but who tabulates and scrutinizes all the experimental data? It's the whole of the scientific community, and their entire infrastructure of universities, research institutions, libraries, journals, seminars, conferences, etc. When Einstein is proven right by some experimental data, it first gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is then further scrutinized by thousands of scientific experts around the world. Only when these numerous experts accept it, does it get ratified. Even in the 1950s, Einstein's theories were not fully believed. He had not convinced everyone at that point. 

 

So scientific truth is never a one man affair, this established truth arises only when thousands if not millions of scientists scrutinize all the data and agree on it. Scientific truth comes out of the massive machinery of science, which involves an army of men and women. It's that army which is the foundation of scientific authority.

 

When you get a one man band dickhead like Mercola who thinks he is smarter than the entire scientific establishment, and contradicts the scientific consensus view that vaccines are the best approach to treating the pandemic, and instead says you should be sniffing hydrogen peroxide, he should be laughed off the stage. But no, he is celebrated on Longecity. 

Edited by Hip, 11 January 2022 - 01:36 AM.

[Daniel Cooper]

Exactly, but who tabulates and scrutinizes all the experimental data? It's the whole of the scientific community, and their entire infrastructure of universities, research institutions, libraries, journals, seminars, conferences, etc. When Einstein is proven right by some experimental data, it first gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is then further scrutinized by thousands of scientific experts around the world. Only when these numerous experts accept it, does it get ratified. Even in the 1950s, Einstein's theories were not fully believed. He had not convinced everyone at that point. 

 

 

Exactly. We believe General Relativity is right not because "some smart guy" (i.e. an authority) says it's right, but because multiple researchers have performed experiments and published their data.  This is the opposite of relying on some "top man", some authority, to tell us it is correct.

[geo12the]

Exactly. We believe General Relativity is right not because "some smart guy" (i.e. an authority) says it's right, but because multiple researchers have performed experiments and published their data.  This is the opposite of relying on some "top man", some authority, to tell us it is correct.

 

"This is the opposite of relying on some "top man", some authority, to tell us it is correct."

 

Substitute "Mercola" or "Tucker Carlson" or "Q" for "top man".  That is the problem with the world today. And it will plague us long after COVID is gone. 

[Daniel Cooper]

"This is the opposite of relying on some "top man", some authority, to tell us it is correct."

 

Substitute "Mercola" or "Tucker Carlson" or "Q" for "top man".  That is the problem with the world today. And it will plague us long after COVID is gone. 

 

 

I don't disagree with you. Using a person, any person, as an authority to justify an issue of science is a very bad idea. Left, right, or middle. Humans are too fallible and prone to outside influences.

[Mind]

Sweden is now 58th on the list of countries in deaths per million. Their long-term thinking turns out to NOT be the absolute disaster that was predicted. You might recall all of the "experts" who claimed Sweden would swamped in death and have the worst outcome in the world.

 

They are about the same as Austria which has the same population, similar age profile, and similar region-adjusted population density (much different weather though). Austria took the tyrannical approach. Sweden did not. No difference in COVID outcomes.

 

 

[pamojja]

Austria took the tyrannical approach. Sweden did not. No difference in COVID outcomes.

 

Actually we Austrians left Sweden behind (in deaths per million) exactly on christmas. Not far from now we'll overtake Iran and South Africa too.

 

Judgment day: Sweden vindicated

Total covid mortality: Sweden vs. Austria (JHU/CSSE)

 

[Hip]

Sweden is now 58th on the list of countries in deaths per million. Their long-term thinking turns out to NOT be the absolute disaster that was predicted. You might recall all of the "experts" who claimed Sweden would swamped in death and have the worst outcome in the world.

 

Here on Longecity TV, they only show repeats of old TV series.

 

This Sweden argument has been brought up many times. But as has been pointed out many times, Sweden's per capita death toll is about 10 times higher that all its close neighbor countries which have similar climate and population density. So the high Swedish death toll suggests that lockdowns, social distancing, masks, etc are effective.

 

Edited by Hip, 26 January 2022 - 08:41 PM.

[Hip]

Actually we Austrians left Sweden behind (in deaths per million) exactly on christmas. Not far from now we'll overtake Iran and South Africa too.
 
Judgment day: Sweden vindicated

 
Whilst what the Swiss Policy Research article said about Sweden's population weighted population density being higher than that of their neighbors is interesting, and worth thinking about, the following comment from the article is ridiculously out of touch with the realities of the COVID pandemic, and a stupid suggestion: 
 

Third, given their low covid risk, offering voluntary, medically supervised live virus infection to children and young healthy adults may have made sense to rapidly build up a natural immunity shield, protect high-risk groups (including parents), and ensure smooth education.

We know that there is a 1 in 100 risk of developing long COVID if you get COVID, even for young people. So infecting people deliberately would have created millions more cases of long COVID, which in turn costs the economy billions, as these long COVID people will likely need disability support for the rest of their lives.

Edited by Hip, 26 January 2022 - 09:05 PM.

[Hip]

More silliness and propaganda from the Swiss Policy Research website in this article: Why the flu has ‘disappeared’

 

The fact that influenza vanished during the winter of 2020/21 was a sure sign that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing were having a dramatic effect in slowing viral spread.

 

But Swiss Policy Research do not want to admit this, because SPR are all about anti-vaccine, anti-mask and anti-lockdown propaganda. 

 

So instead SPR come up with a hand waving explanation that coronavirus has somehow "displaced" influenza virus. Well that's just pure nonsense, and shows a lack of understanding of immunology. Whereas it is possible for viruses from the same family or genus to create this displacement, as a result of cross immunity, you do not get any cross immunity between influenzavirus and coronavirus. So SPR's explanation falls flat on its face. 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 26 January 2022 - 09:13 PM.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

"The fact that influenza vanished during the winter of 2020/21 was a sure sign that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing were having a dramatic effect in slowing viral spread."

 

Amazing how all the above mitigations were selectively working only against the flu virus. Or did COVID-19 also nearly vanish during winter 2020/21 like the flu did? Refresh my memory.

[Hip]

"The fact that influenza vanished during the winter of 2020/21 was a sure sign that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing were having a dramatic effect in slowing viral spread."

 

Amazing how all the above mitigations were selectively working only against the flu virus. Or did COVID-19 also nearly vanish during winter 2020/21 like the flu did? Refresh my memory.

 

Amazing that even with a background in mathematics, basic mathematical concepts in epidemiology are not grasped.

 

Viral spread depends on the R number (reproductive number).

 

If a virus has a higher R number, it will spread more readily. 

 

The R number of influenzavirus is around 1.28, whereas for the alpha and delta variants of coronavirus, the R numbers are 2.79 and 5.08 respectively. Ref here.

 

During the winter, both influenzavirus and coronavirus faced the antiviral measures we threw against them — masks, social distancing, lockdowns, etc — and these measures where effective enough to eliminate influenzavirus entirely for the winter. But because coronavirus is spread much more readily, due to its higher R number, it is harder to control, and so was not eliminated by the antiviral measures, but almost certainly would have been curtailed to a significant extent by the measures.

 

This is a fairly simple mathematical concept, the R number.

Edited by Hip, 26 January 2022 - 10:03 PM.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Re post #1275

 

"During the winter, both influenzavirus and coronavirus faced the antiviral measures throw against them — masks, social distancing, lockdowns, etc — and these measures where sufficient to eliminate influenzavirus entirely for the winter."

 

Funny how that in those places, such as Sweden, that didn't have significant masking, social distancing, and lockdowns, etc., did have significant reductions in flu cases along with the rest of the world. R you ready to explain that?

 

Influenza in Sweden – Season 2020-2021:

 

"The spread of influenza has been very low in the northern hemisphere and in most of the rest of the world. Only 29 sporadic cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza were reported in Sweden."

 

The report does go on to attribute the cause as being "Measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 both nationally and globally contributed to a reduction in the transmission of influenza, while a sharp reduction in travel has also meant that influenza was only sporadically introduced to Sweden and the rest of Europe from countries with ongoing transmission."

 

Of course, the claim had no reasoning (pronouncement isn't substantiation) to back up the claim. It seems, to me, to be a propitiation to WHO--in other words, governmental "sheeple" following the Judas goat (WHO) into the abattoir of conformance-to-the-"correct"-thinking about COVID-19 and mitigation.

[Hip]

Funny how that in those places, such as Sweden, that didn't have significant masking, social distancing, and lockdowns, etc., did have significant reductions in flu cases along with the rest of the world. R you ready to explain that?

 

Influenza in Sweden – Season 2020-2021:

 

"The spread of influenza has been very low in the northern hemisphere and in most of the rest of the world. Only 29 sporadic cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza were reported in Sweden."

 

That is a good question.

 

I think the answer lies in looking at the whole Northern Hemisphere as an extended population, which gets swept with the new stains of seasonal influenzavirus in winter each year.

 

Just did some Googling, and discovered the interesting fact that each flu season, new strains of influenza actually first appear in Asia, and then migrate to the rest of the world. I did not know that.

 

So in this scenario, with most of the Northern Hemisphere in lockdown, socially distancing, wearing masks, etc, and with travel restrictions and air traveller quarantines in place, the virus would have found it very hard to move from one location to the next. Thus seasonal influenza may not have got to Sweden at all, and the influenza cases they had might have been just existing endemic influenza from the previous year. 

[Mind]

 

 

The fact that influenza vanished during the winter of 2020/21 was a sure sign that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing were having a dramatic effect in slowing viral spread.

 

My personal observations are completely opposite of what the CDC is claiming. During the winter of 2020/2021, I knew several people in my circle of family and friends who got a cold and/or flu. It was similar to most other cold and flu seasons, maybe just a little less. In addition, in my area, hospitals were swamped with people getting tested, because they felt ill. The advice was that if you felt ill, you should go get tested. When people tested negative for COVID, they were told that they probably had a cold or flu and they should just go home and recover. The number of ill people had to have numbered into the thousands. There were lines at testing sites for weeks.

[Hip]

 I knew several people in my circle of family and friends who got a cold and/or flu. It was similar to most other cold and flu seasons, maybe just a little less.

 

 A cold is not the flu. Completely different virus. 

[Mind]

 A cold is not the flu. Completely different virus. 

 

The point is that thousands of people "felt ill" and they weren't getting tested for the flu...just told to go home and not worry about it.

[Hip]

The point is that thousands of people "felt ill" and they weren't getting tested for the flu...just told to go home and not worry about it.

 

The point is you cannot assume that just because you someone who got some sniffles that they caught flu. That not a scientific way to test flu prevalence, seeing if you friends are sneezing.

 

When actual swab testing of 685,243 UK citizens was performed during the winter of 2020/21, in order to detect influenzavirus, not one of them was positive for flu virus.

 

Pretty clear that the flu was decimated by the restrictions such as lockdowns, etc. 

 

You can go into denial as much as you like, but the fact is that the flu disappeared in 2020/21.

[DanCG]

The point is you cannot assume that just because you someone who got some sniffles that they caught flu. That not a scientific way to test flu prevalence, seeing if you friends are sneezing.

 

 

 

 The advice was that if you felt ill, you should go get tested. When people tested negative for COVID, they were told that they probably had a cold or flu and they should just go home and recover. 

 

I have added bolding to help with reading comprehension. Your complaints that colds and flu should not be conflated and that 'flu' is not a proper diagnosis based on a negative covid test and some symptoms, should be directed to the "health professionals" who conflated colds and flu, and diagnosed that it must be one or the other based on a negative covid test. Mind is merely relaying what happened.

[Hip]

The influenzavirus testing performed in the UK detected the actual virus. Diagnosis was not based on symptoms. When 685,243 people were tested for influenzavirus, tested for the actual flu virus, they were all negative.

Edited by Hip, 29 January 2022 - 12:31 AM.

[Mind]

More evidence that COVID deaths have been wildly overstated - this time in the UK - 8 times less death "from COVID", than what the public was led to believe.

 

As has been the case in most countries of the world, the average age of death from COVID in the UK is over 80. This has been the case since the beginning. Unfortunately, suggesting "focused protection" for the elderly, will still get you labeled as a conspiracy nut, anti-science, slug-of-a-human-being-that-wants-people-dead. Sad.

[DanCG]

More evidence that COVID deaths have been wildly overstated - this time in the UK - 8 times less death "from COVID", than what the public was led to believe.

 

As has been the case in most countries of the world, the average age of death from COVID in the UK is over 80. This has been the case since the beginning. Unfortunately, suggesting "focused protection" for the elderly, will still get you labeled as a conspiracy nut, anti-science, slug-of-a-human-being-that-wants-people-dead. Sad.

Before anyone has a knee-jerk reaction to Mercola, I would point out that he is citing a presentation by Dr. John Campbell, who in turn based his presentation on data from British government health authorities. Campbell has been consistently a vaccine cheerleader, but he is also a straight shooter and an honest analyst of the data, wherever it leads. The evidence does indeed show that only a minority of death certificates list COVID-19 as the primary or sole cause of death; the majority show comorbidities and it is not clear to what extent the viral disease contributed to the cause of death. He expressed surprise that this fact was not more widely publicized. I wasn’t surprised, I thought that anyone following the pandemic knew this already, but apparently not because otherwise people would not be pushing uniform vaccination and lockdown policies for everyone. The fact is, the risk/benefit analysis is different for different people. Yes, the real world data does suggest that a policy of targeted protection would have been more appropriate as compared to the policies we have had.

 

Mercola also includes a quote from U.K. health secretary Sajid Javid [who] admitted that the daily government figures are unreliable as people have been and continue to die from conditions unrelated to COVID-19, but are included in the count due to a positive test.

So add Javid to your list of right-wing conspiracy theorist internet gurus.

Edited by DanCG, 01 February 2022 - 02:24 AM.

[Hip]

Those 4 people who pressed the "needs references" button in my above post 1283 should pay more attention to the thread. The reference was clearly provided in my previous post 1281. Try to keep up.

 

 

 

[syr_]

Those 4 people who pressed the "needs references" button in my above post 1283 should pay more attention to the thread.

It's a hopeless battle. They downvoted me too just because.

[Mind]

There is a lot of evidence that the number of people actually dying FROM COVID is wildly overstated, as has been documented prolifically in this discussion. Finally, after more than 2 years, the U.S. government is finally getting around to figuring out the true mortality rate.

 

Just mentioning the fact that the COVID deaths were being overstated used to get you labeled as a conspiracy nut, kook, anti-science scum, in addition to getting banned from all public discussion online. Now that the U.S bureaucrats are digging into it, maybe we can discuss this issue rationally, as should have been the case from the beginning.

[Mind]

After more than two years of counting every thing under the sun as a COVID death and trying to instill maximum fear in the world's population, the CDC is revising the death toll in the U.S. They are finally going to stop counting drownings and gun shots wounds as COVID deaths. They are reducing the official childhood COVID fatalities by 25%!!

 

Too little too late. They knew the deaths were being wildly over counted a long time before today. People need to be fired.

[Mind]

Massachusetts is the latest state to revise their "official" death toll from COVID significantly lower.