141 replies to this topic

[Daniel Cooper]

In the case of the long controversy about whether ME/CFS is an "all in the mind" psychologically caused psychosomatic/somatoform condition, or a real physical disease, this debate has taken place between experts in the field. It has not just been an argument between the experts and ME/CFS patients.

 

Because of unscrupulous activities by the disability insurance industry working in cahoots with some unscrupulous psychiatrists, ME/CFS got recast as psychosomatic illness in the late 1980s, whereas previously it had (mostly) been viewed as a real biological disease. So from about the 1990s onwards, a lot of the medical community started seeing ME/CFS as psychosomatic/somatoform.

 

Coincidently, I posted about this today on Reddit, when someone was asking whether Tony Fauci was involved in cutting funding for ME/CFS patients. 

 

When I first read about the nefarious involvement of the disability insurance industry in ME/CFS myself, I could not work out whether it was a conspiracy theory popular among patients, or a true story. But when I found out that some key intellectuals in the field — professors, physicians, researchers, the Countess of Marr, etc — were also talking about these nefarious activities, then I started to believe it. Because serious intellectuals believed it.

 

 

 

In general in the democratic process in the liberal West, you often have grass roots movements involving the general public. For example, the whole environmental movement originally began as grass roots activism in the 1960s, and slowly over the decades, gained traction, and is now something every government follows. It started as grass root, and eventually became mainstream. 

 

But these grass roots movements involving the people are always headed by some intellectuals who know their stuff. The intellectuals provide clear arguments, and the general public then add their weight to those arguments, by means of protests, demonstrations, etc.

 

This is the sort of democratic process that work well. Intellectuals and experts teaming up with the general public. Intellectuals at the top of the pyramid, and the general public as the base of the pyramid. This is the liberal West at its best.

 

Whereas when you take something like the antivax movement, this involves a lot of the general public, but there are no intellectuals or experts at the top of the pyramid. Instead, the antivax movement is headed up by idiots, not intellectuals. 

 

Do you see the difference? 

 

In some of the populist movements we see today, the movement is not headed by intellectuals, but by the witless general public who have not teamed up with experts, but who get their info from conspiracy theory websites run by mad people, and other such garbage sources. So unless we are careful, we will become a society which is steered not by intellectuals, but by morons or mad people. The Nazis are an example of a society run by mad people. 

 

 

So, if only the anti-vaxers had an appropriate intellectual to give them a veneer of respectability then their dissent would be legitimate? And who is to say who's a legitimate intellectual? In the case of the environmental movement, at the time most of those intellectuals were regarded as kooks. Just as you regard doctors and researchers on the other side of the vaccine debate as kooks today. Because there are certainly some doctors and researchers with some qualms regarding these vaccines. But I suppose in your world they don't count as intellectuals? Perhaps we should have government licensed intellectuals? I can see it now - "The Federal Bureau of Intellectual Licensing and Inspections". Has a nice ring to it, no?

 

And your deference to intellectuals once again betrays your disdain of the common man.  The common man is only to be herded or perhaps follow behind a good proper intellectual. He's not allowed to have his own opinions, or if he is he isn't to be allowed to voice them without an intellectual giving him permission.   

 

Here's the thing Hip - if you're going to try to force common people to put things in their body, then morally they damned well have the right to tell the world what they think about that.

 

Even the CCP is starting to figure that out.

 

Basically your whole argument relative to your hypocrisy on Covid vs. ME/CFS boils down to "Oh, that's different". 
 

[Daniel Cooper]

And you and all your friends and family followed the pandemic restrictions ruled without once ever cheating?

 

I followed the rules fairly well myself, as I wanted to avoid COVID, being a vulnerable person with ME/CFS. But I know lots of people who flouted the rules. The UK general public were terrible rebels against the COVID rules, especially young people. So it's the pot calling the kettle black when the UK public point their finger to politicians breaking rules. Everyone was at it. That's why we had such a high rate of COVID deaths in the UK, compared to the more co-operative nations like Japan and South Korea, where people actually followed the regulators.

 

Presumably Mr. Serendipity doesn't have the power to force other people to adhere to pandemic restrictions through force of law. In fact, he might have never supported these restrictions in the first place in which case if he violated them that wouldn't be hypocritical at all.

 

Do you not see the hypocrisy of a government official telling "the little people" to put their masks on and stay locked in their homes while flouting these very same restrictions themselves?

[Hip]

Personally, I don't understand how someone could suffer from a mysterious illness for many years and retain significant respect for authority and experts—particularly of the medical or public health variety.  

 

Because that's when you discover how little they actually know. You see their tests, treatments, and even their knowledge of medicine is basically worthless to you. Seeing firsthand the gap between their abilities and their authoritative public personas, how can you ever put significant trust in them, especially when it comes to a new and mysterious disease?  

 

Let's be clear: ME/CFS has been called "the last disease that medical science knows next to nothing about". This is true, we still are clueless as to what causes ME/CFS, and don't even know where to begin searching for the cause, since most bodily systems look normal on most of the standard tests and scans. ME/CFS is still one of the last great medical mysteries. 

 

So you are choosing a very bad example with which to gauge the competence of medical science. If you look at most other diseases, medical understanding of those diseases is now very in-depth, and good treatments are often available.

 

This is quite remarkable, given that 100 years ago, medicine was not able to offer any help for any disease really. In those days, the only use for a doctor was to tell you which disease you had, and how many years you had left to live. But they could not actually help.

 

I am astounded by the knowledge and competence of doctors. I studied mathematics and physics at university, which are considered difficult subjects, but I was always more impressed with my medical student friends at college, who seemed to have an infinite capacity for remembering all the names and functions of the bodily elements. I would not even be able to remember the names of the 206 bones in the human body, let along the millions of other components that doctors have to learn.

[Daniel Cooper]

In some of the populist movements we see today, the movement is not headed by intellectuals, but by the witless general public who have not teamed up with experts, but who get their info from conspiracy theory websites run by mad people, and other such garbage sources. So unless we are careful, we will become a society which is steered not by intellectuals, but by morons or mad people. The Nazis are an example of a society run by mad people. 

 

I can't believe I over looked this little nugget.

 

Are you not aware that the most destructive ideologies of the 20th century were chocked full of intellectuals from top to bottom?

 

National Socialism was both a grass level movement and an intellectual movement. It was very popular on a number of German university campuses. It had it's intellectual cohort. Carl Schmitt, Ernst Krieck, Baeumler, Chamberlain, Haushofer. These men were all considered to be intellectuals of their day. Kooks certainly. But intellectual kooks. Even Joseph Goebbels had a Doctor of Philology degree from Heidelberg.

Marxism's own spin was that it was a Scientific Theory. An Intellectual Movement. Marx was considered a intellectual in his day. Communism had a vast cadre of intellectuals surrounding it giving it a veneer of respectability.

 

These two movements killed untold tens of millions of people in the last century.

 

You seem to think that the label "intellectual" is a guarantee of wisdom, or at least technical competency. I look at history and see no evidence for that whatsoever. In fact, some of the greatest follies in the world have been foisted in the public by all the "smartest people in the room". The intellectuals.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 12 December 2022 - 10:07 PM.

[Mr Serendipity]

I’m already an introverted person, so staying indoors wasn’t that hard for me, and I didn’t have kids at the time either. But when I wanted to see my parents, I didn’t give a flying fuck about the rules.

 

The people pushing all this crap are the same people who are pushing the idea we should give up meat and eat insects to save us from climate change. I like the climate changing, it keeps things interesting.

[Mr Serendipity]

Presumably Mr. Serendipity doesn't have the power to force other people to adhere to pandemic restrictions through force of law. In fact, he might have never supported these restrictions in the first place in which case if he violated them that wouldn't be hypocritical at all.

 

Do you not see the hypocrisy of a government official telling "the little people" to put their masks on and stay locked in their homes while flouting these very same restrictions themselves?

Right on point.

[Hip]

So, if only the anti-vaxers had an appropriate intellectual to give them a veneer of respectability then their dissent would be legitimate?

 
This is not some public relations exercise, where you have to give your actions a nice-looking veneer. 
 
We have to make sure that our grass roots movements are competent and apt. That requires brainpower at the top. It also requires a body of ordinary people with common sense to partake.
 
Grass roots movements are the lifeblood of Western civilisation. The rights or privileges we enjoy today were often created by some grass roots movement in the past. Had those movements been moronic, then we would end up living in a moronic world. 
 

 

 

In the case of the environmental movement, at the time most of those intellectuals were regarded as kooks. Just as you regard doctors and researchers on the other side of the vaccine debate as kooks today.

 

I don't think they were all regarded as kooks; some of the hippy types may have been, but others were serious scientists. 

 

In the 1960s, a group of physicists performed some theoretical calculations that showed CO2 emissions from industrialisation would heat up the Earth. This was the start of climate change awareness. But it was only really in the 1990s that such messages started to be listened to, amongst the better informed members of the general public. But it still was not mainstream. But it started to become mainstream about 15 or 20 year ago.

 

 

 

And your deference to intellectuals once again betrays your disdain of the common man.  The common man is only to be herded or perhaps follow behind a good proper intellectual. He's not allowed to have his own opinions, or if he is he isn't to be allowed to voice them without an intellectual giving him permission.

 
Recognising that the average member of the public with average intelligence and education is not going to be capable in high office or for major intellectual responsibilities is not a disdain for anyone. It's just a fact of life. 
 
Just as a 5 foot 2 individual is not going to make it in basketball. That's a fact, but no disdain on shorter people. 
 
If you think the common man is just as capable at intellectuals at complex tasks, then go and ask your local butcher to perform brain surgery, if you ever need such a surgery.

Edited by Hip, 12 December 2022 - 10:42 PM.

[Hip]

I’m already an introverted person, so staying indoors wasn’t that hard for me, and I didn’t have kids at the time either. But when I wanted to see my parents, I didn’t give a flying fuck about the rules.

 

 

Right, so you flouted the rules yourself, and you think that's fine, but at the same time criticise Matt Hancock for flouting the rules to see his girlfriend? Good logical consistency.

 

 

The whole of the UK public were foolish hypocrites during the pandemic. We dumped a good Prime Minister because he went to an afterwork drinks party in Downing Street, and then told a while lie about it. In the US, they think Britain is crazy for doing such an extemist thing. 

 

Boris Johnson enjoying a drink after with his colleagues is hardly a Watergate situation. And yet we threw out Boris just for that. It's embarrassingly stupid how the politicians and British public behaved in this affair. 

 

Whatever next? Will we throw out a Prime Minister because he parked on a yellow line?

Edited by Hip, 12 December 2022 - 10:53 PM.

[Hip]

Are you not aware that the most destructive ideologies of the 20th century were chocked full of intellectuals from top to bottom?

 

National Socialism was both a grass level movement and an intellectual movement. It was very popular on a number of German university campuses. It had it's intellectual cohort. Carl Schmitt, Ernst Krieck, Baeumler, Chamberlain, Haushofer. These men were all considered to be intellectuals of their day. Kooks certainly. But intellectual kooks. Even Joseph Goebbels had a Doctor of Philology degree from Heidelberg.

 

I think you have got that the wrong way around. 

 

Hitler's rise to power was the result of intimidation, bullying and murder. Intellectuals of the time who were against him were afraid to speak out because they were intimidated by his brown shirts. 

 

There was nothing intellectually wrong with the Facist concept. In Italy, the nation that invented Fascism, it worked quite well. There was no censorship or intimidation in Italy: you could criticise Mussolini without having any comeback.

 

 

But I agree with you that unbridled intellectualism can be a bad thing. The best movements harness the insight that intellectuals can provide, along with the common sense pragmatism of the people. That is a marriage made in heaven.

 

Intellectuals, if you leave them for too long in their ivory towers, can start talking nonsense. We see this these days with some liberal academics who don't live in the real world, and come up with politically correct silliness. 

Edited by Hip, 12 December 2022 - 10:53 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

This is not some public relations exercise, where you have to give your actions a nice-looking veneer. 
 
We have to make sure that our grass roots movements are competent and apt. That requires brainpower at the top. It also requires a body of ordinary people common sense to partake.
 
Grass roots movements are the lifeblood of Western civilisation. The rights or privileges we enjoy today were often created by some grass roots movement in the past.Had those movements been moronic, then we would end up living in a moronic world.

 
 But in your world, all legitimate grassroots movements must be lead by intellectuals. I think that word does not mean what you think it means.
 

I don't think they were all regarded as kooks; some of the hippy types may have been, but others were serious scientists. 
 
In the 1960s, a group of physicists performed some theoretical calculations that showed CO2 emissions from industrialisation would heat up the Earth. This was the start of climate change awareness. But it was only really in the 1990s that such messages started to be listened to, amongst the better informed members of the general public. But it still was not mainstream. But it started to become mainstream about 15 or 20 year ago.

 
And Freeman Dyson said there's a little bit of warming, it's nothing to be overly worried about, and it's probably on balance going to do more good than harm. Does he count as an intellectual in your book? Surely you are familiar with the name.

 

Dyson also said that "Climate Science" was in general populated by the lowest quality scientists of any technical discipline he was aware of. If we're deferring to the judgement of intellectuals then he has to rank pretty high on the list.
 

Recognising that the average member of the public with average intelligence and education is not going to be capable in high office or for major intellectual responsibilities is not a disdain for anyone. it's just a fact of life. 
 
Just as a 5 foot 2 individual is not going to make it in basketball. That's a fact, but no disdain on shorter people. 
 
If you think the common man is just as capable at intellectuals at complex tasks, then go and ask your local butcher to perform brain surgery, if you ever need such a surgery.

 

 

The error you make here is you assume that credentials are a guarantee of intellectual horsepower and that a lack of a credential is evidence of an "average IQ". In my experience this isn't always the case and in fact might not generally be true. There are certainly plenty of brilliant people out there that had no desire to pursue a academic path.

 

You also assume that credentialed people are only motivated by where "the truth" and "the science" leads them. Were that this were true.

 

You have scientists in the employ of the pharmaceutical industry that as we say "know what side of the bread their butter is on", in other words they know which opinions are likely to advance their career (and thus their prestige and their paychecks) and which are not. Then you have "government scientists" like our good Dr. Fauci.

 

To call Dr. Fauci a scientist is to corrupt the term. Dr. Fauci isn't a scientist in any real sense of the word. He doesn't spend time in a lab running experiments. He is in fact the United State's most successful bureaucrat (literally the highest paid bureaucrat on the federal payroll). He's been in that position for almost 40 years. Through Democrat and Republican administrations. The bureaucracy doesn't generally reward technical competency, and it certainly doesn't reward speaking truth to power. It generally rewards those that are useful in expanding the scope of government. And in this endeavor Dr. Anthony Fauci certainly earns his pay.

 

Because you see, setting the rules for the pandemic isn't like brain surgery at all. Because many of these rules were not set based on solely their technical merits (as you hope the decisions made by your brain surgeon are). They were deeply intertwined with politics and personal biases. Fauci has admitted as much in the last year in congressional testimony. Where did that 6ft spacing rule promoted by Fauci and the CDC come from? It turns out it came from nowhere. They had no science at all to base it one. Masks .... research prior to covid showed that paper masks were almost useless in preventing the spread of flu. Fauci himself was on both sides of that issue both publicly and privately in emails to colleagues. The vaccines? There has never been any scientific basis for giving these vaccines to young children. There was also no rationale for using a novel technology like mRNA when existing vaccine technologies would do aside from certain pharmaceutical company's desire to get mRNA vaccines out of the lab they had been languishing in for two decades without FDA approval, knowing that the rules in an emergency are not the same as the rules in normal times.

 

See, it turns out that intellectuals are as subject to the foibles and vices of humanity as all those unwashed masses. Maybe even more so, because they are prone to hubris and hubris breeds a certain "lack of caution" with respect to one's own limitations.

 

 

 

[Mr Serendipity]

Right, so you flouted the rules yourself, and you think that's fine, but at the same time criticise Matt Hancock for flouting the rules to see his girlfriend? Right. Good logical consistency. 

You mean his mistress in whom he was having an affair with while still married to his wife. 

 

No I don’t follow rules from hypocrites who can’t follow their own. And I worked with my parents in the family business, got Covid and recovered from it early on (March 2020) so I had natural immunity. But if I’m interacting with my parents at work, I don’t think seeing them at a later time is going to make a difference is it.

 

And if you’re counting that as a broken rule, then technically no others were broken, as I’m an introvert who likes being at home. And regarding masks, I was medically exempt so I didn’t have to wear them (thus not breaking the rule as the government clearly allowed medical exemptions), you know being ocd and all, sneezing in your mask and breathing in your own air and having something on your face all the time didn’t sit well with me, in fact it’s disgusting.

 

Regardless if I wanted to do something that broke the rules, I would have done it cause the rules were bull.

Edited by Mr Serendipity, 12 December 2022 - 11:12 PM.

[Hip]

And Freeman Dyson said there's a little bit of warming, it's nothing to be overly worried about

Right, so you take one scientist who holds a counter-view to the consensus of 10,000s of scientists, and elevate that single voice to a truth, presumably because that one voice is anti-establishment.

That seem to be the way a lot of people think on Longecity: label the consensus opinion of 10,000s of medical scientists as lies and corruption, and elevate the voice of one outsider view as the holy truth. COVID vaccines: all lies and corruption. Vitamin D supplements: the saviour of the human race.



 

The error you make here is you assume that credentials are a guarantee of intellectual horsepower

Not all all. I've seen many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, go off the rails, especially when they get older and enter their dotage, or develop poor mental health, and then spout all sorts of nonsense. 

 

And a lot of very smart politicians have no qualifications apart from a degree, nor letters after their names.

 

Credentials do not guarantee that you are sane, rational and intelligent.

 

 

But I am certainly not an advocate for a society run by the unintelligent and unqualified, which you seem to think would be a good thing.

 

 

 

To call Dr. Fauci a scientist is to corrupt the term. Dr. Fauci isn't a scientist in any real sense of the word. He doesn't spend time in a lab running experiments. He is in fact the United State's most successful bureaucrat (literally the highest paid bureaucrat on the federal payroll). He's been in that position for almost 40 years. Through Democrat and Republican administrations. The bureaucracy doesn't generally reward technical competency, and it certainly doesn't reward speaking truth to power. It generally rewards those that are useful in expanding the scope of government. And in this endeavor Dr. Anthony Fauci certainly earns his pay.

Being a lab scientist is a complex and full-time job. How are you envisaging that the director of the NIH could undertake all his responsibilities in running this massive organisation, and at the same time, keep doing daily lab work? 

That's like saying a socialist political leader should spend all his day working in a factory in order to be authentic. That makes no sense at all.

 

In any case, it is normal for a scientist or a medic to progress from practical work in their early career, to consultancy or managerial work later in their life. Being a consultant you draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom you have obtained throughout your career. In fact that is the norm in almost all career fields. 

 

Young surgeons in hospitals do the practical work, but rely on guidance from experienced consultants in order to make the right decisions. Inexperienced surgeons might make fatal mistakes if it were not for such wisdom and guidance of older consultants.

 

All of this should be obvious.

 

 

In any case, government scientific organisations are always pedestrian. Government medical institutions are not where the great breakthrough research happens. The breakthroughs occur in universities, and especially in private industry like the pharmaceutical industry.

Some of the smartest scientists work in the pharma industry, as these are organisations based on results.
 

 

 

See, it turns out that intellectuals are as subject to the foibles and vices of humanity as all those unwashed masses.

We are all human, and we all make mistakes. And the system we have is not perfect. But unless you have a better way of doing things, criticism is pointless, isn't it? I believe you should not criticise unless you can suggest something better.

I don't like the congested roads we find in all our cities these days; but I cannot think of a better means of transport, so it's no good criticising the motor car, is it?
 

Edited by Hip, 12 December 2022 - 11:53 PM.

[Empiricus]

In countries with socialized medicine, the global medical cartel isn't as visible as in the U.S. You don't view a dozen drug commercials before going to sleep every night.  And of course, you don't get so many bills.  

 

If you knew the elites were corrupt, you wouldn't follow them. 

 

But in a socialized system, you don't see as much concrete evidence of greed in healthcare. Nevertheless, the drugs, treatments, tests, standards of care, and so on in your country are still the products of the corrupt global system that's essentially run by huge multinationals for their own benefit.  

[Hip]

Nevertheless, the drugs, treatments, tests, standards of care, and so on in your country are still the products of the corrupt global system that's essentially run by huge multinationals for their own benefit.  

 

That's a standard statement we hear all the time. It's just a dull cliche of the chattering classes. It is not based on any evidence, just a regurgitated notion stated by left-leaning individuals, who have not really analysed the situation to any depth. 

 

If you state the profit-based system of developing new drugs and new medical treatments does not get the best results in terms of healthcare, you need to provide evidence for that statement. And you need to show that there is a better approach.

 

If there is a better system of developing medical treatments, point it out. Communism? I don't think so. The Soviet Union dedicated itself to science, but has not been the source of many great advances in medical science or medical treatment. And the pure communist countries that still exist, like Cuba and North Korea have done nothing at all for medicine.

 

 

I think improvements to the system could be made though. I would like to see more clinical trials of supplements for the treatment of medical conditions. Most supplements have a weak effect, but in a few cases, they have a potency comparable to pharmaceutical drugs, as so could make viable treatments. So Big Vitamin need to be more organised, and spend some of their hefty profits on clinical trials to prove the efficacy of their products, and then court the healthcare providers to get them to use these supplement where appropriate.

 

And I tend to agree that US may be over-medicalised, with drugs and medical interventions thrown at the populace. In countries with universal healthcare, you do not get such a strong pushing of treatments.

 

Edited by Hip, 13 December 2022 - 09:32 PM.

[pamojja]

In countries with universal healthcare, you do not get such a strong pushing of treatments.

 

Austria with everyone insured, was the first country with a mandated experimental vaccine for the whole adult population already written in law. Though because this lame omicron cancelled again.

 

The international plandemic makers are already up to the next one, as with Event101. https://www.centerfo...phic-contagion/

 

Universal vaccine mandates will first be introduced in countries with universal healthcare. And personally I'm preparing for exaclty that.

[Empiricus]

That's a standard statement we hear all the time. It's just a dull cliche of the chattering classes. It is not based on any evidence, just a regurgitated notion stated by left-leaning individuals, who have not really analysed the situation to any depth. 

 

If you state the profit-based system of developing new drugs and new medical treatments does not get the best results in terms of healthcare, you need to provide evidence for that statement. And you need to show that there is a better approach.

 

If there is a better system of developing medical treatments, point it out. Communism? I don't think so. The Soviet Union dedicated itself to science, but has not been the source of many great advances in medical science or medical treatment. And the pure communist countries that still exist, like Cuba and North Korea have done nothing at all for medicine.

 

It's untrue that little Cuba (population 11 million) has done nothing for medicine.  Cuba's contributions to medicine include: 

• A drug for foot ulcers called Heberprot-P that prevents the need for amputations
• A lung cancer vaccine called CIMAvax-EGF
• Policosanol for cholesterol 
• The first meningococcal vaccines 
• NeuroEpo which delays Alzheimer's 
• Pioneering systematic use of quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) 

Cuba's health outcomes metrics are similar to the U.S., even though the U.S. spends 14 times more than Cuba per capita on healthcare ($600 vs $8,600).  For example, life expectancy in the U.S. and Cuba is roughly the same.  

[Hip]

It's untrue that little Cuba (population 11 million) has done nothing for medicine.  Cuba's contributions to medicine include:

 
Well I stand corrected; it seems Cuba has made some contributions to medical advancement. I read just now that the Cuban government has an interest in developing biotech products, and set up a state funded company to pursue this. 

 

Though I wonder how Cuba's output of biotech products compares to a more capitalist country with similar population, like Sweden (population 10.4 million). I found this list of over 200 Swedish biotech companies. I wonder how many biotech companies and biotech products Cuba has in comparison.

 

I like socialist countries, they are a great place to live, more laid back. But I think the capitalist environment is much more conducive to investment in the R&D needed for the production of new medical products.

 

 

 

Cuba's health outcomes metrics are similar to the U.S., even though the U.S. spends 14 times more than Cuba per capita on healthcare ($600 vs $8,600).  For example, life expectancy in the U.S. and Cuba is roughly the same.

 
Often the universal healthcare systems of socialist countries do just as well as the US in terms of health outcomes. The US spends 20% of its GDP on healthcare. European countries tend to spend around 10% of GDP on healthcare, and have similar health outcomes to the US.

 

But you cannot beat the US on medical customer service at the point of care. Primary care physicians in the US are far more attentive to patient needs than their counterparts in Europe. As an ME/CFS patient, I've noticed how US patients get far more attentive care from their doctors. 

 

 

Though it's unfair to compare the US health expenditure to Cuba's, because a lot of the healthcare costs in the US are to cover the high prices of biotech products. These high prices in turn bring in profits, which allows US biotech companies to re-invest in R&D for the next generation of biotech products. So this allows the US to constantly innovate in the biotech field. 

 

And US medical research and discoveries benefit the whole world, as medicine advances. So the US population are paying more for their healthcare, but they are benefiting the whole world as a result. The same is true in Europe, though European drug prices are not quite as high as in the US. Cuba gets its healthcare cheap because it is not focused on making the massive advancements in medical science that more capitalist countries are focused on.

 

For example, the human genome project, one of the most expensive science research projects ever undertaken, was carried out by the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan and China. Sequencing the human genome was a fundamentally important step in advancing medical science. Cuba benefits from that research, but does not pay for it.

 

Similarly, the US taxpayer pays lots of money to support the US military. In turn, US military power has protected the whole Western world from tyranny. European taxpayers by contrast have not contributed their fair share of military expenses, which is unfair on the US taxpayer, since Europe enjoys the protection afforded by US military power without paying for it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 14 December 2022 - 06:56 PM.

[Empiricus]

 

But you cannot beat the US on medical customer service at the point of care. Primary care physicians in the US are far more attentive to patient needs than their counterparts in Europe. As an ME/CFS patient, I've noticed how US patients get far more attentive care from their doctors. 

 

I suspect many Americans would find this observation about ME/CFS patients in the U.S. surprising, as they have trouble getting a doctor to spend time with them. I suspect that your sample consists of better educated, affluent patients with either expensive insurance or deep pockets.  

 

Speaking of which, one argument I've heard made by people asserting that ME/CFS is psychological rather than biological is  that ME/CFS patients tend to be higher income women living in the developed world.  If it's biological, the argument goes, then why would the well-to-do be more vulnerable?   

 

Of course, women are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, so this fact would be consistent with ME/CFS being auto-immune related.  As for the alleged income disparity, I'm not sure whether there is any good data backing it up.  It seems likely that the health issues of the poor, even in developed countries, are less likely to be noticed. So it could be a case of undercounting afflicted members of that demographic. 

 

On the other hand, if it is the case that CFS mainly strikes the developed world, maybe differences in parenting (Are they less exposed to germs? Are they breast-fed for a shorter time?), medical practices (Do they get more vaccines? Are they medicated differently?) or peer socialization (Is social isolation more common, and if so, might this impair their immune systems?) accounts for ME/CFS cases being more prevalent among the wealthy. 

Edited by Empiricus, 18 December 2022 - 09:59 AM.

[Hip]

I suspect many Americans would find this observation about ME/CFS patients in the U.S. surprising, as they have trouble getting a doctor to spend time with them. I suspect that your sample consists of better educated, affluent patients with either expensive insurance or deep pockets.  

 
Sure, obviously in private healthcare system, you get what you pay for. 

 

However, even people I know paying for private GP or private consultant appointments with ME/CFS specialists in the UK do not get the same sort of attentive service that you find in the US. A lot of this is down to clinical freedom. US doctors have a lot more clinical freedom than their UK counterparts. 

 

In the UK, NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) set the rules for what treatments can or cannot be prescribed to patients, and if as a GP you go outside the rules set by NICE, the GMC will come down on you.

 

This occurred a few years back with one private UK GP who was prescribing ME/CFS patients a herpesvirus antiviral on a speculative basis. She was told by the GMC that she must stop using this antiviral, because NICE do not recommend it (due to the fact that the evidence for its efficacy is low — which is the case, though I know some ME/CFS patients who have benefitted from it).

 

In the US, this would not happen. If a doctor wants to prescribe any drug on a speculative basis for ME/CFS patients, they are allowed to do so, because they have more clinical freedom.

 

Because of this clinical freedom and attentive service, you can go to your US doctor and say, "I'm interested in trying this speculative ME/CFS treatment I've read about, here are some studies I've printed for you, can work together and try this treatment?". And you will likely find the doctor is interested and coorperative, and wants to try the treatment. This is especially true for functional medicine doctors, who are happy to try speculative ideas.

 

Whereas in the UK, doctors hands are tied by NICE; and many are too busy to start reading a pile of studies that you place on their desk.

 

 

 

Speaking of which, one argument I've heard made by people asserting that ME/CFS is psychological rather than biological is  that ME/CFS patients tend to be higher income women living in the developed world.  If it's biological, the argument goes, then why would the well-to-do be more vulnerable?   
 
Of course, women are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, so this fact would be consistent with ME/CFS being auto-immune related.  As for the alleged income disparity, I'm not sure whether there is any good data backing it up.  It seems likely that the health issues of the poor, even in developed countries, are less likely to be noticed. So it could be a case of undercounting afflicted members of that demographic. 
 
On the other hand, if it is the case that CFS mainly strikes the developed world, maybe differences in parenting (Are they less exposed to germs? Are they breast-fed for a shorter time?), medical practices (Do they get more vaccines? Are they medicated differently?) or peer socialization (Is social isolation more common, and if so, might this impair their immune systems?) accounts for ME/CFS cases being more prevalent among the wealthy.

 
The reason ME/CFS was asserted to be psychological is because unscrupulous disability insurance industry wanted to get out of paying expensive lifetime disability support to ME/CFS patients.

 

In the late 1980s and 90s, there was a concerted campaign by disability insurance companies to recast myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) as an "all in the mind" psychologically-caused disease.

 

This is because in the 1980s, there was an an enormous 5- to 8-fold increase in the incidence of ME (for reasons unknown, but it may bee linked to the introduction of antibiotics and polio vaccines two or three decades prior).

 

This massive wave of new ME patients would have bankrupted some of the disability insurance companies in the 1980s and 90s, as ME patients often require very expensive disability support payouts for the rest of their lives.

 

So the disability insurance companies, in cahoots with some unscrupulous psychiatrists, decided to recast ME as a psychiatric disease, as the rules state these insurance companies are not liable for long term support of mental health issues, only physical diseases or physical disabilities. 

 

 

 

I am not sure if we have any good data showing the prevalence rates of ME/CFS in different countries around the world. So I would not like to speculate whether developing countries have more or less ME/CFS than the 1st world. 

 

However, it has been shown that being given repeated long courses of antibiotics as a child is a risk factor for ME/CFS. The reason may be that heavy antibiotic use, although it kills off the active infection and can therefore be lifesaving, may also encourage the growth of biofilm bacterial communities in the mucous membranes of the body, such as in the gut. This sets up a bacterial dysbiosis.

 

We have all heard that it is a good idea to take probiotics during and after any extended course of antibiotics, to help prevent this bacterial dysbiosis.

 

Now one theory is that ME/CFS is caused by such bacteria living inside biofilms. So if heavy antibiotics set up a persistent bacterial biofilm dysbiosis in the body, this may pave the way for ME/CFS appearing later in life.

 

Antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s and 50s, and their use in children with infections from that time onwards could explain why there was this explosion of ME/CFS cases in the 1980s some 30 years later  (a 5-fold increase in ME/CFS incidence), when children who were given antibiotics reached the typical age that ME/CFS starts (this graph shows there is a large peak of ME/CFS incidence in the 30 to 40 age group, and also a smaller peak in the teenage years).

 

 

 

The introduction of the polio vaccine in the 1950s might also explain this explosion of ME/CFS cases in the 1980s. The theory is that polio vaccine. although it protects from fatal cases of polio in children, and stops children being permanently paralysed by polio, also prevents natural infection with wild poliovirus. 

 

Wild poliovirus exposure is thought to train the immune system to better deal with any subsequent enterovirus infections. So if you are naturally exposed to poliovirus (which is an enterovirus), as most children used to be before the vaccination program, then when you catch an ME/CFS-associated enterovirus later in life, your immune system more efficiently handles it.

 

But without this natural exposure to poliovirus in the wild, the immune system has not yet fully learnt to deal with enterovirus infections, so it later in life immunity struggles to control other types of enterovirus, such as the enteroviruses linked to ME/CFS (like coxsackievirus B, one of the most nasty enteroviruses, which is linked to many chronic diseases).

 

 

If the immune system is struggling to control a acute enterovirus infection, that may give the infection more opportunity to infect critical organs such as the brain during the acute phase, and thereby cause ME/CFS.

 

Corroborating evidence for this idea that prior natural poliovirus exposure helps fight any subsequent enterovirus infections comes from type 1 diabetes (T1D) prevalence data. T1D of course is linked to enterovirus infection of the insulin producing cells of the pancreas.

 

In Estonia, rates of T1D are 3 times lower than in its neighbor Finland (ref: here). Why? Well, Estonia uses a live poliovirus vaccine, which is closer to natural wild poliovirus infection, and so vaccination confers some future protection from enterovirus. But Finland uses the killed poliovirus vaccine, which does not simulate a natural infection. Thus Finnish childrens' immune systems do not get trained to deal with enterovirus, and so they have less protection against getting diabetes.

 

Generally live vaccines work better than killed vaccines, and live vaccines are also associated with a substantial reduction of all-cause mortality, which is a great "side effect". Killed vaccines do not provide this reduction of all-cause mortality; killed vaccines protect against their target microbe, but do not have any general health benefits; but live vaccines have large health benefits which extend beyond just their target pathogen. It's as if live vaccines give the immune system a good workout, and make the immune system healthier. 

 

If all countries switched to the live polio vaccine, that would likely result in a much lower incidence of chronic diseases associated with enterovirus, such as ME/CFS, type 1 diabetes, Parkinson's, ALS, sudden fatal heart attacks, and various hearts diseases.

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 18 December 2022 - 04:54 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

Boris Johnson enjoying a drink after with his colleagues is hardly a Watergate situation. And yet we threw out Boris just for that. It's embarrassingly stupid how the politicians and British public behaved in this affair. 

 

 

It's not stupid at all. Boris was taking actions to mandate masks and enforce lock downs. Yet we know that he really didn't believe in them - because if he did he'd have been wearing a mask and avoiding extraneous gatherings.

 

It's entirely reasonable to give politicians the boot for forcing people to do that which they don't really believe to be necessary themselves.

 

This idea that the masses are held to one standard and the elites to another has never sat well with the public and rightly so.

[Hip]

This idea that the masses are held to one standard and the elites to another has never sat well with the public and rightly so.

 

This is precisely the problem: different standards. If you break lockdown in the UK, you get fined typically around £100. You don't get forced out of your job for breaking lockdown. But Boris did. That's unfair and stupid. 

 

But of course, theses days politics in the UK and US is increasing become like the squabbling backstabbing of ancient Rome. Politicians try to find any dirt they can on their opposition, so as to try to get them out of office. Very ungentlemanly. 

 

So Boris's breaking of lockdown incident had nothing really to do with this minor infringement itself, it was blown out of all proportion by the liberal UK media like the BBC, who hate conservatives, as well as used by members of his own party to get at Boris. It's not as if Boris tried to cause an insurrection like Trump did. He just had a drink with colleagues after work (colleagues he had been working with during the day anyway). 

 

In Boris's case, many of the hardcore conservatives in his party did not like his policies, because Boris did not take the standard conservative approach of catering for the rich, and giving a raw deal to the poor. Instead, Boris was smart enough to understand that in these days of populist conservatism, it is the working classes that are now voting right. So Boris wanted to cater to the working classes, because that's what will get the party voted back in in the next election; but the hardcore right of his party wanted to cater to the rich as per conservative tradition, and screw the poor.  

 

The gullible public fell for it, and got on the bandwagon of condemning Boris for his little lockdown indiscretion. The public are so easily manipulated by the media. Public opinion thereby helped oust a conservative prime minister who was actually pretty left wing by conservative standards, and was helping the working classes. 

Edited by Hip, 19 December 2022 - 11:40 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

This is precisely the problem: different standards. If you break lockdown in the UK, you get fined typically around £100. You don't get forced out of your job for breaking lockdown. But Boris did. That's unfair and stupid. 

 

 

Boris Johnson wasn't a barista down at Starbucks. He was the Prime Minister of a country and he demanded that the people do one thing, while he did something else.

 

Like the politician extolling family values caught with his young staffer at a No-Tell-Motel, that sort of hypocrisy will tend to get any politician booted from his job, no matter the particular circumstances.

[Hip]

Boris Johnson wasn't a barista down at Starbucks. He was the Prime Minister of a country and he demanded that the people do one thing, while he did something else.

 

Like the politician extolling family values caught with his young staffer at a No-Tell-Motel, that sort of hypocrisy will tend to get any politician booted from his job, no matter the particular circumstances.

 

That's a contradiction to what you said earlier, namely: "this idea that the masses are held to one standard and the elites to another has never sat well with the public and rightly so". So you are saying you want the elites and the masses to be held to the same standards.

 

But in the case of Boris Johnson, it seems you want him to be held to a higher standard than the masses! 

 

 

 

When people like Robert F Kennedy Jr and bone-cracker Joseph Mercola have caused the death of I would say 100,000s of people though their money-making anti-vaccine businesses, you say nothing. These people are elites, they are worth $50 and $100 million respectively, and they make money by promoting ideas that lead to large-scale deaths. But we hear no criticisms from the people of this forum.

 

Yet when a sound and hard working Prime Minister (net worth only $2) enjoys a social event against the rules, which he more than deserves given the stress of guiding the country through a pandemic (and he only went to the social event to please his staff who organised it), you say it's justice that he was booted out of his job.

 

This is incomprehensible, it defies reason, yet such views are not uncommon amongst the general public.  

Edited by Hip, 21 December 2022 - 01:49 AM.

[Daniel Cooper]

That's a contradiction to what you said earlier, namely: "this idea that the masses are held to one standard and the elites to another has never sat well with the public and rightly so". So you are saying you want the elites and the masses to be held to the same standards.

 

But in the case of Boris Johnson, it seems you want him to be held to a higher standard than the masses! 

 

 

 

When people like Robert F Kennedy Jr and bone-cracker Joseph Mercola have caused the death of I would say 100,000s of people though their money-making anti-vaccine businesses, you say nothing. These people are elites, they are worth $50 and $100 million respectively, and they make money by promoting ideas that lead to large-scale deaths. But we hear no criticisms from the people of this forum.

 

Yet when a sound and hard working Prime Minister (net worth only $2) enjoys a social event against the rules, which he more than deserves given the stress of guiding the country through a pandemic (and he only went to the social event to please his staff who organised it), you say it's justice that he was booted out of his job.

 

This is incomprehensible, it defies reason, yet such views are not uncommon amongst the general public.  

 

Not at all.

 

Boris Johnson was "hired" to be a leader of a country. The best form of leadership is leadership by example. In any case, by doing that which he sought to forbid the citizens of his country to do, he so compromised his ability to lead that he was no longer suitable for the job for which he was hired.

 

So, like a Starbucks barista that couldn't serve coffee .... he was let go.

[Hip]

Boris Johnson was "hired" to be a leader of a country. The best form of leadership is leadership by example. In any case, by doing that which he sought to forbid the citizens of his country to do, he so compromised his ability to lead that he was no longer suitable for the job for which he was hired.

 

So, like a Starbucks barista that couldn't serve coffee .... he was let go.

 

This is called not being able to separate what's important from what's unimportant. 

 

We increasingly see this in our woke anxiety-ridden era, where people make huge issues out of unimportant things; they make mountains out of molehills. 

 

For a political leader of a country, it's important that he is good with certain key subjects, like economics, the markets, the needs of business, military issues and national defence, foreign relations and international diplomacy, the running of the health service, the welfare system and the plight of the poor, etc. All vitally important issues that you need to demonstrate competence with. Boris showed reasonable competence in these areas.

 

This is what I judge a leader on, because this is important. Tiny flaws in character (which we all have) that do not effect these key issues should not even be mentioned. To do so is being anally retentive.  

Edited by Hip, 22 December 2022 - 11:41 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

This is getting tiresome so my last post on Boris Johnson.

 

You say that going out and partying unmasked whilst you're enforcing lock downs and mask mandates is just a tiny character flaw.

 

I say that it is at the least being an absolutely lousy politician. Any fool would understand that if you're the guy forcing people to wear masks and stay locked down that if you're caught out with your group of friends unmasked - doing exactly what you are forbidding others to do - that is not going to play well to the public and you're likely to pay an enormous political price for that transgression. And he had to know that reporters were following him around trying to catch him in exactly that situation.

 

But, he was so arrogant that he didn't think he would be caught or just didn't care.

 

This had nothing to do with being woke or anxiety. This had everything to do with Boris Johnson being an arrogant entitled idiot. At the end of the day, his job is being a politician. He proved in spades that he's not very good at it.

 

 

[Hip]

This had everything to do with Boris Johnson being an arrogant entitled idiot.

 

Seems that the mindset of LongeCity members is to condemn all regular public figures and mainstream research, while promoting conspiracy theorists, quacks, fringe science and woo merchants

[Daniel Cooper]

Which conspiracy theories, quacks, and fringe science have I promoted exactly?

[Hip]

Which conspiracy theories, quacks, and fringe science have I promoted exactly?

 

I don't remember you posting conspiracy theories or quackery, but in general there is a lot of it going on on Longecity, since the beginning of the pandemic. 

 

Mainstream medical COVID advice and treatments for COVID are heavily criticised, while speculative COVID treatments with a poor evidence base are promoted without questioning.  

 

I do like examining alternative treatment ideas, so I see no problem with posting treatments like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, vitamin D, nasal irrigation, etc; but I don't really understand the heavy criticism of mainstream treatments and preventions like vaccines and masks. 

[Daniel Cooper]

With respect to masks, I think it is that due the the fact that prior to covid there were a number of studies done on whether masking diminished the rate of influenza transmission and when the sort of paper surgical masks generally being promoted were looked at the results were generally not favorable. You see that in some of Fauci's correspondence with people early in the pandemic which have come to light as the result of FOIA requests. He talks about advising friends and family members that masks don't do much. It appears to be candid conversation and we have every reason to suspect that he believed what he was saying at the time and it was indeed in line with the findings of the majority of the studies at that time.

 

But when the initial availability crunch is worked through we suddenly see Fauci advising the mandating of these masks which is followed by most states and municipalities. One suspects they were either grasping at straws or they thought they were quelling panic in the population by giving them something to hang on to even if it was only marginally effective if at all.

 

These sorts of inconsistencies don't sit well with people.

 

With respect to the vaccines - the public were generally aware that this (mRNA vaccines) was new and that the normal testing and evaluation protocols had been significantly truncated or done away with entirely. People had a sense that they were being made into guinea pigs. 

 

And I personally have an issue with how the approval of these vaccines played out. It seems obvious that a couple of major players (Pfizer and Moderna) realized that this was an opportunity for them to move mRNA vaccines which were originally developed to fight cancer and had been languishing unapproved for about two decades in the lab into general use as the normal rules for vaccine approval would not apply in this pandemic.

 

But that's exactly backwards to how the regulators should have viewed things - if you are going to have an significantly abbreviated approval process and a lot of the normal procedures are going to go out the window, that is exactly when you don't want to be using brand new untested technology. They should have insisted that existing vaccine technology be used as indeed it was for the J&J and for Russia's Sputnik V vaccines.  For all they knew mRNA vaccines could have have serious complication that would only show up on wide scale deployment. And since you were going to go from essentially zero to billions of doses in the space of a year - you might find a hell of a surprise if you were unlucky. 

 

I looked at the data, took my best guess and took the first two Pfizer vaccines when they first became available to me back in March/April of 2020. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some small lingering concern that these things might have some long term negative consequences because they were just so new and so little time was available to study them. I certainly hope that is not the case.

 

At this point pushing the vaccines have become a station of the cross for a new religion. We know that repeatedly taking the same (or highly similar) vaccine over and over produces a smaller and smaller immune response with each subsequent dose. This was known before the covid pandemic. And we see that in real world results. Israel found greatly diminishing returns from the forth booster. Here in the US I just heard one of the national government health advisers say that if your last booster was September or earlier that it's time for a new booster.  So these things are good for three months now? If so they have become virtually useless.

 

The other thing that I notice is what is not being discussed. Remember early on in the pandemic when we were all talking about covid's CFR - Case Fatality Rate and it's IFR - Infection Fatality Rate. Those are two metrics that you're really like to have a handle on when you are weighing whether taking a vaccine makes sense for you.

 

When was the last time you heard anyone talk about the omicron's CFR or IFR? I've looked for papers on this subject but there isn't that much out there. I can tell you that I've studied datasets on new cases, hospitalizations, and covid deaths and can tell you unequivocally that omicron is a hell of a lot less deadly than the initial variants. It concerns me that this vital information isn't out there in the public being discussed so that people are being forced to make decisions without vital data. It leads me to suspect that the case for the vaccines given the current variants is much weaker than those to whom vaccination has become a religion would like.  

 

I have much the same feeling about vaccinating children. You look at the number of covid deaths in the 18 and under cohort and I think there's really no case for vaccinating this group whatsoever. But we're now approved in the US to vaccinate children as young as 5 years old. In spite of the fact that a five year old dying from covid is exceedingly rare to the point of being virtually unheard of.

 

You see, there's a lot of decisions being made on things other than the science to go round. And it's clearly not just on the kook fringe of the anti-establishment types.