'The Pandemic's Wrongest Man' 271
In a crowded field of wrongness, one person stands out. From a report: The pandemic has made fools of many forecasters. Just about all of the predictions whiffed. Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks. California was wrong about the outdoors. New York was wrong about the subways. I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief. And the Trump White House was wrong about almost everything else. In this crowded field of wrongness, one voice stands out. The voice of Alex Berenson: the former New York Times reporter, Yale-educated novelist, avid tweeter, online essayist, and all-around pandemic gadfly. Berenson has been serving up COVID-19 hot takes for the past year, blithely predicting that the United States would not reach 500,000 deaths (we've surpassed 550,000) and arguing that cloth and surgical masks can't protect against the coronavirus (yes, they can). Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News' most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham's show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel's experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.
The vaccines have inspired his most troubling comments. For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates toward the pandemic's finish line, he has proved himself the Secretariat of being wrong:
* He has blamed the vaccines for causing spikes in severe illness, by pointing to data that actually demonstrate their safety and effectiveness.
* He has blamed the vaccines for suppressing our immune systems, by misrepresenting normal immune-system behavior.
* He has suggested that countries such as Israel have suffered from their early vaccine rollout, even though deaths and hospitalizations among vaccinated groups in Israel have plummeted.
* He has implied that for most non-seniors, the side effects of the vaccines are worse than having COVID-19 itself -- even though, according to the CDC, the pandemic has killed tens of thousands of people under 50 and the vaccines have not conclusively killed anybody.
Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance hovering around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won't get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.
The vaccines have inspired his most troubling comments. For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates toward the pandemic's finish line, he has proved himself the Secretariat of being wrong:
* He has blamed the vaccines for causing spikes in severe illness, by pointing to data that actually demonstrate their safety and effectiveness.
* He has blamed the vaccines for suppressing our immune systems, by misrepresenting normal immune-system behavior.
* He has suggested that countries such as Israel have suffered from their early vaccine rollout, even though deaths and hospitalizations among vaccinated groups in Israel have plummeted.
* He has implied that for most non-seniors, the side effects of the vaccines are worse than having COVID-19 itself -- even though, according to the CDC, the pandemic has killed tens of thousands of people under 50 and the vaccines have not conclusively killed anybody.
Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance hovering around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won't get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.
Sarah Palin (Score:5, Informative)
Now that her family has Covid she's certainly singing a different tune about masks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it possible a mask would not have made a difference? Absolutely.
Is it possible a mask would have made a difference? Absolutely.
Each and every thing that lowers the transmissibility has the potential of stopping what would otherwise have gotten you infected.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Informative)
There are anecdotal reports of people wearing masks in confined spaces with someone covid positive and not catching it, but apart from that there are studies on places with mask mandates reducing the spread:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/... [healthaffairs.org]
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
The real world data just doesn't line up with your beliefs
Re: (Score:2)
with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won't get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.
Vaccinate yourself then tet Darwin deal with them, I say.
At least with COVID they can't take us along with them.
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Unfortunately that still puts a lot of people at risk that aren't able to get the vaccine for other reasons
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But those people would be moronic shits, so they could be dismissed. Letting suicidal nutcases off themselves is a good thing.
Mask wearing transmission study [Re:Sarah Palin] (Score:5, Informative)
There are anecdotal reports of people wearing masks in confined spaces with someone covid positive and not catching it,
and some published reports, like this one: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov] :
Absence of Apparent Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from Two Stylists After Exposure at a Hair Salon with a Universal Face Covering Policy — Springfield, Missouri, May 2020
Weekly / July 17, 2020 / 69(28);930-932
M. Joshua Hendrix, MD; Charles Walde, MD; Kendra Findley, MS; Robin Trotman, DO
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
Consistent and correct use of cloth face coverings is recommended to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
What is added by this report?
Among 139 clients exposed to two symptomatic hair stylists with confirmed COVID-19 while both the stylists and the clients wore face masks, no symptomatic secondary cases were reported; among 67 clients tested for SARS-CoV-2, all test results were negative. Adherence to the community’s and company’s face-covering policy likely mitigated spread of SARS-CoV-2.
What are the implications for public health practice?
As stay-at-home orders are lifted, professional and social interactions in the community will present more opportunities for spread of SARS-CoV-2. Broader implementation of face covering policies could mitigate the spread of infection in the general population.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but that's just a reviewed study of actual evidence by professionals with advanced degrees in immunology and virology. Easily discounted by a halfassed anecdote about an anonymous household or bookstore with no testing or hard data whatsoever, and completely different viruses!
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Coincidentally most of them seem to be named Anonymous Coward . . .
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Interesting)
My anecdote is that in a bookstore where everyone used hand sanitizer and wore masks all day, 4 people who worked together all caught the same cold.
I've got this. This one's easy. Infection probability can be expressed as v/V where v is the number of virus particles emitted and V is the number of virus particles required for infection. But there's a hidden component there: time.
The virus particles emitted by a person is not a constant. It's a constant per unit of time. If you stand next to someone for five minutes, they might emit ten million virus particles, of which a hundred might blow the right direction and reach your nose. If you stand near that same person for an hour, that's suddenly 1200 reaching your nose instead.
In all likelihood, one of those people caught the cold and was contagious while around the others all day. And that's how everyone became infected.
Also, the basic reproduction number (R0) of rhinovirus is about 6, which is two or three times higher than COVID, i.e. it is MUCH more contagious. We could probably eliminate flu with masks, and we *might* be able to eventually eliminate COVID with masks and distancing, but there's no PRAYER of eliminating rhinovirus that way. It is just WAY too much more contagious.
I also have another anecdote where 3 people living in a house of 7 caught covid, and they rest didn't, and none of them wore masks at home. Go figure.
First, I would object to your claim that the rest didn't. Asymptomatic COVID infection is not rare. Unless the others were all regularly tested for COVID over a period of weeks, the best you can claim is that the rest didn't have symptomatic COVID.
Second, saying that they didn't catch COVID requires assuming that the others had not previously been exposed to COVID. Asymptomatic infection is, as previously mentioned, not rare, and likely has a lower rate of spreading it to others, because severity is dose-dependent. So there's a high probability that the four who didn't catch it later had previously experienced an asymptomatic case.
But even if you ignore those issues, not everyone is equally likely to get infected by COVID. Having lower ACE2 receptor counts in your nose and lungs is likely one factor, and obesity and race contribute to the ACE2 receptor count, so if there are racial or weight differences in that household, that can make a big difference.
And of course, there's also the "dumb luck" principle, coupled with how much time the non-sick people spent in close proximity to the sick people. (Being in the same house is not automatically "close proximity", depending on ventilation and other factors.)
In short, your anecdotes are pure noise that can trivially be explained away. The evidence in aggregate of masks' effectiveness cannot.
Re: (Score:3)
We could probably eliminate flu with masks
I'm not sure how other countries are going, but in The Netherlands there were ZERO reported cases of influenza this flu season, compared to the 11000 who tested positive to the virus after being admitted to hospital the year before.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's that way around the world. The only country with meaningful influenza cases is the U.S., and even that is down to something like 1% of normal levels.
This flu season, as of week 11, there were only 1854 positive flu tests [cdc.gov] in the U.S. (after this week, content will be here [cdc.gov]), versus 231,654 [cdc.gov] at this time last year. And there has been only one pediatric flu death this flu season, versus 198 last flu season. (That last comparison is not precisely accurate, because the flu season isn't quite over yet this year, or at least wouldn't be in a typical year, but it's probably within the margin of error.)
The maskless U.S. states benefitted a great deal from mask wearing in the southern hemisphere during their winter. Flu almost dies out during the summer because its rate of transmission is low enough that taking schools entirely out of the picture (and taking some percentage of workers out of the picture and having people favor more outdoor shared activities rather than indoor and so on) puts the effective average R0 below 1 during the summer. (Vitamin D deficiency during winter months may also play an important role; there's lots of debate on both sides of that issue.) And without the surge in the southern hemisphere's winter, and with reduced international travel, there wasn't the usual level of reseeding that you'd see in a typical year.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice and tidy.
You proclaim IF IT'S NOT DONE PERFECTLY IN A LABRATORY, THEN IT IS USELESS! I AM THE AUTHORITY ON THIS TOPIC! Source: Trust me bro!
Then you follow that with a statement that anyone who sees through your particular bullshit is a mindless sheep.
Well played, you have a nice iron clad wall to your personal echo chamber.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot can solve all the world's problems. We are the true experts. If you want proof of that just ask us. The best part is that we provide our wisdom on all subjects for FREE! Do not trust the experts because they are getting paid, and therefore they have an innate bias. From the quiet contemplation from our mother's basements we have developed superhuman insights. If only everyone lived in their mother's basement we'd have no pandemic at all, QED.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Informative)
They reuse masks, they touch their masks all day, they adjust htem, they don't have them properly fitted ( this is a big one ).
All of these things are liable to reduce the efficacy of a mask. None of them could possibly lead to a negative efficacy.
I will provide data, but first, I want to really assess why you're truly skeptical of the idea.
The mask is not collecting other peoples' droplets. It's collecting yours. So why would you think that you misusing your mask is going to increase your chances of getting the disease vs. not wearing one at all?
That's like arguing that "the real world is messy, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that pulling out was actually morel likely to get a girl pregnant than not!"
It's absurd.
Now, for the laboratory and epidemiological efficacy data. [ucsf.edu]
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I suspect for all of the annoyance that a mask causes, it probably still results in a reduction of face touching. Anecdotally, it seems to do so personally for me.
Yes, it needs to be adjusted, but I think the overall interaction with the mask is less than the 16 times an hour the average person touches their face, and I think the mask actually makes it so most of the ti
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:4, Insightful)
The question that isn't being asked, but should be, is, "Are masks lowering the transmissibility?". Looking at the dataset, I don't believe so.
I'd argue that there have been large-scale test cases which seem to show that masks do lower transmissibility. Those tests were conducted in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The United States was the control group.
What you see from the numbers is that those countries had far lower covid rates than the United States and also were countries where inexpensive surgical masks are widely available in mini-marts and people willingly wear them as well. In addition, all of those countries are very crowded and you'd think they would have higher transmission rates.
One might argue that there are confounding factors. Although if you look more closely at the data once somebody is infected with covid in any of those countries the incidence of severe illness and death is approximately the same, so I find it hard to argue that there is some kind of genetic factor or difference in their health care system that is producing this difference.
My own suspicion is that there are a lot of things going on here that we need to unpack. One possibility is that since masks are uncomfortable, people avoid situations where they feel the need to wear them -- in that case, the "effectiveness" of a mask is a function of how uncomfortable it is, not how effective it is in keeping blobs of spit and snot from being passed around. The other possibility is that even a partially effective mask can reduce the r-value of the disease, and even small changes in the r-value can produce huge differences in the number of cases.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Informative)
The question that isn't being asked, but should be, is, "Are masks lowering the transmissibility?". Looking at the dataset, I don't believe so.
I'd argue that there have been large-scale test cases which seem to show that masks do lower transmissibility. Those tests were conducted in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The United States was the control group.
That's an okay approach, but IMO a better approach with fewer confounding factors is comparing cases at the county level within the United States [cdc.gov]. The 24 counties in Kansas that implemented a mask mandate showed a 6% drop in cases between a week-long period in early July and a week-long period in mid-August. The 105 counties that did not implement a mask mandate showed a 100% increase in cases over that same time period.
Not a controlled experiment [Re:Sarah Palin] (Score:2)
...One might argue that there are confounding factors.
Correct. There are differences between countries other than mask wearing.
Re: (Score:3)
The other possibility is that even a partially effective mask can reduce the r-value of the disease, and even small changes in the r-value can produce huge differences in the number of cases.
Masks are absolutely not 100% effective (nothing in life is) but as you suggest even an less than 100% effective mask will reduce the incidence of transmission and drive the R rate lower, and especially if you can keep R below 1 then it is going to have massive effect on the number of cases.
It appears to me that the anti-maskers are very adept at making perfect the enemy of better.
Re: Sarah Palin (Score:2, Insightful)
None of those seem relevant. Masks aren't there to stop you receiving the virus, they're there to stop you spreading it specifically (indeed solely) via water droplets.
As such, where the bad man touches the mask is unimportant. So is reuse. How infected the mask becomes is neither here nor there.
All that matters is that the virus can't get out by that means. That reduces the radius over which it can spread.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Informative)
The question that isn't being asked, but should be, is, "Are masks lowering the transmissibility?".
That question has been asked since early in the pandemic, and there have been many observational studies performed showing mask use lowering transmissibility to one degree or another. Like this early study [bmj.com] of mask use in China:
Now mod me down because this goes against the local dogma. Must not question the narrative!
Well, since "Uninformed" is not a moderation option, I don't think you should be modded down for mere ignorance. But that's just me.
Re: (Score:3)
The question that isn't being asked, but should be, is, "Are masks lowering the transmissibility?". Looking at the dataset, I don't believe so.
There is no way you have looked at any relevant data if you have come to that conclusion. There have been studies tracking transmission rates before and after mask mandates, and transmission rates did significantly drop. It is even more true for lockdowns. You can look at any trend-line for any US state/county or any country and identify when either increased mask mandates or lockdowns were put in place because a week or two later the case rate goes down dramatically.
In the US you could see case rates slowi
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:4, Insightful)
Must not question the narrative!
You don't get modded down for questioning the narrative. You get modded down for asking a question that has been answered countless times. At some point you're no longer a concerned citizen keeping "the narrative" in check, but rather you're a dangerous moron.
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Also not a controlled experiment [Re:Sarah Palin] (Score:2)
...Certainly, there are other factors that go into these numbers,...
Correct. There are differences between countries other than mask wearing.
I am particularly skeptical about analyses that pick compare countries without a very good reason to explain why those two. There are 195 countries in the world. Out of the 18,915 possible comparisons of two countries, why did you pick those parti
Re: (Score:3)
Doubtful, mask would not have made a difference.
How is it people who are supposed to be smart (slashdot readers) can be so uneducated?
Re: (Score:3)
How is it people who are supposed to be smart (slashdot readers) can be so uneducated?
Rhetorical, I know, but....
Publishing news for smart people isn't the same as publishing news only to smart people. There's no gate here that keeps uneducated people out.
In fact, I would wager that any source of news for smart people that allows comments is extremely likely to attract stupid people who (consciously or not) feel like they have something to prove.
Re: (Score:3)
People come to a belief through emotion or a gut feeling, then use their intelligence to justify that belief. People with their emotional/gut beliefs can't be argued out of them with evidence or education, just by something in the way of experience changing the underlying emotion.
Re: Sarah Palin (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Re:Sarah Palin (Score:5, Interesting)
We had a customer who was a paratrooper in Normandy, and my brother made that stupid comment for some reason. Dick immediately reamed him a new asshole and said, "More atheists are made in fucking foxholes than anywhere else, since no god worth worshiping would allow shit like that to happen!"
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of someone who said "if you were stranded in the middle of the ocean I guarantee you'd pray to God for rescue." That might be the case, and yet God still wouldn't save you!
Re: Sarah Palin (Score:3)
...so this guy stranded in the middle of the ocean sees a boat coming along.
"Y'allright there mate, need a lift?" - "Nah, I prayed and I believe, god will save me. Just mund your own way." - "You sure?" - "Yeah."
2 days later an aircraft carrier sees the guy, sends a patol voat over "jump in!" - "Mah, God will save me. Still got plenty of piss to drink".
6 hours later a cruise ship woth hot babes, waving "hey, need help?" - "Don't bother, God'll save me eventually"
Next day he's dead, perplexed, in front of Tb
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If a deity created us with the urge to carry out a world war then it's incompetent and doesn't deserve to be worshiped anyway.
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Re: Sarah Palin (Score:2)
You'd be surprised. Not just over how many there are but how often sayings are wrong.
Intentionally wrong? (Score:2)
So it makes me wonder: Does Berenson actually know that he is wrong about the things he is posting and continues to post because he likes the attention? Or does he actually believe the things he posts? I can't decide which would be worse.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't discount the possibility that he knows he's wrong but is intentionally spreading disinformation. Remember, he is a Fox News contributor and favorite of the Right.
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Slow motion eugenics?
Re: Intentionally wrong? (Score:2)
Mostly the poorer, though. In Atlas Shrugged, the bible of the far right and libertarian movements, the poor must die so that the oppressed wealthy elite can be free.
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As long as they enrich themselves first that's not a problem, these people aren't thinking long-term or about anyone but themselves.
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It's a false flag operation. Consider Berenson to be the Manchurian candidate.
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"If you get all the wrong answers on a True / False test, you must know the correct answers. Even on a multiple-choice test it can be difficult to get them all wrong unless you actually know the correct answers."
I had a physics teacher in high school who offered to give anyone an "A" on the final if they got all of the answers wrong. One caveat, though: if they got even one question right they'd get an "F". No one ever took him up on his offer.
Democrats are fools (Score:3, Insightful)
If they had any IQ they would shift the responsibility of vaccines to Trump and Operation Warp Speed. If you force Republicans to admit that Trump himself either has a severe incompetence and lack of judgment â"his own Supreme Court picks voted against him, his own cabinet picks had to be fired by him, and he gave billions to vaccine companies, and he initially went along with lockdowns â" or he is a secret globalist plant who fooled them. Republicans brains would have to reject the premise of Trump being bad, so suddenly you would see increased vaccine acceptance. Democrats are zero when it comes to strategy.
Re: Democrats are wise (Score:3)
Lying to get people vaccinated will always be worse in the end.
Re: (Score:3)
This.
"President Trump spent billions of your taxpayer dollars developing a vaccine shown effective on unbelievably tight timeline. It is a miracle of modern medicine, and may, as a byproduct, cure the common cold. Will you take it?"
Scientifically, that's actually quite useful. (Score:2)
Someone who is consistently wrong is just as useful as somebody who is consistently right.
You just take the opposite.
It's the way my parents raised me.
(It really is!)
Re: Scientifically, that's actually quite useful. (Score:3)
No, because there are many more ways to be wrong than right, only one of which can ever be the opposite of right and thus useful.
One person stands out... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, surely not. "Professor" Neil Ferguson has never met an epidemic he couldn't portray as a world-ending catastrophe. He has often been wrong by four orders of magnitude.
https://statmodeling.stat.colu... [columbia.edu]
https://fort-russ.com/2020/05/... [fort-russ.com]
https://www.spectator.co.uk/ar... [spectator.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not a Neil Ferguson fan, but AC below seems correct. https://theferret.scot/fact-ch... [theferret.scot] In particular, Ferguson's doomsday prediction of 500k dead in the UK was based on just letting the virus run its course. Almost a year later, with 120k dead, this seems like it would be in the right ballpark.
Honestly though, I thought he was an economist moonlighting as an epidemiologist, but it turns out that I had it backwards. So maybe "ballpark" isn't good enough.
Pandemic, democracy and common good (Score:3)
This pandemic has clearly demonstrated that democracy by itself isn't enough for a functioning society. People need to work together for the common good. That can't be enforced by law, and that's how you have perfectly legal idiots citing democracy and freedom and refusing to work **with** the rest of the society, so that the entire society benefits. In times of crisis, such as this, explicitly totalitarian governments seem to function better, and this is very scary for our future. Especially as it's easier to transition to totalitarian governments (starting as overbearing nanny states) than transitioning to a mentality where "common good" exists, from a dysfunctional self-oriented democracy.
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Reducing polarization would be the first step, but nobody with deep pockets or deep incentives seems to want that. Polarization makes money (look at this site, and the type of news it shows these days, and also look at the rest of social media) and polarization is also desired by foreign state actors. Who's going to reduce it?
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Re: (Score:2)
It would be refreshing, and it would take a major event to make that happen. "Social" media is the cancer that divides, classifies and feeds back more and more bile. Either the cancer needs to die, or the host is going to die. I remember when I was young, there was an earthquake that cause people to get out on the streets and spend an evening, out of fear. You can't imagine how refreshingly positive the atmosphere was. Different continent and almost different century though, but still... Take away the echo
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I'd say they agreed with you.
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We live in different times. The dictators are the big corporations, and they're only growing in power. And they don't seem to settle for temporary. In ancient times, a bit of military would do. Now it's all tech. Social discourse is via tech. What people see, is via tech. Military depends on tech. Let's all guess what is the role of Big Tech here...
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Since when has the US had a functioning democracy for anyone except the uber-rich and powerful?
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I guess the answer is never, I don't live there though. It still hurts to see such destructive societal divides, all done in the name of greater profits and maintaining the status quo.
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This pandemic has clearly demonstrated that democracy by itself isn't enough for a functioning society. People need to work together for the common good.
Great, another moron with a bucket full of fallacy. No, the pandemic didn't demonstrate anything about democracy. Your fallacy is ignoring common cause. A democracy is "of the people, by the people, for the people." A pandemic response requires people to modify their behaviors for "the common good". The pandemic demonstrated that people are, in general, stupid, ignorant, selfish assholes.
In times of crisis, such as this, explicitly totalitarian governments seem to function better, and this is very scary for our future.
Totalitarian governments are able to sequester their entire populations and kill anyone who doesn't follow the rules. In
"Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks." (Score:2)
Mr Fauci has already explained why not masks were not required at the beginning of the pandemic, the supply was to be saved for hospital workers.
What is meant by "wrong"? (Score:2)
"Wrong" is a peculiar word. Initially WHO and the CDC used SARS and MERS as proxies, because they knew very little about the new coronavirus variant. Was that wrong? Well, yes, in strict terms, but when you're building initial models to figure out what infection rates might be like, and you don't know a damned thing about the pathogen you're being confronted with, you will be forced to use analogues. That's the way science works; early hypotheses are created based on the best data possible, but you're alway
The Swap (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost everyone (there was no major tribal divide) used to think this kind of joke ("Normally I wear protection, but then I thought, when am I going to make it back to Haiti?") [youtube.com] was funny, but now 40% of American voters literally would go bareback in Haitian brothels during the height of HIV. Peoples' attitudes change. That's what liberalism is all about: letting go of past solutions and strategies, in favor of trying out daring new things just to see what happens. Tear down that fence instead of wasting a
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I'm interested in this idea, can you give some examples of this swap? When I see the Republican party, I see them reinforcing the status-quo by pushing policies that keep immigrants out (thus preventing America's culture from being influenced by new ideas from other parts of the world), restrict access to voting (which keeps the power in the hands of the wealthy), and fall in line with "Reagonomics" (tax policy that puts more money into the hands of the wealthy). When I see the Democratic party, I general
really (Score:2)
so msmash.
what are you going to do about it.
or are you asking for cheese with that wine
Summary is Irresponsible without Links (Score:5, Interesting)
The article has very important links that should probably be included in the summary because those links given EXTREMELY important context.
Summary: Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks.
Article Link: Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is...”
He wasn't wrong that masks are important and need to be worn. He was wrong about masks when he made a comment before on March 8, 2020. On March 8, 2020, the WHO counted 213 total cases in the US to date. At the time it seemed unnecessary to wear a mask in public and, furthermore, the concern was that there would be a mask shortage for medical workers... AND THERE WAS. No one was mass-producing cloth masks yet. We all remember the "how to make a cloth mask at home" tutorials right?
Summary: New York was wrong about the subways
Article Link: New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast the seats, walls, and poles with a variety of antiseptic weaponry, including electrostatic disinfectant sprays.
Surface transmission has been shown to be low risk. This is a relatively new conclusion. Transit systems have shown to be low-probability vectors for transmission, but that is likely due to VASTLY reduced use, reduced occupancy, and and the ridiculous amount of cleaning they're doing now. The precautions have prevented the need for knee-jerk closures of the transit systems. That's not being wrong... that's being successful.
Summary: I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief.
Article Link: We Can Prevent a Great Depression. It’ll Take $10 Trillion.
That still seems about right. It hasn't nor will it come as a single check being written, but all the stimulus adding up will probably cost around that much-- especially if you factor in the MASSIVE amounts of expenses (and lost revenue) taken on by major public institutions with the blind hope of getting reimbursed by FEMA. That's right, a lot of the relief is being debt-financed by organizations other than the Federal government and if we want to prevent recession or depression, we're going to have to keep spending.
Fauci was not wrong about masks (Score:3)
These kind of white lies used to be fairly standard, but you can't do them anymore. It's debatable if you ever should have, but now the anti-science crowd will seize on every one as proof that there is not truth, that the only thing that matters is personal freedom and that your ignorance is the same as my knowledge (to coin a phrase).
Thanks to these anti-science nincompoops there's an entire emerging field of research surrounding how to get them to believe real things are real. It's a bizarre and sad waste of our specie's intellect.
Re: (Score:2)
Please elaborate upon this theory that Trump is somehow a good storyteller.
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Re:Right vs Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
AZ one shot client from the UK here. I am not dead and I am satisfied that I now after a month have a 75% likelihood that I cannot catch it and a 100% chance that it cannot kill me. I will get the boost in May that takes that up to 90%. I am more likely to choke on my dinner than die of Covid thanks to "crappy AZ". Oh and I will continue to wear a mask - just in case I get asymptotically infected. Do not want to kill the grocery store worker. I am continuously amazed how ignorant tech people appear to be about covid and vaccines.
I am even more amazed to see 150,000 dead in the US and less than 10,000 in China. You sure have the biggest military in the world but your public health care is terrible. What exactly is the point of all that military might when the citizens are being murdered by a bug? American values look like crap at the moment.
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Goes back to Ronnie "Facts are stupid things" Raygun and the Christian Coalition, who enshrined the entire ethos that "My opinion is equally valid as your facts."
Re:Right vs Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
And whoever wrote this article and included the phrase "Fauci was wrong about masks" is making a political statement. Fauci pretty much winked at us at the time he said masks won't make much difference. He was saying that because there was a run on them, and doctors weren't able to find enough N95's. In that light, yes, it was more important for doctors to get them than the general public - who were already being recommended to socially distance.
As the epidemic wore on, Fauci and almost anybody else acting responsibly recommended mask wearing for everyone when out in public. But the talking points still include "...but Fauci said masks don't work". It's out of date, irrelevent, and a political distraction tactic at best...
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The fact that he mentioned shortages in the same breath as 'we don't know whether or not masks will help the general public" I took as a wink. More like, it'd be nice if I could recommend masks for everyone - certanly couldn't hurt, but I can't because they're not available. But be careful, folks, and you'll probably be okay until we can get you maked up - at which time you can start grocery shopping again...
And he was kind of wrong - or at least overly optimistic. I got covid during that period, when I
Re: Right vs Wrong (Score:2)
There is relative truth (things that are true... From a certain point of view), there is consensual truth (things acted as if true because many believed it) and there is invariant truth (that which remains true regardless of the variable you adjust).
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Truth is what people believe and people love a good story teller.
That is such unmitigated bullshit. It is literally saying the truth is what most people believe. It is buying into the appeal to popularity fallacy. The truth is what the facts say. If what people believe goes against the facts then people don't believe the truth, they believe bullshit.
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He lied multiple times about the vaccine being available sooner than it would be, often saying "in a week"
Re:Biggest lie (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, but sometimes, you have to be able to discern the difference between success and utter failure.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In light of all existing evidence, we don't need to do anything about COVID-19 except maybe in NYC.
We should start easing off of the restrictions, not adding new ones.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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No, he wasn't wrong about "everything", but making a lucky guess one time in four years is not something that I look for in a country's leadership.
Re: Biggest lie (Score:2)
Being produced is not equal to being available.
Re:Biggest lie (Score:5, Insightful)
A broken clock is right twice a day.
And trump is a VERY broken clock.
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The Gates Foundation took more effective steps to start early vaccine production than his entire Sadministration.
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Personally, I didn't think we'd have a vaccine for years. And if that was the case, we all knew we wouldn't be locked down until a vaccine was developed.
Yes you and I know that sensibly, but the overriding messages from authorities seemed to be that any semblance of economic or social normalcy would never resume until a vaccine arrived.
Re:And the only one who was right... (Score:5, Informative)
The reason he's being investigated is he had no authority to make the purchases, the purchases were done without oversight, and conveniently those purchases went to people who supported the con artist.
It's called corruption.
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Re: Baloney (Score:3)
Disasters happen and your ability to mitigate them is limited but your ability to exacerbate them is limited only by your imagination.
Covid kills and cripples some but nowhere near most or even many. If it did, that would be a different story. But it doesn't. Focusing on the worst outcomes is also a bad cognitive bias that causes poor decisions to be made.
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Re:On the up and up (Score:4, Insightful)
The side effects, from what I've read, can suck but they disappear in 1-2 days. Yeah, it sucks to be miserable for a couple of days but it beats spending a few days on a ventilator.
Re: On the up and up (Score:2)
The risk of Long Covid in any age group is many many orders of magnitude greater than the correspondingly severe side effect.
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No. You're a hermit with WiFi.
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You're shilling for Clear Sky and Bill O'Lie-ly? Really? Good grief.
Re: Chinese culture spread the coronavirus. (Score:2)
As if the right wing in Europe and America weren't cultures spreading lies on a far wider scale than the Chinese could dream of.
No nation comes away clean here, although New Zealand is cleanest.
Freedom is free, but so is stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "Chinese death virus". It's not altogether clear which country it evolved in. Animals, oddly, aren't nationalistic. Neither are viruses.
The virus is entirely natural. Its behaviour is not unusual for viruses. There are many that have a long form.
We need to deal with the virus, we could eliminate it if we could be arsed, but attributing a flag to it is the sort of stupidity that leads to things getting worse.
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There are several vaccines using vastly different approaches.
If you don't trust the ones with new tech like moderna, you can use coronavac or the oxford one or many others.
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The fact is, whatever the current load is, is the baseline. The status quo. No matter how bad the status quo may suck, it has precisely nothing to do with the cost of increasing the baseline and costing additional lives because of doing so.
Really, your argument was too fucking stupid to respond to, but I'm a sucker for calling out morons.