@Heavyarms55 True. It's not like these people are in the corner of a single room. They're few, but they're scattered all over.
@NEStalgia Interesting indeed. Do you have a link to that article? I think it was clearly here before it was even thought to be a threat.
Also agreed on how Covid is now an afterthought on mainstream news here compared to other happenings. I can still find articles on the subject, but they're sometimes buried a little or seem like an afterthought. My guess is almost everyone is tired of reading about it, so clicks are being trafficked through other means.
@WoomyNNYes You are saying it yourself, so called “experts” are missing data all the time and in some cases might never get it, so you shouldn’t always trust them is my point. You know exactly well I’m not faulting anyone for trail and error, that’s ridiculous. And then there’s another side to the whole thing. Experts and scientists are humans and like all humans they have biases and sometimes incentives, of course many will try to minimize this but it’s never gone completely.
I mean, yeah. Don’t trust anyone if you don’t have to; people are fallible beings and prone to mistakes, and the scale of the unknown will always dwarf the sum of human knowledge, even without human error muddying the picture.
But if you do have to, it generally makes sense to trust the people who most clued up on what they’re talking about. Doesn’t mean they’re right, but they’re probably at least putting more time and effort into it than most people. At the very least, it makes sense to listen and take things into consideration.
But then... that’s sort of what you were saying anyway. So yeah, a certain level of scepticism is preferable to blind faith, however well intentioned or directed it may be. And that holds especially for those engaged in the research itself, who have a duty to try and present as accurate a picture as their limitations enable.
If anyone hasn't seen, Google maintains updated Covid-19 statistics graphs that are easy to look up for your country or state. Just search "covid statistics" and you'll get statistics for your area, with filters to see other states/countries. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google%20covid%20st...
@Spanjard Yeah, @maxz's comment is well put. Unfortunately, sometimes things are missed. Like this poor guy:
The first doctor to wash his hands before surgery & visiting sick patients; The medical world literally thought he was insane. His theory of washing-hands-to-prevent-spreading-infection was never accepted while he was alive. He had data & results to back it up, but was ignored. It was only accepted after he died. Oof.
@Tyranexx sadly i don't have a link. I do know it was nyt and from a money and a half or more ago... They usually archive older articles outside the pay wall. It was about a limited antibody test and the 15% number was an interpolation from the test group. Not a hard number but a best estimate based on antibody results. Though if that new study that says antibodies arent a given, maybe that number is much higher than 15%? That would be good... And not... Because than they'd all get it again.
The anecdotes were poster comments on that article online.
@Spanjard From an American perspective, the CDC lying about masks has likely done irreparable damage to their reputation. It's really frustrating, because I don't blame anyone even a bit for not trusting what authorities say now, and that's dangerous during a pandemic.
Also, medical authorities who were urging people to hide in their homes for months telling people to 'go out and protest' because 'racism is more dangerous than the virus.'
It's no wonder a bomb-thrower like Trump got into office. The institutions of our republic are utterly without credibility any more. The media reports news in a way that fits their narrative. Medical authorities lie during a pandemic. The legislative branch has been in a veritable state of gridlock for almost a decade now. Our executive branch is out of control.
@NEStalgia I have to tread carefully with NYT thanks to the pay wall, so unfortunately I can't always follow Link's to it (and I'm not paying lol). I'll search later if I can find another source not behind a money barrier that cites that study. Thanks!
I don't want to get political, but the leader of the USA said there's been too much testing and said to cut back. Now his supporters are calling it a joke. In my experience calling something a joke after the fact, like this, means it was not a joke - or the person who said it is so out of touch he didn't realize how bad what he said was.
But let's change the context:
There's a massive forest fire and and fire fighters have dumped millions of liters of water on it. We gotta cut back that's so much water! Oh the fire is still going? No worries, we slowed it down!
WW2: The Germans have been pushed out of France but it's so expensive to keep fighting, we need to slow down. Look, they've taken a lot of damage, maybe they'll just go away on their own?
I don't want to be political, but it scares the crap out of me when a pandemic that has literally killed tens of thousands of people and made millions ill has become a party issue. Would it be a left vs right issue if instead of a virus, it was an invasion that killed 115k people in your country? Would it be a party line issue if a volcano blew and wiped out a city? If massive hurricane slammed into a major city?
Movies, games and books that portray a massive threat uniting the people in a shared cause of survival are a load of crap! I'm no longer convinced that if aliens invaded, humans would work together to protect themselves!
@Heavyarms55 Regardless of is he making a joke or not what's a worry to me is that this is brushing away the pandemic as it's only because of good testing that's there's so many cases and not there wasn't enough action to combat it early on. It's like saying the dimension of the house you're building is wrong because the measuring stick was too accurate. This isn't the first time he's made these claims of too much testing either, instead he should be claiming good testing (even that's debatable though) is a victory in America's response to the virus.
Whilst the cut testing thing may have been a joke the highlights of the rally included a story of gloriously walking down a ramp and drinking a glass of water with one hand weren't jokes lol
@jump@heavyarms55 Yeah, I've seen some outlets needlessly muddying the waters by only saying number of new cases without historical context. However, some other metrics can better communicate whether covid is spreading too fast, or slowing to make progress. The more of the following, the better the picture.
-Numbers of people hospitalized with covid (historically, and ICU bed capacity)
-Numbers of covid-posititve test results per capita.
But if you do have to, it generally makes sense to trust the people who most clued up on what they’re talking about. Doesn’t mean they’re right, but they’re probably at least putting more time and effort into it than most people. At the very least, it makes sense to listen and into take things into consideration.
Problem is, when most people think "expert" they make no distinction at all between "someone who has routinely made accurate predictions on this subject" as opposed to "someone who has credentials in this subject and is being presented as an expert by some kind of reputable institution".
Having a history of accurate predictions is a good guide that you can be trusted. Simply having a PhD or working for an "institute" of some kind, is completely meaningless.
@Heavyarms55 Everyone for themself is the default human behavior. I'm not trying to sound like I'm right or left (because I'm not) but "everyone uniting for the common threat", that's "liberal Hollywood"'s version of humans....their utopianist dogma at play. Trouble is they're the first to cut and run when things get tight. Its a fantasy of how people wish themselves and others were, not a reflection of any reality that's likely to exist. There's whole buildings full of historical books to prove that. For all the underground resistances during WWII there were just as many selling out their own and everyone else just to get a hall pass. One of those is one of the planet's richest men today who has openly stated he'd do it again and has no regrets. Self-serving at the expense of anyone or everyone else is very well rewarded on this planet, and selflessness is very thoroughly punished. Maybe you'll get a bronze statue for pigeons to dump on.
It doesn't apply to everyone. Some people are shameful suckers that actually like helping people. Dystopianist games actually have that one right. When the fit hits the shan, the majority of humans would sell out the entire planet if it meant saving their own skin or even just improving their own comfort. Not everyone...but there are small pockets of people that wouldn't do that compared to the majority of people who would. And most would flaunt it.
"WW2: The Germans have been pushed out of France but it's so expensive to keep fighting, we need to slow down. Look, they've taken a lot of damage, maybe they'll just go away on their own?" Fairly unironically, that's essentially what happened in China, verbatim, that lead to the China we all know. Chiang Kai-Shek was so obsessed with thwarting the Communist uprising that he largely ignored the ongoing Japanese invasion devastating the South. The public was so sick of the Japanese invasion and his permissiveness of just "containing" it rather than halting it, that they finally turned on the Republic and largely endorsed Mao's movement (and the Soviet backing implied) simply to get rid of the Japanese invaders once and for all. Whether that worked out well or not long term depends on a lot of perspective, I guess.
As the saying goes, "there's no such thing as the present, only the past repeating over and over."
As for the "joke" or not, I haven't seen any of that first hand, and I try not to. It's always so difficult to tell what's up with US news and media flurries, and double so whenever it involves him in particular. Everyone that dislikes him, from before day 1 is so quick to jump on everything whether meaningful or not, strip it of all tone and context, and run with it to portray the worst monster since the Crusades. Everyone that likes him, from before day 1 is equally quick to defend every bad idea and statement made as true greatness. Both sides knee-jerk invent whatever meaning behind anything they want to fit the character they've created making truth almost invisible.
I try to see all sides of every issue, whether him or his predecessor. For the record I'm not terribly fond of either in any capacity, but also saw both sides of them both habitually vilified by critics for things that were otherwise benign, and praised by supporters for things that otherwise were villainous. Reality does not intersect with media/social-driven herd mentality. And yet I'm left baffled by his handling of COVID.....whether as friend or foe.....most of what he has done and said is just outright nonsensical. I can not for the life of me understand what on earth his viewpoint is or what he's trying to convey beyond "There is no disease, just ignore it." Which those that support him have apparently taken that message and ran with it. Yet, oddly, those that don't support him.....also appear to have taken that message and ran with it while also criticizing him for saying it? Ultimately his initial response was to just push for herd immunity and do nothing. He was lambasted. Yet the public has now seemingly fully embraced that idea. Yet instead of admitting they now like his crazy plan, because left or right they actually share the same defiant attitude he embodies (the first great uniter? Let's all suck more, together!) , they continue to assault him for it while actually doing what he said in the first place. In that context maybe it shouldn't be surprising or even criticized he's down to saying bizarre, destructive things like that, joke or not. If you were the leader of a large group of people who pummeled you for your idea....then actually followed your idea while still pummeling you for saying it...even while anybody with knowledge still says it's a bad idea nobody should be following.....at what point would you just start throwing rocks at everyone's heads for amusement and just give up? Not that I agree with the idea at all, but when the populace itself has long passed the line of sanity..... I'm not sure "saying the right things" helps anymore either. If he said too much testing he's out of touch or monstrous. If he said not enough testing he'd be undermining the hard work of all the professionals. If he said just the right amount of testing he'd be out of touch and monstrous, not understanding the risk .
All that said though, despite his clear position that he really doesn't see a threat from the disease, (or is it a clear position that he feels the threat isn't worth the cost of trying to stop it?) he has, thankfully, continued to keep Dr. Fauci on board, who is, IMO the single most realistic person of all the experts involved. If the worst thing of this presidency is the fact that he has instilled a defiant attitude toward the disease to those that politically support him, then the best thing of it is that he's also continued to keep the most sensible mind heading the response, despite his opinion being a 180 of his own. Which always goes back to confusion. Would such a monstrous out of touch individual be so willing to keep someone that is polar opposite of him and a true voice of reason and science heading the whole project? That conflicts with what we "see". Then again, what we see is a concoction of those would would communicate it for their own ends. And when we live inside a web of lies and misdirection edited to make us think what we're intended to think, by all "sides".....what is real? At this point the politicians, the organizations, have all failed. WHO caused the crisis by bending over backward for whatever China said, shutting down Taiwan, and then almost repeated the error with their ridiculous statements on asymptomatic spread. CDC has seemingly classified racism as a terminal disease and anger as a barrier protection for viruses. At this point, Fauci is pretty much the only trustworthy voice around. When the guy with the decades of experience from the old school of medicine pretty much says "we have no idea" "it keeps changing", "we not sure about immunity durability, and a vaccine may not end it" and more or less "I wouldn't be going to all these public places, myself..." that's trustworthy. And doubly so when he directly works for the guy who says "there's too much testing." I always listen, not always with a good mood when done, when he has something to say.
@Dezzy I had long ago abandoned the land across the pond as having fallen even before we did, yet you're one of the few people who seems to actually "get it" with real clarity on a lot of things.
@Heavyarms55 Who? If you mean Fauci because he works for the WH, i think you missed my meaning. My point is he does seem highly qualified, highly honest, genuine medical from the old school of medical. He's the only voice I've found trustworthy, even when the answer is that they simply don't have answers now. That's honest and something few in science say these days.
The only part i don't get is why the WH keeps him as the point man on this if his stance seems the polar opposite the president's very defiant stance. Regardless of ones stance on the WH itself, while who and cdc discarded credibility long ago, Dr. Fauci has been the most consistent voice expressing concern and caution... Definitely worth trusting and listening to.
I just don't get why the WH who doesn't seem to agree with him... At all... Has (thankfully) kept him as the point man.
@NEStalgia I purposely don't comment on politics in here, but I don't think this idea is polarizing, or unreasonable. Regarding Fauci, I have theorized that other republican leaders have weighed in, to keep fauci.
@WoomyNNYes Yeah, that's plausible. Hopefully it continues. At a time when NOONE is trustworthy and without an agenda on this disease, he's been a very reliable north star. Not always with good news. In fact usually the opposite. But reliable and actually concerned.... Unlike seemingly every other camp including cdc.
It's always the old school docs that have any clue. The new ones are great at memorizing text books. Not great thinkers outside the books. And the old school docs know it.
" Some people are shameful suckers that actually like helping people. "
If this is actually how you think I cannot trust you. It completely changes my opinion of you and not in a positive way and makes me immensely sad. You're obviously intelligent, but now I fear what you might do with that intelligence.
@Dezzy I had long ago abandoned the land across the pond as having fallen even before we did, yet you're one of the few people who seems to actually "get it" with real clarity on a lot of things.
No idea what this was in response to, but thanks I guess! Lol
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