Besides which you're simply attempting your usual switch. The issue here [...] — Isaac

... isn't up to you to decide on others' behalf. :grin:

Ordinarily, people, including children, would mask up in public social settings, not at home for example (bubble), while learning more.

People were screamed at, called 'murderers' [...] — Isaac

... and there was "child abuse" screamery (which it isn't, but evokes other things), and some made a fine buck on masks (the :mask:-industrial complex), and elsewhere masking up turned into a mini-trend because then they'd worry less about pimples lipstick whatever. I guess you could schedule a study for when those kids are post-puberty to figure out how many turned into monsters or something. Did past :mask:'ing produce damaged years/generations?

And you wonder how they get to walk all over you... — Isaac

I cannot make sense of your blind obsequience. — Isaac

Hmm So that's what you made out of @EricH's comments.

, something Prasad got right was that the Ο-mutants became wicked at spreading, found fertile ground, but, fortunately, became less dangerous. :phew: ← need icon

On another note...

need icon — jorndoe

:sweat: On point. Good job Vinay Prasad!

... isn't up to you to decide on others' behalf. :grin: — jorndoe

Well, if you want to have a conversation about something else, then I suggest you you do so by posting something independently. Replying to my posts to make unrelated points seems a bit eccentric at best.

Ordinarily, people, including children, would mask up in public social settings, not at home for example (bubble), while learning more. — jorndoe

Why? Why would the default be to mask first, check later? And how exactly do you propose people learn more when doctors and health professionals presenting the alternative position are banned from public discourse?

and there was "child abuse" screamery (which it isn't, but evokes other things), — jorndoe

Indeed. But "they did it too" is hardly a grown up defense for reprehensible behaviour is it?

Hmm So that's what you made out of EricH's comments. — jorndoe

Yep. He referred to the first slightest criticism of the CDC as "vitriol". Not sure what else to make of that.

I haven't followed it but I vaguely remember they thought people would get a false sense of security wearing masks and increase risky behaviour?

I think that is the explanation they eventually settled on when maskwearing didn't seem to yield the results they were expecting.

As to the efficacy of masks, any schoolkid could do the math - they do block droplets of a certain size and larger? Evidence? Try coughing & sneezing with a mask on. Does it feel wet? In the world of microbes, there's a minimum infective dose (MID) and this is where masks come in. By reducing the volume of respiratory infective material what masks do is prevent microbes like viruses from achieving the MID to cause an infection and setting off a chain reaction i.e. they stop epidemics, pandemics from occurring.

I haven't followed it but I vaguely remember they thought people would get a false sense of security wearing masks and increase risky behaviour? — Benkei

:up:

You can read the UK's version here.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887467/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf

It's quite disturbing.

Worse, for NHS staff, the advised wording for communicating to children was "normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination.” from https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Vaccination%20do%20and%20donts%20by%20audience%20cohorts.pdf

Even the sage members regretted it...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit-totalitarian-use-fear-control-behaviour-covid/

“In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.

“The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

Absolutely stomach-churning stuff.

I'm glad some people seem to have finally had their "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

Also somewhat reassuring that the mainstream media are calling this episode for what it is: dystopian, totalitarian stuff of nightmares.

The second link isn't working, by the way. But I was able to find what you referred to via Google.

Absolutely stomach-churning stuff.

I'm glad some people seem to have finally had their "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment. — Tzeentch

Yeah, though as you said before, mostly conspicuous silence. The scientists who engineered the programme admit it was a "dystopian" experiment and what we mostly get from the so-called 'progressives' is studious self-gagging.

One of the "Covid moments" I hated the most. Why were they doing these things? It is unfunny and it looks like they were joking in pandemic and covid deaths.

Why were they doing these things? — javi2541997

Because everyone who follows the rules is part of a cool, happy group who do fun stuff together. You wouldn't want to be left out of their gang would you?

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers.

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers. — Isaac

:rofl: :100:

It's a little crazy how quick things seem to be moving in the background, and how little of it reaches you unless you go looking for it.

Practically everything governments have done with regards to the pandemic has been brought into question.

Next on the list:



Good ol' vitamin D. Safe and effective. Who knew?

Well, we all did. Doctors, medical experts, my old granny and my hypothetical 6-year old brother.


Literally everybody knew this already, but so dependent on "experts" have we become that we need to wait until they tell us we can rely on our common sense, intuition and past experience again.


During the pandemic there was an effort to keep people indoors, away from the sun. Lockdowns, a bans on grouping, etc.

Scarcely a word about vitamin D supplementation from mainstream media or the political establishment (though political opposition seemed more aware of alternatives).

Is it really feasible to think that mankind forgot something so simple? What are we really looking at here? Incompetence bordering on the criminal, or was vitamin D simply not lucrative enough? Was it deemed "unhelpful" to give people the sense that they themselves held the key to their health by getting out in the sunshine or supplementing vitamin D?

Because everyone who follows the rules is part of a cool, happy group who do fun stuff together. You wouldn't want to be left out of their gang would you?

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers. — Isaac

When the extra danger money we have to cough up burns giant holes in our pockets, we'll find out who the real winners are! :grimace: Not much of a choice there, eh? Poverty or Masks? Conservatives, are y'all listening? Keep at it and you'll be free alright, but also poor, very poor. :cool:

Well, the good doctor is quite careful in his wordings, but this just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it?

Also, why is it so quiet in this thread? :chin:

why is it so quiet in this thread? — Tzeentch

Embarrassment.

Embarrassment — Isaac

Who's embarrassed?

We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt...

... We were mesmerised by the once-in-a-century scale of the emergency and succeeded only in making a crisis even worse. In short, we panicked. This was an epidemic crying out for a precision public health approach and it got the opposite. — Professor Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, previously Scottish Covid-19 policy advisor

The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared — Member of UK SAGE - wishing, quite rightly, to remain anonymous talking to the Telegraph

implementation was often too harsh, too inflexible, too slow to adapt and too dismissive of basic rights...

... the balance between the costs and benefits of lockdowns swung towards costs long before governments were willing to lift them.

... Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions. This had a negative effect on economic activity and national morale. Leaders routinely claimed to base policy on expert advice. It is true that some CHOs favoured harsher measures. But it became clear that experts (both within and outside government) often differed in their advice — Fault lines: An independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19

No strong reason against [masking children] in corridors etc, and no very strong reasons for. ...not worth an argument — Chis Whitty, UK Chief Medical Officer in leaked Whatsapp message

In reality we haven’t found shielding easy or very effective first time round and I don’t think anyone else has either. — Patrick Vallance, the UK chief scientific adviser in leaked Whatsapp message

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference — Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

A large study in the UK and another that surveyed people internationally found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.

Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.

Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells. “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.” — https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

Vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about... Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration — Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former chair of AMA

Since the pandemic began, there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths involving heart disease - on average over 230 additional deaths a week above expected heart disease death rates.
...
, Covid infections are no longer a driving force behind the excess heart disease death rate.

...significant and widespread disruption to heart care services has driven the ongoing surge in excess deaths involving heart disease in England. — British Heart Foundation

The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of global progress in tackling tuberculosis and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths have increased, according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report.

In 2020, more people died from TB, with far fewer people being diagnosed and treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019, and overall spending on essential TB services falling.

The first challenge is disruption in access to TB services and a reduction in resources. In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from tackling TB to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services.

The second is that people have struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns. — World Health Organisation

...and in case anyone was thinking this was an unexpected side-effect...

Even temporary disruptions can cause long-term increases in TB incidence and mortality. If lockdown-related disruptions cause a temporary 50% reduction in TB transmission, we estimated that a 3-month suspension of TB services, followed by 10 months to restore to normal, would cause, over the next 5 years, an additional 1⋅19 million TB cases (Crl 1⋅06–1⋅33) and 361,000 TB deaths (CrI 333–394 thousand) in India, 24,700 (16,100–44,700) TB cases and 12,500 deaths (8.8–17.8 thousand) in Kenya, and 4,350 (826–6,540) cases and 1,340 deaths (815–1,980) in Ukraine. The principal driver of these adverse impacts is the accumulation of undetected TB during a lockdown. — The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tuberculosis epidemic a modelling analysis - The Lancet

... does that give any clues as to who might now be too embarrassed to comment retrospectively on how we handled the pandemic?

This thread has become an embarrassment. :)

So, the 2002 SARS outbreak was contained somewhat effectively. The outbreak was first detected in late 2002, and was more or less said to have been stopped by 2005, with something in the range of 10,000 known cases (10% fatalities). Determining infection with the virus was largely by symptoms, followed by testing, tracing.

The 2019 outbreak was different, no similar stoppage (or control), including the subsequent mutations. What went wrong? Was the later COVID-19 virus that much more effective in spreading across the globe, perhaps especially the subsequent Ο-variant? Higher survivability outside of infectees? Indifference/complacency/obstruction? Too much politicizing? (Frump culture? :smile:) Something else? Multiple factors seem likely as of typing.

Surely we want to learn. We've learned some things, with likely more to come. Maybe it'll be a case study sometime in the future. Fortunately, the fatality rate is also lower. Are we prepared for the next one?

I came across someone saying something like ... tinder is still catching fire (tinder being the more vulnerable). Some say that nothing in particular should be done in case of outbreaks (altogether), others say "safety first caution", others still ... You name it, someone said it.

Lessons learned so far?

Lessons learned so far? — jorndoe

If you put your fingers sufficiently far in your ears and squint enough that you can't read properly, you can continue to believe whatever your Facebook feed tells you. Good lesson.

Or... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress?

Or... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress? — Benkei

Sure. Maybe.

Can you think of a compelling reason why I ought to accept one possible interpretation over another?

I can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself!

Also on masking: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

I can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself! — Benkei

Nothing's coming to mind, no.

Sometimes people having fun is just that, other times it's an unhealthy expression of ingroup/outgroup exclusory reinforcement.

I'm not seeing this compelling reason to always assume the former over the latter.

Also on masking: — Benkei

Do you understand what a meta-study does?

Yes, that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways. I just linked one of the few studies specifically dealing with masking and covid and a large n-value. I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results.

that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways. — Benkei

Indeed.

And here are the flaws in the Bangladesh study you cited.

https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-022-06704-z

Upon reanalysis, we find a large, statistically significant imbalance in the size of the treatment and control arms evincing substantial post-randomization ascertainment bias by unblinded staff. The observed decrease in the primary outcome is the same magnitude as the population imbalance but fails significance by the same tests (see Fig. 1 and Table 1). This reanalysis thus complicates drawing any causal link between masks and the observed decrease in population-rate of symptomatic seropositivity.

Do you see what's happening here? Scientists are disagreeing.

I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results. — Benkei

Is anyone suggesting you should? I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory. I don't see anyone accusing mask-wearers of having 'blood on their hands'. I don't see anyone associating mask-wearing with conspiracy theory...

You, it seems, are quite free to believe the Bangladesh study. It is those who believe the Cochrane study who are constrained.

I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory. — Isaac

Not since the ban the burkha thing.

The general venal awfulness and total incompetence of the UK government has been rather a theme in my general posting here for some time. The idiotic waste of the expertise and resources of the NHS track and trace system already in place for sexually transmitted diseases, and the emptying of hospitals of elderly patients back into the care homes that were supposed to be ring-fenced were just the beginning. But the problem is bigger than that. There needed to be a global response, and there was none. Containment isolation and eradication could have worked in the early stages, but there's no point in half the world containing and eradicating. So we had the unedifying scramble for vaccines, and let it rip amongst the poor.

We vote for self-serving politicians because they represent us, unfortunately. The bald monkeys are throwing their shit at each other as usual.