nCoV 2019

[Ab]

I love wearing a mask when I’m in public because I’m a privacy tinfoilhatter and I like frustrating the facial-recognition surveillance that I know is going on everywhere every day.

[Nich]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

How is this scam being run, how was the buy-in of the overwhelming majority of the world's experts achieved? How come places more aligned with best practices (masks, etc.) are doing so much better than those not? How do I get hold of whatever you're smoking?

Germany, Israel, et al are adhering to the full stack of "best practices" (Germany especially has N95 masks as standard) and what can we say about their surging cases? It would have been worse if they just let it burn through? Dare I say that it would be the same, and likely better health outcome if people were allowed free movement with less stress & anxiety. Typically, neighbouring countries where one follows NPIs, and another doesn't their daily cases ebb and flow almost in tandem.

How did a critical mass of experts fall upon the exact same conclusion? Is the dogma and stigmitization not evident? Plenty of examples of dissenting people losing their jobs, having their peer-reviewed papers "temporarily retracted". Twitter accounts suspended, youtube videos removed, Police paying you a visit because of a Facebook post. If you need your paycheck, and your reputation cannot withstand the stigma you may just say and do anything that fits within the Overton Window just to keep your head above water.

Incentives matter. Life is easier if you just go along with what is socially acceptable.

I don't think anyone is in control. I think to get everyone in the pandemic mode we encouraged snitching, shaming, fear, and abundance of caution as if these were virtues. By an large we were all in need of a common goal, so this became it. Governments are excellent at starting wars, but terrible at ending them. So this train is going to continue until the wheels come off because governments in the 21st century also don't have any balls. Bureaucratic hell is our ruin.

The best description (but shitty invented term) I've seen is Dr Mattias Desmet's Mass Formation concept. Probably better described as Mass Hypnosis, he describes the ingredients for totalitarianism as:
- Lack of social bond (anti-religion, anti-patriotism sentiment growing. Subreddits give greater sense of belonging than a flag or religious icon)
- Large swathe of society with lack of meaning (see Bullshit Jobs)
- Free floating anxiety
- Free floating frustration

These boxes have been checked for well over a decade. Trump almost solved it, but the pandemic solved all of it in the most unhealthy way possible.
- We can now bond over public health actions (This is our World War moment, but instead of grabbing a rifle, just sit down and watch Netflix!)
- We now have meaning! #InThisTogether!
- We finally know what we're anxious about, it's the virus!
- We finally know what we're frustrated about, it's COVIDIOTs and anti-vax nutters!

But this isn't exactly totalitarianism. It's not from a single government, nation, or originator. We have converged on grass-roots totalitarianism somehow. I don't believe world leaders and public health advisors thought their suggestions would mutate into this monster.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Nich

Dare I say that it would be the same, and likely better health outcome if people were allowed free movement with less stress & anxiety.

We don't know, we can't know! The best we can do is to act with discipline. But this is incredibly complex as best practice is often difficult to achieve, due to resourcing, due to willingness and ability, due to many factors. All this needs to be weighed when making decisions.

Incentives matter. Life is easier if you just go along with what is socially acceptable.

Incentives are complex and often contradictory. Life can be full of pain if you just go long with what is socially acceptable. Maybe you've just found it easiest riding the wave? And now for the first time that's starting to bite?

I don't think anyone is in control.

Yes, that's how it is and has always been.

How did a critical mass of experts fall upon the exact same conclusion?

Isn't this what we expected from robust science? That whoever does the study, wherever, whenever, the same conclusion is reached? It's not like the science we're basing our responses to the pandemic on were cooked up as the pandemic occurred. We're operating on the basis of knowledge that existed pre-pandemic.

As laypeople we count on reputation systems, as we're not in a position to fully understand the science ourselves. When shills see an opportunity to make bank cause the science is inconvenient and they know we'll never parse their bullshit, we need the scientific community to shame and discredit them.

Mass Hypnosis

Anyone talking about mass hypnosis is an obvious and blatant shill.

The nature of individual and group consciousness is not something that can be understood with certainty, however yeah, if you study these things one understanding is that we're all under some kind of "hypnosis", both as individuals and as groups. It's how the electrochemical soups we all are can somehow find ways to understand itself, each other. It's why children who experience neglect might struggle as their parents haven't appropriately "hypnotised" them. It's why psychedelics impact the way they do, as they can undermine that hypnosis. If you've ever tripped hard, you've had the experience of returning back to that hypnosis.

However understanding what is meant by hypnosis in this way requires a considerable amount of opaque reading, and is completely inappropriate for the layperson as the term is already loaded up with unsuitable meaning. Telling people we're under "mass hypnosis" in this context is completely inappropriate.

Just like we're all "deluded" because none of us has the capacity to completely grasp reality. We're all taking shortcuts, grappling with contradictions, acting on assumptions we can't know to be true. But that's not what's usually meant when we talk about delusion.

[Cyberbob]

Originally Posted by Nich

Sure thing. I'll try to keep things pre-2020 because research is probably a little difficult during the pandemic chaos.
======================

CDC issued this meta-analysis out of Hong Kong. The project ran from 2018 to Feb 2020.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

Comparing hand hygiene, face masks, cough/sneezing etiquette, surface / environment cleaning. They found hand hygiene to provide the greatest risk reduction. All other measures were useless.

====================

I'm going to pick on this one because I actually saw that posted on Twitter not so long ago, as a "CDC STUDY SHOWS MASKS ARE USELSS AGAINST COVID-19" sort of headline.

The study was published by the CDC and supported by WHO, but it was done by the University of Hong Kong.
They didn't find the masks were useless, or didn't work. The absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence, etc.

We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility (Figure 2). However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched.

Then one of the key authors of one of those original studies does a new study specifically for mask effectiveness, and finds 'Use of a surgical mask significantly reduced the proportion of droplets and aerosols with detectable virus among children and adults'

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2

I'm 100% cherry picking here, but it's clear that findings such as the one you quoted can be put forward as evidence for one's viewpoint at face value, but it doesn't take much to tear it apart and damage its credibility in such a discussion.

[Nich]

Great, let superior scientific findings beat inferior scientific findings. Let's not tip the scales with "quick and devestating published" takedowns in WIRED, WP, and removing search results from Google search, and rewriting wikipedia biographies of scientists who see it differently.

[Ab]

Stop trusting Google results and Wikipedia articles

[Nich]

If anything good comes of this pandemic, it will be a profound distrust of Google, social media, corporate media, governments, regulatory agencies, prediction models, and hubristic public health celebrities.

[Nich]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...te-revelation/

Head of SAGE modelling UK:

“You know the answer,” he replied. “Decision-makers are generally only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.” But isn’t it just as vital to be told if action is not needed? I asked him straight. “So you exclusively model bad outcomes that require restrictions and omit just-as-likely outcomes that would not require restrictions?”

“We generally model what we are asked to model,” came the reply. “There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform them with their policy.”

Models follow policy, not policy follows models.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by Ab

Stop trusting Google results and Wikipedia articles

[Native]

Originally Posted by Ab

Stop trusting Google results and Wikipedia articles

[blynk]

Originally Posted by Nich

If anything good comes of this pandemic, it will be a profound distrust of Google, social media, corporate media, governments, regulatory agencies, prediction models, and hubristic public health celebrities.

Will it though.
People that believe in those things will still believe in those things and people who dont, wont.

Similar to politics. No matter what the other side says, they are wrong.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Nich

If anything good comes of this pandemic, it will be a profound distrust of Google, social media, corporate media, governments, regulatory agencies, prediction models, and hubristic public health celebrities.

I came from the other direction, grew up in the 'hood, distrust is the sensible default, the consequences of misplaced trust being quick and vicious. I've had to learn what can be counted on, rather than what can't.

[Nich]

I grew up like a good Labour voting automoton like my parents (and the rest of my extended family). I believed some people were good, and that they were striving to be honest and truthful. We just had to make sure to vote the good people in.

These days I still find it easier to give people and organisations a fair shake at first. But they go straight to the shit list if I detect a lie. I'll admit it's very easy these days because they have an international script:
- "safe and effective" shitlist
- "Russian misinformation" shitlist
- "white supremecist" shitlist
- "asymptomatic spread" shitlist
- "Pandemic of unvaccinated" shitlist

and the list goes on

[The Edge]

Why are the last two on a shitlist? They are actual things - how do you think coronavirus got into the US in the first place? Asymptomatic carriers of the disease played a big part in spreading it there.
As for the last one, well, it's starting to come down to that; the virus is simply looking for people who are not vaccinated to infect them, and infect them in a bad way too.

[Nich]

Those last 2 are contingent on the premise that our method of confirming a "positive case" is actually telling us the person is diseased and infectious, or whether the test merely identifies some nucleotides in an amplified genetic noise.

RT-PCR test, at high enough cycle threshold, is said to be able to detect anything in anybody. On top of that there's a baseline 2% false positive rate. So if your standard is 45 CT (like in Australia, even today), and you are on a mission to perform as many tests as possible, you will have a not insignificant number of people being classified as a positive case. You still have a ultra high sensitivity test looking for signs of virus, not signs of disease.

Anthony Fauci said this about PCR test cycle thresholds:

“It’s very frustrating for the patients as well as for the physicians,” he said, when “somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like [a] 37 cycle threshold, but you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle.”

“So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period,” said Fauci, the top White House coronavirus adviser

For shits and giggles, heres the paper the WHO referenced when deciding PCR tests should be the gold standard in this pandemic:
Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31992387/

Aim: We aimed to develop and deploy robust diagnostic methodology for use in public health laboratory settings without having virus material available.

"we reckon this test will be good for detecting SARS-COV2... however we don't have any real world virus RNA on hand to demonstrate that."

Some of the authors of this paper actually associated with a company that sells PCR test kits! No conflict of interest declared.
https://www.tib-molbiol.de/company/m...t/olfert-landt
https://www.tib-molbiol.de/covid-19


Regarding pandemic of unvaccinated. It's a data collection problem combined with hospitalisation numbers from countries further down the road than us (UK, Scotland, Singapore, Israel). Countries further into the COVID vaccine campaign have more absolute vaccinated numbers in hospital vs unvaccinated. in these numbers, we can't tell who is in hospital for COVID vs who is in for something else. Unless we follow up with a antigen test (immune system jumped into action), all we know is the virus is detected maybe with or without disease.

Any new patient is tested for COVID, and presumably their vaccination status is also checked. What we don't know is whether the person is in hospital because of COVID disease, or they are in for something else, but test positive for SARS-COV2 virus incidentally. Like, deaths we lump it all together and call the whole thing COVID hospitalisations.

For a brief period, CDC also changed how they count vaccinated and unvaccinated cases. Vaccinated (breakthrough cases) were tested at CT 28, while unvaccinated were to be tested at CT 40. This would naturally skew the figures.

[Ab]

How good is sunscreen?

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coro...nscreen-covid/

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Nich

Anthony Fauci said this about PCR test cycle thresholds:

TBF when that was said, Trump was in power and Fauci was trying to find a median between bat-shit crazy and actual fact... and said many a proven-false-since thing.

IIRC this was a over-emphasised thing - so a middle ground between batshit and fact.

[Ab]

These days when I read "Fauci", my brain hears "Benghazi"

[crocos]

So. Decided to do the cautious thing this xmas/nye. (Melbourne)

I was going to attend a few events elsewhere - one that's a 70-min train ride (each way) to Geelong, the other a 20 min taxi ride away... and considering changing my mind about NYE too, even though that venue is walking distance.

WAY too many people don't scan and a disturbing amount don't understand how to wear a mask - which there's no fucking excuse for nowadays. So exposure to the random public? Time to squash that shit IMO.

Other people want to risk it? Well, IMO that selfish fucker, but I can't do shit about them, only me, and I don't trust others. So I do what will help me.

.

[Nich]

Why? The pandemic is over, if you want it to be.

[Lightspeed]

lolz, shut up Nich.

[Nich]

Well, for me it's over. I got off the crazy bus many many stops ago.

This is a good read.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/t...nic-in-denmark
I was wrong with the "everyone has aids" joke. A possible reality is everyone's immune system is now a one trick pony (it sees Omicron, and adaptive immune system does the Wuhan strain trick)

[Lightspeed]

Have you gone down the Adam Curtis rabbit hole yet, I can't recall? So much good stuff there.

[Nich]

Of course! Adam Curtis strikes a good balance most of the time. He starts at the edge of commonly held beliefs and drags you deep into the woods and asks "is it such a leap to also believe this?".

I find documentaries hard to follow these days and have avoided them in favour of well-cited books and articles so I can check sources myself. The book I'm reading at the moment starts very strong at the edge just like Adm Curtis, but is now onto George Soros, and champions of technocracy... sure, still lots of citations to verify the claims in the book, but that's when I stop reading.

[Nich]

More on data collection problems especially when trying to figure out vaccine efficacy.

Worldwide standard is Vaccinated 1st dose = >14 days after injection. People still <14 days remain in the Unvaccinated bucket.

What happens in the 14 days after 1st dose? Your immune system is temporarily supressed and your chances of catching COVID (or shingles, or herpes, or anything... except fungal infections IIRC) are doubled in some cases. So in that 14 day period you are considered Unvaccinated, and risk of infection increased. Almost like it'd be more helpful to make a distinct category for the newly vaccinated.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/w...utm_medium=web

[The Edge]

That's a blog. What does a medical expert say about this? That's what I'm interested to know, not some random guy on the internet with his 5 followers on his blog.

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Nich

Why? The pandemic is over, if you want it to be.

Because I trust actual medical professionals, not internet fuckwits that are semi-charismatic enough to get smooth-brained idiots to believe their nonsense.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by crocos

Because I trust actual medical professionals, not internet fuckwits that are semi-charismatic enough to get smooth-brained idiots to believe their nonsense.

[Nich]

Simple. If your actual health experts can lie to you about something as simple as case numbers, why should we presume that is the only lie? We already know it's not the only lie, so why keep giving them another chance?

[Nich]

I have "trust" issues. And I think we all should.

I don't trust anything or anyone. The oft repeated Bitcoin quote is "Don't trust. Verify".

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by Nich

Simple. If your actual health experts can lie to you about something as simple as case numbers, why should we presume that is the only lie? We already know it's not the only lie...

Evidence, please.

Originally Posted by Nich

I have "trust" issues. And I think we all should.

Why?

[Nich]

Don't trust, verify.

[The Edge]

5 minutes searching on Google isn't verifying anything. All you're doing is finding someone who agrees with your viewpoint.

As before, evidence please for your statement about lies and also; why should we all have "trust" issues? How does that work with your interpersonal relationships?

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Nich

Simple. If your actual health experts can lie to you about something as simple as case numbers, why should we presume that is the only lie? We already know it's not the only lie, so why keep giving them another chance?

The lie is calling case numbers simple. Since when is cause of death a simple thing?

It's one thing to be uncertain and distrustful, but why you gotta sell bullshit?

[Nich]

I didn't mean to say the case numbers are simple, I agree they are not. I mean to say I have a simple rule for my sense-making process. I'll repeat it:
An information source goes straight to the shitlist if I catch 1 lie, and there's no entertainment / comedy value.

I even extend that to information that in order to challenge you'd need to disprove a negative ("If we didn't lockdown blah blah.", "If he wasn't vaccinated blah blah.")

[Lightspeed]

Having a rationale isn't the same as a lie. All information from a health science perspective is presented with rationale. It's unavoidable, as there are always more than one way to collate and present data. Choices inevitably need to be made.

Even just working with information systems for much more basic things I've experienced the effort of producing sets of data where there's no way to elicit a single "truth", with different, yet equally valid results being able to be generated.

[Lightspeed]

This is a good video on the lies in science and knowledge communication:

We Lied To You ...And We'll Do it Again - Kurzgesagt

[Nich]

it's entirely the fault of public health officials and communicators that I have lost all confidence in their stated intentions to improve health of individuals and populations. I've tried to understand their rationale, which is more effort than I should have to put in.

Maybe I'm a big dumdum like crocos suggests.

[Nich]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

This is a good video on the lies in science and knowledge communication:

We Lied To You ...And We'll Do it Again - Kurzgesagt

Science is flawed and imperfect, and constantly proving, verifying, disproving.

The Science™ is perfect, settled, and relies on WIRED and Washington Post to stop "fringe scientists" (from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford) from challenging a narrative.

I like science. I oppose The Science™. To what extent can Australia and New Zealand distance themselves from The Science™? My guess is they must fundamentally march in lockstep with whatever NIH, CDC, NHS chooses. The only wiggle room is superficial localization changes like messaging in Te Reo.

[Nich]

The Science™ says athletes in 2021 are all of a sudden suffering from "dehydration and overheating". Case closed!

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athl...er-covid-shot/

This is a live article, the number is going up every couple of minutes. Many athletes have reached out to the authors to confirm, while others have been discounted when insufficient proof.