Trump (Or any Subject) Derangement Syndrome

[NeuroTypical]

22 hours ago, Ironhold said:

It wasn't until 2021 / 2022 that anyone realized the Covid vaccines were far less safe than we were assured

20 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

With 5.6 billion doses given worldwide, 10,000 deaths means the vaccine is safer than driving a car. 

3 hours ago, Ironhold said:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-denmark-public-health-health-453163d8f93618fde90c06d3474921a0

Note the date on this article. 

 

So just to make sure I understand.   You claim people have realized the Covid vaccines were "far less safe than we were assured".   Your source for this claim is the linked apnews article.  Is that correct?  Because if it is, you're not really making your case.  The article is about a cautionary pausing from some countries based on some things that could be issues, maybe for children.    There's a difference between pausing for some people based on caution, and "far less safe".

I mean, yes, the administration and Faucci were messaging "100% and 100% effective" like the liar-liar-pants-on-fire they were.  The massive push to get children vaccinated flew in the face of the data that kids were the least likely to get it or have complications.  So many things were done wrong, some of it had to be intentional.   But your claim was "covid vaccines were far less safe than we were assured", and that's simply not true.  Not by a long shot.  Your AP news article doesn't make the case, and although I've looked for years, no credible source does either.  

 

 

[Ironhold]

4 hours ago, LDSGator said:

I do think some hawk “natural cures” and know it’s snake oil. We all have families to feed but those are type of people are lower than common thieves. At least a thief doesn’t tell you he can cure your stage 4 cancer with peach pits. 

In the original 1980s "Watchmen" graphic novel, it's revealed that a company has been selling an "all natural" cancer cure made using apricot pits. Rorschach discovers that one of his long-time villains has been taking it out of desperation after developing cancer, neither man realizing that Ozymandias deliberately exposed several people who had been around Doctor Manhattan with dangerous doses of radiation in order to trick Doctor Manhattan into thinking that he was a walking hazmat site & leaving the Earth. 

So even though you were likely meaning it as a joke, it actually has an odd place in pop culture history.

4 hours ago, LDSGator said:

I try not to attribute to malice what I can attribute to ignorance and stupidity. The natural health people mean well but are way off base. 

I think a minority of conspiracy theorists are the same. Mostly well meaning, but that doesn’t mean they are right. 
 
I absolutely think the majority of conspiracy theorists want to show off, pretend they are smarter than everyone else, have a martyr complex, etc   

As part of a tabletop role-playing game campaign I'm creating, I have it that a key NPC has ownership stake in a local TV station that operates in the "adventure city" the party will be based in. 

The station gives a few hours a week to public access programming, and a regular part of this is a conspiracy theorist who gets half an hour every Sunday evening right before the network switches to bartered content from a third-party shop-at-home service ("We'll pay you X per hour that you let us air plus Y percentage of whatever sales we make to addresses that are in your viewing area.")

The twist is that the conspiracy theorist is actually "controlled opposition" in that they are deliberately working with that key NPC to push or bury various stories and theories. 

[Backroads]

4 hours ago, LDSGator said:

I do think some hawk “natural cures” and know it’s snake oil. We all have families to feed but those are type of people are lower than common thieves. At least a thief doesn’t tell you he can cure your stage 4 cancer with peach pits. 

I think it may actually go deeper than that. I've seen some scary, scary ideas in the natural health world. There isn't a plan for exactly a master race, but ... it's kind of there. Literal calls to let a good plague wipe out the weak or something.

The snake oil is tricky because it might be more innocent. I have a relative who made his millions in the natural health industry, and it's an industry that is far, far more profitable than vaccines. I like the peach pit cancer cure example you made. It really does boil down to "vaccines can upset my bottom line" so they have to, as a matter of business, discourage vaccines. You get it with the smaller "I'm just trying to feed my family" crowd, yes, but it's a big business. I think a lot of these people aren't maliciously intended, but I also think some of them are caring more about the almighty dollar than public health. They also get the added guise of "but we're natural!" to hide behind.

To edit: I also don't care much for the attitude behind the anti-vax movement. There's a lot of shadow play and manipulation. "Do your own research" drives me crazy. It's a blatant attempt to sow distrust while also being an idiotic declaration that research is bad. Sorry @Ironhold, but I don't care much for the idea of reading an article instead of analyzing the studies they used for the article. 

Science-based studies? Oh, you'll have people who will line you up with studies to read. But the anti-vax is a bizarre attempt to make you doubt your own mind and studies and follow a false prophet. It's been years now, but I'll never forget that incident where a mom group convinced one of their moms to let her kid die instead of using modern medicine and then made it into cover-up.

Edited yesterday at 08:44 PM by Backroads

[LDSGator]

11 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

In the original 1980s "Watchmen" graphic novel

Never heard of it. Not into comics much. 

11 minutes ago, Backroads said:

think it may actually go deeper than that. I've seen some scary, scary ideas in the natural health world. There isn't a plan for exactly a master race, but ... it's kind of there. Literal calls to let a good plague wipe out the weak or something.

I understand where you are coming from, to some degree. It’s usually white people whining about organic food, talking about natural cures, etc. It’s their way of bragging about how rich they are without actually bragging about how rich they are. 

[Ironhold]

33 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

Never heard of it. Not into comics much. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen

Alan Moore wrote it in the 1980s as a deconstruction of various "Golden Age" superheroes. He meant it to show how life would *really* be like if superheroes were real and actively involved in world drama. 

One of the heroes, Ozymandias, gets it in his head that the only way to stop World War III is to trick NATO and the USSR into thinking that there's an even bigger threat they have to unite in order to stop. To this end he uses his vast fortune to trick a group of disaffected, disgruntled, and / or distressed luminaries from the creative arts into believing that they're working on an elaborate alien invasion movie when in reality he's going to destroy New York City and make it look like a disastrous first contact. Problem is, another hero, The Comedian, inadvertently discovers a part of the plan and so Ozymandias decides to silence him. 

...Never mind the fact that The Comedian was a slobbering drunk at this point due to decades of alcoholism and so everyone else would have ignored what he had to say *if* Ozymandias hadn't killed him. Now that he's dead, vigilante hero Rorschach tries his best to convince the other heroes to investigate. Cue Ozymandias having to pop smoke while also pretending to be "helping" the investigation. 

It was as pivotal to the history of comic books as it was massively shocking, but unfortunately far too many comic creators these days got it into their heads that "dark, edgy, and deconstructive" is how all comics are "supposed" to be. 

[LDSGator]

4 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen

Alan Moore wrote it in the 1980s as a deconstruction of various "Golden Age" superheroes. He meant it to show how life would *really* be like if superheroes were real and actively involved in world drama. 

One of the heroes, Ozymandias, gets it in his head that the only way to stop World War III is to trick NATO and the USSR into thinking that there's an even bigger threat they have to unite in order to stop. To this end he uses his vast fortune to trick a group of disaffected, disgruntled, and / or distressed luminaries from the creative arts into believing that they're working on an elaborate alien invasion movie when in reality he's going to destroy New York City and make it look like a disastrous first contact. Problem is, another hero, The Comedian, inadvertently discovers a part of the plan and so Ozymandias decides to silence him. 

...Never mind the fact that The Comedian was a slobbering drunk at this point due to decades of alcoholism and so everyone else would have ignored what he had to say *if* Ozymandias hadn't killed him. Now that he's dead, vigilante hero Rorschach tries his best to convince the other heroes to investigate. Cue Ozymandias having to pop smoke while also pretending to be "helping" the investigation. 

It was as pivotal to the history of comic books as it was massively shocking, but unfortunately far too many comic creators these days got it into their heads that "dark, edgy, and deconstructive" is how all comics are "supposed" to be. 

I was kidding. Lifelong fan. I’ve read Watchman several times, but it was 25 years ago. 

[NeuroTypical]

5 hours ago, mirkwood said:

100% of the hospitalizations from covid in my agency had taken the shot.

Let me repeat that: 100% of the hospitalizations in my agency took the shot. 

Ok.  How do you explain 5.3 billion shots going into ~5 billion different arms across the whole planet, and your bolded observation (which does indeed sound like one could draw a conclusion about things) doesn't seem to have happened anywhere else across the entire human race?  

I mean, I used to regularly go to the covid news links for my county, several states, my country and others, and global data.  Probably at least half of them had some sort of graph or chart comparing outcomes for vaccinated folks vs unvaccinated folks.  And while the shot indeed was not as effective as hoped/claimed, the same story showed up over and over in the data.  You put 1000 vaxxed folks in a room, and 1000 unvaxxed foks in another room and everyone gets covid.  Open the doors and count the dead and hurt, and the unvaxxed folks had more dead, and more hurt.

How come?

Edited 22 hours ago by NeuroTypical

[mirkwood]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

Ok.  How do you explain 

 

I don't.  I do know that 100% of the hospitalizations that I personally know were covid vaxxed.

 

I guess I'll put that question back to you.

 

How do you explain that?

Edited 20 hours ago by mirkwood

[NeuroTypical]

1 hour ago, mirkwood said:

How do you explain that?

This would seem to be the most likely explanation: 

 

 

 

Other possible explanations, like global conspiracies involving hundreds or thousands of people colluding to hide the truth, would seem to be less likely.

[mirkwood]

The other problem we run into with the covid conversation is the manipulated statistics from the healthcare workers.  There will never be a way to know how much that influenced the numbers.

[JohnsonJones]

9 hours ago, mirkwood said:

 

I don't.  I do know that 100% of the hospitalizations that I personally know were covid vaxxed.

 

I guess I'll put that question back to you.

 

How do you explain that?

 

Vaccination doesn't mean one is completely immune with MRNA vaccines, or at least the Covid Vaccines.  It lowers the chances of serious illness.

Basically, if we look at it like gambling.  Hypothetical numbers.

Without taking the vaccine, you have a 1 in 10 chance (depending on age, the older you get, the more 1 in 10 it will be, for younger individuals it may be 1 in 10,000.  At least for the initial strain, young children were highly resistant to the devastating effects) of dying.  1 in 5 of developing severe symptoms that could lead to hospitalization.

If you take the vaccine, that gamble falls to 1 in 100 for death, 1 in 25 for serious complications or hospitalization.  That means, in a department which has approximately 700 people, if everyone was vaccinated, and if they were all elderly like me, they could have up to 7 deaths and almost 30 people that are hospitalized due to Covid in this scenario.  Better than 70 deaths and 140 hospitalizations. 

Most vaccines don't ensure total immunity.  The amount given varies from vaccine to vaccine.  The hope is that if enough gain that immunity then we get herd immunity, which lessens the chance for the disease to infect everyone.

As less take the vaccines, herd immunity decreases and the number of cases increases.  This is why measles is starting to make a comeback in the states (along with a few other diseases that were eradicated during my lifetime, only to come back because of stupid anti-vaccine ideas these days).  People are not vaccinating their kids and enough are not vaccinated that the herd immunity is fading...so those that are not vaccinated have a chance to actually contract the disease now. 

[mirkwood]

2 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

 

Vaccination doesn't mean one is completely immune with MRNA vaccines, or at least the Covid Vaccines.  It lowers the chances of serious illness.

Basically, if we look at it like gambling.  Hypothetical numbers.

Without taking the vaccine, you have a 1 in 10 chance (depending on age, the older you get, the more 1 in 10 it will be, for younger individuals it may be 1 in 10,000.  At least for the initial strain, young children were highly resistant to the devastating effects) of dying.  1 in 5 of developing severe symptoms that could lead to hospitalization.

If you take the vaccine, that gamble falls to 1 in 100 for death, 1 in 25 for serious complications or hospitalization.  That means, in a department which has approximately 700 people, if everyone was vaccinated, and if they were all elderly like me, they could have up to 7 deaths and almost 30 people that are hospitalized due to Covid in this scenario.  Better than 70 deaths and 140 hospitalizations. 

Most vaccines don't ensure total immunity.  The amount given varies from vaccine to vaccine.  The hope is that if enough gain that immunity then we get herd immunity, which lessens the chance for the disease to infect everyone.

As less take the vaccines, herd immunity decreases and the number of cases increases.  This is why measles is starting to make a comeback in the states (along with a few other diseases that were eradicated during my lifetime, only to come back because of stupid anti-vaccine ideas these days).  People are not vaccinating their kids and enough are not vaccinated that the herd immunity is fading...so those that are not vaccinated have a chance to actually contract the disease now. 

I'm aware of all that.  None of that changes that  100% of the hospitalizations that I personally know were covid vaxxed.

[Carborendum]

21 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

So again, 5.6 billion doses went into ~5 billion humans.  If the world suddenly saw an extra quarter million myocarditis cases, as that unsourced factoid claims, do you not think various national and world health organizations would have written a paper on it?  I mean, they can't all be sharing the agenda to keep you in the dark, can they?

I believe you ended up rebutting yourself.

17 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I mean, yes, the administration and Faucci were messaging "100% and 100% effective" like the liar-liar-pants-on-fire they were.  The massive push to get children vaccinated flew in the face of the data that kids were the least likely to get it or have complications.  So many things were done wrong, some of it had to be intentional.

I realize that the point Ironhold is making is different from the one I'm making. But they seem to overlap.

Here's my point: We hear that there is a concern.  Many jumped on the bandwagon of "Whoa! That's horrible.  Everyone is going to die!!!"  My first reaction was, "Ok, that's concerning.  What's the data?"  It's usually wise to hear an accusation and begin to ask for evidence to determine if it is true or not.

Faucci and others were lying so blatantly (the lab leak theory is a hoax!!!) created an environment of distrust that simply saying "Trust us.  It's safe." was not very reassuring. 

So, I'm just sitting here asking for more data.  And the party that we KNOW are documented liars are saying, "Hey, don't worry."  Is that very reassuring for you?

Now we have clearer data that showed there was some truth to the fears.  But when looking at the bigger picture, it probably was not worth all the hype.

Was it too much to ask that they at least show the data and tell people, "Yes, with any medical procedure, there are always some minor risks.  But in this case, the benefits outweigh the risks."

I realize some of this was all emotional.  But I was simply asking for data.  And when I look at data, I can weigh "how" true a statement is.  Apparently the fears were only about 0.1% true.  While not a lie, it isn't anything to worry about.  And that would be what I based my decisions on.

[estradling75]

12 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

This would seem to be the most likely explanation: 

 

 

 

Other possible explanations, like global conspiracies involving hundreds or thousands of people colluding to hide the truth, would seem to be less likely.

So you are saying in D&D terms..... For their stat roll (3d6) Mirkwoods department rolled a 3 or 4 instead of a 10-11.  Well that sucks for them

Of course you always hear about the people who get 3 or 18's in D&D vary rarely  about the 10-11s.  Same with the COVID Vaccine.    Because "Hi I apparently rolled a 10 on my COVID shot.  I had a sore arm for a few days and that was it" isn't really much for conversation. Plus it might be viewed as a bit insensitive to those who got a worse result.

And of course with any tragedy people want answers they want to blame someone... The answer "You rolled poorly" usually does not work.

Lets not forget all this data we have now.... Did not exist then.  We were being asked to "trust the science"  When the science wasn't  finished yet...  It was pushed on us like a dealer trying to get someone new hooked on their product.

 

[Ironhold]

5 minutes ago, estradling75 said:

Lets not forget all this data we have now.... Did not exist then.  We were being asked to "trust the science"  When the science wasn't  finished yet...  It was pushed on us like a dealer trying to get someone new hooked on their product.

 

Pushed?

People were being told "get the jab or lose your job". 

Large numbers of military service members were forcibly discharged from service for their refusal to get it... only for the Department of Defense to now beg these individuals to come back, with all sorts of ostensible promises that their careers will be reset back to where they were and their records expunged. 

[NeuroTypical]

Yeah, Trump ended our involvement/funding of the WHO in his first term, and took us back out again in like week 1 of his second term.  And that's a good thing.

I'm impressed with the list of things that gained bipartisan consensus.  It would have been nice to get the Dems to see reason on many of the other things in that House report, but this is better than nothing: 

1) The possibility that COVID-19 emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident is not a conspiracy theory.

2) EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive U.S. taxpayer dollars.

3) Scientific messaging must be clear and concise, backed by evidentiary support, and come from trusted messengers, such as front-line doctors treating patients.

4) Public health officials must work to regain American's trust; Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated.

5) Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo participated in medical malpractice and publicly covered up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.

 

[LDSGator]

2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Andrew Cuomo

https://www.andrewcuomo.com

He’s running for mayor of New York City now. Yikes. 

[Phoenix_person]

40 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

https://www.andrewcuomo.com

He’s running for mayor of New York City now. Yikes. 

The entire NY Dem party is a dumpster fire of corruption, so he'll probably win. 

[LDSGator]

35 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

The entire NY Dem party is a dumpster fire of corruption, so he'll probably win. 

Oh, totally agree. When one party has virtually iron clad control over the state, what do you expect? Same applies to Texas/Florida republicans, Massachusetts/California democrats, etc.