Moonbox

It's a race to the bottom here, it seems. Is reddit and 4dchan full or something?

The idea that you have the time, capacity and ability to digest complex technical information and concepts in fields for which you have zero experience or training. Also, on one hand you say you don't like appeals to authority, but then with the other you say that experts should be able to counter false information and claims. By deferring to those experts to counter false claims, you are in fact appealing to the authorities on those subjects.

"There is no relationship between lockdowns (or whatever else people want to call them to mask their true nature) and virus control. " I'd say that goes a LITTLE bit beyond just linking sources. That's their conclusion. Then they link 35 research papers that they know none of you will actually read, and then say, "HERE! PROOF!" Funny thing: I did read the first one, and while the conclusions were interesting they were also written by anesthesiologists, who are hardly experts on viruses and their transmission or control. They ARE doctors who published something that resembles what the AIER wants to hear, however, so that's PERFECT!

Is that the Dr. Duesberg who disagrees that HIV causes AIDS? Oookay. ? and now you're quoting George R R Martin. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

On that point I think we can agree Myata. I look at Doug Ford and his erratic approach over the last year and I long ago lost confidence in their management of the situation. As COVID stands now, with basically everyone guaranteed to get it at some point, I think lockdowns now are doing more harm than good. With the vaccination rates as high as they are now, I think it's stupid to keep people who are largely protected from leading productive lives. On the other hand, the anti-vax brainlets who'd overrun our hospitals if they were allowed to do as they please, the same geniuses crying the loudest about the lockdowns, they're the ones making this last longer than it needs to.

Unless you're a doctor or a data scientist or PhD, meaningfully reviewing these research papers would be well-outside our expertise. Certainly you'd agree that reading 35 research papers would be outside the reasonable scope of this debate, right? In that case we have to defer to experts on these sorts of conclusions, so on one hand you can choose the world's universities, government and international health organizations, and on the other hand you can choose the American Institute for Economic Research. You decide for yourself.

It's interesting that neither of you have actually commented on the meat of the original post. On one hand we have Goddess going on about animal cruelty in an attempt to portray Fauci as an evil mad-scientist, and then you're parroting conspiracy copypasta.

I'm not dismissing universities. I'm dismissing the conclusions the AIER draws from the papers they refer to and whether they even support what what the AIER is saying. That's an info-dump of 35 different publications that neither you nor I are qualified to review. We both know that you didn't read all 35 of them, nor did 99.9% of the people who ever looked at that article. Given that the AIER is a rabidly political, libertarian ECONOMIC think-tank who have already been mocked and ridiculed by the scientific community at large for their resoundingly discredited Great Barrington Declaration, in what bizarre fantasy world do you conclude that they're your best aggregator of scientific and medical research?!? What mental gymnastics does it take to conclude that of all the scientists and doctors in the world, with all of the various international, sovereign and local health organizations, it's ONLY the scientists carefully curated by a conspiracy pandering think-tank that are worth listening to? ?

I thought I'd write this post for fun to highlight some of the silliness I've seen on this forum since I started posting here again last week. I'll start with a simple example that stemmed from a debate I was having with some dude posting "scientific" sources from the American Institute for Economic Research regarding COVID-19 lock-down measures. I'll spare the awkward details of that discussion, but what I wanted to highlight are some obvious misinformation traps that our brave red-pilled conspiracy theorists often fall for and maybe (just maybe) how catch them. https://www.aier.org/article/fauci-lies-in-the-senate/ Here's a recent article by AIER's senior editor, James Harrigan, lamenting Dr. Anthony Fauci lying to the Senate: "It was when Rand Paul asked him if he thought it “appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to smear scientists who don’t agree with you?” Fauci predictably denied the charge, but just about anyone with an ounce of sense could likely guess he was lying." ANYONE with an ounce of sense can see that Dr. Fauci was "lying' in response to a baiting/provocative question from the always-reasonable and totally unbiased Rand Paul. The esteemed James Harrigan then goes on to write that an access to information request PROVES that Dr. Anthony Fauci was in fact using his $420,000 salary to smear scientists who don't agree with him, or that he lied about not doing that...or something. If you click on the "proof" he offers, you're linked to a several pages of nothing-burger emails smothered in redactions where Fauci and his peers/staff refer to AIER's Great Barrington Declaration as scientific nonsense. That's it. The reason this sort of misinformation works is that the majority of people wouldn't actually go through those emails. Folks just see the headline "Fauci Lies," see that the author presented a LINK and assume that because this is a published article online, that the "proof" actually demonstrates what it pretends to. These sorts of traps are everywhere on fringe and conspiracy websites, and the biggest hook is that readers are often invited NOT to take the writer's word for it, but rather to see and decide for themselves with the presented info-dump. Whether that's a boring email-chain, a list of 25 research articles that may not even support the writer's claims or a bunch of pictures that draw connections that don't exist, it doesn't actually matter because 99% of readers will never give it more than moment's thought. What matters is that they were invited to decide for themselves rather than just being told what to think, and for the receptive mind that can take the skeptical guard-rails off whatever they're listening to. By no means is the mainstream media without bias or sometimes outright misinformation, but the more ludicrous claims and conclusions are usually called out by competitors or even the people they write about and there's always a fear of public blowback or even lawsuits. When it's being peddled around on the dark weeb or the endless rabbit hole of political hack/conspiracy websites, it's a pointless effort to try to refute.

You could basically condense your post down to "NO YOU!" Here's the problem with your argument: The scientific and medical community consensus contradicts your viewpoint. For your "sources" to have standing, you have to determine that the prevailing medical/scientific consensus is the product of a global conspiracy among doctors/scientists and the media/corporations/governments with a nefarious agenda all working together to control/fool you. Once you've convinced yourself that's the case, the science becomes irrelevant. Any evidence/research that contradicts your viewpoint can be handled by a perfunctory "NOPE! It's a lie/conspiracy". Once you jump down that rabbit hole, reasonable debate is almost impossible, because the ease at which you revert back to "NOPE! That's what they want you to think" is the catch-all crutch you'll constantly revert to when presented with conflicting information. The fact that you've referenced the AIER at all is a testament to how little consideration you give to your "sources". It's a clown show organization with no standing whatsoever either in the economic or the scientific community.

At this point I've soured on lockdowns as well. I don't support them anymore and think they're doing far more harm than good. On the other hand, I'd rather an overly-cautious and self-righteous wannabe like Trudeau go through the process and let it last too long than for an amoral demagogue like DeSantis to be in charge of anything. When I started reading your post I sort of though "hey maybe this guy is reasonable" but then you finished it off with nonsense about international totalitarian consensus and I realized this was just thinly disguised reddit hyperbole-copypasta.

My numbers were based on some french news broadcast from a week or two ago. Not only are they probably different now, it's also possible that I misinterpret what I hear because french is my second language. I was probably hearing the ICU numbers and didn't realize it. Regardless, I think it pretty clearly proves the case for vaccinations. The math is posted on your image for everyone to see: Unvaccinated = 5.8x (or +580%) more likely to be hospitalized and 12.5x (or +1250%) more likely to end up in ICU. Those aren't perfect because there's all sorts of other factors that go into it, but most of those would make the case even stronger for vaccines than against.

Don't worry about us bud. We're not the ones clinging to the American Institute for Economic Research as a life-raft of truthiness in an ocean of scientific evidence and research that disagrees with you. The AEIR's Great Barrington Declaration on COVID was already widely discredited and ridiculed by the scientific and medical community around the world, so for them to write a half-page saying "lockdowns kill freedom and don't save people - here's 35 articles proving it" with no synthesis or explanation is a farce. It's a giant info-dump than none of you will actually read and is far more limited in scope and definitive conclusions than you think. You like the headline and the pretense of scientific conclusions, however, so as far as you're concerned it's gospel. The funniest part about all this though is how quick you're on-board the "science" bus when you think it's supporting you, contrasted by how dismissive you usually are of the scientist and expert consensus. To call it cherry-picking would be an understatement of grand proportion. Just on a lark, I decided to scan through some of the AIER's publications. I think I'll start another thread on this board highlighting how little credibility it has and how the standard conspiracy theorist buffoonery spreads misinformation.

These sorts of statistics are trash without further information to support them. For example, of those 150 people in the hospital with COVID, how many of them were hospitalized BECAUSE of COVID rather than other things. Some of them catch COVID while they're dealing with other stuff. Regardless, the numbers speak volumes. Stuff like 50% of hospitalizations in Quebec are from unvaccinated people, but they're only 10% of the population. At the very least, that means you're 5x more likely to be hospitalized if you're unvaccinated, but it's probably much worse because the statistics don't really account for how many of those people are elderly and would have been in the hospital anyways, which skews because +90% of the elderly/infirm will be vaccinated but if they catch COVID while in the hospital they'd still be counted in the list of hospitalizations. They probably have that information but trying to explain that sort of breakdown on the news would likely be a wasted effort.

The main purpose of this forum is to reasonably discuss political issues, or at least it was 12 years ago when I originally started. Screeching conspiracy slogans and 4dchan copypasta is a waste of everyone's time. Those arguments are circuitous and dead-on-arrival, relying on nothing more than delusional insistence that everything contradictory to them is a lie. The funniest thing about what this forum has become is that years ago I was considered one of the more earnest righties and usually got in arguments with dudes like eyeball about economic and social issues. Now I'm bizarrely a member of the "Lefties" and rather than talking about real politics and specific issues, these threads are inevitably flooded with buffoonery about media or WHO conspiracies.

You showed nothing. You linked a garbage article from a libertarian think-tank that did little more than post a bunch of links to other articles along with a limp claim that "lockdowns don't work". Whether or not the metaphor you guys are nattering about is apt or not is irrelevant. What's remarkable about this discussion is that of all the medical/epidemiology literature out there, you chose the American Institute for Economic Research as your most authoritative source on viruses and how they spread. That speaks volumes. The AIER's publications are excellent fuel for the screeching monkeys on 4dchan and reddit to LARP that they have "facts" and advanced critical thinking skills, but it's not good for much else. Nobody even takes what AEIR has to say seriously on the actual economic issues on which they presume to be experts. This goes back to my original point: You'll take a fringe claim/article/opinion as iron-clad fact as soon as it even marginally supports your world-view, but revert by reflex to "that's what they want you to think, man" as soon as you're presented with anything that contradicts it (including an overwhelming body of worldwide evidence).

People figured out what it was for and why back when it was written, and it's something that can evolve and be reinterpreted by the Courts over time. Thankfully, it's also something that's largely determined by legal experts and statesmen (with input from citizens) rather than ranting 4dchan conspiracy clowns that quote it whenever they think it's helpful and then conveniently forget about it when it doesn't.

It's the way you default your argument back to the vapid "that's what they want you to think" to answer what doesn't fit your world-view. As soon as you evoke that line of reasoning, your argument is dead. You no doubt can't see it that way, but that's normal. I'm sure you think you're a red-pilled crusader for freedom or...something. The "DeEp StaTe Globalist MEdiA" is amazing copium.

That's pretty much all these qanon Mooks can manage. A deep thought for them is reddit/4dchan copypasta...something about freedom and DeEp StaTe and da media etc etc... It's an absolute race to the bottom for these clowns.

CBC has a whole bunch of ways to order their articles. A lot of the time it's just by time posted. Sometimes it's by relevance. If you'd have checked last night it would have probably been at the top. Now it isn't because it's yesterday's news, was posted elsewhere all over Canada, and having watched it on CTV or Global news or CNN or BBC last night or this morning, people are not likely to read it anymore. Why isn't it under "world news?" Because it's under COVID-19. It could have gone in "Politics" too, but they decided it was most relevant to COVID-19. which makes sense. Don't let the simplest and most reasonable explanation sway you though. It's way easier to let your brain stay on default and automatically assume CONSPIRACY.

What is your actual argument here? Florida's COVID response was world-class awful. Omicron deaths are low because it's apparently milder and because a huge portion of the population is already vaccinated. Florida deaths are low by comparison at this point because: 1) 75% of people there have at least one vaccine 2) Lots of people already had COVID there and therefore have antibodies. 3) They have treatments now that they previously didn't. There's more to it than that of course, but come on man.

If I didn't know better I'd assume you were trying to be funny. This reads like a 4dchan reddit copy-pasta. I'm not sure if there's an original thought in the whole post. You basically went through a qanon checklist of conspiracy nonsense about "peasants" and "big pharma" and "scandemic". Yikes.

It wasn't hidden yesterday. It was yesterday's news and that's why it's not at the top of the page. The % of people who will open up an article and read about the Supreme Court's decision process is minutely small so that article was never going to stay up there long. Of course you think it's the most important event of the week because you believe it supports your "politics" and your interesting theories about censorship, but that's poor logic all-around. Not only are you make-believing examples of censorship, but the Supreme Court's decision was based on scope and authority rather than the legal validity of the mandate itself. It's interesting to note that the Court made a point of explaining that more limited mandates probably would be upheld (like government-funded/run facilities requiring vaccination). They don't say that sort of stuff for no reason.

Doctors now are telling people that if they have an upper-respiratory infection, you might as well assume it's COVID. It's spreading everywhere so it's most likely that's what you have (though not certain) but you're better off assuming that than not. For vaccinated people the symptoms are mostly mild. My double-vaxxed 35 year old sister had it in December and it was like an unpleasant cold for her and her baby. Her husband didn't get sick at all. I looked after her baby last week and was sick afterwards for a couple of days and that was probably COVID too but I'm triple-vaxxed and it was like nothing. I've not read or posted on this forum in over a year but it's stunning to me how poorly understood vaccines are and how there are still so many conspiracy larpers running around talking nonsense about them.

It's in the section for COVID-19. Imagine that. You have to scroll down a bit because it's yesterday's news but it was probably a lot easier for you to just cut and paste a conspiracy and censorship rant than do that.