Coronavirus Thread

[Farrington fox]

Well well. 

 

[st albans fox]

9 minutes ago, Farrington fox said:

Well well. 

 

they have limited value in the face of omicron BUT that graph is a bit disingenuous when wales was behind england on the omicron wave. 

 

suspect that the household transmission over xmas is more responsible for the increase than the additional restrictions they have.  what does the scotland graph look like - i think they weren't so far behind england on their omicron wave 

 

 

[shade]

@leicsmac This is the more the kind of thing I was railing against, rather than the scientific method. I suppose I was trying to suggest that it's corrupted by the people surrounding it? Does it really encourage scientific debate when you know your career could be destroyed?

 

 

 

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10324873/Emails-reveal-Fauci-head-NIH-colluded-try-smear-experts-called-end-lockdowns.html

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116

[Legend_in_blue]

2 hours ago, Farrington fox said:

Well well. 

 

 

There are countless examples of this around the world but even in the face of such mounting data, people fail to look beyond "the success" of lockdowns in this country to even entertain the fact that they were not the reason for the downward trend of the waves.

 

There is no point debating it because people are so entrenched they will not see past their own point of view, as do many in this thread.

 

[Babylon]

4 hours ago, shade said:

Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 73 studies (ivmmeta.com)

 

That's quite a lot of studies. Large, high quality studies are unfortunately time consuming and very costly to do.

There are numerous articles that go into great detail about why it’s not right to trust many of the studies.

 

Everyone is willing to listen about it’s possibilities, but you have to use properly trials.

 

As for costs, how many right wing billionaires are there that would stand to gain a huge amount to prove people were lying, They could fund a gold plated trial, but don’t. 
 

Or governments who are nearly bankrupting their countries to battle it. 
 

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01535-y

[Legend_in_blue]

2 hours ago, shade said:

@leicsmac This is the more the kind of thing I was railing against, rather than the scientific method. I suppose I was trying to suggest that it's corrupted by the people surrounding it? Does it really encourage scientific debate when you know your career could be destroyed?

 

 

 

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10324873/Emails-reveal-Fauci-head-NIH-colluded-try-smear-experts-called-end-lockdowns.html

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116

 

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya Respond: The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health (theepochtimes.com)

 

 

Imagine being a "fringe epidemiologist" at Stanford University   

 

Ferguson on the other hand, he can be wrong at every juncture and still MSM panders to him.

[orangecity23]

That Great Barrington Declaration is interesting, in that it neatly ties me back into something that has bothered me about a lot of the anti-vax, pro "freedom" alternate news sources that have been popping up from the beginning of the pandemic. The thing came from the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libetarian think tank - which immeditately sets off my suspicions, as those 3 words are normally the first clue you'll get to something being tied to the weirdest, greediest destructive parts of American politics. And lo and behold, as soon as you look them up, it turns out its a climate change denying mouthpiece of US billionaires.

Quote

AIER statements and publications portray the risks of climate change as minor and manageable,^[7] with titles such as "What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change", "The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously" and "Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest".^[8][9][10]

The institution has also funded research on the comparative benefits that sweatshops supplying multinationals bring to the people working in them

Usual names then start cropping up, aka the Koch brothers funding the fecking thing. While it may be worrying that "big pharma" could potentially be exerting an influence, don't ever forget that there is a equally big economic force, in the likes of the Kochs and other large libetarian billionaires, exerting their own influence - and, as usual, it always boils down to their form of libetarianism, which is primarily centered round a "small state" - which inevitably translates into: No taxes for billionaires, no public funding of Schools/Health/Roads/infrustructure  etc, as they are all should be kept as opportunities for big business (aka them) to fleece the general populace of their cash.

 

My problem with the a lot of this anti lockdown/anti vaccine material is it all sounds so familiar - anyone who has been around the internet and seen some of the angrier conspiracy bits will recognise all the hallmarks and language of things like Q-Anon, or the Incel movement, or the Gamergate movement, or the original anti vax scare from the MMR/Autism misinformation from the 90s. Its all Fox News, Daily Mail, posts on Telegram, 4 Chan, The Tea Party movement, people who tell you Barrack Obama isn't even an American.

 

People who follow "experts" like Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former doctor who concocted the MMR Autism links in the 90s, and it turned out his exciting study that got all that attention and birthed the modern anti vax movement, was all a load of arse. He conducted it becase he was paid hundreds of thosands of pounds by a lawyer looking to conduct a class action lawsuit against the companies who made MMR, and then fudged his results and made up a hypothetical "new kind of colitis" that "could cause autism" as that was exactly the kind of thing they would need to carry out the lawsuit. Oh, and before he even started his study, he'd already taken out a patent for a new Measles only vaccine, then proceeded to spend all his media attention constantly talking up the need for parents to be given an "option" of seperate vaccines instead - because if it happened, he'd have been quids in. And when the hospital that employed him tried to get him to do a proper larger study into his findings, he ran off and has spent the last few decades making cash from writing books to sell to anti vaccine followers, and making cash appearing at their conferences.

 

Look, I'm not saying that there are no conspiracys in the world - of course there will be some, somewhere. But there's a whole industry tied up and around perpetuating and profitting from conspiracy theories in the internet age, so if you really want to not be a sheep, and are detremined not to follow the "Mainstream agenda", maybe you should start extending that sceptism to your alternate news sources as well, because if you think they are only bringing you the truth and aren't engaging in biased, profit focussed motives of their own, well, I'm afraid you've got a nasty surprise awaiting you.

[GingerrrFox]

http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-sajid-javid-directly-challenged-on-mandatory-coronavirus-jabs-by-unvaccinated-nhs-doctor-12511224

 

That didn’t go as he expected 😅

[danny.]

25 minutes ago, GingerrrFox said:

http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-sajid-javid-directly-challenged-on-mandatory-coronavirus-jabs-by-unvaccinated-nhs-doctor-12511224

 

That didn’t go as he expected 😅

He's clearly just a Facebook conspiracy theorist and not a doctor.

[Farrington fox]

38 minutes ago, GingerrrFox said:

http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-sajid-javid-directly-challenged-on-mandatory-coronavirus-jabs-by-unvaccinated-nhs-doctor-12511224

 

That didn’t go as he expected 😅

Pity his colleagues hadn’t have backed him up. It’s clear the discrimination,castigation being exerted on people who for whatever reason don’t want the vaccines is utterly abhorrent. 

Edited 7 January 2022 by Farrington fox

[shade]

24 minutes ago, orangecity23 said:

That Great Barrington Declaration is interesting, in that it neatly ties me back into something that has bothered me about a lot of the anti-vax, pro "freedom" alternate news sources that have been popping up from the beginning of the pandemic. The thing came from the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libetarian think tank - which immeditately sets off my suspicions, as those 3 words are normally the first clue you'll get to something being tied to the weirdest, greediest destructive parts of American politics. And lo and behold, as soon as you look them up, it turns out its a climate change denying mouthpiece of US billionaires.

Usual names then start cropping up, aka the Koch brothers funding the fecking thing. While it may be worrying that "big pharma" could potentially be exerting an influence, don't ever forget that there is a equally big economic force, in the likes of the Kochs and other large libetarian billionaires, exerting their own influence - and, as usual, it always boils down to their form of libetarianism, which is primarily centered round a "small state" - which inevitably translates into: No taxes for billionaires, no public funding of Schools/Health/Roads/infrustructure  etc, as they are all should be kept as opportunities for big business (aka them) to fleece the general populace of their cash.

 

My problem with the a lot of this anti lockdown/anti vaccine material is it all sounds so familiar - anyone who has been around the internet and seen some of the angrier conspiracy bits will recognise all the hallmarks and language of things like Q-Anon, or the Incel movement, or the Gamergate movement, or the original anti vax scare from the MMR/Autism misinformation from the 90s. Its all Fox News, Daily Mail, posts on Telegram, 4 Chan, The Tea Party movement, people who tell you Barrack Obama isn't even an American.

 

People who follow "experts" like Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former doctor who concocted the MMR Autism links in the 90s, and it turned out his exciting study that got all that attention and birthed the modern anti vax movement, was all a load of arse. He conducted it becase he was paid hundreds of thosands of pounds by a lawyer looking to conduct a class action lawsuit against the companies who made MMR, and then fudged his results and made up a hypothetical "new kind of colitis" that "could cause autism" as that was exactly the kind of thing they would need to carry out the lawsuit. Oh, and before he even started his study, he'd already taken out a patent for a new Measles only vaccine, then proceeded to spend all his media attention constantly talking up the need for parents to be given an "option" of seperate vaccines instead - because if it happened, he'd have been quids in. And when the hospital that employed him tried to get him to do a proper larger study into his findings, he ran off and has spent the last few decades making cash from writing books to sell to anti vaccine followers, and making cash appearing at their conferences.

 

Look, I'm not saying that there are no conspiracys in the world - of course there will be some, somewhere. But there's a whole industry tied up and around perpetuating and profitting from conspiracy theories in the internet age, so if you really want to not be a sheep, and are detremined not to follow the "Mainstream agenda", maybe you should start extending that sceptism to your alternate news sources as well, because if you think they are only bringing you the truth and aren't engaging in biased, profit focussed motives of their own, well, I'm afraid you've got a nasty surprise awaiting you.

This is a strong posts and I agree with a lot of it, there will always be competing interests on both sides. I am in no way an anti vaxxer, in fact my wife was the one who was cautious about MMR for our kids, but as soon as I started reading about it in depth, I was convinced that they should have them.

 

I have to be honest, I haven't looked in to the Great Barrington declaration extensively, but they're three esteemed scientists putting forward an alternative viewpoint, I think that must merit discussion rather than just an instant need to smear them or destroy them as the leaked emails show?

 

I do see sensationalist and obviously incorrect claims about the covid situation which I strongly disagree with (although I'm not convinced anything should be censored), but listening to some very intelligent, reasonably mild mannered experts, many with nothing to gain, has at least convinced me to weigh up my decision on whether to get vaccinated or not carefully.

 

People like this guy I genuinely feel for. I should add that I do strongly oppose mandates, discrimination based on vaccine status or the dehumanisation of people who have chosen not to get vaccinated. (I've added a couple of examples below).

 

 

 

Trudeau comment on Canadians who haven't had the vaccine: 

“They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists, It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?”

[GingerrrFox]

5 minutes ago, danny. said:

He's clearly just a Facebook conspiracy theorist and not a doctor.

Imagine doing 8 years of training to become a Consultant Anaesthetist and working 2 years in ICU treating COVID patients and then have to listen to a ****ing politician say to you “we listen to the experts”. He’s a better bloke than me because I’d probably chin him tbf. 

Edited 7 January 2022 by GingerrrFox

[Farrington fox]

13 minutes ago, GingerrrFox said:

Imagine doing 8 years of training to become a Consultant Anaesthetist and working 2 years in ICU treating COVID patients and then have to listen to a ****ing politician say to you “we listen to the experts”. He’s a better bloke than me because I’d probably chin him tbf. 

Javid now comes across as an arrogant condescending ****. Somewhat changed from the man who took over from Hancock. 

[orangecity23]

5 minutes ago, shade said:

This is a strong posts and I agree with a lot of it, there will always be competing interests on both sides. I am in no way an anti vaxxer, in fact my wife was the one who was cautious about MMR for our kids, but as soon as I started reading about it in depth, I was convinced that they should have them.

 

I have to be honest, I haven't looked in to the Great Barrington declaration extensively, but they're three esteemed scientists putting forward an alternative viewpoint, I think that must merit discussion rather than just an instant need to smear them or destroy them as the leaked emails show?

 

I do see sensationalist and obviously incorrect claims about the covid situation which I strongly disagree with (although I'm not convinced anything should be censored), but listening to some very intelligent, reasonably mild mannered experts, many with nothing to gain, has at least convinced me to weigh up my decision on whether to get vaccinated or not carefully.

 

People like this guy I genuinely feel for. I should add that I do strongly oppose mandates, discrimination based on vaccine status or the dehumanisation of people who have chosen not to get vaccinated. (I've added a couple of examples below).

 

 

Were they personally smeared though? I've read the daily mail article posted, and all those screenshots show people communicating to organise a respose ttacking the premise of the declaration and its contents, not the authors themselves. Was debate squashed? The declaration itself has been birthed in a right wing thinktank, and was widely publicised all over mainstream right wing media (think anything with the stench of Rupert Murdoch on it). It was given massive importance by organisations which stood to make massive amounts of cash if lockdowns didn't happen, was massively invested in keeping Donald Trump in the White House and energizing his vote base, which has a considerable anti-vax demographic. Why shouldn't there be counter articles or communications opposing that viewpoint? Both sides are needed for a debate. The emails themselves state that the White House was already looking on jumping over the declaration at that stage. As for the authors, the fact they are "esteemed" is exacty why they are there. If you were part of a dodgy billionaire think tank trying to put together an attention grabbing piece of propaganda to further your shadowy intentions,the first thing you'd look to do would be to pay off some "esteemed" looking scientists to attach their names to it to give it the veneer of respectability needed to stop people questioning the motives behind it.

[shade]

Just now, orangecity23 said:

Were they personally smeared though? I've read the daily mail article posted, and all those screenshots show people communicating to organise a respose ttacking the premise of the declaration and its contents, not the authors themselves. Was debate squashed? The declaration itself has been birthed in a right wing thinktank, and was widely publicised all over mainstream right wing media (think anything with the stench of Rupert Murdoch on it). It was given massive importance by organisations which stood to make massive amounts of cash if lockdowns didn't happen, was massively invested in keeping Donald Trump in the White House and energizing his vote base, which has a considerable anti-vax demographic. Why shouldn't there be counter articles or communications opposing that viewpoint? Both sides are needed for a debate. The emails themselves state that the White House was already looking on jumping over the declaration at that stage. As for the authors, the fact they are "esteemed" is exacty why they are there. If you were part of a dodgy billionaire think tank trying to put together an attention grabbing piece of propaganda to further your shadowy intentions,the first thing you'd look to do would be to pay off some "esteemed" looking scientists to attach their names to it to give it the veneer of respectability needed to stop people questioning the motives behind it.

Also a Nobel prize winner as well don't forget.

 

If I started making unbased claims like "Pfizer (a company with an almost unparalleled criminal past) has been paying off scientists to downplay the dangers of its vaccine" I would be stamped down immediately.

[CosbehFox]

 

Edited 7 January 2022 by Cardiff_Fox

[st albans fox]

2 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

 

How can double vax and boosted be the same percentage per 100k when boosters only became available in December ??

[z-layrex]

25 minutes ago, GingerrrFox said:

Imagine doing 8 years of training to become a Consultant Anaesthetist and working 2 years in ICU treating COVID patients and then have to listen to a ****ing politician say to you “we listen to the experts”. He’s a better bloke than me because I’d probably chin him tbf. 

I mean 99.9% of that anaesthetist's colleague's would think he's an idiot but that counts for nothing?

[CosbehFox]

1 minute ago, st albans fox said:

How can double vax and boosted be the same percentage per 100k when boosters only became available in December ??

If you read the replies, it’s only data captured from the period boosters are available 

 

 

Edited 7 January 2022 by Cardiff_Fox

[WigstonWanderer]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Having had a cursory look at that article and some related ones right away, I would agree that at least more research is certainly warranted. However, I would certainly not recommend using it as any form of mass direct replacement for a vaccination program at this time.

 

To which I would add that unfortunately policymaking involving matters of science sometimes does not consider peer-reviewed findings as its first guide. Or sometimes even its second or third. See climate change for what science says we should be doing being pretty much ignored in such a way.

This is the problem with the whole ivermectin thing that has the medical establishment rattled. It is being promoted by anti vaxers as an alternative to vaccination. Vaccination has been studied and tested to the nth degree. The jury still seems to be out scientifically on ivermectin. It may or may not be useful, but is definitely not an alternative to vaccination.

[GingerrrFox]

6 minutes ago, z-layrex said:

I mean 99.9% of that anaesthetist's colleague's would think he's an idiot but that counts for nothing?

Well none of them piped up there on TV did they when they had the chance? 

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, Legend_in_blue said:

 

 

Ferguson on the other hand, he can be wrong at every juncture and still MSM panders to him.

Can you put a quid in a charity jar for every time you mention Ferguson?

Edited 7 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[Stivo]

12 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

How can double vax and boosted be the same percentage per 100k when boosters only became available in December ??

The y axis is rate per 100k per week, so the rate for boosters  is calculated over weeks for which boosters existed.

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, orangecity23 said:

That Great Barrington Declaration is interesting, in that it neatly ties me back into something that has bothered me about a lot of the anti-vax, pro "freedom" alternate news sources that have been popping up from the beginning of the pandemic. The thing came from the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libetarian think tank - which immeditately sets off my suspicions, as those 3 words are normally the first clue you'll get to something being tied to the weirdest, greediest destructive parts of American politics. And lo and behold, as soon as you look them up, it turns out its a climate change denying mouthpiece of US billionaires.

Usual names then start cropping up, aka the Koch brothers funding the fecking thing. While it may be worrying that "big pharma" could potentially be exerting an influence, don't ever forget that there is a equally big economic force, in the likes of the Kochs and other large libetarian billionaires, exerting their own influence - and, as usual, it always boils down to their form of libetarianism, which is primarily centered round a "small state" - which inevitably translates into: No taxes for billionaires, no public funding of Schools/Health/Roads/infrustructure  etc, as they are all should be kept as opportunities for big business (aka them) to fleece the general populace of their cash.

 

My problem with the a lot of this anti lockdown/anti vaccine material is it all sounds so familiar - anyone who has been around the internet and seen some of the angrier conspiracy bits will recognise all the hallmarks and language of things like Q-Anon, or the Incel movement, or the Gamergate movement, or the original anti vax scare from the MMR/Autism misinformation from the 90s. Its all Fox News, Daily Mail, posts on Telegram, 4 Chan, The Tea Party movement, people who tell you Barrack Obama isn't even an American.

 

People who follow "experts" like Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former doctor who concocted the MMR Autism links in the 90s, and it turned out his exciting study that got all that attention and birthed the modern anti vax movement, was all a load of arse. He conducted it becase he was paid hundreds of thosands of pounds by a lawyer looking to conduct a class action lawsuit against the companies who made MMR, and then fudged his results and made up a hypothetical "new kind of colitis" that "could cause autism" as that was exactly the kind of thing they would need to carry out the lawsuit. Oh, and before he even started his study, he'd already taken out a patent for a new Measles only vaccine, then proceeded to spend all his media attention constantly talking up the need for parents to be given an "option" of seperate vaccines instead - because if it happened, he'd have been quids in. And when the hospital that employed him tried to get him to do a proper larger study into his findings, he ran off and has spent the last few decades making cash from writing books to sell to anti vaccine followers, and making cash appearing at their conferences.

 

Look, I'm not saying that there are no conspiracys in the world - of course there will be some, somewhere. But there's a whole industry tied up and around perpetuating and profitting from conspiracy theories in the internet age, so if you really want to not be a sheep, and are detremined not to follow the "Mainstream agenda", maybe you should start extending that sceptism to your alternate news sources as well, because if you think they are only bringing you the truth and aren't engaging in biased, profit focussed motives of their own, well, I'm afraid you've got a nasty surprise awaiting you.

Excellent post 

[z-layrex]

9 minutes ago, GingerrrFox said:

Well none of them piped up there on TV did they when they had the chance? 

Pretty sure they have better things to do. You have to understand the entire profession doesn't care anymore. Get it or don't, get sick or don't, do what you can to protect others or don't. We will do our jobs the same, until quitting the field anyway.