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@ebuc
Kamala was not the expert you hoped she would be.
Trust the "Experts"
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@Greyparrot
Kamala was not the expert you hoped she would be.
More hypebole barking at moon and avoiding the comments Ive actually made today, before you fell off into more irrelevant, insignificant, false narrative expert of the short quip hyperbole.
Trumpet > MAFA > Gaetz { pre-resigned } > Michael Flynn > Steve Bannon > and the other 140 { or more } he pardon > ...
...." Trump has repeatedly pledged to pardon the hundreds of his supporters charged for their involvement in the riots on the Capitol building in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, in a violent attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.
....Joseph Biggs is hoping to be one of them.
....Biggs is one of four Proud Boys leaders currently serving a prison sentence after he was found guilty of seditious conspiracy last year. At least 70 other members of the far-right extremist group were charged for participating in the violence.
....Last week Biggs’ attorney Norm Pattis requested that Trump grant his client a “complete pardon”. "....
Ahh the lizard-like people-underbelly of USA is about to be pardoned by the King lizard-like president elect.
Encore! Encore! Encore!
Encore! Encore! Encore!
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@ebuc
Experts don't lose elections.
Kamala wasn't the expert you wished for.
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@ebuc
Encore! Encore! Encore!
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@Greyparrot
Experts don't lose elections.
Your expert has lost half of the elections in which he has run.
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@TwoMan
I didn't vote for Trump.
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@Greyparrot
I didn't vote for Trump.
There is hope for you after all.
The Russians are the experts in American politics. They won two terms for Trump.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
So congratulations to those countries not run by "morons" who successfully kept COVID-19 out of their populations. Would they now come forward to receive our applause:*crickets*
When you have to pretend to be this dumb or uniformed to defend your position, that's probably a good indication that you should change your position.
Keeping COVID out entirely was never an option. The goal for any reasonable country was to minimize it's spread in order to minimize it's death count until we could get a vaccine to the public.
So when Fauci was actually head of the response under Trump, what we he have done differently had Trump not stopped him?
It's not about what Fauci would have done differently, it's about what we all should have done differently. It's not a coincidence that once we got past the initial spread which of course was going to hit metro areas first, the red states all saw the highest death rates. Again, all Fauci could do was offer guidelines and direct agency resources. It's our behavior that ultimately determined the effect of the virus.
So arguments don't establish expertise and in practice neither do results since you just dismiss the facts if the "expert" failed to deliver results.
Wasn't his result to deliver, it was ours. You don't get to ignore what the health experts are telling you and then pretend it's their fault when the results are not what you think they should have been.
But many people are not effective communicators, that has little bearing on whether they know what they are doing.It has a major impact on whether other people know that they know what they're doing.
It does, that's still irrelevant to whether they actually know what they're doing and should therefore be listened to.
"Trust the experts" refers to the claim that somebody knows a truth that you don't know and can't know because you're too stupid or uneducated. They supposedly have the best argument but it's not your role as a plebeian to understand it.
No, it doesn't. That's just you're the caricature of it you've sold yourself for whatever psychological needs it fulfills.
Trust the experts is a simple reminder to people that just because you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night doesn't mean you know what you're talking about, and we as a society are better off deferring to people who actually know what they're talking about because they actually put in the time and work required to understand it.
It is the height of hubris to think that you are qualified to assess every complex subject purely on the basis of which argument sounds better. As if it didn't in many cases take years of study and experience to fully understand the subject.
The funny thing about ignorance is that it has a way of flipping reality upside down to the person who is ignorant. When you don't understand something it always sounds stupid. 'Why should I get vaccinated of I'm probably going to get infected anyway? That's stupid'. Sure it is, to the idiot who doesn't understand that the main point of vaccine isn't to stop an infection but to stop the more severe consequences like hospitalizations and deaths.
In case I haven't already asked this directly of you: Was hippocrates an expert?
I know almost nothing about him, but sure, he was an expert for his time.
Keeping COVID out entirely was never an option. The goal for any reasonable country was to minimize it's spread in order to minimize it's death count until we could get a vaccine to the public.
A made up goal inconsistent with history and biology.
It turned out exactly was would be predicted by actual science.
It's not a coincidence that once we got past the initial spread which of course was going to hit metro areas first, the red states all saw the highest death rates.
So discounting all the death in the blue cities the rest of the death was in red areas... durrrrhhh....
It's our behavior that ultimately determined the effect of the virus.
So by results you mean "I told you to do X and you didn't do exactly X therefore I'm an expert by default". Where are these results you spoke of?
deferring to people who actually know what they're talking about because they actually put in the time and work required to understand it.
Contrast with "somebody knows a truth"
America was the epicentre of Covid . America led the world in Covid related deaths. Over 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. Trump claimed they found one case of Covid coming from China which led him to ban all flights to and from China after treating that individual. So the rest of the cases of Covid was a made America.
184 days later
Corruption/dishonesty of some experts does not undermine the importance of expertise. If you get cancer, will you go to a certified specialist for treatment - or to a conspiracy theorist like RFK who believes that cancer treatments cause anthrax?
In addition, some questions are questions of morality, not expertise. It is obvious that lockdowns save lives when a massive deadly epidemic is abound - but that the lockdowns therefore are justified is a moral judgement. In my moral system, there is no excuse for what virtually all governments did during COVID, no matter how many lives it saved. And in a free country people should be free to make such choices for themselves.
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@MayCaesar
I suppose second opinions are a option, when one doesn't trust an expert,
But still probably better to get your second opinion from a certified or proven expert, than one with outlandish theories, no track record of success, or certification.
What government actions in particular during Covid, do you object to?
8 days later
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@Lemming
Pretty much all of them, but especially the laws prohibiting businesses from being open, or taking in above a certain number of customers. North Korean-style limitations on freedom of movement cannot be justified in my system of values.
The reason many people are suspicious of experts is that they assume that the experts' expertise assumes expectation of validity of their recommendations - but these are only loosely connected things. I can be an expert on mathematics - and make a recommendation to force all high school kids to study graduate-level math. Expertise in a subject does not imply expertise on the role of the subject in a human life. I would trust a chef to whip up a great meal or to talk about a nice recipe - I would not trust his advice that I should buy a $2,000 chef knife for my home kitchen.
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@Lemming
Well stated.
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@MayCaesar
It is not obvious to me at all.It is obvious that lockdowns save lives when a massive deadly epidemic is abound
Quarantine is sometimes practically justified.
Everything that distinguishes "lockdown" from "quarantine" is exactly what makes "lockdown" utterly useless and therefore impossible to justify.
It's like amputating a limb beyond the point of septic infection. You lose a limb, and you still don't stop the infection. The worst of both worlds.
The only way for "lockdown" to be rational is if the goal was not saving lives but prolonging disruption and crisis.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
@MayCaesar
Ought not disease be seen a bit as punching someone in the face?
Sometimes with an 'axe, deadly as some diseases are?
Take of instance people with STDs, maybe they ought not be allowed to have sex with unknowing people?
. . .
I suppose I would be against regulating society and people whose medical status we did not know, (In current society)
But depending on 'how much of an STD problem there was, (Depending on how many lives it saved)
Lockdown was the forced face masks and distancing, right?
Quarantine, would be forcing an individual to not leave their house or city?
. . . I haven't thought about it much. . .
Could required handwashing be considered a lockdown of sorts?
Such doesn't completely 'prevent disease spread, but is there no value in 'decreasing spread speed and chance?
. . . Hm, maybe Covid was 'too easily spread for it to matter?
But then the common cold is easily spread, but people find value in facemasks and handwashing.
Government was still working on vaccine and waiting for disease to run it's course then, as reasons for temporary lockdown?
Still need 'some economy, but trying to avoid mass deaths that mess economy up more, or cost more deaths than was acceptable?
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@Lemming
Lockdown was the forced face masks and distancing, right?
Well their rules were all over the place and their rational connection to science was highly varied.
The most common form of lockdown was the forced closure of what was deemed "non essential" storefronts.
This was in many places combined with orders for employees to not even go to work in "non essential" locations whether they served the public or not.
Masks and social distancing were not typically enforced through the arbitrary power over companies and not the public directly. i.e. you walk down the sidewalk without a mask, some thug cop would likely go after you but they were afraid to test an arrest like that in the courts.
What they were totally comfortable doing (because local petty regulators have unlimited power and have for a long time) is telling businesses that if they didn't enforce masks and social distancing they would be shut down.
There are tons of details to get into, but let me sum it up: A lockdowns are half measures that will fail to contain a highly contagious virus as a matter of ironclad scientific fact.
It doesn't matter how particularly absurd any particular rule or implementation was. None of them had a chance of succeeding. Viruses don't care what we call 'essential', they don't care about what time of the day it is (curfews), they don't care about the difference between BLM protests and churches.
If it's morally justified to keep people 6 feet away, it's morally justified to keep them 300 meters apart. The difference is that the virus is actually contained in the later scenario. The disruption is heavy but brief.
Quarantine, would be forcing an individual to not leave their house or city?
Yes, you draw a line along a natural border you can enforce and nobody crosses it until the populations on both sides have defeated the virus or died trying.
You have several layers of quarantine geography planned for rapid execution and when one zone is contaminated you subdivide. So first you make your whole country a zone. Nobody goes in, nobody goes out (except when they can be accurately cleared of the disease in the equivalent of an airlock or if they had been traveling between nations for so long that it counted as quarantine). More than one island nation had a decent chance of pulling this off but ultimately they failed, why? Exceptions.
Once there are cases in the US, you shut down domestic interstate travel. Inside infected states you quarantine cities. In cities neighborhoods.
After it becomes clear that two or more zones are clear, i.e. they were not infected, they can be allowed to commune with each other again. You are left with a sick zone where the people have to ride it out for six weeks.
This may not work, but when a virus is so contagious and the incubation period is so long as to make all that a useless gesture, then anything short is STILL unjustified because it is even more sure that it will not make a meaningful difference.
Could required handwashing be considered a lockdown of sorts?
If you want to confuse the issue, sure.
Hand washing and cleaning in general isn't just about stopping one disease, it combats thousands. Many of them being far less infectious or airborne.
For example you clean your hands in the food industry not just for the flu but also for salmonella. salmonella can absolutely be suppressed by a combination of thoroughly cooking food and cleaning surfaces. Flu cannot (and has not every single time a new variant appears for all recorded history).
Such doesn't completely 'prevent disease spread, but is there no value in 'decreasing spread speed and chance?
It doesn't reduce the chance unless the disease is contained. I just mentioned salmonella. Salmonella is contained, our protocol has essentially eliminated it from people's normal contact.
It can't even be found on most farms (at least the dangerous strains).
There are differential equations that describe growth and contagions and depending on various factors such as incubation time and time before an individual is no longer infectious a slow enough speed of spread WILL kill the disease, i.e. it dies out faster than it can find new hosts.
In a simplistic example if everyone lived on homesteads that are 10 km from each other and a disease is defeated in 10 minutes it will not spread because you can't walk 10 km in 10 minutes. In that case preventing people from using a car slows the spread but also reduces the absolute exposure. It is a practical quarantine.
Other diseases, like HIV, never stop being infectious (naturally). There is no "slowing down" that will eradicate it, total abstinence is required for the infected individuals and that is in the context of HIV a quarantine.
'Decreasing speed' that is not also 'decrease absolute exposure percentage' is in my opinion pointless. People should be free to try, but there is no way I would agree to a social contract where panicked unaccountable government officials at every level can declare that an excuse to do anything with no repercussions.
. . . Hm, maybe Covid was 'too easily spread for it to matter?But then the common cold is easily spread, but people find value in facemasks and handwashing.
A careful individual can get through flu season without catching it. A population cannot. Not unless they quarantine every year.
I work remotely these days and every time I caught a virus like flu, cold, covid, it was always through my nephews. They go to school. They get it. They come home, give it to everyone, and when I meet my family (in their various houses) I get it.
That's how contagion works. If I am 'careful' 99% of the time I will still get infected by that 1% connection.
I am not a zealot on the efficacy of masking one way or the other, but I will point out two things:
1.) Just because a lot of people do it, does not mean it's working.
2.) Just because the government tells you to do it, does not mean it works.
The reason surgeons started wearing masks is infinitely more sensible: don't spit in the patients open body. And that's about bacteria, not viruses.
As a spit preventer, masks are great, but they protect other people from you, not you from other people. Wearing a mask and going into a bar full of people who aren't doesn't protect yourself, their spit gets all over you, you touch yourself, you touch your food, you're infected.
I am absolutely sure that the vast majority of people thought masks protected their person.
Government was still working on vaccine and waiting for disease to run it's course then, as reasons for temporary lockdown?
Only if selling a vaccine was more important than economic production, liberty, and faith in institutions.
A.) They did not develop the vaccine in time, they knew they wouldn't, the only reason they even get to claim the vaccines did anything was because they claimed every new variant was a continuation of the pandemic.
B.) If it takes them 14 months to develop a vaccine, and it takes 3 months of lock-down to equal the economic damage of 1.5 months of quarantine, then what was the point? If quarantine had been enacted the virus would have been defeated long before the first vaccine appeared. There would be no variants of covid because there would be no more covid 19.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Lockdowns arguably killed far more people because we artificially lengthened the mutation period for the virus.
Lockdowns were intended to “flatten the curve,” protect hospital surges, and buy time for vaccines that were not really vaccines (you still were exposed, virulent, and contagious.) But viruses evolve based on opportunity, and by slowing the spread in a patchy, drawn-out way, we gave SARS-CoV-2 more opportunity to mutate under pressure. The result? Multiple waves, more dangerous variants (Alpha, Delta, Omicron, etc.), and a longer global exposure period. Some elderly people actually fought off the 1st strains only to die to Delta years later! a strain that might well never have existed if we'd have let the virus burn through faster and build population-level immunity early....
Research suggests that the adoption of lockdowns in the initial COVID surge helped contain transmission and deaths, albeit at high economic and social costs.
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@Greyparrot
Lockdowns arguably killed far more people because we artificially lengthened the mutation period for the virus.
It's possible that the immune response when synchronized will exterminate a virus.
With the old plagues: the world is big and it can ripple around it in waves such that by the time it comes back to a place it has changed enough to reinfect.
Even in our interconnected modern world, the flu keeps coming back, and I have heard it claimed that this is because there is a zoonotic reservoir. The same would likely be true of covid19 which did infect other mammals.
Are lockdown effects ‘killing more people than Covid’?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
A great example of a coronavirus outbreak that truly petered out is SARS-CoV-1, the original SARS from 2002–2003. It never spiraled into a global crisis because it was contained early and aggressively. Governments in East Asia and Canada implemented strict quarantines and travel bans. As a result, only about 8,000 people were infected worldwide, with around 774 deaths, before the virus was completely contained by mid-2003. The outbreak ended before the virus had a chance to mutate into more contagious or evasive variants. No Delta, no Omicron, just SARS, then gone. There was no half-stepping, no 5 year long trickle of human hosts. The response was decisive before the virus could turn into a permanent fixture.
Different COVID-19 vaccines may work in our bodies differently but all provide protection against the virus that causes COVID-19. None of the COVID-19 vaccines can give you COVID-19.
This well-funded message brought to you by Pfizer. ™️
The last comment was brought to you by RFK Jr.
How many times do the “experts” need to be wrong for us to stop trusting them? We have Fauci who was using government research to mess with bat and canine viruses, teachers who molest their students, homosexual couples who adopt babies and rape and murder them, midwives who murder babies, doctors who murder their elderly patients, morgue workers who molest the dead, scientists who are paid to tell lies, and so on. An expert is the same as a person in any other job; they can be horrible at their jobs, and in some cases they are psychopaths. Let us think of a poorly suited waitress, or a terrible pool cleaner. They are out there; they exist.
We need to start listening to people. Real people.
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@Moozer325
And expert is someone who has dedicated their life to studying a topic
Ha. That is what they tell you. They stop studying once they graduate, and when they are studying they are told what to study.
What are doctors best at? Ignoring their patients.
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@n8nrgim
Where on earth did you get evidence that the covid Vax was bad? There r claims that the Vax causes heart swelling but the odds r super low and the odds of heart swelling r way higher for patients who get covid. Ive done lots of fact checks like this when idiotic claims r made by anti vaxers and using credible sources I see they r mistaken. The best I can surmise is that you all r too incompetent to interpret science and the main point is that you don't know how to find or use credible sources of info
I have seen patients who became ill after being vaccinated against covid-19. They would have either anaphylaxis or inflammation of the heart. I was a medical student who refused to be vaccinated.
Covid-19 is a mild respiratory virus that the young and healthy survive with ease.
The medical community has no business getting involved in the economy. The grave economic damage during covid is worse than the death from this disease. Unlike the death, it has lasted.