The consensus is now forming that the pandemic is nearing an end
Submitted by gjohnsit on Mon, 11/01/2021 - 1:14pm
First of all, let's look at the numbers.
New Covid-19 cases have dropped almost 60% since September and are projected to drop about 20% over the next three weeks, according to an ensemble of forecast models gathered by CDC.
According to data from the Washington Post, the seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases was around 69,000 this past week, representing a 58% drop since Sept. 13 when new, delta-driven cases were at 164,475.
Personally I'm thrilled that this culture war item is about to be retired.
Maybe we can get back to talking about things that'll make a positive difference in our lives.
Nevertheless, this isn't the only source for good news.
The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub predicts pandemic deaths will fall below 100 per day by March 2022.
Other studies show the same outcome.
There is some optimism to be had surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic according to a doctor with USF Health, who says models have predicted when the virus will fade away.
...“The thing to remember is, we are now currently 82% of the population, we are estimating, are currently immune, from vaccine immunity as well as natural immunity from infections,” Dr. Michael said. “We are very close to herd immunity, about 90% is what we are estimating herd immunity would be, so we are only 8% points away.”Dr. Michael said he does not expect to see another rise in COVID cases and pointing to models that predict the virus will fade away by the start of next year if there are no new variants of the disease or other unknown factors.
Lastly there is Mayo Clinic data.
I'm starting to feel kind of cocky since I called this on August 31, right before COVID cases started to drop.
Comments
I got no beef against hope and I share yours
However.
First from you: Personally I'm thrilled that this culture war item is about to be retired.
No way in hell will this culture war end even if the virus disappears altogether between now and New Years. The problem was not us "anti-vaxxers" refusing to believe in "science." The problem was the authorities lying to the world about the virus and the various vaccines. These lies accompanied the beyond bizarre inflation of stock and housing prices while those lies were being pushed. Nobody should just forget all that, just because the virus fades away
This is no rainbow and unicorns naivete speaking. This is the simple reality of the last year and two thirds -- bullshit coming from most of the governments of the world, most notably the US government.
Conspiracy? Beats the heck out of me why those lies keep rolling out about things like Horse Paste and The Unvaccinated Are Infecting the Vaccinated. But they are coming in an organized torrent, just like the Iraq War was blown past the American people.
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Second, from your quote box:
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Vaccine immunity? Why do people need to take booster shots after taking two doses of the "vaccine"?
If? If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, what a merry Christmas we'd all have! -- Don Meredith on Monday Night Football about fifty years ago.
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These reservations aside, I think there is a good chance that you are exactly right about the virus wearing itself out over the next half year. If so, as long as we are speaking of hopes, I hope that the powers that be admit that the pandemic is over when it is over and not tell a new rash of lies about how the lull in infections is only due to vaccine and we must keep getting jabbed forever.
Paranoia is hard to avoid these days.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
I don't think the pandemic will be over
until TPTB have got what they really came for - bio-metric passports aka REAL ID
Welcome to
20211984. Your portrait will now be entered in the bio-metric data base. If you want to travel by any interstate public transport, train, plane or boat, you will have to have this ID.If you think you can fake it, think again:
Maybe I'm missing something
We have Real ID out here in California, and it doesn't have anything to do with biometrics.
However, I'm skeptical about this because so many people willingly turned their DNA over to ancestry.com and those other similar companies, that, like Facebook, they don't have to do any of that draconian stuff in order to track most people.
You have missed something
REAL ID uses facial recognition software. That is what the yellow star means.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbh3rpzYUVU]
Brave New World ahead
Any bets that your vaccine status will be linked to the following? Of course it will just be for your convenience and safety. Keep in mind that your passport photo will be the same as your Real ID photo. BTW, the airlines don't store your actual photo. They just store the bio-metrics of the photo. Neat eh!
And the Credit Bureau
You can find your FICO score in the toilet.
Because you are high risk for everything — keeping a job, being mobile, general health, renting an apartment, dying early. You are a quasi criminal non conformist, which makes you a bad credit risk.
Fire is right. They are not going to let go of this. Ever.
They might let the COVID whatever you want to call it pass,
but they aren't going to give up the emergency powers. They will shift to some other "emergency" excuse to continue hacking away at democracy. Austrailia is a goddamned dictatorship at this point, something that clearly isn't necessitated by viral illness. Their fetish for kicking the shit out their citizenry for minor disobedience isn't going to go away.
My models say something different.
However, if that is true, and their algorithm — using a single pimple chart to define the entire future of this infectious disease — turns out to be true, then everyone reading can expect to become infected by the virus. Along with every new baby born.
Did you know the common cold was only 200 years old? I thought it was always with us, but Encyclopedia Britannica set me straight. It's a good thing, because Kleenex has only been around for a short time, too. Mothers pass the virus on to their children shortly after they are born.
Nope
These are not sterilizing vaccines, and the U.S. is doing next to nothing aside from vaccinations. It will never be over. And I see 1500-2000 deaths per day still that tell me that.
When did nihilism become so popular on the left?
No wonder the left can never win, if everyone is convinced that everyone that tries is doomed and should be mocked for even trying.
Chicken Little vs. The Ostrich
People misunderstood the tale of Chicken Little. He was actually a gas lighting genius whose cries of alarm about the sky falling tricked the Ostrich into suffocating himself in the sand.
I used to be skeptical of Chicken Little prophecy. Now I am a Chicken Little from hell. Seeing all my plans for the balance of my life destroyed under extremely suspicious circumstances accompanied by an overt campaign of utterly mendacious propaganda -- it wakes up the Inner Nihilist in me.
I do not know whom you specifically believe to have succombed to hopelessness -- I still have hope. Just no hope for electoral politics without a massive manifestation of non-cooperation by millions of human beings.
The challenge is to change the facts on the ground. The ass was falling out of the country in the 30s and the social unrest of the 60s was threatening to reach the same level. When it starts to rain shit balls on the politicians, the politicians will change. Otherwise they just keep their donors happy.
This is not nihilism. For me it is family history.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
@gjohnsit Where did I say we were
Where did I say we were doomed? We could stop the pandemic anytime with masking and closures. We won't though. Partly because of propaganda that it's over.
I could be wrong, but...
That certainly sounds nihilistic to me.
At least when the topic is something negative like a pandemic.
Now if we were talking about great drugs and sex, and you said "It will never be over", then I would take it entirely differently.
On the concept of sterilizing vaccines...
From https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/sterilizing-immunity...
"Say that sterilizing immunity is impossible, that our immune systems cannot, in fact, be trained to achieve perfection. Then it’s neither a surprise nor a shortcoming that COVID-19 vaccines, or other vaccines, don’t manage it: An inoculation that guards marvelously well against disease—offering as much protection as it can—can still end an outbreak. Life would certainly be easier if vaccines offered invincible armor, with pathogens simply ricocheting off. But they don’t, and assuming or expecting them to manage that can be dangerous. The dubiousness of sterilizing immunity is a reminder that just about any immune response can be overwhelmed, if exposures are heavy and frequent enough, Grad told me. The best we can all hope for is functional immunity, more like a flame retardant than a firewall, that still keeps bad burns at bay."
Thanks for bringing this up. I learned something new from this interesting article.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Not all vaccines are alike
The mRNA vaccines only produce a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the spike protein. And even that portion is not complete. This only presents a tiny portion of the genetic makeup of the virus to your immune system so it is relatively easy for immune escape. This immune escape has now been demonstrated by the reduced effectiveness of the vaccines with the rise in the Delta version.
But, the HPV vaccines, after 10+ years of use, are still almost 100% effective. The difference is that this vaccine makes use of the entire virus capsid (the casing of the viral particle w/o it's DNA).
Your article has given a false equivalency. We are not asking for 100% effectiveness. There is nothing in this world that is 100% guaranteed. BUT, there is a fucking huge chasm between a vaccine that can hold it's efficacy for 10 (HPV so far), 20 (Hepatitis) or 30+ (Polio) years compared to one that cannot survive even 6 months before petering out. Also, if a vaccine has a 0.01% of doing harm with each injection, the odds are considerably reduced if you don't have to get one every 6 months as compared to 10 years.
I would LOVE to see the arguments over vaccines etc.
head to an ending, but I don't think that will happen. I have been checking into all the sources linked in headlines on this site and others when people are arguing about vaccines and other treatments, and I am amazed at the hold that right wing sources have on discussions that are occurring on normally left wing websites and blogs. One just the other day claimed that more people are dying in Taiwan from the vaccines than the virus. The source was the Falun Gong news site. It didn't matter at all when this fact was pointed out about the bogus source... the discussion continued as if this was valid news. In other words, minds are entrenched, admittedly on both sides.
The difference for me, and why I fall on the side of hoping that more people will be vaccinated, is the evidence that confirms the fact that most of the covid vaccinations work, and prevent deaths and hospitalizations. That evidence just can not be ignored, but it is being ignored by a large section of our population. One can be aware of the corruptions of Big Pharma, past and present, and be disgusted by it, but one can not ignore that the products for the most part have saved us from far worse scenarios.
As far as which direction the virus takes, I'd like to believe based on past histories with various viruses that it will do the fade out thing, but with overpopulation (which we stopped being concerned about long ago) and climate change, I can't totally be optimistic about that either.
"Maybe we can get back to talking about things that'll make a positive difference in our lives."
Would love this too! The world right now feels very fragile and tense and frankly depressing. I'm tired of the daily drums of fear, whether based on reality or imagined.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Yes! Yes! Yes!
I agree 1,000% with everything you've said here.
I've seen the same thing. Neither side is even considering the possibility that the pandemic is coming to an end. And that is bizarre, because every pandemic eventually ends, and they historically don't last much past two years.
But COVID discussion is far more about politics than science these days. Which is why when I post essays like this, they get received like I'm posting in Mandarin Chinese or Latin. The natural, common-sense assumptions, like a) let's assume that viruses and the human body have not changed, so this pandemic should play out in a predictable way, and b) that we shouldn't simply reject scientific sources, and that we shouldn't assume health care professionals are in on some big conspiracy, is being rejected out-of-hand.
I've noticed that too. But it shouldn't surprise you when all of the talking points are the same. When even the style of the talking points are the same.
Yeh, I've largely given up on discussing the various "facts" that are asserted. I simply don't have the time or energy to fight all of those fights.
That's why I'm focused on the probable and logical end of this pandemic.
Because both sides are going to want to continue fighting this culture war over COVID, but when the cases of COVID become non-significant only then will you be able to reach people.
Not at all.
I am getting tired of the masks, and of course find the vaccine mandates an appalling intrusion on our personal freedom. I hope you're right, but doubt it.
Well, "historically" might have limited usefulness in our current situation. Remember that this is a very novel virus, which might well be lab-manufactured, possibly in a bio-weapons facility. And we have never (to my kn) tried to mass-vaccinate ourselves out of a pandemic before. As Dr vandal Bosche has noted, doing so is highly risky and will tend to increase the chances of prolonging the pandemic as even more infectious variants emerge.
And we've seen these promising lulls before in the past 20 months. I hope it lasts, but Vanden Bosch seems to think it more likely the virus waves will continue with an ever higher baseline of infections.
Dr Malone also stated recently he expects a major wave coming in the winter/early spring period.
Here is the prognosis
from Dr Vanden Bossche:
As the evolutionary dynamics of the virus in highly vaccinated countries/regions are now placing huge immune selection pressure on the viral fitness landscape, it is fair to postulate that the highly diversified spectrum of evolutionary trajectories of this pandemic seen in different highly vaccinated countries will now rapidly narrow down to a more uniform path characterized by the following, prognostically unfavorable features:
. Waning of vaccine efficacy as mirrored by a relative increase of morbidity and mortality rates in vaccinees over time
. A relative increase of morbidity and mortality rates over time in vaccinees as compared to the unvaccinated
. A relative increase in suboptimal immunity over time in both the vaccinees and unvaccinated individuals (due to diminished vaccine efficacy and suboptimal naturally elicited Abs, respectively), which may translate into a relative increase in cases of ADE (Ab-dependent enhancement of Covid-19 disease pathology)
. A relative increase in the base-line infectivity rate over time
. Continuing waves of increased infection, morbidity, and mortality rates
. A relative increase in frequency of more infectious viral variants with immune-resistant phenotypes over time
https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/keep-looking-at-snapshots-and-yo...
What 'right wing' sources have I been using?
No need for these insults.
Fishtroller never called you out
You shouldn't take it personal.
What he said is something that I've noticed too. It's widespread. I'm surprised that you haven't noticed it.
Attacking the messenger
and ignoring the message from you too? Again who decides whether a site is left or right? Or does it depend on whether you agree with the information or not? I just find that closed minded. I read many left wing sites that pushed Russia Gate over and over even after it was debunked. MSDNC for one…
Did I attack you?
As for left vs right, well, let me put it this way.
I have a good friend who went all in on the anti-COVID vaccine. Almost every night he emails me midnight rants (and by "rant" I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. They typically involve lots of curse words and insults) about this issue.
This is a guy that we used to have in-depth debates about the merits of Marxism.
Now he tells me that he looks forward to voting for Trump, his political hero is DeSantis, and that The Squad is the biggest threat to the working class in America.
What should I logically assume from this? What would you assume from this?
And no one is attacking the messenger here. To attack the messenger would require calling out someone.
You attack the websites
That should be obvious what I meant. Again who decides if it’s right or left or true or not?
About your friend…? So?
Let's assume the worst then
That these web sites are leftist web sites and I'm totally smearing them.
So?
Do you run those web sites? Then why are you taking it personal?
Shouldn't you just call bullshit on me, and tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about?
That's what I would do.
Why do I care
I often post things from what others consider right wing sites and I shouldn’t have to stop using them because people don’t like them. Many sites have content that comes from people who others think are from the left, like Greenwald, Taibbi ect. People calling them that without reading the content seem to be shaming those who do.
As for insulting you I’m not in to doing that. I would like you to quit saying that I am anti vax since I have explained my reasoning for not getting one or thinking they are safe. If you’ve missed why I do I can only think you haven’t read what I’ve posted. Others have done that too.
Keeping it real
OK. I'm not telling you to stop using anything.
Hell, I visit Zerohedge on a daily basis, and not only are they far right-wing, but they are also a bunch of RACIST ASSHOLES too. (many aren't racist, but are still total ASSHOLES anyway)
However, they sometimes post an article that is both interesting and about something important that I missed.
I have no issue at all with calling them for what they are.
But what I'm not going to do is deny what the site is, and you shouldn't either with your sources.
Please give me a handle for what I should describe your team. Something that I can type quickly.
Team?
Is this a sport now?
See the site description above, open range politics. Meaning right and left. The "team" thing leads to division. This site has never been about dividing members into teams. But I've noticed you do that a lot.
I’m not on a team
I’m disappointed that you keep going with that. Why do you have to call people anything anyway? I thought more from you, but I guess that doesn’t apply anymore. Sad to see.
Yep, I'm disappointed in me too
Once we get past the fact that I'm a huge disappointment, we still have the open question of what term I should use that wouldn't offend you?
Because if you don't answer that then I'm going to offend you, but it'll be on you.
i really don't care what the term is. Use your imagination.
Why do you need to call me anything?
I can’t take the vaccines so I should have to be called something? I don’t get what you’re doing.
Bullshit. If you need a name to call me that’s on you not me. I am unvaccinated. Will that do? I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone why I am not. Medical issues used to be considered private, but I have explained here why I am not vaccinated because of getting crap from people who think every person who isn’t vaccinated is anti vax. My saying that I am not anti vax should have ended the conversation but apparently you either missed it or refuse to believe it. The reason why is because the vaccines are not safe for everyone. Vaccine injuries are ignored by the people who insist everyone get vaccinated.
Do you think that I'm trying to offend you?
Because I'm not. I don't know your personal background, and I don't think that's important here because we are talking in generalities.
However, if you think that I'm here to hurt you somehow, then just say so and insult me. I can take it. I can withstand whatever you want to throw at me. It'll make you feel better and will clear the air.
I think that's about as fair as I can get.
It's just playing into the dichotomy
and there's no necessity for it. That shit reminds me of DKos - and it's why I left.
When Trump placed the orders for the vaccines all the high level Democrats, including Biden and Pelosi, vowed they would never take it. The same at DKos. Once Trump was out they switched sides and now they are for it.
I know more democrats than I know republicans and at least half think the roll-out was too quick and was motivated by financial interests. We have all noticed the complete lack of any efforts other than vaccination to curb the pandemic. I appreciate the efforts of many here in discovering prophylactics that can increase survival.
Personally, if it was available, I would take the traditional killed virus from China combined with other remedies.
I honestly don't know what you are referring to
You should explain this because I'm confused.
Yep, and I've written about it several times.
I am refering to the one I posted to
It was you who stepped in. I've never used a "right wing" site. Although I've noticed that some sites have had their "perceived colours" changed from left or neutral if they do not toe the pro vaccine line. Mostly I post items from medical sources that are neutral politically.
The following is blatantly FALSE so I am calling this bullshit out.
This is insulting
Who decides what is right wing sources? You? This has been addressed since the site was created. It’s an attack on the messenger without addressing the message.
Pro vaccine advocates seem to turn a blind eye to the severe adverse effects caused by the vaccines and gives a false sense of security that they are safe. They are not.
Just 2 sites with documentation of lives ruined or stopped.
https://www.c19vaxreactions.com/real-testimonials.html
https://nomoresilence.world
People are being fired for exposing the truth while the FDA is covering it up. It’s full of people who have conflicts of interests and they recently ignored every person who talked about the side effects they have been treating while giving authorization to give them to children who are not at risk and who will see no benefit from getting them while being exposed to the risk.
4 countries have refused to give the Moderna vaccine because of the risks of myocarditis which is just one of the adverse effects they are causing, but America is going to inject them regardless.
People have explained that they are not anti vax, but they still get called it anyway. Rude and insensitive to people’s concerns. And closed minded. If you are vaccinated fine. Then you should feel safe from being infected…unless you don’t think the vaccines work and if that’s the case then why are you insisting every one who isn’t take them?
There have been plenty of information posted here about the serious adverse and sometimes deadly effects from them, but yet…
gjohnsit the media has blacked out coverage of countries that have beaten Covid by giving their people early treatment for Covid. You’d think they would be ecstatic to see that happen, but since it goes against vaccines they won’t talk about it. Don’t you find that interesting?
I never thought that you of all people would close your mind to facts, but you have. You still call anyone who questions vaccines anti vaxxers even though you have been corrected numerous times. For the record again I am not anti vax. I recently got a tetanus shot and had all my childhood ones. I will not take the current ones because they are not safe for me. My doctor agrees because of my health issues. That used to not be a problem, but people are being denied exemptions for no reason. I’d think people would find that a problem. Do you?
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. . . !
I'm tired of the daily drums of fear, whether based on reality or imagined.
Says the poster telling fearmongering stories about ‘distant family members dying of Rona because dRumph and cospiracy theories’!
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWAAAAAAAAAAABWAAAAAAAAA! ! !
sorry, not buying it. hypocrisy ain’t pretty. ignore the post below yours, never Acknowledge the damage the vax is doing to untold hundreds of Thousands, if not millions(I thought the FG hated Mainland China), keep pushing msm propaganda, ignoring the reality of the govt outright lying to US since this whole shindig kicked off. . . sheesh.
And I want to emphasize, no ad hominem, hypocrite is a conclusion based on experiential reality as seen in their own writings(if it could be called ‘reality’).
I’m neither a dRumph supporter nor a conspiracy theorist to Know THIS govt Does Not Now nor has it Ever had our health and well being as
priorities.
Also, it is neither nihilistic or defeatist to refuse to participate in this game anymore to the extent one can manage. Because it’s coming to an end sooner than most of us can imagine.
Or wish to.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Hypothetical Question
If the reported new cases and deaths fall to almost nothing, is the pandemic over? Do we still take vaccines for the foreseeable future? If so, it seems to me that the pandemic would not be over in that case. If you disagree with that assessment, please explain why.
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Both gjohnsit and fishtroller very eloquently argue that the debate about vaccines is a bad thing and assert that the debate itself is harmful. I could not disagree more, but that is a value judgment and to each their own.
Looking at what the various measures taken so far have done to our civilization, I think that if there is ever again anything like "politics" in the USA, the very first order of business should be a Truth Commission to determine how all this crap happened. Sending sick people to nursing homes. Masks required. Not required. Then required again. A vaccine that was NEVER promised to prevent infection used as a rationale for mandatory medical treatment. Suppression on many different levels of treatment options.
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Fishtroller again says that this should be about science rather than politics. I disagree. Science is not One Answer and science does not make policy. You can "win" your argument about how wonderful this vaccine is, but unless you persuade the society to go along with your dreams of a unified people cheerfully following the lead of Objective Reality and Science, you are just pissing in the wind. Rather than providing an honest rationale for persuading people to take advantage of the Pfizer and Moderna products' "protection" from the most deadly manifestations of the virus, they continue to push this Hate the Unvaxxed Campaign which is just preposterous.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
It's not a hard question
Yes, the pandemic is over if cases fall to nil. Why would it be otherwise? When has it ever been otherwise?
Vaccines at that point would be treated like any other vaccine. The only thing that makes the COVID vaccine special right now is because of the pandemic.
That's a misrepresentation.
Neither of us say that "the debate about vaccines is a bad thing". What I'm saying is that the current debate about vaccines is being done in an unproductive way.
As for "and assert that the debate itself is harmful". A debate about vaccines is a good thing. The current debate, as it is being done is harmful, for the exact same reasons that every culture war battle in America today is harmful.
When the starting point of every debate is "you can't trust any official sources" and "there is a huge conspiracy amongst medical professionals" and "I'm fully qualified to speak about the science of viruses and vaccines because of what I've read on the interwebs", then the whole debate is doomed from the beginning.
It's being debated on the assumption that there is no science to viruses and vaccines. Or at least that the science isn't important. And that assumption I will reject without even considering.
That's just bullshit, and is totally unhelpful.
There is no hate the unvaxxed campaign going on?
I disagree. Cleary, we live in separate universes. There are countless internet examples of virulent invective heaped on the unvaccinated, beginning with the lie that they are the ones responsible for keeping the pandemic going.
I also disagree with your assertion that I misrepresented your posts. One sentence after denying that your view is the debate is a bad thing, you say, "The debate is done in an unproductive way."
OK, I stand corrected. You think the debate is unproductive.
I have to say that to claim that a debate is unproductive clearly asserts there is a "productive" way to debate the issues. That ain't debate. That is you dictating both sides of an argument.
.
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We are in agreement that the pandemic will be over if cases fall to nil. That's progress. Implicit but not explicit in this passage is an answer to my actual question -- do we continue to vaccinate even after the cases disappear? "Like any other vaccine" -- what does that mean? Will it be mandatory? If it is mandatory, will you say that I should not concern myself with that?
Regarding your thoughts on science. How do I know you know anything about science? I do not go to political message boards for scientific enlightenment. If you do, you are probably barking up the wrong tree.
I have never claimed to know jack shit about science on this board and I firmly believe that there is serious bullshit going on hiding behind the pandemic. At this stage of the game, if you really believe that Biden and Johnson and the rest of the leaders of the Free World are trying honestly to protect their countrymen from illness and death, you are much more generous to politicians than I am.
I hope you are right. I doubt it very seriously.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Re:
There probably is some invective heaped upon the un-vaxxed, but it ain't happening here.
No one in this on this site today attacked you or anyone on your team.
I've noticed that people are far too quick to claim they are being attacked when debating this issue. I'm unclear where this is coming from, but I do know that it helps shut down debate.
Of course there are productive and unproductive ways to debate an issue.
Are you really asserting otherwise?
If we can't agree that there are productive and unproductive ways to debate then we are at a stalemate.
I know that it exists, and that one branch of it involves viruses, and that I'm not qualified to speak on it. What are your thoughts?
On debate on this issue
and politics, it has to be noted that, much like Russiagate, again it's largely (but not exclusively) the Right which has been trying to open a debate in major public forums (Congress, mass media such as Fox) and particularly in the areas of effective treatments and the credibility on certain matters of Dr Fauci. Afaik, it was the usually kinda nutty and previously seemingly stupid Sen Ron Johnson who requested Dr Pierre Kory's testimony re IVM last year in front of that small congressional committee. And it was the normally kinda quirky Sen Rand Paul who was responsible for putting Fauci on the record, possibly in perjurious ways, on the GoF issue.
No Dem showed leadership in closely questioning in either of these areas. The Ds in fact are in lockstep in backing Fauci and none, afaik, has shown any initiative in calling for a public discussion of Covid treatments. It's once again Sen Johnson who tomorrow is holding a forum on a forbidden topic: testimony from witnesses having adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines. I'm fairly sure FB and YT will arrange to block the video.
Strange times where the Ds and left have become more credulous about govt pronouncements and have allied with Big Pharma while the Rs are the ones asking the tough questions and providing platforms for dissenting views.
Meanwhile, on Covid and politics, in recent public talks both Dr Malone and Dr Peter McCullough stated that they are actually slightly left of center politically. An important reminder that The Better Science is not being promoted solely by RWers.
Are they really?
When it comes to an issues that is INFINITELY more important to Big Pharma than COVID - having Medicare negotiate lower drug prices and banning imports of generic drugs from Canada - it's Repubs that are in lockstep with Big Pharma.
Dems certainly aren't showing much leadership on these issues either, but at least they are willing to offer solutions.
Anyone who thinks COVID is more important than Medicare and Canada to Big Pharma hasn't done the math.
Repubs are doing what they always do, which is to make it about a personality rather than a policy.
Well if you want
to shift the goal posts slightly, yes of course on Medicare and cheaper drugs, and that's part of the many reasons why I'm not a R. But the discussion here is about Covid matters, and on that it's depressingly true that the Rs overall have it right on the items I mentioned above, plus on the vaccine mandates, overwhelmingly so in fact on the latter. But as you don't dispute the points I made above in the Covid context, it just helps me make my point that science and politics make for strange bedfellows, that we've been here before such as with Russiagate, and that it's not productive or helpful to let political labels or stereotypes drive your thinking into a ditch.
I think you've missed my main point.
I think there is a huge amount of misinformation being posted in The Dose from bad sources.
One of the best examples of that is the claim that more people died in Taiwan from vaccinations than from Covid. The is blatantly false and doesn't even belong in a posting on Caucus 99%
As for sources.... One main source used is Dr. Pierre Kory of the FLCCC. He claimed in a tweet that over 100 members of Congress took Ivermectin. There is no evidence that this statement is true, but he is still looked at as a valid source for medical information on Covid and its treatments. In fact, that whole group is highly questionable in the eyes of many scientists...https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fringe-doctors-groups-promote...
I don't criticize people who choose not to take the vaccine. I criticize the fact that many people here and on other sites are adding to the pool of misinformation and outright fear mongering in order to convince others not to get the vaccine.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Two drs. told me not to risk the jab. I am hesitant to jab.
That doesn't make me a right winger. Or them.
I have never voted right, never identified as right.
I do have health concerns unique to me. Not everyone was born with the disease I was, not everyone has my crazy reactions to all medicines, over the counter, prescribed, injected, or infused. Just me.
I read whatever I can about any alternatives to the vax from whatever source. I want to live through this.
As the radical leftie I have been all my life, I question everything coming from the agencies controlling the meds, not just for this pandemic, but for HIV, for shingles, or cancer,...for all of it. I do not believe blue sites are only pro-vax, or that red sites are only anti-vax.
The sooner we all stop politicizing a fucking vaccine, and the sooner we start thinking in terms of some minuscule, yet powerful, 1% controlling the narrative, on pain of prison for disagreement (referencing the Great Britain law), the better we 99% can protect ourselves and each other.
Let's survive this, no matter what path we choose. COVID survival is not a ballot choice.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981