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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#561

Post by scotty79 »

incrudible wrote: post #529
scotty79 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get sick with covid multiple times. Our immune systems are just naturally not good enough to deal with this virus. Covid will stop being a concern only after safe and incredibly efficient antiviral drug is developed, which might take decades.

You can get reinfected with all sorts of respiratory viruses. Like I said, nothing to lose sleep over. Antivirals have a very limited window of opportunity. Nothing will make our concerns disappear. At some point, we need to move on.

I don't think we can move on because we haven't adjusted our health services to way larger number of sick and dying people every flu season.

Re: Update on Omicron

#562

Post by Stranger43 »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #394
PostOnce wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's plausible, but it's not the whole picture. It may only partially explain some of the problem. We have, in the wealthy west, millions of vaccine-hesistant and vaccine-denialist people. I'm not just talking about poor or uneducated people, either. I personally know wealthy, educated, analytical people who have bought into the fearmongering and propaganda. I was shocked to find how deeply skeptical they were. I w…

> I personally know wealthy, educated, analytical people who have bought into the fearmongering and propaganda Same, including medical professionals who fit this description. It's clearly an emotional and tribal issue at this point. The animating factor of nearly all of this denialism is a narrative of distrust and outright animus for the "establishment" and the organizations that represent it.

Whenever you got an establishment claiming authority from authority you are going to get this response the only thing surprising is why supposedly competent and intelligent politicians and propagandists keeps getting caught out by this extremely rational behaviour.

The problem here is as that "The Science" is being claimed as a source of authority with the same blind reverence that the church used to claim God or "The Bible" rather then being presented in all it's messy and inconclusive glory.

Re: Update on Omicron

#563

Post by esyir »

op00to wrote: post #556
esyir wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this hits the nail on the head. That the academic space is not just dominated, but overtly hostile to right wingers probably worsens this. Why would they trust advice given by people who proclaim their hatred of them?

Please provide examples of “academia” proclaiming hatred of “right wingers”.

Gladly, as far as hostility goes. The "hatred" was a rhetorical flourish about the relationship between the left and the right, as drawn from their media presence, as well as the general trend on left-aligned circles across social media. A scan of twitter and reddit should be more than sufficient to see that, especially /r/hermancainaward.

I'm going to place a few cases here, but you're going to have to accept that there is a cherry-picking-esque effect here, there isn't really solid data on this, unfortunately, only surveys and general opinion. A decent chunk of my social circle are academics in the state though anecdotal as that is. I'm also going to try to contrast the clash of opinion on both sides.

>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/health/jama-bauchner-race...

Dr Livingstone claims that medicine is not structurally racist, gets placed on administrative leave by journal.

While the endemicity of structural racism is generally accepted on the left, it's very much not so on the right, and in a sizable chunk of the center.

>https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2021/03/16/u...

Professor Kindsvatter made a video about how he felt that the way "whiteness" was applied to him like "some kind of disease" was dehumanizing. This gets him an immediate attempt to get him to step down.

The concept of "whiteness" as a clear negative is pretty common in left and progressive aligned media. See [1], and imagine the fireball would be if "white" was replaced with "black". This definition of "whiteness" is certainly not the mainstay outside of said circles.

>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/georgetown-law-profes...

“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks, happens almost every semester." This results in David Batson's resignation and the firing of his colleague.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/magazine/classics-greece-...

Re: Update on Omicron

#564

Post by nicoburns »

metamet wrote: post #256
maxerickson wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the proposed method of actually isolating the most vulnerable parts of society? I don't see how you do it in any meaningful way (At the very most vulnerable end, they are dependent on lots of people that are less vulnerable...).

To that point, my grandma's retirement home was as well locked down as possible. But you know who didn't take it seriously? The staff who worked there and brought COVID in, which ended up killing her. There's no way of isolating them without isolating their staff, their families, everyone they interact with. With a virus as contagious as COVID, there doesn't appear to be a way to target portions of the population eff…

Indeed, and that's a retirement home which is really the easy case. I don't see how an elderly person that lives with their younger family members is supposed to be isolated.

Re: Update on Omicron

#565

Post by nova22033 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #154

Ok, my 2 cents. This happened because there isn’t enough vaccines in third world countries. They can’t afford them. The moral of the story? It doesn’t matter if you 100% vaccinate your western country. We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’…

The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’ll never get out of this.

The problem in South Africa is vaccine hesitancy, not vaccine availability

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-11-24/exclus...

Re: Update on Omicron

#566

Post by nova22033 »

harry8 wrote: post #318
xg15 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true, but not the whole story unfortunately. While many African countries need more vaccines, South Africa was in the process of throttling shipments because less and less people were getting vaccinated. So the other big challenge is raising acceptance of the vaccines and fighting denialism.

Talking about vaccine hesitancy in Africa must be accompanied by why there's a certain amount of justification of it and it can be viewed as entirely rational, if also wholly undesirable. Included in that must be the USA's role in creating that problem. A couple of examples quickly turned up with a search engine of which there seem to be far, far too many. I can recall a few not here being reported over the past deca…

Pakistan had a history of vaccine hesitancy before the CIA's fake vaccination campaign was revealed.

Re: Update on Omicron

#567

Post by exdsq »

logicchains wrote: post #507
exdsq wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a peer reviewed study, it's a submitted abstract. The sole name on the paper is someone who sells psudoscience plant-based debunked theories that the majority of our health issues come from lectins. He "authors papers" for Gwyneth Paltrow's weird publications. The guy sells supplements based on his scaremongering research to fringe-groups who like the idea of plant-based medicine, I don't trust his opinion…

>The sole name on the paper is someone who sells psudoscience plant-based debunked theories that the majority of our health issues come from lectins A professional cardiologist with decades of experience who now runs his own cardiology practice. Do you feel you're more qualified to assess his qualifications than the editors of Circulation just because you read a wikipedia article? >psudoscience plant-based debunked t…

I read criticisms about him in a few other places too. Either way - if there’s something huge to be found here it’ll be found my many teams

Re: Update on Omicron

#569

Post by unclebucknasty »

esyir wrote: post #554
unclebucknasty wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made a bad argument and got called on it. That's as far as it goes. No need to be a victim. No need to double-down with more bad arguments. But, my apologies if I seemed unnecessarily harsh. I don't know you. I was referring to your argument; an argument that rationalizes malignant behavior and happens to be the crux of the problem. You're more a victim of tribal thinking than you think. You talk almost purely in…

>You made a bad argument and got called on it. That's as far as it goes. No need to be a victim. No need to double-down with more bad arguments. You don't even have a damn argument here. You've lobbed personal attack after personal attack without any backing. I'm going to quote paraphrase the zen of python here on this. Be explict. Tell me exactly which part of my argument you're dismantling, rather than yelling "YOU…

Well, so much for any pretense that you're an objective, non-tribal commentator, amirite?

Obviously, there's a lot of hostility just beneath the surface. Unfortunately, you seem to have bought into exactly the right-wing persecution narrative I mentioned, which is designed to produce the emotional effect you're exhibiting here.

>reddit front page popular posts will give you a fantastic slice

To start detoxing, maybe stop taking Reddit comments as organic and consider the well-known manipulation of online spaces, meant to reinforce bad narratives.

I mean, you offering Reddit comments as proof of anything reveals just how susceptible you are to manipulation. It's bad. Really bad. Your reality is skewed.

>Tell me exactly which part of my argument you're dismantling

Thing is, I told you exactly what's wrong with your argument. Go back and read if you're really interested. I won't enter the infinite loop of re-explaining because every additional comment you make just piles on more bad logic--this, while your anger visibly increases. No coincidence there.

In general, you are regurgitating virtually every talking point you've been programmed to repeat, and even using the language of your programmers ("lefty", "signalling").

It's becoming a case study on exactly how the right has been manipulated, and especially how emotional and tribal vectors are used to circumvent intelligence and critical thinking; which is, of course, my assertion that started this subthread.

So, while I appreciate you offering yourself as a working demonstration of my point, I'm afraid I have no interest in continuing to participate in your demonstration. Fixing the damage here is well-above my pay grade, and I have no delusion otherwise.

Good luck.

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