461–470 of 833 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly did Macron ever do to earn your respect?
Everybody has my respect by default, until they make a major fuck-up like Macron did there. Maybe he fucked up sooner than that, thus not being worthy of respect at that point. But I'm not interested in politics at all so I missed it.
That's terrible, and doubly so when you apply it to politicians.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Happened in the UK as well, Boris (and to be fair the WHO) told us masks were counter productive. That they might get you to stand closer to people and touch your face more, increasing your chances of getting Covid.. All presumably to save a mask shortage; But we know, and they should have known, that the public doesn't buy the same kind of masks that our NHS buys and there never was going to be any shortage. This en…
> All presumably to save a mask shortage I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. We didn't know if the virus was airborne and there was a question about whether the masks would actually be helpful. For example, the masks could have had very low benefit but encouraged people to touch their face more. Whitty in March 2020: "In terms of wear…
Among the civilian population, perhaps. Not among politicians and health officials. At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks to conserve them for health personnel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would that evidence look like? The House Committee on Oversight and Reform have a press release with more detail[1], which the Telegraph mentions - it's how I found it - and you can download a pdf which contains the partially redacted emails. It doesn't seem to me that the Telegraph has misled anyone regarding this news at all. Perhaps you could read it and be more precise as to where you think they're providing…
Evidence that would convince an independent panel of people trained in the field that it confirms a lab leak. Given the odds against that evidence would likely have to be fairly hard.
Science has been shut down for political reasons. Your "panel" would just make sure that exactly that would happen.
> Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”
The position is understandable, is it not? But it still doesn't have to do with science.
If this comment thread is the way the self proclaimed smartest forum on the web deals with articles like this then we're doomed. This article contributes zero actual evidence, is littered with out of context quotes (including of all places the title), doesn't appear to understand the science or the probabilities involved and finally is clearly written with an agenda. It shouldn't have been posted to HN in the first p…
But I take your point, the Telegraph is bilge. But then, so are all British broadsheets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…
This may be unpopular, but I'm actually fine with polititians manipulating the truth in that scenario (_if_ we accept as a starting point that the shortage of masks was already unavoidable, and the best option for public health was to convince the public to minimise purchases). Part of the job of politicians is to act as a rudder for the general public, and if tragedy of the commons applies to a scenario, a politicia…
Plenty of people own scarves and handkerchiefs, and for a while people were making their own masks at home. So the initial message could have been that any face covering helps and that N95 masks need to be reserved for healthcare workers and responders.
I wonder if having additional two years worth of data changed their mind. We see how easily this virus mutates. Recent research indicates that Omicron evolved for some time in mice without breaking out back into human population. Natural origin is way more playsible than ww thought in February of 2020.
This "natural" origin theories kind of sound like conspiracy. Bats, mice, lemurs.. Somehow wildly different DNA parts combine, and virus perfectly adapted for human population emerges from cave with zero prior human contact... If Omicron evolved in mice, we should be able to find it in wild mice population. Or maybe partially replicate its evolution in lab on mice population. We know virus synthesis is possible, it i…
This virus in the form we encountered, spreads among humans best, but it also can spread between a ton of other animals. Most probable explanation is that it originated from civets (second best) and infected a single person with immunity sufficient to suppress it but insufficient to eradicate it. In this person it multiplied and mutated learning how to infect human cells best and finally one mutation allowed it to skip to another person. And then it spread like wildfire because it was already adapted to humans because it mutated in one human for months or years already and just learned how to overcome immune suppression enough to break through.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…
Would it have been different for you if he had elaborated on the reason for the changed policy, and apologized for what he said earlier? Also, in the first case, did he express it very categorically, or did he say something like "to the best of our knowledge, the virus..."?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm Italian and the events in February and March 2020 made it very clear to me how the anglo press largely just ignores foreign sources. The "debate" about lockdown in the UK mirrored the Italian one almost day by day, with a delay of 3 weeks between here and Italy. Italian sources and discoveries were either ignored or discounted. It was like watching a child "discover" on their own how to start a fire. If they do t…
Even though I usually like to stay away from political topics on here, but it pains me that a country I (used to) love so much, UK, is spiraling deeper and deeper into a void. So much so I have to believe its leadership no longer acts in favour of the country. For reasons unknown to me, however it is long known Brexit was a wanted scenario for Russian geopolitics, as laid out in their textbook: https://en.wikipedia.o…
Even if theories said by 'legitimate'(/actual) conspiracy groups are false, that doesn't mean we're so quick to dismiss a discussion about it.Often the discussion itself is more important about the truth discussed, and in some cases people quickly change their minds when presented facts.Same goes in reverse: you cannot call someone a conspiracy-nut when you cannot disprove his claims and more over his claims gradually become accepted by society.
This is why the general public has issues with such persons or such big claims: they are not capable(or willing) of thinking some people are capable of such malice, and they're willing to dismiss even a discussion because: 1.it's uncomfortable; 2.the truth is hard to reach; both unreasonable arguments to shutdown a discussion, let alone charge someone (which in US this apparently has re-surfaced). A society becoming so intolerable of listening to such people is the first symptom of societal collapse.You can call this a conspiracy, or just check a history book. The difference is that we can somewhat verify information more quickly now, as long as people keep their innate filter on and stop consuming garbage.