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I'm not commenting on your third paragraph because calling Trump a "covid denialist" is too ridiculous and unrelated to what is being discussed to even begin to

I'm not commenting on your third paragraph because calling Trump a "covid denialist" is too ridiculous and unrelated to what is being discussed to even begin to explore. in your second paragraph, you use anecdotes as a means of persuasion, despite referring to "accepted facts" two sentences prior. none of this addresses my point which is that well-reasoned skepticism is usually met with seemingly dogmatic opposition. for example, elsewhere in the threads here, it was posited that perhaps not every death that was reported as being due to covid was accurately reported as such, given that a.) it's possible to die with covid in your system without it being the thing that killed you (especially assuming the popular "asymptomatic carrier" assertion is true) and b.) that there are demonstrable profit motives for hospitals (many of which, including my local one, have been condensed into mega-corporations in the past couple of decades). this is a reasoned, reasonable cause for skepticism. yet again, to express things like this is to be deemed a "conspiracy theorist," and to have one's reputation diminished and one's statements nullified as a result. e: re: 4th paragraph, how is one supposed to experience cognitive dissonance from holding both of the following ideas in their mind at the same time? - the FDA is too strict when it comes to approving experimental, elective procedures and medications - the FDA isn't strict enough when it comes to allowing several competing drugs to be emergency-use-authorized without sufficient testing, especially when for many people the choice is between taking an experimental drug and losing employment (or worse...?)

allturtles 6y ago
When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory. If you don't believe the reported COVID death numbers, you can look at excess deaths over prior years, which largely track with or exceeds the reported numbers for COVID deaths. Ultimately, for most people it's pretty obvious at this point that COVID is a catastrophe of the likes we haven't seen in many decades. Trying to persuade people at this point is tiresome, it would be like living in 1943 and trying to persuade skeptics that, yes World War II is a big deal.
- adamrezich 6y ago
  > When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory. except for the lack of conspiracy? when did the definition of "conspiracy" change to encompass the actions of individuals not explicitly working in concert with each other? why is it so difficult to entertain a possible world wherein sars-cov-2 was hyped to be this massively devastating pandemic, and it was indeed pretty bad in terms of confirmed cases... but then when the number of deaths, while definitely nonzero, wasn't reaching the numbers it was "supposed to" on a per-hospital basis, many individual hospitals fudged some numbers here and there in order to get covid money since there was so much of it flying around into everyone else's pockets? this seems like a completely pragmatic, if unethical, course of action to take. there's a lot of hospitals in the US. do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible? again, I'm not asking you to accept this possible world as unconditionally Proven Fact or anything like that—I'm merely asking you to entertain the possibility, without breaking the glass and pulling the "Conspiracy Theory" lever. why is this sort of thinking seemingly beyond many peoples' abilities? where does one acquire this massively optimistic outlook on human nature, especially with regard to those in positions of power, and in the presence of gargantuan amounts of money?
  - allturtles 6y ago
    > do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible You seem to be excluding a large middle. You seem to be saying that either COVID is a fraud perpetrated on us by hospitals, or else I must be arguing there is no such thing as corruption. Your theory is not impossible but it would require a large amount of evidence to believe or even seriously consider. It's similar to the argument that Trump was actually elected president, but large amounts of independent local fraud threw enough votes to Biden to flip the result. There's also the problem of independent lines of evidence that also point to major Covid death (e.g. excess deaths), and the fact that the Covid pandemic is a global problem - does every country have Covid money incentives that explain inflated deaths?

allturtles 6y ago

When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory. If you don't believe the reported COVID death numbers, you can look at excess deaths over prior years, which largely track with or exceeds the reported numbers for COVID deaths. Ultimately, for most people it's pretty obvious at this point that COVID is a catastrophe of the likes we haven't seen in many decades. Trying to persuade people at this point is tiresome, it would be like living in 1943 and trying to persuade skeptics that, yes World War II is a big deal.

adamrezich 6y ago
> When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory. except for the lack of conspiracy? when did the definition of "conspiracy" change to encompass the actions of individuals not explicitly working in concert with each other? why is it so difficult to entertain a possible world wherein sars-cov-2 was hyped to be this massively devastating pandemic, and it was indeed pretty bad in terms of confirmed cases... but then when the number of deaths, while definitely nonzero, wasn't reaching the numbers it was "supposed to" on a per-hospital basis, many individual hospitals fudged some numbers here and there in order to get covid money since there was so much of it flying around into everyone else's pockets? this seems like a completely pragmatic, if unethical, course of action to take. there's a lot of hospitals in the US. do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible? again, I'm not asking you to accept this possible world as unconditionally Proven Fact or anything like that—I'm merely asking you to entertain the possibility, without breaking the glass and pulling the "Conspiracy Theory" lever. why is this sort of thinking seemingly beyond many peoples' abilities? where does one acquire this massively optimistic outlook on human nature, especially with regard to those in positions of power, and in the presence of gargantuan amounts of money?
- allturtles 6y ago
  > do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible You seem to be excluding a large middle. You seem to be saying that either COVID is a fraud perpetrated on us by hospitals, or else I must be arguing there is no such thing as corruption. Your theory is not impossible but it would require a large amount of evidence to believe or even seriously consider. It's similar to the argument that Trump was actually elected president, but large amounts of independent local fraud threw enough votes to Biden to flip the result. There's also the problem of independent lines of evidence that also point to major Covid death (e.g. excess deaths), and the fact that the Covid pandemic is a global problem - does every country have Covid money incentives that explain inflated deaths?