11 ms·

Professor Ehud Qimron: “Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure”

72 points by tomohawk 5y ago

650 5y ago
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/what-convinced-you-containment-was-b33 https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/what-convinced-you-containm... The whole substack is great, but people from all over the globe talk about the hygiene theatre and pushing of optics during the past 2 years. "It’s been nearly two years now and my confidence in publicly funded science is completely destroyed. I don’t believe anyone reasonably intelligent can read the COVID literature and come out the other side without concluding that universities and governments cannot tell the difference between science and scientism. Our society is completely in the grip of people who have effectively evolved under selection pressure to strongly resemble scientists without actually being scientists. Their work looks roughly right from a distance - there are data tables, charts, equations - but when you sit down and read it the scientific method has gone AWOL. I am now explicitly open to counter-narrative claims I’d never have previously considered."
- dekhn 5y ago
  let's be clear, the problems are mostly limited to public health and human health medical biology. There are entire swaths of biology, chemistry and physics which are not nearly as bad when it comes to turning data into actionable knowledge.
- strken 5y ago
  That article mentions "the senseless attacks on hydroxycloroquine" as an example of scientific failure. I disagree. Small initial studies with low sample sizes often find effects that fail to replicate in larger studies, and to the best of my knowledge, that's what happened here. Can you elaborate on why you think it's an effective treatment?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Not the article author, but until such time as the larger study is done, the attacks could be construed as senseless. There were lots of "attacks" on hcq in the beginning when at best the response should have been, "we're skeptical but looking into it".
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      I mean, that is effectively what happens. It's dangerous to give validity to a potential solution when the impacts and side effects of it are unknown.
      - 650 5y ago
        Like the vaccine? (Joking here, but you get my point)
      - dnautics 5y ago
        I don't know if you have selective memory, but the discourse was not at all like how I suggested it could have been.
  - argvargc 5y ago
    HCQ can be effective when used early and in correct dosages, as shown in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. One widely-publicised, large Lancet study claiming it was "unsafe" was later retracted as it turned out to be made up BS. [0] Living meta-study of 300+ likely non-pretend control studies on 400k+ patients: https://c19hcq.com/ https://c19hcq.com/ (Edit to add: And this was apparent early-on. Nothing much has changed with HCQ's profile since it was first identified as an effective, safe therapeutic in early 2020.) [0] https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-monumental-fraud-not-a-huge-scandal/ https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-m...
    - strken 5y ago
      Don't really have the time to go through these right now, but I'll look through them later. Thanks! Initial impression is that taking the average of every published paper across different metrics makes you vulnerable to publication bias (and probably other stuff), but I'd need to make a funnel plot and check out the opinions of actual trained scientists to know whether that's true here. I'm guessing that some studies on each side are probably going to have suspicious or outright false data, too (like the one you mention).
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      can you link to the retraction of that study?
      - dazilcher 5y ago
        https://tinyurl.com/55rext65 https://tinyurl.com/55rext65
abrichr 5y ago
Why is this being flagged? The author is Ehud Qimron, a professor of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University. Edit: here is his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ
- hirundo 5y ago
  Fear. There are many many people who believe that vaccinations are the only viable strategy to contain this pandemic, and information or opinion to the contrary is therefore a public and personal threat.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    People seem to unable to accept that in some situation, regardless of what you do, people will die anyway.
- dekhn 5y ago
  I was fine until it got to the Barrington Declaration.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. > https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ What's wrong with the Barrington Declaration? Thousands of scientists and doctors say there's a better way.
    - microtherion 5y ago
      * None of the countries who paid lip service to "protecting those who are at highest risk" while letting the virus spread freely through the rest of society spelled out how exactly they were going to achieve that protection, and indeed, none of those countries managed to protect the vulnerable. * Identifying those "at minimal risk of death" is not at all simple. There seem to be as yet poorly understood genetic factors in play that determine who is and is not at risk at a younger age, and rolling the dice seems like a poor strategy. * Even WITH precautions (and eventually vaccines), more than 50,000 people under 50 and more than 200,000 people under 65 in the US died of COVID. Under the Barrington strategy, the outcome would have been far worse. * There are other adverse outcomes than death, and those seem to disproportionately affect healthier patients. * The strategy they advocated would have led to the health care system being flooded with cases, with adverse consequences for level of care. * Every extra patient is giving the virus more lottery tickets to develop new mutations. You don't want to give away extra lottery tickets. * And the whole strategy is predicated on achieving an "immunity" which pretty obviously does not exist to the extent propagated in the declaration. People can and do get reinfected. The strategy was a bad idea even in 2020. In 2022, advocating for people to get infected when vaccines are available can hardly be characterised as anything but an utter crackpot notion.
soco 5y ago
What does he mean with "there's no medical emergency"? Does that mean that it never was during these two years? Or that right now in this very moment there's none?
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Japan had no lockdowns, no mask mandates, no vaccine passports, no vaccine mandates. None at all whatsoever from the start of the pandemic. Lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world from COVID. What does this mean?
rmk 5y ago
To my knowledge, there have been no enforced lockdowns in the United States ever since the vaccine became widely available in the spring of 2021. Is this not the case in Israel? Have there been repeated lockdowns despite the (very successful) vaccination and booster programs in Israel?
- ImaCake 5y ago
  It looks like they have restrictions in place but no lockdowns. Maybe the biggest thing is that the borders are still partially closed to the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel#Period_following_vaccination_campaign:_April_to_June_2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel#Pe...
- Thristle 5y ago
  No lockdowns since around the 2nd dose (pre boosters) if I'm not mistaken I believe tourism is blocked for a couple of months? Citizens can still fly out to almost all destinations and return with no/minimal/2 week quarantine Statistics say about 1 out of 5 infected was found positive in the airport PCR test.
tynpeddler 5y ago
This is a bizarre letter containing an absolute scattershot of claims and half statements. Is it a translation problem? >Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail. Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well? > You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge. Is he arguing again that vaccines, masks and other measures have no impact on covid infection numbers? Is there another explanation for why the covid death rate varies so much from place to place regardless of population statistics? Why does Mississippi for example, have a death rate so much higher than places like California or New York, which are much more heavily populated? Is there a good explanation for why Sweden was so hard hit that doesn't reference their total lack of response? >You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007”, p. 26). I haven't read the quoted document, but is there a particular reason why it is the final word on the subject and can't be changed or updated with respect to new information? >You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people. What is he reading? This only came out conclusively in the past few months, and isn't much of a gotcha. The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions. Not to mention that being recovered and vaccinated offers even better protection. Given the lower opportunity cost of vaccinating and the policy complications of exceptions to vaccination requirements, what's his argument that justifies the problem of making an exception program and managing it? > You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. I have no idea where he's getting this from. > Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well. There were very clear vaccination levels necessary for herd immunity that were calculated early on, and few places in the world have even come close to them. Most places have 15-20% to few people vaccinated to even test the herd immunity predictions. >You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020. Just wrong. And what is he trying to say here? Is this a repeat of the "everyone over 60 should just die" line that went around the US in 2020? > You have not set up an effective system for reporting side effects from the vaccines Maybe this is true in Israel, but the US figured out pretty quickly that there was a 7 in 1,000,000 chance for the J&J vaccine to cause blood clots. Is he suggesting that some vaccines have been monitored for side effects and others have not? What's his data? > Reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page Ummm, moving right along. The rest is just rambling. The most generous interpretation of his stance seems to be that maybe vaccines and masks are okay, but any further steps like widespread testing, are bad and vulnerable people should just expect to die. It would be nice if he had expressed his argument a little more coherently. Maybe then people could actually respond to this letter instead of blowing it off.
miguelazo 5y ago
Could tell right away that this guy has a very simplistic analysis that mistakes the laboratory for the real world. Another academic blowhard who doesn’t understand the real world consequences of what he’s suggesting.
star-trek-fleet 5y ago
Reading this, I am not sure what is the "right" policy in the author's mind. The author argue that the ups and downs of infection is more of a innate dynamism of covid spreading, than any society wide policy. Is that suggesting there should not have been society wide intervention to covid? Like just keep things as normal. Although I agree with the conclusion that the covid policy in US definitely has not been effective.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Japan did not do anything. literally nothing, no lockdowns or mandates of any sort. They have lowest mortality from COVID. What if the right policy all along was to do nothing?
  - star-trek-fleet 5y ago
    They definitely have a mask mandate. But my question still remains, what exactly does the author suggest? https://jp.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ https://jp.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ There is also travel restrictions. Nothing is not the right word to use for Japan's covid policy.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Technically there are never mask mandates by gov, but just 99.8% (I assume) of people wear mask.
      - Incipient 5y ago
        Correct, the Japanese people naturally wear masks if they feel sick. This fact, combined with Tokyo being one of the most densely populated cities, should be plenty evidence for how effective masks are.
        star-trek-fleet 5y ago
        Well, there must be an indoctrination process happened sometimes in the history. After all, facial masks are not invented in ancient time people are not used to wear them. So when the obedient Puritan people coming to this land. They are very cooperative in helping maintaining the community. Through some indoctrination, they learned to stand up with their own wills. Turns out coins indeed always have 2 sides, right? When the individuals learn to stand up coercion with their own wills, they would stand-up against facial masks, vaccines, quanrintaines, etc.
motohagiography 5y ago
I read this earlier today and I have no problems with vaccines, I just need for my country to roll them out without: - deception - mandates, especially fake indirect ones - arbitrary emergency powers - inconsistent enforcement - "temporary" rights suspensions - forfeiting responsibility and accountability - internal passports - lockdowns - class hate narratives Among a few other things. This professor's letter is a symptom of an inflection point where the fabricated narratives around the pandemic are popularly no longer tolerated. I would advise policymakers to take the opportunity to cut their losses and walk their bullshit back, as if they just double down, I would go so far as to predict internecine conflict on a level unheard of in decades. Maybe that's what they want, but I would be surprised. I'm just not persuaded the chattering classes apprehend what regular working people are prepared for right now. Imo, our "civilised" societies have about 6-8 weeks of opportunity for the people who are behind the above litany of issues to stand down and walk some of this back. If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts. I don't think most people get what a volatile tinderbox we're sitting on right now, and I'm not sure someone who still watches TV at all can appreciate the severity of how young working class men are interpreting all this. This letter signifies a change in popular sentiment that has been underway for months, and I sincerely hope policymakers take heed of it.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  What if the tinderbox is the point? It's easy to put down a rebellion of tens of thousands. Imagine how many decades of complete control they'll have out of that one useless act of rebellion.
- timcederman 5y ago
  What are your thoughts about existing vaccine mandates? They are mostly unnoticed by the general population, because they affect children entering school following an "acceptable" vaccine schedule, immigrants, high risk professions (e.g. military), etc. Also... > If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts. Wow.
senor_burns 5y ago
The swiss policy research site has a reputation for publishing texts that often appeal to people from the alt-right side of society. That does not disprove or approve anything but should be kept in mind while reading. There are some good references linked on wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research

72 points by tomohawk 5y ago

650 5y ago

https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/what-convinced-you-containment-was-b33 https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/what-convinced-you-containm... The whole substack is great, but people from all over the globe talk about the hygiene theatre and pushing of optics during the past 2 years. "It’s been nearly two years now and my confidence in publicly funded science is completely destroyed. I don’t believe anyone reasonably intelligent can read the COVID literature and come out the other side without concluding that universities and governments cannot tell the difference between science and scientism. Our society is completely in the grip of people who have effectively evolved under selection pressure to strongly resemble scientists without actually being scientists. Their work looks roughly right from a distance - there are data tables, charts, equations - but when you sit down and read it the scientific method has gone AWOL. I am now explicitly open to counter-narrative claims I’d never have previously considered."

dekhn 5y ago
let's be clear, the problems are mostly limited to public health and human health medical biology. There are entire swaths of biology, chemistry and physics which are not nearly as bad when it comes to turning data into actionable knowledge.
strken 5y ago
That article mentions "the senseless attacks on hydroxycloroquine" as an example of scientific failure. I disagree. Small initial studies with low sample sizes often find effects that fail to replicate in larger studies, and to the best of my knowledge, that's what happened here. Can you elaborate on why you think it's an effective treatment?
- dnautics 5y ago
  Not the article author, but until such time as the larger study is done, the attacks could be construed as senseless. There were lots of "attacks" on hcq in the beginning when at best the response should have been, "we're skeptical but looking into it".
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    I mean, that is effectively what happens. It's dangerous to give validity to a potential solution when the impacts and side effects of it are unknown.
    - 650 5y ago
      Like the vaccine? (Joking here, but you get my point)
    - dnautics 5y ago
      I don't know if you have selective memory, but the discourse was not at all like how I suggested it could have been.
- argvargc 5y ago
  HCQ can be effective when used early and in correct dosages, as shown in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. One widely-publicised, large Lancet study claiming it was "unsafe" was later retracted as it turned out to be made up BS. [0] Living meta-study of 300+ likely non-pretend control studies on 400k+ patients: https://c19hcq.com/ https://c19hcq.com/ (Edit to add: And this was apparent early-on. Nothing much has changed with HCQ's profile since it was first identified as an effective, safe therapeutic in early 2020.) [0] https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-monumental-fraud-not-a-huge-scandal/ https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-m...
  - strken 5y ago
    Don't really have the time to go through these right now, but I'll look through them later. Thanks! Initial impression is that taking the average of every published paper across different metrics makes you vulnerable to publication bias (and probably other stuff), but I'd need to make a funnel plot and check out the opinions of actual trained scientists to know whether that's true here. I'm guessing that some studies on each side are probably going to have suspicious or outright false data, too (like the one you mention).
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    can you link to the retraction of that study?
    - dazilcher 5y ago
      https://tinyurl.com/55rext65 https://tinyurl.com/55rext65

abrichr 5y ago

Why is this being flagged? The author is Ehud Qimron, a professor of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University. Edit: here is his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ

hirundo 5y ago
Fear. There are many many people who believe that vaccinations are the only viable strategy to contain this pandemic, and information or opinion to the contrary is therefore a public and personal threat.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  People seem to unable to accept that in some situation, regardless of what you do, people will die anyway.
dekhn 5y ago
I was fine until it got to the Barrington Declaration.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. > https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ What's wrong with the Barrington Declaration? Thousands of scientists and doctors say there's a better way.
  - microtherion 5y ago
    * None of the countries who paid lip service to "protecting those who are at highest risk" while letting the virus spread freely through the rest of society spelled out how exactly they were going to achieve that protection, and indeed, none of those countries managed to protect the vulnerable. * Identifying those "at minimal risk of death" is not at all simple. There seem to be as yet poorly understood genetic factors in play that determine who is and is not at risk at a younger age, and rolling the dice seems like a poor strategy. * Even WITH precautions (and eventually vaccines), more than 50,000 people under 50 and more than 200,000 people under 65 in the US died of COVID. Under the Barrington strategy, the outcome would have been far worse. * There are other adverse outcomes than death, and those seem to disproportionately affect healthier patients. * The strategy they advocated would have led to the health care system being flooded with cases, with adverse consequences for level of care. * Every extra patient is giving the virus more lottery tickets to develop new mutations. You don't want to give away extra lottery tickets. * And the whole strategy is predicated on achieving an "immunity" which pretty obviously does not exist to the extent propagated in the declaration. People can and do get reinfected. The strategy was a bad idea even in 2020. In 2022, advocating for people to get infected when vaccines are available can hardly be characterised as anything but an utter crackpot notion.

soco 5y ago

What does he mean with "there's no medical emergency"? Does that mean that it never was during these two years? Or that right now in this very moment there's none?

inter_netuser 5y ago
Japan had no lockdowns, no mask mandates, no vaccine passports, no vaccine mandates. None at all whatsoever from the start of the pandemic. Lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world from COVID. What does this mean?

rmk 5y ago

To my knowledge, there have been no enforced lockdowns in the United States ever since the vaccine became widely available in the spring of 2021. Is this not the case in Israel? Have there been repeated lockdowns despite the (very successful) vaccination and booster programs in Israel?

ImaCake 5y ago
It looks like they have restrictions in place but no lockdowns. Maybe the biggest thing is that the borders are still partially closed to the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel#Period_following_vaccination_campaign:_April_to_June_2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel#Pe...
Thristle 5y ago
No lockdowns since around the 2nd dose (pre boosters) if I'm not mistaken I believe tourism is blocked for a couple of months? Citizens can still fly out to almost all destinations and return with no/minimal/2 week quarantine Statistics say about 1 out of 5 infected was found positive in the airport PCR test.

tynpeddler 5y ago

This is a bizarre letter containing an absolute scattershot of claims and half statements. Is it a translation problem? >Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail. Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well? > You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge. Is he arguing again that vaccines, masks and other measures have no impact on covid infection numbers? Is there another explanation for why the covid death rate varies so much from place to place regardless of population statistics? Why does Mississippi for example, have a death rate so much higher than places like California or New York, which are much more heavily populated? Is there a good explanation for why Sweden was so hard hit that doesn't reference their total lack of response? >You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007”, p. 26). I haven't read the quoted document, but is there a particular reason why it is the final word on the subject and can't be changed or updated with respect to new information? >You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people. What is he reading? This only came out conclusively in the past few months, and isn't much of a gotcha. The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions. Not to mention that being recovered and vaccinated offers even better protection. Given the lower opportunity cost of vaccinating and the policy complications of exceptions to vaccination requirements, what's his argument that justifies the problem of making an exception program and managing it? > You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. I have no idea where he's getting this from. > Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well. There were very clear vaccination levels necessary for herd immunity that were calculated early on, and few places in the world have even come close to them. Most places have 15-20% to few people vaccinated to even test the herd immunity predictions. >You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020. Just wrong. And what is he trying to say here? Is this a repeat of the "everyone over 60 should just die" line that went around the US in 2020? > You have not set up an effective system for reporting side effects from the vaccines Maybe this is true in Israel, but the US figured out pretty quickly that there was a 7 in 1,000,000 chance for the J&J vaccine to cause blood clots. Is he suggesting that some vaccines have been monitored for side effects and others have not? What's his data? > Reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page Ummm, moving right along. The rest is just rambling. The most generous interpretation of his stance seems to be that maybe vaccines and masks are okay, but any further steps like widespread testing, are bad and vulnerable people should just expect to die. It would be nice if he had expressed his argument a little more coherently. Maybe then people could actually respond to this letter instead of blowing it off.

miguelazo 5y ago

Could tell right away that this guy has a very simplistic analysis that mistakes the laboratory for the real world. Another academic blowhard who doesn’t understand the real world consequences of what he’s suggesting.

star-trek-fleet 5y ago

Reading this, I am not sure what is the "right" policy in the author's mind. The author argue that the ups and downs of infection is more of a innate dynamism of covid spreading, than any society wide policy. Is that suggesting there should not have been society wide intervention to covid? Like just keep things as normal. Although I agree with the conclusion that the covid policy in US definitely has not been effective.

inter_netuser 5y ago
Japan did not do anything. literally nothing, no lockdowns or mandates of any sort. They have lowest mortality from COVID. What if the right policy all along was to do nothing?
- star-trek-fleet 5y ago
  They definitely have a mask mandate. But my question still remains, what exactly does the author suggest? https://jp.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ https://jp.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ There is also travel restrictions. Nothing is not the right word to use for Japan's covid policy.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Technically there are never mask mandates by gov, but just 99.8% (I assume) of people wear mask.
    - Incipient 5y ago
      Correct, the Japanese people naturally wear masks if they feel sick. This fact, combined with Tokyo being one of the most densely populated cities, should be plenty evidence for how effective masks are.
      - star-trek-fleet 5y ago
        Well, there must be an indoctrination process happened sometimes in the history. After all, facial masks are not invented in ancient time people are not used to wear them. So when the obedient Puritan people coming to this land. They are very cooperative in helping maintaining the community. Through some indoctrination, they learned to stand up with their own wills. Turns out coins indeed always have 2 sides, right? When the individuals learn to stand up coercion with their own wills, they would stand-up against facial masks, vaccines, quanrintaines, etc.

motohagiography 5y ago

I read this earlier today and I have no problems with vaccines, I just need for my country to roll them out without: - deception - mandates, especially fake indirect ones - arbitrary emergency powers - inconsistent enforcement - "temporary" rights suspensions - forfeiting responsibility and accountability - internal passports - lockdowns - class hate narratives Among a few other things. This professor's letter is a symptom of an inflection point where the fabricated narratives around the pandemic are popularly no longer tolerated. I would advise policymakers to take the opportunity to cut their losses and walk their bullshit back, as if they just double down, I would go so far as to predict internecine conflict on a level unheard of in decades. Maybe that's what they want, but I would be surprised. I'm just not persuaded the chattering classes apprehend what regular working people are prepared for right now. Imo, our "civilised" societies have about 6-8 weeks of opportunity for the people who are behind the above litany of issues to stand down and walk some of this back. If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts. I don't think most people get what a volatile tinderbox we're sitting on right now, and I'm not sure someone who still watches TV at all can appreciate the severity of how young working class men are interpreting all this. This letter signifies a change in popular sentiment that has been underway for months, and I sincerely hope policymakers take heed of it.

inter_netuser 5y ago
What if the tinderbox is the point? It's easy to put down a rebellion of tens of thousands. Imagine how many decades of complete control they'll have out of that one useless act of rebellion.
timcederman 5y ago
What are your thoughts about existing vaccine mandates? They are mostly unnoticed by the general population, because they affect children entering school following an "acceptable" vaccine schedule, immigrants, high risk professions (e.g. military), etc. Also... > If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts. Wow.

senor_burns 5y ago

The swiss policy research site has a reputation for publishing texts that often appeal to people from the alt-right side of society. That does not disprove or approve anything but should be kept in mind while reading. There are some good references linked on wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research