5 ms·

No, that’s not how this works. You don’t restrict scientific debate or prevent people from speaking. We’re better than that.

PostOnce 4y ago
There's a difference between doing science, and going on a press tour to push a viewpoint, though. I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. If covid was killing 40% of people instead of 1% of people, would we still want to spend 3 years figuring out, on spreadsheets, whether it was really merited based on long-term scientific studies? And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait?
- warmwaffles 4y ago
  > And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait? That's a very short sighted view. Expanding the power of government is not always the answer.
  - PostOnce 4y ago
    We have the concept of a "state of emergency" for a reason, to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. We don't want a completely powerless government, we invented government and endowed it with certain powers for a good reason. That's why states of emergency, etc, are temporary and time limited because we are aware of the tradeoffs and downsides of additional govt power vs catastrophic immediate necessity. If I lived next to an active forest fire, I wouldn't want the govt to commission a 36 month study to determine whether the fire was spread along the ground, or via airborne flaming leaves and embers. I would want them to put it out, even if that meant exercising temporary emergency powers like closing a road or shutting off a power line.
    - rmatt2000 4y ago
      > to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. I just want to point out that, according to the U.S. federal government, we are still in a "temporary" state of emergency, and have been for 30 months now. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/health/covid-public-health-emergency-extended/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/health/covid-public-health-em...
      - PostOnce 4y ago
        I'm not sure if you're aware, but pandemics aren't generally weekend events. Emergency powers help us keep more Americans safe & alive. Also, "State of Emergency" != Martial Law, so I'm not sure what you & your ilk are so disturbed about. Does "The public health emergency declaration allows many Americans to obtain free Covid-19 testing, therapeutic treatment and vaccines. Once it ends, people could face out-of-pocket costs" sound like tyrannical government overreach to you? (from your link) Speaking of which, New York is now in a State of Emergency because there is a polio outbreak in 2022 Great job, guys. A polio outbreak in New York in 2022. FDR would be proud of us. POLIO. I can't imagine vaccinate "skepticism" (read: illiteracy and dearth of critical thinking) has nothing to do with this. POLIO. In 2022. We did this. Can't wait to see what we manage to fuck up in the next 20 years.
        warmwaffles 4y ago
        > POLIO. In 2022. We did this. First off there are two strains of polio. It will never be eradicated, it'll just mutate and move on. Just like the Spanish Flu did. Second > "State of Emergency" != Martial Law It certainly was being treated like that early days during the pandemic. Shuttering all businesses, forcing people to stay home, and curfews. > Emergency powers help us keep more Americans safe & alive. > ... > Can't wait to see what we manage to fuck up in the next 20 years. You are being hyperbolic.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        That's actually normal for US: as of 2022, we have 42 concurrent ongoing states of national emergency. The oldest of which has to do with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, making it 43 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. Don't be ridiculous. We knew very early on that the passengers on the cruise ship Diamond Princess continued to spread Covid from cabin to cabin despite being locked down in their cabins. Yet the scientists who pointed out that this was very good evidence for airborne spread of Covid were shouted down. Why is this important? The mitigations we put in place were based on the theory that Covid had a droplet based spread, like the flu.
  - landemva 4y ago
    And there were cases of couples on that ship locked in the same cabin with one person infected and the other not infected. Somehow some people had natural immunity, and this was not discussed or considered when the "everyone vax" messaging started.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      When there's new pathogen, transmission mechanism(s) unknown, and no moral way to test for "natural immunity", you don't go around saying hand wavy shit like "some people won't need it", because you have no idea who does and who doesn't.
      - switch007 4y ago
        Are you saying coronaviruses were completely unknown to us in 2020? Have some balance.
        PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Nope. I'm saying there was no way to know who had any level of natural immunity to SARS-COV-2.
        origin_path 4y ago
        The topic was never explored so we don't know if there was no way to know. Instead, epidemiologists just assumed 100% susceptibility, droplet transmission and no seasonality, i.e. that everyone would get infected all at once in one giant wave. This was wrong and also, in contradiction with all pre-existing knowledge of both how coronaviruses work and how SARS-1 worked (SARS-1 was airborne over long distances).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
anigbrowl 4y ago
Demon sperm doctor lady is still out there speaking to large audiences. I feel zero guilt about the fact that she's been sidelined from mainstream discourse.
bborud 4y ago
No, he's actually right. When you are in a situation that requires action the last thing you want is for everyone to stop, have a cigarette and debate the issue while nothing gets done. You can't wait around for a consensus to form - you will have to risk being wrong. Because you will be wrong much of the time regardless of what you do. And you will be criticized later. By people who themselves contributed nothing and know nothing because they weren't where the decisions had to be made. Fear, confusion, inaction and people taking advantage of the situation for political purposes are dangerous when faced with an immediate threat. Why do you think these elements are have been part of how people have waged war for thousands of years? These factors make populations incapable of coordinated response. Your mistake is to think that responding to a time-critical threat is scientific debate. It isn't and it is really dangerous when people with the power to influence others don't actually know the difference.
- gilded-lilly 4y ago
  Well yes, China agrees with you. That’s kind of how they run their whole country.
  - bborud 4y ago
    No, this isn't a good comparison. A good comparison is following the orders of firefighters when your house is on fire. They'll have experience with fires. You won't. Their judgements in a situation *where nobody has all the information* is very likely to be much better than any guesses and assumptions you are going to make. This may mean that your Pokemon cards go up in flames when there was a chance you could have saved them by running into the house to save them. But by doing so you would have endangered the people responsible for saving you. After the fact it might turn out that there was time to save your pokemon cards. But when the house is on fire, nobody is going to put their neck on the line to take that risk. And you shouldn't expect them to. The time to make democratic decisions are before something happens. And the time to alter policy is when the data is in. When the house is on fire it is too late. You have to fight the fire with the fire department and the procedures you have. And pray that not too many idiots sabotage the effort because they labor under the delusion that they know better. If you have a hard time accepting this it is at least important that you understand that the rest of society will experience you as an added burden. If you expect to make up your own rules, based on considerably less knowledge, and in the absence of clear information, you are an extra drain on resources that ought to be focused on solving problems. Not catering to people who feel entitled to endangering people because they don't know the difference between making their bed and lying in it. I think it is in poor taste to make comparisons to dictatorships when hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided if people had been better at taking direction that would have saved lives. I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near you in a crisis.

PostOnce 4y ago

There's a difference between doing science, and going on a press tour to push a viewpoint, though. I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. If covid was killing 40% of people instead of 1% of people, would we still want to spend 3 years figuring out, on spreadsheets, whether it was really merited based on long-term scientific studies? And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait?

warmwaffles 4y ago
> And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait? That's a very short sighted view. Expanding the power of government is not always the answer.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  We have the concept of a "state of emergency" for a reason, to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. We don't want a completely powerless government, we invented government and endowed it with certain powers for a good reason. That's why states of emergency, etc, are temporary and time limited because we are aware of the tradeoffs and downsides of additional govt power vs catastrophic immediate necessity. If I lived next to an active forest fire, I wouldn't want the govt to commission a 36 month study to determine whether the fire was spread along the ground, or via airborne flaming leaves and embers. I would want them to put it out, even if that meant exercising temporary emergency powers like closing a road or shutting off a power line.
  - rmatt2000 4y ago
    > to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. I just want to point out that, according to the U.S. federal government, we are still in a "temporary" state of emergency, and have been for 30 months now. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/health/covid-public-health-emergency-extended/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/health/covid-public-health-em...
    - PostOnce 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you're aware, but pandemics aren't generally weekend events. Emergency powers help us keep more Americans safe & alive. Also, "State of Emergency" != Martial Law, so I'm not sure what you & your ilk are so disturbed about. Does "The public health emergency declaration allows many Americans to obtain free Covid-19 testing, therapeutic treatment and vaccines. Once it ends, people could face out-of-pocket costs" sound like tyrannical government overreach to you? (from your link) Speaking of which, New York is now in a State of Emergency because there is a polio outbreak in 2022 Great job, guys. A polio outbreak in New York in 2022. FDR would be proud of us. POLIO. I can't imagine vaccinate "skepticism" (read: illiteracy and dearth of critical thinking) has nothing to do with this. POLIO. In 2022. We did this. Can't wait to see what we manage to fuck up in the next 20 years.
      - warmwaffles 4y ago
        > POLIO. In 2022. We did this. First off there are two strains of polio. It will never be eradicated, it'll just mutate and move on. Just like the Spanish Flu did. Second > "State of Emergency" != Martial Law It certainly was being treated like that early days during the pandemic. Shuttering all businesses, forcing people to stay home, and curfews. > Emergency powers help us keep more Americans safe & alive. > ... > Can't wait to see what we manage to fuck up in the next 20 years. You are being hyperbolic.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      That's actually normal for US: as of 2022, we have 42 concurrent ongoing states of national emergency. The oldest of which has to do with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, making it 43 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
GeekyBear 4y ago
> I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. Don't be ridiculous. We knew very early on that the passengers on the cruise ship Diamond Princess continued to spread Covid from cabin to cabin despite being locked down in their cabins. Yet the scientists who pointed out that this was very good evidence for airborne spread of Covid were shouted down. Why is this important? The mitigations we put in place were based on the theory that Covid had a droplet based spread, like the flu.
- landemva 4y ago
  And there were cases of couples on that ship locked in the same cabin with one person infected and the other not infected. Somehow some people had natural immunity, and this was not discussed or considered when the "everyone vax" messaging started.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    When there's new pathogen, transmission mechanism(s) unknown, and no moral way to test for "natural immunity", you don't go around saying hand wavy shit like "some people won't need it", because you have no idea who does and who doesn't.
    - switch007 4y ago
      Are you saying coronaviruses were completely unknown to us in 2020? Have some balance.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Nope. I'm saying there was no way to know who had any level of natural immunity to SARS-COV-2.
        origin_path 4y ago
        The topic was never explored so we don't know if there was no way to know. Instead, epidemiologists just assumed 100% susceptibility, droplet transmission and no seasonality, i.e. that everyone would get infected all at once in one giant wave. This was wrong and also, in contradiction with all pre-existing knowledge of both how coronaviruses work and how SARS-1 worked (SARS-1 was airborne over long distances).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

anigbrowl 4y ago

Demon sperm doctor lady is still out there speaking to large audiences. I feel zero guilt about the fact that she's been sidelined from mainstream discourse.

bborud 4y ago

No, he's actually right. When you are in a situation that requires action the last thing you want is for everyone to stop, have a cigarette and debate the issue while nothing gets done. You can't wait around for a consensus to form - you will have to risk being wrong. Because you will be wrong much of the time regardless of what you do. And you will be criticized later. By people who themselves contributed nothing and know nothing because they weren't where the decisions had to be made. Fear, confusion, inaction and people taking advantage of the situation for political purposes are dangerous when faced with an immediate threat. Why do you think these elements are have been part of how people have waged war for thousands of years? These factors make populations incapable of coordinated response. Your mistake is to think that responding to a time-critical threat is scientific debate. It isn't and it is really dangerous when people with the power to influence others don't actually know the difference.

gilded-lilly 4y ago
Well yes, China agrees with you. That’s kind of how they run their whole country.
- bborud 4y ago
  No, this isn't a good comparison. A good comparison is following the orders of firefighters when your house is on fire. They'll have experience with fires. You won't. Their judgements in a situation *where nobody has all the information* is very likely to be much better than any guesses and assumptions you are going to make. This may mean that your Pokemon cards go up in flames when there was a chance you could have saved them by running into the house to save them. But by doing so you would have endangered the people responsible for saving you. After the fact it might turn out that there was time to save your pokemon cards. But when the house is on fire, nobody is going to put their neck on the line to take that risk. And you shouldn't expect them to. The time to make democratic decisions are before something happens. And the time to alter policy is when the data is in. When the house is on fire it is too late. You have to fight the fire with the fire department and the procedures you have. And pray that not too many idiots sabotage the effort because they labor under the delusion that they know better. If you have a hard time accepting this it is at least important that you understand that the rest of society will experience you as an added burden. If you expect to make up your own rules, based on considerably less knowledge, and in the absence of clear information, you are an extra drain on resources that ought to be focused on solving problems. Not catering to people who feel entitled to endangering people because they don't know the difference between making their bed and lying in it. I think it is in poor taste to make comparisons to dictatorships when hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided if people had been better at taking direction that would have saved lives. I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near you in a crisis.