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I am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are

I am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are figuring it out now. [1]: The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_and_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an...)

laidoffamazon 4y ago
Indeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.
- AustinDev 4y ago
  [flagged]
- kodyo 4y ago
  Biden’s administration was ready to put people out of work if they didn’t get the shots. Red team vs blue team rhetoric is nauseating.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    Indeed, I’m sure this would mean the current unemployment rate is far higher than it was in January 2021 no?
    - kodyo 4y ago
      The courts blocked the insanity.
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        And they only did that because too large a proportion of workers showed the backbone necessary to lose their jobs and livelihoods in order to not take the shots. If the opposition had been something closer to 10% instead of 30% I think it's a good bet that the courts would have punted on the question. As someone who spent the fall and winter of 2021 checking my email each morning to see if my employer was initiating a mandate, I have a deep & abiding appreciation for all the brave resisters who paid a steep price to put these fascistic mandates on the ashheap of history where they always belonged.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- idgaf4u 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - mindslight 4y ago
    > This comment gets a lot up upvotes until it gets "flagged" and deleted This is because your comment is bog standard disinformation. It tickles the groupthink narrative about "lockdowns", even though "lockdowns" did not exist in the US beyond a few counties in California.
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      That's news to this Washington state resident, who couldn't eat indoors at restaurants or send my kids to in-person school through most of 2020.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Business and school closures are not lockdowns. The abuse of terminology for political purposes is at the heart of this inability to communicate (and both political machines are guilty). If you could legally leave your home (ie you were not subject to a stay at home order with the force of law), you were not "locked down".
        VagueMag 4y ago
        This is a bizarre definition completely at odds with the commonly understood meaning of "lockdowns" in the U.S.
        mindslight 4y ago
        "Commonly understood" by one political camp, which has hyperbolically defined terms to shore up the ranks. See my previous point. "Lockdown" evokes an idea of being uniformly unable to go out at all, which was most certainly not the case. Rather, the business and institutions that were closed were closed for specific reasons. For each venue we can debate those specific reasons - some were certainly ridiculously overbearing [0] - but grouping it all into "lockdowns" accomplishes nothing besides encouraging people talk past one another. [0] Non-controversial example: open air parks that were closed.
kornhole 4y ago
When secretive governments and corporations give stories that don't pass basic tests, our lives depend on finding the most likely truth. This is theorizing. If you don't think they are telling the full truth, you are a conspiracy theorist. I am proud to be one too.
- malandrew 4y ago
  What people don’t get is that the opposite of conspiracy theorist is also a sort of theorist that chooses the prevailing narrative or status quo. A friend of mine coined the term complacency theorist.
smohare 4y ago
[dead]
dibt 4y ago
> '2 weeks to slow the spread' Wasn't that to prevent over-crowding of hospitals? Were hospitals not over-crowded?
- VagueMag 4y ago
  Aside from a few urban hospitals which were turned into COVID case dumping grounds in the early weeks, no, they weren't. Hospital employment tanked at the beginning of lockdowns and has only just recovered to pre-Covid levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001
  - dibt 4y ago
    It doesn't seem like you've said anything backed by facts. The number of employees in hospitals dropping at the start of the pandemic supports that hospitals were under extra stress. Also, it's logical to assume that a crowded and understaffed hospital is a bad place to be when there's an airborne disease spreading. Hard to argue against suggesting people do everything can to stay home for two weeks to not get a new under-researched disease in those conditions.
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      If these measures had actually lasted for only two weeks we'd hardly still be discussing them in the waning days of 2022.
      - dibt 4y ago
        You're still in quarantine? The original comment I was replying to was implying 'two weeks to stop the spread' was a conspiracy. Nice to see people downvoting me for a reasonable comment, while I can't downvote them. Typical for HN. Feel free to downvote this one.
mmcgaha 4y ago
The best part about being a conspiracy theorist is not having myocarditis.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  Heart problems caused by the virus, especially if you haven't been vaccinated, are far more frequent and severe than from the vaccination. Our immune system is powerful and can hurt us all by itself; but it's powerful because it has to be.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    So in fairness, I am in no way anti-vax but I am not vaccinated and intend to ride out this whole unvaxed thing until either my risk levels become higher or some new bad ass strain comes along like the fourth horseman. So as I understand your logic is unvaxed = worse infection = worse heart damage. At this point close to 100% of the western population has had covid. Has there been enough research to know for sure that the unvaxed are at a higher risk for heart damage or are you simply asserting that because it sounds logical?
    - Nomentatus 4y ago
      There's a good recent analysis of the hospital stats vs vaccination rates over time, amongst other things. But remember, our defense against viruses includes having infected cells kill themselves, so damage is always widespread over the body after a serious viral infection, it's just that the heart and lungs can't take time off or ramp activity down sharply to recover, so they're extra vulnerable. People dying days after recovering from Spanish flu and returning to strenuous farm work was common, for example. Two such cases among my grandmother's 12 siblings. You're right re 100% infection by now. I had the first two shots (and two infections, one before vaccines were available.) But I did skip the next two, since the bivalent wasn't available yet and evidence re boosting with the same old vaccine was thin. (Antibodies are an indicator not the whole story.) Now I'm scheduled for a bivalent shot. The first vaccine doesn't really help with the new strain, says a recent study. (Google pubmed and you can really dive into the papers, and know more than I about it pretty quickly.)
belltaco 4y ago
So what would you call things like the QAnon theories? If you didn't believe them that is.
- VagueMag 4y ago
  Disinformation. In the case of QAnon I'd go one further and call it a psyop. The idea that it's all just a big laugh carried out by Jim Watkins or some 8chan randos is risible.
  - AustinDev 4y ago
    Was def some sort of psyop.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      By whom? Who benefits aside from enemies of Western democracies?
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        The large number of elites who were shown by the Epstein scandal to participate in pedophile rings, concerns about which are now equated in most of the public's mind with wild ARG apophenia.
40amxn40 4y ago
[flagged]
- timcavel 4y ago
  [dead]

laidoffamazon 4y ago

Indeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.

AustinDev 4y ago
[flagged]
kodyo 4y ago
Biden’s administration was ready to put people out of work if they didn’t get the shots. Red team vs blue team rhetoric is nauseating.
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  Indeed, I’m sure this would mean the current unemployment rate is far higher than it was in January 2021 no?
  - kodyo 4y ago
    The courts blocked the insanity.
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      And they only did that because too large a proportion of workers showed the backbone necessary to lose their jobs and livelihoods in order to not take the shots. If the opposition had been something closer to 10% instead of 30% I think it's a good bet that the courts would have punted on the question. As someone who spent the fall and winter of 2021 checking my email each morning to see if my employer was initiating a mandate, I have a deep & abiding appreciation for all the brave resisters who paid a steep price to put these fascistic mandates on the ashheap of history where they always belonged.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
idgaf4u 4y ago
[flagged]
- mindslight 4y ago
  > This comment gets a lot up upvotes until it gets "flagged" and deleted This is because your comment is bog standard disinformation. It tickles the groupthink narrative about "lockdowns", even though "lockdowns" did not exist in the US beyond a few counties in California.
  - VagueMag 4y ago
    That's news to this Washington state resident, who couldn't eat indoors at restaurants or send my kids to in-person school through most of 2020.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Business and school closures are not lockdowns. The abuse of terminology for political purposes is at the heart of this inability to communicate (and both political machines are guilty). If you could legally leave your home (ie you were not subject to a stay at home order with the force of law), you were not "locked down".
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        This is a bizarre definition completely at odds with the commonly understood meaning of "lockdowns" in the U.S.
        mindslight 4y ago
        "Commonly understood" by one political camp, which has hyperbolically defined terms to shore up the ranks. See my previous point. "Lockdown" evokes an idea of being uniformly unable to go out at all, which was most certainly not the case. Rather, the business and institutions that were closed were closed for specific reasons. For each venue we can debate those specific reasons - some were certainly ridiculously overbearing [0] - but grouping it all into "lockdowns" accomplishes nothing besides encouraging people talk past one another. [0] Non-controversial example: open air parks that were closed.

kornhole 4y ago

When secretive governments and corporations give stories that don't pass basic tests, our lives depend on finding the most likely truth. This is theorizing. If you don't think they are telling the full truth, you are a conspiracy theorist. I am proud to be one too.

malandrew 4y ago
What people don’t get is that the opposite of conspiracy theorist is also a sort of theorist that chooses the prevailing narrative or status quo. A friend of mine coined the term complacency theorist.

smohare 4y ago

[dead]

dibt 4y ago

> '2 weeks to slow the spread' Wasn't that to prevent over-crowding of hospitals? Were hospitals not over-crowded?

VagueMag 4y ago
Aside from a few urban hospitals which were turned into COVID case dumping grounds in the early weeks, no, they weren't. Hospital employment tanked at the beginning of lockdowns and has only just recovered to pre-Covid levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001
- dibt 4y ago
  It doesn't seem like you've said anything backed by facts. The number of employees in hospitals dropping at the start of the pandemic supports that hospitals were under extra stress. Also, it's logical to assume that a crowded and understaffed hospital is a bad place to be when there's an airborne disease spreading. Hard to argue against suggesting people do everything can to stay home for two weeks to not get a new under-researched disease in those conditions.
  - VagueMag 4y ago
    If these measures had actually lasted for only two weeks we'd hardly still be discussing them in the waning days of 2022.
    - dibt 4y ago
      You're still in quarantine? The original comment I was replying to was implying 'two weeks to stop the spread' was a conspiracy. Nice to see people downvoting me for a reasonable comment, while I can't downvote them. Typical for HN. Feel free to downvote this one.

mmcgaha 4y ago

The best part about being a conspiracy theorist is not having myocarditis.

Nomentatus 4y ago
Heart problems caused by the virus, especially if you haven't been vaccinated, are far more frequent and severe than from the vaccination. Our immune system is powerful and can hurt us all by itself; but it's powerful because it has to be.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  So in fairness, I am in no way anti-vax but I am not vaccinated and intend to ride out this whole unvaxed thing until either my risk levels become higher or some new bad ass strain comes along like the fourth horseman. So as I understand your logic is unvaxed = worse infection = worse heart damage. At this point close to 100% of the western population has had covid. Has there been enough research to know for sure that the unvaxed are at a higher risk for heart damage or are you simply asserting that because it sounds logical?
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    There's a good recent analysis of the hospital stats vs vaccination rates over time, amongst other things. But remember, our defense against viruses includes having infected cells kill themselves, so damage is always widespread over the body after a serious viral infection, it's just that the heart and lungs can't take time off or ramp activity down sharply to recover, so they're extra vulnerable. People dying days after recovering from Spanish flu and returning to strenuous farm work was common, for example. Two such cases among my grandmother's 12 siblings. You're right re 100% infection by now. I had the first two shots (and two infections, one before vaccines were available.) But I did skip the next two, since the bivalent wasn't available yet and evidence re boosting with the same old vaccine was thin. (Antibodies are an indicator not the whole story.) Now I'm scheduled for a bivalent shot. The first vaccine doesn't really help with the new strain, says a recent study. (Google pubmed and you can really dive into the papers, and know more than I about it pretty quickly.)

belltaco 4y ago

So what would you call things like the QAnon theories? If you didn't believe them that is.

VagueMag 4y ago
Disinformation. In the case of QAnon I'd go one further and call it a psyop. The idea that it's all just a big laugh carried out by Jim Watkins or some 8chan randos is risible.
- AustinDev 4y ago
  Was def some sort of psyop.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    By whom? Who benefits aside from enemies of Western democracies?
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      The large number of elites who were shown by the Epstein scandal to participate in pedophile rings, concerns about which are now equated in most of the public's mind with wild ARG apophenia.

40amxn40 4y ago

[flagged]

timcavel 4y ago
[dead]