9 ms·

We need the same for the complete 180 on lockdowns. From universally against to forced lockdowns. I think people forget how strong the consensus (including medi

We need the same for the complete 180 on lockdowns. From universally against to forced lockdowns. I think people forget how strong the consensus (including medical) against lockdowns was. I was in China during the outbreak. All western media and healthcare experts had to say about lockdowns was that they were counterproductive and have never been part of the medical playbook. And that it violates civil rights. A month later this seemed to be completely forgotten. Personally, I believe this is all a function of the states ability to enforce it. It wasn’t possible before, but they found that it was possible now. But it was summarily rejected on principal prior to that.

hospitalJail 3y ago
[flagged]
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Thank God 99% of all the other countries were in on it otherwise they would have looked really foolish as one of the only countries without lockdowns.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Zetobal 3y ago
      Go ahead.
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        EDIT: Disclaimer, this was for one of the most principled politicians I've ever met. To this day, he will say he is an anarchist in public. (Although, he would say it in a pleasurable way) Sure, so to change 0.5% of the vote, we would find people with demographics that people vote for. For instance, if there is a women on the ballot, run another women because at least 0.5% of people vote for a women, so this splits the vote. Or find someone with similar/same names, bonus points if their signage only has their last name. Anyone with the enemy's yard sign, gets the negative ad. Each neg ad was tested considerably. There is a huge database of every voter, their petitions they signed, odds of being dem/gop, odds of voting, their pet names(if registered), etc... You go up to someone's house knowing they support guns because they signed a petition. Heck, the candidate would pretend they remembered the dog's name from a few years ago. Lying and plausible deniability is like a daily thing. Looking back on it, I would have been sacrificed in a second for putting neg ads in people's mailboxes illegally. Those are some heavy hitters. I feel like I forgot like 2 major stomach churning events, maybe I blocked them out. (Oh gosh, when I went to the enemy's campaign rally and put neg ads on everyone's cars, got followed by their staff, jumped over a fence/bush area to escape...) Okay, I'm only missing 1 stomach churning event from my memory. I think it was strategy related, maybe it had to do with old people.
        bena 3y ago
        Well, if you said it, it must be true and we must accept these anecdotes as the complete truth and you as the best source of it.
        George83728 3y ago
        Well since you've responded sarcastically, it must be debunked.
        bena 3y ago
        There's nothing to debunk. That's the entire point. He's trying to prop up his claims with more claims. If we cannot determine the veracity of his anecdotes, they are of no use to us in determining the validity of his conclusions. His entire response could be boiled down to "Trust me, bro". I get the feeling he knows he cannot defend his position based on either commonly known information or on reasoning about the situation. So he has to purport to have special information that most don't. And that special information, which you cannot have, is enough to turn everything around. But he also won't give you enough information to independently verify. He won't tell you which campaigns he did these things for, which politicians he worked for. But they were top men. Top. Men.
        hospitalJail 3y ago
        You guys have convinced me that Democrats ignore scientists and Republicans listen to scientists. Thank you for teaching me the party of Science and Data.
        bena 3y ago
        We've "convinced" you of the thing you came into this thread with. Or is this just a thinly veiled attempt at making others backtrack their words or apologize for impugning your integrity? If you were truly concerned with "Science and Data", you would realize that vague, unverifiable anecdotes are only persuasive to those who are already persuaded. They are not a valid way to make a point.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      The Dems didn't make Trump bet everything on "ignore it and it will go away." He could have pushed for public health measures in February 2020 ("Stop the China Virus, wear a MAGA mask!"). He didn't. He squandered the opportunity to use gentle R reduction, so we had to jump to strong R reduction with lockdowns. I know that following the science doesn't come naturally to Republicans, but this is basic shit. If you had figured it out then, you wouldn't need to be on Trump daiper duty in 2023.
lock-the-spock 3y ago
There was never a consensus for or against lockdowns. Cant speak for the US and it's utterly broken media landscape but in Europe experts were asking for this from day one. It is also a known tool of any epidemic/pandemic management, it just has rarely been necessary at such scale given the intensity and wide distribution of COVID.
- revelio 3y ago
  This is revisionism. The only place in Europe that didn't lock down was Sweden and they were viciously attacked in the media for it, additionally Anders Tegnall was also attacked by other epidemiologists. I followed it all very closely at the time. Tegnall and his mentor stood alone. With the exception of the Great Barrington crew and maybe Ioannidis, all the other so-called experts were loudly and vocally demanding lockdowns as a strategy. Great Barrington meanwhile was viciously attacked, described as fringe, non-consensus, would kill millions etc. The attempts to rewrite what happened in this whole thread are incredible to witness (not just your post, many others). It was only a few years ago! Our memories aren't that bad! And the internet is full of receipts on this. The idea there was robust academic debate about lockdowns or masks or the lab leak or anything else is a fantasy.
  - cygx 3y ago
    But severity and timeline of lockdown measures varied from country to country, ie there was some diversity of opinion. Also note that even Sweden eventually implemented policies such as restricting opening hours of bars and restaurants, limiting the size of some gatherings, etc. for a time.
  - boston_clone 3y ago
    A scientific consensus is significantly different than media opinion. Second, there is no "debate" regarding efficacy of masks and limiting exposure via quarantining. Masking reduces the likelihood of contracting SARS from others, and staying home reduces the spread to others and strain on hospitals. Unsurprisingly, the people attempting to debate this typically had no medical background whatsoever. Millions died in the US alone, and a non-trivial percentage of them would likely still be alive if our public officials did a better job of respecting the medical professionals and their recommendations.
jjoonathan 3y ago
It was an election year. Trump really didn't want to do anything that would upset the economy, and he gambled all his chips on "ignore it until it goes away." Public officials were begging and pleading to take measures to get R under control from the very start of exponential growth in the US, but they were not able to break through the political stonewall. Conservatives will say & do anything to get you to forget how hard they went on the wrong side of history. People came to their senses when the following level of urgency was reached: "if you don't lockdown NOW, in two doubling periods -- one week -- every hospital will have a parking lot full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator. Do you want that news story as your legacy?"
- nradov 3y ago
  It turns out that mechanical ventilators weren't very helpful. They did more harm than good for many patients, and overuse was a factor in the unusually high infection fatality rate seen in New York during the first phase of the pandemic. Ironically, some patients walking around today probably survived only because there was a shortage of ventilators. https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-international-news-virus-outbreak-8ccd325c2be9bf454c2128dcb7bd616d https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-intern...
Manjuuu 3y ago
There has never been any strong consensus (including medical) against, quite the opposite. That's why the lockdowns were done in the first place. Don't try to turn your personal beliefs into accepted reality.
evandale 3y ago
In Canada we wanted lockdowns pretty quickly and our prime minister said no and even refused to close the borders because he considered closing the borders to be racist. They tried to say border closures would have no effect on stopping covid. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-trudeau-borders-1.5619705 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-...

hospitalJail 3y ago

[flagged]

Zetobal 3y ago
Thank God 99% of all the other countries were in on it otherwise they would have looked really foolish as one of the only countries without lockdowns.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    Go ahead.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      EDIT: Disclaimer, this was for one of the most principled politicians I've ever met. To this day, he will say he is an anarchist in public. (Although, he would say it in a pleasurable way) Sure, so to change 0.5% of the vote, we would find people with demographics that people vote for. For instance, if there is a women on the ballot, run another women because at least 0.5% of people vote for a women, so this splits the vote. Or find someone with similar/same names, bonus points if their signage only has their last name. Anyone with the enemy's yard sign, gets the negative ad. Each neg ad was tested considerably. There is a huge database of every voter, their petitions they signed, odds of being dem/gop, odds of voting, their pet names(if registered), etc... You go up to someone's house knowing they support guns because they signed a petition. Heck, the candidate would pretend they remembered the dog's name from a few years ago. Lying and plausible deniability is like a daily thing. Looking back on it, I would have been sacrificed in a second for putting neg ads in people's mailboxes illegally. Those are some heavy hitters. I feel like I forgot like 2 major stomach churning events, maybe I blocked them out. (Oh gosh, when I went to the enemy's campaign rally and put neg ads on everyone's cars, got followed by their staff, jumped over a fence/bush area to escape...) Okay, I'm only missing 1 stomach churning event from my memory. I think it was strategy related, maybe it had to do with old people.
      - bena 3y ago
        Well, if you said it, it must be true and we must accept these anecdotes as the complete truth and you as the best source of it.
        George83728 3y ago
        Well since you've responded sarcastically, it must be debunked.
        bena 3y ago
        There's nothing to debunk. That's the entire point. He's trying to prop up his claims with more claims. If we cannot determine the veracity of his anecdotes, they are of no use to us in determining the validity of his conclusions. His entire response could be boiled down to "Trust me, bro". I get the feeling he knows he cannot defend his position based on either commonly known information or on reasoning about the situation. So he has to purport to have special information that most don't. And that special information, which you cannot have, is enough to turn everything around. But he also won't give you enough information to independently verify. He won't tell you which campaigns he did these things for, which politicians he worked for. But they were top men. Top. Men.
        hospitalJail 3y ago
        You guys have convinced me that Democrats ignore scientists and Republicans listen to scientists. Thank you for teaching me the party of Science and Data.
        bena 3y ago
        We've "convinced" you of the thing you came into this thread with. Or is this just a thinly veiled attempt at making others backtrack their words or apologize for impugning your integrity? If you were truly concerned with "Science and Data", you would realize that vague, unverifiable anecdotes are only persuasive to those who are already persuaded. They are not a valid way to make a point.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    The Dems didn't make Trump bet everything on "ignore it and it will go away." He could have pushed for public health measures in February 2020 ("Stop the China Virus, wear a MAGA mask!"). He didn't. He squandered the opportunity to use gentle R reduction, so we had to jump to strong R reduction with lockdowns. I know that following the science doesn't come naturally to Republicans, but this is basic shit. If you had figured it out then, you wouldn't need to be on Trump daiper duty in 2023.

lock-the-spock 3y ago

There was never a consensus for or against lockdowns. Cant speak for the US and it's utterly broken media landscape but in Europe experts were asking for this from day one. It is also a known tool of any epidemic/pandemic management, it just has rarely been necessary at such scale given the intensity and wide distribution of COVID.

revelio 3y ago
This is revisionism. The only place in Europe that didn't lock down was Sweden and they were viciously attacked in the media for it, additionally Anders Tegnall was also attacked by other epidemiologists. I followed it all very closely at the time. Tegnall and his mentor stood alone. With the exception of the Great Barrington crew and maybe Ioannidis, all the other so-called experts were loudly and vocally demanding lockdowns as a strategy. Great Barrington meanwhile was viciously attacked, described as fringe, non-consensus, would kill millions etc. The attempts to rewrite what happened in this whole thread are incredible to witness (not just your post, many others). It was only a few years ago! Our memories aren't that bad! And the internet is full of receipts on this. The idea there was robust academic debate about lockdowns or masks or the lab leak or anything else is a fantasy.
- cygx 3y ago
  But severity and timeline of lockdown measures varied from country to country, ie there was some diversity of opinion. Also note that even Sweden eventually implemented policies such as restricting opening hours of bars and restaurants, limiting the size of some gatherings, etc. for a time.
- boston_clone 3y ago
  A scientific consensus is significantly different than media opinion. Second, there is no "debate" regarding efficacy of masks and limiting exposure via quarantining. Masking reduces the likelihood of contracting SARS from others, and staying home reduces the spread to others and strain on hospitals. Unsurprisingly, the people attempting to debate this typically had no medical background whatsoever. Millions died in the US alone, and a non-trivial percentage of them would likely still be alive if our public officials did a better job of respecting the medical professionals and their recommendations.

jjoonathan 3y ago

It was an election year. Trump really didn't want to do anything that would upset the economy, and he gambled all his chips on "ignore it until it goes away." Public officials were begging and pleading to take measures to get R under control from the very start of exponential growth in the US, but they were not able to break through the political stonewall. Conservatives will say & do anything to get you to forget how hard they went on the wrong side of history. People came to their senses when the following level of urgency was reached: "if you don't lockdown NOW, in two doubling periods -- one week -- every hospital will have a parking lot full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator. Do you want that news story as your legacy?"

nradov 3y ago
It turns out that mechanical ventilators weren't very helpful. They did more harm than good for many patients, and overuse was a factor in the unusually high infection fatality rate seen in New York during the first phase of the pandemic. Ironically, some patients walking around today probably survived only because there was a shortage of ventilators. https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-international-news-virus-outbreak-8ccd325c2be9bf454c2128dcb7bd616d https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-intern...

Manjuuu 3y ago

There has never been any strong consensus (including medical) against, quite the opposite. That's why the lockdowns were done in the first place. Don't try to turn your personal beliefs into accepted reality.

evandale 3y ago

In Canada we wanted lockdowns pretty quickly and our prime minister said no and even refused to close the borders because he considered closing the borders to be racist. They tried to say border closures would have no effect on stopping covid. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-trudeau-borders-1.5619705 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-...