7 ms·

> Hey, the media, the CDC, "the science" says that if you're vaccinated, you're safe, you won't infect your immunocompromised grandma, you won't get sick, you w

by 8note 2y ago

> Hey, the media, the CDC, "the science" says that if you're vaccinated, you're safe, you won't infect your immunocompromised grandma, you won't get sick, you won't spread covid. to my knowledge, this is not what the science said. the science always said "if youre vaccinated, you are less likely to experience severe covid symptoms"

lmm 2y ago
The actual science, sure. But "the science" in the sense of what the media, and people arguing online, were claiming the science said, absolutely went a lot further than the evidence. It was widely claimed that the vaccines gave immunity, for example.
- defrost 2y ago
  That's free speech in the US for you. Meanwhile, actual science, medical practitioners, have been clear for many decades that vaccines reduce infection and transmission rates, etc. Vaccines didn't "cure Polio" in any absolute sense, but they did make it possible to suppress it until it no longer appeared "in the wild" .. until it came back again.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Free speech beats the alternative. But it's important to realise that just because the media (or anyone) confidently claims something doesn't mean it's true (not generally because they're lying, just because they're wildly overconfident), and that's still true when they tell you what they're saying is "the science".
    - defrost 2y ago
      > (US) Free speech beats the alternative(s). Questionable. > and that's still true when they tell you what they're saying is "the science". Ditto "the earth is flat", "they are eating the cats", "it was a lab leak", .. etc. These are opinions not science.
    - exe34 2y ago
      did you set up an independent printing press and the government came to shut you down? if so, yes, your right to free speech was indeed gravely violated!
    - verdverm 2y ago
      There isn't one alternative, speech rights & laws are a spectrum It is certainly arguable that the American style is to extreme on the freedom side. There is little punishment for the immense amount of malicious lying by too many actors in the system
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        I mean, I would love to make it illegal for a journalist to say "The science says X" when the science does not say X, but understand that for nearly all science, a journalist is not equipped to know that! Journalists are not scientists, and they are especially not scientists, and they do not have the foundation and fundamentals necessary to evaluate whether a paper backs up what a university PR department tells them to publish. The wealth of human knowledge is insanely vast, and basically infinitely recursive. A scientist in one tiny niche of physics can barely evaluate the papers of a scientist in another tiny niche of physics. Most niches in most sciences can't even fill an auditorium with experts. The most important thing to know in science is that if you are not reading the actual paper, you aren't getting scientific information but rather someone's interpretation and marketing copy. The second most important thing to know is that if you haven't written a scientific paper in the same domain, you will likely struggle to accurately interpret the results of one. When everyone was freaking out over LK-99, none of the losers on here or twitter were able to accurately assess the situation, and plenty of people outright bought the lies of that russian furry who claimed to be able to reproduce it, despite any evidence. It took actual domain experts, who were always emphatic that it didn't have good enough evidence to get too excited. There was a similar situation during the "Cold Fusion" nonsense in 1989. A couple chemists did some mediocre science and went on a PR tour with their "findings", quite literally saying their data was unquestionable and the rest of science needed to adapt their theories to the cold fusion data, which meanwhile was unpublished. These two fairly well trained and practiced scientists went and asked congress for something like $25 million on next to no data. An entire conference of Chemists cheered for them and their "findings". The findings were always invalid. Their experiments never generated the kinds of products you would expect from fusing deuterium. If even a room full of trained chemists cannot evaluate other chemists making downright basic errors in their research, how can we possibly expect average people with no scientific experience to keep up?
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    Do we have studies for this that compare two controlled groups in same environment? Don't fotget about "accidents" that spread Polio by vaccination on 120000 children, like Cutter incident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories
    - defrost 2y ago
      > Do we have studies for this For many values of 'this' in the medical domain, yes. > Don't fotget about "accidents" that spread Polio by vaccination Err, the Cutter incident spread Polio via live polio virus rather than by Polio vaccination. Absolutely an example of a serious and deadly Quality Control f*ckup that led to a complete change in how vaccine production was approached.
      - t0bia_s 2y ago
        Please, link those studies.
        exe34 2y ago
        > Do we have studies for this that compare two controlled groups in same environment? are you questioning the link between vaccines and polio almost entirely disappearing from all but about 4 countries on the planet? what alternative "theory" do you have in this case?
        t0bia_s 2y ago
        Increasing wealth and overall hygiene. 99% polio cases are nowadays in developing countries.
        exe34 2y ago
        What mechanism would you suggest connects wealth with polio?
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    > And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data. This quote is literally from the director of the CDC (source in comment above). I mean.. who better to 'trust'?
    - defrost 2y ago
      It's one of several quotes repeatedly dragged up in these discussions. Which peer reviewed paper was that quote sourced from? Which medical conference lecture was that statement made in? Oh, it was from a regular simplified human to human conversation in which the CDC director was indicating a comparitive result? WRT ppm's etc was that an accurate call of magnitude of difference in outcomes at that time?
      - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
        It's the director of the CDC, it's not some rando on youtube. They mentioned the CDC data. Don't be a skeptic now, trust the science. If we can't trust the director of the CDC, who can we trust? Some rando on youtube saying that vaccines won't protect you from getting and spreading covid? Oh wait.. we banned those people from pretty much every social network, and guess what, they were correct. Come on.. be fair.. like really... if we were discussing this in the spring of 2021, and that interview was just on tv, and i said: > "well, she said that vaccinated people won't get sick, won't carry the virus, but i think that she's wrong, she didn't say stuff correctly, vaccinated people will still massively get sick and also carry and spread the virus, her 'real world data' is bullshit, i want to see her sources, she's lying without those" ...what would you tell me? Would you say "yes, you're correct, it was just a human-to-human conversation, it was simplified, there's no data that her sentance is correct, there's no proof of what she said,..."? Or would you just call me an antivaxer?
        defrost 2y ago
        See my reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651747
- exe34 2y ago
  so because the science was reported sloppily, we can't trust science - instead of educating people?
  - lmm 2y ago
    We can't trust people who say "the science" is on their side. We can't trust popular science reporting. If you want to know what the science actually says, you have to dig into it yourself and e.g. read some papers (and even that might not be enough - you have to know which journals are credible and which aren't).
    - exe34 2y ago
      But you can trust uncle Donny who comes up with crackpot theories 24/7?
      - cindycindy 2y ago
        It's the ups and downs from believing those ideas that people live for. They're all chasing a feeling, which is the basis of all addiction.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    That sloppy reporting _is_ the educating of people.
ajsnigrutin 2y ago
The quote above is literally from the director of the CDC
- exe34 2y ago
  who is of course, infallible, never taken out of context, and never misrepresented. he said something you didn't understand once, and therefore everybody who says something you don't want to hear must be wrong. did I cover everything?
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    So, do we trust the director of the CDC now or not? What exactly didn't I understand? https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-3-29-21-n1262442 https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc... <- full transcript, just in case quote: > And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data. What exactly is misunderstood, taken out of context and misrepresented here? The skeptics, who didn't trust the science, didn't trust the "do not carry the virus, don't get sick,..." quote, were right again. I'm not saying that everyone is always wrong, i'm saying that you should blindly trust someone, because of science. Especially if they were incorrect previously. Remember the calculations of how many more vaccinations and infections are needed to reach herd immunity? Well... good luck with trusting that science too. NOT trusting is the basis of all science, even if people don't trust the things you don't want to hear.... and especially if it turns out that they were correct. Blocking/banning/censoring those people is the same as banning non-believers in smoke smoke enemas 200 years ago.
    - defrost 2y ago
      > What exactly didn't I understand? The difference between casual human conversation on a late night panel show and the strict precise statements in actual papers. The educated with real world exposure to weed eradication, stock control,. past use of vaccines, etc didn't take the "do not carry the virus, don't get sick,..." absolutely literally as if it was deified bible quote either. They heard that as saying given the data to hand right now (context) that data suggests (qualifier) that the vaccinated aren't carrying the virus nor getting sick (in contrast to those unvaccinated .. as in there is a visible stark difference). A chat on a late panel show IS NOT "the science" and a paper on the stats coming back from trials would use actual percents, p-values, etc and make it clear.

by 8note 2y ago

lmm 2y ago

The actual science, sure. But "the science" in the sense of what the media, and people arguing online, were claiming the science said, absolutely went a lot further than the evidence. It was widely claimed that the vaccines gave immunity, for example.

defrost 2y ago
That's free speech in the US for you. Meanwhile, actual science, medical practitioners, have been clear for many decades that vaccines reduce infection and transmission rates, etc. Vaccines didn't "cure Polio" in any absolute sense, but they did make it possible to suppress it until it no longer appeared "in the wild" .. until it came back again.
- lmm 2y ago
  Free speech beats the alternative. But it's important to realise that just because the media (or anyone) confidently claims something doesn't mean it's true (not generally because they're lying, just because they're wildly overconfident), and that's still true when they tell you what they're saying is "the science".
  - defrost 2y ago
    > (US) Free speech beats the alternative(s). Questionable. > and that's still true when they tell you what they're saying is "the science". Ditto "the earth is flat", "they are eating the cats", "it was a lab leak", .. etc. These are opinions not science.
  - exe34 2y ago
    did you set up an independent printing press and the government came to shut you down? if so, yes, your right to free speech was indeed gravely violated!
  - verdverm 2y ago
    There isn't one alternative, speech rights & laws are a spectrum It is certainly arguable that the American style is to extreme on the freedom side. There is little punishment for the immense amount of malicious lying by too many actors in the system
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      I mean, I would love to make it illegal for a journalist to say "The science says X" when the science does not say X, but understand that for nearly all science, a journalist is not equipped to know that! Journalists are not scientists, and they are especially not scientists, and they do not have the foundation and fundamentals necessary to evaluate whether a paper backs up what a university PR department tells them to publish. The wealth of human knowledge is insanely vast, and basically infinitely recursive. A scientist in one tiny niche of physics can barely evaluate the papers of a scientist in another tiny niche of physics. Most niches in most sciences can't even fill an auditorium with experts. The most important thing to know in science is that if you are not reading the actual paper, you aren't getting scientific information but rather someone's interpretation and marketing copy. The second most important thing to know is that if you haven't written a scientific paper in the same domain, you will likely struggle to accurately interpret the results of one. When everyone was freaking out over LK-99, none of the losers on here or twitter were able to accurately assess the situation, and plenty of people outright bought the lies of that russian furry who claimed to be able to reproduce it, despite any evidence. It took actual domain experts, who were always emphatic that it didn't have good enough evidence to get too excited. There was a similar situation during the "Cold Fusion" nonsense in 1989. A couple chemists did some mediocre science and went on a PR tour with their "findings", quite literally saying their data was unquestionable and the rest of science needed to adapt their theories to the cold fusion data, which meanwhile was unpublished. These two fairly well trained and practiced scientists went and asked congress for something like $25 million on next to no data. An entire conference of Chemists cheered for them and their "findings". The findings were always invalid. Their experiments never generated the kinds of products you would expect from fusing deuterium. If even a room full of trained chemists cannot evaluate other chemists making downright basic errors in their research, how can we possibly expect average people with no scientific experience to keep up?
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Do we have studies for this that compare two controlled groups in same environment? Don't fotget about "accidents" that spread Polio by vaccination on 120000 children, like Cutter incident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories
  - defrost 2y ago
    > Do we have studies for this For many values of 'this' in the medical domain, yes. > Don't fotget about "accidents" that spread Polio by vaccination Err, the Cutter incident spread Polio via live polio virus rather than by Polio vaccination. Absolutely an example of a serious and deadly Quality Control f*ckup that led to a complete change in how vaccine production was approached.
    - t0bia_s 2y ago
      Please, link those studies.
      - exe34 2y ago
        > Do we have studies for this that compare two controlled groups in same environment? are you questioning the link between vaccines and polio almost entirely disappearing from all but about 4 countries on the planet? what alternative "theory" do you have in this case?
        t0bia_s 2y ago
        Increasing wealth and overall hygiene. 99% polio cases are nowadays in developing countries.
        exe34 2y ago
        What mechanism would you suggest connects wealth with polio?
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  > And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data. This quote is literally from the director of the CDC (source in comment above). I mean.. who better to 'trust'?
  - defrost 2y ago
    It's one of several quotes repeatedly dragged up in these discussions. Which peer reviewed paper was that quote sourced from? Which medical conference lecture was that statement made in? Oh, it was from a regular simplified human to human conversation in which the CDC director was indicating a comparitive result? WRT ppm's etc was that an accurate call of magnitude of difference in outcomes at that time?
    - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
      It's the director of the CDC, it's not some rando on youtube. They mentioned the CDC data. Don't be a skeptic now, trust the science. If we can't trust the director of the CDC, who can we trust? Some rando on youtube saying that vaccines won't protect you from getting and spreading covid? Oh wait.. we banned those people from pretty much every social network, and guess what, they were correct. Come on.. be fair.. like really... if we were discussing this in the spring of 2021, and that interview was just on tv, and i said: > "well, she said that vaccinated people won't get sick, won't carry the virus, but i think that she's wrong, she didn't say stuff correctly, vaccinated people will still massively get sick and also carry and spread the virus, her 'real world data' is bullshit, i want to see her sources, she's lying without those" ...what would you tell me? Would you say "yes, you're correct, it was just a human-to-human conversation, it was simplified, there's no data that her sentance is correct, there's no proof of what she said,..."? Or would you just call me an antivaxer?
      - defrost 2y ago
        See my reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651747
exe34 2y ago
so because the science was reported sloppily, we can't trust science - instead of educating people?
- lmm 2y ago
  We can't trust people who say "the science" is on their side. We can't trust popular science reporting. If you want to know what the science actually says, you have to dig into it yourself and e.g. read some papers (and even that might not be enough - you have to know which journals are credible and which aren't).
  - exe34 2y ago
    But you can trust uncle Donny who comes up with crackpot theories 24/7?
    - cindycindy 2y ago
      It's the ups and downs from believing those ideas that people live for. They're all chasing a feeling, which is the basis of all addiction.
- sethammons 2y ago
  That sloppy reporting _is_ the educating of people.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago

The quote above is literally from the director of the CDC

exe34 2y ago
who is of course, infallible, never taken out of context, and never misrepresented. he said something you didn't understand once, and therefore everybody who says something you don't want to hear must be wrong. did I cover everything?
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  So, do we trust the director of the CDC now or not? What exactly didn't I understand? https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-3-29-21-n1262442 https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc... <- full transcript, just in case quote: > And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data. What exactly is misunderstood, taken out of context and misrepresented here? The skeptics, who didn't trust the science, didn't trust the "do not carry the virus, don't get sick,..." quote, were right again. I'm not saying that everyone is always wrong, i'm saying that you should blindly trust someone, because of science. Especially if they were incorrect previously. Remember the calculations of how many more vaccinations and infections are needed to reach herd immunity? Well... good luck with trusting that science too. NOT trusting is the basis of all science, even if people don't trust the things you don't want to hear.... and especially if it turns out that they were correct. Blocking/banning/censoring those people is the same as banning non-believers in smoke smoke enemas 200 years ago.
  - defrost 2y ago
    > What exactly didn't I understand? The difference between casual human conversation on a late night panel show and the strict precise statements in actual papers. The educated with real world exposure to weed eradication, stock control,. past use of vaccines, etc didn't take the "do not carry the virus, don't get sick,..." absolutely literally as if it was deified bible quote either. They heard that as saying given the data to hand right now (context) that data suggests (qualifier) that the vaccinated aren't carrying the virus nor getting sick (in contrast to those unvaccinated .. as in there is a visible stark difference). A chat on a late panel show IS NOT "the science" and a paper on the stats coming back from trials would use actual percents, p-values, etc and make it clear.