Covid-19 miscellany

[crazyfingers]

At any rate what this sourse says about the information that it delivers is that

Source?

 

[Elixir]

“Why does TSwizzle use this source exclusively to contribute to discussions?“

Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. Ya get it where ya find it...

 

[TSwizzle]

An interesting context to this emotional outrage porn post of TSwizzle is that the source of the information that causes TSwizzle to think something is “very shifty,” is, in fact, Very Shifty.

Let’s dig into what this means for the discussion.

We can all see that TSwizzle uses the Daily Mail exclusively to report all of the context for his opinions. He relies on and exclusively uses as support a news site that is deemed shifty.

“Outrage porn”? Behave yourself.

Your odd treatise on the Daily Mail says nothing about the actual content of the article. You could try reading the Vanity Fair version.

 

[Rhea]

At any rate what this sourse says about the information that it delivers is that

Source?

Is the Daily Mail Reliable? - The Factual | Blog

The Factual looks at how the Daily Mail performs in terms of creating factual, unbiased news and compares it to 240 other major sources.

www.thefactual.com

(sorry, I put it into the link to the words “Daily Mail” in the last paragraph.)

 

[Rhea]

An interesting context to this emotional outrage porn post of TSwizzle is that the source of the information that causes TSwizzle to think something is “very shifty,” is, in fact, Very Shifty.

Let’s dig into what this means for the discussion.

We can all see that TSwizzle uses the Daily Mail exclusively to report all of the context for his opinions. He relies on and exclusively uses as support a news site that is deemed shifty.

“Outrage porn”? Behave yourself.

Seems accurate.

headlines and text are generally heavily opinionated or sensationalized;

Your odd treatise on the Daily Mail says nothing about the actual content of the article. You could try reading the Vanity Fair version.

Is this like asking me why I haven’t read and commented on an article from the National Enquirer?
You post the Daily Mail every time.
There’s a reason you do that. It’s worth thinking about before spending time following your links.

The site has failed numerous fact checks, generally linked to deliberate attempts to spread fake news, implying that the publication seeks to profit from hoaxes or disinformation.

There’s enough previous data to stop following your links to that site.

 

[TSwizzle]

There are a lot of words in your treatise but still off topic.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

An interesting context to this emotional outrage porn post of TSwizzle is that the source of the information that causes TSwizzle to think something is “very shifty,” is, in fact, Very Shifty.

Let’s dig into what this means for the discussion.

Given that the Daily Mail was citing Vanity Fair, a much better way of assessing the matter would be to go to the source and check whether the Daily Mail was misrepresenting it - or just leave aside the Daily Mail and consider the source(s) only.

In fact, the Daily Mail provided the link to the source.

“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy

Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked...

www.vanityfair.com

Also, btw, long ago in the thread I already posted good sources on some very shifty behavior, backed up by other sources. But they got moved to another thread. I add them below, together with further sources:

In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan

A spokesman for Dr. Fauci says he has been “entirely truthful,” but a new letter belatedly acknowledging the National Institutes of Health’s support for virus-enhancing research adds more heat to the ongoing debate over whether a lab leak could have sparked the pandemic.

www.vanityfair.com

The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier

A new leaked document is stirring up another frenzy over the pandemic’s origins. What does it really tell us?

www.theatlantic.com

Fauci and Collins Dismissed Prominent Scientists Who Endorsed Lab-Leak Theory, Emails Show

Early in the pandemic, scientists urged Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins to seriously consider the theory that Covid escaped from a Chinese laboratory.

news.yahoo.com

How COVID-19’s origins were obscured, by the East and the West

The origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remain obscure. The reasons include a vigorous campaign of concealment by the Chinese authorities and missteps by senior medical research officials in the United Kingdom and United States who mishandled the initial inquiry into the virus’s origins.

thebulletin.org

You can look up the sources in different websites, to assess their reliability. For example:

Vanity Fair

LEFT BIAS These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may

mediabiasfactcheck.com

Yahoo News

LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording

mediabiasfactcheck.com

The Atlantic

LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording

mediabiasfactcheck.com

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording

mediabiasfactcheck.com

 

[Rhea]

Given that the Daily Mail was citing Vanity Fair, a much better way of assessing the matter would be to go to the source and check whether the Daily Mail was misrepresenting it - or just leave aside the Daily Mail and consider the source(s) only.

That is exactly my point.

 

[Elixir]

Given that the Daily Mail was citing Vanity Fair, a much better way of assessing the matter would be to go to the source and check whether the Daily Mail was misrepresenting it - or just leave aside the Daily Mail and consider the source(s) only.

That is exactly my point.

About what?

A hypothetical nothingburger cooked up by republitards to distract voters from their intent to destroy American democracy at the behest of their Orange Jabba the Hutt?

“Ooooohh Noooooes!! Fauci and Hunter cooked up the China virus to destroy Donald the Great!”

 

[bilby]

Given that the Daily Mail was citing Vanity Fair, a much better way of assessing the matter would be to go to the source and check whether the Daily Mail was misrepresenting it - or just leave aside the Daily Mail and consider the source(s) only.

That is exactly my point.

About what?

A hypothetical nothingburger cooked up by republitards to distract voters from their intent to destroy American democracy at the behest of their Orange Jabba the Hutt?

“Ooooohh Noooooes!! Fauci and Hunter cooked up the China virus to destroy Donald the Great!”

About the paucity of TSwizzle's news sources.

There's an important difference between someone who reads broadly, and stumbles across an article in Vanity Fair that they think interesting or important, and somebody who only sees Vanity Fair articles if they are directed to do so by the Daily Mail, which they use as their exclusive (or almost exclusive) primary source of information.

 

[lpetrich]

Bree on Twitter: "WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SWEDEN ..." / Twitter

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SWEDEN
ICYMI, science journal Nature has published a scathing assessment of Sweden's pandemic response as the country declares COVID's endemicity. 1/16

The damning "Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden" by Brusselaers et al paints a grim picture of a country seemingly culling its elderly & vulnerable populations while deliberately infecting children in an effort to reach "herd immunity". 2/16

More on herd immunity & COVID can be found in Nature here: Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible (Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.)

"The Swedish response to this pandemic," the researchers report, "was unique and characterized by a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach." 3/16

The Swedish government avoided mandates & instead relied on people taking "personal responsibility" for their safety (sound familiar, Australia?). The LA Times reported that Sweden shunned lockdowns & masks while keeping schools, restaurants & businesses largely open. 4/16

The researchers included this timeline of Sweden's health measures & key events in the early part of the pandemic correlated against COVID waves:

*It can also be found here: Fig. 1: Timeline. | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 5/16

According to Brusselaers et al, in Stockholm, triage rules stated that patients with comorbidities were not to be admitted to intensive care units, on grounds that they were "unlikely to recover." 6/16

Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives, the researchers reported. 7/16

"Potentially life-saving treatment was withheld without medical examination, and without informing the patient or his/her family or asking permission." 8/16

The Swedish government reportedly kept people "in ignorance of basic facts" such as COVID being airborne, that asymptomatic individuals can be contagious & that face masks protect both the carrier & others. 9/16

Many schools did not inform parents or even teachers about confirmed COVID-19 transmission on the premises, nor reported it to official agencies, and urged parents not to tell if their children were infected—since this would “spread fear.” 10/16

Sweden's Twitter account for COVID stats @COVIDSweden hasn't been updated for a while, so we turn to @OurWorldInData which shows Sweden's staggeringly high death rate per million here: 11/16
(most recently: Sweden: 1800, Denmark 960, Finland 520, Norway 440, Iceland 280 -- the US is at 3000)

Clearly, and as Brusselaers et al note, projected "natural herd-immunity" levels remain nowhere in sight.

The research by Brusselaers et al can be found in Nature here: Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12/16

One of the researchers, David Steadson, observed that while the research has been accessed 112 thousand times, Swedish media have yet to report on any aspect of it:

(link) 13/16
David Steadson on Twitter: "Our paper about the Swedish pandemic response has now been accessed an astounding 112 thousand times in less than 10 days. It's ranked by Altmetric as one of the top 10 papers of the past 8 weeks and currently #301 of the past 11 years!
(link)" / Twitter

(link) 14/16
David Steadson on Twitter: "And yet ... as far as I know, *not once* has the paper been mentioned in Swedish media.
Complete silence. (pic link)" / Twitter

Reuters wrote about Sweden's declaration that the pandemic was over here: Sweden declare pandemic over, despite warnings from scientists | Reuters

Nonetheless, the LA Times wrote about the Brusselaers et al research in Nature here: (link) 15/16
Los Angeles Times on Twitter: ""The details of Swedish policies as described [in a new study] are horrifying. The Swedish government...deliberately tried to use children to spread COVID-19 and denied care to seniors and those suffering from other conditions."
Column by @hiltzikm: (link)" / Twitter

Here's hoping Australia can learn from the mistakes outlined in this paper & that the Swedish Government is held accountable moving forward. 16/16

Seems like a total disaster.

 

[Metaphor]

Update, all statistics 7-day averages, and peaks refer to current wave (all time refers to highest of any wave).

Daily new cases and deaths have fallen worldwide and in the US since the 16 March update.

New cases:
    Latest worldwide     1.41m (daily - 2 Apr 2022)

    Peak worldwide       3.44m (daily - 24 Jan 2022)

    All time worldwide   3.44m (daily - 24 Jan 2022)


    Latest US        30k (daily - 2 Apr 2022)

    Peak US         807k (daily - 14 Jan 2022)

    All time US     807k (daily - 14 Jan 2022)


Deaths:
    Latest worldwide       4,191 (daily - 2 Apr 2022)

    Peak worldwide       10,926 (daily - 10 Feb 2022)

    All time worldwide   14,706 (daily - 26 Jan 2021)


    Latest US       646 (daily - 2 Apr 2022)

    Peak US       2,670 (daily - 1 Feb 2022)

    All time US   3,347 (daily - 13 Jan 2021)

 

[Swammerdami]

I was saddened to see this article. Lies are spreading on Facebook that only vaccinated people are eligible for aid from the Ukrainian government. Totally false. I didn't click again but it appears that ... guess who ... Americans are the principal liars.

The anti-Vax idiocy really is a rapture-like cult!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As the World Around Us Moves On, We ID Docs Just ... Can't

Something quite remarkable happened as Omicron tore through the United States in December and January. Despite triggering a record number of cases — which should have made people more concerned about COVID-19 — Omicron paradoxically did the opposite. It made most of our country decide to move...

blogs.jwatch.org

Deciding it's over doesn't make it so. ID docs are going to have a much better understanding than QOP "docs".

 

[Elixir]

As the World Around Us Moves On, We ID Docs Just ... Can't

Something quite remarkable happened as Omicron tore through the United States in December and January. Despite triggering a record number of cases — which should have made people more concerned about COVID-19 — Omicron paradoxically did the opposite. It made most of our country decide to move...

blogs.jwatch.org

Deciding it's over doesn't make it so. ID docs are going to have a much better understanding than QOP "docs".

Does it even matter?
The window of opportunity to quell this disease closed around February 2020.
We will go forward as a sicker population, at least for a while. No matter who is in denial, or who is proactive about suppressing transmission, we are stuck with this new contagion … none of our beliefs or counter-measures matter any more.
I have some sniffles for the first time in a few years (got from my wife, I’m pretty sure). Also have some COVID tests, but no inclination to even take one (or two, per the recommendation). Why bother?

 

[TSwizzle]

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is receiving mounting opposition to its approval of fourth COVID-19 vaccine doses for all Americans aged 50 and older. The agency broke standard practice when it made the decision last month, electing not to take advice from a panel of independent experts. Some of those who would have advised on the decision are now voicing their objections to the authorization, and the lack of transparency the FDA displayed in the lead up to it. Dr Marty Makary, a medical commentator and public policy expert from Johns Hopkins University, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) this week criticizing the FDA and its lack of transparency in the process of approving the additional shot. While federal regulators push for more Covid vaccines, cases in the U.S. have fallen below 30,000 per day once again and deaths from the virus remain low as well. 'Some of the FDA's own experts disagree with the decision, but the agency simply ignored them,' Makary wrote.

Daily Mail

I doubt I will get a second booster anytime soon, I'm not convinced it is necessary. I will get an annual flu shot later in the year.

 

[Artemus]

I doubt I will get a second booster anytime soon, I'm not convinced it is necessary. I will get an annual flu shot later in the year.

I got a second booster because I'm not convinced it is not necessary. Maybe we should adjust Pascal's wager to something meaningful: You should get it because if you needed it will prevent premature death or long Covid and if you didn't need it it cost nothing.

 

[Metaphor]

I doubt I will get a second booster anytime soon, I'm not convinced it is necessary. I will get an annual flu shot later in the year.

I got a second booster because I'm not convinced it is not necessary. Maybe we should adjust Pascal's wager to something meaningful: You should get it because if you needed it will prevent premature death or long Covid and if you didn't need it it cost nothing.

That fails for the same reason Pascal's wager fails. Being religious doesn't cost you nothing. In fact, it is often time-consuming and expensive and boring.

 

[Artemus]

I doubt I will get a second booster anytime soon, I'm not convinced it is necessary. I will get an annual flu shot later in the year.

I got a second booster because I'm not convinced it is not necessary. Maybe we should adjust Pascal's wager to something meaningful: You should get it because if you needed it will prevent premature death or long Covid and if you didn't need it it cost nothing.

That fails for the same reason Pascal's wager fails. Being religious doesn't cost you nothing. In fact, it is often time-consuming and expensive and boring.

What exactly did the booster cost me? (Not time. My wife gave it to me when I picked her up for dinner.)

 

[marc]

I doubt I will get a second booster anytime soon, I'm not convinced it is necessary. I will get an annual flu shot later in the year.

I got a second booster because I'm not convinced it is not necessary. Maybe we should adjust Pascal's wager to something meaningful: You should get it because if you needed it will prevent premature death or long Covid and if you didn't need it it cost nothing.

That fails for the same reason Pascal's wager fails. Being religious doesn't cost you nothing. In fact, it is often time-consuming and expensive and boring.

What exactly did the booster cost me? (Not time. My wife gave it to me when I picked her up for dinner.)

Got my second booster at a pharmacy around the corner. Could walk there in under 5 minutes, and pick up prescriptions at the same time.