Dem Post Mortem

[Emily Lake]

My trouble is that the person exhibits a Dr. Nick like competence in medicine, and Emily Lake disagrees with the statement, but then adds a 'but' at the end of the disagreement. When the issue is something as simple as small pox or polio vaccinations, why in the fuck should we trust a person like that to be anywhere near our Dept. of HHS?

Where are you getting this view from? Like, seriously - what are you assuming? What "but" are you talking about?

Seriously, I think it's dumb to ban vaccines (unless they're like legit more harm than good, maybe) across the board. Vaccines are good. That said... banning a vaccine for something that has been eradicated and is no longer vaccinated for anyway seems extra stupid dumb to me. I had erroneously thought that polio had been eradicated in the US and wasn't routinely vaccinated for anymore.

 

[Politesse]

In what way to do you think I don't practice what I preach? What is it that you think I preach in the first place, that I'm not practicing?

Common decency to others.

 

[Bomb#20]

if the Polio vaccine gets revoked from approval, or banned, millions of dead or paralyzed kids.

Wait, what now? Why would it get revoked or banned? On the other side... why would that matter in the US?

RFKjr's top lawyer has tried to get the Polio vaccine banned. That's why it's a topic. And if it got banned, well diseases spread. There are still pockets of places on the planet where Polio is still a problem.

Seriously.
Of course under the glare of public scrutiny (soon to be a thing of the past), “Bobby” has suddenly recanted everything he has ever said or done, and the worm is busily re-wiring his brain to MAGA spec.
Which means, he now says he doesn’t oppose the polio vaccine, which further means he will probably try to ban it. Because that’s MAGA SOP.

Oh for the love of god!

Aaron Siri did not try "to get the Polio vaccine banned". The specter of "millions of dead or paralyzed kids" is utter nonsense. There are six different polio vaccines approved in the U.S.. Siri tried to get one of them pulled, pending further study -- one that was only approved in the first place in 2022! Why don't you people do the most elementary fact-checking before you trump up insane accusations against your political opponents?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One reason why countries like Ireland, Macau, Bermuda ... and the USA -- do so well in GDP is financial industries: "economic" activity which offers little help for ordinary "people." (I quote "people" since I refer to H. sapiens while the term includes corporations in post-rational American diction.)

Agreed, you can't make a reasonable comparison for the haven countries. Look at the others.

Did you notice I included USA on the list of what YOU call "havens"? Should we exclude it too?

But I didn't use the term "havens." What I wrote is in Red above.

GDP measures the "production of goods and services." If a drug company raises its prices to make an extra million dollars to pay its CEO's salary, that million is included in GDP! Break windows and then repair them? The cost of repair is included in GDP; the breakage is NOT subtracted. GDP blipped upward when employment surged to clean up from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

I was saying you can't compare the tax haven countries because they get "production" that doesn't really happen. It's not the same thing as financial industries.

Wells Fargo increased GDP with its fraudulent service charges. GDP includes the million-dollar bonus paid to the Merrill Lynch "analyst" who made money for his firm with a pump-and-dump scheme and never went to prison.

Income for millionaires and billionaires is factored in to "average household income." Do you REALLY think that's a good metric to learn how STRUGGLING American households are doing?

It's not distorting the numbers like you think. I posted a thread about this recently that clearly showed that boats are floating in all income brackets, not merely at the top. But that doesn't fit the narrative and it got basically ignored.

And you complain that "happiness ratings" are "subjective"? In fact, the scores are derived from well-defined quantitative criteria, e.g. infant mortality. The U.S. has 6.3 under-five deaths per 1000 births, higher than Uruguay or Russia and much higher than Finland (2.3) or Japan (2.5). But I agree: "Happiness" is hard to measure; happiness scores might be almost as flawed as GDP.

You would think it was a well-defined criteria but it is not. Strangely, when you plot stillbirth + infant mortality you get a far flatter curve than when you plot either independently. The only way this makes sense is differing calls on exactly what counts as a live birth (which is how Cuba gets it's good metric--anything below a cutoff weight is not considered a live birth, period.) The fact that infant mortality is not a consistent yardstick gets pushed further and further into the background as they try to pretend the UHC systems are superior. (IIRC the latest iteration simply says that it's not a good measure for some countries and doesn't even identify the US as having distorted data. Think of the old story about how a crock of shit got edited by each manager along the way so the guys at the top thought it was good.)

But it's cynical to discard a subjective rating that goes against your particular point while embracing an equally subjective rating that supports it.

The problem with happiness is that it inherently is against expectations, not against some accurate yardstick.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As for smallpox--it wasn't a threat in the US because of vaccination. Travelers, though--I can't remember if we were actually asked for our yellow books one time, I probably just handed it over with my passport as I knew it would be required. I've been in plenty of places where normal border formalities were passport and yellow book.

Smallpox has existed only in laboratories since it was declared eradicated in 1980, and no country has required vaccination since then.

Eradicated, yes. Nobody demanding vaccination?? A bunch of African countries didn't get their act together, if you didn't have your smallpox shot in your book you would have to pay a bribe to get admitted.

But what I was thinking of in knowing the yellow book was required is that 24 hours earlier we had been in the yellow fever zone. Long lost now but I used to have a yellow book with smallpox, but I was young enough at the time that my parents handled the documents.

Polio, despite being a much more difficult target, came close to eradication a few years ago, but a combination of war and superstition (rumours were spread that the vaccination was a US government and/or local Christian plot to harm Muslims) meant that it has since become resurgent in parts of Africa, and recent cases have made their way to New York, Israel, and the UK, spread by orthodox Jewish communities that are vaccine averse.

Radical Islam can't tolerate good coming from non-Muslims and will do anything to discredit it that they can.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Smallpox has existed only in laboratories since it was declared eradicated in 1980, and no country has required vaccination since then.

I've thought of the eradication of smallpox as a major triumph. I mentioned it as an example of something "only governments can do" during a debate with a team of "Libertarians" but they saw no problem. In their ideology, no government is needed at all: Private police can be called to keep the kids off one's lawn.

I also mentioned flood control as an issue where government spending comes in handy, but they seemed to think each little farmer along the Chao Phya River could have built a levee along his own property to save Thailand from the Great Flood of 2011. Almost as inanely, they said "Who needs flood control anyway? Smart farmers will ensure their revenue by buying appropriate future weather contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade!"

Yup, disease and flood control are prime examples of things that need to be done at government or world scale.

 

[laughing dog]

One reason why countries like Ireland, Macau, Bermuda ... and the USA -- do so well in GDP is financial industries: "economic" activity which offers little help for ordinary "people." (I quote "people" since I refer to H. sapiens while the term includes corporations in post-rational American diction.)

Agreed, you can't make a reasonable comparison for the haven countries. Look at the others.

Did you notice I included USA on the list of what YOU call "havens"? Should we exclude it too?

But I didn't use the term "havens." What I wrote is in Red above.

GDP measures the "production of goods and services." If a drug company raises its prices to make an extra million dollars to pay its CEO's salary, that million is included in GDP! Break windows and then repair them? The cost of repair is included in GDP; the breakage is NOT subtracted. GDP blipped upward when employment surged to clean up from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

I was saying you can't compare the tax haven countries because they get "production" that doesn't really happen. It's not the same thing as financial industries.

Wells Fargo increased GDP with its fraudulent service charges. GDP includes the million-dollar bonus paid to the Merrill Lynch "analyst" who made money for his firm with a pump-and-dump scheme and never went to prison.

Income for millionaires and billionaires is factored in to "average household income." Do you REALLY think that's a good metric to learn how STRUGGLING American households are doing?

It's not distorting the numbers like you think. I posted a thread about this recently that clearly showed that boats are floating in all income brackets, not merely at the top. But that doesn't fit the narrative and it got basically ignored.

And you complain that "happiness ratings" are "subjective"? In fact, the scores are derived from well-defined quantitative criteria, e.g. infant mortality. The U.S. has 6.3 under-five deaths per 1000 births, higher than Uruguay or Russia and much higher than Finland (2.3) or Japan (2.5). But I agree: "Happiness" is hard to measure; happiness scores might be almost as flawed as GDP.

You would think it was a well-defined criteria but it is not. Strangely, when you plot stillbirth + infant mortality you get a far flatter curve than when you plot either independently. The only way this makes sense is differing calls on exactly what counts as a live birth (which is how Cuba gets it's good metric--anything below a cutoff weight is not considered a live birth, period.) The fact that infant mortality is not a consistent yardstick gets pushed further and further into the background as they try to pretend the UHC systems are superior. (IIRC the latest iteration simply says that it's not a good measure for some countries and doesn't even identify the US as having distorted data. Think of the old story about how a crock of shit got edited by each manager along the way so the guys at the top thought it was good.)

But it's cynical to discard a subjective rating that goes against your particular point while embracing an equally subjective rating that supports it.

The problem with happiness is that it inherently is against expectations, not against some accurate yardstick.

There are no perfectly accurate yardsticks when it comes to making international comparisons
due to inherent differential measurement and definitions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I also figure it's more or less in the same camp as smallpox, and not a particular concern in the US.

Emily... ????
Do you not associate our lack of smallpox with the presence and prevalence of use of a smallpox vaccine?
Not an epidemiologist here, but most would probably predict a return of the disease when the practice that locally eradicated it was abandoned.

You know that we don't vaccinate for smallpox anymore, right? We stopped vaccinating for it in 1972. I've never been vaccinated for smallpox, nor has anyone my age or younger in the US.

We stopped general vaccination. I was vaccinated for smallpox in the US in presumably 1974 for travel reasons.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Also Covid wasn't a problem in the U.S. either. Until it was. This shit takes two seconds to think about for people who have braincells.

Oh FFS.

You know that "covid" is a rebranding of coronavirus, right? Coronaviruses are 1) endemic to humans and 2) mutate faster than influenza. "Covid" has always been a problem, as it's been a consistent contributor to annual colds since the dawn of humanity. The other major endemic class is rhinovirus, also endemic, also highly mutable.

"Covid" was a specific virulent strain of coronavirus - and it's one that has already mutated out of what it was. Hell, it mutated 4 times during 2020. It's still here, and it's always going to be here. Same thing with influenza. At best, we'll get a good fast-follow vaccine program like we have with influenza, which will reduce the likelihood of catching the common chest cold.

Just because it's mutated doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. Not long ago I saw an estimate that if things continue as they have been in time most people will be suffering from varying degrees of long covid.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My trouble is that the person exhibits a Dr. Nick like competence in medicine, and Emily Lake disagrees with the statement, but then adds a 'but' at the end of the disagreement. When the issue is something as simple as small pox or polio vaccinations, why in the fuck should we trust a person like that to be anywhere near our Dept. of HHS?

Where are you getting this view from? Like, seriously - what are you assuming? What "but" are you talking about?

Seriously, I think it's dumb to ban vaccines (unless they're like legit more harm than good, maybe) across the board. Vaccines are good. That said... banning a vaccine for something that has been eradicated and is no longer vaccinated for anyway seems extra stupid dumb to me. I had erroneously thought that polio had been eradicated in the US and wasn't routinely vaccinated for anymore.

Since humans are the vector it can always be reintroduced so long as it's anywhere. America stopped vaccinating against smallpox once there were no local cases and nobody would be allowed into the country without being vaccinated. A slight risk but amongst vaccines smallpox is one of the most "dangerous" (still at 1 in a million level) so they dropped it.

What we have done is change vaccines. There are two vaccines for polio. The more effective is an attenuated virus vaccine, it often ends up providing protection for family members as well as the child. But once in a great while it reverts from attenuated to natural. It is what is used anywhere there actually is polio, but so long as it's used there's always the chance of it creating polio. There is a second vaccine which does not provide nearly as good protection but it's a killed virus vaccine and it's good enough to create herd immunity. It's used in places without polio.

 

[Swammerdami]

One reason why countries like Ireland, Macau, Bermuda ... and the USA -- do so well in GDP is financial industries: "economic" activity which offers little help for ordinary "people." (I quote "people" since I refer to H. sapiens while the term includes corporations in post-rational American diction.)

Agreed, you can't make a reasonable comparison for the haven countries. Look at the others.

Did you notice I included USA on the list of what YOU call "havens"? Should we exclude it too?

But I didn't use the term "havens." What I wrote is in Red above.

GDP measures the "production of goods and services." If a drug company raises its prices to make an extra million dollars to pay its CEO's salary, that million is included in GDP! Break windows and then repair them? The cost of repair is included in GDP; the breakage is NOT subtracted. GDP blipped upward when employment surged to clean up from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

I was saying you can't compare the tax haven countries because they get "production" that doesn't really happen. It's not the same thing as financial industries.

BUT now you miss MY point. Much financialization (financial industry) does NOT contribute to human happiness nor to "true" production. Instead we see Wall St. gamblers sliding pieces of paper around, often ripping off the little guys.

GDP has many flaws. Home-making and home schooling aren't included. Sales of illegal recreational drugs aren't included, but legal drugs are, however flawed. The judge who sent kids to private prisons increased GDP.

Wells Fargo increased GDP with its fraudulent service charges. GDP includes the million-dollar bonus paid to the Merrill Lynch "analyst" who made money for his firm with a pump-and-dump scheme and never went to prison.

Income for millionaires and billionaires is factored in to "average household income." Do you REALLY think that's a good metric to learn how STRUGGLING American households are doing?

It's not distorting the numbers like you think. I posted a thread about this recently that clearly showed that boats are floating in all income brackets, not merely at the top. But that doesn't fit the narrative and it got basically ignored.

:-( Boats are NOT floating equally. You make this claim repeatedly. I refute it whenever I notice.

When adjusted for inflation the current federal minimum wage is significantly BELOW what it was in 1968. This despite big gains in (inflation-adjusted) per capita GDP.

CEO compensation increased 1,085% from 1978 to 2023, while a typical worker's compensation increased 24%.
In 1965, CEOs were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker, but in 2023 they were paid 290 times as much.

"In 1957, Fortune magazine named J. Paul Getty the wealthiest living American while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records declared him to be the world's wealthiest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $8.6 billion in 2023)". Elon Musk has $421 Billion, about 50 times Getty's 1966 wealth even adjusted for inflation. Do you think productivity or typical wage increased 50-fold (in "real dollars") during those 58 years?

Capische? No, you don't. You'll wait two months and distort the meaning of some graph to make the same incorrect claim

The problem with happiness is that it inherently is against expectations, not against some accurate yardstick.

"Problem with happiness"?? I think you meant "Difficulty in measuring happiness." That's true enough. But GDP is also severely flawed.

Of course the inflated GDP which YOU seem to prefer argues AGAINST your "all boats floating" claim, as I showed above.

 

[bilby]

Also Covid wasn't a problem in the U.S. either. Until it was. This shit takes two seconds to think about for people who have braincells.

Oh FFS.

You know that "covid" is a rebranding of coronavirus, right? Coronaviruses are 1) endemic to humans and 2) mutate faster than influenza. "Covid" has always been a problem, as it's been a consistent contributor to annual colds since the dawn of humanity. The other major endemic class is rhinovirus, also endemic, also highly mutable.

"Covid" was a specific virulent strain of coronavirus - and it's one that has already mutated out of what it was. Hell, it mutated 4 times during 2020. It's still here, and it's always going to be here. Same thing with influenza. At best, we'll get a good fast-follow vaccine program like we have with influenza, which will reduce the likelihood of catching the common chest cold.

Oh FFS.

Coronaviruses are a large sub-family of viruses, and contain a range of strains some of which cause diseases in humans, and some of which do not.

To suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is much the same as the common chest cold, is like suggesting that a bite from an Inland Taipan is basically just the same as a bite from a Garter Snake, because they are both just snakes.

MERS-CoV is a coronavirus, and kills about 30% of humans who contract it; Fortunately it doesn't appear to spread from human to human, and requires a wild animal (bats, in which it likely originated), or a fairly uncommon domestic animal (camels) as a vector.

Some coronaviruses are really nasty. Some are hardly worth worrying about at all. Lots of idiots appear to have adopted a political stance that conflates the very nasty SARS-CoV-2 with much less dangerous strains, apparently because they think that infectious disease controls are evil, on the sole basis that such controls necessarily restrict individual liberty. A more despicable political ideology is hard to envisage in the modern developed world.

 

[bigfield]

Also Covid wasn't a problem in the U.S. either. Until it was. This shit takes two seconds to think about for people who have braincells.

Oh FFS.

You know that "covid" is a rebranding of coronavirus, right? Coronaviruses are 1) endemic to humans and 2) mutate faster than influenza. "Covid" has always been a problem, as it's been a consistent contributor to annual colds since the dawn of humanity. The other major endemic class is rhinovirus, also endemic, also highly mutable.

"Covid" was a specific virulent strain of coronavirus - and it's one that has already mutated out of what it was. Hell, it mutated 4 times during 2020. It's still here, and it's always going to be here. Same thing with influenza. At best, we'll get a good fast-follow vaccine program like we have with influenza, which will reduce the likelihood of catching the common chest cold.

This is flat out disinformation.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My trouble is that the person exhibits a Dr. Nick like competence in medicine, and Emily Lake disagrees with the statement, but then adds a 'but' at the end of the disagreement. When the issue is something as simple as small pox or polio vaccinations, why in the fuck should we trust a person like that to be anywhere near our Dept. of HHS?

Where are you getting this view from? Like, seriously - what are you assuming? What "but" are you talking about?

I don't know why anyone would be trying to get it banned, at least not the old-school injected vaccine that's been around forever. On the other hand... I guess I also figure it's more or less in the same camp as smallpox, and not a particular concern in the US.

link

It is classic passive aggressive. The text passive-aggressively justify concerns with newer vaccines, which aren't even the subject by indicating not understanding why people would want to ban old trustworthy vaccines. Then you move on and suggest it probably isn't an issue in the US anyway, so... *fill the gap*. In other words, you sound like "them".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Also Covid wasn't a problem in the U.S. either. Until it was. This shit takes two seconds to think about for people who have braincells.

Oh FFS.

You know that "covid" is a rebranding of coronavirus, right? Coronaviruses are 1) endemic to humans and 2) mutate faster than influenza. "Covid" has always been a problem, as it's been a consistent contributor to annual colds since the dawn of humanity. The other major endemic class is rhinovirus, also endemic, also highly mutable.

"Covid" was a specific virulent strain of coronavirus - and it's one that has already mutated out of what it was. Hell, it mutated 4 times during 2020. It's still here, and it's always going to be here. Same thing with influenza. At best, we'll get a good fast-follow vaccine program like we have with influenza, which will reduce the likelihood of catching the common chest cold.

This is flat out disinformation.

Technically they'd need to know what they are talking about for it to be disinformation. Right now, I think it only qualifies as ridiculous nonsense.

 

[Elixir]

I don't understand what point you think you're making here.

Ask an epidemiologist. I'm not here to keep spoon feeding you, when you just blow chunks all over the room.
Take away the vaccine for smallpox and eventually you'll have

Show

smallpox

.

 

[Emily Lake]

In what way to do you think I don't practice what I preach? What is it that you think I preach in the first place, that I'm not practicing?

Common decency to others.

What, the way you and Jarhyn and Elixir and a handful of others exhibit common decency to me?

 

[Politesse]

In what way to do you think I don't practice what I preach? What is it that you think I preach in the first place, that I'm not practicing?

Common decency to others.

What, the way you and Jarhyn and Elixir and a handful of others exhibit common decency to me?

Ah, so you believe good manners are only owed to polite people?

 

[Bomb#20]

In what way to do you think I don't practice what I preach? What is it that you think I preach in the first place, that I'm not practicing?

Common decency to others.

What, the way you and Jarhyn and Elixir and a handful of others exhibit common decency to me?

Ah, so you believe good manners are only owed to polite people?

Non sequitur. Perhaps she believes good manners are owed both to polite people and also to people who practice bad manners only reciprocally.

 

[Bomb#20]

... There are plenty of US citizens who HATE seeing a man publically disparaged by a woman, for any reason. But that's all the more reason why we cannot allow these people to steer the ship. We know exactly what kind of society they'll build if they are in charge, and it isn't tolerable to any thinking person with a conscience.

Sooo... what, you're going to revoke the right to vote for half the country because they didn't do what you wanted them to do?

What are you talking about???

What do you think other people infer when you say "But that's all the more reason why we cannot allow these people to steer the ship. We know exactly what kind of society they'll build if they are in charge, and it isn't tolerable to any thinking person with a conscience."?

It rather strongly reads as if you believe that some people (approximately half the voting populace) shouldn't be allowed to express their preferences in the voting booth.

Non sequitur. There's more than one way to not allow the people who win an election to steer the ship. Remember, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything".⁣