The so called wise men are fools...

[pmv]

The general idea of my intention in this thread regards the topic of certainty, how people know what they don’t know at all, how some people believe one thing and others believe the opposite and how any challenge to that certainty can create a firestorm of defensive retaliation. I find this certainty everywhere and also in myself.

I am reminded of that certainty in myself when I come in contact with people who believe things that conflict with my orthodoxy.

I presented a video about a Stanford professor who along with two other people published different advice on how to deal with Covid and I think the one interviewed was sincere in his belief, whereas my tendency toward anybody with such opinions would actually have to be motivated by malice and ideology. I wanted to share that discovery with others here to see if others agree. The doctor, and I as the messenger were generally roundly attacked, him as a quack and me as a gullible idiot.

The second video was a critique of that kind of certainty and mentioned criticism of that very doctor by the establishment as closed minded bigotry. The result, again was that I am the bigot.

My criticism or reaction to your post here is that what I wanted to do was to create a bit of self reflection in others that this typical rejection of others as evil heretics might in fact be the result of honest disagreement and that the capacity to entertain that idea could be a better or more open way to see things. I rather like being able to hear what others say without reacting as though hearing them would give me some sort of deadly contagion. So when I try to suggest that people look twice at the hostility they can exhibit to the other peoples’ thinking for their own sake, finding it as I do to be personally beneficial, I really don’t want to hand over any potential benefit I fancy there to be tied up tidy and easily digestible with a bow. I don’t want to have to do all the work. If you feel me to be arrogant in that regard, that is fine by me. I say, fuck you if you don’t want to watch the links. I’m not here to spoon feed you even though I just spent this post doing so the best I can. You can thank me in the future by carefully considering my posts to offerings of self improvement from one of the deepest minds you have ever been in contact with.

Hope this passes the arrogance test.

I try not to be too rude because you aren't a fully-paid-up Trumpist, but the trouble is my eyes glaze over at most of your posts.

I suspect you will still be doing the 'mystic guru' act when the fascists lead you through the camp gates. You are just frighteningly gullible when it comes to right-wing grifters.

 

[Moonbeam]

I try not to be too rude because you aren't a fully-paid-up Trumpist, but the trouble is my eyes glaze over at most of your posts.

I suspect you will still be doing the 'mystic guru' act when the fascists lead you through the camp gates. You are just frighteningly gullible when it comes to right-wing grifters.

My desire is to provide you with some truths about your inner condition, 'you' also in a general sense, and according to how I see you (them). I stop there with no need for you to see what I think I see. How would a person define gullible who is over cynical and can't trust anything and is unaware of that fact. Would such a person welcome information that might disturb the root causes of such cynicism by bringing them into unwelcome consciousness? I think not. I like the box you have placed me in, 'mystic guru'. Great name for somebody who sees things differently than you do.

About the only things I can see that are different between you and me is that I follow scientific consensus as best guess scientific thinking but minus typical science believer zealotry. I am not egotistically attached to some imagined superiority such consensus thinking seems to gift others with imaginatively. And I think that if and when new scientific facts accrue that challenges the doctrine of the day, I will adjust to them more rapidly than you for that very reason. Having died to everything I once held sacred with all the accouterments of concomitant emotional wreckage, and having mystically transcended them to become the guru I am today, there will be no such storm for me to weather ever again. For this reason, owing to the great good fortune I have had and with no merit whatsoever, be prepared to expect the occassional poke at what I believe is a defective degree of certainty in others. And while I consider it an almost insignificant achievement not to be a fanatical Trumper, I will remember most from this thread is your wish not to be rude to me.

 

[cytg111]

Someone seems pretty certain that his line of thinking is universally superior and the subsequent desire to preach it upon others is unfaltering.
The very certainty of mind different from his is at the core of our sins.
Validity of superiority is given in the fact that he has died and risen again.
To save ourselves, from ourselves, is to save the Q's, cause, we are one and the same.

Lemme try and parse that shit real quick
I am Q and Q is me, thus if Q dies, if he rises again he is saved, if he doesnt he's a witch?
Lets start with the Q's and work our way up the alphabet, see how it goes, shall we?

 

[Moonbeam]

Someone seems pretty certain that his line of thinking is universally superior and the subsequent desire to preach it upon others is unfaltering.
The very certainty of mind different from his is at the core of our sins.
Validity of superiority is given in the fact that he has died and risen again.
To save ourselves, from ourselves, is to save the Q's, cause, we are one and the same.

Lemme try and parse that shit real quick
I am Q and Q is me, thus if Q dies, if he rises again he is saved, if he doesnt he's a witch?
Lets start with the Q's and work our way up the alphabet, see how it goes, shall we?

Let somebody else try: First link that came up: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-enlightened/

 

[ch33zw1z]

Let somebody else try: First link that came up: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-enlightened/

That link agrees with @cytg111 's assessment. Also, turns out more people are enlightened, by Mike's measurements, than previously thought.

 

[cytg111]

Let somebody else try: First link that came up: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-enlightened/

"There is no spoon" - "What Was Said Was For You, And You Alone."

For me, I cant find the tune to achieve resonance with that article.
This probably came closest
"Our Caesar salads arrived. As the waiter grated parmesan cheese over our bowls, Mike told me about the final state of enlightenment "
- Yea.


*who the f cares* that you tapped into an inherent dorment source of psycociblin. Good for the *enlightened* person I guess? Are you moving the ball forward? Sideways? What?

Is the engine running on solar, hydrogen or magic unicorn shits? Noone cares, but care that its not fucking up the climate. So which is it?

 

[feralkid]

Lemme try and parse that shit real quick
I am Q and Q is me, thus if Q dies, if he rises again he is saved, if he doesnt he's a witch?
Lets start with the Q's and work our way up the alphabet, see how it goes, shall we?

If you wanna talk cults,
Let's go back to the W's.

/s

 

[Moonbeam]

That link agrees with @cytg111 's assessment. Also, turns out more people are enlightened, by Mike's measurements, than previously thought.

Great. According to my view everybody is enlightened but not everyone knows it. I would like to help with that.

 

[Moonbeam]

So which is it?

I think any questions that link raises for you could only be answered by the person who chose to speak of what he thinks he knows in those particular words, in my opinion. I can only say that my experience ended all existential questions. I recommend a glass of wine, the seeking of an altered state of awareness, where the same might happen to you. Here is a story that may help: Once there was a fish who heard of the life-giving properties of water and went in search of it.

 

[Moonbeam]

Here is the second link that came up:

Enlightenment (spiritual) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[woolfe9998]

Going back to the original video and Jay Bhattacharya. He may be politically conservative but he has legit scientific and medical credentials. His opinion, that we were better off protecting the elderly and letting the disease wash over the rest of us is not completely bonkers, or at least, it wasn't at the outset when he originally issued it.

He's correct about several facts: the death rate from COVID was about .3%, way less than initially reported; only the elderly were particularly vulnerable while the death rates for the rest of us were extremely small, comparable to the flu. The reason it was overall false to compare it to the flu was only because it had very high deaths for those aged 70+. For the rest of us, it was basically the flu, maybe a little worse for the middle aged, but actually better for children.

He was also right that there were negative economic consequences to the early business lockdowns. While a recession was certain to happen with or without the lockdowns, the lockdowns made it worse.

The problem came when he continued advocating this approach through late summer and fall, and it got picked up by Scott Atlas, a fellow Stanford professor who became a Trump advisor. Because by August, it was common knowledge that a vaccine was at most a few short months away. Why in the world would one advocate for achieving herd immunity by way of infection when one can obtain herd immunity instead by way of vaccination? Maybe it would have been different had the vaccines taken years to develop as some had initially thought.

Because his opinion became completely irrational by late summer but he continued to advocate it, this leads me to conclude that Battacharya and the other doctors who signed on with him had ideological/political motives. He's not a stupid man. He's not a bad doctor. He got several facts right when others were presenting misinformation to the public. But in the end he was unable to separate medicine from politics.

 

[pmv]

He's correct about several facts: the death rate from COVID was about .3%, way less than initially reported; only the elderly were particularly vulnerable while the death rates for the rest of us were extremely small, comparable to the flu. The reason it was overall false to compare it to the flu was only because it had very high deaths for those aged 70+. For the rest of us, it was basically the flu, maybe a little worse for the middle aged, but actually better for children.

I'm entirely unconvinced by that. Where's your evidence that the death rate was 0.3%?

As excess death numbers currently suggest the global death toll may be between 12 and 22 million, then, taking the higher end of that range and working backwards, _if_ the infection fatality rate is 0.3%, that would mean nearly 7 billion people would have to be infected to get that level of deaths. I.e. everyone in the world would have had to have had COVID already.

A death rate of 0.3% therefore seems completely implausible.

Just India alone pushes the true total to 8 million, even aside from all the other countries that have under-reported deaths (e.g. North Korea having had no deaths at all, as befits a flawless socialist paradise!)

Covid-19 news: Moderna’s omicron booster has promising immune response

A regular round-up of the latest coronavirus news, plus insight, features and interviews from New Scientist about the covid-19 pandemic

www.newscientist.com

The pandemic’s true death toll

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world

www.economist.com

 

[pmv]

I haven't seen any robust calculations of the fatality rate, but I recall when I did some inexpert back-of-the-envelope sums based on New York's death rate and the then infection-rate based on random sampling, it seemed to be closer to 2%. Likewise, with the Diamond Princess passengers (that that guy writing in Stat magazine early on, used to calculate a fatality rate of 0.1%, based on ignoring the fact that many of them were still seriously ill at the time of the calculation), about 2% of those infected died in the end (though they would have skewed towards older people, they also all got top quality health care).

2% is probably too high, but I don't think anyone can confidently say it's been only 0.3% at this point. I don't think we really know yet.

 

[woolfe9998]

I'm entirely unconvinced by that. Where's your evidence that the death rate was 0.3%?

As excess death numbers currently suggest the global death toll may be between 12 and 22 million, then, taking the higher end of that range and working backwards, _if_ the infection fatality rate is 0.3%, that would mean nearly 7 billion people would have to be infected to get that level of deaths. I.e. everyone in the world would have had to have had COVID already.

A death rate of 0.3% therefore seems completely implausible.

Just India alone pushes the true total to 8 million, even aside from all the other countries that have under-reported deaths (e.g. North Korea having had no deaths at all, as befits a flawless socialist paradise!)

Covid-19 news: Moderna’s omicron booster has promising immune response

A regular round-up of the latest coronavirus news, plus insight, features and interviews from New Scientist about the covid-19 pandemic

www.newscientist.com

The pandemic’s true death toll

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world

www.economist.com

Yes, but your error here is not understanding that the seroprevalence studies that Bhattacharya and other researchers are discussing are US numbers. If you read the serorprevalance literature, it states clearly that the infection fatality rates vary vastly from country to country, and region to region. Primarily based on quality and availability of healthcare. In a country like India, where people died without ever going to the hospital because there were no beds available, the infection fatality rate could be 5-10 higher.

Hence, 7 billion people need not have been infected to produce 21 million deaths. In the US yes, but not in the world at large.

Also, excess deaths can be caused by more than one thing. Official stats put the world COVID deaths at 5.5 million. The actual number is probably 1-3 million higher than that, but not 20 million.

 

[Moonbeam]

Going back to the original video and Jay Bhattacharya. He may be politically conservative but he has legit scientific and medical credentials. His opinion, that we were better off protecting the elderly and letting the disease wash over the rest of us is not completely bonkers, or at least, it wasn't at the outset when he originally issued it.

He's correct about several facts: the death rate from COVID was about .3%, way less than initially reported; only the elderly were particularly vulnerable while the death rates for the rest of us were extremely small, comparable to the flu. The reason it was overall false to compare it to the flu was only because it had very high deaths for those aged 70+. For the rest of us, it was basically the flu, maybe a little worse for the middle aged, but actually better for children.

He was also right that there were negative economic consequences to the early business lockdowns. While a recession was certain to happen with or without the lockdowns, the lockdowns made it worse.

The problem came when he continued advocating this approach through late summer and fall, and it got picked up by Scott Atlas, a fellow Stanford professor who became a Trump advisor. Because by August, it was common knowledge that a vaccine was at most a few short months away. Why in the world would one advocate for achieving herd immunity by way of infection when one can obtain herd immunity instead by way of vaccination? Maybe it would have been different had the vaccines taken years to develop as some had initially thought.

Because his opinion became completely irrational by late summer but he continued to advocate it, this leads me to conclude that Battacharya and the other doctors who signed on with him had ideological/political motives. He's not a stupid man. He's not a bad doctor. He got several facts right when others were presenting misinformation to the public. But in the end he was unable to separate medicine from politics.

Love you woolfe. Hope your ability to give some credit to the doctor's point of view doesn't get you into too much trouble, that he wasn't entirely possessed by political animus and presented at the time of delivery positive intentions and sincere belief. At least that is what I believe I saw in him. My support for my point of view and the reasons I posted were not in support of his point of view. I don't know enough to say. I only posted because I feel there is a knee jerk reaction on the left to dismiss anything that challenges left orthodox assumptions. The left is also getting into burning witches, in my opinion. It is that to which I want to hold up a mirror. I fall for that all the time as a result of not having transcending hatred and being aware of it.

 

[dullard]

He's correct about several facts: the death rate from COVID was about .3%, way less than initially reported

Lets try going with 0.3% and see where that leads us. There are 835,994 official US deaths. I'll go with that number for this post even though the excess deaths show that the number is probably significantly higher. So, 835994/.003 = 278.7 million US individuals have had Covid. That is 84.6% of the entire country and that is before Omicron really takes over. If the death toll reaches 1 million, then more US citizens will have had Covid than actually exist. This doesn't necessarily disprove 0.3% yet, but it certainly sounds like 0.3% is just impossibly low.

 

[woolfe9998]

I haven't seen any robust calculations of the fatality rate, but I recall when I did some inexpert back-of-the-envelope sums based on New York's death rate and the then infection-rate based on random sampling, it seemed to be closer to 2%. Likewise, with the Diamond Princess passengers (that that guy writing in Stat magazine early on, used to calculate a fatality rate of 0.1%, based on ignoring the fact that many of them were still seriously ill at the time of the calculation), about 2% of those infected died in the end (though they would have skewed towards older people, they also all got top quality health care).

2% is probably too high, but I don't think anyone can confidently say it's been only 0.3% at this point. I don't think we really know yet.

No, you're confusing the case fatality rate with the infection fatality rate. Cases are much higher than reported because with COVID, and even more so now with Omicron, the vast majority of cases are either asymptomatic or so mildly symptomatic that the individual never gets tested. And obviously does not die. Case fatality rate is just measuring the number who died against the number who were sick enough to bother to get a test. That's why they do seroprevalance studies to determine the real infection rates in a population.

 

[dank69]

Love you woolfe. Hope your ability to give some credit to the doctor's point of view doesn't get you into too much trouble, that he wasn't entirely possessed by political animus and presented at the time of delivery positive intentions and sincere belief. At least that is what I believe I saw in him. My support for my point of view and the reasons I posted were not in support of his point of view. I don't know enough to say. I only posted because I feel there is a knee jerk reaction on the left to dismiss anything that challenges left orthodox assumptions. The left is also getting into burning witches, in my opinion. It is that to which I want to hold up a mirror. I fall for that all the time as a result of not having transcending hatred and being aware of it.

It isn't knee-jerk. We just don't tolerate bullshit, and have gotten very good at identifying propaganda.

 

[woolfe9998]

Lets try going with 0.3% and see where that leads us. There are 835,994 official deaths. I'll go with that number for this post even though the excess deaths show that the number is probably significantly higher. So, 835994/.003 = 278.7 million US individuals have had Covid. That is 84.6% of the entire country. If the death toll reaches 1 million, then more US citizens will have had Covid than actually exist. This doesn't necessarily disprove 0.3% yet, but it certainly sounds like 0.3% is just impossibly low.

That is not at all outside the realm of possibility, that over 3/4's of Americans have had COVID, and most don't even know it. COVID is quite infectious, more so with delta than beta, more so with omicron than delta, but what seroprevalence studies show is that the majority of cases are either asymtomatic or come across like a cold.

This is based on science. Not just seroprevalence studies of Bhattacharya and the other two professors, but many others. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the real death rate is 1%. That is 1% overall. Deaths rates are indisputably 10x higher for over 70's compared to middle age, and 1000x higher compared to children. Remember that Bhattacharya's approach wasn't to take no precautions. It was to protect the elderly and immune compromised.

I still maintain that his position was within the realm of reason before we knew a vaccine was imminent, back in March/April when we still thought a vaccine was years away, and also before we knew that infection immunity wasn't quite as robust as we expected. Later on his position did become unsustainable.

 

[Moonbeam]

It isn't knee-jerk. We just don't tolerate bullshit, and have gotten very good at identifying propaganda.

What else is what you just said but propaganda? You assume it is proper not to tolerate bullshit based on the notion you know what proper intolerance is and what is bullshit. Then you go on to assume you are good at identifying it with no specifics on exactly what propaganda is. All of this is just assertions you make without any factual evidence. I look at everything I say with this recognition probably with only varing degrees of success but I'm not seeing any apparent similar modesty from you. Also you strike me as being very proud of your rage which suggests to me you don't know the limits of rage and what occurs when those limits are reached. That tells me that while you may feel anger you may not have not felt it as deeply as I have. I suggest that if you felt it more deeply you would remember who you are really angry at. I love you because I see you in me, but also, I hate myself. Somebody did something so sad to somebody so sweet. You are so so beautiful.

 

[pmv]

Yes, but your error here is not understanding that the seroprevalence studies that Bhattacharya and other researchers are discussing are US numbers. If you read the serorprevalance literature, it states clearly that the infection fatality rates vary vastly from country to country, and region to region. Primarily based on quality and availability of healthcare. In a country like India, where people died without ever going to the hospital because there were no beds available, the infection fatality rate could be 5-10 higher.

Hence, 7 billion people need not have been infected to produce 21 million deaths. In the US yes, but not in the world at large.

Also, excess deaths can be caused by more than one thing. Official stats put the world COVID deaths at 5.5 million. The actual number is probably 1-3 million higher than that, but not 20 million.

Pretty sure the actual number is a lot more than 1-3 million higher than that. The "official stats" are _obviously_ going to be a massive undercount. As they usually are with flu.

Did you check that linked article about India? India alone seems likely to have under-counted by more than 2 million. And then there's Russia...

I grant that the rate is going to vary country-by-country, depending on local circumstances like the nature of the health-care system. But that also means the rate can get a lot higher if the healthcare system, even a good one, gets overwhelmed.

Maybe this is a partisan source, but it seems to be a widespread view

Part 1: China Is Underreporting The Covid Death Rate

China understates the Chinese Covid death rate by 17,000% ... The true number of Covid deaths in China is not 4,636 – but something like 1.7 million. That is, China’s cumulative death toll is likely at least double that of the United States.

www.forbes.com

Official Covid death statistics are vastly understated, almost everywhere.

• “[The true death toll] is two or three times higher than the number of deaths we know about.” – Amber D’Souza, Prof. of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• “Whatever number is reported is going to be a gross underestimate.” – Tim Riffe, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany.”

The discrepancy varies from country to country.

• “The official death toll is a false figure… [and] it’s much worse than that. There’s no doubt that some countries are under-reporting COVID-19 deaths.” - David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge

The U.S. is apparently “guilty” of underreporting. According to the New York Times study, we probably undercount the prevalence of Covid deaths by about 17%. The Economist found a 7% discrepancy. They later increased their estimate of U.S. under-reporting to 30%.

China is another story. Its official statistics understate the Chinese Covid death rate by 17,000% (according to The Economist’s model).

In fact, based on excess mortality calculations, The Economist estimates that the true number of Covid deaths in China is not 4,636 – but something like 1.7 million.

That is, China’s cumulative death toll is likely at least double that of the United States.

In the case of the United States, the discrepancy is inadvertent. It can be explained in terms of inefficiencies and frictions in the system that cause some data loss.

In the case of China, it is clearly intentional. The Covid death figures are being grossly — one might say, crudely – manipulated by the Chinese authorities.

1-3 million on top of the official toll likely is still a massive undercount.

 

[pmv]

No, you're confusing the case fatality rate with the infection fatality rate. Cases are much higher than reported because with COVID, and even more so now with Omicron, the vast majority of cases are either asymptomatic or so mildly symptomatic that the individual never gets tested. And obviously does not die. Case fatality rate is just measuring the number who died against the number who were sick enough to bother to get a test. That's why they do seroprevalance studies to determine the real infection rates in a population.

Yes, I know that. But going by the seroprevalence study they did in New York earlier in the pandemic, the infection fatality rate seemed to be about 2%. I just don't believe we know yet, but 0.3% seems implausible.

 

[woolfe9998]

Yes, I know that. But going by the seroprevalence study they did in New York earlier in the pandemic, the infection fatality rate seemed to be about 2%. I just don't believe we know yet, but 0.3% seems implausible.

Yes, one limitation of these seroprevalence studies is that by their nature, they can only be conducted in a localized manner. Each covers basically one county. And last I checked, there had been studies done in about 20 counties in the US. Bhattacharya's studies were done in LA and Santa Clara counties. Perhaps after we do another 50 counties, we'll see a higher overall percentage.

However, this is not going to undermine his argument by much. Because the case fatality rate in the US is, according to worldometer.com, 857,257 deaths divided by 60,040,740 cases, which = 1.42%. That number represents the absolute upper limit of the possible fatality rate. It assumes that literally everyone who ever got COVID got tested, and ignores that there are vast numbers of both asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic people who have no reason to even bother with a test.

Which is why I threw up the number of 1% as a hypothetical, in my response to another poster above. As a huge concession to his argument because there is little chance of it being that high. So like I said, take that 1% and then look at the fact that death rates for the elderly are an order of magnitude higher than for the middle aged, and three orders of magnitude higher than for children. And then consider that Bhattacharya 's argument was that we should protect the elderly but allow the rest of us to become infected to achieve herd immunity.

All I'm saying is that his approach when he initially put it forward in April of 2020 was not outside the realm of reason. It was well inside the Overton window, and was at least debatable.

 

[pmv]

However, this is not going to undermine his argument by much. Because the case fatality rate in the US is, according to worldometer.com, 857,257 deaths divided by 60,040,740 cases, which = 1.42%. That number represents the absolute upper limit of the possible fatality rate. It assumes that literally everyone who ever got COVID got tested, and ignores that there are vast numbers of both asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic people who have no reason to even bother with a test.

Except there you are allowing for all the infections that didn't get tested and counted as 'cases', but not allowing for all the COVID deaths that didn't get counted either. Both the numerator and the denominator are going to be undercounts. If you allow for the Economist's take on US excess death figures, you need to increase that numerator by 30%, which would make your 'upper limit' closer to 2%. Granted that's an upper limit, but we just don't know yet what the true figure is. Maybe we'll never know?

The refrain about 'protect the vulnerable and everyone else carry on' has been being made since the start of the pandemic. The trouble is it was never made clear how they proposed to do that. In practice it seemed to mean 'the vulnerable can just hide away as best they can and drop out of society entirely'. It seemed to cross into a nasty Darwinian argument. Besides, it also seems to be a recipe for new variants to be produced.

 

[dank69]

What else is what you just said but propaganda? You assume it is proper not to tolerate bullshit based on the notion you know what proper intolerance is and what is bullshit. Then you go on to assume you are good at identifying it with no specifics on exactly what propaganda is. All of this is just assertions you make without any factual evidence. I look at everything I say with this recognition probably with only varing degrees of success but I'm not seeing any apparent similar modesty from you. Also you strike me as being very proud of your rage which suggests to me you don't know the limits of rage and what occurs when those limits are reached. That tells me that while you may feel anger you may not have not felt it as deeply as I have. I suggest that if you felt it more deeply you would remember who you are really angry at. I love you because I see you in me, but also, I hate myself. Somebody did something so sad to somebody so sweet. You are so so beautiful.

When I say propaganda I mean of the misleading type. My post had exactly zero intention of misleading while both videos you posted in this thread were designed to intentionally mislead people.

I think I understand the limits of rage but that is neither here nor there.