Steerzing in a New Direction...

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Steersman
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1561

Post by Steersman »

fafnir wrote: <snip>

I'm aware of the difference between viruses and bacteria. An insufficient programme of antibiotics allows bacteria to develop resistance. A leaky vaccine allows a virus to develop resistance. The more you use each, the worse the problem gets. If we threw around antibiotics like we throw around covid vaccines they would be useless already.

<snip>

I know. However, if you throw around antibiotics in a way that doesn't reliably kill bacteria, and vaccines in a way that doesn't reliably kill viruses.... what you are doing is training the pathogen to develop resistance. The reason we need booster shots of the vaccine is because we have sprayed it around like it was the gas station scene in Zoolander:
https://youtu.be/ZnZ2XdqGZWU?t=120
Maybe you think that Moderna and Pfizer are intentionally creating "leaky vaccines" just to boost their bottom line?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_i ... my_of_good

fafnir
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1562

Post by fafnir »

Steersman wrote:
fafnir wrote: <snip>

I'm aware of the difference between viruses and bacteria. An insufficient programme of antibiotics allows bacteria to develop resistance. A leaky vaccine allows a virus to develop resistance. The more you use each, the worse the problem gets. If we threw around antibiotics like we throw around covid vaccines they would be useless already.

<snip>

I know. However, if you throw around antibiotics in a way that doesn't reliably kill bacteria, and vaccines in a way that doesn't reliably kill viruses.... what you are doing is training the pathogen to develop resistance. The reason we need booster shots of the vaccine is because we have sprayed it around like it was the gas station scene in Zoolander:
https://youtu.be/ZnZ2XdqGZWU?t=120
Maybe you think that Moderna and Pfizer are intentionally creating "leaky vaccines" just to boost their bottom line?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_i ... my_of_good
I'd assumed that it was just that creating a non-leaky vaccine to covid was difficult. It's not something I've thought about. Are you arguing "the good" would be giving everybody antibiotics so that antibiotic resistance becomes universal? We can't create perfect antibiotics and we shouldn't make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Currently the virus seems to be adapting to the vaccine and creating resistance in a few months. If we push the vaccine harder globally, the virus will presumably adapt more quickly.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1563

Post by fafnir »

Incidentally, one obvious observation I hadn't read until a few hours ago. Given that the vaccine seems mainly to be reducing the severity of the illness, that would imply it is reducing the selection pressure viruses normally have to become less severe over time.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1564

Post by Brive1987 »

fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:35 pm
Incidentally, one obvious observation I hadn't read until a few hours ago. Given that the vaccine seems mainly to be reducing the severity of the illness, that would imply it is reducing the selection pressure viruses normally have to become less severe over time.
The faster the virus learns that killing its host is counter productive - the better.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1565

Post by Brive1987 »

Service Dog wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: America is a land of extremes. A land of BLM and this



I hesitate to embrace advice flowing from such a fountainhead.
We wave Australian flags now.

Your flag has become a symbol.

Someone has to wave ‘em. The Boxing Kangaroo used to be the preferred cloth flapper here for a while. Then the Southern Cross. Before it became nazi/BLF. Mostly flags come out here for international sports games as a tribal marker.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1566

Post by Brive1987 »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: Every day they had been met by her husband in his car who had preselected accommodation and food (motel or camp ground) "along with the best ice cream stand, which is to say, the one that had either blueberries and cream or rocky road — Gerry’s favorite flavors".
As has been observed with Biden, ice cream is recommended as a quick, non-Rx palliative to the crankiness and confusion in the demented, especially during 'sundowning'. This gal was 66?? but displayed frequent confusion and irritableness.

From the material you've found, it's obvious her husband and the friend were shepherding and carrying her. Without constant intervention, she was 'lost' figuratively and literally. Maybe on some level she was cognizant of this, and holing up in the woods to die was to stop being a burden.
There’s a bit of interest online around the irony that she died undetected in the grounds of the navy’s premiere search and evasion school. Apparently they didn’t spot her 😂

The sad reality is that the controlled hike was probably a last ditch effort to demonstrate lost independence.

fafnir
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1567

Post by fafnir »

Brive1987 wrote: There’s a bit of interest online around the irony that she died undetected in the grounds of the navy’s premiere search and evasion school. Apparently they didn’t spot her 😂
The old technique of go into an area of dense cover and stay there still works pretty good.

AndrewV69
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1568

Post by AndrewV69 »

fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:38 am
Brive,

There is a theory that the left has to some degree got a perspective that they can unify around, it's just a question of degree. The right is everybody who disagrees with that perspective, and hence is disunited in their actual beliefs. You have something similar going on with people who support the official narrative being necessarily fairly united, and people who disagree with it being far less united.

There are some basic facts that we can discuss, and maybe come to the conclusion that something is wrong with the official narrative. Any conclusion beyond that as to why is necessarily going to be speculative and depend greatly on our divergent understandings of the world. In the 1500s, there was a practical reality of indulgences being sold that could be sensibly discussed, but the cause of it being that the Pope needed money to pay for the new St Peter's wasn't something any but a handful of people would have known with certainty and evidence.
Brive1987 wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 1:58 am
There’s been a lot of crazy talk and gnashing of teeth. In many ways this connected world is our worst case nightmare. Never mind the tentacled aliens lurking in the Moderna vax.
100%. I work in IT and had an interest in reliability, availability, minimizing the impact of system failure etc.... The not particularly novel conclusion I came to was that the more interconnected, tightly coupled and interdependent systems are the bigger the scope for massive fuck ups and the less I wanted to touch them. That was at around the time of financial issues in 2008 and the two things became connected in my head ever since. It doesn't matter though, because the economies of scale that you get by not caring about this issue is nearly irresistible. On that principle alone, I don't like the idea of vaccinating entire populations in this way, at this pace.
RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) - No IBM mainframe(s) somewhere in your shop?

(When I retired I was doing Z/OS, AIX, Solaris and Linux and specialized in DB2)

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1569

Post by fafnir »

AndrewV69 wrote:
fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:38 am
Brive,

There is a theory that the left has to some degree got a perspective that they can unify around, it's just a question of degree. The right is everybody who disagrees with that perspective, and hence is disunited in their actual beliefs. You have something similar going on with people who support the official narrative being necessarily fairly united, and people who disagree with it being far less united.

There are some basic facts that we can discuss, and maybe come to the conclusion that something is wrong with the official narrative. Any conclusion beyond that as to why is necessarily going to be speculative and depend greatly on our divergent understandings of the world. In the 1500s, there was a practical reality of indulgences being sold that could be sensibly discussed, but the cause of it being that the Pope needed money to pay for the new St Peter's wasn't something any but a handful of people would have known with certainty and evidence.
Brive1987 wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 1:58 am
There’s been a lot of crazy talk and gnashing of teeth. In many ways this connected world is our worst case nightmare. Never mind the tentacled aliens lurking in the Moderna vax.
100%. I work in IT and had an interest in reliability, availability, minimizing the impact of system failure etc.... The not particularly novel conclusion I came to was that the more interconnected, tightly coupled and interdependent systems are the bigger the scope for massive fuck ups and the less I wanted to touch them. That was at around the time of financial issues in 2008 and the two things became connected in my head ever since. It doesn't matter though, because the economies of scale that you get by not caring about this issue is nearly irresistible. On that principle alone, I don't like the idea of vaccinating entire populations in this way, at this pace.
RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) - No IBM mainframe(s) somewhere in your shop?

(When I retired I was doing Z/OS, AIX, Solaris and Linux and specialized in DB2)
That's like Obi-Wan Kenobi talking about the Old Republic. I used to be a storage guy. Symmetrix and such. I got really into queueing theory and all the maths around capacity, performance and availability. What you notice is that most of the books on that were written in the 70s, and pretty much stop in the 90s. After that, it's all best practices for performance that you don't actually have to understand. The number of arguments I'd have with people that what they wanted required the speed of light changing or buildings being moved closer together. It was weird, even with vendor support.... until you got up to the level of talking about developers, it was rare to speak to anybody who actually understood this stuff. :-)

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1570

Post by Brive1987 »

John D wrote: So... okay... the little soprano. Wow. I have a little crush. I could take all my money and travel to Georgia. I could fund her singing career and in our spare time we could raise poppies. We could sing folk songs together in the evenings as we cooked our simple dinner. We would plan her next concert and then cuddle in front of the fire. I should get a good week out of this fantasy as I drift off to sleep.

They have such strong faces and chins. They are probably tougher than I am.... no... they are certainly tougher than I am... but I would try to keep up.

:fpig:

Glad you enjoyed it. Trad music sans wheat-fields is always a bonus.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1571

Post by Brive1987 »

Service Dog wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: The establishment of a new cultural hegemony has been largely completed - but it’s a pro global, anti national and woke liberal culture rather than a traditional ‘left wing’ one. It’s defined by social ‘isms not economic interest. It’s also defined by its destruction of past norms rather than the presentation of new logically coherent alternatives.
....
It’s a brave new world.
I think the term 'Progressive' fits the hegemony.
Brive1987 wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 4:05 am
The counter POV isn’t simply push back, it’s alleging a conspiracy worldview of uncertain parameters. This isn’t helpful.
You are correct that this 'Side' is unified by what-they-oppose, rather than by what they agree-on.
But you emphasize the glass-half-empty aspect of that.

The glass-half-full is that this Side is (overwhelmingly) willing to play by a set of rules which is well-suited to minimizing the harm of heterodoxy.

And the _world_ is a place of uncertain parameters, so a heterodoxy of opinions is the correct response.

Even in your 'holocaust denier' example-- one guy might be a secret-nazi who secretly thinks jews are alien reptiles/ and another guy might be a normie amateur-historian who is trying to understand the past in accurate detail. But our inability to read their minds & guess which-is-which in his heart-of-hearts is not relevant... as long as they both adhere to a set of Best Practices for inquiry & discourse.

I don't know much about the Red Ice people... but it sounds-like they're playing by Marketplace of Ideas rules. They present their case for tentacled aliens in the Moderna vax-- and you're free to take-or-leave it. They're not censoring anyone who disagrees.
Lana (half of RedIce) has always been firm entertainment value. She followed me on Twitter back in the day, which made my minute.

I’m happy to wander about in their marketplace of weird. Maybe not at 3:00am. I’m always amazed at how primal antisemitism trumps any support for a fascist militaristic ethno-state which is crusading against muslims in the Holy Land.

A state that can also produce Gal Godot. 👙

Meh.

However, my original observation was not concerned with secret motivations. Rather I pointed out the red flag 🚩 of conspiracy drivel. Namely a shotgun argument devoid of a clearly articulated thesis.


AndrewV69
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1572

Post by AndrewV69 »

fafnir wrote:
AndrewV69 wrote:
RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) - No IBM mainframe(s) somewhere in your shop?

(When I retired I was doing Z/OS, AIX, Solaris and Linux and specialized in DB2)
That's like Obi-Wan Kenobi talking about the Old Republic. I used to be a storage guy. Symmetrix and such. I got really into queueing theory and all the maths around capacity, performance and availability. What you notice is that most of the books on that were written in the 70s, and pretty much stop in the 90s. After that, it's all best practices for performance that you don't actually have to understand. The number of arguments I'd have with people that what they wanted required the speed of light changing or buildings being moved closer together. It was weird, even with vendor support.... until you got up to the level of talking about developers, it was rare to speak to anybody who actually understood this stuff. :-)
Ah, the good old days, just when it all started to go to shit, where support started to become increasingly problematic, and IBM declared that it was a "global" company.

... I would go on, but you already know, in fact said so earlier, that IT systems are increasingly fragile, held together with spit and rubber bands and tended by an increasing proportion of staff with subject matter expertise in increasingly narrow domains.

2038 approaches, in seven years or so the ten-year forecasts are going to start failing. Any bets on what is going to happen then?

Never mind the imminent fun times due in a few months, mostly related to broken supply chains. Much more happy fun times are ahead of us.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1573

Post by Brive1987 »

Sometimes I think “Marxism” is shorthand for any pseudo intellectual internal movement dreaming of the overthrow of traditional western power structures. The use of the sacred blood of the have-nots is old hat, while the specifics of the replacement solution is sketchy at best.

Engagement requires mental masturbation approaching psychological self harm.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1574

Post by fafnir »

I think there is a parallel between modern IT and the general problem. The idea that failing is fine, and we are going to learn and move on.... asking for permission to implement the change just slows everything down. If Microsoft asked users whether they liked the new interface of Office, loads of them would say no..... so just don't ask them and disable the old one. There's the oft quoted example of changing the colour of the eBay website.... they changed the colour all in one go and there was a stink, so they change it by degrees instead. It feels like the same model is being used in many contexts. You will own nothing and you will be happy. Richard Stallman has well and truly lost.

fafnir
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1575

Post by fafnir »

Brive1987 wrote: Sometimes I think “Marxism” is shorthand for any pseudo intellectual internal movement dreaming of the overthrow of traditional western power structures. The use of the sacred blood of the have-nots is old hat, while the specifics of the replacement solution is sketchy at best.

Engagement requires mental masturbation approaching psychological self harm.
It's a bit more specific isn't it? A prepper fantasizing about overthrowing the government and instituting some libertarian stateless utopia wouldn't be described as Marxist.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1576

Post by Brive1987 »

fafnir wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: Sometimes I think “Marxism” is shorthand for any pseudo intellectual internal movement dreaming of the overthrow of traditional western power structures. The use of the sacred blood of the have-nots is old hat, while the specifics of the replacement solution is sketchy at best.

Engagement requires mental masturbation approaching psychological self harm.
It's a bit more specific isn't it? A prepper fantasizing about overthrowing the government and instituting some libertarian stateless utopia wouldn't be described as Marxist.
A stereotypical prepper fails by falling outside a structured pseudo-intellectually based middle class movement. Too few glasses of chardonnay, too much bud and too many trucker hats.

ThreeFlangedJavis
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1577

Post by ThreeFlangedJavis »

Brive1987 wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:50 am
Sometimes I think “Marxism” is shorthand for any pseudo intellectual internal movement dreaming of the overthrow of traditional western power structures. The use of the sacred blood of the have-nots is old hat, while the specifics of the replacement solution is sketchy at best.

Engagement requires mental masturbation approaching psychological self harm.
Didn't the Marxist diehards deliberately shift to recruiting the woolly-headed daddy haters because nobody was buying the original flavour Marxism? The fuzziness is the feature that allows journos to write gaslighting articles. We have Critical Theory with it's bait and switch language games which allows it to finagle it's way into schools while looking relatively innocuous to dunderheaded Leguizamos. If you read the manuals, which James Lindsay did for us, Marxism is implicit in the theory. It isn't that you can't make a rigorous rebuttal to the modern closet Marxists. You need to read up (not advised) or listen to James Lindsay explaining all of the misdirection and stealth techniques before making a fool out of Joy Reid.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1578

Post by Brive1987 »

Here is a mental sorbet


ThreeFlangedJavis
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1579

Post by ThreeFlangedJavis »

Perhaps I didn't understand what Brive was getting at. The far right antis can be construed as Marxist?

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1580

Post by Brive1987 »

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:50 am
Sometimes I think “Marxism” is shorthand for any pseudo intellectual internal movement dreaming of the overthrow of traditional western power structures. The use of the sacred blood of the have-nots is old hat, while the specifics of the replacement solution is sketchy at best.

Engagement requires mental masturbation approaching psychological self harm.
Didn't the Marxist diehards deliberately shift to recruiting the woolly-headed daddy haters because nobody was buying the original flavour Marxism? The fuzziness is the feature that allows journos to write gaslighting articles. We have Critical Theory with it's bait and switch language games which allows it to finagle it's way into schools while looking relatively innocuous to dunderheaded Leguizamos. If you read the manuals, which James Lindsay did for us, Marxism is implicit in the theory. It isn't that you can't make a rigorous rebuttal to the modern closet Marxists. You need to read up (not advised) or listen to James Lindsay explaining all of the misdirection and stealth techniques before making a fool out of Joy Reid.
I tend to regard “Marxists” as intellectual Vandals and Goths. They wield ‘political theory’ (and, more recently, social theory) as latter day truncheons.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1581

Post by fafnir »

Brive1987 wrote: I tend to regard “Marxists” as intellectual Vandals and Goths. They wield ‘political theory’ (and, more recently, social theory) as latter day truncheons.
I'm not sure how far this analogy can really be taken. The barbarians generally weren't interested in taking over the institutions and culture of Rome beyond the army. Maybe the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire would be a better analogy?

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1582

Post by fafnir »

Brive1987 wrote: A stereotypical prepper fails by falling outside a structured pseudo-intellectually based middle class movement. Too few glasses of chardonnay, too much bud and too many trucker hats.
I agree with you that a broadly defined Marxism is the pseudo-intellectual movement that pervades the middle class. Other causes have obsessed the same type of people in the past. Abstinence movements, for example. It's the Alfred Doolittle speech from My Fair Lady. Middle Class Morality.


Middle Class movements don't necessarily seek to pull down the entire foundations of the culture.

I think it's fair to say that almost definitially, any movement seeking to overturn the existing power structure is left wing. Not necessarily Marxist though. That raises the question though..... given that these "Marxists" are sponsored by Nike, are they in fact left wing any longer?

Service Dog
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1583

Post by Service Dog »

Brive1987 wrote: my original observation was not concerned with secret motivations. Rather I pointed out the red flag of conspiracy drivel. Namely a shotgun argument devoid of a clearly articulated thesis.
I like term 'shotgun argument'.

However-- I think it's a good way of approaching a topic. The bad way should be called a 'pipebomb argument', exploding in all directions. A shotgun confines the pellets in a viable way-- giving them productive direction.

I think Academia has become a pipebomb-- where all-sorts of kooky brainstorming is encouraged and put directly into practice. But there's no process of vetting-- to ensure the shrapnel flies only in a desirable direction.

In the case of those who resist Covid orthodoxy & its immense hegemony... I am optimistic that the vast majority of resisters appear to confine themselves to invisible 'shotgun barrels'. For example, they oppose censorship-- thankfully, they're not in=favor of keeping the censorship but swapping their opponents beliefs for their own. Their notions of 'freedom' are rather pedestrian western-liberal stuff.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1584

Post by Service Dog »

fafnir wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: I tend to regard “Marxists” as intellectual Vandals and Goths. They wield ‘political theory’ (and, more recently, social theory) as latter day truncheons.
I'm not sure how far this analogy can really be taken. The barbarians generally weren't interested in taking over the institutions and culture of Rome beyond the army. Maybe the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire would be a better analogy?
https://media.patriots.win/post/h4wqwSrC.jpeg

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1585

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Brive1987 wrote:
fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:35 pm
Incidentally, one obvious observation I hadn't read until a few hours ago. Given that the vaccine seems mainly to be reducing the severity of the illness, that would imply it is reducing the selection pressure viruses normally have to become less severe over time.
The faster the virus learns that killing its host is counter productive - the better.
Definitely true of a respiratory disease that needs its host to walk around coughing and sneezing. (OTOH, a bug like cholera is perfectly fine with you dying in 24 hours, so long as you spend the entire time spewing the scours into a water source.)

I'm so sick of folks, ignorant of this basic mechanism of selection, lecturing me on 'The Science'. The Left's love for 'Science' is not for the scientific method, or anything beyond a rote memorization of toplines. Their 'Science' is a dogma, comprised of cherry-picked actual scientific knowledge. They can't even remember -- or, more likely, had always been ignorant of -- the facts about infectious disease before the covid-era memory-holing. And as we witnessed, the Left are actually quite resistant to most of natural selection, especially when applied to humans wrt race, EP, etc. Mostly, as with covid and climate change, they wield 'the settled science' as a cudgel to compel others to behave like they want them to.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1586

Post by fafnir »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote: Definitely true of a respiratory disease that needs its host to walk around coughing and sneezing. (OTOH, a bug like cholera is perfectly fine with you dying in 24 hours, so long as you spend the entire time spewing the scours into a water source.)
Even with cholera, I would have thought it would rather you spewed your guts for 48 hours than 24 hours. Typhoid Mary is the holy grail if you are an infectious pathogen.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1587

Post by Service Dog »

The evidence made me laugh, especially her own tweet.


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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1588

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

School shooting in Texas, but the details don't fit the anti-gun narrative:

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/10/06/pos ... arlington/

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1589

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Why did they hate on Ivermectin so much? Merck's new treatment drug costs $18 to produce, but Merck is charging $712 a dose. Ivermectin costs a few pennies.

https://theintercept.com/2021/10/05/cov ... ridgeback/

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1590

Post by John D »

Hmmmm.... I think I might have the coof. I just had some strong garlic crackers with sharp cheddar cheese and it tasted like I was licking a stone. You know.... when you lick a stone... like granite... and the taste is like a mineral. My cheese and crackers tasted like granite. Also... I ate some strong garlic pickles (what we call "old" pickles" here in Detroit) and they had no garlic flavor at all. Just granite.

I can taste my red wine.... but just barely... no wait... just now the taste of my red wine disappeared... haha.

I had a period of about two hours yesterday where I had muscle pain all over my body. I just walked it off and it went away.

No other symptoms. Maybe I am just psychosomatically tricking myself... but I don't think so.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1591

Post by Brive1987 »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:
fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:35 pm
Incidentally, one obvious observation I hadn't read until a few hours ago. Given that the vaccine seems mainly to be reducing the severity of the illness, that would imply it is reducing the selection pressure viruses normally have to become less severe over time.
The faster the virus learns that killing its host is counter productive - the better.
Definitely true of a respiratory disease that needs its host to walk around coughing and sneezing. (OTOH, a bug like cholera is perfectly fine with you dying in 24 hours, so long as you spend the entire time spewing the scours into a water source.)

I'm so sick of folks, ignorant of this basic mechanism of selection, lecturing me on 'The Science'. The Left's love for 'Science' is not for the scientific method, or anything beyond a rote memorization of toplines. Their 'Science' is a dogma, comprised of cherry-picked actual scientific knowledge. They can't even remember -- or, more likely, had always been ignorant of -- the facts about infectious disease before the covid-era memory-holing. And as we witnessed, the Left are actually quite resistant to most of natural selection, especially when applied to humans wrt race, EP, etc. Mostly, as with covid and climate change, they wield 'the settled science' as a cudgel to compel others to behave like they want them to.
May and Anderson’s “trade-off” model doesn’t dispute the underlying premise that the mission of the virus is effective replication. It merely says that the adopted methodology varies by pathogen and host. Ie increasing mortality is offset by compensatory mechanisms. But not, apparently, if you are a stupid 🦠 like Ebola.

I’m not sure there is settled science which could predict how COVID intends to accommodate the vax. It’s already got runs on the board by being maximally transmissive prior to symptoms. 👍

Hopefully it will not be encouraged to evolve to counter our mission of limiting illness and death.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1592

Post by Brive1987 »

Though Delta apparently thought transmissibility coupled to increased mortality was a good combination 😐

And this innovation occurred prior to the widespread roll-out of vaccine.

It appears we are playing catch up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/delta-va ... -1.6200066

John D
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1593

Post by John D »

Strip steak grilled while covered with salt, pepper, and spices tasted like warm water.

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1594

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

John D wrote: Hmmmm.... I think I might have the coof. I just had some strong garlic crackers with sharp cheddar cheese and it tasted like I was licking a stone.
To confirm your self-diagnosis, lick a stone to see if it tastes like garlic.

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1595

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Brive1987 wrote: Hopefully it will not be encouraged to evolve to counter our mission of limiting illness and death.
Not sure that's everyone's mission.

Service Dog
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1596

Post by Service Dog »

John--

The normie-news says that loss of taste & smell is a symptom of the Original Recipe covid... not the Delta variant.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/delta-varia ... mmon-cold/

So... did you unseal any old jars of 2020 air, or release any old farts from seldom-used throw pillows?

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1597

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Brive1987 wrote: Though Delta apparently thought transmissibility coupled to increased mortality was a good combination 😐

And this innovation occurred prior to the widespread roll-out of vaccine.

It appears we are playing catch up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/delta-va ... -1.6200066
That would be a first in the history of evolution for a virus that did not jump species. For me to accept this, I need a plausible selection pressure that would accomplish this feat. (And, yes, 'the ChiComs released v 1.3.1' would do it.)

A few issues with the study jump out. For starters, it's just mathematical onanism. Further, it presumes testing of the population was uniform for all the variants. We know it wasn't. Finally, although it warns dun-dun-duhhh that:
The increasing virulence of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs will lead to a considerably larger, and more deadly, pandemic than would have occurred in the absence of the emergence of VOCs.
its own graphed data show a marked plummet then sustained cessation of hospitalizations and deaths. This trend is observed around the world.

https://www.cmaj.ca/sites/default/files ... 211248.pdf

The paper will, of course, evade scrutiny, and be hoisted aloft as QED.

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1598

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Service Dog wrote: So... did you unseal any old jars of 2020 air, or release any old farts from seldom-used throw pillows?
Pop any of those chink packing bladders?

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1599

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

The Covidian tyrants are cracking down hard on religious exemption to vax mandates. Turns out, the Pfizer vax was developed using fetal tissue, and they've been trying to hide that fact:

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/pfi ... rom-chief/

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1600

Post by Brive1987 »

I turned on the Apple porn site block specifically so I could also block other degenerate sites. Like news.com.au and smh.com.au

However.

The grapevine says our new NSW Premier is rushing bull at the gate to lift restrictions ASAP. Having been Treasurer he seems to want to turn on the money tap. Go figure.

Maybe he didn’t get the memo that “a freedom taken should never be given back” - unless the demands are made by Minutemen. Or maybe it’s good enough to have set the Nazi precedent and dialling back doesn’t matter? Or maybe the cunning plan was to get the tentacle juice into our veins using carrot and stick. 🤷‍♂️

Needless to say, the other Premiers are shitting bricks.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1601

Post by Brive1987 »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: Though Delta apparently thought transmissibility coupled to increased mortality was a good combination 😐

And this innovation occurred prior to the widespread roll-out of vaccine.

It appears we are playing catch up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/delta-va ... -1.6200066
That would be a first in the history of evolution for a virus that did not jump species. For me to accept this, I need a plausible selection pressure that would accomplish this feat. (And, yes, 'the ChiComs released v 1.3.1' would do it.)

A few issues with the study jump out. For starters, it's just mathematical onanism. Further, it presumes testing of the population was uniform for all the variants. We know it wasn't. Finally, although it warns dun-dun-duhhh that:
The increasing virulence of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs will lead to a considerably larger, and more deadly, pandemic than would have occurred in the absence of the emergence of VOCs.
its own graphed data show a marked plummet then sustained cessation of hospitalizations and deaths. This trend is observed around the world.

https://www.cmaj.ca/sites/default/files ... 211248.pdf

The paper will, of course, evade scrutiny, and be hoisted aloft as QED.
On first glance, isn’t the relevant fact the surge in lethality of the Delta (yellow) variant as other variants decreased in influence?

The study stopped short, the spread of Delta didn’t. In any case, I’m not sure “plummet” is the best word to use here?


Steersman
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1602

Post by Steersman »

fafnir wrote:
Steersman wrote: <snip>
Maybe you think that Moderna and Pfizer are intentionally creating "leaky vaccines" just to boost their bottom line?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_i ... my_of_good
I'd assumed that it was just that creating a non-leaky vaccine to covid was difficult.
Seems like a reasonable assumption. Though not sure that "leaky vaccine" is a viable concept. Presumably the vaccines are designed to attack viruses carrying particular molecular markers. That the viruses may subsequently "evolve" so as to not express or use those molecules - making the immune response no longer effective - doesn't seem to justify the argument that the vaccine was "leaky" to begin with.

Maybe vaccines could be designed to attach viruses carrying a variety of molecular markers, but that seems likely to be a more difficult problem.

<snip>
fafnir wrote: Are you arguing "the good" would be giving everybody antibiotics so that antibiotic resistance becomes universal?
Not at all. For one thing, we generally only take antibiotics if we have an infection of some sort, not to trigger our immune systems to "be on guard". That's generally what we take vaccines for.
fafnir wrote: We can't create perfect antibiotics and we shouldn't make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Currently the virus seems to be adapting to the vaccine and creating resistance in a few months. If we push the vaccine harder globally, the virus will presumably adapt more quickly.
Again, it's not antibiotics but vaccines. Seems you're right that we can't create perfect vaccines. But seems clear that using an imperfect one that might result in the death of only 3 million people is better than waiting around for the perfect one that results in the death of only 1 million people if, in the interim, 5 million people have died because there was no vaccine.

That's what the Wikipedia article on the perfect being the enemy of the good was all about: better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1603

Post by fafnir »

Brive1987 wrote:
Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
Brive1987 wrote: Though Delta apparently thought transmissibility coupled to increased mortality was a good combination 😐

And this innovation occurred prior to the widespread roll-out of vaccine.

It appears we are playing catch up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/delta-va ... -1.6200066
That would be a first in the history of evolution for a virus that did not jump species. For me to accept this, I need a plausible selection pressure that would accomplish this feat. (And, yes, 'the ChiComs released v 1.3.1' would do it.)

A few issues with the study jump out. For starters, it's just mathematical onanism. Further, it presumes testing of the population was uniform for all the variants. We know it wasn't. Finally, although it warns dun-dun-duhhh that:
The increasing virulence of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs will lead to a considerably larger, and more deadly, pandemic than would have occurred in the absence of the emergence of VOCs.
its own graphed data show a marked plummet then sustained cessation of hospitalizations and deaths. This trend is observed around the world.

https://www.cmaj.ca/sites/default/files ... 211248.pdf

The paper will, of course, evade scrutiny, and be hoisted aloft as QED.
On first glance, isn’t the relevant fact the surge in lethality of the Delta (yellow) variant as other variants decreased in influence?

The study stopped short, the spread of Delta didn’t. In any case, I’m not sure “plummet” is the best word to use here?

Is it surging in lethality if it is 2/3 of hospital admissions, 4/5 of ICU admissions, but only half of deaths? I don't see evidence in those graphs of increased lethality.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1604

Post by fafnir »

Steersman wrote:
fafnir wrote:
Steersman wrote: <snip>
Maybe you think that Moderna and Pfizer are intentionally creating "leaky vaccines" just to boost their bottom line?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_i ... my_of_good
I'd assumed that it was just that creating a non-leaky vaccine to covid was difficult.
Seems like a reasonable assumption. Though not sure that "leaky vaccine" is a viable concept. Presumably the vaccines are designed to attack viruses carrying particular molecular markers.
Yes, but was it ever a non-leaky vaccine? If it was, is it still?

From a pre-covid article:
https://www.ft.com/content/a1955694-3ae ... 7bc06f590c
"The scientists make a distinction between these “perfect vaccines”, which stop the individual becoming ill and at the same time prevent the infection being transmitted to others, and “leaky vaccines”, such as the one against Marek’s disease in chickens, which prevent illness but not viral transmission."

"That the viruses may subsequently "evolve" so as to not express or use those molecules - making the immune response no longer effective - doesn't seem to justify the argument that the vaccine was "leaky" to begin with."
If people are still getting infected and becoming infectious, it's a leaky vaccine. Is that not what we are currently being told by our betters?

"Maybe vaccines could be designed to attach viruses carrying a variety of molecular markers, but that seems likely to be a more difficult problem."
Maybe.
Steersman wrote:
fafnir wrote: Are you arguing "the good" would be giving everybody antibiotics so that antibiotic resistance becomes universal?
Not at all. For one thing, we generally only take antibiotics if we have an infection of some sort, not to trigger our immune systems to "be on guard". That's generally what we take vaccines for.
Well, in one case you are trying to wipe out the virus globally, in the other you are trying to increase the odds of survival of an individual. Cholera is bacterial, plague was bacterial. If we treated them like we treat covid and tried to wipe them out in the community without caring about developing resistance, we'd be throwing antibiotics around all over the place. NYT claims something like 50% of the global population has had 1 shot and about 40% have had two shots. When delta appeared those numbers were far lower. If it is only taking a few months for the vaccine to become resistant with relatively low vaccination rates, how long is it going to take when it has more people to work with? Covid is surging in populations like Israel with 90%+ vaccination rates. What's the plan going to be? Weekly booster shots with new vaccines?
Steersman wrote:
fafnir wrote: We can't create perfect antibiotics and we shouldn't make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Currently the virus seems to be adapting to the vaccine and creating resistance in a few months. If we push the vaccine harder globally, the virus will presumably adapt more quickly.
Again, it's not antibiotics but vaccines. Seems you're right that we can't create perfect vaccines. But seems clear that using an imperfect one that might result in the death of only 3 million people is better than waiting around for the perfect one that results in the death of only 1 million people if, in the interim, 5 million people have died because there was no vaccine.
We don't have to choose between making no use of vaccines or mandatiing them on everybody. We could give them to vulnerable people and have them shelter so they were less likely to be exposed, and less likely to spread it if the got it. That way there wouldn't be vaccine resistant variants cropping up in a few months, you'd have a far larger population with natural immunity and we wouldn't have transfered whats left of the global economy to Bezos.
Steersman wrote: That's what the Wikipedia article on the perfect being the enemy of the good was all about: better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good isn't a justification for taking a retarded course of action.

Brive1987
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1605

Post by Brive1987 »

I’m convinced.


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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1606

Post by Brive1987 »



Ultralite be damned

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1607

Post by fafnir »

It feels to me like the reasoning goes:
1. Wiping out covid is practically impossible.
2. The only acceptable goal is to wipe out covid.
3. We should perform the actions that we would take to wipe out covid even though that isn't going to happen.
4. Anybody who argues against this plan is necessarily arguing for doing nothing and has the blood of all the people who have died while we try to wipe covid out on their hands.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1608

Post by Keating »

fafnir wrote: We don't have to choose between making no use of vaccines or mandatiing them on everybody. We could give them to vulnerable people and have them shelter so they were less likely to be exposed, and less likely to spread it if the got it. That way there wouldn't be vaccine resistant variants cropping up in a few months, you'd have a far larger population with natural immunity and we wouldn't have transfered whats left of the global economy to Bezos.
This seemed to me the only reasonable plan when it became obvious that wiping it out was impossible. Given the Chinese may have known it was around as early as May 2019 now, there was and is never any chance of driving it to zero. The only reasonable course of action is to live with it. It certainly isn't a big enough issue to bring about a Great Reset for a New World Order.

Keating
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1609

Post by Keating »

John D wrote: Hmmmm.... I think I might have the coof
Set up a dead man's switch to let us know if you die as opposed to flouncing.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1610

Post by screwtape »

fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:28 pm
I know. However, if you throw around antibiotics in a way that doesn't reliably kill bacteria, and vaccines in a way that doesn't reliably kill viruses.... what you are doing is training the pathogen to develop resistance. The reason we need booster shots of the vaccine is because we have sprayed it around like it was the gas station scene in....[snip]
Vaccines absolutely do not work that way. Resistance to a vaccine happens only through the random mutations of viruses that are successfully infecting and reproducing, and that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that. Just look at vaccines that have been around for many decades and are pretty much universally administered - tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles, rabies, smallpox etc. Nearly everybody gets them and no resistance has developed. Certainly their effectiveness wanes with the passage of time in recipients whilst remaining just as good for the newly immunized, measles being good for twenty years, and smallpox for about forty, and a booster shot takes care of that. Immunity from natural infection also wanes - think of chickenpox immunity, which is extremely high after infection or immunisation, but a few decades later you get it back as shingles, or in the case of a truly messed up immune system you can catch the primary infection of chickenpox again.
As for antibiotic resistance, there is a huge problem waiting in the wings (maybe it has one foot on the stage already) as a result of our profligate and unwise use of the drugs. The only way to combat it would be to take a family of antibiotics and ban their use world-wide, especially in the area of most concern which is the routine administration to farm animals, for a period of time. Probably ten years or so would allow bacteria to become sensitive to them again. We would need to rotate the antibiotics being withheld and those being allowed for use and try to stay one step ahead of the bacterial resistance. This would need a level of co-ordination and co-operation around the world that makes it unlikely to happen, but I don't see another way of managing the issue. Unless, the good old Soviet tech of phage therapy can be developed, but it would be a hard sell at the moment to tell people they must be infected with a lab-engineered virus in order to treat their strep throat or whatever!

John D
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1611

Post by John D »

screwtape wrote:
fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:28 pm
I know. However, if you throw around antibiotics in a way that doesn't reliably kill bacteria, and vaccines in a way that doesn't reliably kill viruses.... what you are doing is training the pathogen to develop resistance. The reason we need booster shots of the vaccine is because we have sprayed it around like it was the gas station scene in....[snip]
Vaccines absolutely do not work that way. Resistance to a vaccine happens only through the random mutations of viruses that are successfully infecting and reproducing, and that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that. Just look at vaccines that have been around for many decades and are pretty much universally administered - tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles, rabies, smallpox etc. Nearly everybody gets them and no resistance has developed. Certainly their effectiveness wanes with the passage of time in recipients whilst remaining just as good for the newly immunized, measles being good for twenty years, and smallpox for about forty, and a booster shot takes care of that. Immunity from natural infection also wanes - think of chickenpox immunity, which is extremely high after infection or immunisation, but a few decades later you get it back as shingles, or in the case of a truly messed up immune system you can catch the primary infection of chickenpox again.
As for antibiotic resistance, there is a huge problem waiting in the wings (maybe it has one foot on the stage already) as a result of our profligate and unwise use of the drugs. The only way to combat it would be to take a family of antibiotics and ban their use world-wide, especially in the area of most concern which is the routine administration to farm animals, for a period of time. Probably ten years or so would allow bacteria to become sensitive to them again. We would need to rotate the antibiotics being withheld and those being allowed for use and try to stay one step ahead of the bacterial resistance. This would need a level of co-ordination and co-operation around the world that makes it unlikely to happen, but I don't see another way of managing the issue. Unless, the good old Soviet tech of phage therapy can be developed, but it would be a hard sell at the moment to tell people they must be infected with a lab-engineered virus in order to treat their strep throat or whatever!
Not all viruses are the same. The coof is a corona virus. I think the common cold and influenza are also corona viruses. These corona viruses easily mutate. The flu shot is often not helpful unless the jab matches the flu strain properly....and... there is no vaccine for the common cold. The virus is too dynamic. So... it makes sense to me that a "leaky" coof vaccine causes the coof to spread variants that are vaccine resistant. Now... I am not saying I know this is happening.... I am not that smart. But... I am skeptical enough to understand this might be the case.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1612

Post by fafnir »

screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
fafnir wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:28 pm
I know. However, if you throw around antibiotics in a way that doesn't reliably kill bacteria, and vaccines in a way that doesn't reliably kill viruses.... what you are doing is training the pathogen to develop resistance. The reason we need booster shots of the vaccine is because we have sprayed it around like it was the gas station scene in....[snip]
Vaccines absolutely do not work that way. Resistance to a vaccine happens only through the random mutations of viruses that are successfully infecting and reproducing, and that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that.
That depends very much on an assumption of how effective the vaccine is at stopping infection / transmission. Given that we needed two shots from day 1, that vaccine was a long way from 100% effective at stopping infection from day 1. Vaccinated people are vulnerable too. It's taken nearly a year to get us globally to ~40% double vaxed and 10% single vaxed. Barring a miracle then, it would take at least 2 years to vaccinate the global population. Even if the vaccine remained as good as it was on day 1 that whole time, you'd be averaging at, what 5%? 10%? of the global population single vaxed at any given time and not very well protected for 2 years incubating variants.

Given that the delta variant originated in India, and I think another variant appeared in South Africa, and it looks like it is going to take something like 2 years to vaccinate the global population..... what is the plan? Having billions of unvaccinated people alongside of the ones you are vaccinating for month after month can't be avoided. It does no good to say that the vaccine would work great if only it were possible to roll it out simultaneously to everybody globally. That is magical thinking.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Just look at vaccines that have been around for many decades and are pretty much universally administered - tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles, rabies, smallpox etc. Nearly everybody gets them and no resistance has developed.
Yes, absolutely. They were completely different diseases. We started trying to vaccinate them when natural immunity was already as prevalent as it was ever likely to get in the community. Tetanus is not spread person to person. Polio is mainly spread through contact with feces and peaked at 35 cases per 100k in the USA. It just doesn't infect remotely so many people. Rabies isn't spread human to human, so again.... the comparison is meaningless. The rest of them have different rates of mutation and infectiousness while the vaccines have different levels of effectiveness. I may be able to beat up Gilbert Gottfried, but probably wouldn't do so well against Tyson Fury. Those examples are killer if I was arguing that vaccines don't ever work. I'm not.

We are a year in to the vaccine rollout, natural immunity is now looking to be, what, 20x better than vaccine immunity and the gap is climbing every day. We are going to need boosters every few months. I don't remember having to get boosters every few months for those other diseases. If the smallpox vaccine being a success implies the covid vaccine will be a success.... how come they were able to go around for years inoculating people with cowpox pus where we are a year in and the vaccine is no longer any use at stopping infection?
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Certainly their effectiveness wanes with the passage of time in recipients whilst remaining just as good for the newly immunized, measles being good for twenty years, and smallpox for about forty, and a booster shot takes care of that.
There is a difference between 40 years and 5 months. If measles adapted in 5 months so the vaccine stopped being effective at stopping infection, we'd have a comparison.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Immunity from natural infection also wanes - think of chickenpox immunity, which is extremely high after infection or immunisation, but a few decades later you get it back as shingles, or in the case of a truly messed up immune system you can catch the primary infection of chickenpox again.
Sure, but not in 5 months. Plus the immune system is much better at killing off covid than the vaccines. The vaccine is now barely any protection against infection. I'm not hearing that about the immune system.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
As for antibiotic resistance, there is a huge problem waiting in the wings (maybe it has one foot on the stage already) as a result of our profligate and unwise use of the drugs. The only way to combat it would be to take a family of antibiotics and ban their use world-wide, especially in the area of most concern which is the routine administration to farm animals, for a period of time. Probably ten years or so would allow bacteria to become sensitive to them again. We would need to rotate the antibiotics being withheld and those being allowed for use and try to stay one step ahead of the bacterial resistance. This would need a level of co-ordination and co-operation around the world that makes it unlikely to happen, but I don't see another way of managing the issue. Unless, the good old Soviet tech of phage therapy can be developed, but it would be a hard sell at the moment to tell people they must be infected with a lab-engineered virus in order to treat their strep throat or whatever!
Right. The same issue makes wiping out covid with a vaccine impossible.

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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1613

Post by fafnir »

Damn! Balled up one of those quote blocks.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Certainly their effectiveness wanes with the passage of time in recipients whilst remaining just as good for the newly immunized, measles being good for twenty years, and smallpox for about forty, and a booster shot takes care of that.
There is a difference between 40 years and 5 months. If measles adapted in 5 months so the vaccine stopped being effective at stopping infection, we'd have a comparison.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Immunity from natural infection also wanes - think of chickenpox immunity, which is extremely high after infection or immunisation, but a few decades later you get it back as shingles, or in the case of a truly messed up immune system you can catch the primary infection of chickenpox again.
Sure, but not in 5 months. Plus the immune system is much better at killing off covid than the vaccines. The vaccine is now barely any protection against infection. I'm not hearing that about the immune system.
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
As for antibiotic resistance, there is a huge problem waiting in the wings (maybe it has one foot on the stage already) as a result of our profligate and unwise use of the drugs. The only way to combat it would be to take a family of antibiotics and ban their use world-wide, especially in the area of most concern which is the routine administration to farm animals, for a period of time. Probably ten years or so would allow bacteria to become sensitive to them again. We would need to rotate the antibiotics being withheld and those being allowed for use and try to stay one step ahead of the bacterial resistance. This would need a level of co-ordination and co-operation around the world that makes it unlikely to happen, but I don't see another way of managing the issue. Unless, the good old Soviet tech of phage therapy can be developed, but it would be a hard sell at the moment to tell people they must be infected with a lab-engineered virus in order to treat their strep throat or whatever!
Right. The same issue makes wiping out covid with a vaccine impossible.

Service Dog
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1614

Post by Service Dog »

In late May 2020... I wrote about my friend-- "PW"-- who lost his mind & tried to murder his housemate (a guy named James).
https://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... se#p496123

Yesterday, for the first time, I saw James.

They're both artists & do install work in galleries. They shared a large industrial loft space for 20 years.

PW had a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He also had manic phases, sometimes enhanced by recreational drugs, lack of sleep, self-isolation.

At the height of last year's lockdown, masking, public fear-- and weeks-passing without govt unemployment money being properly processed-- PW & James were stuck in their windowless concrete bunker (with one other guy renting a small room.)

After some ordinary daily bickering and barbs-- James retreated to his space & went to bed. Then-- in a late-night visit to the bathroom-- he saw PW prowling in the dark, with a demonic look on his face. PW smashed several of his own small porcelain sculptures from a nearby shelf-- so James could not walk barefoot back to his own cluster of rooms. James attempted to retreat to the bathroom-- but PW pursued him.

PW is strong & stocky. James is narrow-shouldered & birdlike. PW said something-like "You messed-with the wrong guy!" & began beating James, tried to put James in a sleeper headlock, and... as the scuffle progressed... PW gripped a jagged triangle of 1/4-inch acrylic... maybe 5 inches across the hypotenuse... and gouged James several times in the neck and back. Their renter woke & intervened. PW fled into the night. James & renter changed the door lock. A day or 2 later-- PW attempted to re-enter the building via a roof vent... and was arrested. Restraining orders were filed. The cops took PW to a large, grim public hospital for psych evaluation-- but he was quickly released as the hospital was prioritizing Covid cases. PW was loose for over a week. He posted cryptic & sinister shit to social media. By phone he made threats to his own brother in a distant state. That's when another artist friend contacted me-- warning me, asking if I knew PW's whereabouts, attempting to recruit me to contact/locate/meet/and bring-in PW to another psych hospital. The plan was half-baked & I declined. Eventually he did spend weeks in psych eval-- I don't know if it was voluntary.

As covid abbreviated the court schedule & an epidemic of BLM get-out-of-jail-free antics transpired-- the felony charges against PW were reduced to misdemeanors. I think he spent little or no time in jail. Maybe more weeks of psych eval?

PW did not contact me for many months. When he did call-- he was renting a room, living humbly, working a little. He mentioned none of this, & I didn't hint that I knew. More months passed-- he was in my neighborhood, attending an art opening. I agreed to stop-by. We sat on a park bench & he told his side of the story. His description of events matches what others said-- I think he knew he couldn't deny the truth. He tried to minimize it by describing it as a momentary episode, safely behind him... see how calm & normal he is now?

Yesterday I saw James on the street, first contact I've had with him. We walked & talked. He always reminds me of Gonzo from the Muppets, so his twitchy & jumbled demeanor... was par for the course. But also attributable to the attack. He began with a bunch of details about how his father had died right before the attack, and his mother diagnosed with cancer. As if he were the one who needed to justify his mental state. Then he was overly-concerned with whether I believed the attack was serious & all PW's fault. He kept rebutting phantom doubts I hadn't expressed. He kept forgetting what point he was trying to make-- asking me to prompt him ('What were we just talking-about'?). It seemed like his mind couldn't process several simultaneous thoughts 'marked Urgent!"-- it was as-if the attack were quite recent. Or-- like a guilty person trying to get his story straight on the fly-- if he were immediately caught & interrogated-- but unable to calculate how-much the cops already-know. <--Maybe that's due to me having-been a far-closer friend to PW... so James was trying gauge whether I was now friend or affiliated-with his foe.

Eventually our conversation progressed beyond the big event. And then-- a red flag. James said he "heard on NPR" that "65%" of all porn is now "AI deep fakes" putting new faces on existing porn. He made cryptic reference to his personal-theory why Sesame Street recently introduced an autistic character-- something about Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, & Bezos being autistic & that their-kind now rules the world. He said something about AI processing of voice inputs-- so corporate & political entities now have realtime lie-detector capability... (Ok maybe so) ...but this can be paired with AI deepfake technology to track individuals' cognition and auto-generate realtime content designed to keep your attention glued-to the screen. uhhhh... no.

I already-knew that James usually presents as a square little nerd. But... given a few drinks/ or some cocaine/ or a girl he just-met... James will fail to just 'be himself'... instead he'll improvise a cool-edgy-art-guy persona... with poor results. Like a square white guy attempting to 'act black' for the first time ever-- impromptu-- in a rare conversation with a black dude.

So, basically, when James finally relaxed & decided I'm on-his-side regarding the attack... he let his guard down. Removed whatever 'mask' he had been (pointlessly) wearing-- trying to appear credible about the attack.

Then he let his real opinions flow freely... and... he's a dimwitted kook.


I plan to keep my distance from both PW & James. I'll probably bump-into them around town. Keep it polite & cursory.

Service Dog
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1615

Post by Service Dog »

screwtape wrote: that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that
So... the covid vaccines won't work unless you vaccinate every person living in a third-world shithole & every bat in a wuhan cave.

fafnir
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1616

Post by fafnir »

Service Dog wrote:
screwtape wrote: that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that
So... the covid vaccines won't work unless you vaccinate every person living in a third-world shithole & every bat in a wuhan cave.
No, no, no...... it won't work unless you vaccinate every person living in a third-world shithole & every bat in a wuhan cave *simultaneously*.

screwtape
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1617

Post by screwtape »

fafnir wrote:
That depends very much on an assumption of how effective the vaccine is at stopping infection / transmission. Given that we needed two shots from day 1, that vaccine was a long way from 100% effective at stopping infection from day 1. Vaccinated people are vulnerable too. It's taken nearly a year to get us globally to ~40% double vaxed and 10% single vaxed. Barring a miracle then, it would take at least 2 years to vaccinate the global population. Even if the vaccine remained as good as it was on day 1 that whole time, you'd be averaging at, what 5%? 10%? of the global population single vaxed at any given time and not very well protected for 2 years incubating variants.

Given that the delta variant originated in India, and I think another variant appeared in South Africa, and it looks like it is going to take something like 2 years to vaccinate the global population..... what is the plan? Having billions of unvaccinated people alongside of the ones you are vaccinating for month after month can't be avoided. It does no good to say that the vaccine would work great if only it were possible to roll it out simultaneously to everybody globally. That is magical thinking.
It doesn't change the principal that resistance to vaccines does not develop the more you use them. Because the 'resistance' is merely genetic change that occurs during viral reproduction. The more infections/viral reproduction you prevent, the more occasions of mutation you prevent.

fafnir wrote:
screwtape wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:30 am
Just look at vaccines that have been around for many decades and are pretty much universally administered - tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles, rabies, smallpox etc. Nearly everybody gets them and no resistance has developed.
Yes, absolutely. They were completely different diseases. We started trying to vaccinate them when natural immunity was already as prevalent as it was ever likely to get in the community. Tetanus is not spread person to person. Polio is mainly spread through contact with feces and peaked at 35 cases per 100k in the USA. It just doesn't infect remotely so many people. Rabies isn't spread human to human, so again.... the comparison is meaningless. The rest of them have different rates of mutation and infectiousness while the vaccines have different levels of effectiveness. I may be able to beat up Gilbert Gottfried, but probably wouldn't do so well against Tyson Fury. Those examples are killer if I was arguing that vaccines don't ever work. I'm not.
I don't think the comparison is meaningless at all. They are all different diseases, yet the vaccines keep on working as well as ever in the absence of mutation. Some viruses are better than others at mutating, and that simply means you need to immunize a higher percentage of the population to gain worthwhile herd immunity. Now you may have a point if you want to argue that such immunization rates are difficult to achieve, but deciding to not even try is simply allowing the virus to mutate more often and into more variable forms. I think you will agree that is counterproductive.

fafnir wrote: We are a year in to the vaccine rollout, natural immunity is now looking to be, what, 20x better than vaccine immunity and the gap is climbing every day. We are going to need boosters every few months. I don't remember having to get boosters every few months for those other diseases. If the smallpox vaccine being a success implies the covid vaccine will be a success.... how come they were able to go around for years inoculating people with cowpox pus where we are a year in and the vaccine is no longer any use at stopping infection?
You have to have a brand new vaccine each year to account for changes in the influenza virus. This is a similar phenomenon. And 20x? I haven't seen anything so optimistic, with the clear winner in terms of strength of immunity being natural infection followed by vaccination. Even relatively poor vaccines remain as (in)effective as they ever were, after decades of use. Think of BCG for TB, the old TAB for typhoid, or the old Kolle vaccine for cholera. They were not very good at their job, but were the best we had. Even today, though superseded, they work as well as they did when introduced.

Just as, for example, the new oral cholera vaccine is dramatically better than the old injectable, it may be possible to do better with the coronaviridae. That may prove difficult, perhaps impossible, but that is a different argument to yours of claiming that the more you exhibit a vaccine, the more resistance will develop against it. That's confusing the mechanism of antibiotic resistance, caused by inappropriate use, inadequate dosages and incomplete courses, where bacteria only develop resistance if they are exposed to non-lethal antibiotics. Coronaviruses will mutate whether there are vaccines or not. Now given that vaccines are the only useful way we have of preventing infection outside lockdowns, doesn't it seem reasonable to try our best? And it isn't as if they don't give us an advantage: I have been shown the unpublished projections for this province of what is expected by public health here if vaccination rates remain the same. For every five new infections, four will be among the unvaccinated. Which group should we be advising the public to be in?

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1618

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Service Dog wrote:
screwtape wrote: that requires vulnerable non-immune hosts to get infected. If you achieve a high vaccination rate the virus can't do that
So... the covid vaccines won't work unless you vaccinate every person living in a third-world shithole & every bat in a wuhan cave.
I don't have the spoons to search for it, but I recall screw talking a ways back something to the effect of how in olden times, a disease would sweep through a population, kill 20% of the weak, then the remaining 80% would be immune and that disease would in future not pose a threat to that population.

Now he's regurgitating this branch covidian mumbo jumbo.

Service Dog
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1619

Post by Service Dog »

screwtape wrote: Because the 'resistance' is merely genetic change that occurs during viral reproduction. The more... viral reproduction you prevent, the more occasions of mutation you prevent.
I wonder (I'm not claiming expertise) -- whether there's intramural competition within a host... among viral strains. If one host can support a viral load of 100 coronaballs... then does 88 coronaballs in that host's system mean there's only 'room' left for 12 more?

In which case a vax which blocks 99 coronaballs... but fails to stop 1 mutant... has cleared-the way... plenty of empty real-estate for the 1 mutant to culture 99 vax-proof mutant siblings.

Matt Cavanaugh
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Re: Steerzing in a New Direction...

#1620

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Brive1987 wrote: The study stopped short, the spread of Delta didn’t. In any case, I’m not sure “plummet” is the best word to use here?

Those are either Minecraft screen caps, or only show the portion of total cases made up by the Delta.

Here's the raw number of cases over time:

plummet.png
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