Random Rant Thread

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The single most devastating, harmful message from the WHO/CDC was not "You shouldn't wear a mask" but another one they made later: "You should wear a mask if you are sick."

This single message drove literally tens of millions of people away from mask-wearing in the US alone.

Firstly, we already knew of asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic transmissions at that time. So the message itself was complete nonsense.

And secondly, and most importantly, who the hell would wear one in public if that's basically signaling to the world that they've got Covid? In fact, those who were indeed sick also chose NOT to wear masks in order to avoid potential trouble. And they ended up spreading their viruses everywhere.

You really don't have to be an expert on sociology and psychology to see the problem. I'm still horrified by the total carelessness and ignorance of the authorities which this episode revealed.

[K1power]

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In a non-mask-wearing community, the reliability of contact tracing dramatically decreases because you never know where and when and to whom you might have spread your viruses. Could be anywhere, anytime, anyone. Doesn't have to be restaurants, bars, gyms etc. It could be a bookstore, thrift shop, grocery, museum, etc. Since everyone breathes and talks everywhere with nothing to block their aerosols and droplets, anything is fair game.

OTOH, in a mask-wearing community, you can pretty much discard those relatively safe places/venues. Infection is not impossible in those places, but the chances are negligibly small with masks.

I should probably really stop ranting about masks. I started feeling like an automated robot.

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This is what they call Elon Musk Cycle, but covers pretty much 99% of those people.

In fact, this chart describes Sweden fanboys much better than it does Elon Musk.

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!!

Overall, the figures indicate that less than one in four contacts of those who are infected are reached, and just four in ten contacts of those who test positive for the virus.

This is despite the fact that the test and trace budget has now risen to a staggering £22bn, more than the combined funding for all police and fire services in the UK.

Contact tracing is hard. I don't think the UK missing three quarters of the close contacts is as scandalous as they make it out to be. I mean, it's pretty bad, but not surprising at all.

But £22bn...! That's a fucking Wowzer.

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The latest/current consensus is that kids can and do infect adults. Small children are much less likely, but teens are perfectly capable of spreading it to adults and elderly people.

Many experts now suspect that school children, 11-17, are a major driving force of household infections.

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This is a comedy. It seems purely political now. Almost none of what the PM said makes any sense. It sounds like classic Denialism Stage IV.

Someone, tell him the vaccines are around the corner, and that he lost his bet big time (at a cost). He might not know that. Unfortunately for him and his epidemiologist, the Covid deaths per capita in Norway won't be anywhere near Sweden's in the end. "Finland will have a huge 2nd wave, but we won't, because we will be partially immune." No, Sir. Finland still could - one never knows with this virus - but you are having a rather big one yourself now, PM. So, pretty obviously incorrect.

Smart people can and do make mistakes. Shit happens. But you gotta have the integrity to own it.

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Entire Upper Midwest is in a world of shit right now, and Thanksgiving has just started.

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So, Thanksgiving.

First of all, my humble middle finger to all the anti-Bayesian with their harmful pride, and the idiotic Truthers with their vengeful inferiority complex.

And now, sincere gratitude to my families, friends, and all the people who care.

Finally, to all the health care workers in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving to y'all.

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How such a highly advanced country like Sweden has been largely captured by a typical academic charlatan like Anders Tegnell is a VERY interesting sociological question. It seems like a case of mass delusion. So many Swedes have been clutching at straws to prove their Dear State Epidemiologist is right. I see typical sophist arguments everywhere. I don't understand Swedish, so I must have been missing tons more.

Yes, I've been ranting a lot about the country yesterday and today despite having told everyone not to, but it's not even really about Covid anymore for me. It's 90% sociological interest. It's just too interesting to pass on.

And I'm pretty sure that their hardened super-defensive stance, almost akin to the way Trumpians double down on things, has a lot to do with the fact that they have been constantly criticized, often very unfairly, by pundits and experts in other countries. In a way it's foreigners - most notably American liberals - that kicked the ladder away from them. And they can't back down now even though the country seems destined to lose a large number of lives soon.

They seem to have thought that they would end up losing 10k lives to reach some sort of herd immunity. In reality, they might lose almost as many without ever getting anywhere near the coveted immunological status, and will certainly have to rely on the artificial herd immunity = mass vaccination just like everyone else.  Catastrophically flawed calculations and assumptions dictated their policies. Tegnell said back in July that 40% of people in Stockholm might be already immune. Turned out to be almost comically wrong. Then kept saying for a full month in October that his country wasn't having a second wave, because, because, she can't be!

Yes, she can, and is. He was wrong.

They say they have been "unlucky." I'd say they are extremely lucky that they aren't likely to become another Belgium.

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It's astonishing that those lawyers for Trump have absolutely no shame. And I'm not talking about shame in any professional sense.

All those clowns have been doing is piss off the judges and get thrown out of the court. They don't even read their own documents. They clearly just copy and paste sentences from some pdf, which turns it into a complete mess in the most predictable way (e.g. manysentencesreadlikethisbecausethereisnospacebetweenwords).

And those people represent the President of the United States of America.

It's really astonishing, breathtaking.

Theodor Adorno didn't go far enough in his analysis of the reactionary mind. You really, really must treat them like children.

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The biggest problem with the Covid Truthers and Swediots (overwhelmingly American, British or German) is that they obfuscate the fact that the Covid fatalities and injuries have been underreported and underestimated if anything.

We will most certainly have to revise most of the stats upward in the future in hindsight.

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There was this paper submitted in mid March which argued that either 36%, 40% or 68% of Britons might have been already infected. I remember reading an FT article on that, and chuckling as it sounded to me like complete nonsense.

I was reminded of the paper yesterday and:

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1

"José Lourenço, Robert Paton, Mahan Ghafari, Moritz Kraemer, Craig Thompson, Peter Simmonds, Paul Klenerman, Sunetra Gupta"

LOL. Surprise, surprise.

These people, the same goddamn people, they just pop up wherever you see crap studies.

Journalists must do due diligence before almost uncritically amplifying crap by utter cranks. This woman penned the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for that "open up everything while shielding the most vulnerable" nonsense in the UK (and praised Sweden, of course). That should've discredited the entire thing immediately.

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The amount of logical/cognitive/analytical acrobatics that you'd have to perform in order to STILL believe Sweden had the right strategy on Covid-19 is about the same as the amount you'd need in order to believe Trump actually won the election. It has entered the Atlantis/Alien Abduction/Nessie/Hitler Is Alive in Brazil territory.

I'd fucking hate to be Swedish now. I don't want to know what it feels like to be the pin to hold together the asinine pride of contrarian dweebs from all over the world. It'd be pretty much that Edward Norton in Fight Club situation.

Those imbeciles now distrust the Swedish government agency, who published the data that say there had already been 4,800 excess deaths in 2020 so far (and growing). They flat out refuse to accept that number. That's similar to Trumpians calling Brian Kemp a corrupt agent for Team Biden.

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If you hate lockdown so bloody much, lionize and idolize Japan instead! It's a much better example!

Ah, you are against masks, too. Too bad, lol.

Such typical people.