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Post by K1power on Mar 19, 2021 14:16:26 GMT 1
Sadly accurate.  |
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 30, 2021 8:31:54 GMT 1
Well, I got busy and all, but am still alive.
Obviously we are nowhere near the end of it regarding the pandemic, nor are we at the bottom of it, so this day doesn't signify anything about it. But I was taking dump an hour or so ago, and momentarily reflected on what this whole thing had taught me.
To be frank, the conclusion was that it didn't "teach" me anything new or interesting. Nothing was truly unpredictable.
But there were a few surprising things that wouldn't have surfaced without this whole fiasco, not on the scale they did anyway. And one of them is how incredibly narcissistic and self-important people are.
I think the rate of my using that word "narcissistic" in this thread has been at all-time high throughout this latest round of rants, and there's clearly a reason for that.
If there is such thing as the central theme of this rant thread, it is to question the authority, to put it in the least fancy way. To smash the infallibility of the elite consensus. But at this point, I'm unwilling to do that despite the fact that there are the same number of utter idiots up there as before, because I just don't see how to avoid sounding like I'm defending or even celebrating ignorance when I do that.
This is different from typical leftist intellectuals secretly or even openly despising the Ignorant Masses whom they are supposed to defend and help prosper. It's just that the sheer amount of people's narcissism makes me suffocate.
For example, someone compared Trumpians to the dudes in Fight Club. I had to disagree. Those Trumpian idiots aren't even the space monkeys. They are so much more in love with themselves than that. Yes, they are all products of an overpromising society, but the Trumpians, even the hardcore ones, seem utterly unable to let go of their own pettiness and self-delusion even a tiny bit.
Those people are hopeless. You can't work with people like them. They are literally full of themselves. Read the testimonies of those Trumpians at the Capitol. Made me throw up literally. Yet they think they are fighting "the liberal elites" whose "elitism" and indeed "narcissism" will destroy us.
And needless to say, I see this narcissism fest on the left too, though I won't go into that now (would be too long).
It has become tiring, and I realized that at that rate my rants would be or at least appear to be mostly punching down. On lockdown, on trade, on vaccines, on virtually everything, it would become a story about wounded ego and doubling down on crap.
What story in this world is NOT about that, you might ask. Yeah, you've got a point. But why would I rant to punch down to defend Joe Biden or Mario Draghi or whomever else twice a day here from Joe dumbass Schmucks who can't deal with their own idiocy and simply project their own crap onto the "system" or "elite" or whatever the fuck else? That's roughly what I would end up doing. What's the point of doing that?
So, I'm pretty tired, and that's not just because I got busy.
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 16, 2021 6:00:10 GMT 1
Indeed, airborne it is.
Why are we still talking about this after a full year of the pandemic? Partly because it's hard to prove these things, but mainly because conventional wisdom dies hard.
Even today many doctors and "experts" believe that the airborne theory is wrong and that washing hands religiously is the best defense (e.g. Anders Tegnell of Sweden called the airborne theory "complete nonsense"). As I said many times, washing hands is good. You absolutely should wash your hands. But the likelihood of that preventing you from getting infected is minuscule, because that's not the dominant route of the viral infection.
It's increasingly clear that this particular conventional wisdom - viruses transmitted only through fomites or large droplets in close proximity - was wrong. In fact, it's extremely hard to find cases of fomite transmission.
Like I said, we had so much confusion in terms of messaging by the authorities, such as the WHO and CDC, largely because of this refusal to acknowledge the fatal flaw - to put it mildly - of the conventional wisdom in a large segment of the medical world and academia. It took a year of a pandemic for us to even reach this point. People kept ignoring the importance of ventilation, and kept scolding people chilling and minding their own business at the beach.
And it's pretty clear that what we have learned through tackling this particular virus can be applied to other viruses as well. Much of our understanding on the flu was most likely wrong or at least misguided too.
Conventional wisdom dies hard, sometimes at an enormous cost. Recall how many years it took for the germ theory to be widely accepted, and think of how many people had to die because of that. Obviously this case is nowhere near as bad as that one, but I expect the world of epidemiology and virology to be drastically different after this.
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 16, 2021 6:49:45 GMT 1
And the CDC's decision to further delay their recommendation on the J&J vaccine is just infuriating. They have invigorated the anti-vaxxers ten-fold now over... what? A KNOWN rare condition mostly among younger female that can be triggered by vaccination.
They seem to have no concept of cost-benefit. Fucking imbeciles.
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 16, 2021 19:27:06 GMT 1
Jesus fucking Christ South African variant may evade protection from Pfizer vaccine, Israeli study sayswww.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/south-african-variant-can-break-through-pfizer-vaccine-israeli-study-says-2021-04-10/Are these media outlets in the business of creating panic for the sake of creating panic? This shit article is so wrong on so many multiple levels that I don't know where to begin. And I'm not a fucking expert. The author says the variant may be able to "break through" Pfizer vaccine. As if that were some novel thing. Viruses can "break through" virtually any vaccine. ANY vaccine. The "traditional" standard SARS-CoV-2 can "break through" Pfizer vaccine too. No shit. The point is that the "breakthrough" is not significant enough for us to care about. It's not even newsworthy. To cut the long story short, the paper does not at any point suggest that "South African variant may evade protection from the Pfizer vaccine." Whatever the paper is trying to prove, that ain't it. The paper is basically full of good news. It's just a preprint, and many things in it are kind of vague, but it is far from being a doom paper that Reuters implies that it is. Again, why do they keep doing this? Since Reuters "reported" this, many other media outlets followed. Such incredible irresponsibility. And you know what, I don't think it's just sensationalism, but much of it is actually pure stupidity and ignorance. Or, to be more precise, the lack of literacy in general. They don't know how to interpret data. They don't know how to read charts. They don't know in what manner scientific experiments/analyses are conducted. Basic scientific/analytical literacy is severely lacking. The quality of reporters and editors really, really nosedived over the past few decades. |
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Post by Kenshin (Banned) on Apr 17, 2021 0:11:53 GMT 1
Are these media outlets in the business of creating panic for the sake of creating panic? Fun fact: When I read that question, I made a funny face and immediately (!) remembered that tweet from Dawkins, that you shared some years ago, in which he basically wondered how Christians are now fighting against each other and if that ever was a thing before... or something to that degree. Maybe you remember.
I mean, that and your question is just so obvious.
I hate the media. However, I would say that sensationalism is absolutely the driving force, even if it is somewhat subconscious... like a status quo that has been established and nobody, for their own benefit, wants to question anymore. Then again, sensationalism has been probably a thing ever since "media" was invented some thousands years ago, and there is still non-delusional and fine work out there, and consuming that kind is always a relief.
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gols
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Post by gols on Apr 20, 2021 16:36:50 GMT 1
And the CDC's decision to further delay their recommendation on the J&J vaccine is just infuriating. They have invigorated the anti-vaxxers ten-fold now over... what? A KNOWN rare condition mostly among younger female that can be triggered by vaccination. They seem to have no concept of cost-benefit. Fucking imbeciles. As someone who is much more well-read than most on this subject, what should people actually know about the blood clot thing? |
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 21, 2021 3:31:24 GMT 1
Are these media outlets in the business of creating panic for the sake of creating panic? Fun fact: When I read that question, I made a funny face and immediately (!) remembered that tweet from Dawkins, that you shared some years ago, in which he basically wondered how Christians are now fighting against each other and if that ever was a thing before... or something to that degree. Maybe you remember.
I mean, that and your question is just so obvious.
I hate the media. However, I would say that sensationalism is absolutely the driving force, even if it is somewhat subconscious... like a status quo that has been established and nobody, for their own benefit, wants to question anymore. Then again, sensationalism has been probably a thing ever since "media" was invented some thousands years ago, and there is still non-delusional and fine work out there, and consuming that kind is always a relief. Yes, sensationalism is ingrained at the core of "journalism" to begin with, so that always plays some part, but sometimes stupidity/ignorance cannot be ignored. As they say, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, and in these cases I find the ratio between the can't-help-it bad habit of sensationalism and pure ignorance/stupidity to be around 1:4. Thinking that's the other way around (= 4:1, or even 5:0) can lead you to all kinds of horrible dead end too. Now, having said all this, I've grown reluctant to do this "media=bad" stuff since it has become an enormous industry to bitch endlessly about "fake media." Whatever I say will be drowning in the sea of that deeply dangerous right-wing culture of narcissistic grievances and self-centered conspiracy theories, which is pretty much all the American right has now. Full-blown Red Dawn shit, of They Are Coming To Get Us! hysteria. It was entirely predictable, but seeing so many people consumed by that crap, including the kind of people that I (apparently wrongly) thought knew better, I'm getting increasingly quieter and quieter on these issues. I shouldn't be, but it's hard to convince myself that I can just carry on the way I used to. |
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 21, 2021 3:51:45 GMT 1
And the CDC's decision to further delay their recommendation on the J&J vaccine is just infuriating. They have invigorated the anti-vaxxers ten-fold now over... what? A KNOWN rare condition mostly among younger female that can be triggered by vaccination. They seem to have no concept of cost-benefit. Fucking imbeciles. As someone who is much more well-read than most on this subject, what should people actually know about the blood clot thing? I think it's pretty clear now that there are links between the CVST issue and vaccines, primarily but not exclusively for young/young-ish/middle-aged women. It's an extremely rare condition as you know. The benefit of the one-shot vaccine like J&J vastly, vastly outweighs that risk. I sometimes suspect that people in general don't understand the inherent risk of medicine in general. It's a difficult topic, though, because that's the matter of social consensus, which is quite often based on benign ignorance of the general public. Anyway, the issue is that these long days of "pause" most likely won't give us any new information. What they should do won't change. They are simply creating an unnecessary theater. |
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gols
Novice Member
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Post by gols on Apr 21, 2021 15:02:22 GMT 1
Like I said, we had so much confusion in terms of messaging by the authorities, such as the WHO and CDC, largely because of this refusal to acknowledge the fatal flaw - to put it mildly - of the conventional wisdom in a large segment of the medical world and academia. It took a year of a pandemic for us to even reach this point. People kept ignoring the importance of ventilation, and kept scolding people chilling and minding their own business at the beach.
They have the more current guidance elsewhere on their website, but a lot of people are probably going to visit the above page and get useless advice.
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 23, 2021 21:45:15 GMT 1
Like I said, we had so much confusion in terms of messaging by the authorities, such as the WHO and CDC, largely because of this refusal to acknowledge the fatal flaw - to put it mildly - of the conventional wisdom in a large segment of the medical world and academia. It took a year of a pandemic for us to even reach this point. People kept ignoring the importance of ventilation, and kept scolding people chilling and minding their own business at the beach.
They have the more current guidance elsewhere on their website, but a lot of people are probably going to visit the above page and get useless advice.
I hear that the truth is that there is a significant faction in the WHO who are still willing to die with the conventional wisdom. They resist the drastic revision in the name of "not conclusively proven" while not dismissing it out right either since they know doing that would severely damage their reputation. So, they are playing that same old self-preservation game. In other words, they are yet another group of people who cannot for the life of them ever admit they were ever wrong on anything. They think doing that would destroy their career and social standing. And the tragedy is that they may be right. Maybe we do live in that kind of a society whose ethos is that only losers acknowledge their mistakes. |
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 23, 2021 21:59:51 GMT 1
I regret to inform you that I'm almost in full agreement with David Brooks. Yes, David Brooks. The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worsewww.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/opinion/trump-gop.htmlIt's the NYT and behind the paywall, but the gist of the column is what the title says. Things are much, much worse in the American right-wing world than they ever were when Donald Trump was the president. And it's extremely easy to explain why. It has everything to do with one of the most frequently mentioned themes in this thread, namely the process of radicalization that someone who used to have power goes through after losing it. You see this over and over again in history, and most atrocities in the past have something to do with that process. Honestly I don't think there's anything that can stop this downward spiral. The rest of the world ought to be scared shitless about the course that US politics is very clearly taking. Its destination is an incredibly, incredibly dark place. |
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 24, 2021 23:02:02 GMT 1
The way these people string words together is very interesting, and by "these people" I mean Oxford graduates who studied the "Classics."
You may say it's embarrassing, but the overuse of vacuous modifiers - of which I'm also often guilty in real life - seems to be a hallmark of those British Eton elites. They are so drunk on their own adjectives that they don't seem to mind making little sense.
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Post by Kenshin (Banned) on Apr 24, 2021 23:11:32 GMT 1
I don't know what you guys are talking about right now. Something very important indeed. However, since this is the rant thread and all, I just want to - and I am very drunk right now ( I have a few days off) get it all off. You can say this and that, share stuff on Facebook and whatnot... but what my mother just told me... I just had to get drunk. This isn't normal for my city. She was just at a bus stop and wanted to get home, but some terrible people got into an argument, and the German guy just got.. you know, fucked. The other guy, from Chechnya probably, he kicked the guy in the chest and head over and over again.
I just don't understand this. All I copuld do is take her into my arms. She was even brave enough to say "please stop or I am calling the police". The guy was aggresive then and yelled "so call the police!". The guy was bleeding all over his face. The police fortunaly arrived after some people stopped (cars)... I just don't know. I'm out.
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Post by miscmisc on Apr 27, 2021 20:59:19 GMT 1
That kind of "incidents" happen more frequently than before due to the stress of the pandemic, and the only reason for why the case count of such "incidents" is actually lower than average according to the stats is - yes, you guessed it right - that a majority of countries have been locked down for a very long time = significantly fewer occasions where strangers interact with each other. Cases of domestic violence skyrocketed meanwhile.
That wasn't really the case earlier in the pandemic, but the mood very clearly changed around late 2020.
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