Cancer of the world (Split from “e-mobility devices banned from city buses in Erie Pennsylvania”)

[meepmeepmayer]

Oh boy, this thread... (Just posting this so nobody thinks its existence means any kind of agreement or endorsement. Certainly not from me! Not that I read any of it.)

[Freeforester]

None the wiser, unscathed and only potentially better informed - sounds like ‘bliss’. 
 

How the deal was handled in the EU -‘cosy’! (Settings, auto translate, set to English, as desired):

 

[0000]

10 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Just posting this so nobody thinks its existence means any kind of agreement or endorsement.

Yes, we certainly wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea that you'd endorse the ability to speak civilly and link to material on matters of global consequence such as:

• bodily sovereignty, experimental medical products, informed consent, and mandates and how these relate to civic and economic participation
• whether one "is allowed to" opine on basic statistics without a related accredited degree in matters of health
• corruption in academia and governance
• the ethics of changing long-standing definitions to suit political outcomes
• conflicts of interest and regulatory capture in various industries and how the "revolving door" affects economic and politic outcomes
• committing blatant fraud and ethics violations in (a) profoundly consequential medical trial(s)
• how the climate change narrative is being used to subvert respective national sovereignty and deliberately decrease standards of living by raising energy costs

and more in the Off-Topic section of this discussion forum.

10 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Certainly not from me! Not that I read any of it

Your preference of purity in remaining sheltered from consequential topics of discussion has been duly noted and has greatly contributed to the ongoing discussion

[Planemo]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:13 AM, Flygonial said:

I do feel as though the tone from @Planemo's comment is patronizing and distasteful

Harsh, but I could find far more scathing words for the individuals that I come across on a daily basis who think the world revolves around them. In any event I can live with the comments you made about me as imo they are far milder traits than those presented by a large proportion of the people I see in the world today. 

On 7/16/2023 at 9:14 PM, Flygonial said:

Though you've pinned blame on capitalism

I never pinned the blame on capitalism. I said that it was one part of the problem.

On 7/16/2023 at 9:14 PM, Flygonial said:

There will always be entitled people too, and in fact I don't believe that most people in our dominantly capitalist world today are actually that bad at their core, but like I said, what do you expect with the way things are?

I expect people to behave with decency, integrity, respect, humbleness and honesty irrespective of their personal situation.

This can be applied whether you are struggling to pay for a tin of beans or if you are a billionaire. As an aside, and as you can probably guess, I don't subscribe to the fact that harsh times should afford a free pass into narcissism, disrespect or criminality. It is entirely possible to live by a good moral code even when times are tough. Far too many people don't. A bit like when do-gooders say 'oh yeah, the local kids are a bit naughty, it's because all the youth clubs have shut down'. Oh please.

And I don't like the way that 'naughty' has been dumbed down these days. Naughty isn't nearly a strong enough word for feral teens that run riot smashing things up, throwing projectiles at passing police cars, openly swear at police officers (whilst thrusting cameras into their faces), break into buildings/domestic sheds and nick anything that isn't bolted down. And to really rub salt in the wounds, when these blights on society are caught we get an outcry from the families of said low-lifes who fondly describe them as 'lovable rogues' who are simply 'misunderstood' and have only been tainted because 'there isn't anything else for them to do'.

Of course, I use this as an example of just one small part of society which has lost it's way. Theres plenty of adults around who have the same lack of decency which was the issue I referred to in my very first post.

[Punxatawneyjoe]

3 hours ago, Planemo said:

feral teens that run riot smashing things up, throwing projectiles at passing police cars, openly swear at police officers (whilst thrusting cameras into their faces), break into buildings/domestic sheds and nick anything that isn't bolted down. And to really rub salt in the wounds, when these blights on society are caught we get an outcry from the families of said low-lifes who fondly describe them as 'lovable rogues' who are simply 'misunderstood' and have only been tainted because 'there isn't anything else for them to do'.

You can be sure the people who you are describing have nothing to do with capitalism. These are usually the helicopter parented , entitled and lazy losers on the dole waiting for the next hand out.

 

[Freeforester]

A less visible, yet potentially more insidious aspect of the ‘off-topic’ topic:

 

https://philipmcmillan.substack.com/p/potential-covid-19-vaccine-autoimmunity?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

[Planemo]

1 hour ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

You can be sure the people who you are describing have nothing to do with capitalism.

I agree. But I don't know how much clearer I can make it that I never said capitalism is the root of all evil. I believe it's a part of it.

Some people seem to have been triggered by my mere mention of the word and remained blinkered to everything else I said.

I still believe capitalism (medium to large scale) is a separate problem because it can quite easily nurture greed, even in people who were previously of good standing. If they become successful greed sets in and breeds narcissism and with that an overall reduction in respect for other people. A Chinese 'sweat shop' being an example. I would bet my hat that the MD of the sweat shop is now also an ar$e outside of work as well, but will readily accept that prior to the sweat shop they may have been a decent person. It can go from this right up to the hugely in debt water company I mentioned at the beginning. Greed.

 

 

[Freeforester]

 8 mins in for N95 mask ‘efficacy’, for most wearers I’d wager:

https://youtu.be/I5Xn7SeaUVI

 

[Eucner]

19 minutes ago, Freeforester said:

 8 mins in for N95 mask ‘efficacy’, for most wearers I’d wager:

https://youtu.be/I5Xn7SeaUVI

 

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715243/

Quote

Authors' conclusions: The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions.

Some are more ready to make conclusions than the authors.

[atdlzpae]

1 hour ago, Eucner said:

Some are more ready to make conclusions than the authors.

How?

Also from Author's conclusions, a few paragraphs down:

Quote

The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.

To me it sounds like the authors are agreeing with Vinay Prasad.

And if they couldn't show a clear reduction in healthcare setting (where doctors&nurses are much more likely to wear them correctly than an average person), they are almost certain not to work in the general population either.

####

Do I believe masks work? The good ones (P3 - 99.99%) are likely to work on an individual level. If you wear it correctly, it may protect you.
If you live with someone else though...

Shitty ones (N95's or surgical)... They are more of a placebo. Even if you filter out 95% of virus particles you'll still get infected eventually.
And during pandemic like 99% of people I saw had surgical masks.

Edited July 19, 2023 by atdlzpae

[Flygonial]

13 hours ago, Planemo said:

Harsh, but I could find far more scathing words for the individuals that I come across on a daily basis who think the world revolves around them. In any event I can live with the comments you made about me as imo they are far milder traits than those presented by a large proportion of the people I see in the world today. 

I never pinned the blame on capitalism. I said that it was one part of the problem.

I expect people to behave with decency, integrity, respect, humbleness and honesty irrespective of their personal situation.

This can be applied whether you are struggling to pay for a tin of beans or if you are a billionaire. As an aside, and as you can probably guess, I don't subscribe to the fact that harsh times should afford a free pass into narcissism, disrespect or criminality. It is entirely possible to live by a good moral code even when times are tough. Far too many people don't. A bit like when do-gooders say 'oh yeah, the local kids are a bit naughty, it's because all the youth clubs have shut down'. Oh please.

And I don't like the way that 'naughty' has been dumbed down these days. Naughty isn't nearly a strong enough word for feral teens that run riot smashing things up, throwing projectiles at passing police cars, openly swear at police officers (whilst thrusting cameras into their faces), break into buildings/domestic sheds and nick anything that isn't bolted down. And to really rub salt in the wounds, when these blights on society are caught we get an outcry from the families of said low-lifes who fondly describe them as 'lovable rogues' who are simply 'misunderstood' and have only been tainted because 'there isn't anything else for them to do'.

Of course, I use this as an example of just one small part of society which has lost it's way. Theres plenty of adults around who have the same lack of decency which was the issue I referred to in my very first post.

I did not suggest that criminals are supposed to get a free pass for their behavior. I understand a sense of indignation towards the man with the insolence to threaten other’s lives for a quick buck, or the gangs that take over roads, smash windows, and intimidate. What I did suggest however, is that capitalism generates poverty by concentrating wealth (contrary to the supply side economics theory of wealth trickling down), and crime follows. Along the same vein, and I suspect you already agree, is that without the proper controls capitalism rewards greed, although my belief is not so much that greed is inherent to human nature as so much as it gets amplified. 

By patronizing and distasteful, I mean the implication that human nature is bad and needs to be controlled. I believe that meeting people’s baseline needs goes a longer way than any laws or strict and heavily resourced enforcement. It is still necessary but is moreso a treatment rather than a cure. It would seem that in this point you moreso visualize lawlessness whereas the image I have in mind is police overreach, and given that upon rereading your initial comment that we both agree that laws are necessary I think I may have ended up stirring up shit when we don’t seem to actually disagree on that much .

7 hours ago, Planemo said:

I agree. But I don't know how much clearer I can make it that I never said capitalism is the root of all evil. I believe it's a part of it.

Some people seem to have been triggered by my mere mention of the word and remained blinkered to everything else I said.

I don’t believe it’s the root of all evil either. Perhaps some of it is lost in translation, but I do believe it contributes more than you’ve described. It is an advancement in human development, for sure, as there is some real hope of social mobility and a rejection of notions of aristocracy from feudalism. Hell, we probably have it to thank for the fact our wheels exist (though I would also argue that much of the technology in them, gyro included are the result of publicly funded research). I’m sure I’m close to repeating myself, but I believe that it’s the perverse incentives that lead to the harm, and it would seem I disagree on the extent to which this distorts the world and how we think of human nature as a result.

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Flygonial

[0000]

For anyone still stuck on masks (@Eucner), here's some of the studies on mask effectivity, often performed in controlled hospital settings, where adherence to protocol is much easier to establish than studies on mask mandates vs large pop RCTs. Bear in mind, all of these studies published all before the Political Science took over mid-2020 onward.

I'll provide the most relevant quote from each study/compilation and highlight a few things in bold or add parentheses for easy reading.

MASK EFFECTIVITY STUDIES

Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) “Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: A randomized controlled trial,” American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 37, Issue 5, 417 – 419. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216002

Quote

N95-masked health-care workers (HCW) were significantly more likely to experience headaches. Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.

Cowling, B. et al. (2010) “Face masks to prevent transmission of influenza virus: A systematic review,” Epidemiology and Infection, 138(4), 449-456. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/face-masks-to-prevent-transmission-of-influenza-virus-a-systematic-review/64D368496EBDE0AFCC6639CCC9D8BC05

Quote

None of the (10) studies reviewed showed a benefit from wearing a mask, in either HCW or community members in households (H). See summary Tables 1 and 2 therein.

bin-Reza et al. (2012) “The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza: a systematic review of the scientific evidence,” Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 6(4), 257–267. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1750-2659.2011.00307.x

Quote

“There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”

Smith, J.D. et al. (2016) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” CMAJ Mar 2016 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567

Quote

We identified six clinical studies … . In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, (b) influenza-like illness, or (c) reported work-place absenteeism.”

Offeddu, V. et al. (2017) “Effectiveness of Masks and Respirators Against Respiratory Infections in Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 65, Issue 11, 1 December 2017, Pages 1934–1942, https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747

Quote

Self-reported assessment of clinical outcomes was prone to bias. Evidence of a protective effect of masks or respirators against verified respiratory infection (VRI) was not statistically significant”; as per Fig. 2c therein

Radonovich, L.J. et al. (2019) “N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” JAMA. 2019; 322(9): 824–833. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214

Quote

Among 2862 randomized participants, 2371 completed the study and accounted for 5180 HCW-seasons. … Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza

Long, Y. et al. (2020) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks against influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” J Evid Based Med. 2020; 1- 9. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jebm.12381

Quote

A total of six RCTs involving 9,171 participants were included. There were no statistically significant differences in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza, laboratory-confirmed respiratory viral infections, laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, and influenza-like illness using N95 respirators and surgical masks. Meta-analysis indicated a protective effect of N95 respirators against laboratory-confirmed bacterial colonization (RR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.43-0.78). The use of N95 respirators compared with surgical masks is not associated with a lower risk of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

It's called beating a dead horse. Over and over and over again.

You might ask yourself why these researchers keep getting funding to find out what has already been clearly established. You also might ask yourself how trustworthy studies mask studies will be post 2020 given the incentives to protect the credibility of those involved political health mandates. There's something called a preponderance of evidence that can be used to demonstrate something is true or not, like the effectivity of masks in preventing the spread of respiratory based virus. Just because it looks like it does something, doesn't mean it does.

One thing masks obviously do do is have psychological impacts on the populations that regularly use them in a variety of negative ways I won't get into unless there's discussion interest. What they do do is restrict oxygen and increase CO2 intake, and they create a wet/warm barrier in front of your breathing holes in which bacteria can grow. This moist trap can "help" challenge your immune system over time depending upon frequency and length of mask use in addition to any aerosolized spike proteins you'd still be encountering indoors. It can logically be assumed that the only scenarios in which these barriers are helping is if you're a frequent "social spitter" or if you tend to sneeze on people (but as a conscientious citizen you'd stay home if presenting symptoms, right?).

Fact is, a whole hell of a lot of people got played in a multitude of ways, and despite the massive amount of pre-existing evidence, some of which I've linked to above, people are still free to believe their political leaders and academically dishonest "experts" on the effectivity of masks. People are also free to believe they can photosynthesize all of the nutrients they need for their survival as well.

[Freeforester]

21 minutes ago, Vanturion said:

their political leaders

Just to add to the arrests made here in connection with alleged accounting irregularities, embezzlement and misuse of party funds, now this:

The coming days should be ‘interesting’ for these fallen politicians.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Freeforester

[0000]

6 hours ago, Freeforester said:

8 mins in for N95 mask ‘efficacy’, for most wearers I’d wager:

https://youtu.be/I5Xn7SeaUVI

He does a good job summarizing the situation. It's just absurd that he or anyone else needs to rehash what was already known, and that kinda highlights the problem at hand. That so many "professionals" were willing to go along with obviously false narratives, mask effectivity as just one of them. Now as some of the truth inevitably trickles out over time, how many people are, rightfully, going to lose faith in their institutions, experts, and leaders as a consequence? What will the results be? They all burned significant future crediblity to push for these political, non-evidence based "health" priorities. And speaking of...

17 minutes ago, Freeforester said:

Just to add to the arrests made here in connection with alleged accounting irregularities, embezzlement and misuse of party funds, now this:

Always with those video links, much faster to just parse an article myself *grumble grumble*

Authorities will go after "small potatoes," I assume on some level to assuage growing negative public sentiment, and give the impression of dispensing justice for some of the pandemic related abuses and crimes, but what do you want to bet justice never finds those who were far more responsible in perpetuating this grand human mRNA experiment and crime against humanity at a much higher level as "leaders" ultimately "helped" to populate vaccine injury databases like VAERS? People like Bourla, Walensky, Fauci, Daszak, Gates, Tedros, Birx, and many, many more.

[mrelwood]

 

Took me a while to get back here, but I want to start with replying to @Vanturion's post two pages back:

"That’s not true. We’re evidently engaged in the activity right now. Debate. Argumentation."

This was referring to my argument that you can't assess the validity of the advice. First, if one has to debate and argue about a piece of information to confirm whether it's relevant or not, you've already lost. The presented information needs to convey itself as credible enough for people to take any interest. And even if your advice were perfectly laid out, including inarguable truths etc, you are fighting against windmills: The status quo, mass media, and western education system. You simply can't win a fight against them just by presenting a great argument.

The debate you had with UniVehje was a great example of what I meant. Do you think you changed his views in any way?

"And yet it’s been made easier than ever before in human history to pull out one’s smartphone at any point in the day and peruse primary sources. People don’t even have to set aside a day to go to the library anymore, the library of Alexandria is literally in our pockets."

Absolutely, it's incredibly fast to get some information instantly, about practically anything. Google even answers questions directly itself before presenting the search results. But a lot of the information is wrong. Going back to all the links in this thread. Huge amounts of data, yet completely opposite views. And even people in this thread are debating which of them are true. Who has the time to go through all this, especially when it still doesn't even end up with any kind of clear result?? Nah, what we're doing in this thread is simply spending some time. We're not educating anyone, or make them change their minds about anything.

"I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but if one was going to gamble with their life, or their children’s, as some did (and lost all without real informed consent mind you, and often under some form of duress/coercion due to professional pressure), you would think they’d make some time to do their research given the conflicts of interest and incentives involved for many of the pushers."

People didn't know they were gambilng with their or their kids' lifes before taking the jab. And even if they did, they'd find controversial arguments against, and controversial arguments for. The second blames the first of being conspiracy theorists, and the first blames the second of executing a conspiracy. Now, how exactly does that help in making the decision?

 

Then my favourite subject:

"That said, lots of good people are religious and being raised in a system that instills a good moral code is infinitely superior to what we have today in the West"

Oh boy. Where do I start. I do have to pull my punches since I don't want to anger the readers here too much. But in my opinion the religion's moral code is a myth. There are of course very different levels of fundamentalism in any religion, but since the non-fundamentalists take their moral code from other sources as well, I think the purest form of religion's moral code can be inspected from the more fundamental ones.

Living a very restricted life tends to suppress basic human needs and emotions that is not uncommon to lead to outbursts that nullify the original intent. Orthodox choir boys is of course the easy example. TV priests is another. During my studying years I was constantly told how students of theology party the hardest. Etc.

A problem in religion is that it consists of spoken word tales only written down a few centuries after people allegedly said them, which has then been tried to translate to a modern world by ordinary people in the 20th century. (Talk about Broken Telephone...) And then you try to follow them to the letter. Many of them doesn't even quite make sense, or are contradicted elsewhere in the big book. But you just have to take their word for it. And what does it teach you? Obedience, not much else. And what does non-religion based moral code consist of? Thoughts of reason, deduction, experience, and viewpoints that life itself teaches you. It forces you to form your own moral code, not to follow someone else's. Obedience is a great trait for the masses though, individual thinkers are a problem. Same goes for other problems one has in their life. "God will give me the answer" vs "I need to figure this out". Which one is more succesful for the struggles of life? Then there's the distorted reward system: "I succeeded! Thank you God, you made this happen!" vs "I succeeded! The work I did for this paid off." Just guess which one makes you better prepared for the world and life.

Being greedy or selfish has nothing to do with religion. The band Genesis made a magnificent music video of their song "Jesus he knows me". Brave move I must say. Some people are greedy and selfish, whether they live a religious life or not.

 

"Honestly, I really don’t know how people move forward from this if these crimes continue to go unacknowledged or addressed though."

Easy. Stop making news about it and the opposing voices will die out. There's simply nothing to gain from being vocal about unfairness or illegal actions of instances like the government. The Finnish health care system is generally thought of as great, but try to juggle with it with a rare genetic disorder and any illusion about it working at all will surely crumble. Yet, no matter how loudly we'd yell, nothing at all would happen that would make it better. Call it pessimistic, I call it realistic based on experience.

I haven't read into the matter of covid vaccines all that much, but just based on what I've observed in my own life: Quite a few people had the covid, some twice or even thrice. Only one of them said that it was quite bad. All the others described it as exactly like a flu. Certainly easier than I had with the vaccine flu. My friend worked as a temporary nurse, and she said that they were pushed into recommending the jab, and that the reporting of ill effects and deaths is badly off. All this definitely creates one kind of baseline for me.

And like I mentioned, when it comes to the Finnish medical system as a trustworthy instance, try getting a fair treatment with a rare genetic disease and you'll soon learn that the only worthy doctors are those who disobey the rules and status quo, and who lose their doctor's licence soon after. You'll also learn how a certain specialized clinic can be a downright fraud, and that the push for more and more pills is just disgusting. "That pill didn't work? Let's get you an additional one, but don't stop with that one!" Etc. It's inhumane.

 

 

Edited July 20, 2023 by mrelwood

[Eucner]

13 hours ago, atdlzpae said:

To me it sounds like the authors are agreeing with Vinay Prasad.

You are making conclusions from the part of text authors warned not to make conclusions. 

13 hours ago, atdlzpae said:

Do I believe masks work? The good ones (P3 - 99.99%) are likely to work on an individual level. If you wear it correctly, it may protect you.
If you live with someone else though...

Shitty ones (N95's or surgical)... They are more of a placebo. Even if you filter out 95% of virus particles you'll still get infected eventually.
And during pandemic like 99% of people I saw had surgical masks.

I think you are on the right track. The usefulness of masks is mostly depending on virus density in the air, masks filtration efficacy, leaks, exposure time and personal threshold against virus type. Virus density can be high for long time at the healthcare and home with an infected person. This will likely overpower the resistance even when quality masks are used. On the other hand when doing fast shopping or talking shortly with an infected person outdoors, even a cloth mask could be enough to prevent virus transmission. All factors of virus transmission include randomness, so they need to be handled statistically. In everyday life this means you can be lucky without paying any attention to virus prevention or unlucky despite all precautions. Wearing masks is one way to make your odds better. Washing hands is an other, etc.

10 hours ago, Vanturion said:

For anyone still stuck on masks (@Eucner)

I start to see a pattern. You have again red something not written. My comment was only about correct use of a source.

10 hours ago, Vanturion said:

here's some of the studies on mask effectivity, often performed in controlled hospital settings, 

Studies made in hospitals, healthcare and infected homes doesn't necessarily represent masks effectiveness in less virus dense environments or at shorter exposures.  

[atdlzpae]

17 minutes ago, Eucner said:

You are making conclusions from the part of text authors warned not to make conclusions.

For all practical purposes "not enough data" means "likely no effect". My issue isn't really with suggestion to use masks - hell, I started using them back in 02.2020 and I used them religiously for two years. (well, an M3 respirator with P3 filter, so even better than normal N95/P3)

My issue is with mandates.
Based on currently available data mask mandates were anti-scientific. Will we have other results in the future? Maybe. Current data? Masks don't work on population level.
End of story, time to stop the paranoia until more data comes.
Wear a mask if you're immunocompromised and let everyone else live. That's all what I'm asking for.

Same with Covid "vaccines". Did I change @UniVehje's mind? No. And yet, we need discussion outside of our echo-chambers, otherwise we'll be divided forever.

I am radically pro freedom. And I support other's freedom to disagree with me on every topic.
What I want is "my body my choice". And no coercion with stuff like forced masking, testing or vaccine mandates.

IMO it's strange that there are people who say "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion, and "your body not your choice" when it comes to mandates.

23 minutes ago, Eucner said:

Virus density can be high for long time at the healthcare and home with an infected person. This will likely overpower the resistance even when quality masks are used. On the other hand when doing fast shopping or talking shortly with an infected person outdoors, even a cloth mask could be enough to prevent virus transmission.

Shops gather thousands of people per day, each of which spends half an hour in there. And the air is typically circulated because of AC or heating.
Thus I don't think that you can make a conclusion one way or the other if hospitals or shops are worse. Especially for workers who spend 8 hours in each per day.

[Eucner]

37 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

I am radically pro freedom. And I support other's freedom to disagree with me on every topic.
What I want is "my body my choice". And no coercion with stuff like forced masking, testing or vaccine mandates.

IMO it's strange that there are people who say "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion, and "your body not your choice" when it comes to mandates.

You freedom of transmitting deceases and killing peoples would violate other people's right to stay live in good health. Most societies have taken understandable attitude against this.

37 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

And the air is typically circulated because of AC or heating.

In this part of the world heat exchangers are more common. The amount of fresh air needed is regulated in building codes.

37 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

Thus I don't think that you can make a conclusion one way or the other if hospitals or shops are worse.

I didn't make such a conclusion. We can't continue discussion, if not staying honest.

[atdlzpae]

9 hours ago, Eucner said:

In this part of the world heat exchangers are more common. The amount of fresh air needed is regulated in building codes.

I agree, that was an error on my part.

9 hours ago, Eucner said:

You freedom of transmitting deceases and killing peoples would violate other people's right to stay live in good health. Most societies have taken understandable attitude against this.

I agree. Hell, we have some stupid culture of "go to work even if you're sniffling" in some places. Even for office jobs that could be done remote without any problems.

[0000]

Sweet, I got a long one for you @mrelwood I hope it's appreciated

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

This was referring to my argument that you can't assess the validity of the advice. First, if one has to debate and argue about a piece of information to confirm whether it's relevant or not, you've already lost.

I’m not sure what you mean by this because it doesn’t sound like we disagree.

I agree, if the public isn’t exposed to counter-arguments and dissenting opinions + evidence, those positions are deliberately and consistently maligned by stereotyping the dissenters with hated out-groups labels for social shunning, and broad measures of censorship are leveraged against any dissent in public mediums of discussion, for the majority of people who can’t or haven’t been taught how to see past those tactics and remain trusting in the integrity of authorities, they lose in the immediate and we all tend to lose over time (loss of institutional trust leading civilizational decay).

I also agree, the predilection on a percentage basis of the population who tend to accept truths based on robust debate and independent research is far outweighed by those who accept truths based on authoritative signaling if that's what you are implying. I think it’s an interesting and relevant topic to ponder, who it benefits to have a society made of people who tend not to question “authority” in all it’s forms vs one in which authority is routinely questioned and frequently forced to defend their position under robust public scrutiny.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’re arguing that debate and argumentation isn’t used to come to “authoritative positions” as that would be to assume all committees, regulatory bodies, and panels of experts always agree with each other 100% on every issue. For a fun and relevant example people should know, just look at the way Monkeypox was declared a Pandemic by the WHO almost exactly 1 year ago:

Quote

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the W.H.O. currently uses to describe only two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio. --NYTIMES

The experts couldn’t agree, and after a series of arguments/presentations/debates I’m assuming, were overruled by a man who never personally practiced medicine. Now look at the CDCs global statistics on this pandemic. Unless I did my mental math wrong, that’s 152 deaths in 1 year. Out of 8 billion people, that's statistically negligible. Doesn't quite sound like a disease “with enormous numbers of deaths and illness ”. Conveniently for authoritarians though, pandemic, among other extremely consequential medical terms, have been redefined to affect this and other geopolitically significant outcomes (something I'll continue to raise awareness about).

If one doesn't assess the validity of (medical) advice, it would follow that we simply outsource this responsibility to others such as the WHO. Is this the panel of experts we want to defer decisions of public health to? Is it even appropriate to do so given no two individuals have exactly identical health risk factors in choosing natural immunity over experimental medical products as one applicable example? If we debate these points now, have we already lost? I'd say yes. But if we don't ever debate them, we'll assuredly lose again in the future.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

The presented information needs to convey itself as credible enough for people to take any interest. And even if your advice were perfectly laid out, including inarguable truths etc, you are fighting against windmills: The status quo, mass media, and western education system. You simply can't win a fight against them just by presenting a great argument.

This is why I keep bringing up examples to show that many of these foundational institutions that have previously enjoyed the intrinsic and automatic trust of the masses are neither trustworthy nor credible today. If our rights are to survive tyrannical impositions of authorities that prefer top-down dictatorial rule, people must awaken to reality and stop giving them our trust. If people on the whole don't start taking responsibility for evaluating and separating fact from fiction, and they continue to outsource this personal responsibility for convenience to panels of so-called "experts," we will end up with no rights, essentially servants to those who would rule over us.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

The debate you had with UniVehje was a great example of what I meant. Do you think you changed his views in any way?

No, but sometimes people can serve as an example to others. I’ll even include myself in that critique spending time on online debates to your point later.

UniVehje has shown that he’s someone who dishonestly reduces 5 pages of argumentation to being the product of 1 website, who admits because he can’t imagine something happening it is impossible (institutional corruption), who repeatedly traffics slanderous “journalism” (both the dailybeast and wiki/vice articles that I deconstructed in previous posts) that makes prolific use of stereotypes, non-sequitur type “arguments,” and appeals to authoritative opinions all without even addressing the data in question to “disprove” the broad array of arguments, points, and facts I’ve raised in this thread.

He’s stated himself that, as a layman, he automatically defers to perceived “experts,” can’t imagine or be bothered to make an attempt to understand the source material statistics or studies himself which, presumably, disagree with his views, attempts to reduce all of my points as simply “throwing links” which you’ll notice is exactly what he did (as opposed to how I use them to supplement and reinforce my points often with examples, never as link dumps), then claims to be here only for EUCs not medical discussions which contradicts exactly his entire post in which he opines on the medical discussion! Bad faith bullshit all around. You can’t do much with that. It's a lot like that Paul guy I had got into it with on occasion- if I wanted CNNs opinion on something I'd go to CNN, similarly...

I’ll point out something else that should be highly illuminating in lieu of the context of this thread, Finland is still relatively ethnically homogeneous. According to wikipedia (lazy), as of 2020 ya'll still live amongst 86.9%, or 92.1% if you include the Swedes, of your literal brothers and sisters. You Finns live in one of the few remaining high-trust Western countries that haven’t (yet) been subsumed in the melting-pot ideology pushed and enforced by the functional aristocracy that’s been ruling America for quite some time. As such, it’s very easy to see why Finns may tend to continue to have such faith in their institutions (and how some can’t imagine otherwise). I would suggest to Finns reading this, perhaps recognize that such fortunate living conditions do not extend to other places in the West, and certainly not America. You still have what I would recognize as a country, while here in America we have instead an Economic Zone.

People are free to continue to believe “the experts” and put their faith in the infallibility of the “peer review process,” (something not under threat) - as long as I’m free to speak openly and give examples why such trust and faith is undeserved and dangerous (something 100% under threat from censorship), I’m good.

Besides, it’s far more rewarding to talk to people like you - those more open-minded, willing to take the time to write out their thoughts and engage in good faith, and most importantly, who don’t resort to libel without engaging the source material and data to make a point.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

Absolutely, it's incredibly fast to get some information instantly, about practically anything. Google even answers questions directly itself before presenting the search results. But a lot of the information is wrong. Going back to all the links in this thread. Huge amounts of data, yet completely opposite views. And even people in this thread are debating which of them are true. Who has the time to go through all this, especially when it still doesn't even end up with any kind of clear result?? Nah, what we're doing in this thread is simply spending some time. We're not educating anyone, or make them change their minds about anything.

I’ll only raise a few points to this:

1) Some people won’t have an open-mind to change their views until they themselves have been disadvantaged or hurt by bad policy, and sometimes not even then.

2) I contribute to this thread to show, in at least one place allowing for relatively free speech, that the ridiculous, 2-dimensional, right-wing conspiracy anti-vax labels that get thrown by, at the end of the day, an empire with endless amounts of resources to spend on agit-prop for the purposes of protecting official narratives such as “any criticism of COVID policy is misinformation” isn’t an accurate or even legitimate characterization of the dissent whatsoever.

3) We’re spending some time whether it’s on EUCs or not here and EUCs are pretty simple contraptions. Sometimes it’s more interesting to talk about more consequential topics. If people aren’t open to discussion, so be it. But if they make a dumb argument, that’s fair game for criticism.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

People didn't know they were gambilng with their or their kids' lifes before taking the jab. And even if they did, they'd find controversial arguments against, and controversial arguments for. The second blames the first of being conspiracy theorists, and the first blames the second of executing a conspiracy. Now, how exactly does that help in making the decision?

No, many didn’t. Many never even bothered to reason out for themselves or even ask their doctor what the mortality statistics were for their combination of age/weight/comobidity/ethnicity metrics that would help quantify the risks involved when weighing whether to take an experimental medical product with no toxicology or long-term health data available. Doesn’t that say something about the way in which people engage in medical decisions with regard to advice from their respective doctor(s)? What does it say about our education practices in general to fail to impart these kind of critical reasoning habits?

In fact, how many parents know offhand the health statistics and risks involved for each of the vaccines in the 72 or so that are on the childhood vaccine schedule now? It would seem more relevant information, now, to ask these types of questions rather than to simply trust that the “standard of care” doctors are required to comply with is actually serving the interests of public health (vs the profiteering of industry), especially with regard to what each vaccine is presumably protecting for.

Regardless, in my book it means these parents have critically failed in one of the key areas of parenthood, keeping their kids safe from predation. In this case, a complex form of predation, profiteering (among other incentives) through medical fraud (as they never were vaccines). There’s a saying we’re all familiar with: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well wouldn’t ignorance of (medical corruption) risks also hold the parent (responsible party) to a similar accountability?

Maybe not, strictly speaking, but it doesn’t change the outcome. Ultimately, the reason some people and kids got injured (and died) from experimental injections is because adults outsourced their capacity for risk assessment to perceived authorities and experts. If this connection and resultant accountability is not impressed upon people, and they do not make the changes necessary to prevent this kind of exploitation again (removing their trust), then it’ll keep happening. Prevention of future exploitation is the best outcome now, punishing the criminals secondary but of still great importance.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

Oh boy. Where do I start. I do have to pull my punches since I don't want to anger the readers here too much. But in my opinion the religion's moral code is a myth. There are of course very different levels of fundamentalism in any religion, but since the non-fundamentalists take their moral code from other sources as well, I think the purest form of religion's moral code can be inspected from the more fundamental ones.

Haha I like that preface, I think we can have some good discussion here.

What I was highlighting is the code itself, not the people and communities who fail to live up to such standards. I think it’s more of a good thing, particularly as tyranny and authoritarianism is on the rise, that people recognize a higher power outside of the decrees of man (government) which can and does tend to both change and become corrupted over time. I’m not saying there aren’t immoral people out there who try to wrap themselves in the blanket of “authority by god” to commit acts of evil, I’m saying that power will always breed corruption and so I recognize the utility, and even possibility of necessity (much longer argument I won’t start now), of people believing in an authority, god or ideal, above the corruptible man and his corruptible rules.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

Living a very restricted life tends to suppress basic human needs and emotions that is not uncommon to lead to outbursts that nullify the original intent. Orthodox choir boys is of course the easy example. TV priests is another. During my studying years I was constantly told how students of theology party the hardest. Etc.

For sure, isolation and repression can cause some really messed up problems. So can unlimited social tolerance especially with promotion and elevation in society of (sexual) deviance and gender dysmorphia.

An not-often-considered example of repression or deliberate denial of basic biological realities: putting teenage boy and girls in the same class room making for a source of constant and significant distraction during the important cognitively formative years, particularly for boys with normal amount of hormones, which repeatedly diverts focus away from teaching and toward biologically imperative matters of procreation to put it scientifically. I don’t know about Finland, but this reality continues to go unacknowledged and unaddressed as a non-issue by Western society, at least where I've lived.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

A problem in religion is that it consists of spoken word tales only written down a few centuries after people allegedly said them, which has then been tried to translate to a modern world by ordinary people in the 20th century. (Talk about Broken Telephone...) And then you try to follow them to the letter. Many of them doesn't even quite make sense, or are contradicted elsewhere in the big book.

Totally. I don’t believe I was arguing about the consistency or historical accuracy of examples, stories, and Parables in the bible, just on the merits of recognizing an idealized and simplified set of moral rules/code/commandments for a people to try and live by.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

And what does it teach you? Obedience, not much else. And what does non-religion based moral code consist of? Thoughts of reason, deduction, experience, and viewpoints that life itself teaches you. It forces you to form your own moral code, not to follow someone else's.

Yet for all that non-religious education and enlightenment in the West, we still got the mass outsourcing of individual risk assessment in favor of trusting the “experts”. This is why I’ve brought up issues with our (Prussian) educational model in the West multiple times which tends to ingrain the exact same obedience to authority by replace pastor or priest with experts on TV. Same results. Cook up enough fear and amplify peer pressure to achieve compliance, and whether it’s donating to the clergy to secure your place in the afterlife or injecting for Pfizer profits, the same social dynamics are at play.

I don’t wholly disagree, but there is also wisdom to be found amongst passages in the Christian bible (and among other religious text/doctrines as well I imagine). Wisdom that allows for lessons not to have to be learned the hard way through sometimes bitter life experience. My point was, clearly lacking broadly recognized moral guidelines and with all the reason, deduction, and experience we have access to in the secular West, we’re increasingly getting some decidedly bad results. The quote by John Adams (US founder) comes to mind:

Quote

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

--

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

Obedience is a great trait for the masses though, individual thinkers are a problem. Same goes for other problems one has in their life. "God will give me the answer" vs "I need to figure this out". Which one is more successful for the struggles of life? Then there's the distorted reward system: "I succeeded! Thank you God, you made this happen!" vs "I succeeded! The work I did for this paid off." Just guess which one makes you better prepared for the world and life.

100% with you here, and I’ve made some of the same arguments in my personal life at times. If you trust that god will provide, you’re not like to use the tools (your brain) that god provided you to help you provide for yourself, as the logic goes. It’s not necessarily a useful mentality (although that's not to say that putting your mind in a place to ask for help doesn't sometimes yield positive results).

Perhaps a more useful or relevant interpretation would be something like:

God gave me the ability to reason, and only because I have this capability can I have the free will to choose to do good or evil. It is by outsourcing my reason to others and thus my free will which allows for the possibility of evil to act through me. Example: parents unnecessarily injecting their kids with risky mRNA products.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

Easy. Stop making news about it and the opposing voices will die out. There's simply nothing to gain from being vocal about unfairness or illegal actions of instances like the government. The Finnish health care system is generally thought of as great, but try to juggle with it with a rare genetic disorder and any illusion about it working at all will surely crumble. Yet, no matter how loudly we'd yell, nothing at all would happen that would make it better. Call it pessimistic, I call it realistic based on experience.

I have sympathy for realistic pessimism, but this is probably the most disagreeable thing you've said to me that I can recall. You are effectively saying we should not acknowledge or even bother with the process of evaluating whether crimes were committed because there’s nothing to gain. That we should just roll over in the face of these crimes; uninformed consent, mandates, and coercion, which continues to yield new victims every day.

I mean, do you disagree that society gains by putting away criminals and evil do-ers isolating them from doing further harm to people in that society? What is the purpose of prisons? What is the purpose of accountability? Speaking of, totalitarian Australia decided to stop counting their victims of permanent heart damage just the other day. If we deem it impossible or simply look the other way because it is inconvenient to hold powerful criminals responsible, who benefits?

Also, how does this prevent them from further exploitation? Are we simply to accept that committees of "experts" and legislatures who shield manufacturers from legal liability for their experimental medical products now have total dominion over what we put into our bodies when they fail to make convincing arguments for voluntary compliance?

I'll accept making people occasionally uncomfortable here if it helps in any way to keep these matter in the public conscience as it may not result in criminal prosecutions, but if it helps people awaken to the exploitation that occurred, that is only to the good.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

I haven't read into the matter of covid vaccines all that much, but just based on what I've observed in my own life: Quite a few people had the covid, some twice or even thrice. Only one of them said that it was quite bad. All the others described it as exactly like a flu. Certainly easier than I had with the vaccine flu. My friend worked as a temporary nurse, and she said that they were pushed into recommending the jab, and that the reporting of ill effects and deaths is badly off. All this definitely creates one kind of baseline for me.

This being evidence of ethics violations (professional coercion) in the most charitable interpretation with your anecdotes here. As I said above, many people don’t become open-minded to a skeptical perspective of power/authority until they themselves are harmed by it.

COVID for me was exactly the same as swine flu, in terms of my health precautions, a non-event. I got sick only once for 1.5 days with a very mild fever in the last 3 years. Can you imagine it from my perspective, watching the world imbibe deeply of the insanity, young healthy people unknowingly taking on disproportionate risks relative to known statistical health outcomes. My brother who still trusts The political Science got sick with fever multiple times for longer periods of time, still gets sick quite often, and seems to be incapable of connecting the dots. Not that that’s uncommon obviously.

How does your experiences with the people who repeatedly got COVID in Finland square with whether or not they were injected?

It really deserves it's own post, but the July 2020 study (by 9 conspiracy theorists medical researchers) that was recently inducted into the hall of infamy due to the "incredibly stupid smear RFK Jr. campaign" right before his congressional public testimony on state-sponsored censorship had shown ethnically Finnish people to have very low susceptibility to the SARS-COV-2 spike protein. This due to a low expression of ACE2 polymorphisms that are deleteriously associated with the spike protein in the respiratory system.

In other words, Finns had a distinctly notable genetic advantage over other Non-Finnish-Europeans and African/African Americans in being less affected by spike proteins by the primary delivery system (breathing).

The above might lead one to ask, where was the Finnish medical system in notifying Finns of their inherent protections to aerosolized SARS-COV-2 to help inform their decision making? Again, something known by mid 2020.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

And like I mentioned, when it comes to the Finnish medical system as a trustworthy instance, try getting a fair treatment with a rare genetic disease and you'll soon learn that the only worthy doctors are those who disobey the rules and status quo, and who lose their doctor's licence soon after.

The insurance industry and the legal system help design if not outright dictate the “standard of care” doctors are required to comply with. You could even argue that under these conditions doctors no longer practice medicine. It follows that healthcare practitioners have been colloquially redefined as healthcare “providers”. It’s my understanding that if a doctor doesn’t follow the standard of care and instead does their job the traditional way using critical thought and past personal experience to prescribe treatment to individuals, then they assume disproportionate legal liability for malpractice if their prescriptions deviate from the standards set by the committee of "experts" determining the standards. This being the state of modern “medicine”.

On 7/20/2023 at 3:25 AM, mrelwood said:

You'll also learn how a certain specialized clinic can be a downright fraud, and that the push for more and more pills is just disgusting. "That pill didn't work? Let's get you an additional one, but don't stop with that one!" Etc. It's inhumane.

Agreed. There’s no money to be made in a healthy, self-sufficient population. A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure - what happen to that bit of common sense in the official health guidelines? This notably when it came time to foster peoples’ immune system health in early 2020 while they were buying time for their Operation Warp Speed pre-selected solution, experimental mRNA injections. And by notably, I mean there was a notable absence of prevention advice in advising people to lose weight, which itself was the single greatest individually controllable co-morbidity associated with their COVID fatality statistics.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Vanturion

[0000]

On 7/20/2023 at 11:51 AM, Eucner said:

You freedom of transmitting deceases and killing peoples would violate other people's right to stay live in good health.

100% faulty logic. Humans are perpetually in a state of transmission by breathing and through proximity to others.

If the standard for living our lives is to make each individual accountable for the state of every other persons' immune system in the world including the sick and elderly, who would ever leave their house for fear of accidentally transmitting "something" to them and accidentally killing someone? No one could live life under this standard.

Make no mention of the individually controllable aspects of immune health - do you believe you should be responsible for the immune systems of people who choose to smoke cigarettes, or who choose to be morbidly obese? This thing we call life only works if each adult takes 100% ownership and responsibility for managing their own well-being and risk mitigation. Your assertion removes the agency of other people for being responsible for their own health choices. I can't control your choices regarding healthy living, so why should I be responsible for the state of your immune system?

Furthermore, officials had to (quietly) walk back their claims of stopping the spread of SARS-COV-2 so you can't factually claim that vaccinating injecting the mRNA instructions to have your body indiscriminately manufacture spike proteins for up to 2 months was ever a valid requirement for societal participation either. The only claim still standing after the litany of lies about these injections is that they reduced the symptoms, something that has little to no consequence on the so-called right of other people to live in good health. If you meant something else by this right (is this a law somewhere?), you'll have to explain further.

Finally and for completeness, the choice of whether or not to inject oneself with an experimental medical product had zero bearing on any one else's choice to do so or not. Therefore, no matter any individual's injection status, everyone intrinsically had and has the freedom to transmit this virus (and others) by simply existing and participating in public life as there is no alternative other than permanent isolation.

@atdlzpae wasn't wrong with his pro-freedom, pro bodily sovereignty stance in any way whatsoever.

The faulty logic you've espoused was created to sell vaccines as The Solution to The Pandemic to an unwitting and largely ignorant public. It sounds like they got you.

On 7/20/2023 at 11:51 AM, Eucner said:

Most societies have taken understandable attitude against this.

This was never the standard before COVID. Visibly symptomatic people generally stayed home or were often appropriately pressured or shamed to stay home. That's always been the standard.

Asymptomatic spread, if that's what is being implied here, was invented by misusing the Polymerase Chain Reaction manufacturing/duplication process as the sole diagnostic tool, which labs could ramp up the cycle threshold any number of times "to find anything in anything" according to the inventor of PCR Kary Mullis, and gain a "tested positive" result to support the dominant political agenda. In this way, people could be counted "sick" without actually being sick, an absolutely new phenomenon beginning in 2020.

On 7/20/2023 at 9:57 AM, Eucner said:

Studies made in hospitals, healthcare and infected homes doesn't necessarily represent masks effectiveness in less virus dense environments or at shorter exposures. 

Why would we be worried about transmission in less virus dense outdoor environments or shorter exposures? It's pretty much universally recognized that transmissibility happens primarily indoors, in people-dense environments if public, and most consistently at home under longer duration exposure.

Even considering a simple thought experiment can help figure this super complicated brain twister out: would you rather be in a 20 ft by 20 ft room relatively full of sick people for 4 hours or in a 20 ft by 20 ft outdoor field populated with the same number of sick people for 4 hours?

Quote

Five identified studies found a low proportion of reported global SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred outdoors (<10%) and the odds of indoor transmission was very high compared to outdoors (18.7 times; 95% confidence interval, 6.0-57.9). ^{Note: Outdoors studies seem to be notoriously poorly controlled.}

 

On 7/20/2023 at 10:48 AM, atdlzpae said:

Shops gather thousands of people per day, each of which spends half an hour in there. And the air is typically circulated because of AC or heating.
Thus I don't think that you can make a conclusion one way or the other if hospitals or shops are worse. Especially for workers who spend 8 hours in each per day.

On 7/20/2023 at 11:51 AM, Eucner said:

I didn't make such a conclusion. We can't continue discussion, if not staying honest.

Actually, @atdlzpae you bring up is a highly relevant point regarding the mask effectivity studies. Even the CDC opines on the importance of ACH or Air Changes per Hour (# of times the total volume of air replaced with outdoor air) with regard to viral transmission recommending a minimum of 5. If we look up ventilation building standard codes on a good engineering reference website, they maintain the building minimum is 4. Hospitals are spec'd with an ACH of 4-6, far below many other public buildings. Also, it's worth noting one of the few buildings that deviate below the 4 ACH minimum is residential housing with an ACH of 2.

In any case, knowing that all of those mask studies I linked above mostly occurred in the hospital setting, it is safe to assume that much higher ACH rates often associated with other public buildings didn't end up gaming the "indoor" numbers to detract from the universally consistent result:

Masks, including N95, have no statistical significance in preventing respiratory infection.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Vanturion

[sbb]

Obligatory

[mrelwood]

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

I’m not sure what you mean by this because it doesn’t sound like we disagree.

I would think that we don't disagree. By "losing" i meant that you'd be losing the battle of getting the information as a relevant choice to the people to choose from. Since as you described:

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

I also agree, the predilection on a percentage basis of the population who tend to accept truths based on robust debate and independent research is far outweighed by those who accept truths based on authoritative signaling if that's what you are implying.

That is exactly what I was trying to express. It's not nearly a fair game.

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

1) Some people won’t have an open-mind to change their views until they themselves have been disadvantaged or hurt by bad policy, and sometimes not even then.

Oh, absolutely. I'd even say that that describes the vast majority of people. I've met several people who haven't properly even met any people with any kind of disability. Their views are often so f'in distorted, belittling and discriminative that it makes me ashamed of them at a whole new level. Aspects that don't touch your life in any way are often victims of the worst kinds of generalisations and misinformation.

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

Many never even bothered to reason out for themselves or even ask their doctor what the mortality statistics were for their combination of age/weight/comobidity/ethnicity metrics that would help quantify the risks involved when weighing whether to take an experimental medical product with no toxicology or long-term health data available.

I don't think people were generally even aware that the "vaccine" was an experimental product without toxicology or not having passed the standards and steps generally required to get a medicine to public. Critical reasoning didn't even get a chance before it was stabbed in the back.

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

There’s a saying we’re all familiar with: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well wouldn’t ignorance of (medical corruption) risks also hold the parent (responsible party) to a similar accountability?

I don't think it's a fair comparison. Ignorance of the law doesn't require questioning the authority. Some level of legal understanding is required and expected in order to take part in society, just as one is expected not to question the authorities. Though the latter might be becoming more and more relevant, and not just because of the covid debacle.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

putting teenage boy and girls in the same class room making for a source of constant and significant distraction during the important cognitively formative years, particularly for boys with normal amount of hormones, which repeatedly diverts focus away from teaching and toward biologically imperative matters of procreation to put it scientifically. I don’t know about Finland, but this reality continues to go unacknowledged and unaddressed as a non-issue by Western society, at least where I've lived.

I'm not sure if I understood your view correctly. Are you saying that we should go back to having separate schools for boys and girls? I hope that's not what you meant. Going to the same classes is absolutely distracting to the education, but it's also a critical phase to learn how to interact with the opposite sex. And for it to become a normal part of their lives. I think it's a far more important part of growing up than say classes on religion (at least in the specific form we had them). If they went to separate schools, when and where would they meet? When and how would they learn how to interact, if there weren't a large group of people around to guide and instruct (sure, by laughing at you, but still, letting you know what went wrong) if you mess it up?

 

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

Yet for all that non-religious education and enlightenment in the West, we still got the mass outsourcing of individual risk assessment in favor of trusting the “experts”.

I'm not saying that being free of religion automatically makes one a master of critical thinking. Besides, christianity is far more popular than atheism/agnosticism, so one could claim that the outsourcing of risk assesment would come exactly from the obedience that religion (tries to) teach us.

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

there is also wisdom to be found amongst passages in the Christian bible

I don't know how well you know the bible, but it's a pretty nasty book. Yes, there is wisdom and goodwill to be found if one is picky enough and just ignores the rest. But it doesn't make sense to me to consider the source of the wisdom as divine and loving when as a whole it isn't. A radical example: I'm sure that Saddam Hussein had some nice thoughts and did some good things in his life. But since the bad he did so largely crushes the (possible) good, it wouldn't be appropriate to quote the nice and good ideas as instructional and guiding. And make no mistake, I'm NOT comparing god or any parts of the bible to Saddam, I'm just bringing up an example why cherry picking good thoughts might not always be a good idea. And why it probably shouldn't be supported.

I'm also not saying that the source of any good advice should always be 100% purely good and ideal. That would be too much to expect. But the reason why some of the passages of the 50-1600 year old book are even considered good is the idea of the source as a whole. Nobody would be cherry picking good teachings from a book that weren't idolized like the bible is.

But I'm sure that it's very obvious by now that I've got a big beef with the whole institution, so I'm easily derailed into debates(/rants) about pretty much any aspect of it.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

I have sympathy for realistic pessimism, but this is probably the most disagreeable thing you've said to me that I can recall. You are effectively saying we should not acknowledge or even bother with the process of evaluating whether crimes were committed because there’s nothing to gain.

I'm sorry, I was not able to express the tone of that part correctly at all. I have learned a lot of English phrases and sayings, but the tone of them is something that's sometimes much harder to grasp.

My comment was a response to your phrase "I really don’t know how people move forward from this if these crimes continue to go unacknowledged or addressed". I tried to paint out a picture of how I think people are going to move forward. How I think we should go forward is a completely different matter!

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

I mean, do you disagree that society gains by putting away criminals and evil do-ers isolating them from doing further harm to people in that society?

I absolutely don't disagree with that! Calling them "correctional facilities" aside, people who can't play well with others need to be secluded. But realistically, do you expect that Pfizer, WHO etc. are ever held responsible for the covid fraud? Do you think that your respectable amount of work it's taken for you to look into these things will ever cause for someone to be brought in front of a judge and a jury? Even if your quest to spread awareness would be succesful? I admire your goals if you do, but I'm not betting a cent for your success.

Btw, I hope you have other forums for your information than an off-topic discussion on an EUC forum... I have no idea how many are still reading this thread, but I'd imagine that they are not many.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

How does your experiences with the people who repeatedly got COVID in Finland square with whether or not they were injected?

Good question. I didn't keep track on who of them were vaccined, how many times and how often, but I did get the general idea that all of them might've followed the generally guided practices. I was an outlier of only taking two.

On 7/22/2023 at 8:06 AM, Vanturion said:

The insurance industry and the legal system help design if not outright dictate the “standard of care” doctors are required to comply with.

I'm not sure if they are intertwined the same way in Finland, since we don't have a health insurance based hospital system. We pay for health care with general taxes, so treatments only cost us a tiny fraction of their total cost. But there are definitely standards that doctors need to comply with, which in some cases seem to be way too limiting to what the patients would actually need. Your description of modern medicine seems very accurate.

Science of medicine has become largely what the name suggests, information about medicines. Actual health care seems separated somehow. It's a huge shame, since there are still a lot of people in there who try to do actual good.

 

[Freeforester]

6 hours ago, mrelwood said:

Saddam Hussein had some nice thoughts

A well respected sportsman with an almost unreasonable belief in the inherent good in others, and never found it possible to negatively criticise another soul was asked by a journalist what he would say about Adolf Hitler; the golfer thought for a moment and opined “He was one of the very best at what he did”…

[0000]

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

That is exactly what I was trying to express. It's not nearly a fair game.

Gotchya.

Well I sometimes still find it shocking how many people still believe that their government functions as some kind of altruistic entity rather than a broad scale “legitimized” protection racket for the various factions competing for control and resource dominance. In the US if you’ve had an inquisitive mind regarding politics and trying to figure out how the actually world works vs the Schoolhouse Rock version we’re constantly bamboozled with, you’ve probably already recognized and delved into some of the false justifications pushed by the political apparatus and its corporate media cheerleaders at large to commit various atrocities, prior to COVID, mostly outside of the publics’ purview. The Iraqi WMDs justification to launch a resource/dominance war in the middle east being one of these now infamous lies comes to mind. Skepticism should be the default policy regarding just about any official narrative, particularly when fear is the vehicle being used to sell the propaganda.

For me personally, it's been pretty disheartening to observe how little a majority of the public overall seems to learn as the state and it’s corporate partners work hand-in-hand to run one scam after the next, and the public still with seemingly little to no ability to apply yesterday’s lessons that demonstrated clear and overt fraud to evaluating present day authoritative credibility.

It’d go a long way in evening the odds if everyone was born with an inherent lie detection ability, and from a certain perspective, it makes sense why there is some support for Fact-Checkers, misinformation assessors, and other entities that attempt to claim absolute Authority on Truth. Again, I can only speak fluently about the situation here, but here’s a short look at how well things are going as the US government created their own Ministry of Truth to attempt to shore up their credibility issues among other political aims.

I think the only way out of the trap (slavery) that’s being laid for all of us is for people en-masse to lose faith and stop automatically giving their trust to our institutions and authorities. If the uncritical masses actually could understand what it was they were ultimately supporting by parroting their government’s position/agenda/narratives, and where it was leading us all (a world without individual rights), many more would necessarily reject them. That’s why I think it’s important to take notice and bring attention to issues where huge oversteps occurred like uninformed consent vs mandates because otherwise the uncritical minds will continue on as if nothing happened while humanity slides further into dystopia.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

Oh, absolutely. I'd even say that that describes the vast majority of people. I've met several people who haven't properly even met any people with any kind of disability. Their views are often so f'in distorted, belittling and discriminative that it makes me ashamed of them at a whole new level. Aspects that don't touch your life in any way are often victims of the worst kinds of generalisations and misinformation.

True. I’m sure some of that is a reflexive fear-based response too in order to protect the ego from imagining themselves and their own weakness/mortality from being met with a similar fate.

A relevant counter-example: at any time, the world is full of millions of starving children. Is it your responsibility to feed them? What about the parent’s who chose to bring them into the world without sufficient means to provide? Should an “altruistic” central authority forcibly take resources from their respective collective group and marginally make everyone’s lives slightly more difficult to feed the children of deliberately irresponsible parents even though the kids born into the world had no say in the matter? Should those parents and kids be further subsidized with food and accommodations if they continue reproducing increasing the burden on the responsible people who don’t reproduce without first assessing their financial solvency and future prospects?

The world is full of tragedy and difficult choices, often many steps removed due to the complexities and abstractions afforded by higher living standards enjoyed by many today creating further distortions that remain un-pierced in these populations increasingly sheltered from certain realities (money out of thin air or "deficit spending"-->no possibility of repayment-->inflation tax).

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I don't think people were generally even aware that the "vaccine" was an experimental product without toxicology or not having passed the standards and steps generally required to get a medicine to public. Critical reasoning didn't even get a chance before it was stabbed in the back.

The credible people speaking out about these issues at the most critical times were censored, banned, and slandered one after another, which had the social effect of equating personal association to, in your own words earlier, being a flat-earther. It’s one of the reasons I’m so quick to point out unjustified hit pieces and slander because of the way it operates, to immediately shut down important nuance and discussion.

“Oh you’re just a blank. Now that you’ve been socially maligned as this label, I don’t have to listen or take seriously anything you say.” This is the state of public discourse today, completely fucking absurd, pathetic even.

Speaking of being censored, one of those extremely credible people that risked their reputation who still consistently gets the label-treatment is Dr. Peter McCullough, which I linked earlier in that fantastic, information dense 1 hr interview.

I don’t know how to fix our, I'll say it, feminized society in which debates are won not through direct argumentation on the merits of the facts, but on emotional plays, manipulation, and character assassination to discredit the individual; until more people wise up to the state of things, authorities will keep using these bullshit strategies to further their anti-human rights agenda.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I don't think it's a fair comparison. Ignorance of the law doesn't require questioning the authority. Some level of legal understanding is required and expected in order to take part in society, just as one is expected not to question the authorities. Though the latter might be becoming more and more relevant, and not just because of the covid debacle.

Technically speaking, demanding authority provide the law that specifically is being broken if you’re being charged/challenged could count as questioning, but I think that’s commonly provided in practice. What’s more important from my POV is if individuals are allowed to have the opportunity (free uncensored speech) to even perceive if an authority is no longer acting in their interests, to be exposed in the first place to relevant dissenting arguments and evidence may lead them to start to question the legitimacy of said authorities. This is what I think power really fears and why they spend so much effort controlling the narratives issued to the public (like the article shows linked above) and censoring the most effective sources of dissent.

Good to see that you are seeing the same need for skepticism toward authority.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I'm not sure if I understood your view correctly. Are you saying that we should go back to having separate schools for boys and girls? I hope that's not what you meant. Going to the same classes is absolutely distracting to the education, but it's also a critical phase to learn how to interact with the opposite sex. And for it to become a normal part of their lives. I think it's a far more important part of growing up than say classes on religion (at least in the specific form we had them). If they went to separate schools, when and where would they meet? When and how would they learn how to interact, if there weren't a large group of people around to guide and instruct (sure, by laughing at you, but still, letting you know what went wrong) if you mess it up?

I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world if you had gender-separated classes from puberty to the end of high school, no. Socialization could still happen after school in clubs/activities, work opportunities, and inter-sex social functions. As for guidance on how to interact, especially if they didn’t have siblings/friends growing up, isn’t that what Tik-Tok parents who actually parent are suppose to do? Sure, some kids will likely end up worse in terms socialization in the immediate upon getting into college (if they go that route), but what you lose in short-term socialization and conformity, you’d gain in focus, performance, and even comradery opportunities that otherwise take a hit in the current environment.

Then again, to place more importance on focus and learning the materials taught in class, the classes would actually need to be perceived as valuable and not just some form of extended day care or social engineering/indoctrination that tend to waste the mental potential of youth to begin with. There’s a lot of things that could be done better to even make use of what you would potentially gain by separating classes by sex.

I also think you’d also end up with more pronounced gender dimorphism in the population. In other words, more men being men and women being women, something that has seemingly been bred out of existence in the West in place of "I can identify as *insert your favorite locomotive*". In a more traditional oriented society, this kind of bullshit wouldn't fly, and I think that would be preferable as well as healthier in terms of anchoring children to reality than permitting delusional fantasies to flourish.

I understand that some prefer the way things are today where more masculine characteristics have been bred out of the public space such as being blunt, direct challenges (to authority/hierarchy), and assertiveness in general, in order--at least I think--to make sure every public environment possible conforms to women’s preferences and comfort. I don’t necessarily think this is to our universal good as we’ve obviously lost the ability to prevent random mentally-ill, almost assuredly perverse, cross-dressing men to read bed-time stories to children like some kind of societal role models as just one example.

I’m not going to lay all that at specifically at the feet of not having separate schools for boys and girls at developmentally critical times, but I will say, I think it’s had a distinctly negative effect.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I'm not saying that being free of religion automatically makes one a master of critical thinking. Besides, christianity is far more popular than atheism/agnosticism, so one could claim that the outsourcing of risk assesment would come exactly from the obedience that religion (tries to) teach us.

You’re right, I definitely had to go back and think on this one some more as to whether I really agreed with what I said. I think it is infinitely preferable to be taught critical thinking/reasoning and skepticism over blind obedience to authority, and I think it goes without argument that obedient thinking tends to follow religious doctrine more often than not at least from a theoretical point of view. So does public education though simply trading religious authority for politicized science authority.

That said, I think the propensity to comply with essentially orders of the state in terms of COVID compliance varied greatly amongst different churches, much less sects, much less religions as a whole, and peoples’ individual values are probably much too fragmented to simplify compliance vs non-compliance in terms of being taught obedience to authority as a simply a consequence of following religious doctrine.

Quote

We make plans talk theory, god laughs

 

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I don't know how well you know the bible, but it's a pretty nasty book. Yes, there is wisdom and goodwill to be found if one is picky enough and just ignores the rest. But it doesn't make sense to me to consider the source of the wisdom as divine and loving when as a whole it isn't. A radical example: I'm sure that Saddam Hussein had some nice thoughts and did some good things in his life. But since the bad he did so largely crushes the (possible) good, it wouldn't be appropriate to quote the nice and good ideas as instructional and guiding. And make no mistake, I'm NOT comparing god or any parts of the bible to Saddam, I'm just bringing up an example why cherry picking good thoughts might not always be a good idea. And why it probably shouldn't be supported.

My experiences are colored by I guess what I would call modern Catholism's preference for the New Testament. You’re right though, I don’t think my example was good for the point I was trying to make. From a certain point of view you could say, other than probably Islam or the Amish, none of the more popular religions provide a total alternative way of living to Western globalization/global economy. In a way, most other religions still exist within and not separately from Western model of living life.

I was trying to point out the lack in society of some of what I would describe as "the good aspects" of traditional living / traditionalism often associated with Christianity (coming from a Western perspective). However, as you rightly pointed out, the reality of the entirety of the text as well as some of the communities who maintain the faith didn’t and don’t always reflect the more recognizably good aspects that seem to be increasingly missing from societal norms today.

As for Saddam Hussein, having never independently researched this political leader myself, all I know or remember is the perspective of my government as espoused by our media propaganda “they hate us for our freedoms” outlets ; that of a political enemy and military target. Not an objective perspective to say the least.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I'm sorry, I was not able to express the tone of that part correctly at all. I have learned a lot of English phrases and sayings, but the tone of them is something that's sometimes much harder to grasp.

Oh cool, no worries then. Multilingualism, that's one of those things I’ll probably always stubbornly remain American about in that I only speak English American (lol) while simultaneously being a little envious of other’s who are more closely linked to their own unique heritage and associated language.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

I absolutely don't disagree with that! Calling them "correctional facilities" aside, people who can't play well with others need to be secluded. But realistically, do you expect that Pfizer, WHO etc. are ever held responsible for the covid fraud? Do you think that your respectable amount of work it's taken for you to look into these things will ever cause for someone to be brought in front of a judge and a jury? Even if your quest to spread awareness would be succesful? I admire your goals if you do, but I'm not betting a cent for your success.

I think I went a little over board with all of those questions as you got the point right away.

No we have no chance of that, there’s more possibility we help get Julian out of imprisonment before anyone important involved in this crime against humanity experiences any kind of justice outside of the street. My main goal is to get people to recognize, through reason, debate, evidence, and links that they are in error for giving out this level of trust to their institutions and governments. Take away that trust, and it gets far harder to control people by any other means than voluntary compliance which is how people should demand to be governed anyway if we’re going to continue to agree to have people represent and rule over us.

Increasing the default level of skepticism toward authority in all things to prevent future harm is the main goal, but it doesn't hurt to publicly recognize and demand perpetrators of crimes be punished as well.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

Btw, I hope you have other forums for your information than an off-topic discussion on an EUC forum... I have no idea how many are still reading this thread, but I'd imagine that they are not many.

I like to think that having these conversations online shows that we’re not all only wheel-heads here .

Well, whatever hope there is to change things is very small, but if someone is into EUCs, gets bored and finds there way here to be exposed to new ideas, arguments, and examples contained within, that’s cool. If they hate them and want to debate, also cool. The exposure is low, but that’s fine. I think for the more independent thinkers out there, we all have our own ways of coping with reality.

On 7/24/2023 at 4:04 AM, mrelwood said:

Science of medicine has become largely what the name suggests, information about medicines. Actual health care seems separated somehow. It's a huge shame, since there are still a lot of people in there who try to do actual good.

Yes, and worth mentioning the good ones last until their tolerance for being ignored, demoralized, overworked, bad policy, etc. dries up, and then they quit. I bring this up because I think it’s an important point to make, that once a kind of corruption sets in a system, it tends to spread and reinforce itself as well as push out anyone whose ideas/demands would threaten the system that now primarily benefits the corrupt(ion). A self-reinforcing system, one now evidently expressed in many institutions of influence/power/note today. Like cancer, corruption that doesn't get excised spreads and grows.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Vanturion
fixed some clumsy wording