Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
keiths,
This reminds me of a calculation I did (or got Grok to do) relating to PCR. At 100% efficiency, product doubles every cycle. Typical maximal cycles are in the 30s – that’s enough to detect a single molecule in most systems. Covid deniers (hi J-Mac!) insist that cycles kept running until the machine detected something, to create a false pandemic – but you can’t detect less than 1 molecule. So once you get to c40 cycles, you aren’t going to detect, if you haven’t already. Yet the deniers often quoted machines running to ‘1000 cycles’.
40 cycles is easily contained within the tiny wells of a PCR machine. But 1,000 cycles would require a mass of reagents equivalent to 10^225 universes. So the real issue with 1,000 cycles is not that you would get false positives, but that you would be squashed by the gravity of the reagents, and/or be vapourised by the nuclear fusion ignited, well before the 1000th cycle.
Megyn Kelly melting down over Bad Bunny
Allan:
With God, all things are possible.
Since the election, Trump disapproval has increased by twice as much among low-knowledge voters as among high-knowledge voters. The numbers are now roughly equal. That suggests that if the low-knowledge voters had educated themselves prior to the election, we might have averted the Trumpocalypse.
An exchange from Pam Bondi’s disgraceful appearance before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday:
Becca Balint:
Bondi, snidely:
Balint:
What is the evidence that there was a panicdemic?
New “evidence” claims Bill Gates — the self-appointed computational virologist — and Jeffrey Epstein — financier, fixer, and alleged gain-of-function enthusiast — planned a pandemic years in advance. Because… they could? How exactly?
Here’s the curious part of this so-called “pandemic preparedness”: it wasn’t about preventing pandemics. Not really. It was about planning what to do once one hit.
Aren’t vaccines supposed to prevent pandemics? If that’s the case, why focus so heavily on managing the fallout instead of stopping the spark? Isn’t preparing for a full-blown crisis different from preventing one in the first place?
And then there’s the redefinition of vaccines. They used to mean immunity — you take it, you don’t get sick, you don’t spread it. Now the emphasis is on reducing symptoms. Protection has… evolved.
So the model, we’re told, was crafted by the “best in the business” — Gates and his well-connected associate — to ensure the system runs smoothly when the next crisis arrives.
Philanthropy, preparedness, and profit — all wrapped in one neat package.
J-Mac,
Vaccines can’t prevent pandemics: you’re always playing catchup. Development and delivery lags the disease.
Vaccines were not redefined; that’s a bullshit antivax trope (which I have addressed before, and you just keep coming back with). As to the rest- gibbering conspiracist nonsense. I created a couple of threads for just this topic; why you keep coming here?
Epstein is an absolute gift to the conspiracy-addled. You can weave it into any narrative you please. Hate Jews? Epstein! Believe there’s a shadowy baby-murdering cult? Epstein! The pandemic was faked? Epstein! Lizard people at the highest level? Epstein!
Of all these, Epstein fits the Covid pandemic frame the least. But Americans have no problem stretching time frames. Many of them believe that their Founding Fathers appeared shortly after Moses and walked together with Jesus. And Jesus read the King James Bible, obviously.
Erik,
Whaddya mean? He met Bill Gates! Bill Gates is in charge of global medicine! It all fits!
Sorry, my bad. Of course Bill Gates –> global medicine, therefore Covid pandemic is a total scam. Also Fauci –> Soros –> Epstein. It all fits.
The world just keeps getting weirder and weirder:
Steve Bannon courted Epstein in his efforts to ‘take down’ Pope Francis
From the article:
He’s right. It is an easy choice.
(In the Closet of the Vatican is a book.)
Allan Miller,
What? You cannot be serious…
Allan Miller,
Back to the point: Explain to the well informed audience what the Relative Risk Reduction is vs Absolute Risk Reduction in relation to “vaccines”
Tell us why it is imperative to know the difference and, without bias, why do you think the public was notified inaccurately what that meant…
Can you do that without bias?
I’m sure you can…
I love my new helper…
“The 95% efficacy number from the Pfizer/BioNTech trial did not measure transmission at all. What??? I beg your pardon???
It measured relative reduction in symptomatic COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people compared to placebo during the trial period.
So if someone thought:
“I’m 95% protected from catching it AND spreading it”
…that was incorrect.”
No s..t!
I’m no longer confused who the conspirators were and why…
What about specifically?
Ah, trying to do science. Cute. I don’t know why you couldn’t do this in one of the relevant threads.
RRR measures the relative incidence of an event between treatment and control. It is the standard in all clinical trials. ARR includes the overall incidence of the event, which is also the rate in the control group, CER. ARR = CER x RRR, and RRR = ARR/CER.
RRR is the standard for comparison because ARR varies with time and prevalence. Observe twice as long, you (roughly) double ARR, because you double CER. Likewise if prevalence doubles, ARR doubles.
But what does even ARR mean to someone who thinks the disease itself does not exist? There are 0 incidents in both treatment and control, to a Covid denier. 0 = 0 x 0.
J-Mac,
If you don’t catch a disease, you can’t spread it. That is an effect on transmission. But people also use ‘transmission’ to cover the effect on onward transmission where people have caught the disease.
HOW do we know viruses even exist?
AI, which is smarter than me, apparently, proposes this with sarcasm…hmmm..
How To Prove Viruses Exist (Apparently the Hard Way
Step 1: Take fluid from a sick person.
Step 2: Filter out bacteria and cells.
Step 3: Add the filtered material to healthy cells.
Step 4: Watch those cells get sick in exactly the same way.
Step 5: Repeat in lab after lab, country after country.
Step 6: Sequence the genome of the mysterious particle thousands of times and watch it mutate predictably.
Step 7: Photograph the particles under electron microscopes.
Step 8: Demonstrate antibodies binding specifically to their proteins.
Step 9: Reproduce disease in animal models and re-isolate the same particle.
Easy..
You are trying to “use science as cover-up”. Do you know what conscience is?
I know that you have completely dodged my response. If you don’t think the virus – or any virus – exists, why are you attempting to make a point re: ARR vs RRR in a vaccine trial? To a virus denier, they must both be zero.
Dude, you asked him to explain what those terms meant yourself.
Some Trump poll numbers from Pew Research:
Red is Republicans, gray is independents, and blue is Democrats.
The numbers are dismal overall, but what’s most remarkable to me is that only 52% of Republicans think that Trump “respects the country’s democratic values”, and only 42% of them think that Trump “acts ethically in office”.
How to Fake Pandemics?
I’m sure all the experts here who have never worked in the frontline healthcare think it is impossible…It is…
However, I have documented the evidence now that close to 80 hospitals in the greater Toronto (GTA) had not fulfilled the requirement of a pandemic disease before fake vaccines arrived….
Are they real? Trump apparently said the US doesn’t need Canada and my portfolio managers smiles and tells me almost 100% of my gas investment is safe because the US buys almost 100% of gas from my owned company…
J-Mac,
Conversely, my daughter was frontline on the Respiratory ward when the pandemic hit and watched people die horrible deaths in great numbers, spilling into corridors as they ran out of beds.
So there’s that.
J-Mac,
Since there are only about 50 acute hospitals in the GTA, that’s going some. Are you counting rehab units etc? What criteria do you define to be ‘the requirements of a pandemic disease’?
Grok is under the impression Ontario was pretty hard hit.
As of today, I would like to invest in “panicdemics,” just like Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates supposedly did.
According to Bill, investing in vaccines delivers an impressive return — something like 20:1.
Here’s the key question for pandemic “investors”: if you invest in a pandemic and your investment doesn’t materialize, what do you do? What can you do?
And if you’re Bill Gates — living alone in a 50-room mansion — how do you even sleep in all those rooms, and how often?
I’m not doubting some of the “Flu” symptoms may have been unusual but not really among the Amish and the Mennonites… lol
So it was an epidemic of flu***? Take your pick; it was an epidemic of something. This was late March through June. Northern Hemisphere flu season’s usually done by February, and does not have people spilling into corridors.
***[eta – let’s point and laugh at a virus denier invoking flu as an alternative explanation…]
J-Mac,
Ah, we’re taking a stroll through Conspiracism’s Greatest Hits, now? He meant in terms of health outcomes in developing nations, but let’s not get bogged down in facts when there are batshit conspiracies to pursue, eh?
Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein persuaded huge numbers of people to drown in their own body fluids so they could sell vaccines. It’s true I tells ya. Each shot contains a chip, activated by 5g towers. No, really, they suppressed ivermectin for the disease even though the disease doesn’t exist. When people didn’t die quick enough they bumped ’em off, in empty hospitals. It all fits.
Unfortunately, given the “panic-demic preparedness” reality, I feel I have no choice but to invest a bit of money in the next big thing — cancer pandemic preparedness. After all, why else would so many self-proclaimed benefactors of humanity have poured billions into the mRNA platform long before the COVID-19 crisis was even launched?
Sometimes I wonder whether certain episodes of “The Twilight Zone*”were less fiction and more documentary. I wake up thinking everything is normal — yet the world around me behaves as if something is profoundly wrong, and I’m the only one not reading from the script….
BTW: I love Allan Miller who “witnessed” the panic-demic as the “frontline healthcare worker”…
You are going down…
I understand how frustrating it must be for your set of beliefs to be shattered… But if I were you, I’d fight. After all, what is the point of your existence if your most cherished beliefs fall apart?
J-Mac, to Allan:
Reading that, I got the same feeling as I did seeing Trump criticize the Supreme Court opinions as “poorly written”.
One of my most cherished beliefs is that my daughters are honest. They saw what they saw, and have no reason to lie to me about the seriousness and reality of the illness, and even less reason to allow me to be harmed by vaccines if they know some dark truth about the reality of the situation. That is hardly going to be shattered by gibbering loons on the Internet.
Haha. That a threat?
[no… a promise, says J-mac darkly]
J-Mac,
Did I say that? My daughter witnessed it, as a doctor on the Respiratory ward. My son lived with her at the time, saw how it affected her. My other daughter, a nurse, was not frontline but had plenty of access to those who were, and the picture was bleak. You are, of course, free to doubt their existence. That helps calm your nerves, I guess, which are clearly jangling. You would have an uphill struggle to persuade me they don’t exist. But have a go.
Locked in the ‘denial’ stage. For 6 years. Sad!
I wrote this 4 years ago on the broader question: why these biological flat-earthers have taken Covid scepticism to mad extremes and deny the entire 125-year history of virology in toto.
How does a “computer virus” designer suddenly become an authority on biological viruses — like Bill Gates? He claims he read a book or two on the subject and anticipated a pandemic, and suddenly everyone goes along with it. I didn’t.
The only plausible explanation for this so-called pandemic — which Bill himself has commented on repeatedly — is that we experienced a severe seasonal flu that exceeded the usual baseline mortality rate. Typical flu mortality is often cited around 0.1–0.2%, and recent seasons have fluctuated within that range.
Lovely.
J-Mac,
No-one but conspiracy loons considers Gates an authority on science.
It wasn’t flu; they are readily distinguished, and it was beyond flu season when it kicked off. But why would a virus denier invoke flu anyway? Flu is caused by a virus.