Sandbox (4)

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.

5,829 thoughts on “Sandbox (4)

  1. aleta:
    Good point. I assumed he would offer specific items, but if the general idea is that they must be hiding something but he doesn’t know what it is because it’s hidden, then expecting any detail is fruitless.

    Also, we should bear in mind that Pfizer is in competition with several other companies, their products are not identical, they can contain trade secrets kept secret to avoid someone copying the products or reverse engineering their processes. I think we can be fairly confident that there are ingredients not published, on the part of every competing company. I think the problem lies in assuming these ingredients are harmful because they are hidden.

  2. I agree that it is irrational to believe corporations hide or fail to disclose adverse information.

  3. petrushka:
    I agree that it is irrational to believe corporations hide or fail to disclose adverse information.

    This is not about whether corporations hide adverse information. This is about how you spew irrational drivel about covid policies without any reference point, putting your wacky ignorance to full display regarding how similar pandemics have been handled before (if you think there have not been similar pandemics, then yup, that’s your wacky ignorance speaking), and blowing out of proportion the mask and vaccine policies without the faintest idea why masks and vaccines exist. And you tied this in earlier pages further into partisan anti-Biden politics of your own country, completely forgetting that the vaccine policies started under Trump and the pandemic was worldwide and pretty much every country had lockdowns and masks and vaccines and those that did not faired worse, not better.

    These are not characteristics of a critical thinker or a healthy skeptic. These are characteristics of a Q/MAGA cultist.

    To avoid displaying such characteristics in the future is not too hard: Just don’t spew Q/MAGA talking points. Try to stay on one topic. If vaccine, then vaccine. If corporate policies, then corporate policies. If pandemics policies, then that. If partisan politics and elections, then that. And whichever you pick, it is a good idea to be reasonably informed and follow the factual timeline at least. My prediction is that you are incapable of this. You will continue your current line after again whining a bit about how this discussion is not nice, whereas actually you have been treated far too nicely here, as if Q/MAGA propaganda were worth discussing the same way as academic research or plain common sense. It really is not. People here are too nice to confront it.

    ETA: When it comes to the covid vaccines, J-Mac and petrushka have the same cultist post-truth agenda.

  4. Certainly corporations hide adverse information. Think of tobacco companies 50 years ago.

    That doesn’t mean Pfizer has done so.

    Why are specifics as opposed to unsupported generalities to hard to come up with, I wonder?

  5. aleta:
    Certainly corporations hide adverse information. Think of tobacco companies 50 years ago.

    That doesn’t mean Pfizer has done so.

    Why are specifics as opposed to unsupported generalities to hard to come up with, I wonder?

    Wel, yes, adverse information is least likely to be publicized. I suspect a great deal of “classified” information has less to do with national security than to cover up stupid things someone doesn’t want the public to know.

    Still, I think you have it somewhat backwards. Opposition to masks and vaccines is the initial “policy” (more like cult groupthink) position. OK, this requires that masks and vaccines are some sort of harmful conspiracy. And that in turn means those producing the vaccines must be a central part of the conspiracy. And THAT in turn means they are hiding the details that would prove they’re out to harm us.

    And I think the initial opposition to masks and vaccines was derived from a deep distrust of government, and big business, and other shadowy evil forces that surround us and wreck our lives! It’s these forces responsible for the groomers, and CRT, etc.

  6. aleta:
    Good point. I assumed he would offer specific items, but if the general idea is that they must be hiding something but he doesn’t know what it is because it’s hidden, then expecting any detail is fruitless.

    Companies that “serve now and pay later” don’t need to hide anything…
    I hope you understand what I mean…
    If vaccines work, as per their real purpose, why would you need two, or a booster?
    Can you follow the logic?

  7. J-Mac:
    If vaccines work, as per their real purpose, why would you need two, or a booster?
    Can you follow the logic?

    I don’t think there is any need for two slightly different vaccines, except that multiple companies were competing to produce one. The CDC no longer even recommends that anyone stick to either brand on subsequent shots.

    The booster is needed for reasons of the biology of the virus. A virus that mutates very little requires no boosters for most people – a single childhood inoculation is sufficient. For something that mutates rapidly, antibodies can’t keep up with new variations. So the original vaccine “wears off” as the virus mutates. Covid, like the flu, promises to become endemic, and both covid and flu will likely require “variation chasing” annual vaccines.

  8. J-Mac, I take annual flu shots. I just got a 10-year tetanus boosters. Is this evidence that “the real purpose” is something other than preventing disease?

  9. Erik: This is not about whether corporations hide adverse information. This is about how you spew irrational drivel about covid policies without any reference point, putting your wacky ignorance to full display regarding how similar pandemics have been handled before (if you think there have not been similar pandemics, then yup, that’s your wacky ignorance speaking), and blowing out of proportion the mask and vaccine policies without the faintest idea why masks and vaccines exist. And you tied this in earlier pages further into partisan anti-Biden politics of your own country, completely forgetting that the vaccine policies started under Trump and the pandemic was worldwide and pretty much every country had lockdowns and masks and vaccines and those that did not faired worse, not better.

    I find this rant to be a bit unhinged.

  10. At least this part seems calm and true: “the vaccine policies started under Trump and the pandemic was worldwide and pretty much every country had lockdowns and masks and vaccines and those that did not faired worse, not better.”

  11. aleta:
    At least this part seems calm and true: “the vaccine policies started under Trump and the pandemic was worldwide and pretty much every country had lockdowns and masks and vaccines and those that did not faired worse, not better.”

    Not just the policies. The vaccines themselves. Warp Speed.

  12. aleta:
    At least this part seems calm and true: “the vaccine policies started under Trump and the pandemic was worldwide and pretty much every country had lockdowns and masks and vaccines and those that did not faired worse, not better.”

    Note from the mad spelldude: you mean “fared”, not “faired”.
    And I’m off and awayyyyy….

  13. aleta:
    FYI: Passing the buck here, mad spelldude. For the record, I was quoting Erik.

    OK, you are forgiven. If I had a dollar for every homophone error I’ve seen, I’d be a wealthy man today. The most common is reign/rein (and sometimes rain!), although today sight/cite/site misuse is more common than correct use. But English is rich with opportunities to get it wrong, from cell/sell to sale/sail to tale/tail to scene/seen to sole/soul and probably hundreds more. I’ll put up a picture or two, and I hope they’re not too small to see…

  14. Autocomplete is getting better at detecting context.

    But due to the AI Peter Principle, as it gets better, it also gets more assertive. So you get weirdness at a higher level.

    I keep it turned on for entertainment.

  15. Just a drive by to link to a recent paper that presents evidence on the safety of Covid vaccines. Apparently getting 130 jabs of the vaccine over a 12 month period did not have a downside.

    Lancet paper

  16. Vaccine safety, like most things in biology, is determined by individual genetic factors, and by acquired immune system deficiency.

    For reasons having nothing to do with virtue or personal habits, I do not get respiratory diseases. Or, if I do, the symptoms are never severe.

    People around me had one or two bad days after the vaccine, and i didn’t even get a sore arm.

    Our perception of risk an harm has interesting twists. I can read that 99 percent of occasional cannabis users are not harmed, so cannabis is safe.

    But if 99.5 percent of people survive covid, it’s a crisis. This is a curiosity.

  17. petrushka:
    Our perception of risk an harm has interesting twists. I can read that 99 percent of occasional cannabis users are not harmed, so cannabis is safe.

    But if 99.5 percent of people survive covid, it’s a crisis. This is a curiosity.

    This might relate to the nature of the harm. If the 1% of occasional cannabis users suffer temporary sore throat, while the 0.5% of covid sufferers die a horrible death, this matters. From what I read, the dangers of weed use fall in the “may lead to” category, but nothing much seems definite.

  18. Alan Fox,

    Antivaxxers falling over themselves to deny that this really happened! It does not compute, in their worldview, so can only be a lie. A damned elaborate one, looking at the paper.

  19. Flint: This might relate to the nature of the harm. If the 1% of occasional cannabis users suffer temporary sore throat, while the 0.5% of covid sufferers die a horrible death, this matters.

    Yes, this.

    What is “a curiosity” here, petrushka, is how your antivaxx truthering loses sight of any and all perspective in each next post. But then again, this is a necessary part of being a cultist.

  20. Flint,

    I don’t think temporary sore throat was implied.

    I am not among those who think the response to covid was motivated by evil, or by cabalistic rehearsals of Orwellian controls. I do think that most policies were ineffective and unfortunate, but that was because the disease just wasn’t tractable.

    There are all kinds of nasty things in the world — cancer, drug addiction, child abuse, etc. — that aren’t responsive to wishful policies. Sometimes we have judged treatments to be worse than the problem, or at least not acceptable.

    I have no animosity to people who try, but I reserve the right to judge effectiveness.

  21. J-Mac:
    Alan Fox,
    Did you get it, Alan?

    Yes, as I think I mentioned at TSZ. It was some time last year. I had mild ‘flu symptoms and a sore throat. A Covid test showed positive and my wife went above and beyond in providing meals and keeping me isolated for the few days I was under par. She did not get Covid until a month or so later so that must have come from elsewhere. We had both had four vaccinations by then.

  22. Allan Miller:
    Alan Fox,

    Antivaxxers falling over themselves to deny that this really happened! It does not compute, in their worldview, so can only be a lie. A damned elaborate one, looking at the paper.

    Eradication of disease by vaccination seems to have been forgotten. Smallpox, other childhood diseases, polio? Was it all a myth?

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