Your analysis of the evidence is irrefutable. But I am still rooting for the “vaccines work” version to be the story that circulates. My daughter just started college this year, and I can tell you we are all on the edge of our seats hoping that they don’t have to shut down. I think that the Duke data gives the non-neurotic colleges cover so that they can continue resuming normal activities. This is extremely important for the mental health of college students across the country. And as you rightly pointed out, the practical difference between vaccines working and not working is practically nail in this population. So maybe it’s good (?) to have a nice placebo effect going, and that gives a college administrators confidence that they are not killing their students. Honestly, this is how low we have all fallen, that we are rooting for “noble deceits” like this. Because otherwise I’m in despair.
and yet the duke administration is requiring double masking and distancing and contact tracing and who knows what else.
this feels less like placebo and more like "enabling."
it's rampant virtue signaling and oppressive behavior that all bolsters the "MOAR FEAR" narrative of "this is so dangerous we have to do crazy things to try to stop it" when, what they should be pushing is "your kids are safe. this disease poses them little threat and having them here on campus is the safest place they could be."
we need to bring the perception of the threat back into some semblance of reality, not distort it further into some even greater phantasmagoria.
Yes, totally, "enabling" is a great way to think about it. But I think there are levels of crazy, and different institutions have discretion. So maybe it could turn out better in some places. Of course, the difference between "two masks indoors and out" and "one mask indoors" is degrees of phantasmagoria, as you say. But as a practical "survive the semester" matter, this does make a difference.
You're right, the real problem is how to recover reality. There is currently a vicious feedback loop in the colleges: admin believes their customers demand "safety", admin provides "safety," ubiquity and intensity of "safety" measures drives up customers fears that it is unsafe, customers demand more "safety". And I get the sense that this is what is happening in a lot of other places as well.
So... you're rooting for placebo effects to validate vaccine mandates to attend higher education so everyone will feel better and you don't have to deal with this anymore?
I'm unvaccinated. What else would you like to take from me so we can declare vaccine victory and you can have your sovereign rights back (never mind where mine went).
I guess I do have a "wish it away" problem. Maybe I am not thinking clearly, but I think we're on the same side here, Guttermouth. I can barely believe what is happening, constitution torn to shreds, civil rights tossed like yesterday's fish bones. I don't want the vax, don't want anyone else to have the vax, and am terrified of what is unfolding around me. My college-bound daughter went and got the vax, she was legal and I couldn't persuade her. The sacrifice, from her perspective, was too high--life as she knew it, basically. So when I contemplate the possible long-term consequences for her life, yeah, I'm rooting for the placebo effect. Wouldn't that be the best (albeit least likely) of many possible bad outcomes available now, that we'll just wake up one day and say, oops, that was a mistake, and there are no long-term population-wide health devastating consequences? What I want is for this madness to stop. But how do we get there when the faith of the faithful is so absolute? What do you think should be done?
My problem with your position is that you're willing to accept mandates, EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR BASIS IS LIKELY SPURIOUS, as a consequence of wishful thinking in vaccine efficacy, so we can "be done." You're complying your way out of tyranny and not giving a damn (as is your right) about those who have not knuckles under like your daughter.
You can't have it both ways. Vaccine mandates to satisfy the faculty at your daughter's school and bargain your way back to normal includes me being gradually jobless, homeless, and finally probably held down by men with guns and forcibly vaccinated.
I'm not your daughter, so I'll forgive you not thinking of me here. But I'm someone's.
Collaborator, wow, that stings. You may be right, even if that is not what I meant to do. We are living in horrifying times. Evil is afoot. How to resist? It is so huge, so evil. Lives are being ground to dust in the jaws of a monster. They have divided us, manipulated us, given us little scraps to keep us in line. Each of us is just trying to survive. How do we come together to fight this evil?
Boosters are on the horizon...for everyone. If people keep complying to "get their lives back", it will not end.
Here's your motivation...every single injection your child submits to might increase her risk serious, life-altering or life-ending disease in the future. This is an experiment on humanity. They have no notion of the longterm consequences of these injections. None. Nada. Zip.
So far, the doctors and scientists who have been vilified for speaking out against the "vaxxines" have been right about every risk they identified.
Here's just one example of what might be in out future on a massive scale...
I wouldn't have called you that. My point is less melodramatic.
"Each of us is just trying to survive" = "We are not in this together."
That's fine, that's what life is. You lose the moral high ground if you don't allow people to go along to get along.
I just want people to be honest about it. If you can't or won't resist, you're not in the same position of people who will or must resist, and it's insulting to suggest we're of a kin- whether or not that's anyone's fault. It's the same bullshit of "allyship" the woke Left loves to flog. We are simply not in the same boat. It takes great moral courage to sacrifice your position unnecessarily for the sake of others. It is not the norm or the expectation.
We don't come together to fight this evil unless we're all affected by the evil enough that we see no alternative. See also, literally every other social reform in human history.
It never ends. Here in San Francisco we have a vax rate of 85%. (3x many have died of overdoses than of/with covid here.) But it isn't enough. As an unvaccinated person I can't eat indoors, go to a bar or cafe without showing proof of vaccination. There is also AB455 ("dead" for now until the results of recall election favor Newsom) that will make it impossible for unvaccinated Californians to enter any public building except grocery stores or churches. No entrance to hotels etc...Never in my wildest nightmare.
I am on your side here; I think just the reality of having the staff and students on campus and back in the normal routines will help immensely to shake us out of this bizarre fugue state.
If a widespread adoption of sensible risk assessment (if the kids weren't at school they would still have to be *somewhere*, and the virus would still get to them lol) is truly impossible due to psychological hard-wiring, it's just one more sign that society literally cannot function under secularism.
This is my sentiment as well. I think mechanistically we have confidence the vaccines work as they generate antibodies and immune memory that wouldn't have to be sterilizing. It's just that this Duke 'cohort' is not a good one to look at for a signal since it's so young. Same in trying to study efficacy among children... there's just nothing work with since the disease does nothing to them anyway, even at vast scales much less small study sizes.
Vaccines probably do work, but uptake in the low risk age groups likely won't make much of a difference in deaths or even hospitalizations. With the knowledge that natural immunity is stronger, it's a strong argument against mandates and for continued investment in treatments while still advocating to vaccinate the vulnerable.
Can you please explain to me the long term effects of taking a mRNA vaccine? You seem to comfortably think it is a "placebo". What are you basing this on, other then your faith that it will work out? There is zero data on long term use in humans.
Oh, no, I don't think it's a placebo. I personally think there are danger flares all around. But insofar as every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever, I cling to the thin hope that, in spite of everything I have learned, it is somehow benign in the long term. I used "placebo" in this case only to indicate the immediate psychological effect this injection appears to have.
Do you think I can control the actions of sovereign adults? If so, your family functions differently from mine. You make other assumptions in your comment that are also unwarrented, but this is not about me or you. What I was trying to say was, all of us, whatever our "vax status", have many loved ones who have chosen or been effectively forced to go along. I cannot wish them ill. I pray I am wrong, and el gato malo is wrong, and Dr. Malone is wrong, and vanderBrosse (?) is wrong. But I fear they are all right. This should be breaking all of our hearts.
When one side argues for choice and the other side insists that the side that's happy to give them the choice to mask up, vaxx up, stay home must be compelled to do the same or else their own interventions "won't work," we've got asymmetry of regard here.
It's like a knightly order of chivalry challenging Barbary pirates to a Queensberry boxing match.
This is an important point that many people don't understand. Science can (or should be able to) tell us what the risk is -- but it can't tell us if that risk is acceptable or not. Everybody has their own risk tolerance and risk profile. I don't ride a motorcycle because the risk isn't worth the reward. On the other hand I play third base in softball whereas others won't because THEIR risk isn't worth the reward.
Of course, the bureaucrat would either ban ALL risk or spread it out evenly -- even to people who don't want to ride the motorcycle or play third base.
You're right - it's a sort of faith. Perhaps informed by the success (or failure) of past vaccines? In either case, there is no long term data yet so no one can answer those questions only speculate based on what's been observed so far. This is why getting the vaccine should be a personal choice based on one's own risk/benefit calculation.
Your analysis of the evidence is irrefutable. But I am still rooting for the “vaccines work” version to be the story that circulates. My daughter just started college this year, and I can tell you we are all on the edge of our seats hoping that they don’t have to shut down. I think that the Duke data gives the non-neurotic colleges cover so that they can continue resuming normal activities. This is extremely important for the mental health of college students across the country. And as you rightly pointed out, the practical difference between vaccines working and not working is practically nail in this population. So maybe it’s good (?) to have a nice placebo effect going, and that gives a college administrators confidence that they are not killing their students. Honestly, this is how low we have all fallen, that we are rooting for “noble deceits” like this. Because otherwise I’m in despair.
and yet the duke administration is requiring double masking and distancing and contact tracing and who knows what else.
this feels less like placebo and more like "enabling."
it's rampant virtue signaling and oppressive behavior that all bolsters the "MOAR FEAR" narrative of "this is so dangerous we have to do crazy things to try to stop it" when, what they should be pushing is "your kids are safe. this disease poses them little threat and having them here on campus is the safest place they could be."
we need to bring the perception of the threat back into some semblance of reality, not distort it further into some even greater phantasmagoria.
Yes, totally, "enabling" is a great way to think about it. But I think there are levels of crazy, and different institutions have discretion. So maybe it could turn out better in some places. Of course, the difference between "two masks indoors and out" and "one mask indoors" is degrees of phantasmagoria, as you say. But as a practical "survive the semester" matter, this does make a difference.
You're right, the real problem is how to recover reality. There is currently a vicious feedback loop in the colleges: admin believes their customers demand "safety", admin provides "safety," ubiquity and intensity of "safety" measures drives up customers fears that it is unsafe, customers demand more "safety". And I get the sense that this is what is happening in a lot of other places as well.
agreed. it seems like a feedback loop to limbic melt down and decent into permanent performative panic alleviation rituals.
it's like telling more ghost stories to calm the terrified cub scouts down.
So... you're rooting for placebo effects to validate vaccine mandates to attend higher education so everyone will feel better and you don't have to deal with this anymore?
I'm unvaccinated. What else would you like to take from me so we can declare vaccine victory and you can have your sovereign rights back (never mind where mine went).
I guess I do have a "wish it away" problem. Maybe I am not thinking clearly, but I think we're on the same side here, Guttermouth. I can barely believe what is happening, constitution torn to shreds, civil rights tossed like yesterday's fish bones. I don't want the vax, don't want anyone else to have the vax, and am terrified of what is unfolding around me. My college-bound daughter went and got the vax, she was legal and I couldn't persuade her. The sacrifice, from her perspective, was too high--life as she knew it, basically. So when I contemplate the possible long-term consequences for her life, yeah, I'm rooting for the placebo effect. Wouldn't that be the best (albeit least likely) of many possible bad outcomes available now, that we'll just wake up one day and say, oops, that was a mistake, and there are no long-term population-wide health devastating consequences? What I want is for this madness to stop. But how do we get there when the faith of the faithful is so absolute? What do you think should be done?
My problem with your position is that you're willing to accept mandates, EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR BASIS IS LIKELY SPURIOUS, as a consequence of wishful thinking in vaccine efficacy, so we can "be done." You're complying your way out of tyranny and not giving a damn (as is your right) about those who have not knuckles under like your daughter.
You can't have it both ways. Vaccine mandates to satisfy the faculty at your daughter's school and bargain your way back to normal includes me being gradually jobless, homeless, and finally probably held down by men with guns and forcibly vaccinated.
I'm not your daughter, so I'll forgive you not thinking of me here. But I'm someone's.
Collaborator, wow, that stings. You may be right, even if that is not what I meant to do. We are living in horrifying times. Evil is afoot. How to resist? It is so huge, so evil. Lives are being ground to dust in the jaws of a monster. They have divided us, manipulated us, given us little scraps to keep us in line. Each of us is just trying to survive. How do we come together to fight this evil?
How to resist? Don't comply. Speak out.
Boosters are on the horizon...for everyone. If people keep complying to "get their lives back", it will not end.
Here's your motivation...every single injection your child submits to might increase her risk serious, life-altering or life-ending disease in the future. This is an experiment on humanity. They have no notion of the longterm consequences of these injections. None. Nada. Zip.
So far, the doctors and scientists who have been vilified for speaking out against the "vaxxines" have been right about every risk they identified.
Here's just one example of what might be in out future on a massive scale...
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cheryl-cohen-dies-rare-brain-disease-second-dose-pfizer-covid-shot/?fbclid=IwAR0Y_YbtRi9nIrk-hzZso-1upbrOlHi6W9g3_6x_cMrRbmufuZ4qyknNRlY
This, this, a thousand times this. "How" to resist is very simple. Gato malo already answered it.
Will you choose to do so, or will you go along to get along is the bigger question, and one without any concrete answer.
I wouldn't have called you that. My point is less melodramatic.
"Each of us is just trying to survive" = "We are not in this together."
That's fine, that's what life is. You lose the moral high ground if you don't allow people to go along to get along.
I just want people to be honest about it. If you can't or won't resist, you're not in the same position of people who will or must resist, and it's insulting to suggest we're of a kin- whether or not that's anyone's fault. It's the same bullshit of "allyship" the woke Left loves to flog. We are simply not in the same boat. It takes great moral courage to sacrifice your position unnecessarily for the sake of others. It is not the norm or the expectation.
We don't come together to fight this evil unless we're all affected by the evil enough that we see no alternative. See also, literally every other social reform in human history.
It never ends. Here in San Francisco we have a vax rate of 85%. (3x many have died of overdoses than of/with covid here.) But it isn't enough. As an unvaccinated person I can't eat indoors, go to a bar or cafe without showing proof of vaccination. There is also AB455 ("dead" for now until the results of recall election favor Newsom) that will make it impossible for unvaccinated Californians to enter any public building except grocery stores or churches. No entrance to hotels etc...Never in my wildest nightmare.
btw my daughter is vaccinated as well; she had no choice, the NCAA requires it of all student-athletes.
I am on your side here; I think just the reality of having the staff and students on campus and back in the normal routines will help immensely to shake us out of this bizarre fugue state.
If a widespread adoption of sensible risk assessment (if the kids weren't at school they would still have to be *somewhere*, and the virus would still get to them lol) is truly impossible due to psychological hard-wiring, it's just one more sign that society literally cannot function under secularism.
This is my sentiment as well. I think mechanistically we have confidence the vaccines work as they generate antibodies and immune memory that wouldn't have to be sterilizing. It's just that this Duke 'cohort' is not a good one to look at for a signal since it's so young. Same in trying to study efficacy among children... there's just nothing work with since the disease does nothing to them anyway, even at vast scales much less small study sizes.
Vaccines probably do work, but uptake in the low risk age groups likely won't make much of a difference in deaths or even hospitalizations. With the knowledge that natural immunity is stronger, it's a strong argument against mandates and for continued investment in treatments while still advocating to vaccinate the vulnerable.
Can you please explain to me the long term effects of taking a mRNA vaccine? You seem to comfortably think it is a "placebo". What are you basing this on, other then your faith that it will work out? There is zero data on long term use in humans.
Oh, no, I don't think it's a placebo. I personally think there are danger flares all around. But insofar as every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever, I cling to the thin hope that, in spite of everything I have learned, it is somehow benign in the long term. I used "placebo" in this case only to indicate the immediate psychological effect this injection appears to have.
> every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever
I really question your judgement. I do hope it all works out for you.
Do you think I can control the actions of sovereign adults? If so, your family functions differently from mine. You make other assumptions in your comment that are also unwarrented, but this is not about me or you. What I was trying to say was, all of us, whatever our "vax status", have many loved ones who have chosen or been effectively forced to go along. I cannot wish them ill. I pray I am wrong, and el gato malo is wrong, and Dr. Malone is wrong, and vanderBrosse (?) is wrong. But I fear they are all right. This should be breaking all of our hearts.
and this is an important point.
arguing for choice and liberty involves accepting that others will make choices we wish they would not.
hell, i have some friends that listen to (shudder) maroon 5 and have mistaken it for music...
what can one do save pity them and try to educate them?
we can provide information, but we cannot force choices. that's not consistent with supporting a free society or personal agency.
When one side argues for choice and the other side insists that the side that's happy to give them the choice to mask up, vaxx up, stay home must be compelled to do the same or else their own interventions "won't work," we've got asymmetry of regard here.
It's like a knightly order of chivalry challenging Barbary pirates to a Queensberry boxing match.
This is an important point that many people don't understand. Science can (or should be able to) tell us what the risk is -- but it can't tell us if that risk is acceptable or not. Everybody has their own risk tolerance and risk profile. I don't ride a motorcycle because the risk isn't worth the reward. On the other hand I play third base in softball whereas others won't because THEIR risk isn't worth the reward.
Of course, the bureaucrat would either ban ALL risk or spread it out evenly -- even to people who don't want to ride the motorcycle or play third base.
You're right - it's a sort of faith. Perhaps informed by the success (or failure) of past vaccines? In either case, there is no long term data yet so no one can answer those questions only speculate based on what's been observed so far. This is why getting the vaccine should be a personal choice based on one's own risk/benefit calculation.