Neither Canada nor US ever envisioned herd immunity against CoVid. They wanted then and still only demand now, herd mentality. One other thought...note how when the weather gets nice each spring and summer the numbers of deaths magically went down - both before 'vaccines' were available and afterwards. This indicates, to me anyway, that fresh air and sunshine are excellent (perhaps the best?) disinfectants for the human immune system...just like everyone's grandparents have told us for decades. Which begs the question: where's the imperical evidence that shows otherwise-healthy 'vaccinated' people fared "better" than the healthy unvaxxed? Lastly, one should have known that *every* contagious viral outbreak tends to affect the elderly and immune-compromised among us at the highest rates. We've known that for a couple of centuries now. CoVid didn't change that. Good post, Ken.
Yes, it's amazing (one even might say "unprecedented") how so many basic, fundamental facts were conveniently forgotten in the spring of 2020. And even with "hindsight", we still know basically what we did right at the beginning. The only difference now is that we're a little more allowed to say it.
Can you give an example of a “basic, fundamental fact” that was “conveniently forgotten in the spring of 2020?”
I clearly remember that BOTH the seasonality of cases AND the particular vulnerability of the weak and elderly were major talking points of health officials in their communications to the public during the pandemic. It sort of seems like Mr. Jafo is making up stuff that didn’t happen.
Well, basically everything we did was exactly what we had previously decided we SHOULDN'T do in the event of a pandemic: masks, lockdowns, travel restrictions, etc.
What do you mean ‘herd immunity’ ? I know people who’ve had Covid 19 three times. You don’t become immune from catching Covid by catching Covid, if that’s what you’re trying to say.
“just like everyone's grandparents have told us for decades” ?? My grandfather was a GP, a medical doctor, and he certainly never said anything like “fresh air and sunshine are excellent (perhaps the best?) disinfectants for the human immune system” LOL. He DID have some choice words to say about anti-vaxxers though.
“Where's the imperical (sic) evidence that shows otherwise-healthy 'vaccinated' people fared "better" than the healthy unvaxxed?"
Fresh air and sunshine would've been great for the kids:
"Some health-care professionals attribute the spike in RSV infections to the fact that physical distancing and public health restrictions during the pandemic kept children from being infected with the virus for two years, so their immune systems have less experience fighting it now that those restrictions have lifted."
Ned, you've convinced me...that you're a contrarian for nothing more than the sake of being a contrarian. It simply isn't possible to 'study' hundreds of millions, perhaps billions when you count world-wide numbers, of otherwise-healthy people who didn't get sick, never had symptoms, were never "vaxxed", fully recovered, and didn't volunteer for anyone's CoVid clinical trials (LIKE ME). Even less possible are "thousands of studies" --OF THOSE PEOPLE, AGAIN, LIKE ME, -- the people to which I'm referring. Officials, to this day, continue to downplay aquired natural immunity to CoVid by those who were never tested, never treated, but did indeed recover without medical interventions or so-called "vaccines" - you guessed it, LIKE ME AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. Please, by all means, continue to regurgitate what your media feeds you. If nothing else, you're making them proud. But hey, if you're into sharing links, check this out: https://brownstone.org/articles/kid-lab-rats/
We agree. You haven't a clue what life looks like 'outside' your allegedly-"Progressive" bubble. You may need these special sunglasses if you're ever going to see reality.
This post is blindingly ironic. You’ve found a study about biases, which apparently confirms your personal beliefs (all scientists are liars for some vague reason, it’s bad when governments govern etc.), and you hold it up as ‘proof’ that you were right all along. This is a textbook example of confirmation bias in action.
What I've written here really has nothing to do with that study - it's merely an independent observation. The study is simply one more piece in the ever-expanding puzzle of how we were constantly being misled regarding covid.
What if we’d done nothing? Epidemiology data going purely from excess mortality rates puts the number at around 20 million, but that obviously increases every day. At least 20 million more people would have died of Covid if we’d done nothing. It’s more difficult to estimate the numbers that would have died if there were no lockdowns etc, but obviously, it would’ve been a lot.
On October 31, 2020, the Winnipeg Free Press ran this headline:
"Covid-19 related deaths in Manitoba could total 2600 by the end of January"
And of course they quoted a study that was done using the latest modeling software.
I'm not actually sure how many people here have died from covid-19 to date, but according to our government's statistics, as of the 9th of March, 2024, the grand total was 2,571 so we'll probably hit that 2600 yet, but it sure as hell didn't happen before January 31, 2021. And this was hardly an outlier, but was actually the norm. Government and media love to use words like "could," and "might," and "as much as," especially when they're trying to make a point. It's remarkable how little time it takes for these predictions to be cited as fact, regardless of how far from reality they are.
Do Canadian stats differenciate those 2571 deaths to date between, died from CoVid vs died 'with' CoVid? The US CDC does not. In fact, in far too many cases the CDC is trying to re-code death certificates to hide 'due to covid vaccine' deaths.
This is a review of a new and interesting pre-print on how "The Science" has been twisted and skewed to promote the efficacy of these vaccines. This appears to be the rule rather than the exception.
I wish I could say the Publishing of Bad Science is new. This old article from The Guardian (of all sites, the Guardian printed this?) demostrates The Science publishing game changed more than a decade ago...and not for the betterment of science, itself.
Good article. Yeah, this is hardly a new phenomenon. In 2005, John Ioannidis published Why Most Published Research Findings Are False and found that much of it is simply due to "prevailing bias." This was 20 years ago.
This is a real issue. It's not the same in every province, nor in every US state, I presume. I really don't know how we do it here in Manitoba, and finding out is, I'm sure, quite difficult. They may have even changed the way that's reported by now.
Here's another guy that's done a lot of work on this topic in New Hampshire:
Am I sure about what? I’m not sure about ANYTHING, and I’m not a doctor or an epidemiologist. I actually find scientific material difficult to decypher. That’s why I generally go by whatever the expert consensus seems to be, just as you do in every circumstance other than those weaponized in the name of political partisanship. If I were to take my personal political beliefs and then seek out some research to justify it, I could probably find papers and data to support just about anything, but that’s not what we do. We take all of the evidence at hand, on balance, and see what direction it points.
If we’re not doing that, then why have scientific inquiry at all?
"I actually find scientific material difficult to decypher. That’s why I generally go by whatever the expert consensus seems to be..." That's what we're talking about, Ned. Your deference to authority and media, with zero willingness to critically think for yourself, is on *you*, not others who are critical of your remarks. Every post you make reinforces your Pavlovian training - and very well, I might add. “I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.” -Robin Williams
I highly recommend looking into the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s an idea that’s been around for a long time, can be summed up as ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’, and it has become a far more insidious problem with the rise of social media.
Basically, a person who is entirely ignorant will lack any confidence in their knowledge and opinions, but a person with a little knowledge suddenly becomes extremely confident in their opinions and assessments (the ‘I do my own research’ crowd / heavy social media users).
This spike in confidence is sometimes called the peak of Mt. Stupid, and is followed by an equally rapid decline in confidence as one gains ever more knowledge (the more you know, the more you know you don’t know).
The amount of arrogance required to dismiss the world’s peak medical bodies (Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, WHO, etc) in favor of your own online investigative talents places you somewhere near the summit of Mt. Stupid, with a breathtaking panoramic vista.
I will defer to experts because that’s what smart people do. You may call me a ‘sheep’ if you like, but I’ve been called a sheep by flat earthers and climate change deniers and I take it as an endorsement.
So I just looked up the Winnipeg Free Press and, just as I suspected, this media outlet is privately owned and is run as a business, just like basically every media outlet. That means they need to sell papers and get clicks. Now, if you’re the editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, and you’re most pressing KPI is to sell newspapers get clicks, and there are multiple angles you can take in reporting on an unfolding health crisis, would you go with the most alarming and sensational forecast, qualified with a ‘could’? or with a much less exciting but more probable projection?
The point is, newspaper headlines have absolutely nothing to do with anything.
I’d highly recommend reading the report I linked to, there are no newspaper headlines mentioned and no projections or forecasts of any kind. It’s essentially case rates and hospitalizations vs excess mortality, 20 million is erring on the conservative side.
Of course the Free Press is privately owned. It's also the oldest paper in the province. The only other option is "public", and they're just as bad, or worse. You seem to be implying that they just make up these numbers, or something. The fact is, these numbers are the result of today's experts doing today's science. Pointing out these failings doesn't make one anti-science.
You brought up a really good point though, which is that these kinds of studies are the ones that get the most airtime, which was (and remains) one of the biggest reasons for the mass public freakout during covid. These types of articles also played a big role in the terrible policy decisions that were made.
No, the newspapers and journalists don’t make things up. When we ask researchers and experts to make forecasts, we will get a wide range of different projections. Some dramatic, some less dramatic. Journalists simply report the more ‘exciting’ projections, along with a ‘could’, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. We’re humans and we’d rather read a headline saying “the sky is falling” than something with more nuance.
Yes, political leaders are influenced by public opinion (we’re the ones who do the hiring and firing), and public opinion is shaped in part by the news media. It’s not a great system, but it’s the best we’ve come up with so far.
Where we’re in disagreement is that you believe leaders should rely less on experts because experts can’t be trusted, and the reasoning you offered is a newspaper headline.
I think experts should play a more central role in decision-making and my reasoning is because that’s the purpose of having experts.
I never said government shouldn't rely on experts - of course they should. The problem is, they didn't. Or at least, the experts they relied on gave them bad information. The reason for this is because the government didn't want certain kinds of information, only the kind that bolstered what they had already decided to do. If they were really concerned about expert advice, they'd have gotten more than one opinion.
Ned, your link is a NEWS RELEASE that contains selective data - "...visits to pediatricians, family medicine doctors, emergency departments, and more." It does not contain any expert quotes or research outside the scope of the author's preferred, single-angled use of very real, human, biases. The Winnipeg Free Press could republish this very same NEWS RELEASE and I suspect you'd complain it did so to simply get more 'clicks'. Tell us why your biased NEWS RELEASE is "better" than other NEWS RELEASEs that encapsolate (like the author in your link) medical experts who disagree with this NEWS RELEASE's conclusion. You have biases. I have biases. But your biases are not less biased than any other human's biases - yet you proceed as if yours are super-duper-better biases than everyone else's. They're not. The other glaring problem with this news release is it's topic: Vaccines in Children. Children under 12 were already the least likely age group to get CoVid at all. The fatality rate in this group is recorded as the lowest among all age groups. So it's hardly clear and convincing that giving this group of people 'vaccines' for an infection they were already likely to not get, is 'proof' the vaccine prevented infection at all. Again, kids who weren't infected, didn't go the clinic and didn't get vaccinated far outnumber the statisically few children that were seen for this news release. The author of this release fails to mention these facts, too.
"What if we’d done nothing?...At least 20 million more people would have died of Covid if we’d done nothing." That's called "projection", Ned. Would have, Could have, Might have, May have, are ALL presumptive words assuming something that hasn't been proven. Those are not the words of science. There's nothing scientific in using projection or presumption in place of evidence, no matter how many may agree with that 'something' that's not provable. Without realizing it you've just circled back to asserting "consensus" as fact. That's not how science or medicine works.
No Ned, I do not use that word 'every day in my life' improperly because I understand the meaning of "consenses" is only agreement. It does not now (nor has ever conferred) "fact" proof, or evidence. Here's Oxford's definition...note the word "OPINION" is mentioned three times:
con·sen·sus
/kənˈsensəs/
noun
noun: consensus; plural noun: consensuses
a general agreement.
"a consensus view"
Similar:
agreement
harmony
concord
like-mindedness
concurrence
consent
common consent
accord
unison
unity
unanimity
oneness
solidarity
concert
general opinion/view
majority opinion/view
common opinion/view
Opposite:
disagreement
minority view
Origin
mid 17th century: from Latin, ‘agreement’, from consens- ‘agreed’, from the verb consentire .
What does the dictionary have to do with anything? I’m talking about the way we treat consensus as fact every day. It doesn’t matter if you like it, it doesn't matter if you agree with it, it doesn’t matter what the dictionary definitions of the words are (word definitions are a great example of consensus as fact though).
Does the sun rotate around the earth or does the earth rotate around the sun?
How do you know? The truth is, you don’t. You’re taking consensus as fact. Pretty much everything in science, and especially medicine, is based on the consensus view, which we generally treat as fact.
This is precisely the issue - there is no consensus on what "might" have happened. Just like there's not even a consensus on whether we should have done what we did to combat this disease. The problem is that the whole program was run as though there *was* a consensus, and we were led to believe there was. It's still no more true than it was.
No Ned, we don't take consensus as fact or proof. Nor do we change the meaning of common words to make it convenient for a narrative. Is English your native tongue? If so, you're doing it wrong.
Neither Canada nor US ever envisioned herd immunity against CoVid. They wanted then and still only demand now, herd mentality. One other thought...note how when the weather gets nice each spring and summer the numbers of deaths magically went down - both before 'vaccines' were available and afterwards. This indicates, to me anyway, that fresh air and sunshine are excellent (perhaps the best?) disinfectants for the human immune system...just like everyone's grandparents have told us for decades. Which begs the question: where's the imperical evidence that shows otherwise-healthy 'vaccinated' people fared "better" than the healthy unvaxxed? Lastly, one should have known that *every* contagious viral outbreak tends to affect the elderly and immune-compromised among us at the highest rates. We've known that for a couple of centuries now. CoVid didn't change that. Good post, Ken.
Yes, it's amazing (one even might say "unprecedented") how so many basic, fundamental facts were conveniently forgotten in the spring of 2020. And even with "hindsight", we still know basically what we did right at the beginning. The only difference now is that we're a little more allowed to say it.
Can you give an example of a “basic, fundamental fact” that was “conveniently forgotten in the spring of 2020?”
I clearly remember that BOTH the seasonality of cases AND the particular vulnerability of the weak and elderly were major talking points of health officials in their communications to the public during the pandemic. It sort of seems like Mr. Jafo is making up stuff that didn’t happen.
Well, basically everything we did was exactly what we had previously decided we SHOULDN'T do in the event of a pandemic: masks, lockdowns, travel restrictions, etc.
What do you mean ‘herd immunity’ ? I know people who’ve had Covid 19 three times. You don’t become immune from catching Covid by catching Covid, if that’s what you’re trying to say.
“just like everyone's grandparents have told us for decades” ?? My grandfather was a GP, a medical doctor, and he certainly never said anything like “fresh air and sunshine are excellent (perhaps the best?) disinfectants for the human immune system” LOL. He DID have some choice words to say about anti-vaxxers though.
“Where's the imperical (sic) evidence that shows otherwise-healthy 'vaccinated' people fared "better" than the healthy unvaxxed?"
There are thousands of studies. Did you search?
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2024/january/analysis-covid-vaccine-strongly-effective-in-young-people
Fresh air and sunshine would've been great for the kids:
"Some health-care professionals attribute the spike in RSV infections to the fact that physical distancing and public health restrictions during the pandemic kept children from being infected with the virus for two years, so their immune systems have less experience fighting it now that those restrictions have lifted."
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/we-are-so-overwhelmed-children-s-hospitals-across-canada-stretched-as-rsv-cases-flu-like-illnesses-spike-1.6139599
Ned, you've convinced me...that you're a contrarian for nothing more than the sake of being a contrarian. It simply isn't possible to 'study' hundreds of millions, perhaps billions when you count world-wide numbers, of otherwise-healthy people who didn't get sick, never had symptoms, were never "vaxxed", fully recovered, and didn't volunteer for anyone's CoVid clinical trials (LIKE ME). Even less possible are "thousands of studies" --OF THOSE PEOPLE, AGAIN, LIKE ME, -- the people to which I'm referring. Officials, to this day, continue to downplay aquired natural immunity to CoVid by those who were never tested, never treated, but did indeed recover without medical interventions or so-called "vaccines" - you guessed it, LIKE ME AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. Please, by all means, continue to regurgitate what your media feeds you. If nothing else, you're making them proud. But hey, if you're into sharing links, check this out: https://brownstone.org/articles/kid-lab-rats/
I have no idea what any of this means
We agree. You haven't a clue what life looks like 'outside' your allegedly-"Progressive" bubble. You may need these special sunglasses if you're ever going to see reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjw_DuNkOUw
This post is blindingly ironic. You’ve found a study about biases, which apparently confirms your personal beliefs (all scientists are liars for some vague reason, it’s bad when governments govern etc.), and you hold it up as ‘proof’ that you were right all along. This is a textbook example of confirmation bias in action.
What I've written here really has nothing to do with that study - it's merely an independent observation. The study is simply one more piece in the ever-expanding puzzle of how we were constantly being misled regarding covid.
What if we’d done nothing? Epidemiology data going purely from excess mortality rates puts the number at around 20 million, but that obviously increases every day. At least 20 million more people would have died of Covid if we’d done nothing. It’s more difficult to estimate the numbers that would have died if there were no lockdowns etc, but obviously, it would’ve been a lot.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537923/
Are you sure about that, Ned?
On October 31, 2020, the Winnipeg Free Press ran this headline:
"Covid-19 related deaths in Manitoba could total 2600 by the end of January"
And of course they quoted a study that was done using the latest modeling software.
I'm not actually sure how many people here have died from covid-19 to date, but according to our government's statistics, as of the 9th of March, 2024, the grand total was 2,571 so we'll probably hit that 2600 yet, but it sure as hell didn't happen before January 31, 2021. And this was hardly an outlier, but was actually the norm. Government and media love to use words like "could," and "might," and "as much as," especially when they're trying to make a point. It's remarkable how little time it takes for these predictions to be cited as fact, regardless of how far from reality they are.
https://www.canada.ca/en.html#a2
Do Canadian stats differenciate those 2571 deaths to date between, died from CoVid vs died 'with' CoVid? The US CDC does not. In fact, in far too many cases the CDC is trying to re-code death certificates to hide 'due to covid vaccine' deaths.
https://ashmedai.substack.com/p/busted-cdc-is-fraudulently-doctoring
This is a review of a new and interesting pre-print on how "The Science" has been twisted and skewed to promote the efficacy of these vaccines. This appears to be the rule rather than the exception.
https://sanityunleashed.substack.com/p/the-extent-and-impact-of-vaccine?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
I wish I could say the Publishing of Bad Science is new. This old article from The Guardian (of all sites, the Guardian printed this?) demostrates The Science publishing game changed more than a decade ago...and not for the betterment of science, itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/sep/05/publish-perish-peer-review-science
Good article. Yeah, this is hardly a new phenomenon. In 2005, John Ioannidis published Why Most Published Research Findings Are False and found that much of it is simply due to "prevailing bias." This was 20 years ago.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Thanks for the link.
"The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." --Ronald Reagan
This is a real issue. It's not the same in every province, nor in every US state, I presume. I really don't know how we do it here in Manitoba, and finding out is, I'm sure, quite difficult. They may have even changed the way that's reported by now.
Here's another guy that's done a lot of work on this topic in New Hampshire:
https://open.substack.com/pub/coquindechien?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=15ke9e
Thanks for the link, Ken. Ned, this is a good link. The author makes excellent observations and suggests solutions that should be applied everywhere.
https://coquindechien.substack.com/p/explanation-of-new-hampshire-house
Am I sure about what? I’m not sure about ANYTHING, and I’m not a doctor or an epidemiologist. I actually find scientific material difficult to decypher. That’s why I generally go by whatever the expert consensus seems to be, just as you do in every circumstance other than those weaponized in the name of political partisanship. If I were to take my personal political beliefs and then seek out some research to justify it, I could probably find papers and data to support just about anything, but that’s not what we do. We take all of the evidence at hand, on balance, and see what direction it points.
If we’re not doing that, then why have scientific inquiry at all?
"I actually find scientific material difficult to decypher. That’s why I generally go by whatever the expert consensus seems to be..." That's what we're talking about, Ned. Your deference to authority and media, with zero willingness to critically think for yourself, is on *you*, not others who are critical of your remarks. Every post you make reinforces your Pavlovian training - and very well, I might add. “I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.” -Robin Williams
I highly recommend looking into the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s an idea that’s been around for a long time, can be summed up as ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’, and it has become a far more insidious problem with the rise of social media.
Basically, a person who is entirely ignorant will lack any confidence in their knowledge and opinions, but a person with a little knowledge suddenly becomes extremely confident in their opinions and assessments (the ‘I do my own research’ crowd / heavy social media users).
This spike in confidence is sometimes called the peak of Mt. Stupid, and is followed by an equally rapid decline in confidence as one gains ever more knowledge (the more you know, the more you know you don’t know).
The amount of arrogance required to dismiss the world’s peak medical bodies (Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, WHO, etc) in favor of your own online investigative talents places you somewhere near the summit of Mt. Stupid, with a breathtaking panoramic vista.
I will defer to experts because that’s what smart people do. You may call me a ‘sheep’ if you like, but I’ve been called a sheep by flat earthers and climate change deniers and I take it as an endorsement.
So I just looked up the Winnipeg Free Press and, just as I suspected, this media outlet is privately owned and is run as a business, just like basically every media outlet. That means they need to sell papers and get clicks. Now, if you’re the editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, and you’re most pressing KPI is to sell newspapers get clicks, and there are multiple angles you can take in reporting on an unfolding health crisis, would you go with the most alarming and sensational forecast, qualified with a ‘could’? or with a much less exciting but more probable projection?
The point is, newspaper headlines have absolutely nothing to do with anything.
I’d highly recommend reading the report I linked to, there are no newspaper headlines mentioned and no projections or forecasts of any kind. It’s essentially case rates and hospitalizations vs excess mortality, 20 million is erring on the conservative side.
Of course the Free Press is privately owned. It's also the oldest paper in the province. The only other option is "public", and they're just as bad, or worse. You seem to be implying that they just make up these numbers, or something. The fact is, these numbers are the result of today's experts doing today's science. Pointing out these failings doesn't make one anti-science.
You brought up a really good point though, which is that these kinds of studies are the ones that get the most airtime, which was (and remains) one of the biggest reasons for the mass public freakout during covid. These types of articles also played a big role in the terrible policy decisions that were made.
No, the newspapers and journalists don’t make things up. When we ask researchers and experts to make forecasts, we will get a wide range of different projections. Some dramatic, some less dramatic. Journalists simply report the more ‘exciting’ projections, along with a ‘could’, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. We’re humans and we’d rather read a headline saying “the sky is falling” than something with more nuance.
Yes, political leaders are influenced by public opinion (we’re the ones who do the hiring and firing), and public opinion is shaped in part by the news media. It’s not a great system, but it’s the best we’ve come up with so far.
Where we’re in disagreement is that you believe leaders should rely less on experts because experts can’t be trusted, and the reasoning you offered is a newspaper headline.
I think experts should play a more central role in decision-making and my reasoning is because that’s the purpose of having experts.
I never said government shouldn't rely on experts - of course they should. The problem is, they didn't. Or at least, the experts they relied on gave them bad information. The reason for this is because the government didn't want certain kinds of information, only the kind that bolstered what they had already decided to do. If they were really concerned about expert advice, they'd have gotten more than one opinion.
Ned, your link is a NEWS RELEASE that contains selective data - "...visits to pediatricians, family medicine doctors, emergency departments, and more." It does not contain any expert quotes or research outside the scope of the author's preferred, single-angled use of very real, human, biases. The Winnipeg Free Press could republish this very same NEWS RELEASE and I suspect you'd complain it did so to simply get more 'clicks'. Tell us why your biased NEWS RELEASE is "better" than other NEWS RELEASEs that encapsolate (like the author in your link) medical experts who disagree with this NEWS RELEASE's conclusion. You have biases. I have biases. But your biases are not less biased than any other human's biases - yet you proceed as if yours are super-duper-better biases than everyone else's. They're not. The other glaring problem with this news release is it's topic: Vaccines in Children. Children under 12 were already the least likely age group to get CoVid at all. The fatality rate in this group is recorded as the lowest among all age groups. So it's hardly clear and convincing that giving this group of people 'vaccines' for an infection they were already likely to not get, is 'proof' the vaccine prevented infection at all. Again, kids who weren't infected, didn't go the clinic and didn't get vaccinated far outnumber the statisically few children that were seen for this news release. The author of this release fails to mention these facts, too.
"What if we’d done nothing?...At least 20 million more people would have died of Covid if we’d done nothing." That's called "projection", Ned. Would have, Could have, Might have, May have, are ALL presumptive words assuming something that hasn't been proven. Those are not the words of science. There's nothing scientific in using projection or presumption in place of evidence, no matter how many may agree with that 'something' that's not provable. Without realizing it you've just circled back to asserting "consensus" as fact. That's not how science or medicine works.
We always present consensus as fact, you do it every day of your life. That’s all that ‘facts’ are, in essence.
No Ned, I do not use that word 'every day in my life' improperly because I understand the meaning of "consenses" is only agreement. It does not now (nor has ever conferred) "fact" proof, or evidence. Here's Oxford's definition...note the word "OPINION" is mentioned three times:
con·sen·sus
/kənˈsensəs/
noun
noun: consensus; plural noun: consensuses
a general agreement.
"a consensus view"
Similar:
agreement
harmony
concord
like-mindedness
concurrence
consent
common consent
accord
unison
unity
unanimity
oneness
solidarity
concert
general opinion/view
majority opinion/view
common opinion/view
Opposite:
disagreement
minority view
Origin
mid 17th century: from Latin, ‘agreement’, from consens- ‘agreed’, from the verb consentire .
Nowhere does it say or confer "fact" or "proof".
What does the dictionary have to do with anything? I’m talking about the way we treat consensus as fact every day. It doesn’t matter if you like it, it doesn't matter if you agree with it, it doesn’t matter what the dictionary definitions of the words are (word definitions are a great example of consensus as fact though).
Does the sun rotate around the earth or does the earth rotate around the sun?
How do you know? The truth is, you don’t. You’re taking consensus as fact. Pretty much everything in science, and especially medicine, is based on the consensus view, which we generally treat as fact.
This is precisely the issue - there is no consensus on what "might" have happened. Just like there's not even a consensus on whether we should have done what we did to combat this disease. The problem is that the whole program was run as though there *was* a consensus, and we were led to believe there was. It's still no more true than it was.
No Ned, we don't take consensus as fact or proof. Nor do we change the meaning of common words to make it convenient for a narrative. Is English your native tongue? If so, you're doing it wrong.
"Miscategariztion bias" you can't even spell the word you dumb hick 🤣
LMAO