all 44 comments

[–]StillLessons 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (13 children)

The greatest casualty of the Covid panic has been the destruction of the word "science".

Regulatory bodies around the world have re-defined "science" to mean "policy". This is a very rapid, very effective way to undo hundreds of years of learning made possible by critical analysis. In its place, we find ourselves in the same environment in which those who disagreed with the the Catholic Church found themselves in the middle ages. To say the health consequences of this are going to be severe is a radical understatement.

The WHO's re-definition of the phrase "herd immunity" is singularly the most destructive change in thought I've seen in decades.

The suicide of the enlightenment. It's logical, given the guilt embedded in our social consciousness associated with the carnage of centuries of Europeans slaughtering millions of people around the world militarily, but it's still so hard to watch all the good that Europeans accomplished be flushed down the toilet in our desperate effort to purge this guilt. Is it not possible to acknowledge the damage that was done without simultaneously destroying all the real positives that Europe also brought to human thought?

[–]madcow-5 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Agreed. The word was a little twisted at times before, but COVID19 killed it entirely. It's used a lot now to mean whatever a perceived authority said. Anyone wearing a suit or a lab coat.

What was the redefining of herd immunity though?

[–]StrategicTactic 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The normal understanding is that people develop antibodies to viruses usually by fighting them off- either through a weakened form of them via vaccination or just by acquiring and fighting through the virus normally. Herd immunity pre-Covid was understood to mean when enough of a population had these antibodies to effectively prevent the virus from being able to spread.

The recent change on the WHO site was to remove the thought that people could get antibodies on their own, and any herd immunity must be acquired via vaccination.

[–]madcow-5 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Creepy. I think most people as of now still understand it as the original meaning, but I'm sure it wont take long for the left to memory hole that, like they seem to be doing with literally everything else in society.

[–]StillLessons 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You explained much more efficiently than I did.

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Herd immunity for a century has been understood to be achieved through two methods: first some portion of the population is infected with the agent (perhaps geting sick, perhaps not) from which the immune system learns how to fight it (among the survivors), and the next time people are exposed to the same pathogen, people's immune systems kill the pathogen before it can reproduce. The second path (which was widely recognized as inferior, it is important to note) was to vaccinate, which is to introduce a substance similar enough to the original pathogen to awaken people's immune system so that if they later came in contact with the real pathogen, the body would be "trained" to fight it already. So two paths to herd immunity: natural infection and spread through the community, leading to a group of immune people having had it, or vaccination providing a group of people whose bodies should recognize the pathogen if they encountered it.

The WHO - in its infinite politicization - decided within the past couple of months to eliminate the natural method of developing herd immunity. In other words, the only way (per our policy overlords) for herd immunity to develop is through vaccination. According to them, the people who get the bug, survive, and provide a population of bodies that now recognize the actual pathogen, don't count. Not useful. If you're not vaccinated, you are not "immune", as they now use the term.

This is the single greatest piece of stupidity I could ever imagine, because it flies in the face our understanding of thousands of years of human evolution. Natural immunity is precisely why we are resistant to the literally thousands of potential "pathogens" that surround us in the biome. We are exposed to uncounted microorganisms daily, and we don't get sick because we naturally evolved to live alongside them.

But Gates and the WHO don't want that. They want CONTROL.

If this change in thinking is successful, it will be responsible for millions of deaths, as our understanding regresses hundreds of years.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"What was the redefining of herd immunity though?"

A means to an end. In commie thought, any means to achieving the desired socialist end is always justified.

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Absolutely. We have entered a new age of scientism orthodoxy, with those who seek truth once again scheduled for (social, for now) death.

Its almost as if humans have not changed substantially in the last 30,000 years, and the 'old' behaviors we so deride. Witch burnings, dark ages, inquisition, purges, etc, etc, etc, are all just waiting under that thin veneer of western civilisation, waiting to emerge and fuck up sensible people all over again.

I hope the autistic master race is paying attention. Because it will NEVER END whilst NTs rule the world.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

NTs?

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

neurotypicals.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

over 2,000,000 dead worldwide. Over 400,000 dead in the us.

[–]StillLessons 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Statistics like these are more useful as propaganda than they are as an accurate picture of our interaction with a new pathogen.

When I hear them stated "naked" like this (which is to say without any context or complex debate which is actually quite necessary to give real meaning to numbers), I hear an emotional appeal to authority rather than a well-articulated call to rational policy.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that these numbers are accurate (which is in truth debatable, though that debate is not being permitted, because of precisely the anti-science thinking I refer to in my original comment), what do they mean? Numbers of dead tell us nothing about options. They tell us nothing about alternate scenarios, and whether those numbers might go up or down depending on different strategies.

When I see these numbers, I see a call to urgency. They are usually stated with the intention of refuting the "hoax" argument of covid. They mean when used this way, "Look at all the dead bodies! This is real; it's not a hoax!"

They tell us nothing, however, about what matters: which strategies work to protect which populations against a respiratory virus? Are the strategies the authorities are mandating actually achieving the goals they are designed to achieve? What are the unwanted "side-effects" of these policies? In other words, what's the "cost" in what is (if debate were permitted) a hugely complex societal cost-benefit analysis?

These are all the kinds of questions (among many more) which in our current environment are strictly verboten. The reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration says it all. The primary signatories of that letter are epidemiological experts with decades of experience in addressing these kinds of questions. What is the reaction of the authorities to genuine scientific inquiry and debate of what is the most effective scientific response to a dangerous new pathogen? Censorship. Censorship and "Look at all the dead bodies!"

This is not science. It's a call to submit to authority, and it will lead not to safety (what they are selling) but paradoxically to more death and suffering, both from the disease itself and from the societal costs which the authorities pretend don't exist when they sell us their "solution".

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Dude. It's deadlier than the flu. It disables people. It's not something to fuck with. Your idea of "science" is basically a rational for embarrassing Trump as little as possible. Had Hillary Clinton been the leader of your country, you would know damn well that 400,000 deaths is a big deal. Especially when one keeps in mind that only 25,000,000 of America's 330,000,000 people have had it so far.

I am not saying we know everything. They were wrong about some things, like how contagious covid was of surfaces, or the possible efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, or how it could spread in an elementary school setting. We need to know the virus better. It will open up opportunities as well as present challenges.

But don't waste your brain power trying to figure out how harmless covid is. That is spitting of the graves of over 2 million people.

[–]wuzizname 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (23 children)

Believe the doctors and scientists!!!

What dumb people don't understand that the core belief of the scientific method is that ALL IDEAS ARE CHALLENGED and need to be proven multiple times to be true. My grandmother was prescribed menthol cigarettes by her doctor when she was twelve years old to help her with a cough she had. We barely know how the human body functions at all, medicine is mostly differentially applied (try something, if it doesn't work and doesn't kill the patient, try something else until it works or the patient dies).

So all these idiots shaming people who question the virus are themselves very non-science. The sad thing is lockdowns is all they got, there's nothing else and without lockdowns they see cases going up and they freak out, so they lockdown people again - instead maybe we should be pumping those billions of dollars we're paying waitresses not to work and reallocate those funds into... I don't know... improving and building more hospitals and improving ICU conditions?

[–]madcow-5 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Bret and Heather Weinstein discussed a lot on their recent podcast how there's a market in the scientific community for publishing things that will get cited, regardless of quality. Creating an incentive to amp up the fear factor in COVID19 research, because a million and one media outlets and journals will then cite their paper. They went into detail on one recently published study that's being cited all over right now and basically rendered it meaningless. But it makes for a juicy headline, so it's passing as "science".

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

For what it's worth, one cannot get an academic promotion unless one's research is cited and used by other scientists. Scientists must also refer to and consider the work of other scientists in order to responsibly assess their own results.

[–]noice 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Of course. But the proxy for high quality and high impact research has become the number of citations, which itself becomes a heavily gamed metric divorced from the thing that it's supposed to quantify.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a process whereby the state of the research can be confirmed. When there are problems with the initial research, it's challenged by other scientists, and in most cases a correction is published where necessary. There is no alternative approach that would have scientists respond to the research. A video that provides no reliable evidence certainly doesn't help.

[–]madcow-5 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

They mentioned specifically it’s the drive for as many citations as possible in academic jobs. According to them, even negative citations help.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Metrics used for Research Assessment Exercises are supposed to consider negative citations and associated retractions. A portion of the metric initially counts all citations and offers information on the 'world class' nature of the state of the research, even if there are negative citations. I would agree that the latter is a serious problem. Research Assessment Exercise committees are tasked with locating the negative citations and retractions, but they can also get this wrong, and have done so.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You justify everything.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

LOL. I should note that Research Assessment Exercise metrics are extremely annoying for academics who are not in the sciences, as the metrics were not appropriately adjusted for non-science academics. I suppose I could say - yeah, fuck the Research Assessment Exercise - but that's not part of a solution for dealing with it, even if true.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't say anything about the RAE, my guy.

[–]bobbobbybob 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

I'm a scientist. A good one. A published one. Pretty special, but can't say more without outing myself.

Good scientists are still following the scientific method. Papers get published that destroy things like AGW, there's research out in Nature atm that proves that covid is a brain disease, not a lung one. Whatever political orthodoxy you look at, there are published papers out there, spelling out the truth, as we currently see it.

We just get totally ignored. What is truly frightening is the power of the public to take the political position and then amplify it and impose it on others. The propaganda machine has billions of active promoters, burying that hard won truth under mountains of darkness.

The way I see it, the push is to eliminate the predominantly white, scientific, meritocratic past, because they think that the structures of civilization that we have built will sustain the ignorant low-IQ masses they intend to replace us with.

But, if we all stopped supporting them, and withdrew into small enclaves, dispersed, just let go of the reigns of control and discovery, it would all collapse into shit in short order. We just need to hunker down for a couple of generations, investing our knowledge, principals, morals and aesthetics into our children.

[–]FediNetizen 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

I'm a scientist. A good one. A published one. Pretty special, but can't say more without outing myself.

As opposed to all those scientists that haven't been published, right?

There's a reason AGW deniers are a small minority among scientists, and it's because in denying AGW, you're denying a whole lot of basic physics and well-supported science.

[–]bobbobbybob 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

knew you'd pipe up.

AGW proponets: Lots of math heavy papers looking at blackbody radiation in the atmosphere

Physicists: Gasses cannot exhibit black body, or even greybody radiation.

for example. There's a thousand examples of the BS.

But, this is one you can test yourself. Get the global climate dataset (its online). Construct a search that grabs temperatures (everywhere) at sunset and for the next 2 hours. Drop data that has clouds, or that has wind speed above a few knots. Drop the outside 5% of data from each site.

Waterfall plot %CO2 vs day of the year vs cooling rate

learn that increasing CO2 increases the cooling rate after sunset.

/end AGW theory.

Its quite simple. Many of us have done it, but getting that published is another story, its a bit too blatantly heretical. The result is also expected if you understand wave physics, and don't rely on (photon) particle models that are not applicable in near equilibrium resonant systems. (As Lorentz himself, who invented the math that the AGW crowd abuse, proved)

or suck on Greta's ponytails. More your style

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

AGW proponets: Lots of math heavy papers looking at blackbody radiation in the atmosphere

Physicists: Gasses cannot exhibit black body, or even greybody radiation.

You see, I said it was supported by the fundamentals, and you respond in a way that indicates you don't quite understand the fundamentals. By the way, gasses is a verb, and gases is the plural form of the noun that you should have used there. The greenhouse effect doesn't assume that gases behave like a black body. Actually, the fact that they don't is pretty basic physics (Kirchhoff's Law), and I'm scratching my head wondering why you think greenhouse theory would be based on a premise that is so obviously wrong. Actually, wait, I know why you would.

In fact, it's because of the narrow bands that gases do absorb that creates the climate forcing effect we need to be concerned about in the first place. A greenhouse gas is one that absorbs in the frequencies where the bulk of the emission from the earth is, the infrared. The energy is absorbed, then re-emitted in a random direction, meaning about half of it gets sent back to earth. This process leads to higher surface temperatures than what would be possible otherwise, and when at stable natural levels is what sustains life on earth.

Increase GHG concentrations, and you get a stronger greenhouse effect. Interestingly, the CO2 itself only accounts for about 1/3rd of the total increase in temps we get from an increase in CO2 concentrations; most of the rest is a cascade effect from the increased water vapor in the atmosphere as a result of that temperature increase.

With regards to the second part of your comment, where you seem to believe you have debunked climate change, even as a student I can think of so many problems with that plot that I understand exactly why you can't get it published. It's not because it's "heretical", it's because it's exactly the kind of retarded crank "science" clogging up the inbox of real physicists everywhere. Maybe it seems "simple" to you, because you never understood the science in the first place.

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

lol. you pretend to be able to school me on physics by being a grammar nazi

deep burn, bro.

The greenhouse effect doesn't assume that gases behave like a black body.

I guess you've never read any of the math papers that looks at doppler widening of CO2 re-emission bands

The energy is absorbed, then re-emitted in a random direction, meaning about half of it gets sent back to earth.

That's assuming, of course, that it is re-emitted in a random direction. When I was talking about using a particle model of energy, that's one of the issues. There's many more.

But, even ignoring that little detail, the rate of collision of gasses at 1atm is far greater than the relax/re-emit time of CO2, so most of that absorbed IR energy ends up in other gasses, which have fast relaxation/re-emit times, with the net effect of energy shifting the upwelling IR into lower frequencies. You can see that in the from-space emission spectra, that show excess energy (over the blackbody curve of earth at whatever temp it is at) at all frequencies down-frequency from CO2's main vibration states. Of course, most AGW proponents and even many of the scientists i've talked to seem to think that the emission spectra has an upper bound of the earth blackbody curve, instead of having the CO2 absorption balanced back into near equilibrium by extra emission by other atmospheric components. lel. There is an effet, for sure. But given the earth is a globe, not flat, even with 100% random re-emisison, the net effect of the energy bouncing around is about 80-100ms of delay in the energy exiting.

As for your second bit of ad hominem. Do the work. open your eyes. The reason I posted it is it provides actual proof/disproof of CO2's effects without any other confounding factors. A very basic experiment _for which all the data is already available. I could show you my working, even show you the code required to filter the datasets (hardest part for me was making sure I had sunset times for each location / time of year), but as you've already said, you won't read any links I post because you think i'm stupid.

Enjoy your smug, IYI, ignorance. Remember, Truth is Racist!

EDIT. If anyone else reads this, happy to show papers referencing every statement here. We know that Earth's radiation, for example, is pretty random in direction from the surface. But with the atmosphere, there's a bunch of resonance / standing wave effects that modulate re-emission (and even particle movement) and phase, etc. At the scale of the distances between CO2 molecules, compared to the length of IR's wave, individual CO2 molecules even end up vibrating in phase. crazy stuff :D

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Yeah, no. All you did was graph temperature trends over time; since CO2 has been rising steadily, your CO2 axis is just a proxy for time. You know what would make the rate of heat loss after sunset increase? Higher temperatures. You know what we've been getting as CO2 levels have been increasing? Higher temperatures. But that temperature increase is slow, as in ~0.2C/decade slow.

You know what 0.2C/decade translates into per day? ~1/18,300th of a degree. You know what that translates into over the two hour period you're using? ~1/210,000th of a degree, or about 5 micro Kelvin. You're not going to see a few micro kelvin in a fucking waterfall plot that's dominated by current weather conditions, and that would have been obvious to anyone who understood the fundamentals, hence why I said that even as a student it's obvious that you don't. At the end of the day, you are in fact just a delusional crank.

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

since CO2 has been rising steadily,

not true. goes up and down as it rises.

You know what 0.2C/decade translates into per day? ~1/18,300th of a degree. You know what that translates into over the two hour period you're using? ~1/210,000th of a degree, or about 5 micro Kelvin. You're not going to see a few micro kelvin in a fucking waterfall plot

unless CO2 is a potent cooling agent. Run the data.

You missed the point. Rate of cooling is to the infinite void of space, so the few degrees variance over time of actual temperature results in very small changes to the earth/void gradient, so the signal, which is CO2s cooling effect, becomes quite clear when you control for clouds and wind.

run the data

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Steady cyclical effects are still steady. CO2 levels fluctuate over the course of the year, an effect which, apparently you need to have pointed out to you, was being cancelled out when you made an axis of your (brilliant, AGW debunking) chart the day of the year.

You missed the point. Rate of cooling is to the infinite void of space, so the few degrees variance over time of actual temperature results in very small changes to the earth/void gradient, so the signal, which is CO2s cooling effect, becomes quite clear when you control for clouds and wind.

And writing shit like this continues to show how you really don't even understand the basics. Radiation is proportional to temps to the 4th power. No, a few degrees change isn't noise. What a clown show.

[–]bobbobbybob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

you always make me laugh. You manage to spout the official narrative, word perfect, as if you understand.

Radiation is proportional to temps to the 4th power.

right ho. You didn't run the data, did you. Because if you did, you'd know that all this 'out of your arse' debunking really doesn't get close to touching on the issue.

But let's play in your inane world. When I run the data, it is clear that the rate of cooling increases with CO2 concentration. You can attempt to explain it away, as you have, by claiming that the increased temperature gradient of a warming plant produces the increased cooling.

That's fine. Let's say you are right. Let's say that increased temperature increases cooling at the extent the data shows. Great. We now have a powerful negative feedback mechanism that prevents the temperature of the planet increasing above. oh. sorry. if it is temperature causing the observed sunset, no wind, no clouds, cooling, then we can't even warm by more than another degree and a half. If I plug in the numbers from the last ice age, we can't actually leave the ice age.

But you'd have to do the math and run the data to have any kind of place to stand and debate on.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are legitimate question. There are lockdown measures that might go too far. But saying covid is just like the flu is deadly bullshit.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

No - that's obviously not evidence of 87000 doctors & nurses, /u/x0x7. Why did you post it?

[–]Airbus320 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

Because he can and you can't stop it

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not trying to. Just curious.

[–]FediNetizen 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The first time this video was posted on Saidit, they claimed it was 87,000 medical professionals from the Netherlands. When someone pointed out that the Netherlands only has a population of 17 million, meaning like half of the medical professionals would have signed on to this, no one had any response then either.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

By "doctors" do you mean chiropractors? And by nurses do you mean white women who follow fringe politics too much?

[–]Vagina7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

covid is a political weapon.

[–]hfxB0oyA 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Looks a lot more like 7 supposed doctors saying that a bunch more are onboard than it does 87 thousand.

I checked out their website. If thousands of medical professionals are behind them, how come the only people whose names are on the site are the 7 in the video plus only two more?

Digging a little deeper...oh fuck, they're hyping Andrew Wakefield. They're anti-vaxxers.