Coronavirus: International Facts and Figures
- Thread starter Chief
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Yeah, this is the positive and the negative of universal access to information, combined with a massive decline in educational standards in the most influential Western country.
- Jul 28, 2012
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Then you are an imbecile! Totally brainwashed. There is no analytical thing on this subject, it's all follow the leader blindly and you are blind. I have no time for people like you. When Dan says "do not panic" what he really means is "don't worry, we will panic for you"...He follows the Science! For most people, having a negative reaction to things is normal, and having a gross overreaction is not uncommon at all. In fact, there's science behind near all of it. Yipee, science! It doesn't matter what side of the political fence you sit on, Scomo is just as bad. Governments lie about lots of things - what they're doing, how much they're doing, whether they're doing anything at all ? There are myriad reasons for this, from intimidation to keeping the population on their side with a list of impressive accomplishments, sweep everything else under the carpet and ban Peta Credlin from any press conferences? Who's going to call them out on bending the science a little? In the Governments view everyone flunked Science anyway, so they will never know? Nobody likes the term "sheeple", i certainly don't, sadly it's true. Are we really going to live like this every week going forward? Do people know the Vaccine does not prevent you getting Covid! It might give you a 94% chance of not getting seriously ill, what are the figures without it? Most people with COVID-19 experience mild symptoms or moderate illness and infected people recover from COVID-19 after 2 to 6 weeks. The Federal Governement doesn't quite grasp exactly what's coming just yet, we've had panic in WA and Victoria and it's only February, wait until April! Josh is about to lose even more hair!
Just because people decide to wear masks or adhere to other rules, doesn't necessarily mean they 100% believe what the government is saying.
The two are largely unrelated.
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- Jul 28, 2012
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I wear the mask, i obey the rules, but i don't necessarily believe what Dan the Man says at all. If i don't and i'm found out, i will be shot down in flames as Leftist ideology will have me ostracized and cast out of society, the Left must learn how to argue and persuade, instead they go down the violent path of seek and destroy. I just had a decades long friendship end because i think Joe Biden is a Chinese sycophant, weak, crazy and politically inept. C'est la Vie...I'm open to discussion, but the abravisness of Trump comes into the conversation and the administration was a lot more than that. Biden isn't changing everything despite the excessive amount of executive orders!
I find that often the frustration from 'the left' comes from how these opinions are formed, rather than the opinion itself.
May I ask what led you to form this opinion?
I'm a little more cautious. Remember that science is just a current line in the sand of knowledge.
It wasn't that long ago that the best scientists of the day believed that disease was transmitted by 'bad air' (malaria comes from that) or 'humors' and bleeding by cutting or leeches cleansed the blood and body.
You can hardly argue that Newton, Davey, Boyle, Maxwell and so on weren't great scientists. But not one of them believed in bacteria or viruses or anything like that.
So science is science. It's fact...
as we currently understand facts.
Like you I have no time for the conspiracy nuts. They damage others by spreading falsehoods. How many people have died because they have been persuaded not to take MMR vaccines or get their kids vaccinated, for example?
And while I'll take science over bunkim religion or pseudo science pedalled by snake oil salesmen any day, I'm well aware that scientists don't have all the answers. And often get it wrong. And people that are worried about the C-19 vaccine because of this have every right to be.
But in this day and age, I'll take the vaccine ASAP. I'm 99.9% sure it'll be fine.
But that is the big misconception about science.
What the scientists of the day think doesn't really matter. At the very core of the scientific method is that opinions change as more information (facts) becomes available. Scientific consensus is relevant of course, but the science is the facts.
The facts are a constant. They don't change.
And that's why the deadshits on Facebook are just so misguided. They never read the actual facts themselves. The facts of course being the studies. The scientific papers.
Just because a scientist of professor says something, does not make it 'science'. They are merely interpreting tests and studies. And as you say, these opinions change as the facts change. And, if you look hard enough you'll find a scientist or professor out there that interprets studies any way you want!
For example, the 'science' around ivermectin is there for all to see. So are opinions of various scientists and professors. But they are two different things.
The studies themselves are published, and are actually pretty easy to understand. They are the 'science'. They are the facts. There is no right or wrong. They are simply facts - results of studies based on specific and repeatable circumstances.
The stuff you see posted on Facebook and on here however are not scientific facts at all. They're interpretations of the facts. Interpretations are not science.
The ivermectin studies I've read myself do not say that 'ivermectin cures COVID'. And they certainly don't even come close to suggesting that we should all be taking it!
The issue is that very, very few people actually read the research. Or, in most cases they don't understand it. In most cases, I don't either.
Instead, people take what a professor says in a YouTube video or on Facebook and refer to it as 'the science'! It's not the science. It's an opinion. In many cases, a bias one.
Same with the mask thing. I've heard people say "the science says that masks don't work". That's a nonsense statement.
There may be some studies where masks were shown to be ineffective in certain conditions, but I've personally read relevant studies were they were effective. So I'm open to it being debatable. However to state that that 'science says they don't work' is just a false statement.
Without telling you or anyone else how to suck eggs, the classic example is the hypothesis that 'All apples are red'.
Remember, a hypothesis cannot be proven. If it can - it's not a hypothesis.
An appropriate test for this may be to get 100 apples from 20 different trees, and see what color they are.
If 99 apples are red, and 1 is green - then the hypothesis is disproven.
If all 100 apples are in fact red - then the hypothesis is supported. It's not proven, because you didn't test every apple in the world. You can never prove it. And that's the point.
The results of this study would trigger other studies about apples, until there's been 100s of 1000s of them and scientists get a better understanding of apples.
There could be 1000 studies on the color of apples, and every one of them could continue to support that all apples are red. But it's still not proven. And the moment someone finds a green one, which could be 50 years later, that original hypothesis is disproven.
The science hasn't changed. The interpretations and opinions of it have though.
Science is like an enormous tapestry of facts that is constantly added to again and again and again. The pieces of the tapestry itself never change though, they're facts and are constant. But as each new fact is added, the interpretation of the tapestry as a whole can, and usually does, change.
So in summary - if people really care about these topics, they should read the studies themselves. Interpret the results themselves. Read dozens of them. That's really the only way to be informed and actually have a clue.
And if they don't, then they really should STFU and stop quoting other people's opinions as 'science'.
If they are skeptical of the scientific consensus because they read something contrary on a conspiracy website or on Facebook, that's fine - but at least read the studies yourself before spruiking this s**t everywhere!
I'm not anti-conspiracy. I'm very open to it. But it shits me no end when people talk conspiracy and when I lean in to listen, the only thing they have is links to YouTube videos or selective quotes from Facebook.
It's just idiotic and really frustrating.
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Isn't that what I just said?
- Jul 28, 2012
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May i ask for you to sing the praises of Crazy Joe, Nancy, Schumer, John Kerry and the most insane of them all AOC? It's pretty easy to form these opinions. I was a lefty myself once, but thankfully there was room in the lifeboat! How are you frustrated? It can't always be clamshell packaging or is it the madness that is the United States right now ? The world's a frustrating place sometimes, made all the more frustrating by the fact that so many of the annoyances we deal with every day don't have to be that way. What happens when the world is complete bullshit, and the only reason for it is human stupidity and selfishness?
- Jul 28, 2012
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Indeed why? Crazy Joe is a self admitted gaffe machine, in fact he is the Ferrari of gaffe machines! The rest just need a nice padded cell !
So because you don't like one side or one person on that side - you support the other?
That is just idiocy in its purest form im afraid.
- Jul 28, 2012
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Insane response. I have no love for Scomo down here, i abhor Dan the Man, i know Trump was abrasive, confronting and un-excepting to most. Joe Biden is not the answer in America. (He's fair dinkum nuts") Anybody with half a brain knows it will be Queen Kamala by the end of the year. I am a humanist, but i won't be praying to some imaginary being in the sky to help us all, although the temptation is there. The idiocy is well and truly on the Left. It's 2021 and the s**t hasn't hit the fan yet...
This post has nothing to do with the thread, and all you are doing is parroting messages that you have received, in relation to a country that you don't even live in. And it is exactly what your first rant in this thread was about, people believing messages from others.
Then if someone questions your idiot posts you resort to abusing them. Humanists, by the way, believe in reason - so you are not a humanist.
- Jul 28, 2012
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Well that triggered a clumsy and irrational response. There is my point, the Left can't debate without vitriol, if you don't agree you are cast out of society. Facts & Figures mean nothing to the Left, it's agree with me or be dammed..the Left is baffled by any reasonable thought process, it plays with their minds. To a lefty it's 2 + 2 = 5. Most people are brainwashed, certainly in Victoria. The problem is that the general understanding of brain science is exactly as it is with any other scientific field: constantly fuddled by misreported media outlets, theory-touting nut jobs, Woke America , and stuff you read on the back of cereal packets. Dan the Man knows this better than anyone.
Every other scientific field is constantly fuddled by misreported media outlets, theory-touting nut jobs, Woke America, and stuff you read on the back of cereal packets?
I would suggest that you are projecting here, 'clumsy and irrational" and 'theory-touting nut job" are pretty accurate descriptions of your posts.
Now do you have something of value to contribute to the discussion about COVID-19 and facts and figures?
- Jul 28, 2012
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I rest my case. the brainwashing is complete with you
Do you not see the irony?
You've formed strong opinions based solely on what governments and media have told you.
- Sep 26, 2012
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purple duck.. negative hyperbole
Well yes, obviously, but no.
If you read the science yourself, in a field you don't understand well, your interpretation of it is also "an opinion", and almost certainly a very bad one.
Much better for the layman than reading the science, is reading the scientists.
Get a bunch of opinions, find out who those opinions are from. This gives you a pretty good consensus.
This go to the science bullshit is just that, bullshit. Most cannot, and those that can on average will form considerably worse views than the scientific consensus.
The number of people that have "examined" climate science and decided for themselves what it means is laughable. The collective value of most of those opinions wouldn't be worth a pinch of s**t.
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I don't agree.
There are enormous amounts of scientific research papers out there that don't mean s**t to me. Can't make any sense of them. In those instances, I realise and accept that I in fact don't know s**t. It's a humbling experience and one that makes you very wary to jump on internet forums or Facebook and scream at people that you know the facts and they don't!!
There's nothing wrong with not knowing, and not having an opinion.
I'm smart enough to know that I don't know much.
However there are plenty that I do understand. In many cases though, it's not my opinion that matters anyway. It's just the facts of the study that are relevant. The why and how often don't matter. It's just understanding what the study actually was, and what the results were.
Just for example, here is the headline from the Foundation for Economic Education website:
"New Danish Study Finds Masks Don’t Protect Wearers From COVID Infection"
And these are the results of the actual study they're referring to:
A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
Note the limitations:
Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.
So the headline that most Facebook Users would come across during their 'research' would get them all riled up that it's a fact that the science says that masks don't work. However if you bother to actually read the study, it's not the case at all. It shows that there was a difference between wearing a mask and not wearing one.
But given that all participants were socially distancing anyway, and participants provided the results themselves, and it was never verified if they actually wore masks or not - there's not a heap you can really take from it.
Point being, there's often a huge gap between 'research' and actually doing your research.
I don't have an issue with people following scientific consensus, as long as they too are aware that it's just that - the consensus of opinions. Granted they are educated opinions - but it's not fact. And as such, jumping on internet forums or Facebook and screaming at people that you know the facts and they don't is very foolish.
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