We broke all records of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations today

You have completely ignored peer reviewed science presented to you. You have completely ignored experts in epidemiology and infectious disease discussing levels and degrees of herd immunity—not levels of vaccination.

We do not agree on anything because your still unsubstantiated opinion has been shown to be incorrect with the empirical evidence I’ve provided.

I have never claimed there is a blanket recommendation to mask at home. You are making that up. You claimed the CDC made no recommendations for uninfected individuals to mask at home. I showed irrefutable evidence you are incorrect.

Covid absolutism is mostly an excuse people like you use to deny science and justify irresponsible behavior. There is nothing so sad as seeing people like you reject science and depend on feelings to guide mitigations that affect your life and the lives of others.

When you can support your opinions that NO scientist anywhere espouses, get back to me. Until then, my links, pull quotes, and other information on herd immunity and mask usage in the home fully support my posts on the subject. Until you can present expert opinion or peer reviewed studies to support your erroneous opinions I accept your concession on both herd immunity and mask usage. I’m confident my reliance on empirical evidence as opposed to your unsubstantiated opinions will convince third parties your opinions lead to sickness and death, while my posts can lead to protection from infectious disease and life.

 

What I find suspicious is that once the Election was over and everyone knew Joe Biden was going to be inaugurated President, the Daily Count of New Covid-19 cases began to drop like a Rock, so I believe there was some manipulation with the Numbers to make this Pandemic look exponentially worse then it was for Political points. January 8th 2021 we had 308,442 New Cases in America and on Jan 12th 2021 4502 Deaths. Then on Feb 15th 2021 we had 53, 627 New Cases in the United States and 939 Deaths, so in a little over a Month, an almost 6 fold drop in New Cases and a 4 fold drop in Deaths as if Joe Biden got elected, Raised his Staff into the Air and magically caused the Pandemic to be WAY! better like Moses Parting the Red Sea. I SMELL! a Fish in all this.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

 

I have done no such thing. What I HAVE done is agree with your own words. Yes! There will be NO herd immunity until after we re-open. Looks like you refuse to take yes for an answer.

I think that's important because some people are talking about some "natural" herd immunity. There is no science that supports that that could happen in this pandemic. And that even attempting to try such a thing would result in an almost "apocalyptic" loss of life. Maybe there will be in the future... who knows... But promoting such concept at this point can only be based on pseudo-science and would be irresponsible.

MY opinion is and has been since the beginning that a blanket recommendation (apart from the very specific circumstances mentioned, which are all temporary) makes no sense because it's not realistic. People just wouldn't follow it. According to the paragraph I quoted, scientists suggest that it could be counterproductive. I don't know if there are any scientific studies about this or not. But it sounds reasonable to me.

I mentioned it as just one more element that works against the position that you espoused.

On a more general note, you seem to jump into this thread every time you think that one of the many unsubstantiated claims you have professed here has been confirmed by science. Something like a "I knew this before science, therefore I'm superior to science"

That's NOT how it works. If you make a claim today that is not substantiated by science today, you are wrong and will always be wrong. Even if it becomes a fact tomorrow, you were still WRONG. Because science doesn't work by throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. That's similar to when Trump started throwing in treatment after treatment hoping one of them one day would turn out to be effective.

 

This kind of thread should be temporally contextualized.
The title gives the impression that US are still going to hell.

It's not true. The situation in the United States [some states aside: I'm receiving concerning news from friends in Florida, just to say ... but I don't live in Florida, so I can only record what they say] is getting better and better.

Is Biden doing the right things? It's still early to say something about this.

 

That is so not true!!! The reason why the cases and deaths dropped has NOTHING to do with Biden and everything to do with the Christmas surge. It overlaps perfectly since diagnoses get a 2-week delay and deaths a 3-5 week delay. Once the surge passed, of course things started to calm down. But rest assured, they will pick up again thanks to the B.1.1.7 variant, like it has happened in all countries that have had it. This is far from over. Your ridiculous conspiracy theory supposes that the virus gives a s.... to who is president, or that the count of cases and deaths is manipulated. Neither is true. There are simple and good reasons for these fluctuations (it's not the first nor the last time that the virus oscillates up and down) and they are linked to people's behaviors and to the infectiousness of the specific dominant strains, not to who is president. Gee!

This virus has a way of debunking conspiracy theories. It always does. People make these ridiculous assumptions, then the virus invariably prove them wrong. Mark my words. It will happen again.

 

Well! you know more about this Pandemic than I'll ever know, but I find the steep decline in New Cases and Deaths hard to believe. I think there was some skewing of the Numbers, because of the Election.

 

The first time I brought up mask usage at home I provided empirical evidence in the form of peer reviewed studies on transmission rates in households as opposed to other venues. I also supplied peer reviewed studies of actual mask usage in the home that showed statistically significant reductions in infection rates with mask usage. I do not and never have provided an opinion or fact on C19 that doesn’t have a solid foundation in formal science. My posts are ALWAYS based on existing empirical evidence. My home masking posts have been predicated on existing peer reviewed evidence from the start.


NOTHING I post is crap thrown at a wall. It is all supported by irrefutable empirical evidence. That’s why you can’t refute it. That’s why eventually entities like the CDC, WHO, and NHI of the U.K. have to come around to the facts I’ve presented months earlier. If they didn’t they would be science deniers (like you) and more often than not (they do deny science at times) they choose to follow the evidence. Slowly of course as bureaucracies do. I explained all this months ago when Dr. Birx first started accepting the evidence. To her credit, she was only days behind me in beginning to disseminate the clear evidence behind the value in home mask usage.

You are wrong about nearly everything you post on biology, virology, and epidemiology. You have falsely stated in the past SARS-CoV-2 virons would degrade overnight on glass and stainless steel. You have denied common cold viruses exhibit antigenic shift through recombination—something people who are educated in virology and microbiology learn in 100 level classes. You have said the CDC has no recommendations on home mask usage for uninfected persons—which they do and I provided. You have claimed the terms “degrees of herd immunity” and “levels of herd immunity” are products of pseudoscience, yet world renowned experts commonly use the terms to discuss a topic your first paragraphs above show you still can’t comprehend. When given numerous examples of everyone from chief WHO scientists to the chief epidemiologist in the Biden administration using the terms in the context I have been for months you go on some more about my posts being crap thrown at the wall.

You outright admit you appeal to authority but you can’t cite a single expert that shares your opinion, let alone empirical evidence or peer reviewed data sets. The best scientific expert source you have is a freaking NYT journalist hiding behind a paywall. A blind squirrel journalist who incidentally found a nut but doesn’t even know it’s a nut. His theory that we should recommend the most effective measures in place of less effective ones is actually MY position. I’ve clearly demonstrated the secondary attack rate in households is many times that of in public spaces. With multiple peer reviewed meta analysis and studies I’ve posted links to and pull quotes from.

I hate to be so blunt, but you are the reason so many people mistrust the scientific community. You blatantly and unapologetically make demonstrably false statements. Almost everything you post on Covid 19 is in direct conflict with the empirical evidence. You never back up your opinions with any evidence and when irrefutable evidence to the contrary of your opinions is produced you move on to some other unsubstantiated claim or call peer reviewed studies and other empirical evidence pseudoscience. You do all this while claiming to understand epistemology. You do science and fields of applied science a huge disservice.

I don’t have any idea why you are talking about natural herd immunity. I have discussed the subject numerous times in the past and have always predicated and often bookended my posts with the clarification I in no way advocate for pursuing that option in the presence of efficacious vaccines (which we now have).

For Covid 19 there will undoubtedly be a natural infection induced component of herd immunity. There will likely always be unvaccinated individuals with neutralizing antibodies and even more likely cellular immunity in the population contributing to herd immunity. Herd immunity will be a combination of vaccine induced and natural infection induced immunity, hopefully heavily favoring vaccine induced immunity. I suppose that bothers some people to hear, but it’s an unavoidable fact.

 

No. There simply wasn't. The numbers are accurate. It's just the natural up and down of a pandemic. Look at the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu: it came in 3 waves over almost two years. The American politics is just coincidental. This is a PANdemic, which means, all over the planet. Of the 211 countries, only 1 had an election featuring Biden v. Trump, and all the other 210 had ups and downs and first, second, and third waves like we're seeing here. This virus doesn't differentiate if you're Dem or Repub or Independent or black or white or Asian or Hispanic or liberal or centrist or rightist. The virus will just do what it does. What viruses do. No conspiracy theory necessary.

Shark attacks happen more in the summer.

Ice cream parlors sell more ice cream in the summer.

However, as tempting as the coincidental correlation is, people eating ice cream is not what is causing shark attacks.

These events happened parallel in time but have strictly nothing to do with each other.

Now, it is conceivable and even likely that as vaccination progresses and as more people get the natural infection, eventually the numbers will drop for good. But this current drop is not due to politics, and is not even due to vaccination yet.

 

My friend, you are obviously 100% right, as usual. The opinions of this guy debating with you just don't make the grade. It's not even worth continuing. I stopped debating with him for this very reason. As you know, you and I have been through it in detail, and you are the only guy I've seen here who actually understands what herd immunity is, what vaccine immunogenicity is, what parameters are involved in the effective use of masks as an epidemiological device, and so many other topics regarding this pandemic. It is truly remarkable that your expertise is in the veterinarian sciences but you know so well about what is involved in the human kind of medical sciences.

I see so much BS here, then it is very refreshing to read you, because you do know what you're saying.

 

And since the first time I have been trying to explain to you why your conclusion (not the studies) is pseudoscience. Let me try to explain to you one last time: the way pseudoscience works is by bringing facts that support a certain position, some of them even valid scientific peer-reviewed studies. But ignoring any facts or science that don't support the position.

Sure... transmission at home, mask protection at home would protect you.... there are peer-reviewed studies and all that... I have already said that all that is true. But... so what now?

The point is that, scientific studies or not enough, people will not wear a mask at home.

Look... imagine that there were somehow evidence that wearing masks at home is the ONLY way to stop the pandemic. If that were the case there would need to be a change in culture. Americans have a hard time getting used to wearing masks outside (though we have made progress), it would be immensely more difficult to get them to wear masks at home. You don't make a change of culture just because "it helps". If when the CDC made the recommendation to wear masks, they had said: "everybody needs to wear masks when they go out AND when they are at home", it stands to reason (as those who argue against "Covid abolutism" say), that people would not wear masks in either of the two scenarios. Why? Because we're human! And we know this from empirical evidence. Which I mentioned on the first post about Covid absolutism.

Being supported by irrefutable empirical evidence proves that the statement is factual. It doesn't tell you how to act on those facts.

The fact that, if people wore masks at home, the spread of the virus would be less, doesn't automatically mean it's a good idea to recommend people wear masks at home in all situations.

I'm going to leave this here hoping you will read it three or four times, because this is the ONE thing you fail to understand. The scientific evidence is NOT what I am arguing against. What I am arguing against is how YOU have arbitrarily interpreted we should act based on it.

 

It's sad how even bright intelligent educated people can be bamboozled by pseudoscience.

You know... once James Randi (famous magician and debunker of pseudoscience) said that scientists are among the people most vulnerable to pseudoscience. The reason is that they are not used to being fooled. Because they are used to dealing with nature. And nature never tries to deceive them.

 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Biden is president now. So according to your logic, which is pretty close to non-existent, Biden is to blame for all the deaths from Jan 20th and on, for as long as he is president. He should have had this thing solved by now, with all this "science" that he has.

 

Dude, I get you don’t want to wear a mask. Nobody likes it. But the science is clear. My intention is to inform people of the best ways to protect themselves and those they love. I’ve been clear about that since the first time I posted this content on PF.

I have no interest in what YOU think people will or won’t do. You don’t decide for anyone what’s best for them. You’ve already been clear you don’t care enough about your family to inconvenience yourself. That’s your right. But everyone else has a right to the truth which I provide. You wish to suppress the truth for some greater societal good or to pander to your feelings, I’m not sure which. You give mixed signals in that regard. I want individuals to have accurate information so they can protect themselves. I abhor dishonesty, especially in matters of science and applied science. I refuse to deny others verifiably accurate information that has the ability to save lives just because the information is unpopular or you don’t like it.

Everything you post is YOUR UNSUBSTANTIATED OPINION. I have no interest in it except to show third parties the danger of your ideas. You would deny life saving information to your countrymen on the basis YOU think you can predict their behavior. Your position is so centered on what you think others should and will do it borders on being egomaniacal.

No matter how many times a person reads your post, it’s still unsubstantiated opinion. Opinion based on your desire to withhold lifesaving information from people you think you know better than they know themselves. In applied science we take empirical evidence and use it to solve problems and innovate. We don’t bury evidence to assuage our feelings.

The repeated projection of your denial of science and selfishness in regards to the safety of your family onto society as a whole is frankly disturbing. Just because YOU are anti mask doesn’t mean all are. Just because your personal gratification outweighs your concern for others doesn’t mean all people operate in the same manner.

Furthermore, your repeated and documented false statements on every aspect of science disqualifies you from lecturing anyone on virology, epidemiology, and most of all epistemology. Your every post violates every aspect of epistemology.

 

Nope! Trump is to blame. Maybe not for "all" the deaths. But his planning for the rollout of the vaccine, for example, was pathetic. Lives would have been saved if he had been doing the job of President instead of wasting his time trying to figure out ways to become a dictator.

Estimations are that somewhere between 60 to 70% of deaths in this country due to Covid could have been avoided if Trump's policies had just followed science since the start of the pandemic.

 

Operation warp speed was a huge success. Biden's implementation of warp speed a huge failure.

 

Of course! When you lack arguments to discuss the topic, discuss the opponent. Not difficult to see that coming from you.

What do YOU think people would do? Do you think more people would say "yeah... I'll wear a mask all day and night at home and outside, stay away from the family that I love while in my own house and is not infected anyway, and wash my hands every time I touch a doorknob. Just because the government told me so"? For over a year! Or more people, especially those who barely tolerated the "wear mask outside" guideline, who would say "WTF? The government is crazy. F*** this! If I'm going to get infected at home anyway, why bother wearing a mask outside?" Which would have caused even more loss of life. And I very very much doubt even most people who decided to do exactly what the authorities were saying would have stuck with it for more than... a month (and that's generous).

But that's me. What say you. What say anybody who just happened to read this post?

 

Terrible failure. All it did was instruct the FDA to speed up authorization. Whoopy doo! But when the hard part came. The part where the government had a big role: implementing logistics to get vaccines into the arms of people.... this administration went AWOL. No plans, no logistics, no coordination with the incoming administration... nothing! Well.. not "nothing" Plenty of photo ops, golf and planning for the insurrection... But not much more.

 

This thread was started during the worst part of the pandemic. It's true that there is great news for most of the country (unfortunately for me I DO live in Florida). I think Biden is doing good things. But I don't believe that's the reason. Looks like experts don't actually know for sure yet what the reason is.

 

Do you actually understand what Warp Speed was? List, please. What did it do? What vaccines did it foster, and in what way for each one? What else did it do regarding manufacturing, and distribution? Did it only work on vaccines? What exactly do you mean by "Biden's implementation of warp speed"?

I could bet that you largely ignore the assets and limitations of Operation Warp Speed. Do reply to the above without googling; we'll see. The reason I doubt that you know what you are talking about, is this idea of Biden somehow "implementing" Warp Speed.

Go. Oh wait, let me get my popcorn. OK, go, now.

 

You are certainly bamboozled by pseudoscience. I can’t speak to your education...don’t know much about it.

James is quite ignorant. Anyone who has spent any amount of time observing nature is well aware of the myriad of deceptions attempted by nature. Golem, this is why everything you believe is wrong. You listen to people who are ignorant of the subjects they expound on. The statement nature doesn’t attempt deception is patently absurd to anyone who’s spent time observing nature. Thanks for finally revealing your sources. Holy cow. (Pun intended in memory of James)

 

You have freely admitted you don’t want to wear a mask in the home even though the science is clear it would protect you and your family. I’m not making it about you. You made it about you.

I’ll keep repeating myself here as in other threads. Government has a duty to disseminate correct information. To fully disclose all known ways to protect oneself and others and how effective each mitigation is. Then, it’s up to individuals to decide what level of risk they are comfortable with and proceed with mitigations that coincide with their risk tolerance. When individuals make their own choices “Covid absolutism” is out of play and irrelevant. That’s what you want, right?

You do realize if everyone approached Covid 19 as I have the pandemic would have ended in the US in March of 2020? The pandemic has lasted over a year because people like you will not take action to stop it. Your freedums are a higher priority than ending the pandemic.

 

What unbelievable nonsense. Nature "attempts" to deceive? Wow! That could not make it clearer for me that your ignorance of how science is or how it works is at some sort of "Uri Geller" or "Von Daniken" level.

As for James Randi he's not a scientist. Even so he was well regarded in the scientific community as a reputable debunker of pseudoscience. And the only ones I have ever seen attacking James Randi have been promoters of pseudoscience. So you have further substantiated my suspicion that you are an adherent to that "discipline". Your lame attempt at an ad hominem fallacy seems to have backfired on your credibility.

 

QUOTE me "admitting" that I myself don't "want" to wear a mask at home, or retract. If you can't quote it or refuse to, that would be an admission that you resort to a lame ad hominem out of lack of arguments.

The only one here discussing me is YOU. And you do that because you are unable to respond to my arguments.

What you have not realized (i.e. refuse to accept) is that "everyone" simply WILL NOT approach Covid 19 like you proposed. Therefore, your "approach" is pseudoscience.

"Pseudoscience" means that it "sounds" like science... It does that by cherry-picking the science that support a claim but ignores the facts that don't support it. And, when they find themselves backed into a corner, the favorite "argument" of pseudoscience promoters to try to get out of it is the ad-hominem fallacy, like the one you start this post with.

BTW, you didn't answer the question. Further evidence that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, let's wait for the quote (or retraction) I requested.

 

Well ... there is something we [operators of the sector] noted last year and probably we are going to note the same.
Have you ever wondered why flu disappears before of summer?
The answer is among the reasons why there was who said that Covid-19 was going to disappear before of summer as well.
Unfortunately SARS-Cov-2 is more alive than a common flu virus.

It's still early. Anyway the absolute humidity [not the relative humidity which is the one you hear listening to weather forecasts] begins to increase. This puts viruses in troubles. Substantially more water in the air means heavier droplets and more easy to filter for our nose and our mouth.

In the Mediterranean region this is particularly evident and in fact last summer we lived an almost common summer with a very low presence of Covid-19 [but it was around]. The great mistake of Italian authorities was to be optimistic about the transition from the warm season to the cold season: last autumn SARS-Cov-2 had a party in Italy!

In US you cannot compare the situation of the pandemic now with the situation of the pandemic in February 2020.
In Italy we can. Now, we were testing well less persons, so that the number of cases is irrelevant as factor of comparison. But the number of deaths ...

And looking at those numbers, now we are in a well better situation: in February / March 2020 in Italy 600 - 900 persons died because of Covid-19 everyday. Now we are recording between 300 and 400 deaths per day. We cannot be happy, but the containment measures are working in some way.

 

Absolutely it does. In fact survival of most living things depends on deception. Even viruses as non living bits of information contain deceptive information. Of course little of the deception is by self aware organisms, but Randi is the one who anthropomorphized nature, not me. LOL

Obviously he’s no scientist. Science is observation of nature and clearly he never did so or he would not have made such ignorant comments about nature.

As I said, your opinions are not founded in any empirical evidence. They are humorous, but completely void of any substance. I will never have a credibility problem on PF because I back my posts with actual data and other formal science. You will never have credibility because your opinions come from journalists and magicians and can not be confirmed using empirical evidence.