Rayvin

This is such an RTG thing to happen So desperate to be loved and acknowledged that whenever any other fan pops over and agrees with them on anything, he becomes some kind of celebrity. It's like in the movies where untouched cannibal tribes meet 'an outsider' for the first time and immediately make him their god. That spurs fan will be loving the attention for now, but wait until they try to cook and eat him. Might well be talking literally here tbh.

I enjoyed this thread

Have watched video, can believe it's possible and am reassured by peer reviewed paper supporting the conclusion, but not sure what your argument is? Are you saying they should have done this instead of vaccinating everyone? If so, I have the following thoughts: 1 - If this is something that is actually done with such diseases, it's very likely that they tried with earlier variants but they weren't successful - or rather, the process was so lengthy that it took them until now to achieve it. 2- If we had waited and done nothing on the vaccine front it would have been horrendously irresponsible. 3 - Many more people would have died while we were waiting for Omicron, given that we're 2 years into the disease now and one year into the vaccine program. How many deaths would the wait have been worth? 4 - We don't know the long term effects of Omicron yet, genetically engineered or otherwise - far less than we do about the long term health effects of the vaccine. Why do you trust the virus more than the vaccine? 5 - The guy in the video isn't making the case that we developed Omicron, he's saying it happened randomly. So.. I mean are you saying we should just trust dumb luck in future? Or is the argument that as of now, there's no need for the vaccine? So your contention becomes you've cheated the system by not being vaccinated for long enough that the far more dangerous form of the disease has been nerfed by the more recent one. That's not a gotcha moment though, that's the same thing as I mentioned in an earlier post. Equivalent to a someone giving the right answer with the wrong working out. It's just dumb luck. It's an interesting video though, I do grant you that.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/20/vitamin-d-is-a-vital-covid-defence-tool "Vitamin D is a vital Covid Defence Tool" May 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/10/does-vitamin-d-combat-covid Does Vitamin D combat Covid Jan 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/05/matt-hancock-orders-third-review-on-link-between-vitamin-d-and-covid UK keeping the link between Covid and Vit D under review - Feb 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/add-vitamin-d-bread-milk-help-fight-covid-urge-scientists-deficiency-supplements Scientists urge people to add Vitamin D to bread and milk to help fight Covid - Oct 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56180921 The truth about an alleged Vit D Cover up - April 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52371688 Should I start taking Vitamin D - Dec 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/23/health/vitamin-d-uk-coronavirus-wellness/index.html Britons urged to take more Vitamin D if they don't go outside April 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/health/vitamin-d-coronavirus-wellness/index.html Vitamin D's effect on Covid may be exaggerated May 2020 I'm going to stop here because I think I've covered the unholy trinity of media sources as far as the right wing go. The Guardian, the BBC and CNN. Many articles. It took me 5 mins to find these. Actually it didn't, it took me 30 seconds. It took me 5 mins to make the post. Is it worth considering that you may just be reading the wrong media sources? The right wing ones are really unreliable tbf.

I will give it a look - I work in academic publishing so I'm always interested in this sort of stuff anyway.

Totally agree about the media, but that doesn't mean we can just run off in the other direction - it means we have a duty to understand the truth through credible evidence. For me, credible evidence at least as far as pandemics go, starts and ends in academia (and data).

Can't speak to that first point I guess, I just don't know. If you ask Gloom, there isn't much love for the MSM on here - especially from me But that tends to be because I think they make speculative, evidence free judgements about situations. I still completely trust experts and specialists though.

Yes but that acceptance comes from evidence from specialists, not just people making uninformed, speculative guesses. If a kid does some maths equation and gets the right answer through the wrong process, they're still wrong. The process matters, evidence matters.

Not sure about that... Epstein was convicted in 2008. Pizzagate kicked off in 2016. Pizzagate believed in a hidden code in emails released by wikileaks or something. Granted, what went on with Epstein could have formed the basis for why they thought this was possible, but that doesn't mean they uncovered anything that hadn't already been known for almost a decade by that point. Unless I'm mistaken anyway.

Honestly I just saw the headline come up on my phone or something, I don't even know what it was about. If it was a pro-Palestine message then that suggests she has gone off down the hard left rabbit hole though. I mean you don't have to be hard left to support Palestine, but still.

Well that's good to hear anyway. Was a bit surprised at that one.

True - did you see Emma Watson got in trouble for being anti-semitic the other day? I didn't really look into it truth be told but it feels like it's going to be a never ending debate in many ways.

Mate, the Jews are human beings too. Some of the stuff that gets posted on here sometimes, seriously...

There is no good reason not to trust the science. That's really all it comes down to. It could be that we're wrong, but not based on any particularly strong data or information that is presently available. It's like when Quiff came out and said that the Chinese government had 100% made this in a lab - maybe it did, but he was making that claim on the basis of no evidence or factual information whatsoever. I don't know why it's so difficult to trust that people who have built their entire careers around this sort of work actually know what they're doing, but there we are.

They're just people to me, whether they're Muslims or not is irrelevant in my judgement of the situation. Having said that, I'm opposed to identity politics myself. Fair enough though, I understand your point.

I agree with that, but I still don't think he should be honoured, especially given the resentment towards him from the left and right. But I basically agree with NJS anyway. Abolish the monarchy. What I will say in defence of Thatcher, is that she was far, far, far more competent than Boris Johnson. But in terms of her view of society, I always come back to that Neoliberalism article by Monbiot. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Blair is a centrist. The left absolutely despises the guy. You can see this very readily if you spend a bit of time looking at the division in the current Labour Party.

What does them being Muslim have to do with anything? I mean I know the answer but I find it annoying. You think it's some kinda gotcha for left wingers to invoke someone who attacked Muslims in particular, because Islam is a sacred cow of the left. He wasn't a cunt for attacking them because they were Muslim, he was a cunt for attacking them because they were human beings. The left is concerned with human beings. Blair did a lot of good in this country domestically, but ruined his legacy with the war. I do think it was a war crime. I don't think he should be knighted. I do think we should abolish the monarchy. Thatcher was a weapons grade cunt. That's my view.

What I will say for Asprilla is that his views do appear to be consistent across issues. For Brexit, philosophical motives win out - i.e. we should be free to do what we please irrespective of economic (and other) factors in which we will suffer. For Covid we should be free to do what we please irrespective of the number of people who die and the extent to which the health services are overwhelmed. Freedom > everything. I can't accept any economic argument on covid though since the economy was thrown under the bus by Brexit - that position isn't consistent unless we're saying that the order of priority is freedom > economy > people's lives. If that's your position then you don't need to argue the data points specifically - you can acknowledge the scale of the deaths, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the other issues as being true, and still say that despite all of that, you prefer to have your freedom. I prize my freedom too, and am quite liberal in a number of areas as a consequence. And I'm not totally happy with the idea of vaccine passports either for what its worth - but I couldn't put my desire to be free on this single issue up against someone's very life, and look myself in the mirror in the morning. And since you're arguing the facts, I guess you can't either. So - do you need your interpretation of the facts to be right in order to continue to have your freedom as paramount, and is that what is motivating you to find arguments that suit your preferred outcome? Or would freedom win out either way, and the rest is something of a PR exercise because you know how that would look? For whatever it's worth, I'd respect the latter more than the former. I wouldn't agree, at all, but I think reaching a really honest place with our views is very important for society these days. I may be alone in this though.

Yeah fair, I didn't so much mean to suggest he caused it so much as he was a quite high profile case of someone saying it quite bluntly. You're right though, climate science denial was an early example of this sort of rhetoric.

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular but I feel moved to say it. I think it's difficult to have civil discourse these days because the frames of reference for factual information aren't aligned anymore. These days your average guy in the street thinks that his opinion carries as much weight as someone who has researched and specialised in a particular area for many years of their life - we've talked about this before, it comes from the Michael Gove style trashing of experts that was key to getting things like Brexit/Trump over the line. If people don't like facts based on evidence, give them "alternative facts". This notion we've somehow arrived at that all that's in the mix are a series of equally valid opinions is just a nonsense. It's not true. My personal opinion on covid, our response to it, the measures we should take, etc cannot ever stand up on equal footing with someone who works in the field, or has a PhD in a related area, or lives and breathes this stuff day in and day out through their entire lives. My opinion is so far below theirs that it's not even worth mentioning it. And yet that's what so many anti-vaxxers think, they fundamentally believe that their views are equal. It's actually offensive to the entire idea of a knowledge based society. We can't all have equal opinions in everything because we can't all specialise in everything. A big part of the issue, in truth, is that many of these people don't understand how rigorous the academic process is. We're worlds away from "journalistic research" with this stuff, it's unbelievably complex, pored over by peers in the field, repeated ad nauseum and so on, until we get to a stage where we're confident that it's as right as we can say. And then, other people take that data and research and go off and try to replicate it, try to build on it, all the while it's being critiqued over and over by people who have spent literal decades specialising in this. Their opinion is just always, always going to be worth more than mine. That doesn't mean I'm not as smart as them, or that I'm surrendering my own personal agency, it just means I'm recognising reality.

£15m plus £100k a week Some of the numbers journos were flinging around about this man. £35m plus £200, 300k a week. Sounds very reasonable, great bit of business by the looks of it.

Not sure that analogy could have been any more unpleasant

Dotbum is Adios. I know him online elsewhere now and aye, he's a good fella.

Christ... I really am sorry everyone, it looked shorter in the text box.