Conspiracy theorists are not driven by facts or evidence, as a community they have a scatter-gun approach, and then retcon in “see, we were right all along” by claiming a tiny portion of their collective predictions came true, neatly forgetting the rest that didn’t. Often even those they do claim have come to pass have not, and rely on a misinterpretation or exaggeration.
It’s quite funny to watch, a combination of survivorship bias, confirmation bias, wishful thinking and at times downright disingenuousness.
- mask effectiveness: Remember "masks don't work"? Remember "masks work"? (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/fauci-email-masks-dont-work/)
- vaccine effectiveness: Remember "vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick"? I know I've gotten sick. Most people I know have too, vaccinated no less. https://nypost.com/2021/04/02/cdc-walks-back-claim-that-vacc...
- vaccine safety: check the list of officially recognized side effects, then ask any woman you know if it affected their menstrual cycle. Or just google it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/af... (if you choose to go down the "menstrual cycle alterations are minor insignificant events not worth reporting" argument path, pause to consider you perhaps have no idea what you're talking about, and at the very least it'd be nice to have all well studied phenomena regarding covid vaccines side effects documented on the CDC's covid vaccine side effects page)
- lockdown durations: "two weeks to flatten the curve". QED.
- COVID severity: remember when it was faux pas to suggest COVID was "just another cold"? Everyone I know has had it now, they all have said it was basically just a cold.
- dangers of remote schooling: students across America are performing well below where they were at pre-covid, by factors of 25% and more. https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2021/08/30/the-results-are-in...
That Fauci email says that masks are primarily to prevent infected people from spreading disease, and a lot of crappy masks are unlikely to do much but prevent some droplets. This was before a lot of the studies were in that showed there was some effect. People can be wrong early on, this is expected.
Later on when the pandemic was really ripping through populations it was all a numbers game, to try to reduce spread by percentage. A lot of people seemed to miss that, and would say stupid things like ‘masks aren’t 100% effective” or “they don’t even protect you! They protect other people”, as if that was smart or meaningful.
> Remember "vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick"?
Nope, I’m not American, and it appears neither does your source, because the link that should take you to the original claim goes to some other story.
> vaccine safety
Yeah so you have nothing there either. Anything can affect women’s menstrual cycles. Aircraft travel, dietary changes, stress, all sorts.
> Two weeks to flatten the curve
Was too little too late and a symptom of fucked up, broken American politics.
> remember when it was faux pas to suggest COVID was "just another cold"?
It’s still a really stupid thing to say, sorry bub, excess deaths should show you just how dumb.
> dangers of remote schooling
It’s not exactly surprising that remote schooling is less effective. However saying “dangers of remote schooling” is unnecessarily hyperbolic, and this is a great example of “throwing enough shit at the wall to see if something sticks”
So like I said, you’re claiming a bunch of things that no, the powers that be have not “admitted” to being true, and the rest of the world has not, actually, come to understand, and some things that were just bleeding obvious (remote schooling is less good, we should only rely on it when there are reasons to do so. Like, I don’t know, a pandemic that’s killed about 7 million people worldwide.)
Also this: teen suicides went down for the first time in ages during the pandemic, and has rebounded since.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w30795
Remote-only schooling might have been negative overall, especially for the younger ones, but it's more nuanced than all good vs. all bad. There are better and worse ways to run in-person schooling. There are better and worse ways to run remote schooling. There are positive and negative effects beyond the schools themselves. There are financial and other demands on parents to consider. There are even climate-change considerations. "Dangers of remote schooling" is a shibboleth, not an argument.
P.S. Thank you @Nursie for taking the time to go point by point. Much appreciated.
Here's another: https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-director-data-suggests-vaccinated...
And more: https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1376925777397186560
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> Anything can affect women’s menstrual cycles [...] It's not really surprising and it's not necessarily serious.
Me: Don't make the mistake of saying fucking with menstrual cycles and covering it up isn't serious, as it will out you as someone who speaks to things they have no clue about
You: aight ima fuckin do it
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Besides that all your points are "your sourced claim is in disagreement with my feelings", which is hilarious coming from the "It’s very funny to watch [people talk about their feelings with no support]" guy.
Also flagging isn't an appropriate response to "this person disagred with me in a civil way" but you do you.
Which you’re still doing.
> Here's another
"Scientist talks about existing data on the original virus, conspiracy theorist uses hindsight and information from variants that didn't even exist at the time to try to paint them as malicious"
> Don't make the mistake of saying fucking with menstrual cycles and covering it up isn't serious, as it will out you as someone who speaks to things they have no clue about
Or it might out you as someone who has no idea, because you haven't provided any evidence that such a thing is serious and has any longer term effects, and all of those other things I've mentioned can cause the same issue, yet we don't scream about how aircraft travel is evil because it can disturb menstrual cycles.
Seriously, your comment on this is about as useful as "In Before XXXX".
> Besides that all your points are "your sourced claim is in disagreement with my feelings"
Your sources don't back up you original claims that the US said "oh yeah, we totally did that". You've stitched together assertions, hyperbole and half-truths.
It's that simple. And it's utterly predictable.
> "Scientist talks about existing data on the original virus, conspiracy theorist uses hindsight and information from variants that didn't even exist at the time to try to paint them as malicious"
In fact, "scientist makes bold claims they don't have the facts to back up. scientist ignores all prior data showing that vaccines don't work like that to overstates the importance of the vaccine to push their agenda that everyone should be vaccinated. scientist presents a false narrative that the vaccine for coronaviruses (such as the common cold) is a one-shot procedure. scientist conveniently forgets to mention that viruses evolve. scientist in public position knowingly lies to constituents to push their agenda. people on the internet say `this is ok, it's for my own good`."
> Or it might out you as someone who has no idea, because you haven't provided any evidence that such a thing is serious and has any longer term effects, and all of those other things I've mentioned can cause the same issue, yet we don't scream about how aircraft travel is evil because it can disturb menstrual cycles.
Please do yourself a favor and talk with an actual woman about how the vaccine affected their cycle compared to airline travel. It's not even on the same page. Or, if that's too much to ask, read one of the numerous studies that institutions other than the CDC have published. If you do go down the "talking to a real woman" approach, I recommend you then tell them how the problem isn't really that serious and even though a huge number of women went out of their day to report (to the CDC) severe pains for months following the jab, it's reasonable for the CDC to leave it completely off of their "known side effect of the vaccine" page. Even better, go around on the street and make a TikTok telling women how you know best. I'd pay money to see that.
It’s very funny to watch.