mioasndo
There is nothing loose about the US media and political establishments. If you watch mainstream media with any regularity you'd think it was two departments of one corporation.
> The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma.
I didn't see anyone make that claim. There are many extensively documented cases of collusion between government and media. 9/11 coverage, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, virtually any coverage of foreign adversaries (Russia, China, Iran), vaccines, etc. being some obvious examples.
> I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
Oh yeah, can't think of anything more comfortable to think of!
You're ignoring economies of scale, ignoring basic economics (increase supply - price goes down), ignoring the fact that vaccines require 2 dozes - and potentially more, as well as ignoring the additional costs of administering vaccines multiple times. Also, I would like to see where you're getting those numbers from, since a quick google search directly contradicts your numbers:
> The U.S. government will pay Pfizer Inc nearly $2 billion for 100 million additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to bolster its supply as the country grapples with a nationwide spike in infections.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-pf...
> Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these.
I literally just proposed it to your face 2 times in a row.
> The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
Oh, look at you, so concerned about the poorest citizen that you want to explicitly deny them the possibility to pay for their own tests and force them to get vaccinated against their will. What a champion of the poor.
> Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ? Do you want to respond to my actual statement or just continue with these weak strawmen?
> It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
> The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
Another strawman completely unrelated to anything I've said.
> - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
Do you see the words 'safe' or 'unsafe' anywhere in my 3rd point? No? Are you going to continue making these fallacious, insincere strawmen, or are you secure enough with your beliefs to actually defend them honestly?
> That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
It's pretty cringy how dishonest you are tbh.
Are you going to pretend people are not being actively censored, banned, cancelled, fired for being vaccine-sceptical?
Do you not believe that the extensively-documented mass manipulation of public opinion is a thing?
If this is the fantasy land you want to base your reasoning in, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point.
Something you don't know. If you want a sincere discussion you might want to at least admit the obvious.
> If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logically).
First of all you don't know if it's cheaper. Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is. I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
> If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why do you keep with the 'if, if , if'? I did not make any assertions or assumptions that intersect with your ifs whatsoever. All of your 'ifs' are completely irrelevant, and I'm guessing by the fact that you start explaining every supposed hole with an 'if', that you understand that you can't even verify the validity of these supposed holes you found.
> Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense.
Because natural immunity is more effective and some people do not want to get the vaccine?
> You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
- We do not know the long-term side effects of mrna vaccines.
- MRNA vaccine efficacy is lower than natural immunity, and all data points to MRNA vaccines wearing off significantly after 6 months.
- Some people may not want to get the vaccine for other reasons, the actual reasons are completely irrelevant - in a free society people get to choose what biologically active substances they inject into their own bodies.
> You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
So looks like you did notice one of the reasons I gave you? Interesting that you quoted it, yet completely ignored the substance and failed to challenge or respond to the actual point.
> If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people,
Stop with the 'ifs'. If you don't know the validity of your own point, don't make the point.
> for the other stated benefits (logical, tracking, and cost).
These other stated benefits coming directly from your imagination right? Or are these the 'if' kind of benefits?
'IF the vaccines are a perfect solution, we should forcibly vaccinate everyone.' - cool story bud
That's not a valid reason at all.
> We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
We also lacked vaccine quantity, and many people still do.
> We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
Meh, that's a very weak reason considering it's a small incremental cost to vaccine passports and covid testing.
> The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe.
That's just your 'implicit assumption'.
> Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Except vaccine efficacy is much lower than natural immunity and vaccine efficacy wears off over time. We literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
> Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals.
Your comment here is a distraction. You literally haven't brought up a single fact or data point on vaccine vs natural immunity efficacy.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
How is it a settled issue when there is literally zero data on long-term effects?
> you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
Cool story bud.
Nope.
> It is a bit bizarre that your comment, or variations of it, appears for every single Apple release. For those people so jaded and annoyed at the existence of Apple, why not just skip those threads?
For those people so jaded and annoyed at people critiquing apple - why not just skip those threads?
> There's something unique about Apple that draws in the detractors, however (seriously -- just look at the comments! What a junkyard of noise).
Maybe the only unique thing here is your need to defend apple with no arguments other than your own annoyance at apple being criticised?
So, tell me, why should a healthy, young person, who already had covid and went through it no problem, take a vaccine that could literally kill them? Because vaccine passports as introduced in some places will majorly mess up the lives of many people.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co...
> Human studies show that formic acid is excreted faster than it is formed after ingestion of aspartame. In some fruit juices, higher concentrations of methanol can be found than the amount produced from aspartame in beverages.
Also:
> Aspartame consists of two amino acids—aspartic acid and phenylalanine. When ingested, aspartame is broken down into these amino acids for use in protein synthesis and metabolism. In addition to aspartic acid and phenylalanine, aspartame digestion also yields a small amount of methanol, a compound that is naturally found in foods like fruits and vegetables and their juices. The amount of methanol resulting from consuming an aspartame-sweetened beverage is about five to six times less than that resulting from the same volume of tomato juice.[1]
[1] https://foodinsight.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-as...
Not sure that's true, go to reddit for example, and you'll see the majority are already brainwashed into thinking Assange is a Russian asset. US mainstream media is working on it overtime.
60k per tent site, as in - multiple, like a dozen, tents? Or 60k per tent?
True, when I say 'science' I mean 'hard science'. Every theory is basically an arbitrary statistical model trained on extremely noisy signals. Generally, it can't carry out controlled experiments or predict new phenomena.
> What is the difference between an RCT on how a drug affects cancer (given some formal rating scale for cancer), vs. an RCT on how a drug affects ability to concentrate (given some formal rating scale for ability-to-concentrate)? The former is considered medical research. The latter is considered psychological research.
You can measure the size of the cancer in a fairly direct and objective way. To measure ability to concentrate you need to have a statistical model that interprets a very noisy signal.
> Also, I don’t want people to drill holes in my skull. Most people don’t. It is, in fact, considered unethical by most medical boards to drill holes in a patient’s skull, if what you’re treating for would not be worse than a hole in the skull.
It was a joke about lobotomies...
> “Psychology” is to “neuroscience” as “ML” is to “Computer Science”
It's more like what 'astrology' is to 'astronomy'.
I would say engineering has more rigour because almost everything that really matters is based on rigorous science. Engineering also includes a certain amount of artistry, but that's generally within a rigorous framework that allows this. But, yeah, as I said, psychology is pseudo-science.
> Because we've figured out what the underlying pathology is many (not the majority, but many) cases
Again, how many cases? If you've figured out the underlying pathology for 1% of cases (which is still many), how can you claim that underlying pathology is 'almost always benign'?
> and almost every underlying pathology we've discovered is something benign: e.g. a genetic mutation that causes your synapses to produce less of some messenger-chemical. Such mutations have no long-term effect on your health, other than affecting your psychology.
First of all I would question the accuracy of these diagnoses. Second, I would question the classification of these pathologies as benign - a more accurate statement is probably 'we don't know'. Third, you say 'other than affecting your psychology' - so they often do actually have long term effects on the person?
> Like I said, psychiatrists pre-screen for non-benign pathologies first, often too widely. You can't get diagnosed with clinical depression (by a psychiatrist who's doing their job) until you've been checked for vitamin deficiencies, hypothyroidism, anemia, diabetes, etc. Even in cases where you have 100% of the symptoms of clinical depression, including ones that have no organic basis. They'll still do the pre-screen, just to be sure.
This is the only reason why psychology is even able to exist - because all of the heavy lifting is done in the realm of real science, and once real, understood pathologies are excluded the psychologists/psychiatrists can do their thing. That is, until yet another real pathology is discovered and the guidelines have to be updated such that psychologists don't end up mistreating people with the condition as they were up until then.
> But once you're known to not have any of the known-malignant pathologies, then they can and will treat the symptoms, because at that point the only problem they have left to treat is the symptoms.
So, basically, once the real medicine and science find they cannot solve the problem, the patient is left with the psychologist, who drugs the patient to mask the symptoms?
> (What else would you expect them to do? Biopsy your brain?)
Well, I don't expect a psychologist to have enough expertise for a biopsy, but could I expect to at least have a couple holes drilled in my skull, or maybe some electroshock therapy?
> There's also just by the simple observation that these syndromes aren't degenerative. People can have e.g. untreated ADHD all their lives, and they won't live less long or end up in the hospital more often than people without ADHD.
ADHD isn't a pathology, and 'live less long & end up in the hospital more' are not the only criteria I would consider required to label a disease as benign - they must have ongoing issues affecting their qualify of life in order to be diagnosed with ADHD in the first place. That being said, your statement is a pretty good argument for why psychology is irrelevant.
> When we treat a syndrome, what we're treating for usually is our best understanding of the etiology.
When you say 'our best understanding' you mean a psychologists best understanding? The question is how good is this 'best understanding' really?
There are many different fields involved in modern medicine - biology, chemistry, neuroscience, physics, statistics, etc. What does psychology add? From where I'm sitting it adds absolutely nothing, and is far less rigorous.
Except in this case there is a (vague) diagnosis - something is wrong with the car's computer (psychological issues).
> Psychology is just fine at recognizing symptoms (and complexes of symptoms that go together, a.k.a. "syndromes")
You don't need psychology to recognise symptoms. Unless you're saying psychology has it's own set of symptoms and it's own terminology - which is just a truism.
> and also very good at treating symptoms/syndromes, such that they go away.
Very debatable, and very provably false for most of psychology's existence.
> Often, an understanding of the etiology isn't involved,
How often?
> but also isn't needed, because it's the symptoms/syndrome that are the problem, and the underlying pathology is otherwise benign.
So,the symptoms are a problem, but the causes of the symptoms are not? How could you claim that the 'underlying pathology is benign' without even knowing what it is? Imagine if this level of rigour was applied to cancer - 'here take these sedatives and painkillers to get rid of your symptoms... don't worry the causes are totally benign'. It's absurd.
> There're very few psychological diseases that have an organic origin, where treating the symptoms but not the disease will lead to the disease progressing and killing you.
Except you really have no idea how many 'psychological diseases' could be progressing and/or affecting you while you mask the symptoms. How do you know such a disease isn't present and progressing, if, as you said, you aren't even able to identify the disease if it existed.
Of course that's one of the reasons, and that goes directly against the notion that python and ruby are somehow cheaper or more efficient to develop in.
> Horizontal scaling isn't the reason and nor is it the bugaboo you make it out to be.
The point is horizontal and vertical scaling don't automatically resolve the drawbacks of slow code. Using 10x the resources to make up for slow code is generally not a solution if performance actually matters.
> Vertical scaling might get you a factor of 100 on modern hardware over dynamic languages, vertical with threading might get you to 1000x, massive parallelism afforded by the coming exponential jump in core counts is going to get folks to 10-50k increases in throughput.
Not sure what you're trying to argue here. Yes 'dynamic' languages are slower, yes you can vertically and horizontally scale both. I don't see how that's relevant for a comparison of languages.
Let's see the data on that. Then let's see the cost of maintenance vs Java.