Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 193

[ecosophia]

We are now in the fourth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary more than three years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health are anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 

Comments

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[anonymoose_canadian]

How about verb conjugation in non-standard Norwegian dialects? I studied linguistics in university, came across some really odd claims in the course of research for a paper, and when I started trying to investigate found out the claims were most likely fabricated.

If data for papers on something as absurdly unimportant and easily verifiable as that (Norwegian is not exactly an obscure language!) is being fabricated, and no one cared that an undergraduate student found this, I think there is a far deeper problem.

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[(Anonymous)]

There's no profit to be had by finding one conjugation vs. another and probably no ideology to support, so if it was fabricated, it was probably because someone had to finish a thesis or something really fast or else so just made up text to fill it out. Two other possibilities might be that the source was incompetent and honestly wrote down what they thought they heard, or if the wrong claims are old enough, that the source actually got some of it right but the dialects have since changed to make it wrong. I don't know anything substantive about linguistics so can't guess if that is plausible.

In general, we shouldn't be treating writing as holy writ that must be true because it was published, perhaps a leftover habit from bibleism, but when we see that some of it is wrong we shouldn't flip to the opposite and say all writing is false or all is untrustworthy so we can never know anything. Our knowledge is not just finite but imperfect, which means that it contains some falsehoods, whether accidental or deliberate. Rooting out and removing those falsehoods is an important part of improving our knowledge.

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[anonymoose_canadian]

I'm not sure why you want to focus on profit and ideology when my point was that the problems with scientific fraud are much deeper than that. What I'm saying is that even in cases where there is no society wide ideology to support, nor corporate/government profit to be had by finding one thing vs another, we cannot trust the modern system of "scientific" research. If an interested and motivated undergraduate can look at something and say "This doesn't make sense", and upon investigation find evidence of either fraud or specatcular incompetence, and the general response from the academics who study the field is to say "Huh, interesting" and then move on to other things, something has gone horribly wrong.

"Our knowledge is not just finite but imperfect, which means that it contains some falsehoods, whether accidental or deliberate. Rooting out and removing those falsehoods is an important part of improving our knowledge."

Part of this process means identifying when a given source is so untrustworthy as to no longer be worth taking seriously. Given the rampant problems with our current systems of knowledge, and the fact that it does not seem to be self correcting, I'm far from sure it at this point that it is ever reasonable to trust anything that a scientist or any kind of researcher or acadameic says that cannot be personally verified.

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough, but then, are there any categories of people whose factual claims you do consider it reasonable to trust without personal verification? Or do you consider it wisest to adopt a semi-Skeptic posture of only believing that which you have seen? (A true Skeptic would also not believe that which he HAD seen, but that's nuts.)

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[anonymoose_canadian]

Yes. I'm happy to trust people who do not lie to me.

Re: Randomized clinical trial

[(Anonymous)]

But that sounds like you are speaking of people as individuals. How can you identify the truth-telling individuals without verifying their claims?