So coronavirus is definitely going to kill a few of us.

[Dan Druff]

Here's a paper from a University of Minnesota research group -- definitely not right-wing -- which calls out recent high profile "masks are safe" studies as pseudo-scientific crap:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...y-and-why-most

I liked this part near the end:

Scientists who skip peer review but fail to convey appropriate context and nuance to their study results can often do more harm than good—as can journalists reporting the results without the proper caveats. Preprints, retractions, and the surrounding controversies are stark reminders that misleading COVID-19 literature challenges the integrity of the scientific process.

Mask wearing has been an extremely polarizing and politicized topic across the world, but especially in the United States. Endless unrealistic expectations, along with gross misinterpretation and overconfidence, have been evident, including claims that masks alone would "flatten the curve," "end the pandemic," or "reduce the clinical severity of COVID-19." Now, one and a half years into the pandemic, if masks were as effective as many believed them to be, we should have seen significant impacts. But that has not been the case anywhere on the globe.

Owned.

I expect the researchers of this paper to be blackballed from the left-wing scientific cult community very shortly.

[gut]

Here's a paper from a University of Minnesota research group -- definitely not right-wing -- which calls out recent high profile "masks are safe" studies as pseudo-scientific crap:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...y-and-why-most

I liked this part near the end:

Scientists who skip peer review but fail to convey appropriate context and nuance to their study results can often do more harm than good—as can journalists reporting the results without the proper caveats. Preprints, retractions, and the surrounding controversies are stark reminders that misleading COVID-19 literature challenges the integrity of the scientific process.

Mask wearing has been an extremely polarizing and politicized topic across the world, but especially in the United States. Endless unrealistic expectations, along with gross misinterpretation and overconfidence, have been evident, including claims that masks alone would "flatten the curve," "end the pandemic," or "reduce the clinical severity of COVID-19." Now, one and a half years into the pandemic, if masks were as effective as many believed them to be, we should have seen significant impacts. But that has not been the case anywhere on the globe.

Owned.

I expect the researchers of this paper to be blackballed from the left-wing scientific cult community very shortly.

Dr. Osterholm has been saying this for awhile now on his youtube, with predictable reactions from the left.

[Dan Druff]

I've also been saying it for a long time -- in this very thread!

My point has long been that the left politicized masking to the point to where it became the holy grail of responsible COVID behavior. Thus, now they feel pot committed, so to speak, and can't back away from that position, even though we still lack convincing data that cloth masking helps much, even 20 months later.

Even if masking does bring some small degree of additional safety, the cost of doing so -- uncomfortableness, declined social development for kids, mask-related respiratory issues, and false-sense-of-security risk taking -- makes mask mandates useless at best, and more likely overall harmful.

This paper clearly states that the widely cited "studies" seem to be crap, and that the highly politicized sceintific/media establishment has been pushing a false "masks are everything" narrative, despite it being harmful and untruthful to be doing so without any conclusive proof.

[Dan Druff]

Also, I'd love to see a true accounting of the political biases of those performing these masking studies.

Of all the scientists involved, is there a single one who voted for a major Republican candidate in 2020?

Is there a single one who can be traced to have any significant criticism of the Democratic Party in the past 5 years (except from even farther left)?

It seems that most of today's COVID "studies" start with a conclusion they want to see reached, and then they massage the study and the data to get there.

[Walter Sobchak]

How is it “spinning” to tell the truth? He was being treated for cancer and it weakened his immune system despite vaccination.

My point was every other news organizations reported it as “Covid Complications”. They are the only ones who mentioned cancer in the headlines. As they are the main vaccine defenders in the media, not shocking they want to downplay a vaccinated person dying.

If they had reported it as Covid, you’d be complaining that they’re tallying Covid deaths for people who didn’t really die of Covid. Which is it?

[FRANKRIZZO]

Officers in Seattle told don't come to work tomorrow if not vaccinated

[Dan Druff]

Something which doesn't get enough discussion is vaccine side effects. The second dose of the COVID vaccine has pretty bad (albeit temporary) side effects -- worse than any vaccine I know of, by a wide margin. The benefit of the vaccine still makes it worth taking, especially if over 35, but the side effects are pretty brutal for some people, myself included.

As we've seen in this thread, several PFA users reported bad side effects from the second shot, and it kinda seemed like we were about 50/50 regarding good and bad experiences with the second shot. That's about the ratio I've seen with people I know in my personal life and/or through poker.

Now there's a study about side effects, though I'm not sure I trust it, since it's basically collecting data from 10 journal artciles published through May 2021.

The below two graphs show mostly the same data in two different ways. The second graph does split the result between ages 18-54 and those 55+.





Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...-vaccines.aspx


According to this study, there are 6 fairly common side effects from the vaccines: Arthralgia (joint pain), chills, fatigue, fever, headache, and myalgia (muscle pain). Pfizer is referrent as BioNTech (BNT) in this study, by the way.

Fatigue was most common, hitting 67.6% of Moderna recipients, and 59.0% for Pfizer. Least common was fever, being 16% for Pfizer and 17.4% for Moderna. I am only quoting the 18-54 age group. Interestingly, for the 55+ crowd, nobody who took the AstraZeneca vaccine (not available in US) got a fever, but those under 55 got it at a 24% rate!

Anyway, of the six side effects, I got five from the Pfizer second shot:

- Arthalgia (joint pain): YES. Pretty bad.

- Chills: YES. Noticeable, but I've had worse.

- Fever: YES. Consistently sat in the 101.2-101.7 range before slowly declining. Overall the fever lasted more than 48 hours.

- Fatigue: YES. Among the worst I've ever had. Just a few minutes out of bed and I'd be very tired again.

- Headche: NO. However, I did get a tension headache as a result of spending so much time in bed. This wasn't a direct result of the vaccine, though, so I can't count it.

- Myalgia (muscle pain): YES. Pretty bad.

This study also doesn't seem to cover nausea/vomiting, which is apparently also a common side effect. That's also weird. I experienced a little nausea, but I didn't vomit.

I did not get any rare side effects, such as the ball-in-armpit issue that someone out here described, or the rashes others have reported experiencing.

However, my experience was somewhat unusual in that it occurred in slow motion. Most people's adverse effects started within 6 hours and were over after another 24 passed. My adverse effects started about 13 hours after the shot, and lasted about another 50 before making any major improvement -- meaning my side effects were progressing at about half the speed of the typical person. I have spoken to a few others who experienced this, but it's not common.

I still believe that the side effects are more common than what is being stated in this report, especially the fever, as many people don't keep thermometers at home, and may not have been able to tell they had one. My COVID vaccine fever was the first fever I had since the 2000s.

[gimmick]

Here's a paper from a University of Minnesota research group -- definitely not right-wing -- which calls out recent high profile "masks are safe" studies as pseudo-scientific crap:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...y-and-why-most

I liked this part near the end:

Scientists who skip peer review but fail to convey appropriate context and nuance to their study results can often do more harm than good—as can journalists reporting the results without the proper caveats. Preprints, retractions, and the surrounding controversies are stark reminders that misleading COVID-19 literature challenges the integrity of the scientific process.

Mask wearing has been an extremely polarizing and politicized topic across the world, but especially in the United States. Endless unrealistic expectations, along with gross misinterpretation and overconfidence, have been evident, including claims that masks alone would "flatten the curve," "end the pandemic," or "reduce the clinical severity of COVID-19." Now, one and a half years into the pandemic, if masks were as effective as many believed them to be, we should have seen significant impacts. But that has not been the case anywhere on the globe.

Owned.

I expect the researchers of this paper to be blackballed from the left-wing scientific cult community very shortly.

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

[BCR]

Something which doesn't get enough discussion is vaccine side effects. The second dose of the COVID vaccine has pretty bad (albeit temporary) side effects -- worse than any vaccine I know of, by a wide margin. The benefit of the vaccine still makes it worth taking, especially if over 35, but the side effects are pretty brutal for some people, myself included.

As we've seen in this thread, several PFA users reported bad side effects from the second shot, and it kinda seemed like we were about 50/50 regarding good and bad experiences with the second shot. That's about the ratio I've seen with people I know in my personal life and/or through poker.

Now there's a study about side effects, though I'm not sure I trust it, since it's basically collecting data from 10 journal artciles published through May 2021.

The below two graphs show mostly the same data in two different ways. The second graph does split the result between ages 18-54 and those 55+.





Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...-vaccines.aspx


According to this study, there are 6 fairly common side effects from the vaccines: Arthralgia (joint pain), chills, fatigue, fever, headache, and myalgia (muscle pain). Pfizer is referrent as BioNTech (BNT) in this study, by the way.

Fatigue was most common, hitting 67.6% of Moderna recipients, and 59.0% for Pfizer. Least common was fever, being 16% for Pfizer and 17.4% for Moderna. I am only quoting the 18-54 age group. Interestingly, for the 55+ crowd, nobody who took the AstraZeneca vaccine (not available in US) got a fever, but those under 55 got it at a 24% rate!

Anyway, of the six side effects, I got five from the Pfizer second shot:

- Arthalgia (joint pain): YES. Pretty bad.

- Chills: YES. Noticeable, but I've had worse.

- Fever: YES. Consistently sat in the 101.2-101.7 range before slowly declining. Overall the fever lasted more than 48 hours.

- Fatigue: YES. Among the worst I've ever had. Just a few minutes out of bed and I'd be very tired again.

- Headche: NO. However, I did get a tension headache as a result of spending so much time in bed. This wasn't a direct result of the vaccine, though, so I can't count it.

- Myalgia (muscle pain): YES. Pretty bad.

This study also doesn't seem to cover nausea/vomiting, which is apparently also a common side effect. That's also weird. I experienced a little nausea, but I didn't vomit.

I did not get any rare side effects, such as the ball-in-armpit issue that someone out here described, or the rashes others have reported experiencing.

However, my experience was somewhat unusual in that it occurred in slow motion. Most people's adverse effects started within 6 hours and were over after another 24 passed. My adverse effects started about 13 hours after the shot, and lasted about another 50 before making any major improvement -- meaning my side effects were progressing at about half the speed of the typical person. I have spoken to a few others who experienced this, but it's not common.

I still believe that the side effects are more common than what is being stated in this report, especially the fever, as many people don't keep thermometers at home, and may not have been able to tell they had one. My COVID vaccine fever was the first fever I had since the 2000s.

I think it’s accurate. I don’t know anyone under 45 who had any reaction beyond fever for a few hours. Younger people had the flu for 24 hours. Wtf is that compared to the dude I know 48 on on oxygen every day 90 days after, and with a month long ICU stay.

Honestly, any of these side effects are a hundred times less than common cold. Between masks as child abuse rather than simply bad policy and now trying to act like this is some serious side effect, you keep drifting towards extremist positions the longer this goes on.

I wouldn’t classify anyone here as having bad side effects unless I missed something. A bad 48 hour flu isn’t dick. I do recall FTP almost dying according to him. That trumps all the side effects combined. Most of us know someone who has died. Many of us know someone who is dealing with serious long term effects.

Serious is relative. Nothing with a duration of 48 hours is severe. It reminds me of when they ask the pain scale. Even when it’s really bad I’ll usually say 7 or 8. They’ll say you seem in a lot of pain. I say what is the the guy with kidney stones or in a fire if I say 9 or 10? That’s I’m going to kill myself pain. 48 hours compared to even those who survived feeling like they are drowning for a few weeks to a month is serious.

[Kalam]

Something which doesn't get enough discussion is vaccine side effects. The second dose of the COVID vaccine has pretty bad (albeit temporary) side effects -- worse than any vaccine I know of, by a wide margin. The benefit of the vaccine still makes it worth taking, especially if over 35, but the side effects are pretty brutal for some people, myself included.

As we've seen in this thread, several PFA users reported bad side effects from the second shot, and it kinda seemed like we were about 50/50 regarding good and bad experiences with the second shot. That's about the ratio I've seen with people I know in my personal life and/or through poker.

Now there's a study about side effects, though I'm not sure I trust it, since it's basically collecting data from 10 journal artciles published through May 2021.

The below two graphs show mostly the same data in two different ways. The second graph does split the result between ages 18-54 and those 55+.





Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...-vaccines.aspx


According to this study, there are 6 fairly common side effects from the vaccines: Arthralgia (joint pain), chills, fatigue, fever, headache, and myalgia (muscle pain). Pfizer is referrent as BioNTech (BNT) in this study, by the way.

Fatigue was most common, hitting 67.6% of Moderna recipients, and 59.0% for Pfizer. Least common was fever, being 16% for Pfizer and 17.4% for Moderna. I am only quoting the 18-54 age group. Interestingly, for the 55+ crowd, nobody who took the AstraZeneca vaccine (not available in US) got a fever, but those under 55 got it at a 24% rate!

Anyway, of the six side effects, I got five from the Pfizer second shot:

- Arthalgia (joint pain): YES. Pretty bad.

- Chills: YES. Noticeable, but I've had worse.

- Fever: YES. Consistently sat in the 101.2-101.7 range before slowly declining. Overall the fever lasted more than 48 hours.

- Fatigue: YES. Among the worst I've ever had. Just a few minutes out of bed and I'd be very tired again.

- Headche: NO. However, I did get a tension headache as a result of spending so much time in bed. This wasn't a direct result of the vaccine, though, so I can't count it.

- Myalgia (muscle pain): YES. Pretty bad.

This study also doesn't seem to cover nausea/vomiting, which is apparently also a common side effect. That's also weird. I experienced a little nausea, but I didn't vomit.

I did not get any rare side effects, such as the ball-in-armpit issue that someone out here described, or the rashes others have reported experiencing.

However, my experience was somewhat unusual in that it occurred in slow motion. Most people's adverse effects started within 6 hours and were over after another 24 passed. My adverse effects started about 13 hours after the shot, and lasted about another 50 before making any major improvement -- meaning my side effects were progressing at about half the speed of the typical person. I have spoken to a few others who experienced this, but it's not common.

I still believe that the side effects are more common than what is being stated in this report, especially the fever, as many people don't keep thermometers at home, and may not have been able to tell they had one. My COVID vaccine fever was the first fever I had since the 2000s.

I think it’s accurate. I don’t know anyone under 45 who had any reaction beyond fever for a few hours. Younger people had the flu for 24 hours. Wtf is that compared to the dude I know 48 on on oxygen every day 90 days after, and with a month long ICU stay.

Honestly, any of these side effects are a hundred times less than common cold. Between masks as child abuse rather than simply bad policy and now trying to act like this is some serious side effect, you keep drifting towards extremist positions the longer this goes on.

I wouldn’t classify anyone here as having bad side effects unless I missed something. A bad 48 hour flu isn’t dick. I do recall FTP almost dying according to him. That trumps all the side effects combined. Most of us know someone who has died. Many of us know someone who is dealing with serious long term effects.

Serious is relative. Nothing with a duration of 48 hours is severe. It reminds me of when they ask the pain scale. Even when it’s really bad I’ll usually say 7 or 8. They’ll say you seem in a lot of pain. I say what is the the guy with kidney stones or in a fire if I say 9 or 10? That’s I’m going to kill myself pain. 48 hours compared to even those who survived feeling like they are drowning for a few weeks to a month is serious.

The day after my second dose my whole body was sore and I was super tired. I still went to work and put in a full day. I think both sides of this discussion are guilty of exaggerating "seriousness" of symptoms when it is ideologically convenient.

[gimmick]

Here's a paper from a University of Minnesota research group -- definitely not right-wing -- which calls out recent high profile "masks are safe" studies as pseudo-scientific crap:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...y-and-why-most

I liked this part near the end:




Owned.

I expect the researchers of this paper to be blackballed from the left-wing scientific cult community very shortly.

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

Might as well just add stuff here related to this work...

"Rather, we believe that the more important findings of this study are: (1) school sports accounted for 75% of school-acquired infections for high school students and staff, with indoor basketball playing a large role in transmission and (2) minimizing the number of students in a classroom and using a hybrid model with cohorts attending school on alternating dates most likely played an important role in minimizing infection rates."

...about the importance of masks for low infection rates in North Carolina. Sounds like a massive deathblow to libtards. Fuck school sports, less kids per class and go to school only every other day. Masks alone do that much, but adding a good amount of tyrannical mandates does sound like a Team Retard suggestion.

So far i haven't seen anything i disagree with in the article. Guessing Druff didn't bother to read almost any of it.

[BCR]

I think it’s accurate. I don’t know anyone under 45 who had any reaction beyond fever for a few hours. Younger people had the flu for 24 hours. Wtf is that compared to the dude I know 48 on on oxygen every day 90 days after, and with a month long ICU stay.

Honestly, any of these side effects are a hundred times less than common cold. Between masks as child abuse rather than simply bad policy and now trying to act like this is some serious side effect, you keep drifting towards extremist positions the longer this goes on.

I wouldn’t classify anyone here as having bad side effects unless I missed something. A bad 48 hour flu isn’t dick. I do recall FTP almost dying according to him. That trumps all the side effects combined. Most of us know someone who has died. Many of us know someone who is dealing with serious long term effects.

Serious is relative. Nothing with a duration of 48 hours is severe. It reminds me of when they ask the pain scale. Even when it’s really bad I’ll usually say 7 or 8. They’ll say you seem in a lot of pain. I say what is the the guy with kidney stones or in a fire if I say 9 or 10? That’s I’m going to kill myself pain. 48 hours compared to even those who survived feeling like they are drowning for a few weeks to a month is serious.

The day after my second dose my whole body was sore and I was super tired. I still went to work and put in a full day. I think both sides of this discussion are guilty of exaggerating "seriousness" of symptoms when it is ideologically convenient.

Well I know far more vaccinated people than I do people who had Covid. I think everyone does. I don’t know a single person who ended up in the ICU for the vaccine. I know several who ended up in the ICU for Covid, most in their late 40s and 50s as that’s my age. The same cycle of three months of vitriolic Facebook posts that are sociopathic and about their personal freedom to infect others and full of false bravado, followed by I have Covid and this shit is no joke, to some sister or wife asking for prayers, to the eventual gofundme after they’ve stole hospital space for a few days to a month over something unnecessary and created a few hundred k bill.

I’ve seen young dudes who had temporary myocarditis, but you gamble, and last football season, every week some young dude was out with myocarditis from the virus before the vaccine. I believe it occurs, but is extraordinarily rare among vaccinated or unvaccinated. As I said, one random kid would be out on some team every week. When it happens after a shot, I see the same kid shared among a million people as some cautionary tale. I don’t know it occurs more with the virus, but is think I’d see more people saying it happened to their kid if it did.

[Kalam]

Yeah. I am not arguing there is some sort of equivalency between Covid and vaccine side effects. I was just making a general point that many people on both sides of the political aisle are guilty of exaggerating when it is ideologically convenient.

Here in the Peoples Republic of California the main problem is the severe restrictions placed on vaccinated persons, eg. the city of San Francisco forced vaccinated marathon runners to run with masks on (that same weekend the mayor of the city was recorded partying in a crowded bar sans mask, but the hypocrisy of the neoliberal elites who run our state is a different discussion).

So if the vaccines work you have to act like they work. You can't have it both ways, arguing how effective they are AND placing severe restrictions of vaccinated persons. That just makes you sound like a liar.

[gimmick]

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

Might as well just add stuff here related to this work...

"Rather, we believe that the more important findings of this study are: (1) school sports accounted for 75% of school-acquired infections for high school students and staff, with indoor basketball playing a large role in transmission and (2) minimizing the number of students in a classroom and using a hybrid model with cohorts attending school on alternating dates most likely played an important role in minimizing infection rates."

...about the importance of masks for low infection rates in North Carolina. Sounds like a massive deathblow to libtards. Fuck school sports, less kids per class and go to school only every other day. Masks alone do that much, but adding a good amount of tyrannical mandates does sound like a Team Retard suggestion.

So far i haven't seen anything i disagree with in the article. Guessing Druff didn't bother to read almost any of it.

The part after Druff's quote...

"This is not to say that masks do not play a role in disease control, but that public health officials should not oversell the role of masks. Rather, they need to encourage appropriate mask use in the context of other highly effective interventions such as vaccination."

...and what they were trying to conclude...

"It is time to lower the unrealistic expectations about masks—or any single intervention. Public health messaging needs to be focused on many interventions, starting with those at the top of the hierarchy. Masks offer very limited source control and personal protection and should not be considered a replacement for vaccination or equivalent to interventions such as limiting time and the number of people in a shared space or improving air movement."

...still can't see why they would be blacklisted or why any researcher would disagree with anything they are saying. I've literally said everything they are saying (all major standard conclusions) in this same thread.

So if the gotcha is that masks aren't magic, then i guess the libtards got owned. Can't really remember anyone saying that though.

[BCR]

Yeah. I am not arguing there is some sort of equivalency between Covid and vaccine side effects. I was just making a general point that many people on both sides of the political aisle are guilty of exaggerating when it is ideologically convenient.

Here in the Peoples Republic of California the main problem is the severe restrictions placed on vaccinated persons, eg. the city of San Francisco forced vaccinated marathon runners to run with masks on (that same weekend the mayor of the city was recorded partying in a crowded bar sans mask, but the hypocrisy of the neoliberal elites who run our state is a different discussion).

So if the vaccines work you have to act like they work. You can't have it both ways, arguing how effective they are AND placing severe restrictions of vaccinated persons. That just makes you sound like a liar.

I agree with you once vaccinated, I don’t like having to wear one at all. The bad days of 2k deaths would be 200 if people just got vaccinated. The good days of 500 would be 50. All of this is a moot point if people simply got vaccinated. The reality is your state is going overboard, but on a per capita basis, your state kicks the shit out of Texas, with a similar demographic breakdown, so it works, but you could argue it causes more problems than saves lives.

X amount of people die from every bad economic outcome. Once vaccinated, you have to be free to do as you wish. You can only mitigate risk. Once again though, all of this is because of anti-vaxxers. Covid wouldn’t disappear as we aren’t going to halt global travel, but it would be an irrelevant problem rather than a top 2 leading cause of death.

[Kalam]

Yeah. I am not arguing there is some sort of equivalency between Covid and vaccine side effects. I was just making a general point that many people on both sides of the political aisle are guilty of exaggerating when it is ideologically convenient.

Here in the Peoples Republic of California the main problem is the severe restrictions placed on vaccinated persons, eg. the city of San Francisco forced vaccinated marathon runners to run with masks on (that same weekend the mayor of the city was recorded partying in a crowded bar sans mask, but the hypocrisy of the neoliberal elites who run our state is a different discussion).

So if the vaccines work you have to act like they work. You can't have it both ways, arguing how effective they are AND placing severe restrictions of vaccinated persons. That just makes you sound like a liar.

I agree with you once vaccinated, I don’t like having to wear one at all. The bad days of 2k deaths would be 200 if people just got vaccinated. The good days of 500 would be 50. All of this is a moot point if people simply got vaccinated. The reality is your state is going overboard, but on a per capita basis, your state kicks the shit out of Texas, with a similar demographic breakdown, so it works, but you could argue it causes more problems than saves lives.

X amount of people die from every bad economic outcome. Once vaccinated, you have to be free to do as you wish. You can only mitigate risk. Once again though, all of this is because of anti-vaxxers. Covid wouldn’t disappear as we aren’t going to halt global travel, but it would be an irrelevant problem rather than a top 2 leading cause of death.

Diabetes would be an irrelevant problem if people weren't morbidly obese. At some point you have to let people make their choices and live with those choices. But no one is telling some 160 pound person they can't eat French Fries because of all the 400 lb people dying of diabetes. Noone is even telling the 400 lb person they can't eat French fries for that matter.

[BCR]

I agree with you once vaccinated, I don’t like having to wear one at all. The bad days of 2k deaths would be 200 if people just got vaccinated. The good days of 500 would be 50. All of this is a moot point if people simply got vaccinated. The reality is your state is going overboard, but on a per capita basis, your state kicks the shit out of Texas, with a similar demographic breakdown, so it works, but you could argue it causes more problems than saves lives.

X amount of people die from every bad economic outcome. Once vaccinated, you have to be free to do as you wish. You can only mitigate risk. Once again though, all of this is because of anti-vaxxers. Covid wouldn’t disappear as we aren’t going to halt global travel, but it would be an irrelevant problem rather than a top 2 leading cause of death.

Diabetes would be an irrelevant problem if people weren't morbidly obese. At some point you have to let people make their choices and live with those choices. But no one is telling some 160 pound person they can't eat French Fries because of all the 400 lb people dying of diabetes. Noone is even telling the 400 lb person they can't eat French fries for that matter.

Now you’re going back to arguments Druff and I used to have a dozen years ago before Obamacare. I always advocated for a fat tax. I said why are we charging people more for life insurance but not health insurance? Things we can control. Why are we subsidizing the shittiest products and a chicken salad cost me $12 when I could buy a double cheeseburger if I wanted for a dollar.

When Michelle Obama wanted to clean up school lunches, the GOP response was to classify pizza as a vegetable. They fight cutting soft drinks from 100oz to 44oz because freedumb! and nanny state. They were the party of the merchants of death. You can find politicians taking money always, but they were by a wide margin the big tobacco party.

It’s been amusing to watch the revisionist history and their decades long advocacy for gluttony has now had ramifications and they want to act like they’ve always been holistic health gurus. Split thinks she discovered obesity as a problem in the last two years when some of us were advocating for higher premiums because diabetes was skyrocketing and it was dragging the whole system down with it back on NWP and donkdown.

[country978]

Here's a paper from a University of Minnesota research group -- definitely not right-wing -- which calls out recent high profile "masks are safe" studies as pseudo-scientific crap:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...y-and-why-most

I liked this part near the end:




Owned.

I expect the researchers of this paper to be blackballed from the left-wing scientific cult community very shortly.

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

gimmick are you in favor of respirators when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space? Would you want the state to provide one to all the people and for them to be required? And Druff, you say masking a child is harmful but not abusive. Isn't knowingly causing harm to a child the definition of child abuse? If we now know that masking of kids is not necessary and also that the masks cause harm is it not at least open for debate that we are currently engaged in the systematic abuse of children in our schools?

[gimmick]

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

gimmick are you in favor of respirators when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space? Would you want the state to provide one to all the people and for them to be required? And Druff, you say masking a child is harmful but not abusive. Isn't knowingly causing harm to a child the definition of child abuse? If we now know that masking of kids is not necessary and also that the masks cause harm is it not at least open for debate that we are currently engaged in the systematic abuse of children in our schools?

Mostly depends where you're. They excluded respirators when they talked about masks in general. Non-fit tested respirators are just N95s or respirators that meet a similar standard.

Here's a chart from before Delta...



...the usefulness was roughly in that region. Vaccination lowers the amount of infected (and likely how transmissible they are) and Delta increased transmissibility. The chart assumes the source is infected. The 15 min baseline is mostly arbitrary (it's likely around there). The chart only shows differences of masks and respirators.

But to your questions, if there's reasonable amount of infections around your area, i think using a respirator is a good idea. How states go about mandating/providing them is their business. Workplaces have their own practices and some federal/state regulations.

I haven't had a good reason to use anything besides surgical masks. Once infections started going up everywhere crowded places didn't exist. After that infection numbers here were low excluding one larger outbreak a year ago. I don't much go to crowded places for hours.

[nightmarefish]

Sure...

"Again, at the outset, we underscore that we are not "anti-mask." Rather, we are in favor of wearing the most protective type of facepiece for the setting—such as a non-fit tested respirator when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space—and only in combination with other interventions."

...owned. Get fucked while you're at it.

gimmick are you in favor of respirators when spending more than a few minutes in a crowded, indoor space? Would you want the state to provide one to all the people and for them to be required? And Druff, you say masking a child is harmful but not abusive. Isn't knowingly causing harm to a child the definition of child abuse? If we now know that masking of kids is not necessary and also that the masks cause harm is it not at least open for debate that we are currently engaged in the systematic abuse of children in our schools?

Ummm no, they don't. JFC