[SpinnerMan]

I read the thread in the Honey Hole on Experimental Vaccince https://www.duckhuntingchat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=911562

Three things jumped out at me, but didn't really want to get into a controversial topic in there so I moved my comments to new threads here.

So the vaccine is worse than covid? :umm:

Not even close.

Maybe for young healthy people. For some of them it may be safer to get the virus than the vaccine. However, nobody ends up giving it to other people that die because you got vaccinated. My sister-in-law gave it to her parents. Thankfully they didn't die, but they were a lot closer than they would have liked to have been. If she had got vaccinated, she wouldn't have nearly killed her parents.

Even if we are talking about 100 deaths per 1,000,000 vaccinations. If we vaccinated all 330,000,000 Americans, that would be 33,000 deaths and the reality is that it is probably 1/10th of that or less. After all we are vaccinating the weakest and probably most effected first. The virus has killed a minimum of 10 times that already and given that probably no more than 1 out of 3 have gotten it so far, we are looking at doubling that number before we reach herd immunity without the vaccines. So 33,000 deaths compared to another 300,000 to 500,000 deaths would be a massive amount of lives saved. And it's not just death that the virus causes. A lot of people have other serious health consequences, not just the suffering through the virus, my father-in-law was extremely sick for a month and when you are almost 80 you don't just bounce back from that, but also many have probably permanent damage that will impacts on their life.

Hundreds of thousands of more will die without the vaccine.

At most thousands will die with the vaccine. The only problem is we can't vaccinate quickly enough. As a result we will probably lose another 100,000 more at least and millions more will suffer badly and often permanently.

Obviously you start vaccinating the highest risk people first, but you keep going down the list until this thing is sent to the ash heap of history like polio and other disease we have vaccinated into irrelevance. Maybe we don't have to vaccinate anyone under 25 to do that, but when your risk group comes up and this thing is still around, I think it's immoral to not get vaccinated.

 

[SpinnerMan]

Heck if know. All I will say is half the folks are out saying they don't feel well. Some are really sick but hard to tell without actually seeing them in person.

Supposedly this is not news

One thing I heard is that may be a good thing. If the vaccine triggered a strong immune response, it wouldn't be surprising to feel sick. Basically getting the virus without getting it.

But there's so much crap out there so who knows.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I believe you're on the right track Inda

I've been reading some are having issues with the second dose of Pfizer. Modena is the one being given that I actually know about. It may be the second dose too. I know it made a few sick on the first go around.

I've also read that some people are having issues with the virus.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I believe you're on the right track Inda

I've been reading some are having issues with the second dose of Pfizer. Modena is the one being given that I actually know about. It may be the second dose too. I know it made a few sick on the first go around.

I've also read that some people are having issues with the virus.

But it is no where near the R naught of 3.1 they claimed when this first started... fact is 99.995% of all infections, people live.

And hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.

I get a laugh out of the math. Is it a bunch of false positives? If so, it is far more deadly and we are much further from herd immunity.

If just 100,000 have died and 99.995% survive, that means 2 billion Americans have had it.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I believe you're on the right track Inda

I've been reading some are having issues with the second dose of Pfizer. Modena is the one being given that I actually know about. It may be the second dose too. I know it made a few sick on the first go around.

I've also read that some people are having issues with the virus.

But it is no where near the R naught of 3.1 they claimed when this first started... fact is 99.995% of all infections, people live.

And hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.

I get a laugh out of the math. Is it a bunch of false positives? If so, it is far more deadly and we are much further from herd immunity.

If just 100,000 have died and 99.995% survive, that means 2 billion Americans have had it.

Right...and the flu just disappeared like magic.

We have worldwide travel restrictions and people are having much less social interactions. This is going to reduce the spread of the flu is it not?

What is your estimate of the number of people that would be alive if they had not caught this virus? Mine is 250,000 to 350,000.

What's your estimate of the number of people that have been infected by it? I'd put it at 75 to 150 million.

Where do you think we are or like a lib is it a secret while you complain?

 

[SpinnerMan]

but you keep going down the list until this thing is sent to the ash heap of history like polio and other disease we have vaccinated into irrelevance.

As the vaccine was not generally available in the US until the 60s', polio was actually hand-washed to the ash heap of history, not vaccinated, as it is spread by bad hygiene (poop). Beginning after WWII, and prior to any vaccinations, the US and other nations did massive advertising campaigns encouraging new standards of hygiene. People for the first time understood the connection between hygiene and polio spread. That is what put polio on the ash heap. The vaccine helped but was not the real reason as polio was pretty rare when people began getting the vaccine.

Don't take this wrong. I am thrilled there is a vaccine for polio. My childhood friend's oldest sister (born in late 50s) survived polio and was partially crippled. The vaccine simply tapped out the small remaining infection rate. :hammer:

Almost all disease spread comes down to two things (1) hygiene and (2) parasites, mostly mosquitos and ticks. God bless Edwin Ruud, the inventor of the hot water heater as he brought modern hygiene to the level we enjoy today. :thumbsup: There is your Nobel Peace Prize. :hammer:

Hygene was why it fell. Not why it's non-existent today. It would have remained at a low level just like measles and other things that have been vaccinated into irrelevance.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I believe you're on the right track Inda

I've been reading some are having issues with the second dose of Pfizer. Modena is the one being given that I actually know about. It may be the second dose too. I know it made a few sick on the first go around.

I've also read that some people are having issues with the virus.

But it is no where near the R naught of 3.1 they claimed when this first started... fact is 99.995% of all infections, people live.

And hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.

I get a laugh out of the math. Is it a bunch of false positives? If so, it is far more deadly and we are much further from herd immunity.

If just 100,000 have died and 99.995% survive, that means 2 billion Americans have had it.

Right...and the flu just disappeared like magic.

We have worldwide travel restrictions and people are having much less social interactions. This is going to reduce the spread of the flu is it not?

What is your estimate of the number of people that would be alive if they had not caught this virus? Mine is 250,000 to 350,000.

What's your estimate of the number of people that have been infected by it? I'd put it at 75 to 150 million.

Where do you think we are or like a lib is it a secret while you complain?

What I am saying spinnerman is that I do not buy the data, either for Covid deaths nor positive tests. It has all been manipulated. And I certainly don't buy the BS about masks...they do not work. I'm tired of the American public being gaslit, lied to and fed propaganda. It is revolting quite frankly.

So you are a well informed guy, what is your estimate of the number infected and number of excess or increase in deaths over what would hav happened because of the virus?

I am specific because we have increased suicides, drug and alcohol deaths, probably decreased vehicle deaths, ...

I agree there is a lot of BS, but it's coming from those that thinking shutting the planet for a year or more but also those that are trying to minimize it.

What is your range for deaths and infections? Without an informed opinion on them how can you have an opinion on anything related?

 

[SpinnerMan]

I don't know.. What I do know is the tyrannical lock-downs and mask mandates are nothing but a ludicrous over reaction. They keep moving the goal post....it is infuriating.

I agree 100% on that being a failure to rationally deal with a very serious problem.

Just because these incompetent bureaucrats and career politicians proposed ludicrous and destructive "solutions" because they had no clue how to PROTECT THEMSELVES, which is their primary motivation, doesn't mean it's not a very serious problem, which it is.

It's much like the obvious that you can frame a guilty man. Proving that they are incompetent and self-centered does NOT peove it's not a serious problem.

It's killed hundreds of thousands. There was likely nothing we could do to change that a whole lot. Most everything they've done is made the bad situation worse. This is what happens when you elect career politicians and have experts with no real world diverse experience and backgrounds. I am always amazed at how clueless so many of my colleagues are of what people without advanced college degrees do and live. They cannot relate and operate from a lack of respect and bigus stereotypes. None of this makes the problem not serious, but it makes dealing effectively with the problem impossible.

BTW, somewhere around 1 in 300 or higher will die from it. And that doesn't account for all the non-lethal suffering and damage. If herd immunity is 70% and it is just 1 in 300, that means over three quarters of a million will die without a vaccine. 330 million Americans x 70% / 300. Again, that's if 99.7% survive and it's likely a few tenths lower meaning even more will die without the vaccine. That's just the simple math.

 

[SpinnerMan]

Yes, we have a reasonable estimate.

But nice trying to pretend we are all as clueless so we can pretend like we know it's not hundreds of thousands dead that wouldn't have been.

 

[SpinnerMan]

Next you'll be arguing that masks don't work either.............

Vaccines work if you take them.

The way ordinary people wear and behave with the masks they wear, they don't work and likely increase the risk. Plot mask use with infections and unlike with the vaccine, you don't see a drop or we would not have a problem. There is a big difference between theoretically and in practice. For many the mask gives a false sense of security, so they take risks they would not without their security blanket. It's supposed to be "wear a mask if you cannot social distance" and not "wear a mask so I don't have to social distance."

In practice masks do little to nothing and maybe make it worse or we would see different results.

Do NOT do anything with a mask you would not do without one.

 

[SpinnerMan]

Someone is exposed to a positive Covid. Unless they are around said person for 15 minutes then there is not much concern. It used to be 30 minutes now.

huh?

Hopefully, this is based on data. However, who the hell knows. It's like speeding. You have to define a number. There's no perfect number. Nothing magic happens at the 15-minute mark just like 73 inches is not that different than 71 inches but all are a lot safer than 24 inches.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/201...ng/contact-tracing-plan/appendix.html#contact

Someone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period* starting from 2 days before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to test specimen collection) until the time the patient is isolated.

 

[SpinnerMan]

(1) These by definition are "EXPERIMENTAL" vaccines using totally new approaches which have never been used on humans.

Never BEFORE because they have been used on humans which demonstrated that they do in fact reduce the risk of the virus. That's what they have been doing all too slowly for the last year.

Granted we neither know the long term effects of being infected by the virus nor being injected with the vaccine. We can make educated guesses from a fairly large dataset at this point that make it pretty clear that being exposed to the virus will kill a whole lot more than the vaccine. Granted not so for young healthy people, but definitely so for seniors and most middle aged Americans.

But yes we have an experimental vaccine and an experimental virus. Almost everybody must get one before this thing goes away and possibly both depending on the duration of effective immunity for those that survive being infected by the virus.

And the quicker we make this virus irrelevant by vaccination, the more likelihood we have that the virus will not mutate sufficiently to make the vaccinations and previous infections ineffective at providing protection from future exposures. Letting it mill around in the young healthy people until it mutates to thwart immunization so it can kill more doesn't seem like a prudent plan given the massive suffering and death caused so far.

But I just don't understand how people think on this.

There are the vaccine is pointless or somehow for most it is worse than getting the virus even though all the data and anecdotal evidence (who doesn't know someone that hasn't died or suffered horribly at this point?) suggest clearly this is far worse than the flu or the common cold. Granted I don't think we've taken them seriously enough in the past and I think we've largely overreacted to this.

There are also people like my mother-in-law who had the virus but doesn't think it is safe to go out until she gets vaccinated. Seriously, ***! :fingerhead: :fingerhead: :fingerhead: I've been as inoculated as you ever will be right now. No more effective vaccine than the actual virus assuming it doesn't kill you. But until she gets vaccinated, she's afraid to go anywhere :no: :no: :no:

 

[SpinnerMan]

I think you would benefit from listening to "experts" explain how this vaccine technology is different. I cannot explain it sufficiently except to say that when I hear a medical professional describe it, the differences are significant.

I have listened and I have looked at the results of the trials and now the administration of millions of doses.

Different does not mean worse. It can be better. It can just be different.

It is effective and there is no indication of any issues nor any reason to be concerned that there would be more issues than traditional vaccines. There are many types of vaccines. They are all different and all were once "experimental."

The question is do they work and what are the risks.

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vaccine-types

Vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA), an intermediary between DNA and protein, also are being developed. Recent technological advances have largely overcome issues with the instability of mRNA and the difficulty of delivering it into cells, and some mRNA vaccines have demonstrated encouraging early results. For example, NIAID-supported researchers developed an experimental mRNA vaccine that protected mice and monkeys against Zika virus infection after a single dose.

Rather than delivering DNA or mRNA directly to cells, some vaccines use a harmless virus or bacterium as a vector, or carrier, to introduce genetic material into cells. Several such recombinant vector vaccines are approved to protect animals from infectious diseases, including rabies and distemper.

The mRNA vaccines didn't just appear this past year without a long history of development. The time was simply right for the next technology innovation to be used in human vaccines. They were used in animals for other diseases and now humans for this.

That's how technology advances.

 

[SpinnerMan]

And as I have a 99.997% chance of surviving (probably higher given I am in better than average shape) IF I contract it and do nothing with therapeutics, I will take a hard pass on the experimental vaccine. Risk versus Reward. :hammer:

I recommend you get it as often as possible. :hi:

Most people think their odds are much better than they are.

Actually, I believe our ages are similar, so that put you in the group with an average risk of dying at around 0.1%. Even if you are 10 times less likely, even healthy people can get a comorbidity like catching the flu simultaneously or something that opens the door which is why I believe we have perfectly healthy people suffer some times, that would be 0.01% or about 40 times higher than that. Which it is unlikely you are actually at 10 times less risk than the average person in the group.

When I actually was the model of health, 30, thin, fit, running 25-30 miles per week, lifting 3-4 times per week, ..., I caught the flu, no problem. Then I caught pneumonia because the flu opened the door. Took me months to get back to where I was. Today, no way I'm back to where I was in months or maybe ever. And it's not far fetched. The odds of getting two infections at the same time. If just 1% of the population has each, that means only 99.99% don't have both. That's why even the healthy die and suffer. Two or three not so rare events hit at the right time and your If you get just Covid, you probably will be OK, but do you have anything undiagnosed or what else are you going to catch at the same time that will multiply your problems?

And then there is the risk of hospitalization, risk of permanent damage, ... Which are much more prevalent than those that succumb. Just because you don't die, doesn't mean you won't suffer possibly permanently that degrade your quality of life. And that is if you are simply purely 100% self centered. Because if you are not, then there is the risk of giving to others that are not the model of health.

Get Covid and you are probably 99% likely to not suffer seriously or die. 1% suffer and about 0.2%-0.4% chance of dying if you get it (probably 50%-90% chance without the vaccine for anyone, granted I'm aware of the I'm better let the other people take the risk for me argument - the equivalent of going to Canada during Vietnam). Take the vaccine, and those odds drop by orders of magnitude for those that identify as healthy middle aged men. BTW, another reason you are likely way underestimating your risk. Men are more at risk than women, so the average for the age is half men and half women and you are in the wrong half that puts your risk above average. I doubt identifying as a woman will help.

But I get it. It's the basic liberal argument. We don't really know anything except that I'm right. Maybe not about any of the facts, but I'm still right. :thumbsup:

But enjoy your extremely rare status as a 99.997%'er.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I read the thread in the Honey Hole on Experimental Vaccince https://www.duckhuntingchat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=911562

Three things jumped out at me, but didn't really want to get into a controversial topic in there so I moved my comments to new threads here.

So the vaccine is worse than covid? :umm:

Not even close.

Maybe for young healthy people. For some of them it may be safer to get the virus than the vaccine. However, nobody ends up giving it to other people that die because you got vaccinated. My sister-in-law gave it to her parents. Thankfully they didn't die, but they were a lot closer than they would have liked to have been. If she had got vaccinated, she wouldn't have nearly killed her parents.

Even if we are talking about 100 deaths per 1,000,000 vaccinations. If we vaccinated all 330,000,000 Americans, that would be 33,000 deaths and the reality is that it is probably 1/10th of that or less. After all we are vaccinating the weakest and probably most effected first. The virus has killed a minimum of 10 times that already and given that probably no more than 1 out of 3 have gotten it so far, we are looking at doubling that number before we reach herd immunity without the vaccines. So 33,000 deaths compared to another 300,000 to 500,000 deaths would be a massive amount of lives saved. And it's not just death that the virus causes. A lot of people have other serious health consequences, not just the suffering through the virus, my father-in-law was extremely sick for a month and when you are almost 80 you don't just bounce back from that, but also many have probably permanent damage that will impacts on their life.

Hundreds of thousands of more will die without the vaccine.

At most thousands will die with the vaccine. The only problem is we can't vaccinate quickly enough. As a result we will probably lose another 100,000 more at least and millions more will suffer badly and often permanently.

Obviously you start vaccinating the highest risk people first, but you keep going down the list until this thing is sent to the ash heap of history like polio and other disease we have vaccinated into irrelevance. Maybe we don't have to vaccinate anyone under 25 to do that, but when your risk group comes up and this thing is still around, I think it's immoral to not get vaccinated.

Wrong you can still get it and spread it after the MRNA is shot in your arm. It only helps you get through it.

With every vaccine you still CAN get it. Nothing is 100%, but this one seems pretty close. And for most people I would think it is close enough.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/Moderna.html

Based on evidence from clinical trials, the Moderna vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness in people who received two doses who had no evidence of being previously infected.

That means that without the vaccine, for every 1,000 people that would have been symptomatic and test positive , only 59 will test positive and 941 will not test positive. That's a lot more than just getting through it. There are 941 people that had no symptoms.

But they did not really test for asymptotic cases meaning they didn't continuously test the recipients to see if at any point they were asymptomatic. It would be quite a prohibitive experiment. But I suppose you can theorize that all the people who would have been asymptomatic got it even with the vaccine as well as an additional 941 people per 1000 symptomatic cases without the vaccine all got asymptomatic cases. That the ONLY effect of the vaccine is on symptoms and consequences with 100% still getting infected and being just as infectious. Have we ever seen that or anything close to that in any other vaccine? :huh: Again, we have used mRNA in animals and if it had no benefit in stopping transmission I think we'd know that by now.

We cannot be paralyzed with uncertainty. It's pretty safe to say that if you take the vaccine, your risk is reduced by about a factor of 20 at least. And it would be beyond shocking to think the chances of getting and spreading the disease are not also dramatically reduced, but obviously not 100% eliminated.

Now if you are in the highest risk group, is that enough to return to normal before the virus fades away? I would but it's a judgment call just like what precautions you choose to take today. It just tips the risk/reward relationship strongly towards the reward but not necessarily enough to change any particular decision.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I have no idea why or how published scientific literature has a "left political agenda".

That's not hard to imagine. Why are double blind studies required? Because if they're not the results will reflect the biases and desires of the scientists.

Have you ever been a peer reviewer? Doesn't make any of this the Gospel. Which papers are accepted, who does the peer review, ... All that is subject to bias.

For example, in my field saying the best solution is to minimize wind and solar, it would never get published in a credible journals no matter how well the research is done. Our "job" is to do research that proves we can use a ton of wind and solar effectively without issues. It's the accepted fact and a terrible idea most places without incredible technology innovations. Good to research those innovations. Horrible to assume they will magically appear.

Funny story on peer reviewing, when I was a grad student, my advisor gave me a transcript and told me to review it. I was probably the only person in the world that would have saw the error in the study. Used my equations that I had just developed and published and used them incorrectly :lol3: Unlikely anyone else would have saw that. Different reviewer that paper is published as is. With me as a reviewer, never published.

While I generally agree with you on the facts of this, there is definitely bias and it is left of center bias reflected by the research communities. It's really nothing but the traditional view of classes which inderpins all left policy and thinking.

The researchers are in one class and everyone else is in a lower class. The stereotype of that lower class is not a good one. Just like any insidious stereotype, there will always be some morons within the group that support that stereotype. You don't like black people as a group, the high crime seen in the black community. There you go just dismissed the whole group because you're an idiot even if you're a well educated idiot. That's why they dismissed the Trump people as violent while the groups burning down American cities this summer in spring are mostly good people. That's a stereotype that they adopted and their "research" will show it.

It's just the common sense of why we need double blind studies. Without it the research and everything reflects the biases of the scientists. And little can do to be done with double blind studies. Also you quickly cross over into policy and not just points of scientific fact. And in that clouds the facts and the policy. And that is why so many people don't believe the scientists these days even when is a pure point of fact. They have lost their credibility by their actions. Just look at Fauci, he admits he lied. So when do we believe in when is he lying?

 

[SpinnerMan]

I think it falls into the bias category or maybe just the BS category.

My place of work is studying the "next generation workplace" or something like that. They are doing the normal things. Taking a survey and putting together a committee.

I am not a volunteer for things kind of guy. Most times there are plenty of people that like to feel important that can waste their time. However, I have actually been doing this for 5 years. I have a list of reasons why I am probably one of the most qualified people to be on this committee. Actual years of experience and a few other unique aspects of my job that few have that add additional challenges. So I immediately volunteered. It matters to me and I really do have the resume to contribute.

Got an email back. "the committees full" :lol3: :lol3: :lol3: They had picked it before they asked for volunteers.

There are just so many ways bias express themselves. But when most people talk about reducing bias, etc., it's always about the other guy's biases. It's not about self reflection :no:

 

[SpinnerMan]

I'm the first to say it wasn't tested long enough. And we didn't, but having COVID currently, I doubt the vaccine is worse for you in the short term. Might kill you a few years down the road, but probably wouldn't feel like I have for a week.

Get well.

We didn't have time to test it long enough.

This really comes down to the war generals and peace generals. In peace, you have time to plan and nobody dies no matter what. In war, you don't have time to plan and people die no matter what you do.

You can test and guarantee people die or you can use your expertise and maybe less people die. With what little I know, I am unaware of any recent vaccine trials that were really harmful. Ineffective maybe, but what mechanism is there for you he mRNA to cause harm. We cannot do things based on abundance of caution because what does that mean when on the order of 1,000 Americans per day are dying. Is more test really more cautious? Let's go take 2 more months (aka let 60,000 people die and maybe another millions suffer). Do we need to test for another 100,000 dead? How cautious do we need to be?

Time means death and suffering. We don't have it. We have to have men of courage and expertise to make decisions based on horribly inadequate data. Is there an example of a modern vaccine trial that killed a significant fraction that would suggest it really might be better to let all that will die to die? I'd love to hear the example that is the cautionary tale. There has got to be at least one of this is completely insane that took this long.

 

[SpinnerMan]

I think very recently there was a shipment of polio vaccine that had live virus in it and some kids in a third world country were just given polio.

There are certainly vaccine horror stories. But I wouldn't just look at vaccines to judge the necessity of medical testing as fda regulations. Look at opioids, when there is a ton of money to be made I wouldn't trust drug companies to not lie or cheat.

Horror stories on the scale of the death and destruction from the experimental virus :huh:

We are choosing between TWO unknowns. You don't have a choice to simply not get the experimental virus. Almost everybody will eventually get it if we do nothing. If we do long term testing on the vaccines, nearly everybody will have gotten it before the vaccines are tested.

We have bad choices. I don't see anything that suggests the choice to wait on more testing is anywhere close to the death and destruction that will result.

One, do nothing, is 100% certain to happen. The death and destruction, just the short term effects we know of, are very high. And long-term, we don't know how many people will suffer long term. It's all but certain that a large fraction of the people will suffer long-term effects. A month of hell rarely leads to a normal life for all after that. There are usually negative consequences down the road.

The other is rush a vaccine. What is the risk? The worst experience, and the worst experience is very unlikely, seems far below the risk of contracting the virus. Yes, mistakes will be made, people will have serious adverse reactions up to death, ... But these seem to be in the 10's per million in modern vaccines. Experts should know this more or less off the top of their head. Maybe I'm wrong, but it should be known. The risk of serious problems with the virus is measured in the 100's or 1,000's per million for the healthiest individuals and 100,000's per millions for the most at risk individuals.

It doesn't have to be a very high chance of success for the risk of rushing the virus being far lower than delay for more testing. And with all the modern technology, an app on everybody's phone, even old folks have a smartphone or know somebody that can do it for them. Report daily status to see if the vaccine is effective or not and the rates of other adverse conditions.

 

[SpinnerMan]

Don't get me wrong, I 100% that they have lost their credibility. They have done countless things that were at best misleading and often completely ass backwards.

As far as ass backwards, they used "we need double blind studies before we try ..." on things where we didn't have time to do that and should have used their expertise to cut every corner and slice every thing done "out of an abundance of caution" and anything creatively to move the vaccines as fast as possible. Trump's team did a great job on the economic side. The Governor's bombed in many cases on the distribution and the top scientists acted like this was all theoretical and millions world wide are not going to die.

Then to make it complete ass backwards, the mask, double mask, shut down the world for a couple weeks and a couple more and more and more and ..., There was no "we need to study this until the end of time before we move forward." And it doesn't take a expert to see that a bunch of people half-assed wearing half-assed dirty masks was not going to help.

I get that it looks like some grand conspiracy because how could they be that stupid. And if they are that stupid, how can you trust anything? The risk of the virus or the efficacy and risk of the vaccine. Step back and it looks like they were really trying to maximize harm and not minimize it.

However, I really don't believe that at all. I work with people like this. This is how they think or more accurately do not think. There are things really smart people struggle with. Paralysis of analysis. Fear of being wrong. Need to be right. Inability to make decisions and stick to them in highly uncertain situations. There's just a lot of psychology going on here. They have been programmed their whole life that they know everything and this is how you do things. All of the sudden, you cannot do things how they have been done and you know that you don't know much. You have to rely upon common sense and how often is the stereotype of really smart people that they have no common sense? They are simply the absolutely wrong people to make decisions. Fauci, Burke, ... None of them should have been front and center. They are advisors. They are not policy makers. They are not decision makers. There is no reason to think they can learn these on the the fly. Trump is and did a great job, as good as anyone could have. If he would have just kept his mouth shut. Make the decisions and let someone else communicate them. The career politicians are not decision makers either. All of this is how we get what Rat describes. That's how we go from no need for masks to we need two masks After all, the brainiacs see that one mask didn't do anything to "flatten the curve" or anything else they predicted, so don't admit you are wrong, just needed better masks, so go with 83 masks. Better yet, if you put a plastic bag over your head and seal it tightly, you will be 100% certain that you will not be exposed to Covid. Nothing will get through that sucker.

Like the Boy that Cried Wolf, when he was right, nobody believed him. These guys are right sometimes. If you assume they are always wrong, you will be wrong sometimes.