No relationship. Just bored on a day off. I am passionate about Covid related topics because I am frankly concerned by the rhetoric around Covid. It boggles my mind that this has become so politicized and opposition is equated with homicidal disregard for human life.
There is also so much sensationalism around Covid that it's impossible to actually discuss. Mask compliance for example. I've heard so many times that if only dumbfuck America would mask up we'd be sitting pretty. Except the US has some oh the highest mask compliance of western nations. People talk about anti-lockdown protests as being pawns for the far right and hating science, yet these protests are not unique to the US or the Right.
Essentially our response to a pandemic has devolved into people shouting memes at one another while 30 million unemployed are liking up at food banks. It's fucking crazy
I think in this case, you're getting back what you put into the conversation. I've never been accused of disregarding human life, and I've had a bunch of conversations here and elsewhere about COVID-19 response.
It feels like you're in what I call a "contrarian headspace" where you believe you've discovered something that's under-reported or under-represented, and you've grabbed firmly onto that belief, riding it into every conversation you can. Here be dragons, especially on HN.
I think, to retain my own sanity, I'm going to bow out of this conversation, but I do suggest you take a good hard look at how your beliefs landed you on the same side as the system crushing Rebekah Jones. What they're doing to her is, regardless of legal technicality, problematic, and if you're not able to see that because of your feelings about COVID coverage, you're in some trouble.
And likewise, you inability to see her as anything but a martyr against an oppressive system is informed by your tightly held belief that the government is for some reason downplaying Covid.
Oh is that not the case? Then don't attribute some armchair psychology to my motives. I in no way think I've "discovered" something underreported. I know full well that millions of people, from credentialed scientists to dumbfuck hillbillies see the same things I rail against.
I've been accused of disregarding human life for my views on Covid response. Which is funny as Covid has touched my family in painful ways.
Humans are complex beings, more so than your coined phrase captures. But I still love you! I hope someday we all can have a calm, reasonable discussion about epidemics. Because this will happen again, so we need to study our response here as much as possible
Police are raiding her house, pointing guns at her kids, continuing to come back with technically illiterate and nonsensical reasons to arrest her, because she's said something that someone in politics did not like. Why is this discussion even about covid? This is not an epidemic discussion, this is a political liberties discussion.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for and the guidelines ask everyone not to do it:
The discussion is about covid because that's the only factor informing people's opinions on the matter. If we didn't know anything about her Covid work - if the only information we had was that some random government ex-employee was arrested for allegedly misusing government credentials - nobody would presume to know what the full story is or what's motivating the prosecution.
This is a discussion about Covid because the accused was motivated by Covid. My argument is that the hysteria we've whipped up over this pandemic has caused people to take crazy risks to further a cause which only exists in our hysteria.
I believe Ms. Jones earnestly believes that she had to do these things to save tens of thousands of lives. If those weren't the stakes in her head, would she have downloaded PII and misused an alert system?
Essentially our rhetoric around Covid is mentally dangerous for many people and can cause them to act beyond reason due to their misinformed notion of risk
If the state’s data is garbage in the first place then the chance of a good-faith debate happening drops even further. I’m more than a little disturbed by the narrative that it’s OK for the state to lie as long as they are advancing a cause that you agree with. The underlying issue (covid) should not matter.
I’m not the person you’re replying to but I do think anyone who comes to HN to discuss primarily one narrow (and politically contentious) topic isn’t participating in HN in good faith. There’s no effort to “gratify one’s intellectual curiosity” or “have curious conversation” if you’ve arrived with an agenda.
Because you know the links I click on. Or maybe, and I know this is crazy, but maybe this isn't my primary account as people have been mobbed and cancelled for having contrarian views on Covid!
I didn't interpret that comment the same way at all.
I think the gist of it can be summed up by (purportedly) Winston Churchill:
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
If, as you suggest, you're using a semi-throwaway account specifically to discuss COVID, unless other folks know that, your posting history with this account would likely give that impression.
Well, in salmon30salmon's defence: the mainstream media are completely and utterly missing in action when it comes to COVID.
They only parrot what the gov tells them and investigate nothing these days.
There are countless credible scientists saying that we are getting this incredibly wrong on so many levels yet mainstream media does not mention anything other than government narrative.
When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"? I mean, on a scientific level, not government ineptitude at rolling it out.
Edit: I can't reply for some reason but here's a video talking about the "vaccine"[0] and here's the Great Barrington Declaration[1]. Here is criticism from the BMJ [2] stating that (according to my maths) it's only 19% effective... in addition, it's designed to TREAT the symptoms, not cure you... what kind of vaccine is that?
I love you and thank you for coming to my defense but please do not link vaccine distrust with my views. I trust the data and the science behind the vaccines and believe we need to be getting them distributed as soon as possible
My point wasn't about vaccine distrust although that's part of it. It's more about not having a competent media that will at least say "we will question everything" and investigating along those lines. COVID is the prime example in my opinion so I provided links when asked.
I think it isn't the media not questioning, I think the media realizes that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving and they won't look that gift horse in the mouth.
It's like the trope about media coverage of plane crashes except instead of being an acute incident the media can play off of our fears day after day
This is the first point where 300 odd people were excluded from the analysis because of protocol deviations. Worryingly, this number was much higher in the treatment group. While I hope that blinding would have prevented any motivated exclusion, it's still quite concerning.
His second main point (which is actually really interesting), is that there were 3500 cases of symptoms consistent with Covid-19 that weren't revealed by a PCR test. I'm not sure what to think of this (and note that this number swamps the actual numbers of confirmed cases by about 10x), except that it matches with anecdotal evidence I've seen around negative tests in the presence of symptoms.
The message sent via emergency comms was quite dramatic. Her insistence that the numbers were being cooked with malice to justify reopening is also attributing to conspiracy that which could be explained by differing opinions on how to clean up messy data (if someone tested positive on vacation, will they count in their home state or Florida?)
To me that doesn't pass the smell test. In my state, they've just changed the thresholds. "New science is showing XYZ so in response counties can now eat at restaurants if their shits under 20"
Right no shit. What I'm arguing is that people take the path of least resistance and it would have been far easier to announce a policy change than cook the books. I am saying that if opening up was the only reason, I do not believe that's the path they would take. Of course I'm just basing this off of my own feels.
Making a policy change has consequences. “De Santis made a terrible policy change, X people are now dead” is a very different headline than “after the data suggested Florida open up, X people are now dead”.
I don’t know if there is a conspiracy, but your argument regarding motivation is definitely not thorough.
There is also so much sensationalism around Covid that it's impossible to actually discuss. Mask compliance for example. I've heard so many times that if only dumbfuck America would mask up we'd be sitting pretty. Except the US has some oh the highest mask compliance of western nations. People talk about anti-lockdown protests as being pawns for the far right and hating science, yet these protests are not unique to the US or the Right.
Essentially our response to a pandemic has devolved into people shouting memes at one another while 30 million unemployed are liking up at food banks. It's fucking crazy