[_Microft]

No, that's what happens if people lack self-reflection. If they had asked themselves if there is any chance that they could possibly know better than someone who's working on a topic all the time, the answer would have been a resounding no, no matter the topic in question.

[speeder]

In my personal experience... you are wrong. I mean, the part about knowing better than someone that works with something.

People working in some fields often suffer the "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"

Example: I have Hashimoto's Disease. All endocrinologists I went to, wouldn't help me, some of them burned a lot of my money trying to prove I had diabetes or other disease that could lead to expensive treatment (one insisted I had cancer, despite every test for cancer she asked for, returning negative). In the end to get treatment I got help from an Ophthalmologist, that even explained to me some things I didn't knew about the disease.

Example 2: when I was having some mental issues, all psychiatrists kept giving me random meds that were recently patented and expensive, and refused to let me get Ritalin, that was cheap because generic version of it exists. In the end the solution was ritalin. To get the ritalin I went to a psychiatrist that inherited lots of wealth and focused treating poor people, I suspect that psychiatrist in particular is the only one not getting dinners, parties and other "marketing events" from manufacturers. (I also in one point of my career worked in a software company that one project was make an app for the pharma client sales team track all the "gifts" given to doctors...)

[nabla9]

Thank you for sharing your personal experience. Unfortunately sharing personal stories like this in the internet is the source of much grief for three reasons:

1) There is no way to quantify how likely this is from personal stories. If your experience is 1 in 100 event, you are doing more harm sharing it than not sharing it if 1 in 10 becomes too suspicious to follow diagnosis.

2) We really don't know. Either things happened as people say, or they doctor shopped until received a misdiagnosis and mismedication they wanted.

3) Readers can't use your example in their personal life because they are different. They may read what you said and go doctor shopping and googling until they are misdiagnosed and mismedicated.

You should not blindly trust doctors, and get second opinion of things seem wrong, but sharing medical stories in the internet is misses the information needed for it to be usable.

[NhanH]

So “lived experience” matters until it is against the dogma.

Sharing personal story likes this is the reason the internet being a wonderful place. It should always be recommended as long as it is truthful, and doesn’t involve explicit agenda of spamming out other experience or information.

[nabla9]

That's not what I said.

> It should always be recommended as long as it is truthful,

That's the point. You never know.

[NhanH]

Your argument makes no sense unless you are claiming the GP is lying.

The sharer should always be truthful. But also the reader should assume things might not be as it seems, trying to verify it on their own. But that is different than recommending everyone to not share anything.

There are two separate recommendations to be made: one for the writer, and one for the reader.

[dennis_jeeves1]

So indirectly what you're saying is protect the masses from 'misinformation'. The masses are too stupid to think for themselves, correct?

[realjhol]

Actually yes, sometimes an outsider opinion can be the correct one... that is the very essence of scientific enquiry - to ask questions.

Who am I? Some rando on the Internet, but I correctly assessed that the vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects - sometimes extremely serious, that natural immunity would provide far greater protection, that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults, that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless.

We have been proven correct about every single one of these things, and every health official who promoted these ideas has been proven completely incorrect

[ben_w]

> We have been proven correct about every single one of these things

No, you haven't.

> natural immunity would provide far greater protection

false

> vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects

"Prevent" and "non-zero" are weasel words, that sentence as written is true of literally every treatment and prophylactic in existence forever.

But it does reduce the risk of transmission even in the case of prisoners sharing a cell.

And the risks of side effects are much, much lower than the risks of those effects from the actual illness.

> that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless.

False on both counts.

Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity. Several places ran out of capacity to handle the dead, let alone the living. I still don't understand how we were able to get short of medical oxygen, but that happened in some places too.

Masks likewise, reduce the transmission rate. Not eliminate, reduce. That's not pointless.

> that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults,

Weasel phrasing, "unnecessary" can mean anything. But, I will try to interpret generously as possible: Sure, lots of kids and young adults won't die, they'll only get sick for a few weeks, with unknown long term damage.

[mrphoebs]

While I agree with the points you are making and think they are important, they could have been made just as effectively without resorting to an Ad hominem format. Though the quality of civil discourse on HN has degraded over the years, HN is still the one of the places I expect to live upto a higher standard.

(I'm sorry to any readers that this comment is not adding anything materially useful to the wider discussion)

[ben_w]

Noted. I'm not sure how to make the same points without saying that some of the statements were weasel words, but if you could suggest a different way to make the same points, I'd appreciate it.

(Apart from anything else, I know that raising the other party's heart rate is a terrible way to change their minds).

[mrphoebs]

I think you were half way there taking charitable view on one of the arguments, I think taking a charitable view on the commenter's perspective/intent would have gotten you all the way.

With that adjustment, I think you can go from "weasel words" to "Your perspective might be flawed..."

Apologies, if this comes off as patronising.

[ben_w]

> Apologies, if this comes off as patronising.

Thanks for checking; don't worry, it wasn't.

[realjhol]

>> natural immunity would provide far greater protection

> false

True: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965

> vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission,

The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/10/12/pfizer-vaccine-not-tes...

-- and indeed they do not prevent transmission, or infection for that matter. Many many people, from Joe Biden to my own mother have been injected and boosted 5-times over, and still got a COVID infection. The vaccines simply don't work very well.

> And the risks of side effects are much, much lower than the risks of those effects from the actual illness.

You can't make a blanket statement about risk, especially when so little was know about the risk of side effects across the population.

For people like us, and the large number of people who have had COVID, we know what the risk of a COVID infection is, and in our case - as with most other people who are in good health, and not extremely elderly, it's a very mild condition.

On the other hand, health officials continue to deliberately downplay the significance of side effects, which we now know includes non-negligable risk of life threatening heart dissease and Bell's Palsey.

> Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity.

That was the claim, certainly. But as we predicted, this never actually happened anywhere in the world - not even in places where people live in poverty, and healthcare is virtually non-existant.

> Several places ran out of capacity to handle the dead, let alone the living. I still don't understand how we were able to get short of medical oxygen, but that happened in some places too.

A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks.

Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

> Masks likewise, reduce the transmission rate. Not eliminate, reduce. That's not pointless.

They don't though. Scarecly anyone wore the kind of mask that could possibly make any difference. It was security theatre to calm the masses. All a cloth mask does is redirect your breathe out the sides. It doesn't filter anything.

> Sure, lots of kids and young adults won't die, they'll only get sick for a few weeks, with unknown long term damage.

My kids have never had any COVID symptoms at all since we were first infected March 2020. So in our case (and millions like us), it's actually not unknown. I wouldn't even know if they had had the disease a dozen times over already - I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

Over and over the claims of the expert class have been proven wrong. They claimed to know things that they couldn't possibly have known, and continue to lie and deflect to this day.

[mrphoebs]

Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.

-> personal experience: I survived only because I was able to get an ICU bed at the right time as did millions more in my country. Millions more didn't because the health systems were overwhelmed.

It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."

Look at the hell china is going through right now and the hell we went through(India). The wounds are still deep and fresh, loved ones dying because they can't get a bed, or oxygen. Bodies rotting because crematoriums couldn't handle load and cities ran out of firewood.

I think there is room for discussion about the merits and demerits of various public/social policies around the pandemic without reducing it to a binary point of view and making it evidence based instead of offhandedly invalidating the pain and suffering of millions over the last few years as "fabricated".

[realjhol]

> Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.

There's no evidence to support this assertion, and plenty of evidence to the contrary e.g. Sweden.

> It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."

But a lot of what spread around was fake:

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/cor...

https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/nypost-fake-news-people-dyin...

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Burning-bodies-Mass-graves-Ec...

https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-b...

https://reason.com/2020/04/10/no-nyc-is-not-running-out-of-b...

> Look at the hell china is going through right now

The hell is of the chinese governments own making. A Zero COVID policy cannot possibly work.

[mrphoebs]

>There's no evidence to support this assertion

Like all your other assertions this one feels self serving for your point of view when a rudimentary google search provides references to the alternative.

Consensus on efficacy of lockdowns flattening the curve with relevant bibliography.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02823-4

N of 1 as in what worked in Sweden (ranked 3rd in the global healthcare index and has a population lower than some cities in india) does not in any way shape or form meaningfully imply what would be good for the rest of the world (though it might certainly inform it)

I wasn't referring to the presence of fake/false/sensational/agenda driven narratives or your allusion to them, I was referring to your following offhanded assertions.

" Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity.

That was the claim, certainly. But as we predicted, this never actually happened anywhere in the world - not even in places where people live in poverty, and healthcare is virtually non-existant."

[Avamander]

> The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission

Because it's an inevitable thing when people are less ill. It's dishonest to demand testing something like "people coughing less spread less" and then use that to pad the rest of your weak arguments with that - like the last sentence about efficacy (straight after the anecdotal).

> Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe

Emphasis on the "were".

> Scarecly anyone wore the kind of mask that could possibly make any difference. It was security theatre to calm the masses. All a cloth mask does is redirect your breathe out the sides. It doesn't filter anything.

Whose fault is that when the good practices could have been followed but were not? Should have beaten them with a baton? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

Yikes. The old adage about "what doesn't kill you" should end with "leaves scars" as it's definitely not so cut and dry to only "make you stronger".

> Over and over the claims of the expert class have been proven wrong. They claimed to know things that they couldn't possibly have known, and continue to lie and deflect to this day.

They have been far less wrong than the rest. That is how the process is supposed to work - new evidence comes to light, opinion changes. It's not an ancient belief system based on a book. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of science to expect random sentences (where most nuance has been filtered out from) to be irrevocably true.

There are going to be improvements, better ways to apply the same principles, changes in the underlying assessments, things change. Framing it as the reason why some opposing stance is correct is extremely dishonest and grossly wrong.

[realjhol]

> Because it's an inevitable thing when people are less ill. It's dishonest to demand testing something like "people coughing less spread less" and then use that to pad the rest of your weak arguments with that - like the last sentence about efficacy (straight after the anecdotal).

The context of this is that there were voices calling for coercing vaccination. My mother-in-law lost her job because she refused to have it. The sole justification offered was that the experts claimed to know that it would protect other people. Except they never knew that - it was guesswork, and we now know that the vaccines don't prevent transmission.

For example this linke @grjdiofgeriov shared:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116597 "Although vaccination still lowers the risk of infection, similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated persons who are infected with the delta variant call into question the degree to which vaccination prevents transmission."

>> Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe

> Emphasis on the "were".

Not just were - they continue to be now. Their all-cause mortality has been far lower from start to finish, and they never had any kind of COVID-related crisis.

Equally, if you look across the world, there is simply no correlation between COVID policy and outcomes. None of the intereventions made any significant differentce.

> Whose fault is that when the good practices could have been followed but were not? Should have beaten them with a baton? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Even with perfect practices, it wouldn't have made much difference. The virus was airbourne, endemic, and highly transmissible. In the same way, I can still smell a bonfire half a mile away mask or no mask.

It was purely security theatre. "Something must be done. This is something"

>> I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

> Yikes. The old adage about "what doesn't kill you" should end with "leaves scars" as it's definitely not so cut and dry to only "make you stronger".

No - not yikes. Their symptoms from COVID were zero. No scars. Nada. Nothing at all.

> It's a fundamental misunderstanding of science to expect random sentences (where most nuance has been filtered out from) to be irrevocably true.

I agree entirely, and this wouldn't have been a problem if governments hadn't used these half-baked ideas as a reason to coerce people to lock down, wear masks, or receive experimental medical treatments.

> They have been far less wrong than the rest.

Not at all. Again and again, the @realjhol model was far more accurate than the Imperial College model. Many such cases. Sad to see my alma mater fail so badly.

[Avamander]

> Not at all. Again and again, the @realjhol model was far more accurate than the Imperial College model. Many such cases. Sad to see my alma mater fail so badly.

Did you forget to switch to a sockpuppet account?

[moistly]

The risk from catching sars-cov-2 was/is way higher than the risk from vaccination. This is proven by the fact that some 13 billion doses have been administered with little harm, while some 700 million infections have caused 7 million deaths. You have drawn the wrong conclusions and made incorrect decisions based on your ineptitude. You are Dunning-Kruger instantiated.

[realjhol]

Turns out that just winning an election doesn't help you enact a lasting win against the swamp, when 95% of the people qualified to serve in your cabinet are DC swamp creatures or are at least adjacent to the swamp

[ben_w]

While any sane person would agree in general, it isn't hard to find examples of experts in any domain who made some mistake in that domain at some point.

Also, normal people are absolutely terrible about probability.

Combined, I therefore suspect it's "I know they're normally right, but not about this."

[korm]

In this case it's not disagreement with one expert, or even a few. The vaccination schedule is based on a consensus of experts. Not only across organizations, like the CDC, AAP, FDA, but across nations too, more or less.

It's truly bizarre to _radically_ disagree, especially as a layperson.

[ben_w]

I mostly share your assessment, except that I think the word "bizarre" presumes how normal people behave. These kinds of attitudes have been around since at least the Spanish Flu pandemic, so it's important to… how do I phrase this? To account for such attitudes when planning public health campaigns, and not just dismiss such people as arrogant fools with no self-awareness.

[iinnPP]

Hi.

You don't know me and that is fine. In early January 2020 I predicted the entire pandemic, including the mask lie(before they lied), the supply run (My entire family picked off full shelves), the effort from people, the vaccine issues, and the aftermath.

If I followed what you suggested, I would be without my mother. So maybe, just maybe, you are wrong.

[hcrean]

It is almost unperceivable to people who truly have faith, that other might not believe in the same higher authority as them.

This is a story as old as time.

[hanselot]

Faith has no impact on my decision to prefer not to be the guinea pig for experimental gene therapy, that results in micro clotting and turning your body into a spike protein factory.

I have no issue with traditional vaccination, but this is nothing like a vaccination. They wouldn't have needed to change the definition of vaccination if it was.

They wouldn't need to push this 24/7 on every possible platform if it worked as promised. They wouldn't have to tell us that these super rare side effects that every one of my colleagues is experiencing is super rare and nothing to be concerned about.

If you find your opinions align with the mindless masses, perhaps you are among them.

[blibble]

it is not possible for your DNA to be modified by the mRNA vaccines, so it is not gene therapy

and the virus will turn your body into a spike protein factory regardless

[pclmulqdq]

This is actually not true - reverse transcriptase is present in your cells, and has been known to add code from viral RNA to your DNA, sometimes permanently.

[blibble]

you are thinking of integrase, which is not present

and there is no primer site on the mRNA for RT to operate

if it was that easy for random bits of floating mRNA to integrate itself into your DNA then we'd never make it to the point of being born

[pclmulqdq]

I'm not suggesting that it's normal, easy, or within the everyday functions of a cell.

The parent comment said "...it's not possible..."

It demonstrably is possible, and has happened before in the genetic record of humans.

[moistly]

13 billion doses administered. If they were one-thousandth as dangerous as you claim, we’d see a helluva lot more problems than we do. But we don’t. You’re jus plain wrong.

[Avamander]

> Faith has no impact on my decision to prefer not to be the guinea pig for experimental gene therapy, that results in micro clotting and turning your body into a spike protein factory.

I guess fair, it's just the underlying cause for both the faith and your gross misunderstanding of high-school biology that's the same.

[ben_w]

This is very true. I don't know if you're saying that about vaccination providers or anti-vax campaigners (Deliberate ambiguity? I ask because I do that sometime).

While there is a massive difference in evidence supporting these two sides, as I have a mere GCSE grade C in biology, I necessarily have to just have faith in the research methods and licensing regimes that made my 4 Covid jabs and humpteen others.

Not unadulterated faith, but I do have faith, and it is only faith. I can't do a double-blind replication even if I wanted to.

[fidgewidge]

Why? There's no requirement that you get a credential from a particular group in society before being allowed to distrust them. If such a rule really existed it'd be a field day for scammers. For example nobody would be allowed to doubt any claim related to Web3 if they hadn't already spent years writing smart contracts. Or they wouldn't be allowed to decide Tesla FSD isn't safe enough, because they aren't themselves self driving car researchers.

It's really smart to distrust vaccine providers and public health authorities. Having blind faith in them is bad. You don't need a credential to see that, you just have to observe that they constantly make strong claims in favor of vaccines that they later walk back when it's too late, without any consequences whatsoever.

[ben_w]

Why do I trust the vaccines?

Because medicine is generally useful and functional.

Because doctors studied at the same university that taught me much of my profession.

Because nations in economic dispute with each other, nations with territorial disputes, even nations at war with each other, still all agree that the vaccines are a good idea.