PILOT SPIN

Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 05:23:27 AM

Title: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 05:23:27 AM
So, people with lots of money and fame are claiming that wearing a mask is a no-brainer...

One conclusion is that the droplets we exhale are so laden with viruses, that we are an instant threat to everyone else.

So, why is the test for COVID-19 a deep deep deeeeeeep nasal swab?  Why not just collect what we exhale?

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 05:32:35 AM
The science is settled!
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Anthony on July 08, 2020, 05:39:36 AM
For me the Mask has become a symbol of subservience to Government and the acceptance of a false narrative.  The Progressive entertainment and media are all on board with this Marxist trend.  It is the Nazi Swastika armband of today worn proudly by the believers in a Virtue Signaling display of compliance.  It is f*cking scary.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 05:43:34 AM
The fucking science is settled!!!!   You troglodytes are a bunch of science deniers!
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: nddons on July 08, 2020, 08:15:58 AM
For me the Mask has become a symbol of subservience to Government and the acceptance of a false narrative.  The Progressive entertainment and media are all on board with this Marxist trend.  It is the Nazi Swastika armband of today worn proudly by the believers in a Virtue Signaling display of compliance.  It is f*cking scary.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200708/208dfe2862c9d494df8c1c86a205683b.jpg)
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 09:46:42 AM
The test for the 'rona is based on the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.  While extraordinarily sensitive, it does need a decent sized sample.  The 'rona is an RNA virus, and RNAses (enzymes that degrade RNA) are everywhere and out to get you.  You do need a few unadulterated viral genomes for it to work, so you go deep into the nasal cavity to have your best chance at detecting them.

As far as masks, the idea is to a) diminish the path length of any aerosols, which most masks can do to some extent  b) diminish the number of viral particles that make it into the air, which most masks can do more or less, and c) keep you from sticking your fingers in your mouth, which most humans do reflexively.  All masks can prevent this.

Not all masks are built equally.  A bandana tied across your face will do little.  A surgical mask will do quite a bit more.  An industrial mask more still.  Keep in mind that none of these will prevent your infection, all you're doing is preventing yourself from giving it to someone if you're infected and don't know it.  Also, the fit of the mask is crucial, since breath, and therefore virus, can leak out of a poor seal.  Wearing one is a very good idea, since some infections cause only mild symptoms, and all have a long latency while the infected are actively shedding virus.

I am fortunate, since Mrs. Steingar made me a mask that's 3 layers of cotton with a coffee filter in the middle.  Surgical and industrial masks are disposable and degrade quickly with use, my mask is washable and quite sturdy.  The coffee filter can even be replaced.

The most successful strategy for avoiding the virus is to stay in your house and not to come into contact with anyone.  You can only get this from other people.  Sadly, I think less and less of the intelligence of Americans ever year.  I predicted this surge or spike or whatever it is some time ago, seeing the utterly witless behavior of my fellow Americans.  Sadly, my predictions came true with a vengeance.  We're now at 1 in 100 Americans, a frightful number.  I don't think we're going to be rid of this any time soon.  I truly wish all of you good luck in these troubled times.  I may not agree with anyone here, but I don't want to see anyone hurt.  Even if you think it a violation of your precious freedom please please please do as I say.  The virus doesn't care about your politics, it doesn't care about your freedom.  We are its ecosystem, it will infect you if it can, and it will evolve with each new infection.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 09:50:20 AM
...  I predicted this surge or spike or whatever it is some time ago, seeing the utterly witless behavior of my fellow Americans.  Sadly, my predictions came true with a vengeance. ....

Considering that historically every pandemic has follow up spikes, it doesn't take any intelligence to predict a surge/spike.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 09:53:02 AM
The test for the 'rona is based on the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.  While extraordinarily sensitive, it does need a decent sized sample.  The 'rona is an RNA virus, and RNAses (enzymes that degrade RNA) are everywhere and out to get you.  You do need a few unadulterated viral genomes for it to work, so you go deep into the nasal cavity to have your best chance at detecting them.

As far as masks, the idea is to a) diminish the path length of any aerosols, which most masks can do to some extent  b) diminish the number of viral particles that make it into the air, which most masks can do more or less, and c) keep you from sticking your fingers in your mouth, which most humans do reflexively.  All masks can prevent this.

Not all masks are built equally.  A bandana tied across your face will do little.  A surgical mask will do quite a bit more.  An industrial mask more still.  Keep in mind that none of these will prevent your infection, all you're doing is preventing yourself from giving it to someone if you're infected and don't know it.  Also, the fit of the mask is crucial, since breath, and therefore virus, can leak out of a poor seal.  Wearing one is a very good idea, since some infections cause only mild symptoms, and all have a long latency while the infected are actively shedding virus.

I am fortunate, since Mrs. Steingar made me a mask that's 3 layers of cotton with a coffee filter in the middle.  Surgical and industrial masks are disposable and degrade quickly with use, my mask is washable and quite sturdy.  The coffee filter can even be replaced.

The most successful strategy for avoiding the virus is to stay in your house and not to come into contact with anyone.  You can only get this from other people.  Sadly, I think less and less of the intelligence of Americans ever year.  I predicted this surge or spike or whatever it is some time ago, seeing the utterly witless behavior of my fellow Americans.  Sadly, my predictions came true with a vengeance.  We're now at 1 in 100 Americans, a frightful number.  I don't think we're going to be rid of this any time soon.  I truly wish all of you good luck in these troubled times.  I may not agree with anyone here, but I don't want to see anyone hurt.  Even if you think it a violation of your precious freedom please please please do as I say.  The virus doesn't care about your politics, it doesn't care about your freedom.  We are its ecosystem, it will infect you if it can, and it will evolve with each new infection.

 And what's your concern with how the states are counting "covid cases"?  Also, please tell us your concern with the high false positives that these test are producing.

 Also, please explain that while cases are increasing, the death rate has hit new lows and is still declining, and why the few actual covid hospitalizations the patients are recovering faster with milder symptoms.

 As for your mask, did you perform a face fitting to test the effectiveness?  Professionals who are required to use PPE must do an annual fitting test for N95 and other mask to insure they are fitted correctly, as well as worn correctly.   Can you tell us how you did your fitting?
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 09:53:56 AM
Considering that historically every pandemic has follow up spikes, it doesn't take any intelligence to predict a surge/spike.

Follow up spikes are not inevitable.  There was no follow up spike to Zika, Ebola, SARS or MERS.  If we Americans behaved with even a lick of sense we'd have had this nipped in the bud long ago.  We don't and we're all suffering the consequences.  I suspect we're going to keep suffering the consequences well into the next year and possibly beyond.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 09:59:36 AM
And what's your concern with how the states are counting "covid cases"?  Also, please tell us your concern with the high false positives that these test are producing.

And what is the rate of false positives do you think?  Do you think it so pervasive to throw off the numbers by multiple percentage points?

 
Also, please explain that while cases are increasing, the death rate has hit new lows and is still declining, and why the few actual covid hospitalizations the patients are recovering faster with milder symptoms.

Two factors.  The first is most of the new infections are in the young, who don't suffer the debilitating effects to the degree of older patients.  The second is, like I told you, the virus has evolved.  There are now strains that are, while more infective, less lethal.  It isn't clear at present their representation in the viral pool, but they're likely to grow.  A virus that doesn't kill its host is more successful than one that does.

 
As for your mask, did you perform a face fitting to test the effectiveness?  Professionals who are required to use PPE must do an annual fitting test for N95 and other mask to insure they are fitted correctly, as well as worn correctly.   Can you tell us how you did your fitting?

A very good point.  I sport facial hair, so no mask is going to be airtight on my face.  I gave you a salient description, you can tell me how good you think it is or isn't.  The main prevention of infection is still social distancing.  I suspect however much you complain all of you are doing that as well.  I think the majority reading this are sufficient aged to present comorbidity for viral infection.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 10:02:17 AM
Global Climate Change, Man Made Climate Change, Global Cooling, Global Warming........

And now Corona Virus.    Notice a common theme among all of these?   Fear Mongering, "the science is settled!", "we're all gonna die", "do as your told or else!", "we need drastic measures now!", "Your rights don't matter!, How selfish of you!" and on and on.

  The liberal progressives are all about fear and propaganda, it's their bread and butter.  "Never let a crisis go to waste".
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 10:07:27 AM
Global Climate Change, Man Made Climate Change, Global Cooling, Global Warming........

And now Corona Virus.    Notice a common theme among all of these?   Fear Mongering, "the science is settled!", "we're all gonna die", "do as your told or else!", "we need drastic measures now!", "Your rights don't matter!, How selfish of you!" and on and on.

  The liberal progressives are all about fear and propaganda, it's their bread and butter.  "Never let a crisis go to waste".

If you really think the virus is imaginary then I feel a great swell of pity for you.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 10:09:46 AM
Follow up spikes are not inevitable.  There was no follow up spike to Zika, Ebola, SARS or MERS.  If we Americans behaved with even a lick of sense we'd have had this nipped in the bud long ago.  We don't and we're all suffering the consequences.  I suspect we're going to keep suffering the consequences well into the next year and possibly beyond.

keyword:  pandemic

Interestingly, the CDC doesn't include SARS, Ebola, Zika, or MERS in it's list of past pandemics.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/basics/past-pandemics.html

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 10:11:46 AM
And what is the rate of false positives do you think?  Do you think it so pervasive to throw off the numbers by multiple percentage points?

 Right now it's showing about a 30 to 40% false positive.   I'd say that's rather high.

 
Two factors.  The first is most of the new infections are in the young, who don't suffer the debilitating effects to the degree of older patients.  The second is, like I told you, the virus has evolved.  There are now strains that are, while more infective, less lethal.  It isn't clear at present their representation in the viral pool, but they're likely to grow.  A virus that doesn't kill its host is more successful than one that does.

So we can expect to "social distance" and wear mask for, oh, another decade or so? 


 
A very good point.  I sport facial hair, so no mask is going to be airtight on my face.  I gave you a salient description, you can tell me how good you think it is or isn't.  The main prevention of infection is still social distancing.  I suspect however much you complain all of you are doing that as well.  I think the majority reading this are sufficient aged to present comorbidity for viral infection.

 It takes me 90 minutes to have a mask fitting done.  I can assure you that your homemade mask is doing zilch for you.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
keyword:  pandemic

Interestingly, the CDC doesn't include SARS, Ebola, Zika, or MERS in it's list of past pandemics.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/basics/past-pandemics.html

Each one of them affected multiple nations on multiple continents.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: nddons on July 08, 2020, 12:09:02 PM
Follow up spikes are not inevitable.  There was no follow up spike to Zika, Ebola, SARS or MERS.  If we Americans behaved with even a lick of sense we'd have had this nipped in the bud long ago.  We don't and we're all suffering the consequences.  I suspect we're going to keep suffering the consequences well into the next year and possibly beyond.
Yet for those other viruses we took no extraordinary measures as a society to “stop the spread.” 

Now in 2020 it’s treated so differently.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 01:14:42 PM
Yet for those other viruses we took no extraordinary measures as a society to “stop the spread.” 

Now in 2020 it’s treated so differently.
Our government under more competent leadership was able to stop each of these well before they became epidemic in this country. 
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 01:54:07 PM
Our government under more competent leadership was able to stop each of these well before they became epidemic in this country.

why thank you.  I enjoyed the laugh.

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Anthony on July 08, 2020, 02:14:07 PM
Our government under more competent leadership was able to stop each of these well before they became epidemic in this country.

What would you have had Trump do differently?  He followed all the recommendations of the long tenured, career bureaucrat, medial experts that were on board previous to his Administration like Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: nddons on July 08, 2020, 02:32:29 PM
Our government under more competent leadership was able to stop each of these well before they became epidemic in this country.
Bullshit. What did the government do to “stop” them?  Facts, not hyperbole. 
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 08, 2020, 02:34:06 PM
What would you have had Trump do differently?  He followed all the recommendations of the long tenured, career bureaucrat, medial experts that were on board previous to his Administration like Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx.

Don't you remember? President Trump should have fast-tracked a serology test even before China reported the unexplained pneumonia cases.  sheesh.  The perfessor POS was very clear about that.


Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Number7 on July 08, 2020, 04:52:32 PM
Bullshit. What did the government do to “stop” them?  Facts, not hyperbole.

Give mikey time to find someone's words he can steal and then he will be back and pretend superiority...
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 05:36:20 PM
https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

Quote
Now begins the grand effort, on display in thousands of articles and news broadcasts daily, somehow to normalize the lockdown and all its destruction of the last two months. We didn’t lock down almost the entire country in 1968/69, 1957, or 1949-1952, or even during 1918. But in a terrifying few days in March 2020, it happened to all of us, causing an avalanche of social, cultural, and economic destruction that will ring through the ages.

There was nothing normal about it all. We’ll be trying to figure out what happened to us for decades hence.

How did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of international travel, a 40% job loss among people earning less than $40K per year, devastation of every economic sector, mass confusion and demoralization, a complete ignoring of all fundamental rights and liberties, not to mention the mass confiscation of private property with forced closures of millions of businesses? 

Whatever the answer, it’s got to be a bizarre tale. What’s truly surprising is just how recent the theory behind lockdown and forced distancing actually is. So far as anyone can tell, the intellectual machinery that made this mess was invented 14 years ago, and not by epidemiologists but by computer-simulation modelers. It was adopted not by experienced doctors – they warned ferociously against it – but by politicians.

Let’s start with the phrase social distancing, which has mutated into forced human separation. The first I had heard it was in the 2011 movie Contagion. The first time it appeared in the New York Times was February 12, 2006:

    If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is “social distancing,” which is the new politically correct way of saying “quarantine.”

    But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the [elbow] bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.

Maybe you don’t remember that the avian flu of 2006 didn’t amount to much. It’s true, despite all the extreme warnings about its lethality, H5N1 didn’t turn into much at all. What it did do, however, was send the existing president, George W. Bush, to the library to read about the 1918 flu and its catastrophic results. He asked for some experts to submit some plans to him about what to do when the real thing comes along.

The New York Times (April 22, 2020) tells the story from there:

    Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated like a piñata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic.

    When they presented their plan not long after, it was met with skepticism and a degree of ridicule by senior officials, who like others in the United States had grown accustomed to relying on the pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new treatments, to confront evolving health challenges.

    Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were proposing instead that Americans in some places might have to turn back to an approach, self-isolation, first widely employed in the Middle Ages.

    How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis.

    It required the key proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician, and Dr. Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House adviser — to overcome intense initial opposition.

    It brought their work together with that of a Defense Department team assigned to a similar task.

    And it had some unexpected detours, including a deep dive into the history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important discovery kicked off by a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories.

    The concept of social distancing is now intimately familiar to almost everyone. But as it first made its way through the federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and politically infeasible.

Notice that in the course of this planning, neither legal nor economic experts were brought in to consult and advise. Instead it fell to Mecher (formerly of Chicago and an intensive care doctor with no previous expertise in pandemics) and the oncologist Hatchett.

But what is this mention of the high-school daughter of 14? Her name is Laura M. Glass, and she recently declined to be interviewed when the Albuquerque Journal did a deep dive of this history.

    Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed.

Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation. That paper is Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza (2006). It set out a model for forced separation and applied it with good results backwards in time to 1957. They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts to a totalitarian lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.

    Implementation of social distancing strategies is challenging. They likely must be imposed for the duration of the local epidemic and possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is developed and distributed. If compliance with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities do not also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to introduce influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a depressed level more easily accommodated by healthcare systems.

In other words, it was a high-school science experiment that eventually became law of the land, and through a circuitous route propelled not by science but politics.

The primary author of this paper was Robert J. Glass, a complex-systems analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. He had no medical training, much less an expertise in immunology or epidemiology.

That explains why Dr. D.A. Henderson, “who had been the leader of the international effort to eradicate smallpox,” completely rejected the whole scheme.

Says the NYT:

    Dr. Henderson was convinced that it made no sense to force schools to close or public gatherings to stop. Teenagers would escape their homes to hang out at the mall. School lunch programs would close, and impoverished children would not have enough to eat. Hospital staffs would have a hard time going to work if their children were at home.

    The measures embraced by Drs. Mecher and Hatchett would “result in significant disruption of the social functioning of communities and result in possibly serious economic problems,” Dr. Henderson wrote in his own academic paper responding to their ideas.

    The answer, he insisted, was to tough it out: Let the pandemic spread, treat people who get sick and work quickly to develop a vaccine to prevent it from coming back.

AIER’s Phil Magness got to work to find the literature responding to the 2006 paper by Robert and Sarah Glass and discovered the following manifesto: Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza. The authors included D.A. Henderson, along with three professors from Johns Hopkins: infectious disease specialist Thomas V.Inglesby, epidemiologist Jennifer B. Nuzzo, and physician Tara O’Toole.

Their paper is a remarkably readable refutation of the entire lock-down model.

    There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of influenza. … It is difficult to identify circumstances in the past half-century when large-scale quarantine has been effectively used in the control of any disease. The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations; difficulty in getting critical supplies, medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration…

    Home quarantine also raises ethical questions. Implementation of home quarantine could result in healthy, uninfected people being placed at risk of infection from sick household members. Practices to reduce the chance of transmission (hand-washing, maintaining a distance of 3 feet from infected people, etc.) could be recommended, but a policy imposing home quarantine would preclude, for example, sending healthy children to stay with relatives when a family member becomes ill. Such a policy would also be particularly hard on and dangerous to people living in close quarters, where the risk of infection would be heightened….

    Travel restrictions, such as closing airports and screening travelers at borders, have historically been ineffective. The World Health Organization Writing Group concluded that “screening and quarantining entering travelers at international borders did not substantially delay virus introduction in past pandemics . . . and will likely be even less effective in the modern era.”… It is reasonable to assume that the economic costs of shutting down air or train travel would be very high, and the societal costs involved in interrupting all air or train travel would be extreme. …

    During seasonal influenza epidemics, public events with an expected large attendance have sometimes been cancelled or postponed, the rationale being to decrease the number of contacts with those who might be contagious. There are, however, no certain indications that these actions have had any definitive effect on the severity or duration of an epidemic. Were consideration to be given to doing this on a more extensive scale and for an extended period, questions immediately arise as to how many such events would be affected. There are many social gatherings that involve close contacts among people, and this prohibition might include church services, athletic events, perhaps all meetings of more than 100 people. It might mean closing theaters, restaurants, malls, large stores, and bars. Implementing such measures would have seriously disruptive consequences…

    Schools are often closed for 1–2 weeks early in the development of seasonal community outbreaks of influenza primarily because of high absentee rates, especially in elementary schools, and because of illness among teachers. This would seem reasonable on practical grounds. However, to close schools for longer periods is not only impracticable but carries the possibility of a serious adverse outcome….

    Thus, cancelling or postponing large meetings would not be likely to have any significant effect on the development of the epidemic. While local concerns may result in the closure of particular events for logical reasons, a policy directing communitywide closure of public events seems inadvisable. Quarantine. As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences, such as loss of public trust in government and stigmatization of quarantined people and groups, are likely to be considerable….

Finally, the remarkable conclusion:

    Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

Confronting a manageable epidemic and turning it into a catastrophe: that seems like a good description of everything that has happened in the COVID-19 crisis of 2020.

Thus did some of the most highly trained and experienced experts on epidemics warn with biting rhetoric against everything that the advocates of lockdown proposed. It was not even a real-world idea in the first place and showed no actual knowledge of viruses and disease mitigation. Again, the idea was born of a high-school science experiment using agent-based modelling techniques having nothing at all to do with real life, real science, or real medicine.

So the question becomes: how did the extreme view prevail?

The New York Times has the answer:

    The [Bush] administration ultimately sided with the proponents of social distancing and shutdowns — though their victory was little noticed outside of public health circles. Their policy would become the basis for government planning and would be used extensively in simulations used to prepare for pandemics, and in a limited way in 2009 during an outbreak of the influenza called H1N1. Then the coronavirus came, and the plan was put to work across the country for the first time.

[Post-publication note: You can read the 2007 CDC paper here. It is arguable that this paper did not favor full lockdown. I’ve spoken to Rajeev Venkayya, MD, who regards the 2007 plan as more liberal, and assures me that they never envisioned this level of lockdown: “lockdowns and shelter-in-place were not part of the recommendations.” To my mind, fleshing out the full relationship between this 2007 document and current policy requires a separate article.]

The Times called one of the pro-lockdown researchers, Dr. Howard Markel, and asked what he thought of the lockdowns. His answer: he is glad that his work was used to “save lives” but added, “It is also horrifying.” “We always knew this would be applied in worst-case scenarios,” he said. “Even when you are working on dystopian concepts, you always hope it will never be used.”

Ideas have consequences, as they say. Dream up an idea for a virus-controlling totalitarian society, one without an endgame and eschewing any experienced-based evidence that it would achieve the goal, and you might see it implemented someday. Lockdown might be the new orthodoxy but that doesn’t make it medically sound or morally correct. At least now we know that many great doctors and scholars in 2006 did their best to stop this nightmare from unfolding. Their mighty paper should serve as a blueprint for dealing with the next pandemic.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 08, 2020, 05:42:07 PM
Watch the video in the piece.

https://noqreport.com/2020/07/08/california-ab-262-is-the-ultimate-coronavirus-authoritarian-loophole/

Quote
Who controls the fate of millions of people in California when it comes to outbreaks and pandemics? Mayors? The Governor? The various levels of legislature? Nope. It’s the unelected “health officers” who have all the power in times of crisis thanks to California AB 262 which was signed into law last year.

On the latest episode of the NOQ Report, JD and Tammy discussed this bill and the multiple detrimental effects it has on the people. The most important takeaway is that this bill puts people who have no accountability to voters in charge of major decisions that affect everyone. As Liz Wheeler at One America News noted yesterday:
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 08, 2020, 06:30:29 PM
Give mikey time to find someone's words he can steal and then he will be back and pretend superiority...
You are so amazingly stupid as to defy comprehension.  It’s as if a dying star of idiocy went supernova and you are the stupid neutronium left over (you are certainly dense enough).  You are the singularity of stupid that lies in the center of the imbecilic galaxy.  You are a deity of stupid, no you are the high God of stupid.  You are the chief God of the Doltish Pantheon; you emit greater and more profound stupid than any other being in the cosmos.  Your stupid is so pure and forceful as to have slain all the other Gods that have existed since the beginning of time until you stand alone with your total simplicity.  You invented stupid at the dawn of universe, emit it with such force and brightness that any intelligence or thought is repelled by your unrelenting foolishness.  You were born of a dimension of stupid, squeezed into being by witlessness of unimaginable simplicity through a tear in the fabric of the universe created by your unrelenting superhuman imbecility.  You are kilo-stupid, giga-stupid, tera-stupid.  Mathematicians haven’t invented the numbers to describe how stupid you are.  They would need to develop a whole new system of stupid math that only you are sufficiently witless to discover.  Your microbes are stupid, your cells stupid, you are a colonial organism of insurmountable brainlessness.  You contain enough stupid to populate an entire idiotic universe.  Your stupidity is so pure and uncontaminated as to be the well spring from which all stupidity flows.  You are the alpha and omega of stupid. Your stupid will shine bright long after the Universe cools, indeed your stupidity is so profound and unrelenting that it will outlast creation itself.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Number7 on July 08, 2020, 07:13:46 PM
Poor, pathetic, Mikey....

No one is willing to stand up and cheer for his remarkable mediocrity.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Mr Pou on July 09, 2020, 04:28:05 AM
He's just doing this for fun, you know. Don't feed the troll.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 09, 2020, 04:45:38 AM
This is the first crisis not of Trump's own making.  ...

Our government under more competent leadership was able to stop each of these well before they became epidemic in this country.

hmmmmm
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 09, 2020, 04:46:25 AM
He's just doing this for fun, you know. Don't feed the troll.

He can't get this kind of attention on POA...  rules of conduct and all...
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Little Joe on July 09, 2020, 04:58:47 AM
He can't get this kind of attention on POA...  rules of conduct and all...
Which is sort of why any of us are here; rules of conduct and all.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Mr Pou on July 09, 2020, 05:57:32 AM
Which is sort of why any of us are here; rules of conduct and all.

Touche
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 09, 2020, 08:15:10 AM
He can't get this kind of attention on POA...  rules of conduct and all...

He just got his ass handed to him over on PoA (once again), so I guess he's here to vent.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Anthony on July 09, 2020, 08:22:00 AM
He just got his ass handed to him over on PoA (once again), so I guess he's here to vent.

Figures.   ::)
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Mr Pou on July 09, 2020, 10:31:53 AM
He just got his ass handed to him over on PoA (once again), so I guess he's here to vent.

Which thread is that one? Hard to keep up with where he's getting bitch slapped.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 09, 2020, 10:51:54 AM
Motorbike thread, plus some other assorted thread smack downs.

His shtick is the same on all forums.  He comes in with the smarmy "I'm so much smarter than everyone here" routine, or his constant virtue signalling, then gets in pissing contest that he can't defend his bullshit.

Wash, rinse, repeat.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 09, 2020, 11:08:02 AM
He just got his ass handed to him over on PoA (once again), so I guess he's here to vent.
How fucking creepy!  You follow me around the internet?  Am I so important to you?!  I knew you were an ignorant SOB, but I have no idea you were a fucking stalker!
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on July 09, 2020, 11:09:36 AM
"I have no regard for you, but I'm sure you have enough for yourself to go around"

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: EppyGA - White Christian Domestic Terrorist on July 09, 2020, 11:10:59 AM
How fucking creepy!  You follow me around the internet?  Am I so important to you?!  I knew you were an ignorant SOB, but I have no idea you were a fucking stalker!
No one is allowed to read PoA except you?
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 09, 2020, 11:12:20 AM
No one is allowed to read PoA except you?

Exactly.

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Lucifer on July 09, 2020, 11:14:15 AM
How fucking creepy!  You follow me around the internet?  Am I so important to you?!  I knew you were an ignorant SOB, but I have no idea you were a fucking stalker!

 And the next shtick is to play the victim.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Anthony on July 09, 2020, 11:14:47 AM
The original concept and Genesis of this website, Pilot Spin, was that it was an offshoot of POA and essentially POA's off Balance Sheet Spin Zone.  So of course people are going to participate in both and read other members posts.  Duh!
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Number7 on July 09, 2020, 07:14:07 PM
Progressive (communist) academics really do believe that they are special and deserve special attention.

Of course that translates to, “you must pretend to agree with my every utterance or you are a racist...”

In every setting liberal show up and ruin whatever they touch because liberals are very poor at building anything, with the exception of Building contempt by their ass-holery, building ignorance by their insistence that history must be scrubbed to fit their narrative, building distrust by their dishonesty, and building devastation by their insane ignorance of reality.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Steingar on July 10, 2020, 06:00:39 AM
Progressive (communist) academics really do believe that they are special and deserve special attention.

Of course that translates to, “you must pretend to agree with my every utterance or you are a racist...”

In every setting liberal show up and ruin whatever they touch because liberals are very poor at building anything, with the exception of Building contempt by their ass-holery, building ignorance by their insistence that history must be scrubbed to fit their narrative, building distrust by their dishonesty, and building devastation by their insane ignorance of reality.

You are actually quantum stupid, you are made of stupid gluons, idiot quarks, and imbecile mesons. They interact and reinforce their mindlessness until their idiocy pervades all.  You embody the galaxy’s complement of dark stupid.  You have both dark stupid matter and dark stupid energy, possibly the only instance in the known universe, that’s how amazingly stupid you are.  It’s as if stupidity fucked brainlessness and you are their aborted love child.  Were the Encyclopedia Britannica devoted to describing your stupidity it wouldn’t be enough.  We would need to double the number of words describing stupid in English to adequately describe how monumentally stupid you are.  There aren’t enough words describing stupid in all the languages in all the world to describe how stupid you are.  Yes, that’s right, you are indescribably stupid.  Stupid beyond the imaginings of Man.  Transcendentally stupid, your stupid could take on a life of its own and live on after you die, that’s how stupid you are.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: StevieTimes on July 10, 2020, 08:51:38 AM
I'll take "what is ad hominem" for $200, Alex.
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Number7 on July 10, 2020, 11:20:13 AM
Wonder where he stole that???
Title: Re: If masks are so necessary...
Post by: Old Crow on July 10, 2020, 03:17:44 PM
The use of the word 'Stupid' so many times makes me think of teenagers chatting using the word 'Like'.