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Messages - PeterNSteinmetz

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1
Spin Zone / Re: Years Late - CDC Releases Covid Vaccine Injury Reports
« on: April 05, 2024, 08:51:54 PM »
That said, I would agree with what I think many are reacting to here that the entire rollout was grossly distorted by the fact that the government was paying for it and exempted the manufacturers from liability and by the fact that the FDA regulates and approves drugs.

Without this sort of government interference in the healthcare marketplace, I am not at all sure these vaccines would have been a money maker for the manufacturers.

2
Spin Zone / Re: Years Late - CDC Releases Covid Vaccine Injury Reports
« on: April 05, 2024, 08:48:55 PM »
Quote from: Jim Logajan on April 05, 2024, 08:46:17 PM
Then there is the placebo effect:
https://www.bidmc.org/about-bidmc/news/2022/01/placebo-effect-contributes-to-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-events

"Haas and colleagues analyzed data from 12 clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. The 12 trials included adverse effects reports from 22,578 placebo recipients and 22,802 vaccine recipients. After the first injection, more than 35 percent of placebo recipients experienced systemic adverse events – symptoms affecting the entire body, such as fever – with headache and fatigue most common at 19.6 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively. Sixteen percent of placebo recipients reported at least one local event, such as pain at site of injection, redness or swelling."
Very good point. That is exactly why one must rely on randomized controlled trials to understand what is due to simply getting a shot, what may be due to receiving the activating agent (adjuvant) to induce greater immune response, and the active agent that is specific to a disease, in vaccine trials.

3
Spin Zone / Re: Years Late - CDC Releases Covid Vaccine Injury Reports
« on: April 05, 2024, 08:42:55 PM »
Quote from: Jim Logajan on April 04, 2024, 07:08:29 PM
Interesting! Thanks for that. 8% suffering negative side effects should have clearly shown up in the phase 3 trials which had 43k subjects just for the Pfizer vaccine. Did a quick search and this is what Pfizer reported:

"Data demonstrate vaccine was well tolerated across all populations with over 43,000 participants enrolled; no serious safety concerns observed; the only Grade 3 adverse event greater than 2% in frequency was fatigue at 3.8% and headache at 2.0%"

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccinem

Hmmm ... "adverse event greater than 2%". Not going to spend time digging through their original results but if they had just 3 other adverse event categories each affecting 1% of subjects then 8% is easily attained and still honestly report only two adverse event types occurring over 2%.
What appear to be differences here are likely due to how you grade the severity of the adverse events. If the rate of serious adverse events is only 1 in 100k, we also know that mild adverse events is something like 30% or 30k per 100k. Given those numbers, how you draw the qualitative boundaries between mild and moderate or different numeric grades will matter - a lot.

4
Spin Zone / Re: Years Late - CDC Releases Covid Vaccine Injury Reports
« on: April 05, 2024, 08:38:49 PM »
Quote from: Lucifer on April 05, 2024, 05:42:05 AM
  And people lost jobs for refusing the shot.   People in the military were kicked out for refusing.  We even had people here on this forum going on about how safe the vax was and how the VAERS data was wrong.
The VAERS data is not “wrong” - it just cannot be used to estimate rate. It is self report and so fairly clearly subject to reporting bias. If there is a lot of news coverage, the number of reports will jump enormously.

5
Spin Zone / Re: Years Late - CDC Releases Covid Vaccine Injury Reports
« on: April 05, 2024, 08:35:41 PM »
No excuse for government interference in healthcare. But the truth is the rate of serious adverse events from these shots is well known from multiple randomized controlled trials. It is about 1 per 100,000.

I don’t know any serious non government employee who ever claimed it was 100% effective. The early shots were perhaps 90-95% effective, in the sense of reducing your likelihood of being infected, and this decreased over time.

6
Spin Zone / Re: “Angel Flight” for abortion or trans surgeries
« on: March 28, 2024, 07:50:53 PM »
Quote from: Rush on March 27, 2024, 06:57:27 PM

I do kinda have a problem with them being a non-profit and writing it off as charity like regular Angel Flight.

But if taxation is extortion, then it is a form of coercion. Thus I think all reduction of coercion, no matter how selective or how much we may dislike the reason for the reduction, is good morally.
Otherwise one is advocating for coercion of some people but not others.

These are the sort of moral conundra created by having the state involved in everyone else’s business.

7
Spin Zone / Re: More Racism
« on: March 25, 2024, 08:46:30 AM »
Quote from: Username on March 25, 2024, 04:38:44 AM
The adaptation I've made is to view everyone outside my immediate family and everything with suspicion.  That's far less than 25 - 50 people.

One of the downsides to living in a large relatively anonymous societies. Of course, there are a large number of advantages as well, particularly in regards to trade.

8
Spin Zone / Re: Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 06:08:06 PM »
Quote from: Rush on March 23, 2024, 06:01:09 PM
After what happened with Twitter, I wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA/FBI have someone on the PoA management board.
Well, since we don’t actually know who owns PoA or the identities of most of the board members, I guess that is more likely.

9
Spin Zone / Re: Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 05:43:47 PM »
Quote from: EppyGA - White Christian Domestic Terrorist on March 23, 2024, 05:38:00 PM
What is your problem with Spike?
Okay, go to PoA and advertise PS and see what happens. They don't take kindly to having that board used to advertise other boards.  We;re all here because they did away with their Spin Zone many years ago.
Huh? Yes, I know the answer to that. Spike did so. Without any warning or explanation.

I certainly don’t agree with him on the use of moderation, as I imagine most of us here don’t, because it normally starts out semi-reasonable and then nowadays is captured by the woke crowd.

10
Spin Zone / Re: Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 05:15:39 PM »
Quote from: Lucifer on March 23, 2024, 05:02:06 PM
  No, just asking.

  Touchy?  Hardly.

Not familiar with whoever that is.
I think PoA has an enormous network effect that is very hard to overcome. You see this in how many people get there. New pilots will Google a question, just like I did, and the first few links are often to PoA.

Neither Jim nor I are sure how to more effectively combat that. Suggestions are most welcome!

SCCutler is the oldest standing member of the board at PoA. He is the one who banned me because I was promoting FlyersForum as an alternative and then likely arranged, for the same reason and again without explanation, to ban me from BeechTalk.

He is an open advocate of strong moderation stating that is “because it works”. I am not sure to what extent is incorrect in terms of developing a large audience. I mean a very very large number of people continue to use Facebook despite the fact that they took money from the government to suppress one side of the debates surrounding Covid-19. It may be that the average person just likes the large network effect and convenience of posting some family photos over dealing with people of other points of view.

MeWe is an example of a social media site that is doing fairly well using the bi-directional block model, though its numbers are quite small compared to FB. They have also been around a rather long time.

11
Spin Zone / Re: Saw a drawing of Rush today.
« on: March 23, 2024, 05:02:52 PM »
Quote from: Rush on March 23, 2024, 01:53:55 PM
I had 3 big mugs today. I'm getting out of control.

So I did some quick math and I estimate that is 504 mg of caffeine. The FDA says you should consume no more than 400.  Okay, good, I'm not obeying the Feds.  Other research googling tells me that 500 mg of caffeine a day is associated with increased longevity, and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, colon cancer, liver cancer and depression.  So there.
Over the years I have seen several talks and papers about this. Reasonable research on both the long term benefits and harms of using coffee.

Aside from the obvious acute effects - stimulation, headache on withdrawal, energy slump after use, and heart palpitations with high doses - the longer term effects are usually small and the research seems to go back and forth.  I am not at all surprised by this given the long history of use of this drug.

Personally I gave up coffee about 15 years ago after being stuck somewhere where the coffee was just awful by comparison to my usual at the time Peet’s French press. I stayed off because I prefer not having the afternoon slump after morning only use it interferes less with my sleep.

12
Spin Zone / Re: Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 04:49:14 PM »
You know Lucifer, you seem awfully concerned about that. And perhaps a bit touchy about any criticism of what happens here on PS. Why is that?

Is it similar to SCutler over at PoA. Early moderator and so “your baby”? (Perhaps a somewhat unfair comparison as he does not use a pseudonym so he is arguably a bit different.)

13
Spin Zone / Re: Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 04:14:38 PM »
Quote from: Lucifer on March 23, 2024, 04:00:50 PM
You can block people here.   So I still don't see the problem.
We have discussed the difference before, right? I think a bi-directional block is preferable. The only thing we have here is muting really.

So for example, while I had in the past just ignored Number7 he would consistently come into threads where I was ignoring him and make abusive posts -  just out of the blue. In this sense he behaves like some random homeless guy in a public park who, when you are sitting having a reasonable conversation at a table with your friends, insists on coming over and inserting himself into the conversation. And just won’t leave.

That is essentially the difference between a mute and a bidirectional block. The former allows the homeless guy to keep doing this.

I am not advocating that it needs to be changed though I have advocated for it previously here on PS. But people here apparently prefer it this way.

As I said above, I just note that it will tend to create an environment where many people won’t be particularly interested in participating or disclosing much. It seems people here may like that.

14
Spin Zone / Getting To Know Each Other - Part Two - The Sequel
« on: March 23, 2024, 03:59:13 PM »
I do think people who use pseudonyms to abuse others are mild cowards. That doesn’t mean it should be banned.

I prefer a system where one can simply block them from one’s own contacts and be rid of them.

I think it is rather clear from behavior in this forum and many others that people are much more prone to be abusive of others and engage in all sorts of logical fallacies when they are writing under a pseudonym. That doesn’t mean everyone does so and we have examples of that here as well.

The primary point in my comment here is that one tends to reap what one tolerates and one sees the results here. Many of the prior posters who might have provided a counterpoint are now gone.

15
Spin Zone / Re: More Racism
« on: March 23, 2024, 03:56:46 PM »
Quote from: Rush on March 20, 2024, 10:40:51 AM

I know you know that and I concur that the tendency to make that negative association is strong; it’s based on survival instinct.  When you see dangerous behavior, you memorize the characteristics of the person (or animal or thing) so that you may avoid it in the future. It’s a natural adaptive response.
It also makes an enormous amount of sense evolutionarily. When the humans species largely was evolving recently we lived in small tribes of 25-50 people. It conferred a survival advantage to regard people outside that group with suspicion and expect hostility.

It is a real challenge to adapt these engrained behaviors to societies of up to a billion people.

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