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Coronavirus

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Chris OConnor

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Re: Coronavirus

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DWill wrote:But those healthy infected are still able to pass the disease on, perhaps justifying the strict measures. I say 'perhaps' because, as Dr. Z said in the video, the response to the virus is something reasonable people can differ on, whereas asserting the virus is a hoax, is just false.
This whole thing is confusing as hell isn't it? So on the one hand the total number of infections isn't as important as we once thought it was. Most infections are not dangerous. Great. But we cannot deny that we're approaching 200k dead in the US from this virus. And we know these deaths are from the virus because we know the expected death rate for the same period of time is up by 200k+.

The pandemic is not a hoax but each far end of the spectrum seems to exaggerate things because of political bias. I'm not saying all Republicans are claiming this is a blown out of proportion hoax but a huge amount of the most vocal ones are continuously making this argument. And then you have Chris Cuomo on CNN and plenty of Democrats screaming that we all need to isolate even more or the world is doomed. I mean Jesus this is out of control.

That's why I like ZDoggMD so much. He is all about the science and critical thinking. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle and that's one of the reasons I left the Republican party a decade ago and never joined the Democrats. I'm a moderate and independent thinker. At least I try to be. Both sides blow things out of proportion and vilify their political opponents. I'm exhausted from the tribalism.
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Re: Coronavirus

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Chris OConnor wrote:KS, you're not going to be permitted to continue posting on BookTalk.org much longer if you don't make a significant change to how you interact with people on the forums.
Jeez, Louise. Been a while since I've been here. Let me go back and read.
Robert Tulip wrote:...KindaSkolarly is a total moron. ... Obviously, except to morons, the virus kills people by giving them pneumonia and heart failure etc. ... For a moron like KS to misuse Orwell in this way is the height of ironic stupidity.
That was Dr. Tulip's response to my last post. I can only assume it's an example of an acceptable interaction. Fine. I'll give it a try.

The video about the CDC and the 6% was made by a man who is a self-styled "doctor/comedian" (no joke, look it up. Zubin Damania). I saw one of his other videos some time ago. It was about hydroxychloroquine. He toed the Gates line that nothing short of a Gates vaccine will stop Covid.

Journalism’s Gates keepers
"I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism...."
cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-jour ... unding.php

I expect the doctor/comedian gets a piece of that quarter-billion PR money. He also refers to himself as an "internet influencer." Influencers with a large following charge fees.

As for his 6% video, the CDC says that 6% of the reported Covid deaths are attributed solely to Covid. 6% is 6%. If the moron Dr. Tulip has a problem with that, he should take it up with the CDC. Like the doctor/comedian in the video says, the other 94% of the deaths may have a Covid connection, but still...only 6% have died of Covid alone. And that's worrisome to the Gates cabal because to qualify as an epidemic in the US, a disease must be responsible for a certain number of deaths. The number varies from disease to disease, and it hasn't really been established yet for the Wuhan virus, so the Covid profiteers are nervous.

Anyway, I guess the moron Dr. Tulip considers himself to be an influencer. He's a self-styled scientist, even though he can't tell you where water comes from. He can't tell you where water comes from, yet he claims that his flatulence has the power to raise sea levels. Imagine that. He also believes that people who "deny" his powers are criminals. So is he a deity, or a moron?

A report from the home of Dr. Tulip:

The thought police come to Australia and New Zealand
youtube.com/watch?v=mbgfBrc8g6I&fea ... e=youtu.be

Fauci goes full pseudoscience: COVID-19 is due to "extreme backlashes from nature"
(Some like-minded flatulence for Dr. Tulip)
jordanschachtel.substack.com/p/fauci-go ... ce=twitter

I don't know, Chris. I'm not comfortable calling Dr. Tulip a moron. Seems like an insult to morons. Punish me if you must.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Coronavirus

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KindaSkolarly wrote:That was Dr. Tulip's response to my last post. I can only assume it's an example of an acceptable interaction. Fine. I'll give it a try.
My response is at https://www.booktalk.org/post174231.html#p174231 My harsh comment is justified because wilful disinformation about a pandemic can kill people. To assert that only 6% of deaths are due only to covid, as KS implied by comparing this stat to Orwell’s science in 1984, is totally deceptive, and is equivalent to saying 2+2=5.

Any claim that we can set aside obvious arithmetic is moronic, when the simple counting is pointed out. The condemnation in my comment is justified by noting that promoting complacency and misinformation about the virus is a deadly practice.
KindaSkolarly wrote: Zubin Damania
In a debate like this it is important to stick to relevant facts and not bring in fallacious claims. Damania is clearly a brilliant physician, and his talk on the 6% claim is simple and irrefutable.

I watched his first talk on Hydroxychloroquine that KS fallaciously brings in to discredit him. https://zdoggmd.com/hydroxychloroquine/ It cites the fraudulent withdrawn Lancet HCL study, and was done immediately after that study was published. That study appeared to have been based on direct conflict of interest and invented data. But then he goes on to critique the Lancet study, noting that it was only looking at the sickest patients in hospitals, and saying it needs to go through a scientific process. That has since happened to some extent. Then his first comment under that video is “ADDENDUM 6/5/2020: OH SNAP! This study got retracted by the Lancet! Check out our followup video.”

So now I am watching that video. It talks about the Lancet scandal, and then picks up on the more recent claims that HCQ only works as a low dose early treatment, not a cure, serving to reduce the death and illness rates from COVID. This is exactly how sensible people should discuss such a politically charged topic.

I can appreciate that a doctor like Damania will wait until more credible sources than Epoch Times are available to refer to. The proper assessment in this talk is that this preventive use of HCQ may prove to be justified, although the studies they had seen shown only minor benefit. He concludes that he has been burnt by trusting comments on covid from WHO and CDC that later proved to be wrong, and that in such a fast moving topic such mistakes are inevitable. What is not forgivable is holding to simple errors after they have been pointed out to you.
KindaSkolarly wrote: the CDC says that 6% of the reported Covid deaths are attributed solely to Covid. … that's worrisome to the Gates cabal because to qualify as an epidemic in the US, a disease must be responsible for a certain number of deaths.
This twisting of the statement from CDC continues the moronic failure to do simple sums. There is nothing “worrisome” in this CDC statistic, contrary to the conspiracy theory. It has to be placed in the context that many of the other deaths are mostly due to COVID, a fact that KS resolutely refuses to address for purely political motives. To say 6% had no known co-morbidities is not the same as saying only these deaths are attributed solely to Covid.

A good summary of why KS is advancing this untrue claim is at https://www.factcheck.org/2020/09/cdc-d ... -covid-19/
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DWill

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Re: Coronavirus

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KindaSkolarly questions the bona fides and integrity of the source Chris cited, but Alex Jones is a totally legit guy, right? What's the journalistic standard here?

My view of calling moron is that it goes too far. KS, in my recollection, has avoided calling BT members that type of name. I don't give him great credit for that, though, because he vents hatred and personal venom on other parties in a most appalling way. He's a character assassin or a demonologist who would have us believe in the satanic nature of G.H.W. Bush and John McCain. Of course, Barack Obama was, or is, a jihadist, that's beyond doubt. What distinguishes him from anyone else who comments here is that, as king of doubledowners, he never retracts a statement, never admits a mistake. He goes blithely forward with mostly nonsense from questionable sources, smokescreen and obfuscation all the way. The CDC and the 6% is a good example of failing to engage in real argument.
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Re: Coronavirus

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I expect the doctor/comedian gets a piece of that quarter-billion PR money. He also refers to himself as an "internet influencer." Influencers with a large following charge fees.
In logic, there’s a fallacy called Ad Hominem.

Let’s say Bill Gates said that vaccines typically contain a small amount of inactive vaccine. If you attack this claim because of his ties to vaccine money, that doesn’t make his claim incorrect.

Even simpler, if he claims 2+2=4, and you say that’s incorrect because he slept with mathematicians, that doesn’t make his claim incorrect.

Whether or not something is true depends on the claim and the evidence, not the person making it, qualities of the person making it, or associations of the person making it. Ignore the person making the claim. Look at the claim.

When you get this wrong, you commit the ad hominem fallacy. Read back through all the things you write in all the threads, and you commit this fallacy constantly, in nearly every post.

As a heuristic, you can certainly distrust information coming from a source. For example, I distrust anything I hear from Alex Jones. Not because he’s Alex Jones, but because whenever I’ve dug deeply into his claims, he’s very frequently wrong. If I’m going to comment on the truth of his claims, I’ll do so based on the merit of the claim. Not because it came from him.

My belief is that Alex Jones is frequently untruthful, but his untruthfulness isn't an argument against any individual claim he makes.
The video about the CDC and the 6% was made by a man who is a self-styled "doctor/comedian" (no joke, look it up. Zubin Damania). I saw one of his other videos some time ago. It was about hydroxychloroquine. He toed the Gates line that nothing short of a Gates vaccine will stop Covid.
Ad Hominem. Which claims, specifically, did Zubin get wrong, and why?
As for his 6% video, the CDC says that 6% of the reported Covid deaths are attributed solely to Covid. 6% is 6%.
And the doctors who fill out these reports agree that it should be closer to 0%. Covid leads to death via pneumonia, heart attack, asphyxiation, etc. As it’s already been explained many times, the appropriate way to fill out a death certificate is to list all contributing causes. And causation is a web, not a point.

Also, why are you ignoring the elephant in the room? Explain excess deaths.

Explain why excess deaths so closely match Covid death counts in countries around the world? Go ahead, I’ll grab popcorn.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Coronavirus

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Three months since the last post on this thread.

Very distressed to see the explosive growth in new cases in the US while President Trump cultivates a mentality of pure dangerous fantasy. I hope people are keeping safe.

Here in Australia we have eradicated the virus except for tiny outbreaks caused by hotel quarantine for returning citizens from overseas.

The ruling mentality of the USA is hostile to essential public health measures and systems despite having by far the highest health expenditure in the world, 50% higher than the OECD average.

Such opposition to public coordination does not work.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coronavirus

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I'm glad Australia is handling its public health crisis well. It's true, we're handling ours poorly, with only small consolation that some other countries--but not so many, really--have higher death rates than the U.S. We have a real maniac at the head of govt. With a rational leader, the suffering would have been much less. How can a country have fallen so far in a mere four years?
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Re: Coronavirus

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DWill wrote: some other countries--but not so many, really--have higher death rates than the U.S.
Our Australian media tends to obsess about the US, and the overall number of infections in the US far outstrips any other country. Yet in national worldwide rankings, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality shows that the USA is ninth overall in deaths per hundred thousand population, with 86.

This pandemic has made me revise my opinions about role of government. For some years I have been rather enamoured by the small government ideology of the Austrian Economics school, but the pandemic has showed that countries with a strong sense of government legitimacy in public health leadership have responded far more effectively than those where government is weak. Civil society and the private sector are simply incapable of leading the coordinated scientific response that controlling the virus demands.
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Robert Tulip wrote:This pandemic has made me revise my opinions about role of government. For some years I have been rather enamoured by the small government ideology of the Austrian Economics school, but the pandemic has showed that countries with a strong sense of government legitimacy in public health leadership have responded far more effectively than those where government is weak. Civil society and the private sector are simply incapable of leading the coordinated scientific response that controlling the virus demands.
Hey Robert :) . These words are like music to my ears.

The logic you’ve posted here can most certainly be projected towards pollution and it’s global effect. The logic is apropos towards climate engineering as well.

It’s fitting that this weakness of libertarian ideology, has been laid bare. It’s even more fitting that it is the USA that has demonstrated the failure. Our system can work but as you’ve written, it can only work when people think in terms of legitimacy of government. Libertarianism naturally undermines legitimate government. The U.S. is best positioned to overcome character flaws of ideology precisely because of the fluidity that allows for legitimate governmental change. Internal factions are often the greatest threat to an Open Society. I think that we are living in extraordinary times, given the historical context of authoritarianism drawn from the early 20th century Europe and what we are living through currently. I think that there is something exiting going on because we have such historically recent examples of the destruction/outlawing of legitimate democracy. (Hitler’s Germany) Eyes and minds are taking in vast amounts of information via the internet. We are learning to not only process the deluge of new and old ideas in new ways, but to compartmentalize, and prioritize as well. It is easy to be led by the nose when algorithms manipulate bias. We are witnessing the confrontation between those who are willing to undermine legitimate democracy under republic standards and those who are genuinely concerned with defending those founding standards, an internal battle against subliminal suggestion coming from all corners. Open Societies vs. Maddison Avenue who’s willing to subvert humanity for shareholder equity.

Labor is attempting to defend those standards in America. It is Labor that is defending those standards in Australia. Labor will claim those standards in communist China, the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, Russia..

So.. Legitimate Government. That’s the question..

I’d like to see a thread that debates the idea of legitimate government and in particular.. government that can have no doubts as to whether it is best suited for those needs of private property and individual rights and that provides for the community’s highest standards of infrastructure and social security.

Not a small order but I’d like to see Booktalk throw their minds at it.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Coronavirus

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DWill wrote:We have a real maniac at the head of govt. With a rational leader, the suffering would have been much less. How can a country have fallen so far in a mere four years?
The roots of American dissonance go back well before Trump.

Honestly, to me the most disturbing statistic about the USA is that 40% of Americans believe in creationism and reject the scientific story of the origin of the earth.

In my view that demonstrates the pervasive hold of irrational fantasy in American life, with false myths far more widely accepted than almost anywhere else. American historical themes such as providence, manifest destiny, liberty, the frontier, the American Dream, etc have played into this propensity to accept psychological fantasies, with media and popular culture creating bizarre social bubble universes.

Trump has played to that fantasy base. Imagine if he had lost in 2016. What a head of steam his "government in exile" and "righteous emperor of Magaland" nonsense could have cooked up by 2020, for an even more virulent attack on norms of democratic legitimacy. In a sense his one term wonder has lanced the boil of fascist tendencies, but only in part.

The country now has an empirical view of the consequences of putting a maniac in power, with Fauci warning the US is pushing 400,000 dead next year. Hopefully that will temper the reactionary tendencies in 2024, making people see the serious importance of voting.

Ronald Reagan also played to the fantasy base, but because he was so much more a congenial communicator and he successfully stared down the USSR he has been viewed more kindly. But in important ways the Reagan-Bush years prepared the way for Trump.

Just on the theme I raised of Austrian Economics, I was quite amused to see the Mises Institute recently complaining about having its anti-mask video removed by YouTube. I commented on that thread about the risks of allowing freedom to kill people, but now the comments are not loading, hopefully just a temporary glitch.
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