ericn
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Post by ericn on May 2, 2021 15:40:03 GMT -6
The false equivalence is that the opinion of one doctor, or even dozens of doctors, is the same worth as the opinion of any other doctor...or worse, of every other doctor... But no one said all doctors opinions should receive the same value, of course not. I would get your point if I said "hey guys, I took my cat into the local vet here and he said this whole vaccine thing is b.s." đ. Bossche has the credentials to at least be heard but yet it was quickly pointed out he's a vet which is low hanging fruit in my opinion. He has several scientific papers and other sources listed on his site to help understand why he has the concerns he has. I found them interesting and think they are worth a read: www.geertvandenbossche.orgThe whole point of sharing the other links was to show that there are different ways of looking at this and there are varying levels of concern not just with the vaccines, but in how they are implemented. I'm of the opinion that we're all adults here and are capable enough of researching and drawing our own conclusions from the information available. The reason there is no open and honest discourse is simple...money. Every facet of how scientific discourse works requires money. Good luck getting some when you go against the grain. I think our disagreement here comes down to the fact that I don't trust the system or many of the people in place and it seems that you do and that's fine. You said if a doctor has a concern they should just take it to the FDA. I wish I could trust that it is that simple and that the system would work, but I don't. I think we're two intelligent guys(hopefully you feel the same đ) that have put a good bit of effort into educating ourselves on these subjects and have looked at the same situation but have come to some different conclusions. I have personal reasons/experiences for feeling this way but I'm trying to hold off from getting into all that so RGO doesn't have to upgrade its storage capacity haha. You know the old joke, what do they call someone who couldnât get into vet school? MD. The top Vet schools have much higher standards and there are fewer. Hell I trust my vet more than my GP. |
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2021 15:52:34 GMT -6
svart , what are the odds of a person who has no formal training in your expertise (EE?) coming up with something that: - you wouldn't have thought of - that when explained to you, you would have said "that won't work" - was some kind of secret or presented as inside knowledge - was based off of something you would have said was a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic? Yes, sometimes people do things that the experts say won't work. But these are the exceptions, not the rules, and they're usually based on special insight or perspective. Not ignorance. It's not that experts are unimpeachable and unquestionable. It's that expertise does in fact have value, and most of the time experts know what they're talking about. If experts are ignorant and have a narrow view, as a rule laymen are even more ignorant and myopic. My case against these felons and charlatans is not gatekeeping. It's that what they're peddling is self-serving and dangerous, and we shouldn't give them credence simply because they have something to say. I've had all those done, and done them myself. I won't go through enumerating them. Some I barely remember, some are just pissing matches, most are just doing novel things or finding inventive ways to do things and moving on. The point is that I've been on the end of being dismissed because others believed I couldn't possibly have anything to offer because I was not an "expert". This was a huge problem early on in my career simply because I had multiple "specialists" above me all pushing down those below them to stay afloat. I've had multiple experts tell me that I didn't know what I was talking about dozens of times in 20 years. A few of which are now running jokes with some of my coworkers who I still work with who were also present during some of these exchanges. I do all their jobs now. Why? Because eventually everyone rises to their peak, with peak also being a metaphor for a narrow point.. And without branching out and actively keeping yourself from being painted into a corner of knowledge, you end up making yourself extinct if the industry makes a turn. Every day I just read about electronics stuff. My favorite is reading through the Hackaday type stuff because these guys are coming up with crazy ideas based on pure experimentation. Most of them will never work in the electronics design industry yet they LOVE what they are doing. I've poached a number of ideas from places like this because they're unbound by knowledge and expectations on them to deliver. They can just hack away and if things don't work they don't lose their jobs. My industry is VERY conservative for the most part. There is not much room for untested theories and that's one thing I dislike about it. I came up with a patent-able idea for a hybrid Vector Network Analyzer using proprietary phase modulation of harmonically related carriers, only possible through the powers of DSP. My digital design counterpart and I proofed it out in MATLAB and we had a low frequency proof of concept working on the bench with a FPGA and DAC reference design and one of our existing receiver designs. The CTO and VP of engineering didn't understand the concept and they poo-pooed the idea because it was too risky to go inventing things for a product rather than design in a known method.  Ok, so one good story even though I said I wouldn't..  We had two Principle RF Engineers on staff, I was just an engineer, one of maybe a dozen somewhere around 2005. We had a problem where an RF tuner needed to be able to tune in definable frequency steps at 200us intervals to follow a series of 10us pulses across 1GHz of bandwidth.  The tuner board used an off-the-shelf tuner IC meant for cable tv boxes. They worked well but weren't intended to tune very fast. The tuners couldn't tune faster than 4ms, or as we were saying, "this is fucking impossible". The RF guys decided to parallel up a few tuners and try to play some tricks of skipping pulses on some traces and hitting those pulses on subsequent traces but even then it was missing too many and taking forever to build one trace. I was researching the new (at the time) DDS (direct digital synthesis) chips and thought "wow, if only these could go high enough in frequency they would be perfect!". And during my research I thought of a bunch of ways to try to make a DDS (about 200MHz total bandwidth) span 1GHz of bandwidth with no spurious or harmonics in-band. For the laypeople reading, that's really tough to do. Anyway, I got a hare-brained idea that PLLs mostly acted like frequency multipliers when used at a static frequency. They take the REF frequency, divide it down to something easily compared in the PFD (phase-frequency-detector). The output stimulates a VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) to oscillate at a certain frequency and the PLL takes a copy of that output, divides it down to the PFD frequency and compares it in real-time with the divided REF frequency. Generally, the REF is steady and the VCO output walks around slightly as the PLL pushes and pulls current to try to keep it in place. However, what if the REF input were to move? Would the PLL "follow" the REF input around like a dog on a leash? What if I used the DDS as a moving REF input, would the VCO output move in conjunction with the DDS frequency? I was told by both RF guys, the director of CATV engineering and the VP of CATV engineering that I was less of an engineer to even suggest such a thing.After hours, I scrounged up a PLL/VCO reference design and used my DDS reference design as the REF frequency. A few hours of tweaking and tuning timings and I was able to jump to any consecutive frequency point in sub-100us by stepping the DDS in fine but fast steps. We had a meeting with corporate the next week and my bosses proposed their ideas for paralleling up tuner ICs despite their idea still being too slow, requiring 10x more board space than we had, and about 20x more power than we had available. Corporate was not amused and stopped the meeting early. They asked if anyone else had something to add. I raised my hand and said I had a solution. My bosses immediately started to dismiss me from the room saying that I had no idea what I was talking about and I was wasting company time, etc. Luckily the CTO and CEO stopped them and asked me to explain myself. I offered to SHOW them my solution instead. They came and took a look at my contraption and the CTO looked me dead in the eyes and said "I'm glad you showed this to us. It just saved all your jobs". They had come to shut us down that very day if we did not have a solution.  So not only did my novel idea save the site, I got a raise and a promotion and worked as the lead engineer for that product. During the next 18 months my boss resigned. One of the RF engineers was fired. The other quit in a rage and walked out. Our company was bought a few years later and that product was their prime desire. I got a big payout for my stock and a good offer to come on board to the new company. So yeah, I'm going to listen to everybody and anybody have their say. I'm NEVER going to dismiss someone because I don't agree or think I know better. Sometimes being ignorant of common knowledge is the BEST thing to sidestep problems. People who don't know why a problem exists are usually the best to see around the problem with new perspectives. I've had technicians come up with great ideas based on limited knowledge but fresh eyes. I've had salesmen and marketing folks suggest ideas that turned out to be better than I came up with. I've talked to folks outside of the design community who ask me things like "well, why can't you do xxx" when I mention not being able to do things in my job and their prodding be the impetus for me to stand back and solve the problem from a completely new approach. Above all, I'm not going to dismiss someone simply because I need to defend the idea that education trumps inventiveness. I may be college educated but my real learning comes from doing and trying and breaking stuff and never allowing myself to become complacent with status-quo mentality. Being too sure of what you know is a death sentence for learning.  This is especially true for audio dsp and even audio gear. The larger corporations with a revolving set of employees and contractors rarely produce anything novel. The pioneers are usually one or two guys doing stuff that nobody else has tried. Maybe they started doing it for free like the Uhe and Tokyo Dawn guys who quickly moved to the top of the heap. Many of the coolest 500 series started off as diy designs too. The same with new types of monitors. Amphions came from the seas kit world and found a far greater acceptance than other recent designs with similar drivers and crazy wave guides. |
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Post by drbill on May 8, 2021 10:50:50 GMT -6
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Post by matt@IAA on May 8, 2021 11:07:01 GMT -6
Itâs amusing to me. When big pharma advertises drugs for off-label use the FDA has not approved them for, theyâre horrible no-good and evil and the FDA is protecting the public interest. When doctors and social media influencers and politicians promote using drugs for off-label use, theyre heroes and should be listened to and the FDA is evil for limiting use (see: hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for treating COVID19). www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19When the FDA grants emergency use authorization for a vaccine in the midst of a pandemic their motives should be questioned along with the same pharma companies they also oppose, sometimes. The narrative shifts and motive questioning seem to be a matter of convenience. |
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Post by drbill on May 8, 2021 11:44:39 GMT -6
We should only look at things one way Matt? Is there not room for full disclosure and honesty in both directions? If there is room for both criminal liability and financial gain in this pandemic, surely Pharma should be at minimum looked at. IMO, I would think they should be held to higher standard than some random doctor on the internet with a dissenting view - no? You were the one pointing felon fingers earlier. Well....Pfizer and J&J are right there down in the dirt too.
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Post by matt@IAA on May 8, 2021 12:07:42 GMT -6
I didnât say to trust Pfizer because theyâre Pfizer. I didnât even say to trust Pfizer at all.
Pfizer has done research in the open. The findings were peer reviewed and published. The FDA was deeply involved with evaluating their research and has approved the vaccine for use.
Thereâs no logical consistency to this.
If promoting off-label use of drugs is bad, Pfizer is bad and so is anyone promoting the use of HCQ or ivermectin. The only difference is Pfizer is subject to criminal fines for their bad thing and random poster on the internet is not.
If the FDA is trustworthy in determining what is safe use, then use of ivermectin or HCQ against their recommendation is bad and shouldnât be done. Also, the vaccine has been approved for use, so we should accept their approval and use it per their recommendation.
If you say the FDA should not limit off-label use then ideologically you should have no reason to support Pfizer being criminally liable for doing what doctors are doing for ivermectin. Itâs a bureaucratic crime, not a moral one.
If the FDA cannot be trusted to safely evaluate drugs for use - emergency or otherwise, then on what grounds can we say they should punish Pfizer for advertising drugs they havenât approved?
Itâs all a mess of convenience.
At any rate there is a specific problem with saying âyou should listen to this person because heâs an expertâ when that person is a liar and a thief.
Iâm not suggesting to listen to Pfizer because they can be trusted to meticulously follow FDA rules about advertising drugs. Or even to listen to Pfizer at all. If we like the FDA, why not follow their advice?
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Post by Ward on May 10, 2021 10:18:53 GMT -6
We should only look at things one way Matt? Is there not room for full disclosure and honesty in both directions? If there is room for both criminal liability and financial gain in this pandemic, surely Pharma should be at minimum looked at. IMO, I would think they should be held to higher standard than some random doctor on the internet with a dissenting view - no? You were the one pointing felon fingers earlier. Well....Pfizer and J&J are right there down in the dirt too. I know this is just a meme below, but it has a sobering message. How many people read matt@IAA point about Big Pharma being evil and Doctors being BENEVOLENT? I sure did, and thanks Matt. I see the difference. Doctors are on the front lines saving our lives. I just came from mine who saved mine by getting my Blood Pressure down from 214/114 to 120/80 and slowly creeping downwards. Good on you! I knew you could see through the propaganda.  |
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Post by rowmat on May 10, 2021 12:03:21 GMT -6
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Post by svart on May 10, 2021 13:33:48 GMT -6
More and more things trickling out about the WIV and their military work they claim they never engaged in.. There's also connections to other viral research centers here in the USA that were funding coronavirus work at the WIV that were the first "scientists" to claim there was no man-made connection, yet they also failed to disclose their connections and it's looking more and more like a botched attempt to get ahead of blame rather than an honest assessment of the viral origins. |
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Post by rowmat on May 10, 2021 17:03:20 GMT -6
More and more things trickling out about the WIV and their military work they claim they never engaged in.. There's also connections to other viral research centers here in the USA that were funding coronavirus work at the WIV that were the first "scientists" to claim there was no man-made connection, yet they also failed to disclose their connections and it's looking more and more like a botched attempt to get ahead of blame rather than an honest assessment of the viral origins. So far the usual MSM suspects have been âcricketsâ on Fauciâs connections to the Gain of Function research in Wuhan. |
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Post by cyrano on May 11, 2021 14:09:49 GMT -6
Another serious question is: "Why did the University of Texas pay 5 million $ for research to a lab in China?" Especially since the lab had a bad reputation for safety.
I've seen several takes on the man-made or not man-made point but none about the reason or kind of research. Isn't it kinda weird for a US university to hire a 3rd party in China under the Trump administration, without it turning into a bit of a media show?
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Post by svart on May 11, 2021 14:23:29 GMT -6
Another serious question is: "Why did the University of Texas pay 5 million $ for research to a lab in China?" Especially since the lab had a bad reputation for safety. I've seen several takes on the man-made or not man-made point but none about the reason or kind of research. Isn't it kinda weird for a US university to hire a 3rd party in China under the Trump administration, without it turning into a bit of a media show? Probably the same reason the vaccines were tested in 2nd and 3rd world countries.. Because those are the only places that will generally take on risky work.. or to get around plausible deniability. I personally don't think gain-of-function work is necessary nor do I buy the the ends-justify-the-means attitude surrounding it. Looking ahead to see what might happen if a particular virus crops up? Bollocks. |
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,086
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Post by ericn on May 11, 2021 17:03:22 GMT -6
Another serious question is: "Why did the University of Texas pay 5 million $ for research to a lab in China?" Especially since the lab had a bad reputation for safety. I've seen several takes on the man-made or not man-made point but none about the reason or kind of research. Isn't it kinda weird for a US university to hire a 3rd party in China under the Trump administration, without it turning into a bit of a media show? Probably because 5 million goes a lot further in China than Texas. We were just discussing this here with a bunch of researchers. You have to understand there are not that many bio level 4 labs in the world, itâs a pretty tight knit community and other than most bio weapon research a project is usually spread out across the world. The scientists will seek advice from around the world. Think of it as a giant RGO except they can literally kill you softly with there songs. I would be able to go into more detail if my understanding of French, Chinese and Vietnamese went beyond menus. |
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Post by Ward on May 11, 2021 17:19:22 GMT -6
Another serious question is: "Why did the University of Texas pay 5 million $ for research to a lab in China?" Especially since the lab had a bad reputation for safety. I've seen several takes on the man-made or not man-made point but none about the reason or kind of research. Isn't it kinda weird for a US university to hire a 3rd party in China under the Trump administration, without it turning into a bit of a media show? This is an administration-ambivalent situation, as ericn eludes to by pointing out how small that theater of operations is and how limited it extends. Dr. Fauci has had involvement with these labs for quite some time. No doubt it is not a nefarious situation but the only option that exists. Joint efforts may be the only way to prevent these kinds of human-caused situations from continuing. |
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Post by cyrano on May 14, 2021 2:28:30 GMT -6
I remember at the time the university of Texas decided to use the Wuhan lab, there was serious resistance from faculty members, including a short list of other labs that were capable of doing the job, with less risk. There was also at least one faculty member that simply refused to cooperate with the Wuhan lab.
None of these questions were answered.
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Post by drbill on May 14, 2021 9:37:41 GMT -6
Senator Rand Paul going after Fauci this week in DC regarding the labs in Wuhan and gain-of-function stuff. Got pretty ugly. Fauci essentially denying any involvement - although it seemed to me he was dancing around technicalities. Typical political BS from both sides.
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Post by svart on May 14, 2021 10:15:43 GMT -6
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Post by drbill on May 14, 2021 12:13:54 GMT -6
Yeah, it was obvious to me that at the very least Fauci was seriously sidestepping the truth - if not outright lying. Paul was freaking holding his feet to the fire. LOL. Who knows....
The CDC today announced that if you've been vaccinated there's no longer a need to mask. But the official remarks came with so much hidden between the lines anti-vax condemnation that it makes one wonder what their agenda is? Especially since there is so much evidence that masks don't work anyway....
They did leave it open that we might have to go BACK to masks though. LOL
Try to find ANY truth in all of this hyperbole....
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Post by rowmat on May 14, 2021 15:19:09 GMT -6
Remember it was Fauci who said masks werenât required and then later did a complete 180 and said he basically lied because it would have resulted in mask shortages for healthcare workers.
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Post by svart on May 14, 2021 15:22:51 GMT -6
Remember it was Fauci who said masks werenât required and then later did a complete 180 and said he basically lied because it would have resulted in mask shortages for healthcare workers. They was also no precedent for mask wearing for SARS2 because masks hadn't been shown to be effective in prior SARS outbreaks. |
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Post by cyrano on May 15, 2021 3:50:33 GMT -6
Yeah, it was obvious to me that at the very least Fauci was seriously sidestepping the truth - if not outright lying. Paul was freaking holding his feet to the fire. LOL. Who knows.... The CDC today announced that if you've been vaccinated there's no longer a need to mask. But the official remarks came with so much hidden between the lines anti-vax condemnation that it makes one wonder what their agenda is? Especially since there is so much evidence that masks don't work anyway.... They did leave it open that we might have to go BACK to masks though. LOL Try to find ANY truth in all of this hyperbole.... I'd like to see some real evidence that masks are ineffective. All the scientific tests and numbers I've seen, support a high effectiveness for masks. Much higher than any other method, including staying at home. Of course, if the number of people wearing masks slides below a threshold, effectiveness goes down exponentially. There is a direct correlation between number of deaths and percentage of the population wearing masks. Just look at India and Brazil. We had no cases of the flu, this year. How about you? |
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Post by M57 on May 15, 2021 9:31:05 GMT -6
At the K-8 independent school where I teach (with a matriculation of 300+) I'm pretty sure the flu was all but non-existent. I'm not aware of any cases.
Unlike most schools across the country we have been 100% in person teaching on campus the entire school year, with maybe 5% of the students opting for remote learning. We have strict mask protocols. Indoors and out we wear masks all the time. Cohorts are small and special scheduling keeps them apart. We eat lunch outside with distancing except when the weather doesn't permit. Inside we use desk shields when eating and you can't talk when you eat indoors. Over the course of the year, we've had about 3 or 4 instances where individual cohorts had to go remote for a few weeks because of an isolated Covid case, but never was a case traced from one community member to another. It was scary to be sure, especially over the holidays. We rolled the dice and came out way on top.
It's all anecdotal evidence to be sure, but there's little doubt in my mind that masks made a huge difference.
..Next week, I'm going to check with the school nurses about the # of flu cases. They may not be allowed to give me any hard numbers, but they can probably let me know if the # of cases has been normal, low or high.
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Post by matt@IAA on May 15, 2021 10:54:48 GMT -6
As far as evidence go you canât really ask for evidence of ineffectiveness. The baseline is no masks, so the test is do masks make an improvement. But this is a very very difficult thing to test with any kind of rigor.
The only thing I saw that showed any benefit was a large scale study of county by county case growth rates in the US before and after statewide mask mandates. Even then thereâs so much potential to confound because travel could import cases from state to state and county to county. But they found that it reduced the daily growth rate by maybe a percent. Compounded, thatâs a significant effect. However we should consider a mask mandate does more than encourage people to wear masks - it can act as a reminder or a behavior modifier in general. So itâs hard to say itâs masks per se.
Logically they canât hurt. They obviously reduce the amount of spittle and droplets flying around from coughing and sneezing and talking, but we donât really know which scale the virus moves at. We donât even know that very well for flu, and weâve been studying that for a long time.
My guess, and it is no more than a guess, is that masks probably are a marginal benefit to reduce spread in aggregate, but not likely to do much for any particular case. However they probably have knock-on benefits as a behavioral tool, which is as much a real effect as any.
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Post by chessparov on May 15, 2021 11:44:31 GMT -6
Quick comment. I haven't actively participated in this thread that much. Partly, as I know enough-to know I don't know enough.  Regardless of the benefits (or lack thereof) of masks... I can tell you my personal experience of wearing a mask, is a very similar physical effect, compared to my sleep apnea. (thankfully keeping my window open-to get fresh air at night helps) Chris P.S. As always, my main concern is that I want all of "You and Yours" to be as healthy and safe as possible. |
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Post by Tbone81 on May 15, 2021 12:26:38 GMT -6
The efficacy of masks is a tough one. As Matt was saying, the studies we have aren't great and don't control for just about any variables. There was a study in the Lancet, I think in 2018, that showed that healthcare workers who wore a single mask for 12 hours had a higher rate of getting sick than those that didn't...which I think points to an important consideration, that masks are often worn incorrectly. Disposable hospital masks aren't made to worn for 12 hours. Their usable life span is closer to 30mins. Before covid we would NEVER ware the same mask patient to patient. We'd get new masks every time we entered a room.
Still, I think masks help. Just my personal opinion, but based on my experience with taking care of Covid patients (as well as other people with other droplet spreading diseases), when we ware masks, gloves, wash our hands we're fine and don't see large rates of in hospital infection. Basically, if you treat Covid the way you'd treat every droplet spread pathogen, you're pretty much OK. But I think some of the mask mandates are overkill and not very credible, like wearing masks outdoors.
One of the many frustrating things about this whole experience is that we do have lots of data on hand washing, and that's the single best thing you can do stop the spread of communicable diseases. Yet we're not crazy about pushing people to wash their hands. We don't mandate hand sanitizer everywhere.
As for the Flu, yeah, there was no real Flu this season. I can't think of single Influenza patient I saw all year. Again, just IME, but Flu Season is our busy season (normally) and we haven't seen any of it. RSV is gone too, but for different reasons. But basically the Covid precautions cover those diseases as well.
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