American Politics Discussion Thread

[BING_XI_LAO]

conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory

I used to work in the media, it chooses what to cover and what not to cover, it follows the line set by its small number of wealthy owners as well as the intended audience, and they all copy each other to fill column inches. How can any Westerner believe their elite and media after the destruction of multiple Middle Eastern countries under very false pretenses? I don't even like those countries but it's a great moral shame and embarrassment that we did that, especially for such stupid or corrupt reasons. Anyhow the Middle East is the biggest reason I'd rather have conspiracy theories instead of the insane and dangerous lies of the media. I don't just mean Iraq-Afghanistan, they even doubled down later with Egypt Libya Syria and so on.

About the lab leak idea, I don't really care either way whether it's true or not though an epidemiologist I chatted to the other day seemed to think it was a reasonable idea. My point was that the Western power structure first banned that narrative and then promoted it, which means you cannot trust what they're saying.

(unlike the vaccines that you fear so much).

Did you reply to me point-by-point before even reading the whole post? I'm not particularly afraid of the vaccine after getting annoyed with anti-vaxxers for being content with innuendo and anecdote. I am more afraid of the vaccine than the Coronavirus but that's not saying much. Besides, vaccination means you get vaccinated over and over, whereas with Coronavirus it's unclear when you will ever get infected, or if by the time it happens it will still be a serious illness.

Additionally, there is a moral element, which is that getting vaccinated supports the spreading of total mass surveillance and coercive violation of medical rights for the entire society.
So there is a moral obligation to stay unvaccinated. (I am kind of joking/teasing here)

-Disparaging ivermectin as "dangerous" "horse dewormer" - how can you trust anything from a source which produces such idiotic lies?

Those are not lies. It is used as a dewormer for horses, and it can be dangerous to take it (especially in high doses). Most drugs have chances of side effects, it's not recommended to take random drugs that you don't need. Additionally, taking useless drugs against Covid can give you a false sense of security when you really need to get real medical help.

It's not dangerous and it's not just horse dewormer.

-Russian and Chinese vaccines not treated as legitimate

I don't even know what this has to do with American politics and haven't heard anything about this.

It's just a reminder that Western regulators/governments serve the interests of Western corporations, and of an aggressive foreign policy agenda. Which makes them less trustworthy on most things frankly.

-vaccines being in the hands of a few large corporations whose sales pitch is heavily dependent on government spending and policy, aka the archetypal Western grift

The governments don't just blindly buy these things, everything is scientifically tested and proven. Just because you don't know or understand how they work doesn't mean the government is just blindly administering a mystery substance to their citizens. There were way more vaccines being made, but guess what, they didn't pass the trials and that's why they aren't being mass produced and given to people unlike those that did pass the trials.

Okay, but I was making a broader point, the Western governments will start entire wars just to leech tax money into corporations, and any public-private partnership automatically stinks at this point after seeing the endless parade of scam outsourcing and privatisation (yet still taxpayer funded) here in the UK for example.

-histrionic pressure to force holdouts to get vaccinated even when the vaccination rate is already high across society

America is at fucking 60% fully vaccinated, that is not enough. 2000 people are dying every day to Covid. It is one of the top causes of death in America. It would be the clear #1 without vaccines. Most people dying are unvaccinated.

Well, I get that this is the American politics thread, but in Australia for example the rate is higher but there is still plenty of pressure for ever further vaccination. I can't even enter the country as an unvaccinated citizen!

-constant weakening of the claims of vaccine efficacy made by its proponents and constant expansion of the number of necessary doses. So either they didn't know what they were talking about or they were using a gradual let-down expectation management strategy. Like with "2 weeks to slow the spread". Either way they can't be trusted any more.

That's how science works, you constantly learn more. It's not like pandemics are commonplace. The reason why more doses are needed is because not enough people are vaccinated and the disease is still around and mutating. We did know from the beginning about needing high vaccinations rates and the possibility of mutations if the virus sticks around. Some other things we did not know from the beginning and have learned since then.

Meanwhile some conspiracy theorists already guessed from early on that there would be ever more variants and vaccines. One of my favourite conspiracy theorists said he expected a new variant two weeks before Omicron.

What you want and what is very common for antivaxxers is that you want the world to be very simple and easy to understand and that's why you fall for misinformation that makes it seem like so.

For your part, believing everything you're told by the rich and powerful about the latest reshaping of society is not a great intellectual feat either.
But I don't want to trash-talk you too much, I haven't interacted with you enough yet to know if I dislike you

Conspiracy theory about some conspiracy that every country in the world are intentionally trying to poison their citizens. Completely ridiculous and impossible to manage anything like this. But it is in the same vein as Flat Earth conspiracies and Q-Anon conspiracies. The Venn Diagram between antivaxxers and the former two is a circle.

Anyway probably not gonna engage in the vaccination talk after this. Everyone who could be persuaded to get it have taken it.

Lol, I was disagreeing with those conspiracy theories albeit from a sympathetic standpoint. Did my post get you so mad you didn't follow what I was saying?

[BING_XI_LAO]

-censorship against reporting side effects (of vaccines)

That might be a thing on your side. Here on my European side the news and the government are pretty transparent about the side effects. When side effects popped up governments paused the usage of that vaccine for further inspection. In the end they found that the risk of these side effects were very low and/or Covid has a higher risk. They even stopped the use of some vaccines for specific age groups entirely just to be safe. In my book that does not count as censorship.

I couldn't remember what I was even referring to when I complained about vaccine side effect reports getting censored, like I said I find the anti-vaxxer parade of anecdotes annoying despite my political sympathy, so didn't follow it closely.
But here';s a recent example in the US:
https://www.nvic.org/cmstemplates/nvic/P...t-2021.pdf
You may dislike NVIC as disinfo, never heard of them myself, but it's still censorship.

Further case of facebook censorship
https://nypost.com/2021/05/25/facebook-t...cs-report/
Project Veritas is run by a deranged narcissist, I hope I can find the recent hilariously cringe dance he did for TPUSA recently. But I think this report from them on algorithmic manipulation on Facebook is almost certainly correct, after all that is par for the course at this point.

Also I had to use Yandex to even look that up, google just produced pro-vaccine results when I googled "censorship of vaccine side effects reporting"

I don't actually mind censorship in itself, I just don't trust the Western ruling class. If we had more competent rulers I would be less annoyed by them governing what info the masses can easily access.

-banning and censoring ivermectin/hydroxchloraquine. For example my dad's immuno-suppressed due to an organ transplant, so would need every treatment he could get, yet his GP says he'd get in trouble for prescribing such things ahead of time.
-Disparaging ivermectin as "dangerous" "horse dewormer" - how can you trust anything from a source which produces such idiotic lies?

All of these drugs are perfectly fine drugs for their specific diseases, but and that's a big but there is no overwhelming medical evidence that those drugs work against Covid. They are labelled dangerous not because they are bad drugs, but rather because it is dangerous to take drugs if you don't have the disease related to that drug. Like for example you wouldn't take Insulin if you are an otherwise healthy person. That can seriously mess with your body and may even be dangerous.

It also helps to look at Russia and China as some people seem to trust them more then the West. But even they do not use those drugs against Covid to my knowledge.

Fair points! Though actually, I still think Ivermectin is not dangerous assuming you take the normal dose.

-Russian and Chinese vaccines not treated as legitimate

I think it was ok to be cautious of the Russian Sputnik V in the beginning, because they did not wait for the whole phase III result of clinical triels. But in the end that phase went through fine and I agree it is a problem not to treat them as legitimate.

Thanks!

-constant weakening of the claims of vaccine efficacy made by its proponents and constant expansion of the number of necessary doses. So either they didn't know what they were talking about or they were using a gradual let-down expectation management strategy. Like with "2 weeks to slow the spread". Either way they can't be trusted any more.

I have a problem with the word constant expansion, because that's just not true. So far most vaccines needed 2 doses from the very beginning. We (Germany) now started with a 3rd dose mainly because we learned that Omicron does manage to bypass the immune system better, but with a 3rd doses that risk is lowered.

Well it now seems like we're told a vaccine every six months indefinitely may be needed, in the West the third dose was mooted before Omicron, and I think I heard about a fourth the other day.

The bigger problem though is that we kept the vaccine for us 1st world countries, when we should have started vaccinating the whole world to decrease the potential of mutations.

Oh man, these global problems with global solutions are tiring to even hear about, it's like Global Warming
But you may be right.

I recommend this youtube channel.



He's a known cardiologist in the UK and of course knows a lot of stuff when it comes to the heart.

Thanks, I did already know about the "being fit and exercising can put you at higher risk" idea though. Will watch.

That's because the vaccine isn't more dangerous then the disease it prevents. The vaccines are now in mass use for a year and guess what there was no mass deaths.

That's indeed what it's looking like to me. I kind of "wanted" to believe in the worst kind of conspiracy theory about the vaxx, it's now just not stacking up though.

Another thing to consider is that China and Russia are pushing vaccines despite not being part of the Western media and power structure. They can't be in on the hoax, in particular China can't be doing it to seize power for the state or profit for the corporations, because the Chinese state already has mass surveillance systems and controls the corporations.

Very important remark that should give every conspiracy activist and anti-vaxxer pause.

Thanks!

[T-hawk]

I don't have much opinion on vaccine effectiveness either way, and this is the politics thread not a medical thread, but I will jump in on this point:

in case of Omicron there are hints that it might cause less severe cases, but more research has to go into that.

Omicron is far milder, and this is way beyond a "hint", it's clear as a bell obvious and couldn't be more definite.

Hospitalizations, ICU cases, and deaths in South Africa are all occurring at 90% less per case since the Omicron wave. This is a country-wide scale of 60 million population, not some small or skewed sample size. It's not a small difference at all, it's a gigantic world-defining difference.

[Charriu]

But T-hawk the major difference between South Africa and Europe or the US is that their population is much younger overall

[T-hawk]

No, that's not 90% less compared to Europe or the rest of the world, it's 90% less compared to South Africa itself during their original and delta waves.

And the UK is at something like 1 death out of 50k confirmed cases. Omicron is a nothingburger. The medical phenomenon is apparently that it replicates much more in the upper respiratory area, thus spreading more, but much less in the lungs, which is what causes the bad outcomes.

If you still want to be scared of Omicron, the correct argument is that we don't yet know to what degree antibodies from that work and last against the harsher variants. (Then there's the concern that even if we figure that out, will it be buried by the media and government like everything else about natural immunity.)

[BING_XI_LAO]

Just played a dota2 match and someone mentioned being infected and self-isolating for Christmas. Someone asked if he was double-vaxxed and he said yes.
Not an interesting anecdote but it reminded me that British figures a few months ago seemed to show more infection for younger age categories specifically, if you assumed ceteribus paribus for the two groups. What's the evidence regarding how much it reduces transmission? The same data showed a 60% reduction in mortality for the elderly IIRC, and that's a generally accepted figure or close enough right?

[Mjmd]

Omicron may end up being long term lucky but short term pain. The reason more transmissible equates to "deadly" is obviously statistics.

Omicron appears to be less deadly, but as a reminder a lower % across more people can still mean we may end up in a bad spot (hopefully it at least provides antibodies to those who continue to refuse the vaccinations, but as mild cases aren't guaranteed to do so /shrug / hope).

Vaccinations reduce chance of catching, transmission, hospitalization and death. What a lot of anti vaxxers will point is cases where one of those things happens. Again statistically its less, but it doesn't mean its 0.

Anyways, I'm taking a break from the politics forum at least for day.

[T-hawk]

"It's just common sense that the unvaccinated can't leave this neighborhood of their city." Show me what's going to stop that from happening. Or are you in favor of it?

I called it. https://www.rappler.com/nation/unvaccina...g-outside/

Manila (Phillippines) now forbids unvaccinated people from leaving their homes at all.

Still think this doesn't turn into concentration camps unless stopped now?

[Charriu]

Yes.

[T-hawk]

Then tell me, at what point are you going to start opposing it?