Matt Taibbi on censorship; John Cochrane on official lies; Emily Oster on living with COVID; Bari Weiss hosts a COVID journalist; Heather Heying on the Canadian trucker protest
In consideration of Cochrane's opinion I'll add that humans are both gullible and skeptical and sometimes this duality serves us well and sometimes it fails us. Furthermore, the things about which we are gullible and skeptical varies by individual and this creates a diversity of opinion and conflict between individuals and groups.
As a younger person I was more gullible of the things my tribe said and more skeptical of what those not in my tribe. When Colin Powell gave his 2003 testimony justifying military intervention against Iraq, I distinctly recall thinking the evidence was thin but I wanted to give Powell and the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt.
Now in my more seasoned age I have gone full George Carlin who declared: "I don't believe anything the government says." The more I see and hear the more I feel justified in this skepticism.
The American government response to Covid has been horrible. It has been defined by hyperbole, lies and deception, coercion and hostility. I think it a normal response for people to consider the government's behavior and be troubled by it, and become ever more skeptical of its claims.
My impression is the government officials who have acted badly and the "influencers" who support them are are blind to the duplicity. At each moment, they demand we ignore anything said and done previously. But we have memories and we have the internet.
A healthy government would prioritize the building of public trust. But this effort would require government officials to be dispassionate about political and corporate interests. Time and again we learn it is good luck to have a government that is for the people more than it is for itself. Most of the time we get the government we deserve.
"government officials who have acted badly... are blind to the duplicity."
If they're blind, it's quite willfully so.
More likely, they know exactly what they're doing.
When Taibbi writes "Censors have a *fantasy* that if they... rein in people like Joe Rogan, that all the holdouts will suddenly rush to get vaccinated", he also misjudges things.
Most of the censors, esp. those at the top of the political hierarchy, know better than to expect holdouts to suddenly rush to get vaccinated.
The point of all such policies is mostly, to provoke opponents into conduct which The Powers can spin as being Deplorable or Insurrectionist.
The constantly changing censoring policies, like the vaccine mandates, are likely designed to push opponents to the edge, to the brink of going postal.
"I wish we had one or two presidents of Ivy League universities who were as principled and articulate when facing demands from students who are offended." Amen, amen.
On the outside, it might look like a few students get angry and the leadership simply buckles, but that's not accurate.
Thousands of students get angry for all kinds of reasons and Presidents try to be fair, but they don't pay much attention to the masses of people who get disgruntled for whatever reason.
Normal people adopt a submissive posture of respect and fear towards their boss. The political left ultimately chooses who gets promoted to President, they can replace Presidents they don't like, and this makes them the the boss. University Presidents see the political left as their boss, and act accordingly. Kling's principled President who doesn't view the political left as a rightful boss, wouldn't get promoted into the position.
Thanks Arnold for reminding us the many Substack writers rising against the barbarians that are trying to censor those threatening their grabbing and consolidation of power. You should have read Chelsea Clinton's tweets for censorship --she is worse than her terrible and senile mother although she has been rewarded much more than Hunter Biden. You should paid attention to how Robert Reich and other little academics have been trying to censor millions of Americans. Btw, don't forget the many cowards at GMU that remain silent and prefer not to speak out against the barbarians.
Among the many Substack writers, I celebrate EL GATO MALO who has been reminding daily of the sort of puppets the barbarians rely on to destroy their enemies. His latest post
Barbarians is the wrong metaphor. Barbarians are outsiders.
The censorship we see now targeting Substack and Joe Rogan is being waged by insiders: an aristocratic coalition of elite insiders that wield the power of the universities, the teacher unions, and elite media, and various other bureaucracies inside and outside government to control public perception and opinion.
@ Cochrane, on "so many Americans believe... beliefs that *wildly* get *wrong factual* costs and benefits, such as those of vaccines?"
Since Cochrane didn't deign to provide evidence that anti-vaxers are "wildly" wrong, Here is an alternative outlook:
"Pro-vaxers push beliefs that *wildly* get *wrong factual* costs and benefits, and bring with this pushiness a dogmatism reminiscent of totalitarian mov'ts of the last century.
Why shouldn't laymen wager, that this dogmatism bespeaks a determination to intimidate laymen away from the likely truth,, that these vaxes are the most deceitful products in the history of Big Pharma & the FDA?"
For the latest related bombshell, see the BMJ revelation that vax producers admit they’re *hiding test data* (’til at least late 2022?): see https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3775784 (“Until This Data Is Produced, STFU”)
Seeing as he so throws his weight around about "wildly get wrong", it's brutal that this "grumpy economist", like "world-class" intellectual S. Pinker, so disses major segments of the population, w/o deigning to show a scintilla of proof to support this claim about "wildly".
It looks like the Academia Echo Chamber is far worse, than foreseen by Allan Bloom in the late '80s.
It was smart for substack to stay web-based and accessible on the open internet via any browser, as opposed to something mostly experienced via proprietary smartphone app, in which case they become subject to pressure from Google and Apple, or more precisely, the pressure moves upstream to those companies and then through them. That still leaves the payment processing companies and the ISPs and in most other countries the government.
One question floating around out there is why substack should succeed now, since, after all, it is just widespread blogging reincarnated with a subscription option (which, IIRC, was already something people could do via WordPress plugin I don't know about Blogger). If blogging mostly died except for a few die-hards, then why won't this?
My speculative and provisional guess is that because the first time, all the riff raff piled in, in multiple instances of "eternal September". But this time, all the riff raff have *other* places to go, which are more, ah, 'compatible' with their preferences, dopamine triggers, impulsiveness, and other character deficiencies, and in general cater to the needs and multimedia desires of the vast majority of the low-quality population of our increasingly post-literate society.
So the other terrible social media apps are kind of like a pile of shit attracting all the flies, in which case, the riff raff are selecting themselves out, making the regular web internet safe for blogging again.
My speculative guess is that Substack brought new prestige to blogging by throwing big money at its first set of star writers. Sort of the way the NY Jets brought new prestige to the American Football League by paying a big bonus to sign Joe Namath.
Heying protest the invisibilty of the convoys by the MSM. Well, a 50K truck convoy would be half the lenght of Canada and the province of New Brunswick ten times over. The Kingston convoy from the whole of Southern Ontatio had a hundred trucks and 200 cars. The 1.5 million turned out to be 5000.
It is obvious that Heying has no idea what a truck is or what is Canada. At that level, the only thing left is one more, one less, adjust the dose.
The masses of protesters, far from the "hundreds of thousands" that were supposed to appear, were a rather pitful by canadian standards. The 2012 "Printemps Érable"("Maple Spring") regularly brought 250K people each month for a year.
The "truckers" (most of the protesters are not truckers) are not affected by the vaccine mandates as, being unvaccinated, they are not involved in cross-border traffic. The vaccination is required by the US and "protesting" in Canada is somewhat pointless.
Their goal included that a "Memorandum of Understanding" be signed by both the Governor-General and the Senate (institutions with no power to wipe their own noses) to the effect of abolishing fderal, provincial and municipal authorities and replacing them with a "Unity Comittee" of themselves. Even the January 6 idiots were not that deluded.
Anyway, these nice "freedom fighters" blocked ambulance access to hospitals ,killing one person, vandalized hotels and liquor stores, broke into a homeless shelter and stole food, parked their cars and danced drunken on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, defaced the monument to Terry Fox (Canada's greatest canadian hero) and paraded ina various mix of Nazi and Confederate flags.
But they are the kind of 'freedom fighters" much admired by the libertarian cosplayers like Heying.
Schools start to realize that it's impossible to keep school open while following CDC guidance. Decide that only way to stay open is to not test and therefore not have any contact tracing and quarantining. End run around public health officials by not telling them they are wrong but denying the data.
This may be how a lot of COVID "ends". The laws stay on the books but everyone avoids testing so they don't trigger them.
Note this makes everyone happy because CDC can report "victory" as a result of their "guidance".
There really ought not to be a "phase transition" as Oster suggests. At every stage we as individuals and as policy makers should be processing information on the costs (including of course external costs) and benefits of different behaviors and taking the net benefit maximizing action? She gives a good example of this in that the recently recovered person does not need to take the same self protective and other protective actions that others do. But she could have generalized the point.
I don't see the anti-spread measures becoming "more authoritarian." Although patchworky, I'd say they have declined and ever so slightly become more focused on the externality of spreading the infection rather than self protection. The most important remaining failure is not to use cheap rapid screening test as an alternative to more costly anti-spread measures. Daily testing for example could allow less rigorous social distancing in schools.
The testing should end when so many are coming back negative that there is not point in continue to test. Until then, testing is in lieu of other more costly measures.
I think you are very wrong about testing. I'm willing to read any serious paper that support the continuation of current testing in the U.S. and at least a couple of other countries.
My impression is that here, in Chile, testing is just another low cost signal of being ok (if you fail the first one, take soon as many as needed to get one ok). FYI, Chile is regarded as a very good performer in complying with the "package" of standard restrictive measures and vaccination (I'll get my second booster on February 7, just 6 months after the first one, and one year after the first two doses. After reading earlier today Dr. Jetelina's latest Substack post I'm not sure, however, I'll go for my second booster).
As long as we continue testing at the rate of 1-3.5 million tests/day (in the US), it will never end. COVID testing will produce anywhere from 20K to 300K positive results/day from now on if we continue this testing regime- that is the seasonal patter, and this virus went endemic over a year ago. The vaccines didn't stop this- having large numbers of recovered hasn't stopped this. It will not stop until we stop looking for it outside of a hospital setting which is the only place we should ever be testing for it from this point forwards. This virus and its progeny will produce at least 20 million new infections every single year from now on. We live with COVID by ignoring it the same way we do with other respiratory viruses. But we won't do that until we stop testing for it everywhere.
If I understand your reasoning, it is that testing at level X will lead to decisions cost ineffective decisions, so don't test. I say just don't take those decisions, but others. But your target should be the cost-ineffective decision, not the test.
I'm not in favor of the "current" testing program, (there is a "program? :)) either. I favor intentional screening that enables the tested person who tests positive to avoid/reduce contact with other presumably uninfected people. For example, before having contact with lots of maybe not so socially distanced people in maybe a not so well ventilated place the person could test themselves to be sure they would not infect the others. Or all the students and teachers at a school could test to reduce the probability of a transmission that day, or testing rather than sending all possible exposed people home or testing to end quarantine rather than an arbitrary number of days). In these cases the alternative ways of reducing transmission would be more costly: not attending the event or fewer person days of school or work. Of course when the prior probability of a positive test is a certain circumstance is low enough we stop screening in those circumstances.
Upon reading Don Boudreaux's latest post, I think that in some of your country's states or counties, the cost of complying with some restrictive measures may be quite high
You are simply wrong- the historical data from last year prove it. Almost all tests were coming back negative last May and June, and yet here we are today. The same thing is going to happen this Spring, and when the seasonal wave starts in the deep South and Southwest in late July and early August, we will be right back to where we were last year, and now.
What you are offering is a false choice- copious rapid antigen testing or lockdowns and masking and other restrictions. I am saying flat out- neither option is reasonable any longer, and never was.
You are correct. I believe that it makes sense to slow the spread of an infectious disease if it can be done cost effectively. At any point its valid to ask if set of measures X is cost effective. That ought to be a "technical" issue or if "political" nothing to do with identity politics.
It shouldn't be used on asymptomatic people at all. They shouldn't be used outside of a hospital. It shouldn't be a hurdle to pass to gather with other people- ever again. This testing is complete madness at this point in time. Every single positive result results in 10 x more testing of the contacts, and leads to children being sent home from school for ten days, their classmates being sent home because of the fear they were infected, and their schools put on remote learning.
I think you have this just backwards. Testing means that "exposed" children and teachers do NOY need to be sent home and that anyone sent home can return when they text negative, not X day later. Tests allow less restrictive measures.
Now if you think we are now at the stage where further delaying of infection is valueless, then yes, so is testing.
I probably haven't listened to 99% of Joe Rogan's content, but what I have seemed just fine.
I think he even said he was going to get the vaccine, but something got in the way, then he got COVID, so he figured he already had immunity. This is a common story. I suspect a lot of people that haven't gotten vaccinated have natural immunity.
I think vaccine resistance is some peoples way of related to it being the only practical way most people can "resist" public health officials. They can't get the mask policy at their kids school changed, but they can refuse the jab. This makes even more sense considering that the vaccination rate among older Republicans is still very high, the signaling is mostly done by lower risk people.
Anyway, I've got COVID. I rate it a 5/10 in severity, though its lingered a long time. Not the worst cold I had this year, annoying but not worth what we've done.
My kids had it and I would rate it a 1/10 for severity and a 1/10 for length. I can't fucking believe they ever masked children, or that many school districts are thinking of doing it the rest of the year (and of course, if there is another variant this summer...).
Maybe people getting COVID is the only way for them to get over it.
I wish Taibbi had been a little more specific about who holds the position he (very rightly) criticizes.
Cochrane has it slightly wrong in implying that public health officials have only been exaggerating the harms of the various pandemic waves. Their messaging mistakes have been to give recommendations rather than criteria for decision about how both individuals and policy makers can reduce the harms in the most cost effective ways. [In addition the message to individuals (most tragically about vaccines) was only about self protection, not what we should do to protect others.]
In addition they did not allow development of effective anti spread technologies such as vaccines and cheap rapid screening tests quickly enough.
In consideration of Cochrane's opinion I'll add that humans are both gullible and skeptical and sometimes this duality serves us well and sometimes it fails us. Furthermore, the things about which we are gullible and skeptical varies by individual and this creates a diversity of opinion and conflict between individuals and groups.
As a younger person I was more gullible of the things my tribe said and more skeptical of what those not in my tribe. When Colin Powell gave his 2003 testimony justifying military intervention against Iraq, I distinctly recall thinking the evidence was thin but I wanted to give Powell and the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt.
Now in my more seasoned age I have gone full George Carlin who declared: "I don't believe anything the government says." The more I see and hear the more I feel justified in this skepticism.
The American government response to Covid has been horrible. It has been defined by hyperbole, lies and deception, coercion and hostility. I think it a normal response for people to consider the government's behavior and be troubled by it, and become ever more skeptical of its claims.
My impression is the government officials who have acted badly and the "influencers" who support them are are blind to the duplicity. At each moment, they demand we ignore anything said and done previously. But we have memories and we have the internet.
A healthy government would prioritize the building of public trust. But this effort would require government officials to be dispassionate about political and corporate interests. Time and again we learn it is good luck to have a government that is for the people more than it is for itself. Most of the time we get the government we deserve.
"government officials who have acted badly... are blind to the duplicity."
If they're blind, it's quite willfully so.
More likely, they know exactly what they're doing.
When Taibbi writes "Censors have a *fantasy* that if they... rein in people like Joe Rogan, that all the holdouts will suddenly rush to get vaccinated", he also misjudges things.
Most of the censors, esp. those at the top of the political hierarchy, know better than to expect holdouts to suddenly rush to get vaccinated.
The point of all such policies is mostly, to provoke opponents into conduct which The Powers can spin as being Deplorable or Insurrectionist.
The constantly changing censoring policies, like the vaccine mandates, are likely designed to push opponents to the edge, to the brink of going postal.
You are right. Barbarians know exactly what they're doing. For the latest example of despicable barbarians trying to kick their opponents out, read
https://www.foxbusiness.com/entertainment/joe-rogan-spotify-meghan-markle-prince-harry-concerns
Very good articles. Thank you.
"I wish we had one or two presidents of Ivy League universities who were as principled and articulate when facing demands from students who are offended." Amen, amen.
On the outside, it might look like a few students get angry and the leadership simply buckles, but that's not accurate.
Thousands of students get angry for all kinds of reasons and Presidents try to be fair, but they don't pay much attention to the masses of people who get disgruntled for whatever reason.
Normal people adopt a submissive posture of respect and fear towards their boss. The political left ultimately chooses who gets promoted to President, they can replace Presidents they don't like, and this makes them the the boss. University Presidents see the political left as their boss, and act accordingly. Kling's principled President who doesn't view the political left as a rightful boss, wouldn't get promoted into the position.
Thanks Arnold for reminding us the many Substack writers rising against the barbarians that are trying to censor those threatening their grabbing and consolidation of power. You should have read Chelsea Clinton's tweets for censorship --she is worse than her terrible and senile mother although she has been rewarded much more than Hunter Biden. You should paid attention to how Robert Reich and other little academics have been trying to censor millions of Americans. Btw, don't forget the many cowards at GMU that remain silent and prefer not to speak out against the barbarians.
Among the many Substack writers, I celebrate EL GATO MALO who has been reminding daily of the sort of puppets the barbarians rely on to destroy their enemies. His latest post
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/justin-trudeau-a-portrait-in-cowardice?
Barbarians is the wrong metaphor. Barbarians are outsiders.
The censorship we see now targeting Substack and Joe Rogan is being waged by insiders: an aristocratic coalition of elite insiders that wield the power of the universities, the teacher unions, and elite media, and various other bureaucracies inside and outside government to control public perception and opinion.
@ Cochrane, on "so many Americans believe... beliefs that *wildly* get *wrong factual* costs and benefits, such as those of vaccines?"
Since Cochrane didn't deign to provide evidence that anti-vaxers are "wildly" wrong, Here is an alternative outlook:
"Pro-vaxers push beliefs that *wildly* get *wrong factual* costs and benefits, and bring with this pushiness a dogmatism reminiscent of totalitarian mov'ts of the last century.
Why shouldn't laymen wager, that this dogmatism bespeaks a determination to intimidate laymen away from the likely truth,, that these vaxes are the most deceitful products in the history of Big Pharma & the FDA?"
For the latest related bombshell, see the BMJ revelation that vax producers admit they’re *hiding test data* (’til at least late 2022?): see https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3775784 (“Until This Data Is Produced, STFU”)
Seeing as he so throws his weight around about "wildly get wrong", it's brutal that this "grumpy economist", like "world-class" intellectual S. Pinker, so disses major segments of the population, w/o deigning to show a scintilla of proof to support this claim about "wildly".
It looks like the Academia Echo Chamber is far worse, than foreseen by Allan Bloom in the late '80s.
It was smart for substack to stay web-based and accessible on the open internet via any browser, as opposed to something mostly experienced via proprietary smartphone app, in which case they become subject to pressure from Google and Apple, or more precisely, the pressure moves upstream to those companies and then through them. That still leaves the payment processing companies and the ISPs and in most other countries the government.
One question floating around out there is why substack should succeed now, since, after all, it is just widespread blogging reincarnated with a subscription option (which, IIRC, was already something people could do via WordPress plugin I don't know about Blogger). If blogging mostly died except for a few die-hards, then why won't this?
My speculative and provisional guess is that because the first time, all the riff raff piled in, in multiple instances of "eternal September". But this time, all the riff raff have *other* places to go, which are more, ah, 'compatible' with their preferences, dopamine triggers, impulsiveness, and other character deficiencies, and in general cater to the needs and multimedia desires of the vast majority of the low-quality population of our increasingly post-literate society.
So the other terrible social media apps are kind of like a pile of shit attracting all the flies, in which case, the riff raff are selecting themselves out, making the regular web internet safe for blogging again.
My speculative guess is that Substack brought new prestige to blogging by throwing big money at its first set of star writers. Sort of the way the NY Jets brought new prestige to the American Football League by paying a big bonus to sign Joe Namath.
Heying protest the invisibilty of the convoys by the MSM. Well, a 50K truck convoy would be half the lenght of Canada and the province of New Brunswick ten times over. The Kingston convoy from the whole of Southern Ontatio had a hundred trucks and 200 cars. The 1.5 million turned out to be 5000.
It is obvious that Heying has no idea what a truck is or what is Canada. At that level, the only thing left is one more, one less, adjust the dose.
The masses of protesters, far from the "hundreds of thousands" that were supposed to appear, were a rather pitful by canadian standards. The 2012 "Printemps Érable"("Maple Spring") regularly brought 250K people each month for a year.
The "truckers" (most of the protesters are not truckers) are not affected by the vaccine mandates as, being unvaccinated, they are not involved in cross-border traffic. The vaccination is required by the US and "protesting" in Canada is somewhat pointless.
Their goal included that a "Memorandum of Understanding" be signed by both the Governor-General and the Senate (institutions with no power to wipe their own noses) to the effect of abolishing fderal, provincial and municipal authorities and replacing them with a "Unity Comittee" of themselves. Even the January 6 idiots were not that deluded.
Anyway, these nice "freedom fighters" blocked ambulance access to hospitals ,killing one person, vandalized hotels and liquor stores, broke into a homeless shelter and stole food, parked their cars and danced drunken on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, defaced the monument to Terry Fox (Canada's greatest canadian hero) and paraded ina various mix of Nazi and Confederate flags.
But they are the kind of 'freedom fighters" much admired by the libertarian cosplayers like Heying.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/30/omicron-states-education-coronavirus-00003424
Living with COVID watch:
Schools start to realize that it's impossible to keep school open while following CDC guidance. Decide that only way to stay open is to not test and therefore not have any contact tracing and quarantining. End run around public health officials by not telling them they are wrong but denying the data.
This may be how a lot of COVID "ends". The laws stay on the books but everyone avoids testing so they don't trigger them.
Note this makes everyone happy because CDC can report "victory" as a result of their "guidance".
There really ought not to be a "phase transition" as Oster suggests. At every stage we as individuals and as policy makers should be processing information on the costs (including of course external costs) and benefits of different behaviors and taking the net benefit maximizing action? She gives a good example of this in that the recently recovered person does not need to take the same self protective and other protective actions that others do. But she could have generalized the point.
I don't see the anti-spread measures becoming "more authoritarian." Although patchworky, I'd say they have declined and ever so slightly become more focused on the externality of spreading the infection rather than self protection. The most important remaining failure is not to use cheap rapid screening test as an alternative to more costly anti-spread measures. Daily testing for example could allow less rigorous social distancing in schools.
Sigh. The testing is what has to end. Without that, the phase transition will never occur.
The testing should end when so many are coming back negative that there is not point in continue to test. Until then, testing is in lieu of other more costly measures.
I think you are very wrong about testing. I'm willing to read any serious paper that support the continuation of current testing in the U.S. and at least a couple of other countries.
My impression is that here, in Chile, testing is just another low cost signal of being ok (if you fail the first one, take soon as many as needed to get one ok). FYI, Chile is regarded as a very good performer in complying with the "package" of standard restrictive measures and vaccination (I'll get my second booster on February 7, just 6 months after the first one, and one year after the first two doses. After reading earlier today Dr. Jetelina's latest Substack post I'm not sure, however, I'll go for my second booster).
As long as we continue testing at the rate of 1-3.5 million tests/day (in the US), it will never end. COVID testing will produce anywhere from 20K to 300K positive results/day from now on if we continue this testing regime- that is the seasonal patter, and this virus went endemic over a year ago. The vaccines didn't stop this- having large numbers of recovered hasn't stopped this. It will not stop until we stop looking for it outside of a hospital setting which is the only place we should ever be testing for it from this point forwards. This virus and its progeny will produce at least 20 million new infections every single year from now on. We live with COVID by ignoring it the same way we do with other respiratory viruses. But we won't do that until we stop testing for it everywhere.
If I understand your reasoning, it is that testing at level X will lead to decisions cost ineffective decisions, so don't test. I say just don't take those decisions, but others. But your target should be the cost-ineffective decision, not the test.
You have way too much faith in our leaders.
I'm not in favor of the "current" testing program, (there is a "program? :)) either. I favor intentional screening that enables the tested person who tests positive to avoid/reduce contact with other presumably uninfected people. For example, before having contact with lots of maybe not so socially distanced people in maybe a not so well ventilated place the person could test themselves to be sure they would not infect the others. Or all the students and teachers at a school could test to reduce the probability of a transmission that day, or testing rather than sending all possible exposed people home or testing to end quarantine rather than an arbitrary number of days). In these cases the alternative ways of reducing transmission would be more costly: not attending the event or fewer person days of school or work. Of course when the prior probability of a positive test is a certain circumstance is low enough we stop screening in those circumstances.
Upon reading Don Boudreaux's latest post, I think that in some of your country's states or counties, the cost of complying with some restrictive measures may be quite high
https://cafehayek.com/2022/01/well-at-least-theyre-reducing-their-prospects-of-being-exposed-to-covid-19.html
BTW, I wonder when the GMU administration will censor Don.
You are simply wrong- the historical data from last year prove it. Almost all tests were coming back negative last May and June, and yet here we are today. The same thing is going to happen this Spring, and when the seasonal wave starts in the deep South and Southwest in late July and early August, we will be right back to where we were last year, and now.
I guess I do not understand how you think rapid screening testing of asymptomatic people should be used.
What you are offering is a false choice- copious rapid antigen testing or lockdowns and masking and other restrictions. I am saying flat out- neither option is reasonable any longer, and never was.
You are correct. I believe that it makes sense to slow the spread of an infectious disease if it can be done cost effectively. At any point its valid to ask if set of measures X is cost effective. That ought to be a "technical" issue or if "political" nothing to do with identity politics.
It shouldn't be used on asymptomatic people at all. They shouldn't be used outside of a hospital. It shouldn't be a hurdle to pass to gather with other people- ever again. This testing is complete madness at this point in time. Every single positive result results in 10 x more testing of the contacts, and leads to children being sent home from school for ten days, their classmates being sent home because of the fear they were infected, and their schools put on remote learning.
Screening test should not be used in hospitals. For that you want PCR diagnostic tests.
I think you have this just backwards. Testing means that "exposed" children and teachers do NOY need to be sent home and that anyone sent home can return when they text negative, not X day later. Tests allow less restrictive measures.
Now if you think we are now at the stage where further delaying of infection is valueless, then yes, so is testing.
I probably haven't listened to 99% of Joe Rogan's content, but what I have seemed just fine.
I think he even said he was going to get the vaccine, but something got in the way, then he got COVID, so he figured he already had immunity. This is a common story. I suspect a lot of people that haven't gotten vaccinated have natural immunity.
I think vaccine resistance is some peoples way of related to it being the only practical way most people can "resist" public health officials. They can't get the mask policy at their kids school changed, but they can refuse the jab. This makes even more sense considering that the vaccination rate among older Republicans is still very high, the signaling is mostly done by lower risk people.
Anyway, I've got COVID. I rate it a 5/10 in severity, though its lingered a long time. Not the worst cold I had this year, annoying but not worth what we've done.
My kids had it and I would rate it a 1/10 for severity and a 1/10 for length. I can't fucking believe they ever masked children, or that many school districts are thinking of doing it the rest of the year (and of course, if there is another variant this summer...).
Maybe people getting COVID is the only way for them to get over it.
But this sort of presupposes that people want to "resist" public health recommendations. But why is that?
I wish Taibbi had been a little more specific about who holds the position he (very rightly) criticizes.
Cochrane has it slightly wrong in implying that public health officials have only been exaggerating the harms of the various pandemic waves. Their messaging mistakes have been to give recommendations rather than criteria for decision about how both individuals and policy makers can reduce the harms in the most cost effective ways. [In addition the message to individuals (most tragically about vaccines) was only about self protection, not what we should do to protect others.]
In addition they did not allow development of effective anti spread technologies such as vaccines and cheap rapid screening tests quickly enough.