NoPie

Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't).

More studies show that ivermectin has a positive effect in covid patients. In fact, ivermectin has no effect or has only a very weak effect in certain patients.

In medicine observational studies suffer from certain problems that are hard to overcome. The biggest is that the groups are not equal. For example, smokers die younger. Covid risk increases exponentially with age. Consequently, covid will kill more people who have reached greater age as a result of not smoking. The researchers may think that they control for these factors but in reality it is very hard to do.

If you take a random article, it says smokers have greater risks from covid: https://www.renalandurologynews.com/home/departments/mens-he...

Not much evidence in either way, but before we study for reasons how smoking could protect from covid, we would like to know for sure that this is really true.

Observational studies are rubbish though and suffer from too many problems. I don't have much trust in them. It might be true but we don't have good evidence that we could cover up.

Did you notice that you again talked about how other people view tweets, not that you personally couldn't switch to chronological view and enjoy only tweets from people you follow?

Usual Soviet tactics – if you dislike someone, you can always selectively find fault to prosecute even though most people have committed the same offenses.

It is not much different from Europe with many local languages. People in those countries study in their own native languages. Starting with Hindi in India would be a good start to give local languages more prominence.

I think that overall it is a good idea. Despite English being very popular in India, not all people speak good English, most patients would prefer using their native language. If a doctor cannot even say “heart attack” in the native language of a patient, then it can cause great communication problems.

Of course, English will remain important language as most textbooks, studies, international conferences will be in English.

Because 0.15% is not a life-saving treatment but hoping for a miracle. And when people are immensely suffering they actually prefer to die than prolonging the sufferings.

How could not money pay part in this? If the continued care costs, let's say $10,000/month (not unusual for the US) and you have 1:1000 chance to live that month, it means this month has cost $10 million dollars. Who is going to pay for that? In fact, taking all this money for yourself, the healthcare for other people will need to be reduced which can lead to shortened life expectation for those people.

15% is clearly too optimistic. It is closer to 0.15% and it is usually not only about chances but that the person is experiencing extreme suffering despite pain killers that any therapy only prolongs this suffering.

Marshal plan helped to rebuild Europe after the WWII while the Soviet Union was left behind.

The same could be expected of Ukraine and Russia after this war.

The war has nothing to do with Ukraine joining NATO. It was a lame excuse by Putin. And Ukraine is not responsible for all the dead Russians in this war. It is on Putin 100%.

The Crimea will get food and medicines sent by ferries. It won't be as effective and some shortages could be expected but it will not be the end of the world.

Pfizer had this data from Israelis already in March 2021 but scientific publications appeared in July 2021. Most vaccine mandates were introduced after that which is very strange because we already had all the data that vaccines are not going to stop the spread of infection thus making vaccines only good for personal protection to minimise the risk of severe disease and infection.

I had never heard about Peter McCullough until today. Short glance in wikipedia about him is not very impressive. He was wrong about hydroxychloroquine but so were many health authorities about certain other things. He got some things correct. For example, the last sentence in wiki is: _by disputing the necessity of vaccinations to achieve herd immunity_. He got that one right and those who (mis)labeled it as misinformation were wrong.

Banning him is not good for democracy. Better to have an open debate based on scientific data to show who is right.

No, he is not.

In fact, Musk didn't even propose anything. He just asked if it would be a good plan.

Noah Smith explains it much better why this plan is not going to work.

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1577120229942910978

“Americans who come up with peace plans for Ukraine are just groping for the illusion of control in a scary and uncontrollable situation. The truth is that Putin has no interest in any such plan, and that it's his decision whether to keep escalating.”

Any data how much worse Russian and Chinese vaccine was?

Because if you look at this objectively all covid vaccines are shit. Vaccines that didn't stop infection after 3-4 months are shit. The effectiveness against severe disease and death was still maybe 80-90% which is so-so but still doesn't deserve mandates.

And while Russia didn't have vaccine mandates, China appears to have very strong restrictions. Their problem is that many elderly are not getting vaccines despite mandates. The strength of mandates does not seem correlated with vaccine effectiveness at all. Many East European countries also had poor vaccine uptake among elderly despite using mRNA vaccines and having vaccine mandates.

Just to clarify, I am not against those Russians who changed their minds and now wants to avoid draft. I certainly support that the EU accepts them because that means less people sent to fight in Ukraine. The access to good information was very limited in Russia and don't blame them if they were ignorant before what is really happening in Ukraine.

I used to live in Russia for a few years and still have many friends and acquaintances there. It totally terrified me that many of them supported the war openly. In fact, my stay in Russia was related to religious organization, Hare Krishna which is quite popular in Russia now, and usually these people are quite apolitical, try to avoid taking strong stance in such matters which could damage their legal status as Russia is not very friendly to new religious organizations. One of their leaders gave a speech which did not name anyone particularly but mentioned that even religious people cannot stay neutral when big transgressions against people are committed. He clearly meant Russian massacres in Ukraine and everybody understood it. Since Soviet times Russians have a skill to talk about pressing matters in indirect way. He was supported by all Ukrainians and totally lambasted by Russians. People who preach renunciation from all mundane matters, loudly objected to their own leader and supported Putin. I was terrified.

I am sure there are a lot of people who simply keep silent because it is dangerous to speak out against the war but there is also a sizable and very active majority who support the war.

True, but some of those on vk are people I know personally and they were actively supporting it. Others were more reserved and said, the war massacres are wrong but Ukraine is still bad and it would be better if they capitulated to Russia.

This all indicates that the support for the war is immense.

And what changed now that many of the same people now are against the draft? I didn't notice it among my contacts, they mostly stopped writing or said something that every bad thing passes, even mobilization will come to an end but there are some examples where some people very actively changed their opinion with the start of mobilization.

It just looks that Russians themselves don't want to die in the war but otherwise supported it.

I was reading vk.com and generally there was 1 post or comment against the war in Ukraine for every 10 or 20 posts pro-war.

Now the ratio is 1 post against the draft versus 1 post pro-draft.

You see the change? Russians mostly supported the war and those few people who were ready to protest against the war were simply overwhelmed and suppressed by those who supported it. Some people live in bubble where they see that everybody around them thinks similarly to them but that doesn't seem to be the whole reality in Russia.

I am not convinced about the resistance against covid restrictions in Russia. Russia had its own share of lockdowns and restrictions. It wasn't as free as Sweden. It avoided some most stupid ones like vaccine mandates. But the UK also didn't have vaccine mandates. Was it due to people actively resisting? Possibly, but I don't think you had something so active as Canadian convoy in February 2022. It can rather be explained that the authorities were not really very eager to introduce those measures in the first place. When they encountered even lukewarm resistance, they gave up because vaccine mandates were not effective at all.

Look, Russia had abysmal vaccination rates among elderly (the only measure that really mattered). That shows the failure of public health institutions. The UK (no mandates) and Canada (strong mandates) both had very good vaccine coverage among elderly – which shows that regardless of mandates, it is possible to ensure high vaccination uptake among risk groups. Russia doesn't have that and mandates wouldn't have helped anyway. No wonder authorities gave up so quickly even with a moderate resistance to those measures.

Basically the IMF discusses how the countries who get a lot of foreign currency from selling oil, can use this money in the best way.

While others theorize that this is a system that the west uses to subjugate them and therefore needs to be abolished.

You can use the same terms and have completely different understanding. I don't see any evidence for the second theory.

It is when you talk about the petrodollar as something important globally. It definitely is not something you could call a system.

Here is wikipedia for a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling

“In reality, the use of dollars in international oil transactions increases overall U.S. dollar demand by only a tiny fraction, and the dollar's overall status as the major international reserve currency has relatively few tangible benefits for the United States economy as well as some drawbacks.[41][42]”

There is no petro-dollar system. The world economy consists of many countries, it is complex and moved by different interests. Some people just want a simple, contrarian explanation (for example, Russia vs. the West) but it leads to strange worldviews that have little connection to the reality.

Mostly among elderly and risk groups as these groups are the ones with high risk of hospitalization and death.

But they also are at high risk of hospitalization and death from other sources, not only from covid. Although covid was more prominent at certain period and vaccines helped to bring down the numbers.

1) of course, but it is not something that the west and Ukraine could do on their own when Russia was starting a war in 2014.

2) That's incorrect. It wouldn't have stopped Putin but only given him more than Ukraine.

3) Probably had little impact on Russia's decision to start a war.

4) The same as (2). It wouldn't have stopped Putin but only encouraged him even more to subjugate Ukraine, if it didn't want to play by Russia's rules.

In other words, I don't think you have any suggestions that would have helped to avoid this war.

I think you misunderstand both Russia and the West.

Russia wants to conquer Ukraine and the EU wants to prevent it. While the ways to do it diplomatically may have been wrong and therefore failed, it primary is the responsibility of the aggressor (Russia) for high count of casualties both Russian and Ukrainian.

>> Unmistakably, this is a massive tragedy for Ukrainians and I think it was avoidable.

What exactly you think should have been done to avoid this?

Probably not a troll, just someone who really roots for Russia and Putin.

I have seen my Russian acquaintances and even friends to believe all kinds of nonsense about this war. Mostly it is due to blind nationalism when one cannot tolerate anything that threatens the view that his nation is the best and should lead the world. Sometimes it is just contrarianism – if the policies started by the West have been largely more successful, then one needs to find a case where they were wrong and overemphasize this point.

Why would a country leave NATO and become a target to be conquered by Russia? I don't believe any such country is so suicidal.

The earth has stored nuclear elements for millions and billions of years. It is thought that in some places naturally occurring nuclear reactors have happened.

Of course, the civilization needs more orderly storage and disposal, and nuclear waste can be polluting but it is also the thing that is produced by completely natural processes. Some places have higher levels of radioactive radon gas produced by radioactive decay of elements deeper underground.

Thanks to nuclear Ukraine was (is?) selling electricity to the EU even during this war. Their nuclear power-stations has shown surprising resilience.

Long term is exactly where nuclear rules.

This article has very good points and shows that things are more complex than just insulin price.

Probably most activists demanding lower insulin prices haven't even heard about SGLT2 such as dapaglifozin or GLP-1 agonists such as liraglutide or semaglutide.

The problem is clearly the insurance system in the US. Other countries can deal with this better. In any case, the cost issue remains and we also need to balance incentives to companies to innovate and interests of patients.

Even with insulin there are newer, better formulations (long acting or mixed short and long acting) etc. If we capped one type of insulin, then the companies will make another one which will only be slightly better.

So far the best way to reduce prices of drugs works when patents expire and companies compete on making cheaper generics. The manufacturing of biological drugs however are quite complicated and the cost savings are not as big as with small molecules. Complex problems require more thoughtful approach than just capping the price of drugs.

If you are a health young male then it is probably safe but it is not safe for some people (people with other medications, liver problems etc.).

For example, someone taking immunosuppressants due to organ transplant may have treatment failure which can lead to transplant rejection. This is the reason why it is the prescription only medicine and is prescribed only after assessing the patient.

Those other benefits are minor compared to potential harm.

Paxlovid for vaccinated non-risk groups most likely is useless and the suggestion to distribute it like candy is simply irresponsible.

Initial studies were done with non-vaccinated risk groups and it showed a good efficiency. Since then most people have already been vaccinated and the benefit for them is probably lesser. The post-marketing studies showed that it doesn't help people under 50 y.o.

The other issue is with covid rebound when using Paxlovid. In the studies rebound was something like 2-3%, in practice it happens much more often which can also indicate that the study population that was benefitting from Paxlovid is different from the one that is taking it now.