bedhead

Good news citizens of San Francisco and Chicago, your looting/shoplifting epidemic is about to vanish completely! Antifa riots? What are those? I mean, if you can't post pics and videos on Twitter, did it even really happen?

The next step is Twitter will have a formal list of approved media outlets (gee I wonder which ones it might be) where if they publish it first, Twitter will allow it. Selective reporting seems to be one of the primary tools for media bias/activism, and this is Twitter figuring out their own way to selectively ban content they don't like instead of the current user generated openness.

Can you point to a single policy that has demonstrated (in an intellectually honest way) ANY efficacy in slowing covid? One??

Vax passports, cloth masks, N95 masks, face shields, closing schools, cohorts, WFH, clean/dirty pen jars (my fave), plexiglass, 6 feet, travel bans...

The grim reality is that there hasn't been a single policy that's been shown to have made any difference at all. NONE. There's literally nothing to do other than stay home if sick and get vaxxed if you want, the rest is all theater and much of it has horrible tradeoffs.

No, it's my commitment to objective analysis and not bizarre herd behavior combined with religious/cult undertones that led me to this conclusion.

I always love when someone posts like one single "study" that almost always doesn't even qualify as amateur hour (eg data mining) and thinks it's some sort of mic drop, as if there aren't 25 disconfirming studies or data points for every one thing saying masks have even a faint amount of efficacy.

Oh I agree, at a bare minimum there's nothing even remotely wacky about the lab leak theory. I'm just explaining why half the country has counterintuitively decided to brand it as lunatic fringe conspiracy rather than it being self-evidently plausible if not likely.

Because political ideals. The left treats this as a conspiracy because:

(1) Trump initially blamed COVID on China and the ethos of the left is that Trump isn't ever allowed to be right, and "resist" means unconditionally doing the opposite. So once Trump said it, half the country unplugged their brains.

(2) It's no fun to blame a lab in Wuhan when the left could instead blame DeSantis/Republicans/Unvaxxed.

(3) The US is kinda wimpy about a real fight over this, regardless of who is in office. Xi would tell Biden (or whoever) to pound sand if the US ever really tried investigating this and seeking some sort of retribution. Again, the path of least resistance is to stick one's head in the sand and find a convenient scapegoat like Joe Rogan or whatever.

(4) Too many people have already definitively declared it impossible so they're pot committed to their position even if it's wrong, no different than mask efficacy (zero). There have been a couple issues where one side went all-in so there's no reversal or even slight walking back because the repetitional risk is too high.

You're still going to get covid. "More dangerous than flu" is only true for some and not others. I've had the flu twice and each time ended up in the ER. It just depends. We are very clear about who's at risk from covid but half the world can't seem to process it, their brains blew a fuse with all the fear mongering.

I’m also 43 and very healthy. Who knows. The reality is that vaccines aren’t for people like me, the risks are HIGHLY stratified by age and health.

I'm vaxxed (Moderna), my county has a 97% vaccination rate plus indoor mask mandate, and I just got over covid. It was basically a very mild flu. The idea that we can control this is fantasy, and I do not plan on getting vaccinated again for covid.

I think what people are missing is that getting covid is inevitable, it's not a choice we can make anymore, whereas getting vaccinated is. That throws a monkey wrench into this risk/reward equation where even if the vaccination benefits outweigh the risks, people are worried about the possibility of an own-goal and how stupid they would feel knowing their personal risk profile to covid is basically zero. It's this notion of the possibility - no matter how remote - of self-inflicted harm juxtaposed with the unavoidable outcome of getting covid that messes up the equation, and I don't think it's really that irrational for many people.

Behold, an Orthodox Covidian! So righteous! So caring! So noble! So educated!

How is one supposed to debate with someone who thinks the sun rises in the west? If you can't even process the basic facts about vaccines - they don't reduce spread but reduce risk of complication - that logically make mandates and masks useless (which is now also being proven in real-world data), I mean, there's no point in discussion. You can say the sky is red as many times as you want, that doesn't make it true. Besides the fact that by your logic this is a new ridiculous equilibrium for life, with PERPETUAL quarantines, testing, masks, employer enforcement of personal medical choices, passports to do anything, and more broadly everyone hating each other's guts. Sounds fun!!! Totally worth it!!! Places like Sweden and Florida don't count!!!

Most crime-ridden city in America is vehemently trying to put in a policy which would cause potentially almost a third of their police fired. Again, cult of safetyism run amok. This is what fatally flawed logic gets you.

https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-police-fop-john-catanzara-ma...

Oh vaccines reduce it by some vague amount, if at all, to vaccinated people whom you admit are at far less risk having been vaccinated? Oh well then go nuts, put in whatever draconian rules you want if it may or may not reduce some spread by some minor amount and means that someone gets COVID in 2023 instead of 2022. That's all the justification we need! Quarantine the kids. Fire police. Make everyone hate each other. Sounds totally worth it!! Yay!!

This is the cult of safetyism. A total inability to process risk/reward and tradeoffs, and eschewing basic logic for "protection" whether real or imagined no matter the cost. All I sincerely ask to people such as yourself is, "What is your long-term plan? Is this forever for you?" Usually, I watch as their brains simply break down on the side of the highway. They have no answer because their logic is so bad they get stuck in an eddy with no way to get out. Welcome to the Church of COVID.

And no, conservatives aren't banning prevention measures. Everyone alive is free to get vaccinated (and wear a mask) as most have even in places like Florida. They're banning punitive rules, and whether it's Florida or Texas or all of Scandinavia, they've demonstrated that there are no worse outcomes from simply allowing people to make their own health choices without figuratively putting a gun to their heads (mandates) or making them do anything they don't want to (masks). Meanwhile, half the world upon seeing this: "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!"

Yes, and rather than admit this plainly observable fact, incorporate this new information, then base policy choices on what we now know, we still have "health officials" and politicians from one side of the aisle sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and shouting "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!" as they push illogical (and arguably wildly immoral) policies like vaccine mandates and perpetual masking and an overall unending bizarro world. I don't know how else to describe COVID anymore other than it's become the world's largest secular religion.

The business of iBuying is destined for the trash heap, its future so seemingly inevitable that I'm shocked anyone alive considers this a viable business with a real terminal value. Did we not learn real fast back in 08 that the financialization of people's homes is basically a non-starter? Being a glorified payday lender with people's homes is never going anywhere. It's one big Catch 22, if these companies ever even figure out how to make money from this (and so far they can't) they will inevitably just get shut down by local governments, which has already begun in Europe.

I'm hard pressed to think of a person more responsible for our current world having already swung into uncomfortably dystopian tendencies than Dorsey.

Hard truths and politics aren't compatible because there's too much incentive misalignment. People in power have no reason to tell the truth because it'll get them fired, and the reason for that is most people don't even want the truth anyhow, it triggers some form of pain. The path of least resistance inevitably seems to be lying in some form.

All of the above.

Yup. These platforms are all perfectly 100% fine with hatred as long as it's the right kind.

I’m guessing you had great parents?

I do investment stuff for a living and this was one of the single-most important things I ever learned.

The odds of my house burning down are about one-in-a-billion but I still have fire insurance.

I did well and was promoted and given raises and bonuses - that was kinda the point of working hard, not to get more days off. I just didn't like people making PTO a thing, it struck me as juvenile. I used plenty of PTO days, one summer I took every Friday off, but I didn't like the idea of being tracked like I was a child. My simple thought was if people do a good job, who cares about PTO tracking.

I used to work at a company that, like everyone else, tracked PTO days. But I'm kind of a pain in the ass so I never bothered, plus, I worked ridiculously hard and came in at least one day every weekend and sometimes both Sat and Sun (plus most nights in general). Anyway, the head of HR asked me to start putting my PTO days in the system and I said sure, just let me know where I can submit the overtime slips. They got the point...it helped that I was good at my job.

I've always liked the "treat people like adults" policy with unlimited PTO and no formal tracking. If someone can't manage PTO and is abusive of it, my guess is they either might not be a great hire anyway, and if they are, what are you accomplishing by bothering them?

There have been a bunch of surveys similar to this that are all strong evidence of how disgraceful the messaging has been from politicians, health departments, media, etc. But the real problem with surveys like this are asking people what the "average" chance of death or hospitalizations are. We know that the risk from COVID are highly stratified by things like age and obesity and pre-existing conditions, so "average" is wildly inadequate as a measure to describe the real world. A statistics course explaining the difference between normal and Pareto distributions would go a long way in bringing many people back to reality. Alas...

Facts like these don't matter to the COVID-obsessed. Turns out that screaming 24/7 for 18 months at people they're going to die messes with their cognitive abilities. Go figure! And here I thought doing this would keep us calm and rational.

We basically have a best-case scenario today and an awful lot of people don't care and still think it's doomsday. Vaccines are fantastic at reducing COVID to a cold, kids are at no risk, the overwhelming majority of adults are at no risk, vaccines are available, natural immunity is great, and ironically, vaccines DONT stop transmission. So, we're all gonna get it, anyone who wants to be protected can be, and unvaccinated people don't matter because COVID is already endemic and we're all gonna get it so we have a clear path towards herd immunity. This is great!

And here we are, instead making illogical and probably illegal rules that accomplish literally nothing, make everything worse, perpetuate irrational fear, etc. We scapegoat "the unvaccinated" and start this medical class warfare and just ramp up unnecessary hatred of each other. And worst of all, it doesn't protect anyone and probably will make COVID worse.

Are we having fun yet?!

Bingo. It's wild to me that with these simple and undisputed facts, so many people are still unwilling to operate within that reality.

We have these "rules" to play by: Vaccines don't stop transmission, vaccines majorly help prevent major complications, kids at zero risk, overwhelming majority of adults at zero risk, unvaccinated people are unlikely to convert for whatever reason (political, fear, friends won't, etc), and natural immunity after infection is very helpful.

If given these "rules" - aka reality - what would you do? The dumb people are like, "Durrr, we need more vaccinated people, those evil bastards they are" even though it blatantly ignores reality and will therefore accomplish nothing, besides being an illogical fear since they're protected anyhow. But if you just accept this is how reality is, there's no other logical option but to drop restrictions and move on. It's a relief that at least a couple countries in Scandinavia are normal enough to recognize this. We're too stupid, too broken with fear.

This is stupid and will never actually happen. More generally, I'm growing tired of how signaling is usurping rational behavior. People are so focused on "being bold" and generating a headline instead of "being smart" and managing things rationally.

Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.

It feels like more and more people whom I would consider very partisan (either side) simply act out of spite nowadays. Whatever the other side wants, well, we're just going to unconditionally fight it. You saw this accelerate after Trump won with "Resist", an ethos that literally means to defy regardless of circumstances. And now you see the right's version of "Resist" by avoiding vaccinations. Why? Because screw them, that's why. This is just more the feeling I get about society. It's very frustrating.

I also think places like the CDC made enormous tactical errors by doing things like celebrating certain political protests, or changing language from "mothers" to "birthing people", etc. They tried to score cheap political points while sowing seeds of total distrust in the process. Just a massive mistake, all downside no upside.

Oh I certainly didn't mean to be dismissive of the negative effects on boys, it's just been far worse for girls and there's lots of data showing it (eg hospital admissions for self-harm)