Pandemic started in a lab:

[Diamond7]

most likely arose from a laboratory leak,

Dr. Francis Collins, the former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. In 2017, Dr. Collins lifted a ban on funding for "gain-of-function" research, which involves manipulating viruses or other pathogens to make them more transmissible or deadly in order to better understand their potential for causing pandemics. The ban had been put in place in 2014 after a controversial study on the H5N1 avian flu virus sparked concerns about the risks of such research. The decision to lift the ban was based on a risk-benefit analysis and a set of guidelines for conducting and overseeing such research to minimize the risks involved.

Opponents of the decision argue that the risks of gain-of-function research, including accidental release of modified pathogens or their use as bioweapons, outweigh the potential benefits. They also argue that the safety protocols and oversight mechanisms put in place may not be sufficient to prevent such risks.

 

[KCfromNC]

Do you think that's evidence of something?

Yep, evidence that your previous claims about Sweden getting it right are factually incorrect.

You continually amuse me with your misplaced confidence.

Hey look, personal attacks when the evidence gets too close to displacing a wished-for conclusion.
Quite the pattern, it seems.

 

[KCfromNC]

a useless mask

Weird assertion, given a previous post saying that masks did help in some small way.

I guess the facts are pretty malleable, depending on the needs of the narrative of the day. Or the hour.

 

[KCfromNC]

You do know that Sweden has had fewer cumulative excess deaths than many other places in the world, right?

Starting off with a question which attempts to confuse raw death numbers with population adjusted rates? That doesn't seem like a sign of confidence in using relevant data to make a case.

I mean, while you want to hyper-focus on 2020's "spike"

Let's not forget the original post I responded to was trying to hide this spike by averaging it with a pre-pandemic year. That seems an acknowledgement that spike was meaningful, otherwise why the need to obfuscate it to bolster a predetermined conclusion?

But yeah, sure, try and convince people that they should ignore Sweden's 2020 spike in death rate while evaluating their immediate pandemic response. Let's see how credibly people view that approach.

But when we examine the mortality rate over time, we see that Sweden has fared considerably better than other places that locked down hard.

In what way, specifically? I mean, sure, they might have historically had a lower death rate than other countries, but it seems weird to use a pre-pandemic trend death rates to demonstrate their pandemic response was better.

This article is particularly interesting

It's an article from late summer 2020. Meaning the experts there who thought that Sweden was doing it right in 2020 after a temporary lull in covid infections are strongly disagreeing with your rationalizations now for why Sweden got it right - namely that despite a bad 2020, long term the country came out ahead. They were instead going with the at-the-time popular covid will be 'miraculously' be gone by April 'once the weather warms up' approach (for various values of April). I think we know how that turned out.

Like I said, the hard part isn't cherry-picking random stories to prop up a conclusion. The tough part is putting together a consistent story which both explains the data and doesn't contradict itself. This one kinda does both, but oh well, par for the course for science denialism.

It's easy to achieve "consensus" when you censor other viewpoints.

Yeah, they're so censored you just found an article from a mainstream source containing them.
It's not that they're censored, it just that there appears to be a need, in this thread at least, for posts to try and hide the real data while making the point that Sweden's approach was better. It's not censorship to point that out.

 

[probinson]

Weird assertion, given a previous post saying that masks did help in some small way.

This has been the rallying cry of COVID hysteria. Some have latched on phrases like, "It's not perfect" to hide the fact that masks made no appreciable difference at any point int any place at any time in the pandemic. Sure, they may have been up to 10% "effective" (depending upon what you mean by the word "effective", which seems to change with the tides), but some will never admit what the A122 Cochrane review on masking has said since 2006, that wearing a mask probably makes little to no difference in respiratory viral spread.

Thankfully, mask hysteria is now well and truly behind us. There are still a few diehard believers out there, but those people are now in the overwhelming minority and most people have acknowledged, either explicitly or tacitly, that masking was nothing more than talismanic virtue signal that made people "feel" better while not actually providing any real benefit.

I guess the facts are pretty malleable, depending on the needs of the narrative of the day. Or the hour.

Indeed.

 

[KCfromNC]

This has been the rallying cry of COVID hysteria. Some have latched on phrases like, "It's not perfect" to hide the fact that masks made no appreciable difference at any point int any place at any time in the pandemic. Sure, they may have been up to 10% "effective" (depending upon what you mean by the word "effective", which seems to change with the tides),

I'm enjoying how the post can't even make it through a few sentences without admitting that the research shows results than the claims that masks do literally nothing.
It's like watching the cognitive dissonance work itself out in real time.

 

[probinson]

Let's not forget the original post I responded to was trying to hide this spike by averaging it with a pre-pandemic year.

Anyone that's been following this thread has seen the data and charts that I've posted, and I've posted the raw data and the rates for each individual year multiple times since then. That's an odd thing for me to do if I were actually "trying to hide" something.

In what way, specifically? I mean, sure, they might have historically had a lower death rate than other countries, but it seems weird to use a pre-pandemic trend death rates to demonstrate their pandemic response was better.

Examine this chart closely. It's not "pre-pademic". It's showing age-standardized mortality for the countries we've been talking about from 2019-2022. And even with Sweden's relative 7.33% "spike" in 2020, we can see that since then, their mortality has been trending downward while the other countries we've been discussing are trending upward. You might also notice that Sweden has the lowest rate in 2022.

This discussion reminds me of the tortoise and the hare. You seem to be saying that because New Zealand and other countries did better at the beginning of the pandemic, this necessitates that they did better overall. But as has happened many times over throughout this pandemic, people have prematurely declared victory before the race is over. You point to the 7% "spike" in Sweden as evidence of "failure", but ignore that of the countries we've been discussing, Sweden is the only one to see a consistent downward trend in ASMR since 2020. In fact their 2022 ASMR is actually LOWER than their 2019 rate. New Zealand is 10% higher than it was in 2020 while Sweden is 8% lower, a delta of 18 percentage points BETTER. Yet you (apparently) want to pretend like Sweden's response was a "disaster" in spite of this. It's simply not true.

Like I said, the hard part isn't cherry-picking random stories to prop up a conclusion. The tough part is putting together a consistent story which both explains the data and doesn't contradict itself. This one kinda does both, but oh well, par for the course for science denialism.

Ah, "science denialism". Intellectually dishonest code for, don't disagree with the "experts", but only the "experts" I deem worthy. It's appalling how much damage has been done to science by this foolishness.

It's not that they're censored, it just that there appears to be a need, in this thread at least, for posts to try and hide the real data while making the point that Sweden's approach was better. It's not censorship to point that out.

You know what's interesting is that you keep throwing out that I'm trying to say Sweden's approach was "better". In some ways it was, and in others it wasn't. But there are those on your side of the debate that have employed baseless hyperbole to state that Sweden's response was "disastrous" and "catastrophic". This is demonstrably untrue by looking at the data.

 

[probinson]

I'm enjoying how the post can't even make it through a few sentences without admitting that the research shows results than the claims that masks do literally nothing.
It's like watching the cognitive dissonance work itself out in real time.

So then let me ask you this. For the sake of this post, I'll spot you the "up to 10%" claim. Even if this is true, do you think the amount of energy and zealotry behind the push for masks was justified given that they MIGHT be "up to 10%" effective? Do you think the opportunity cost of putting 1.6 BILLION masks into our oceans in the first year of the pandemic alone justifies the maybe 10% benefit? Why was there so much time and energy and money devoted to MANDATING something that had such a marginal benefit?

 

[FredVB]

Pandemics are still going to come, maybe many times. Do you know why? It is your fault. As long as there is use of animals in agriculture with many kept near together for so much demand, pandemic pathogens will continue to thrive for spreading. And why? We do not need such use of animals for our health anyway, even if there weren't epidemics and pandemics, studies show this, and ways like Forks Over Knives saves lives, and this is shown. And how we have animal agriculture violates what God wants for the way we live, among various passages Proverbs 12:10 shows that. And global issues are really affected by animal agriculture, and more resources used for it. So why go on choosing the same way that leads to more pandemics??

 

[durangodawood]

..... Proverbs 12:10 shows that......

If the intent there was to discourage animal agriculture, you'd think Jesus wouldn't refer to himself in animal ag terms: as a shepherd, over and over again.