Binger wrote: ↑Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:53 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:37 pm
Use current research. An N95.
ohhhhhh, so there has been changes and updates in the standards. Got it. As it relates to vaccines, that is also true, correct? How do you think this plays out within narrow and funneled and filtered information silos as it relates to vaccines and therapeutics? Can we talk about the vaccine and therapeutic research done in more isolated communities like New Zealand or Israel? Asking for permission, not capability. Can we talk about the propaganda around the research and why we should trust the same sources? For example, what is the source of the information in a meme posted by Doc Cam?
Yeah, out of context memes. Because you don't really have an argument. When Biden made that statement, it was basically accurate. The vaccines were highly effective against the then current strains. The rate of vaccinated people contracting COVID after being fully vaccinated was extremely low. But of course, memes ignore both context and nuance, and so the poster pretends that Biden meant "no vaccinated person ever will get COVID." The context -- the vaccine companies themselves published the efficacy rates, and they weren't 100%. This is Binger's painfully obvious black and white thinking, which he is total denial about.
In the meantime, two things happened. We discovered, as was always a possibility, that the vaccine efficacy waned over time. Them's the breaks, and the response was a booster dose, which restored efficacy, at least for some period of time. And Omicron took the world by storm, having sufficient mutations to significantly evade what had been considered "full vaccination" but less so in those that had been boosted. Again, experts and the media had been talking about variants for months, and there is no way to predict which variants would and will show up.
With masks, the fact is there was precious little research on the effect of mask wearing outside of medical settings at the start of the pandemic. I know because I looked. There was a study from a hospital in Vietnam that found that using cloth masks in a medical setting created a significant risk of surface transmission. That was about it.
And the opportunity to do research during the early pandemic on surgical mask and respirator use by the general public was extremely limited because of the shortages of PPE for medical staff. In fact, the idea of cloth mask usage came from emergency recommendations to medical staff to use a cloth face covering, like a bandana, if they were out of appropriate masks and respirators. The public saw that and latched onto cloth masks, with people making their own.
Meanwhile, as the pandemic protests, WHO and other organizations commissioned studies about cloth mask usage. As the data came in, it supported the conclusion that cloth masks had a significant effect, at least as source control. As the PPE shortage lessened, more studies were conducted on the effect of wearing surgical masks and respirators by the general public. And the current state of the literature is that cloth face coverings result in some reduction of transmission, surgical masks are more effective, and N95/KN95 respirators reduce transmission the most when work by the public. And, in the context of a highly contagious variant, every reduction in transmission helps preserve the capacity of hospitals to treat the sick who need treatment.
How does Binger's meme address all that context and nuance? It ignores it. It's a giant Herp Derrrp! Biden said something that was not literally true about vaccines, therefore we can't trust any authorities. It's not genius. It's the opposite of genius. It's moronic.
The same with posting old CDC guidelines. The strength of science is that it changes its views based on information. But Binger treats an old CDC guideline as if it were purported to be immutable scripture. CDC guidelines are not the Book of Mormon. No one claims the guidelines at any given time are the infallible word of God. They are guidance -- the best advice the organization thinks it can give based on the state of the science and the facts on the ground. I guess it's not surprising to find so much of this fallacious thinking among former Mormons, as (based on my own obervation), they have a tendency to treat all authorities as if they are LDS general authorities.
From time to time, I think a meme can be insightful. But most are just crap based on oversimplification and black and white thinking. They make people stupid instead of helping them to think clearly. If you've got a legitimate argument, you should be able to lay it out and support it. 99% of the time, a guy who has to resort to memes does so because he knows he can't.
