"It's definitely more than a simple respiratory virus"
No, but it's idiotic to claim any other option is possible.
Time after time we strike the problem that you're an idealist and think the ideal can be applied to everyone. That's patently absurd, so I look at the real world, and people are not going to take precautions no matter how much you pretend it's possible.
Time after time, we strike the problem that The Atheist doesn't change his mind when the real world proves him wrong. Throughout the pandemic and to this very day, other options have been tried out and are still being tried out, so it's not a question of
pretending what's possible. It's a question of
seeing and
acknowledging what's possible, which some people are better at doing than others.
And you continue to post false statements about me - good work. I've always known it's not another cold, and if you go back to the very start of the first covid thread, one of the first arguments I had was with Skeptic Ginger, when she claimed influenza was :hundreds of times more deadly than covid".
The Atheist has continuously posted false statements comparing the C19 death toll to any other kind of disease in an attempt to make this virus seem innocuous, and he has made predictions about how this disease would evolve that were
contrafactural even at the time when these predictions were made. They were based on nothing but wishful thinking and turned out to be spectacularly wrong.
It is ridiculous to refer to what Skeptic Ginger may have thought about the influenza in comparison to SARS-CoV-2 at
"the very start of the first covid thread."
As always with The Atheist's claims, it would have been nice to see an actual quotation
and a link to whatever somebody may or may not have said.
This is supposed to be the
Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology subforum, not the
I was always right and can never be wrong subforum.
I have no idea what Skeptic Ginger may have said about COVID-19 in comparison to the flu in early 2020. I know
what I said in March 2020, and my idea turned out to be very wrong, being based on the little that was known about this particular virus at the time.
*
I did take a look at the first couple of pages of
The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread and noticed that SG was obsessed with the idea of hand-washing and fomites, in case you need something else to blame her for, but at the time it was a valid concern: We (!) didn't know any better. Evidence was just emerging that
this was an airborne disease and that contagion from fomites was insignificant.
But once upon a time somebody was wrong! Big deal! Some of us are able to correct our mistakes instead of turning them into obsessions (Vitamin D!). That Anders Tegnell was wrong in March 2020 is forgivable. That he based Sweden's pandemic strategy on wishful thinking instead of being cautious isn't, and that he was still wrong in 2021 and 2022, and still pretends that he is right in 2023 is a ******* disgrace.
His predecessor as state epidemiologist, Annika Linde, was in on the herd-immunity-by-infection strategy in March 2020, but two months later she knew that it was wrong - after the catastrophic death toll in Sweden's nursing homes where the vulnerable old people were supposed to have been protected while Sweden let the virus rip:
"The problem was underestimated. It was clearly misjudged." (
DR.dk, May 19, 2020)
One of those two was and remained a
scientist. It wasn't Tegnell!
More false bollocks - he's had all the vaccine shots he's able to and has constantly worn a mask and that was before he got covid. His infection has made zero difference to my opinion on anything.
Wearing a mask obviously doesn't protect you from getting infected
post-infection, but it does help protect others from getting the virus from you. And it might have helped The Atheist's son if whoever infected him had worn a mask, which is why it's still a good idea to do so on public transport and in public indoor settings. It makes a difference in the Asian and other countries where they still wear face masks to protect themselves and each other, and it makes a difference when air filtration systems are installed to catch the virus aerosols indoors.
That The Atheist is more concerned about the
costs of such measures than about people's health and lives is obvious and unfortunate.
Maybe you could go ahead and do that for us instead of spending time dreaming up false narratives what I think or have said.
I don't make up false narrative about what the Atheist has said. I usually quote and/or link to his false narratives. There is no reason to make up anything. I base what he thinks on his narratives on this forum. It's all I've got to go by.
It is obvious that I was wrong when I thought that The Atheist had changed his mind about minimizing SARS-CoV-2 when he said, contrary to what he has been saying for the last couple of years, that
"it's definitely more than a simple respiratory virus." Now it appears to have been nothing but a sudden insight, forgotten almost as soon as it popped up.
As I have mentioned so often before, there are plenty of things we
can do about this virus. We don't
"just have to suck it up and see what happens next." The
#DavosStandard (or even the
#PigStandard) is an actual, real-world, practicable way to deal with a virus that causes
"long-term damage ... to immune systems." We don't have to suck it up and breathe it in but powerful interests make us do it nonetheless because people's health aren't a concern to them.
That ordinary people wouldn't want to put up with the lifestyle choices of billionaires is far-fetched nonsense. Describing the very
practical, down-to-earth, real-life solutions to the problem of a debilitating pandemic as
idealism even more so.
* That I am not an epidemiologist and didn't have access to enough information about the virus at the time to have an informed opinion about SARS-CoV-2 and how to deal with it was the reason why I placed my 'modest proposal' thread in
Members Only even though I thought it was a brilliant idea.
ETA: I assume that since it now appears to be clear to everybody that
"it's definitely more than a simple respiratory virus," we will be spared from repetitions of the disgusting idea about people being dry tinder or already wearing toe tags. After all, since
"long-term damage has been done to immune systems" as well as to hearts, lungs, brains, livers, kidneys and arteries, some people may take a very long time dying from this disease. It remains to be seen how the many babies currently hospitalized with C19 will fare in the future.
