Vaccine

[watfly]

The article is really good at pointing at why. it's a paradigm shift akin to shifting away from heliocentrism or to evolution or to Newtonian and away from Aristotilian physics. it makes the good point that scientists have always treated scientists in the other paradigm as heretics (he's arguing, in effect, science has always been tainted by religion). The issue is that it's usually been held that science always moves forward...the author points out that's not always the case, and we who have been saying science is "questioning" are actually wrong....every day science usually works to bolster the paradigm and paradigm shifting questioning is actually quite rare. It's an insightful way of looking at it....i hadn't really seen it until now.....it certainly does explain dad4 and his vehemence in the face of all the repeated and frequent failures of his paradigm.

I'll take your word for it, I honestly didn't understand a lot of the article, but I think I got the gist.

 

[dad4]

that's not what's happening and team panic knows it. the signers of the GBD are also "experts". They are just experts your team discounts as "fringe", to use dad4's world. As the article explains, the reason why is because they are outside the paradigm....they are heretics and therefore not worthy of the term "experts" because the paradigm must be defended at all cost.

The author doesn't explain what the paradigm is and why it shifted. Here's a nascent seed of an idea. It came to me thinking about a movie we just watched....call it the "War of the Worlds" paradigm. In the last 60-70 years there has been a radical shift in public health. Through diet, sanitation, medicine and vaccination we have drastically reduced epidemics, particularly childhood diseases that took so many children in their childhood or injured their lives through long term health issues. We have largely forgotten the millenia of our existence that when it came to public health, life tended to be nasty, brutish and short. Our technology (whether the moon landing, jet travel, nuclear power or the internet) has fed that hubris that we have overcome our baser, animal selves that we would prefer to forget, rendering us different from our dogs and cats, let alone the wild animals. It's led to a hubris that we can actually "control" a virus. So, when finally faced with the unthinkable (after years of nightmare books and films ranging from the zombie invasions to Contagion), particularly among public health experts (who faced the unthinkable in their nightmares day to day, and waited for the big one to finally occur), all planning that had gone into preparing for a pandemic such as this was jettisoned and they settled on what to them was a scientific truth: that we could actually control the virus....it was unthinkable to them that we could actually lose such a war (which BTW is where we are...the war, like the war on poverty or war on drugs, or other fanciful utopian schemes....is a failure). Hence, the rise of the new paradigm.

What a word spam.

“subverting the dominant paradigm” is mostly useful for half drunk arguments after the real work is done. Don’t take it too seriously.

 

[Hüsker Dü]

I'm pretty sure you just proved my point. So its not true until those that control the narrative say its true. Got it.

There is a religion that has a quote "When the prophet speaks the debate is over". We're treading dangerously close to this with our Covid policies.

And you proved my point. You will rebel whether you have the ammunition or not.

 

[espola]

that's not what's happening and team panic knows it. the signers of the GBD are also "experts". They are just experts your team discounts as "fringe", to use dad4's world. As the article explains, the reason why is because they are outside the paradigm....they are heretics and therefore not worthy of the term "experts" because the paradigm must be defended at all cost.

The author doesn't explain what the paradigm is and why it shifted. Here's a nascent seed of an idea. It came to me thinking about a movie we just watched....call it the "War of the Worlds" paradigm. In the last 60-70 years there has been a radical shift in public health. Through diet, sanitation, medicine and vaccination we have drastically reduced epidemics, particularly childhood diseases that took so many children in their childhood or injured their lives through long term health issues. We have largely forgotten the millenia of our existence that when it came to public health, life tended to be nasty, brutish and short. Our technology (whether the moon landing, jet travel, nuclear power or the internet) has fed that hubris that we have overcome our baser, animal selves that we would prefer to forget, rendering us different from our dogs and cats, let alone the wild animals. It's led to a hubris that we can actually "control" a virus. So, when finally faced with the unthinkable (after years of nightmare books and films ranging from the zombie invasions to Contagion), particularly among public health experts (who faced the unthinkable in their nightmares day to day, and waited for the big one to finally occur), all planning that had gone into preparing for a pandemic such as this was jettisoned and they settled on what to them was a scientific truth: that we could actually control the virus....it was unthinkable to them that we could actually lose such a war (which BTW is where we are...the war, like the war on poverty or war on drugs, or other fanciful utopian schemes....is a failure). Hence, the rise of the new paradigm.

That's a dream world. "Control" should be "respond to". Then your argument falls apart.

 

[dad4]

I'm pretty sure you just proved my point. So its not true until those that control the narrative say its true. Got it.

There is a religion that has a quote "When the prophet speaks the debate is over". We're treading dangerously close to this with our Covid policies.

You’re just not qualified. It has nothing to do with who controls the narrative. It has to do with whether you are capable of doing the work in question.

I don’t blame the Spanish Sports Mandarins for the fact that Barcelona hasn’t hired me as head coach yet. I never bothered to learn that skill, so they have no need of my opinion on soccer.

Likewise, you quote some twitter troll who never bothered to learn epidemiology or aerosol physics, I have no need of his opinion on whether masks work. His opinion on mask efficacy is as useless as my opinion on conditioning regimens.

 

[Grace T.]

Please define your terms. You keep referring to “macro” and “micro”.

It is not at all clear whether you mean individual versus population, single event versus repeated, or small scale trial versus full public implementation. These are three different concepts. You have all three mixed together in that rambling post, jumping from one to the other without any warning.

this is, again, basic economics 202. Micro is, as i told you in a post before, an incidence count....infection to infection....or if you prefer to it dummy to dummy at a particular measure of time. Macro is anything that scales it. the more you scale it, the bigger the scaling problem. So, for example, let's say you have a group of 10 friends and you all decide that you are going to be very COVID careful: everyone vaxxed, everyone wears an N95, no one goes out if they feel sick, no one goes to indoor dining, everyone is real careful. You know these 10 friends and know they feel the same about COVID as you, and so you feel pretty safe being around them, even with your 5 year old unvaxxed kid, since you know none of you send your 5 year olds to daycare, let alone wander around in indoor public settings unmasked. Pretty safe, right? Scale it up to your local small church group of 100 people..... you know and trust those people and they have a similar outlook to you, but maybe one of them works as a plumber and another has a kid working the lunch shift at mcdonalds. Scale it up to your neighborhood with people who look like you, vote like you and feel the same about COVID as you do. Scale it up to to your city. Transfer it to another city in a red state. Transfer it to Japan (hence your preferred solution we all become Asian).

 

[Grace T.]

What a word spam.

“subverting the dominant paradigm” is mostly useful for half drunk arguments after the real work is done. Don’t take it too seriously.

"i don't like him because he is attacking my cherished assumptions that I know about science so I'm going to dismiss it out of hand"

 

[Grace T.]

You’re just not qualified. It has nothing to do with who controls the narrative. It has to do with whether you are capable of doing the work in question.

I don’t blame the Spanish Sports Mandarins for the fact that Barcelona hasn’t hired me as head coach yet. I never bothered to learn that skill, so they have no need of my opinion on soccer.

Likewise, you quote some twitter troll who never bothered to learn epidemiology or aerosol physics, I have no need of his opinion on whether masks work. His opinion on mask efficacy is as useless as my opinion on conditioning regimens.

p.s. you know with the misleading arguments, the lashing out, the not qualified, the shut ups and just accept it, the drinking game troll, you are just a hair away from becoming a full fledged member of the three amigos. All it will take is just a nonsense or coo coo from you.

 

[Grace T.]

That's a dream world. "Control" should be "respond to". Then your argument falls apart.

meh...the health experts, the journos, the teachers unions, the politicians, and the covidian proponents have all used the word "control" at some point...not my word.

 

[espola]

meh...the health experts, the journos, the teachers unions, the politicians, and the covidian proponents have all used the word "control" at some point...not my word.

Not like you used it.

 

[Grace T.]

Not like you used it.

again, using their word to describe what they are thinking.

for what it's worth, i agree with you that the debate should be around what we should do to "respond to".

the paradigm, though, is that they aren't seeking to just "respond to"....they are seeking to "control" it because of their hubris that they think mankind has reached a point where it is possible to control such things (hence the "War of the Worlds" paradigm).

It's an inciteful point, however, so thanks for that. I like thoughtful espola. Maybe you'll climb down from the trollish 3 and dad 4 will agree to take your place?

 

[Grace T.]

Governor of colorado seeing writing on the wall is breaking away from the Covidians and declares the emergency over....

Interview: Gov. Polis leaves mask mandates to local officials, says the state shouldn't 'tell people what to wear'

“You don't tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to . If they get frostbite, it's their own darn fault.”

www.cpr.org

 

[watfly]

You’re just not qualified. It has nothing to do with who controls the narrative. It has to do with whether you are capable of doing the work in question.

I don’t blame the Spanish Sports Mandarins for the fact that Barcelona hasn’t hired me as head coach yet. I never bothered to learn that skill, so they have no need of my opinion on soccer.

Likewise, you quote some twitter troll who never bothered to learn epidemiology or aerosol physics, I have no need of his opinion on whether masks work. His opinion on mask efficacy is as useless as my opinion on conditioning regimens.

I've never quoted a twitter troll, I don't even have twitter. What's up with the Covidian's having to misquoute and misrepresent someones argument to make theirs more plausible.

It's amazing you continue to appeal to authority (the ones that fit your narrative) and they continue to be wrong. At what point are you going to walk away from the theoretical, the projections and the lab results and consider what's actually happening in the real world. I hate to break it to you but the lab and the classroom are not the real world, which has been most acutely obvious over the past 18 months.

When you can look at what's actually happening you don't need someone else to research or peer review it for you. You just need to exercise basic reason.

 

[EvilGoalie 21]

The article is really good at pointing at why. it's a paradigm shift akin to shifting away from heliocentrism or to evolution or to Newtonian and away from Aristotilian physics. it makes the good point that scientists have always treated scientists in the other paradigm as heretics (he's arguing, in effect, science has always been tainted by religion). The issue is that it's usually been held that science always moves forward...the author points out that's not always the case, and we who have been saying science is "questioning" are actually wrong....every day science usually works to bolster the paradigm and paradigm shifting questioning is actually quite rare. It's an insightful way of looking at it....i hadn't really seen it until now.....it certainly does explain dad4 and his vehemence in the face of all the repeated and frequent failures of his paradigm.

If you are going to walk the path of Kuhn it is important to emphasize that, in addition to the overhyped and much abused idea of the paradigm shift, he was also at pains to emphasize that, by its nature, science must work to generate some coherence in understanding. Kuhn recognized that without this science would quickly degenerate to a quasi-functional state, shaped by cults of personality, much as we see in our current politics for example. Even on our thread we've seen quotes to this effect just today. Much of Kuhn's book was focused on the physcho/social constructs that enforced the conservative aspects of science as a necessary component of the discipline. When a real paradigm shift comes-as opposed to whatever you are imagining-the ideas aren't necessary new, but radically re-formulated models that embrace old ideas in a new way, forced though the advent of new technologies, etc. And the resulting paradigm rests of the foundation of the old ideas. It's basically the evolutionary idea of punctuated equlibrium applied to science. For example, a real paradigm shift is echoing through the fields of genetics at the moment. The ability to sequence genomes and track genetic diversity at large scale is forcing the field to move beyond a century ruled by conceptions of binary Mendelian traits and simple pathway analysis.

I understand that from a narrow perspective bumping into Kuhn gives you another sciency term to plug into a dualistic framing that allows you to keep an argument running on social media, periodically claiming victory along the way. Which is fun. And you are wrapped up in the politics of the moment and pissed off. Everybody is tired of this thing. But utimately, ideas are cheap. since you studied economics seems like if you put your mind to it you should be able to come up with at least 6 paradigm shift worthy ideas before breakfast. Then people want to see the data.

 

[espola]

again, using their word to describe what they are thinking.

for what it's worth, i agree with you that the debate should be around what we should do to "respond to".

the paradigm, though, is that they aren't seeking to just "respond to"....they are seeking to "control" it because of their hubris that they think mankind has reached a point where it is possible to control such things (hence the "War of the Worlds" paradigm).

It's an inciteful point, however, so thanks for that. I like thoughtful espola. Maybe you'll climb down from the trollish 3 and dad 4 will agree to take your place?

That's just a continuation of your dream world.

 

[espola]

Governor of colorado seeing writing on the wall is breaking away from the Covidians and declares the emergency over....

Interview: Gov. Polis leaves mask mandates to local officials, says the state shouldn't 'tell people what to wear'

“You don't tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to . If they get frostbite, it's their own darn fault.”

www.cpr.org

What's a Covidian? Does capitalization give the term more status?

 

[Grace T.]

That's just a continuation of your dream world.

Yeah, your improvement from troll to useful, thoughtful contributor does always turn out to be a dream world.

 

[espola]

I've never quoted a twitter troll, I don't even have twitter. What's up with the Covidian's having to misquoute and misrepresent someones argument to make theirs more plausible.

It's amazing you continue to appeal to authority (the ones that fit your narrative) and they continue to be wrong. At what point are you going to walk away from the theoretical, the projections and the lab results and consider what's actually happening in the real world. I hate to break it to you but the lab and the classroom are not the real world, which has been most acutely obvious over the past 18 months.

When you can look at what's actually happening you don't need someone else to research or peer review it for you. You just need to exercise basic reason.

What's a Covidian?

 

[Grace T.]

If you are going to walk the path of Kuhn it is important to emphasize that, in addition to the overhyped and much abused idea of the paradigm shift, he was also at pains to emphasize that, by its nature, science must work to generate some coherence in understanding. Kuhn recognized that without this science would quickly degenerate to a quasi-functional state, shaped by cults of personality, much as we see in our current politics for example. Even on our thread we've seen quotes to this effect just today. Much of Kuhn's book was focused on the physcho/social constructs that enforced the conservative aspects of science as a necessary component of the discipline. When a real paradigm shift comes-as opposed to whatever you are imagining-the ideas aren't necessary new, but radically re-formulated models that embrace old ideas in a new way, forced though the advent of new technologies, etc. And the resulting paradigm rests of the foundation of the old ideas. It's basically the evolutionary idea of punctuated equlibrium applied to science. For example, a real paradigm shift is echoing through the fields of genetics at the moment. The ability to sequence genomes and track genetic diversity at large scale is forcing the field to move beyond a century ruled by conceptions of binary Mendelian traits and simple pathway analysis.

I understand that from a narrow perspective bumping into Kuhn gives you another sciency term to plug into a dualistic framing that allows you to keep an argument running on social media, periodically claiming victory along the way. Which is fun. And you are wrapped up in the politics of the moment and pissed off. Everybody is tired of this thing. But utimately, ideas are cheap. since you studied economics seems like if you put your mind to it you should be able to come up with at least 6 paradigm shift worthy ideas before breakfast. Then people want to see the data.

This one hit a little close to home, didn't it evilgoalie? Not your MO to lash out like the others. I see it's got all of the covidian-leaning people's feathers in a ruffle, which if it was just an idea to be dismissed, wouldn't inspire such a reaction.

In any case, the author of the piece challenges the assumption that science is necessarily evolutionary. And you make a great point about politics...one of the problems with the covid response is that it got wrapped up into politics.

My point was that the author didn't get it broad enough. the reason why it got wrapped into politics is because a hubris has crept into our scientific thought: that we are actually far enough removed from our animal selves that we think we have surmounted our human limitations and have, with our technology, become proteans if not outright gods. The paradigm shift I am proposing is scientific hubris in the workability in technology. You see this most obviously in the point that espola raised yesterday: every body was really excited about the speed which the mrna vaccines made a response possible, saving lives in the process, but which long term may not necessarily have been the best or most effective approach.

 

[watfly]

What's a Covidian?

Our pet name for you Dad4, Espola, Husker, GoldenGate etc. Actually that's unfair to you, GG is a Covidiot.

Whereas Dad4's pet name for me, GraceT, Desert Hound, Kickingandscreaming etc is Team Virus.