Ding Dong the puppet is gone

[N35t0r]

Only N-95 masks (or better) had much impact. Even when evidence suggested those would help, Fauci downplayed it to try to protect the supply for hand picked workers. That policy was "evidence-based" in motive but not in message. That message would be what we might call "dishonesty-based. The problem wasn't that Fauci wasn't motivated by evidence. The problem was that he thought lying to the public to get a short term behavior he wanted would be a good tactical decision in the face of the pandemic. I suppose he thought he could reassure everybody later, "Oh certainly we lied earlier to protect the mask supply. I'm happy to reassure you all that we've stopped lying and you can trust us again now."

First hit on the efficiency of cloth masks:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7510705/

Even by late 2020, there was still debate about what was COVID's primary transmission medium:

https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/penn-physician-blog/2020/august/airborne-droplet-debate-article

COVID really revealed some huge gaps in our knowledge of aerosol pathogen transmission. Early on, consensus was that masks were useless outside of closed environments with heavy viral load (even if there were already several pushers of alternative theories). Judging decisions based on current knowledge is not really helpful.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9149

Just to put things into perspective, there was never a possibility of TP running out, yet people were hoarding it like there was no tomorrow, causing in some cases temporary shortages (because producers didn't want to increase production just to be left with unsold stock a couple of weeks down the line).

You really think that risking people behaving like that with the few masks that were available, for what at the time was believed to be of little benefit, at the expense of health workers, was the correct thing to do?

[Elok]

Undermining public trust in the authorities at the start of a pandemic is dumb as ****, yes. Profoundly, egregiously dumb. They could have handled that by trying to temporarily restrict sales to healthcare workers only, and being honest. Instead they lied, setting the stage for several years of nobody trusting them. Some measure of blame for vaccine skepticism surely lies with the CDC itself.

[Provost Harrison]

Only N-95 masks (or better) had much impact. Even when evidence suggested those would help, Fauci downplayed it to try to protect the supply for hand picked workers. That policy was "evidence-based" in motive but not in message. That message would be what we might call "dishonesty-based. The problem wasn't that Fauci wasn't motivated by evidence. The problem was that he thought lying to the public to get a short term behavior he wanted would be a good tactical decision in the face of the pandemic. I suppose he thought he could reassure everybody later, "Oh certainly we lied earlier to protect the mask supply. I'm happy to reassure you all that we've stopped lying and you can trust us again now."

On an *individual* level and yes, they are pretty effective. However any face covering will attenuate the spread of the virus and remember the epidemiological name of the game is to reduce the transmission rate to an R number of less than 1 so the disease does not continue to propagate. It's not just about the safety of the individual but about the statistical probabilities of spread. There are several weapons in the arsenal for this, masks, viruses, social distancing and other sanitary measures.

[Berzerker]

Right. Once mask production was up, and the TB-based model for airborne transmission was proven to not apply to COVID (to the surprise of a lot of people), masking became a big priority for the scientific community.
Funny how that works, huh? Evidence-based.

Compared to Trump, who downplayed the severity and masks for the entirety of the pandemic.

What about what Pelosi did in ****ing February? In February Trump was saying that the epidemic would be gone by April.

Do you think they tested the Covid vaccine for transmission and knew it failed prior to reports of "breakthrough" infections? I want to know what Fauci and his friends told the vaccine makers about where Covid originated. Did they lie to Pfizer too or did Fauci admit it came from the lab and gave them the data to expedite a vax? Is that why Pfizer wanted to hide information for 75 years? I don't think RFK, Tulsi and Patel will let that stay swept under the rug.

In the movie Jaws a conflict developed between the sheriff cleaning up dead bodies and the local business council facing a loss of revenue if the beaches were shut down. Nancy Pelosi was the business council, at the end of February she stood in a maskless crowd inviting the world to Chinatown to allay fear over covid. That was the attitude of everyone in govt and media because Fauci told the world Covid wasn't a big deal and masks don't work to make sure people didn't buy up protective gear. Hell, Cuomo was sending infected elderly back into nursing homes. Typhoid Tony killed millions of people and Biden pardoned him back to 2014 for a reason. The GOP doesn't want this exposed either, they're in on it. This is a result of our bioweapons industry which is bipartisan. Maga wants this exposed and if Trump doesn't deliver he's gonna lose his base.

[Broken_Erika]

Do you think they tested the Covid vaccine for transmission and knew it failed prior to reports of "breakthrough" infections? I want to know what Fauci and his friends told the vaccine makers about where Covid originated. Did they lie to Pfizer too or did Fauci admit it came from the lab and gave them the data to expedite a vax? Is that why Pfizer wanted to hide information for 75 years? I don't think RFK, Tulsi and Patel will let that stay swept under the rug.

In the movie Jaws a conflict developed between the sheriff cleaning up dead bodies and the local business council facing a loss of revenue if the beaches were shut down. Nancy Pelosi was the business council, at the end of February she stood in a maskless crowd inviting the world to Chinatown to allay fear over covid. That was the attitude of everyone in govt and media because Fauci told the world Covid wasn't a big deal and masks don't work to make sure people didn't buy up protective gear. Hell, Cuomo was sending infected elderly back into nursing homes. Typhoid Tony killed millions of people and Biden pardoned him back to 2014 for a reason. The GOP doesn't want this exposed either, they're in on it. This is a result of our bioweapons industry which is bipartisan. Maga wants this exposed and if Trump doesn't deliver he's gonna lose his base.

[N35t0r]

Yeah, Broken_Erika puts it very succinctly.

[Provost Harrison]

Did I just read that Jaws was being used as a basis for an argument against the COVID response That's a new one.

[Dauphin]

You know Johnson used it?

[Dauphin]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-jaws-mayor-beach-b1838049.html

[BeBMan]

The jaws analogy is brilliant. Donald is the big bad sharkie which tries to eat democracy and/or reason, and gives good spamsharks like us a bad name

[Provost Harrison]

You know Johnson used it?

Johnson said a lot of crap. Inverted pyramid of piffle, etc, etc. I've blanked as much of his destructive tenure from my mind as I can.

[The Mad Monk]

On an *individual* level and yes, they are pretty effective. However any face covering will attenuate the spread of the virus and remember the epidemiological name of the game is to reduce the transmission rate to an R number of less than 1 so the disease does not continue to propagate. It's not just about the safety of the individual but about the statistical probabilities of spread. There are several weapons in the arsenal for this, masks, viruses, social distancing and other sanitary measures.

I like to relate anti-pandemic measures to the atomic energy standard of TDS -- Time, Distance, Shielding -- where you want to minimize time spent in proximity to a source, maintain a distance as far as practical from a source, and have a certain level of protection from a source.

It's a good practice to maintain in general when any kind of virus is in the area.

[The Mad Monk]

Do you think they tested the Covid vaccine for transmission and knew it failed prior to reports of "breakthrough" infections? I want to know what Fauci and his friends told the vaccine makers about where Covid originated. Did they lie to Pfizer too or did Fauci admit it came from the lab and gave them the data to expedite a vax? Is that why Pfizer wanted to hide information for 75 years? I don't think RFK, Tulsi and Patel will let that stay swept under the rug.

In the movie Jaws a conflict developed between the sheriff cleaning up dead bodies and the local business council facing a loss of revenue if the beaches were shut down. Nancy Pelosi was the business council, at the end of February she stood in a maskless crowd inviting the world to Chinatown to allay fear over covid. That was the attitude of everyone in govt and media because Fauci told the world Covid wasn't a big deal and masks don't work to make sure people didn't buy up protective gear. Hell, Cuomo was sending infected elderly back into nursing homes. Typhoid Tony killed millions of people and Biden pardoned him back to 2014 for a reason. The GOP doesn't want this exposed either, they're in on it. This is a result of our bioweapons industry which is bipartisan. Maga wants this exposed and if Trump doesn't deliver he's gonna lose his base.

His base? You mean for his next re-election campaign?

[Geronimo]

His base? You mean for his next re-election campaign?

I still think of him as having a "base" as well. I assume he'll want a friendly successor at least to avoid vindictive "lawfare". I don't think he has the courage and has too much paranoia about loyalty to go through with trying to stay in power past the end of his term. Also, he has serious ego problems and sincerely wants to be loved by an adoring widespread base. Whatever he does he won't be willing to give that up.

[The Mad Monk]

Oh, I nearly forgot!



Hail Satan!

[Provost Harrison]

I like to relate anti-pandemic measures to the atomic energy standard of TDS -- Time, Distance, Shielding -- where you want to minimize time spent in proximity to a source, maintain a distance as far as practical from a source, and have a certain level of protection from a source.

It's a good practice to maintain in general when any kind of virus is in the area.

Yeah, it's definitely very similar...minimise exposure. Golden rules. I think the difference is that everyone is a potential vector for it so you need to reduce the probability of it spreading so the number of people infected by any given person is less than one.

And holy ****, that's one gaudy piece of tat I would only ever expect from Trump.

Also did no one get it, the actual bad guy in Back To The Future II, alternative reality Biff Tannen, was based - and not slightly - on Donald Trump.