The German Health Minister has long demonstrated a fundamental inability to understand simple studies and evaluate scientific, but this error is on a totally new level.
When I worked as a graduate student our research director had one student who was consistently wrong. I mean EVERY time. It wasn't random either. He claimed to reason it out, but he always came to the wrong conclusion. One day in total frustration I heard our boss tell him "Ron, if you flipped a coin at least you will be right 50% of the time." So profound, but one of the most devastating insults to someone in a Ph.d program ever. Let's give Karl a coin.
Dear Karl ,why don't you get yourself a big set of Micky mouse ears ,and wear them instead of the snot pouch ?.You will look sooo much better and the kids will love it
The option which pays more for less risk to career and income is the scientific one. It's called rational choice/objectivism with free agents making individually optimal decisions which will in sum total create the most beneficient outcome to everyone, and is seen as virtuous.
It is also the sum total of its ethics: if /I/ profit from it, it's morally good, otherwise it's not.
There are of course other moral systems, but they are rapidly falling out of fashion.
Why not just abolish Governments and get rid of ALL ministries and bureaucrats.
And for those who might say it would be mob rule, it already is.
List of mobs ruling us: environmentalist; climate change; woke; alphabet people; transgender; Big Pharma; Bank & Finance; WEF; UN; Unions & Professional bodies; Victimology, grudge, grievance; Big Tech.
A lot of people seem to like to tell other people what to do. We must find ways to restrict their ability to do so. Not easy but more realistic than expecting this kind of person to disappear.
It has always been that way. It might be a little more overt but it's merely a matter of degree to which one acknowledges it or enacts it. No one has any existential authority over anyone or anything else. The fact that we exert power over others, knowingly and unknowingly, is an uncomfortable fact of existence. Humans may justify it politically, morally and rationally but that doesn't change the nature of it.
The best you can hope for is to deal with that dilemma as an individual.
“ But if you'll don a mask in a restaurant to go for a piss ten feet away you probably believe people who can't build roads in their home country can somehow design satellites for a living in yours”
Actually, Belgium gave it a try a couple of years back. They didn‘t have a government for almost two years. The result? The economy was growing and it was the first time in years there was a budget surplus.
I can understand this. But there is another way. It does involve a reversal of the current philosophy of telling people what is best for them. A better way is to empower the public to make decisions for themselves, such as how much risk to accept. During covid here in the US, there was very little information available on the IFR or the difference in covid outcomes among age groups. The authorities didn’t trust the public and in return the public can no longer trust the authorities.
That kind of BS began with the whole "eggs and meat cause heart disease" lie, the data was provided by an opportunist and funded by corn oil and cereal companies.
Yep. I posted an article on this yesterday. It is a bizarre study and the Minister should resign for tweeting it. I do wonder if the professor that is listed as the last author on the paper knew his name would be on it. If so, he should probably resign in disgrace as well
So, I have mentioned this about a hundred times, but it is pertinent, so here goes. Back in October of 2020, when I was *still* somewhat unsure of the banality of masking and therefore mask mandates, I visited the CDC website. My goal was to complete what I was calling my Masking Nomological Network of Cumulative Evidence, mask-nom-net, for short. Basically, all the evidence I could find, pro or con on masking, from all sources I could find. Upon that visit to the CDC cite, I downloaded EVERY link to the studies they cited, and started reading. They had 19 studies cited at that time. The first 9 did not mention masking. They were not even about masking. (No, I am not kidding.) The rest of them were dicey or sucky, or both. So then, to hear this dude cite a study that IS about masking, but is crap, is actually an improvement in approach for these people. They will not give up on masks. At this point, and people like Jerome Adams' on Twitter is another example, they will keep gaslighting in favor of masks. Why? Unclear. The die is cast, though.
And Fauci too not giving up on masks. Pushing them on children. Just evil.
Luckily in April '20 I happily came across Denis Rancourt's, 'Masks Don't Work', where he cites over 20 studies ( most 10-30 yrs old), showing surgical masks and N95's offer little, if any, significant protection against respiratory borne illnesses.
And Fauci, Walensky, etc. know all this. It all comes down to control, try to keep the people in fear, to promote their agenda and profit from it.
That is a fascinating point! As one more bit of trivia during my quest, I offer this. I returned to the CDC website, probably a year later, looking to update my mask-nom-net. They had, as one might expect, increased the number of studies cited. They had also kept the citations of the studies I mentioned above that said *nothing* about masks. However, they had removed the links that would take you to the PubMed (or wherever) website where the actual study could be found. If you wanted to see the cited study, you had to copy the words from their citation and search on your own! Cheeky bastards *knew* those studies were B.S., but kept them to make their list bigger! The levels of raw bullshitery to which the CDC will stoop has no limit.
this is going to be used to mask the college students again this fall in the US. that's probably the only reason for its existence - and they were paid to produce garbage that looks legit enough to mask all the kids.
no, i don't think so. it honestly looks like something a few naive/stupid medical students pooped out in 2020 and decided to put up as a preprint on a lark. too bad for them lauterbach (and other desperate mask brigadiers) seized on it and brought it to prominence.
Imagine being an overworked student, trying to get some extra credit, and then having a Health Minister tweet your nonsense for the whole world to see. What did they do to deserve this?! It's not like students don't come up with nonsense all the time. Most of the time, it just ends with a B+ (grade inflation and all that).
At this point anyone that goes along with masking is getting what they deserve. College kids could simply en masse not wear masks, against any mandate. Instead They will just wear it because they want to or don’t care either way and it’s easier. I for one will never wear a mask again anywhere, and if asked to do so will simply ignore the request. I will have to be forcibly removed from places.
I’m currently at a food science conference in Pittsburgh - I’d say about 10-15% of people are masked. But the vast majority of mask wearers are young healthy students at minimal risk of adverse effects from covid. It’s just another virtue signal for them and they’ll comply en masse when the mask mandates are enacted again
Suppose we make a graph of all mask studies, with the Y axis representing "Efficacy / Impact" found in the study, and the X axis represents the "Quality" of the study - using the EBM pyramid for reference, where as you move along the X axis you go from models, to case reports, to cohort studies, eventually to RCT, then to systemic reviews of RCTs, etc.
You would plot, for example, the Georgia Salon maybe at coordinates (X = 1, Y = 10), as it has low quality of evidence but claims high impact. The Bangladesh Mask study might be plotted at (X = 10, Y = 1), as it is a more rigorous level of evidence, but found weaker impact than Georgia Salon predicted.
Here is what is interesting about this thought experiment -
If you restrict this to only studies prior to 2020, plot the studies, and run a trendline, it's mostly a straight line. The impact (Y) doesn't have much variation as you move left to right on the evidence standards.
This is because the scientific community was dispassionate about community masking - there was no political allegiance to the masks, no need for them to work. You weren't guaranteed to be published by the CDC, Nature, Science, or other "prestigious" journals merely for writing about the value of masks.
Repeat the process for the post 2020 mask studies, and suddenly the trendline has a sharp negative slope as you move from weak evidence to the stronger evidence - a clear sign that bias and intent has corrupted the hypothesis. All the strongest "evidence" is found in the lowest tier of science which is the easiest data to spin and corrupt to meet your claims (see, Wakefield). The Kansas Mask, Salon, the various models - all of which failed real world replication ("If 80% wore a mask the virus would be extinguished" - lol) are suddenly high on the efficacy Y axis.
It's crazy that these morons can't easily see this.
Every person I know that wore a mask religiously over the last two plus years got covid (of course they were vaxxed too) and every person that didn't didn't! In fact, some of them got it twice!
Face diaper stupitity study again lol. The best mask I've seen to data is of a Mexican laborer getting off work, jumping into his beatup pickup truck, wearing his Huggies babywipe softpack cover homemade mask, turning on the radio, opening the dispenser flip top on his mask, and taking a big long swig of his ice cold Corona bottled beer. Hilarious. The best ever ha, ha, ha. PS I think the clip was on TikTok last summer.
This goes really well together with your earlier point about how to lie without telling lies: the study lies in its intent, but not in its words, so neither does Lauterbach.
We've seen it before, haven't we? "90% of climate scientists agree..."
Now, if we could only find a way to inoculate people against believing stuff like this before having checked it out...
Not discounting or disputing that in any way. My memories of university is mainly that it was a competition in social and cognitive conformity and ditto creativity and research only allowed along already set and predetermined vectors.
I'd add real life experience to that sentiment you express, due to that all the really knowledgable and competent teachers (as in knowing how to teach, not just parroting 'lookupable' facts) were men and women who had come to academia and teaching after at least ten years of real life outside the institutions.
One man I remember had been crew on trans-oceanic cargo ships, done time for fighting, put himself through mechanic's school and the added a teacher's degree when he was almost 40.
I think that's what's needed. I mean, who knows economy best: a university economist, upper middle class background, never lacking or wanting for anything, well read on all theory, knows all the big names and terms and can do the "advanced" math of economics and finance - or a single mother of three, working 60 hour weeks as a cleaner or at a laundry or sitting behing the register at Lidl?
My money is on the mother, because she knows what's what in reality.
Still haven't gotten COVID. Unvaxxed and unmasked. Took Ivermectin for 8 month prophylacticly. But also haven't been sick since 2007. And I travelled internationally by late. Are there many out there never got it yet? What's the percentage?
When I worked as a graduate student our research director had one student who was consistently wrong. I mean EVERY time. It wasn't random either. He claimed to reason it out, but he always came to the wrong conclusion. One day in total frustration I heard our boss tell him "Ron, if you flipped a coin at least you will be right 50% of the time." So profound, but one of the most devastating insults to someone in a Ph.d program ever. Let's give Karl a coin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY
Kung Pow - Wimp Lo, 47 seconds
"we have purposely trained him wrong as a joke"
This is up there with Idiocracy 😂 Saved to my folder labeled medical/financial/political
Oh I’m stealing the shit out of this. So many applications I’m giddy about it.
That clip explains a lot - much more logical than the alternative and less dark.
the entire movie is awesome, but the clip was most relevant.
next up, the "product placement with taco bell" bit
"I am bleeding. That makes me the victor."
thanks for the laugh :)
Dear Karl ,why don't you get yourself a big set of Micky mouse ears ,and wear them instead of the snot pouch ?.You will look sooo much better and the kids will love it
Yes, he and Falsi can be a clown duo show together.
hahaha
Confirmation bias masquerading as science. Yet again. Does anyone understand what science is anymore?
Yes, the people being censored understand science. The lunatics are running the asylum.
The lunatics are damned close to subletting the asylum now. It's a rental property!
The option which pays more for less risk to career and income is the scientific one. It's called rational choice/objectivism with free agents making individually optimal decisions which will in sum total create the most beneficient outcome to everyone, and is seen as virtuous.
It is also the sum total of its ethics: if /I/ profit from it, it's morally good, otherwise it's not.
There are of course other moral systems, but they are rapidly falling out of fashion.
Science is the invention of fake facts used to support a specific agenda.
True that’s what it’s become. Whoever pays the most gets the results they want.
No. No they don't.
Nothing new, the masses have been skimming the headlines ever since different size type fonts were invented.
I truly think we'd be better off disbanding and abolishing all health ministries.
Why not just abolish Governments and get rid of ALL ministries and bureaucrats.
And for those who might say it would be mob rule, it already is.
List of mobs ruling us: environmentalist; climate change; woke; alphabet people; transgender; Big Pharma; Bank & Finance; WEF; UN; Unions & Professional bodies; Victimology, grudge, grievance; Big Tech.
A lot of people seem to like to tell other people what to do. We must find ways to restrict their ability to do so. Not easy but more realistic than expecting this kind of person to disappear.
The best way is to keep speaking out, not letting them get away with their nonsense unchallenged.
Except that we thought we already had these ways -- human rights' laws -- to prevent them from doing so. We have to do better, but how?
Accountability has to be built in somehow. A law that isn’t enforced equally can’t do the job
Indeed.
I’ve seen it posted elsewhere -
The new political spectrum is no longer “left vs. right” but “authoritarian vs. libertarian” - on either side of the supposed political “aisles”.
Ie. people who want to tell others what to do - versus those who don’t.
It has always been that way. It might be a little more overt but it's merely a matter of degree to which one acknowledges it or enacts it. No one has any existential authority over anyone or anything else. The fact that we exert power over others, knowingly and unknowingly, is an uncomfortable fact of existence. Humans may justify it politically, morally and rationally but that doesn't change the nature of it.
The best you can hope for is to deal with that dilemma as an individual.
There will never be a solution for it en masse.
Authority and conflict can't be wished away though. It helps to explain libertarian ideals, but wolves and sheep will be with us til armageddon.
We have no national sovereignty. No borders
“ But if you'll don a mask in a restaurant to go for a piss ten feet away you probably believe people who can't build roads in their home country can somehow design satellites for a living in yours”
Nailed it 😝
Actually, Belgium gave it a try a couple of years back. They didn‘t have a government for almost two years. The result? The economy was growing and it was the first time in years there was a budget surplus.
My thesis once again:
“Government ruins everything that it touches”
I think that happened in Spain too, General election was a close call, nobody could form a Government. The economy picked up there too.
Mises.org is a wonderful positive site, lots of lectures and podcasts and articles in this general vein. I listen to it for the uplifting sanity.
They don't understand war and conflict though, and the nameless war. But that's dangerous to talk about.
Bold move but I am onboard
Welcome!
Thesis:
Government ruins everything that it touches.
Disprove?
Overwhelming evidence supports the thesis.
BINGO!
I am ‘older people’. I believe in self-government.
Maybe those who believed in this are dead. It is certainly something passed on to me by my parents & grandparents.
I am 67
I say take it all down… become ungovernable
...Which no longer exist, it would appear.
same people who were so anti-establishment in the 60s and 70s
New Zealand seems to be at the gulag stage
I can understand this. But there is another way. It does involve a reversal of the current philosophy of telling people what is best for them. A better way is to empower the public to make decisions for themselves, such as how much risk to accept. During covid here in the US, there was very little information available on the IFR or the difference in covid outcomes among age groups. The authorities didn’t trust the public and in return the public can no longer trust the authorities.
That kind of BS began with the whole "eggs and meat cause heart disease" lie, the data was provided by an opportunist and funded by corn oil and cereal companies.
yess!
"Ketchup is a vegetable"
You mean… critical thinking?
As in thinking for myself?
Shock! Horror!
“Government ruins everything that it touches”
SUPERLIKE.
Fabulous idea. All we need to do is take away their pens and microphones and they’re useless.
and keep them away from useful idiots
I concur, enthusiastically.
A most brilliant idea! I wholly concur.
A great analogy - "When pants and underwear stop us from smelling farts, I will believe masks stop Covid particles." - No further study required.
Well, farts are a gas, methane and sulfuric gases, whereas Covid spreads via much larger aerosol particles.
The aerosol particles may be large but when the carrier evaporates the remaining small virus itself can be inhaled through a mask
Please quantify “larger”. Aerosolized virus was able to circulate in the air for 17 hours(!) and then subsequently grown in Vito.
"...grown in 'Vito'"? Do you mean "in vivo" or "in vitro"?
Happy to oblige: 10
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Aerosol-particles-size-distribution-schematic-diagram-for-various-parameters-in-an_fig1_263011250
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32717211/
Anyway the size of an oxygen molecule O2, or Methane, is much smaller than the size of a virus. The virus has many many atoms.
So?
...well, pFauci sez that if you double-underwear, the smell is reduced to safe levels!
Yep. I posted an article on this yesterday. It is a bizarre study and the Minister should resign for tweeting it. I do wonder if the professor that is listed as the last author on the paper knew his name would be on it. If so, he should probably resign in disgrace as well
I thought a bunch of grad students, poorly supervised, yet the authors can be found on Goggle scholar.
So, I have mentioned this about a hundred times, but it is pertinent, so here goes. Back in October of 2020, when I was *still* somewhat unsure of the banality of masking and therefore mask mandates, I visited the CDC website. My goal was to complete what I was calling my Masking Nomological Network of Cumulative Evidence, mask-nom-net, for short. Basically, all the evidence I could find, pro or con on masking, from all sources I could find. Upon that visit to the CDC cite, I downloaded EVERY link to the studies they cited, and started reading. They had 19 studies cited at that time. The first 9 did not mention masking. They were not even about masking. (No, I am not kidding.) The rest of them were dicey or sucky, or both. So then, to hear this dude cite a study that IS about masking, but is crap, is actually an improvement in approach for these people. They will not give up on masks. At this point, and people like Jerome Adams' on Twitter is another example, they will keep gaslighting in favor of masks. Why? Unclear. The die is cast, though.
And Fauci too not giving up on masks. Pushing them on children. Just evil.
Luckily in April '20 I happily came across Denis Rancourt's, 'Masks Don't Work', where he cites over 20 studies ( most 10-30 yrs old), showing surgical masks and N95's offer little, if any, significant protection against respiratory borne illnesses.
And Fauci, Walensky, etc. know all this. It all comes down to control, try to keep the people in fear, to promote their agenda and profit from it.
At one point, the only source cited by the CDC for their dental guidelines was an unsourced PowerPoint from about ten years ago.
They know nobody actually reads beyond the headline. Well, almost nobody.
That is a fascinating point! As one more bit of trivia during my quest, I offer this. I returned to the CDC website, probably a year later, looking to update my mask-nom-net. They had, as one might expect, increased the number of studies cited. They had also kept the citations of the studies I mentioned above that said *nothing* about masks. However, they had removed the links that would take you to the PubMed (or wherever) website where the actual study could be found. If you wanted to see the cited study, you had to copy the words from their citation and search on your own! Cheeky bastards *knew* those studies were B.S., but kept them to make their list bigger! The levels of raw bullshitery to which the CDC will stoop has no limit.
Funny also, i don't find a 'Center for Disease Control' anywhere in the 30 enumerated powers of the Constitution.
Bet he has a picture of Fauci on his wall that he uses to pleasure himself.
hahaha...eeww!
O my gosh! That is a desperate act. I hope he fulfilled.
Biden forgot his when he visit the pope:)
Ewwww! The visuals!
"written in crayon"--priceless wit
this is going to be used to mask the college students again this fall in the US. that's probably the only reason for its existence - and they were paid to produce garbage that looks legit enough to mask all the kids.
no, i don't think so. it honestly looks like something a few naive/stupid medical students pooped out in 2020 and decided to put up as a preprint on a lark. too bad for them lauterbach (and other desperate mask brigadiers) seized on it and brought it to prominence.
::cringe::
Imagine being an overworked student, trying to get some extra credit, and then having a Health Minister tweet your nonsense for the whole world to see. What did they do to deserve this?! It's not like students don't come up with nonsense all the time. Most of the time, it just ends with a B+ (grade inflation and all that).
I don't feel sorry for them. Laziness and harm and those kids have a great future in the NIH.
At this point anyone that goes along with masking is getting what they deserve. College kids could simply en masse not wear masks, against any mandate. Instead They will just wear it because they want to or don’t care either way and it’s easier. I for one will never wear a mask again anywhere, and if asked to do so will simply ignore the request. I will have to be forcibly removed from places.
I’m currently at a food science conference in Pittsburgh - I’d say about 10-15% of people are masked. But the vast majority of mask wearers are young healthy students at minimal risk of adverse effects from covid. It’s just another virtue signal for them and they’ll comply en masse when the mask mandates are enacted again
God help us
I, too, have noticed that many of the remains maskers in my neck of the woods are the young. Sad.
They are just plainly stupid, nothing more. The same is the LGBT and the gay community.
Stupidity due to indoctrination.
Stupidity due to media indoctrination.
That reminds of these scenes from Close Encounters:
https://youtu.be/n_rvE_8naJI
https://youtu.be/_ys28U7dskw
I was thinking of that back in 2020.
Thank you!
Welcome in group, some of us started to do that last winter - it's very exciting exercise.
I was thinking the same thing
Suppose we make a graph of all mask studies, with the Y axis representing "Efficacy / Impact" found in the study, and the X axis represents the "Quality" of the study - using the EBM pyramid for reference, where as you move along the X axis you go from models, to case reports, to cohort studies, eventually to RCT, then to systemic reviews of RCTs, etc.
You would plot, for example, the Georgia Salon maybe at coordinates (X = 1, Y = 10), as it has low quality of evidence but claims high impact. The Bangladesh Mask study might be plotted at (X = 10, Y = 1), as it is a more rigorous level of evidence, but found weaker impact than Georgia Salon predicted.
Here is what is interesting about this thought experiment -
If you restrict this to only studies prior to 2020, plot the studies, and run a trendline, it's mostly a straight line. The impact (Y) doesn't have much variation as you move left to right on the evidence standards.
This is because the scientific community was dispassionate about community masking - there was no political allegiance to the masks, no need for them to work. You weren't guaranteed to be published by the CDC, Nature, Science, or other "prestigious" journals merely for writing about the value of masks.
Repeat the process for the post 2020 mask studies, and suddenly the trendline has a sharp negative slope as you move from weak evidence to the stronger evidence - a clear sign that bias and intent has corrupted the hypothesis. All the strongest "evidence" is found in the lowest tier of science which is the easiest data to spin and corrupt to meet your claims (see, Wakefield). The Kansas Mask, Salon, the various models - all of which failed real world replication ("If 80% wore a mask the virus would be extinguished" - lol) are suddenly high on the efficacy Y axis.
It's crazy that these morons can't easily see this.
Why can I only "like" this once?
I wonder what the intersection is between the hand-picked 13, and the studies Hector Drummond has dissected in his book.
Every person I know that wore a mask religiously over the last two plus years got covid (of course they were vaxxed too) and every person that didn't didn't! In fact, some of them got it twice!
Multiple bouts of covid is a feature--not a bug--of being vaccinated. #ROFL
but drag us into horrible situations
Eh, instinct is to 'fit in'. We are the abnormal, we who think.
Face diaper stupitity study again lol. The best mask I've seen to data is of a Mexican laborer getting off work, jumping into his beatup pickup truck, wearing his Huggies babywipe softpack cover homemade mask, turning on the radio, opening the dispenser flip top on his mask, and taking a big long swig of his ice cold Corona bottled beer. Hilarious. The best ever ha, ha, ha. PS I think the clip was on TikTok last summer.
i wish there was a way to do a double-blind study of one group wearing surgical masks and the second group in bullet proof vests & compare results
This goes really well together with your earlier point about how to lie without telling lies: the study lies in its intent, but not in its words, so neither does Lauterbach.
We've seen it before, haven't we? "90% of climate scientists agree..."
Now, if we could only find a way to inoculate people against believing stuff like this before having checked it out...
Not discounting or disputing that in any way. My memories of university is mainly that it was a competition in social and cognitive conformity and ditto creativity and research only allowed along already set and predetermined vectors.
I'd add real life experience to that sentiment you express, due to that all the really knowledgable and competent teachers (as in knowing how to teach, not just parroting 'lookupable' facts) were men and women who had come to academia and teaching after at least ten years of real life outside the institutions.
One man I remember had been crew on trans-oceanic cargo ships, done time for fighting, put himself through mechanic's school and the added a teacher's degree when he was almost 40.
I think that's what's needed. I mean, who knows economy best: a university economist, upper middle class background, never lacking or wanting for anything, well read on all theory, knows all the big names and terms and can do the "advanced" math of economics and finance - or a single mother of three, working 60 hour weeks as a cleaner or at a laundry or sitting behing the register at Lidl?
My money is on the mother, because she knows what's what in reality.
Yes! The mama bears know. The mama bears won't take it either.
I was lucky enough to be at Uni in the 80s. And people debated me, and sometimes even changed my mind.
What can I say..? My neck is tired from shaking my head in disbelief....
Still haven't gotten COVID. Unvaxxed and unmasked. Took Ivermectin for 8 month prophylacticly. But also haven't been sick since 2007. And I travelled internationally by late. Are there many out there never got it yet? What's the percentage?
You probably had it and shook it off.