[Ski]

[Randito]

[Ski]

2 + 2 = 5 RE: previous post from the other Covid thread RE: previous post from the other Covid thread I cannot help but be greatly amused by the persistence of members who continue to insist, based on anecdotal evidence presented by a local radio talk-show host with a BA in politics, that the drug hydroxychloroquine is going to provide some panacea for the Covid-19 virus, notwithstanding a recently posted article (here) co-authored by a well-credentialed journalist and published author and a well-credentialed doctor and journalist and a paper authored by several medical professionals which concludes that the claims previously made by the aforementioned radio talk-show host (as well as Mr. Trump) are clearly without merit. More egregiously, it is being argued that the refutation of the claims previously made regarding hydroxychloroquine by medical professionals somehow constitute a "war on science" (a term co-opted from the title of a 2016 book written by Shawn Otto ) or a "media jihad", a term used by various academics who use the term to describe the tactics used by radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS, recently co-opted as a dog-whistle sound-bite term by Attorney General William Barr during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. I say amused because I cannot take seriously the regurgitation of the dog-whistle sound-bite terms being inserted into what is ostensibly being presented as fact-based dialog, when in fact it is only thinly-guised agenda-driven political palaver. Take note that the argument is presented not once, but rather repeatedly, a text-book example right out of the Josef Goebbels playbook: "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." The point at which this becomes not just outrageously ridiculous, but dangerous, is when people begin to actually believe this sort of nonsense, and view as acceptable the practice of co-opting terms commonly used in the parlance of what is viewed as "the opposition", subsequently assigning diametrically opposed definitions to those terms, and then utilizing them in ways which fit their own agenda and narrative. It is at that point we enter the universe of Winston Smith, where up is down, black is white, and 2 + 2 = 5. == There is a great, albeit lengthy, dissertation by Mr. Otto HERE see also: https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1183673#1183673 (in which nwhikers.net member Kaskadia accurately and succinctly assesses these arguments: “The other stuff is a distraction/cultural war/political material.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-war-on-science-kudlow-fauci.html https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-really-a-war-on-science/ https://www.c-span.org/video/?411578-1/the-war-science https://www.stratcomcoe.org/media-jihad-islamic-states-doctrine-information-warfare https://www.nationalreview.com/news/barr-slams-media-jihad-aimed-at-discrediting-hydroxychloroquine/ https://thehill.com/homenews/media/491936-barr-claims-media-is-on-jihad-against-trump-over-promotion-of-anti-malaria https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/trump-malaria-drug-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-study-results-virginia-20200421.html (Philadelphia Inquirer 04/21/20) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf 2545

[Cyclopath]

[treeswarper]

[BigBrunyon]

Vegas is willin' to go down gamblin': https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/vegas-mayors-coronavirus-plan-dumbfounds-anderson-cooper.html

[Tom]

As someone else said hard to tell the onion from the news these days.

[Cyclopath]

[neek]

Models show that if 80 percent of people wear masks that are 60 percent effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R0 of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease. So, starting tomorrow: mandate mask wearing in public, and open things back up (maintaining social distancing requirements and the large group ban). Objections? Again, I'm not at all convinced health/economy is a zero sum game. Maybe I'm glossing over some details, but as was pointed out earlier, nuance has gone out of style.

[Randito]

[Cyclopath]

[Cyclopath]

[Ski]

Great find, neek. The first question that comes to mind, however, is how do we implement this in a country where half the population is capable of rational thought, and the other half is more concerned about their putative "freedom" and "rights"? If it were made mandatory, say, by an executive order, it creates an entirely new set of problems with respect to enforcement. We already have a moronic Shonomish County Sheriff who publicly announced his refusal to enforce the State Chief Executive's "Stay at Home" order. In a nation where stupidity reigns supreme, I just don't see a level of compliance that would result in significant enough results to make the wearing of masks mandatory. Perhaps it was the woman standing in front of me in line, waiting to get into Trader Joe's earlier this afternoon, insisting that it was "just the regular old flu" that causes me to lose all faith in the ability of the majority of Americans to actually use their brains.

[Ski]

And just in case you haven't had a good enough dose of "stupid" today...

[treeswarper]

It'll be Tide Pods all over again!! I think he's trying to be sciency and failing miserably.