A Fifth of Coronavirus

[BruceVC]

39 minutes ago, rjshae said:

This was an interesting read on anti-mask behavior:

Negative attitudes about facemasks during the COVID-19 pandemic: The dual importance of perceived ineffectiveness and psychological reactance

There's a disturbing conclusion at the end:

Yoikes. Well that explains certain news stories.

https://nypost.com/2021/06/14/woman-killed-in-supermarket-for-telling-man-to-wear-a-mask/

Simply asking someone to wear their mask can lead to you getting shot, that concerns me immensely 

[213374U]

16 hours ago, rjshae said:

This was an interesting read on anti-mask behavior:

Negative attitudes about facemasks during the COVID-19 pandemic: The dual importance of perceived ineffectiveness and psychological reactance

Wait. Is this science now?

I'm asking because I can't tell, what with all the cherrypicking going on regarding scientific papers.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I always found it interesting that there was so much more focus on people wearing masks than on cramped poorly ventilated workplaces people who couldn't work from home got packed into to make the meat grinder go brrrrrr. For example, in California at least, line cooks had the biggest rise in mortality, presumably because of the rona. Perhaps this is because blaming the dip**** who can't put on a piece of cloth for five minutes is easier than looking too closely at labor conditions, which would require more than finger wagging to fix.

Anyways soon I will have the microchip and will become a Gates supersoldier or whatever is supposed to happen.

[majestic]

7 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Anyways soon I will have the microchip and will become a Gates supersoldier or whatever is supposed to happen.

Your eyesight is replaced by a really neat T-800 style tracking user interface. You may or may not develop a slight German accent in the process, can't tell, obviously. Uhm, assuming you'll be getting Moderna there, can't vouch for the others. Not sure if they have the same microchips.

Anyway, you definitely can't unlock your phone with it, I tried. From what I gathered, you can open your garage remotely. I woudln't know, I don't have a garage. *shrug*

[Gfted1]

^It doesnt work for garage doors. I still have to push the button on my mirror like a savage.  

[Malcador]

28 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Anyways soon I will have the microchip and will become a Gates supersoldier or whatever is supposed to happen.

Remember. Stick with the Prod.

[Zoraptor]

People say that vaccination doesn't really do anything, but my wifi has improved noticeably and the amount of buffering I've got has dropped a lot so I'm theorising that the vaccine makes you act like an antenna or signal booster at very least. You can also tell who the microchips were manufactured by, if you get a fever after the injection you know it was an Intel based dose since their chips are well known for operating at 100 degrees.

31 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I always found it interesting that there was so much more focus on people wearing masks than on cramped poorly ventilated workplaces people who couldn't work from home got packed into to make the meat grinder go brrrrrr. For example, in California at least, line cooks had the biggest rise in mortality, presumably because of the rona. Perhaps this is because blaming the dip**** who can't put on a piece of cloth for five minutes is easier than looking too closely at labor conditions, which would require more than finger wagging to fix.

Yep, the fundamental thing about standard (ie non medical grade) facemasks is that they may reduce the risk to others, but they don't come anywhere close to eliminating it. Same for social distancing. If you're constantly exposed for a long period in an enclosed space then nothing except for innate luck will stop you getting it. And yes, if you're in the typical light industrial or production type workplace it will spread like wildfire because even a large reduction in incidental chance of infection gets overwhelmed if the contact isn't incidental but is systematic. That's also why so many medical personnel get covid, despite all the precautions and training; constant low chance of transmission adds up massively over time.

To be fair, I'm sure there are papers on how industrial type working conditions contribute- and reporting too, certainly at the start there was a lot of reports on spread via abatoirs and the like. Fundamentally, 'industrial design' isn't fixable without redesigning the entire economy though which cannot be done short term whereas wearing a mask or social distancing is a quick 'fix', so one gets picked over the other. And it also has to be said, if you did fix that problem it would likely be via increased automation, leaving the former employees without work.

[Malcador]

Surprised no conspiracy hack has linked the vaccine to the semiconductor shortage.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Surprised no conspiracy hack has linked the vaccine to the semiconductor shortage.

You're on to something there. Make a Telegram account, post a bit and you'll have a couple hundred thousand followers in no time.  

 

[rjshae]

2 hours ago, 213374U said:

Wait. Is this science now?

I'm asking because I can't tell, what with all the cherrypicking going on regarding scientific papers.

Yes it's science. I got curious about the psychology of anti-masking beliefs, so I went looking for useful papers. Most of that 2021 paper isn't especially controversial, and, tellingly, it has already been cited by at least 10 other papers, so it's not exactly fringe theory stuff. I just found that one statement about psychopathic personality traits rather interesting.

[213374U]

Good to know that the official threshold for science is 10 citations. It's a pity that the paper we were discussing at the start of this thread only had 9. Just one citation away from being science -- alas, it will instead languish next to the likes of phrenology, the luminiferous aether  and bloodletting, forevermore.

I mean, I guess I could dismiss it out of hand because it could be argued that that one sentence is meant to draw headlines, but I'm not going to do that. Because it's science.

[rjshae]

8 minutes ago, 213374U said:

Good to know that the official threshold for science is 10 citations. It's a pity that the paper we were discussing at the start of this thread only had 9. Just one citation away from being science -- alas, it will instead languish next to the likes of phrenology, the luminiferous aether  and bloodletting, forevermore.

I mean, I guess I could dismiss it out of hand because it could be argued that that one sentence is meant to draw headlines, but I'm not going to do that. Because it's science.

Are you trying to troll me or something? Have you even looked at the paper? The threshold is set by peer review. The fact that it has been cited ten times in four months suggests it's fairly mainstream thinking. But thanks for your particularly unhelpful observations.

[213374U]

1 minute ago, rjshae said:

Have you even looked at the paper? The threshold is set by peer review.

That's a laugh, coming from you.

[rjshae]

20 minutes ago, 213374U said:

That's a laugh, coming from you.

I see. Thanks moderator, I forgive you. 

Edited June 18, 2021 by rjshae

[rjshae]

3 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I always found it interesting that there was so much more focus on people wearing masks than on cramped poorly ventilated workplaces people who couldn't work from home got packed into to make the meat grinder go brrrrrr. For example, in California at least, line cooks had the biggest rise in mortality, presumably because of the rona. Perhaps this is because blaming the dip**** who can't put on a piece of cloth for five minutes is easier than looking too closely at labor conditions, which would require more than finger wagging to fix.

I think it has more to do with scale. Mask wearing and social distancing effects the global spread, whereas protecting line cooks presumably only impacts a few. The goal is to reduce the viral replication rate in the whole population, which in turn will (hopefully) help lower the risk for line cooks.

[rjshae]

[BruceVC]

4 hours ago, rjshae said:

Are you trying to troll me or something? Have you even looked at the paper? The threshold is set by peer review. The fact that it has been cited ten times in four months suggests it's fairly mainstream thinking. But thanks for your particularly unhelpful observations.

Just ignore him Rjshae, sarcasm from 2133 is his way of  contributing  constructively  towards many debates

Its an insecurity and not worth getting annoyed about. Its a pity because he is a bright and interesting guy when he tries 

Edited June 18, 2021 by BruceVC

[Amentep]

15 hours ago, majestic said:

From what I gathered, you can open your garage remotely. I woudln't know, I don't have a garage. *shrug*

 

15 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

^It doesnt work for garage doors. I still have to push the button on my mirror like a savage.  

I think its not "your garage door" but "a garage door".  Somewhere in the middle of Idaho, there's a guy really pissed off about his garage door opening and closing by itself at random.  He crossed Bill Gates once, in 1962.

12 hours ago, rjshae said:

Are you trying to troll me or something? Have you even looked at the paper? The threshold is set by peer review. The fact that it has been cited ten times in four months suggests it's fairly mainstream thinking. But thanks for your particularly unhelpful observations.

To try to move this away from us continuing to take personal shots at one another, citation only means someone wanted to reference it in their work (we don't know if the citation is to support or refute unless there was somewhere on the linked page to see how it was cited).  Peer review has been demonstrated to be a dodgy gatekeeper (see any of the instances where hard scientists troll the soft-science journals with made up nonsense papers using buzzwords and get them published despite supposed peer review).

This doesn't mean that the paper has no merits or isn't worth more research to dig deeper into, but I also wouldn't say that my skim through the paper left me convinced by it. Partially this is because I'm a little concerned about the data gathering, but I have to confess its been 20 years since I've had to look at any kind of valid random sampling and don't know how the processes have moved on in the internet age and what kind of validity or skew may be involved.  The other part is the data is correlative, which I tend to find worrisome in trying to draw conclusions from since without further random sample study you may be drawing a conclusion based on correlation that isn't actually there.

Lines like "PR is strongly correlated (r = .51) with psychopathic personality traits such as a tendency toward angry, impulsive behavior [46]. Accordingly, confronting people who refuse to wear masks could be hazardous. Indeed, there have been media reports of people reacting violently when confronted about not wearing masks." seems worryingly like a conclusion (based on news reports) that someone wanted to back up with data (as there seems to be no mention of media reports of people reacting violently when confronting a person not wearing a mask as that would detract from the paper writers goal).

But hey, I'm not a psychologist and my statistics studies are waaaaaaaay behind me.

[Malcador]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/astra-zeneca-second-shots-stop-1.6069838

Not surprising we have people wanting a particular vaccine here. 

[213374U]

1 hour ago, Amentep said:

Lines like "PR is strongly correlated (r = .51) with psychopathic personality traits such as a tendency toward angry, impulsive behavior [46]. Accordingly, confronting people who refuse to wear masks could be hazardous. Indeed, there have been media reports of people reacting violently when confronted about not wearing masks." seems worryingly like a conclusion (based on news reports) that someone wanted to back up with data (as there seems to be no mention of media reports of people reacting violently when confronting a person not wearing a mask as that would detract from the paper writers goal).

To be honest, I don't have an issue with the paper in general.

However, that last bit seems to be both a tangential footnote, and poorly substantiated, seeing as how it's entirely based on a rather suspect application of the transitive property. The paper cites another paper to support this, which says PR remains "a salient factor" for psychopathy. And this study shows PR plays an important role in anti-mask attitudes, therefore anti-maskers are psychopaths. Neither paper does actually study the correlation between psychopathy and anti-mask attitudes.

Seems like someone went fishing for "anti-maskers are psychopaths", found this paper and just ran with it. Because, science.

yeahsciencebitch.jpeg

[rjshae]

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/astra-zeneca-second-shots-stop-1.6069838

Not surprising we have people wanting a particular vaccine here. 

Some people choose astra-zeneca specifically because it uses existing well-tested vaccine technology and isn't an experimental mRNA vaccine. I don't think they'll be happy about it.

[rjshae]

n/m

Edited June 19, 2021 by rjshae

[rjshae]

20 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Just ignore him Rjshae, sarcasm from 2133 is his way of  contributing  constructively  towards many debates

Its an insecurity and not worth getting annoyed about. Its a pity because he is a bright and interesting guy when he tries 

Thanks. Yes it's funny what will trigger some people. I just thought it was an interesting curiosity.

[Gorth]

4 hours ago, rjshae said:

Some people choose astra-zeneca specifically because it uses existing well-tested vaccine technology and isn't an experimental mRNA vaccine. I don't think they'll be happy about it.

I chose the exact opposite, following my native country's health advice (Denmark has completely banned AZ and J&J for human use). That from a country that currently has its own DNA based vaccine in trial testing, as an alternative to the mRNA vaccines).

Bear in mind, BioNTech (the company that developed the vaccine commonly just called 'Pfizer') is not new to the technology, it wasn't something that sprung up overnight. The two brothers (Turkish immigrants who moved to Germany in some distant past) that runs the company has been doing a decades worth of research in mRNA technology searching for treatments of cancers. Somehow they just got the bright idea it might also work if put to triggering the immune system against Covid virus (not at least thanks to some hefty support by the German government). Pfizer was necessary, as a small company has nowhere near the manufacturing capacity nor the overseas distribution network that a giant like Pfizer has.

[213374U]

8 hours ago, rjshae said:

Thanks. Yes it's funny what will trigger some people. I just thought it was an interesting curiosity.

I see your "triggering" and raise you some "projecting". I simply pointed out selectiveness and seemingly arbitrary thresholds for accepting something as "science". Your reactions and obsessive editing betray way more "triggering" than anything I've said.