Old friends who have gone full moon howler

[carpetmonster]

3 minutes ago, Detournement said:

He mass murdered some Beagles anyway. 

Beagles started it, mouthy c***s 

 

[ICTChris]

If you find yourself continually losing friends over them becoming moonhowlers there’s a big chance that it’s you who have become a moon howler.

[sugna]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

... unvaccinated people are having no problems with Covid but aye deciding not to take the vaccine is moonhowler stuff.....

A quick note on this, as even highly numerate people appear to be taken in by some such claims.

We measure "effectiveness" of measures in a fairly universal way. That is, the same methodology is used whether we're talking about avoiding infection, hospitalization or death; and whether that's based upon a particular vaccine or some other modality; and whether it relates to COVID, measles, etc.; and whether it's in Scotland or some other place.

We state all of those other parameters to give the context.

Effectiveness as a percentage indicates how many in an equivalent untreated sample of 100 that would suffer the fate are "saved".

Data is available for many countries for COVID, each source being independent of the others. Bearing in mind the definition of effectiveness, I would encourage people to decide in advance the question they want answered (to avoid cherry-picking/inadvertent data-mining), then go and look at the primary data.

In the case of vaccination against COVID, in Scottish data sets, effectiveness against mortality was 94% (last time I looked, and for the other parameters I looked at such as vaccine variant).

That means that, for every 6 vaccinated people in a particular sample size who die after contracting COVID, 100 unvaccinated people in a sample of the same size who have also contracted COVID die.

Sorry that's so long. I've had to simplify it a bit or it would have been longer. But without the preamble it's not easy to explain effectiveness and why not being vaccinated brings a much higher relative risk of dying from COVID following infection.

[Detournement]

7 minutes ago, sugna said:

Effectiveness as a percentage indicates how many in an equivalent untreated sample of 100 that would suffer the fate are "saved"

In the case of vaccination against COVID, in Scottish data sets, effectiveness against mortality was 94% (last time I looked, and for the other parameters I looked at such as vaccine variant).

That means that, for every 6 vaccinated people in a particular sample size who die after contracting COVID, 100 unvaccinated people in a sample of the same size who have also contracted COVID die.

Firstly the Scottish and UK governments no longer produce vaxxed Vs unvaxxed stats so you don't have a clue what the current situation is. 

Secondly when they were producing those stats they were useless bevause they included large numbers of people who had been vaccinated as unvaccinated. 

Third there were never enough unvaccinated people in the vulnerable groups to draw any conclusions anyway and factors such as substance abuse and pre existing terminal illness could easily distort any attempt to do so. 

Fourth if you believe there are currently 17 unvaccinated people dying due to Covid for every vaccinated death you are tuned to the moon. 

For anyone outside the vulnerable groups the only reasons to take the vaccine were reduced symptoms and transmission neither of which were actually delivered by the vaccination program. 

 

[Florentine_Pogen]

20 minutes ago, sugna said:

A quick note on this, as even highly numerate people appear to be taken in by some such claims.

We measure "effectiveness" of measures in a fairly universal way. That is, the same methodology is used whether we're talking about avoiding infection, hospitalization or death; and whether that's based upon a particular vaccine or some other modality; and whether it relates to COVID, measles, etc.; and whether it's in Scotland or some other place.

We state all of those other parameters to give the context.

Effectiveness as a percentage indicates how many in an equivalent untreated sample of 100 that would suffer the fate are "saved".

Data is available for many countries for COVID, each source being independent of the others. Bearing in mind the definition of effectiveness, I would encourage people to decide in advance the question they want answered (to avoid cherry-picking/inadvertent data-mining), then go and look at the primary data.

In the case of vaccination against COVID, in Scottish data sets, effectiveness against mortality was 94% (last time I looked, and for the other parameters I looked at such as vaccine variant).

That means that, for every 6 vaccinated people in a particular sample size who die after contracting COVID, 100 unvaccinated people in a sample of the same size who have also contracted COVID die.

Sorry that's so long. I've had to simplify it a bit or it would have been longer. But without the preamble it's not easy to explain effectiveness and why not being vaccinated brings a much higher relative risk of dying from COVID following infection.

 

4 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Firstly the Scottish and UK governments no longer produce vaxxed Vs unvaxxed stats so you don't have a clue what the current situation is. 

Secondly when they were producing those stats they were useless bevause they included large numbers of people who had been vaccinated as unvaccinated. 

Third there were never enough unvaccinated people in the vulnerable groups to draw any conclusions anyway and factors such as substance abuse and pre existing terminal illness could easily distort any attempt to do so. 

Fourth if you believe there are currently 17 unvaccinated people dying due to Covid for every vaccinated death you are tuned to the moon. 

For anyone outside the vulnerable groups the only reasons to take the vaccine were reduced symptoms and transmission neither of which were actually delivered by the vaccination program. 

 

There's a COVID thread for this pish.

 

[Dan Steele]

[ICTChris]

What about a family member who goes moon-howler?

I saw this tweet

referring to the actress Sydney Sweeney, who hosted a hoedown themed party for her mums 60th. The party had MAGA hats with ‘Make Sixty Great Again’ on them and someone had a Blue Lives Matter shirt on.

The tweet seems a bit strange to me but would people ever cut off a family member over politics or conspiracy theories etc? I think there’s a whole genre of stories regarding people whose parents embrace QAnon and stuff like that. Is this just a yank thing or is it common in Britain/Scotland?  

[sugna]

50 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Fourth if you believe there are currently 17 unvaccinated people dying due to Covid for every vaccinated death you are tuned to the moon. 

For anyone outside the vulnerable groups the only reasons to take the vaccine were reduced symptoms and transmission neither of which were actually delivered by the vaccination program. 

 

On the first of those points, if you think I was describing my belief at any point then I apologize for not being sufficiently clear: I was explaining what "effectiveness" means, and why I think that understanding that would help people understand the data when supplementary analysis of the data uses effectiveness as a discriminant.

There are (were) indeed nothing like 17 unvaccinated people dying due to COVID  for every unvaccinated death. I tried hard to strike the balance between giving enough information to describe the metric, and not giving too much for a post in a non-specialist forum. I actually thought I had covered the point you cite with enough clarity. As a statistician I used to work with was wont to say, "It's not difficult, but it is complicated!" Effectiveness is a proxy for "relative risk", not for "absolute risk". You've inferred absolute risk. I did try to make that distinction clear, sorry I didn't.

At the point when I looked at the data, the effectiveness against mortality of the vaccine I looked at was 94%. If (for example) 1 person in 20 in the demographic being sampled was unvaccinated, then absolute death rate from COVID in the vaccinated cohort would be higher than that in the unvaccinated cohort. This actually happened at one point, and was the source of some claims that "you're more likely to die from COVID if you're vaccinated".,

On the second of those, I would again return to the data. Whatever "reasons" (another subjective term, like "believe") are cited, the data shows significant effectiveness of COVID vaccination against both hospitalization and mortality, for some different age groups, regardless of underlying conditions.

However, I know that people have strong views on COVID, including vaccination (I don't, I'm only really interested in understanding the data); so I'll leave that there, and you can consider whether or not you think I am vaccinated. A paradoxical clue: there is actually no clue in anything that I've written.

[sugna]

1 hour ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

 

There's a COVID thread for this pish.

 

Apologies.

[carpetmonster]

55 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

What about a family member who goes moon-howler?

I saw this tweet

referring to the actress Sydney Sweeney, who hosted a hoedown themed party for her mums 60th. The party had MAGA hats with ‘Make Sixty Great Again’ on them and someone had a Blue Lives Matter shirt on.

The tweet seems a bit strange to me but would people ever cut off a family member over politics or conspiracy theories etc? I think there’s a whole genre of stories regarding people whose parents embrace QAnon and stuff like that. Is this just a yank thing or is it common in Britain/Scotland?  

Primarily a yank thing at the minute, I think, although QAnon seems to have made ground in Australia and Germany. The  US is a perfect storm tho; they’re religious, education levels aren’t what they are in Europe, and the likes of Fox News can give you as much weaponised pish as your wee brain can soak up. 

I think some folks could be susceptible - my old bat has a tendency to believe what she reads and gave me it how it was dreadful how the rail workers were striking when they made lots more than some folks, until I pointed out to her the papers had been massaging driver wages into the figure and the drivers weren’t out. So far I don’t think anyone in the UK’s interested enough in Piers Morgan or Andrew Neil for the media to become quite as horrendous as it is over here. I think lack of religiosity and the European slant toward cynicism that (certainly white) America doesn’t have means that shit should be more fringe. At least for now. 

 

[Ziggy]

3 hours ago, Detournement said:

 

When was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome invented again?

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/theres-nothing-new-about-sudden-adult-death-syndrome/
 

According to the link it has been referred to since the 1800s and studied from the 1970s but I’m guessing you won’t agree with it.

[Detournement]

56 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/theres-nothing-new-about-sudden-adult-death-syndrome/
 

According to the link it has been referred to since the 1800s and studied from the 1970s but I’m guessing you won’t agree with it.

Congratulations for going to the world's worst country for a fact check. 

[Shandon Par]

My friends were mainly moonhowlers to start and are mainly dead or not friends with me any more. The dog likes me though. He howls through the cat flap sometimes.

[Ziggy]

18 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Congratulations for going to the world's worst country for a fact check. 

It was just the one I happened to pick.
 

What’s your alternative theory?

[Melanius Mullarkey]

5 hours ago, Detournement said:

Excess deaths are sky high and officially unexplained  and unvaccinated people are having no problems with Covid but aye deciding not to take the vaccine is moonhowler stuff.....

When was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome invented again?

Exhibit A to Z.

[Hillonearth]

Yeah, I've got one on my FB that falls into that category...ironically what seemed to unhinge him wasn't the loss of an actual job over the course of the pandemic like happened to so many, but the lack of opportunities for his fairly lucrative nighttime side gig in a function band.

Previously when I thought of him - which admittedly wasn't too often as he's one of those guys who inhabits that FB netherworld consisting of people you know but are unlikely to ever make plans to actually meet up with - I always considered him a fairly sorted and decent guy, but as things progressed, he went from an understandable healthy scepticism to long deranged posts, Youtube links to three hours of some Yank ranting and attachment to and espousal of every conspiracy theory going.

AFAIK he's not a flat-earther just yet, but it's surely in the post.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Hillonearth

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

It was just the one I happened to pick.
 

What’s your alternative theory?

Probably better to pick one where the Prime Minister didn't give himself secret powers over the entire government for two years. If they will lie about that I doubt their fact checking is up to much. 

My theory - backed up by excess death stats - is that a lot more people  are dropping dead than there used to be and politicians who were doing daily public health briefings not long aren't at all interested. 

 

[Ziggy]

8 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Probably better to pick one where the Prime Minister didn't give himself secret powers over the entire government for two years. If they will lie about that I doubt their fact checking is up to much. 

My theory - backed up by excess death stats - is that a lot more people  are dropping dead than there used to be and politicians who were doing daily public health briefings not long aren't at all interested. 

 

The question you asked was 

“When was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome invented again?”

I was wondering when you thought it was invented?

 

[Detournement]

22 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

The question you asked was 

“When was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome invented again?”

I was wondering when you thought it was invented?

 

This year. 

Sudden arrthymic death syndrome seems to have been around for longer. 

[Satoshi]

For any conspiracy theory friends - voodoo history by David Aaronovitch is a good book to recommend although it's almost 15 years old now so there's probably a more up to date one that covers similar themes.

For me conspiracy theorists are displaying a clear sign of insecurity, it's a way to show they are more intelligent and tuned in than others. And some people just like being unorthodox.

I try and avoid a social media echo chamber by following groups from across the political spectrum (follow, not like) but sadly grown up right wing content (not centrist) is virtually impossible to find. If you're banging on about imaginary culture wars is because you don't have anything worth promoting - or that you think your target audience will understand.

In real life though I very much do live in a bubble with my friend group - pretty much all of whom do have a cosmopolitan, international perspective. I certainly don't align politically with most members of my family but not to the extent it would particularly harm any relationships.

One thing I have experienced is that even some of the intellectual elite* in SE Asia (where I'm currently based) have an apparently genuine dislike of white people - despite dating white people, and often studying / living in the UK. It's a casually racist attitude that was quite surprising to me, although for all I know there are valid reasons for it.

*The kind getting full ride scholarships to Oxbridge and walking into fancy government jobs.

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Satoshi