185 replies to this topic

[Dorian Grey]

Why would most doctors nearly everywhere not follow the standard of care for everything else except for covid?

 

Remdesivir was approved in Q4 2020 in the US, and didn't become instantly available worldwide anyway.

 

Is there any good evidence that psychological factors caused millions of deaths?

 

I agree that public health officials like Fauci should be held accountable, if that's legally possible, but OTOH, the necessary and direct cause of excess deaths is covid. Without covid, there would be no excess deaths. Sure, expert incompetence is a significant factor (e.g., respirator use wasn't recommended), but when someone dies in a poison gas attack, the direct cause of death is "poison gas," not "failing to wear a gas mask."

 

Doctors wanted to put patients on vents as that is the only way to avoid them exhaling to room air.  The doctors & nurses were scared, and the policy makers were worried if the COVID fatality rate turned out to be substantially higher, doctors & nurses would simply quit or "hurt their back" and be out on work comp TFN.  

 

Remdesivir was granted EUA on May 1 (Mayday, Mayday, Mayday; "run, death is near").  They had to offer up something, and this shunted efforts at outpatient care with HCQ onto a back burner (where it was left to go cold).  Perfect to preserve the vaccine and Paxlovid EUAs, as it was an inpatient IV only infusion.  

 

I'm an old man, & not afraid of death, but I did a lot of thinking about my mortality back in 2020, and recall every night as I went to bed, wondering if this was the night I was going to wake up sick with fever.  I also remember thinking if I was younger, I might have despaired into self destructive behavior.  There were many who were saying "this would never end", and I recall the shock & surprise when reports on omicron coming out of Africa were saying the virus was mutating into a much more benign infection.  

 

If you wish to hold anyone accountable, Fauci more than anyone helped put the kibosh on any and all outpatient treatment.  "Stay at home...  Make sure you're alone...  Call 911 if you start turning blue, & we'll haul you in for some remdesivir & a vent.  DESPICABLE!  Hope I live long enough to spit on his grave.  

[Florin]

Doctors wanted to put patients on vents as that is the only way to avoid them exhaling to room air.  The doctors & nurses were scared, and the policy makers were worried if the COVID fatality rate turned out to be substantially higher, doctors & nurses would simply quit or "hurt their back" and be out on work comp TFN.  

 

Remdesivir was granted EUA on May 1 (Mayday, Mayday, Mayday; "run, death is near").  They had to offer up something, and this shunted efforts at outpatient care with HCQ onto a back burner (where it was left to go cold).  Perfect to preserve the vaccine and Paxlovid EUAs, as it was an inpatient IV only infusion.  

 

I'm an old man, & not afraid of death, but I did a lot of thinking about my mortality back in 2020, and recall every night as I went to bed, wondering if this was the night I was going to wake up sick with fever.  I also remember thinking if I was younger, I might have despaired into self destructive behavior.  There were many who were saying "this would never end", and I recall the shock & surprise when reports on omicron coming out of Africa were saying the virus was mutating into a much more benign infection.  

 

If you wish to hold anyone accountable, Fauci more than anyone helped put the kibosh on any and all outpatient treatment.  "Stay at home...  Make sure you're alone...  Call 911 if you start turning blue, & we'll haul you in for some remdesivir & a vent.  DESPICABLE!  Hope I live long enough to spit on his grave.  

 

I doubt your vent claims, because for a long time, almost everyone thought that the virus wasn't airborne. The only time the virus was thought to be airborne was during the intubation procedure that's done when people are put on vents.

 

I wasn't aware of the EUA, but the initial Italy and New York City covid death wave happened before May. And much of the rest of the world didn't have access to Remdesivir for some time.

 

Fauci and his counterparts in the rest of the world tried to imitate what China and other Asian countries were doing. It seemed to work even without therapeutics, and they simply followed their lead. When it started to not work so well for the rest of the world, they didn't know what else to do and simply doubled down on the same stuff until a vaccine would arrive or the virus became much milder.

 

But why was stuff like Remdesivir and Paxlovid used and others ignored? The most charitable reason has to be that they simply interpreted the evidence differently than you have. I haven't look at that evidence in too much detail, so I have no strong opinion about it.

[Dorian Grey]

I doubt your vent claims, because for a long time, almost everyone thought that the virus wasn't airborne. The only time the virus was thought to be airborne was during the intubation procedure that's done when people are put on vents.

 

I wasn't aware of the EUA, but the initial Italy and New York City covid death wave happened before May. And much of the rest of the world didn't have access to Remdesivir for some time.

 

Fauci and his counterparts in the rest of the world tried to imitate what China and other Asian countries were doing. It seemed to work even without therapeutics, and they simply followed their lead. When it started to not work so well for the rest of the world, they didn't know what else to do and simply doubled down on the same stuff until a vaccine would arrive or the virus became much milder.

 

But why was stuff like Remdesivir and Paxlovid used and others ignored? The most charitable reason has to be that they simply interpreted the evidence differently than you have. I haven't look at that evidence in too much detail, so I have no strong opinion about it.

 

Yes, there was an odd initial obsession about fomites early on, but it's absurd to believe nurses & doctors weren't worried about dozens of patients in open ICUs sick with plague of unknown lethality coughing and wheezing all about them.  Why do you think Fauci initially lied about masks?  Because he feared there might be a shortage, and you can't treat patients with respiratory plague without PPE.  Put them on a closed circuit vent & staff can breathe freely.  This was common knowledge inside the hospitals.  

 

So the COVID pandemic/panic had largely died down by May 1 2020?  Really?  While we're re-writing history, why don't we eliminate slavery, and get all this racial tension out of the way?  How much for an ounce of whatever it is you're smokin'?  

 

The rest of the world was begging their doctors to treat their patients with anything they thought might help, and they did.  USA and those who followed the leader banning outpatient treatment had case fatality rates much worse than countries who allowed their GPs to roll up their sleeves and DO SOMETHING rather than taking a year or two off.  If remdesivir worked, why did we have a million dead (here where we had remdesivir), where other countries like Switzerland (case fatality rate 0.3) treated their citizens (with HCQ) and largely survived, with minimal interruption in daily life.  

 

Paxlovid came along just as Delta morphed into Omicron, which was the beginning of the end of the whole pandemic panic, as it switched from a pulmonary disease to a head cold.  I guess there was an illusion when Pax appeared and deaths fell off a cliff, it must have been the Pax, but keen observers noticed omicron was a whole new ballgame.  I seriously doubt we'd be in a substantially different place if Pax never arrived.  The pandemic was already burning itself out.  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 19 December 2023 - 07:02 AM.

[pamojja]

You don't think there were more deaths than usual?...

What caused the massive wave of death in Italy and New York City at the beginning of the pandemic?

 

What happened on the Diamond Princess wouldn't necessarily apply to what happens in the rest of the world for reasons besides the nature of the virus.

 

There are always excess deaths in some regions for some time, then there are less following. Also seen with some countries during covid.

 

What happened in New York City wouldn't necessarily apply to anywhere else.

 

For example, taken about half the countries stats from EuroMomo, no extraordinary excess mortality seen at all. Austria had an equal spike in excess deaths from a flu at the beginning of 2017 - then interestingly not even worth mentioning in the media. But with similar excess during covid, Austria was the only country which ordered vaccination of the whole adult population with an experimental vaccine by law. And cancelled at the last moment. Everything about the whole manipulated by worldwide policies.

 

 Screenshot 2023-12-18 132233.png   75.72KB   1 downloads

 

Germany a similar spike from a flu beginning of 2018.

 

 Screenshot 2023-12-18 132504.png   74.84KB   1 downloads

 

But yes, what happened in Germany or Austria doesn't necessarily apply to Italy or New York.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by pamojja, 19 December 2023 - 12:38 PM.

[Florin]

Yes, there was an odd initial obsession about fomites early on, but it's absurd to believe nurses & doctors weren't worried about dozens of patients in open ICUs sick with plague of unknown lethality coughing and wheezing all about them.  Why do you think Fauci initially lied about masks?  Because he feared there might be a shortage, and you can't treat patients with respiratory plague without PPE.  Put them on a closed circuit vent & staff can breathe freely.  This was common knowledge inside the hospitals.  
 
So the COVID pandemic/panic had largely died down by May 1 2020?  Really?  While we're re-writing history, why don't we eliminate slavery, and get all this racial tension out of the way?  How much for an ounce of whatever it is you're smokin'?  
 
The rest of the world was begging their doctors to treat their patients with anything they thought might help, and they did.  USA and those who followed the leader banning outpatient treatment had case fatality rates much worse than countries who allowed their GPs to roll up their sleeves and DO SOMETHING rather than taking a year or two off.  If remdesivir worked, why did we have a million dead (here where we had remdesivir), where other countries like Switzerland (case fatality rate 0.3) treated their citizens (with HCQ) and largely survived, with minimal interruption in daily life.  
 
Paxlovid came along just as Delta morphed into Omicron, which was the beginning of the end of the whole pandemic panic, as it switched from a pulmonary disease to a head cold.  I guess there was an illusion when Pax appeared and deaths fell off a cliff, it must have been the Pax, but keen observers noticed omicron was a whole new ballgame.  I seriously doubt we'd be in a substantially different place if Pax never arrived.  The pandemic was already burning itself out.

Your vent scenario still doesn't make sense. Again, almost no one thought that covid was airborne for a long time, not just at the beginning of the pandemic, and controlling fomites and droplets from sneezing or coughing was easy--just wipe stuff down, wash your hands, and have covid patients wear surgical (or even cloth) masks. Putting patients on vents instead of cleaning and masking would have been crazy overkill with a high risk of lawsuits and would generate airborne aerosols which would make viral transmission as likely or more likely than just having to deal with fomites and droplets.
 
The first wave of the pandemic peaked the end of April in most places. That seemed to indicate the NPIs were starting to work like they had in the Asian countries. Remdesivir was made widely available in the US only after this happened, so it can't be blamed for excess deaths in the first wave as Mind seemed to imply.
 
New Zealand had almost no covid deaths without using alternative therapeutics. So, it's not necessarily a clear cut case how much therapeutics helped, and to blame some of them for all or most excess deaths seems ridiculous.

Edited by Florin, 19 December 2023 - 07:19 PM.

[Florin]

There are always excess deaths in some regions for some time, then there are less following. Also seen with some countries during covid.

 

What happened in New York City wouldn't necessarily apply to anywhere else.

 

For example, taken about half the countries stats from EuroMomo, no extraordinary excess mortality seen at all. Austria had an equal spike in excess deaths from a flu at the beginning of 2017 - then interestingly not even worth mentioning in the media. But with similar excess during covid, Austria was the only country which ordered vaccination of the whole adult population with an experimental vaccine by law. And cancelled at the last moment. Everything about the whole manipulated by worldwide policies.

 

Screenshot 2023-12-18 132233.png

 

Germany a similar spike from a flu beginning of 2018.

 

Screenshot 2023-12-18 132504.png

 

But yes, what happened in Germany or Austria doesn't necessarily apply to Italy or New York.

 

Of course, there were differences in excess deaths at different times and places, but in an earlier post, you claimed that there was zero excess deaths in most countries. EuroMomo clearly indicates that there was excess deaths in most of the countries it monitors and significant excess deaths in the large countries and some of the smaller ones too.

 

Germany had a big spike in 2018, but it was smaller than the rest of the covid spikes put together.

 

Austria saw a small spike in 2018, and larger spikes during the pandemic.

 

Both Germany and Austria did better than the US but did worse than New Zealand which had negative excess deaths.

Edited by Florin, 19 December 2023 - 07:44 PM.

[pamojja]

EuroMomo covers 22 countries, not most of this world, 10 of which had no excess deaths at all.

 

 

Austria saw a small spike in 2018, and larger spikes during the pandemic.

 

I said there was a larger spike in beginning of 2017, not 2018. Not even mentioned in media, but the smaller taken as excuse for vaccine mandates to every adult. And there are other reason for negative excess deaths, as already mentioned,

 

 

 

 

[Florin]

EuroMomo covers 22 countries, not most of this world, 10 of which had no excess deaths at all.

 

I said there was a larger spike in beginning of 2017, not 2018. Not even mentioned in media, but the smaller taken as excuse for vaccine mandates to every adult. And there are other reason for negative excess deaths, as already mentioned,

 

If you select "All ages", only 4 to 5 countries had little excess deaths, and if you select "65+ years," only 1 country had almost no excess deaths. Most did have excess deaths.

 

I don't see any 2017 spike on EuroMomo.

 

Anyway, mortality from the flu is usually low and flu vaccines aren't always that effective, but Austria already knew that covid can produce high mortality and believed that vaccines can significantly reduce mortality. So, it's not surprising that getting a covid vaccine was encouraged.

 

AFAIK, I'm the first to point out the negative excess deaths in NZ.

Edited by Florin, 21 December 2023 - 12:26 AM.

[pamojja]

Most did have excess deaths.

 

I don't see any 2017 spike on EuroMomo.

 

That's because you look at the last 5 years only. That's why you don't see the 2017 spike, obviously. (you can see it in the graphs I uploaded in 2020). Excess mortality reached its lowest point a few years ago, and is rising since everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

You can't see the bigger picture. So let's agree to disagree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by pamojja, 21 December 2023 - 11:26 AM.

[pamojja]

You can't see the bigger picture.

 
Which also includes population growth. From Wikipedia:

Year    Population      Yearly growth           Density pop/km2

2018 	7,683,789,828 	1.10% 	83,967,424 	52
2019 	7,764,951,032 	1.06% 	81,161,204 	52
2020 	7,840,952,880 	0.98% 	76,001,848 	53
2021 	7,909,295,151 	0.87% 	68,342,271 	53
2022 	7,975,105,156 	0.83% 	65,810,005 	54
2023 	8,045,311,447 	0.88% 	70,206,291 	54 

Yearly change of growth compared to the preceding year:

 

2017-2018: -0,05%

2018-2019: -0,04%

2019-2020: -0,08%

2020-2021: -0,11%

2021-2022: -0,04%

2022-2023: +0,05%

 

A slowing down of growth already before.

 

Worse with the rollout of vaccines in 2021! Long after Italy or New York.

 

[Florin]

That's because you look at the last 5 years only. That's why you don't see the 2017 spike, obviously. (you can see it in the graphs I uploaded in 2020). Excess mortality reached its lowest point a few years ago, and is rising since everywhere.

You can't see the bigger picture. So let's agree to disagree.

 
Show me excess mortality, not just mortality stats.
 

Which also includes population growth. From Wikipedia:

Year    Population      Yearly growth           Density pop/km2

2018 	7,683,789,828 	1.10% 	83,967,424 	52
2019 	7,764,951,032 	1.06% 	81,161,204 	52
2020 	7,840,952,880 	0.98% 	76,001,848 	53
2021 	7,909,295,151 	0.87% 	68,342,271 	53
2022 	7,975,105,156 	0.83% 	65,810,005 	54
2023 	8,045,311,447 	0.88% 	70,206,291 	54 

Yearly change of growth compared to the preceding year:
 
2017-2018: -0,05%
2018-2019: -0,04%
2019-2020: -0,08%
2020-2021: -0,11%
2021-2022: -0,04%
2022-2023: +0,05%
 
A slowing down of growth already before.
 
Worse with the rollout of vaccines in 2021! Long after Italy or New York.

 

 
I'm not sure why you're shifting away from excess death stats to population growth statistics. That has a tendency to muddy the water with by mixing births and deaths. So, I prefer to stick with excess death stats.

[pamojja]

So let's agree to disagree.

 

I disagreed with your myopic view on excess mortality, denying anything further away than 5 years. And by that asserting exceptional excess mortality for such a short timespan. Beside being an off-topic discussion here

 

You can disagree as much as you want with my disagreeing. I agreed to disagree. That's it. If you can't look any further, we two're done with discussing.

 

Good luck

 

Edited by pamojja, 21 December 2023 - 08:32 PM.

[Mind]

i can't believe Dr. Fauci is out giving interviews about "science", "disinformation", "untruths".

 

Not only did he NOT follow real evidence-based science during the COVID panic, he lied repeatedly to the public.

 

The fact that he can go on TV and calmly proclaim that everyone else is wrong, spreading disinformation, and not following the science, is clearly a sign of psychopathy.

[Daniel Cooper]

i can't believe Dr. Fauci is out giving interviews about "science", "disinformation", "untruths".

 

Not only did he NOT follow real evidence-based science during the COVID panic, he lied repeatedly to the public.

 

The fact that he can go on TV and calmly proclaim that everyone else is wrong, spreading disinformation, and not following the science, is clearly a sign of psychopathy.

 

Yeah, that whole "I am science, hear me roar!" (in Fauci voice) is awfully grating considering his involvement in the cause of this pandemic, the coverup, and his response. 

[Mr Serendipity]

Elon reiterates his pronouns again today: https://x.com/elonmu...506812947787786

[Hip]

Elon reiterates his pronouns again today: https://x.com/elonmu...506812947787786

 

Elon Musk is a real plonker for giving his kids names like "X Æ A-12". Poor child is going to be laughed at when he gets to high school.

 

Musk's comprehension of the COVID pandemic was rather poor, tweeting in March 2020 that COVID cases would be “close to zero” by the end April 2020.

 

Imagine if Tony Fauci had made a tweet like that. Fauci would have been laughed out of office if he made such a totally wrong statement. 

 

But Musk gets away with it. 

 

That's the difference between a measured and responsible person like Dr Fauci, whose job is to carefully weigh up the evidence, and a loose cannon like Musk.

 

 

If Musk spent some of his billions and some of his energy trying to solve the vexing problem of long COVID, then I would be impressed. 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 09 April 2024 - 05:14 PM.

[Mind]

Elon Musk is a real plonker for giving his kids names like "X Æ A-12". Poor child is going to be laughed at when he gets to high school.

 

Musk's comprehension of the COVID pandemic was rather poor, tweeting in March 2020 that COVID cases would be “close to zero” by the end April 2020.

 

Imagine if Tony Fauci had made a tweet like that. Fauci would have been laughed out of office if he made such a totally wrong statement. 

 

But Musk gets away with it. 

 

That's the difference between a measured and responsible person like Dr Fauci, whose job is to carefully weigh up the evidence, and a loose cannon like Musk.

 

 

If Musk spent some of his billions and some of his energy trying to solve the vexing problem of long COVID, then I would be impressed. 

 

Fauci didn't "carefully weigh up the evidence". He testified that the 6-foot social distancing rule was completely made up...no evidence at all. THIS IS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD!!

[Daniel Cooper]

Elon Musk is a real plonker for giving his kids names like "X Æ A-12". Poor child is going to be laughed at when he gets to high school.

 

Musk's comprehension of the COVID pandemic was rather poor, tweeting in March 2020 that COVID cases would be “close to zero” by the end April 2020.

 

Imagine if Tony Fauci had made a tweet like that. Fauci would have been laughed out of office if he made such a totally wrong statement. 

 

But Musk gets away with it. 

 

That's the difference between a measured and responsible person like Dr Fauci, whose job is to carefully weigh up the evidence, and a loose cannon like Musk.

 

 

If Musk spent some of his billions and some of his energy trying to solve the vexing problem of long COVID, then I would be impressed. 

 

Well, in fairness those names are very hard to crack WiFi passwords. And I suppose his children will simply have to offset the weird names by the fact that they were born with a net worth in the billions. How ever will they console themselves?

 

As far as that tweet, maybe he had believed the early speculation on the effectiveness of masks and the vaccines on the horizon.  Shame on him. 

 

And that "loose cannon" btw created a successful EV car company from scratch and is currently launching the bulk of payloads to LEO. Not too shabby for a loose cannon.

 

Fauci on the other hand plausibly helped create SAR-CoV-2 and authored a national response to HIV that's still receiving criticism for backing a vaccine that has never materialized and nearly completely ignoring anti-virals which are now the mainstay of AIDs treatment. Noteworthy accomplishments perhaps but not in the way we normally think of it.

[Hip]

And that "loose cannon" btw created a successful EV car company from scratch and is currently launching the bulk of payloads to LEO. Not too shabby for a loose cannon.

 
Yes, but Musk expects his staff to work the same gruelling 120 hour weeks as he does. That's exploitation, because it means people cannot have a life beyond work. That in turn means they cannot develop as a human being. So they may end up becoming shallow or hollow, and that in turn might result in giving their kids silly names also.
 
Furthermore, if you are demanding 120 hours a week from your staff, rather than the average of 40 hours per week, you would expect a company to be doing much better than its rivals. So arguably the success of his companies might be more to do with slave driving than genius.
 
Not to say that there isn't some talent there. The advancements Musk has made in rocketry are impressive.

 

 

 

 

[Hip]

Fauci didn't "carefully weigh up the evidence". He testified that the 6-foot social distancing rule was completely made up...no evidence at all. THIS IS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD!!

 

You still have to act when there is an absence of evidence, and in such circumstances, you can use a common sense judgement, or base your decision on theoretical considerations.

 

It's pretty clear that in general, the further you are from an infected person, the less risk you have of catching that infection. So countries wanted to provide some guidance on what constituted a good social distance. Most countries stipulated some minimum recommended distance, about half the countries stipulated 1 metre / 3 foot, and the other half stipulated 2 metres / 6 foot, according to this paper. 

[Florin]

Musk's comprehension of the COVID pandemic was rather poor, tweeting in March 2020 that COVID cases would be “close to zero” by the end April 2020.

 

Imagine if Tony Fauci had made a tweet like that. Fauci would have been laughed out of office if he made such a totally wrong statement. 

 

But Musk gets away with it. 

 

That's the difference between a measured and responsible person like Dr Fauci, whose job is to carefully weigh up the evidence, and a loose cannon like Musk.

 

If Musk spent some of his billions and some of his energy trying to solve the vexing problem of long COVID, then I would be impressed. 

 

Fauci's advice about wearing masks instead of respirators almost certainly led to the deaths of a lot of people. But Fauci got away with it.

[Hip]

Fauci's advice about wearing masks instead of respirators almost certainly led to the deaths of a lot of people. But Fauci got away with it.

 

Loose fitting surgical masks are a LOT easier to wear all day long compared to N95 respirator masks. If people are asked to wear N95 masks all day long, they might find that too much, and so may take it off after a while. But surgical masks are less stifling.

 

So in fact you may get more compliance if you ask people to wear surgical masks all day.

[Daniel Cooper]

 
Yes, but Musk expects his staff to work the same gruelling 120 hour weeks as he does. That's exploitation, because it means people cannot have a life beyond work. That in turn means they cannot develop as a human being. So they may end up becoming shallow or hollow, and that in turn might result in giving their kids silly names also.
 
Furthermore, if you are demanding 120 hours a week from your staff, rather than the average of 40 hours per week, you would expect a company to be doing much better than its rivals. So arguably the success of his companies might be more to do with slave driving than genius.
 
Not to say that there isn't some talent there. The advancements Musk has made in rocketry are impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

It's not exploitation if you agree to do it. These are not Chinese dissidents being used as slave labor in their Laogai camps. Generally we're talking about highly educated scientists and engineers with a passion for spaceflight and a dream of planetary colonization. If they don't want to work how ever may hours they are putting in, they quit and go to work somewhere else. Those sorts of people have any number of job opportunities.

 

Even the ostensible "manual laborers" are going to be highly skilled welders and metal workers. Again, plenty of opportunities to work elsewere.

 

You can't exploit people with a myriad of options and the freedom to leave a job at will. If they are there, it's because they want to be there. 

 

If I were younger I'd probably be there.

[Hip]

It's not exploitation if you agree to do it. These are not Chinese dissidents being used as slave labor in their Laogai camps. Generally we're talking about highly educated scientists and engineers with a passion for spaceflight and a dream of planetary colonization. If they don't want to work how ever may hours they are putting in, they quit and go to work somewhere else. Those sorts of people have any number of job opportunities.

 

I appreciate your point, but I would say there is a wider societal angle to consider here. You may be a passionate engineer who loves their work; but if you have a wife and kids, your family life is going to suffer if you are working 120 hours per week. So Musk may be exploiting the families of these engineers and other workers, even if the workers themselves are game. 

 

Furthermore, the workaholic culture of Musk's workplaces may not be producing well-balanced and rounded human beings. I like to see people who have developed their cultural, moral, spiritual and aesthetic senses as well as their technical capabilities. I think it is bad for society when people are not rounded in this way, and only focus on the technical side of life, not the human side, like Mr Spock.

 

Musk is a monomaniac who wants to colonise Mars, and nothing else really matters to him. But normal human beings should be culturally balanced, I think.

 

 

Edited by Hip, 09 April 2024 - 08:41 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

I appreciate your point, but I would say there is a wider societal angle to consider here. You may be a passionate engineer who loves their work; but if you have a wife and kids, your family life is going to suffer if you are working 120 hours per week. So Musk may be exploiting the families of these engineers and other workers, even if the workers themselves are game. 

 

Furthermore, the workaholic culture of Musk's workplaces may not be producing well-balanced and rounded human beings. I like to see people who have developed their cultural, moral, spiritual and aesthetic senses as well as their technical capabilities. I think it is bad for society when people are not rounded in this way, and only focus on the technical side of life, not the human side, like Mr Spock.

 

Musk is a monomaniac who wants to colonise Mars, and nothing else really matters to him. But normal human beings should be culturally balanced, I think.

 

None the less, all his employees have free will and the freedom to leave the job if they so wish. Who are you or I to tell them what to do? You may "like to see people" do X, Y, and Z but those people are free to make their own judgements on how they want to live their lives. 

 

But of course, we are getting off topic here.

[Hip]

None the less, all his employees have free will and the freedom to leave the job if they so wish. Who are you or I to tell them what to do? You may "like to see people" do X, Y, and Z but those people are free to make their own judgements on how they want to live their lives. 

 

You don't seem to like the concept of social engineering, preferring freedom over any manufacturing of a social milieu. 

 

But I would argue that people are never fully free to make their own judgements about how to live; they are highly influenced by the society they live in. Every society provides a set of values, rules and laws to live by, which are influential and constraining.

 

In the US, where people are more focused on personal freedom, ironically people are not actually free, as there are many constraints and influences which dictate behaviour. For example, in the US, the value of doing well for yourself financially is one of the most fundamental values of American society. If you have been inculcated with that value from an early age, then it is hard to escape it. 

 

So I would argue that the US is just as socially engineered as Europe, except that the values are different. 

 

Even bringing up people with the concept of liberal freedom of choice is social engineering. People then want that freedom of choice because the values they were brought up with instruct them to think that way.

Edited by Hip, 09 April 2024 - 10:02 PM.

[Florin]

Loose fitting surgical masks are a LOT easier to wear all day long compared to N95 respirator masks. If people are asked to wear N95 masks all day long, they might find that too much, and so may take it off after a while. But surgical masks are less stifling.

 

So in fact you may get more compliance if you ask people to wear surgical masks all day.

 

How would recommending (not mandating) that some people (especially high-risk) wear better protection led to less compliance?

[Daniel Cooper]

You don't seem to like the concept of social engineering, preferring freedom over any manufacturing of a social milieu. 

 

 

Now you're catching on. Yes, I don't like the concept of social engineering. Because I understand that the people that want to do the social engineering simply aren't smart enough to do it. They either have various ideologies that blind them or they simply can't see all the ramifications of the policies they advocate beyond the first level because they are superficial thinkers, or they fail to appreciate the limits of their own intelligence and the imperfect knowledge they have. Yes, I don't like the concept of social engineering. It was tried several times in the prior century and it ended up killing millions of people. So count me out.

 

 

But I would argue that people are never fully free to make their own judgements about how to live; they are highly influenced by the society they live in. Every society provides a set of values, rules and laws to live by, which are influential and constraining.

 

In the US, where people are more focused on personal freedom, ironically people are not actually free, as there are many constraints and influences which dictate behaviour. For example, in the US, the value of doing well for yourself financially is one of the most fundamental values of American society. If you have been inculcated with that value from an early age, then it is hard to escape it. 

 

So I would argue that the US is just as socially engineered as Europe, except that the values are different. 

 

Even bringing up people with the concept of liberal freedom of choice is social engineering. People then want that freedom of choice because the values they were brought up with instruct them to think that way.

 

There is no such thing as absolute freedom. Freedom is a relative concept.

 

But even if I cast aside any concern for freedom, I'm still left with the problem that engineered societies (versus societies that develop organically) tend to be pathological societies. Think of the major engineered societies of the 20th century - Nazi Germany, the USSR, Communist China, so on and so forth. These engineering projects didn't turn out so well because there are no engineers up to the task and they lack the knowledge that would be necessary.

 

Consider China's arguably least evil social engineering project of the prior century - the One Child policy. When it was started in 1979 all the really bright people in China and even many in the West hailed it as a truly enlightened and responsible policy. But, in 2024 it's widely acknowledged that China may ultimately fail because their demographics are now so fouled up. 

 

It's a parallel to the reason capitalist economies tend to do a lot better than engineered (i.e. centrally planned) economies. At the end of the day, centrally planned economies fail because know one really knows how many pairs of size 10 shoes or how many toothbrushes need to be made. In an organic economy no one has to. 

 

I find that people with a STEM background often times have an enthusiasm for these sorts of things. I'm an engineer by profession and when I was younger I felt an attraction to this thinking. But those of us with this background (which I think you fall into) really fail to appreciate what a messy problem a human economy or a human society is. Maybe we can predict the 1st order effects of some proposal (maybe) - but 2nd and 3rd order effects almost never.  It's too complicated. The models don't exist. And the data to feed into the model is highly uncertain and of poor fidelity. 

 

People such as yourself tend to look at society as a giant stereo system. With knobs and sliders and gauges to be twiddled, pushed and monitored. But all those things end up being people. You're literally dealing with people's lives here. And neither you nor anyone else is qualified to do it and you lack the moral authority even if you knew how. We're all on this planet for a shockingly brief time. And aside from preventing you from interfering with someone else too much, I don't have a right to dictate to you how you should live. I'm not God, and neither are you. 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 10 April 2024 - 03:58 PM.

[Hip]

But even if I cast aside any concern for freedom, I'm still left with the problem that engineered societies (versus societies that develop organically) tend to be pathological societies. Think of the major engineered societies of the 20th century - Nazi Germany, the USSR, Communist China, so on and so forth. These engineering projects didn't turn out so well because there are no engineers up to the task and they lack the knowledge that would be necessary.

 
You are talking about a specific type of social engineering, namely where a group of intellectuals raze to the ground the current order, and attempt to implement their radical redesign for the whole of society. And I tend to agree that when you get this happening, it often turns out to have problems. 
 
Karl Marx tried this, because he saw all the terrible misery that was inflicted on the working classes during the Industrial Revolution, and his books tried to replace the current order with his own system. He had good intentions, but his communist solution was a mess, that did not really fit in with human nature, nor how supply and demand economics works, as you point out.
 
Though arguably the French revolution was a more successful razing to the ground. So sometimes it works. 
 
But social engineering is usually not a radical razing to the ground. A lot of social engineering happens gradually and organically over centuries, and involves grass roots movements which each change society (hopefully) for the better. 
 
I agree that few people have the genius to know what is right for the whole of society, which is why small piecemeal changes over the centuries probably work best.


 

People such as yourself tend to look at society as a giant stereo system. With knobs and sliders and gauges to be twiddled, pushed and monitored. But all those things end up being people. You're literally dealing with people's lives here. And neither you nor anyone else is qualified to do it and you lack the moral authority even if you knew how.

Your argument seems to be that because nobody is perfectly qualified to engineer society, we should give up trying, and just let the raw forces of nature or capitalism dictate our living conditions. Well that often ends up with even worse results, because those raw forces can be so severe that people suffer terribly. 

 

The aim of social engineering should be to create a living environment where the parameters of life are controlled so that they don't result in extreme conditions where people are wiped out by extreme raw forces. Just as the human body has hundreds of self-balancing homeostatic mechanisms for creating the right internal bodily conditions to maintain life, a human society should operate by the same principle.

 

Britain now is in a dire state because of the astronomical costs of housing. This is directly due to allowing too much net immigration, bringing too many people into the country, which pushes the cost of accommodation up, by the law of supply and demand. The result is that the young generation cannot afford to get their own place to live, and so now remain with their parents into their 30s and beyond. Part of character formation for a young adult is to branch out on your own, which involves getting your own place to live, but this rite of passage is now denied, because we have let the raw forces of global capitalism dictate our living circumstances.

 

From a social engineering perspective, this is a disaster, and is very unfair on this new generation. But nobody in government thinks about creating the right conditions for people to live by. Successive British governments have just let the raw forces of globalist capitalism dictate the circumstances by which people live. 

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 10 April 2024 - 04:41 AM.

[Daniel Cooper]

 
Britain now is in a dire state because of the astronomical costs of housing. This is directly due to allowing too much net immigration, bringing too many people into the country, which pushes the cost of accommodation up, by the law of supply and demand. The result is that the young generation cannot afford to get their own place to live, and so now remain with their parents into their 30s and beyond. Part of character formation for a young adult is to branch out on your own, which involves getting your own place to live, but this rite of passage is now denied, because we have let the raw forces of global capitalism dictate our living circumstances.

 

 

This wasn't remotely due to the "raw forces of global capitalism". It is due to horribly misguided social engineering.

 

The decision to encourage mass immigration into the UK was begun in the 1960s as a social engineering project. It was a early form of social justice - recompense to former colonies for past sins of the empire. It was not by in large due to unfulfilled labor shortages. In fact, it wasn't long after these immigration policies began that indigenous unemployment rates in the UK began to noticeably rise. 

 

So blame bad social engineering, not bad capitalism.

 

This is my problem with social engineering of this sort. It represents a "single point failure" in a system which is normally considered to be a "bad thing". Some handful of people or political party gets some big idea that needs to be inflicted upon the people. Usually these things are not put up to popular vote. They must be imposed on the population by their betters.

 

After awhile it becomes clear the the big idea is a bad idea, but it continues unabated. You see, there are now big political names and political parties associated with the social engineering so to admit that it doesn't work or is indeed counterproductive has ramifications that those people don't want to accept. So the policy plods on and on, oftentimes decades after the point at which almost everyone recognizes that it's doing real damage. If for no other reason the people or party that originally proposed it won't let it go out of shear pride - to do so would admit they were wrong and they just aren't prepared to do that.

 

Distributed decision making as in a capitalist system when considering economics doesn't have this "feature". These decisions are being made by diverse and largely anonymous people. So no one really gets their feeling hurt if it is admitted that things are not working out as planned. Systems like this can often turn on a dime when it is clear that something isn't working.

 

And that is one of the clearest determiners of success in any endeavor - the ability to admit bad decisions, change course, and move on. Everyone occasionally has bad ideas and makes poor decisions. But the people that really suffer from them are those that either can't see them or will not admit them and change course.   

 

This was the case with Fauci and his cohorts. Even when it was oblivious that some of his policies were not working or were making things worse, he generally doubled down on them. He was too emotionally and politically invested in them to ever admit that they were bad ideas. So we had the specter of the US health bureaucracy shilling for more and more boosters at shorter and shorter intervals beyond all common sense and beyond the point at which most people had returned to their normal lives and moved on.