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I agree. I would just say "responsible" instead of "courteous." I also think bans are rarely appropriate. One can always ignore. That's the best way to get rid of somebody. I am amazed when people rise to the bait, then call for a ban.
Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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01-21-2024 01:59 PM
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I'm convinced there is very little, if any reliable information on most anything. In our money based society, everyone has an angle. I tend to use what I personally see and hear, to draw my own conclusions. I don't really care to argue about my position. There is much truth to your hook line and sinker line. At the risk of getting flamed I conclude that the people that are calling out the covid narrative, as presented, have done a bit more to research both sides, than the ones that agree with it. It's easy enough to be aware of a narrative that's being jammed down your throat 24-7 takes a bit of digging to see the other side, especially since it's presented as socially unexceptable. And still both sides have that money incentive..... Originally Posted by princeplanet
I think you guys need to zoom out! Musicians, especially Jazz musicians, are empaths by nature. DB is not a "sociopath", and his detractors are not "intolerant jerks". You're all mature and reasonably intelligent people, but you'll disagree when I suggest most of you appear to have been taken in (without your awareness?) by the way that modern media is designed to trick you into taking a polarised view on a great number of binary issues. Are you for or against covid vs vaccines, Trump vs election fraud, Brexit vs no Brexit, Israel vs Palestine, UFOs vs no UFOs, Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard, etc etc...
We think we're all experts on our chosen stance on all these positions, because we've read the data! LOL, as though
we've carefully researched all credible, peer reviewed information on both sides of an argument like a good academic should. But we haven't, instead we're spoon fed emotionally charged morsels from our favourite echo chambers that play into expectation bias... but it's curated by the "algorithm", not you! We know it, but we still refuse to divide our time equally between exploring both sides of any debate. OK, maybe one or two of you will make up the tiny minority (in my experience at least) that does make this effort, but if you're not ultimately agnostic on most of these issues, you've probably been seduced into swallowing either one narrative or another, hook, line and sinker.
In the words (I think) of the great Oliver Cromwell "I beseech thee, in the bowels of Christ, pray that thee may be wrong! "
Fence sitters of the world unite!
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If the same people who insist everyone must get vaccinated and wear masks to protect others had for decades also demanded everyone take a regular seasonal flu shot and wear mask I would take their extreme vehemence over covid more seriously. I still wouldn't care what they think but at least they would've been consistent. They only became vehement when the media cranked up the fear machine and yet the regular flu kills vulnerable adults as a matter of routine (until the zero flu cases covid years). These same people have no doubt shown up to the supermarket or office in the past with a sniffle, which was eventually passed to someone with a compromised immune system, and killed them. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
I also don't really take anyone's criticisms or insults to heart. They are entitled to see things how they want. So am I. If I get banned I guess I will accept my fate the same way I will if I get covid and die. I did not expect to make friends with my brash viewpoint but as the thread went on it started to become obvious I am not the only person who has doubts about how it was handled. I do not see the world in shades of grey so generally I only have polarizing thoughts to share.
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Always easier to argue without facts. And, it gets exhausting to actually do the work required to present the facts to the fact-challenged. Originally Posted by DawgBone
Here are some facts:
Flu deaths per year are estimated between 4900 to 52,000.
Covid deaths in 2021: 460,000.
Meaning, somewhere between about 10 and about 90 times as many deaths from Covid that year compared to flu averages.
Media can get shrill, but that's more than 3 times as many American deaths in 2021 as in all of WWII. Sounds like a story to me.
Might it be that that's why people responded differently to Covid compared to flu?
Here are the citations:
Disease Burden of Flu | CDC.
Provisional Mortality Data — United States, 2021 | MMWR
United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia
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There were no facts during covid, just people on every side claiming that the info they were presenting was the real truth. It was easier to ignore it all and believe/do what you wanted, which is always the case in this life. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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You better not get banned! You simply stated your opinion in no uncertain terms. These other folks including myself have done the same. That would be like science that isn't allowed to be met with healthy scepticism. lol Originally Posted by DawgBone
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DB, ya if this was The Gear Page you would have been banned a long time ago lol..
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Some statements are based on actual evidence, some not. Originally Posted by DawgBone
I don't see those two categories as equally valid.
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Bro we get it, nobody tells DawgBone what to do. Don't vote, don't mask, don't get shots, drinking and driving is fine, yee-ha, Texas, people do coke at your gigs. We GET it.
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Ultraviolet light can kill almost all the viruses in a room. Why isn’t it everywhere?
Ultraviolet light can kill almost all the viruses in a room. Why isn’t it everywhere? - Vox
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There were a good many facts. My son is a professional demographer working with population shifts, birth rates, and death rates. Wading through the whole debate about "did they die from COVID or was it only ascribed to COVID?" he worked out a model based on excess deaths overall against previous years plotted against factors varying from those previous years, and came up with a model for estimating COVID deaths without delving at all into the diagnosis. He was pretty cautious because it's a giant correlation model, but by being agnostic on the diagnostic controversy, he simply noted that between previous years and the first 18 months of COVID, the only potential variable affecting mortality was COVID, and the excess death rates over previous years was sharply increased in a curve matching the spread of COVID cases, on a state-by-state and even county-by-county level. This allowed him to cut through the political debates about incentivizing COVID as a cause of mortality on death certificates. He simply learned that in years when there was actually a down turn in traffic accidents, deaths by other accidents, etc. and other agents of mortality remained flat, there was a very sharp increase in excess deaths. The central thing that changed was COVID. He re-worked this model every month when mortality figures came out, and felt pretty satisfied that COVID was in fact a mass killer and worthy of efforts going beyond, say, flu prevention. Originally Posted by DawgBone
He also was living in Hong Kong when COVID first began to be found there, and moved back to the US as it was hitting hardest here. Then lived in Montreal Canada during the worst of it, and witnessed firsthand the rather draconian and ultimately, ineffective measures imposed by the Canadian government.
He is a natural born contrarian with a love of annoying pundits and ideologues and was not interested in confirming or disconfirming anyone's narrative. He just wanted to know, to make good choices for his family, and had a considerable body of skills and experience that equipped him to work it out.
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Good post. Interesting to look at where we are with excess deaths right now. Our govt (UK) and opposition don’t seem interested.
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Validated numbers are better than anecdotes.
That said, after seeing video of refrigerated trucks acting as makeshift morgues in hospital parking lots -- and everybody I know knowing some people who died from it, those numbers are in line with my expectations.
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First-hand anecdotes from a trusted source are useful as evidence--my account of my brother's encounter with Covid, for example, is as accurate as I can make it, and I can back some of it up with dates and text messages and contemporary e-mail exchanges with my siblings. But any given anecdote is just one data point, and you have to line up and evaluate and analyze a lot of them before they begin to approach the status of "data." In fact, I prefer "evidence," with the additional suggestion that anecdotal accounts be lined up with conventional quantitative data and analysis (for example, demographic and epidemiological analysis) and well-grounded technical research (for example, virology and immunology).
That is the way to build a big picture--and we should never forget that the picture is constructed and is not a simple, unitary entity. Similarly, recommendations built on such a big picture are inevitably also constructions, with all the constraints that any risk-management system entails. We live in a probabilistic universe, and "knowledge" is never complete--though long-established and frequently-re-examined practice gets pretty reliable, and the models that support it can get quite solid. (How long since the last smallpox epidemic? Had typhoid recently? Where does polio show up?)
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For me the problem is not about one's stance on COVID. It never was. I think that masks and vaccines were the right things to do. And I believe that any employer or business owner has the right to require these things if they feel that it's in the best interest of their business. But these are open for discussion and I have no issue with debating that.
The problem I have is being called a bigot.
If anyone other than DawgBone can point out anything I said that was racist, please show me. Originally Posted by DawgBone
If anyone can get away with saying anything about anyone then where does it stop? If I don't agree with someone's opinion on something can I fly off the handle and based on their profile picture and call them "a fat pig who obviously can't think because they can't push themselves away from the table"?
In other forums, I've seen where people get unhinged and carry their personal vendettas into threads that have nothing to do with them. Posts like - "Don't listen to so-and-so about pickups - he's an ignorant commie faggot" start to show up. And threads devolve into insult matches that have nothing to do with the original topic. Then the value of the site degrades and people with anything useful to say (e.g. professionals), go elsewhere because they think "why bother with this shit? I could get dragged into something like this trying to help somebody".
I think there's a limit to what one can say in a civilized discussion forum. Otherwise it can get devalued and potentially degrade to nothing (see the "alt.guitar.amps" USENET group if you want an example).
I come here because it's a great resource and a refuge of intelligent discussion and relative civility. I'd like it to remain that way. But it's not up to me, it's for the owners of this forum to decide and do as they wish.
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Jeff, please don't get all bitter and take what I said out of context just because you didn't sway the entire forum into seeing it from your perspective. Some of you guys can't seem to bear the thought of someone not giving a shit what you think about masking and shots or a whole other list of topics for that matter. This just in: People see things differently. That's life. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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apocalypse been coming since creation so enjoy life while you can...
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No bitterness here. I was simply remarking that you are clearly a "nobody tells me what to do" kinda guy. Originally Posted by DawgBone
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Originally Posted by BFrench
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I’ll remark - stating the obvious - that he’s an odious troll who offers nothing of value, gets off on riling up others for his enjoyment, and then frosts the cake with his “likes” when people respond to his trolling. Without moderation here, he’ll just keep getting off on it. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I’ll remark - stating the obvious - that this person is an odious troll who offers nothing of value, gets off on riling up others for attention and enjoyment, and then frosts the cake with their “likes” when people respond the his trolling. Without moderation here, they’ll just keep getting off on it. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I don’t know who is trolling because my patience isn’t what it used to be. But I wonder how many people here spend 30-60 minutes on a crowded commuter train to go to an open office space of about 30-odd people and return on said crowded commuter train to arrive home to see their wife or partner that has done nearly the same thing and to also see their shared kids who have spent their whole day in several classrooms of 30-odd other kids and a few adults let alone time spent in a crowded cafeteria for 40-60 minutes. My guess is that this resembles nothing like some people here experience. And you wonder how COVID got to the far reaches of the globe within a few short weeks since it was first uncovered as a lethal infection.
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