Do We Need a Control Group?

[Bob B]

I will respond, but I know you will ignore what I type as usual and hurl some other accusation out.

I think some religions can have a positive effect on peoples lives, in fact religion in general was beneficial to some extent just like tribalism. The issue is once we began to spread further and wider, these butted up against each other and now cause a significant amount of problems.

I put down people who believe in something without good reason, and it just so happens to be that religion is often from indoctrination and teaching people to not think for themselves or to think critically.

I know you haven't read or listened to most of what I've said because calling me far left is hilarious, just because I want proof and good science vs hopes and dreams?

Do you even know what a Marxist is??? Socialism or Communism over Capitalism.... who in these threads have been against Capitalism? Not me, I think that it helped us get a vaccine so quickly.

Well .... I had a brilliant response all typed up .... and it suddenly went into LaLa land .... I doubt I can re-create it.

When I was in college .... many, many years ago ..... I wrote a term paper about Communism .... and learned a LOT about it.
I just see a lot of similarities to you guys posts .... You are atheist thru and thru .... You are condescending of anyone who has any sort of spiritual belief and think that if they are spiritual they must be stupid. You have brought QAnon into the conversation several times for no apparent reason except you seem to think people who don't believe what the CDC and other organizations must be far right nuts. You find it necessary to put people into their own little categories ... not recognizing that people are individuals. But.... If you put them in a category you don't like, you can just argue against the category whether it has any bearing on the conversation or not. You are totally OK with mandating people to get a vaccine while knowing nothing whatsoever what their reason might be for not wanting to get it.
You want to blame everything about the pandemic on the un-vaccinated .... ignore that the people who are directing us helped create the pandemic by funding gain of function research in China. You want to ignore the fact that many of the top officials in the CDC are making patent money of 250K per year in perpetuity for drugs they were responsible for vetting. Why did 2 of the top people in the FDA quit their jobs instead of approving the vaccine for younger and less at risk people?
You want to totally ignore that John F Kennedy Jr doesn't fit that category at all and think he is crazy for believing the person who is in prison for killing his father isn't the one who did it .... do you REALLY think you are in a better position to evaluate that than he is.

I myself have come to the conclusion that most "churches" have been corrupted .... but that doesn't mean I don't have spiritual beliefs of my own. I think that the lack of spirituality in some people is probably due to not seeking ... somehow not having the ability or maybe the willingness to see.

I just thought that if you want to put so many of us into a neat category that it is only fair that we have a category to put you into.

 

[Shale MacGregor]

Well .... I had a brilliant response all typed up .... and it suddenly went into LaLa land .... I doubt I can re-create it.

When I was in college .... many, many years ago ..... I wrote a term paper about Communism .... and learned a LOT about it.
I just see a lot of similarities to you guys posts .... You are atheist thru and thru .... You are condescending of anyone who has any sort of spiritual belief and think that if they are spiritual they must be stupid.

I find many socialist programs untolerable, let alone communism. I grew up Christian, I ate breathed and slept Christianity. I went to Church 2-3x a week, went to a Christian school from 3rd-12th, went to a Christian college. When I belittle someone's belief it is because I have been there and I never got challenged. It took me years before I realized I could even think critically about my religion, that is how ingrained it was in me through indoctrination. So when I speak more vociferously against religions, it is because I know how insidious it is and how much it UNDERMINES your logical thought processes. If you have spiritual beliefs you have an out that makes it less likely for you to follow the logical path, and instead jump around looking for fringe views that don't have firm grounding.

You have brought QAnon into the conversation several times for no apparent reason except you seem to think people who don't believe what the CDC and other organizations must be far right nuts.

Bob... lets be serious here... we didn't bring Qanon into it until MANY conspiracy theories started getting thrown around.

You find it necessary to put people into their own little categories ... not recognizing that people are individuals. But.... If you put them in a category you don't like, you can just argue against the category whether it has any bearing on the conversation or not.

Do you not understand how discourse works? If I put someone in a category and I am wrong, then they should have the ability to clarify instead of just throwing a fit and claiming we are doing things we are not.

You are totally OK with mandating people to get a vaccine while knowing nothing whatsoever what their reason might be for not wanting to get it.

I am not ok with mandating people get a vaccine while knowing nothing whatsoever what their reason might be for not wanting to get it. That would be against my morals.

You want to blame everything about the pandemic on the un-vaccinated

I don't.... I blame the appropriate amount of things about the pandemic against the unvaccinated, if I go to far without evidence please show me so I can apologize and clarify.

.... ignore that the people who are directing us helped create the pandemic by funding gain of function research in China.

I don't blindly follow Fauci and the CDC my friend. I follow the science. Guess what? I advise people who haven't gotten the vaccine yet follow a 8 week gap for their second dose because science says that optimizes the response, against the advisement of the CDC, Fauci, and PFizer

You want to ignore the fact that many of the top officials in the CDC are making patent money of 250K per year in perpetuity for drugs they were responsible for vetting.

I do?

Why did 2 of the top people in the FDA quit their jobs instead of approving the vaccine for younger and less at risk people?

I don't know, please link me the reason.

You want to totally ignore that John F Kennedy Jr doesn't fit that category at all and think he is crazy for believing the person who is in prison for killing his father isn't the one who did it .... do you REALLY think you are in a better position to evaluate that than he is.

Err, I am kinda worried Bob. First of all isn't the JFK who was killed his Uncle, not his father? Secondly I don't know enough about the killing to even have formed an opinion. I don't like JFK jr because of what he has done recently regarding his anti-vax stance and supporting a film that resulted in more black deaths.

I myself have come to the conclusion that most "churches" have been corrupted .... but that doesn't mean I don't have spiritual beliefs of my own. I think that the lack of spirituality in some people is probably due to not seeking ... somehow not having the ability or maybe the willingness to see.

Definitely doesn't apply to me. That is a common argument people try to use against atheists... god has hardened your heart, you arent willing to open your eyes and see, you really know there is a greater power but you hate him, etc

I just thought that if you want to put so many of us into a neat category that it is only fair that we have a category to put you into.

The difference is instead of spouting off insults, I explain my position when someone wants to discuss it... like you and I did before you went all reactionary in these threads and started treating me like a BmCL

 

[Bob B]

First of all ..... RFK Jr Uncle and Father were both assassinated .... The detail of both of those incidents were covered up by government agencies ... so, I think he has good reason for his conspiracy theories .... but, you would assume he is QAnon based on his writings.
He has thousands of references in his book to prove his positions .... yes .... it is VERY uncomfortable to listen to what he has to say.

In my generation, all these chronic conditions we have today was unheard of. ADHD, autism, asthma, anxiety disorders, peanut allergies, gluten intolerance, celiac disease .... and many more. The IQ of our children is on a serious decline .... those aren't conspiracy theories .... they are a fact of life now days.
No one in my high school or grade school classes had ANY of these conditions .... but now they are rampant. Some say 50% or more of children have some sort of chronic condition. One person in my high school class had polio ... he ended up being the class valedictorian and went on to be the first person to ever get strait A's at Harvard .... he just couldn't walk very well.
JFK Jr says none of his siblings had any of these conditions ... yet 2/3 of his children have one of them.
He has literally spent his life researching to determine what is causing these terrible chronic childhood diseases and has successfully litigated the results of that research in court ... what are your credentials to try to label him as a nut case?

I shared one of my life experiences with you .... but have several others .... things that leave me with no doubt that the spiritual world is real. If we were sitting around a camp fire having adult beverages, I might share some more of them .... but will not do it on this forum.

You seem to have mixed points of view that aren't quite as rigid as some of the others .... Just be aware that those JFK Jr is trying to expose will do whatever they can to de-legitimize him ... and most of what you will find on Google about him is suspect.

One of the good things for me that has come out of all the chaos on these threads has been that I have discovered new things thru some others posts and my own ramped up research.
I found out yesterday at my routine Dr appointment that I know a lot more about Covid than my Dr does. He didn't even know what Fluvoxamine was when I asked him if it was something he would off label prescribe .... and argued with me that there was no medicine by that name ... I had to do a quick search on my phone to show him some of the articles ... he was totally unaware that any stage 3 trials had been done about it.
I asked him if there were any early treatment protocols that had been shared with doctors .... after a little thought, he mentioned monoclonal antibodies .... but even though he has had people in his practice die from Covid ... he didn't know the referral process to get the antibodies.
I don't think this is his fault ... he is a busy primary care physician .... he relies on the "system" to inform him.

 

[Samsonite801]

Spoiler: SAmsonite

Nope, I really enjoy discourse but I won't meet people halfway if I don't agree with their points so it is often taken as contrarianism or objectivism.

There are good answers to all of these points you made from your last post. Unfortunately, I do not have the motivation right now to type and respond to each or all of them. The NDE'er community has detailed answers for all of those items, and they all would make logical sense (to those who could be open-minded to a world beyond the box), so I will say, if you really have that much desire to learn what those opinions are and how they answer those questions, you can delve into the research of NDE for yourself, and listen to as many of those accounts and their wisdoms as you could, and draw your own conclusions from them.

If not, then I hope science keeps working well for you. If we wanted to keep this kind of discussion going though, we should open a dedicated thread for it and not do it on this one though... I guess I feel guilty for going off topic too long here. ?

 

[Bob B]

Instead of starting a new thread .... I decided to revive this old one. Even though the discussion strayed from the original subject .... as pretty much any Covid discussion does.

The original post on this thread theorizes the importance of having a "control group" .... The value of a control group has a lot of value when analyzing data from a study.
It's turning out that having an unvaccinated control group is becoming extremely valuable as more and more "scientists" become interested in unveiling the safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccines.

The Cleveland Clinic has just posted a pre-print of a study that is NOT turning out as they expected .... They do their best to hedge the results, but some of the data is irrefutable .... The result I am referencing is their data from following over 50,000 employees of the Cleveland Clinic over a long term.
Their data shows that those who had the LOWEST likelihood of contracting Covid was those who were UNVACCINATED .... and the MOST likely were those fully vaccinated and boosted .... The more vaccine doses received, the higher the likelihood of getting Covid. This was the case in all but the first few weeks of the start of their study.
Here was their interpretation:


The chart below clearly shows this relationship .... below the chart I will post links to this study .....So, the unvaccinated control group is going to be VERY helpful in the post mortem on this whole Covid debacle.
I will post links to the study below the chart.



Yes .... I know .... this is a pre-print .... and is not YET peer reviewed .... but, this is the Cleveland Clinic's data. Lets see how many "scientists" are brave enough to peer review this study.

The study is here .... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1 .... and there is a discussion about it over here .... with plenty of science deniers chiming in.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1605526658743554048

 

[Shale MacGregor]

Wow. Blast from the past. It looks like this was jumped on immediately without time for peer review or evaluation. It also doesn't seem to fully address severity of infection vs vaccination, which, correct me if I am wrong, has been the primary message for over a year now, as it has been obvious that long-term the vaccines did not prevent covid, but were supposed to decrease the severity of it by priming the immune system.

It is easy to hop on early studies that use straw-men as targets instead of addressing the actual benefits of vaccination. Don't forget that 1 in 10,000 of younger men might have a few days of myocarditis and peri-peri-carditis as well.

 

[Hedges]

From what little is written, doesn't seem like they separated the "Covid naive" from those with natural immunity due to prior infection (or did it?) (Outcome of the latter may go against the narrative, but with sufficient weighting of the data sets can be made to show anything desired.)

In other news, it has been determined that people who are vaccinated have a lower rate of automobile accidents.

I've heard that because the bivalent booster contains the original strain and not just Omicron, its effectiveness is delayed (wonder if also reduced.)
Gotta use up the existing stocks, though!

which, correct me if I am wrong, has been the primary message for over a year now

Funny how the target has to get moved.
But yes, that is what I'm now being told.

 

[Bob B]

Wow. Blast from the past. It looks like this was jumped on immediately without time for peer review or evaluation. It also doesn't seem to fully address severity of infection vs vaccination, which, correct me if I am wrong, has been the primary message for over a year now, as it has been obvious that long-term the vaccines did not prevent covid, but were supposed to decrease the severity of it by priming the immune system.

It is easy to hop on early studies that use straw-men as targets instead of addressing the actual benefits of vaccination. Don't forget that 1 in 10,000 of younger men might have a few days of myocarditis and peri-peri-carditis as well.

I primarily made this post to support the idea that an unvaccinated control group is VERY important ... But, it can't be ignored that we were told exactly the opposite of what was true .... as far as Covid vaccines preventing infections ... and there is a perfect correlation to the number of doses and the HIGHER the number of cases. In some time frames, the unvaccinated had 6 times less chance of getting Covid than those with higher number of doses. It stands to reason that if the highly vaccinated were up to 6 times more likely to get Covid ... that they were also much more likely to be spreading it and therefore more deaths were happening with higher vaccination rates.
This study didn't examine Covid deaths .... but, I think there is a LOT more to come.

There are more scientists every day waking up to the fact that we were seriously misinformed by the ones we have trusted to give us health advise. We are no where near the end of discovery of how deep this pit is ... this is just the beginning.
A FULL post mortem has to be done if we want to be able to trust our agencies going forward.

 

[Bob B]

In other news, it has been determined that people who are vaccinated have a lower rate of automobile accidents.

Yes .... I saw that also .... there will be all manner of things put out there to confuse the issues.

 

[Shale MacGregor]

I primarily made this post to support the idea that an unvaccinated control group is VERY important ... But, it can't be ignored that we were told exactly the opposite of what was true .... as far as Covid vaccines preventing infections ... and there is a perfect correlation to the number of doses and the HIGHER the number of cases. In some time frames, the unvaccinated had 6 times less chance of getting Covid than those with higher number of doses. It stands to reason that if the highly vaccinated were up to 6 times more likely to get Covid ... that they were also much more likely to be spreading it and therefore more deaths were happening with higher vaccination rates.
This study didn't examine Covid deaths .... but, I think there is a LOT more to come.

There are more scientists every day waking up to the fact that we were seriously misinformed by the ones we have trusted to give us health advise. We are no where near the end of discovery of how deep this pit is ... this is just the beginning.
A FULL post mortem has to be done if we want to be able to trust our agencies going forward.

I guess I am a bit out of the loop then. The theory you are pointing out is that COVID vaccines cause more COVID? I thought a significant number of people who get COVID didn't end up with symptoms, and so didn't get tested? I would be curious if they tested for antigen response in these "unvaccinated" people who also never got COVID. I am always interested in more information but these partial examinations of things when we are looking for a specific result always make me skeptical.
I fall into the category of those who got vaccinated then didn't keep up with vaccinations. I never ended up getting COVID (or at least not symptomatic COVID), but my wife and daughter who had kept up on vaccines then neglected to get the booster ended up with symptomatic covid.
I still see studies showing efficacy in preventing COVID for a certain number of days, and then claims of reduced severity, but I honestly am out of date with how many studies are out there now without complete information or paying attention to all of the nuances that might make real #s make sense.

 

[Shale MacGregor]

Yes .... I saw that also .... there will be all manner of things put out there to confuse the issues.

If you stay home and don't travel as much you are less likely to get exposed, seems pretty obvious to me and not "things put out there to confuse the issues". Causation vs correlation is always tricky, but it seems telling when someone jumps to intentional obfuscation instead of applying some critical thinking to the issue.

 

[Bob B]

I guess I am a bit out of the loop then. The theory you are pointing out is that COVID vaccines cause more COVID?

While that wasn't the subject of the study ..... seems like a pretty safe extrapolation since the higher vaccinated are up to 6 times more likely to get Covid ..... they are also much more likely to spread Covid .... more Covid equals more people dying from Covid.

If you stay home and don't travel as much you are less likely to get exposed, seems pretty obvious to me and not "things put out there to confuse the issues". Causation vs correlation is always tricky, but it seems telling when someone jumps to intentional obfuscation instead of applying some critical thinking to the issue.

Yes .... If you simply consider that old people and people with more comorbidities are likely to be driving less .... they are going to have fewer accidents.
But ... gotta wonder why they would be trying to make that ridiculous correlation.

 

[Hedges]

I think the proposed explanation was that people who don't believe in protecting themselves by vaccination also don't believe in protecting themselves by obeying speed limits or red lights.

I understand the vaccine hesitant are found more among the poorly educated, and the PhDs.
Would be interesting to break down that unvaccinated vs. vaccinated car-accident people by education. Perhaps the PhDs known to drive safely, perhaps not.

Not making a ridiculous correlation, reporting statistical data.

 

[Hedges]

Remember, causation does not imply correlation.

Current in an inductor:



when driven with a sine wave is not correlated with voltage. Not positive correlation, not negative correlation. Entirely uncorrelated, correlation = 0.
Yet caused by it.

 

[Bob B]

I think the proposed explanation was that people who don't believe in protecting themselves by vaccination also don't believe in protecting themselves by obeying speed limits or red lights.

I understand the vaccine hesitant are found more among the poorly educated, and the PhDs.
Would be interesting to break down that unvaccinated vs. vaccinated car-accident people by education. Perhaps the PhDs known to drive safely, perhaps not.

Not making a ridiculous correlation, reporting statistical data.

But .... ignoring obvious explanations for it .... and settling on ones that fit a narrative.

 

[bradbill]

But .... ignoring obvious explanations for it .... and settling on ones that fit a narrative.

LOL...you actually wrote that?

Bullshit Bob is at it again.

 

[Shale MacGregor]

I understand the vaccine hesitant are found more among the poorly educated, and the PhDs.
Would be interesting to break down that unvaccinated vs. vaccinated car-accident people by education. Perhaps the PhDs known to drive safely, perhaps not.

Less education also means less income on average, and older vehicles / less safety features, etc. Newer vehicles with braking assist, lane keeping, self driving could make it even moreso.

 

[Shale MacGregor]

While that wasn't the subject of the study ..... seems like a pretty safe extrapolation since the higher vaccinated are up to 6 times more likely to get Covid ..... they are also much more likely to spread Covid .... more Covid equals more people dying from Covid.

 

[Bob B]

View attachment 125793

What's the source for that chart? Is it part of a controlled study?

 

[Shale MacGregor]

What's the source for that chart? Is it part of a controlled study?

Nope, it is data from hospitals around the country, compiled and distributed via an updated dataset by the CDC. A lot of studies use this data but in my opinion the hospitals, doctors, and most of the government who have access to the real data are in on it and trying to perpetuate this for political reasons, this is why they keep pushing more people to get vaccinated since it is reducing certain types of voters in larger numbers and will help with upcoming elections.

Rates of COVID-19 Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Updated (Bivalent) Booster Status | Data | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

data.cdc.gov