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heartbroken that John Clauser seems to have joined climate change denial.
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Wallace Gasiewicz:
QUOTE:  Yes I'm absolutely serious There is no doubt that the vaccines have a significant reduction in mortality rate (the exception is that the AZ and J&J vaccines are no where near as effective, though they still conferred some benefit). 

You are making the assumption that the vaccines stopped the virus.  This is an assumption based on observation of this pandemic. 
So why did the 1918 have only  two deadly waves? 
There was no vaccine for that disease at that time at all. And no laboratory tests, really only physical examination of the ill and dead. 

Also please note that the COVID vaccine was only available after the second wave had pretty much ended.
Here are two other charts showing that there was a third wave: 

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-deaths?time=2020-01-03..2022-10-02&country=~GBR
In the above chart, Please note that the red line is cases, deaths are green line. Lots of third wave cases not so many deaths.
There is a lot of reasons thee data do not tell the entire story, one of the things would be the availability of tests to diagnose relatively minor cases were not as available in the earliest wave.We do not know anything about a third wave in the 1918 Flu pandemic, since we have no testing results and the third wave would not have caused a lot of deaths.



tom66:

--- Quote from: Wallace Gasiewicz on August 04, 2023, 12:20:26 pm ---QUOTE:  Yes I'm absolutely serious There is no doubt that the vaccines have a significant reduction in mortality rate (the exception is that the AZ and J&J vaccines are no where near as effective, though they still conferred some benefit). 

You are making the assumption that the vaccines stopped the virus.  This is an assumption based on observation of this pandemic. 
So why did the 1918 have only  two deadly waves? 
There was no vaccine for that disease at that time at all. And no laboratory tests, really only physical examination of the ill and dead. 
--- End quote ---

How accurate is the data from the 1918 pandemic compared to what we have today?   PCR testing was but a glimmer in the eye of epidemiologists.


--- Quote from: Wallace Gasiewicz on August 04, 2023, 12:20:26 pm ---Also please note that the COVID vaccine was only available after the second wave had pretty much ended.
Here are two other charts showing that there was a third wave: 

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-deaths?time=2020-01-03..2022-10-02&country=~GBR
In the above chart, Please note that the red line is cases, deaths are green line. Lots of third wave cases not so many deaths.
There is a lot of reasons thee data do not tell the entire story, one of the things would be the availability of tests to diagnose relatively minor cases were not as available in the earliest wave.We do not know anything about a third wave in the 1918 Flu pandemic, since we have no testing results and the third wave would not have caused a lot of deaths.

--- End quote ---

Indeed but this is my point about asymptomatic testing.  Because after the 2nd wave and vaccines we had a lot more socialisation, lots of things reopened, there was more opportunity for the virus to spread.  But the majority of the time it was spreading from vaccinated to vaccinated, or if it was spreading to an unvaccinated person, less virus was spreading each time.  And those it did infect didn't get as sick, they didn't end up in hospital, they didn't die as often.  This idea of viral load is one reason masks helped somewhat with the virus spread (though like lots of things in the pandemic, their effectiveness was exaggerated.)

Another issue with looking at case numbers instead of deaths/hospitalisations is that case numbers aren't corrected to the proportion of those tested - the UK really ramped up testing once socialisation was allowed again with the expectation of having to lock down quickly if the virus got out of control (indeed that did happen in December 2021, which I think was a mistake, but that's politics!)    Deaths and hospitalisations on the other hand don't require correction for somewhat obvious reasons (it's hard to ignore someone dying.)

What we do know is even against Omicron the current generation mRNA vaccines reduce illness by about 65% and while they may not stop you getting sick they reduce the severity of sickness, which in my mind is a win...  There is also a nice epidemiological benefit:  we possibly pushed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to this evolutionary outcome.  Since the vaccine trains the immune system against the spike protein, it was not as effective any more for SARS-CoV-2 to use that protein.  The spike protein mutated and became less effective, reducing the severity of the virus.  Note that Omicron only was spotted late Nov 2021 well after a majority of people had been vaccinated. While we will never know the true reason for an evolutionary benefit it's reasonable to surmise that vaccine evasion is a strong driver so this is a possible example of vaccines protecting even the unvaccinated.
tszaboo:

--- Quote from: nctnico on August 04, 2023, 11:32:16 am ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on August 04, 2023, 01:25:15 am ---
--- Quote from: EEVblog on August 02, 2023, 10:16:00 am ---And we saw how the unwillingness to do that during and now after covid, not only caused them to fail epicly, but it destoryed almost all of the communities respect in science (and politics, if there was any respect there to begin with).
I see this same thing happening again with climate science and climate politics.

--- End quote ---

Science failed during and "after" covid? Didn't we manage to come up with multiple vaccines in record time? Didn't we discuss and learn about virus infection in schools, at home, on the net, whatever, like we had never done before? How can science have failed when we exactly improved our knowledge about  (and techniques to deal with) the issue at hand? I don't get it.

--- End quote ---
Agreed. Science saved our asses big time (just like it did in the past by eradicating other highly infectious diseases like polio and measles). It is just that foreign entities saw a big opportunity to spread false information and did so. To the extend that many now distrust the very people that work hard to keep them safe.

One of the primary failures is to selectively shop in research papers. Better follow the advice given by instutes that exist to supply governments with information.

--- End quote ---
In a way some of the institutions did fail. People realized that the WHO is politics first, that any science rom communist countries are subject to meddling from the governments. At the beginning the downplay of the events were exactly like the Chornobyl disaster, not giving clear info, not sharing the danger. Or the sputnik vaccine developed  and then the lead scientist getting murdered by the state.
An entire new generation have to realize how bad having dictatorships as neighbors is. And those dictatorships keep inventing and funding disinformation to undermine our trust.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: tautech on August 04, 2023, 01:32:17 am ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on August 04, 2023, 01:25:15 am ---
--- Quote from: EEVblog on August 02, 2023, 10:16:00 am ---And we saw how the unwillingness to do that during and now after covid, not only caused them to fail epicly, but it destoryed almost all of the communities respect in science (and politics, if there was any respect there to begin with).
I see this same thing happening again with climate science and climate politics.

--- End quote ---

Science failed during and "after" covid? Didn't we manage to come up with multiple vaccines in record time? Didn't we discuss and learn about virus infection in schools, at home, on the net, whatever, like we had never done before? How can science have failed when we exactly improved our knowledge about  (and techniques to deal with) the issue at hand? I don't get it.

--- End quote ---
Proper real vaccines prevent transmission.

--- End quote ---
No, that is not how vaccines  work. Vaccines train your immune system to recorgnise a threat and deal with it properly. Reduced spreading of a disease is a secondary effect.
Dr. Frank:
As always on eevblog, we have a factual debate on an emotional subject, which is fought near-religiously, especially in Germany.
I'm also an experimental physicist and natural-scientist. In physics, we have a clear view how to validate new theories.
I recommend the old 1964 video from Feynman, On scientific methods:



It's a three step process, in brief:
1) Observe the phenomenon, i.e. make precise measurements on the observable parameters
2) Guess a theory, best in form of closed equations, which combines the parameters from 1), and try to identify possible correlations amongst them.
As Weather and Climate are like Thermodynamics non-deterministic, you have to use statistical methods and numerical simulation instead.
Both methods have to describe exactly the known, historic data. The theory will allow extrapolation in e.g. geometrical or timely manner.
Usually there are several different theories, either contradicting each other (which is good), or giving different predictions.
3) The theories/simulations have to be validated, again by experimental methods, by checking their predictions

The theories, which fail versus experiment, are definitely false.
Those which agree with experiment are "not wrong" only.

Climate Research is therefore not yet a "complete" science, as the final experimental proof will be available in 30, 50, 100 years from now.
To my knowledge, there do not exist (yet) accelerated life methods or short termed monitoring which would correlate well with the Climate models.
The Climate simulations probably use strong averaging statistics with a time-constant of about 30 years.
The mean global  temperature trend itself is such a prediction which arises from a strong averaging statistics.
Therefore, they can't make any prediction about Weather events, or similar events on a short termed basis any more. They only provide long termed trends.
That's similar to the Allan Deviation (statistics) for clocks.. you can't correlate short term noise with long term stability, e.g. on Cs clocks vs. MASER clocks, also due to different time constants.

The IPCC AR6 results therefore deliver ideas about long term evolution of temperature, glacier melting, sea level rise, but barely any advice, how weather events will develop. There's a weak indication that Strong Rain events might happen more often.
And I'm not sure, whether Geologists or Biologists are able to identify early signs of changes.
One of my former school mates is a prof for Geology, and works on Climate Change by using satellite measurements. I have to ask him.

This obvious gap in perception is politically used in Germany and EU to justify painful changes of our economy and Power supply with recent catastrophic events like flooding of a narrow valley and those many forest fire events in Southern Europe and in Germany.
But there exists  no real scientific correlation, only religious like apocalypse visions. People are gluing themselves to the soil for that reason.
The root cause of the flooding is: long time settling in a danger zone, that's historically proven. Identical floods occurred in 1808 and 1910.
Wild fires are near 100% caused by arson.

In Engineering (my company) we use e.g. "A3 problem solving" for investigation on the REAL root causes and problem management, mostly (99%) by risk mitigation. In rare cases only, the problem itself can be solved. That's my daily experience as well, as I'm dealing with hundreds of terminations and changes on components (PCN / PTN) every year. You always have to find work arounds like re-engineering or long term storage, but only rarely you are able to convince the supplier to withdraw the PCN or PTN.
Probably the Global Warming can not be stopped (so fast), so we have to mitigate the consequences.
 
It would be better, if experience from "complete" fields of science AND the experience of engineers-in-industry would be consulted to make problem and risk analysis, technology assessments on these more technical oriented subjects.

Here in Germany we have the most dumb Climate politics and Energy change.
The politics and so called "experts" cut down our working, reliable energy system, formerly based on nuclear power and fossile energy, before the "renewable" energies can safely and completely take over. There are still several important technologies for energy buffering missing, do not have the necessary maturity level, or are too expensive, like battery storage or hydrogen conversion.

Me and my colleagues in Automotive Electronics company developed many new automotive compliant components and technologies, like SMD, Blue LED, LCDs, 25 years ago.
This now allows to terminate old analog instruments with dials, pointers, stepper motors, which were produced up to now, for over 40 years.
The new devices are already working and running in mass production for many years.

That's the way to bring innovations into life, but definitely not the other (German) way round.

Frank

PS: Phrases like "denial" ,"believing", "disbelieving", ""blame" "original sin" are often used in the daily discussion about Climate and COVID alike on TV, journals, by environmental activists and medical "scientists".
Those terms are all originating from the religions.
I have big problems with these terms, as I guess i never simply "believed" in something, but I always wanted to know how technical things worked in its core.
I always was questing for the root cause, and disassembled each and every device I could access.
What could not be proven, is not existing.
That's the materialistic view of a typical scientist.
So I have my big doubts on politics, religion, fanatic, any doctrine, medical "science", latter from personal experience.

Peter Higgs suggested "his" particle in 1964, and the whole physical community was fully convinced of his theory over all the years.
But only about 50 years later in 2012, the experimental proof was achieved with 5-sigma uncertainty @ CERN.
Only then he was granted the Nobel Prize. That's how Physics / Science works.   
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