Dilbert loses newspapers, publishers, distributor, and possibly its website

[Kim Christensen]

There were plenty of people who had already been tested and known to to have previously had the infection, yet were still vaccinated before those who hadn't, simply because they were a bit older.

There has been no randomised, placebo-controlled trial into whether vaccines provide any benefit in those who have natural immunity. None whatsoever.

Not sure how you would slip an antivaxxer a "placebo" but here you go:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119497

Of course an anti-vaxer wouldn't enrol in a vaccine trial, so I don't see how that comment is relevant. There would have been plenty of people who would have enrolled in such a trial. I believe I probably had it in March 2020 and if an antibody test proved it, would have precipitated in a vaccine trial, given the chance.

Even taking it at face value proves the Canadian policy of giving everyone two doses is retarded, as there was no difference between one vs two doses. Those wasted doses could have been used for those who needed them.

But, that study still doesn't prove a positive risk-vs-benefit.

It's not a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial. More importantly, it just looks at re-infection, rather than severe disease and death and doesn't even deal with adverse events. So what if the

Ok. I give up.
Maybe you can tell me this: "How do I unsubscribe to this thread? I'm too dumb to figure it out myself."

[james_s]

Everything else aside, i never understood the apeal of Dilbert cartoons. They always seemed to me stating the obvious and often being silly and borderline stupid. Kind of same as Mr Bin, never found him funny, just plain idiotic. Wish the author the best though, as he did/does have his audience.

Well as I think has been mentioned before, humor is very subjective. Personally I think Dilbert is funny, it's not the most hilarious thing I've ever seen and it's not always great, but I laugh whenever I see one that relates to a situation I've been part of or observed during my career. I'm not going to fault you for not finding it funny, there's lots of humor out there that some people think is hilarious that I either don't get or don't find to be funny. My sense of humor has changed somewhat as I've aged too, some movies I thought were absolutely hilarious when I was a teenager have not held up well. Others I didn't get at all at the time are funny now.

[james_s]

Maybe you can tell me this: "How do I unsubscribe to this thread? I'm too dumb to figure it out myself."

On the list of threads, click the checkbox next to this thread to select it, then click the Ignore Threads button on the top-right.

[Zero999]

The mandates never made any sense because the vaccine doesn't induce sterilising immunity and it's certainty doesn't reduce the spread enough to have a significant effect on the number of cases.
The idea everyone needed to have it is not based on any scientific evidence. There is no evidence to suggest it provides any additional protection against severe disease and death, after someone has already been exposed to the virus. Someone who's already had the virus, then recovered would be perfectly rational in refusing the vaccine, because there's no evidence of any benefit. They FDA might as well have just told everyone, who caught it, to take ivermectin. It has the same level of evidence to support it as vaccinating those with natural immunity.

"Sterilising immunity" is almost impossible to prove because you have to demonstrate that an infection never occurred. All you can observe are symptoms. Some vaccines are more effective than others.

But we know the vaccine doesn't induce sterilising immunity, because those who've had it clearly continue to get infected. It was pretty obvious fairly early on, it wasn't going to stop the pandemic. When Alpha hit, we knew it was mutating to become more infectious, then Delta had sufficient immune escape to ensure it would slowly spread, even if everyone were vaccinated overnight and Omicron just spread like wildfire.

I only mentioned "sterilising immunity" because the person I was replying to brought it up. During the pandemic there were many antivaxxers claiming they weren't actually antivaxxers because they had been the recipients of other vaccines. When it became clear that the covid vax didn't provide sterilizing immunity, the antivaxxers felt vindicated while trying to claim that it was useless.
But that's the thing about "sterilizing immunity", while it is easy to prove that a vaccine doesn't provide sterilizing immunity, it is much more difficult to prove when it does. Many other vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity but are still useful to administer.

I apologise for overlooking this.

Yes of course just because it's non sterilising, it doesn't mean it's no good. I didn't mean to suggest that. My point was making a non-sterilising vaccine a condition of work, or to go to public events was the issue. The vaccine is very good at preventing severe disease and death. People get infected, but it's much milder, than it would've been had they not had the disease or vaccine, so it's definitely useful. It's just questionable whether it's beneficial for all.

Then why were people who had never been infected and more vulnerable, put before those with natural immunity?

Because it was very early in the pandemic. There was no widespread easy way to test people for natural immunity. Logistically, it was simply easier to base it on age and overall health status than trying to triage people of unknown status.

There were plenty of people who had already been tested and known to to have previously had the infection, yet were still vaccinated before those who hadn't, simply because they were a bit older.

I agree with Kim here: Given the number of people that needed to be vaccinated, you need to streamline the process and base it on simple rules. As older people are more vulnerable, they where called in first.

Also, protection against flu like virusses (Rhino, Influenza, Corona, etc) wears off pretty quickly (*) and these group of virusses mutate a lot as well. So there is an additional benefit of vaccinating people with a vaccine that targets a wider range of mutations compared to the (single) mutation they have already been subjected to.

I don't know about Canada, but testing became widespread by the time we started vaccinating in the UK.

At the very start, reinfection was comparatively rare. It's only when the virus mutated and started to infect the upper airway, did immunity become more short-lived. This is probably because antibodies linger for longer in the blood, than the mucus membranes and earlier variants caused more systemic infection. The later variants starting with Delta and especially Omicron caused more upper airway infection, which is what made Omicron much less pathogenic, was well as more transmissible. People often attribute the reduction in pathogenicity in the virus not wanting to kill its host, but I suspect it's more to do with the fact infecting the nose and mouth, rather than the lungs causes drastically increased transmissibility, with reduced pathogenicity being a good side-effect. Remember, most fatalities occurred due to the body's inflammatory response, after the virus had already been eliminated.

I find this topic fascinating. I do my best to listen to both sides of the augment and have changed my opinion on many things over the last three years. I focus more on what doctors are saying, rather than politicians. I do admit I pay more attention to those who question the authorities and mainstream media, because I believe there are many more who have been afraid to speak up and others who never question anything. I hope the authorities have learned, but the fact that some have been so slow to change their policy, when new evidence comes to light, doesn't give me much confidence.

* I don't know how things are at your end, but over here there has been quite a big flu pandemic because people didn't got the flu for a while due to all the Covid restrictions and their immunity declined. That is also why older & vulnerable people get a flu vaccination every year. Having read a bit into it, I strongly doubt there ever will be a vaccine that cures the flu 100%. The best is to get infected a couple of times per year so your immune system remains up to date and well trained.

We've had huge problems with strep A infection, especially in children over the Christmas and New Year period. Another side effect of the response. Whether the risk-benefit was positive or not, is still an ongoing question.

Thanks to the attached video clips, I was mistaken to say 'Bleach', it was 'Disinfectant'.

Injecting a person with a "disinfectant" is not an entirely idiotic thing to speculate, at least on the surface if we assume they lack medical expertise. By "disinfectant" I am assuming they mean a substance that kills the virus but somehow doesn't harm the host, not an off the shelf disinfecting cleaner such as Lysol. Now I'm not suggesting this is actually possible, but in the right context is is far from the dumbest thing I've heard a person say, and I still don't think it was a suggestion of something a person should go out and do.

I think Trump's biggest weakness is not thinking things through before he opens his mouth. It's also a strength because he doesn't hide his true personality, like other politicians do. I sit on the fence as far as Trump is concerned. All politicians are A-holes, but Trump doesn't bother to hide it.

[james_s]

I'm fine with double standards, actually, we all are more or less susceptible of letting something "slip" when done by our favorites; but intellectual dishonesty and outright sociopathic lying I hate.

I think everybody has double standards, everybody has biases, it's perfectly normal. What bothers me is when people with a blatant double standard claim they don't.

As somebody with no particular political affiliation and views that are all over the map from far left to far right depending on the topic, I constantly see groups engaging in exactly the same behavior they accuse groups they are strongly opposed to of doing, "but it's not the same" when they do it, or if you point out that they are also doing it they deflect with an accusation of "whataboutism". 

[Zero999]

The whole Soviet experiment can even be argued to be a form of affirmative action, but based on class, rather than ethnicity.

The policy didn't last long. Korenizatsiia was forgotten in the later 1930's and every different ethnicity from white ethnic Russian speaking Russian was treated as non-equal. Even when they were "integrated" and started speaking Russian and eradicated their own culture, they were still treated as they were from the colonies, which they were (I've read what some Kazaks have written). But Russia has a good history of erasing and totally destroying other cultures. For instance, already in the 1700, Russians tried to commit genocide on the Circassian people. This continued in Soviet times and today's Russia still has these imperialistic and colonialist ideas. Just look at Georgia and Ukraine. I'm not saying other nations haven't done similar things. Just that the Soviet system didn't help, and today's Russia has learnt nothing from history (they deny it) and continues as usual, where at least western nations have learnt something and in many cases apologized for colonialism.

China has been doing it for longer.  I could have also mentioned Zimbabwe, or South Africa. It's not worked there either.

Anyway, you're just proving my point. The kind of affirmative action carried out in the US and parts of Europe will also harm minorities. As I said, universities in the US have already faced legal action from Asians who have no doubt been discriminated against. It's also anti-Semitic because Jews generally do better academically, than other ethnic groups.

And who would you rather receive treatment from: a doctor who got there because she's a woman, from X minority, or a man who's there purely on merit?

[james_s]

]I think Trump's biggest weakness is not thinking things through before he opens his mouth. It's also a strength because he doesn't hide his true personality, like other politicians do. I sit on the fence as far as Trump is concerned. All politicians are A-holes, but Trump doesn't bother to hide it.

I do think he is his own worst enemy. He simply has no filter, at all. He runs his mouth, insults people, makes an ass of himself, when called out on it he doubles down, he just can't shut up, never could, never will. When he finds himself in a hole he can't stop digging. Some people love him for that, he speaks his mind, he's transparent, in a sense that's true, but I would call it belligerent. He behaves similarly to a person that has had too much to drink. It's not against the law to be a belligerent asshole and he's certainly far from the only businessman with that personality, but as an American it was embarrassing to have a person like that holding the most prestigious job in the land. The president is, among other things, the main spokesman, the face of the nation. Personality and diplomacy are not everything, but they are very, very important, and they are areas where he just utterly failed. Another trait of great leaders which he has totally lacked is humility and the ability and willingness to take responsibility when something goes wrong, even when it is not their fault, again Mr Trump utterly fails at that in every situation, his is simply incapable of being humble or ever admitting fault for anything. 

[Someone]

My point was making a non-sterilising vaccine a condition of work, or to go to public events was the issue. The vaccine is very good at preventing severe disease and death. People get infected, but it's much milder, than it would've been had they not had the disease or vaccine, so it's definitely useful. It's just questionable whether it's beneficial for all.

If it wasn't mandatory, the uptake would have been too low to keep the hospitals from collapse (which did happen in the UK and some other countries). Pretty much all the public health measures were just to balance hospital capacity and continues today. Isolation and/or Vaccination, one of those is much easier to sell politically.

You're communicating your position much better than Dave (who dropped some barely coherent "point" and walked away), and there is considerable evidence that natural immunity is as good (or probably stronger) than the vaccines available:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02465-5
So here in Australia the current recommendation is 6 monthly jab or infection, treated interchangeably that we'll probably agree is a reasonable balance on the known data. Now that there is enough protection within the community almost all mandates for workplaces are lifted/gone (healthcare remains, due to high interaction and with vulnerable groups).

Then why were people who had never been infected and more vulnerable, put before those with natural immunity? It didn't make sense to vaccinate a 60 year old who had the disease a few weeks ago, before a 50 year old with no prior infection.

I was disappointed that Australia being 6-12 months "behind" the UK didn't take more from their experience and data showing the effectiveness of single doses (instead holding rigidly to the manufacturer trials). Same thing here with a rigid short interval double dose working from old people to young despite it being pretty clear by that point the population would have been better off (and the old people slightly worse off) if they had prioritised first doses and a longer interval to the second.

[vk6zgo]

That is Trump's MO, presumably used to prevent any negative comeback. "Some smart people have said he fiddles with kids. Maybe he does - I don't know." Of course, he says that kind of thing not because anyone has actually said what he purports but to plant the idea, and then reiterates that he's not saying that "but maybe there's something in it".

Specifically to the bleach thing, there is surely a time and place to ask things and suggest things, and when speaking as The Official Word in front of the entire world is surely not it. He did it then to a) bring his idea forward where it couldn't be dismissed, and b) make sure everyone knew he owned it. But, again,  he gave himself an out, just in case.

Trump is actually a great example of how 'just asking' is really not that at all.

Trump is a blathering idiot, that much has been obvious for as long as he has been involved in politics. I really hate being forced to defend the guy because I absolutely cannot stand him and cringe whenever he flaps his gums, but he did not suggest anyone inject themselves with bleach. He was pondering whether it is possible to inject something that would disinfect a person and kill the virus, it's an idiotic thing to ponder if one knows anything about medicine but he's an idiot and doesn't know anything about medicine. If somebody is stupid enough to take that idle speculation as an instruction to actually inject themselves with disinfectant then they win the Darwin award.

I don't really see it much differently than someone with a poor understanding of engineering and physics pondering if we can "just do xyz" to fix a free energy machine so that it achieves over unity. People speculate about things they don't understand all the time.

Normally, people in such positions as the one Mr Trump occupied have learnt to not "run off at the mouth" about things they not only don't know anything about but have not done even a minimal amount of research about.
Amongst his supporters, his comments have much more influence than if he was just the "dumbo down the road."

We may say "more fool them", but do they deserve to die for their mistake?

[EEVblog]

Can we please stop the Trump stuff.

The last Dilbert was just published on the website. From today (13th Mar) Dilbert Reborn will only be available on the Locals platform.
I want Dilbert, but not at US$70/year. And I don't use Locals for anything else.

[vk6zgo]

Can we please stop the Trump stuff.

The last Dilbert was just published on the website. From today (13th Mar) Dilbert Reborn will only be available on the Locals platform.
I want Dilbert, but not at US$70/year. And I don't use Locals for anything else.

Dave, the Adams' "hoax" list you linked to was almost all about Mr Trump.

[EEVblog]

Can we please stop the Trump stuff.

The last Dilbert was just published on the website. From today (13th Mar) Dilbert Reborn will only be available on the Locals platform.
I want Dilbert, but not at US$70/year. And I don't use Locals for anything else.

Dave, the Adams' "hoax" list you linked to was almost all about Mr Trump.

And it was several pages back. And at least was technically on-topic because it was about Adams.

[wilfred]

And it was several pages back. And at least was technically on-topic because it was about Adams.

And this is the General Technical Chat board of the forum so that's technically correct.

[m k]

And it was several pages back. And at least was technically on-topic because it was about Adams.

For some it can be just a moment ago.

[tooki]

But Trump's opinion is not equal, not even close, to that of an expert in the field of study being questioned.

It kind of is. Science is truth by majority.

No. Science is not truth, science is a method.
The second you start defining science as an "accepted truth", you completely miss what science is.

Quoting for truth, because this cannot be repeated enough!!!

[tooki]

For an example of 60% of articles failing reproducibility test, look at psychology (Nature, 2015, cited 56 times).  (And that's not all crappy papers, only the ones whose results cannot be reproduced.)

In preclinical cancer research, 89% of articles failed reproducibility testing, ie. their results could not be reproduced.  Also note that this Nature article has been cited 1851 times, so it is definitely main-stream science, not some lone goofball spouting nonsense. 

Which is in no way indicative of the scientific process failing. It's literally just the process working exactly as it is supposed to. One of the core purposes of academic publishing is to say "hey everybody, we did this, but we need for others to replicate the experiment to either confirm or refute its findings". Academic publishing isn't intended to mean "we did this novel experiment and it proves this and that". When you have several replicated experiments that all confirm the findings, then you can start to take it to mean that something is proven.

Of course, most people don't know any of this, since they're scientifically illiterate and rely on the often wildly distorted misinterpretations of scientific papers by scientifically illiterate journalists.


The biggest actual issue with academic publishing is that failed experiments are rarely published (that is, they're rarely ever submitted for publishing). So there's a lot of studies we don't know about at all. That and the paywalling of the results of publicly funded research in privately-published journals that add very little value to the entire process.

[james_s]

The more times a theory holds up to being tested, the more confident we can be that the theory is truth, but it's never really 100% proven. Science encourages continuous testing and questioning of everything, and occasionally things long believed to be true turn out to be incorrect.

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

I'm OK with the theory that everything consists of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. (although you can get a really good rock group with just three of these elements)
It's the Aether that I am not so sure of.
I dislike these newfangled ideas.

[Buriedcode]

The more times a theory holds up to being tested, the more confident we can be that the theory is truth, but it's never really 100% proven. Science encourages continuous testing and questioning of everything, and occasionally things long believed to be true turn out to be incorrect.

Just to add, often people will constantly raise the bar for "proof" if they don't believe in a finding, or lower the bar to ridiculousness if they want something to be true.  Because you cannot really prove a negative, cognitive bias skews peoples views on what constitutes evidence so if a study is negative - it just wasn't precise enough, or wasn't large enough.  If its positive - no matter how small or poorly designed - it must prove my theory right!   Case in point the whole silly hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin debacle - where people are still quoting obviously fake studies.

Add that relying solely on placebo controlled double blind studies - without looking at important things like, you know, plausbility, or whether theres even a possible mechanism at work - means that the biases/flaws that can never be removed from said studies end up creating false positives.  For example P<0.05 thresholds - 5% of studies will be "positive" by pure chance, but are seen as showing something meaningful if one only considers the results from the test and nothing else like context.

[Zero999]

My point was making a non-sterilising vaccine a condition of work, or to go to public events was the issue. The vaccine is very good at preventing severe disease and death. People get infected, but it's much milder, than it would've been had they not had the disease or vaccine, so it's definitely useful. It's just questionable whether it's beneficial for all.

If it wasn't mandatory, the uptake would have been too low to keep the hospitals from collapse (which did happen in the UK and some other countries). Pretty much all the public health measures were just to balance hospital capacity and continues today. Isolation and/or Vaccination, one of those is much easier to sell politically.

The fact it wasn't mandatory had nothing to do with the UK's hospitals being over-crowded. Most of the pressure on the NHS occurred at a time, before the vaccine was approved (Spring 2020) and during the point people were queuing up to take it (winter 2020/2021) and it had to be given to those who were deemed to be more vulnerable. Uptake amongst the vulnerable was more than high enough to ensure the NHS could cope. This was one of the reasons why the Delta and Omicron waves didn't cause as much of a problem as the previous ones.

Vaccine mandates would have made the situation far worse, not better. At the end of 2021, just as Omicron hit, if I remember rightly, the government mandated all care home workers take the vaccine, but it resulted in staff shortages. They were going to do the same for NHS staff in early 2022, but dropped the requirement, as the numbers didn't add up. A fraction of the population equal to 1-¹/_R need to have sterilising immunity in order to stop the spread, yet Omicron has an R₀ of 18, the vaccine only reduces transmission by 30% and is short-lived. Avoiding a small number of infections, which are unlikely to be severe in the vaccinated, didn't outweigh the poorer care which would have resulted from understaffing, which is already bad enough as it is.

You're communicating your position much better than Dave (who dropped some barely coherent "point" and walked away), and there is considerable evidence that natural immunity is as good (or probably stronger) than the vaccines available:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02465-5

Exactly. More importantly, protection against mild or asymptomatic disease is unimportant. Getting a cold is part of every day life. The vaccines were approved because they have been proven to be highly effective at preventing hospitalisation and death. The risk vs benefit for the first two doses was definitely worth it for most adults, who lacked immunity, especially given the more pathogenic variants in circulation. The boosters are much more questionable, but even though I find it interesting, I won't get into it again.

I've noticed many people appear to be unable to look at this rationally. There are those who will never trust the vaccine, whatever the evidence says and there are those who appear to be completely blinkered to the fact it does have some risks. Some authorities got it right, others messed up. I do my very best to look at it from both sides, but it's difficult given the lack of data.

So here in Australia the current recommendation is 6 monthly jab or infection, treated interchangeably that we'll probably agree is a reasonable balance on the known data. Now that there is enough protection within the community almost all mandates for workplaces are lifted/gone (healthcare remains, due to high interaction and with vulnerable groups).

Good. They shouldn't have been any in the first place. Plenty of other countries managed fine without them. There are no mandates for flu vaccination and now this not much different, certainly not at this stage.

I didn't want to get into a debate on vaccines. My point was the pandemic response of most governments was not evidence based. I could have talked about keeping 2m distance, facemasks, school closures etc. Some of it can be put down to inexperience but a lot of it was negligent. Governments will try to make excuses for the madness, some of them have some merit, others are completely false. Getting unbiased data on which measures proved beneficial long term and which did more harm than good is difficult. I think most of them resulted in net harm. It's often better to do nothing, than harm, but that's pure speculation.

[Zero999]

The more times a theory holds up to being tested, the more confident we can be that the theory is truth, but it's never really 100% proven. Science encourages continuous testing and questioning of everything, and occasionally things long believed to be true turn out to be incorrect.

Just to add, often people will constantly raise the bar for "proof" if they don't believe in a finding, or lower the bar to ridiculousness if they want something to be true.  Because you cannot really prove a negative, cognitive bias skews peoples views on what constitutes evidence so if a study is negative - it just wasn't precise enough, or wasn't large enough.  If its positive - no matter how small or poorly designed - it must prove my theory right!   Case in point the whole silly hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin debacle - where people are still quoting obviously fake studies.

Face masks are another one. The evidence now points in the direction they're completely ineffective, yet many still hold onto bad studies which state otherwise. Heck I was one of those who thought they were effective, yet my opinion has changed, in light of new evidence.

Add that relying solely on placebo controlled double blind studies - without looking at important things like, you know, plausbility, or whether theres even a possible mechanism at work - means that the biases/flaws that can never be removed from said studies end up creating false positives.  For example P<0.05 thresholds - 5% of studies will be "positive" by pure chance, but are seen as showing something meaningful if one only considers the results from the test and nothing else like context.

I don't see your point about placebo controlled studies. If there's sufficient randomisation in the participants and the study is large enough, there shouldn't be any bias. Interestingly many interventions lack a plausible mechanism, or one was presumed, yet later turned out to be false: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is a classic example.

[james_s]

Face masks are another one. The evidence now points in the direction they're completely ineffective, yet many still hold onto bad studies which state otherwise. Heck I was one of those who thought they were effective, yet my opinion has changed, in light of new evidence.

N95 masks? Or cloth masks? Or both?

I never really understood why wearing one or not was such a big politicized deal, but I'd be surprised if properly worn N95 masks were not effective, especially at capturing particiles if you are infected. Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.

[nctnico]

But Trump's opinion is not equal, not even close, to that of an expert in the field of study being questioned.

It kind of is. Science is truth by majority.

No. Science is not truth, science is a method.
The second you start defining science as an "accepted truth", you completely miss what science is.

Maybe truth isn't the right word here and my wording could be better. So excuse the semantics. Still for all intends and purposes, the broadly accepted (scientifically established) theory that explains a certain phenomenon is treated as being true / the truth until the theory has been disproven c.q. replaced by a new, better theory. 'Truth of the day' could be a better term.

[SiliconWizard]

Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.

Yes, but they were never meant to block viruses. It's usually even marked clearly on the boxes.

[coppice]

Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.

Yes, but they were never meant to block viruses. It's usually even marked clearly on the boxes.

Most simple masks catch aerosol spray from the mouth of the wearer quite well. That has always been the goal. Droplets of a surgeon's saliva on a wound could be devastating. They do little for something truly airborne. So, you need to see if your virus of interest mostly floats freely in the air, or is mostly carried in water droplets. Even N95 masks aren't much good against free floating virii.