Dr. Dan Wilson, Covid-19 Mask Science |490|

Don’t worry. I know someone who took an AP English class last year.
Maybe there are roughly two types of people here.

There are those who see some of these issues as interesting technical questions, and there are those who vaguely see it ias their duty to support the medical authorities because they obviously know what they are doing. I think I'd put you and Silence in that category.

I am definitely in the first camp. If someone says this disease is not how it seems, the interesting question is, how can that be. Think how boring it would be to fill a website with official COVID advice!

Let me give you an example, that struck me when I first heard it. A lot of AIDS patients given anti-retrovirals report that they rapidly feel better - on the face of it, this is good evidence that their AIDS is caused by a virus - HIV - which can be eliminated by anti-viral drugs.

However, Henry Bauer points out that these drugs also have a powerful anti-fungal action, and AIDS patients are often extremely ill from fungal infections. However those drugs are far too toxic to use for that purpose. Now I find that interesting because one way to potentially mistakenly think that these unfortunate people are suffering from a viral infection would be to notice how fast they improve if given an antiviral drug.

It is only when you realise that there is another interpretation of the facts that you start to wonder.

Another fascinating personal 'discovery' was that there is something called exosomes. These perform very much like viruses but are actually generated by our bodies. You only have to absorb that fact to realise how much confusion that might create!

David
 
Last edited:
Ah so you think my mind became distorted so that I don't hold your beliefs? Well OK, but might it not be the other way round?

David

No, I was thinking that your approach is very different from mine. My approach depends upon whether or not good or bad information is followed, so if I'm led astray, its because I followed bad information. And conversely, if I see someone who has been led astray, I think it would help to substitute their bad information with good information.

But you just have a different approach. And good/bad information (in the way that I think about it) is largely irrelevant to it. We'll forever be talking at cross-purposes. This is all overly simplified, of course. And this isn't meant as any sort of under-handed dig at you.
 
Maybe there are roughly two types of people here.

There are those who see some of these issues as interesting technical questions, and there are those who vaguely see it ias their duty to support the medical authorities because they obviously know what they are doing. I think I'd put you and Silence in that category.

I don't even know what that means. What would be an example of a medical authority?

I think we're both about interesting questions (I'm terrible about being skeptical of everything). I just think we go about exploring them in very different ways, which means we end up in quite different places.

I am definitely in the first camp. If someone says this disease is not how it seems, the interesting question is, how can that be. Think how boring it would be to fill a website with official COVID advice!

Let me give you an example, that struck me when I first heard it. A lot of AIDS patients given anti-retrovirals report that they rapidly feel better - on the face of it, this is good evidence that their AIDS is caused by a virus - HIV - which can be eliminated by anti-viral drugs.

However, Henry Bauer points out that these drugs also have a powerful anti-fungal action, and AIDS patients are often extremely ill from fungal infections. However those drugs are far too toxic to use for that purpose. Now I find that interesting because one way to potentially mistakenly think that these unfortunate people are suffering from a viral infection would be to notice how fast they improve if given an antiviral drug.

Yup, so then my approach would be, why do people who seemingly know way more than me think otherwise? How can I prove to myself I am wrong?

It is only when you realise that there is another interpretation of the facts that you start to wonder.

Yup.
 
There are those who see some of these issues as interesting technical questions, and there are those who vaguely see it ias their duty to support the medical authorities because they obviously know what they are doing. I think I'd put you and Silence in that category.
Says a lot David.

I'd put it this way:

There are those who see these technical questions as interesting, but lack the hubris to come to analytical conclusions on technical issues outside their expertise. What are they to do in this case? Weigh the various sources of information, namely analysis by those with credentials or other attributes that demonstrate technical expertise. If there are conflicting conclusions from such "experts", they do not draw strong conclusions either way. If there seems to be consensus, all other things equal, they rely on the consensus.

Its how 99.99% of people go throughout their lives when dealing with topics/issues outside their area of expertise. You do it everyday when you take the advice of your financial consultant, have your attorney draw up your will, or your accountant prepare your taxes.

How you conflate this approach as some "duty to support medical authorities" is beyond me. Its endemic of a lot of thinking in this community of late. If you dare to suggest a mainstream body of science/medicine/etc to be legitimate, you are typically accused of being a troll (or worse).

Take this question of mask science for example. I see the "science" as unsettled. At least that's what my non-technical view of the various data suggests to me. I do not see any evidence of wide spread harm that might come from wearing a mask (as some have attempted to suggest). I see policy makers likely making really rushed, inexperience, and likely suboptimaly informed decisions. Decisions which will very likely be reviewed, many found lacking, and adjusted should we face future public health crises. I do not see evidence for a conspiracy but rather the typical floundering about that humans typically demonstrate when dealing with something new; something novel.

So, on the question of efficacy of masks I'm neutral. I don't see clear evidence of benefit nor do I see clear evidence of harm; so the common sense notion that they might help (even a bit) made wearing one a pretty easy thing for me to do. (For now; not forever)

What I'm not is an apologist for the medical community. Ironic, huh?
 
Says a lot David.

I'd put it this way:

There are those who see these technical questions as interesting, but lack the hubris to come to analytical conclusions on technical issues outside their expertise. What are they to do in this case? Weigh the various sources of information, namely analysis by those with credentials or other attributes that demonstrate technical expertise. If there are conflicting conclusions from such "experts", they do not draw strong conclusions either way. If there seems to be consensus, all other things equal, they rely on the consensus.

Its how 99.99% of people go throughout their lives when dealing with topics/issues outside their area of expertise. You do it everyday when you take the advice of your financial consultant, have your attorney draw up your will, or your accountant prepare your taxes.

How you conflate this approach as some "duty to support medical authorities" is beyond me. Its endemic of a lot of thinking in this community of late. If you dare to suggest a mainstream body of science/medicine/etc to be legitimate, you are typically accused of being a troll (or worse).

Take this question of mask science for example. I see the "science" as unsettled. At least that's what my non-technical view of the various data suggests to me. I do not see any evidence of wide spread harm that might come from wearing a mask (as some have attempted to suggest). I see policy makers likely making really rushed, inexperience, and likely suboptimaly informed decisions. Decisions which will very likely be reviewed, many found lacking, and adjusted should we face future public health crises. I do not see evidence for a conspiracy but rather the typical floundering about that humans typically demonstrate when dealing with something new; something novel.

So, on the question of efficacy of masks I'm neutral. I don't see clear evidence of benefit nor do I see clear evidence of harm; so the common sense notion that they might help (even a bit) made wearing one a pretty easy thing for me to do. (For now; not forever)

What I'm not is an apologist for the medical community. Ironic, huh?


Hmmmmm....

I think there is a lot of nuance here as there is in all big complicated situations, and I appreciate what you are saying. In my opinion David is mischaracterizing those who go against the contrarians. I do not think that cautiously adopting what officials say is a dim witted, knee jerk, lemming like rush to side with the 'official narrative" as conspiracy theorists like to call anything that doesn't support sinister conspiracies. This is especially true when, as you note, you have no expertise in a subject matter.

Your point about lawyers, financial consultants, etc is good.I'd add in everything from airline pilots to the pimple faced tattooed person in the restaurant kitchen preparing the meal you ordered. Though even honest doctors tell you to seek a second opinion if you doubt theirs. In the balance, trusting in "officials" seems to come out ahead of being a paranoid cave dweller. I mean society has survived millennia; albeit with many terrible episodes and injustices. Few want to live in a cave and, of those, fewer could survive long doing so. But we must challenge officials to keep them on the right path. Power corrupts after all. There will always be a tension between the officials and the public in any society that has freedom, justice and prosperity as a goal. Such is life and the founders of this country knew that. That being said, the tension must exist at reasonable healthy levels.

If there is some seemingly obvious evidence from good sources that support, as materially true, what goes against the official narrative, then one should be skeptical enough to at least ask the officials to reconcile such evidence with their narrative. Officials should openly and thoroughly perform the reconciliation. If they don't, then they are at least remiss in their duty as officials and, maybe, they are lying.

I think you would agree with that and David and others here certainly would.

The conundrum lies in deciding what constitutes good contrarian evidence. That is where I see things falling apart on this forum and most others. In fact it is a societal issue of major importance at this point. If you don't know anything about the topic or even topics of a similar nature, you cannot discern what good evidence looks like. Add to that the fact that most people are not disciplined in analytical thinking and methodologies. The result is a lot of people clinging to poor quality "evidence" and, when experts hand wave away that poor quality evidence, it reinforces the conspiracy thinking. Add to that all of the deliberate misinformation that is available and mixed in with the real stuff.

The best contrarian evidence is that which exists within the officials' own reports. It is sometimes right there, though, as I have pointed out elsewhere on this forum, officials are people too and, as such, make honest mistakes. Just because you find an official contradicting himself or associated officials doesn't mean you have detected the "smoking gun".

Getting back to covid, in the opening days of the pandemic, before my team joined the corporate task force and began sharing data with other teams (we were worried about how much this thing was going to cost us in claims expense - turned out to be minuscule because we weren't and still aren't seeing covid taking a toll on our covered lives) I was exposed to some information that made me skeptical of the official narrative. We all were. Some noticed; many did not.

That information was the cruise ships. Cruise ships are notorious for being bacterial and viral breeding grounds. Deaths from contracted pathogens on cruises have been well known for decades. Cruises tend to attract an older customer base. Indeed, it is common for terminally ill people to enjoy a cruise in the months before they are slated to die. The cruise ships involved in the opening days of the pandemic were no different. Yet very few of the passengers became ill from covid infection and only a tiny number died. I read all of the articles because I knew that the impact on the passengers and crew would be very telling as to the contagiousness and lethality of the virus - and it just wasn't happening. The same was repeated a little later on US Navy ships. I think one older sailor had a death attributed to covid. There is a long standing tradition with Naval cruises. As soon as the ship leaves port on a deployment, just about everyone comes down with some kind of "crud". After a week or two it's run through the ship and everyone is back to 100%. But that wasn't the case with covid. It simply wasn't that contagious (or most everyone was asymptomatic). It certainly was not anything like as deadly as the black plague it was being made out to be.

Now that is a common sense observation that any reasonable person should use to question the narrative. The effect (or lack thereof) on the cruise ships was well documented by the officials themselves. One doesn't need to be an expert on anything to recognize a red flag in that experience. It was incumbent on the officials to explain the lack of deaths on the cruise ships, not to hype the few that happened. Had the officials addressed what we all saw, if we were paying attention, we would have known that covid only kills the most elderly and frail and/or ill with pre-existing serious conditions. Because that is what happened on the ships and that is what is happening in the larger society. The cruise ships were actually the perfect microcosm for the world wide experience with covid.
 
Last edited:
A disabled woman has filed a lawsuit involving mandetory mask rules. A woman who has both cancer and asthma was kicked out of a grocery store for not wearing a mask, even though she has legitimate medical exemptions.

 
Says a lot David.

I'd put it this way:

There are those who see these technical questions as interesting, but lack the hubris to come to analytical conclusions on technical issues outside their expertise. What are they to do in this case? Weigh the various sources of information, namely analysis by those with credentials or other attributes that demonstrate technical expertise. If there are conflicting conclusions from such "experts", they do not draw strong conclusions either way. If there seems to be consensus, all other things equal, they rely on the consensus.
I actually gave you two examples of information that are fairly easy to evaluate and understand.
Its how 99.99% of people go throughout their lives when dealing with topics/issues outside their area of expertise. You do it everyday when you take the advice of your financial consultant, have your attorney draw up your will, or your accountant prepare your taxes.
Well 99.99% of people do not come to this website! I dare say a few of them go to websites that do discuss the intricacies of tax, bitcoins, or whatever. It is perfectly normal that intelligent people should take a particular interest in certain areas of life and more or less ignore others.
How you conflate this approach as some "duty to support medical authorities" is beyond me. Its endemic of a lot of thinking in this community of late. If you dare to suggest a mainstream body of science/medicine/etc to be legitimate, you are typically accused of being a troll (or worse).
Well I used to be extremely mainstream in my view of medical science. I simply did what the doctor suggested (though I rarely needed his attention), with no quibbles. If you experience what can go wrong that way, you start to get curious. More recently, partly because of the near paralysis of the NHS, I decided to try acupuncture for some osteoarthritis and sciatica. Doctors tend to treat these with pain killers and hope they will go away. It turns out that acupuncture can pretty much zap both of these complaints with no drugs and in less time than it would take to get a doctor's appointment and the inevitable scan. I was very impressed, and I have to ask why normal medicine makes so little use of this form of treatment. My bet is that Big Pharma doesn't like it.

Anything that produces $billions of profits will be corrupt, and that obviously includes parts of the health service. To assume otherwise is like walking onto a battlefield and not expecting to get injured!
Take this question of mask science for example.

I don't really think masks are the most interesting thing to look at. The science is obviously going to be obscure. However something like the PCR tests and their chances of producing false positives is far more interesting, and it is possible to come to pretty clear conclusions because you are looking at essentially digital questions.

David
 
Last edited:
I actually gave you two examples of information that are fairly easy to evaluate and understand.

Well 99.99% of people do not come to this website! I dare say a few of them go to websites that do discuss the intricacies of tax, bitcoins, or whatever. It is perfectly normal that intelligent people should take a particular interest in certain areas of life and more or less ignore others.

Well I used to be extremely mainstream in my view of medical science. I simply did what the doctor suggested, with no quibbles. If you experience what can go wrong that way, you start to get curious. More recently, partly because of the near paralysis of the NHS, I decided to try acupuncture for some osteoarthritis and sciatica. Doctors tend to treat these with pain killers and hope they will go away. It turns out that acupuncture can pretty much zap both of these complaints with no drugs and in less time than it would take to get a doctor's appointment and the inevitable scan. I was very impressed, and I have to ask why normal medicine makes so little use of this form of treatment. My bet is that Big Pharma doesn't like it.

Anything that produces $billions of profits will be corrupt, and that obviously includes parts of the health service. To assume otherwise is like walking onto a battlefield and not expecting to get injured!


I don't really think masks are the most interesting thing to look at. The science is obviously going to be obscure. However something like the PCR tests and their chances of producing false positives is far more interesting, and it is possible to come to pretty clear conclusions because you are looking at essentially digital questions.

David

David,
I have some quibbles with what you wrote.

To summarize the quibbles (great British terminology!) - most all people are corrupt; not just those involved with $billions. The food prep service worker is just as bad as the banker or pharmacy corporation CEO. One just thinks bigger than the other, but the corruption level is the same. The dedication to a good product delivered and a job well done is also the same.

You don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Societal decisions - even personal ones - should be based on net positives instead of absolute positives. That is how any successful happy person lives.

Some doctors are greedy self-serving asses. Some are totally incompetent. All are incompetent at least sometimes. That is true of anyone in any profession. How many airline crashes were due to pilot error? answer- the majority. Did the pilots want to die? No. They just made bad decisions in a situation. Of those crashes that were mechanical issues, did the maintenance crew want to kill a few hundred people? No. The suicidal pilot or the terrorist mechanic scenario is exceedingly rare.

Every day in this imperfect world is a roll of the dice. You make the best decisions you can based on what you know and you move forward.
 
David,
I have some quibbles with what you wrote.

To summarize the quibbles (great British terminology!) - most all people are corrupt; not just those involved with $billions.
It isn't easy to tell which of our expressions are not used on your side of the pond. I remember some Americans being interviewed asked about words that only Brits use - and one of them said "Bollocks!" - I'd never realised this was not part of our joint language - but all his American friends burst into laughter when he said it! Now I know that "quibble" is a UK only word too.
The food prep service worker is just as bad as the banker or pharmacy corporation CEO. One just thinks bigger than the other, but the corruption level is the same. The dedication to a good product delivered and a job well done is also the same.
However, I think those at the top tend to be those that crave power/money. I mean, think Bill Gates - how can he possibly even care if he makes some more money out of his vaccines - wanting more money when you already have $80 billion is just a form of madness.
Some doctors are greedy self-serving asses. Some are totally incompetent. All are incompetent at least sometimes. That is true of anyone in any profession. How many airline crashes were due to pilot error? answer- the majority. Did the pilots want to die?
I would hate to have a job in which a bad decision couldn't be reversed. I think this fact would be far better acknowledged.

I don't think the doctors are really to blame for what has happened to medicine. The biggest mistake was to create a system that pressurised doctors into following "best practice". That gave Big Pharma something to aim at - bribe them and your profits will be astronomical.

I am always amazed that people (including some here) don't seem to see that companies that earn many billions from pharmaceuticals (and pay huge fines when they are caught out) won't be corrupt.
The suicidal pilot or the terrorist mechanic scenario is exceedingly rare.
There was one pilot that did seem to deliberately crash his passenger jet full of people - possibly German or Swiss - plus of course the 9/11 nutters.

David
 
Anything that produces $billions of profits will be corrupt, and that obviously includes parts of the health service.

David, listen to these short clips of Dr. Fuellmich describing how Dr. Fauci worked to stomp out effective treatments for A.I.D.S. in the 80's, and instead promote the Big Pharma drugs that killed so many.

The clips are about 1 minute each.




 
Interestingly, I have yet to see a situation where the so called "mainstream" view is given real consideration; let alone advocation. See how the conversation went as it relates to healthcare as an example. Eric had to fight tooth and nail to establish even a precipice for a contra contrarian viewpoint.

It's odd that. Personally, if I'm met by "a lot of smart, super-informed, super-experienced people see it that way", I'm more likely to think "I must be missing something, I should figure out what it is", instead of doubling down on whatever uninformed guess I came up with.
 

Here's Fauci saying it.

"If you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more, that the chances of it being replication competent are miniscule."

"Somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it's like 37, the cycle threshold, but, you can never, you almost can never culture a virus from a 37 threshold cycle".

There are so many qualifications in just this one excerpt that disqualifies any of this as science that I wonder what we are all talking about.

I have to theorize, because I'm not privy to what decisions are made behind closed doors at the CDC and WHO and GAVI, that the WHO instruction to test centers to reduce the cycle threshold was done to reduce the positive cases reported to coincide with the release of the vaccines.

Well done!

Casedemic closed!
I think this is an awesome little tidbit... because from my experience this is exactly how the game is played. obscure and obfuscate science rather than say stuff science stuff that's it totally and provably bullshit. I think this came up in the interview with dr. Dan the ridiculous emphasis on masks blocking particles.

This is in contrast to the Tom Collins stuff "they haven't isolated the virus" which pretty quickly wind up looking like Flat Earth bullshit.
 
However, I think those at the top tend to be those that crave power/money. I mean, think Bill Gates - how can he possibly even care if he makes some more money out of his vaccines - wanting more money when you already have $80 billion is just a form of madness.

Sure some people with $billions crave power and control and yet more money. However, I still quibble with that as a generalization. A lot of these people are just hyper type-A over-achievers. They're smart, extremely organized and focused, and driven and that leads to material success. The image of the CEO who just sits around drinking martinis and playing golf is false. Most of these people work around the clock. They are constantly networking, planning, thinking.

I do think that at a certain point in their success path they lose perspective. They also figure that they are leaders and the world needs leaders. So why not them? They don't mean to do harm. They want to help a world that desperately needs help. These people are typically not well schooled in the humanities. They do not always comprehend the concept of hubris nor that the best intentions can still lead to destruction. Their success based on a "can-do" attitude has blinded them. Then again, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not assign bad motives and sinister collusion where outcomes are more easily explained by human foibles and organizational failures.
 
It's odd that. Personally, if I'm met by "a lot of smart, super-informed, super-experienced people see it that way", I'm more likely to think "I must be missing something, I should figure out what it is", instead of doubling down on whatever uninformed guess I came up with.

Me too. You just don't hear about the times where I've agreed with the experts.

The issue with your worldview, is that you don't appear to understand that people here are just discussing and arguing about things on a forum. We aren't giving medical advice to people. This isn't some official town hall meeting where you have to present official information to citizens. There will be various levels of expertise, from professionals in a certain field, to casual observers interested in topics discussed here.
 
Last edited:
I think this is an awesome little tidbit... because from my experience this is exactly how the game is played. obscure and obfuscate science rather than say stuff science stuff that's it totally and provably bullshit. I think this came up in the interview with dr. Dan the ridiculous emphasis on masks blocking particles.

This is in contrast to the Tom Collins stuff "they haven't isolated the virus" which pretty quickly wind up looking like Flat Earth bullshit.

All I hear is a career bureaucrat lapping up his 15 minutes of fame and playing it safe. He says he doesn't know, many times. Some people are more risk averse than others. If you were tasked with helping set policy that will impact hundreds of millions of people, what would you do? Take the cautious path or take the risk that a million or more could die because your decision wasn't cautious enough? Want to sit in that seat? Sure the million dead might be the elderly and infirm who were not going to live long anyhow, but.....that is an ethical question that cannot be discussed in our society. So the science takes a bit of a back seat to politics. I get that. Don't like it, but get it. A lot gets lost in the process of mass communication because, well, it's to the masses, half of whom are, by definition, not too bright.

I ultimately disagree with Fauci's chosen path through this, but that doesn't mean he's throwing science out of the window. I don't hear that. It's just that he doesn't know and doesn't want to take a risk on uncertain science. Maybe I'm missing something?
 
Last edited:
Maybe I'm missing something?

Well I suspect you are. I mean, Fauci is probably in on the whole 'project' to exaggerate the significance of this virus. He manipulates his language to achieve an end, and it isn't an end that any of us would approve of.

I don't feel the masses are dim, in many ways they seem to see through a lot of stuff that snares us up.

David
 
Well I suspect you are. I mean, Fauci is probably in on the whole 'project' to exaggerate the significance of this virus. He manipulates his language to achieve an end, and it isn't an end that any of us would approve of.

I don't feel the masses are dim, in many ways they seem to see through a lot of stuff that snares us up.

David
David,
Do you disagree that covid could kill millions of elderly and frail/ill people?

My position has always been that covid is real, but not a threat to most of us; especially not to children and productive people.

I do think that there is still a lot of low hanging fruit for the virus to reap; just that I do not believe that the children and productive people's success and freedom should be sacrificed for those who are going to die anyhow.

That is the equation that Fauci cannot address.

I don't think that your typical dummy that cares about the lives of celebrities is able to absorb any of this. I also do not think the media is capable of handling it honestly (Eric Newhill wants grandma to simply die off so he can live his life normally! Monster!")

Trump couldn't say it either, which is how he got boxed in and left an opening for Biden to attack him. Trump basically followed Fauci because he had no other choice. And Fauci laid out what he did because he didn't have a choice either.

Just because the covid situation is being used to justify "the great re-set" and other major political initiatives doesn't mean it was created or perpetuated for those reasons. Opportunists are going to seize opportunities. Vultures on road kill don't collude with drivers to hit animals.
 
Last edited:
Me too. You just don't hear about the times where I've agreed with the experts.

The issue with your worldview, is that you don't appear to understand that people here are just discussing and arguing about things on a forum. We aren't giving medical advice to people. This isn't some official town hall meeting where you have to present official information to citizens. There will be various levels of expertise, from professionals in a certain field, to casual observers interested in topics discussed here.

I don't have any problem with sitting around BSing. If that's the case, what's with all the avoidance and derision with respect to mainstream sources?
 
Back
Top