Pam Popper, Fight for Health Rights |526|

Robbedigital said:
He seems to be leading you around on a leash. Yah, the only reason I recognize it is because up until i found Skeptiko Forum I had spent way too much time on Reddit. I had a game I would play, where I would challenge myself to argue in good faith and positive regard, no matter how poignant the troll.. Ultimately, I've come to learn that there's a certain type of troll; lets call it a "Keep-you-busy type.", with whom debate is generally fruitless. You can spot them by their methods which are something like:
Primary
#1 Keep you busy
Secondary
#2 Excite you
#3 Sharpen debate skill
#4 Draw others into the debate
Tertiary
#5 Consider absorbing a tiny piece of new info but only if there's energy leftover from 1-4.

How do you know you've been arguing with a Keep-you-busy type? Maybe go back though the thread and count how many times you thought "huh, he has an interesting point here, I wonder what he thinks about _______."
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Yep. You're right.

I took your Redit approach when I first engaged Ellis on the post where Alex asked for help understanding a mask study. He got to me to the point where I felt compelled to address his nonsense even though I was distracted and supposed to be doing something else; so much so that I made stupid mistakes like writing .76% as 0.76 instead of 0.0076.

What he did to hook me was consistently misrepresent what I said and what the study said. It was kind of a form of gaslighting, which is a pet peeve of mine.

Now I know what Ellis is. I have engaged him after that conversation only because I wanted to observe his slimy technique. He bores me now. Yes. Time to ignore him completely no matter what outrageously idiotic misinformed things he says - or deliberate lies he tells.
 
EllisR said:
I haven't the foggiest idea about what Fauci said in the 80's. HIV/AIDS changed because the virus was identified and accurate tests were developed to screen people. And then most importantly, effective treatments were developed.
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HIV was created and initially targeted Haiti in a "hepatitis b vaccine". Depopulation agenda. Strecker memorandum.
And I don't want to hear any shallow retarded not-going-to-do-the-research bullshit about its been "debunked" or some other such nonsense of troll cancel culture.
Follow the money. Look at the results.
None of this works like it's supposed to. So, it's injected into us. With syringes or penises.
 
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Eric Newhill said:
I took your Redit approach when I first engaged Ellis on the post where Alex asked for help understanding a mask study. He got to me to the point where I felt compelled to address his nonsense even though I was distracted and supposed to be doing something else; so much so that I made stupid mistakes like writing .76% as 0.76 instead of 0.0076.
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Your mistake wasn't "writing 0.76". We all make trivial errors like that and nobody cares as long as it is clear what you mean. Your error was that you used 0.76 in a calculation, when you should have used an entirely different number, as neither 0.76 or 0.0076 had anything to do with what you were attempting to calculate.

And in reality, you were never able to find anything incorrect in the points I made, while I had to make multiple corrections to mistakes you were making in your claims, as well as correct your unfamiliarity with basic statistical procedures. And that is why you've had to use the tactic where you call me names instead. You wouldn't have to do that if you had any sort of reasonable argument to present.
 
K9! said:
Why be so poorly informed? Why show up in a forum to discuss topics which you seem to know nothing about? Could you be trolling perhaps???
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Careful. The axiom about throwing stones while living in a glass house comes to mind.
 
Starmonkey said:
HIV was created and initially targeted Haiti in a "hepatitis b vaccine". Depopulation agenda. Strecker memorandum.
And I don't want to hear any shallow retarded not-going-to-do-the-research bullshit about its been "debunked" or some other such nonsense of troll cancel culture.
Follow the money. Look at the results.
None of this works like it's supposed to. So, it's injected into us. With syringes or penises.
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Unreal.
 
Silence said:
None posting here. The ROI would be hyper negative: too small a target audience and too well-entrenched in CTs.
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The trolls aren't assigned to a single forum. They spend all day on multiple forums using different names. An energetic troll can type out thousands of words and 100s of posts a day. Remember, they don't have to take time to research or really even think about what they are saying. Sometimes they are given specific responses/line of argument by their handlers. Other times they are given more freedom as to how, exactly, they want to disrupt and sow doubt and chaos. One end goal is to simply ruin a forum so that people stop visiting and it shuts down.

As far as ROI, they aren't paid that well. They're losers.

I've put Ellis on ignore. I don't care what he says. It's all BS and everyone knows it.Everyone should do that. It is the best way to banish a troll - don't feed them.
 
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Silence said:
Unreal.
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LOL.

Yeah.

Trolling goes both ways. Like I've been saying, the CT nuts here do as much damage as a standard Ellis model troll. Sometimes I wonder if some of the CTers are also trolls using a more sophisticated methodology, but then I realize that they are just lost souls.

It's sad. Alex has some really good shows and then he has a bunch of kooks promoting CTs that Alex himself appears to buy into to some degree. That just attracts more CTers to the comments forum and, worse, it discredits the good material.

Sometimes the science here is very good and interesting, but then the CTs go off on the thinest of evidence, which suggest that no one here,Alex included, is very scientific after all.There has to be a carful separating of wheat and chaff when dealing with non-mainstream topics.That doesn't occur here.
 
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Silence said:
None posting here. The ROI would be hyper negative: too small a target audience and too well-entrenched in CTs.
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Alex doesn't even have a Wikipedia page any more. I'm not sure why anyone here thinks this would be a worthwhile target. Then again, I'm probably very naive about how this all works. After all, I would have guessed Russian Social Media Bots was a straight up Conspiracy Theory.

We live in interesting times.
 
Steve said:
Would your attitude be similar if you hadn’t experienced a side effect?

Too many side effects of many varieties happening, which I’ve seen personally and read about (though not proven of course) and I heavily suspect it’s being hushed up.

Not being critical, just asking questions.
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It’s all about real life Steve.

I couldn’t care less about some argument in the internet if several people in my life have potentially had side effects from the vaccine.

If my doctors are mentioning this to me, then I pay serious attention. I’m sure they have decades of experience and expertise to help base their medical opinion from. Sure I’ll listen to data from all sides but only one side has been consistently silenced and derided throughout this whole thing and that swings me being back to suspicious, which I am completely entitled to believe.

So any concern trolling or engagement from people who want to play debate club, instead of being honest about the data, is about as relevant to me as what went into the toilet this morning.

It’s as simple as that.
 
diverdown said:
It’s all about real life Steve.

I couldn’t care less about some argument in the internet if several people in my life have potentially had side effects from the vaccine.

If my doctors are mentioning this to me, then I pay serious attention. I’m sure they have decades of experience and expertise to help base their medical opinion from. Sure I’ll listen to data from all sides but only one side has been consistently silenced and derided throughout this whole thing and that swings me being back to suspicious, which I am completely entitled to believe.

So any concern trolling or engagement from people who want to play debate club, instead of being honest about the data, is about as relevant to me as what went into the toilet this morning.

It’s as simple as that.
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Exactly.

Setting aside what I know from the data I use professionally (for insurance analytics) -

I know several middle aged people who have had covid (tested positive) and had a mild flu for a few days. I don't know anyone who has been hospitalized or died from it. I go about life as normal, as does my wife (who also teaches in a private school where masks and vaccines aren't required). Neither of us are vaxxed. We don't wear masks. WE go to the gym, to pubs, shopping, etc. If we've had covid, we haven't noticed.

Someone I know who is over 70, but healthy, got vaxxed and felt very bad for two weeks afterwards and then had a brain bleed that required hospitalization. His wife also has felt sick and generally lousy since the vax. Was the brain bleed a coincidence? I don't know. Neither does he. We are both suspicious. His doctor can't explain the bleed. It's a common enough anecdote with the vax.

These things cannot be ignored. They must be looked into. A doctor or any other adherent of science doesn't just hand wave it away.

You're right about the debate club approach. It's BS. You're also right about the manic suppression of these suspicions. That in itself is wrong and antithetical to science - and suspicious.

And who cares what some unqualified dork on the internet says?
 
K9! said:
Here is an overview of the shortcomings of the vaccine, from a doctor who is pro-vaccine.
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He‘s not a Medical Doctor, pretty sure he‘s a nurse trainer (or was) with a PhD.
He‘s a nice, fair guy, sometimes too fair imo. I think we must somehow make our disdain known when obvious bullshit is observed.
 
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diverdown said:
Sure I’ll listen to data from all sides but only one side has been consistently silenced and derided throughout this whole thing and that swings me being back to suspicious, which I am completely entitled to believe.
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It‘s truly ironic that Silence liked this post, because he’s been quite consistent in opposing my fairly lonely shouting from the rooftops for months about this on PsiQuest. Very little support has been shown.

Its the certainty of some that I really rail against. (Not Silence)

The ‘conspiracy theorists and wackos’* here at Skeptiko are on the right side of this argument imo, so maybe a lesson can be learned?

* That‘s how many at PsiQuest view Skeptiko.

Eric Newhill said:
And who cares what some unqualified dork on the internet says?
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I do. Opinions aren’t automatically rejected with me.

To me, ‘unqualified‘ should not automatically mean they should be ignored, just as ‘qualified‘ should not mean they are talking sense. Far from it. Fwiw, I’ve heard some highly qualified people talking complete garbage. Alex has proven this over and over, with interviews with highly respected scientists with qualifications up the ying-yang! The choosing of people and the topic they’re speaking about is often critical - as well as they’re bias - who’s funding them etc.

My own preferred method is looking at everything, then by instinct and prior evidence/knowledge choose relatively honest qualified individuals to trust to put forward the side of the story I currently tend to favour.

Of course every side will have biases, but I look for honesty/integrity in the people I choose.
 
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My personal experience...I know a bunch of people who've had COVID, mostly before vaccines were available. Not counting the ones who died, I think three were hospitalized, two ending up in the ICU. My sister's doctor died from COVID. He was 60, but otherwise fit and healthy - that was quite the shock at the time. The other person I know who died was elderly and in some kind of extended care home.

More recently, I had a friend who was fully vaccinated who tested positive after an exposure to a fully vaccinated family member who tested positive (I was also exposed, but tested negative).

I have a good friend that I talked to a couple of months ago about the vaccine - she was hesitant because she had a friend who had developed Guillain Barre Syndrome a week or two after getting the vaccine. We tried to find information on GBS and the vaccine - it seems there is a likely association with COVID, and potentially an association with the vaccine (too weak to tell at the moment). (That seems to be another condition where COVID is a bigger problem than the vaccine.) She and her husband never did get the vaccine and they both recently got sick with COVID. She eventually was well enough to go home from the hospital (although she still feels pretty sick at home alone). Her husband is still in the ICU on a ventilator and they don't know if he'll recover. They are both great people and I'm really worried about him.

I had a friend who got a brain bleed a year ago - the doctors did not find the cause (as far as I know - this information was all second-hand). He had a full recovery. The vaccine wasn't available at that point, so couldn't be blamed on it. Same with the parent of another friend you developed cardiomyopathy last year and died. On the other hand, my gramma had a heart attack a few days after receiving her 2nd dose (fully recovered). Nobody thought to attribute it to the vaccine, though. Missed opportunity to turn into a CTer I guess.

I'm fully vaccinated with Pfizer, and I'll get the booster now that it's available for me. I wear a mask when I'm out in public, and do the social limiting thing. There was a period of time, when me and friends were all vaccinated, where we stopped wearing masks and started going out. But then Delta came along, cases were high in my area and the hospitals/ICUs were overloaded, and I discovered a couple of my "friends" lied about being vaccinated. So I've gone back to wearing a mask, and social limiting.

Although I should confess...I'm an introvert and I'm partly (maybe even mostly) using COVID as an excuse to limit social interactions. I know that many people really struggle with isolation, and that some areas have been subject to strict lockdowns. I have a lot of sympathy for all the adversity that people have suffered. But it's the opposite for me - now that I've experienced the pleasure of being left alone, I'm finding it hard to convince myself to go back to the way things were.

I should mention that my personal experience didn't alter my perception of COVID and the vaccine. I know that it's not going to be representative, and I try not to fall prey to my cognitive biases (maybe I succeed...some of the time).
 
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Steve said:
The ‘conspiracy theorists and wackos’* here at Skeptiko are on the right side of this argument imo, so maybe a lesson can be learned?

* That‘s how many at PsiQuest view Skeptiko.
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A broken clock is right twice a day.

PsiQuest sounds like it might be populated with smart and mentally stable people.
 
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