Great Barrington Declaration

[Tsing Tao]

I think you are assigning your own biases and concerns to the objectivity of the top scientists who follow the facts. Fauci does not strike me as someone who is concerned with CYA. He strikes me as a rational man of science.

As for your paradigm shifts, you are reminding me of marketsurfer who kept stepping in front of oncoming trains and calling turns. Always thought he knew better than the prevailing trend or wisdom, even when he didn’t.

There is not a legitimate paradigm shift at every corner. They’re rare. Please stop looking for zebras whenever you hear hoofbeats.

I never even suggested there is a legitimate paradigm shift at every corner. All I said is if we plug our ears and only listen to one side of the argument, we will never see when there actually is a paradigm shift. Folks that follow ignore such an approach will only embrace truth that is found to be different than their preconceptions once forced - at gunpoint - to do so. That's incredibly close minded.

I remember your fascination (I'm being as kind as I can here) with Marketsurfer. I am nothing like marketsurfer. I don't put myself in harms way before I am able to make a judgment call on the prevailing data. I don't let my ego make decisions for me like he did. In fact, what I'm suggesting is exactly putting ego aside to learn something new you hadn't considered before. Ego - by its very substance - prevents us from learning something new. Between you and I, I am the one open to considering other points of view. Who has the ego and who is like Marketsurfer?

Your option seems to be to decide what experts are the ones that align with your worldview and then discount everyone else as a fraud or a sham. That's great. Do what makes you feel right. Obey, and don't go outside the lines.

For me, I'll continue to challenge when something appears amiss. Sometimes I will be wrong and I will revert back to the main stream "experts" in their comfortable little shelter of "Science". Sometimes I'll be ahead of the curve.

That's how life works.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

I never even suggested there is a legitimate paradigm shift at every corner. All I said is if we plug our ears and only listen to one side of the argument, we will never see when there actually is a paradigm shift. Folks that follow ignore such an approach will only embrace truth that is found to be different than their preconceptions once forced - at gunpoint - to do so. That's incredibly close minded.

I remember your fascination (I'm being as kind as I can here) with Marketsurfer. I am nothing like marketsurfer. I don't put myself in harms way before I am able to make a judgment call on the prevailing data. I don't let my ego make decisions for me like he did. In fact, what I'm suggesting is exactly putting ego aside to learn something new you hadn't considered before. Ego - by its very substance - prevents us from learning something new. Between you and I, I am the one open to considering other points of view. Who has the ego and who is like Marketsurfer?

Your option seems to be to decide what experts are the ones that align with your worldview and then discount everyone else as a fraud or a sham. That's great. Do what makes you feel right. Obey, and don't go outside the lines.

For me, I'll continue to challenge when something appears amiss. Sometimes I will be wrong and I will revert back to the main stream "experts" in their comfortable little shelter of "Science". Sometimes I'll be ahead of the curve.

That's how life works.

Where I take issue with your world view is when you engage in far too much false equivalency. You regard fringe players with the same weight as recognized experts in their field. And when it comes to fields that require a considerable amount of education and experience, you think you can arbitrate on the details -- without the education or the experience.

I remember your fascination (I'm being as kind as I can here) with Marketsurfer.

As for marketsurfer, I was not fascinated by him. I was disgusted by his attitude and bluster. This apart from whether he may or may not otherwise have been a good guy. This is why I am equally disgusted (not fascinated) by Trump, who, on top of his fucking attitude and bluster, is an amoral sociopath. And equally incompetent.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Where I take issue with your world view is when you engage in far too much false equivalency. You regard fringe players with the same weight as recognized experts in their field. And when it comes to fields that require a considerable amount of education and experience, you think you can arbitrate on the details -- without the education or the experience.

First of all, the adjective "fringe" you are using is entirely subjective. For example, someone you call fringe, I don't consider so. Same in reverse. Then there will be sources you and I can agree on are fringe, or are main stream. So that's a non-starter. You're no more a better judge of what is fringe than I am. The only difference is that I am willing to listen to alternative viewpoints, even if they come from a source I did not expect or one that isn't widely accepted. You don't give me credit for the times I hear from these sources and discount them - which occurs far more often than when I listen to them because when I discount them, you never hear about it. I say nothing. They were discounted.

As for marketsurfer, I was not fascinated by him. I was disgusted by his attitude and bluster. This apart from whether he may or may not otherwise have been a good guy. This is why I am equally disgusted (not fascinated) by Trump, who, on top of his fucking attitude and bluster, is an amoral sociopath. And equally incompetent.

I don't take issue with your feelings on MS or Trump. I share them in regards to MS and almost all of them in regards to Trump.

Just don't put me in the same bucket as them. I don't believe I deserve that classification.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Just don't put me in the same bucket as them. I don't believe I deserve that classification.

I only referenced you in that you seem to be seeking paradigm shifts with the same tenacity that surfer was trying to predict trend changes. No other association.

As for your other points, fair enough. But Fauci is not a fringe player. Meanwhile those who challenge him have been fringe players (in the field) up until now.

 

[Tsing Tao]

I only referenced you in that you seem to be seeking paradigm shifts with the same tenacity that surfer was trying to predict trend changes. No other association.

I appreciate that. I've also enjoyed our conversation. Thanks, Fred. So glad I rectified my mistake of putting you in the ignore category.

 

[jem]

Nice red herring. What a cheesy argument you are making. I did not dispute the validity of your statement about radiative forcing... I said you not taking into account the complex negative feedbacks in our atmosphere of which CO2 is part.

Obviously, you don't give shit about the real science.

If the CO2 and NO in the thermosphere (where we don't live, btw) blocked the radiation that warms the ground, it would be dark down here.

 

[piezoe]

You need to be careful about the statement "It makes one out of five young, healthy adults extremely ill and some of them die."

Healthy adults rarely die from COVID. Healthy adults rarely die from the flu.

Sure, you can get a flu vaccine - and you hope you got the right one. People still die from the flu.

Just to clarify one out of five young healthy people who come down with Covid get extremely ill, and a number of these take a long time recuperate. A subset of these go on to develop long lasting ailments. This is thought to be a result of vascular complications which can affect almost any organ. But it is less than one out of five young healthy persons coming down with covid who die during the acute phase. Covid death rate overall is approximately 30 times the rate for more common flu viruses. It is a mistake however to think that young healthy persons are immune to the virus, as Trump has said on occasion -- he says a lot of things, as we know, and a high percentage of what he says is nonsense. It's a serious disease to be taken seriously.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Just to clarify one out of five young healthy people who come down with Covid get extremely ill, and a number of these take a long time recuperate. A subset of these go on to develop long lasting ailments.

Really? Please provide the data behind this assertion, including clarity on the long lasting ailments this demographic experiences. I mean, you're stating it as fact so you obviously have data, right?

 

[piezoe]

If the CO2 and NO in the thermosphere (where we don't live, btw) blocked the radiation that warms the ground, it would be dark down here.

jem's an interesting character. It seems at heart he means well, but he is a bit given to conspiracies, and he can surprise you with the occasional odd ball idea -- the fed is a private for-profit institutions, etc. In the matter of NO and CO2's role in the outer atmosphere, however, I think he is at least partly, and perhaps mostly, correct. Both NO and CO2 are transparent to visible light of course (i.e., they have no color) so whether in the outer atmosphere our in the troposphere they don't do anything to visible light other than engage in "reflectance" due to Raman like phenomena such as Rayleigh scattering. Their presence and reflective activity in the outer atmosphere would not make it dark down here in Trump land -- other phenomena, of course, could make our world "dark" if by darkness you meant a lack of intellectual enlightenment. NO and CO2 do act in the outer atmosphere to partly shield the Earth from certain portions of the solar spectrum , including portions of the I.R. and U.V. spectra that they can absorb. They re-radiate absorbed light* in all directions. Some sizable fraction of that re-radiated light is re-radiated back into space away from the Earth. So it is true that these gases serve a protective or cooling role in the outer atmosphere. In other words, they are a bit like Trump in being multifaceted, although to be fair, nothing knows more about everything than Trump. So really we should be asking Trump if jem is right.

*I am using "light" to mean any wavelength of electromagnetic radiation, not just visible "light".

 

[piezoe]

Really? Please provide the data behind this assertion, including clarity on the long lasting ailments this demographic experiences. I mean, you're stating it as fact so you obviously have data, right?

I have no data , nor will I bother to look for any. My information comes entirely from experts on Covid infections, whom I trust to know far more about covid than I. I merely pass the information on as a thankless service to you and others who may be interested. If you find relevant published data, please post it here.