Trump lost and fox news started undermining vaccine efforts out of spite?
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I have yet to hear of a single person in my real life who died with Covid. I now personally know 6 off the top of my head who were killed by Covid. I also know 4 that died from strokes and CHF within 2-3 months after having Covid who were not deemed of dying from Covid but I would wager that Covid exacerbated their condition.
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I lost my father to covid a year ago this month.
I also have generally respected Marcie’s posts. But I see she’s changed her avatar for Halloween, and it appears her red hat is showing.
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You don’t know what ‘intellectually dishonest’ means? That explains so much.
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I know the difference between “of COVID” and “with COVID”. I don’t know if that’s what Dara was referring to when saying “intellectually dishonest” when lumping the 2 together.
I employed the mute function last night.
I was a mod on AO so I never muted anyone in case they said something that needed moderation. But I’m not a mod here, so I don’t have any sort of duty to keep my eyes peeled.
Also, I think with this software if a bunch of users ignore/mute the same person, the mods are notified of a possible troll.
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Is that true? If so, I’m willing to do my part… I’ll ask in the Site Feedback section.
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I’m pretty sure one of the mods said that in a post a long time ago.
@Lucy am I remembering that right?
Yes, but I’m waiting for the question to be posted in site feedback, so as not to detail this thread.
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The mute function on this site is quite effective. The AO’s mute was clunky so I rarely used it.
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My intention wasn’t to “come at” Marcie. Just making the point that the distinction doesn’t matter much since excess people are dying in numbers that agree with the reported COVID numbers.
Tens of thousands of people are dying IN THIS MANNER still. Most of them are unvaccinated. The vaccine is safe. High adoption would save lives and get us back to normal faster.
I want to save lives and get back to normal faster.
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It’s like saying someone died of heart failure, with a huge gunshot wound to the chest. But the heart quit pumping so it was heart failure they died from. The gunshot wound just happened immediately prior. Same with cancer, kidney failure, stroke, whatever. All heart failure in the end.
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I have had serious doubts about the reporting of covid data since day 1. Partly from interest in data and partly trying to correctly gauge the actual risk of the disease, I spent a lot of effort trying to understand what the reported data actually meant. In the end, I have accepted that most of the reported mortality from covid is real- there will be some data that is misreported (car accident, had covid, called a covid death) and also a lot of unreported deaths, but looking at higher level mortality trends shows that the reported deaths are close to the actuals. Case counts started out as garbage data- and that was the case for most of 2020. But I think case counts have found a mostly consistent basis in 2021. Case counts <> actual cases by a significant amount (and do not represent severity), but I think the reporting basis for them is steady enough to look at the trends.
Most here will read this and say ‘ya? water has been wet for a long time’. I am writing this out for Marci since I am a conservative that has taken a lot of heat from liberals over the last 2 years on my opinions on the matter. I was (and still am) against most masking policy, I was highly critical of the methods used during lockdown, and I was initially on the fence on vaccination strategy. I know damn well that speaking freely here I need to be ready to defend my thoughts well before I speak- This forum has been a good place to actually converse with folks you dont agree with. Some of my wider views have even changed from conversations here.
With that said, I also get irritated by the smugness of some individuals (here and IRL). Not because I disagree with them, but I dont like the manner they express themselves. specifically, by calling some one dumb out of frustration immediately takes the conversations down an unproductive track. Similarly, calling large groups dumb shows a lack of contextual awareness of how other are looking at things.
I have been called an anti-vaxer, anti-masker, covid denier, Trumper, and other labels that I dont think fairly represented my opinions. But the people IRL and the folks here likely have not muted me for it. I have tried to serve as a bridge to other conservatives out here to tell them what I really think the risk has been to them and the entire population.
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Appreciate the thoughts.
I try not to be smug, and getting second opinions on official data is a good thing. But I’m so frustrated at how it all went down. I think there is room to be critical on policy-making (IMO mask mandates, WFH, social distancing, and vaccine mandates are good. Keeping kids out of in-person learning, probably not good) but hindsight is 20/20 here.
My frustration with conservatives mostly stemmed from the baseless questioning of the data and the science that informed those policies. As your research confirmed, excess mortality from COVID is real. Furthermore, a lot of the predictions that informed policy making (I’m thinking the Imperial College Paper, and Dr. Fauci testifying in early 2020 that we were dealing with a highly contagious virus that is 5x to 10x times deadlier than the flu) turned out to be very very good.
Back on the old forum, we had people shift seamlessly from, “it’s not that deadly” to “it’ll go away in the summer” to “we’re already at herd immunity” to “dying WITH COVID not FROM COVID” to “it’s all old people anyway.”
The aim here is clearly just baseless skepticism. Just putting all the chips on “conventional wisdom is wrong.” That’s an incredibly popular thing to do on the Internet these days. The support for the skepticism was always incredibly weak. Stuff like, “denominator bro, case numbers are underreported”, as if some guy on the AO thought of that, but the people determining how deadly the virus was didn’t. Or stuff like, “My friend’s neighbor is a doctor and he says the hospital is pressuring them to code EVERY death as COVID.”
I’m not exaggerating when I say this caused me to seriously doubt the exam and accreditation process. Last Summer, before the AO died, I linked several quarterly earnings reports from insurers that showed losses. I made the case that since losses (above and beyond guidance) for insurers happen when actual experience is worse than expectation, that something is clearly going on. I explained that if everyone dying would have died with or without COVID, that the reserves on the balance sheet would be sufficient to avoid losses. But apparently, lots of people go through the exam process on autopilot so that they can stamp themselves as qualified to use excel and collect a paycheck. If that sounds smug, I apologize, but that’s my genuine assessment at this point.
To be clear, I know that most liberals haven’t thought about this as deeply as I have. Most just accept what Dr. Fauci or the CDC or Liberal policy makers say at face value. But the world is way too complicated for one person to understand it. And if you’re not a virologist or an expert in mortality trends or a skilled policymaker with access to the best information… buckle up for this… putting your faith in the things that doctors and scientists say is not a bad heuristic.
Doing so means you’ll get it wrong sometimes, but you’ll get it right so much more often than you get it wrong. What I see from conservatives these days, is a questioning of expertise that is so hard-wired, that the heuristic is mistrust. If conventional wisdom works 75% of the time, that means that reflexively going against conventional wisdom works out at best, 25% of the time. So we have millions of the 25%ers now, and what is worse, we have a whole industry of grift that revolves around telling these people, “No. Actually you’re really smart and you’re right to question all this nonsense!”
Scary times.
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My recollection is that those opinions, while they did exist, were in the extreme minority.
The rest of your post reads rather like preaching to the choir. Or preaching to Marcie and a couple of trolls… take your pick.
I buy some (but not all) of the points here.
Your points on data are pretty accurate. I expect data from December, 2020 to be significantly more accurate (and complete) than data from April, 2020. Lots of reasons for that: better understanding of what’s going on, time to figure out what to collect, time to sort out quality issues, etc.
Methods used during lockdown: yeah, that was a massive “screw the pooch” episode in hindsight. To be fair, there was a playbook for this stuff and it got set on fire and thrown out the window. The past administration intentionally eschewed intelligence for “rain fire from hell” and we’ll be tallying the costs of that for decades.
I don’t get your seemingly knee-jerk reaction against mask mandates, vaccination policy, etc. I would have a better chance to buy it if you had realistic alternatives that would accomplish the same goals, and not “keep letting it burn, it’s no big deal” like many on the anti-X side want to carry out. I think that’s where a lot of the split here comes: person says X that’s contrary to popular opinion but then won’t explain it in a good-faith attempt to have a discussion.
Everyone on both sides should be willing to listen to the other side and amend opinions based on new information. But again, that requires the presentation of information that’s not gaslighting. (Not accusing you of that.) If someone is too dug in to consider new information that runs contrary to their opinion and even more importantly disproves their thoughts and ideas, that’s a different problem.
I have thoughts on this. They’re not remotely kind to the CAS. They’re also better suited for a different thread.
[Geez, my spelling sucks today. I absolutely need more caffeine.]
I was responding to LuckyHat and trying to add context to what comes across as smugness.
And I WISH the AO was the only place I saw Actuaries expressing baseless skepticism. People around my (virtual) office who make 5x to 6x the US Median personal income were saying the same things.
It was a good learning experience though. I can’t tell these people off in the same way that I can strangers on the Internet. In real life, you gotta keep presenting facts/figures/consequences to people in a neutral way. Then, after a couple of months, you let them think you forgot all about their baseless skepticism.
Conservatives and conspiracy theorists similarly need an escape hatch after the last ten or fifteen years. A way to come around to a more logical way of thinking without requiring the humility to admit how wrong they’ve been. Almost no one (regardless of political affiliation) has that level of humility.
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Thanks for writing out this post. I admit that early in the pandemic, I was mostly on the ‘this is being overblown by the media’ side of things. I remained on that side of things until probably around nov/dec of last year. That is when I finally started trusting the data coming out. It is also when my local area really got hit with its first big wave (early wave here was limited and almost exclusively the elderly population). This was also when the election ended and I started believing the media more since their motivations may have changed. bringing me to this important point:
I heard tons of complaints from conservatives in my area, including my own family, about how we are being lied to and manipulated in the name of covid caution. Some of these complains were founded and I agreed with. But the core thing I pushed back on was the integrity of data- pretty much every conservative here said this same line to me : Deaths are being over reported. This is simply untrue, and I may have been the first person to validate the mortality data to many of them. My frustration was not with conservatives for being wrong here, it was about the public health messaging they were receiving which was hard to distinguish from political banter.
Ill leave the insurance reporting to another day, but short story on that is- depends on the risk exposure to the insurer. Group employer plans should have shown gains during the pandemic due to lower utilization, while public and Ind plans would have gotten hammered with covid hospital claims. I can speak to one side of that at least. LOL at some of your comments on the credentialing process… agree that ability to memorize 1000 lists <> ability to be an actuary.
about whom to believe- your last line may have been said verbatim by a certain Fox news host. I have watched a lot of tucker/Hannity over the years, and I have looked at my wife and said many times “this is what is wrong with America” (referring to the existence of these show). I once described Mark Levin as ‘the worst thing ever allowed to be showed on TV’.
Again thanks for the gentle reach across the aisle.
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hold on- thats not what I said. It was just part of a larger point and I didnt really give you the details. In short I didn’t believe in universal mask mandates, lockdown strategy, and initially disagreed with vaccine strategy. I actually do think masks should be worn in some cases- Like when I traveled by air last year I wore 2 of them. But sitting outside at a football game in the rain getting screamed at by security to wear a mask seemed unnecessary. I doubt anyone really agrees with the way lockdowns were conducted. And my initial hesitation on vaccines was for lower risk people only and I actually promoted vaccines for most people out of the gate. I have recently moved towards ‘we should just have a federal mandate’ camp, end this nonsense.
My complaint was that in pushing back at all on these ideas led to being called an anti-masker, anti-vaxxer, covid denier, and that led to people calling me a trumper.
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