Covid UPDATE: What is the truth? | Hacker News Reader

Covid UPDATE: What is the truth?

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

4 pointsdrummer4 comments

This article has so many red flags but I would just start with it being an editorial on an open journal[0] from a questionable retired neurosurgeon[1]

[0] https://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint-articles/covid-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Blaylock

He seems eccentric to say the least but his sources seem to hold up to a certain degree. "Red flags" is a non-argument. Anything specific that seems wrong?

This statement is just not true, public health has been a field for a long time and includes so many actors (let alone name dropping several people who are often included in conspiracy theories):

"For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.[23,38]"

The phrase "this so-called “pandemic” "

There is not scientific consensus around how useful certain protocols being put in place, there absolutely has been research showing that many things like masking and social distancing have helped and saying there is no evidence is lying. "The draconian measures established to contain this contrived “pandemic” have never been shown to be successful, such as masking the public, lockdowns, and social distancing. A number of carefully done studies during previous flu seasons demonstrated that masks, of any kind, had never prevented the spread of the virus among the public."

Again, those are just some of the issues. I agree my statement did not really give information but from start to finish this article in the best case just adds to the noise with no useful information, in the worst case is causing harm due to blatantly false information being spread.

These are qualitative statements and there cannot ever be a definite answer. I don't think there is scientific consensus at all and that we are currently analyzing effects of certain measures. That can take years. I certainly do have the impression that "science" tried to consolidate opinion and not by scientific means at all. Of course most doctors will tend to err on the side of caution especially if they don't have information about a new form of viral threat.

The degree of efficiency of mask might be in question but it certainly is not zero. That is exceedingly unlikely. But I am not sure the author makes that statement. Ultimately they were ineffective to control the spread. Fair point, but the primary goal was to delay infections to not crash health systems which might or might not have been a sensible choice.

> The draconian measures

This is already a fairly unscientific statement in any case and there certainly is a lot of room to criticise the author.

> with no useful information

Here I disagree. Any form of opposition is valuable because we had a far too much consolidated "official opinions" and some of it has been proven wrong later. No harm done with someone swimming in the other direction. On the contrary.

And I think there was a lot of precedent to fast track vaccines and side effects were neglected. It didn't hit too many people but it did affect people.

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