Relaxation of Restrictions, Part IV - Read OP for Mod Warnings

Arghus · 31-05-2020 12:33AM

growleaves wrote: »

Will the people who were dead set against earlier re-opening now re-direct their passionate anger against the Government?

No, not necessarily. It depends on the context. If case numbers continue to decline and are at a much lower daily rate then I wouldn't have a problem with them accelerating the process come June 29th.

SNNUS · 31-05-2020 12:36AM

We can go back and forth on the craziness of the restrictions but I was out most of the day and I can tell you that normal life has resumed as far as I can see.. Now a spoofy RTE poll may say otherwise but just going by what I have seen out and about today.

road_high · 31-05-2020 12:41AM

SNNUS wrote: »

We can go back and forth on the craziness of the restrictions but I was out most of the day and I can tell you that normal life has resumed as far as I can see.. Now a spoofy RTE poll may say otherwise but just going by what I have seen out and about today.

Yes and all those curtain twitchers complaining about it...as they’re out and about themselves. “For essentials” lol

FintanMcluskey · 31-05-2020 12:56AM

Arghus wrote: »

So you don't think restrictions had any bearing on curbing the spread of the virus?

Nah cancelling the leaving cert had little bearing. Id put my life saving's on that :pac:

Arghus · 31-05-2020 12:59AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Nah cancelling the leaving cert had little bearing. Id put my life saving's on that :pac:

You seem to not want to give a straight answer.

FintanMcluskey · 31-05-2020 01:02AM

Arghus wrote: »

You seem to not want to give a straight answer.

Whats your direct question?

Juwwi · 31-05-2020 01:02AM

I wonder how much Gemma pays the troops to be on this thread per hour ,, even at €1 an hour I'd say there is good money to be made .

Cork Boy 53 · 31-05-2020 01:03AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Nah cancelling the leaving cert had little bearing. Id put my life saving's on that :pac:

I will ask you the same question that the other poster asked. Do you think the restrictions contributed to the virus being contained to a large extent? Yes or no?

Arghus · 31-05-2020 01:04AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Whats your direct question?

So you don't think restrictions had any bearing on curbing the spread of the virus?

FintanMcluskey · 31-05-2020 01:06AM

Cork Boy 53 wrote: »

I will ask you the same question that the other poster asked. Do you think the restrictions contributed to the virus being contained to a large extent? Yes or no?

NO.

Without mandatory mask wearinng, only the social distance made a difference.

Which has now been reduced from 2m (advisory)

Whats the 5km bulls#it doing?

alta stare · 31-05-2020 01:08AM

Juwwi wrote: »

I wonder how much Gemma pays the troops to be on this thread per hour ,, even at €1 an hour I'd say there is good money to be made .

Is Simon's pay a bit better it is?

FintanMcluskey · 31-05-2020 01:08AM

Arghus wrote: »

So you don't think restrictions had any bearing on curbing the spread of the virus?

The distance from home rule is bullsh#t that is preventing family seeing each other.

Mask up and live life for now.

So to answer your question NO, the current guidelines are bolix that have no basis in science

Arghus · 31-05-2020 01:15AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

The distance from home rule is bullsh#t that is preventing family seeing each other.

Mask up and live life for now.

So to answer your question NO, the current guidelines are bolix that have no basis in science

But you've no proof they didn't work.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 01:17AM

Arghus wrote: »

But you've no proof they didn't work.

And why would the burden of proof be on people who fail to believe in a scientific hypothesis?

Especially one which involves measurable damage in terms of social, economic, health costs.

Arghus · 31-05-2020 01:20AM

growleaves wrote: »

And why would the burden of proof be on people who fail to believe in a scientific hypothesis?

Especially one which involves measurable damage in terms of social, economic, health costs.

Well, you do make consistent claims that they don't work, which is at odds, generally, from the widely held view - it's hardly too much to ask for proof, considering.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 01:24AM

Arghus wrote: »

Well, you do make consistent claims that they don't work, which is at odds, generally, from - it's hardly too much to ask for proof, considering.

I've made consistent claims that lockdown is an unproven hypothesis.

Then I've had to patiently explain to around 10,000 people that evidence that correlates with a cause-and-effect assumption isn't the same thing as scientific proof. It's the starting point for a scientific investigation.

That's usually when I get accused of being an idiot and the debate terminates.

FintanMcluskey · 31-05-2020 01:27AM

Arghus wrote: »

But you've no proof they didn't work.

Sweden

growleaves · 31-05-2020 01:31AM

It isn't the done thing to ask someone to prove that an unproven scientific hypothesis isn't true. It doesn't work like that.

The burden of proof that lockdowns work is on those who people who posit that lockdowns work.

Arghus · 31-05-2020 01:35AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Sweden

I don't know, no one else has taken Sweden's hand off approach and Sweden does have a lot of deaths. A lot more than it's neighbours, ten times more than it's nearest neighbour Norway. I'm not convinced that Sweden's approach was a roaring success.

There's also been measures put in place in Sweden, it hasn't just been business as usual.

Arghus · 31-05-2020 01:40AM

growleaves wrote: »

It isn't the done thing to ask someone to prove that an unproven scientific hypothesis isn't true. It doesn't work like that.

The burden of proof that lockdowns work is on those who people who posit that lockdowns work.

So you can can make claims without any evidence then?

That's a good system.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 01:47AM

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Sweden

I think what Fintan is alluding to here is that if we use Sweden, or other countries and states that didn't lock down, as our control group then predictions of mass death have been proven false.

We also have ‘controls’, since not all countries have behaved the same. Neither Sweden nor Japan have locked down so, if the lockdown hypothesis were true, Stockholm would by now be a morgue and Greater Tokyo (population 38 million) a necropolis. - Alistair Haimes

See also this article for multiple comparisons between locked-down and un-locked-down states:

Bad Arguments For Lockdowns & The Burden Of Proof. Also: US States Analysis

When I posted this article on this thread before the poster I was arguing with said he did not the accept the non-locked-down countries as a control group since they were too different culturally, geographically, environmentally, in population density and distribution, and in other ways to be comparable to the countries that did lock down.

To which I replied: if these other factors are so significant as to make comparisons between locked-down and un-locked-down countries untenable then they are, ipso facto, more significant than the lockdown itself - so we are admitting that locking down is, at best, only sometimes the solution to curbing spread of the virus.

In any case, if we have no agreed control group then we are back to where we started: lockdown is an unproven hypothesis.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 01:50AM

Arghus wrote: »

So you can can make claims without any evidence then?

That's a good system.

Let me start from the beginning:

You have a scientific hypothesis (lockdown). You claim it is true and you wish other people to believe it is true.

Your proof that your scientific hypothesis is true is that nobody has so far proved to you that it is untrue.

MickeyLeari · 31-05-2020 01:53AM

Juwwi wrote: »

I wonder how much Gemma pays the troops to be on this thread per hour ,, even at €1 an hour I'd say there is good money to be made .

So anyone who thinks there should be an easing in the unnatural lock down is a fascist?

So you can count FF, Labour, IBEC, Michael O’Leary, Ivan Yates, Michael Smurfit et al all as fascists?

Arghus · 31-05-2020 02:06AM

growleaves wrote: »

Let me start from the beginning:

You have a scientific hypothesis (lockdown). You claim it is true and you wish other people to believe it is true.

Your proof that your scientific hypothesis is true is that nobody has so far proved to you that it is untrue.

Well, if you could find some compelling evidence to the contrary I'd certainly be all for being convinced.

None of us here are - I presume - epidemiologists or experts in infectious disease. So we have to go on the words of those we assume to know more about this than ourselves.

The prevailing view from experts - of course there's people who differ, but they are the minority opinion - has been all along that lockdowns are a crude, but effective means of curbing the spread of an infectious disease.

There's also the strong coincidence that the spread of the virus and the imposition of lockdown have synced up pretty much as expected. If lockdowns aren't effective, it's amazingly coincidental that they very much appear to be.

So, yes, no-one has proven it be untrue, but there's also strong arguments in it's favour.

I also don't believe that you apply the same level of sceptical enquiry to "anti-lockdown" arguments. I think you give them a free pass.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 02:25AM

Well, if you could find some compelling evidence to the contrary I'd certainly be all for being convinced.

See above for the linked article which does multiple statistical comparative analyses. Sample quote:

In the US, eight states never locked down. They were, with deaths per million (as of 17 May, using the COVID Tracking Project’s numbers): Iowa (111), Oklahoma (73), Nebraska (64), North Dakota (56), South Dakota (50), Arkansas (32), Utah (25), and Wyoming (14). Be careful with these numbers, as they are stated in relative terms. Wyoming, for example, has about 580 thousand souls, and had only 8 coronavirus deaths.

The states with the harshest lockdowns were California (83), Illinois (330), Michigan (490), New York (1162), New Jersey (1166).

growleaves · 31-05-2020 02:26AM

The prevailing view from experts - of course there's people who differ, but they are the minority opinion - has been all along that lockdowns are a crude, but effective means of curbing the spread of an infectious disease.

This statement is itself an extraordinary claim which needs to be proved before it can be accepted.

Experts who have been presented to us through the media lens may believe that but they haven't proven it.

Right when this thing started, it was the rubbishing of the report from Oxford University's Infectious Diseases Lab by The Guardian and The Financial Times with blithe soundbites, right when I was being introduced to the concept of "lockdown" which I'd never heard of before, which created my sceptical disposition.

I've also seen testimonies from multiple epidemiologists with different opinions from universities all around the world, some of them famous and respected institutions. I've posted some of them on various threads.

Experts with the 'wrong' opinion are not being pushed to the fore of international media. I'm not claiming this is a 'conspiracy' - just that people should not believe that there is an 'official' scientific view of things or one majority opinion. There isn't, besides which scientific hypotheses aren't decided by a majority opinion of experts anyway.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 02:38AM

There's also the strong coincidence that the spread of the virus and the imposition of lockdown have synced up pretty much as expected. If lockdowns aren't effective, it's amazingly coincidental that they very much appear to be.

So, yes, no-one has proven it be untrue, but there's also strong arguments.

They've also synced up with how routine pandemics usually rise, peak and fall. Its also been the case in states and countries without a lockdown though.

I also don't believe that you apply the same level of sceptical enquiry to "anti-lockdown" arguments. I think you give them a free pass.

Well it depends on the argument. If I haven't offered an opinion on something that shouldn't be taken as assent.

Arghus · 31-05-2020 02:40AM

growleaves wrote: »

This statement is itself an extraordinary claim which needs to be proved before it can be accepted.

How is it an extraordinary claim?

Look at the advice that government's have acted on all over the world. Clearly there's a prevailing opinion out there that lockdowns are effective. To claim otherwise is self evidently false.

Whatever about the mainstream media. I have certainly come across - in this forum at least - what feels like each and every dissenting scientific voice. Obviously these people exist, but to make out that their voices are as numerous as the opposing side? No, I don't believe that's true.

Arghus · 31-05-2020 02:43AM

growleaves wrote: »

Well it depends on the argument. If I haven't offered an opinion on something that shouldn't be taken as assent.

Oh, please, come on. You offer no opinion? Everything you post is anti-lockdown in nature.

growleaves · 31-05-2020 02:54AM

I have certainly come across - in this forum at least - what feels like each and every dissenting scientific voice.

There are far more scientists who have given contrary opinions. I can't translate from Greek, French, Portuguese, Spanish etc. and I'm not being paid to post here all day.

Usually the sceptical-of-lockdown scientists we do see linked here have made Youtube videos presenting their views in a way that's accessible to the public.

There are enough differing scientists that talk of a 'consensus' (a word we know from climatology debates) would be totally misleading.

Relaxation of Restrictions, Part IV - **Read OP for Mod Warnings**

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Relaxation of Restrictions, Part IV - Read OP for Mod Warnings