eric76 said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Now, I will say I had some fairly intense debates with colleagues in public health early on that we need to prepare for the reality that this probably wouldn't stop transmission.

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One early concern was that the coronaviruses that caused colds would generally only give immunity for a year or so and that any covid vaccine might easily have that short a period for it to give immunity, wasn't it?

When they released the covid vaccines and talked them being good for life, I was rather surprised.

---

Correct, but even that was probably generous. And that wasn't the way it was sold to the public.

It's also important to remember that what most people think when they hear immunity (I can't get the disease) isn't the totality of what it means medically/immunologically (any enhanced degree of immune response; including that which prevents you from getting as sick). It's also a myth, frankly one I didn't really realize many people would held until all this, that all vaccines prevent you from getting a disease all the time. That just isn't true.

Why erase it though?

Mark it as bad science with made up numbers.

Infection_Ag11 said:

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eric76 said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Now, I will say I had some fairly intense debates with colleagues in public health early on that we need to prepare for the reality that this probably wouldn't stop transmission.

---

One early concern was that the coronaviruses that caused colds would generally only give immunity for a year or so and that any covid vaccine might easily have that short a period for it to give immunity, wasn't it?

When they released the covid vaccines and talked them being good for life, I was rather surprised.

---

Correct, but even that was probably generous. And that wasn't the way it was sold to the public.

It's also important to remember that what most people think when they hear immunity (I can't get the disease) isn't the totality of what it means medically/immunologically (any enhanced degree of immune response; including that which prevents you from getting as sick). It's also a myth, frankly one I didn't really realize many people would held until all this, that all vaccines prevent you from getting a disease all the time. That just isn't true.

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Keep patting yourself on the back. Answer this one question. Why do you feel the need to come here and prove the OP's point?

If I had time, I would go research all your wrong information you've espoused. But don't think I won't tonight.

OnlyForNow said:

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Why erase it though?

Mark it as bad science with made up numbers.

---

Retracting an article doesn't make it vanish from existence. You can still read any/all those publications online. The publishers simply issue a retraction and, usually, remove it from their library/archive. But a quick google search of any article in question will allow you to read it.

Quote:

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Why do you feel the need to come here and prove the OP's point?

---

My original post was a clarification of a fairly misleading thread premise. The rest of them are literally just me answering questions posted by others.

JoeAggie1010 said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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FrioAg 00 said:

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You talk about how difficult it is to admit you were wrong to someone who was right only for ideological reasons.

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In response to a question about why so many physicians/scientists were reluctant to change their turn on various topics.

Quote:

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But there was, without doubt, NO group in the country who was led less by science and more by political ideology than the physicians and medical institutions.

---

I mean, you can think that if you want. And certainly there are blind ideologues in medicine just as there are anywhere else. But if you are going to sit here and tell me the average American who protested any given aspect of the pandemic, it's existence or the response did so on the basis of a deep dive into the scientific rationale, well then we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Quote:

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Basic, elementary type scientific knowledge was not just ignored - but it was zealously fought against by the supposed "scientists".

---

This is just completely untrue. Nobody had ANY knowledge of this virus when it first hit the western hemisphere, because the only place we had data from flagrantly lied about literally everything. And the fact that covid, particularly the initial strain, diverged WILDLY in pathogenicity and transmissibility from the most comparable prior viruses we have experience with. And NONE of that preexisting knowledge was "elementary level" anyway. Claiming such a thing is just Dunning-Kruger in its most flagrant form.

Quote:

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What they did to children (who were almost completely unaffected) and education

---

As I've said before, this was the most flagrant miscalculation throughout the whole pandemic. But even then, there ARE conceivable scenarios where such a thing would be warranted and the reliable data on morbidity/mortality in children wasn't available until about 6 weeks after it hit the west hard. The data used to claim sooner timeframes by some came from China, where they vastly UNDERSTATED how bad it was for adults and I particular the elderly. We had no reason to ever believe that data and the people touting it wouldn't trust China on literally ANYTHING else.

Quote:

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the lunacy of unsealed surgical masks and cloth face coverings

---

Such masks have a significant impact on the transmission of many respiratory viruses, particularly in healthcare settings, just not covid. But anyone claiming they had scientific basis for that in the Spring of 2020 is just lying. Full stop. Particularly since even some other coronaviruses are significantly impeded by such measures.

Quote:

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the pushing of vaccines that had no chance of keeping up with a rapidly evolving respiratory virus

---

The evolution of the covid variants, particularly the manner in which they mutated, was both unique and on a rate/scale virology is just not very familiar with. And again, probably the most ignored scientifically indisputable fact on this board is that the vaccines in their first year of use demonstrably decreased the rates of severe disease and death in adults over the age of 50 and the benefit was greater the older you were. With respect to the active strain at the time the vaccine was rolled out, it took the mortality of an 85 year old with 2+ chronic medical conditions down to that of a healthy young adult in their 30s.

Did the claims of decreased transmission turn out to be largely incorrect? Yes. Did the benefits decrease with time and mutations? Absolutely. Was there ever a good reason to vaccinate 12 year olds? No (and if you check I was clearly stating this from the start when these were rolled out). Was the adverse event rate understated in certain populations, particularly in very young men? Yes. But the vaccines saved A LOT of your parents and grandparents in that first 6-12 months. Maybe even some of you. The absolute bottoming out of deaths we saw in the hospital was stunning. The volume of data documenting this is overwhelming at this point.

Quote:

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there were honestly so many mistakes pushed that were obvious mistakes made in the name of liberal groupthink

---

Most of the mistakes were initially not mistakes, they were unknowns, and only later once it was clear they were mistakes are many of these individuals liable. Now there certainly are many, and I'll readily admit there were things I believed that turned out to not be backed by the results, but ultimately there is a clear distinction between the ideologies who held to incorrect ideas far too long and everyone else who was learning as we went. And now in 2023 yes, there is a segment of the population dug in because of "liberal group think". But the same phenomenon exists on the right too, as we can see here. This board refuses to accept some things are we just stone cold facts at this point, because some of the stuff they were told was indeed untrue.

---

I say this respectfully, but very angrily! Your like minded doctors help kill my mom! We went to the ER and asked about Ivermectin. To quote the staff, "you mean that horse paste?!" I was only able to see my mom the last few days, while she was in the hospital for more than two weeks. When she went to palliative care, my kids, nieces and nephews only got to be with her for a few hours. Oh, my oldest daughter didn't get to say goodbye!

You can take your sanctimonious bull**** somewhere else!

---

I'm sorry that happened to her and to your family, I truly am. The person who addressed your family that way should have been reprimanded, and keeping you from seeing her was gravely immoral.

Ivermectin isn't "horse paste", it's a miracle antiparasitic that has saved millions from death and blindness in the second and third world. The doctors and the media who pushed that narrative deserve the scorn they receive for it. That being said, there just isn't any good evidence it is effective against covid. Some of the largest studies ever conducted on anti-infectives have indicated this. And that doesn't make what happens to your mom any less horrible.

Infection_Ag11 said:

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Quote:

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Why do you feel the need to come here and prove the OP's point?

---

My original post was a clarification of a fairly misleading thread premise. The rest of them are literally just me answering questions posted by others.

---

Then you should have inferred the medical profession side that advocated for, propagated, and lied to us about the whole COVID solution. You are part of the problem, not the solution. You continue to defend or change the narrative. To late for that.

Infection_Ag11 said:

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Quote:

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These geniuses of medicine killed untold thousands or millions with ventilators and Remdesivir.

---

This sort of stuff is what I'm talking about

---

There used to be stories by practicing medical professionals that once patients were placed on ventilators, they didn't come off. Even in the best circumstances, it's hard for patients to be weaned from ventilators.

So when physicians placed their patients on vents, were they and their families informed of the risks and likelihood the patients will never be taken off? Were patients given informed consent to being placed on a machine knowing there is potentially a 50/50 chance they will die being attached to it?

Infection_Ag11 said:

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JoeAggie1010 said:

---

Infection_Ag11 said:

---

FrioAg 00 said:

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You talk about how difficult it is to admit you were wrong to someone who was right only for ideological reasons.

---

In response to a question about why so many physicians/scientists were reluctant to change their turn on various topics.

Quote:

---

But there was, without doubt, NO group in the country who was led less by science and more by political ideology than the physicians and medical institutions.

---

I mean, you can think that if you want. And certainly there are blind ideologues in medicine just as there are anywhere else. But if you are going to sit here and tell me the average American who protested any given aspect of the pandemic, it's existence or the response did so on the basis of a deep dive into the scientific rationale, well then we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Quote:

---

Basic, elementary type scientific knowledge was not just ignored - but it was zealously fought against by the supposed "scientists".

---

This is just completely untrue. Nobody had ANY knowledge of this virus when it first hit the western hemisphere, because the only place we had data from flagrantly lied about literally everything. And the fact that covid, particularly the initial strain, diverged WILDLY in pathogenicity and transmissibility from the most comparable prior viruses we have experience with. And NONE of that preexisting knowledge was "elementary level" anyway. Claiming such a thing is just Dunning-Kruger in its most flagrant form.

Quote:

---

What they did to children (who were almost completely unaffected) and education

---

As I've said before, this was the most flagrant miscalculation throughout the whole pandemic. But even then, there ARE conceivable scenarios where such a thing would be warranted and the reliable data on morbidity/mortality in children wasn't available until about 6 weeks after it hit the west hard. The data used to claim sooner timeframes by some came from China, where they vastly UNDERSTATED how bad it was for adults and I particular the elderly. We had no reason to ever believe that data and the people touting it wouldn't trust China on literally ANYTHING else.

Quote:

---

the lunacy of unsealed surgical masks and cloth face coverings

---

Such masks have a significant impact on the transmission of many respiratory viruses, particularly in healthcare settings, just not covid. But anyone claiming they had scientific basis for that in the Spring of 2020 is just lying. Full stop. Particularly since even some other coronaviruses are significantly impeded by such measures.

Quote:

---

the pushing of vaccines that had no chance of keeping up with a rapidly evolving respiratory virus

---

The evolution of the covid variants, particularly the manner in which they mutated, was both unique and on a rate/scale virology is just not very familiar with. And again, probably the most ignored scientifically indisputable fact on this board is that the vaccines in their first year of use demonstrably decreased the rates of severe disease and death in adults over the age of 50 and the benefit was greater the older you were. With respect to the active strain at the time the vaccine was rolled out, it took the mortality of an 85 year old with 2+ chronic medical conditions down to that of a healthy young adult in their 30s.

Did the claims of decreased transmission turn out to be largely incorrect? Yes. Did the benefits decrease with time and mutations? Absolutely. Was there ever a good reason to vaccinate 12 year olds? No (and if you check I was clearly stating this from the start when these were rolled out). Was the adverse event rate understated in certain populations, particularly in very young men? Yes. But the vaccines saved A LOT of your parents and grandparents in that first 6-12 months. Maybe even some of you. The absolute bottoming out of deaths we saw in the hospital was stunning. The volume of data documenting this is overwhelming at this point.

Quote:

---

there were honestly so many mistakes pushed that were obvious mistakes made in the name of liberal groupthink

---

Most of the mistakes were initially not mistakes, they were unknowns, and only later once it was clear they were mistakes are many of these individuals liable. Now there certainly are many, and I'll readily admit there were things I believed that turned out to not be backed by the results, but ultimately there is a clear distinction between the ideologies who held to incorrect ideas far too long and everyone else who was learning as we went. And now in 2023 yes, there is a segment of the population dug in because of "liberal group think". But the same phenomenon exists on the right too, as we can see here. This board refuses to accept some things are we just stone cold facts at this point, because some of the stuff they were told was indeed untrue.

---

I say this respectfully, but very angrily! Your like minded doctors help kill my mom! We went to the ER and asked about Ivermectin. To quote the staff, "you mean that horse paste?!" I was only able to see my mom the last few days, while she was in the hospital for more than two weeks. When she went to palliative care, my kids, nieces and nephews only got to be with her for a few hours. Oh, my oldest daughter didn't get to say goodbye!

You can take your sanctimonious bull**** somewhere else!

---

I'm sorry that happened to her and to your family, I truly am. The person who addressed your family that way should have been reprimanded, and keeping you from seeing her was gravely immoral.

Ivermectin isn't "horse paste", it's a miracle antiparasitic that has saved millions from death and blindness in the second and third world. The doctors and the media who pushed that narrative deserve the scorn they receive for it. That being said, there just isn't any good evidence it is effective against covid. Some of the largest studies ever conducted on anti-infectives have indicated this. And that doesn't make what happens to your mom any less horrible.

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I appreciate your response.

Ulysses90 said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Quote:

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The vaccines were only effective at producing an antibody response.

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Incorrect, they DRAMATICALLY decreased the rates of severe disease and death in high risk groups. This is EXTENSIVELY documented in the research at this point. The benefit is past us now due to mutation and the fact that essentially everyone has had covid, most people more than once.

They were not effective at reducing transmission or rates or + test results in any meaningful way.

Quote:

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There is voluminous evidence that the mRNA vaccines produced a pathogenic priming effect that made the vacinated more susceptibleto COVID infction.

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This just isn't true, and it won't become true the more times you post it:

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The most aggressively vaccinated country in the world was Israel. They didn't see any benefit for the older population and those with comorbidities from the vaccines. What they did see was higher rates of infection among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.

Despite the data, that didn't stop NPR from blaming the infections among the vaccinated on those who weren't vaccinated and were experiencing a lower rate of transmission.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why

Quote:

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The bad news, doctors say, is that half of Israel's seriously ill patients who are currently hospitalized were fully vaccinated at least five months ago. Most of them are over 60 years old and have comorbidities. The seriously ill patients who are unvaccinated are mostly young, healthy people whose condition deteriorated quickly.

Israel's daily average number of infections has nearly doubled in the past two weeks and has increased around tenfold since mid-July, approaching the numbers during Israel's peak in the winter. Deaths increased from five in June to at least 248 so far this month. Health officials say that currently 600 seriously ill patients are hospitalized, and they warn they cannot handle more than 1,000 serious infections at the same time.

---

The absence of data on pathogenic priming for the mRNA vaccines is specifically because Anthony Fauci approved ending the trial after six months and vaccinating the control group so that there would be no long term population of people against which to compare all-cause mortality and infection rates.

---

https://www.europeanreview.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/1770-1776.pdf

A meta-analysis of studies including over ONE MILLION total patients

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9459165/

Another massive meta analysis assess 54 different studies in 9 different countries

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7112e1-H.pdf

Over 7500 patients in a prospective case control study, including over 6k test-negative controls.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7139a2-H.pdf

Another of over 3800 nursing home residents, which will be your highest risk demographic.

These are MASSIVE data sets from studies all over the planet across years now. And the number of retrospective studies on this topic are so numerous that I'd be here literally all day linking them.

The data on the benefit in reducing death/severe illness in that initial time frame is as extensive as anything ever studied in this realm of science at this point.

tysker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Quote:

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These geniuses of medicine killed untold thousands or millions with ventilators and Remdesivir.

---

This sort of stuff is what I'm talking about

---

There used to be stories by practicing medical professionals that once patients were placed on ventilators, they didn't come off. Even in the best circumstances, it's hard for patients to be weaned from ventilators.

---

That's because, generally speaking, intubation as a means of therapy for respiratory infections is a life sustaining measure performed where patients are on the brink of fatal respiratory failure. They are often in multi-organ failure and/or shock as well. These are the sickest patients many of whom will die no matter what you do.

Quote:

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So when physicians placed their patients on vents, were they and their families informed of the risks and likelihood the patients will never be taken off?

---

Sometimes intubation is emergent, meaning that unless the patient is DNI we have to intubate them immediately or they will die. When it isn't, yes, patients and/or their families are told the risks of the procedure and whether or not we believe they will eventually be able to be extubated. I've had many talks with sick end stage COPD patients where I told them that if they get intubated they will likely either still pass away or at best ultimately require a trach and long term ventilation. Some then choose to not be intubated and proceed with comfort measures, some still want it. On the flip side, a young person with an asthma exacerbation is told we will almost certainly be able to extubated and usually relatively soon. But when possible it's an informed decision.

The issue here is the belief that there was widespread intubation of people who otherwise would have been fine without it, and that the mechanical ventilation itself is what killed them. And while it's certainly possible for an intubated patient to sustain an acute lung injury from high airway pressures (this is long established and why we monitor pressures in intubated patients) that is neither unique to covid nor the primary cause of death in anyone who is intubated.

JoeAggie1010 said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

---

Quote:

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Why do you feel the need to come here and prove the OP's point?

---

My original post was a clarification of a fairly misleading thread premise. The rest of them are literally just me answering questions posted by others.

---

Then you should have inferred the medical profession side that advocated for, propagated, and lied to us about the whole COVID solution. You are part of the problem, not the solution. You continue to defend or change the narrative. To late for that.

---

I have and have expressed plenty of scorn to that side, it's just not something that usually becomes necessary in this board. But much of my last few years has been spent arguing with "covidians" on the opposite extreme. I've spoken at local school board meetings, public health policy meetings, hospital committee meetings, etc.

The irony is that many people on that side of things probably think of me as a contrarian and "conspiracy theorist". I've actually been called that to my face by someone who still wears a mask anywhere indoors. I've had MANY patients and friends express gratitude for giving them an even handed assessment of the information on covid. Literally only here am I regarded as some left wing covid authoritarian or whatever it is many of you think me to be. It's all a matter of perspective.

I remember this from a book, it was called 1984.

Well there ya go. Seems like the thread is misleading.

Adverse Event said:

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Dr Lexus (idiocracy) scene "UNSCANNABLE" comes to mind anytime I think about the amount of respect this era of medical schooled professionals churns out.

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Reference

Quote:

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where's your tattoo? Vax card?

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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tysker said:

---

Infection_Ag11 said:

---

Quote:

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These geniuses of medicine killed untold thousands or millions with ventilators and Remdesivir.

---

This sort of stuff is what I'm talking about

---

There used to be stories by practicing medical professionals that once patients were placed on ventilators, they didn't come off. Even in the best circumstances, it's hard for patients to be weaned from ventilators.

---

That's because, generally speaking, intubation as a means of therapy for respiratory infections is a life sustaining measure performed where patients are on the brink of fatal respiratory failure. They are often in multi-organ failure and/or shock as well. These are the sickest patients many of whom will die no matter what you do.

Quote:

---

So when physicians placed their patients on vents, were they and their families informed of the risks and likelihood the patients will never be taken off?

---

Sometimes intubation is emergent, meaning that unless the patient is DNI we have to intubate them immediately or they will die. When it isn't, yes, patients and/or their families are told the risks of the procedure and whether or not we believe they will eventually be able to be extubated. I've had many talks with sick end stage COPD patients where I told them that if they get intubated they will likely either still pass away or at best ultimately require a trach and long term ventilation. Some then choose to not be intubated and proceed with comfort measures, some still want it. On the flip side, a young person with an asthma exacerbation is told we will almost certainly be able to extubated and usually relatively soon. But when possible it's an informed decision.

The issue here is the belief that there was widespread intubation of people who otherwise would have been fine without it, and that the mechanical ventilation itself is what killed them. And while it's certainly possible for an intubated patient to sustain an acute lung injury from high airway pressures (this is long established and why we monitor pressures in intubated patients) that is neither unique to covid nor the primary cause of death in anyone who is intubated.

---

Are you certain covid patients were informed of the downsides of intubation? It may not have killed them, but did it help cure them? Why was intubation considered an acceptable practice given the known outcomes?

Quote:

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A meta-analysis of studies including over ONE MILLION total patients

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Meta analyses you say? Back up and let's discuss the statement you made above that there is no good evidence that Ivermwctin is effective at treating or preventing COVID.

https://c19ivm.org/

Ulysses90 said:

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Quote:

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A meta-analysis of studies including over ONE MILLION total patients

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Meta analyses you say? Back up and let's discuss the statement you made above that there is no good evidence that Ivermwctin is effective at treating or preventing COVID.

https://c19ivm.org/

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Lord knows we should trust their "meta-analysis" given their track record

Get Off My Lawn said:

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You're contorting yourself to a comical degree. "The problem is that Joe Public just missed the nuance of our profession's lexicon!" And now you're trying to hide behind technicalities or distortions. Nah. Y'all lied. The intent was to deceive and manipulate. You lie.

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OnlyForNow said:

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Why erase it though?

Mark it as bad science with made up numbers.

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Bad science is great $cience.

Even if everything a person says is factual they can still intend to deceive.

Clearly the case with Covid and the experts.

Ulysses90 said:

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Quote:

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A meta-analysis of studies including over ONE MILLION total patients

---

Meta analyses you say? Back up and let's discuss the statement you made above that there is no good evidence that Ivermwctin is effective at treating or preventing COVID.

https://c19ivm.org/

---

This has been thoroughly panned and shredded here and elsewhere across the Internet. The long and short of it is many of the included studies in this meta analysis were small and poorly conducted, proven fraudulent and/or since retracted, conducted in third world countries with a myriad of flaws, etc. One of the studies has an N of 6 and was published in a local newspaper in Mumbai. That's a joke. And it's also a lie to claim they were all peer reviewed even to begin with. Again, in a world full of grift Pierre Kory is the king.

Compare that to the two in my link, in which the entire controversy between BOTH of them is one single retracted study from Italy on the basis of discrepancies in inclusion criteria. Moreover, extremely large analysis not including controversial data have shown no benefit of ivermectin.

We're just talking about entirely different classes of evidence here.

Data is data, as long as it's presented without slanted bias.

I don't think we'll ever get a clear picture of what the data says, as too many people reviewing it are slanted one way or the other.

There was misinformation on both sides in all sorts of forms. What bothered me is there were credentialed and well established experts on both sides (and in the middle). But once a useful political narrative began to be settled on, it rapidly came to dominate and divide the medical and immunology experts also. There was a lot of credentialed conjecture based on knowledge AND intuition framed as much more authoritative than was really justified. Once politics intruded and it became politically useful or politically correct to assume certain narratives or positions in order to appeal to one side or the other, and appear sufficiently caring or concerned, the side with the most useful narrative for patronizing progressive authoritarians that dominate media bullied and intimidated and oppressed the academics and experts that had different perspectives or would not conform to official politically approved narratives.

There were academic and professional activities to sabotage the normal processes for research, validation, vetting, and publishing of data in the rash effort to protect the official narrative. Even if inspired by the idea that intuition was correct and the best course of action was to manipulate as many people as possible into a certain set of actions and forgo all other options, it was done unethically and recklessly in my view. You can't assume you are right in life altering matters at such a scale until you KNOW the data backs you up.

And in the mad rush to implement actions based on the conjectures of medical experts trying to save lives in the short term, legions of other experts in other fields like economics and supply chain logistics were ignored and suppressed when they pointed out the dangers and risks of not weighing the proposed actions against the opportunity costs and unintended by likely side effects.

We ignored the past, which provided useful information on dealing with a pandemic of this nature, out of the hubris that our modern expertise and credentialism would naturally result in better choices in the present, and let politics intrude on decisions that exploited fear and then caused needless harm to be done.

tysker said:

---

Infection_Ag11 said:

---

tysker said:

---

Infection_Ag11 said:

---

Quote:

---

These geniuses of medicine killed untold thousands or millions with ventilators and Remdesivir.

---

This sort of stuff is what I'm talking about

---

There used to be stories by practicing medical professionals that once patients were placed on ventilators, they didn't come off. Even in the best circumstances, it's hard for patients to be weaned from ventilators.

---

That's because, generally speaking, intubation as a means of therapy for respiratory infections is a life sustaining measure performed where patients are on the brink of fatal respiratory failure. They are often in multi-organ failure and/or shock as well. These are the sickest patients many of whom will die no matter what you do.

Quote:

---

So when physicians placed their patients on vents, were they and their families informed of the risks and likelihood the patients will never be taken off?

---

Sometimes intubation is emergent, meaning that unless the patient is DNI we have to intubate them immediately or they will die. When it isn't, yes, patients and/or their families are told the risks of the procedure and whether or not we believe they will eventually be able to be extubated. I've had many talks with sick end stage COPD patients where I told them that if they get intubated they will likely either still pass away or at best ultimately require a trach and long term ventilation. Some then choose to not be intubated and proceed with comfort measures, some still want it. On the flip side, a young person with an asthma exacerbation is told we will almost certainly be able to extubated and usually relatively soon. But when possible it's an informed decision.

The issue here is the belief that there was widespread intubation of people who otherwise would have been fine without it, and that the mechanical ventilation itself is what killed them. And while it's certainly possible for an intubated patient to sustain an acute lung injury from high airway pressures (this is long established and why we monitor pressures in intubated patients) that is neither unique to covid nor the primary cause of death in anyone who is intubated.

---

Are you certain covid patients were informed of the downsides of intubation? It may not have killed them, but did it help cure them? Why was intubation considered an acceptable practice given the known outcomes?

---

As a matter of law it's required to provide informed consent when at all possible. But more to the point, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what intubation is. The alternative to intubation in these cases is generally just death. We don't intubate people to "treat" them, not directly anyway. We intubate to buy us time to treat them by other means. We don't intubate people unless we've run out of other ways to ventilate/oxygenate them or other ways will not be adequately or provide adequate time for them to get better.

People get intubated because they are about to die of respiratory failure, not because we think it will help improve an otherwise stable patient. There's this idea that we were intubating people en masse to prevent respiratory spread or intubating them much earlier than we do for other conditions, and that just isn't true. There were certain modalities we DIDNT often use because it was associated with poor outcomes, and as the pandemic went covid patients generally actually had a HIGHER threshold to intubation because of the pressure issue we talked about. The fibrosis triggered by severe covid just made it so hard to use positive airway pressure modalities in some cases.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

You're contorting yourself to a comical degree. "The problem is that Joe Public just missed the nuance of our profession's lexicon!" And now you're trying to hide behind technicalities or distortions. Nah. Y'all lied. The intent was to deceive and manipulate. You lie.

---

That's not what I'm saying at all. But you do you.

MouthBQ98 said:

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There was misinformation on both sides in all sorts of forms. What bothered me is there were credentialed and well established experts on both sides (and in the middle). But once a useful political narrative began to be settled on, it rapidly came to dominate and divide the medical and immunology experts also. There was a lot of credentialed conjecture based on knowledge AND intuition framed as much more authoritative than was really justified. Once politics intruded and it became politically useful or politically correct to assume certain narratives or positions in order to appeal to one side or the other, and appear sufficiently caring or concerned, the side with the most useful narrative for patronizing progressive authoritarians that dominate media bullied and intimidated and oppressed the academics and experts that had different perspectives or would not conform to official politically approved narratives.

There were academic and professional activities to sabotage the normal processes for research, validation, vetting, and publishing of data in the rash effort to protect the official narrative. Even if inspired by the idea that intuition was correct and the best course of action was to manipulate as many people as possible into a certain set of actions and forgo all other options, it was done unethically and recklessly in my view. You can't assume you are right in life altering matters at such a scale until you KNOW the data backs you up.

And in the mad rush to implement actions based on the conjectures of medical experts trying to save lives in the short term, legions of other experts in other fields like economics and supply chain logistics were ignored and suppressed when they pointed out the dangers and risks of not weighing the proposed actions against the opportunity costs and unintended by likely side effects.

We ignored the past, which provided useful information on dealing with a pandemic of this nature, out of the hubris that our modern expertise and credentialism would naturally result in better choices in the present, and let politics intrude on decisions that exploited fear and then caused needless harm to be done.

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There is a lot of truth in this post

Unfortunately, in all likelihood, we will do it again next time. It is in our nature.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Unfortunately, in all likelihood, we will do it again next time. It is in our nature.

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Medicine and public health have been made into such risk averse industries over the last century that this will probably always be true. They will assume the worst by default at the outset of any future pandemics. Add in the power component and it just compounds the issue.

Ultimately things like school policy should never have given such disproportionate weight to one aspect of the pandemic. The harms to kids were never proportionally considered, and that's without factoring in that the reliable evidence for benign disease in kids was widespread fairly soon in the mid-late Spring of 2020.