Conspiracy theorists... are they all just a bit thick?

[dukeboy749r]

Dagnir said:

isaldiri said:

Well, I merely listed out various things done and saw by public health/government figures in the pandemic.

You were the one who earlier referenced having faith in verified experts. I was pointing out the behaviour of some of those verified experts that was at least partially responsible for fuelling why there was that loss in faith because the accepted truth wasn't.... well... anything like what it was being portrayed by them to be. Whether nutter with their belief system or actual expert, it seems people were entirely prepared to misrepresent and believe whatever they wanted to.

Perhaps that makes me a conspiracy theorist I suppose.

Don't bite. Just ignore and move on.

Accusations of being a conspiracy theorist say more about the person throwing out, than the target.

Ah - as does your telling post.

You probably refer to it as MSM, too.

[Boringvolvodriver]

dukeboy749r said:

Ah - as does your telling post.

You probably refer to it as MSM, too.

So using the term MSM makes one a a conspiracy theorist now? Ok got it!

Fwiw - if you read through Isaldiris posts you would come to the conclusion that he is very balanced and calls out all types of stuff that’s is clearly rubbish.

[Ken_Code]

Upinflames said:

Professor Angus Dalgleish explaining how vaccines and their boosters are causing cancer.

Is he a CT?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xFIgymUnrNShPLds...

Yes.

[captain_cynic]

Boringvolvodriver said:

So using the term MSM makes one a a conspiracy theorist now? Ok got it!

Fwiw - if you read through Isaldiris posts you would come to the conclusion that he is very balanced and calls out all types of stuff that’s is clearly rubbish.

Strange, he's never called out his own posts.

An endorsement by you isn't exactly helping his case either.

[Boringvolvodriver]

Ken_Code said:

Upinflames said:

Professor Angus Dalgleish explaining how vaccines and their boosters are causing cancer.

Is he a CT?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xFIgymUnrNShPLds...

Yes.

I do find it strange how someone who has this written about them becomes a Conspiracy Theorist

from wiki
Dalgleish was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001[2] and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians[when?] the Royal College of Pathologists[when?] and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.[when?][23] His citation on election to FMedSci reads:
Professor Angus Dalgleish is Professor of Oncology at St Georges Hospital Medical School London. He has made seminal observations relating to the virology of HIV. In particular he identified CD4 as a major receptive for HIV in humans, produced the first report of a link between Slim Disease in Africa and HIV infection. He also identified the close correlation between the immune response and the presence of tropical spastic paraparesis in patients infected with the HTLV-1 virus.[2]

Still he was a UKIP candidate so that must prove it I guess

[Ken_Code]

Boringvolvodriver said:

I do find it strange how someone who has this written about them becomes a Conspiracy Theorist

from wiki
Dalgleish was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001[2] and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians[when?] the Royal College of Pathologists[when?] and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.[when?][23] His citation on election to FMedSci reads:
Professor Angus Dalgleish is Professor of Oncology at St Georges Hospital Medical School London. He has made seminal observations relating to the virology of HIV. In particular he identified CD4 as a major receptive for HIV in humans, produced the first report of a link between Slim Disease in Africa and HIV infection. He also identified the close correlation between the immune response and the presence of tropical spastic paraparesis in patients infected with the HTLV-1 virus.[2]

Still he was a UKIP candidate so that must prove it I guess

Yes, the psychology is interesting.

A colleague in the physics department at Impetial became convinced that you could propel a craft with gyroscopes and of course we had formerly respected research scientist Andrew Wakefield who went properly down the rabbit hole a few years ago.

[Baroque attacks]

paulguitar said:

Dagnir said:

paulguitar said:

Are 'they' trying to turn us all gay then?

This is such an unproductive and condescending reply, and speaks to your intellect far more than it does the person you are replying to.

Crikey, steady on!

Was just supposed to be a bit of fun, Jesus...

When you’re too busy proving Bill Gates had the WHO force a 5G enabling, head-magnetising vaccine on us ~3 years ago which would kill us all after 18months, there’s just no time for humor!

[paulguitar]

Baroque attacks said:

paulguitar said:

Dagnir said:

paulguitar said:

Are 'they' trying to turn us all gay then?

This is such an unproductive and condescending reply, and speaks to your intellect far more than it does the person you are replying to.

Crikey, steady on!

Was just supposed to be a bit of fun, Jesus...

When you’re too busy proving Bill Gates had the WHO force a 5G enabling, head-magnetising vaccine on us ~3 years ago which would kill us all after 18months, there’s just no time for humor!

Apparently not

[Chromegrill]

Boringvolvodriver said:

Ken_Code said:

Upinflames said:

Professor Angus Dalgleish explaining how vaccines and their boosters are causing cancer.

Is he a CT?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xFIgymUnrNShPLds...

Yes.

I do find it strange how someone who has this written about them becomes a Conspiracy Theorist

from wiki
Dalgleish was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001[2] and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians[when?] the Royal College of Pathologists[when?] and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.[when?][23] His citation on election to FMedSci reads:
Professor Angus Dalgleish is Professor of Oncology at St Georges Hospital Medical School London. He has made seminal observations relating to the virology of HIV. In particular he identified CD4 as a major receptive for HIV in humans, produced the first report of a link between Slim Disease in Africa and HIV infection. He also identified the close correlation between the immune response and the presence of tropical spastic paraparesis in patients infected with the HTLV-1 virus.[2]

Still he was a UKIP candidate so that must prove it I guess

Quite a bizarre turn of events. To save looking for his Wikipedia page, I have reproduced the section that immediately follows on from where you pasted up. Concerning its credibility, the full story was brought to public attention by one of the investigative journalists who helped write up the Post Office Horizon scandal, though his failed attempt to design a completely new type of vaccine against COVID in 2020 was reported on at at the time.

In October 2023, following a joint investigation analysing emails leaked in 2022 by Russian hacking group working for the Russian FSB, an article was published by Computer Weekly[26] and Byline Times[27] containing several controversial claims about Angus Dalgleish.

That Dalgleish was a member of a secret group led by Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6), Gwythian Prins (a historian academic), and John Constable (of the Global Warming Policy Foundation) - who called themselves the "Covid Hunters".
That in March 2020 the group prepared an 'Urgent Briefing for the Prime Minister and his Advisers' which advised that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (see COVID-19 lab leak theory).
That the group had briefed Boris Johnson that the man-made nature of the virus meant that the best candidate for vaccine development was the Norwegian Biovacc-19.[28] Also that Dalgleish had been given stock options in the company Immunor which held the patents for this vaccine due to his significant involvement in the research behind its development.
That when the scientific journal Nature Medicine published an article[29] contradicting their viewpoints on the origin of COVID-19, the group considered this to be COVID-19 misinformation by China.
That following these suspicions the group had advised Michael Gove to secretly start electronic surveillance on the journal using MI5 resources to uncover them as part of a “China Persons of Influence Network” of senior officials, politicians and academics allegedly under the influence of the communist state. (For examples, see Chinese information operations and information warfare and Chinese espionage in the United States.)
That the group had then contacted a range of other Western intelligence agencies to brief them on the supposed Chinese activity in a briefing titled 'The Three Interlocking Arms of The Intelligence Case against PRC' which claimed China was “attempting to control the terms of the origin of COVID-19 debate with active help from non-Chinese agents of influence, notably at the scientific journal Nature.
That the group had worked together previously to replace Theresa May with Boris Johnson and had previously attempted to replace the National Security Council.

[Boringvolvodriver]

To be honest, I am not sure who or what to believe.

We have all sorts of statements and evidence over varying different timescales from the same people saying that covid was natural from bats and then changing there minds to it could have been a lab leak to we really don’t know!

There are probably too many vested interests for the truth to ever come out and as was once said

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

[Bill]

coldel said:

Bill said:

coldel said:

Well news is pretty emotive, wrapped around often not very well established facts. As per the description yes every single news outlet from the extreme right wing stuff like info wars to the more centric BBC will have some sort of company leaning. So I can see in its purest form of definition its propaganda.

It's a false equivalence. Making out that infowars is the flip side of the BBC and therefore just as (in)valid.

I never said it was a flip. I just picked two news sites as examples of political leaning and that every news site has a leaning of some sort.

No, I agree with you. I mean that the use of "propaganda" to describe the BBC etc is to try to give wibble sites equal status.

[James6112]

Boringvolvodriver said:

To be honest, I am not sure who or what to believe.

We have all sorts of statements and evidence over varying different timescales from the same people saying that covid was natural from bats and then changing there minds to it could have been a lab leak to we really don’t know!

There are probably too many vested interests for the truth to ever come out and as was once said

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Boring
Keep it to the fruitcake thread:-
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Chromegrill]

isaldiri said:

I'm referring to the government/public health officials that

1. at every turn decided to emphasise that covid was a very serious risk to everyone rather than being very highly age stratified
2. refused in spring 2020 to acknowledge that 'the peak' had passed for ages despite the official data clearly showing that weeks before
3. presented a highly misleading graph to justify the 2nd lockdown (by which time they were well aware was already incorrect)
4. stated that it was all the bad unvaccinated people clogging up hospitals in summer 2021 when official NHS data was clearly showing that was not the case
5. repeatedly stated that post infection immunity didn't apply and only vaccination would provide immunity
6. (like chromegrill earlier) ignored the fact that the risk/benefit of the vaccines for the younger population was very much the opposite of older people in constantly trying to push that younger group to get vaccinated for little if any benefit using overall population risks which were not relevant to them in order to justify that

You tell me whether those were 'actual experts' or 'nutters and their belief system'.

Some thoughtful questions there and I can appreciate that some people could be concerned that they indicate a wider malaise. But press conferences and soundbites can only convey a fraction of the work that went on behind the scenes during the pandemic and you can decide if, with a bit of wider context, they are quite the smoking gun that some have made them out to be.

1. Risk of death or severe COVID infection was related to several factors, of which age was the most obvious. However, others included being male, chronic illness, immunosuppression, obesity, pregnancy, belonging to certain ethnic minority groups and coming from more socio-economically deprived areas. Indeed throughout the pandemic there was a very strong relationship between risk of severe COVID and deprivation in pretty much all age groups even down to children. So it wasn’t as simple as saying “protect the very old and everyone else will be fine”. A large majority of doctors who died from COVID in the UK came from minority ethnic groups for example. From the WHO report in February 2020 onwards the key at risk groups were fairly accurately determined. In March 2020 I recall we were advising certain groups about additional precautions to take such as over 70s, people with long term health conditions, plus identification of immunocompromised people so they could be advised to shield. Whilst risk of dying from COVID was lower in other groups, it was still important to prevent infection in lower risk groups (a) because something that could still be pretty nasty to a low proportion of a large number of people would end up harming large numbers of people, both from acute illness and the longer term effects of COVID, and (b) because if lots of young people got infected, it would inevitably put many more older people at risk of infection who were likely to come to greater harm.

2. In the first wave, infections were doubling around every 4 days. Due to the incubation period, the number of new infections on any given day represented the number of people who became infected several days earlier. Therefore trying to determine how many people at any one time were infected was like driving with your windscreen completely blacked out and relying upon where your rear view mirror was telling you that you had just driven through. The number of cases prior to first lockdown rose much more rapidly than the fall in numbers after the peak. Anyone can use the benefit of hindsight to see when the curve starts falling but that's not possible when you are in the middle of it. When the health service is set to run out of hospital beds unless the relentless rise in infections is curbed pronto is not the time to sit back, cross your fingers and hope it’s just going to go away.

3. The Saturday evening briefing in early November you refer to was widely criticised for the use of one graph without mentioning there was an updated chart. Yet with a different chart the conclusion would have been no different, just the timing of when we would run out of hospital beds would have been pushed back by some days. So yes, I think many people would agree that particular briefing was clumsy but it didn’t change the fundamental problem, it just pushed it a bit down the road. Unlike the first wave, doubling times were if I recall more like every 10 days or so due to the various control measures already in place but that didn't mean hospital beds weren't filling up. In the end, more people in the UK died from COVID in the second (winter) wave than the first wave, which is especially tragic given how close vaccines were to becoming available. It also debunks claims being circulated by some at the time that rising numbers of cases of COVID in the autumn of 2020 were just an illusion.

4. In seven out of eight months between March and December 2021 the majority of patients getting admitted to ICU were unvaccinated (the exception being October). In every age group of people admitted to ICU, age-specific rates of unvaccinated people were at least ten times higher than vaccinated. There were other differences between the two groups as well – unvaccinated patients in ICU were more likely to be younger (50 versus 62 median age) females from minority ethnic groups (65% white versus 85%) living in more socioeconomically deprived areas with no serious pre-existing illness. The ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated evidently caused confusion to some people. Partly because it changed as fewer people remained unvaccinated over time, and some news reports specifically counted intensive care patients with COVID receiving ECMO (effectively a lung bypass machine) of whom around 90% were unvaccinated. I suspect in part because the ICNARC reports counted incidence (newly admitted patients) whereas individual hospitals typically reported prevalence (ie numbers of vaccinated or unvaccinated patients on any one day). Unvaccinated patients tended to have more severe lung disease and might stay longer in ICU, so you need only a few to get stuck in intensive care for days on end if vaccinated people tended to recover faster to see how both ICNARC reports and claims from individuals hospitals or their medical teams could apparently arrive at contradictory conclusions yet be counting the same patients.

5. In the absence of a playbook, countries took different approaches to hybrid immunity. Some argued that one infection was equivalent to one dose of vaccine. Others took the position that since many people had COVID with very mild or no symptoms, it was unclear how protective any immunity from such infections would prove to be.

6. I absolutely do not ignore the risk benefit profile of COVID vaccines and like all those involved in the vaccine program strove to ensure that those at highest risk were the highest priority, indeed almost all my time with vaccinations was spent helping to identify those who had the most to benefit from vaccination then ensuring they could access it. That said, I am acutely aware of the inequalities different populations faced from COVID as outlined in my response to your first question, and it’s clear from multiple studies that in a non-immune population, the benefits of vaccination over infection relative to potential harms extended well beyond the very elderly and very frail. Since population immunity to COVID is now almost universal, the age and risk factor groups now eligible for COVID vaccines are quite appropriately more limited.

Perhaps these responses will convince you that I’m a nutter, maybe they've provided helpful context that explains things that puzzled you. Each of your points could be taken up as support for one or other of the many conspiracies around COVID, or considered in context and reflected on as being a logical response that many people appraised of the supporting evidence would have chosen at the time. Your call.

Edited by Chromegrill on Tuesday 23 April 23:26

[isaldiri]

Chromegrill said:

Some thoughtful questions there and I can appreciate that some people could be concerned that they indicate a wider malaise. But press conferences and soundbites can only convey a fraction of the work that went on behind the scenes during the pandemic and you can decide if, with a bit of wider context, they are quite the smoking gun that some have made them out to be.

Well, they weren't so much questions but simply a list of things that actually did happen and I listed them as examples of why 'trust in verified experts' was affected as a result.

As for the individual points in your post:

1) I fully agree that there were various risk factors in covid but given age was such a dominant factor (effective linear on a log scale), playing up covid risk to younger groups in order to get compliance to reduce infections was a lousy idea as data by mid March 2020 from Wuhan was pretty clear and nothing subsequently refuted it either.

2) by the 20th of April 2020 or thereabouts, the NHS/ICU data (of which senior govt/public health figures undoubtedly had knowledge of) were clearly showing that infections had slowed once cycle times were taken into account. While it's entirely reasonable not to expect anyone to be saying around, say the 10th of April, that the pandemic had peaked, I don't think carrying on the farce of 'not past the peak' for weeks was a good look and didn't exactly require much hindsight because any missing lags to NHS hospital/icu numbers/deaths were backfilled long before.

3) my point was that knowingly using incorrect data was always going to backfire (per above as well). And I agree (and said so at the time) it was clear by mid october there was going to be a second winter peak of covid short of draconian restrictions would have been impossible to maintain from november until the full rollout of the vaccines (which no one yet had a firm idea of when they would arrive anyway at that time). However the insistence on using imperial/lshtm projections that showed implausible number of deaths that took absolutely no account of behaviour change (that had already happened by late October and which also happened over a week prior to the spring lockdown) nevermind an out of date chart that was reflecting an incorrect number on the day it was shown wasn't just clumsy but just taking people for idiots. Which perhaps you think was justified just to have avoided hospital beds being overfilled I suppose so the ends justified the means.

4) That is a good example what I would call intentionally misleading cherry picking of numbers. March to December 2021 covers the early 2021 period where covid rates were still relatively high and vaccination of older people not quite as widespread yet. The period of which the 'bad unvaccinated people were clogging up hospitals' mantra was being trotted out was much later in 2021, if not late summer then autumn 2021. NHS/ICNARC reports were showing that it was not unvaccinated people that were the largest numbers in hospital. The fact that the age specific rates was much higher for unvaccinated people was a separate point but that wasn't the claim being made about absolute numbers of people. Again, my point returns to knowingly claiming something that was obviously incorrect in order to get something perceived to be 'for the greater good' having unintended consequences.

5) the problem is that various people were denying that infection derived immunity existed. See above re knowingly claiming something incorrect.

6) You absolutely did ignore the risk/benefit profile of covid vaccines for those involved per my earlier reply to your post that quoted John Bell saying 'if you don't want myocarditis, get vaccinated'. For those aged <30, it definitely wasn't obvious that the quoted bit was true, nevermind the fact that vaccination would not prevent the near certainty of getting infected at some point later anyway so any vaccine related myocarditis risk was going to be a cumulative risk to infection. For the older population, overall the net benefit was still (hugely) in favour but claiming a population level benefit as part of the drive to get younger people to be vaccinated was.... at minimum a blatant misrepresentation of the risk/benefit for that group.

You were at the time (mid 2021) adamant that younger people should just jab up nevermind with AZN (whatever the ViTT risk) or the mRNA ones (nevermind the myocarditis risk) even though they were at little risk of covid - do you think that was a mistake now?

Chromegrill said:

Perhaps these responses will convince you that I’m a nutter, maybe they've provided helpful context that explains things that puzzled you. Each of your points could be taken up as support for one or other of the many conspiracies around COVID, or considered in context and reflected on as being a logical response that many people appraised of the supporting evidence would have chosen at the time. Your call.

I don't and didn't think previously you were a nutter even if I didn't agree with how quick you were willing to effectively force people to do what you saw as being for their own good. Your responses however now (and as before) do reflect the issue that I (and some, perhaps many) others saw as a refusal to countenance anything other than what you already believed in and dismissing criticism from outside your immediate profession as due to being ignorant. Well that plus the already mentioned willingness to misrepresent/coerce people 'for the greater good' but this I accept is something that different people have quite differing views on the acceptability of.

Perhaps my posts will reaffirm to you that I am just a nutter conspiracy theorist or perhaps it might provide something for you (and others in your profession) to reflect on how some of what was done might have come across to other people who weren't prepared to simply have blind faith in 'verified experts'. Your call as well.

Edited by isaldiri on Wednesday 24th April 01:06

[Al Gorithum]

[coldel]

Al Gorithum said:

Just ask Matt Le Tissier!

[dukeboy749r]

Boringvolvodriver said:

dukeboy749r said:

Ah - as does your telling post.

You probably refer to it as MSM, too.

So using the term MSM makes one a a conspiracy theorist now? Ok got it!

Fwiw - if you read through Isaldiris posts you would come to the conclusion that he is very balanced and calls out all types of stuff that’s is clearly rubbish.

First of all, as you probably knew you were doing, I was a) referring to someone above me in the thread and b) my comment (in being aimed at that one person) was taking their language and replaying it to them.

But, you got yoru kicks and then referred to me on the Wibble thread in NP&E, so well done you.

10 out of 10 for your confirmation bias.

Your logic is almost Vulcan-like.

[captain_cynic]

dukeboy749r said:

First of all, as you probably knew you were doing, I was a) referring to someone above me in the thread and b) my comment (in being aimed at that one person) was taking their language and replaying it to them.

But, you got yoru kicks and then referred to me on the Wibble thread in NP&E, so well done you.

10 out of 10 for your confirmation bias.

Your logic is almost Vulcan-like.

It's a badge of honour being discussed on there, it means you've managed to penetrate their fantasy bubble and it needs to be addressed from their safe space

The next level is when you get added to "the list" of blocked user accounts.

[GeneralBanter]

Just chanced on this thread…. this week you only have to look at Marjorie Taylor Greene to realise how dangerous and influential a combination of conspiracies, Russian misinformation and made-up beliefs no more factual than a Ladybird book can be.

[Ashfordian]

isaldiri said:

Apart from the fact that it was age dependent and the your quote above intentionally ignores that. Myocarditis was not a greater risk from infection than from vaccination in some circumstances - namely for those under 30 at their 2nd mRNA jabs especially if Moderna. It also excludes the pretty much certain likelihood of being infected by covid in the future so your myocarditis risk would be cumulative from any vaccine risk + infection risk.

If Chromegrill really was a health professional involved at a fairly senior level in the COVID response , why is he ignoring answering the above very valid point from isaldiri regarding the cumulative risk of Myocarditis from Covid infection and vaccination?

Chromegrill also wants to try and confuscate that Covid was mainly age related. It was obvious early on from the data that Covid doubled your risk of death.. This fact was totally ignored by the health professionals publicly, in preference of creating unnecessary fear and anxiety, which is likely to have done more damage to said peoples health in the long term.

I wonder if Chromegrill is involved "at a fairly senior level" looking into the effects of said Covid overreaction on the long term health of the nation?