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

[Tankrizzo]

On a final related note - I would like to extend my apologies to isaldiri, I was rather unkind to him a few months ago and on reflection it was unwarranted. Although he believes what he believes about Covid, he obviously thinks politicians are knobheads - a sentiment I can heartily condone - and whenever he's ventured over here he's tried to be polite and sensible. I get the impression in 'that thread' that he is starting to feel like the last sober man at the party who's getting a bit nervous as he looks around at 1am to find the last of the sensible people have slunk away and he is surrounded by very drunk oddballs.

[Baroque attacks]

LF5335 said:

I see the Covid nutters have trashed this thread permanently. Please just stop replying to the whackos. They’ve got their own thread to spout bks.

It’s 2-3 people with about 7 accounts. They’ll tire themselves out.

[Chromegrill]

Ashfordian said:

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?

I'm not ignoring anyone but do have a life outside PH.

COVID relatively rarely caused severe disease in children though paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome affected around 1 in 3000 and could be pretty nasty (e.g. needing intensive care). Comparisons of risk of myocarditis from vaccine versus virus have taken time to gather evidence but generally favour vaccination. Studies have also found that vaccinated children had less risk of hospital admission from COVID. However, pretty much all children now have immunity, we don't offer children multiple vaccinations unless they are in a high risk group and the UK stopped offering even first dose vaccinations to children a while back so it's a bit of a moot point now. You can find a good read of both sides of the debate here.

As for looking at the impact of the pandemic and its control measures, for me and other public health specialists I know, that started in late March. Of 2020.

[Chromegrill]

isaldiri said:

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.

My bad, I meant "May to December", not March. Regardless, the period when particular concern was raised about the numbers of unvaccinated people in intensive care was the latter half of 2021. During those six months, anyone aged 18 and over could already have had at least one COVID vaccine yet unvaccinated patients made up the majority of admissions to ICU over that period, and during only one month out of those six were slightly more vaccinated patients admitted than vaccinated. Please can you point me to whichever ICNARC report that you refer to above in your claim that there were more unvaccinated patients than vaccinated in ICU during that period?

isaldiri said:

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?

I really don't recall in mid 2021 saying young people should still have the AZ vaccine. After all, UK guidance had restricted from general use in people under 30 in early April 2021 and those under 40 the following month. Could you remind me what I actually said?

[LF5335]

Should I ask the mods to rename this “Another Covid thread Vol 5984583920”

Please, please, please. Stop engaging with them, or this thread will be dead, just as the Covid nutters want it to be.

[coldel]

CG, appreciate the back and forth, but honestly if someone has sat in the same camp unmoved for years and countless volumes, is there really any point debating any more? COVID is one of those things people have decided they are either in on it or they aren't, there is no changing of minds, no matter what is said. Which is why on this particular subject its best left to leave the COVID stuff to that thread to the handful in there to rumble on for as long as it remains relevant to them.

[dukeboy749r]

coldel said:

CG, appreciate the back and forth, but honestly if someone has sat in the same camp unmoved for years and countless volumes, is there really any point debating any more? COVID is one of those things people have decided they are either in on it or they aren't, there is no changing of minds, no matter what is said. Which is why on this particular subject its best left to leave the COVID stuff to that thread to the handful in there to rumble on for as long as it remains relevant to them.

Well put.

[dukeboy749r]

May we now just summarise the OP's original question, via the thread title?

Possibly not thick, but mostly misguided/susceptible to having their rational thought process knocked off course via influences that correlate with deeper mistrust of certain bodies/groups/authorities. Maybe?

[eldar]

Baroque attacks said:

It’s 2-3 people with about 7 accounts. They’ll tire themselves out.

They are in a high state of tumescent excitement over there. Their frenzy just cant be contained, it seems.

Doing a grand job of reinforcing this threads premise.

[paulguitar]

dukeboy749r said:

May we now just summarise the OP's original question, via the thread title?

Possibly not thick, but mostly misguided/susceptible to having their rational thought process knocked off course via influences that correlate with deeper mistrust of certain bodies/groups/authorities. Maybe?

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

[isaldiri]

Chromegrill said:

My bad, I meant "May to December", not March. Regardless, the period when particular concern was raised about the numbers of unvaccinated people in intensive care was the latter half of 2021. During those six months, anyone aged 18 and over could already have had at least one COVID vaccine yet unvaccinated patients made up the majority of admissions to ICU over that period, and during only one month out of those six were slightly more vaccinated patients admitted than vaccinated. Please can you point me to whichever ICNARC report that you refer to above in your claim that there were more unvaccinated patients than vaccinated in ICU during that period?

...

I really don't recall in mid 2021 saying young people should still have the AZ vaccine. After all, UK guidance had restricted from general use in people under 30 in early April 2021 and those under 40 the following month. Could you remind me what I actually said?

This is a graph from the ICNARC Jan22 report here. It shows - ICU patient admissions at just over half being unvaccinated and general hospital admissions being perhaps 10-15%.

The concerns and general messaging from the authorities however was that it was almost all unvaccinated clogging up hospitals full stop not just as per your above post that 'they made up the majority in ICU'. That messaging was clearly at odds with what the data was and had been showing for months.

On the 2nd point - Elysium in the other thread had put up a link to an older thread where you did say the below in June 2021 which was not entirely true depending on age:

""Bottom line is that the vaccines in use are safe and effective and before vaccination people are assessed to ensure they can safely be vaccinated with the appropriate vaccine. If you really want to know what it feels like to suffer a blood clot, catch COVID since most people have a much greater risk of blood clots from COVID than they will from any of the vaccines against COVID.""

however... I do concede my memory wasn't what it was and had mistakenly thought that you and Prof.Prolapse were saying the same thing wrt to the AZN vaccine (he for example claimed that it was 'debunked' that ViTT was caused by the AZN vaccine which it rather obviously was not). You were mainly only arguing for the mRNA vaccines in the year so my bad in including the AZN one in that on your part.


However I do put my earlier question to you (which I don't think you did answer) again with somewhat more precision - do you still think that urging those who were healthy and under age 25-30 years to get that 2nd mRNA jab/booster was the right thing to have done in the latter half of 2021/early 2022? Especially as it was becoming very clear by mid 2021 that the vaccine would only provide a fairly time limited period of infection immunity given the age related vaccine risk for them and a lot of that group would long ago have got infected as well.


Tankrizzo - well that was rather unexpected. I don't know if what I believe about covid is quite as different as you might think even if what I believe about the government/public health response is clearly at odds with the likes of chromegrill do but I suppose no one is going to change their minds about that very much at this stage.

As far as the oddballs are concerned, well there certainly are some (drunk or otherwise) and while I might not have a particularly good opinion of some of those even if they are nominally on 'my side', I'd like to think my opinion of them would mirror what you think of some of the more strident posters here on this thread on 'your side'.

[coldel]

paulguitar said:

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

Thats awful news, so sorry to hear that. Condolences.

[Who_Goes_Blue]

LF5335 said:

Should I ask the mods to rename this “Another Covid thread Vol 5984583920”

Please, please, please. Stop engaging with them, or this thread will be dead, just as the Covid nutters want it to be.

or "We want to sling st at people but dont want to be challenged on it"

[Bill]

paulguitar said:

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

That's awful, really sorry to hear that.

[coldel]

Who_Goes_Blue said:

LF5335 said:

Should I ask the mods to rename this “Another Covid thread Vol 5984583920”

Please, please, please. Stop engaging with them, or this thread will be dead, just as the Covid nutters want it to be.

or "We want to sling st at people but dont want to be challenged on it"

I said I wouldn't engage with you again, but just to point out, you guys sling all sorts of nonsense around on the threads about me, but I don't challenge you on it there. Same rules apply.

If you want to talk the behaviours and psychology of conspiracy theorists and why they do what they do, then fine, otherwise COVID chat belongs in the COVID thread. In the same way I wouldn't be talking about BMWs in the Porsche threads or my favourite books or radio shows in the Netflix thread.

Edited by coldel on Thursday 25th April 11:06

[dukeboy749r]

Bill said:

paulguitar said:

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

That's awful, really sorry to hear that.

I'm sorry to learn of this, Paul.

My thoughts are with you and your family.

Depression to the point that you seek to take your own life is a terrible time, not only for the sufferer but also, of course, for those left behind.

[Ashfordian]

paulguitar said:

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

Had the authorities taken a more pragmatic and sensible approach to Covid do you think it would have taken less of a mental health toll on your cousin?

This is the whole argument about how we overreacted, that we created huge amounts of fear and anxiety for the whole nation, for such a relatively minor virus for the majority, with no consideration for the long term mental issues that would be created. And we are unfortunately seeing these negative outcomes more and more regularly. The blame squarely lies with the those making the decisions on this!


And on the mistrust of authorities, below is what Chris Whitty said about Omicron in December 2021

"This is a really serious threat at the moment. The how big a threat - there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad,"

They bring it on themselves and you should be calling them out for it rather than celebrating them. Then there may not be the mistrust....

Edited by Ashfordian on Thursday 25th April 11:25

[PurplePenguin]

coldel said:

Who_Goes_Blue said:

LF5335 said:

Should I ask the mods to rename this “Another Covid thread Vol 5984583920”

Please, please, please. Stop engaging with them, or this thread will be dead, just as the Covid nutters want it to be.

or "We want to sling st at people but dont want to be challenged on it"

I said I wouldn't engage with you again, but just to point out, you guys sling all sorts of nonsense around on the threads about me, but I don't challenge you on it there. Same rules apply.

If you want to talk the behaviours and psychology of conspiracy theorists and why they do what they do, then fine, otherwise COVID chat belongs in the COVID thread. In the same way I wouldn't be talking about BMWs in the Porsche threads or my favourite books or radio shows in the Netflix thread.

Edited by coldel on Thursday 25th April 11:06

To discuss the psychology of conspiracy theorists, surely by definition you have to discuss the conspiracy theory? (and that includes covid)

[coldel]

PurplePenguin said:

To discuss the psychology of conspiracy theorists, surely by definition you have to discuss the conspiracy theory? (and that includes covid)

Not at all. The behaviours and psychology is pretty consistent across all conspiracies, its why often you see that people don't just go for one, there are usually quite a few. The content is largely irrelevant. And those same psychological profiles and behaviours have been pretty consistent over time. COVID happens to be the most recent one, in ten years time it will be largely forgotten and it will be the next set, but the behaviours and psychological makeup of who and why they are pushed so arduously is always the same.

[andyeds1234]

Ashfordian said:

paulguitar said:

Mistrust of authority seems to be a big part of it.

I'm pretty shaken up today. One of my cousins, with whom I was very close as a kid, has taken his own life. He turned into a huge conspiracy theorist during COVID and became very withdrawn. None of us saw this coming. I strongly suspect the conspiracy stuff had a lot to do with it.

Had the authorities taken a more pragmatic and sensible approach to Covid do you think it would have taken less of a mental health toll on your cousin?

This is the whole argument about how we overreacted, that we created huge amounts of fear and anxiety for the whole nation, for such a relatively minor virus for the majority, with no consideration for the long term mental issues that would be created. And we are unfortunately seeing these negative outcomes more and more regularly. The blame squarely lies with the those making the decisions on this!


And on the mistrust of authorities, below is what Chris Whitty said about Omicron in December 2021

"This is a really serious threat at the moment. The how big a threat - there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad,"

They bring it on themselves and you should be calling them out for it rather than celebrating them. Then there may not be the mistrust....

Edited by Ashfordian on Thursday 25th April 11:25

In the meantime, there are the conspiracy theorists who veer wildly from one horsest theory to the next, pedalling their fearmongering for what? The greater good?

If the “authorities” over reacted, the fkwit conspiracy community practically frothed themselves into oblivion at the chance to create even more uncertainty, in an already volatile situation.