site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32471 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I would bet there is no reliable data in unvaccinated countries. Every country developed enough for a vaccine campaign (except for China) has used the Western mrna vaccines. Also, if there was good data it wouldn't be comparable. Africa's mortality is not comparable to countries where half the country is over 50 (or whatever it is). Especially when you factor in all the excess mortality in Africa from other things (AIDS, untreated diseases that wouldn't matter in the developed world, etc)

Every country developed enough for a vaccine campaign (except for China) has used the Western mrna vaccines

Did Russia / Belarus / Ukraine use western mrna vaccines ?

They used copies of them, so basically. Not sure about Ukraine but Russia and Belarus did.

This is false, Sputnik is an adenovirus vaccine like J&J. It would still be subject to potential issues around using a small subunit of the virus (the spike) to generate immunity, but not anything to do with the mRNA approach to replication.

I think some of those countries may have used Sinovax to some extent also? (which is more like a regular flu shot)

My bad. I'm just working off memory of Russia making a big deal over it years ago.

Also very low vaccine uptake rates in those countries.

Ukraine mostly didn’t get vaccinated, and Sputnik is sort of a hybrid between MRNA tech and more conventional vax.

We're talking about excess death statistics, not some nuanced "died after getting vaxxed" vs. "died because of the vax". There are some countries dysfunctional enough that they might routinely miss a bunch of dead bodies in their statistics, but why should that effect be more pronounced post-covid relative to during-covid?

Regarding comparing Europe to Africa, surely there are some countries with a similar age profile, with some variance in how many people got vaxxed?

You should have a look at Hungary -- their rate is lowish for Europe, and a significant number of those who did get it had Sinovac or Sputnik, due to Hungary opting out of the EUs Pfizer/Moderna supply in order to get quicker access.

Also I think Peru used a lot of Sinovac -- not sure they are devoloped enough for you, but clearly moreso than most places in Africa.

Those sound like the sorts of things that would increase mortality from the baseline? Anyways I'm not particularly fixated on Hungary; the fact that there are such large differences at the moment (and that many places are quite elevated) is profoundly weird.

"The monthly excess mortality indicator is expressed as the percentage rate of additional deaths in a month, compared to a baseline period. The baseline is given by average monthly deaths in the period 2016-2019."

This is a very crude methodology compared to the Euromomo approach.

Well you click on "methods" at the link above, but I'll link it for you:

https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/

More comments

Would you trust data from Peru or Hungary? I sure wouldn't. I suspect even US data is quite fuzzy.

Sure, why not? You don't need to be a technostate to count dead people.

The cause of death and data surrounding it would be more what I'm worried about.

That information is not required to calculate excess mortality.

It's required to tell what excess mortality means, which is the whole point of this discussion.

Excess mortality (above usual) is often used as a way of estimating deaths in times and places where reliable statistics are problematic -- it's a way of solving the exact problem you were complaining about earlier. Yes a database of all deaths paired with vaccine intake of those individuals would be better, but it's not available anywhere that I'm aware of.

Yes, and yes. I might be more skeptical of Ukraine, and not because I'm throwing shade at them, but because they're currently at war.

Have you ever been in either of the countries you criticize? You're acting like they're both worse than a 3rd world basket case.

I'm not criticizing anything. You don't have to be a 3rd world hell basket to have poor data. It's a pretty common problem. Detroit has poor data tracking and is not anything approaching a 3rd world hell basket, even if it's crime is pretty close. There are pretty big swathes of most countries which don't track data well. For example, its pretty well established that China probably isn't quite sure what it's exact population or GDP are. The specific problems in China are likely different (incentives for people collecting data to lie) but the problem as a whole is pretty universal.

EDIT:I'm not sure why you wouldn't just compare US vaccinated vs unvaccinated. That's basically what the trials did, and the data is public.

https://eua.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/providers/clinical-trial-data

You don't have to be a 3rd world hell basket to have poor data. It's a pretty common problem.

We're talking about counting corpses. Things would have to get very bad for a given government to have significant problems with that data.

EDIT:I'm not sure why you wouldn't just compare US vaccinated vs unvaccinated. That's basically what the trials did, and the data is public.

I'm skeptical of findings from controlled trials that don't show up in population level data in any way. There could be good reasons for that, but my first guesses are that the conclusions of the trial were wrong, or that the effect size is way smaller than it's made out to be.

As I recall total mortality did not differ significantly between the groups during the trials -- expanding this analysis to a larger population group would be great, but sadly no country that I'm aware of tags all death certificates with vax status -- and you do get into data quality/sampling bias issues whenever you start looking at a convenience sample for which you happen to be able to get the two bits is_vaxxed and is_dead.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats