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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Seems like it’s been a while since we had a COVID report. I am seeing reports of excess deaths continue in western countries especially mRNA vaxxed countries. Theoretically after a pandemic that targeted people with a high risks of death we should see a period of below trend deaths. Usually I use Berenson when something feels off on the vaccine; always thought he misrepresented data but I knew he would have the vaccine skepticism data and seemed to do Scott’s line of the official media (he was NYTimes) will always present you true data just misrepresent it.
So he’s showing 1 million excess deaths in the last 12 months in MRNA countries which is a lot
https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1622623915775336448?s=46&t=5lPC0Ua_zfSaFWePIhVHfg
And a few counties I believe parts of UK and Germany are at peak excess deaths.
Then you had the Hamlin incident which doesn’t look like the initial story sold to me.
A few rationalist made mea culpas lately for being too pro lockdown etc. I’m now questioning whether my pro-vaccine position was correct. Scott Adams gave a mea culpa he was wrong on vaccines.
https://youtube.com/embed/C41GCgyG4mI
Of course on death counts. Overdoses seem to be at a new base rate adding some excess deaths. Maybe explains 150k. Murders up too but that’s like 30k tops. And some more suicides. And COVID still exists. But we also thinned the herd of near death people which should pressure excess deaths down. Did everyone get fat sheltering in place and/or didn’t stimulate their immune system enough with all sorts of pathogens plus other health care (cancer etc) went undetected?
I think the long term mRNA vaccine bear case rests on it training your body wrong for long term immunity by flooding your system with just the spike protein. Plus the Pfizer project Veritas guy said they don’t have a good explanation for menstrual changes that shouldn’t be occuring but could indicate it’s doing something with hormones unexpected.
Now I was never pro-mandate. Got COVID before vaccination confirmed and without symptoms. Eventually got 1 jab of mRNA as a booster and it knocked me out for 36 hrs so I swore off taking more shots. But I still recommended it to older family members.
Which leads to the discussion - what is causing the excess deaths? Will the mRNA vaccines end up being viewed as a huge failure and Berenson moves from quack to Seer who saw everything everyone else was blind to. And Kyrie Irving moves from fool to semi-normal. Currently I am in the confused stage where the data seems to be not fitting with my prior beliefs and trying to figure out what is going on. Is there a more rational explanation for excess deaths than mRNA vaccines are bad.
Excess deaths aren’t as scary as they sound. For starters, they aren’t unexplained, just excess over previous years. Or, in this case, over the Economist’s machine learning model. They include COVID deaths, meaning that the chart cannot distinguish between “failed to stop COVID” and “actively killed more people.”
I’ve got some issues with that plot which don’t really inspire confidence in Mr. Berenson. Why is “High Income Countries” treated as synonymous with highly vaxxed? Why are all the other groups so similar? And doing a cumulative plot so the numbers only go up is just dishonest.
Here is one that solves most of those issues. From the same source, even. Notice where the 12-month period lined up. Yes, Berenson’s chosen plot starts right after the biggest drops in excess mortality rate. Drops which would make the rest of his chart look a lot flatter.
Now this doesn’t at all demonstrate that vaccines were highly effective. But it’s also a really weak argument for spooky excess mortality. The whole last year was great compared to the winter spikes or even the year-round levels of 2021 or 2022. So his chart 1) includes COVID, not just mystery deaths, 2) shows cumulative instead of rate lines, and 3) starts at the most dramatic possible time.
No way he moves up as a seer—even if he’s 100% right. This is the kind of prediction that’s hard to parlay into real benefits. Then again, I’m not sure how journos and influencers actually get that level of credibility, or if they even still can.
Speaking of which: is Scott Adams taking a contrarian stance really unusual? It’s been his MO since the Trump campaign: loudly and confidently proclaim that the outsiders are right, and that anyone who doesn’t buy it is irrational. I’d think antivaxxing is red meat to his viewers. Anyway, he probably represents an upper bound for parlaying truthiness into (in)famy, and it’s not that high.
Euromomo is my goto for this, considering that they've been tracking this for a long time using an apparently consistent methodology, and seem unlikely to fiddle the data/mislead with statistics one way or the other.
Those graphs look quite concerning to me? Especially the under-45 demographics -- lingering covid or whatnot doesn't seem to be a likely explanation here.
In terms of pinning things on vaccines directly that's pretty hard given that you can't slice mortality datasets that way -- but if you scroll down to the country-level excess mortality graphs it would be interesting to know why France, Germany, and the UK (to pick a few) are all substantially elevated while Hungary (for instance) is right around their baseline.
Thanks. This looks like a good site. I concur that there are obvious excess deaths ongoing, and the fact that they include the relatively young is…not good. Not good at all.
I am having a hard time seeing which countries are currently elevated on mobile. Is it possible that they are ones which evaded deaths early on, leaving larger vulnerable populations? E.g. I see Hungary had multiple high peaks in the first two winters, and now it’s actually down in the negatives. I have no idea how their current demographic pyramid looks.
The map is useful, but you need to roll it back a couple months as the data lags depending on the reporting systems of the individual countries. Based on the view for wk 50 2022, all of the EU is experiencing at least "moderate excess" (> 4 s.d., I think?) other than Ireland, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Greece, and Hungary. (The last two being "no excess")
Germany, England, and the Netherlands were at "very high"
Eyeballing the charts, Estonia looks to be flirting with "substantial increase", Finland is trending up, Malta, Hungary and Greece seem OK.
It doesn't really seem to be related to strong peaks from the coronavirus waves -- France, Netherlands and the UK all did quite badly on those, and are now looking about as bad they've been as any time since 2017, other than the initial spring-2020 coronavirus wave.
The lower charts use z-scores based on a seasonal model, so normal flu deaths should be accounted for; a really strong flu season would do this, but if this is going on at the moment I haven't heard about it?
The current Covid stats aren't really comparable to 2021/early 2022 stats, though, since testing rates are much lower and most people with Covid will probably just treat it as a normal influenza and won't be recorded anywhere.
These aren't covid stats though, this is raw excess mortality.
I was reacting to "doesn't seem to be related to strong peaks from the coronavirus waves".
I was looking at the mortality peaks on the Euromomo charts -- you can pretty clearly see the covid waves on there in the whole-population group and older demographics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link