Free Republic

Has our new house speaker joined the swamp?

Terrible idea. You can’t force clinicians to accept medicaid just to keep a broken system going. The system needs to be re-written from the bottom up... without all the lobbyist influence.

Honest study. Thanks.

A peer-reviewed cross-sectional study (n=3231) funded by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that persons reporting to wear a face mask sometimes/often or almost always/always had a 33% and 40% higher incidence of self-reported COVID-19 compared to those wearing face masks never or almost never after adjusting for available, relevant confounders (Epidem Infection. 2023;Nov. 13;DOI: 10.1017/S0950268823001826). Based on the observational nature of this study, the authors state “o note that this association may be due to unobservable and non-adjustable differences between those wearing and not wearing a mask”. They also note that “Recommendations to wear face masks in the community are largely informed by low certainty evidence from observational studies”.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/0525AD535D10FDCDF0C52603B50E7A1E/S0950268823001826a.pdf/association-between-face-mask-use-and-risk-of-sars-cov-2-infection-cross-sectional-study.pdf

At the bottom of the article they mention using this new knowledge to be better at controlling people.

“One example the researchers point to is the introduction of the 20mph limit in Wales. The existing campaign to inform the public of the speed limit change, which focuses primarily on the lives potentially saved by driving slower is unlikely to encourage compliance from more agentic personalities. A broader campaign, which also focuses on personal costs and benefits of compliance with the change would target a wider range of personality types more effectively, the researchers say.”

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/2023-11-21-mental-health-costs-of-lockdown-compliance-still-being-felt-research-shows

You should qualify your remarks. Cloth and surgical masks do not work. N95’s are likey do stop virus particles, but only up to the point of tolerance of the mask irritation. After a half hour or so, people start touching their masks. Sometimes they remove the mask and adjust them. They touch the contaminated outer surface and often even touch the inside of the mask. Others keep it in the pocket in between uses. In real world situations N95’s do not work as they are generally worn for more than half an hour.

The U.S. health care system is broken and needs fixing. In the U.S., we spend on average $12,914 per person per year on health care, whereas that figure in the other comparable countries is $6,125. That comes to $6,800 more per person—and if you multiply that by 334 million Americans, we are spending an excess $2.3 trillion a year on health care—and getting poorer results. The U.S. spends 96% of the biomedical research money on medical drugs and devices, and only four percent on how to make the population healthier and how to deliver health care more efficiently and effectively. In 1991, 80% of pharmaceutical research was taking place in university medical centers, by 2004 it was only 26%, thus 74% is being done at for-profit research companies. They own the data and control the publishing of it. In 2008, the average annual price of a new drug in the U.S. was $2,115; by 2021, this annual average price of a new drug had risen to $180,000. Think about that. The greatest bipartisan agreement among our political leaders in Congress is that it is fine for them to accept large contributions from drug companies. Huge amounts of money flow about equally to Democrats and Republicans (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/americas-broken-health-care-diagnosis-and-prescription/ Assessed 11 Nov 2023).

There is no difference between Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Military and Big Corporations. All of them create levers of power, which they help design, and then control, to coerce people to do what is far too often not in their best interests. Today they have melded with governments to procure more power to destroy competition and alternative thinking.
• Patients whose medical claims are denied by insurers have the right to appeal the decision. However, despite a clean-up of the rules by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed at making appeals easier, a decade on only about 0.2% of denials are appealed by consumers (Appeals Against Medical Insurance Denials Underused, Says Lawyer - Medscape - Mar 28, 2022). Advocates say that approximately 50% of appeals are successful, so patients are missing out. The most common route to winning the appeal is for the healthcare team to provide evidence of “medical necessity.” Healthcare software company Change Healthcare estimated that US hospitals spent $8.6 billion in administrative costs to appeal denied claims.

Canadace has similar beliefs as Tucker Carlson. Not anti Jew, rather anti-foreign war and anti-establishment.

“the FBI has a few “good guys” spread through out their agency. However, it’s impossible to know who is good and who is corrupt. The FBI is corrupted beyond repair and you will never see me cooperate with them. “ THE TRUTH....sadly

They use ground up tires as a base for artificial turf fields. There has been some concern about cancer and goalies (spend a lot of time on the ground).

RE you stating: “While a mask cannot stop all COVID from passing through, it can increase the time it takes for a sufficient viral load to pass on to an uninfected person. Viral Load is the key and it is something many people are not understanding.”

Do you have any data to support this? I think is is only theoretical, particularly for C19. the infective dose likely can sit on the head of a pin....besides, that agreement is mute cause data shows masks don’t work (enough viruses go through or around masks to infection you). N95 masks are likely helpful for large bacteria size infections...like tuberculosis.

Consider this:
• Many studies have been conducted that provide information on the minimum infective dose (MID) of human viruses. However, due to differences in the epidemiology and culture methods for each virus and differences and limitations of experimental procedures, estimations of the MID should be interpreted with caution (Food Environ Virol. 2011; 3:1–30 doi:10.1007/s12560-011-9056-7). Notwithstanding these limitations, the MID of respiratory and enteric viruses appears to be low and should be viewed in relation to the likely host characteristics of the at-risk population of interest. These include host factors such as age, health status, and previous exposure to the virus; pathogen factors such as virulence of the viral strain and passage in cell culture; and experimental factors such as the route of inoculation and the sensitivity of the assay used to determine the viral dose administered.

Wow what an idiot. The Danish study was not too small. It had 5,000 people, that is huge. Found no statistical benefit with masking.
The Bangladesh study was propaganda. It has been disproven with several published studies that re-analyzed their data.

• A cluster-randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh found a 9.3% reduction in symptomatic covid-19 seroprevalence as well as a further 11.9% reduction in covid-19 symptoms with surgical masks….. as among people who consistently used masks, 7.6% reported symptomatic infections, compared to 8.6% in the control group (Science. 2021;375:6577 DOI: 10.1126/science.abi9069). This study included both self-reported “COVID-like symptoms” and positive COVID serology tests, and so the absolute reduction was a bit smaller. Moreover, a reanalysis of the raw data from the study did not show even this small benefit (“Re-Analysis on the Statistical Sampling Biases of a Mask Promotion Trial in Bangladesh: A Statistical Replication,” Trials. 2022;23:786, doi:10.1186/s13063-022-06704-z). In the villages randomized to surgical masks (n = 200), the relative reduction was 11.2% overall (aPR = 0.89) and 34.7% among individuals 60+ (aPR = 0.65). The symptomatic seroprevalence was 0.76% in comparison villages, 0.74% in cloth mask villages and 0.67% in surgical mask villages. WHO-Defined COVID-19 Symptoms were seen in 8.6% of comparison villages, 7.9% of cloth mask villages and 7.5% in surgical mask villages. There was no significant decrease seen in symptomatic seroprevelence in anybody wearing cloth masks. With surgical masks there was no benefit for anybody less than 50 years of age but did decrease disease by 23% in 50-60 yo’s and by 34.7% in 60+ yo. This study stated that it could not reject that cloth masks have zero or only a small impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections. Of note, the surveillance staff was not blinded to the interventions nor were the villages blinded to the surveillance staff. Data revealed imbalances in the starting size— likely because the trial failed to achieve concealment, leading more people to sign up in the intervention arm (who may be less committed to report + Covid symptoms; biasing results). Furthermore, absolute event differences were very small. The cost of this intervention as estimated to have been between $10K and $52K per life saved. The study had several flaws. If masks were the cause of the decrease, why would that only be in patients over fifty years of age? People in every younger decile showed no significant reduction. Should that not prompt the idea that older people had a different reason to account for that, since we know that every age group in the village experienced the same impact from others masking? The study tested only for antibodies—did these people become antibody-positive during the study, or were those antibodies pre-existing from a prior infection, even before the study? No testing for virus was performed, so the infection per se was not tested. Only 40 percent of symptomatic agreed to testing for antibodies—that introduced selection bias. Antibody testing has significant false positives and false negatives—would that eliminate all the statistical significance in that one age group, too? And logically, if less than half of villagers in the mask-wearing villages actually wore masks, would that account for significantly fewer symptomatic cases, when we know that masks do not even protect mask wearers themselves? A subsequent re-analysis of the study by statisticians at Cornell University found that there was in fact no benefit at all (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2112.01296). “we find that the behavior of unblinded staff when enrolling study participants is one of the most highly significant differences between treatment and control groups, contributing to a significant imbalance in denominators between treatment and control groups. The potential bias leading to this imbalance suggests caution is warranted when evaluating rates rather than counts. More broadly, the significant impacts on staff and participant behavior urge caution in interpreting small differences in the study outcomes that depended on survey response.”

Good summary!

On July 6,2020, Trump tweeted, “SCHOOLS MUST REOPEN IN THE FALL!!” If Trump said schools should reopen, that was reason enough forthose opposing him to assume they should stay closed. The teachers’ unions embraced the fight to keep teachers away from the classroom. as they were allies of, and contributors to, the Democratic Party, which dominated most major urban areas. They held enormous sway over big-city school systems.

By 2022, journalists, academics, and even some public-health officials were finally coming to grips with the enormous damage done to children — especially disadvantaged children — because of remote learning. In August 2022, Fauci announced that he planned to retire at the end of the year. Over the next few months, he made the rounds to discuss how the country had fared during the pandemic. Invariably, he was asked whether he regretted his forceful advocacy of lockdowns, especially given its effect on children. At one forum, he said, “Sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences … on the economy, on the schoolchildren.” But, he added, “The only way to stop something cold in its tracks is to try and shut things down.” What he could never acknowledge was that “shutting things down” didn’t stop the virus, and that keeping schools closed didn’t save kids’ lives. Then again, to understand that, you had to be willing to follow the science.

They want their own version of modern day slavery cause Repbulicans took away the Democrats old version during our Civil War.

The leftists are such immoral hypocrites. Truly hope Jews start to wake up and vote republican.

What you are being offered is essentially “Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE)”. This is a process that removes the aging, dysfunctional lens, then inserts an intra-ocular lens (IOL) into the now empty lens capsule to restores vision to a level that often cannot be achieved with LASIK surgery. Patients over 45 will often begin experiencing poor quality near, intermediate and even distance vision due to the natural aging of the lens, called “presbyopia”. These lens changes eventually end up causing cataracts. But many patients suffer from gradually worsening vision during their 40’s, 50’s and beyond. Instead of waiting years for a cataract to fully develop, RLE permanently replaces the dysfunctional lens in a 5-10 minute painless procedure. New technology intraocular lens implants (IOLs) can offer visual freedom by restoring distance, intermediate and near vision (all 3 vs distance and intermediate with IOL placed in front of the lens). The columnar lens allows for all 3 corrections in all 4 quadrants of the eye (unlike typical multifocal eyeglasses where they are just top to bottom). RLE procedure, like cataract surgery, is usually performed one eye at a time, generally 5-10 days apart. Halos around lighted object at night can be bothersome initially but tend to improve in most after a few months. There are certain lenses that can eliminate this but one would need to give up correcting near vision, but a good option for truck drivers as it eliminates the halos.

I agree that this is reminiscent of the 2020 election.

• Either side could be blowing smoke up our asses.
• Simply calling people deniers or antivaxxers implies that they are lying to us.
• We need credible people who understand the complex math and have access to the raw data interpret this. And do it in a public way such that at least their reputation would be on the line if we later find out otherwise.
• Basically we need a formal commission by congress to have experts on both sides testify as to what is going on.

False Arguments:
1) “The pores in a mask do not have to be small enough to stop the passage of viral particles as viruses are always contained within droplets and can only survive within droplets of around 10-200 microns in diameter, although survival is limited at the lower end of this range. So, as long as a mask can filter out particles larger than 10 microns, it will protect against virus transmission”. Masks can filter particles according to their charge or hydroscopic properties. Droplets are both charged and aqueous.
2) There are plenty of scientific studies that show the efficacy of masks for decreasing transmission of viruses. (laboratory experiments and observational studies but not real-world randomized use, RCT).
3) Studies have shown that masks made of three layers of fabric are just as good as N95’s to protect from droplets as long as they cover your nose and mouth.
4) The goal of masks is to simply reduce the amount of virus you are exposed to, such that if you get sick you are less likely to get really sick.
Reality: Larger droplets can dry on the mask and can pass through or wick their way across the moisture. Even if they did work, they need to be properly fitted. Facial hair or an atypical face size likely makes it near impossible to form a good seal. Additionally, the average person touches their face over 20 times an hour. No RCT in humans shows any protective effect of masking to reduce the severity of an infection, this is a pipe dream.

Really no reason a healthy person would want a vaccine against the common cold....which is what C19 has evolved into.

That’s common sense. But we live in an age when common sense is not only uncommon, it’s controversial. It’s controversial to argue that children fare better in two-parent families. It’s controversial to argue that someone who swam on the boys team last year shouldn’t be allowed to swim on the girls team this year. It’s controversial to condemn unequivocally Hamas’s massacre of unarmed Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. And yes, it’s controversial to argue that race-neutral policies are preferable to polices that promote racial favoritism.
The day after Mr. Hughes’s talk, he received a call from Mr. Anderson, who said that black employees at TED were upset by his remarks.....
Mr. Anderson explaining that he was under pressure to not post the talk online...... Another email from TED arrived, this one inviting Mr. Hughes to participate in a “moderated conversation” with an opponent of colorblindness, after which both his talk and the debate would be published online. Reluctantly, he agreed to this arrangement..... TED did the opposite of amplify my talk: they deliberately under-promoted
and sandbagged it on their website.”....As it is, the lack of standard promotion by TED has Coleman’s talk at about 10% of the views of all the other talks surrounding his on their site.”