Covid-19 Discussion

We could help housing markets if we didn't have local government hellbent on not allowing conversion of commercial real estate into residential, which is the obvious thing that would happen if we had free markets.

Zoning for industrial sites, stadium, and the like is everywhere in the world afaik, but mixed residential+commercial is the norm in normal countries, the USA are the outlier with a ton of "residential only" areas and other areas with offices-only and the like.

What I mean is for instance my 3 little streets that I consider my village is suburban single homes but there are other streets like mine in the neighborhood where people have plopped down 40 unit apartments right on the residential street. I'd be bummed if someone did that on my street and add all that traffic to our quiet area but absolutely can be done handing an envelope or two to the right officials.

Ye but that's just residential anyway, just about how much of it.

So imagine how they react to the idea of converting office buildings into thousands of apartments all clustered togheter.

Commercial real estate is usually not on single home streets. Seems like it'd be a pretty easy transition but this isn't talking about the mix of tax base the city prefers.

But with values dropping really hard, the tax base is eroding a lot. Residential conversion would bring more revenue. It's the citizens opposing it because voters are overwhelmingly house owners and like you, why would they accept *any* inconvenience to increase the supply of housing?

why would they lie? that's what they do. you're not familiar with Russian propaganda?????

First u quoted a lot of countries .
Second let’s say Russian used propaganda, ok but to what end ?
What are they really winning by downgrading death rates from covid ?
Using propaganda just for fun and risking to be exposed just for the heck of it ?

I get the propaganda for Ukraine but for covid ?
Not really.

I don't want to keep the sidetrack going but from my experience living on the west coast, most commercial real estate are normally in their own little pockets. Different then putting apartment buildings in existing single family home neighborhoods. Anyways I don't think we have much of a disagreement here.

Study shows LARGE MORTALITY INCREASES ASSOCIATED WITH VACCINE ROLLOUTS in multiple countries.

Short video here about the study.

Zero evidence of causation presented, just fabricated correlations and a ridiculous claim that the vaccine caused 17M deaths. There were also shortages of toilet paper during the vaccine rollout. Perhaps I'll write a study showing how toilet paper shortages caused 17M deaths.

Rancourt started as a reasonable (anti lockdown) critic of COVID mismanagement, and then went completely bananas like in March 2021 over COVID vaccine.

One of the many sad developments

That's what I got out of the post as well.

Cmon BJ, that's just bad propaganda. Why do you insist on posting terrible data.... when there should be plenty of scientifically vetted documents that you could cite if "your side" is so convinced vaccine=bad ?

The easy way to show what vaccines cause is to compare a vaccinated cohort to an unvaccinated cohort directly. He very carefully avoids doing that, because every time that is done it demonstrates that the vaccines are safe and effective.

Weird.

Except....... 1v1 sample size (anecdotal). Suspect that one cannot get a scientifically vetted document outta 1v1.

We have no unvaxxed control groups. There is no group of people, randomly selected, which have been banned from taking the vaccine which we can monitor for years and compare.

This is one of the many problems we had, we disregarded science

How do you know it's terrible data? Have you looked at the sources of the data?

As for plenty of "scientifically vetted documents". You have to be kidding. Who do you think funds scientifically vetted documents these days? I'll give you a clue. It's not independent researchers.

Now that is a completely bizarre claim. You don't need them to be banned from getting vaccinated, simply unvaccinated. And yes, we can compare populations that were vaccinated vs unvaccinated. We do it all the time. And it always shows they are safe and effective.

Not really that weird when you realise the cheap tricks used to hide the real numbers.

Interesting article here on the (deliberate) miscategorising of vaccine status and how that affects any assessment of vaccine effectiveness for either infection, hospitalisation or death.

https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/...

Here's the paper linked to in the article.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication...

And here's a study looking at this and other sources of bias in observational studies of covid-19 vaccine effectiveness

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1...

They only did with COVID, normally you only compare control groups.

If the decision to vaccinate is endogenous you lose all statistical power, because you don't end up with a cohort of vaccinated people that is the same random sample of the population that the unvaccinated people are.

Example: people who refuse the vaccine might very well be more extrovert and disregard all other distancing rules (imagine you think they work).

If you check the two groups, the differences in infection rates could depend on their different behaviour rather than on vaccination, at least to some degree.

The only way to really know is to have a group of absolutely normal, random people who aren't going to get vaccinated ever for a couple of years. Which is what they do with other vaccines usually.

We didn't with COVID because of "ethical reasons" about preventing people to get a working vaccine during a pandemic.

Even if you agree with that take (and it's not an absurd take) you still destroyed any scientifical way we had to actually verify what happens if you don't get vaccinated.

Because if you only measure events in the unvaccinated group which is composed voluntarily, you don't get a scientifical answer.

Banally, the unvaccinated night be lower income, or lower education, than the population in average, and so have worse health outcomes for other reasons, not necessarily because they didn't vaccinate.

You need well off upper middle class 50-60y old not to get the vaccine RANDOMLY and check them vs other people with the same profile who got the vaccine. If for any reason you can't get that, you will never have a scientifical answer on actual efficacy long term

Another example: you believe masks work (to reduce infections and severity of cases).

The unvaccinated very probably never wore masks as well.

How do you disentangle the increased infection rate and severity of symptoms caused by never wearing masks vs not being vaccinated among them?

You can't if the unvaccinated are self selected.

The CDC uses 14 days after the second dose, which is taken directly from the phase 3 trial results.

90% of USA ICU patients and deaths during Delta were unvaccinated, even though they represented a minority of the population (40% at the time). That's the only statistic one needs to dispel misinformation about the effectiveness of the vaccine during one of the worst stages of the pandemic.

Hilarious that you call basic science a cheap trick. And no, deaths from the vaccine within the window of a couple of weeks are not counted as unvaccinated deaths. If they died from COVID, then obviously yes, the vaccine requires time to become effective and that makes sense, but they don't discount the vaccine as a potential cause for death in that window. That's just an absolutely stupid claim (like all of yours are).

As for the claims that it ruins the claims of effectiveness, that's also horse crap.

Vaccines obviously don't start working instantly, so you have to account for the time it takes good then to become effective. There are various proposed ways to account for it, all of which are reasonable, but none of which are good enough to not completely throw out every study ever done according to that ridiculous blog author.

Just more pathetic attempts to poison the well.

It is noteworthy, though, that no matter how you slice any of that data, it never supports the conclusion that the vaccines are ineffective or dangerous.

So there's that.