A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@AtheistIntelligence @georgetakei He's probably trying to buy the freedom phone right now.

@TRyanGregory@mstdn.science

There's likely a mix and match of all three, honestly. Put it like this, none of the three are likely to make things any better and there's evidence for all three occurring.

But, really, people don't want to hear about it still. I have an acquaintance and all 5 people in his family have been sick for months. He keeps bringing it up, and so I've tried bringing any of this up a couple of times only to be immediately shut down. Hasn't gone any better with either co-worker who suddenly have autoimmune disorders, or even my best friend who clearly has pretty "classic" long COVID and doesn't want to hear it.

Hopefully some discussion in very broad terms like was on CBS news yesterday will start to make more people ask questions about what is likely the new reality going forward.

@luke

Can't speak for myself just yet, but I know a few off-grid types who swear by Victron. We have a 48V system we're rehabbing/updating, but I'm pretty sure we're going to be using Victron going forward.

@Baley That's seriously the most adorable thing ever.

@neroden @tofugolem @fitterhappierAJ

One of the more "interesting" things to happen over the last few years is watching how "precaution" or "better to be safe than sorry" became widely and openly mocked or at least ignored.The progression after that is that things that were pretty much universally agreed to be bad things, like Polio, are minimized by using the same metrics as COVID minimization. The future progression could be pretty bleak.

@Pat @jljcolorado @freemo I understand what you're saying and my : autocorrected to a .

I haven't turned on a local TV news station in well over a decade, so I can't really comment, but I can see exactly who gets platformed online and gets the loudest voice and I bet they're the same cohort of "experts"

@Pat @freemo @jljcolorado

I definitely do my own research whenever I'm interested in a new topic. I absolutely understand how masks work(and, yes, they do) and would still recommend @jljcolorado and his work. He's one of the first "COVID is airborne" scientists and is a renown aerosols expert.

You can see links to his work on his page at that bird site if you would like. Same username as here.

As to experts letting us down, yes, that's largely why we're here, *but* not all experts. Largely just the ones who were, and still are, platformed the most and given the loudest voice. You should still listen to the ones who are telling the unvarnished truth to us.

@LeonardiBot

Imagine if we'd have platformed and given the louder voice to the more cautious scientists and doctors early on instead of the people who were more than happy to tell everyone that everything was going to be fine.

@auscandoc I feel like we're going to have to go back to much shorter, more difficult lives before people realize that modern medicine was, overall, a good thing.

@auscandoc

Even amongst doctors....my kids' pediatrician, who happily vaccinated them when they were little and always said that vaccines were good, now makes a point of catering to anti-vaxxers and people who want off label medicine. I can't imagine ever bringing my kids back to him. We're currently in a small town and there's not really another option, so we're essentially without a family doctor.

@goingwithout @imabuddha Hmmm I couldn't figure out why a couple/few of my follows were hung up on pending, either. If that's the reason that does get to be problematic.

@Geefeconomie@mastodon.green

It gets easier! I started intermittent fasting maybe 5 or 6 years ago now. I usually partake in waffles with the family on Saturday morning these days and fast the other 6 days.

@tramontana @Coffee

That SunAmp heat battery looks pretty cool. I actually used to work in PCMs. I'm assuming you're pretty happy with it?

@zonz

You're asking the right question. There's been quite a few studies about this, but here's one.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/09/19/blood-clot-risk-remains-elevated-nearly-a-year-after-covid-19

Blood clot risk is a thing in COVID and was long before there were vaccines for COVID at all. Hospitals were also anecdotally reporting high incidences of blood clots before COVID vaccines existed.

@Pat @freemo

I'd like to touch on a part of that. I'm never afraid to say when something is out of my scientific comfort zone. I included Polio because, traditionally, droplet transmission from sneezes and coughs are listed as a method of transmission. I know there's been a lot of work done, a lot by someone who's dipped his toes into qoto.org here and is recognized as an expert, into aerosols vs droplets. I've read a lot of his work and unfortunately I don't think he's active here at the moment, but perhaps he'd weigh in with his academic expertise.

@jljcolorado

Also, yes, less infections = less mutations. This is a real part of the problem.

@Coffee Thank you for sharing! Gives me another thing to research :)

@tramontana Totally agree and let me clarify my point, because I clearly didn't make it well enough!

Doing everything you can is good.

Being told that you're saving the world just because you spend $200,000 on solar panels, *despite not doing anything else to even try* is not all that good.

Unfortunately, the solar industry is catering to the wealthy because soothing their conscience is profitable.

Your 12 solar panels and garden sound lovely. Will I ever be 100% self-sufficient? Probably not. This is modern society. Should it be so hard to try? I don't think so.

@freemo @mathlover @Pat

Having read further I can see you brought up reducing it to the background. I'm still not good at finding everything in a thread of responses here! So take what I said about comparing it to measles and pretend I was agreeing with this statement :)

In the end, even a flu-like amount of infection(2 infections a decade on average) might not be so bad for your health. The jury's still out on that. Getting it multiple times a year is simply not a viable way forward. Agree to disagree there, but I'm near 100% certain that the issues with that path forward will continue to bring about unfortunate health events for the majority of people, not a minority.

@freemo @Pat

This is actually not exactly true. Let's take the case of measles because it's spread through coughing/sneezing and has a similar R0 to current strains of COVID.

You don't go around seeing people with measles every day, right? That's because the baseline number of infections wasn't astronomically high as people were being vaccinated. There's breakthrough cases of measles, just like COVID post-vaccination, but it's not newsworthy and life changing because of the numbers.

Insert polio for measles if you'd like. It's quite a similar case study.

So, yes, as has been proven with many viruses previously, if the circulating number of cases were quite low, and a reasonable percent of people were vaccinated, it would be just like measles. It would still exist, but you wouldn't be surrounded by it constantly.

Now, will we ever get enough people to wear them and get vaccinated to test this out? Seems kind of doubtful.

Nuance!

@vipertwosix@mstdn.ca My 9yo was singing "M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E" this morning and I can't get it out of my head. Trying some random music now...