“so you are a “just press the I-believe button and don’t ask any questions” kinda person. Got it. I am not.”
Two points on this:
1. It’s not a “blind faith” it’s a rational risk-assessment based on many beliefs, and assumptions about the world, motivations, knowledge of how science works, how healthcare works, the motivations behind physicians, laws and ethics in medicine, the kinds of skills and training physicians and public health officials are required to learn, my personal critical thinking toolkit that took education, practice and hard work to develop, etc.
2. Are you SURE you’re not the kinda person to push the “I-believe” button? When you get on an elevator, do you inspect the cabling and motor bearings, read the service record, research the engineering firm that designed it, read up on studies for the safety of that model of elevator? What about when you get on a plane? When you buy over-the-counter medicine do you research the supply chain, the manufacturing process of the supplier, test for contaminants, comb through medical literature to determine the safety/efficacy of your aspirin for headaches? Do you do a physical inspection of every bridge before you drive/walk over it, checking the welds, reading the reports from the inspectors?
The reality is we’re ALL push the “I-Believe” button kinda people. Life would be impossible in the modern world if we didn’t put trust in institutions, standards organizations, inspectors, researchers, experts and others who are all much smarter than us in their respective fields of expertise. It’s not a “blind trust” though. We’re able to understand that we can trust them because we know the incentives, educational requirements, laws and safeguards that are in place to justify that trust. Don’t fool yourself. You absolutely are pushing the “I-Believe” button all day long.
“First you tell me that 96% of physicians are vaccinated like it really means something.”
It DOES mean something. It means not only are they putting their professional reputations on the line by advocating for vaccines, but that they have so much confidence in the safety of the vaccine that they’re also willing to expose themselves to the vaccine. This proves that they hold a sincere belief that the risks from vaccination pale in comparison to the risks from infection of Covid. The fact that you don’t think it “means something” is an indication that your critical thinking skills need work.
“I asked him what else mRNA had ever been used for before. It is a simple question. If it is as safe and as reliable as it is being touted, it should have been used before…at least once”
It’s been used for years in animal studies. It is a newer technology and human trials necessarily move slowly than animal research. The gravity of the pandemic was of sufficient concern to push through the usual red tape. I can certainly understand someone being reluctant to participate in the early trials, but by now the safety and efficacy is firmly established. Your doctor may not be familiar with all of the details, but he’s networked with plenty of people who are familiar through professional organizations, state and local health boards, and his professional network of colleagues. He doesn’t have to review all of the literature because he understands the rigor and standards involved in human trials. He learned about that in med school. He also understands that if there were serious concerns about safety and efficacy, that he would be made aware of them through those same sources. He also doesn’t inspect elevators before entering them.
“Then you turn around and tell me their opinions aren’t reliable since they aren’t virologists or genetic engineers.”
I never said their opinions aren’t reliable. You’re straw-manning. A consensus doesn’t require all individuals to fully understand all aspects of all evidence.
“It could tell you that they bought into the hype and automatically trusted something named “vaccine”.”
Think about the underlying assumptions required for that statement to be true. That hundreds of thousands of highly educated and trained physicians with millions of years of collective experience all decided not to look into the data and research and simply inject the vaccine into themselves based on “hype?” The fact that you consider this as a possibility, is unbelievably revealing about the assumptions you have.
“Since we all know vaccines have been around for a long, long time and have been proven to be useful and successful, it would be normal for them to accept it without a lot of question.”
That’s not how it works. There are lots of questions. If you’ve ever sat in on a CME lecture to providers you would know there are ALWAYS lots of questions.
_”...asking some basic questions about something they want to put into my body to fundamentally alter my immune system.”
You are constantly putting things into your body that “fundamentally alters” your immune system. Every breath you take has all kinds of foreign particles. Every bite of food you eat has some surface contaminants. Every sip of liquid you drink has foreign particles. Your immune system isn’t static, it’s in a perpetual state of “alteration.”
“And those questions were not answered even poorly. They just plain weren’t answered. What does that tell YOU?”
I don’t know for sure, but my inclination is that your physician has limited time to spend with you, and decided you weren’t worth the effort to explain all of the reasons why you’re wrong. I can’t say I blame him if that is what was going through his head.
“When I show studies about masks…RCT studies which are considered the gold standard…that shows they don’t work, people like you tote out an “evidence based” evaluation and act like that is the end all be all.”
As I’ve explained to you before RCTs are basically impossible to conduct to establish the efficacy of masks in source control. It would require an entire quarantined town of study participants over a very long period of time to get enough data. That’s why the only RCT studies available on the subject are basically inconclusive, biased, and mostly worthless. The absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. You can’t conclude “masks don’t work” because you’re not able to find RCTs that show a benefit.
“Forget for a moment that bacteria are about 1000x larger than viruses. So yeah, I can see where that would throw you off. Oh wait! That means if they aren’t good for bacteria then they are even worse for viruses. Huh. Imagine that.”
This is a perfect illustration of how a lay-person with an incomplete critical thinking toolkit can convince themeslves they’re right when they’re completely fucking wrong. The surgical study tells us as much about the efficacy of mask wearing as source control prevention of covid transmission in public as this study does: in other words it tells us fuck all. But for the hell of it, and to help illustrate the point of the OP’s question let’s dive in.
1. I don’t have access to the full text of the article, do you?
2. How are the patients being controlled for postoperative infection outside of the operating room?
3. What is the baseline rate of postoperative infection for general surgical procedures? The data I found suggested this rate was 2–4% but it was from a study nearly 3 decades after the one you provided. So the rates of infection in the study you provided didn’t demonstrate any effect, possibly because none of the surgeons participating were symptomatic with contagious respiratory bacterial infections? Was this tested for? In all likelihood, the variance you’re seeing between the treatment and control groups are the result of infections that occurred once they left the hospital. It’s a tiny effect size, and is basically a meaningless result—as the authors concluded.
4. Bacteria are larger than viruses, but DROPLETS are much larger than bacteria, and DROPLET transmission from the infected to the uninfected are what’s being prevented with masks. You’re talking about aerosols.
5. The surgeons in the study were much closer than 6 feet to their patients (I’m assuming they weren’t using robots)
6. You can’t infer conclusions about the efficacy of masks when studied in one context when used in a completely different one.
Did any of these questions occur to you as a self-proclaimed “sane, rational human being?” Those studies don’t show that masks don’t work, they are inconclusive. Proving a lack of efficacy (which is what you’re claiming) is very different than proving nothing at all (which is what your studies are showing).
