REDACTED because petty.
I don't even know where to start with this and the majority of it was just trash so I'm removing the entire thing. This person is already on a complete timeout for this post, but nothing was done about the post itself so I'm making note. Political opinions, offensive language, racism, and more aren't allowed in the forums. [reurbo]
@Mike_Girard: You seem overly threatened by the existence of a cuddling website where people can hang out without being pelted by information they don't want to be pelted by.
This is one website. One lovely, cuddly park.
You talk like the mods are putting parental controls on your browser: "self-satisfied, conformist shitlibs telling us what we could and couldn't read and watch," "I'm in awe and wish that my viewing habits had been strictly controlled from '95 on," "over-confident shitlibs on discussion boards deciding what is and isn't garbage."
You do know you're free to believe whatever you want to believe, yes? Just not to bother people who don't want to be bothered with it—not here, anyway.
What's the median age of a person who dies from Covid in the US?
In 2020, most of the people who died with Covid were 85 or over. (122,895)
In 2021, the age group with the highest death rate was 65–74 years old. (111,693)
This year, 2022, it's been people 85 and older again. (53,481) [source]
Some people argue that these deaths would have occurred Covid or no Covid—that, in short, excess mortality was low enough not to matter. 20,000 to 25,000 more people died than we were expecting just between March 2020 and December 2021. That's bad.
How many co-morbidities do they have on average?
What you want to ask is how many comorbidities they had. How many things that hadn't killed them (but did weaken them)? How many things that they might have survived if Covid hadn't taken a hand?
Some people like to think that, so long as they don't have pneumonia or hypertension or cardiovascular disease or whatever, they definitely won't develop those things after getting Covid—they won't be in two or more types of trouble at once, and so they'll be safe. Covid won't make them "more susceptible to secondary infections during, and immediately after recovery from a bout of COVID-19."
The idea here seems to be that only the "weak" die... and who cares about them?
What are the three leading comorbidities?
Hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
Nearly half of adults in the United States (47%, or 116 million) have hypertension. Nearly half of all U.S. adults have some type of cardiovascular disease. 37.3 million people have diabetes (11.3% of the US population).
Roughly how many children died of Covid in 2021?
Worldwide, from April 2020 to August 2022, somewhere around 1430 children from 0 to 18 years of age died with Covid.
What is the risk of people in your age group being hospitalized or dying?
Age is not the only factor here. There is a Covid mortality risk calculator developed by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that might give an idea of my risk based on factors such as age, sex, race/ethnicity, medical history, etc. To be a decent person I should probably consider the mortality risk of those around me, too.
[Continually edited and updated to complete the response because I have the feeling this thread may be closed without warning, and I don't want to type up a full reply only to realize I can't post it any more than I want to spam the forum with repeated postings in this thread.]
[Okay, done (unless I spot another typo or formatting error).]
@dave31415 What you specifically said was that the vaccines are useless and unnecessary. I appreciate that you've changed your stance since your misinformation was deleted, but stop lying about it.
@melissa_em: I... don't remember Dave saying that. I remember thinking it could easily be interpreted that way. I remember thinking it wasn't phrased well. But I came away from his comments with the impression that he was, in fact, cautioning against too much reliance on the current vaccines alone.
I don't have a screenshot of his original comments, though—just my memory of what I thought when I read them. Do you (or anyone else) have a screenshot? I hate it when my memory does this to me.
@DaringSprinter The cleaning crew works for the park patrons and should only throw away what is collective determined as garbage. What must happen when the crew walks around throwing away people's uneaten food or the equipment for their recreational activities? Who audits the cleaning crew? It seems only the minority is entirely happy with their scope of service. If they are beyond reproach, then they don't serve the patrons but themselves.
@slowblink: The park crew, in this case, works for the owner of the park. Who makes his park public for us all, but doesn't have to. This park doesn't even have to be here.
We all agreed to the rules at the gate; we've all been informed of what is and isn't allowed in the forums.
As previously mentioned, if you want stuff that isn't allowed here, you can have it—outside the park. Sex, romance, harmful misinformation, whatever you want and can find... elsewhere.
@DaringSprinter See now we can't even CONFIRM what dave31415 did or did not say because it is GONE. Censorship facilitates the potential for revisionist history. You don't burn books about the holocaust for the sake of the feelings of Jewish people less the lessons of that event be forgotten and they happen again as a result. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
@slowblink: To bold a word, put two asterisks on either side of the word (no spaces). To italicize, put one asterisk (or one underscore) on either side.
**All these words will be bold.** _This sentence will be italicized._
Astoundingly, erasing a post that looked like a harmful lie is different from erasing records of the Holocaust... which no one would do for the sake of Jewish people's feelings.
What do you think is being hidden by the removal of a couple posts that may or may not have said something that is dangerously untrue?
@DaringSprinter Telling us that if we don't like it, we can go somewhere else is simply abandoning the debate. If these arguments tire you(as they do me) then the goal would be to convince the dissenters that their information is harmful and the cleaning crew is necessary. Valiant as you've tried, the problems with the moderation are glaringly obvious as we cannot even agree on the nature of the original and potential offense nor confirm said nature by revision. I browse many parks and understand their laws and regulations especially if the parks purpose is information itself. What I don't understand is why this park, being so small, and who's purpose is entirely separated from the integrity of truth, seems to parrot the draconian measures of the biggest of the city parks at the pleasure of a minority of its patrons. It's not about the patrons. It's about google combing, I imagine. It's about the megacity that houses these parks cutting off funding...and the parks must assimilate due to fear of cut utilities. Truth by force...history doesn't look favorably on this dynamic.
@melissa_em I guess you are a liar. How pathetic.
@DaringSprinter Information is a tool. It can be used for good and bad. When you consent to other's getting rid of tools for you, without any control in the process that determines the tools worth to you, you have consented to a cage of their design...of course, some would rather live in blissful delusions than painful realities...and that is why Cypher was right.
@slowblink: You can debate me on another website, if you like.
The metaphor is becoming strained. This is a cuddle park. Its purpose is not information, it's cuddles. Furthermore, it's a British park. You and I are, metaphorically, visiting a park in another country. If you think Britain's got some kind of big "megacity" that's pressuring the park owner to keep his guests from spreading biohazards... fine. You can believe what you like—just follow the park rules or (if you don't want to do that) go somewhere else.
...we cannot even agree on the nature of the original and potential offense....
You don't agree that Dave's post was removed because moderation thought it was dangerous misinformation?
Believe it or not, most people don't come to this site for Covid information.
Furthermore, astoundingly, information about Covid is available in lots of other places! Don't complain that knives aren't allowed in the passenger cabin on the plane. They're allowed in lots of other places, no one's forbidding you from ever owning a knife.
The point of a vaccine is to protect the person who is vaccinated. It's not to stop them from being infectious once infected. If it does reduce the viral load to reduce their infectiousness, that's a bonus. The article I linked to that was published in Nature showed that the vaccine when given to someone who has a breakthrough infection will reduce their chance of spreading it by 24%.
That study was done in prisons. Prisoners are close but not nearly as close as cuddlers. So the viral load received by two people cuddling is going to be higher than for prisoners and so this reduction in infectiousness due to the infected person having been vaccinated is going to be even less. In other words, if you are cuddling with someone who has COVID, whether or not they were vaccinated is likely not going to matter very much for the chances of you getting infected. What's going to matter for you is whether YOU were vaccinated.
So stop spinning and lying about what I said @melissa_em. I haven't changed my mind on anything.
@dave31415: I read your original posts correctly, then. I'm sorry they were misread as saying vaccines are useless. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of misreading myself! It stings.
Don't let it get to you, if you can help it. Humans aren't perfect (and moderators are human). Mistakes will be made.
Gee telling a person of color to go somewhere else if they don’t like it here when they are a white person doesn’t really look good. The intent may not be there but it’s not a good look. That’s my two cents and how it appears to me on the surface.
@DaringSprinter The metaphor is quite strained. The "megacity" I was referring to was actually Google. It seems your points are only proving that moderating information on this site is unnecessary and therefore unwarranted. It is what it is. I can operate within the rules but I just see no justification for them(specific to information moderation).
@supadupa I don't think my color has anything to do with it.
@slowblink: Ah, Google. That does make more sense.
How does "some tools aren't allowed on planes; that doesn't mean no one can own those tools" prove that keeping harmful misinformation off a cuddling website is unnecessary? Butcher knives are essential tools for many people; airlines aren't about knives, they're about transport; does this mean "moderation" of knives in a plane's passenger cabin is unwarranted?
...Incidentally, I forgot our respective races. Did I do a racism? I don't see how I could've (I've advised myself to leave places with rules I don't like—I think it's good advice for everyone), but my education here is lacking.
Edit: Thanks for the feedback, slowblink.
The policy seems to be that if you say anything about the limitations of vaccines, people call it "COVID misinformation". Then they will censor your post and other people will then lie about what you said and other people can't even see the content you posted to judge for themselves. Wonderful.
@DaringSprinter Relative to the tool metaphor, I don't think CC is a plane that can be crashed. I think we are all in individual drones who's maintenance is purely our own responsibility.
@dave31415 Exactly. Why can't we be the judge of the validity of the information we encounter? This is how children are treated.
@dave31415 "On the contrary, it's dangerous to make assumptions that vaccines protect people more than they do because it could cause someone who is immunocompromised to take a larger risk that they really want to take."
This 100%. Everyone I know including myself and immediate family in my home contracted covid some months after having been vaccinated and since we had been out and about before noticing symptoms, we probably spread it to vaxxed and unvaxxed people unbeknownst to us.
Another thread gone south. Nice work, folks. I don’t have time to read all the comments, I have to attend to a friend who has cancer. For now, this thread is closed.