adriancjr.bsky.social
From Finland, in our world and our times.
Typos galore.
Opinions 100% my own.
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Is the current administration playing some secret board game in which they collect points for every move in which the US self-destruct?
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What kind of government employs agents proud of their Gangs of New York vibes?
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What kind of government employs agents proud of their Gangs of New York vibes?
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If it works one way, it must work in the other direction also, i.e. enter from the ear and go through the brain to perform a rectum procedure.
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Yes, that's exactly my point. The "left" parties in the Western world have shifted so much to the right that there's no one to catch a slam dunk like "workers' safety at the workplace". Those supposed to catch the ball play for the other team now.
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These flimsy justifications, by public health office, against respirator masks are so similar to the failures of the intelligence offices in the run up to GW Bush's war in Iraq, that it leaves a smell of systemic institutional rot.
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For that to work, you need actual left wing parties.
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Wow... The USA sent a Christofascist as ambassador to Israel and the Israeli government accepted him?!
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bsky.app/profile/adri...
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But that result was omitted. Only a modified ITT analysis was published. Re-running the original analysis flips the result. Add to this:
-Unregistered sites
-Implausible data patterns
-Mid-trial protocol changes
-Undisclosed conflicts of interest
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So, TLDR: in this RCT, held up by Cochrane as the only admissible piece of evidence for respirators vs. masks for COVID prevention, he originally registered per-protocol (PP) analysis showed that medical masks were likely inferior.
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Finally, and perhaps most concerning: in the Egypt subgroup, zero participants tested positive by both PCR and seroconversion. The statistical probability of this occurring by chance? Less than 1 in 18 million. Data that implausible should trigger an audit, not form the basis of global policy.
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...and most facilities participating LACKED MECHANICAL VENTILATION, making them difficult to compare to facilities in high income countries. The Egyptian component of the trial was conducted during Omicron emergence when...
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The Egyptian sites (administered by a paid clinical research organization or CRO), in addition to being non-protocol) were problematic for other reasons: there was a high level of prior infection in participants at that point...
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In fact, per protocol analysis of registered sites (Canada and Israel) shows a trend towards non-equivalence (P = 0.09 when I ran the numbers when first published). The data monitoring and safety board must, or should, have known this too.
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Indeed, over 50% of the trial participants, and over 70% of the infection outcomes came from the non-protocol site in Egypt. The timeline is really incredible...the Canadian (red) and Israeli (blue) sites were in the registered protocol. Egypt (red/white/blue) and Pakistan (green) were not.
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In the Ungrin preprint we learn that trial protocols were changed several times during the trial, pre-specified analyses were omitted, and over half the study subjects came from unregistered, overseas sites added after the original trial ended (without publication). All of this shifted the outcome.
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EBM types are VERY serious about protocols. If you want to have an RCT published, you'd better have registered your protocol ex ante. As I recall, Peter Juni, who some will remember as the chair of the Ontario covid science table, mentioned that he would assign a "custodian" to his RCT protocols...
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In 2022, Loeb et al. published a trial claiming medical masks were "non-inferior" to N95s for healthcare worker sars-2. This claim strongly influenced public health policy, and was held up as the sole piece of admissible evidence around respirator effectiveness in a controversial Cochrane review
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Non-historian here: every time I dip my toe into history matters, I am amazed how blurred the lines between myth and facts are, even for the more recent history. The chance of "solving" that algorithmically are not high.
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Wouldn't the Winter War be a simpler starting point for how Finland developed the sense that it had to do it alone?
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The paper of broken record.
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The paper of broken record.
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Language works differently sometimes. "Airborne", for instance, should have a meaning independent of public health offices, governments or liberal media. Yet it has been successfully suppressed in the context of Covid transmission. I'm revolted by its loss, the same you probably are about "liberal".
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I also think we agree on that. My point is that they have taken over the "liberal" label and it means something else now. Left of NYT views need to invent a new way to describe themselves, or restore the liberal label (hard w/ no MSM control), or use existing terms like "social democrats".
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In which respect does the NYT editorial line differ from normie liberals like Jeffries, Pelosi or Schumer? How is the NYT line different from the pro Joe Biden (anti-Sanders) coalition of 2020?
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Applicability of RCTs is a key point in the discussions about the efficacy of respirators, where some aspects require physics and engineering methods (how respirators work, fitting), some are suitable for RCTs (side effects) and some need population studies, but not necessarily RCTs (compliance).
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The U-turn by Prasad et. al on RCTs is disgusting, but in line with the character. One point about RCTs that could be highlighted: RCTs are the gold standard for pharmaceutical interventions. For many medical NPIs, like iron lungs, pace makers or plaster casts, RCTs are not the gold standard.
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Honestly… it is scary how quickly “you don’t have to wear a mask” turned into “you don’t need to wear a mask” and now to “you aren’t allowed to wear a mask…” in so many places.
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Which means someone is paying for this kind of messages to be spread.
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2/ nothing to worry about should STFU. Laws like this pose serious threats to our safety. Today, a public event; tomorrow, the grocery store or ER.
Also: Hatred of the disabled runs deep. People on bluesky are saying disgustingly ableist things against immunocompromised people. Call them out.