Yes, and as I pointed out, you reported those statements incorrectly when you said:
That kind of imagination is expected in ‘Great Debates’, but it has no place in ‘The Quarantine Zone’, where people are expected to report facts, not make up facts of their own.
I reported an idea, a policy. When challenged, I reported actual words used by a actual people. Riemann claims that reporting actual words used by actual people is ‘reporting things incorrectly’ – except when it applies to Riemann. Riemann takes a free pass to make false claims.
And once he links to that, a link to where he got his information would be helpful as well. Tracking this shit down for context is a pain in the fucking ass and I wouldn’t bother if I hadn’t already been in the thread in question.
Jump to bottom for TLDR version…
Here’s what appears to me to be the issue. I numbered the statements for ease of response.
Cite? I have seen nothing from the Australian authorities saying that the reason for this move is specifically because they believe vaccines are ineffective at reducing transmission.
Back to Melbourne who made a statement about something the Prime Minister said in an unknown context calling it a media bite (never base your argument on a standalone and unlinked “media bite” when it comes to something like vaccination immunity):
Mr Morrison said there was not yet “considerable clinical evidence that tells us transmission is preventable” after the jab.
That’s we don’t know yet . So your post was another instance of the common misrepresentation that I noted in the other thread, in bold below.
I am trying to stay out of debates in that thread, other than to simply counter misunderstood claims, and to be fair Riemann also tried to steer this to a different thread. But if I had participated, here’s what my take would have been.
That’s a very definitive sounding claim. Had the statement said “We aren’t yet sure that it prevents transmission”, I would have fully supported the claim, with the caveat that it does appear to have a positive effect on transmission to some extent to be determined. We don’t know for sure that it prevents transmission, but we certainly have some mounting evidence that it drastically reduces it. I would have asked for a cite as well, as I’d like to see if the statement was taken in the proper context.
This is not a direct counter to the claim, as it is speaking to reduction as opposed to complete prevention, but see no issues with the statement at all. Since we have the claim without context, it seems fair to counter with this.
Which is exactly the point that Riemann was trying to make.
As noted directly above, this seems spot on.
TLDR version:
Vaccination does not seem to prevent transmission
and
We do not yet have considerable evidence that tells us transmission is preventable
@DMC has summed up what I was disputing about what @Melbourne wrote, thanks.
Just to note that describing it as an “oversimplification” is not appropriate. It’s a very widespread misconception that vaccines prevent disease but do not prevent transmission. And that’s precisely because of this kind of misreporting. Cautious scientists (or in this case the Autralian PM) may correctly say we don’t yet know how effective vaccination is at reducing transmission. That’s often reported incorrectly or ambiguously that we have affirmative knowledge that they do not reduce transmission, and many people have misunderstood this. Here are some examples:
And here’s somebody in another thread misunderstanding what we know about transmission because of the specific post by @Melbourne that’s under discussion here:
The reason we don’t know yet is because it’s much more difficult to directly study transmission to other people from a vaccinated cohort (to unknown other people) than to study the incidence of disease in the cohort itself. But there is a strong expectation (and a growing body of evidence) that any vaccine that is highly effective against disease will also significantly reduce transmission. And it would be shocking and terrible news for the world if this were not the case.
So I’m not just nitpicking, and I think it’s important to correct the error when we see it.
As for @Melbourne - well, my experience of this poster is a tendency to overreact into apoplexy when challenged on even the most minor of points, rather than concede any error. So I can’t say I’m particularly surprised at them taking the overreaction to another level with this ridiculous Pit thread.
An opinion that I’m sure you arrived at through careful and objective consideration of the Quarantine Zone thread, and not at all because I disputed your prescriptivist hogwash in this thread:
I read Melbourne’s original post “vaccination does not seem to prevent transmission” and took it at face value, noting it as yet another disappointment in this whole sad Covid saga. Thank you Riemann for pointing out the error.
Melbourne, you were wrong in your original post. You misrepresented what you had heard and it does make a difference. A simple, “yeah, I meant ‘not enough evidence to be sure’” would have avoided the whole kerfuffle.
But the point of the quote that I posted was that the person was recovered. But even if that wasn’t true, people don’t usually say that colds are sexually transmitted since you can get one if you’re having sex with someone who has a cold. I’m not seeing how truncating that quote to take out the recovered part and then talking covid as sexually transmitted is relevant.
You’re now pitting me for making a joking comment about what I thought was the rather ambiguous way someone (off the board, which I made clear) expressed that aspect of their findings? Since you clarified the context, and @LSLGuy explained where I was coming from, I didn’t think anything more needed to be said. I wasn’t disputing anything you said, or the main substance of your post. I humbly apologize if I gave that impression.
I’m not Pitting you. I just added my question here because the thread was already open. You didn’t note that your comment was a joke when I replied to you.
Given how seriously you took that comment in this thread, I thought I might have missed something. Considering how you characterized Melbourne’s reaction, your reaction was quite interesting.
I was making a joke (although I did read an article about, iirc, the Dutch govt requiring the use of glory holes at brothels) but I did not realize you were. I thought your complaint was a little odd, of course. But it didn’t strike me as “ha ha” odd.
I thought at the time that it was obvious that it was just a joke, but on rereading the thread now I realize it’s not so clear. Anyway, please be assured it was intended as a joke, and not to dispute the substance of your post - my error for not making that clearer. I apologize for causing the misunderstanding, without the sarcasm of my prior apology.
As to the subject of the OP, @Riemann had it right. I find that you tend to be pretty careful in how you word things, to your credit. You do come across a little, uh, terse sometimes, but maybe you just don’t suffer fools gladly.