The scientific method! Worldview: humanism. Tweets in English, German and Portuguese. Sometimes RTs in Dutch. Images: “The Blue Marble” and “The Pale Blue Dot”
Nov 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Before accusing a scientist of fear mongering, remember that nature has no obligation whatsoever with outcomes that are positive for us. We are not the center of the universe and reality is not based on what make us comfortable.
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A scientist must point out all the possible outcomes. In fact, from the perspective of risk management, the ones with the most negative impact must be particularly mentioned in case they turn out to be true.
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Oct 21, 2021 • 21 tweets • 9 min read
🧵 on an article from the 🇳🇱 newspaper @trouw against vaccinating children. It’s very concerning the amount of misinformation, fallacies and anti-vax rhetoric that, maybe inadvertently, is propagated in the text (that can be easily translated by google translator).
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The text starts with a strawman fallacy implying that children would be vaccinated “only” to protect vulnerable groups. This line of thinking is not surprising because it is not the first time this has been used in the Netherlands (see tweet bellow ).
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1: Delta is more/not more severe to children
2: There has been not so many hospitalizations
3: Focus on the protection of “vulnerable” children
And one point that is ignored:
4: Unknowns
1/19
1: Delta is more/not more aggressive to children.
While delta might be more severe to children and adults in comparison to previous variants, this is not the main point in the overall picture.
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Jul 31, 2021 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
A conjectural 🧵 trying to connect the following aspects:
“The Scary Virus Paradox” in a nutshell: non extremely-deadly but highly transmissible viruses have caused more deaths. “This is obviously caused by society's reaction: the deadlier a virus, the scarier, and the more society acts in unison against it, like for Ebola or SARS.”2/19
Have you heard of the recent explosive growth of infections in the Netherlands? This thread is a compilation of tweets in English to illustrate the Zeitgeist here in the recent weeks.
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The Dutch CDC @rivm claims : “The spread of COVID-19 among children or from children to adults is less common”. This claim is presented as if it was a sound conclusion derived from established science.
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This is misleading, unsound and dishonest. For the sake of comparison, the German CDC @rki_de states that children infectiousness is inconclusive, and in some studies infectiousness and viral load in children were found to be similar to adults.
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