Lourdes shrine closes healing pools

[Tired of the Nonsense]

CATHOLIC HERALD
March 3, 2020
Lourdes shrine closes healing pools as precaution against coronavirus
https://catholicherald.co.uk/lourdes-sh ... ronavirus/

What does this say about the church's confidence in the "miraculous" properties of the water at Lourdes?

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 47 by Mithrae]

Another major factor to be considered is the extent of testing for the virus by nations in question. One that has a rigorous testing program may show very different results than a nation that is lackadaisical. Transparency / honesty in reporting can also influence apparent death rate.

Again: Countries like France, Italy, Spain and the UK all have mortality rates above 9%. The global average seems to be somewhere above 5.8% (deaths divided by total cases, which would tend to yield at least a slight underestimate). It varies widely from country to country - presumably due to factors like general health of the population, average age of infected patients, availability/quality of medical care and perhaps even genetic susceptibility in some populations - but if we're considering the essentially "do nothing" approach which folk like 1213 and AgnosticBoy seem to be advocating we should be looking at the more worrying scenarios rather than results in the countries which have responded most effectively.

No one is recommending nothing, and frankly I don't believe the 9%.

It is not 9%.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... tes-differ

Good points. Spain has conducted ~7600 tests per million population and 43% of those tested came back positive, whereas somewhere like Canada has conducted ~9800 tests per million population and only 5.6% of those tested came back positive; presumably the data from Spain will be much more skewed towards symptomatic/serious cases.

So looking only at countries which have reported more than 9000 tests per million population (South Korea, one of the best responders, has done ~9300) with large sample sizes (more than 5000 positive results overall), we'd find 3.24% for deaths per confirmed cases averaging the results of thirteen countries. That also excludes France (~5100 tests per million pop.) and the UK (~4400) but includes Italy (14,114 tests per million, with 16.8% coming back positive). The result would be 2.45% if we excluded Italy also; but it would be highly questionable to look only at the countries which have responded most effectively as a basis for deciding to adopt less stringent measures, and deaths/confirmed cases would tend to yield an underestimate to begin with (since critical or recently-infected people who will eventually die would nevertheless reduce the calculated mortality rate).

https://www.livescience.com/death-rate- ... mates.html

First one explains the why, and the latter says it could be as low as less than a percent.

You'll remember that my first post on this was defending 1213 when he said it wasn't much worse than the flu.

Meanwhile, your own source notes that
"Even though the fatality rate is low for younger people, it is very clear that any suggestion of COVID-19 being just like influenza is false," he wrote. For those between the ages of 20 to 29, for instance, the chance of dying from SARS-CoV-2 is 33 times higher than the odds of dying from seasonal influenza, he wrote."

Both the inevitability and the risks of flu are fairly well-established - and many countries actively promote vaccination, social awareness and hygienic practices even for that. Finding outlier studies which suggest that COVID-19 is 'only' thirty-three times worse than the flu doesn't justify a more relaxed approach: In cases of uncertainty, looking only at the lower-end estimates amounts to little more than a naive "hope for the best" attitude.

I just don't like it when people are called stupid for sharing their thoughts, especially when no one knows what is actually going on.

And I'm always going to step in when I see this happening, especially when one side is being, frankly, bullied.

No-one said that anyone is stupid, just displaying an "obvious lack of knowledge" in statements such as
"I think this whole pandemic is fake and the virus is no more dangerous than common influenza" ~ 1213

You are certainly free to defend such comments all you want, just as others are free to point out the obvious and dangerous errors in such attitudes.

[Mithrae]

In this argument I am in some agreement with you. Mithrae. There is sufficient rigour applied to separate dubious from extraordinary but the extraordinary does exist. I cannot see the point in counting cures and attributing them to "chance", whatever that means, when medical knowledge has declared that the sufferer cannot be cured. If medical science is wrong then it is incumbent on us to find out what has intervened; what methodology has been used that is as yet inaccessible to science

The stumbling block is the picture of a nice lady, terribly choosy in what she decides to cure. This reduces the situation to silliness. If water has the power to heal one in a million and I am declared to be in the vestibule of death, then I drink. But I drink sceptically and presumably uselessly. The mother who defied guards and went to the early grotto to plunge her dying child in the water had what most do not have: utter belief. Those who attribute psychology, which certainly seems a factor, cannot offer it to the barely conscious baby. In what way did his mum's determination effect a cure?

Finally it may be that chance occasionally descends at the moment we are desperate for answers. Chance does not explain the mechanism by which the declared incurable was cured. So I am happy to accept that we are ignorant in many areas and it would be appropriate to seek reasons rather than kick the hapless blessed Virgin and deride the Papacy. They may have nothing to do with what has happened, but there is something worth investigating. A miracle is another way of confessing our ignorance - that's all.

Some of the few particularly profound stories in the Torah are those in which God tells Moses that he is to be known simply as "I am who I am," and that no other kind of images should be used to represent him. The fact that we will always be largely ignorant of the 'Ultimate Reality' is one which seems to have been rather lost in all the canons and doctrines and institutions raised by many later varieties of Judaism and Christianity. I do think it's highly probable that at least some of the cures reported at Lourdes (particularly among the most thoroughly-investigated ones of recent decades) are due to the intervention of external agency, which strongly implies a deity of some sort, but odds are that similarly convincing examples of divine intervention could be found in non-Christian cultures also. I'm looking and learning in the English language, which biases results towards the western hemisphere, and it just so happens that the Roman Catholic Church is particularly good at documenting and promoting its alleged miracles (many of which are considerably less persuasive, of course )

[Bust Nak]

a) Covid-19 comes from a family of viruses (the coronavirus) that has been known about for decades. This most recent strand, SARS-CoV2 (which causes covid-19), may be new but we can expect immunity towards it to work as it would with any other virus. We do have studies from other coronavirus outbreaks, like that in 2002-2003 (i.e. SARS), where it's been shown that immunity can last up to 3 years.

Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says regarding immunity and covid-19:

"We don't know that for 100 percent certain because we haven't done the study," Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told "The Daily Show" host Trevor Noah last week. "But I feel really confident that if this virus acts like every other virus that we know, once you get infected, get better, clear the virus, then you will have immunity that will protect you against reinfection."

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... e-n1171976

So we are 90% certain instead of 100% certain.

Like every other virus but we still get seasonal flu every year.

Despite not understanding some of the how and whys, but we do know 100% that people have recovered from covid-19. IF they no longer have the virus, then they can NOT spread it.

IF they don't have it. According to this article, people who recovered from the disease still test positive for days or weeks afterwards.

b) I might have to start taking note of who I'm mentioning this to. Again, my plan involves isolating the high risk population. If the high risk population has little to no close contact with the low risk population then the risk of infecting the high risk is low.

Many hospitals are already near their limit with the current level of isolation, how about we do what scientists tell us and stay home?

Being afraid while being immune or being in the population that would experience MILD symptoms is NOT consistent with someone being led by science. It's more like someone being led by the media hype, perhaps.

Right, there is no need to be afraid, we just need to listen to what scientists are saying.

[marco]

I do think it's highly probable that at least some of the cures reported at Lourdes (particularly among the most thoroughly-investigated ones of recent decades) are due to the intervention of external agency, which strongly implies a deity of some sort, but odds are that similarly convincing examples of divine intervention could be found in non-Christian cultures also.

I have absolute confidence that whatever the astonishing cures point to it is not Yahweh any more than a giant turtle. Our human culture has been fed on deity stories so when we are lost for an answer we naturally think God. I like to think the explanation conforms to a science as yet beyond our knowledge; a freak nudge from another dimension. This might explain ghosts - we get an occasional insight into dimension ninety. And we get puzzled, so call on God for help and he sends us big stones with writing on them. As a God would!

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 54 by marco]

For centuries our Western culture has been fed on reports of naturalistic laws too, so when we are lost for an answer some of us naturally think of as-yet undiscovered laws. Obviously what scientists can actually observe are behavioural patterns, not prescriptive laws nor agency. So in the grand scheme of things I don't see any reason to imagine that the relatively novel concept of blind deterministic laws offers a better model for interpreting the universe than those deity stories at their core always did. Quite the opposite if anything, since god hypotheses are ultimately based on extrapolation from what we do actually know most certainly (our experience of agency as a causal factor in our own behaviour) whereas we really have no confirmation that deterministic laws occur in any context.

We can agree that our deity probably is not a giant turtle or the petty, vindictive Yahweh described by ancient Hebrew mythographers.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 54 by marco]

For centuries our Western culture has been fed on reports of naturalistic laws too, so when we are lost for an answer some of us naturally think of as-yet undiscovered laws. Obviously what scientists can actually observe are behavioural patterns, not prescriptive laws nor agency. So in the grand scheme of things I don't see any reason to imagine that the relatively novel concept of blind deterministic laws offers a better model for interpreting the universe than those deity stories at their core always did. Quite the opposite if anything, since god hypotheses are ultimately based on extrapolation from what we do actually know most certainly (our experience of agency as a causal factor in our own behaviour) whereas we really have no confirmation that deterministic laws occur in any context.

We can agree that our deity probably is not a giant turtle or the petty, vindictive Yahweh described by ancient Hebrew mythographers.

In regards to agency and likely why humans are so prone to assign agency to things...

Barrett suggests we have evolved to be overly sensitive to agency. We evolved in an environment containing many agents - family members, friends, rivals, predators, prey, and so on. Spotting and understanding other agents helps us survive and reproduce. So we evolved to be sensitive to them - oversensitive in fact. Hear a rustle in the bushes behind you and you instinctively spin round, looking for an agent. Most times, there's no one there - just the wind in the leaves. But, in the environment in which we evolved, on those few occasions when there was an agent present, detecting it might well save your life. Far better to avoid several imaginary predators than be eaten by a real one. Thus evolution will select for an inheritable tendency to not just detect - but over detect - agency. We have evolved to possess (or, perhaps more plausibly, to be) hyper-active agency detectors.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ble-beings

If we are sensative to agency due to the environment humans evolved in, then arriving at 'the gods did it' would not seem to be a reliable path for explaining the world around us.

Causality at least can be observed.
Take the snowflake. No gods are needed. Just chemicals reacting to their properties.