In this first person shooter the object is bring people back to health. The world is in disarray, the more people to help the rebuild the better.
The problem faced, is a quick decision. Is this zombie to far gone? Wrong choice and it is a wasted vaccine cartridge. They are cost lives to produce, you know. Bosses obviously need to be put down as they are not recoverable* and are incredibly infectious, totally defeating humanities stabilizing climb.
Team up, as any good human should do. Can you doctor the zombie apocalypse?, with a vacs gun. . . . . * or are they? . [wjt] comments recovered from below, idea related
The fictitious, quick immunity boosting, vaccine, allowing the body to stage a regenerative defense, was just to implement the line, will it help the fictitious infected human or won't it.
The more interest part of the game is the need for a trigger decision, in increasing complex situations. Rather than the usual simple, blind, quick booting stomp out of all opposition. The society can't be formed without the right allies.
If you can't kill it, be cleverer about living with it. It might even become very important.
[wjt] comments recovered from below, idea related
All right. I suppose if the front line fighting elite are putting there lives on the line then they should be able to react instantly without a tremor of decision.
How would a zombie be a identified as still having the stain of humanity anyway? a wistful gaze at a rose, a chuckle as a rat fell of a ledge or even maybe a tormented hesitation before a bite.-- wjt, Sep 26 2021 This idea from Vernon is this wjt's idea from the other end of the telescope Sterilization_20for_20the_20Pseudo-Deadalso, it's not a videogame, which makes it pretty repulsive imo [calum, Sep 27 2021] The Guardian (British Newspaper) https://www.theguar...rotest-ban-unlawfulI would recommend The Guardian as a trustworthy non-government source of investigative journalism [Frankx, Sep 28 2021] Full Fact organisation https://fullfact.or...utm_medium=trendingFull Fact is a registered charity who "fact check claims made by politicians, public institutions and journalists, as well as viral content online." [Frankx, Sep 28 2021] Snopes https://www.snopes....-reliable-resource/"it’s the oldest and largest fact-checking site online, widely regarded by journalists, folklorists, and readers as an invaluable research companion" [Frankx, Sep 28 2021] Pro-Truth https://www.protruthpledge.org/to encourage politicians – and everyone else – to commit to truth-oriented behaviours and protect facts and civility. [Frankx, Sep 28 2021] Deus Ex (videogame) https://www.youtube...watch?v=C8kZ3HfeqtAconspiracy theories that aged surprisingly well [sninctown, Sep 30 2021] Could it Be Aspergers? https://www.youtube...watch?v=LuZFThlOiJIA lecture about a type of individual which has found a special interest that is more interesting than relating to other people. If the special interest is conspiracy theories, the results can be extraordinary, contributing to the infamy of the "chans" [sninctown, Sep 30 2021] 7 Conservative talk radio hosts https://www.busines...ath-covid-19-2021-9 [RayfordSteele, Oct 02 2021] The young and the lungless... https://www.healthl...eople-most-affected [RayfordSteele, Oct 03 2021] Leo in drag? https://phys.org/ne...-self-portrait.html [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2021] Stylite_20Vertical_...istancing_20Vehicle re. "Mentally ill people should be revered" [pertinax, Oct 05 2021] Where is a1? https://en.wikipedi...oad_(Great_Britain) [Frankx, Oct 05 2021] Elon Musk's twitter (20 march 2020) https://twitter.com...91706304512?lang=en(covid) "Feels like the plot of Deus Ex" [sninctown, Oct 07 2021] I disavow https://www.youtube...watch?v=eKwP9RpkCd8Roll your own! Now legal in Michigan! [Voice, Oct 08 2021] Hospital capacity tracking by state https://carlsonscho...19-tracking-projectAs reported by the states [Voice, Oct 09 2021] BMJ article on natural immunity https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101The BMJ is about as reputable and independent as you can get. [Frankx, Oct 09 2021] Not the BMJ https://www.timesof...ense-than-vaccines/+ still not peer reviewed? [4and20, Oct 09 2021] The Lancet https://www.thelanc...21)00675-9/fulltextUK NHS study “SIREN” [Frankx, Oct 09 2021] Grey State (NSFW -- war movie) https://youtu.be/Gy7FVXERKFEViolent dramatization of civil war -- think Fallujah but on this side of the world. Movie was not finished due to apparent insanity and death of the filmmaker. [sninctown, Oct 10 2021] Excess Mortality Rates for Australia, Canada, the UK and the US https://ourworldind...try=AUS~CAN~USA~GBROverall deaths from all cause above what would be normally expected. [AusCan531, Oct 10 2021] Proof that Vaccinated People CAN STILL CATCH THE DISEASE! https://www.snopes....d-one-not-smallpox/One of these boys was vaccinated but the other wasn't. BOTH Caught the disease and both presumably could still be spreaders. [AusCan531, Oct 10 2021] Australian Police Covid search https://www.google....ralian+police+covid [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2021] Consequences from Melbourne 'Protest' https://www.theguar...torian-headquarters [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] Free Speech and Social Media https://i.redd.it/c6xczkqwc6a71.jpgSpreading misinformation kills people. [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] This is near where you live [2 Fries], were you in attendance? https://twitter.com...1433204799621660675At least they didn't block ambulances while harassing medical staff unlike in Vancouver. [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] Australia compared to Florida https://imgur.com/yckZXrP55,000 extra Floridians get to experience the Freedom of the Grave [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] BEWARE! 'They' are trying to control you. https://imgur.com/NfpYgD1Do your own research. [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] Vaccines stop transmission? https://www.cdc.gov...cinated-people.htmlCDC says better than tinfoil hats. [4and20, Oct 12 2021] British Columbia Covid Stats https://imgur.com/SGQvD2xI think, we've found the problem. [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] Nursing staff discuss what many (not all) Covid survivors face. https://www.reddit....rce=share&context=3There's more to it than just 'Dying' or 'Not Dying'. [AusCan531, Oct 12 2021] My entire attitude summed up in a nutshell. https://i.redd.it/o75bskzunme71.jpgTrue story. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 14 2021] May 2019 Madonna / Eurovision song (NSFW) https://www.youtube...=VG3WkiL0d_U&t=299sMusic video featuring covid-related symbolism ~9 months before covid, gratuitous occult symbolism, and snippets from a song whose full lyrics include "fight against the English...They think we are not aware of their crimes. We know, but we are just not ready to act". It's probably nothing; no reason to be paranoid. [sninctown, Oct 15 2021] Vaccine efficacy - see table 2 https://assets.publ...bs-clean.pdf#page=7 [Frankx, Oct 16 2021] paper on reinfection of common cold strain (coronavirus) https://www.cambrid...2B4C0E39861A9F88B01The time course of the immune response to experimental coronavirus infection of man [Loris, Oct 16 2021] BMJ article "Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?" https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101Reviews data on immunity through prior infection and vaccination and how the USA and the rest of the world is dealing with this. [Loris, Oct 17 2021] (??) Three felonies a day https://www.wsj.com...4574438900830760842 [Voice, Oct 21 2021] Seat Belt Statistics https://www.edgarsn...lts-statistics.html [Loris, Oct 22 2021] How Covid-19 vaccines dramatically reduce death rates https://www.newstat...-reduce-death-rates [Loris, Oct 22 2021] UK excess deaths April 2020 to October 2021 https://app.powerbi...WRlODY2NiIsImMiOjh9Gross excess, and individual other causes of death which might have contributed. In great detail. [Frankx, Oct 26 2021] Mortality risk of COVID-19 https://ourworldind...ty-rate-of-covid-19 [Frankx, Oct 26 2021] Here's some predictions for the next few years https://www3.weforu...l_Edition_Pages.pdfPage 51 is good... [Frankx, Oct 28 2021] Sure everyone saw this https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59077036 [4and20, Oct 28 2021] Four doctors step up. https://www.cbc.ca/...zW8EiDlLFwY-OvQijccGood on'em! [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2021] Recovered Covid victims are 5 times more likely to be reinfected than vaccinated individuals. https://www.cdc.gov...tm?s_cid=mm7044e1_wpatients hospitalized with COVID-19–like illness whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity [AusCan531, Oct 30 2021] Vaccines may cause variants. https://www.quantam...bHJWSWo54FNYgn_4BT8 [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 31 2021] Informed Consent https://www.nhs.uk/...nsent-to-treatment/No-one is being forcibly injected. Informed consent is utterly embedded in medical ethics. [Frankx, Oct 31 2021] Dr. Eric Payne, MD is a neurologist in Rochester, Minnesota https://www.jccf.ca...YNE-CPSA-letter.pdfEric T. Payne. Pediatric Neurologist, Alberta Children's Hospital & University of Calgary. [Frankx, Oct 31 2021] Why so much of published scientific journalism is wrong... https://www.youtube...watch?v=42QuXLucH3Qstatistics... [RayfordSteele, Nov 01 2021] Variants of SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedi...iants_of_SARS-CoV-2summary of knowledge, wikipedia page [Loris, Nov 01 2021] VAERS database https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html [Frankx, Nov 04 2021] Whose news can you trust? BBC is reckoned to be one of the most trustworthy sources https://www.makeuse...g/trust-news-sites/Of the BBC, “ Despite being center, US citizens may find that "center" in the U.K. is notably to the left of what they're used to.” [Frankx, Nov 04 2021] Nobel Laureats per capita https://en.wikipedi...aureates_per_capita [Frankx, Nov 05 2021] Old Saxons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_SaxonyNew English [4and20, Nov 06 2021] Benny Hill https://www.youtube...watch?v=algHEnMMvKINational Health [Frankx, Nov 07 2021] ^ the flip-side of that coin https://external-pr...d68cb2f3d182798dd0fI'm the one on the left. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 14 2021] Dehumanizing people with mistaken beliefs [-]: there's a regrettable tradition of this, which has contributed to the sort of ambient paranoia which makes people into, for example, anti- vaxxers.-- pertinax, Sep 26 2021 [pertinax] were you aware that the definition of the word vaccine was changed from; “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection”?
If it does not provide immunity it is not a vaccine, so... I know! Let's just change the meaning of the word vaccine and scare monger the population of Earth into taking whatever we give them to stave off something with a 99.5% survivability rate.
Oh! And then let's target the few who are smart enough to see they're being conned and sick the general population against them.We can call them Anti-Vaxxers so that people can attack them instead of the Con-Men perpetrating this plandemic.
It'll be great and they'll be way too busy to care about Hong Kong or any rich and powerful Pedo-Island type stuff.You watch, we'll have them lining up and begging to get jabbed with whatever we can roll off the shelves first.Why I bet we can even make a few million before we even get FDA approval...
Call me an anti-vaxxer and I will wear it like a crown.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 26 2021 well said [2 fries] !!-- xandram, Sep 26 2021 A vaccine is not a cure or treatment...-- Voice, Sep 26 2021 No, but a vaccine by definition confers immunity... or at least it used to until just slightly before this epic con job was undertaken.(get it?... undertaken)So now the CDC just changes the definition of that one word while enabling the previous definition to give themselves broad sweeping powers in the form of mandates.You 'can't' argue with them... it's for your own health citizen.
When you point out that only those who are vaccinated will be spreading this virus while thinking themselves as non-carriers they call you an anti-vaxxer idiot and lately on Farcebook, and I quote; "Let's just all call anti-vaxxers what they really are... infant-killing fuckwads".
Grab your torches and fucking pitchforks people!It's time to bring back neighbour lynchings!
Y'know, most of the time I find the stupididity of my species amusing.Then there are other times when they do their damndest to drag me down to their level.
Good luck with that.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 26 2021 They didn't change the definition of a vaccine. I just googled the effectiveness of other common vaccines:
chicken pox: single dose: 82% two doses: 92% Measles (MMR): singe dose: 93% two doses: 97% Mumps (MMR): singe dose: 78% two doses: 88% Rubella (MMR): singe dose: 97% Flu vaccine: typically 40-60% effective.
// When you point out that only those who are vaccinated will be spreading this virus //. Can you please point me to information about how ONLY vaccinated people spread the virus? I tried googling it, but maybe the rumor is dying out and I can't get any hits. (or alternately the censors are getting more effective)
I've also heard someone (who I would generally consider intelligent) say that more people died from the vaccine than Covid-19. I tracked that to it's source of wildly misinterpreting data one way in one case and the other in the other case, then taking it out of context and making a typographical error...
I don't think vaccine mandates are a good thing: that just fuels the conspiracy theorists further, and we should have rights over our own bodies. The medical establishment has made systematic mistakes before and will again. However I have seen no evidence (that stands up to more than a few minutes of scrutiny) that the established science behind Covid-19 is wrong unless there is a massive conspiracy.
I know one person personally who died from Covid-19. I think it happened just before Pfizer got full FDA approval, which they were waiting for. I know another unvaccinated person who VERY sick and was sure they would. Several others I've known were just miserable, and of course a few cases that weren't much worse than a flu. In my entire life I've never known anyone who died or was hospitalized because of the flu. Obviously not a scientific poll, but my personal experience lines up with the mainstream data: Covid-19 is MUCH worse than the flu, even after all the precautions people have taken. What do you say about the situations that occurred in Italy and New York City where hospitals where completely overwhelmed at the start of the pandemic?-- scad mientist, Sep 27 2021 // Can you please point me to information about how ONLY vaccinated people spread the virus?//
No, I said that only the vaccinated 'will' be spreading the virus, (future tense), while thinking that they are not carriers...How will the virus be spread by folks who can't eat out, or travel, or gather in groups?I ask you?Think it through.Only the vaccinated 'will' be spreading the virus... while blaming me for staying home and ignoring the bullshit.
I'm a hermit by nature and can cook for myself.
I had covid, (then still called corona), didn't take up a hospital bed because I usually get at least two colds a year, and have built up my own antibodies. Taking the vaccine would do absolutely no good either for myself or for anyone else since I would still be a carrier and only risk serious side-effects by doing so. As was reported by one of the creators of the RNA vaccine but then he had his youtube video cancelled for daring to state that there are many people who should not get vaccinated.
Yet I should... why?Because it will halt the spread? False.Because it will protect others? False.Because it will protect myself?......false.
It's all fucking false.
You've been conned... and it's way easier to con people than it is to convince them that they've been conned.
I never said I wasn't a sucker for punishment.
Harder daddy!-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 27 2021 None of that has anything to do with how the definition of a word can change while still holding the same weight and therefore statutes as the displaced definition without a change of policy to accompany the linguistical gymnastics.
Go on then.
Tell me how laws remain while the words used to write them change...
Convince me that I am not being conned.
...
anyone-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 27 2021 Deletion of annotations do not prove me wrong.
Nice try though.
Sorry [wjt]. I didn't mean to go off on a tangent on your posting. I just, I just don't put up with bullshit, and I don't really know how to, or even want to, back down when I am confronted with it.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 27 2021 I read recently that science was a kind of system or way of thinking. Not a pic-n-mix selection box. You can't choose to believe in the bits of science that give you mobile phones and internet message boards, but reject the bits of science that give you vaccines.-- pocmloc, Sep 27 2021 I believe this vaccine generally works as intended. However, I also believe that there is some resemblance to some plot elements of the videogame "Deus Ex" (Eidos, 2000), specifically the Ambrosia vaccine and a plague which was created to control the population. COVID seems even more like a politically convenient pretext for war than 9/11 did. If everyone got vaccinated today, I would predict not an end to COVID, but the emergence of another strain requiring another vaccination and more bailouts, surveillance, and restrictions. The COVID response so far reminds me not of childhood vaccinations, but of the lead-up to invading Iraq. Science has thoroughly documented the ability of groups of influential people to create plots which go completely off the rails in practice, especially in domains related to international politics. I got the vaccine since that's what my leadership recommended, but I think the zombies might have the right idea here. At least the zombies aren't instigating a war. My wild guess at a better alternative would be to wear P100 masks, since this would filter the virus and not require movement controls, but admittedly this might not work due to problems such as cost, fit, and decontamination after use.
I give this idea a [-] for being basically a WINBI distillation of the zeitgeist, and for restarting the COVID Lawn Sprinkler Debate.-- sninctown, Sep 27 2021 Where I begin to agree with [2 fries] is that I think there was a Lancet study which showed that only a very small percentage of Brits who'd had Covid once were subsequently on record as getting it again. This gels with the admission by many countries that prior proof of Covid recovery is adequate proof that one can safely enter a country. But that proof usually has a time limit. So being a prior Covid recovery may give you some immunity, but for how long?
Where I may disagree with [2 fries]: Who's proven that having a prior case of Covid will make people less likely to spread Covid regardless, vs. the transmission rate of people who've been vaccinated?
Where I definitely disagree with [2 fries]: Take a visit to Worldometers.info and sort the biweekly Covid cases by rate. There are always a certain number of countries which have such high death rates per million, on a weekly basis, that a full 1% of their total population could die quite quickly. That's not recovery rate. That's gross death rate.-- 4and20, Sep 27 2021 FFS. Again with your bullshit 2 fries?
[m-f-d removed due to discussion] Take your political bullshit anywhere else on the internet.
(Sorry, wjt, once something is infected with this garbage, it should be culled to protect the rest.)-- Loris, Sep 27 2021 //Tell me how laws remain while the words used to write them change// I took this class in 1997. It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but basically - where there is ambiguity - it involves the courts adopting one of two approaches: the literal (what do the words say?) or the purposive (why do the words say what they say?).
Though perhaps I took a literal interpretation of yr question, where a purposive one would have been more useful.-- calum, Sep 27 2021 Nothing I've said is bullshit. Being silenced about this topic is part of the propaganda. This is the only place I've found on the internet where people are smart enough to still have open minds.
//You can't choose to believe in the bits of science that give you mobile phones and internet message boards, but reject the bits of science that give you vaccines.//
Sure I can.Didn't the same science that gave us space flight also give us Thalidomaide?Scientists are not shining gods in lab coats and since the creator of the rna vaccine had his youtube video pulled for saying the same things as me......which scientists are correct and which are wrong?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 27 2021 I have heard, [calum], that difference between those two is one of the differences between the legal traditions in, on the one hand, mainland Europe and, on the other hand, the UK; the European approach usually has a closer focus on the law's intent, whereas the British approach tends to steer closer to literalism.
The former approach gives you more flexibility, but requires that you place more trust in whoever is interpreting the law that day.
Is there any truth in that, in your experience?-- pertinax, Sep 27 2021 That is correct. This is also why EU legislation looks and feels very different - big long recitals and preambles, uh, preceding some very "principles-level" drafting vs what looks like computer code. That's not to say that the UK courts won't look at intent when trying to figure out what legislation is supposed to say ("look at Hansard").-- calum, Sep 27 2021 //Nothing I've said is bullshit.//
Dude, it's all bullshit.
the covid-19 vaccines /do/ confer some immunity. They may not be /perfect/, but as scad mientist pointed out, other vaccines arn't either.
You say "And then let's target the few who are smart enough to see they're being conned [...] We can call them Anti-Vaxxers so that people can attack them instead of the Con-Men perpetrating this plandemic."
Which is wild. What /is/ the con? What does that word, "plandemic" mean to you? We've been over that before, and you didn't have a coherent explanation.
You say "When you point out that only those who are vaccinated will be spreading this virus while thinking themselves as non- carriers.."
And then when called on it, you do some sort of weasel-wording defence. (As far as I can tell, this relies on the non-vaccinated dutifully isolating themselves entirely, forever, and/or uniformly thinking of themselves as potential carriers when the vaccinated uniformly do.)
And you're now going on about "one of the creators of the RNA vaccine" being /cancelled/ for saying /something/ - as if that proves anything. So of course I looked into this a little, and you're probably talking about a guy called Dr. Robert Malone, who according to the website "rwmalonemd.com" (I'm sure that it's entirely impartial) is "the inventor of mRNA vaccines". Because, you know, a development like this only ever has one inventor who is entirely deserving of all the credit for everything in the field in perpetuity; no-one else was likely to be working on that independently or at all. And of course, his work in the '80s on frogs and mice means he's entirely up to date and an expert on all developments in the field over the three decades since then. And of course is also an expert in the medical regulatory environment and has full and unfettered access to all the vaccine testing data.
So, realistically, the guy looks pretty pissed about not receiving credit for his work, and recently said something which can be disputed, on an extremely touchy subject where the social networks are already on a hair-trigger. And maybe what happened was that enough people paid notice to a TV appearance and complained that some of his stuff got taken down. You can probably thank the anti-vaxxers spreading misinformation for the rather aggressive response. And ...well, I'm not in the jurisdiction of the CDC, but I don't know what game they're playing. Lots of people are confused about that, it's true.
So... he's obviously pretty thoroughly cancelled. I mean he can only get articles on random news sites like the Washinton Post and low-rent scientific journals like Nature, and tweet about how he's giving interviews on TV. Having to request reactivation of his LinkedIn account, wow.
But... you know, what do you think that proves?
//Yet I should... [get vaccinated] why? Because it will halt the spread? False. Because it will protect others? False. Because it will protect myself?... ...false.//
I think you're wrong with at least two of those 'falses', there. It /would/ provide some protection to others around you, in the event you were exposed. It /would/ protect you, in the same circumstance. Vaccinating any one person can't hope to 'halt the spread', of course. It's obviously a group effort. At this point, though, it doesn't seem feasible to eliminate covid-19 anytime soon, and at least in the UK we've moved on.-- Loris, Sep 27 2021 Counterpoint(s): Why NOT get vaccinated? It's free (at least, it is where I live...) It takes maybe half an hour of your time (& another 1/2 in 6 weeks) It (probably) stops you dying of Covid-19 It keeps society from demonising you (not sure myself if that's actually a reason...) It doesn't track you, make you magnetic, make you sick, or any other "conspiracy theory" crap Another point to ponder: now that vaccination is widespread, those hospitalised with Covid-19 are about 1% vaxxed, 99% unvaxxed (citation needed). If the vaccine didn't work, those numbers would be wildly different.-- neutrinos_shadow, Sep 27 2021 Sorry [scad mientist] on longer threads I hit the end button and scroll up from the bottom to find my last anno and I completely missed yours. You make good points, but they did indeed change the definition of the word vaccine.When you list the percentages of those actual vaccines does it refer to its effectiveness in an individual or the percentage of people rendered immune? If it is the latter then these... shots offer exactly 0% immunity and so do not qualify for the previous definition of the word vaccine.
As for hospitals being overwhelmed, I think we should be spending more on medical facilities and less on military.
//What /is/ the con? What does that word, "plandemic" mean to you? We've been over that before, and you didn't have a coherent explanation.//
The con is misdirection and total control of the masses. Absolute power of course without protest.Did you know that in the Philippines going out after curfew will now get you shot as a covid precaution? The jackboot on their necks might be wearing scrubs, but it's a jackboot nonetheless.
The word Plandemic means to me that the overreaction response to this man-made virus, (whether accidentally or purposefully released), was premeditated and is being used to Stockholm Syndrome all of our societies to the point of welcoming our new overlords with open arms to save us all from the fear they have mongered.
"Two weeks to flatten the curve..."
//You say "When you point out that only those who are vaccinated will be spreading this virus while thinking themselves as non- carriers.."
And then when called on it, you do some sort of weasel-wording defence.//
Weasel-wording defence? My statement was entirely logical and need no defending. As long as un-vaccinated people are on lock down then only vaccinated people will be spreading this shit about now won't they?Wtf is so hard to understand about that?
//(As far as I can tell, this relies on the non-vaccinated dutifully isolating themselves entirely, forever, and/or uniformly thinking of themselves as potential carriers when the vaccinated uniformly do.)//
If both vaccinated and un-vaccinated people are carriers then why are they not both on lock-down?Un-vaccinated I pose no more threat to you or your kids than all of the vaccinated people sitting around the restaurant you get to enjoy or walking around that resort you get to go to and I don't.The only reason I can think of is that you've sufficiently demonstrated your willingness to conform and I have not.
//I think you're wrong with at least two of those 'falses', there. It /would/ provide some protection to others around you//
No. No it wouldn't.
//in the event you were exposed. It /would/ protect you, in the same circumstance.//
No. No it wouldn't. Having my own immune system kick its ass without aid means that all I stand to gain is Bells Palsy or permanent double vision or an entire body rash or any number of other lovely side-effects which are kept surprisingly low-key given how much every single other aspect of this shit-show gets hyped.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 28 2021 //When you list the percentages of those actual vaccines does it refer to its effectiveness in an individual or the percentage of people rendered immune? If it is the latter then these... shots offer exactly 0% immunity and so do not qualify for the previous definition of the word vaccine.//
You're wrong. Something I've noticed a lot recently is people misunderstanding data, or asking why we don't have particular measurements without thinking about how data is gathered. In this case, (and I've seen this stated by an expert), the experiment is to track vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, and see how many of each get covid. Then effectively the protection is how much rarer it is for vaccinated individuals to get covid than unvaccinated. Now there are /obviously/ various statistical gotchas, but also obviously you can work to take those into account. This is in general how the values given are calculated. So given that, this doesn't tell us whether some individuals have very good immunity and others none, or whether vaccinated individuals are each just more resistant to developing the infection, or somewhere in-between. To find that out definitively, you'd need a different experiment, which it would be hard to get past the ethics board.
////What /is/ the con? What does that word, "plandemic" mean to you? We've been over that before, and you didn't have a coherent explanation.////
//The con is misdirection and total control of the masses. Absolute power of course without protest. Did you know that in the Philippines going out after curfew will now get you shot as a covid precaution? The jackboot on their necks might be wearing scrubs, but it's a jackboot nonetheless.//
So obviously we can easily extrapolate from a mad power-play which happened in one country - to all the others? Oh, no, that would be a mistake on your part.
//The word Plandemic means to me that the overreaction response to this man-made virus, (whether accidentally or purposefully released), was premeditated and is being used to Stockholm Syndrome all of our societies to the point of welcoming our new overlords with open arms to save us all from the fear they have mongered.//
The man-made bit isn't anywhere near proven. At best it's a hypothesis. Rhetoric. Insinuation about deliberate release, which would make no sense as previously discussed. Rhetoric. Suggestion that there was an international, coordinated plan to manipulate societies worldwide relying on the above. Absolute bullshit. Clearly ridiculous - it doesn't even fit the basic evidence.
weasel-wording defence of: //////You say "When you point out that only those who are vaccinated will be spreading this virus while thinking themselves as non- carriers.."//////
//Weasel-wording defence? My statement was entirely logical and need no defending. As long as un-vaccinated people are on lock down then only vaccinated people will be spreading this shit about now won't they? Wtf is so hard to understand about that?//
When you make multiple unstated and incorrect assumptions, you can 'prove' anything.
//If both vaccinated and un-vaccinated people are carriers then why are they not both on lock-down?//
Neither group are on lockdown, here. I don't track restrictions in every country in the world, but if that's the case for you then maybe you should say that. Regardless, your statement is untrue for most of the world, and possibly not for Canada either, since even people on lockdown have to have some interaction with the rest of society when it becomes protracted - and in any case it's likely a rule observed largely in the breach at that point.
////I think you're wrong with at least two of those 'falses', there. It /would/ provide some protection to others around you [...] in the event you were exposed. It /would/ protect you, in the same circumstance.////
//No. No it wouldn't. Having my own immune system kick its ass without aid means that all I stand to gain is Bells Palsy or permanent double vision or an entire body rash or any number of other lovely side-effects which are kept surprisingly low-key given how much every single other aspect of this shit-show gets hyped.//
Nothing is ever completely risk-free, but given the numbers vaccinated now, the vaccines are demonstrably safe enough that it's better than being infected, at least for adults. (Given the increase in risk of covid infection with age, it's less definitive a benefit in children, at least for the individual.) I think this is now considered clear even for people who've already had a mild covid infection some time previously. The potential long-term effects of covid infection are pretty well covered and seem extensive.-- Loris, Sep 28 2021 [2_fries] - I don't trust our politicians or big corporations driven by profit.
I have no idea what names people get called on Facebook, or why. I thought it was just a way of keeping in touch with friends.
I don't agree with hatred, mob-rule or fear-mongering.
I have immediate family who are medical doctors, research scientists, and in particular, virologists.
All of them agree:
1) "science" does make mistakes
2) there are health risks to any vaccine
3) no vaccine is 100% effective at preventing an individual from getting an infection
But all of them also agree:
1) the personal health risk of infection far outweighs the risk of the vaccine
2) more people vaccinated means lower risk for the un- vaccinated (and those few people who, despite being vaccinated still get an infection)
3) the illness that those people get will be less severe, and is less likely to be passed on to others
And finally, every single one of them has insisted on having their own children vaccinated at the earliest opportunity.
These are people who have access to the very highest quality peer-reviewed independent research, the various medical safety authority assessments, all the data - and have the education and training to understand that information and assess it critically.-- Frankx, Sep 28 2021 [Frankx] - [+]-- hippo, Sep 28 2021 All excellent and reasonable points. However, I notice that I am still required to "wear mask" and "social distance" and remote work, despite being in a highly vaccinated region, since apparently there is a new strain that poses a risk to the vaccinated. This suggests to me that there is more to the story.
The Pro-Truth Pledge reminds me of Prak, from the Hitchhiker's Guide, who was given much too much of a sci-fi truth drug and ordered to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which he did, and this flow of truth was so problematic that the court was closed permanently and sealed in a Chernobyl-type enclosure to stop the truth from getting out. Apparently, there were some good bits about frogs. Prak's experience rings true to my own experience.-- sninctown, Sep 28 2021 All you have to do, frankly, is compare the vaccination rate of blue states and red states, and the hospitalization / death rates.
We're so tired of hearing the belligerent bullshit. If this were my site I'd ban 2f by now.
Shut up and deal with it. If you feel oppressed or silenced or something by that statement, then, well, tough. Jutta has already said to take your political bullshit elsewhere.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 29 2021 //We're so tired of hearing the belligerent bullshit. If this were my site I'd ban 2f by now.//
Who are 'we'?I am very glad it is not your site.
//Shut up and deal with it. If you feel oppressed or silenced or something by that statement, then, well, tough. Jutta has already said to take your political bullshit elsewhere.//
Has she now?Under what guise?
Explain yourself. Now.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 29 2021 C'mon bully. I haven't got all night.
I'm gonna go to bed soon and you'll have to wrangle your posse to come to the rescue as to just who ...'we'... refer to?
...or is it just your imaginary friends?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 29 2021 Guess I will find out tomorrow.
[2fries] out.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 29 2021 I think we've been through this with the Covid Lawn Sprinker idea...that one which got the [mfd] a few months ago with a comment to the effect that this is an idea discussion site, not a politics discussion site, of which there are many. My sense of things is that this Covid stuff tends to lack whimsy and makes people upset, and the noise scares off commenters whose thoughts might be more artful and less ruggedly confrontational, and so ideas which turn into political debate get the [mfd] in order to maintain whimsy and harmony.
Personally, this all seems like a psyop to "salami-slice" change toward a "new normal", but I don't know if the end goal is a managed and equalized global economic system which some think tanks have been talking about, or if this is a soft bio conflict scenario between countries, or something else. Either way, since vaccinated people can still catch and spread new strains, I don't see this going away anytime soon.-- sninctown, Sep 29 2021 The fictitious, quick immunity boosting, vaccine, allowing the body to stage a regenerative defense, was just to implement the line, will it help the fictitious infected human or won't it.
If you can't kill it, be cleverer about living with it. It might even become very important.-- wjt, Sep 29 2021 Yes, 2f she has. Did you miss it? It was in the Covid Lawn fiasco.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 29 2021 I get it. I'm sorry.
It's me. Spend decades fighting for your rights and you get a bit touchy when they look even a little bit threatened... let alone taken away.
I... I just, all of the shit comes from the same place, y'know? The inventions, the intuition, the art, the... knowing without knowing how you know stuff, and for me it's all the same thing. I can make no distinction between the mechanical engineering aspects of the things I am shown from my subconscious and the geopolitical things I am shown.
I just get shown things.
So......how am I to differentiate?
If I wasn't just so damned correct all the time this would be a whole lot easier.
It all stems from the same well and I can't turn off any aspect of it without restricting all aspects and I'm not really prepared to do that.
I can however leave politically sensitive thoughts unsaid if that is the general consensus. I just think it a shame that there are topics not allowed to be discussed 'here' of all places.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 30 2021 I think the rule is "no politics". The rule isn't "no alternative politics". So, if the peanut gallery prefers not to listen to us talk whimsically about the secret illuminati and their plan to print vast sums of money for themselves while people are stuck indoors worrying about worse covid strains, maybe they can just [mfd] advocacy this idea so we can all go do something else.
// I can make no distinction between the mechanical engineering aspects of the things I am shown and the geopolitical things I am shown. // Same here -- and I think I also have seen some of the same alternative media items that paint this covid situation in a different light: the Event 201 exercise, the 2010 Lock Step scenario, the "Madonna 2019 Eurovision" performance, the "I Pet Goat II" video, and the videogame "Deus Ex" (link), all of which seem to foreshadow or predict a covid-type event, albeit indirectly.
I don't know how to discuss this in a nuanced way that doesn't turn into a shouting match between "you're stupid for watching the news" and "you're stupid for not watching the news" factions.
Near as I can tell, someone is paying for English- language "troll farms" to generate vast quantities of alternative opinions and launder them through internet forums such as the "chans", to try to inject narratives into the public consciousness, to benefit many different agendas. Similarly, English "mainstream media" coordinate their stories to save writing costs and to drive their own agendas. The resulting collision of ideas is a bit of a mess. But the denizens of those websites learn many surprising things, which emerge as radical-seeming opinions. Not whimsical.-- sninctown, Sep 30 2021 I wish I was better at reading subtext-- calum, Sep 30 2021 [calum] it's at the bottom of the page.-- pocmloc, Sep 30 2021 [pocmloc]; is that the one under the Stockmarket ticker & to the left of the weather?-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 01 2021 //If I wasn't just so damned correct all the time this would be a whole lot easier.//
You're safe.-- AusCan531, Oct 01 2021 I'm with 2fries on this one. The subtext is clear to those who have eyes to see. I feel like Jeremiah.
Make a videogame that's a modern Deus Ex, delving ever deeper into conspiracy (and real conspiracy, not this lame "augmentations" discussion that plagued Human Revolution; if the studio doesn't get visited by black SUVs at least once then the game hasn't found good enough info yet) and it would probably be something the videogame community wants.
Or, cash in on the "vaxxmaxxing" meme and require players to get shots of all the manufacturer's vaccines (i.e. 2 shots of 5 different covid vaccines) for the high score.-- sninctown, Oct 01 2021 Everybody thinks they're some kind of gifted damn prophet these days. Especially all those right-wing talk radio hosts that got sick and died.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 01 2021 [Frankx] - [+]
— hippo, Sep 28 2021
_-- blissmiss, Oct 01 2021 //Everybody thinks they're some kind of gifted damn prophet these days.//
I just have random things pop into my head and then research them to find out whether the things I've seen in my head are true. I don't know what that means. When enough of those random thoughts tend to pan out, it makes one wonder. Is prophet the word kids are calling it these days? Who knew?
//Especially all those right-wing talk radio hosts that got sick and died.//
Did they die of covid?... or some secondary condition which has been omitted from public accounts of every corona/covid related death since April Fools day almost two years ago now?
It's been a long two weeks.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2021 All right. I suppose if the front line fighting elite are putting there lives on the line then they should be able to react instantly without a tremor of decision.
How would a zombie be a identified as still having the stain of humanity anyway? a wistful gaze at a rose, a chuckle as a rat fell of a ledge or even maybe a tormented hesitation before a bite.-- wjt, Oct 02 2021 All of those things and more. Nuance is the key. The more you notice the higher your score.
Just like in real life...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2021 Thanks [bliss] and [hippo].
And also thanks [2_fries]... //shit comes from the same place// - yeah, me too, I totally get that. Apologies If I come across as a pompous know-it-all a**hole. All perspectives are valid.-- Frankx, Oct 02 2021 Yes. They died of covid. See link.
Is there anything that you take at face value anymore? Or is it all some game played to trick you into thinking that 2 + 2 = 4?
As for your tboughts, maybe you just are gradually realizing that the world largely operates in patterns which are in some fashion predictable?-- RayfordSteele, Oct 02 2021 Maybe.I've taken nothing at face value for a very long time.
As this virus supposedly has a higher than 99% survivability rate for those without secondary health issues do you not find it suspicious that these secondary issues are never mentioned?
Like ever?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2021 What am I supposed to do with all this Truth Goo I ordered? Like a cement truck full of pizza dough, it seems to be growing and I'm not sure where to put it.
For complicated issues several perspectives can be true at the same time. The official story from the CDC and OSHA is of course true, just as it was true that the twin towers and building 7 all collapsed on 9/11. It might be less fraught to talk about past examples of this kind of thing. The official story about the Iran-Contra scandal was true, even though Gary Webb had some other ideas. There is no official story about social class, even though the movie 'Eyes Wide Shut' suggests a wild perspective. In fiction, the founder of the Hitchhiker's Guide spent some years // sitting in darkened rooms in illegal states of mind, thinking about this and that, and fooling around with weights // before figuring things out. Some time ago I responded to a company-wide survey with my thoughts about the "big picture", and soon after that they gave me a raise, but when I emailed my boss with some concerns (which he kindly reassured me about, and miraculously I'm still employed) a black suv blocked my road to work so I went a different way, unless I hallucinated the whole thing, which is possible; covid has been really getting to me. Am I //tbought//? Well, I have many thoughts, and there's never a dull moment when my train of thought is this far off the rails, like a derailment in Truth Goo tanker switchyards.-- sninctown, Oct 02 2021 //As this virus supposedly has a higher than 99% survivability rate for those without secondary health issues do you not find it suspicious that these secondary issues are never mentioned? //
We discussed this before, when you said: //Why entire societies were bankrupted when the cost of placing all at-risk individuals in 5-star hotels for the duration of the pandemic would have been a fraction of the cost to society?//
And I looked into it, and found that 37.6% of adults in the U.S.A have a higher risk of developing serious illness if they become infected with coronavirus, due to their older age (65 and older) or health condition. So there's obviously just no way your hotel strategy would work.
And the health conditions wern't wierd secret illnesses, but common things like being obese or having diabetes.-- Loris, Oct 02 2021 So again, being forced to take a double shot, which will not prevent me spreading a virus which my body has already battled so that I don't take up a hospital bed is complete nonsense.
Yet I am not allowed to dine out or travel or go to concerts or gather in any large group until I comply.Yes that's a Canadian-centric point of view but hey, at least we don't have a curfew yet...
When the numbers reflect reality. When secondary health causes are included in reports. When every false positive isn't counted as a covid death. When I am not lied to at every turn...
...'then' I will consider complying.Not before.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2021 Work the numbers. Figure out what this fiasco has cost all businesses and citizens of this planet... and then tell me I'm wrong to think we could have removed at-risk individuals, let this virus run its course, (like it will do anyway), and the bill wouldn't have be lower than it is going to be.
Then try to tell me that every single covid death reported didn't have a secondary health issue which would have resulted in death with or without covid.
Paddlin?...
...well you know that's a Covid death.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 03 2021 //What am I supposed to do with all this Truth Goo//
I'll take it off your hands if you can cover the cost of shipping; it'll be a useful feedstock for ... something.-- pertinax, Oct 03 2021 Truth Goo???
No. That's a covid death for sure.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 03 2021 I could mix in some alcohol or other disinfectant. perhaps gin. now there's an appetizing thought. No need to worry too much about it. Everyone dies. Not everyone really lives. Now just need an appropriately secure way to share an address, and a fast enough shipping method that it won't burst the vial on the way there, and we're in business...-- sninctown, Oct 03 2021 Well, the radio host who said his lungs felt like crap when he was perfectly fine before? That's Covid. The one guy who died of pneumonia brought on by Covid that took his response system and ran it amuck? That's Covid. Straight pneumonia is usually survivable, sometimes not.
I keep seeing that most of the delta patients now filling the hospitals are the young and healthy and unvaccinated. So there's your numbers ran, and you're wrong. As my wife had to have major surgery recently and that was an exciting time to try and get a room, I've been there and seen that with my own eyes. Here in Michigan, where we weren't exactly in the news for running out of space, the local hospitals were putting patients in hallways and classrooms for the night.
See link.
Calculating Covid deaths can get complicated quickly. The people who died of rather mundane medical issues because they couldn't be seen in time because the hospitals within 400 miles were full of Covid patients? How exactly do you assign those deaths? They probably would've lived if it weren't for the deathly-sick antivax clusterfucks taking up hospital beds.
Do I have to lay out every single death before you start to see the trends? If so, then you're falling way way short of your supposed prophecy gift. And speaking of, why didn't you warn us about all of this back in early 2019?
But nevermind that. Here's your chance to prove yourself. Give us your prediction for the next big conspiracy to be sniffed out and laid bare, ahead of time. Bonus points if it doesn't include someone who has a page or ten devoted to them in the news every week. And I'll even do this: as I realize that prophetic revelations don't come simply on-demand, I'll leave it as a standing invitation. Whenever the insight strikes.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 03 2021 Not to worry. We simply let 2F notify the community with a posting whenever he feels it, screen shot it then, and wait.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 03 2021 //Do I have to lay out every single death before you start to see the trends?//
No. The news sources should already be doing that, but they're not.
I've been warning you guys that the shit was going to hit the fan in my lifetime for many years now.I spent the last two decades working double-time in order to get me and my family as far from a major centre as possible to a place that has a chance of getting through what I see coming, and managed to pull it off just under the wire.I've also already given you lot the latest thing I see coming.
That our governments are going to start rounding up all of the precious metal.That your neighbours will be conscripted to rat out anyone they suspect to be hoarding any.
...and now we wait.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 03 2021 Documented for posterity.
//Here's your chance to prove yourself. Give us your prediction for the next big conspiracy to be sniffed out and laid bare, ahead of time. Bonus points if it doesn't include someone who has a page or ten devoted to them in the news every week. And I'll even do this: as I realize that prophetic revelations don't come simply on-demand, I'll leave it as a standing invitation. Whenever the insight strikes.// --RayfordSteele, Oct 03 2021
//That our governments are going to start rounding up all of the precious metal. That your neighbours will be conscripted to rat out anyone they suspect to be hoarding any.// --2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 03 2021
I think this is a legitimate prediction, in that there isn't an obvious move to do that at this point. A google search for "precious metal government hoard" didn't give any current news articles, other than some buried treasure in Essex being classified as hoard and similar. There /are/ a number of questions about whether the government can confiscate it.
I think there should be stricter definitions of some parameters, to avoid weird ambiguous edge cases (e.g. North Korea decides to confiscate gold from citizens, or some law changes permissions for confiscation of proceeds of crime, etc). I would consider this prediction validated when there are articles on legitimate news sites (BBC news, etc) about the governmet of a country in the set (Canada, USA, UK, Germany, France) passing a law to allow confiscation of at least one precious metal (from the set : gold, silver, platinum) held by ordinary citizens. This /must/ include that of sentimental value, i.e. wedding rings. Compulsory purchase counts.
I promise that if I edit this post I will describe below what I changed, why and when.-- Loris, Oct 03 2021 Could be, reminds me of the Gold Seizure Act of 1933, but I'm not sure there's even a trillion dollars worth of gold in the USA.
Here are some covid-related predictions: 1. Covid was lab-made and deliberately released. 2. Fully vaccinated people can still get and spread covid. Most covid spread will be in vaccinated people. 3. Covid variants will get worse over time. 4. This abnormal "new normal" of "masks" and "social distancing" will continue to at least 2025. 5. The unvaccinated will be blamed.
Could be worse. Instead of covid, it could have been a Bolshevik revolution based on race instead of on class, or war between Western and Eastern powers. This covid stuff is mild in comparison.-- sninctown, Oct 03 2021 Excellent - a forum for making predictions which hasn't been prematurely tagged as "Blatantly Idiotic"
I predict that, in the name of further reducing the impact of Covid, AIDS, and Global Warming, the media will change their encouragement from turning most men transexual into turning most men asexual. It will become customary for men to seek laboratory intervention to even have children, probably with each other.-- 4and20, Oct 03 2021 // it could have been a Bolshevik revolution based on race instead of on class, or war between Western and Eastern powers//
Ah, those sweet days of summer when I believed things would basically turn out well. Enjoy them while they last, friend.-- Voice, Oct 03 2021 //Here in Michigan, where we weren't exactly in the news for running out of space, the local hospitals were putting patients in hallways and classrooms for the night.//
Were they? Or were they reserving empty rooms for potential covid patients and calling basically any respiratory illness covid so they could make use of at least some of those? and so they could get medicare "covid" money for a case of the flu?-- Voice, Oct 03 2021 I looked at the "death by Covid?" another way: by ignoring "cause of death" entirely. (The stats I found first were for the USA, but if you know where to dig, most countries should be available...) SOMETHING caused a massive jump in deaths (per capita) in April last year, & they remained well above "historical normal" for a long time. (It was a while ago that I looked, so can't comment on the Delta situation...) So if it wasn't Covid causing all these extra people to die, what was it?-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 03 2021 //So if it wasn't Covid causing all these extra people to die, what was it?//
That is not in dispute. A new virus has been released. People with preexisting health conditions are at risk. Do everything you can to protect those people, encourage people to hand sanitize, wear a mask if you feel ill...
...that's common sense.
Start taking away people's rights with mandates unless they conform to mass "vaccination", with something just whipped up, prior to FDA approval, and which also would not have qualified for the, recently removed word 'immune', definition of the word 'vaccine' and I get suspicious.
That's also common sense.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2021 No. The ER was so full that they sent everyone who was not a patient back out.
The nurses I saw were on mandatory overtime and pretty exhausted.
There are ethics, and my doctor friends would slap you sideways if you even suggested that they or their hospital were gaming the system and displacing patients in doing so. Take that sick shit elsewhere.
BTW, the Pfizer vaccine is FDA approved, if that rubber stamp makes you feel better.
"Do everything you can to protect those people." Does everything we can include getting stubborn asses to wear masks or get their shots?
It's a good thing you weren't alive in Britain during WWII. The inconvenience of having to keep your lights doused and curtains drawn might've been objectionable.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 04 2021 //"Do everything you can to protect those people." Does everything we can include getting stubborn asses to wear masks or get their shots?
It's a good thing you weren't alive in Britain during WWII. The inconvenience of having to keep your lights doused and curtains drawn might've been objectionable.//
I have learned here that what you have stated is referred to as a straw-man argument. Whereby the subject of discussion is circumvented by a completely separate argument.
When those who think they can tell me what to do make sense I will listen to them.Not before.
You think this shit is easy for me don't you? That I'm just fucking around?
I'm not.
I gain not a single fucking thing by being frank with you folks. Not one. I tell people the things I see because it is the only way to determine if I still retain my own sanity. Seriously.I've seen so fucking many others lose theirs that it is my greatest fear... so I check it as many ways as I can figure.
The things that pop into my head are completely random. Things I couldn't possibly have concocted. So I put them out there so that I can determine weather the things I see are real or delusion, (I believe I have stated this before).
I will give you an example.It is by no means proof of what I claim... but it might make you wonder as much as I do.
Several years ago now it popped into my head that the Mona Lisa painting was Leonardo painting himself in drag.So I posted it.I have no idea why I was compelled to do so... but I did.
Then, way afterwards it was discovered that the Mona Lisa is the only one of Leonardo's paintings to have the the initials L V scratched into one of the eyeballs of his paintings.
...after I told you guys my prediction.
It is by no means proof that I was correct in my assumption, but there was no reason for me to make an assumption at all in the first place... and yet the fact that I did in order to double check myself should speak volumes. But it doesn't does it? Well it should.
I have no agenda.
I am not trying to con you.
I have nothing to gain by telling you the things I do besides your scorn and derision.
yay me.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2021 Send money.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2021 I tried that, with the help of a Nigerian friend, but you wouldn't give him your bank details.-- pertinax, Oct 04 2021 Actually you do gain quite a bit, psychologically, at least short term. You get to maintain your narrative. You solidify your reasoning and position in your own mind, which brings comfort in the face of the risk of change or loss. It's that discomfort of potential loss of your narrative as a piece of your self-image that scares you the most I'd bet. It's in effect a self-con.
My "straw man" was to a similar situation. Personal action required by government edict for shared safety from an uncontrolled enemy.
And there was alot done during WWII by either side that didn't make a lot of sense, in hindsight. But there ain't nobody during a war that has all the information and all the time in the world to explain to the holdouts the entire backstory of why they need to do 'x'.
I used to get "insights" myself back when I was religiously-observant, actively defending it, and cared about such things. They were usually observations or insights or sometimes just blurry lightbulbs that lead me to hints of some surprising and beautiful conclusions or further research into what others had written about it, to find myself having the very same thoughts as those with masters in theology and such. I even reached out and engaged with an eminent professor about my thoughts and his writings, we had a nice back-and- forth for awhile about his writings and my own variations. One Mr. Alvin Plantinga. I had no theological training save my own exploration and church attendance. I felt special, and that became comfortable.
But you see, now I look back and shake my head and see that it was just all religion and its pseudo-logical sirens songs, and therefore a tragic waste of time about fantasy that only made inroads to reality when it needed them to sustain itself.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 04 2021 //It's in effect a self-con.//
On the other hand, some form of self- deception may be an unavoidable part of the human condition, to the extent that the alternative is terrifying existential angst. If you're living with the terrifying existential angst, then you're probably not functioning too well, but if you've never had it, then maybe you've never got beyond self- deception.
Camus writes well about this, though I don't entirely agree with his resolution of it.
Wait; I'm getting pompous and wandering off the point, and I think the point is, if we drive away all the crazy people, then there might not be many people left, and those that are left might not be so interesting to talk to.-- pertinax, Oct 04 2021 It's more comfortable to say I might be wrong than to bear moral responsibity for failing to stop the covid false-flag attack.-- sninctown, Oct 04 2021 Genuinely curious: what is the covid false flag attack? More specifically, who is attacking, what are they attacking, how are they attacking, why are they attacking, and (least important) whose flag is being falsified?-- calum, Oct 04 2021 Regarding [2]'s latest prediction -- many cell phones contain precious metals. Is he not predicting that people's smart phones will be confiscated?-- 4and20, Oct 04 2021 [4and20]; once military vehicles become electric, they'll come for your batteries...-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 04 2021 Ask your doctor if anti-paranoia medication is right for you.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 04 2021 Big picture: releasing the virus on purpose then using the resulting pandemic as a pretext for social and financial changes. And maybe this is the right thing to do.
Is there a pill for inability to consider more than one perspective at a time?-- sninctown, Oct 04 2021 Ha!
This is too rich. I guess bone structure comparisons of Leonardo's subjects has spawned a project to dig the man up to see if the Mona Lisa is indeed a self portrait. [link] Hahahaha... Stop. Stop! I'm gonna pee.
Remember, you heard it here first folks.We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2021 //Is there a pill for inability to consider more than one perspective at a time?//
There sort-of is, and it's called dialectical logic. Unfortunately (a) it's *really* hard to swallow and digest, and (b) if it's washed down with Marxism then it doesn't work and has horrible side- effects.-- pertinax, Oct 05 2021 Um...
"The identification of the subject as Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, is based upon accounts by Giorgio Vasari (1511-74). His account of the artist’s life which first appeared in 1550 is the only source up to now to name the subject and which also allowed an approximate dating of between 1503 and 1506, which means this identification came nearly 50 years after the painting. There have been doubts up to this day about the validity of these comments, as Vasari is known for his anecdotal tendancies. Leonardo himself makes no mention of the Mona Lisa in his sketches and notice books."
Yeah... there's some doubt.
Regardless of whether I lose my left testicle or not... the possibility popped into my head as a completely random thought long before any such discussion, I disclosed it to you all before any hoopla began, and now it's a thing.
Like I said.Not proof one way or the other in the slightest... just really fucking strange and the fact is that I have led a lifetime of similar really strange occurrences so I share them with others.
Keeping them to myself seems... pointless, while sharing them lets me determine whether I've lost my shit or not.
I was raised by mentally ill people. I've kinda been like steeped in it. My existential crisis came at like fourteen. If mental illness were a disease I've spent a lifetime building up antibodies.Y'all think I'm nuts?You should meet my kin.
I'm the head warden.
Okay here's another insight or premonition or whatever you want to name it.
Mentally ill people should be revered.
Their minds have attempted and failed to run the gauntlet.
"I" did not fail.Got pushed way past the point where I should be drooling idiot in some sanctuary somewhere but instead I somehow made it through and now get glimpses of possibilities before they happen.Since there are infinite realities things don't really solidify until the last instant.I've done this before... many times.At some point in my life there will be a single instant of time I am able to change from the last incarnation...
...because nobody else seems to be aware of the nuances.
...and I have to put up with your shit while I figure it out.
How 'bout them apples?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2021 I'm sort of with [2 fries] again. There have been quite a few mentally ill people in my family, and like [2 fries], I feared and resisted it. But, on the other hand, Kirkagaard apparently once wrote that intelligence comes from paranoia. It's certainly possible to be oversensitive, but in my family's case, people reacted by just shutting down. As a matter of fact, I hear more bizarre conspiracies from so-called sane people. It's a kind of gift and a curse trying to track ALL the nuance of the world while steadily trying to find an all-emcompassing sense to it.-- 4and20, Oct 05 2021 The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.
NB: If I stop posting for a long time, contact the soundcloud rapper who calls himself "Plowman" a.k.a. "Tech Rap" from San Francisco (not me! not endorsed by me!) and tell him that this website is wondering what happened to his dark web bro sn;-from-ctown... He would know how to get in touch with me. (My employer continues to teach Critical Race Theory, i.e. racial Marxism, which violates the 14th, 5th, and 1st Amendment and would lead to a disastrous war followed by population collapse if implemented, same as the last few times countries tried this kind of thing; and several coworkers have told me I am "famous"; they didn't say why but I guess it is for not only denying my own guilt, but for ending up in a situation where it's clear that the people teaching this stuff are obviously guilty per their own teaching.) I don't expect to go anywhere, but, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.-- sninctown, Oct 05 2021 //Mentally ill people should be revered. //
See annotations to linked idea.-- pertinax, Oct 05 2021 //Leonardo faked his death// So the turtles thing is true as well! My god how deep does it go-- pocmloc, Oct 05 2021 Well then I guess I get to cross; Find someone calling themselves a1 and amuse them, off my bucket list.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2021 You're a plumber arn't you, A1? And an electrician.-- Loris, Oct 05 2021 And the Great North Road of course [link]-- Frankx, Oct 05 2021 Everyone knows that conspiracies are a right-wing kinda thing. The left isn't capable.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 05 2021 //There are ethics, and my doctor friends would slap you sideways if you even suggested that they or their hospital were gaming the system and displacing patients in doing so.//
Don't put words in my mouth. I suggested they were reserving rooms for potential covid patients and gaming the system just so they could undo some of that. Thereby implying the setting aside was required. By way of coincidence I was in a Michigan emergency room a couple of weeks ago myself. The waiting room wasn't full but they were taking in one patient every hour from it. No respiratory complaints among them. Just evidence the hospital wasn't properly staffed even for a slow night. Let me guess, this too is evidence of covid.-- Voice, Oct 07 2021 Possibly. The nurses have become rather burnt out lately.
Here, have some more words. They're quite tasty...-- RayfordSteele, Oct 07 2021 //Just evidence the hospital wasn't properly staffed even for a slow night. Let me guess, this too is evidence of covid?//
Could be. I don't know about where you are but here many doctors and nurses were among those peacfuly protesting these mandates outside of the hospitals they work for.The same hospitals they are no longer welcome to work in unless they comply to the arbitrary mandates and take shots they know no longer conform to the past definition of the word vaccine since they confer zero immunity.
Government's response?Make it illegal to protest outside of hospitals of course.
Last months heroes... this months unemployed.What a joke.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 08 2021 The trouble with facts is that there are plenty of facts to support all perspectives on any issue. Same with statistics. As long as we're blasting Truth Goo willy-nilly, here's a perspective:
Atlantis was a real place, located on the Atlantic mid- ocean ridge when it was above sea level. Their culture's ruins were hidden or destroyed for political reasons, but foretold periodic cataclysms / mass extinction events every 40,000 years or so, or as Lovecraft wrote: When the stars were right, [Cthulhu and friends] could plunge from world to world through the sky. The video "I Pet Goat II" appears to depict Covid as a Christ figure who leads those in the know out of the cities before the next cataclysm, in which existing towers and caves and some ancient monuments are destroyed. This is pretty much certainly the wrong understanding of events, but I like to speculate about it anyway, and it feels less dishonest than being told to wear a cloth face covering that demonstrably doesn't stop the spread rather than rolling my own high grade filtration and face shield system.-- sninctown, Oct 08 2021 So here's the deal: go explain to the hospitals down south, say in Louisiana, who are filled beyond capacity exactly how it is that their wards are full of an amazing percentage of non-vaxed people, make a coherent theory that passes the laugh test, then come back to me. Until then, just no.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 09 2021 I got the two doses of vaccine because I see the chance as the same as me rolling round underneath a house and getting stabbed with a dirty nail. It just adds to my deck of cards to play , immunologically speaking.
Then again, I wonder if I make my immune system bolster looking outward , I'm up for my own cells running amuck more.
Well, I have to die of something.-- wjt, Oct 09 2021 Just because people are actually getting sick and dying of covid, and the vaccine is successfully preventing people of dying of covid, doesn't mean there isn't a grand conspiracy.-- sninctown, Oct 09 2021 //go explain to the hospitals down south, say in Louisiana, who are filled beyond capacity//
In Louisiana hospitals are reported by the state to be at 0-25% capacity due to covid. Linky.
So my explanation is that you are getting your news from a source that is lying to you.-- Voice, Oct 09 2021 //Just because people are actually getting sick and dying of covid, and the vaccine is successfully preventing people of dying of covid, doesn't mean there isn't a grand conspiracy.//
Never let a good crisis go to waste.-- Voice, Oct 09 2021 ^ (+)
//Is that in all of Canada, or just Quebec?//
It is being written into law here as we speak.[link]
Coming soon to a neighbourhood near you...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 Protests here were completely peaceful. Decades of pro-life etc. protests have peacefully been held in front of hospitals... no problem.
Suddenly health care professionals are no longer allowed their own voice.
...and you think there is no con?
really?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 What, they’ve lost he ability to speak? They cannot write? They’re chained up in some dungeon without food or water or internet access or homing pigeons?
When they start rounding you up and putting you in camps because of your racial heritage, then you can complain that they’ve gone too far.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 09 2021 //When they start rounding you up and putting you in camps because of your racial heritage, then you can complain that they’ve gone too far.//
Well see, you want to shut the gate 'before' the horse gets out. Not much use complaining after it gets out.
//“Here?” Your town or province, this week? All of Canada in the past month or year?//
Doesn't matter. What does matter is that you've chosen to attack the periphery of my statement while trying to ignoring the important part about doctors and nurses, (who probably know more than you or I), protesting arbitrary mandates based on a non-vaccine which will have them blackballed from the medical community for daring to resist.
To reiterate;
These non-vaccines will not stop the spread of the virus, they will not help me fight off a virus I've already gotten over, and they will not protect others from me.Yet I am to be punished until I comply.
It's a con for power and the more people who capitulate the greater the level of hatred directed towards those who refuse to.It is almost impossible to convince someone they've been conned.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 [2_F] You might find this BMJ article interesting [link]
The BMJ is probably the most robustly incorruptible medical publication in the UK. Published by the BMA (Trade Union for doctors and physicians).
The article supports your position about natural immunity and there being questionable value in having a vaccine if you’ve already tested positive for COV-19-- Frankx, Oct 09 2021 From my link:
"The study also found that when recovered patients boosted their natural protection with a single vaccine shot — as recommended by Israeli health officials — their protection reached new highs, and they had approximately half the infection risk of other recovered patients."-- 4and20, Oct 09 2021 The Lancet [link] publishes a report (the SIREN study) that shows prior infection to give at least 90% protection against re-infection.
So it seems likely that a vaccination after infection does boost immunity further, it also seems to be the case that the risk of side-effects also increases. It’s not clear whether the residual 10% risk of infection outweighs the risk of serious side- effects.
Also worth noting that across all vaccines, protection against infection is in the 65-85% range, but protection against serious illness (hospitalisation) is in the mid-90%.
And both natural and vaccinated protection fade significantly with time.
So still: if you’re unvaccinated and haven’t already had COVID, get the vaccine.-- Frankx, Oct 09 2021 There are a number of countries and/or islands which have gone largely unvaccinated for more than 18 months of the pandemic, and yet they still experiences waves of exceptionally high covid case numbers and deaths. I was considering using the graphs of daily cases per country on Wikipedia to guesstimate timespan between peaks, but my guess is that prior Covid recovery is not producing either lasting immunity or preventing retransmission.-- 4and20, Oct 09 2021 See?That's what I don't get. I am somehow now considered selfish because I refuse to place myself in harms way because some other talking monkey tells me to.
If the jab doesn't do a damned thing to protect others then society, with it's unwarranted, unconstitutional, and possibly illegal pressure, is welcome to go piss up a rope.I know it's hard to admit you've been conned but ain't no number of ya draggin me into it just because the con was too big not to fall for.
Individual humans are smart and usually rational.Groups of people are a panicky critter which quickly becomes a mindless mob easily manipulated by whomever controls the media doled out.They don't tell folks that doctors nurses and police men are protesting this bullshit, they just keep hammering the population with ever increasing doom'n'gloom stories while handing out small rays of hope just slightly prior to slamming down more restrictions because we somehow ruined the opportunity to be good we were given by people who have assumed power over our lives...
...because you give it to them!
I don't.Deal with it and get off my back.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 Everyone is free to make choices for themselves but they have to take the consequences of that choice.
Wanting expensive help when options are there to limit the cost seems a bit harsh on the rest of us.
Then again, we mercifully treat idiots that don't use seat belts.-- wjt, Oct 09 2021 I didn't take up a hospital bed, I healed. I've avoided going to doctors my whole life unless I need to be stitched up because Murphy really likes me and because it hurts.Not one of them have ever listened when I tell them that anesthesia doesn't work so good on me so I've had a dentist with a waiting room full of kids crack a tooth with no freezing and extract it in three pieces while trying not to scream. Another severed the nerve in my jaw with the syringe. I woke up three separate times once during the same endoscopic procedure and can no longer brush my back teeth without retching.etc.etc.
I'm not taking up your hospital beds.Give me my fucking rights back.I'll take my chances... as is my right.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 Hands up.
Who's been put through Stockholm syndrome before?<raises hand>
Anybody?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 09 2021 <raises hand> <twitches lower eyelid>-- sninctown, Oct 10 2021 So weight on ethics rather than laws. I'll agree with that.-- wjt, Oct 10 2021 Sorry to hear that [sninctown].<eyelid twitches a little in response>Con-dar is one of my side-effects. I am overly sensitive to being conned and I loathe those who use others entirely.
Good luck trying it twice is all I can say.
//Go ahead. Stay away from others as much as you can and make sure they know your position so they can decide if they want to keep their distance from you.//
Will that keep them safe?
Your medical history has never been and is still none of my fucking business.(I'm debating hanging that as a sign on my front door)How long before the hospitality industry can no longer host you without compliance?
Fools.
These non-vaccines are a placebo to keep 'free' societies quiescent until it's too late to do anything about what's happening in places not yet effected near you.
Let's hear some feedback from our Aussie contingency.
You guys still allowed to share news from down-under? Shit went sideways fast didn't it?
First they came for the anti-vaxxers...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 10 2021 No wait. First they disarmed you all... and then they came for the anti-vaxxers.
My bad.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 10 2021 Can't speak for the other states, but here in Western Australia, things continue fine. There are virtually no restrictions on normal life, except it's a hassle visiting other states. The other day, I was passed by a lone cyclist who was playing amplified songs about conspiracy by the CDC (which doesn't exist in Australia). This cyclist was riding through a park which was full of families who didn't have to wear masks or social-distance, for the simple reason that we have successfully kept the virus out.
There are a few stickers around on lamp-posts urging revolt against the new normal, except that the new normal is very similar to the old normal, so there's really not much to revolt against.
That's how it is here in reality. What have you been hearing, [2 fries]?-- pertinax, Oct 10 2021 Well I'm glad someone's optimistic. What happens next, when covid infections inevitably continue despite the vaccinations?-- sninctown, Oct 10 2021 Most likely, we'll eventually have to open our borders for economic reasons, at which point infections will start (and I emphasise "start", not "continue") and hundreds of people will die. But that'll be better than the thousands of people who would have died if we'd opened up before getting vaccinated.
It's a pity, because literally no-one in this state has died from COVID* in more than a year. However, it became inevitable because other jurisdictions failed to wipe out the virus when they had the chance.
*neither from COVID, nor with COVID, nor by, in or on COVID.-- pertinax, Oct 10 2021 You of all people shouldn't believe what you see in the media [2 Fries]. Pertinax has it right. If our state had the same Covid death rate per Capita as the US we would have had 5,500+ deaths. We've had 9. Total. From the beginning. Everything is wide open here, my wife and I went to a fully- crowded restaurant last night - not a mask in sight. I speak DAILY to people in the eastern parts of Australia and they're mystified at the wild-eyed reports that are showing up in the media about how terrible their lives are. (Hint: They're not). Go onto the /r/Australia subReddit on Reddit to see what real Australians think about these reports.
If Australia as a whole had the same death rate per Capita as Canada, we'd have 19,980 corpses instead of 1,432. Those 18,858 lives mean something to us. I know, I know, many of those still living people may have other health issues and "ve must let zee veak perish" for the good of society and all, but I'd rather not.
I suspect my own father *may* have died of Covid in Canada this Xmas, but by the time a family friend told me he'd really been struggling to breath the prior week, he'd already been cremated and no tests were ever done. Doesn't matter to him after the fact I guess, but I bet there's tonnes of other cases which aren't identified because the 'person was old anyway'. Have a look at the 'excess mortality' chart [link] which shows that the plague nations like the UK and US have mortality rates 18% and 24% above expected levels while Australia...doesn't.
The virus WILL come to Western Australia and probably it will be soon. We're finally getting an adequate supply of vaccines but have only 50% of the 16+ folks vaccinated yet. My family of 5 is double-jabbed as of 2 days ago and we've done all we can reasonably do. I just hope we continue to ignore our tiny contingent of anti-vax whack-a-doodles and get somewhere near the levels to provide herd immunity. After that, it's just 'herd thinning'.
I have been in and out of hospital for some treatments and talk to the staff. They are petrified of an outbreak here and are all vaxxed themselves. As for the whole 'You'll get it anyway and natural immunity is best' line - maybe. But I'd rather be vaxxed first THEN get a breakthrough case with a 19x less chance of serious illness or death. That whole '1 in 50 chance of dying' thing doesn't appeal.
And if I needed a gun, for some reason, I could get one but doubt it would help much against a virus. Unless someone can tell me how it would.
anyone?-- AusCan531, Oct 10 2021 //That's how it is here in reality. What have you been hearing, [2 fries]?//
That your police are granting themselves excessive power.That they've locked down your citizens.That they are shooting rubber bullets at protesters.That Farcebook banned any news coming out.
The rumour(though I'm pretty sure this is a false one... at least I hope it is),is that if you get pulled over down there and don't have proof of vaccination the cops will inject you themselves.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 10 2021 It's very simple: The obedient are permitted all other liberties for now, and so they don't feel repressed. Only those who disobey will notice any significant repression. And for those who believe the official statements obedience with this demand is something they would perform without any duress. To such people those unwilling to conform are on the other team and therefore are evil and not worth worrying about.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say something about slicing rights away from the populace one at a time and that the right to refuse medical treatment is a pretty damned important one.-- Voice, Oct 10 2021 I don't agree with everything the government is doing - that never happens anyway. But it ain't what you see in the media and the VAST majority of the people are fine with the new rules until we get the vax rates up.
I know [2 Fries] everyone but you is being conned, you see the truth and you're tired of 'being right'. You remind me of the guy in the 200 person marching band who, after the big parade, states proudly to his mother - "Did you notice that I was the only one in step!"
[2 Fries] You should know better than to go onto Facebook. Most of what you've heard is rubbish.
[Voice], I'm happy to give as much airtime to people going on about their 'rights' as they want as they like - on the proviso that they give equal time to their responsibilities.
Seriously you guys, hypothetically, WHAT IF there really was a virulent pandemic ripping through the population (Ebola or such) and you're in charge. What WOULD you guys do other than limit the spread through lockdowns & restricting travel until a vaccine could be developed? What would you do with those numnies who insist upon 'their rights' so they can go to Starbucks anyway - no matter the consequences to anyone else?-- AusCan531, Oct 11 2021 //The rumour//
You are correct: it's false.
The steady increase in the powers of police and government ministers *is* a real phenomenon, and you're right to be worried about that, but that's been going on at least since 9/11, and is only incidentally COVID- related.-- pertinax, Oct 11 2021 //but that's been going on at least since 9/11, and is only incidentally COVID- related.//
Yep... seriously premeditated. Long-con for sure. As far as I can tell been around since Christ was a cowboy.
//[2 Fries] You should know better than to go onto Facebook. Most of what you've heard is rubbish.//
You've met me and you should know better than to assume that my friend. This ain't my first rodeo.Just Google "Australian police covid" and start reading the headlines.
//so they can go to Starbucks anyway - no matter the consequences to anyone else?//
That's my whole point!
What are the consequences you incur by my noncompliance?
What are they?!
Non-vaccinated or un-non-vaccinated, I can still give this virus to your kids... but one of those "types" of people can come for dinner at your house, and one of those "types" of people can not...
...because you've been told so.
I just see folks buying into being told that they are "types".-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2021 Everything I said, besides the cops sticking you with needles themselves, was taken directly from news sources.Here, I will do it for you. [link]
That cop-injection thing is just a verbal rumour going around from friends and family of people living there.
The rest of what I said is bang on the money.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2021 Loss of freedoms // that's been going on at least since 9/11 // doesn't sound good... i don't want to get too controversial here so instead i humbly submit a few out-of- context quotes from "Deus Ex" (2000), an entertaining videogame: - Ask me, I think the government [C4'd the statue]. They want people to think the NSF are terrorists. - For a hundred years, there’s been a conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people. - I think the government made the plague on purpose to get rid of the population growth. - UNATCO assumes that people are incapable of protecting themselves and therefore should submit to surveillance and intimidation by an outside force. - The Gray Death is a man-made virus. Everyone up to the President is at UNATCO's mercy as long as UNATCO controls the supply of Ambrosia.-- sninctown, Oct 11 2021 I'm sorry [2_F] - I think some of this debate gets heated because we're all agreeing on some stuff without actually being explicit about what we're disagreeing on. I'm grateful that because of this debate I looked up the effectiveness of natural immunity - which was enlightening.
So, a summary of the main points of contention (and my position on each)
1) COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective: No. 65%-85% protection from infection, ~90% protection from life-threatening illness
2) Natural Immunity is more effective: Yes, probably. ~90% protection from infection. But you have to suffer a life-threatening illness to get it
3) COVID-19 is an engineered virus, deliberately released from a Govt-sponsored lab (in Wuhan/somewhere else): No. So many reasons.
4) The Government is corrupt (or perhaps politicians have their own selfish interests): Yes. (extent depends on which politician/government)
5) The Government want to limit the rights of the individual: Yes. This is fundamental in the concept of Government
6) The Government has passed legislation during the COVID pandemic that undermines rights: Yes. UK Gov. have rushed through some dodgy legislation while people weren’t paying attention
7) Big Pharma routinely lies to us, and have friends in the Govt: Yes, quite likely.
8) Big Pharma have rushed vaccine production, and lied to us about effectiveness and side-effects: Kind of. Vaccine development, testing and production was rushed. Effectiveness figures have been revised downward. Side effects have been downplayed
9) Big Pharma lied to us and used their friends in authority to knowingly release ineffective and dangerous vaccines just to make money: No.
10) The Govt/Scientists knew this was coming: Yes. Epidemiologists and virologists have been warning for decades that a major pandemic was imminent. Many Govts did not pay enough attention because they did not understand the risk.
11) The Govt had plans for this: Yes, in response to the warnings from scientists, some Governments had some emergency preparedness plans in place. Probably not enough though.
12) The Govt want to take away your guns: Yes. Nations with fewer guns have fewer gun-related crimes.
13) The Govt can read all your emails, social media, etc: Yes. But they’re probably not that interested.
14) If you talk negatively about the vaccine on social media, you’ll be “silenced”: Yes. FB and others are blocking “antivax-type content” because some people who get convinced not to have the vaccine will die. Misinformation genuinely costs lives.-- Frankx, Oct 11 2021 // I'm happy to give as much airtime to people going on about their 'rights' as they want as they like - on the proviso that they give equal time to their responsibilities.//
The right to free speech? That's a pretty important one. Too bad you've immediately crippled your conceptualization of even that as you conflated allowing people to talk about rights with allowing people to have rights. At this point you may as well be arguing about which boot heel is softest on one's face.-- Voice, Oct 12 2021 Okay [2 Fries], I amend my previous comment to say that it's *mostly* BS. Like I say, I speak to people in Melbourne and Sydney almost daily.-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 [Voice] Yep,Free speech is an important right. Doesn't mean anyone is forced to listen to you or call you out when they think you're full of it. Once again, another anti-vaxxer going to lecture me about the importance of 'their rights' with nada to say about their responsibilities.
Actions have Consequences - and not only to the 'free speaker'. This time, these 'protesters' in Melbourne who were smashing down office doors also nicely managed to spread Covid around a city which was working hard to eliminate a minor break-out. Now other people will get ill and possibly die because of it.
I know you guys think the virus (or its consequences) are fake news. The Vaccine is fake news. The lockdowns are fascism, etc. but neither [2 Fries] nor [Voice] answered my question: "WHAT IF there really was a virulent pandemic ripping through the population (Ebola or such) and you're in charge. What WOULD you guys do other than limit the spread through lockdowns & restricting travel until a vaccine could be developed? What would you do with those numnies who insist upon 'their rights' so they can go to Starbucks anyway - no matter the consequences to anyone else?"-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 // "WHAT IF there really was a virulent pandemic ripping through the population (Ebola or such) and you're in charge. What WOULD you guys do other than limit the spread through lockdowns & restricting travel until a vaccine could be developed? What would you do with those numnies who insist upon 'their rights' so they can go to Starbucks anyway - no matter the consequences to anyone else?"//
So this is a dress rehearsal is it?
These non-vaccines will not stop the transmission of this virus. It will run its course and all we can do is slow it down. I agree with this.Wash your hands.Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing or just get the chills.Take whatever preventive medicines present themselves if you feel that you are at risk.Common sense.
What are my responsibilities exactly?
Putting myself in harms way so that you can get your placebo and pretend that you are safe from all of this if I conform?
Yeah... no.How about no?
You are still a carrier. I am still a carrier.Believing that one of us deserves rights the other does not is not what I call sane.It is a conditioned response whether you want to admit it or not.
This plandemic has nothing to do with saving the masses.Quite the opposite if my gut is correct yet again. You have no idea how much I hope it's wrong this time.
I guess we'll see won't we? Either way, keep your definition-changed non-vaccines the fuck away from me just because I bloody well said so.
I need no other reason, as I have not given away the right for anyone else to demand one, so any other reason you can also think of will do just fine.
Label me whateverthehellyouwant... I ain't budging.
The only herd immunity being built globally is against Stockholm Syndrome.You'll see.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 12 2021 So no serious answer to my question but a bunch more paranoid "it's all a plandemic" BS. You say I'm not sane while going on about shadowy forces in the background always planning nefarious ways to 'get you' and hold you down. You're the only one smart enough to see through this because of your 'gut'.
You do that while I'll do my bit to keep my fellow citizens alive. PS, beware of 'big lifejacket' [link]-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 TRUTH GOO-- sninctown, Oct 12 2021 Can anyone show us that vaccines have zero or little impact on the likelihood of transmission?
Because here's what the CDC claims: "Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) "-- 4and20, Oct 12 2021 Hi AusCan531, I'll try & give you a serious answer. For me lockdown & travel restrictions are not a serious problem & they clearly slowed down the spread of the virus (masks are a joke though; most people don't wear them properly & re-use the same one. That seems to me to be what Bruce Schneier would call 'security theatre'). However, politicians world wide have seen the crisis as an opportunity to grant themselves additional powers that are not going to go away. At no point was there an appeal to people's common sense. Nope. Straight to emergency measures. Clearly governments did not & do not trust citizens to act responsibly. Is it any wonder that many citizens reciprocate the feeling? So, for me, this reflects a much deeper political issue that goes well beyond the virus. Am I an anti-vaxxer? No. I've had vaccinations a-plenty. But things like Covid passports set my alarm bells ringing. In the UK there have been several attempts to introduce ID cards. All of them defeated because they impact on people's freedom & change the relationship between the government & citizens. And now we see that once again they are trying to sneak them in under cover of a health crisis. COVID may be the casus belli but it is not the true agenda. Is there some enormous conspiracy? Nope. There doesn't have to be. People in power are opportunistic & grab for more power when the chance comes their way. So don't give them the opportunity. Get your vaccination or don't. People who do shouldn't have too much to fear from those who don't. Those who don't have no excuses if they contract the disease. But, in this day & age, compulsory anything leads to compulsory monitoring. Fishbone for the idea wjt, because of the political agenda it represents, although I kinda like the helping not shooting idea of the game.-- DrBob, Oct 12 2021 Thanks Dr Bob. Great anno. Depending upon which way you look at it, there are 2 sayings which may be relevant:
"Just because someone is paranoid, it doesn't mean they don't have enemies."
and the one I think fits best
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." - Sigmund Freud.
I don't care too much if some individuals choose to bunker down into their position that the virus or the vaccine or the entire medical community is all an evil plot then choose not to get the jab personally. I do care that they insist on propagating that conspiratorial nonsense out to others - especially on this otherwise happy little website. I was going to ignore it this time round and move on until there was a specific request to hear from the Aussie contingent who were presumably under the jackboots of fascism or such hyped up nonsense. . I responded.-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 // I responded.// Yep. Ditto on that! :)-- DrBob, Oct 12 2021 My position on many things like this is: Educate first, legislate later. Very few people complain about wearing a seatbelt, because we have all learned that it's actually a good idea. Some people still don't "get it", & those people get fined when they are caught (depending on local laws). Likewise, vaccines. We are in the "cross-over" period; much education has been done, but some people still haven't learned yet, so laws etc are being put in place.-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 12 2021 //Educate first, legislate later.//
That's all well and good, until thousands of people are dying daily. Dying isn't the only downside - surviving can have costs too. [link]
Believe it or not, I have sympathy for the position of people against being 'forced' to vaccinate. I mean, my family and I done so willingly, but that position has merit and it's certainly something worth discussion - even heated discussion. I haven't forced my employees to do so even though I legally could.
That's very different though than saying 'the virus was planned' 'it's no worse than the flu' 'the vaccine doesn't work' 'the vaccine does work but it's full of brain-controlling nano- chips or whatever' and spreading misinformation trying to convince other people not to get the jab. I also don't go for the "You're all conned fools, I'm always right and you'll see - you'll ALL see mwuhhahahha" BS.-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 Nice summation [limpnotes] but I'd add one more category
5. The Vaccine is good and people not getting it contributes to 10s or 100s of thousands of unnecessary deaths, which is kinda bad and should not be encouraged.-- AusCan531, Oct 12 2021 ^Umm if avoiding death and lingering ailments ain't good enough, then good luck to you. Although...Vax rates DO go up when people are offered free donuts or lottery entries so you may be onto something. Blow me down if I know why the first isn't enough but the second is.-- AusCan531, Oct 13 2021 I did answer your question [AusCan], not that there is any one brain running this show but if it were up to me I would institute exactly what I said.Common sense.
This virus will run its course and all we can do is slow it down.
Restricting personal freedoms while every single person remains a carrier is an arbitrary bias not based on logic. It is based on control and too many chefs in the kitchen.
As long as mandates are not based on logic then following them only enables the establishment of a very dangerous precedence which I for one am not on board with.That's all.
I speak for not one single person other than myself......but I highly doubt I am alone.
I've just lost the few fucks I had to give about how other people's offence somehow became my responsibility.
What exactly 'was' my responsibility again? You didn't really answer.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 13 2021 [a1]; where is that version of the Golden Rule from? It reads like it's (a translation) from the Qu'ran.-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 13 2021 Good words, but what is the meaning?
It's obvious to me from the rhythm of history that // COVID-19 is an engineered virus, deliberately released // but admittedly it's a bit out there to consider this. Oh well, I tried (to persuade the people to call for something less destructive). Presumably I will be wrong, and my wrongness will become obvious within the next year, as rising vaccination rates eliminate covid transmission. Ah well. At least these days it's marginally acceptable to wear a respirator to buy groceries, which looks very cyberpunk.-- sninctown, Oct 13 2021 //"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole of the Law, all the rest is commentary."//
Great.I agree to these terms and conditions and in addition also promise not to use my power to turn your friends/neighbours /relatives/employers /etc... against you until you conform to my will even if I wouldn't mind that being done to me.
Deal?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 14 2021 //that version of the Golden Rule//
I believe it's traditionally known as "the Silver Rule", since, unlike the golden rule, it does not ask anyone to be actively helpful.
(I'm not making a polemical point here, just being a history- of- ideas nerd; carry on, everyone).-- pertinax, Oct 14 2021 Yes, however actually using those powers is superfluous in this case, when one's charming personality suffices.-- sninctown, Oct 14 2021 //Thank you for this. Just curious though, do you believe you have this power?//
I was asked what I would do if I was in charge so I Just assumed I must have been offered the position.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 14 2021 First, this virus is never going to "run it's course". At least not for decades. At this point it has multiple animal reservoirs, and is widely considered endemic. So a decision to not get what protection you can is not just short term.
Second, of course everyone "could" be a carrier. But your odds on being one are somewhere between 3:1 and 9:1 worse if you aren't vaccinated. The Israeli data, which had some of the worst numbers to date showed that you were 3x more likely to have a Covid infection if you weren't vaccinated than if you were. Various studies where the complete population of an area were tested regularly produced significantly better numbers.
And every one of those vaccinated people who don't get it also don't pass it on. And that's why vaccine mandates exist, and have as long as vaccines have existed. Just as our laws prohibit the freedom to drive drunk, they are permitted to prohibit the freedom to spread infection unnecessarily. This prohibition represents a compelling government interest, vaccination is narrowly tailored to achieve it, and is the least intrusive way of achieving that interest.
And yes, that last sentence represents the total requirements of strict scrutiny.-- MechE, Oct 14 2021 Ooh, compelling government interest. Hold on a minute, let me get my head in just the right position for some serious boot licking. If it's good for the government it's good for all of us!-- Voice, Oct 14 2021 Strictly speaking, vaccination works *against* the government's interest, to the extent that, if lots of old people died a little earlier, then governments could stop paying their pensions and (depending on jurisdiction) health benefits.
Clearly, some fiendishly cunning double bluff is in play here.-- pertinax, Oct 14 2021 Yep. Layers. Mostly psychological in nature.
//First, this virus is never going to "run it's course". At least not for decades. At this point it has multiple animal reservoirs, and is widely considered endemic. So a decision to not get what protection you can is not just short term.//
Oh its gonna run its course all right. There's no stuffing the Genie back into the bottle.
Well, first off that decision to accept or not accept protection is mine to make, not societies, and since I survived the first wave of it my body has produced it's own antibodies so getting jabbed will do neither myself or the public at large a damned bit of good. It's not about protecting us, it's about compliance.
//Second, of course everyone "could" be a carrier. But your odds on being one are somewhere between 3:1 and 9:1 worse if you aren't vaccinated. The Israeli data, which had some of the worst numbers to date showed that you were 3x more likely to have a Covid infection if you weren't vaccinated than if you were. Various studies where the complete population of an area were tested regularly produced significantly better numbers.//
Now see those numbers are saying two different things. Carrying the covid virus on your person and having a covid infection are not the same thing are they? Yet you would swap one for the other as proof.Since only the "vaccinated" will be travelling, then only "vaccinated" people will be spreading this outside of the lock-down areas arbitrarily imposed on non-compliers.
//And every one of those vaccinated people who don't get it also don't pass it on. And that's why vaccine mandates exist, and have as long as vaccines have existed.//
Blatantly not true. If there is any disinformation to point your finger at it is that assumption. That as long as you comply with the shots you are not a carrier.Total horseshit.
Vaccine mandates exist because they were based on the previous definition of the word 'Vaccine'. Actual vaccines conforming to the previous definition which was changed to facilitate this shit-show confer immunity to the percentage of people they are effective on.
Immunity!
That word was removed from the definition and these Non-Vaccines confer immunity to exactly zero percent of the population and since the mandate laws were written with the previous definition in mind these Non-Mandates are invalid. They have been shoved down our throats through verbal sleight-of-hand.
No immunity?
Then it is not a vaccine. It is a pharma-band-aid masquerading as a vaccine while assuming the sweeping powers attributed to the real McCoy.
Sounds to me like we need to start calling these mandatory shots something other than the word vaccine because it is the crux which this entire con pivots on.
How about we call them what they really are, inoculations, just like the flu shots which don't allow governments the power to take away an individuals rights when they they say "Thanks but no thanks."
How about that?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 15 2021 You do realize that back when the word was created, they had significantly less understanding of the mechanics of immunity, don't you? You're conflating historical etymological imprecision with intentional deception.
And you still haven't adequately answered the question concerning an Ebola strain breakout.
And Ian Watson's short quip fails to address the truly deranged.
If it's all just hype, then why not prove it? Go wander around the COVID wing, give a big ole hot kiss to the first younger ventilated patient you see, and report back in a couple months. Be sure and wear a sign though declaring your intentions so people can avoid you like the plague.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 15 2021 //You do realize that back when the word was created, they had significantly less understanding of the mechanics of immunity, don't you? You're conflating historical etymological imprecision with intentional deception.//
I am saying that not one single individual human has been rendered immune to this virus yet rights over my life have been assumed based on past definitions not current ones. These things are usually publicaly debated before changes occur. That has not been the case this time... comply or you will lose your standing in society and job citizen. No arguments!
//And you still haven't adequately answered the question concerning an Ebola strain breakout.//
Haven't I? I remember answering, "logic and common sense" what do you remember?
//And Ian Watson's short quip fails to address the truly deranged.//
Ah, I see you clicked on my profile page. Yes I totally agree with your assessment of his quote which is why I added the proviso about not subjecting others to segregation even if that is something I would be onboard with.
If the rules are insane, then those making the rules need to go.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 15 2021 No, I clicked on your link.
I don't see anything terribly detailed. What are the specifics of your plan. Remember, time is of the essence.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 15 2021 Plan?
Personally? Or Emperorially?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 15 2021 I see you added this bit to the mix after I began to reply to you;
//If it's all just hype, then why not prove it? Go wander around the COVID wing, give a big ole hot kiss to the first younger ventilated patient you see, and report back in a couple months. Be sure and wear a sign though declaring your intentions so people can avoid you like the plague.//
...and if I did? Would that snap you all out of it?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 15 2021 But you do realise that the anti-vaccine conspiracy is a deliberate mis-information campaign by the Russian secret state agencies to undermine stability in western democracies?-- Frankx, Oct 15 2021 I'm thinking you've already snapped something.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 15 2021 //compelling government interest// You do understand that that particular phrase is a legal term, correct? And that keeping it's citizens alive has always been considered one.-- MechE, Oct 15 2021 //Blatantly not true. If there is any disinformation to point your finger at it is that assumption. That as long as you comply with the shots you are not a carrier//
I agree that isn't true, because it isn't what I said. I said that if you get the vaccination you have a greatly reduced chance of being a carrier. Which is true. The risk from a vaxxed population is hugely lower than an unvaxxed population. A vaxxed and tested population, which is what most countries are requiring for travel is even lower.
// That word was removed from the definition and these Non-Vaccines confer immunity to exactly zero percent of the population and since the mandate laws were written with the previous definition in mind these Non-Mandates are invalid. They have been shoved down our throats through verbal sleight-of-hand.??
And that simply isn't true. If they result in a 2/3 reduction in infections (infections, not cases), that is conferring immunity on 66% of the population. That's how every vaccine has worked in the past, and it is how this one works. For some reason the fact that these vaccines were FIRST authorized because they reduced severe illness and death has resulted in anti-vaxxers ignoring fact that we've since determined that they prevent infections as well.
PS Inoculating with a non pathogenic or weakened pathogenic material is vaccination.-- MechE, Oct 15 2021 Also, the earlier definition (pre-covid) was:
//a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease//
If a vaccine automatically created full immunity, it would not be possible to "increase" immunity. It would be a binary yes or no. So even that definition agrees that something that gives partial immunity is still a vaccine.-- MechE, Oct 15 2021 The MMR vaccine has been around forever and doesn’t have 100% effectiveness.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 15 2021 // You do understand that that particular phrase is a legal term, correct?//
Yes, but I don't particularly care. A person only has the rights they're willing to defend, and stepping down as soon as you hear some legalese is not part of that.
//And that keeping it's citizens alive has always been considered one.//
Among many other more repressive ones, yes. But again I don't care. If the people are willing to give up their rights the moment they're read a law or even a riot act they'll soon be under the rule of a dictator. Have your tea back straight from the sea!-- Voice, Oct 15 2021 //it isn't what I said. I said that if you get the vaccination you have a greatly reduced chance of being a carrier. Which is true.//
How so? Tested I agree with.Mandated to conform I do not agree with.
// that is conferring immunity on 66% of the population. That's how every vaccine has worked in the past, and it is how this one works. PS Inoculating with a non pathogenic or weakened pathogenic material is vaccination.//
Am I not completely immune to Polio? You're telling me my kids can still get Polio after their 'vaccination'?Not one single human being on Earth has been given immunity from this. We're in for the long haul.
I've already been inoculated with the full strength pathogenic material in question, (I will leave the pathonogenic material in question unnamed since it seems to want to change its name every so often) and decline participation in this particular conformitorium.Thanks to whom-it-may-concern for the offer/opportunity/ultimatum, but no thank you.
Are we done then?Even though I didn't jump through your hoops I can go to movies and take my wife out to dinner again?
That'd be great. Our anniversary isn't too far away so if you rule making folks could get your shit together before June or so that would be totally awesome.
Totes luv, thnx fam.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 You don't get to decide what everyone else does. Half of the nation doesn't get to decide that. Nor do you or half the nation get to decide what's good and right. A comparison to social conventions that go back thousands of years is laughably inappropriate.-- Voice, Oct 16 2021 //You don't get to decide what everyone else does.//
That's true. However, a restaurateuse does get to decide what people may do in her restaurant, and executives of an airline do get to decide what people may do on their aircraft, and the principal of a school does get to decide what people may do in their school.
There's a good case for setting up a recognised system to certify past- infection status alongside the systems for certifying vaccination status which are now emerging. However, until such a system exists, you can understand why people with responsibility for their customers' safety are insisting on vaccination.-- pertinax, Oct 16 2021 // However, a restaurateuse does get to decide what people may do in her restaurant//
No they are being told what their decision is under threat of having their license revoked.
//and executives of an airline do get to decide what people may do on their aircraft//
No they are being told what their decision is to be under threat.
// and the principal of a school does get to decide what people may do in their school.//
No they don't. They are told their decisions about who is and isn't allowed through their doors.
//Actually I don’t care if [2f] or anyone else chooses not to get vaccinated - as long as they stay away from other people.//
Why is that?.. and do try a little logic instead of just name-calling while insisting that I am the one acting like a child.If you are "vaccinated" then how am I a threat to you? You refuse to answer that.Inoculations do not confer the right to enforce mandates. My employer isn't blackmailed into firing me if I didn't get the flu shot this year... and nobody so far has answered my question about being immune to Polio.
No-immunity = Non-vaccine = Illegal-mandates
You've been fear-mongered into segregation and now gleefully discriminate against people who refuse to be fear-mongered as we are divided before being conquered and you deem it a "social convention".
You spew hate and are not rational.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 //Am I not completely immune to Polio? You're telling me my kids can still get Polio after their 'vaccination'? Not one single human being on Earth has been given immunity from this. We're in for the long haul.//
The CDC has a page on this, it says: ::Two doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective.:: ... ::It is not known how long people who received IPV will be immune to poliovirus, but they are most likely protected for many years after a complete series of IPV.::
So it looks like the polio vaccine gives pretty good protection for a good number of years. But not quite a perfect 100%, and maybe not for life.[1]
The thing to recognise here is that different viral diseases have distinct biology. Just like, say, different predators (wolves, lions, bears, crocodiles, etc) are different. If you absolutely positively have to trek on foot by yourself through their territory, there are probably things you can do to defend against all of them. But they're not necessarily completely protective.
In this case, covid-19 is a coronavirus, which is the sort of virus which causes the common cold. It's widely recognised that you can get a cold more than once - in fact several times a year. Conversely, diseases like measles are generally once-in-a-lifetime infections. [2]
'Common cold' viruses seem to have the ability to minimise how much they provoke the immune system, and the resistance induced by infection seems to fade. So there was certainly a concern that protection conferred by the covid-19 vaccines wouldn't last very long. However, as I understand it, as time goes on the data does seem to support longer-term protection against all of infection, morbidity and mortality.
I've also seen it reported that being vaccinated after having covid boosts resistance significantly, so even if you think you've had the disease, it's still worth getting vaccinated, particularly if you're older.
--
[1] That doesn't matter so much, because vaccines confer a population-level benefit. If 'everybody' is vaccinated, then any sporadic cases (from other, unprotected populations, or animal reservoirs) won't spread very much, so won't become outbreaks. Meaning that those with only partial protection probably won't be exposed to the disease anyway. Obviously, this falls down when people become complacent and don't bother to be vaccinated.
[2] I believe there already exist a number of vaccines which need the occasional booster to extend protection. There's not really any controversy over this; it's just how it is.-- Loris, Oct 16 2021 Thank you that was very informative. I have only one bone of contention with what you've written.
//It's widely recognized that you can get a cold more than once - in fact several times a year.//
Ah but you can't catch the same cold twice."When you get sick, you develop antibodies for the virus serotype you’ve caught, Dr. Greninger explains. This keeps you from catching it again right away. But those antibodies won’t necessarily protect you from other forms of the virus.
Say you catch the serotype HRV (human rhinovirus)-A60, then improve right as your partner catches HRV-C17. You could get the common cold again if your body is vulnerable to that new rhinovirus serotype."
So you can't catch the same cold twice and since I've already been inoculated with the active virus in question only variants of this crap can get me, and since my immune system has produced antibodies on its own without landing me in a hospital I will fight off variants more easily than I already fought off the original.
Therefore I 'am' vaccinated and have actual immunity to the original virus unlike the folks coerced into taking 'shots' under the threat of unemployment and becoming outcast.I have arranged my life in such a way that these threats do not work on me and I will not be bullied into compliance by society ostracizing me.
If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized... If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance - you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 Yet you are still a carrier after vaccination.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 Well soon there will be very 'very' few of us, not because the virus killed us but because capitulation is mandatory or else, and not one 'anti-vaxxer' will be spreading it around the planet on airliners so unless the virus remains on surfaces long enough to be transported some other way then you'll only have yourselves to blame.
Maybe then you will all snap out of your mass hysteria.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 //Time will tell. Check back with me late next year on that.//
Hey! I was going to say that!
Well, the way I look at it is that 'your' medical history has never been and is still none of my damned business, so the same holds true in reverse, but I will answer your question so you'll know where I am coming from.
My wife is debating getting vaccinated. We don't think she's had the virus because we had bought our new place and I lived alone here alone in my camper for that first winter when I got it.She and I have however seen a few of these media-down-played side effects for ourselves like permanent double-vision and all-over body rashes, blood clots, our cleaning lady's neighbour had a stroke and such.She is her own woman and would gladly tear-me-a-new-one if I tried to tell her what she should do.She's like me but the feminine version. Not much of a childhood, abused, mother at seventeen, grew up quick.She doesn't take any shit either... "especially" mine. (bless her)
My children are adults and also make their own decisions. They hear my views but we taught them early that their decisions have consequences and that we love them without judgment.So I have not asked my son if he is vaccinated, (like I said, he's a man now that's his business and he will tell me if he chooses to), and my daughter has had her first dose, (even though she has had the virus and built up her own antibodies), because she can't get a job if she doesn't get vaxxed and wants to make it on her own without relying on Mom and Dad.
I'm not the bad guy you are fabricating in your head and I do not impose my will on others, (not that I couldn't)... and I also don't allow it in return.
ps
I felt it only right to show this anno to my wife before I posted it because it contains her personal information and she says;
"Well that's none of his fucking business."
What can I say. I knew she was for me the first moment I laid eyes on her.We're soul mates.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 16 2021 //Ah but you can't catch the same cold twice.//
Yeah, but no. That is, it's true in the short term but not the long term.
If you look closely at the quote you gave, you'll see they also imply this: "...This keeps you from catching it again /right away/. ..."
Or you could look at the literature. For example, from the abstract of "The time course of the immune response to experimental coronavirus infection of man", published 1990 and online 2009 (link). (this is only part of the abstract, but I've extended the quote to include a caveat it would be dishonest to exclude) ::In this group [definitely-infected individuals], antibody concentrations started to increase 1 week after inoculation and reached a maximum about 1 week later. Thereafter antibody titres slowly declined. Although concentrations were still slightly raised 1 year later, this did not always prevent reinfection when volunteers were then challenged with the homologous virus. However, the period of virus shedding was shorter than before and none developed a cold.""
I've only read the abstract, so I'm trusting them on this, but I don't feel like there's any particular reason to be suspicious of this finding.
So after a year you can be reinfected with exactly the same strain of a cold virus - but if you are it doesn't seem to be as serious.
Unfortunately, longer-term studies are progressively harder to do, so there may not be many of them. However, another more recent paper investigated blood antibody data from healthy individuals covering 10 years didn't find long-term protection - it was titled "Seasonal coronavirus protective immunity is short-lasting". And at least one other study found similar, looking at RNA data to identify reinfections.
While we may /hope/ that some reduction in the seriousness of the infection would be retained, that isn't definitive, and I think it's clearly unlikely to improve without a fresh challenge. Given the greatly increasing lethality of Covid-19 with age, I'd say it was foolhardy to assume that reinfection after a few years would be milder.-- Loris, Oct 16 2021 None of that makes me think that it is less foolhardy to allow pharma companies to dictate mandates based on the previous definition of vaccine which didn't have the word immunity removed from it.
Take their boot off our throats... and we'll talk.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 17 2021 //Therefore I 'am' vaccinated and have actual immunity to the original virus unlike the folks coerced into taking 'shots' under the threat of unemployment and becoming outcast. I have arranged my life in such a way that these threats do not work on me and I will not be bullied into compliance by society ostracizing me.//
You don't mean you're vaccinated, you mean you have immunity due to previous infection. That may be a semantic issue, but I strongly feel that it is important that words have specific meanings, to avoid misunderstandings. You keep saying that the vaccines don't confer immunity. This is wrong. I'm also reasonably sure /I/ didn't threaten you.
//If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized... If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance - you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest.//
Of that list of words and phrases, some are innocuous (e.g. "persuaded", "reminded"), some are probably predominantly by other groups than those invested in vaccination (e.g. "lied to", "bullied"), and some shouldn't be happening, and probably arn't in any real way, over most of the world (e.g. "punished", "criminalized").
It seems like you might just be annoyed that there are certain rules recently or in the process of being introduced which would restrict what you can do as an unvaccinated individual. I don't know what those are, so I've no idea how punitive that is. Where I am - the UK, there are various rules, but there is typically an alternative way for unvaccinated individuals to qualify. For example, taking a (free, self-administered) lateral flow test within the 72 hours prior to an event. I think there are plans to make vaccination mandatory for patient-facing health care workers and nursing-home staff. And honestly, I'm okay with that.
//None of that makes me think that it is less foolhardy to allow pharma companies to dictate mandates based on the previous definition of vaccine which didn't have the word immunity removed from it.//
Um, what? I don't understand what you're getting at here.-- Loris, Oct 17 2021 //No they are being told//
I think you'll find that varies by jurisdiction. Some nations, and some states, are more dirigiste, others are more laissez-faire. Different places have different responses to the virus. That's because there is no global conspiracy.-- pertinax, Oct 17 2021 Wow, okay, hold up a sec. geez.
// you mean you have immunity due to previous infection. That may be a semantic issue, but I strongly feel that it is important that words have specific meanings, to avoid misunderstandings. You keep saying that the vaccines don't confer immunity. This is wrong. I'm also reasonably sure /I/ didn't threaten you.//
Yes. I have immunity from a previous infection. Is that somehow less protection than these shots? If not. Where is the exception?I didn't mean that /you/ threatened /me/. Humanity is being caged... it's got fuck all to do with me.I keep saying... no keep asking, if not one single person taking these shots is completely immune to "the same cold twice" in a short period of time then how are the mandates themselves legal when they were based on the previous definition, and how have certain portions of the public been coerced into getting shots they either don't need because of natural antibodies or shouldn't accept because it poses a greater health risk than the virus?
Because it's mandatory.Get back in line citizen.
//It seems like you might just be annoyed that there are certain rules recently or in the process of being introduced which would restrict what you can do as an unvaccinated individual.//
Nope. I'm looking at the bigger picture and not filtering out all of the stuff not only happening in my neck of the woods.As I've said, I made sure to figure out how to remove myself from the shit I see coming. It's not going to be "only over there" for long.
////None of that makes me think that it is less foolhardy to allow pharma companies to dictate mandates based on the previous definition of vaccine which didn't have the word immunity removed from it.////
//Um, what? I don't understand what you're getting at here.//
The definition of the word 'vaccine' changed just prior to this pandemic by omitting the word immunity, and switching it to 'protection from', allowing pharma to assume through governments the power of mandates to save us all from something "we" didn't release and now need protection from.
You will take the required shot citizen... or you will be unemployable.
//I think you'll find that varies by jurisdiction. Some nations, and some states, are more dirigiste, others are more laissez-faire. Different places have different responses to the virus. That's because there is no global conspiracy.//
...and yet the entire globe changed over night. Two weeks to flatten the curve remember? How long before that is no longer remembered? Humans are short lived critters.
//I don’t think you’re a bad guy. But even the finest, best intentioned folks can make unwise choices. The kicker is that your choices can affect others, so sometimes they ARE other folks’ business - like it or not.//
All I can say is... ditto.
Even if these world bankrupting choices are being made by the finest folks with the best of intentions then they can affect me, and those unwise choices ARE my business.
Like it or not.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 17 2021 A friendly reminder for all sports teams: hospitals are not a place to stage your games. Even in the richest countries hospitals are only places to die. If, for example, viral load is what makes Covid so dangerous, why in the double hockey sticks are the worst Covid cases jammed side-by-side into the same Covid hothouse of a room?-- 4and20, Oct 17 2021 //Yes. I have immunity from a previous infection. Is that somehow less protection than these shots? If not. Where is the exception?//
The short answer is it may be, the long answer is we're not sure and it's complicated. I found a BMJ article (link) which goes over this in some detail. One concern is, for example, that many people who think they've had covid actually haven't. These would be a pretty significant exception. I think the general consensus is that having an actual covid infection gives about the same protection as vaccination. In much of the world, a proven infection (i.e. a lab-administered positive test) is considered sufficient, in at least the short term. However, I think it's also generally considered that vaccination after infection will boost immunity and be beneficial, different countries have different processes in that regard.
//I keep saying... no keep asking, if not one single person taking these shots is completely immune to "the same cold twice" in a short period of time then how are the mandates themselves legal when they were based on the previous definition, and how have certain portions of the public been coerced into getting shots they either don't need because of natural antibodies or shouldn't accept because it poses a greater health risk than the virus?//
You're making claims you can't support. How do you definitively know what the experts explicitly state there are uncertainties over? And what is this coercion? Needing to be vaccinated before getting a job interacting with the most vulnerable to infection? How dare they inconvenience someone who only wanted money and didn't care about their patients!
//Because it's mandatory.//
Where? Not here. Not most of the world. Possibly not /any/ of the world.
//////None of that makes me think that it is less foolhardy to allow pharma companies to dictate mandates based on the previous definition of vaccine which didn't have the word immunity removed from it.//////
////Um, what? I don't understand what you're getting at here.////
//The definition of the word 'vaccine' changed just prior to this pandemic by omitting the word immunity, and switching it to 'protection from', allowing pharma to assume through governments the power of mandates to save us all from something "we" didn't release and now need protection from.//
It seems like a wierd semantic argument over a definition change no-one in the field thinks is important enough to worry about (I don't even know where you're getting it from - googling suggests it was a dictionary definition, or perhaps a minor clarification by the CDC), and implying a vague malevolent intent by "pharma companies". Repeatedly going on about this and disregarding all other evidence makes you look like a frothing conspiracy nut.
..
// If, for example, viral load is what makes Covid so dangerous, why in the double hockey sticks are the worst Covid cases jammed side-by-side into the same Covid hothouse of a room?//
Most places have limited resources to spend on medicine, so it makes sense to be efficient.If the medical system is stretched to its limit, it's imperative. Once someone is infected with a particular strain of virus, the vast majority of virons their cells are exposed to come from within their own body. A few more won't make any difference. (I should say that cross-contamination could be important in evolution of the virus - if there were significantly different strains - recombination might be a problem, but this is essentially a rare event, and my guess would be that this is more likely to happen in multiply-infected individuals in the community.)-- Loris, Oct 17 2021 //You're making claims you can't support. How do you definitively know what the experts explicitly state there are uncertainties over?//
Common sense.People who have already contracted the virus have developed their own antibodies and yet are still 'forced' to be vaccinated.Younger people with kick ass immune systems are 'forced' to risk the side effects even though they could shrug off this virus.People with underlying health conditions for whom the shots are almost guaranteed to be detrimental are forced to take it.They are now mandating that all children over the age of five must be vaccinated to attend school.etc.etc.
//And what is this coercion? Needing to be vaccinated before getting a job interacting with the most vulnerable to infection? How dare they inconvenience someone who only wanted money and didn't care about their patients!//
Last months heroes... this months unemployed.
Where? Not here. Not most of the world. Possibly not /any/ of the world. ////googling suggests it was a dictionary definition, or perhaps a minor clarification by the CDC), and implying a vague malevolent intent by "pharma companies". Repeatedly going on about this and disregarding all other evidence makes you look like a frothing conspiracy nut.//
Where?Canada. Kind of hard to talk about anywhere else since all local news sources talk about nothing other than case counts, numbers of ICU patients and Covid deaths.The constantly repeated phrase we hear is.Think local, shop local, listen local... and be safe.
This minor clarification of definition allows governments to assume the power of mandates and force citizens to take untested drugs even before those drugs had FDA approval.
No frothing... just conspiracy.
Take the vaccine or..No restaurants.No movies.No gatherings.No job.
They did exactly what I said they would do, they loosened restrictions here just before Thanksgiving so that they could tell us all how badly we handled the opportunity we've been given to just be good little citizens so they have no choice but to impose harsher restrictions now...
...for our own good.
No froth at all.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 17 2021 //Common sense.//
Ah, that. If only the experts with their years of study and work on the topic had your common sense.
After all, without common sense, people wouldn't know that trees are made of soil, the moon is shadowed by the earth on a monthly cycle, and it's best not to switch in the Monty Hall problem.
////Where?//// //Canada. //
//This minor clarification of definition allows governments to assume the power of mandates and force citizens to take untested drugs even before those drugs had FDA approval.//
So why do you even care about the FDA? Why don't you pay attention to Health Canada's HPFB?
From Heath Canada's website:
::Regulating drugs and vaccines sold in Canada Drugs, including vaccines, are regulated under the Food and Drugs Act and Regulations. They must meet the regulatory requirements for safety, efficacy and quality before they can be sold in Canada. Health Canada's regulatory process involves:
authorizing the use of a product in a clinical trial reviewing data and evidence to provide a product market authorization and monitoring and assessing the safety and effectiveness of a product once it is on the Canadian market We have authorized certain products to treat COVID-19 and its symptoms.
On December 9, 2020, we authorized the first vaccine in Canada for the prevention of COVID-19.::
Clicking through to a new page, I'm told it has now authorised four Covid-19 vaccines - those from Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson).
So the vaccines have clearly been evaluated by your local health regulator, and the testing found to be good. The USA heath system is pretty FUBAR, and it's regulatory system is probably a bad role model to idolise.-- Loris, Oct 17 2021 //So why do you even care about the FDA? Why don't you pay attention to Health Canada's HPFB?//
Because the US is the big bad bully on the playground and Canada is its little buddy. Anything done by the big bad bully affects the little buddy.
It's not the drugs I have a problem with. Its the mandatory part.You will not question. You will get back in line and take whatever we tell you to take citizen.It's mandatory.Think local, listen local, shop local and be safe.
Trees aren't made of soil.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 17 2021 //Trees aren't made of soil.// OK, nutrients etc FROM soil, & water & atmosphere & sunshine & love... happy?-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 17 2021 //ps Trees aren't made of soil.//
Yeeeeessssss.....-- Loris, Oct 17 2021 Ever since the 2016 South Korean political scandal which revealed that their president really was taking orders from a secret cult, my go-to explanation for confusing and divisive political events is "there appears to be a secret cult controlling events from behind the scenes". Fortunately for me, no one listens.-- sninctown, Oct 17 2021 Petition to rename this the Vaccine Debate Club and possibly move it to new category other:general:discussion-- Voice, Oct 17 2021 Not sure this counts as a "debate" any more (if ever).-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 18 2021 Discussion?
Discussion is good.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 18 2021 Name of the Club should include Truth Goo or some such wording to inspire self-reflection-- sninctown, Oct 18 2021 The change in definition is on merriamwebster.com. It went from
//:a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease//
//: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease://
For some reason antivaxxers believe that "artificially increase immunity" is semantically different from "stimulate the body's immune response". I still haven't figured out why that is. It's an identical connotation and denotation.-- MechE, Oct 18 2021 //Therefore I 'am' vaccinated and have actual immunity to the original virus unlike the folks coerced into taking 'shots' under the threat of unemployment and becoming outcast. I have arranged my life in such a way that these threats do not work on me and I will not be bullied into compliance by society ostracizing me.//
There is dispositive evidence that natural infection does not provide perfect immunity, and significant evidence that in cases where it does provide immunity, that immunity is not unlimited in duration.
There is also dispositive evidence that vaccination after infection (or vice versa in breakthrough cases) greatly strengthens immunity. As, at present, we don't have a reliable test to evaluate someone's current level of immunity, it is far safer to err on the side of extra precautions.-- MechE, Oct 18 2021 //I keep saying... no keep asking, if not one single person taking these shots is completely immune to "the same cold twice" in a short period of time //
Because that's false? Once again, you seem to be taking the statement "it's possible for people to get the virus after immunization", which is a general statement, and applying it on a case by case basis. There is no statistical difference between the statements "85% of people are fully immune", and "all people are 85% immune". Both situations produce an outcome that matches the latest CDC information. That is that for every 1 case of Covid in a vaccinated individual, we see 6.5 in unvaccinated individuals.
However, when we look at the specific cases, we see that, more than likely, the latter "85% of the people are fully immune" is the correct statement. Because the vast majority of breakthrough cases are found in individuals who are older, or otherwise have weakened immune systems. Exactly the types of people you would expect to have immune systems that do not fully develop immunity based on vaccination. Not every case, and we can't evaluate exactly who is and isn't at further risk (see prior statement on lack of a test), so it's best if everyone continues to take precautions for a time.
//shouldn't accept because it poses a greater health risk than the virus?// Unless you have a specific allergy to one of the vaccine components no one is at greater risk from the vaccine than the disease. Period.-- MechE, Oct 18 2021 The word "artificial" is deceptive there. Avoiding it provides a more precise response.-- Voice, Oct 18 2021 Fair. I guess there's a little connotation of synthetic antibodies in the old definition, whereas the new definition clarifies that it's the body's immune system doing the work in all cases. Which, I suppose is important when compared to something like monoclonal antibodies which temporarily increase the immune response, but don't produce a long term response. So the changed definition is more accurate without contradicting the old definition.-- MechE, Oct 18 2021 In the late 1880's vaccination literally meant introducing cowpox pus into the bodies of patients to give them a better chance of fighting off Smallpox.
That "vacc" in vaccine coming from the Vaccinia Virus or Cow-pox virus, where "vacca" is italian/latin for cow.
So the meaning of the word has changed over time as the technology has advanced, while the underlying function (to stimulate people's natural immune systems) remains exactly the same. So we no longer expect a "vaccine" to be the specific introduction of cowpox pus, to protect against a single, specific disease - it's now a term that describes anything whose general function is that of stimulating some degree of immunity.
For me the interesting part is examining the reasons why people distrust their governments so deeply. I distrust my government, not only because they're all liars - but I'd not go as far as to imagine that they'd go out of their way to kill or harm, or even control me. I'm just not that special. I'm sure they'd be complacent enough to let me or my family starve or die out of neglect should that circumstance arrive. But in terms of their motivations, they're going to want to consolidate their position, buy up some real-estate through an offshore entity or two, and then once they're free of any local laws and constraints, kick up and enjoy easy street. Going out of their way to engineer and release a novel virus for the purpose of developing and then consequently introducing me to a vaccine, that will open up stage 2 of the plan...whatever that may be, it's just too much effort. And these people are not known for their effort, or attention to detail.
Clearly, people distrust the established world order - and I can understand that part.
I guess it then comes down to how smart and organised you think the "bad guys" are.
Given the amount of total incompetence that's very much on show nearly everywhere, I'm still of the opinion that largely speaking, they are pursuing the tactic of hiding their wealth and power through destabilisation and maintenance of large information-disparity gaps that they can easily exploit when necessary.
As a tactic, it's just as effective as all the more specific conspiracy ideas, only it's a great deal cheaper and easier to achieve.
Given that the net effect of controlling the masses is almost exactly equivalent to keeping the masses confused and panicked, it's almost a certainty that they'd opt for the second strategy rather than the first.
And once you discount there being a shadowy but expensive attempt to control a mass of people, it just doesn't make sense to imagine a nefarious motivation for these vaccinations.
There just isn't any benefit to the bad guys. Just the most basic cost/benefit analysis rules it out.-- zen_tom, Oct 18 2021 //seatbelt mandates//
Isn't it awesome how state and federal governments never ever create unconstitutional laws?-- Voice, Oct 18 2021 //Going out of their way to engineer and release a novel virus//
No, but once released by accident there are a hundred ways making use of the crisis can add to Swiss accounts.-- Voice, Oct 18 2021 //For some reason antivaxxers believe that "artificially increase immunity" is semantically different from "stimulate the body's immune response". I still haven't figured out why that is. It's an identical connotation and denotation.//
Well for one thing you've just lumped me into a category and attributed knowledge I found accidentally as belonging to the lump you mentally created just now.
I will get back to the second part of your anno later in another answer.
// There is dispositive evidence that natural infection does not provide perfect immunity, and significant evidence that in cases where it does provide immunity, that immunity is not unlimited in duration.//
So... just like these shots being mandated.
//There is also dispositive evidence that vaccination after infection (or vice versa in breakthrough cases) greatly strengthens immunity. As, at present, we don't have a reliable test to evaluate someone's current level of immunity, it is far safer to err on the side of extra precautions.//
That does not convince me. Get back to me when you 'do' have a reliable test.
// There is no statistical difference between the statements "85% of people are fully immune", and "all people are 85% immune". Both situations produce an outcome that matches the latest CDC information.//
Horseshit! Semantics are very important, especially legally when people's lives are at stake.
One means 85% gain complete immunity and a disease dies out, the other means that nobody gains complete immunity and the disease lingers.That's a pretty big difference.The mandate laws were written around the previous definition and have not been redressed for the current definition.
//Unless you have a specific allergy to one of the vaccine components no one is at greater risk from the vaccine than the disease. Period.//
Got a test for that other than "try it and see?""No you misunderstand citizen it wasn't a question... try it, and see.""Try it now, or else it will only get worse for you."
//Not one single person wearing a seatbelt is *completely* protected from death or even serious injury in a car accident. How can seatbelt mandates be legal?//
You strawman too much. Stay on target. Stay on target.
//In the late 1880's vaccination literally meant introducing cowpox pus into the bodies of patients to give them a better chance of fighting off Smallpox.
So the meaning of the word has changed over time as the technology has advanced, while the underlying function (to stimulate people's natural immune systems) remains exactly the same. So we no longer expect a "vaccine" to be the specific introduction of cowpox pus, to protect against a single, specific disease - it's now a term that describes anything whose general function is that of stimulating some degree of immunity.//
Cool! Huh.
//For me the interesting part is examining the reasons why people distrust their governments so deeply. I distrust my government, not only because they're all liars - but I'd not go as far as to imagine that they'd go out of their way to kill or harm, or even control me. I'm just not that special. I'm sure they'd be complacent enough to let me or my family starve or die out of neglect should that circumstance arrive. But in terms of their motivations, they're going to want to consolidate their position, buy up some real-estate through an offshore entity or two, and then once they're free of any local laws and constraints, kick up and enjoy easy street. Going out of their way to engineer and release a novel virus for the purpose of developing and then consequently introducing me to a vaccine, that will open up stage 2 of the plan...whatever that may be, it's just too much effort. And these people are not known for their effort, or attention to detail.//
Totally agree. Mostly incompetent twats quadrupling up on pensions while frantically covering their asses in an impromptu game of Don't-guess-wrong.No argument from me.
//Clearly, people distrust the established world order - and I can understand that part.
Given that the net effect of controlling the masses is almost exactly equivalent to keeping the masses confused and panicked, it's almost a certainty that they'd opt for the second strategy rather than the first.//
Again! I completely agree with your assessment of the situation sir... but it's this bit,//I guess it then comes down to how smart and organized you think the "bad guys" are.//,that's the rub.Governments aren't behind the entire planet being placed under lock down for two weeks almost two years ago.No.World governments are being used by corporate entities which have recently, (in historical terms), given themselves the status of personhood.They are extremely organized and seem to choose successors by criteria such as, most rutheless, quarterly increases, and bottom line.
//And once you discount there being a shadowy but expensive attempt to control a mass of people, it just doesn't make sense to imagine a nefarious motivation for these vaccinations.
There just isn't any benefit to the bad guys. Just the most basic cost/benefit analysis rules it out.//
I have not discounted there being a shadowy but expensive attempt to control a mass of people.Have you seen how much the wealth-gap has widened since this shit-fest began?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 19 2021 But manifestos are so, gauche…-- RayfordSteele, Oct 19 2021 I have not yet begun to manifesto.
Oh you'll know.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 19 2021 //// There is no statistical difference between the statements "85% of people are fully immune", and "all people are 85% immune". Both situations produce an outcome that matches the latest CDC information.////
//Horseshit! Semantics are very important, especially legally when people's lives are at stake.//
This is not a semantic argument. Semantics are the meanings of words. Like the discussion of how the definition of vaccine has been updated to reflect the development of technology - as several people have been telling you.
The point MechE is making here (and it's something I think I've tried to explain to you previously) is that the measurement we're able to make (and hence the statistic) doesn't discriminate between these two options - or anything in the range between them.
//One means 85% gain complete immunity and a disease dies out, the other means that nobody gains complete immunity and the disease lingers.//
No, this is wrong. In either case the disease would infect 15% of the people it would otherwise have infected. Whether the disease dies out or not depends on how many it infects in general.
//The mandate laws were written around the previous definition and have not been redressed for the current definition.//
Are you confusing "mandate" with "mandatory"? They're both words with annoying secondary meanings for the other, but the primary meaning of "mandate" is 'authorisation', while "mandatory" means 'compulsory'.
Yes, semantics are important.
In the UK and Europe at least, getting vaccinated isn't mandatory in the general sense. You may need something for higher-risk (to others) activities. Countries do things differently, but in general if you've had Covid you can get a certificate of this as an alternative to vaccination, and if you can't be vaccinated for some reason (e.g. allergy risk) there's an exception, or if you just arn't vaccinated there's an alternative involving testing beforehand.-- Loris, Oct 19 2021 //Oh, you'll know.//
Should I start sending newspapers so you can clip out the letters? What's your preferred font? Or are crayons and lipstick more to your liking?-- RayfordSteele, Oct 19 2021 Loris, I have come to understand that the common usage of mandate in America in this context at least, is the "mandatory" rather than "empowering". However, I am also fairly sure that the mandates are more along the lines of "if you want access to public building X, you must be double vaccinated" rather than "all must be vaccinated"-- calum, Oct 19 2021 Vaccines are not mandatory in the US but each activity forbidden to the unvaccinated brings them a step closer to that.-- Voice, Oct 19 2021 // So... just like these shots being mandated.//
Yes. But unlike Covid, the shots do not represent a risk to the receiver. So there is no logical reason not to gain the additional protection. Especially when we know that doing so provides greater protection than either alone.
False. Both definitions mean that some of the population is protected, and some is not. Either you are infected with Covid, or you are not. In this case, for every 13 unvaccinated people who get Covid, only 2 vaccinated person with identical exposure gets it. That represents 11 people who have full immunity. It really is that simple.
//That does not convince me. Get back to me when you 'do' have a reliable test.//
Once again, you are ignoring the difference between statistical and specific definitions. We have a statistical definition because we can count the number of positive tests and compare it to vaccination and see the outcome. What we can't do is point to a specific individual and determine their predicted immune response. (Other than be challenging it with the virus, which is not an accepted methodology anymore).-- MechE, Oct 19 2021 // Got a test for that other than "try it and see?"//
Sorry, missed this one. The test is "try it and see". None of the vaccine components are not also found in food, or in other medication. If you have an undiagnosed allergy to one of them, it's far better for you to have the reaction in a medical setting, where epinephrine and similar treatments are immediately available.-- MechE, Oct 19 2021 //Semantics are the meanings of words. Like the discussion of how the definition of vaccine has been updated to reflect the development of technology - as several people have been telling you.//
Several people seem to be telling me lots of conflicting things. I see past definitions being updated yet past laws being enforced.
//Are you confusing "mandate" with "mandatory"? They're both words with annoying secondary meanings for the other, but the primary meaning of "mandate" is 'authorisation', while "mandatory" means 'compulsory'.//
Maybe.Either meaning you pick seems to mean compulsory......or do I still 'have' a choice?
If not, then all I can say is those responsible for relieving me of this choice are welcome to their fate. Bad decision assholes. Enjoy.
//? Or are crayons and lipstick more to your liking?//
I've been considering Braille. Appropriate don't you think?
//Yes. But unlike Covid, the shots do not represent a risk to the receiver. So there is no logical reason not to gain the additional protection. Especially when we know that doing so provides greater protection than either alone.//
Also Horseshit!
Tell that to the fuckers that just volluntarily signed up to die from stroke to protect you fuckers from them getting the sniffles!
You self righteous asswipes!
Get a fucking grip!-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 20 2021 I just learned of a Homeopathy "textbook" which claims that the electromagnetic levels of some solution can be measured and sent as a cure via email. Is no one in this forum concerned that the frequency of what's being said is somehow vaccinating them?-- 4and20, Oct 20 2021 Also, I remain unconvinced that it is at all salutory to lock Covid patients together in the same room. An alternative answer seems blindingly obvious. In countries returning to pandemic conditions, tourism is likely to suffer. So, put those patients in hotel rooms, the way New York does for some homeless people. It's tiresome to hear repeated media claim that lack of "beds" is the problem. Beds are cheap and so is oxygen.-- 4and20, Oct 20 2021 Maybe if we do what the tv tells us to do, like in "Teletubbies" where they watch and obey the orders of the tv built into their stomach, we can wriggle with joy as we lead our friends to do what the tv told us to do. Sounds good to me.-- sninctown, Oct 20 2021 //You self righteous asswipes//
I agree with your general position but your abrasive language makes me reluctant to admit it. I wonder whether you would want to find a tree to punch or a telemarketer to scream at? Perhaps an ice cream cone and a hot bath.-- Voice, Oct 20 2021 I think you will change your mind in time, after every trust you place has failed you, and you have become cynical.-- sninctown, Oct 20 2021 Cynicism is for the lazy and uninvested. Everyone and everything fails from time to time. The successful fail much more often.
Oddly, that's close to how much I care about being called a self-righteous asswipe in this conversation. You've been publicly owned so many times now that you could be considered a utility.
If you scramble the homeopathic email through a secure cryptographic method, do you disrupt the electromagnetic woo somehow? When it gets disassembled and sent through servers all over creation, does it know what happened?
//I've been considering Braille//
Or just hide the message in barely-slightly-off-tone colors that only those with the eyes to see can make out...-- RayfordSteele, Oct 20 2021 Did my statement cause offence?
If you as an individual agree with the statement; "Any person not conforming with the vast majority deserve to lose the right to decide."
...then my offensive statement holds true.
If you did not agree with that statement, then why have you taken offence? It does not apply to you.
People need to get a grip. Things are going sideways at an increasing pace and I grow increasingly impatient with the complacency I see around me.
I've tried to explain to you all that I can't turn off the things I see in my head, and I fully admit to seeing things in my head.
Other people are not forced to see things in their heads and so instantly dismiss the possibility. Their lack of ability to see in their heads makes my mind-visions no less accurate. They've scared me shitless for decades and I don't have a clue if there's a way to head things off at the pass before we all go through the same shit I seem to be remembering in advance but...
...for me, "It's Groundhog Day... again..." I am trying to somehow change the course of events I see coming, and sometimes people going into hysterics need a slap in the face.It's really hard to not offend the everybody while trying to slap them back to sense.So it is very difficult for me, this knowing that seeing things in my head which then happen means I am subject to the decisions of people who can not, which I can only consider must be blind, or they would also be able.
I am bound by the choices made by those unable to see what's coming... because those who can do not exist.
If the definition of the term which gave offence does not fit...
...don't wear it.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 21 2021 Don't put words into my mouth.
As I've said above and you ignored, your statement doesn't consider the very strong possibility that you could be full of shit, and places you into a special category that is at the crossroads of paranoid, stubborn, and delusional.
I don't give two shits about your visions. They're not the issue. The issue is that a few million people have died. Some poor schmuck in the neighborhood of India who wasn't immune because although they're smart enough to get a shot, none were available, became the evolutionary patient 0 for the delta variant which is now bloody fucking everywhere. Meanwhile in Delusionville Rich Countryland idiots and assholes who think they know better are themselves choosing to remain viral breeding grounds, and making it increasingly difficult to ever get in front of this thing.
Did you have any "visions" about any of that? If not, then you kinda missed it. Maybe they're not so good.
You point to doctors and nurses protesting mandates.
But you miss that they are the exception that proves the rule. Every bloody fucking day there are burnt-out doctors and nurses and technicians all pleading with people to roll up their sleeves. And yet you're so busy with ideological worries and deep state bullshit that you miss the blindlingly obvious.
There are people who see possibilities. With the right sort of position and training, they make good guides sometimes. But they are lousy on the front lines or in emergencies because their head is in the clouds when they need to be shooting a gun or building a wall.
There are others who see the concrete things in front of them and deal with the immediate. They are great at keeping the real world moving. But they don't have the skills to see what might be.
Guess which group most halfbakers belong to.
And then there's the split between those that have time on their hands in the countryside to ponder their thoughts and those that have their only two minutes of freetime in the bathroom. Prophets and hermits and paranoid schizophrentics seem to occupy similar Venn diagram space, don't they.
The crazy thing about democracies is that if you don't like the way any particular issue is going or being handled, you can do something concrete like run for office or start a petition or organize a movement of like-minded nutters. But nobody wants to listen to idle old farts with voices in their heads take potshots from the sidelines that often.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 21 2021 //“Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”//
What a pile of tripe. (as applied) Potential harm is not harm and it's evil to constrict liberty in the name of preventing potential harm. The reason it's evil is the same logic can be used to justify ANY LAW AT ALL. Name a hypothetical law and I can use that idea to justify it. So the use of that principle to justify a law is no different from enacting a law without justification.-- Voice, Oct 21 2021 //you miss the blindlingly obvious.//
Perhaps you could restore my sight...?-- Voice, Oct 21 2021 //get in front of this thing//
Are you seriously claiming it's possible (i.e. sufficiently practical) to eradicate the common cold? Because wiping out Coronavirus will not be easier than that. The best we can do for now is the same thing we do for the flu. It's out there en masse and no amount of vaccination at 65% efficacy is going to wipe out any variant. Get off your unicorn and get off my liberties.-- Voice, Oct 21 2021 //IS done//
That's fine. It's how we outlaw theft, murder, and accidentally picking up the wrong kind of bird feather.-- Voice, Oct 21 2021 It's also how we outlaw drunk driving, although that is only potential, although high probability, harm.
If you get Covid, you WILL be contagious before onset of symptoms. Unless you are testing daily, you will not know you are contagious before the onset of symptoms. If you, while contagious, come into contact with others, you put them at a varying degree of risk, depending on their status. (If they're 85 and immune compromised, that is a high degree of risk, even if they're vaccinated). You also bear a level of responsibility for everyone they infect, and so on.
There is a compelling government interest to prevent that risk. Mandatory vaccination is a narrowly tailored, and minimally intrusive way to do so. Just like forbidding drunk driving is.
And, yes, it is safe. The total of severe side effects in the US are 3 deaths and a handful of easily treated allergic reactions. And those 3 deaths don't represent a continuing risk, because we know how to identify those at risk for it, and can provide them with one of the other vaccines.-- MechE, Oct 21 2021 //There are others who see the concrete things in front of them and deal with the immediate. They are great at keeping the real world moving. But they don't have the skills to see what might be.
And then there's the split between those that have time on their hands in the countryside to ponder their thoughts and those that have their only two minutes of freetime in the bathroom. Prophets and hermits and paranoid schizophrentics seem to occupy similar Venn diagram space, don't they.//
Wow have you got me read wrong.
Sometime in 2000 I sentenced myself to 10 years of double time to lift my family out of trailer-park status and my new bride was on board.That decade sentence turned into 17 years of double time. We sold at a profit, looked for 3 years while either renting or living in our camper, and now we've added a minimum of another 5 years to that double time sentence. I am bringing an entire town back to life after Edison decided it deserved to die by removing every single trace of Tesla's stench from it, and anyone calling me a slacker can kiss my ass.Try to keep up with me... I dare ya.
I care for a schizophrenic younger brother, a bipolar step son, a completely fucked over by society mother and I "am" their safety net.
Shove your diagrams up your ass and realize that there are exceptions to the rules that have been drilled into your head.
Things pop into my head. I research them. Learn the words associated with the concepts, and then learn that the concepts themselves are sound.
I think I might actually have what that asshole Trump was touting himself as... stable genius.Yes I hear myself... no I don't care how pretentious it sounds. Genius once meant something you were afflicted with not something you could take credit for. Shit pops into my head when I self flagelate myself to the point of forgetting who I am.
I tells it like it is. When you can show me a computer simulation that can model Coanda Tornado when I was able to not only conceive of it visually but then build a working model with shit I found in second hand shops as proof of concept, then I will listen to criticisms of my vision.Can your computers model it even yet?
//If you get Covid, you WILL be contagious before onset of symptoms. Unless you are testing daily, you will not know you are contagious before the onset of symptoms. If you, while contagious, come into contact with others, you put them at a varying degree of risk, depending on their status. (If they're 85 and immune compromised, that is a high degree of risk, even if they're vaccinated). You also bear a level of responsibility for everyone they infect, and so on.//
None of that changes whether you are the vaccinated or un-vaccinated carrier of the virus.What exactly is 'your' level of responsibility as a vaccinated carrier as opposed to that of an 'un-vaccinated' carrier.
Are you somehow less culpable as a vaccinated person?
...and why?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 22 2021 Because a vaccinated individual has taken the best available precautions to prevent it. An unvaccinated individual has not.
You can't prevent every negative occurrence. But as long as you've met a certain minimum standard of prevention, you cannot be held responsible for circumstances beyond that. In this case, that is vaccination. (Note that, on average, vaxxed individuals also tend to be better about masking, and various other preventative measures as well, so we go beyond the minimum standard).-- MechE, Oct 22 2021 So why should "best available" be a standard when the best available isn't good enough? Should seatbelts be mandated if they're all made of silly string? (or if they break in 40% of accidents) How is that changed if silly string seatbelt wearers are more likely to also pay extra for air bags? What if 90% of airbags are improperly installed in a way that renders them inoperative but leaves the driver feeling protected? What is the ground length of an overburdened metaphor?-- Voice, Oct 22 2021 //So why should "best available" be a standard when the best available isn't good enough? Should seatbelts be mandated if they're all made of silly string? (or if they break in 40% of accidents) How is that changed if silly string seatbelt wearers are more likely to also pay extra for air bags? What if 90% of airbags are improperly installed in a way that renders them inoperative but leaves the driver feeling protected?//
This is a strange and somewhat facetious argument, but I'm absolutely going to humour it.
According to a page I found through google (linked):
::When used correctly, wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury to front seat passenger car occupants by 45%, and risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50%. For those riding in the rear of vans and sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) during a car crash, rear seat belts are 73% better at preventing fatalities.::
What about the reduction in risk of vaccination? Well, according to a New Statesman article based on Public Health England data (linked), this varies by age, but the least effective percentage-wise is in the age 80+ cohort, at 70%. The next worst is 18-29 year-olds, at 75%, and all ages in-between are over 80%.
So according to the cold hard data, seat-belts are rather less efficacious at saving lives than covid vaccinations. Does that help you out Voice?-- Loris, Oct 22 2021 The 3 felonies a day thing is an outrageously wrong but popular meme that was pushed by a guy to sell a book, honestly. There are still myriads of stupid laws on the books in some places, but nobody actually enforces them.
At this point, 2f, you've shared most of these bits of your life multiple times. We have them unwillingly memorized like a bad earworm.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 23 2021 I am just not handing over sovereignty to big-pharma the decisions about what goes into my body.We have to mask every where we go, my hands a raw from sanitizer, I am not ill, I've already built up my own antibodies, I've got a chip on my shoulder bigger than Texas and I am not afraid of getting this virus again.
Remove the mandates and I will consider.Continue to punish me until I comply?... m'yeah...no. Doesn't work on me.
You are all cheering on the subjugation and bankrupting of all of the societies on the planet for something with a 99.75% survivability rate knowing full well that Klaus Schwab's little reset meetings are attended by billionaires from around the planet who are on board with it.
I am as protected from this virus as I wish to be. If you are vaccinated then I pose no threat to you, other than occupying the hospital bed I've been paying the last forty years for without using yet.
...remove the boot from my neck and I might change my mind.Leave the boot, and you can all go pound salt before I'll budge. I don't deal with fascists. Period.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 23 2021 So at this point you're refusing out of shear obstinance and foot-stomping. Got it. Brilliant. While you're at it, make sure you ignore the signs saying "ROAD CLOSED" and BRIDGE OUT" too. Sorry that our attempt to save some fucking lives has offended your sense of "freedumb."-- RayfordSteele, Oct 24 2021 Welcome to the great reset.Smell them gaslights.
Enjoy your subjugation.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 24 2021 On second thought, I lack certainty and insight about what is going on, so I have to recommend vaccination following official guidelines.-- sninctown, Oct 24 2021 Thing is, there is a tiny chance nature will chuck a suicidal virus at us. Case by case basis I suppose.
Help that helps others and helps oneself seems a no brainer. Everyone has to judge their own risk, though. But any action will always have risk.-- wjt, Oct 24 2021 Enjoy your ventilator.
"Help help! I'm being repressed!"-- RayfordSteele, Oct 24 2021 Not sure what part of I already had the virus and it didn't even make me take time off work you don't get?I ask for proof that the response to this pandemic isn't a con and your replies are not convincing.
Our news sources no longer report news. Remember when news meant being presented with all sides of an issue and making up our own minds? That doesn't happen any more.No news stories about the hundreds of doctors, nurses, health care workers and police refusing to acknowledge the sweeping powers of these mandates. They've all been fired here now by the way other than the cops. Strangely their unions refuse the ultimatums. They can see what's going on in other countries and that they will soon be turned into storm-troopers themselves if they don't. Good on'em.
We don't hear international news anymore and must search it out ourselves.Unless of course it is covid related.
Everything is propaganda now.You know that new law China is enacting where un-masculine men are to be removed from their media and movies?(yep, real thing, check it out if you've not heard)Well the opposite seems to be happening here since this shitfest began and all of the baritone voices of reporters and newscasters on our radios have suddenly begun to change to whiny, nasally adolescents.No, the bass voices didn't all die off at once from covid, they've been let go because they remember what real news is for one thing, probably make too many waves about it, and their reassuring voices do not pair well with the panic inducing agenda.
You give me straw-man arguments and gas-lighting.
I'll stick to my guns... you keep your ventilator.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 25 2021 700,000 dead in the US alone, and a current hospitilization rate that is 95% unvaccinated. Current new infection rate, 83% unvaccinated. None of those numbers are "a con".-- MechE, Oct 25 2021 What part of 'breakthrough case' don't you understand?
You see the problem here, 2f, you're asking for 'proof' yet you're extending the definition of what constitutes 'proof' beyond any sort of reasonable degree. It's all some con that somehow nobody's managed to sniff out save you and the same sort of folks who got pulled in to QAnon.
Thus is always the game of the conspiracy nut. Would you like to go talk to some coroners?
Maybe read up on the 6 or 7 right-wing radio hosts that fought against getting the vaccine and ended up dead?-- RayfordSteele, Oct 25 2021 //700,000 dead in the US alone, and a current hospitilization rate that is 95% unvaccinated. Current new infection rate, 83% unvaccinated. None of those numbers are "a con".//
What are the 'secondary' conditions for all covid deaths reported?Where exactly is that data?Why is it not reported to the public?I don't discount the science. I refute the number crunching. Numbers can be made to say anything you want them to say depending on the parameters set out before disclosure. Like the difference between 85% of all people being 100% immune to something, as opposed to only receptive people being 85% immune.Subtle yes, but important.
//you're asking for 'proof' yet you're extending the definition of what constitutes 'proof' beyond any sort of reasonable degree. It's all some con that somehow nobody's managed to sniff out save you and the same sort of folks who got pulled in to QAnon.//
So just more straw-man then?No examples of fuckery will suffice? They are all just not to be questioned then? All of the news channelled now? Doctors silenced? Police actions left unreported?
You're good with this are you? All of you? Even the ones you pretend to speak for?
//Maybe read up on the 6 or 7 right-wing radio hosts that fought against getting the vaccine and ended up dead?//
I did.What were their secondary conditions associated with their dying? If there weren't any then... with a 99.75% survival rate, did they really die from covid?
The latest omission on any of the daily covid reports is the word virus.In the last three days or so all reports have changed to the word disease. As though secondary conditions do not factor in at all as far as death rate is concerned. So is it a disease or a virus?
I am tired of con men running our lives.
If you honestly think I am the only one tired of being conned you are very much mistaken.
Your arguments are hollow. I think I will listen to my gut. It doesn't seem to screw me over nearly as much as 'normal' people do.
Again, I thank the powers that be for their offer/opportunity/ultimatum but no thank you.
Please, take the boot off my neck.
This is the last time I will ask...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 26 2021 //What are the 'secondary' conditions for all covid deaths reported? Where exactly is that data? Why is it not reported to the public?//
here: [link]-- Frankx, Oct 26 2021 Not straw men. Analogies.
You haven't risen to your own level of proof. So fuck your gut. It doesn't convince anyone, which is what you're claiming you want to do. So where are your data? I'm tired of this game. It's your extraordinary claim of conspiracy. You provide the data or fuck off.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 26 2021 Also //99.75% survival rate//
Best available data gives a fatality rate of around 2%.
Varies from nation to nation, and over time (because treatment has improved over time)
See [link]
For comparison, normal flu has CFR around 0.1 - 0.2%-- Frankx, Oct 26 2021 //Numbers can be made to say anything you want them to say depending on the parameters set out before disclosure. Like the difference between 85% of all people being 100% immune to something, as opposed to only receptive people being 85% immune.//
No, that's not a subtle difference. The former is 85% real world immunity. The latter is not. The statistics show the former.
But you just admitted that no amount of evidence will convince you because your "gut" knows better than every infectious disease expert on the planet. So, farewell and good luck.-- MechE, Oct 26 2021 Time will tell.I'm not intractable I just don't take orders under duress and have some serious trust issues. Maybe if "infectious disease experts" hadn't opened Pandora's box I wouldn't feel the need to second guess their best judgment.
//So fuck your gut. It doesn't convince anyone, which is what you're claiming you want to do. So where are your data? I'm tired of this game. It's your extraordinary claim of conspiracy. You provide the data or fuck off.//
No. I will not fuck off.
Stop speaking to me as though you are a group.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 27 2021 hmmm, maybe if the rules made more sense.
-You can spread covid while standing at a restaurant so must be masked but can take your mask off while seated with a group because you're now safe.-You must have your vaxx card to dine out, but your waitstaff and cooks don't need to be vaccinated.-You can eat at a restaurant un-vaccinated, as long as it has counter service... but not if it serves alcohol.-You can carry the virus while vaccinated but can't fly without getting vaxxed.-You can now cross the border from Canada to the States (if double vaxxed) easily but to cross back means a two week quarantine.
It is mass hysteria and psychological warfare conducted simultaneously on a planet wide scale and proof of its cause should be secondary to its effects. You know I can't prove it 'is' a con any more than you can prove it's 'not'.
Are we both supposed to fuck off then?
This virus will run its course. We can keep our rights through it or not.
That's all.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 27 2021 Do you not realise how whiny and petulant you sound 2fries? I assume the measures you mention are true for Canada, but most places have similar. The vaccination rules may not all be optimal, but they're intended to reduce the spread of an epidemic disease which has the potential to cause significant loss of life if it gets too widespread.
//-You can spread covid while standing at a restaurant so must be masked but can take your mask off while seated with a group because you're now safe. -You must have your vaxx card to dine out, but your waitstaff and cooks don't need to be vaccinated. -You can eat at a restaurant un-vaccinated, as long as it has counter service... but not if it serves alcohol. -You can carry the virus while vaccinated but can't fly without getting vaxxed. -You can now cross the border from Canada to the States (if double vaxxed) easily but to cross back means a two week quarantine.//
-You can drive dangerously on a private racetrack with like-minded others, but not on the public highway -You must have a driving licence to drive a car (on a public road), but workers at the petrol station may not have one. -You might kill someone by accident while driving, even if you have a driving license - but you're not allowed to drive (on public roads) without one. -You can easily drive on a main road straight past a T-junction, but if you want to pull out from a side-road you need to give way, and come to a stop first.
(What's that, four equivalent points rather than five? Well, your points 2 & 3 can't both be true as written, so I ignored the second.)
//This virus will run its course. We can keep our rights through it or not.//
Something I've noticed about American libertarians is that they're very big on 'rights', but don't seem to understand that a legal right assigned to them is necessarily a restriction on everyone else. If 'everyone' has the same rights, then there has to be a trade-off where your rights infringe on others. Your property is stuff which other people arn't allowed to take. Your ability to drive is contingent on being able to do so safely, i.e. with a limited and socially acceptable risk of harming others. Your freedom to use your body however you like ends where other people's bodies begin (if not before).
I don't think rules purportedly aiming to constrain the spread of disease necessarily deviate from that pattern. Maybe some do, but if so, you could, well, talk about those rather than going on and on about the ones which don't instead.-- Loris, Oct 27 2021 //Do you not realise how whiny and petulant you sound 2fries?//
Is that how you hear me with your minds ear? Just like the voices of all our male radio broadcasters now.I can assure you I am neither.
//Well, your points 2 & 3 can't both be true as written//
My two and three points are both true though I agree the rules are quite contradictory.They've determined that getting up and walking to a counter to pick up food and bringing it back to my own table somehow makes it not-a-restaurant, so I don't need a vaccine to eat at one...
...unless they serve alcohol, then this turns counter pick-up back into a restaurant again so that's off limits.Somehow one is safer than the other but there's only one difference I can see.
I don't equate this over-night arbitrary mandate free-for-all with common sense road laws developed over time. If those were as contradictory as these mandates people would not blindly listen to them.
//Something I've noticed about American libertarians is that they're very big on 'rights', but don't seem to understand that a legal right assigned to them is necessarily a restriction on everyone else. If 'everyone' has the same rights, then there has to be a trade-off where your rights infringe on others.//
I am not one of those but I'll be sure to tell the first American Libertarian that the next time I see one.Until then this politically neutral Canadian boy wants the rules to make sense before being imposed on his rights.
This pandemic is being used to bankrupt the planet. You've seen the agenda from the world Economic Forum gatherings presented before any of this started and now its going just like clockwork.
You will own nothing, and you will be happy to be relieved of the burden of your rights citizen.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 27 2021 //Is that how you hear me with your minds ear?//
It is now.
//My two and three points are both true though I agree the rules are quite contradictory.//
No, "dining out" covers too much for your argument to work.
Nevertheless. The rules may be too convoluted for their intention. That seems to be the way of laws, and I agree that tendency should be contested where possible. But it's not evidence of a worldwide conspiracy. And none of the rules you mention seem particularly (or even slightly) draconian, given the situation.
People have asked you what your alternative would be, and ... well, you don't have one, so you are limited to down-playing the issues instead.
(American libertarians / rights)
//I am not one of those//
Lives in the North American continent - check. Whines about rights being infringed when slightly inconvenienced for the public good - check. Shoe fits, dude.-- Loris, Oct 27 2021 I didn't come here for good ideas. I came here to watch indignant people spray each other with Truth Goo. And it's going great!
If we can't whimsically discuss ideas then it's [mfd] time. As much as I enjoy looking at monuments of Truth Goo, I realize this isn't everyone's preference, and for the sake of my health, the best time for me to stop sifting Truth Goo for imaginary gold nuggets was 10 years ago, and the second-best time is today, or maybe ~1 week ago.-- sninctown, Oct 27 2021 I asked for more whimsy and tolerance, not [mfd]. I want this idea to stay up, and others are free to [mfd] if we (meaning the dear reader) are really that unable to cope with diverse perspectives.
I am archiving this page as a hedge against the future: a few years from now, either I will enjoy being right, or I will enjoy living in a more optimistic world.-- sninctown, Oct 27 2021 //draconian//
Not yet. I know that it 'is' draconian in the Philippines, I suspect it is getting there in Australia and Canada is just playing a game of Dr.Bonnie-Henry-Says for now.
////Is that how you hear me with your minds ear?////
//It is now.//
Then you should work on that. If you met me you would know better.
Delete my words if you wish, but you're just kinda proving my point that rational discussion of this topic is actively discouraged.Thank you [Frankx] for that very informative link.
Nobody has told me yet why the general public is left uninformed of such data without being required to search it out themselves.
That used to be news.Another thing nobody seems to want to discuss. You all just want to lump me into a category and dismiss my words as nonsense without actually considering them.Feel free.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 28 2021 Thanks [2_F].
//lump me into a category and dismiss my words as nonsense without actually considering them//
No, really not.
It's a crisis that's been badly handled by un-trustworthy politicians (varies depending on your location), clumsily and hurriedly producing dubious (and often non-sensical) legislation that genuinely does impinge on individual freedoms.
And all in the context of global capitalist mega- corporations, financial institutions and international trade federations intertwined with (and having excessive influence on) our various political leaderships.
There's plenty of reason for suspecting individual corruption and widespread incompetence (plenty of examples of both).
But that's not the same as the deliberate, malevolent, coordinated effort to subdue, deceive and subjugate citizens globally that some seem to believe.
Not least: the individual politicians, the political organisations, the governments, the international corporations... they just aren't that competent.
These people repeatedly fail to deliver minor infrastructure projects on-time-on-budget, even when their entire careers depend on it. Sh**e, sometimes you wonder whether they can tie their own shoelaces.-- Frankx, Oct 28 2021 In your mind, 2f, you lump me into a group. One of many deluded sheep who got the vaccine. So group- speak it is.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 28 2021 Have I Rayfo? This whole time I've said that any at risk individual should be vaccinated and those who want to be as well. My beef is with force being used to demand it.
How does it make someone a deluded sheep because they are forced to choose between compliance and unemployment? (this includes my own family)So no. I haven't lumped anybody either in my head or out of it.
//And all in the context of global capitalist mega- corporations, financial institutions and international trade federations intertwined with (and having excessive influence on) our various political leaderships.There's plenty of reason for suspecting individual corruption and widespread incompetence (plenty of examples of both).But that's not the same as the deliberate, malevolent, coordinated effort to subdue, deceive and subjugate citizens globally that some seem to believe.//
I am aware that two people can't keep a secret unless one of them is dead, and also aware that humans as a group are not savvy enough to pull off a con of this scale.So what does that leave?All of the citizens of planet Earth locked down and all world governments enacting mandate powers practically over night. We've got most of the billionaires and big-wigs on the planet gathering to listen to Klaus Schwab's Great-Reset agenda, our Prime Minister actually using the word reset in his speeches, and everything seems to be going down exactly as outlined in his book.
We agree, humans aren't that capable... and yet it's happening anyway.So what does that leave?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 28 2021 //My beef is with force being used to demand it//
Except that, in the process, you have routinely denied its effectiveness, overemphasized rare or non-existent side effects, ignored the risk from covid to otherwise healthy people, and various other anti-vaxxer talking points, indicating they you believe the rest of us have been fooled.
Therefore, you are classing us all as deluded sheep.
//I know that it 'is' draconian in the Philippines//
In case you missed it, Duterte was encouraging extra- judicial killing of drug users long before the pandemic was a thing. And being praised for it. To claim that the pandemic is why the Philippines has draconian enforcement is to ignore a lot of recent history.-- MechE, Oct 28 2021 //So what does that leave?//
I've no idea. Not a scoobie-doo.
What does it leave?-- Frankx, Oct 28 2021 It may shock everyone to hear that Hitler wasn't much of an engineer. Or a military tactician. And his people couldn't be everywhere (hell, he killed the brown shirts). But the people were so self-regulating, or even proactive in doing what they IMAGINED he'd want them to do, that the whole thing degenerated. The same thing is apparently happening in Hong Kong, where the authorities pass a vague censorship law and everyone clams up.-- 4and20, Oct 28 2021 ////My beef is with force being used to demand it////
//Except that, in the process, you have routinely denied its effectiveness//
The effectiveness of force being used to demand results? Never. I've seen it first-hand. There is no shame in having been conned. Perhaps the stigma attached with that should be addressed before proceeding.
The effectiveness of these shots? No. I asked questions about the definition change. I only know what they disclose.
//overemphasized rare or non-existent side effects//
When? My mothers all-over body rash? My Step-uncle's permanent double-vision?, Blood clots?, or our cleaning lady's stroke victim neighbour?
// ignored the risk from covid to otherwise healthy people//
How so when vaxxed and anti-vaxxed can both carry the virus? We're down to not enough hospital beds and staff as your argument then. Both fixable, especially if you stop firing staff for refusing to comply.
//and various other anti-vaxxer talking points indicating they you believe the rest of us have been fooled.//
I don't know what other anti-vaxxer talking points are. I'm just me making up ''my' own mind without affiliation with any group at all. Like none... ever.
//Therefore, you are classing us all as deluded sheep.//
That is entirely your assumption. I believe I've used the expressions; 'rubes' and self righteous asswipes' as it pertains to forcing others to put themselves in harms way for your sake.Anything else comes strictly from your own mental projections and says far more about you than it does about me.
////I know that it 'is' draconian in the Philippines////
//In case you missed it, Duterte was encouraging extra- judicial killing of drug users long before the pandemic was a thing. And being praised for it. To claim that the pandemic is why the Philippines has draconian enforcement is to ignore a lot of recent history.//
Sure. Okay. Did they shoot people for breaking curfew then as covid precaution? Were they praised for it?
//I've no idea. Not a scoobie-doo.What does it leave?//
<shrugs>Something other than governments.
//The many missteps among various agencies during the pandemic do not mean there's a conspiracy//
Nor does it not.Wake me when the rules I am to conform to make sense. I will consider listening to them then. Devise tests to determine adverse reactions to each of these shots.
Mandate that.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2021 //////Is that how you hear me with your minds ear?////// ////It is now.//// //Then you should work on that.//
Why should I? I mean, I would - but you keep saying things like "My beef is with force being used to demand it[vaccination]." And we ask what force that is, because maybe there's a local rule we don't know about, and the best you've got is /not even/ being unable to 'eat out' while unvaccinated, it's not being allowed an alcoholic drink with your meal when you do so, apparently because of some strange parochial licencing situation. Or a rule about being required to be vaccinated (and therefore a lower transmission risk) if you work with the vulnerable. But somehow we're the 'self righteous asswipes' because we're "forcing others to put themselves in harms way for [our own] sake".
//If you met me you would know better.//
Yeah. I expect I'd like you, and maybe we'd get along. I mean, I've always thought you were okay, I just think you're wrong here, and going about things very badly.
//Delete my words if you wish, but you're just kinda proving my point that rational discussion of this topic is actively discouraged.//
I should maybe clarify that I marked this idea for deletion before most of the discussion on it, and I was for retention of the other thread once the discussion had happened. It seems that jutta wants to let the discussion happen and then maybe delete it, while I'd prefer a firm and consistent rule that things are not allowed and nipped in the bud, or conversely are allowed and retained forever.
//Nobody has told me yet why the general public is left uninformed of such data without being required to search it out themselves.//
On the TV here we've had daily updates routinely for most of the crisis - where data is reported by the government. They may not have done the best job (they've sometimes been criticised for lack of clarity), but it's not like they didn't try to push information to the public. If you only watched entertainment shows on TV, you'd have seen guidance in adverts around them. If you looked on the internet you could also find it. If you read the newspapers you'd also have seen it. If you walked down the street, there was information on advertising hoardings and bus stops. If you had a mobile phone, you got texts with the most critical information in. What exactly are you thinking they should do - come round your house and answer your questions individually in person?
//I don't know what other anti-vaxxer talking points are. I'm just me making up ''my' own mind without affiliation with any group at all. Like none... ever.//
And yet you still bring up insane rumours, like the Australian police vaccinating people against their will on the side of the road. You may not be affiliated (whatever that means), but you're certainly exposed to the propaganda.-- Loris, Oct 29 2021 //Why should I?//
Because it means your mental voice projector needs to be tweaked.
//I mean, I would - but you keep saying things like "My beef is with force being used to demand it[vaccination]." And we ask what force that is, because maybe there's a local rule we don't know about, and the best you've got is /not even/ being unable to 'eat out' while unvaccinated, it's not being allowed an alcoholic drink with your meal when you do so, apparently because of some strange parochial licencing situation.//
No. The force being used is loss of employment if you do not comply to the demand.
The restaurant rant was just to point out how stupidly arbitrary these mandates are.When you can't eat in a restaurant without a vaccine card but all of the people serving you and the cooks do not need to be vaccinated then......that mandate is not only conflicting and arbitrary, it is completely insane.It's all about pressure and nothing to do with public health. Restaurant an pub owners are 'forced' to demand your vax card upon entry with the threat of losing their liquor license.
Yes, force.
//On the TV here we've had daily updates routinely for most of the crisis - where data is reported by the government. They may not have done the best job (they've sometimes been criticised for lack of clarity), but it's not like they didn't try to push information to the public.What exactly are you thinking they should do - come round your house and answer your questions individually in person?//
I hardly ever get to watch tv but the radio plays all day while I work.A constant litany of;Number of Covid cases.Covid ICU patients.Covid death count.Mandate updates.Think local, listen local, shop local, and stay safe.
No news, just propaganda.Maybe they could start there.
//insane rumours, like the Australian police vaccinating people against their will on the side of the road. You may not be affiliated (whatever that means), but you're certainly exposed to the propaganda.//
I did preface that with saying I thought the rumour was false, but its not from just any propaganda source, it's from the word-of-mouth going around from people here with friends and family down there.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2021 //The restaurant rant was just to point out how stupidly arbitrary these mandates are. When you can't eat in a restaurant without a vaccine card but all of the people serving you and the cooks do not need to be vaccinated then...//
This is precisely because they're trying not to make vaccination mandatory.
If you require people to be vaccinated in order to work in any customer-facing job, it's de facto mandatory for a very broad swathe of the population.
However, eating out in a restaurant (which has some particular legal definition because obviously it does) is a luxury, and definitely not essential, and presumably was a significant enough mixing (and hence disease propagation) risk to get a rule targeted at patrons.
//It's all about pressure and nothing to do with public health. Restaurant an pub owners are 'forced' to demand your vax card upon entry with the threat of losing their liquor license.//
//Yes, force.//
So all laws work through force by that argument. Pub owners are forced to check that their customers are of legal drinking age. If you want to drive, you're forced to prove you can do so safely, then you're forced to drive on one specific side of the road, and no faster than a certain speed. When you get a job you're forced to give some of the money you earn to the state. And so on, for everything. It's a very libertarian attitude.-- Loris, Oct 29 2021 In a way [2F], you begin to sound like a politician to me, with a great deal of emotion and soapboxing and unclear on facts and motives. I begin to suspect that you are above all enraged that your hospitality business (and thus the town?) will suffer because of ongoing regulations. That is a real concern, but why not just say it?-- 4and20, Oct 29 2021 //This is precisely because they're trying not to make vaccination mandatory.//
No. When the reason given for needing vaccinations to dine out is to limit the spread of a virus and then let the people who are touching everything, and potentially spreading it to Every Single Patron they come in contact with, remain un-vaccinated... well that my friend is complete and utter bullshit.Mandated bullshit.
//I begin to suspect that you are above all enraged that your hospitality business (and thus the town?) will suffer because of ongoing regulations. That is a real concern, but why not just say it?//
Because it is patently untrue. You assume too much about my motivations.Covid has been nothing but a cash cow for us.With nobody allowed to travel, our little tourist mecca was swamped all summer and we filled this place to capacity in our very first year. People tell us this place never used to fill up at all because it was such a dive and now they are booking group spots years in advance.I've got sixteen of our thirty rooms completed and housing is in such demand here that various businesses are renting our kitchenettes monthly for the entire winter to house their staff when we would normally shut right down.I expect to have twenty eight rooms ready for the coming summer season and I've increased the property value to such an extent that I could walk right now with a couple million free and clear after only owning it for a year and a half.
You suspect incorrectly sir.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2021 ////This is precisely because they're trying not to make vaccination mandatory.////
//No. When the reason given for needing vaccinations to dine out is to limit the spread of a virus and then let the people who are touching everything, and potentially spreading it to Every Single Patron they come in contact with, remain un-vaccinated... well that my friend is complete and utter bullshit.//
I feel like you ought to make up your mind what you're arguing for.
Does the vaccine reduce disease spread? Well, yes it does, but you've been consistently and wildly claiming that it doesn't because anecdotes and a reluctance to grok the data. If in spite of this you still think it doesn't, you can't in good faith use an argument which relies on it.
Do you want vaccination to be mandatory for the public in general, or not? Because you've been claiming it is (even though it patently isn't), yet now seem to be arguing that it ought to be required for many more situations.
It is obvious that if the vaccine reduces spread (and I think for transient contacts it's now clear it does), and if everyone who could reasonably be vaccinated, were vaccinated, the spread of the disease would be reduced - a public health good. It's also clear that making vaccination a legal requirement would be an impingement on civil liberties, which would be undesirable. Most people seem to understand that the governments of liberal democracies are trying to balance these two conflicting pressures, and also their other normal political objectives, so there's no need for some wierd conspiracy element.-- Loris, Oct 29 2021 //Does the vaccine reduce disease spread? Well, yes it does, but you've been consistently and wildly claiming that it doesn't because anecdotes and a reluctance to grok the data. If in spite of this you still think it doesn't, you can't in good faith use an argument which relies on it.//
If you read my words again, not once will you find that I claim that the vaccines won't reduce the spread of disease.I said that since no anti vaxxer will be travelling only vaccinated people will be spreading it on airlines and that you will no longer be able to vilify non vaccinated individuals for international spread.
Big difference.
//Do you want vaccination to be mandatory for the public in general, or not?//
Not.
//Because you've been claiming it is (even though it patently isn't), yet now seem to be arguing that it ought to be required for many more situations.//
My only claim is that vaccinations are being forced on the public by using the mandates to restrict freedoms and threaten employment status to where most people really have no choice now do they?
Saying that it is insane for a mandate to contradict itself in no way implies that I think more freedoms should be restricted.How can you even twist my words to suggest such a thing when I'm the guy telling them to stick their mandates up their asses?
//It is obvious that if the vaccine reduces spread (and I think for transient contacts it's now clear it does), and if everyone who could reasonably be vaccinated, were vaccinated, the spread of the disease would be reduced - a public health good.//
Not if everyone can still be a carrier and nobody is 100% immune. You merely prolong the inevitable, and I get that, we need to slow down the number of folks sick from this shit at any given time, but they can damned well make sense while doing it.
//It's also clear that making vaccination a legal requirement would be an impingement on civil liberties, which would be undesirable. Most people seem to understand that the governments of liberal democracies are trying to balance these two conflicting pressures, and also their other normal political objectives, so there's no need for some wierd conspiracy element.//
...and yet my gut screams that there is. Talking monkeys never all agree on anything in the history of, well history, and when all governments on the planet simultaneously assume powers there is fuckery about.
I think [a1] expressed interest in the first court case against these arbitrary mandates.Well here it is.[link]
About fucking time is all I can say.
I've tried to tell you guys. I've seen all this coming for a very long time and sacrificed decades to put us in a position to be able to get through just about anything.Give me a few more years and my little town will be capable of hopping off the grid at the flip of a switch.
It's not 'me' I'm worried about.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2021 Question: aren't you in charge of the place? Maybe play a different station? Get an Alexa and play some random station from somewhere?
Yes. There is fuckery about. It comes in the way of a small virus.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 30 2021 //If you read my words again, not once will you find that I claim that the vaccines won't reduce the spread of disease.//
You've never said the precise phrase "The vaccines won't reduce the spread of disease". True, but misleading. Throughout this thread (and elsewhere) you've repeatedly, in various ways, explicit and implicit, made false statements about the covid vaccines.
You started the thread by claiming they don't provide immunity, and arn't even vaccines: //If it does not provide immunity it is not a vaccine,//
Now the thing is, they do, in relevant biological sense of provoking an immune reaction in the presence of an antigen, rather than the law/lawyer sense of 100% protection. And they do all provide pretty good protection. You've /persistently/ claimed that anything short of perfect protection isn't good enough, in spite of multiple people pointing out e.g. other vaccines which arn't completely protective. For example:
//If the jab doesn't do a damned thing to protect others then society,...//
I think if you showed this comment in full to someone, and asked them "Does it look like the author thought the vaccine would reduce the spread of the disease?" They'd say something approximating "Definitely not."
//I am saying that not one single individual human has been rendered immune to this virus [by the vaccine] ...//
You've also persistently tried to invoke some sort of conspiracy theory involving vaccines at the same time, for example:
//That word was removed from the definition and these Non-Vaccines confer immunity to exactly zero percent of the population...//
And yet, you think that a prior covid infection provides immunity:
//I have immunity from a previous infection. Is that somehow less protection than these shots? If not. Where is the exception?//
In overview, this is basically a motte and bailey strategy, where you use the word immune to mean "more resistant to" when it suits you, but require it to mean "complete protection" elsewhere.
//How can you even twist my words to suggest such a thing [...]?//
I'm not twisting your words, you're writing them that way. You should try to be more precise. (I do think you're trying - please keep working to improve.)
//Saying that it is insane for a mandate to contradict itself in no way implies that I think more freedoms should be restricted.//
I do understand your frustration with convoluted rules like the restaurant/"non-alcoholic eatery" thing. I agree it would be great for that sort of issue to be straightened out, for effectiveness of the legislation, ease of comprehension and logistical reasons. Absolutely. I hate that sort of thing (and I believe I've said so, if not on this thread the previous one.) However, my point is that they exist as a compromise between "everybody must be vaccinated to reduce infection rates" and "all services must be shut down to reduce infection rates". I think they're the sort of thing you're going to get when the government is aiming to benefit the people, rather than itself. I suggest that before you rail against them too hard you should consider whether you'd prefer one of the (much easier to legislate in a totalitarian regime) extremes.-- Loris, Oct 30 2021 //Question: aren't you in charge of the place? Maybe play a different station? Get an Alexa and play some random station from somewhere?//
I drive a lot. I listen to many stations. Should I not be able to get the straight shit from local sources? Like I said, news used to be news. Now it's not. Now it's Covid FM. All Covid. All The Time!
//Yes. There is fuckery about. It comes in the way of a small virus.//
Which didn't cause all talking monkeys planet-wide to adopt the same agenda over night without premeditation.M'yes, quite.
// //If you read my words again, not once will you find that I claim that the vaccines won't reduce the spread of disease.//
Okay Stephen King. Shit. Take a breath. Some of us have to work in the morning, don't live at a computer, and need to explain to their wife why they are still trying to save the world in the only time we get together. If you could be more succinct in the future my ability to respond and not be drowned out by your preconceived assumptions would be greatly appreciated. You should try to be more precise. (I do think you're trying - please keep working to improve.) Thanks in advance.
The rest of my words you've twisted to mean what you want them to mean by telling me that by saying this... you mean this...
...and since I am not responsible for whatever delusions of me you wish to write in your head...
...perhaps you could tell me about your mother.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 30 2021 It's disappointing that you won't take responsibility for the things you say, 2 fries.-- Loris, Oct 30 2021 I take responsibility for everything I say.What I won't take is being told I 'mean' one thing because I said something else. Stop putting words in my mouth and then assuming I will accept responsibility for words which are yours.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 30 2021 I can only go by the words you've written, 2 fries. If you write something sloppily and it doesn't mean what you intended, that's on you. I've been working pretty hard to try to understand you. To be honest, it's pretty hard given your sometimes lackadaisical approach to word definitions.-- Loris, Oct 30 2021 // You suspect incorrectly sir. //
I prefer "Your Highness.", in the kitchen, with the lead pipe.-- 4and20, Oct 30 2021 I take responsibility for everything he has said, for arbitrary and extreme definitions of "he".-- Voice, Oct 30 2021 Not many people place their own actions and choices with respect what they think is good or bad for society, Not many have the luxury or resources. To feel strongly enough comes with personal cost.
On the next to nothing slim chance the the vaccine will cascade to an extinction event. I'll will be happy dying, knowing a few will live on, the way diverse nature intended.-- wjt, Oct 31 2021 //To be honest, it's pretty hard given your sometimes lackadaisical approach to word definitions.//
Tell that to the CDC.Turns out that shoving vaccines down societies throats might be causing the variants. [link]
Viruses evolve just like everything else.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 31 2021 //Good on ‘em//
"Any medical procedure performed on a patient without their informed consent amounts to assault,"
No physician would disagree. No-one is being injected without consent.
Your state/gov.t/whatever may be putting pressure on citizens to have the vaccine, but medical ethics and consent are unambiguous: no physician will inject you without informed consent.
Consent is precisely defined and unambiguous in this context.-- Frankx, Oct 31 2021 //Tell that to the CDC.//
They updated their vaccine definition, sure. They've also explained why:
::The previous definitions could have been interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered::
This means they changed it because some people were interpreting "immunity" to mean "complete protection" and also to keep up with the development of technology. We've been over this several times now. So, y'know, that's probably not the killer retort you seem to think.
//Turns out that shoving vaccines down societies throats might be causing the variants.//
a1 has made some good points above. To these I'd like to add that people who recover from disease can apply the same sorts of selection pressure, leading to variants arising. As a disease passes through a population and makes everybody (who survives) resistant, there's a strong selection pressure for mutants which can reinfect the survivors. With the additional disadvantage that there's more disease around, and hence more opportunity for mutations to arise.
//Viruses evolve just like everything else.//
I might know a little about evolution. Given I did a degree in genetics and a PhD in molecular microbiology.-- Loris, Oct 31 2021 // But your take on it is not supported by the text. Viruses, like every other living thing, evolve - the article discussed how vaccines can be a factor in that process. Some bits you may have missed or chose to ignore://
I didn't miss or ignore anything. We are repeatedly told that blame for the variants rests entirely on the shoulders of us evil anti-vaxxers and it's just not true.
//[2f] What *are* the specific rules in your province regarding hotels, motels, RV parks such as yours?//
Everyone arrives individually or as groups and remain separate. Motels and hotels have been deemed essential services, so we are required to outline specific and thorough cleaning practices, put hand sanitizer stations every bloody where, and plastic screens between desk staff and guests.We no longer provide turn-down service until covid is over.
Pretty much boils down to; make your own rules and precautions... and don't guess wrong because we'll be checking later.
//The previous definitions could have been interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered//
Forget 'effective', let's focus on the word they've removed, 'immunity'. To say that previous vaccines weren't 100% 'effective' does not mean that those the vaccines did work on weren't rendered immune.No human is rendered 'immune' to this virus by taking these shots so it will never be eradicated.
// To these I'd like to add that people who recover from disease can apply the same sorts of selection pressure, leading to variants arising. As a disease passes through a population and makes everybody (who survives) resistant, there's a strong selection pressure for mutants which can reinfect the survivors. With the additional disadvantage that there's more disease around, and hence more opportunity for mutations to arise.//
Is that why the masses have been conned into screaming at me that 'all' of the variants are the fault of this group I've been lumped into?Maybe they need to be informed as to the percentages of variants arising from naturally acquired antibody response as opposed to vaccine resistant strains.
Y'know... both sides of a story. C'mon, you guys can remember when the public's information wasn't filtered to remove anything contrary to the narrative being presented.News I think they called it.
//Given I did a degree in genetics and a PhD in molecular microbiology.//
Noice! I'm jelly.So maybe you can tell us the percentage of variants arising due to vaccination response compared to natural immune system response.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 31 2021 Seeing as how the mRNA vaccines don't actually include any actual virus their contribution would seem to be 0.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 01 2021 Meaning; nobody becomes immune from it?, or no variants can mutate and arise because of it?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 01 2021 Meaning there are no variants from it. It doesn't exist in any form in their bodies that can evolve to them.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 01 2021 2 fries, I know this is long, but I'm answering a question you explicitly asked in the best way I can, so you'd better read it carefully, or there will be a deleterious effect on all future conversation.
//We are repeatedly told that blame for the variants rests entirely on the shoulders of us evil anti- vaxxers and it's just not true.//
I don't think anyone /here/ is saying that.
//Pretty much boils down to; make your own rules and precautions... and don't guess wrong because we'll be checking later.//
Red tape is always annoying. Ambiguous rules particularly so.
////The previous definitions could have been interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered////
//Forget 'effective', let's focus on the word they've removed, 'immunity'. To say that previous vaccines weren't 100% 'effective' does not mean that those the vaccines did work on weren't rendered immune. No human is rendered 'immune' to this virus by taking these shots so it will never be eradicated.
They're rendered immune in the sense of having an immune response. It's a bit unfortunate that the reason you're complaining about the CDC definition change is because of confusion about the terminology they'd decided was confusing. It's not a conspiracy, you're just wrong.
//// To these I'd like to add that people who recover from disease can apply the same sorts of selection pressure, leading to variants arising. As a disease passes through a population and makes everybody (who survives) resistant, there's a strong selection pressure for mutants which can reinfect the survivors. With the additional disadvantage that there's more disease around, and hence more opportunity for mutations to arise.////
//Is that why the masses have been conned into screaming at me that 'all' of the variants are the fault of this group I've been lumped into?//
It seems like you're feeling defensive because of some local thing none of us know about. None of the news sources I look at say that.
//Maybe they need to be informed as to the percentages of variants arising from naturally acquired antibody response as opposed to vaccine resistant strains.
Y'know... both sides of a story. C'mon, you guys can remember when the public's information wasn't filtered to remove anything contrary to the narrative being presented. News I think they called it.//
You're effectively asking for the news to give you information I don't think it's possible to determine. I'll go into more detail below. But before we get to that - as a thought experiment, how would /you/ tell where a variant arose? To get a percentage, you don't just have to do that for one, you need to do that for them all.
//So maybe you can tell us the percentage of variants arising due to vaccination response compared to natural immune system response.//
I /think/ what you're asking is basically how many "variants of interest" arise through infections of vaccinated individuals vs those who have not been vaccinated but have previously been infected.
It should be obvious that there isn't going to be an invariant percentage for this, it'll depend on the relative sizes of these two groups, and even if these were fixed, it would still depend on the disease itself and the vaccine. If the vaccine were killed or weakened organisms, I'd expect there not to be much difference in the /sort/ of mutation which was selected. Basically vaccinated individuals just look like previously infected individuals to the disease in a new infection. So you could calculate a percentage easily just using the group sizes. But it wouldn't be a particularly /useful/ metric.In any case, what I'd predict would be variants which could better infect all these individuals; some variation which allows reinfection. If the vaccination substituted for a widespread epidemic, you could say that the vaccination hasn't really changed the course of evolution very much - except of course that there was much less disease, so if resistance could be kept up at a high level in the population, that disease might be eventually be eradicated.
Now, you'll have noticed that this doesn't entirely apply to all the covid19 vaccines, since some are derived from only part of the virus. Yes, this /may/ mean the immune response differs somewhat. Let's consider that. People vaccinated with i.e. just the covid19 spike protein (or anything which eventually encodes it) will only respond to that, while those 'naturally' immune through infection /may/ have a broader response. The broader response is not /necessarily/ beneficial (in some diseases, it's apparently /worse/) - but for the sake of argument, let's suppose it is. I think this would be expected to favour mutations in the spike protein gene, to allow better infection of vaccinated hosts. Is that bad? Well, it's obviously not great if a variant can overcome the vaccination resistance, but it's not worse than the prior situation, where everyone had to catch the disease to gain immunity, with the inherent risk of generating and passing on a new variant in the process.
So given all that, perhaps we could consider a different approach - what do we actually know about the variants of Covid? This information is available to anyone with internet access who cares to look, I'll post a link to what I found ("Variants of SARS-CoV-2"). This wikipedia page has a table summarising the current variants of concern. There are five, including one variant of a variant. What can we say from this table? In terms of resistance, there isn't much difference between natual resistance and vaccination. Natural infection is better than vaccination against the beta variant, but worse against the gamma variant. The first variant of concern was alpha, first identified in the UK in Oct2020 after the country had experienced widespread infection. The vaccination programme didn't begin in the UK until Dec2020. The "Alpha with E484K" variant was first identified 26th January 2021, so just after the start of the vaccination programme. Two weeks prior to this (i.e. 10 Jan), about 2.5 million people had received their first vaccine dose (UK total), we can treat this as an approximation of people whe may have vaccine-mediated immunity. Which is just under 4% of the UK population. Neutralising antibody activity (a proxy for immunity) for this variant is reported as "considerably reduced" for both natural infection and vaccine- mediated immunity.
I think most concern is now centred on the Delta variant, which has the highest transmissibility, hospitalisation and mortality. It also is apparently better able to reinfect and overcome vaccine resistance. This variant was identified in India, in Oct 2020. At this point, its vaccination programme had not began (started Jan 2021), and the country was going through a disastrous epidemic wave.
In both these cases we don't actually definitively know that the variant arose in an unvaccinated individual, but on balance of probabilities, it seems likely. I'm going to pick one more (the beta variant), then I'm not going to look at the other variants - if anyone wants to compare their origin to the local vaccination programme, please do.
The Beta variant arose in South Africa, first isolated May 2020. I thought I should look at this because it's apparently somewhat more likely to infect vaccinated individuals than those previously infected, judging by the summary table. (Those previously infected with what I assume is a local strain do have a reduced T-cell response, but this is apparently sufficient.) South Africa didn't start its vaccination programme until Feb 2021. However, I had a niggling concern about vaccine trials occuring in this country, in particular the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine which is less effective against it. Looking in to this however, the trial began in June2020, so although this vaccine is significantly less protective against this strain, it doesn't look likely to be involved in its origin.
Given that there is a significant lag between identifying a variant and determining whether it's a problem, we can't say that variants which can /specifically/ infect vaccinated individuals haven't arisen, but to date it doesn't seem to be a problem, and the variants which we know about seem to be blocked about equivalently by vaccination as by infection. I think thats what you'd look for if you thought there might be an issue.-- Loris, Nov 01 2021 [a1] Precisely. Every time the virus reproduces, there is a chance of mutation. Every mutation is either beneficial, neutral, or deleterious to that particular viruses survival under current selection pressures. Deleterious mutations tend to die out on their own. Beneficial ones increase spread. Neutral ones do neither.
If you introduce a vaccine, it prevents most viruses from spreading. But a formerly neutral mutation (or even a very mildly deleterious one) that is resistant to that vaccine suddenly becomes very beneficial. So therefore that strain is likely to become dominant.
The vaccine does not create the strain, nor does it make it more likely to spread in absolute terms. It just makes it more likely to spread in relative terms.
The reason that unvaccinated people are commonly blamed for variants is simply that they are more likely to be infected, and to pass it on. As a result, far more of the total viral reproduction happens in those individuals. Since each reproduction introduces a risk of a resistant mutation, a new variant is more likely to come from those individuals simply due to probability.-- MechE, Nov 01 2021 //No human is rendered 'immune' to this virus by taking these shots so it will never be eradicated.//
I thought you just said you'd never denied the effectiveness of the vaccine?
Once again, they, collectively, are reducing the infection rate by 85%. Not severe symptoms, total infections. That means that 85% of the people who would be getting Covid without the vaccine are not.
They are immune by even the most stringent interpretation of the word.-- MechE, Nov 01 2021 I must think on this. In my mind immune means impervious-to. Like those two people who shrugged off HIV aids when it was a death sentence for anyone else at the time. They were immune.
I will say this though. It is not too much to ask that tests be devised to determine whether one vaccine would be harmful to a person and another would not before lining us up like cattle with threats.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 02 2021 Given the number of people who have gotten the shot thus far, then I think any significant adverse reactions would be known by now.
There's the rarish teenage myocarditis thing but not much else.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 02 2021 Almost ten thousand now eh?
<doffs hat>br>A moment of silence.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 03 2021 Oh, I get the numbers.
Acceptable losses and all that jazz... but did those vaxx-death folks put us all in this position? No.Did the covid-death folks put us in this position? No.
Yet here we all are... squabbling amongst ourselves, just as intended.
I need more time to grok.
My head says, "We need to fix this", my gut still screams, "Yeah... but the fix is the con."
It's quite disconcerting.
You all learned... the stuff I'm gleaning from your interactions... which I didn't learn.<ear-worm alert>I learned how to crawl inside a shell and wait until I was strong enough to emerge.
So you guys know math, and history, and science and chemistry and stuff, and I know con-men, and psychopaths, and aberrant behaviour and the like.
That the vaccines, while being necessary, are also being used to subvert the entire population of Earth also bears consideration.
The possibility that both are true exists and that our basic human rights are at stake by being piggybacked on a intentional international emergency situation.
It's what I would do given enough power and lack of conscience.Why wage physical war when physcological will do? Much less loss of infrastructure.
Like I said, I need to think for a bit.
the collective sigh didn't really need to be that heavy guys-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 03 2021 Take the time you need, [2 fries]. We'll still be here, as annoying as ever.-- pertinax, Nov 03 2021 zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [marked-for-deletion] Turning Halfbakery into a platform for tiresome Qanon Fintstone's rantings.-- xenzag, Nov 03 2021 //Almost ten thousand now eh? <doffs hat>br>A moment of silence.//
//Acceptable losses and all that jazz... but did those vaxx-death folks put us all in this position? No. Did the covid-death folks put us in this position? No.//
A couple of things. Firstly, the majority, probably the large majority of those 10k deaths were incidental. I've not chased up this figure, I'm assuming it's from the USA. But I'm interpreting these as deaths within 28 days of vaccination, or similar. Now, a1 mentioned that the death rate was 0.0022%. Suppose you randomly selected people and did nothing to them - what sort of death rate would you expect in a month?. This is easy to calculate from the life expectancy - it's approximately 1 divided by the number of months alive on average. This is 1/(70*12)=0.00119, or about 0.12% : fifty times more than the reported rate! It's clear that most deaths are excluded (we don't ascribe being run over by a bus to the vaccine, and so on), but it's easy to see how some deaths may be hard to call, and the more cautious you are, the more you'll include. And the FDA is pretty cautious.
But there definitely are some rare side-effects. So for the sake of argument, let's go with it for now. We /know/ that the viral infection is much worse.If you're wanting to avoid the small but measurable health cost of vaccination over the population, then, you ought to want to avoid the much bigger risk of rampant infection in the community. So, if you're against vaccination, and care about the general risk, you absolutely should be promoting all other measures of disease control. Pro-lockdown in outbreaks, pro-masking, pro-quarantine etc. You'd want to come down hard and exterminate the disease locally, then keep it there with stringent control of movement between regions. But this is not what we observe. We see the people aggregating and protesting vaccination, lockdown and facemasks, all together. Why? Well, /either/ they're misinformed, and think that vaccines are much more dangerous than the disease, /or/ they're not actually concerned about the health of others like they pretend, and have their own selfish reasons.
The latter people are the real conmen, and yes, their actions absolutely have contributed to the situation.-- Loris, Nov 03 2021 Ruport Murdoch, the My Pillow Guy, people selling useless cures, Marjorie Taylor Green, websites that sponsor those useless cures, Putin, Breitbart, major religious figures, OAN, James Woods, the rest of the disinformation dozen...-- RayfordSteele, Nov 03 2021 //We see the people aggregating and protesting vaccination, lockdown and facemasks, all together. Why? Well, /either/ they're misinformed, and think that vaccines are much more dangerous than the disease, /or/ they're not actually concerned about the health of others like they pretend, and have their own selfish reasons.//
There are more than two reasons, here's one; that they don't trust that they are being told the truth since politicians lying through their teeth appears to be the running theme.Two weeks to flatten the curve... false.Woohan wet market origin... false.No vaccine mandates... false.No vaccine card restrictions... false.
Maybe stop lying to the general population and asking for trust.Try that.
//The latter people are the real conmen, and yes, their actions absolutely have contributed to the situation//
Ah but they are by absolutely no means the cause are they?Or are they?!Maybe point the blame-ray where it belongs.
Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain citizen.
It actually makes me want to puke... how the previously given trust has been misused and how we're just supposed to trust a bit harder to make it all right.
Let's see how it's going a year from now, and just how much of this shit is still somehow my fault for non-compliance.
Two weeks to flatten the curve kids... just another two weeks.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 04 2021 Shirley the folks regulating our lives will have gotten their shit together by then...
... they'll have our best interests at heart by then.
They said so.
It must be true.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 04 2021 [a1] made a great catch with those Covid mortality stats. But they do tend to support [2f]'s fears. With so many vaccine deaths, the numbers should really be broken down by cause, but never will be, because 1) It would implicate a vaccine manufacturer by name 2) It would risk producing fear instead of compliance.
The question is: just which brand(s) of vaccine cause the most deaths? Is it the first shot or the second which is most dangerous? And other related, unanswered questions.-- 4and20, Nov 04 2021 //would implicate a vaccine by name// Well, the VAERS database is freely available- at an amazingly open level of detail, so you can find, download and analyse reactions for each vaccine. They’ve even gone to the bother of telling you how to search and access the data, download entire datasets.
[link]-- Frankx, Nov 04 2021 I think this response by 4and20 is a good example of how I want to respond to 2 fries.
It's very easy to misinterpret data (accidentally or wilfully) to get a headline value. And if what you're looking for is a simple explanation, it looks great! The truth, on the other hand is often messy, awkward, and sometimes hard to understand. If your idea of someone trustworthy is someone with a quick explanation and who is very certain, someone who actually has an understanding of a subject and tries to explain their working can look terrible.-- Loris, Nov 04 2021 Although I go to great extremes to avoid doing any work at all, sometimes even I am too busy to do all the data gathering and data analysis. For example, I did find the total number of reported deaths, broken down by vaccine brand, on [Frank]'s link, but without knowing how much of each vaccine has been adminstered, along with doing some statistical estimates, I call only ballpark a comparison among them. If there is no Walter Cronkite today, maybe there should be.
On the other hand, while I admire the highly educated contributions of [Loris], a certain kind of rationalism[?], materialism[?] in British data analysis, (not knowing if you're even British) makes me highly suspicious of the conventionality of the answers of Walter Cronkite or even better educated people. I am not an anti-vaxxer, but I feel the Anglo-Saxon mind in some countries is so conformist that it usually starts with a so-called acceptable hypothesis and makes the data analysis fit.-- 4and20, Nov 04 2021 //On the other hand, while I admire the highly educated contributions of [Loris], a certain kind of rationalism[?], materialism[?] in British data analysis, (not knowing if you're even British) makes me highly suspicious of the conventionality of the answers of Walter Cronkite or even better educated people. I am not an anti-vaxxer, but I feel the Anglo-Saxon mind in some countries is so conformist that it usually starts with a so-called acceptable hypothesis and makes the data analysis fit.//
I /am/ british, and I had to look up who Walter Cronkite is, or was.
I don't consider my education to make me an authority on vaccination. But I object to the idea that I work backwards from something I'd find acceptable. I am in at least some sort of scientist, and pretty much the first objective of science is to try not to do that. It's a hard thing to do, and no-one's perfect. But I at least make some effort not to.
The problem I'm having with your recent statements is that you're starting off considering "vaccine deaths". It's pretty important to recognise that they're not, /necessarily/. VAERS even has you tick a box to acknowledge you've read their disclaimer, where they say that. "Vaccine providers are encouraged to report any clinically significant health problem following vaccination to VAERS, whether or not they believe the vaccine was the cause." You're assuming the result you want, which is kind of what you're accusing me of doing.-- Loris, Nov 04 2021 // You're assuming the result you want, which is kind of what you're accusing me of doing. //
I agree with your general point, but I suspect that (saying you hadn't looked at the data first) you used statistics to try to minimize what could in fact be additional deaths. I suspect that a certain mindset, although it might be entirely right in the end, will ignore the anti-vaxxer claims, tiresome as they are, about Covid deaths being overcounted, while minimizing vaccine related deaths which are being reported by the same medical professionals.-- 4and20, Nov 04 2021 I suspect that your suspicions miss the standard of objectivity very clearly spelled out a couple of times now.
Maybe, just maybe that old stubbornness that 2f relies on to get him through some things is a hindrance in other situations?-- RayfordSteele, Nov 04 2021 //Who was…trusted newsman// Richard Baker probably. Richard Dimbleby, Kate Adie.-- Frankx, Nov 04 2021 //Who was the iconic and trusted newsman of the postwar era in your part of the world?//
I was thinking Trevor McDonald, but he's a bit later than postwar. If we're counting Kate Adie, though, then he's in the running.-- Loris, Nov 05 2021 // that does NOT support [2f]'s fears, except perhaps in hos own mind.//
I've never been a ho... though there was that brief stretch in my twenties when I did manage to juggle three girlfriends who all knew about each other at the same time.
I remember it rather fondly.
//Maybe, just maybe that old stubbornness that 2f relies on to get him through some things is a hindrance in other situations?//
That is a very real possibility and I'm the first to admit it, but shear stubbornness is just an innate character trait. A tool.It was intuition which kept me from being eaten alive eaten after being thrown to the wolves.Most of you discount intuition, (that's not a criticism by any means, just a fact), and did not need to learn to rely on your own for survival just to make it to adulthood.
I did.
I can no more discount my gut feelings than an engineer can discount his formulas or a musician can discount the musical scale.That my course load consisted of things which have no accreditation by no means indicates that I have not mastered the courses themselves... just that they are not taught in schools.
I get the impression that a huge percentage of individuals here excelled at the study of whatever they chose or had imposed upon them and were excellent students.Well I had to learn to utilize my intuition because it's pretty much been my only teacher.You guys got taught.I had to figure out how to teach myself.
For me not to give the same weight to non-provable visions as I give to those I've been able to double check would be the same as randomly slapping my sensei in the face... and would probably have a similar effect.
My teacher doesn't scream at me very often. When it does... well let's say I've learned the hard way that 'it' actually has my best interests in mind... and not just 'my' own best interests.
Sometimes I take quite a shit-kicking defending others, but I've seen things, and done things, which... don't seem to exist in your strictly scientific and rational world... yet they happened none the less.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 05 2021 You learn all of your life. Formal education teaches some specialized things that you don't pick up elsewhere, but learning how to be humble and learn from others isn't one of them. There are people with more education and/or knowledge than myself. I've learned to shut up and listen to them from time to time. Halfbakers are bright people. You've said so yourself. Please just take our word for this one thing.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 05 2021 // There are people with more education than myself. I've learned to shut up and listen to them from time to time.//
Not me, I know everything!-- Voice, Nov 05 2021 I just know what my gut says.
It's proven itself smarter then me too many times. I would not still be here without it.
Discount it at your own peril.
I've had to learn to. I guess you will too.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 05 2021 I don't think any of us think you should completely disregard your gut feeling. We have intuition as well (indeed, 4and20 was pointing this out above.)
I'd say it's fine for your gut to give you an initial impression. But you're treating yours as an Oracle, which is never wrong. And that's a mistake.
//For me not to give the same weight to non-provable visions as I give to those I've been able to double check would be the same as randomly slapping my sensei in the face... and would probably have a similar effect.//
Let's talk about that.
Some way up the thread, I mentioned three common beliefs. You pointed out that one of them was wrong. However, you didn't say anything about the others - which are also incorrect. To be fair, I'll concede that you may not have recognised the third case, but everyone with reasonable vision should understand the second. So your gut only scored one out of two in that test.
We're not /even/ asking you to discount your gut in 'unprovable' cases. We're talking about the testable ones.-- Loris, Nov 05 2021 [4and20]
//highly educated contributions of [Loris]... rationalism, materialism in British data analysis... makes me highly suspicious of the conventionality of the answers//
//but I feel the Anglo-Saxon mind in some countries is so conformist//
I think that's unfair. There's quite a few scientists and engineers here who highly value rationalism both philosophically and practically. That doesn't make them "conventional", "conformist" or un-creative.
It's true to say that engineering and science have deep roots in western philosophy, but the UK has a track record of radical thinkers making world-class discoveries [link] - and in the arts too. We rank in the to 20 for democracy, education, innovation, political and social freedom and many other indices.
And we have a national news service (and at least one newspaper) that is globally recognised as unbiased and free of pro-government propaganda.
We do still have some massive problems with racism, and racial intolerance, classism and gender inequality.
Oh, and the fact that most of our politicians went to the same private schools.-- Frankx, Nov 05 2021 [4and20] Vaers gives you the ability to select for a specific vaccine, to select for a specific adverse reaction, or any combination thereof. You can easily track down any reported issue and determine how many people reported it.
But, once again, it's critical to realize that VAERS is correlation, not causation. If someone had early access to the vaccine because they were a 90 year old with late stage 4 cancer, their death in close proximity to vaccination is unsurprising.
If an apparently healthy 20 year old has a heart attack within a week of getting the vaccine, it's a little more of a concern, but even there, it does happen. An occurrence that's one in a million in the background population, when you've vaccinated 193 million people, means you can expect 193 such incidents. If you see 200, then you've got a statistic that maybe is pointing fingers.
And we have a perfect example of that. The temporary hold on J&J occurred because there were 6 cases (out of ~7 million doses) of something that occurs in the background population at 3-4 per million per year. So those numbers weren't even above the background rate, but they were paying enough attention to detail to catch that proximity to vaccination appeared to be a risk factor.
So they halted the vaccine, investigated, and came back with a warning label indicating that the risk existed, and the appropriate treatment if it does occur, eliminating any long term health risk.
Over 6 cases. To claim that there are ten thousand of deaths that are caused by the vaccine without triggering massive investigations and halts is ignoring reality.-- MechE, Nov 05 2021 Maybe not entirely relevant, but here is a quote from 'Been There, Done That, Try This' by Tony Attwood:
// How can a person with an ASD, living on a planet that creates so much anxiety, cope with feeling almost constantly nervous and fearful? There are many strategies that are known to alleviate anxiety that have been recommended by the authors in this chapter, and there are also some that are effective, but not recommended. The following are not recommended strategies, as they can be destructive for friendships and relationships. When one is prone to anxiety, there is a tendency to develop strategies to control everyday experiences that have the potential to trigger greater anxiety, or even panic. Such strategies can include defiantly refusing to engage in a particular activity, or the use of emotional blackmail, such as threats to damage something or hurt someone, in order to escape having to comply with a request or expectation to participate in an activity that has previously been, or is anticipated to be, a cause of intense anxiety. Sometimes psychologists describe these anxiety management strategies as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) or Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). These strategies can be effective in avoiding anxiety for the person with an ASD, but are not appreciated by neurotypicals, who accuse the person with an ASD of being a control freak or a domestic terrorist. Being excessively controlling or threatening will have a detrimental effect on friendships and relationships and can lead to arguments, and punishments from parents and teachers. It is important that the person with an ASD communicates clearly why a particular situation is perceived as creating intense anxiety... //-- sninctown, Nov 05 2021 // If you see 200, then you've got a statistic that maybe is pointing fingers. //
Although I don't know that I agree with that number, the VAERS database reports that 717 people aged 49 and younger who took a Covid vaccine have died.
The number, somewhere around 10,000, in the link provided by [a1] is the total deaths the CDC reports, whether we like it or not.-- 4and20, Nov 05 2021 // It's true to say that engineering and science have deep roots in western philosophy, but the UK has a track record of radical thinkers making world-class discoveries //
Modern Anglo-Saxons really seem like a people at odds with themselves, and not just because they've spent so much time fighting each other. As Vikings or as Gothic tribes they were physically remote and some of the last in Europe to be "civilized". This suggests that they could be tribal and internally conformist on the one hand, while also being dynamic and nomadic. Indeed I am shocked at the confluence of events which made them such stellar scientists, although their having a wealthy Empire of overseas cultures which had been taken over with violence did improve the chances of this.
The Nobel prize is awarded by a Nordic country. The Nobel in Literature has been described as typically rewarding conventional folk tales in some way. I don't know enough about Nobel prizes in science to generalize, but it's possible the award is sometimes years behind the times.-- 4and20, Nov 05 2021 //Modern Anglo-Saxons//I don't really know what you mean by this? Do you mean English people?-- calum, Nov 05 2021 Anglo-Saxons is a common but probably misused catchall. The Angles, from part of what is now called Denmark, were Vikings I think and they settled England. HB has had a brief discussion about who Normans were. They were probably also Vikings. None of these people come from Saxony of course, but I understand that a high percentage of English still self-identify as "Saxons".
Btw, I thought you were Scottish. Have you heard of the book "How the Scottish Invented Everything"?-- 4and20, Nov 05 2021 //self identify as Saxon//
Never met anyone who identified as Saxon. Or Anglo-Saxon.
British, English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh… yes. Cornish even.
As a nation, we generally acknowledge that we’re the product of hugely diverse origins and backgrounds. It really winds up nationalists when you point out the Royal Family are half German half Greek.-- Frankx, Nov 05 2021 //still self-identify as "Saxons"//
It's not so much a self- identification. Consider the Welsh and Scottish exonyms for the English, namely, "Saeson" and "Sassenach". In an American context, "WASP" is also an exonym, mostly.-- pertinax, Nov 05 2021 // Let's talk about that.
We're not /even/ asking you to discount your gut in 'unprovable' cases. We're talking about the testable ones.//
Yes lets.If you could be more specific then I and everyone else will know what you're talking about.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2021 Please...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2021 I put the //odd// in //a people at odds with themselves// and the only invention I would take credit for is the 'motorcycle bagpipe exhaust' posted elsewhere on this site to the chagrin of some who read it.-- sninctown, Nov 06 2021 I stand corrected. The (Old) Saxons probably established more English cities than the Angles did. [link]
I would be surprised if the British Royal family is literally Greek instead of being just more Germans sent to rule Greece.-- 4and20, Nov 06 2021 //// Some way up the thread, I mentioned three common beliefs. You pointed out that one of them was wrong. However, you didn't say anything about the others - which are also incorrect. [...]////
//If you could be more specific then I and everyone else will know what you're talking about//
Sure. Here it is:
////After all, without common sense, people wouldn't know that trees are made of soil, the moon is shadowed by the earth on a monthly cycle, and it's best not to switch in the Monty Hall problem.////
//ps Trees aren't made of soil.//-- Loris, Nov 06 2021 Ah. Isn't the moon shadowed by the Earth on a monthly cycle? Did you mean swallowed?
I am unaware of the Monty Hall problem so I have no comment on that.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2021 //Ah. Isn't the moon shadowed by the Earth on a monthly cycle?//
No. I think people decide the Earth shadowing the moon is why it sometimes looks crescent-shaped when they're five or six, and don't ever think properly about it again.-- Loris, Nov 06 2021 I'm pretty sure that's what they taught back then.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2021 //Huh, that’s funny - I never thought that and don’t remember ever being taught that. [Loris] bringing it up as one of those “common sense” things that’s really wrong is the first I’d ever heard of it. Maybe even the notion that “everyone knows” some common things like that is mistaken.//
Well, you shouldn't have been taught it, because it's totally wrong. And certainly some people will either figure it out for themselves properly, or be paying attention when the the real reason is explained. Nevertheless, try going round and asking a few people why they think the moon sometimes looks like a crescent. It's really shocking how many people will say "It's the Earth's shadow". Or something even more outlandish (I had someone guess it was Venuses shadow). I suppose it may vary between regions, which would be interesting, so if you do ask anyone I'd be interested in knowing what answers people give.
There's just a fuck-ton of things like this. I have an idea on here somewhere about collecting lots and making an online quiz, but I've not got round to actually doing it.
//I'm pretty sure that's what they taught back then.//
Although it's wrong, I wouldn't rule out you having been taught it in primary school. One of my children brought home a book which contained a different error in celestial mechanics, which also seems to be "simple intuitive common sense" and also "common knowledge".-- Loris, Nov 06 2021 You totally should make a common sense quiz!-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2021 A long time ago, a guy I knew gave me the following common sense test:
Imagine you are about to take the "Common Sense Test", sitting at a table in a school building with paper and pencil, waiting for the test to begin, while the instructor is standing in the front of the room watching to make sure there is no cheating during the test. You are only allowed to take the "Common Sense Test" once. Suddenly, there is a fire in the school building and smoke and flames come pouring through one wall of the room where you are sitting waiting to take the "Common Sense Test". What do you do?
Apparent correct answer: leave the building.
My answer: insist that the instructor let me re-take the "Common Sense Test" at a different time, when the building is not on fire.
In retrospect, I don't think it was a very good test.-- sninctown, Nov 07 2021 Here's an idea for a quiz. Let's call it the Benny Hall problem. What percentage of transmission reduction provided by current vaccines would have justified not focusing on producing a Covid pill from the very start?
This assumes that vaccines are still "leaky" and don't prevent retransmission. The question also assumes, possibly falsely, that development of a Covid pill was somehow given less priority than development of (more profitable? longer to reach market saturation?) vaccines. For all I know, given the amount of money involved, the quest for both of these Covid solutions may have been allotted equal resources.-- 4and20, Nov 07 2021 Has this thread approached bitcoin hash size yet?-- RayfordSteele, Nov 07 2021 //Benny Hall//…known for his work on Tears of J'Kah: A Star Trek Fan Film?
Or this [link] inspired vision of the National Health Service?-- Frankx, Nov 07 2021 So I was thinking about this:
//Let's call it the Benny Hall problem. What percentage of transmission reduction provided by current vaccines would have justified not focusing on producing a Covid pill from the very start? . This assumes that vaccines are still "leaky" and don't prevent retransmission. The question also assumes, possibly falsely, that development of a Covid pill was somehow given less priority than development of (more profitable? longer to reach market saturation?) vaccines. For all I know, given the amount of money involved, the quest for both of these Covid solutions may have been allotted equal resources.//
First off, yes, the assumption that producing these two treatments somehow interfered with each other is wrong. There was more than enough money (and incentive) to work on both, and there isn't much in the way of overlap between essential resources in short supply needed for development or production of both. Also yes, the vaccines do prevent spreading of the disease, as well as morbidity and mortality.
It's also clearly impossible to know how good a vaccine or drug is until it's been developed and tested, so in an emergency the sensible thing to do is work on every possibility in parallel, and pick the best options afterwards - which is what most countries did. Particularly the UK - this is one of the things Boris Johnson actually did pretty well on, IMO.
But, well, presumably there must be some level of effectiveness below which it's not worth actually using a vaccine, even after you've developed it. The same is true of drugs too, of course. In this context, it's probably worth noting that the latest covid-19 treatment (molnupiravir), which has been recently reported:
::The tablet - molnupiravir - will be given twice a day to vulnerable patients recently diagnosed with the disease. In clinical trials the pill, originally developed to treat flu, nearly halved the risk of hospitalisation. ::
So the current state of play is that being treated with the most recent, most effective drug so far developed is not as beneficial as being vaccinated, if you actually can be. Observe that it's only going to be used to treat 'vulnerable' patients - probably including those who couldn't develop an immune response through vaccination. Given the way these things work, it's going to be massively more expensive per treatment course than vaccination... yep, it's $712, apparently. (That's okay, of course - the developer needs to make their R&D costs back somehow. But if you're going to be shit-stirring for vaccines being too profitable, you're probably not really understanding the economics of the situation.)-- Loris, Nov 09 2021 //Anglo-Saxons is a common but probably misused catchall.//Aha, the "White Englishmen" catch all.
//Btw, I thought you were Scottish.// I am Scottish by blood, English by birth, neither of which I had any say in. I live in Scotland now, which is something that I do have a say in.
//Have you heard of the book "How the Scottish Invented Everything"?// I am pretty sure I read this, though it was under a different title. Being philosophically Scottish, I am a keen subscriber Tall Poppyism, so I wasn't that stoked about the Scottish boosterism (esp. as, if I remember rightly, the book didn't make much of Scotland's participation in the, uh, triangular trade, for example). We get enough witless flagfucking foisted upon us from down south.-- calum, Nov 09 2021 // ::The tablet - molnupiravir - will be given twice a day to vulnerable patients recently diagnosed with the disease. In clinical trials the pill, originally developed to treat flu, nearly halved the risk of hospitalisation. ::
So the current state of play is that being treated with the most recent, most effective drug so far developed is not as beneficial as being vaccinated, if you actually can be.//
I feel pretty certain that you already knew about the much improved recovery rate being claimed by Pfizer for their new Covid pill, even if it hadn't received official approval in any jurisdiction by the time you'd written this. God and even the devil knows that you have more of a day job than I have, but it appears to be the second time in over 2,000 words you've already typed in just this one thread that you appear to have used selective data to prove your point.
There have been 252 million Covid cases. And 7.34 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered. If ALL of the Covid cases required treatment via pill, it appears that vaccines would have needed an average cost of $179 for the two treatments to achieve the same gross sales.
However, according to ons.gov.uk: "Two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are estimated to be 96% and 92% effective against hospitalisation with the Delta variant, respectively"
I am lacking a zinger conclusion here...-- 4and20, Nov 10 2021 //I feel pretty certain that you already knew about the much improved recovery rate being claimed by Pfizer for their new Covid pill, even if it hadn't received official approval in any jurisdiction by the time you'd written this. God and even the devil knows that you have more of a day job than I have, but it appears to be the second time in over 2,000 words you've already typed in just this one thread that you appear to have used selective data to prove your point.//
No, actually. I think I just remembered BBC news had an article on a covid pill on the front page, so I assumed that was what you were talking about. Then I googled that by name. Or maybe I just googled "covid pill", I forget.
I don't /ever/ try to use selective data to prove a serious point. So I don't know what the other thing you're talking about is. Possibly you're talking about the VAERS reports? I think you're just plain wrong in your characterisation of them as "vaccine deaths", i.e. deaths known to have been caused by vaccination - and it doesn't seem like I'm the only one to think that. Regardless, I would encourage you to consider that I am in fact human and not omniscient. If you want to talk about something in particular, the trick is to state its name, so other people know what you're talking about.
OK, so using the key phase "Pfizer covid pill" I now think you're talking about Paxlovid. It doesn't look like they're done with testing, and I couldn't find an indication of cost.
I still don't think Pfizer would have held off on developing this drug until the vaccine was 'done', I think that it probably just took longer to come to fruition. Their vaccine had a much better turn-around time, probably in part because they'd already done a lot of the development work. I don't think I'm equipped to look too deeply into paxlovid development, but it has a short wikipedia page which looks like a good starting point.
//There have been 252 million Covid cases. And 7.34 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered. If ALL of the Covid cases required treatment via pill, it appears that vaccines would have needed an average cost of $179 for the two treatments to achieve the same gross sales.//
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Same gross sales as what?
If you could have treated all 252M confirmed covid cases with molnupiravir at $700 per patient, it would cost $176 billion. To match that cost with the same vaccine reach, each dose of vaccine would have to cost $24 - which is actually approximately what the mRNA vaccines do cost. (The AstraZeneca vaccine is far cheaper.) There are additional costs in getting them into people, of course.
The Pfizer pill looks pretty good, with a reported 91% protection rate. But it's not like it doesn't come without risks. The article I read said the control group reported about as many adverse events as the treatment group, but you can't identify rare side-effects until you've got much larger numbers. Obviously, the benefits seem to outweigh the risks, but if you're still thinking the vaccines are unsafe and evaluate these drugs in the same manner, you'll be waiting a very long time for sufficient data to accumulate.
Vaccines are considered one of the most effective public health interventions available. If you can only afford one thing... well, you want clean water. But if you've got more to spend, then vaccines are a low hanging fruit. If you think you've got some sort of economic argument for relying on drugs instead of vaccines... well, it's not convincingly supported by the evidence accumulated to date.
The thing is, that vaccination reduces the spread of disease (yes, yes, outside the wierd leaky vaccine case which doesn't apply to covid-19). So by vaccinating people you're reducing spread into the future, in a way that treating existing infections pretty much doesn't. You get to avoid the massive peaks of infection which can overwhelm a health system.
The other thing is, they're not exclusive options. If you're an enlightened health service, there's no good reason (other than increased cost, I suppose) not to vaccinate basically everybody, then /also/ treat disease with drugs to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates.-- Loris, Nov 10 2021 Sp. Weird-- pertinax, Nov 10 2021 //Sp. Weird//
I spell it "wierd" out of spite against those who say "I before E, except after C."-- Loris, Nov 10 2021 [marked-for-help] Extra credit. Read this post for a deeper understanding of the Bakery's idea post system, the personalities and the flow of subtopics.
Context: The December 2019, Covid-19 pandemic and humanities reaction, action, reaction complexity.-- wjt, Nov 28 2021 Well...
given three years of hindsight on this topic...
Do you all still hate me for remaining un-jabbed and calling out this bullshit?...or have you seen reason yet?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 07 2024 2 fries, we never hated you. Well, I didn't, I should let others speak for themselves. If I hated you, I wouldn't talk to you.
To answer your second question, I think you're the one in the wrong, but at this point I'm not expecting you to see reason.-- Loris, Nov 07 2024 1. Much love to you, 2 fries - never any hate from me. 2. I read this whole thread through again. I still don't agree with you but - and this is the important thing - I don't have to and you don't need me to. We can get along just fine while disagreeing.-- calum, Nov 07 2024 I never hated you or anyone else here. Hate is an evil thing.-- Voice, Nov 08 2024 Perhaps not me personally, but think back to your own individual reactions towards those around you who refused to comply with the jab-mandates.We were all labelled Society-wrecking, baby-killing, wastes of breath not fit to be in the same room with anyone on board with the narrative for an excessive amount of time.
...and now of course we just aren't supposed to talk about that unfortunate overreaction by more than 90% of the population of Earth.Just shut up and trust The-Science.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 08 2024 random, halfbakery