Covid 19/Coronavirus

[jaxadam]

Give everyone military rations if needed. There, problem solved

There's nothing better than sitting by the pool eating MRE's with a couple of cases of Bud heavy and a handlful of chicks that work the night shift at Emperor's Gentleman's Club. I mean nothing.

 

[mbardu]

Unfortunately, you're correct.

Between the brain fog from covid, the brain fog from arguing with people who insist that the Earth is not getting warmer because their feet are cold, the brain fog from the endless news cycle of 3 second soundbites, etc., I'm approaching the point of just not caring anymore about other people's rights, since they, by and large, will only use those rights to infringe on mine. I suppose I should choose my battles.

That's the real ideological conundrum there. It's tempting to cross those lines and say "fuck it". But when the pendulum swings and those others are then the ones in charge, they will feel justified to turn it up to 11 against you. Aren't we also a little bit culpable then? Since we have to make it political, the democrats and the use of filibuster comes to mind when you think of that scenario.

 

[jaxadam]

Resist the urge to press "show ignored content".

Remind me why it's important to constantly broadcast this.

Back to ignore it is.

What made you remove them from ingore, to just put them back on?

 

[mbardu]

What made you remove them from ingore, to just put them back on?

The "I'll put you on ignore" argument is 80% of the time just posturing from people who don't want to lose face when they run out of things to say, but actually keep reading regardless hoping they can come back later for a quick win against an out-of-context point that nobody made. Before soon again disappearing when that doesn't work either.
Usually, the more they broadcast their "I'll put you on ignore" for the validation of their peers, the more that's likely to be the case too.

Oh whoops, look I generalized as well - too bad, but I guess that's a "reasonable" generalization too

 

[bostjan]

That's the real ideological conundrum there. It's tempting to cross those lines and say "fuck it". But when the pendulum swings and those others are then the ones in charge, they will feel justified to turn it up to 11 against you. Aren't we also a little bit culpable then? Since we have to make it political, the democrats and the use of filibuster comes to mind when you think of that scenario.

I don't affiliate with either major political party, so I assume no culpability for Biden's ego trip. That said, I still think this is less destructive than Trump suggesting that people inject sunlight and lysol.

 

[mbardu]

I don't affiliate with either major political party, so I assume no culpability for Biden's ego trip. That said, I still think this is less destructive than Trump suggesting that people inject sunlight and lysol.

I was also talking beyond politics regarding your discussion of personal choices within the social contract. Didn't mean to imply you were particularly supporting Biden here.

Now, of course the vaccine is mostly safe and unlikely to seriously harm the majority of those who will be forced to take it one way or another.
But just like you said, the way it's done may very well ensure that we mechanically get Trump (or a "DeSantis"-like) and full Republican control the next time around.
And not only that, but we can be sure they'll take that whole situation as precedent to implement some nasty sh*t with 0 remorse.

 

[TedEH]

What made you remove them from ingore, to just put them back on?

I didn't technically remove from ignore, I just hit the "show ignored" 'cause otherwise I just see a bunch of no-context shouting into the void - and it's difficult to fight the urge to see what all the drama is about. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I dunno what I expected exactly - it's always just more people arguing just to hear their own voice, so to speak.

 

[jaxadam]

The "I'll put you on ignore" argument is 80% of the time just posturing from people who don't want to lose face when they run out of things to say, but actually keep reading regardless hoping they can come back later for a quick win against an out-of-context point that nobody made. Before soon again disappearing when that doesn't work either.
Usually, the more they broadcast their "I'll put you on ignore" for the validation of their peers, the more that's likely to be the case too.

Oh whoops, look I generalized as well - too bad, but I guess that's a "reasonable" generalization too

My favorite is when they thank all of the responses to the ignored posts.

As an aside, my aunt and uncle where fully vaccinated back in January. They are in an independent living facility and did the finger-prick antibody test. They both have no antibodies to be found, but the caregiver told them that doesn't mean anything . I have another buddy who got covid last year, did not get the vax, and a month ago his antibody test returned a result in the 700's.

 

[cwhitey2]

...I'm approaching the point of just not caring anymore about other people's rights, since they, by and large, will only use those rights to infringe on mine. I suppose I should choose my battles.

1000% agree

 

[mbardu]

As an aside, my aunt and uncle where fully vaccinated back in January. They are in an independent living facility and did the finger-prick antibody test. They both have no antibodies to be found, but the caregiver told them that doesn't mean anything . I have another buddy who got covid last year, did not get the vax, and a month ago his antibody test returned a result in the 700's.

In the same vein, I don't know their antibody count...but I do know of people (hell, even on this here forum there are a few) who go to events/concerts unmasked and think they are superior because they got vaccinated 5 months ago and took it as a "free-to-do-whatever-you-want" card - nobody cares about the risk they are posing.

Whereas I know people who cannot get vaccinated, already got mild Covid, have been actively and selflessly helping during the whole pandemic, are being extremely cautious with social interactions and masking - and yet those are the people we have to discriminate against, insult by putting them in a "dumb selfish Trump-tard" box, and those are the people we want to take livelihood and healthcare from...

Really don't think that's fair.

 

[CovertSovietBear]

People today don't believe the facts, because it's their "opinion".

I have a couple friends who have told me "stop it with your damn sources, I don't care about them" when discussing things that clearly need to be sourced. They take their opinion over facts 99% of the time.

http://wapo.st/1JRQatz

We've solved climate change without sources or information everybody, we did it.

Grabbing some popcorn to read this thread again, who wants some?

 

[TedEH]

I think I'm just baffled by how much arguing and mental gymnastics people have to go to in order to avoid doing their part. Like I can empathize on some level with mbardu and his arguing, 'cause the best I can assume, if I give him the benefit, is that he knows one or two people who have some kind of immune disorder that make vaccines dangerous for them or something, and they take some undue flak for it. I get it. That's fine. And his penchant for arguing makes him extrapolate from that to "hey man everyone has their reasons". I can appreciate that. But there's no way in hell that's actually representative of almost half the US.

I mean, I've come across people who are hesitant for their reasons too:
- One friend of mine has schizoaffective disorder and literally doesn't understand what's going on
- Some who are scared that they aren't in good enough health to withstand what would otherwise be minor side-effects
- A friends neighbour who was scared of what might be in the vaccine, but never looked it up and hoped they could just shelter at home instead (but of course took zero precautions when interacting with us, and still went out into public pretty often, hosted birthday parties for her kids at home, etc, because of course). We did actually manage to convince her to get the vax. She didn't die. No side effects. Bill gates hasn't visited her. She didn't suddenly become an annoying "liberal" overnight.
- The usual conspiracy or political nonsense, etc

But how many of those are actually at a heightened risk in regards to taking the vaccine? From what I can see, and I'm not trying to position this as a "scientific take" by any stretch, it's obviously anecdotal, but I see LOTS of fear, but much less informed legit reasons to be hesitant. I'm not saying there are zero reasons. But I am saying that as far as I can tell, there are very few. I mean, even if 1 out of 100 people suffered something serious from the vaccine - that's still much lower than the percentage of people who aren't taking it. How does that account for the rest of them?

In a pandemic, "they have their reasons" isn't good enough if nobody is willing to talk about what those reasons are. That leaves only being able to speculate about people's motivations, leading to everyone arguing about who is generalizing about what. My is that fear and being uninformed is not a good enough reason on it's own, and it's difficult to avoid assuming that this is what's happening when nobody is willing to volunteer their real motivations.

 

[Randy]

Unfortunately, you're correct.

Between the brain fog from covid, the brain fog from arguing with people who insist that the Earth is not getting warmer because their feet are cold, the brain fog from the endless news cycle of 3 second soundbites, etc., I'm approaching the point of just not caring anymore about other people's rights, since they, by and large, will only use those rights to infringe on mine. I suppose I should choose my battles.

Which is fine from a personal, psychological standpoint but as a matter of practicality, navigating an apocalyptic hellscape of death disease and famine because of everyone else does effect our lives.

This was the absolute stupidest course for this pandemic to take. The economy was actually surprisingly healthy despite having large sectors of business shut down. I personally think we know for a fact the "independence from the virus" rollback on mandates was not science based and I don't even think it was based on saving the economy, I think it was 100% political points and it blew up in their face because we're all fucked now.

 

[CovertSovietBear]

we're all fucked now.

You summed it up well in your last post, mismanagement at multiple levels that span from the beginning of this conundrum and continue until now.

 

[bostjan]

http://wapo.st/1JRQatz

We've solved climate change without sources or information everybody, we did it.

Grabbing some popcorn to read this thread again, who wants some?

Ahh, the snowball defense.

That guy was re-elected in 2020 by a margin of 2:1 and won his primary by a margin of 5:1. He's cosponsored a bill revoking the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution, campaigned to bring back earmarks, and has accepted over half a million dollars in kickbacks from the oil industry alone. Definitely the exemplar of the US Senate.

Some who are scared that they aren't in good enough health to withstand what would otherwise be minor side-effects

According to the Institute of Global Health Innovation, that's the #1 reason people in Europe don't get the vaccine. I have personally come across quite a few Americans that have given similar reason. Being open with them about my side effects when I was vaccinated seemed to have helped them come around.

In the USA, there is this portrayal in the media that the people refusing the covax are either "It's against God's Will" or "The government is trying to put microchips in me," and, while I'm assuming those people exist somewhere, I've never heard these arguments first hand unless sarcastic.

Most people are not quite as stupid as we tend to think that they are, but people are also surprisingly irresponsible and fickle. That's why I'm saying to just calmly offer the information and reassure people that the vaccine is safe. If you are going to go on the aggressive, find the people spreading absolute bullshit and slap them upside the head. If the volume comes down on this, people will start to come around. You'll always have Alex-Jones-level morons out there, and there's not much you can do for them to stop them from eating their neighbours as soon as they think the apocalypse is coming, but that's also a smaller proportion of the population than the 50% of adults who haven't been vaccinated yet.

Which is fine from a personal, psychological standpoint but as a matter of practicality, navigating an apocalyptic hellscape of death disease and famine because of everyone else does effect our lives.

This was the absolute stupidest course for this pandemic to take. The economy was actually surprisingly healthy despite having large sectors of business shut down. I personally think we know for a fact the "independence from the virus" rollback on mandates was not science based and I don't even think it was based on saving the economy, I think it was 100% political points and it blew up in their face because we're all fucked now.

I said it over a year ago, but the economy was going to take it rough from this no matter how it was handled. We're pretty far from being out of the wood in terms of public health and the economy. If you let the virus run rampant, people get sick and die and everyone else starts to panic, which crashes the economy. If you clamp down and order people to stay at home, people automatically panic and crash the economy. When we had Trump pressuring governors to stay open, and governors were each deciding to handle the thing differently, it caused a lot of panic. I guess the pleasant surprise was finding out that Americans have a very short attention span for panic. Here in VT, it was something like 2-3 weeks we couldn't really find TP, and now, even though things aren't really much better, numbers-wise, I can go to the store and buy isopropanol just as easily as I could in 2019. But, I don't see any scenario where the US economy could have weathered the pandemic without taking any damage.

This virus should have been the least political thing. In 1918, the Influenza pandemic had a similar set of circumstances. People were told to mask up and stay away from each other. Theaters and restaurants were closed. Churches operated with lowered capacities. There are plenty of records of this, but hardly any record of people politicizing the disease. That was over 100 years ago, when germ theory had only barely achieved widespread public acceptance. Nationalism and partisanism were running high after WWI, but the tooth-and-nail fighting of information for political purposes was more or less governments telling the press to stop reporting the death toll numbers.

 

[Se7enHeaven]

I kinda want to call BS on this. Isn't "bell's palsy" specifically used for cases of "unknown cause"? If it was known to have been incited by a vaccine, they wouldn't have called it bell's palsy, as I understand it. I'm obviously no expert, I just know people who have been given this diagnosis, and it was explained to me as being a catch-all term for "your face did funky things and we don't know why".

When you have that stroke type appearance within hours of taking something, likely that is the cause. It's somewhat common among delivering mothers. Eventually, it tends to go away. I have a client who had it over a year ago (not from the vax) and it's yet to correct itself. I suppose each case is unique in terms of how long it lasts. You are correct that there is no one single cause: Bell's palsy, also known as acute peripheral facial palsy of unknown cause, can occur at any age. The exact cause is unknown. It's believed to be the result of swelling and inflammation of the nerve that controls the muscles on one side of your face. Or it might be a reaction that occurs after a viral infection.

 

[mbardu]

I think I'm just baffled by how much arguing and mental gymnastics people have to go to in order to avoid doing their part. Like I can empathize on some level with mbardu and his arguing, 'cause the best I can assume, if I give him the benefit, is that he knows one or two people who have some kind of immune disorder that make vaccines dangerous for them or something, and they take some undue flak for it. I get it. That's fine. And his penchant for arguing makes him extrapolate from that to "hey man everyone has their reasons". I can appreciate that. But there's no way in hell that's actually representative of almost half the US.

I mean, I've come across people who are hesitant for their reasons too:
- One friend of mine has schizoaffective disorder and literally doesn't understand what's going on
- Some who are scared that they aren't in good enough health to withstand what would otherwise be minor side-effects
- A friends neighbour who was scared of what might be in the vaccine, but never looked it up and hoped they could just shelter at home instead (but of course took zero precautions when interacting with us, and still went out into public pretty often, hosted birthday parties for her kids at home, etc, because of course). We did actually manage to convince her to get the vax. She didn't die. No side effects. Bill gates hasn't visited her. She didn't suddenly become an annoying "liberal" overnight.
- The usual conspiracy or political nonsense, etc

But how many of those are actually at a heightened risk in regards to taking the vaccine? From what I can see, and I'm not trying to position this as a "scientific take" by any stretch, it's obviously anecdotal, but I see LOTS of fear, but much less informed legit reasons to be hesitant. I'm not saying there are zero reasons. But I am saying that as far as I can tell, there are very few. I mean, even if 1 out of 100 people suffered something serious from the vaccine - that's still much lower than the percentage of people who aren't taking it. How does that account for the rest of them?

In a pandemic, "they have their reasons" isn't good enough if nobody is willing to talk about what those reasons are. That leaves only being able to speculate about people's motivations, leading to everyone arguing about who is generalizing about what. My is that fear and being uninformed is not a good enough reason on it's own, and it's difficult to avoid assuming that this is what's happening when nobody is willing to volunteer their real motivations.

If you just look objectively at how any dissenting opinion to the "vaccine only for everyone" approach is received- the amount of vitriol, insults, attack, straight up call for harm (even in here, just look at how it's spoken of...), you'll easily understand why people are not more enthusiastic in sharing their reasons.
In general, the scale of vaccine harm and side effects is reduced/silenced quite a bit, both actively through attacks like the ones we're seeing here, as well as passively. What I mean by passively is bias in people in good faith thinking all vaccines are always safe, so if they experience adverse effects, they'll attribute it to anything but the vaccine. They'll never go and self-report.
Now, notice I am not saying the benefits don't still largely outweigh the downsides. I'm not saying vaccines cause autism or 5G or any other nonsense. Yet I can tell people can't wait to accuse me of just that and call me an antivax as I type this. To wit, you couldn't even avoid a few gratuitous quips at Bill Gates or conspiracies just because, while none of your actual examples included that

Now how many people/what proportion of people...you have your anecdotes, I have mine, everyone has theirs, we don't know who has more... At least it's good that you acknowledge that you just feel that there not a lot of good reasons, but don't have any scientific backing for that impression.
I find it a bit amusing that you say "Some who are scared that they aren't in good enough health to withstand what would otherwise be minor side-effects" just to dismiss it out of hands. As far as anecdotes go, I spoke of it before but I know of at least one place (small town with a lot of older retirees) where they've seen significantly more death this year immediately after the vaccination campaign than they had seen last year during the entire first Covid outbreak. If that impacts you, maybe the question is not so dumb...

But anyway, from a logic standpoint none of that matters. At the end of the day, if you are trying to generalize on an entire population, or put in place policies affecting an entire group, a single counter-example should suffice to say your generalization is wrong or your policy is unfair.
I know for a fact that there's quite a bit more than just one counter-example. I'd go as far as to argue that it's a good percentage of the 40% of unvaccinated people, but even if we disagree and you think it's minute - it's besides my initial point.

My initial point was just that hateful generalizations are no good, but apparently even people who think themselves better, or people who should know better have no problem making them the moment they kinda agree with the message. Oh and they also don't have a problem with authoritarian stuff either, as long as it doesn't affect them personally. Good to know!

 

[mbardu]

According to the Institute of Global Health Innovation, that's the #1 reason people in Europe don't get the vaccine. I have personally come across quite a few Americans that have given similar reason. Being open with them about my side effects when I was vaccinated seemed to have helped them come around.

In the USA, there is this portrayal in the media that the people refusing the covax are either "It's against God's Will" or "The government is trying to put microchips in me," and, while I'm assuming those people exist somewhere, I've never heard these arguments first hand unless sarcastic.

Most people are not quite as stupid as we tend to think that they are, but people are also surprisingly irresponsible and fickle. That's why I'm saying to just calmly offer the information and reassure people that the vaccine is safe. If you are going to go on the aggressive, find the people spreading absolute bullshit and slap them upside the head. If the volume comes down on this, people will start to come around. You'll always have Alex-Jones-level morons out there, and there's not much you can do for them to stop them from eating their neighbours as soon as they think the apocalypse is coming, but that's also a smaller proportion of the population than the 50% of adults who haven't been vaccinated yet.

Most people are not quite as stupid as we tend to think that they are, but a lot of people like to think that's the case so that they can feel superior.

Same as you, I have never met a single actual 5g conspiracy-warrior or anti-vaccine religious zealot, and yet people on one side of the discussion act like they're everywhere, just because we can see a few of those on YouTube or on TV for sensationalism...

I followed closely the "anti-vaccine-pass" demonstrations in France because I still have a lot of contacts there, and it's absolutely infuriating. If you look at media coverage, the press is trying to make the people there look and sound like absolute lunatics, whereas if you actually talk to people with firsthand experience of the demonstrations, the handful of lunatics are a small minority that the majority is kind of ashamed to see in their ranks.

 

[Drew]

how is that an upside.

Upshot, not upside. Colloquial for "but, the short summarized version is," rather than "but wait, here's the good news!"

 

[Randy]

Ahh, the snowball defense.

That guy was re-elected in 2020 by a margin of 2:1 and won his primary by a margin of 5:1. He's cosponsored a bill revoking the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution, campaigned to bring back earmarks, and has accepted over half a million dollars in kickbacks from the oil industry alone. Definitely the exemplar of the US Senate.



According to the Institute of Global Health Innovation, that's the #1 reason people in Europe don't get the vaccine. I have personally come across quite a few Americans that have given similar reason. Being open with them about my side effects when I was vaccinated seemed to have helped them come around.

In the USA, there is this portrayal in the media that the people refusing the covax are either "It's against God's Will" or "The government is trying to put microchips in me," and, while I'm assuming those people exist somewhere, I've never heard these arguments first hand unless sarcastic.

Most people are not quite as stupid as we tend to think that they are, but people are also surprisingly irresponsible and fickle. That's why I'm saying to just calmly offer the information and reassure people that the vaccine is safe. If you are going to go on the aggressive, find the people spreading absolute bullshit and slap them upside the head. If the volume comes down on this, people will start to come around. You'll always have Alex-Jones-level morons out there, and there's not much you can do for them to stop them from eating their neighbours as soon as they think the apocalypse is coming, but that's also a smaller proportion of the population than the 50% of adults who haven't been vaccinated yet.



I said it over a year ago, but the economy was going to take it rough from this no matter how it was handled. We're pretty far from being out of the wood in terms of public health and the economy. If you let the virus run rampant, people get sick and die and everyone else starts to panic, which crashes the economy. If you clamp down and order people to stay at home, people automatically panic and crash the economy. When we had Trump pressuring governors to stay open, and governors were each deciding to handle the thing differently, it caused a lot of panic. I guess the pleasant surprise was finding out that Americans have a very short attention span for panic. Here in VT, it was something like 2-3 weeks we couldn't really find TP, and now, even though things aren't really much better, numbers-wise, I can go to the store and buy isopropanol just as easily as I could in 2019. But, I don't see any scenario where the US economy could have weathered the pandemic without taking any damage.

This virus should have been the least political thing. In 1918, the Influenza pandemic had a similar set of circumstances. People were told to mask up and stay away from each other. Theaters and restaurants were closed. Churches operated with lowered capacities. There are plenty of records of this, but hardly any record of people politicizing the disease. That was over 100 years ago, when germ theory had only barely achieved widespread public acceptance. Nationalism and partisanism were running high after WWI, but the tooth-and-nail fighting of information for political purposes was more or less governments telling the press to stop reporting the death toll numbers.

That's kind of the part that blows my mind.

I post pretty frequently on a football message board and honestly most people on there aren't knuckledraggers but I have been reading over the last year over and over "watching the game last night I was glad to see the stadium full and it felt great, I was pumped up, feels like back to normal again" and the mindset blows my mind. You can't enjoy the game unless it's a full stadium but further, you can't enjoy watching the game ON TV unless the stadium is full. And that's among even moderate or even 70/30 lefties to righties.

I get the same thing from my friend, he's been bitching for months about vaccine passes and portals and mandates despite being vaxxed. Said well IF I want to go to a club I don't want to have to fight with my phone or worry about it not loading and the bouncer kicking me out. That's besides even getting past the idea you would insist on going to a club in the first place, the idea that it's maybe good but hypothetically could inconvenience me somehow someday maybe so I'd prefer it didn't happen at all.

This super weird insistence that not only do I want my life not even 1% different but I don't want anyone else's life any different either or whatever. It's just madness.