It's new name is..

[holaareola]

On 11/28/2021 at 9:39 PM, Jello said:

We already require vaccinations for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella in the US. If you get bit by a wild or feral animal, you're given a rabies vaccine, if you get stuck by a rusty nail you're given a tetanus vaccine. The only reason polio vaccines aren't mandatory in the US is because we've effectively eradicated it. I've never had one, but my mother has. I've met people who wish the polio vaccine would've been around when they were kids, so they didn't have to walk around with a malformed foot or a leg brace for the rest of their life. 

All these vaccinations are preventative though, you need them before you get a rabies bite or meet that rusty nail. They're also all more serious illnesses. But above that, isn't it legal to refuse vaccination in most states of the US? You can refuse to vaccinate your kids in the UK. I'm sure I read measles cases are rising globally due to falling rates of vaccination.

 

On 11/28/2021 at 9:39 PM, Jello said:

I say yes, everyone should be required to get vaccinated unless they have a clear medical health condition that would make vaccination dangerous. And so far, I have yet to read about any medical condition that would prevent someone from getting a COVID vaccination. I'm sure they might exist, but legitimate health reasons to not be vaccinated have to be extremely rare. Hell, we probably could've prevented COVID from becoming another "Common Cold" if we would've tried to mitigate it's spread early on. But no, people were too concerned with their "freedumbs" and doing whatever the Hell they pleased, and not wanting to be told what to do, that we ended up with the current situation.

 

"I just want to get back to normal!" "Well then stop spreading the fucking virus! Stay home, if you have to go out, wear a damn face mask, and stay six feet apart." "But I don't want to! I want to get in everyone's face and tell them just how ridiculous I think this whole thing is!" "Well... this is going to last a Hell of a lot longer."

As I posted above, I'm queasy about forcing things into people's bodies against their will. Especially for a virus that is mild in the general case. But there's for sure a common good case to do so, and I'm quite certain that if governments did what you said we'd be in a much better position. 

[Biodegradable]

1 hour ago, holaareola said:

As I posted above, I'm queasy about forcing things into people's bodies against their will. Especially for a virus that is mild in the general case

 

I mean, if it was just some kind of flu shot, you might have a point, but... over 5 million people have died thanks to COVID-19 so far. And those who have survived it have been left crippled with long-term health issues. Those who refuse to get vaccinated are ignoring literal centuries-worth of scientific discovery, breathroughs and evidence while also needlessly putting other people's lives at risk. I wouldn't qualify any of its effects this past year as "mild", personally. The longer people refuse to get vaccinated, the longer the pandemic will drag on.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Biodegradable

[holaareola]

46 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I mean, if it was just some kind of flu shot, you might have a point, but... over 5 million people have died thanks to COVID-19 so far. And those who survive it are left with long-term health issuess. Those who refuse to get vaccinated are ignoring literal centuries-worth of scientific discovery, breathroughs and evidence while also needlessly putting other people's lives at risk. I wouldn't qualify any of its effects this past year as "mild", personally.

Out of at least 250m infections though. I wouldn't class the effects as mild either, the effects have been huge: it's accelerated tons of trends that were already present in society, massively increased inequality and showed a real weakness in supply chains and the tight margin incentives towards just-in-time manufacturing inherent in competition etc etc. But the virus itself, for the average person, is mild. Outside of greying Western nations, even more so. I have a friend from Senegal (median age of 19 or something mad like that) and she says that amongst her society it's almost not a concern since so few people know someone who has died or been ill, and the only ones that have were elderly. Not saying it's a good thing, better to be careful in my view.

 

46 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

And those who survive it are left with long-term health issuess.

This just isn't true. There's a really high proportion of asymptomatic cases. Then there's another large proportion of cases with very mild symptoms, only then do you get onto loss of smell/taste and more flu like symptoms. Finally you have SARS long covid etc.

 

46 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

The longer people refuse to get vaccinated, the longer the pandemic will drag on.

Agree, as I said earlier in the thread, it's the only way out imo. At least for normality within nations with the help of border controls. Globally, it will drag on anyway until we find a universal vaccine or something because lets face it, humanity will never coordinate itself well enough to get 7.7bn people vaccinated within the relatively short immunity window.

 

//edit: ooc would you be for mandatory vaccination?

[mrthejoshmon]

"Yeah but not *that* many people died, so it's fine, nobody I know died"

 

I love such disregard for human life, always makes you look good. I'd argue only that much died because of our preventative measures, I reckon we'd be looking at piles of corpses if we didn't do anything.

[holaareola]

35 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

"Yeah but not *that* many people died, so it's fine, nobody I know died"

 

I love such disregard for human life, always makes you look good. I'd argue only that much died because of our preventative measures, I reckon we'd be looking at piles of corpses if we didn't do anything.

Oi! Where did I say it was fine? I'm laying out some facts re the general profile of covid. I do think truth is important and exaggeration is IMO often counterproductive. You're arguing with some tribal caricature in your own head. As I've said over and over in the thread, I think preventative measures are the only way out of this -- i.e. I completely agree with you.

[mrthejoshmon]

57 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Oi! Where did I say it was fine? I'm laying out some facts re the general profile of covid. I do think truth is important and exaggeration is IMO often counterproductive. You're arguing with some tribal caricature in your own head. As I've said over and over in the thread, I think preventative measures are the only way out of this -- i.e. I completely agree with you.

I never directly quoted you, the first line of your post quite simply reminded me of that argument point, a weak point from the age of barbarians.

[holaareola]

34 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I never directly quoted you, the first line of your post quite simply reminded me of that argument point, a weak point from the age of barbarians.

Sorry man, bad on me for being jumpy.

[magicsofa]

Meh, who can be surprised? The correct response would have been an intense global lockdown. 2 months of sit down and shut up, this thing would have died off with no available hosts. But we have the economic powers that be not willing to share, and the masses of people who have been trained to be unable to sit quietly in their homes without flipping the hell out. We're just being taught a hard lesson about why those are weaknesses in our species.

[Maes]

5 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I mean omicron is just the little o

 

you know they’re saving the Ωmega Strain for the really serious shit 

 

They can drag it all the way down to the last letter of the Chinese alphabet if they need to -and there are literally tens of thousands of them ;-)

[Megalyth]

20 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

...the masses of people who have been trained to be unable to sit quietly in their homes without flipping the hell out

 

Yes, trained by several hundred thousand years of evolution. It is quite literally impossible for our species to function in isolation.

[RDETalus]

49 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

The correct response would have been an intense global lockdown. 2 months of sit down and shut up, this thing would have died off with no available hosts.

Never gonna happen. If you really did that, got everyone to isolate for 2 entire months, the global food supply network would fail and everyone would turn into cannibals. Our current way of life just cannot tolerate this kind of interruption.

[magicsofa]

1 hour ago, Megalyth said:

 

Yes, trained by several hundred thousand years of evolution. It is quite literally impossible for our species to function in isolation.

 

Completely false. Just because people's emotions get in the way doesn't mean it's impossible. Besides, it doesn't mean sitting in a deprivation chamber. People could still have contact with families, roomates, the internet, and the great outdoors.

 

35 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

Never gonna happen. If you really did that, got everyone to isolate for 2 entire months, the global food supply network would fail and everyone would turn into cannibals. Our current way of life just cannot tolerate this kind of interruption.

There is no global food supply network.

[Major Arlene]

47 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

Never gonna happen. If you really did that, got everyone to isolate for 2 entire months, the global food supply network would fail and everyone would turn into cannibals. Our current way of life just cannot tolerate this kind of interruption.

Clearly you didn't pay attention to new Zealand.

[Megalyth]

8 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

Completely false. Just because people's emotions get in the way doesn't mean it's impossible. Besides, it doesn't mean sitting in a deprivation chamber. People could still have contact with families, roomates, the internet, and the great outdoors.

 

And people who don't have access to any of those things? What if your refrigerator stops working? What if your house burns down? Human contact is inevitable, even when you don't want it.

 

Forcing a lockdown of that magnitude and intensity on the entire planet would result in more deaths than Covid itself.

 

4 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

Clearly you didn't pay attention to new Zealand.

 

New Zealand is a tiny island. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

[RDETalus]

27 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

There is no global food supply network.

Yes there is. Food is constantly moving through different countries going through different stages of preparation and packaging. Certainly many foods can be entirely local, but the way we’re currently setup, many countries simply do not have their own sustainable food source.

 

18 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

Clearly you didn't pay attention to new Zealand.

I’m talking about this from the perspective of eliminating COVID from the planet.

 

Also, New Zealand is entirely food self-sufficient, an uncommon trait. If everyone working in global food production and logistics shut down for 2 months, it would be game over for my country, we’d lose a third or more of our population to starvation.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Damn it. And I am supposed to go back to school on January.

Spoiler

To be honest I don't know what to do now...

 

[magicsofa]

26 minutes ago, Megalyth said:

And people who don't have access to any of those things?

 

My point was that people not having access is our weakness. I understand that political (read: economic) boundaries befuddle the ability of humans to really focus, all together, on anything. That's what I'm referring to when I say "the powers that be don't want to share." The United States produces significantly more than the food it consumes - estimated by the USDA to be possibly as high as 40% waste. Even without country-wide data, you can see this with your own eyes. I used to be friends with anarchist dumpster-divers and wow could they fill up a room with discarded donuts, bagels, breads, and frozen foods. Get a job at a grocery store and chances are you'll end up tossing large amounts of edible, safe to eat product. It might be a day past expiration or just slightly damaged, but for liability reasons they are required to trash it. I once had to throw out hundreds of soda bottles because of the expiration date. They were obviously fine, so I snuck myself a 6-pack, but the company was pretty strict about not letting employees take stuff like that, as most large stores will be. I've also done a fair amount of farming in my life and anyone who has worked on a farm should have noticed the hundreds of pounds of slightly ugly produce lying around in the rows. If it doesn't look like it will sell, you don't bring it to market. Thankfully in that situation it will be consumed by the other animals and life present on the farm, but still, the point is we have a lot more food than we need. These inefficiencies are caused by a variety of factors, but I think money money money is the main one.

So what I really meant was, if there was a more robust, global way of us all helping each other, we certainly could lock it all up for a while and we'd be just fine. We have the technology and the resources unless someone is withholding them.

 

23 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

Yes there is. Food is constantly moving through different countries going through different stages of preparation and packaging. Certainly many foods can be entirely local, but the way we’re currently setup, many countries simply do not have their own sustainable food source.

 

Different countries = not global. You could say there's a kind of "network" that most countries participate in, but it's quite muddy by virtue of the push and pull of all their respective economic structures. Again, it is possible for all humans on earth to have a sustainable source of food as well as other, less fundamental resources (like internet). Political lines are what keeps that from happening. And really, a political line is just an economic line with a flag/name/ethnicity slapped over it.

 

23 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

Also, New Zealand is entirely food self-sufficient, an uncommon trait. If everyone working in global food production and logistics shut down for 2 months, it would be game over for my country, we’d lose a third or more of our population to starvation.

Ironic isn't it - a country that embraces the pure evil of progressive socialist policies just happens to be the most resilient in the face of struggle.

[Megalyth]

@magicsofa I too have done farming, all of my groceries come from a place that sells "less than perfect" products, etc. so I know that the resources exist.

 

Essentially, we both dream of a perfect world, but any solution that begins with the words "if everybody" or "if nobody" simply will not work. I'm just being realistic.

[mrthejoshmon]

5 hours ago, holaareola said:

Sorry man, bad on me for being jumpy.

I mean to be fair on you it looked like a direct response, I should have prefaced my post so that's my bad.

[Lizardcommando]

Oh how convenient. Just when I got my Covid booster shot (Moderna) this past weekend too...

[Maes]

7 hours ago, Lizardcommando said:

(Moderna)

Coincidence?

[Lizardcommando]

Uh oh! Cue the X-Files theme song!

[Apprentice]

2 hours ago, Lizardcommando said:

Uh oh! Cue the X-Files theme song!

Nope, the Twilight Zone

[omx32x]

at this point i think stuff like masks are just going to a fact of life

 

honestely covid was so widespread and so many variants have appeared that i really dont think we will ever reach a point where we will not have to worry about it

[Spooner5020]

2 hours ago, omalefico32x said:

at this point i think stuff like masks are just going to a fact of life

 

honestely covid was so widespread and so many variants have appeared that i really dont think we will ever reach a point where we will not have to worry about it

It just needs to be an endemic at this point!!! And masks should not be permanent. Sorry!!! If it makes you comfortable wearing one, GREAT!! If not don’t wear one!!! And masks don’t actually STOP you from getting Covid so there’s even less point of wearing one forever. 
 

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Spooner5020

[Apprentice]

4 hours ago, omalefico32x said:

at this point i think stuff like masks are just going to a fact of life

 

honestely covid was so widespread and so many variants have appeared that i really dont think we will ever reach a point where we will not have to worry about it

Covid will become what the flu has been for years: an annual thing that unfortunately affects some of us more then others, just like the flu. What I fear more, is that covid is going to be misused and abused by the political elite to push their agenda through where they "normally" couldn't do. What will happen in 2022? What will happen in 2023, etc, etc, etc . . .

[Major Arlene]

54 minutes ago, Apprentice said:

What I fear more, is that covid is going to be misused and abused by the political elite to push their agenda through where they "normally" couldn't do. What will happen in 2022? What will happen in 2023, etc, etc, etc . . .

Trust me, they don't need covid to do that.

[Spooner5020]

59 minutes ago, Apprentice said:

Covid will become what the flu has been for years: an annual thing that unfortunately affects some of us more then others, just like the flu. What I fear more, is that covid is going to be misused and abused by the political elite to push their agenda through where they "normally" couldn't do. What will happen in 2022? What will happen in 2023, etc, etc, etc . . .

Exactly!!! Covid will just become the next flu!!!

[Apprentice]

1 hour ago, Major Arlene said:

Trust me, they don't need covid to do that.

They certainly don't but it's a hell of a convenience having covid around . . . 

[Obsidian]

5 hours ago, Spooner5020 said:

And masks don’t actually STOP you from getting Covid so there’s even less point of wearing one forever. 

 

Masks do however help to prevent people who have COVID from spreading it to others. It's a distinction without a difference only if the majority of people are wearing them.