Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Da Geezer]

Our society has extremely stupid people in charge of it.

A total kakocracy.

[Da Geezer]

I talked to an army captain not too long ago midpoint of his career couldnt decide whether to stay and finish his 20 or not. The question for him was a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and losing his career because of the woke agenda. The switch of the mission from national defense to national inclusiveness. he was captain in a signal company with 2 trans soldiers. told me the morale, fear, and loathing from the other soldiers to those 2 who did nothing but file complaints through any means possible tying up the whole command with paperwork and wokeness training
he just wanted out but was just sick at his stomach he was giving up his career.

days of testosterone driven hard core soldiers are over.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?v...lectedIndex=49

We need soldiers to kill bad guys and to break things. There is a type of man who revels in that sort of thing. Sign them up. Next thing you know we are going to have to subcontract war-fighting to the private sector.

About a year ago a charity that I support asked me to attend a wokeness training the government was requiring their staff to go to. Such total shit. The "guy" doing the training was about 5'2" and had a full beard. Claimed he was born a woman but was transitioning. He started out by paying homage to the Indian Tribe du jour. Then he told us his pronouns. At the end, he asked for questions so I asked him if he was one of those men who was getting pregnant all the time. A "birthing person" so to speak.

I was asked to leave.

[Hannibal]

No mandate but Columbus just issued a mask advisory today.

They say the current varients cause a lot more sneezing than previously. I don't remember sneezing much at all when I had it last year.

Just fifteen more days to flatten the curve!

[Hannibal]

The good thing about this beta omicron variant 90210.5134 is that it will lay bare once again the hilarity of Democrat mismanagement and keep mask mandates and lockdowns fresh in people's memories. These retards thought that one way grocery aisles would prevent the spread of Covid.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Even the Post is downplaying this a bit now. The Times interviewed the “assassin”, who is an alcoholic Iraq war vet, and he claimed to not know who Zeldin even was, just that someone told him he was disrespecting veterans.

[froot loops]

Vincent K McMahon is out.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I say why stop with the mask. Go all the way with a plastic bag and rubber band.

Full body suits...let's all be Seinfeld Bubble Boys!

[THE_WIZARD_]

...

[Obi-Jon]

Boy this thread is getting stupider and stupider.

[THE_WIZARD_]

With you here yes.

[lineygoblue]

Mike - Nothing you say about the Flint Community Schools would surprise me. They were losing their minds when I graduated in 1972. I can imagine what its like 50 years later.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Flint. Heh.

[lineygoblue]

Its even worse than the movie. In fact its so bad, they filmed most of the scenes elsewhere.

[Jeff Buchanan]

There's been some talk on various platforms regarding COVID's recent variant that suggests vaccines are useless. Whether they are useless or not does not have a yes or no binary answer. That's because the question of how humans respond to exposure to, in particular, Ba.5, also doesn't have a binary answer.

What I'm reading in the available literature confirms that Omicron's lineage continues to produce variants that are more contagious but produce less serious symptoms. That explains why there are more new cases but hospitalizations and deaths as a percentage of those new cases remain flat. Why that is so has multiple explanations but virologists agree on one set of constants. The human immune system produces anti-boides that are protective to varying degrees depending on exposure to either the viurs itself or vaccination. Both produce an immune response. Further, the more you are exposed and develop symptoms or the more you're vaccinated, the stronger the immune response to future exposures becomes. At the same time, the virus evolves and becomes less restrained (reproduces in vivo more robustly) by one's anti-bodies. That reality gives rise to the thinking that "tailored" vaccines to the path of the evolving lineage make sense.

It also seems that exposure to Ba.1 for example, may not protect against illness from Ba.5. That reinfections are occurring is not a condemnation of vaccines. The reality is that the initial concoction in the first round of vaccines (the first series of mRNA types, as an example), produces X immune system response. Repeated vaccinations, i.e., "boosters" generally fortify the immune response in an X+n fashion. But said response is not at all uniform across populations. That explains why reinfection occurs at all and appears to be random across risk cohorts.

What is also generally acknowledged is that the number of exposures or vaccinations, not in any particular combination, reinforce the body's immune system, partiularly as it relates to serious illness/hospitilizarions and death. To a lesser degree complete protection from infection. There is nothing conclusive regarding the question of which is better, repeated exposures to the dominant variation, in this case, Ba.5 of the unvaccinated or repeated vaccinations of the cohort that has never had COVID. What is understood, however, is that population protection is improved within the cohort that has both been previously infected and also vaccinated. IOW, vaccines help on a population level but not necessarily when viewing it on an individual basis - that examination can be misleading with regard to the efficay of COVID vaccines.

To me, it's still a matter of personal choice of whether to vaccinate at all or even get boosted if already initially vaccinated. That is because, the tools are available to assess individual risk and those who do choose to go unvaccinated/unboosted can understand the risks of those choices. TBC, (IMO) there is not an appropriate argument that the unvaccinated serve as a pool for the development of variants that could produce more serious illness. That is because the facts support that variants are not becoming more virulent. The facts also support that the vaccinated are not immune to COVID and they can become reinfected. It is, however, indisputable that repeated exposure to the virus and/or vaccines blunt population level serious illness/hospitilization and death.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Breaking and as predicted, the fucking Russians fired four Kalibur missiles into the port of Odesa damaging port infrastructure. The report indicated the Russians were not part of the Erdogan brokered grain shipment deal involving the Un. I thought they were. In any event, Putin does not give a shit about global collateral damage his fucking war is causing.