Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

That is a devastating putdown that I will have trouble ever recovering from.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Have a drink on me...

[iam416]

We are back to normal. Covid is done in the US. We are pretty much exactly where we should be once entrepreneurs and private industry began producing safe, effective vaccines.

At this point, anyone Fear Monkeying is out of their fucking gourd.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Interesting...despite temporarily suspending new leasing on federal lands (which a judge almost immediately blocked), the Biden administration is on pace to approve more new oil/gas wells in 2021 than any year since Bush was President.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-science-environment-and-nature-6ac8ff49970e4b052489678b40e3ba82

[Kapture1]

Well, yes, of course. The problem is, in the US, we've reached a point that between dedicated anti-vaxers, the crowd that blindly followed Donald Trump's COVID messaging and the 10-20% of people residing in the US that are too stupid to understand the low risk and high value of vaccinations, we have around 35% of the US population that are going to remain unconvinceable ...... unless you kick their asses into action by implementing policy that if you don't get vaccinated, you will be required to stay at home to the extent that you can't enter businesses anyway without being vaccinated. If that sounds draconian in an opposite sense, so be it. It is blitheringly obvious, based on available vaccine facts, that if we want to beat this thing, vaccines and high vaccination rates are the way to do it. Let me point out that policy like this is both legal and defensible.

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a USSC case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state. There might be some question of a federal policy like this and the state's policing powers to issue such requirements. Regardless, it's what is needed. Work on the legal basis for it after the fact. American citizens still have a choice. We can choose to be dragged down by SARS2 or get past it.

pretty sure Trump is/was pro vaccine

that said, I don't think it's "stupid" to not want to inject a non-FDA vaccine that was extremely rushed, where we have no idea if there are any long-term negative effects from it.

It doesn't have anything to do with Trump, or any lack of intellect.

[crashcourse]

trumps most amazing accomplishment was operation warp speed

funny thing about the unnvaccimated is the vast majority by population are no antivaxers but minorities esepcially blacks

[THE_WIZARD_]

We are back to normal. Covid is done in the US. We are pretty much exactly where we should be once entrepreneurs and private industry began producing safe, effective vaccines.

At this point, anyone Fear Monkeying is out of their fucking gourd.

Egg Mutha Fargin' Zactly

[lineygoblue]

Any sliver of credibility that "blm" had has now been eliminated.

https://www.newsweek.com/black-lives-matter-calls-biden-immediately-lift-cruel-cuba-embargo-1609901

They have officially sided with the Cuban government in its crackdown on protesters demanding freedom.

This bogus 'movement' has never been about rights for black folks or treating them fairly. Its been, and remains, a movement dedicated to ending democracy in America. They embrace lawlessness and violence, and refuse to work within the constitutionally sanctioned laws that we already have.

Anyone who supports them needs to seek psychological help.

[Jeff Buchanan]

We are pretty much exactly where we should be

I don't agree with this. I think most of us on this side of the issue believe the disease burden, from sometime around late summer last year had peaked as knowledge of SARS2 and improvements in C-19 management advanced. Vaccines certainly helped in further decreasing disease burden as measured by declining hospitalizations and deaths.

Here's the deal. All these things I just mentioned are positives in the pandemic fight. The problem is that the lack of a global, even a US national consensus on how to move forward from here is producing a stunning lack of uniformity in approaches to manage community transmission of SARS2. Lock everything down, some things down, open everything up or some things up? You answer these question by driving case numbers down. Why?

There can be no argument that the continued emergence of SARS2 variants that are more transmissible, more survivable is not "pretty much exactly where we want to be." The literature I'm reading suggests two possible outcomes, neither of them yet certain due to lack of good data: (1) The virus continues to evolve, become more transmissible and more deadly (2) the virus runs out of places on it's spike protein to change and extinguishes itself. It's a good bet that is what will happen to SARS2 but it's not a good enough bet for me.

I'm not prepared to go with outcome (2). I'm more likely to go with (1) and hope governments globally take steps to blunt that outcome. The complicating factor is politics and forces that point to more overreactions in the face of public pressure "to do something" that fail to balance social and economic consequences with PH benefits obtained. My position therefore is to do what is necessary to shut the press up. The driving factor of their "fear monkeying" is rising case numbers. The driving factor of rising case numbers, regardless of the irrelevancy of that metric, is the failure to deliver vaccines to arms.

I don't buy the argument that "we don't know enough about the long term side effects of the vaccines to take them." Well, you can either take the pretty good chance that nothing will happen to you if you take the vaccines and the virus is subdued or the very certain outcome that if vaccines aren't widely administered governments will do stupid things going forward due to public pressure "to do something" and that will turn into things that continue to limit our mobility, economic recovery and our freedoms.

[lineygoblue]

I got the vaccine for many reasons. I'm square in the middle of the age group that it targets with the most complications, and I have additional risk factors. When the vaccine became available to me, I rolled up my sleeve. There were political reasons why I shouldn't have been so eager, but this is a decision where politics didn't get a say. Everything considered, I felt I needed to roll up my sleeve as early as possible.

I see where people are coming from, who choose not to have the vaccine. I don't think its wise to refuse the vaccine, especially for those with similar risk factors to my own. But, if we're going to remain a country of Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and liberty, then those folks' right to refuse the vaccine has to be respected. Otherwise I guess the only other way out is to toss the Constitution and the Bill of Rights into the trash can, and let Bernie Sanders decide what's fair.

I'm not an anti-vaxer. My family and I all received the vaccine as soon as it was made available to us. I think everyone in a similar situation as mine should do the same. But I also respect the rights of those who choose not to get vaxed. I think its misguided, and potentially dangerous, but lots of things in life are that way, but you have a right to choose the wrong path if that's what you want.

God allowed Adam to make the wrong choice. Adam's choice was not forced upon him. Man has a free will.

[iam416]

Speaking of Covid, apparently the Cubans are protesting Covid and not, you know, tyranny. Well, according to the WH spokesperson.

[iam416]

Meanwhile, Iran more or less continues to shit on the Ayatollah's Cock Holster: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...t=morning-jolt

Foreign policy can be complicated, but in the end, it boils down to incentives, deterrents, and consequences. Right now, the Iranians don’t even fear the consequences of launching a plot to kidnap an American citizen off the streets of New York for being an outspoken critic of the regime.

Why would Iran fear the Chairman? He's desperately licking boots to get Iran back into an awful nuclear deal they have no intent on adhereing to.

Chairman Joe, folks. Chairman Joe.

[iam416]

Also in the Geraghty article, Prog/D Hero, Luv Guv Cuomo is undercounting NY covid deaths. By a lot. Shocking, I know.

[Tom W]

pretty sure Trump is/was pro vaccine

that said, I don't think it's "stupid" to not want to inject a non-FDA vaccine that was extremely rushed, where we have no idea if there are any long-term negative effects from it.

It doesn't have anything to do with Trump, or any lack of intellect.

The constant doubling down by the Masters of the Fearmonkeys doesn't particularly add to their credibility, either. Instead of acknowledging that they might have possibly miscalculated the science that they never actually presented or that perhaps the Chinese could have been a little sloppy in the security of one of their labs, we get gimmicks ( like Whitmer's pathetic "Sweepstakes!") and calls to intimidate your neighbors "door to door".

I'm not sure which is worse- that the politicians can say this with straight faces, that so-called Journalists fawn over them, or that there's so many sheep that can't see through all of this. It's probably all three and the product is greater than the sum of them.

[Dr. Strangelove]

There's been talk, btw, that Pfizer could get full non-emergency approval as soon as the next 30 days. Almost definitely before summer is over. The others could too.