Negatory

Hope so, but we probably need to wait and see. If you remember, this is what everyone said back in 2020 as well.

That's unironically a good point. The "there's not enough data" argument has very little evidence behind it. I think getting away from feelings-based arguments is in everyone's best interest.

Careful trying to use math as your high horse, because there is actually validity in what Ratner is saying from a mathematical perspective. Marginal changes in R0 for an extremely infectious disease do not significantly affect the ultimate end state. This is because a population is limited, so exponential growth is ultimately only possible at the beginning. And logistic limiting effects are basically unimportant until a huge amount of society has been infected. This is due to the fact that, even with masking and vaccines for the entire population, the vaccine would spread with an R0 well greater than 1. That’s what actually matters. None of this feel good, I have less likelihood to give COVID to my kids when they are at home, bs. The truth is, they’ll just get it in the future. In reality, with an R0 estimated around 5, with vaccines that are 50% effective (many studies dispute this and estimate it closer to 10-30%), you’d still need masks and social distancing to be close to 60-70% effective. Good thing the CDC, in internal modeling, estimates masking effectiveness around 20-30%. For a good summary, just read the delta predictions on the last source below. Bottom line is that it is nigh impossible to stop this with the vaccines we have. Sources: R0 of Delta: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34369565/ Vaccines are not that effective after a short period of time: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y Masking efficacy is estimated at 20-30%: (page 20) In reality, all that these mandates do (for a shot that is not as effective as we wish it was) are draw out the inevitable - most of the population will get infected at some point. If hospitals are fine - and they ARE right now, from a national perspective - what’s the benefit to society of the blue curve vs the red one? Yeah, people are going to die. But there actually isn’t much you can do about it, and most of it really is their own choice as to whether they want to be vaccinated or not. We should do what we can to “flatten the curve” to a level that is sustainable from a healthcare perspective. The vaccine has been extremely effective in reducing hospitalizations and death for society to a sustainable level. Curve: flattened. If we’re sustainable now, then we have won. Mandates aren’t going to help society any more, and instead will only serve as a tool to continue politicization of the masses. The only thing that would actually work is having people stay home and actually limit contact - a la China - but we’ve seen the disastrous effects of that policy on both the economy and society. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

To be clear, a 38% vs 25% is more like 50% more likely to be infected. Just like if it was 10% vs 1% it wouldn’t be 9% - it’d be 1000%.

Yep, sure have. Basic training and tech school. More to follow, probably. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-11-02/how-the-military-is-handling-troops-who-refuse-coronavirus-vaccines?context=amp

Yeah. When you put it that way, f$&% that. I’m not interested in being a pawn in another failed war like Vietnam. At the same time, if we don’t use our military for things like this, it begs the question as to what’s the point of even having the military we have? Do we only exist to police Iran/N Korea/etc?

That is like 5% of the total force. Time to do more with less I guess.

I think you really only need to look at the USS Theodore Roosevelt to invalidate almost all of these arguments. They can just apply the lessons learned from that experience to basically any potential combat scenario and, bam, everyone in the military must be vaccinated. In this case, does nuance of one's opinion really matter?

I can agree with this for children. At least I can agree that the evidence supporting the need to get vaccines for healthy youth is shaky. But do you guys support boosters for those over the age of 50 or 60? Boosters for those with BMIs > XX? Maybe boosters for those with certain immune issues? Because there are very little actual analytical or data based reasons not to other than political propaganda says to be a pain in the ass to the “liberal” branch of society. Thats the main issue with a lot of this conversation. Many folks on here are taking absolutely indefensible black and white stances (no boosters whatsoever, no shots whatsoever!) with no justification other than their political circle wouldn’t like it disguised with an “I don’t feel like it.” Also, it’s a fallacy to say that an argument is incorrect (some people should get boosters) just because they said something else that may not be true (it’s imperative for children to be vaccinated). You don’t get to conveniently ignore all of the evidence of science or experts or whatever just because you disagree with one conclusion.

I talked personally with Gen Moseley about this ~10 years ago and think it was genuine. But everyone is entitled to their opinions. Agree with everything you said about Bob.

One example: Gen Moseley fell on his sword for the F-22.

Duh, it’s to defend your god given right to buy an iPhone for $1000 as opposed to $2000. The price of outsourcing important manufacturing.

Appreciate the words but I didn’t try hard enough. What actually happened is I got lazy. I took a preconceived notion about my perception of the world and looked up only supporting evidence because I didn’t have time to figure out if my viewpoint was actually correct. Its something I’ve called other people on here out for, so it’s extra embarrassing. My bad. In this day and age, you sometimes legitimately have to spend 5 minutes to figure out if the sky is actually blue, or if it’s just another stupid democrat talking point.

Yep, sure, they changed. I never had an issue with parties - voted Republican from 2000-2008, voted for Obama in 2012, then voted Trump in 2016. I just couldn’t vote for Trump again in 2020. Some days recently, though, I wish I had. There are plenty of independents that are immensely disillusioned with wokeism, double standards, and equity BS. Also, hating on America is so fuckin lame. If an election was today, I’d put big bucks on not the Dems (if Rs can find a single person other than Trump). I just wish I could find a party that combines republican independence/foreign policy ideals with a desire to both effectively tax/deal with the folks that exploit our economy (99% of people with NWs > 50M) and acknowledge scientific evidence on things like global warming. Need more scientific populism. Geniocracy anyone? But instead, because both those things are in drastically different political parties, I - and tons of others like me - have to compromise in a dumb way.

Yeah. I will say it is and was very hard to remain unbiased in news sourcing since the Trump presidency for both sides (maybe it actually began around Obama?). I’m wrong in this case, for sure. COVID, ironically, has been the biggest eye opener of people being brainwashed for me. I think I’m doing better now.

Great bait, man! Adds nothing to the conversation. And the joke about the “high side” was apparently entirely lost on you. Let’s keep this forum unclass because, well, it has to be. And with that, I’d like to point you to the wargaming scenarios that resulted in the idea of “NGAD” that showed that we get crushed without a fundamental rearchitecting of AirPower in 5-10 years. I am 100% certain Lockheed/Boeing, the pentagon, and our entrenched leadership will fail to deliver the actual change we need to win overwhelmingly. And I am certain that the American people won’t go fight a war of attrition against China a la WWII. It’s all fun and games until every single fourth Gen fighter is shot down without firing a shot. https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2021/04/12/a-us-air-force-war-game-shows-what-the-service-needs-to-hold-off-or-win-against-china-in-2030/

I hadn’t seen or followed the Pelosi thing. Although it was in January before we were in pandemic mode, I’ll say I stand corrected. I just never felt like people were mad about travel bans once we agreed Covid was a thing. Whoa buddy, calm your tits. But overreaction is a specialty on this forum.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ I didn’t really recall outrage about Trump travel bans from a racism perspective. Turns out, that’s because it’s more of a republican talking point than reality. Show me some examples if I’m wrong.

After Crimea, I think we can pretty much say we can do nothing. Taiwan will also fall with nothing more than a sternly worded letter from the UN.

To be clear, vaccination does reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by on the order of 90%. I mean, check out the percentage of people who are vaccinated in Scotland - virtually everyone at risk/over 60. But you end up with 30% of hospitalizations and 15% of the deaths in the unvaxxed groups - which are extremely small portions of the at risk population. It’s not like 30% of the population is unvaccinated. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58548727.amp A better argument is that we have reached the point of diminishing returns with vaccines and should stop. We have protected the at risk population - CDC reports that 99% of those 65+ are vaccinated. And as has been pointed out, transmission isn’t effectively curtailed, so getting a relatively healthy 25-50 year old to take the shot doesn’t help the population almost at all.

I think we’ll agree to disagree. Plenty of things the US gov does only provides benefit to a portion of society. The argument against your points will circle back to 2 things: 1) vaccine mandates in the past have been extremely effective with no issues, so prove this is different 2) you get value first by not having to use taxpayer money to take care of a lot of dying people and second by having a more effective healthcare system with excess capacity. Also, I’d be careful with the it’s justified because “taxpayers agree via their representatives” argument. Because that’s exactly what’s happening now. Dems were elected and now are pushing policy. It doesn’t intrinsically make it right. All this to say, I’ve already explained that this particular vaccine mandate doesn’t make sense to me because it doesn’t appreciably affect transmission/infection. I just take issue with not including nuance.

I mean, this gets deeper than this simplification. There’s plenty of counter examples in our society. Is public education a transactional relationship? How about fire departments? What about the military, even? I find the libertarian views you’re describing to be a little overly idealistic. If society was purely transactional you wouldn’t be able to have a lot of things you enjoy in America.

That’s probably an overly simplistic mindset. I’d venture that no one on these forums is capable whatsoever of meeting all their needs on their own. You rely on society for food, transportation, protection, healthcare, etc. Society and each of us must have some amount of cooperation to function. Or you can choose to go fully “into the wild,” at which point I agree your and societies decisions would actually not interact. This is not to say I agree with any more mandates. The point is black and white isn’t an effective way to argue in my opinion.

Can you link the data? Also, how can a death rate be 2-4 times higher than hospitalization for those 50+?

I bet there will be a Covid vaccine, maybe not C19, but I don’t see this thing just disappearing