Prozac

Trump’s potential 2024 run will keep a lot of conservatives in his court. It also has the potential to split the party (a few Republicans are finally getting sick of his shit) and give four more years to Dems.

Agreed. Drove a hell of a race. Mercedes had an uncharacteristic clown show today.

Here is an excerpt from the Mayo Clinic’s website. Basically, for vaccines to work, you need a large portion of the population to participate in order to curb transmission. Thus the “we should only vaccinate at risk populations” argument doesn’t really hold much water. What percentage of a community needs to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity? It varies from disease to disease. The more contagious a disease is, the greater the proportion of the population that needs to be immune to the disease to stop its spread. For example, the measles is a highly contagious illness. It's estimated that 94% of the population must be immune to interrupt the chain of transmission. How is herd immunity achieved? There are two paths to herd immunity for COVID-19 — vaccines and infection. Vaccines A vaccine for the virus that causes COVID-19 would be an ideal approach to achieving herd immunity. Vaccines create immunity without causing illness or resulting complications. Herd immunity makes it possible to protect the population from a disease, including those who can't be vaccinated, such as newborns or those who have compromised immune systems. Using the concept of herd immunity, vaccines have successfully controlled deadly contagious diseases such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, rubella and many others. Reaching herd immunity through vaccination sometimes has drawbacks, though. Protection from some vaccines can wane over time, requiring revaccination. Sometimes people don't get all of the shots that they need to be completely protected from a disease. In addition, some people may object to vaccines because of religious objections, fears about the possible risks or skepticism about the benefits. People who object to vaccines often live in the same neighborhoods or attend the same religious services or schools. If the proportion of vaccinated people in a community falls below the herd immunity threshold, exposure to a contagious disease could result in the disease quickly spreading. Measles has recently resurged in several parts of the world with relatively low vaccination rates, including the United States. Opposition to vaccines can pose a real challenge to herd immunity.

Absolutely. I don’t want the government to have to force you to do anything. What I really want is for you to come to the conclusion on your own that this vaccine is worth the small risks. Certainly the risks of not having a vaccinated population (lives lost, extended economic misery, severe interruptions to education, etc.) outweigh the small risk to your person, wouldn’t you agree? Regardless if you do or not, as I’ve stated previously, I do think market forces will be enough to convince most of us to get it.

I think you are indeed misunderstanding. I want the skeptics and everyone else to get vaccinated ASAP so that we can get rid of social distancing/masks/etc. This is no way to live. If only 50% of Americans get the vaccine we only prolong our collective suffering. In the meantime, I advocate making decisions that not only benefit yourself, but society as a whole. Again, by making the selfish decision today, we prolong the amount of time our collective society will feel the pain.

False choice. Never said I was in favor of lockdown. Nor is that a viable long term strategy. Vaccinating a population against a pandemic novel virus with no pre existing human immunity is a viable strategy that will work. You don’t have to like it, but the world we live in is one that will continue to place severe restrictions on what we previously considered normal life. Why so resistant to simple and effective mitigation strategies that will get our kids back in school and our economy back on its feet?

Unfortunately, we have been living with flu deaths for a long time. What I’m not willing to live with is heaping another two to three hundred thousand deaths a year ON TOP of that number. Also, there are a shit ton of Americans who blow off their flu vaccines every year. Maybe that 65,000 doesn’t have to be so high either.

Is that where you get to find out where the G spot is?

You’re certainly free to exercise your own judgement, just as the rest of us are. I choose to minimize my exposure because I understand there is a chance that I could be an asymptomatic spreader. Let’s say I attend a party. I’m relatively young, healthy, and do not regularly come into contact with high risk individuals. The partygoers are much like myself. But those people in the crowded room with me.....some of them will likely come into contact with at risk populations. Thus, even though I’m highly likely to survive, and I’ve taken steps to ensure I’m not directly in contact with elderly or immunocompromised individuals, I’m still potentially spreading a virus that is deadly to some. Well, it’s a relatively limited group of people at the party you say? Well, take that to a national scale and multiply by the millions of Americans who really want to get together (understandably, human nature) and you see why this thing continues to spread. The only things that are going to stop it are A) a vaccine, or B) it burns itself out and kills many hundreds of thousands more in the process. A vaccine that a significant majority of the population receives is literally the ONLY way we get back to anything resembling normal any time soon.

https://www.consumerreports.org/coronavirus/how-to-know-if-coronavirus-vaccine-is-safe-and-effective/ It’s going to be as safe as any other vaccine out there. Even if you feel you are at low risk, remember, widespread vaccination is as much about removing your potential to be a vector for the disease as it is about protecting you from it.

I like liberty. I’d like the liberty to eat at my favorite restaurant, to go to a concert, to take a vacation, to watch my kids play team sports, to throw a party, and many, many other things I haven’t been able to do in a while. None of that is going to happen anytime soon unless the majority of our population agrees to be vaccinated. Vaccine = liberty.

Didn’t have to look very hard for answers: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/28/fact-check-pennsylvania-ballot-claim-mixes-primary-general-election-data/6450032002/ But keep up with the “critical thinking” man.

Holy shit guys! He’s right. I watched cable news after midnight the other day and it blew my fucking mind! #dontletTuckerCarlsongetwetaftermidnight

Unbelievable. Haven’t seen a shunt like that in F1 in a long time. Really glad Grosjean is ok.

Things like Paris climate and Iran nuclear deals the president has the power to do, although not to the level of signing a treaty so they could be overturned by a subsequent administration. Green New Deal, assault weapons tax, banning fracking, not really within the executive’s purview. Even if Dems win the senate, margins in congress will be razor thin and I wouldn’t expect anything like a Green New Deal to be passed. As far as manufacturing jobs go, the tide has favored them leaving since the 80s. Trump’s statements on bringing them back were largely bluster. How much will go back to China? I’m in the business of moving Chinese goods to North America and I can tell you that the volume of crap coming out of Chinese factories most certainly did not slow down over the last four years. That said, I hope we do realize that there are certain manufacturing segments that the US should retain/rebuild like medical equipment & PPE. I hope congress & the new administration can work together to make that happen.

Fair ‘nuff. I just don’t get the tyranny part. SevenEleven doesn’t let you walk through their store with your junk hanging out. That’s not tyranny, that’s just them trying to protect their business from what most would consider antisocial and unhygienic behavior.

Cool. So if you’re in charge at Carnival, your plan is no vax required, it is what it is? Something like that? If not, how would you elect to protect your business?

Agree that this will be the likely situation, but how is this tyranny and not just market forces? Think about it. If you’re Delta, Carnival, Ticketmaster, or even a restaurant owner, why would you risk the optics of an outbreak at your venue? That could be absolutely devastating to your business. Of course you are going to try and mitigate that scenario by all means possible. So no, not so much tyranny as it’s the free market at work here. Related: if you’d like to travel to a foreign country, guess what? Sovereign nations get to decide their own entry requirements. Expect to dust off that old yellow vaccination card or have your vaccination status tied to your passport number. Like it or not, most of us will be getting this vaccine. I see it as a good thing as nothing short of this will get the global economy back up and moving.

Here’s a white paper from 2018 estimating approximately 20.5 ventilators per 100K population. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2018_clade_x_exercise/pdfs/Clade-X-ventilator-availability-fact-sheet.pdf That equates to approximately 2/3 of a ventilator for a population of 3300 as in the example given. The point is, when you have a pandemic running unchecked, there aren’t enough ventilators.

Why? It's their freedom to eat what they want. Why would you want the government to regulate that, but do nothing for COVID? It's the same line of reasoning... I think you might be misinterpreting my position on COVID mitigation.

I would absolutely be in favor of regulating the amount of sugar in our food and designing our communities to encourage walking or cycling vs driving, but that’s a whole other conversation brotha! 😎

The problem is, it’s not just about mitigating your own risk. Think about all the people you come into contact with in day to day life. Coworkers, store clerks, bank tellers, Uber drivers, delivery people, barbers, dry cleaners, etc., etc. Some of those people will likely come into contact with at risk people. Of course, this is a force of nature. We will not be able to stop the spread entirely. But we can use mitigation strategies, and social distancing, masks, and avoiding large gatherings are all strategies that can be effective and that are really not that much of a strain on your personal liberties given what’s at stake.

That’s like saying you could avoid second hand smoke by never leaving the house. Look, you argue in your previous post that mass shutdowns aren’t really a feasible option. I’m inclined to agree with you. So let’s take seriously the relatively small sacrifices we’re being asked to make. Wearing a mask in public, or even skipping one Thanksgiving with the family is a pretty small price to pay to keep the economy running. Let’s make the mental and physical investments it’s going to take & get through this thing.

Less than 3000 Americans died in the attacks on Sept 11 and we made some pretty significant policy based on that event. ~60k Americans were killed in the Vietnam war over 10 years and that is widely considered to be a great travesty. Are we really going to say that because COVID-19 only affects the old and/or vulnerable that we should disregard a quarter of a million fatalities? Think about that for a minute. A quarter of a million deaths in less than a year. When is the last time this country dealt with fatalities like that? WWII? The Civil War? What kinds of sacrifices did everyday Americans make then? This idea that people have lived full lives and should thus be discarded is kind of sickening. If a cancer patient gets hit by a bus, guess what? It’s not the cancer that killed them. We don’t make the speed limit 75mph through retirement communities with the attitude that the people there have lived full lives & why should the rest of us be inconvenienced by slowing down? Now, is shutting down the entire economy necessary? Should our kids be denied their education? How much stimulus can a government that’s already in debt afford? Those are all valid questions and there is a pretty wide spectrum of reasonable answers given that this is the first time in modern history that a developed society has had to deal with something like this. Maybe, just maybe though, we could soften the blow a little bit if we were willing to make a few small sacrifices for one another.