Pooter

Well if that's your big hang up just go ahead and avoid all medicines until the end of time. Because that statement holds true for every medicine that has ever entered your body.

You're right to have a healthy level of distrust because the pharma companies definitely abused it in the past. But despite legal protections from the EUA, it's still in their financial interest to make a safe vaccine that works. I might not trust them but I trust the financial incentive. There are multiple vaccine options on the market and if one is significantly less effective or safe than the others, word will get out and people will opt for a different shot or none at all. This government-pharma conspiracy to brush adverse effects under the rug simply isn't materializing in the real world. J&J literally had that problem, and it was pulled from the market (some even argued prematurely) while they investigated the blood clot issue.

Again, happy to check out literally any amplifying data on these supposed 800,000 neurological problems. Until then I'll probably default to the stats VAERS, the CDC, and the worldwide medical community are reporting.

I don't accept that claim at face value. I do accept the controlled trials with tens of thousands of participants, the robust adverse effects reporting system, the CDC, the international community who aren't beholden to American pharma companies, and the billions of doses administered in the last year which all point to the vaccine being safe and effective. But maybe the 120 second video of rando lawyer claiming stats that don't even make sense while showing precisely zero causality is more legit.

A few more: If there's a conspiracy to cover up adverse effects why was J&J temporarily pulled out of an abundance of caution for blood clotting issues? Are other countries seeing ten-fold increases in "neurological issues?" or 300% increases in cancer? What kind of cancer? These are some pretty basic questions I would expect anyone attempting to do their due diligence to ask. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not a 2.5 minute video utterly devoid of context or supporting data.

I'd be really interested to see literally any amplifying data on these claims. Also I have a few tiny questions before we just take "the conservative treehouse" (very reputable news organization I'm sure) at face value. -What was the sample size -What were the sample demographics -Which vaccine are we talking about -What constitutes a "neurological issue" and if the military is approximately 2 million people are we saying almost half of them now have a neurological issue? -What is the base rate of increase in these categories for unvaccinated people

Probably somewhere between onesie twosie motorcycle accidents and an entire segment of the population (~30-40%) refusing basic covid mitigation measures.

Because you can't spread motorcycle accidents by not wearing a helmet. But that isn't even what we're talking about. I've repeatedly said I'm opposed to civilian mask and vaccine mandates. I'm opposed to almost all government nanny state interventions. The question was about risk and what I will accept in my own life.

Risk = a * b a=probability of occurrence b=severity of outcome if it occurs Masks slightly reduce variable a. Vaccines slightly reduce variable a and greatly reduce variable b. Masks come with no inherent risk. The vaccines come with negligible inherent risk. So to answer your question, my risk tolerance corresponds to what is easily available to me to mitigate that risk. I will not intentionally accept higher risk than I need to. I've never been in a car crash in my whole life, but the risk of not wearing a seatbelt is intolerable to me because it costs nothing and massively reduces variable b.

Except that if you are operating on incorrect assumptions, you are likely behaving in a way that exposes yourself and others to increased risk.

You're right. The narrative against proponents of natural immunity has been some serious horseshit. It's always been conventional medical wisdom that contracting and then recovering from something is the gold standard of immunity going forward. But.. to play devils advocate here.. there are a lot of people who think they have natural immunity, and probably don't. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone claim they had covid in spring 2020 because they had the sniffles or felt a tingle in their jimmies. "yeah I was probably like one of the first cases" "oh really?" "yeah I felt under the weather back in March of 2020" "did you get tested?" "no, but it was probably covid"

Exactly. We have only been at this for two years and in the grand scheme of things know very little about this virus still. Each variant has caught the country with our collective pants down, and spiked the cases, hospitalizations, and deaths each time. And right before each spike, far right pundits have been busy declaring the pandemic over. Meanwhile the left is busy turning everyone off to common sense prevention measures because they're in full retard panic mode determined to mandate absolutely everything. I'm afraid we might be stuck in this stupid cycle for a long time.

Where's the strawman exactly? A straw man requires that I fabricated the argument to then argue against. the comment I quoted is literally a sarcastic jab at covid precautions specifically because they don't eradicate covid completely. "If everyone got the VAX and wore their masks Covid 19 would cease to exist. Change my mind." Alternatively, reference the 28 weeks later flamethrower post from @disgruntledemployee The mask alarmism in this thread is very real and very dramatic.

No.. but based on all available stats there'd be fewer hospitalizations and deaths. And most likely a reduction in cases resulting in better hospital staffing, fewer airline cancellations etc.. Break/break Man, didn't expect that mask comment to set you guys off so severely. It's really all or nothing with some of you. What I've learned so far: -Precautions are horseshit and not worth doing unless they're 100% effective -Any amount of adherence to public health guidance sets you on an apocalyptic dystopian slippery slope a la 28 days later -Pieces of cloth on our faces are the pre-eminent threat to both our freedom and mental health. -Once they seize control they'll never give it back (except for that time the CDC lifted mask guidance based on data at the time)

That's a pretty pathetic sentiment. We are the most adaptable species on earth and you're saying we're going to be irreparably damaged by putting some cloth on our faces. You know our ancestors actually used to not have any cloth anywhere on their bodies?! But then we started wearing pants and shirts at some point. I wonder if the cavemen lamented the collective damaging of our psyches when that was implemented. It is a small nuisance. So much so that multiple Asian cultures (specifically Japan and Korea) have been diligently masking for decades without grave social damage. And guess what, it helped them be more prepared for this pandemic where they have had significantly lower case and death rates than the western world.

@ViperMan I think people are calling it "a pandemic of the unvaccinated" because it is the unvaccinated who are actually ending up in the hospital and dying from this thing. In a pandemic I don't care how many people get the sniffles. I care about hospitalizations and death, which are happening in disproportionate numbers to the unvaxxed. Similarly, you could call it a "pandemic of the obese" or a "pandemic of the elderly" as they're the ones getting the full brunt of the effects. On mask mandates, I honestly think any tiny shred of efficacy could justify a mandate. Wearing a mask is not an undue burden on you, and mandating you put a tiny piece of PPE on your face is a very far cry from mandating you to get an injection. Hell, we all wear flight suits that have been washed thousands of times and have long since lost their fire resistance so apparently you guys are okay with some useless PPE but not others.. I guess as long as it looks cool.

In fact, it might just be the only worthwhile thing to do in del rio

Your attachment says these protocol recommendations existed in June of 2020. By my count that leaves 7 months of trump presidency to boost manufacturing and distribution of these miracle pills. So why didn't he? They created and distributed a vaccine in a year, shouldn't distributing a cocktail of existing medications be a much easier lift? It's almost like it's easy to sling crap about what you would've done with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Oh and maybe just maybe people would have taken these therapeutics more seriously at the time if trump's communications hadn't been the clown show of the century.

90% of OPRs are meaningless fluff anyway, so I don't see it making the slightest difference when they close out or what amount of time gets cut off. And any of the HPOs who actually give a shit about strats and capturing the end of year data will just pre-empt the bullets anyway.

Absolutely agree. But the wall of text sim so graciously provided us implies throughout that trump could have controlled the virus better. Which is abject nonsense.

@Sim As riveting as trump campaign copypasta is, what exactly would he have done differently to prevent the deaths numbers seen over the course of 2021? What exactly does dick measuring death numbers between trump and Biden accomplish? They had different variants to deal with and the disease wasn't even close to endemic during trump's term. In my view the only thing the trump admin did right was funneling money to big pharma to quickly develop and roll out a vaccine. Other than that his public health messaging was a complete horse abortion. Bottom line, it's easy to sling shit once you're not in charge anymore. But highly I doubt if we had another year of trump that we'd be in any different of a place than we are now. Republican and Democrat administrations have both shown they are utterly incapable of controlling this pandemic in any way.

You're mistaking the sidelines for the moderate center, which strangely enough is where all the data points to.

One of the few joys of this pandemic has been watching the pro mandate/lockdown far left bicker with the staunch anti-vax far right while not a single one of them realizes they're two sides of the same coin.. Both wildly misinterpreting the data to arrive at garbage conclusions.

Believe whatever you want. If you think I'm going to face judgement in front of god because I took a vaccine partially made through stem cell research, that's your prerogative. Just as it is my prerogative to think your beliefs are backward and silly. But at some point we need to acknowledge the reality that not all beliefs are compatible with military service.

Exactly. And the important point here is that not all ideologies are created equal. An ideology based on the scribblings of goat herders from 2000 years ago translated 690 times and then monetized for centuries is far less productive than an ideology based on basic tenets of scientific inquiry and reason.