TheNewGazmo

I assume this wasn't the Taliban. Not really their style. I suggest they make friends with us real quick and weed out ISIS-K/Al Qaeda as best as they can before we decide to show up for a 20 year anniversary party.

This explains the huge spike and then huge drop in cases in India this past May. India, at the time, had barely anyone vaccinated. They suffered huge amounts of infections and death, but their case numbers are almost down to nothing. Herd inmunity?

Do you at least get credit for a prostate exam with all that?

They're in the BBC. They put tanker crews back in the trailers. I keed... I keed... 😁

When's the last time the Bone's did some show of force passes over Kabul? We wouldn't even have to drop ordinance on them. Just a few round-robins to get these dudes back in their momma's basements.

I'm sorry you misunderstood me. When I said "we", I did not mean us service members. Maybe I should have said, "they". We, the service members, spent 20 years polishing a turd better than anyone else on the planet could have and made many, many sacrifices doing it, but I can't help but admit that as time went on, our (the service member's) view of the situation became quite cavalier knowing that there was no end in site.

Christ.... what a disaster. Whether you agree with the reasons why we went into that country two decades ago or not, every 1st-world nation on this planet has failed Afghanistan. Watching Muslims hand their children over a wall to American service members for a better life is eye opening and sickening to watch. It makes me re-evaluate all of the times I bitched about the mold in the trailers or doing the walk of shame through customs at the Died for a month or two.... or heck, complaining that someone is making me wear a mask. Life could could definitely be worse. If you look at pics of some of these Taliban fighters, I bet you most of them were either not born prior to 9/11 or born shortly there after. They're 18-25 years old, which means, we killed their father, their brother.. We made them. For every bad guy we took out, we probably made 2-3 more. These are not old dudes set in their ways not wanting to see Afghanistan change. Most of them are younger than you and I.

We could easily have a carrier sitting in the Arabian right now, but the tankers are going to have to come from somewhere far, far away........................again. I remember those days of flying 11 hour sorties to offload less than 45k.

Another case study from Singapore which concluded that "The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection. Vaccination is associated with faster decline in viral RNA load and a robust serological response. Vaccination remains a key strategy for control of COVID-19 pandemic.". I like finding studies out of other countries because it (at least I think) takes the politicism out of the equation: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1

Update after getting my first Pfizer shot a week ago, I woke up yesterday with moderate pain in my right arm pit and sort of a pinched nerve (tingly) feeling in my arm all day (arm I got the shot in). I could barely touch the area. Wound up identifying it as a swollen lymph node, which is apparently normal and means the vaccine is "working". In over 2+ pages of vaccination record, I've never gotten that side effect from any other vaccine I've received over the last 19+ years. Pain relievers helped. Today, the pain and tingling is pretty much gone. I love being a science experiment! Hopefully it's worth it.

Because none of those PAX could have had cell phones on them, right? I don't buy that it was necessarily a crew member.

"Hey dude. Where does the line to use the lav start?"

Another case study about "breakthrough" infections of healthcare workers in Israel: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article Lots of medical jargon, but you'll get the idea if you scroll down to the "Discussion". Sorry, I edited this a few times.... I'll admit, I am not a huge fan of the idea of getting a piece of metal shoved in my arm and having some "mystery" substance injected into my body. I've never been a fan of shots since I was a kid. I am not sure there are many people who actually enjoy the process. I was fishing with my kid earlier the day of my COVID shot and hooked myself right in the thumb. It was pretty deep... blood everywhere/lots of cursing involved. Pulled it out, applied pressure and kept fishing.... I honestly didn't even feel the COVID shot. I dodged the anthrax shot for as long as I could and managed to get into the AOR without it a few times (they did get me on the last rodeo, however), but I'm intelligent enough to recognize that the data is the data (which we didn't have and probably will never have for the anthrax series btw so I'm still skeptical on that one...) I know that vaccinations are essential for a healthy planet. No matter what your religious belief are, you should be able to recognize that medical research is one of the most invaluable things we have. There are actually people out there that live and breath this stuff in order to better the health of human-kind and probably have no interest in injecting some sort of locator chip into your body. Are there side effects to vaccines? Yes. There will always be. There are side effects to Advil and Tylenol (ulcers and liver failure... still want to take them for your headache?). Are the side effects rare? Yes. I'm on Day 2 since my first poke. Last night my arm felt about as sore as it would from a Tdap jab and I felt a little more tired than usual, but this morning I feel "normal". Was this vaccine made quickly? Under the circumstances, it was, but can we recognize that maybe vaccine technology has advanced to the point where it is possible to make a vaccine in less than a decade? Isn't that something we ultimately want to combat things like COVID? When will the next COVID be? This stuff seems to happen every 10-15 years. Why must the rate at which we create a vaccine turn into a government conspiracy? The propensity for anti-vax'ing isn't just associated with COVID. If you look at the flu vaccine maps, the same states that are low on COVID vaccines are notoriously low for the flu vaccine as well. I'd imagine it's the case with all vaccines. Why? Can anyone explain that one?

Here's a study done in Israel: "Initial report of decreased SARS-CoV-2 viral load after inoculation with the BNT162b2 vaccine" - The results show that infections occurring 12 d or longer after vaccination have significantly reduced viral loads at the time of testing, potentially affecting viral shedding and contagiousness as well as the severity of the disease13 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7 If the vaccine does indeed reduce onward transmission 40-60%, that is significant and it's obviously a good assumption that as more people get vaccinated, the less cases we'll eventually see.

I wonder if his Christianity prevents him from going into MOPP4 as well.

What would make her look more credible on social media would be to site specifics as to what makes it an "unlawful order". If the DoD can't mandate a vaccine for Active Duty service members that has been approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC for emergency usage, I question our ability to enforce anything in crisis much more severe than this one.

The simple fact that she is Tweeting this stuff prooves my theory, but I guess that's what all the cool people are doing these days, so....

I don't know her, but she sounds like an idiot. It's going to be a tough one for Commanders to explain when even a small percentage of their troops are lying in a hospital bed on a ventilator when they could be performing their jobs.

I got my first jab yesterday at my local Pharmacy. I wanted the Pfizer flavor so I shopped around for one who stocked that one. 16 hours later, I haven't grown an extra testicle yet, so I suppose it's "so-far-so-good". Slightly sore arm... no other side-effects thus far, but I hear it's the 2nd one that gets you. I found a good explanation about the COVID vaccines (cut and paste from an article): Del Rio noted that the vaccines were specifically designed to protect against severe disease and death, and that's what those big vaccine trials looked for. "Infection was never an end-point in these studies," he said. That the vaccines were later found to prevent infection, he said "was a little bit ... like the cherry on the cake." The phrasing also bothers immunologist and virologist Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose lab played a key role in the development of the Moderna vaccine. Graham described it in a way that really made me visualize the vaccine's effect on your body. "The vaccines were always designed to focus against disease in the lower airways [the lungs] -- not in the upper airways [the nose and upper throat]," he explained. Think about that. According to Graham, a person becomes severely ill when the virus enters the lungs, and that is exactly where the vaccines offer up their most protective barrier. You see, the vaccines trigger the creation of immunoglobulins, which are proteins that function as antibodies. The main one generated by the vaccines is immunoglobulin G (IgG) which easily moves from the blood into the lower airways (the lungs) where it can block the virus. The level of IgG in blood needed to penetrate the tissues of the upper airways (the nose and throat) is much higher and that is why it is more difficult to block the virus from growing in the nose. "That's why we see such consistency in the efficacy against severe disease. It wasn't designed to protect the upper airways as much," he explained. It is also why Graham said scientists weren't expecting the vaccines to prevent infection as much. "We got very lucky that it did to some extent, against earlier strains," he added. And, while the Delta variant is more transmissible, meaning more infections will certainly occur overall in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, there will be a bigger difference between the two groups when it comes to protection against severe disease compared to protection against mild or asymptomatic illness, Graham explained. That's clear from data that show the overwhelming majority of hospitalizations and deaths happen in the unvaccinated, not the vaccinated.

Stop reading the news and Google medical research articles and case studies. These are written by people getting paid trying to better the world with their medical research vs getting paid to invoke some sort of reaction out of certain groups or support certain political parties.

They've done it before.... they'll do it again, although this time, I find myself being able to swallow (STS) taking a COVID shot over the anthrax shot. At least the COVID threat is somewhat real and has documented results. Depending on what you read, using the anthrax vaccine for protection from pulmonary anthrax is still considered "off-label" usage of the shot since no real human tested was ever done to support its efficacy (and the original formula had mysteriously changed since the FDA approved the original vaccine in 1970).

But it does NOT spread the same 71% of the time. Again, read the article below: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates

I had read something before that they were only going to make it mandatory for Active Duty or ARC who are "Federally Mobilized". Are there any more details on that or will it be 100% for all?

Well, the good news is that pharmaceutical companies are already working on a Delta booster and mRNA vaccines don't take very long to make and trial. Also remember that we're still talking about a virus that 98+% of people live through. Vaccinated people may still get it, but they're spreading it less (even though they may feel asymptomatic), which means less people around them get it, which means it's R-value drops dramatically. Between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated with natural anti-bodies from actually getting it, the hope is that it dies. More data: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-cases-data-from-the-states/

This should not be of any surprise. How is this any different than the flu other than COVID having a death rate of about 3.5x more? The flu vaccine is only 40-60% effective. 40-60% is still better than 0%. The flu mutates more often than COVID does. It still reduces the amount of flu-related hospital visits by an order of almost 4,000,000 people per year. Yes, viruses mutate. Most of the time when they do, they get weaker. Is that happening with COVID? It has mutated four times and while the Delta variant may be more transmissible, the jury is still out on whether it's more lethal. Fauci claims the vaccine will do just the opposite; reduce mutation. The Delta variant has been linked to India, where over 32M people have gotten COVID. Most, if none of which were vaccinated at the time. The vaccine itself doesn't cause the mutations. It's more about the rate of your vaccination schedule. Mutations occur less when people get vaccinated quickly instead of spreading it out over a 6-12 month period, which allows the virus to jump from the unvaccinated to the vaccinated back to the unvaccinated. The probability of mutation goes up each time it jumps to a new person. So take your pick. What makes the virus mutate more? We've had at least four mutations amongst an unvaccinated globe (Delta was around last December before the vaccine was even out). Only time will tell if we see more. Some more good research: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates