heywood on 2/4/2021 at 15:12
At this point I'm just waiting for the argument to reach the conspiracy stage. The pandemic is a hoax designed to destroy the economy and prepare us for communist takeover, it's just the flu, the death toll is manipulated, and I think Bill Gates and his pharma buddies want to modify my genes so I become a docile slave. You know that this is what it's about, and all this talk about tyranny and freedoms and shit is just a smokescreen.
Nicker on 2/4/2021 at 16:01
At least zomfg could have attributed the quote. It is C. S. Lewis, speaking in defense of a particularly pernicious oppressor, the God of Abraham and the toxic myths about his version of the afterlife and how his salesmen can more subtly exploit their foundation of fear. The irony of zomfg quoting it is almost as savory as Lewis concocting the irrelevant argument in the first place.
Here's a quote for you, zomfg - "Freedom Is A Two-Edged Sword of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp". - Jack Parsons
Don't fret, you are not alone. Responsibility is the part of this equation which most chest thumpers skip.
zomfg1234 on 2/4/2021 at 22:01
Sure, but you all agree that this vaccine hasn't been tested properly, if the restrictions were introduced 5 years after the vaccine, after it's proven to be safe, then I don't mind it.
Again, it's unprecedented to restrict us based on something that hasn't been tested properly yet. I find it reasonable to lack trust in that department then, would you say that I am unreasonable if I don't want to be a test subject? Especially knowing that I have no issues with Covid itself but I could have issues with the vaccine? And before you say that I think only about myself, I think about everyone who's in the same position, which there are a lot of people. An overwhelming majority is immune to the virus at this point.
faetal on 2/4/2021 at 23:50
It has been tested properly - it has been through all phases of clinical trials which were run concurrently.
This is usually not allowed, but an exception was made on account of the global pandemic.
Does this mean the vaccine is less safe? No - it just meant that the information on safe dosing for trial participants starting trial 2 was not available from the outcome of trial 1 and so on. But since vaccines aren't like regular drugs in that they are just there to train your adaptive immunity, the dosing concerns are not the same. Additionally production was started way ahead of time without knowing efficacy to allow distribution to hit the ground running. All of this still took over a year.
Again - you should not treat your ignorance as some kind of virtue which lets you fill in the blanks with gut feel. Having a clue != brainwashing.
Thirith on 3/4/2021 at 07:18
Quote Posted by zomfg1234
An overwhelming majority is immune to the virus at this point.
Where on earth do you get this from, especially with the amount of blissful confidence you've been displaying?
fett on 3/4/2021 at 12:23
I'm finally catching up on this thread and feel like I have enough context to comment. A) because my wife has now worked on Covid units at both Penn State on the east coast and at John Muir on the west in the bay area, both in counties that were at least once determined to have the most cases nationally per capita, and B) because of my work in the transplant community and subsequent interaction with infectious disease experts at Penn State, Tufts, The Cleveland Clinc, Mayo (MN), Dartmouth, and now Stanford. So I'll just speak from boots on the ground experience, and the converstions I've had with some of the actual folks who've consulted on the patholgy of the disease with both the CDC and the WHO and maybe help dispense with the hypothesiszing and conspiracy theories.
* zomg has called it a 'hoax' several times -a phrase and conspiracy theory originally spewed from the lips of Donald Trump and his merry band of sychophantic naziesque minions that has done nothing but make it twice as hard for healthcare workers to do thier jobs. I won't bore everyone here with life story but most will take it as a matter of course that I'm connected to nurses who've migrated across the country since my stay at Penn State. They've largely been eyewitness to the severity and the body bags that mark the spread of Covid. The notion that any of this is a hoax is both ignorant and myopic and springs from nonesense media and political agenda.
*I also won't bore you with microbiology but the pathology of Covid in and if itself dictates that its transmission and survival is will cause rapid and widespread infection. It's an RNA based virus capable of creating its own mucus membrane -literally as the situation calls for, and its design allows it to bypass certain systemic safeguards and attack a little understood cluster in the body's T-cell that - in layman's terms - paralyzes the immune system. This sets a dozen other Bad Things into motion. It also makes it, and the degree of infection in a population anything but the "typical endemic" whatever scientists may have originally thought. I know all this because I've been on a team responsible for educating the transplant community in several states about risk factors and survival rates - numbers and data dervived first hand by studies at Stanford, Harvard, and BYU, independent of government funding or involvolvement.
*My wife's current hospital in the Bay area just releases it's last Covid patient this week. She was the admitting nurse for Penn State's first Covid patient last Febreuary. Flu seasons and 'endemics' don't last that long and she had the misfortune of seeing both ends of it. The deaths horrific and unlike any flu or virus related codes.
*In the aftermath of surges, trauma units she's worked on have dealt with unexplained strokes, annuerisms, brain bleeds, flash pulmonary edema, cardiac infatctions, paralysis, and tumors in Covid survivors, which has put tremendous strain on these units outside of dealing with direct Covid cases. Flu and influenza strains do not cause thisn, especially in infants and people under 50.
On a personal note, it's hella distressing to find people still banging the conspiracy drum after 14 months. There is no more election-based reason to maintain a farce and the assertion that the severity has been exaggerrated is an insult to the healthcare workes who have sufferd and died while these armchair analysts sit around pontificating their bullshit theories. More bluntly, if my wife were to hear someone blathering some of the stuff that's been postulated here, she would probably kick some people's asses in an ill-advised attempt to beat some sense into them. She's exhausted from that crap. It'a also an insult to immune-compromised people like me who've stayed safe behind locked doors, sepatated from our own families for nearly a year while this hoax narrative has prompted protests against healthcare workers and elicited signs that say "let the weak die."
Your words have an effect. I take strong exception to your cock-a-mamie theories and faux-intellectual garbage assertions of hoaxes and conspiracies. You are objectively, factually wrong and have made my situation and the work of people I love and trust harder than they could have imagined by virtue of supporting and spreading lies and misinformation. It's personally offensive on every possible level.
Azaran on 3/4/2021 at 17:32
Quote Posted by zomfg1234
An overwhelming majority is immune to the virus at this point.
Immunity only lasts for 5-6 months max, and even within that period you could get reinfected with a variant. Thousands of people have been reinfected so far, and the virus keeps getting deadlier with every mutation
fett on 3/4/2021 at 17:36
This is also true - nurses are treating the exact same patients for Covid 4-6 months apart. Asserting the "majority is immune" is utter nonesense. Zomg post sources for this or stop saying such things. You're objectively off the rails.
SD on 3/4/2021 at 21:34
Quote Posted by Azaran
Immunity only lasts for 5-6 months max, and even within that period you could get reinfected with a variant. Thousands of people have been reinfected so far, and
the virus keeps getting deadlier with every mutationDo you have any evidence for that?