NON_POLITICAL China Coronavirus THREAD

[Muse]

Amazing

View attachment 50345

I have to wonder if this isn't the work of America's enemies. Maybe Russia.

 

[Brainonska511]

I have to wonder if this isn't the work of America's enemies. Maybe Russia.

Perhaps - they have been linked to fomenting anti-science things in the US before. It could easily be another nut too. Regardless, I don't think I would be reposting all those addresses all over the web. No need to help them spread their propaganda.

 

[K1052]

The unabated spread of COVID in the US, seemingly driven by anti-vaccine/mask nonsense, is quite ridiculous. I'd like to travel to another country without having to jump through hoops. Too bad many of them are not making exceptions for people from non-backwards states.

At least the UK is allowing vaccinated people in without quarantine, provided they take a COVID test ≤72 hours prior to arrival, and one 2 days after arrival. Maybe my wife and I will finally get to go on our trip to London (originally scheduled for Summer 2020, then Spring 2021, now Christmas 2021).

I think most of the EU nations are letting Americans in with proof of vaccination and PCR testing within 72 hours prior.

My husband wanted to go to Australia for his 40th birthday last year...maybe we'll make his 45th.

 

[Brainonska511]

I think most of the EU nations are letting Americans in with proof of vaccination and PCR testing within 72 hours prior.

My husband wanted to go to Australia for his 40th birthday last year...maybe we'll make his 45th.

Yeah, my brother and sister-in-law went to Paris this summer under the EU rules. So it's possible. I'll just have to make sure I go to the right spot for a PCR test.

My wife has it easier: she gets PCR-tested weekly by her med school.

 

[Kaido]

Some idiot on the local news the other night was mad because his kids had to wear masks at school, then was mad because the school had to close due to an outbreak so they had to do the learn-from-home thing.

People who are contrary, irrational, and constantly angry are so difficult to deal with. They were the bane of my existence when I worked in retail & in food service. You could never make them happy because they were, quite literally, happy being unhappy. The tell-tale sign simply boils down to chronic complaining, which is a mindset that nothing is ever good enough.

I saw some TV show awhile back where a jerk confronts the main character, rants & raves, and leaves. The sidekick was like why did you tell that dude off & set him straight! And his response was simply "I don't argue with idiots". The sidekick blew up again & was like but this & that and his response was again, "I don't argue with idiots". I remembered that old saying "never argue with an idiot, they'll only bring you down to their level & beat you with experience", which is the conversational version of "don't feed the trolls".

I've gotten somewhat better at not feeding the trolls online, but it's so hard to remember to do that in real-time conversation because you expect everyone else to be on the same page as you, to be logical, to be rational, to look at ALL of the emotions & not be emotionally bullied into just one way of thinking or into adopting a knee-jerk reaction. I hate it when people run with an incorrect perception of what I'm trying to say, but I loathe being willfully misconstrued by people who have an agenda or are just plain mean, and until I heard that "I don't argue with idiots" line, I never really put it together that while I do have some measure of responsibility to provide correct, factual information about a situation, I can't fix someone who's not open to hearing truth, and an awful lot of people out there have INCREDIBLY high internal barriers of denial, to the point where I'm just banging my head against the wall. In general, I've found that people have three types of self-limiting beliefs that act as truth-barriers in conversation & in reading:

1. What they hope to be true
2. What they fear to be true
3. What they've decided to be true

The impact this has had on me is two-fold, in terms of finding the actual truth in a situation:

1. I've learned to "dig for gold" in terms of working past people's personalities, misinformation, etc.
2. I've learned to let things go, in terms of the sunk-cost fallacy

So basically, the ability to persistently pivot past barriers has been the magic key for me learning more stuff & doing better in life, and also adopting the mentality of "I don't argue with idiots", which is a mean way to say it lol, but simply means that unless someone wants to have a rational, non-emotionally-driven conversation about a topic, there's just no getting through to them because they've already made up their mind about what their version of the truth is & aren't interesting in diving into what the situation really, truly entails.

And it's interesting because each self-limiting belief has to be handled differently. For what people hope to be true, we have to work on "managing customer expectations". In the IT field, I call this "SEP Magic". In the sci-fi classic novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", they land a spaceship in the middle of a sports game, but nobody sees them. The main character wonders if there's an invisibility cloak, but the author hilariously explains that it's an "SEP Field", aka "Somebody Else's Problem", which causes people to straight-up ignore a spaceship sitting in the middle of the ball field lol. People expect things to just happen by magic with no time, money, or effort invested & no kinks in the hose to success along the way (Murphy is alive & well, people!), thus people who hope for something to be true need to be recalibrated by changing their expectations to match reality, rather than writing it off as "SEP Magic" - that's somebody else's problem, just make it happy by magic please! We've all had bosses (and family members) who have this very hopeful approach to complex situations hahaha.

As far as what people fear to be true, this is often anxiety-driven & just requires a little hand-holding to get through the situation, because 99% of the time, it's not as bad as we think, and even if it is, we ALL have a 100% track record of getting through what life has thrown at us so far! As long as people are willing to try, then progress can be made! It's that third self-limiting belief, the one where people have already pre-decided what the "truth" is (re: "your perception determines your reality"), that creates the most problems. If you've already decided what your version of the truth is & aren't interested in learning anything more or being open to new ideas, then you're not (1) going to dig for gold, and (2) going to let false beliefs go.

I've been working on making "I don't argue with idiots" my default M.O. as a habit, because it's so easy to see other people as "equals" in terms of being on the same page as you, when really, they may be stuck with their own version of the truth, aren't open to discussion or adopting new beliefs based on truth & reality, and all we're doing is hurting ourselves when we get frustrated arguing with them, because they simply don't want to hear it! i.e. don't feed the trolls! lol

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So this is one of the things I struggle with - this is an actual billboard here in Hartford, right off the highway:

View attachment 50339

If you have a kid & if you care about them, wouldn't you want to take EVERY precaution possible in keeping them safe & healthy, whether or not it's completely proven that masks work 100%? Especially as when it's as easy as simply putting on a mask? As of today, we are at 667,000 deaths in America. Children make up 15.5% of COVID cases, with 5,292,837 cases to date cumulatively. I can't imagine getting so upset about wearing a mask that you'd setup a website & pay thousands of dollars to get the message out there. It just seems so completely illogical!

I'd have a real hard time not renting a cutting torch and just cutting that billboard down entirely.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Honestly it would be more fun to just black out the "UN" part.

Seriously though children are such a low risk, I kinda get where they are coming from. If we can go in a restaurant or in the office and take off our masks at our table/desks then why not school students - especially younger kids. They should be able to take them off once they're at their desk, at very least. I honestly feel bad for young children who will not get to grow up and have a school life like the rest of us did. Simple things like being able to play/work close together, see each other's faces etc are easy to take for granted. They are growing up in a completely different world and may never get to see what pre 2020 life was like, and it's kind of sad. I guess same goes for anyone born after 9/11 though. The constant surveillance and knowing your actions are being watched by multiple federal agencies at any given time is just something we have to live with now and that we got used to but some of us remember a time when this was not the case, and when products were only local, like cassette players and VCRs etc. Now everything is cloud/app based and designed with surveillance built in and most people have just grown to accept it.

 

[Kaido]

I'd have a real hart time not renting a cutting torch and just cutting that billboard down entirely.

Well, that's the difficulty, right? Where do you draw the line between freedom of choice? Because if you did that, you'd become an extremist, just for your side instead of their side! But at the same time, the decision to get unvaccinated & then to get into a hospital situation & then oversaturate the available resources has literally resulted in the death of people who came in for other medical problems, so now we're looking at a largely preventable disease that people are ignoring the cure for, which is killing other people in turn downstream.

The solution seems obvious, but it also tramples on individual freedom. Tricky situation!

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Well, that's the difficulty, right? Where do you draw the line between freedom of choice? Because if you did that, you'd become an extremist, just for your side instead of their side! But at the same time, the decision to get unvaccinated & then to get into a hospital situation & then oversaturate the available resources has literally resulted in the death of people who came in for other medical problems, so now we're looking at a largely preventable disease that people are ignoring the cure for, which is killing other people in turn downstream.

The solution seems obvious, but it also tramples on individual freedom. Tricky situation!

Oh, i'm not talking about stapling masks to people's faces here. Just silence the ones trying to kill other people. Not legally of course, extra legally. Odds are good they can't afford two billboards, also the billboard company will eventually stop giving them board space if their boards keep falling over.

 

[Captante]

Oh, i'm not talking about stapling masks to people's faces here.

IDK .... I can think of quite a few people I would take GREAT pleasure doing this to!

 

[Captante]

I have to wonder if this isn't the work of America's enemies. Maybe Russia.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find that Russia or China (possibly both) are behind a long-term plot to destroy America from the inside by turning us against each other.

Worst part is that it seems to be working quite well.

 

[Kaido]

Odds are good they can't afford two billboards

Why does this sound like a My Name is Earl episode LOL

 

[Kaido]

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find that Russia or China (possibly both) are behind a long-term plot to destroy America from the inside by turning us against each other.

Worst part is that it seems to be working quite well.

I over-think this stuff too much. Like, I grew up watching the G.I. Joe cartoon...what did Cobra Command hope to achieve? World domination, then what? A lot of the goodness in the world comes from people working together to come up with great ideas & bring them to life, like self-driving electric cars or magical wireless hand-held information devices (smartphones) or fun online multi-player video games or amazing food recipes. I love how they addressed it in the CGI cartoon "Megamind"...he wins & then gets totally bored because being the boss of everything isn't too exciting after the challenge of taking over is completed.

I've found the same thing in my own life...many years ago I was out of work & school for a few months due to a medical issue. The first few weeks were glorious...endless TV shows, junk food, video games, etc. I caught up on all of the books I had been wanting to read, surfed the net non-stop, etc...and then the boredom set in. And you can't escape boredom simply by going from one escape to another, it drives you INSANE! This was a bit of turning point in my life because I had a mindset shift from essentially pure consumerism & a reactive lifestyle to being proactive & realizing that I got a large amount of my personal joy from making a contribution to myself, the people in my life, and the world by using my talents & efforts. Sounds cheesy, but it was kind of a maturing experience for me to get to that point mentally!

But yeah, Putin & Xi are probably over there doing all kinds of weird stuff involving our country lol.

 

[dullard]

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find that Russia or China (possibly both) are behind a long-term plot to destroy America from the inside by turning us against each other.

Worst part is that it seems to be working quite well.

I don't think that it is any secret that Russia is spamming American social media on both sides of many issues. The more we have infighting, the less of a threat we are to them. Yes, the sad part is that since many people just want to confirm their biases, this tactic does work quite well.

 

[Captante]

I don't think that it is any secret that Russia is spamming American social media on both sides of many issues. The more we have infighting, the less of a threat we are to them. Yes, the sad part is that since many people just want to confirm their biases, this tactic does work quite well.

That's the true genius that makes it so hard to combat too ... the SUBJECTS in contention don't really matter long as we are at each others throats. Covid was just a juicy target of opportunity.




EDIT: All we can do is defend our little corner of the web from BS to the best of our ability AND call it out when encountered IRL.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

People who are contrary, irrational, and constantly angry are so difficult to deal with. They were the bane of my existence when I worked in retail & in food service. You could never make them happy because they were, quite literally, happy being unhappy. The tell-tale sign simply boils down to chronic complaining, which is a mindset that nothing is ever good enough.

I saw some TV show awhile back where a jerk confronts the main character, rants & raves, and leaves. The sidekick was like why did you tell that dude off & set him straight! And his response was simply "I don't argue with idiots". The sidekick blew up again & was like but this & that and his response was again, "I don't argue with idiots". I remembered that old saying "never argue with an idiot, they'll only bring you down to their level & beat you with experience", which is the conversational version of "don't feed the trolls".

I've gotten somewhat better at not feeding the trolls online, but it's so hard to remember to do that in real-time conversation because you expect everyone else to be on the same page as you, to be logical, to be rational, to look at ALL of the emotions & not be emotionally bullied into just one way of thinking or into adopting a knee-jerk reaction. I hate it when people run with an incorrect perception of what I'm trying to say, but I loathe being willfully misconstrued by people who have an agenda or are just plain mean, and until I heard that "I don't argue with idiots" line, I never really put it together that while I do have some measure of responsibility to provide correct, factual information about a situation, I can't fix someone who's not open to hearing truth, and an awful lot of people out there have INCREDIBLY high internal barriers of denial, to the point where I'm just banging my head against the wall. In general, I've found that people have three types of self-limiting beliefs that act as truth-barriers in conversation & in reading:

1. What they hope to be true
2. What they fear to be true
3. What they've decided to be true

The impact this has had on me is two-fold, in terms of finding the actual truth in a situation:

1. I've learned to "dig for gold" in terms of working past people's personalities, misinformation, etc.
2. I've learned to let things go, in terms of the sunk-cost fallacy

So basically, the ability to persistently pivot past barriers has been the magic key for me learning more stuff & doing better in life, and also adopting the mentality of "I don't argue with idiots", which is a mean way to say it lol, but simply means that unless someone wants to have a rational, non-emotionally-driven conversation about a topic, there's just no getting through to them because they've already made up their mind about what their version of the truth is & aren't interesting in diving into what the situation really, truly entails.

And it's interesting because each self-limiting belief has to be handled differently. For what people hope to be true, we have to work on "managing customer expectations". In the IT field, I call this "SEP Magic". In the sci-fi classic novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", they land a spaceship in the middle of a sports game, but nobody sees them. The main character wonders if there's an invisibility cloak, but the author hilariously explains that it's an "SEP Field", aka "Somebody Else's Problem", which causes people to straight-up ignore a spaceship sitting in the middle of the ball field lol. People expect things to just happen by magic with no time, money, or effort invested & no kinks in the hose to success along the way (Murphy is alive & well, people!), thus people who hope for something to be true need to be recalibrated by changing their expectations to match reality, rather than writing it off as "SEP Magic" - that's somebody else's problem, just make it happy by magic please! We've all had bosses (and family members) who have this very hopeful approach to complex situations hahaha.

As far as what people fear to be true, this is often anxiety-driven & just requires a little hand-holding to get through the situation, because 99% of the time, it's not as bad as we think, and even if it is, we ALL have a 100% track record of getting through what life has thrown at us so far! As long as people are willing to try, then progress can be made! It's that third self-limiting belief, the one where people have already pre-decided what the "truth" is (re: "your perception determines your reality"), that creates the most problems. If you've already decided what your version of the truth is & aren't interested in learning anything more or being open to new ideas, then you're not (1) going to dig for gold, and (2) going to let false beliefs go.

I've been working on making "I don't argue with idiots" my default M.O. as a habit, because it's so easy to see other people as "equals" in terms of being on the same page as you, when really, they may be stuck with their own version of the truth, aren't open to discussion or adopting new beliefs based on truth & reality, and all we're doing is hurting ourselves when we get frustrated arguing with them, because they simply don't want to hear it! i.e. don't feed the trolls! lol

Seems the ones I know are obsessed that the vaccines don’t work, as in they are not 100% effective.
I keep repeating this mantra “The vaccines work as advertised”
Reinforced with they were not advertised to be 100% protection. They were advertised as 90-something percent reduction in severe illness.
They all fall into yeah but you still get sick and spread it.
“Yes I can get sick and spread it, unlikely I will go to the hospital and even more unlikely I will die. That is why we all need to be vaccinated”

 

[Kaido]

Seems the ones I know are obsessed that the vaccines don’t work, as in they are not 100% effective.
I keep repeating this mantra “The vaccines work as advertised”
Reinforced with they were not advertised to be 100% protection. They were advertised as 90-something percent reduction in severe illness.
They all fall into yeah but you still get sick and spread it.
“Yes I can get sick and spread it, unlikely I will go to the hospital and even more unlikely I will die. That is why we all need to be vaccinated”

One of the things I've learned about people is they need a Yes/No choice box. This is why McDonalds makes $23 billion a year...you hit up the drive through, there are a handful of pre-designed menu choices with big color pictures available, DONE! The purpose of the vaccine is more to help prevent you from dying & getting horrible symptoms, not to prevent you from getting it in the first place, but that explanation doesn't fit in the Yes/No choice box, which then justifies not getting it. And as you've probably also seen, most of the people who were "waiting for FDA approval" are not getting it (again) because now the FDA is full of corruption! (I mean, I don't trust any government organization, but still...lol).

I don't know what the future holds, but I wonder if we're ever going to get much above 60% vaccinated in America. The free, working vaccine has been available nationwide for months now. I'm sure there will be a few late-adopters for the rest of the year, but I don't anticipate that number magically going up to 90%+ by Christmas. Maybe the government's vaccination requirements will change that, as the economic incentives to continue to work are pretty strong lol. But I also feel for people who are strongly anti-vax & are getting shuffled into compliance by as much force as the government is able to, because hey, we all may grow third eyeballs in a few years from this stuff! But in all seriousness, I do respect the right of choice & the right of people to choose what they put into their own bodies, which is why this is such a tricky, complicated situation.

 

[Captante]

I can recall mentioning early in the pandemic how everyone in far-future sci-fi is nearly always seen wearing a MASK of one kind or another.

Far as I'm concerned that sci-fi future is now... a mask will be part of my permanent wardrobe during cold/flu season moving forward when in public.

My attitude is this:

From now on YOU do YOU. (not directed at anyone here specifically btw)

I won't say shiite about YOU not masking up AND YOU shut your pie-hole about me or anyone else being careful!!

Sound fair?


EDIT: I for one have NOT BEEN SICK even with a cold for 18+ months and I've ENJOYED IT personally! Part of this was no doubt due to the limited social contact but the remainder was from masking up.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I don't think that it is any secret that Russia is spamming American social media on both sides of many issues. The more we have infighting, the less of a threat we are to them. Yes, the sad part is that since many people just want to confirm their biases, this tactic does work quite well.

They're targeting conservatives far more, although that's probably more because when they tried targeting more liberal groups their methods tended to fail.

The problem, is just like that of COVID itself. It wouldn't matter if they are (same as it wouldn't matter if China did develop and release COVID), as the vast majority of the damage done to America was due to its own idiocy. The only reason the Russian propaganda works is because we have a LOT of dumb assholes that actively want to harm others and are willing to believe any and all manner of insane nonsense to justify it. Its not a coincidence that those are the same ones rabidly against simple measures to deal with COVID.

Further, those people are the ones that started and are driving the polarization. Its fucking asinine for some of you to be pulling this "both sides need to stop being so mean" when one side is literally calling to murder the other while that other side is saying "please get vaccinated so you and others don't die" or "support welfare so people don't go starving" and act like its in any way even remotely close to the same with regards to polarization.

I have friends in the local medical community & they are, once again, incredibly frustrated people. The general public doesn't get as much exposure to the insanity of COVID as they do, and because it's all happening behind closed hospital doors, other than the random person you know who gets COVID or what you see on the news, it's not super visibly prominent, so people have gotten a LOT more relaxed. I don't know how to doctors detach themselves, but I'm also an overly-sensitive person (yay ADHD!), so being an ER doctor or an EMT or something would probably leave me as an emotional wreck lol.

The most vocal anti-vaxxer people at my work have taken to claiming they have tons of friends in the medical field and that they're all against the vaccine. Its really sad how far they'll stoop to try and justify their beliefs. And if anyone calls them out on it they then start complaining that person is making it "political" despite not making any argument that has any ties to politics whatsoever.

 

[Muse]

People who are contrary, irrational, and constantly angry are so difficult to deal with. They were the bane of my existence when I worked in retail & in food service. You could never make them happy because they were, quite literally, happy being unhappy. The tell-tale sign simply boils down to chronic complaining, which is a mindset that nothing is ever good enough.

I saw some TV show awhile back where a jerk confronts the main character, rants & raves, and leaves. The sidekick was like why did you tell that dude off & set him straight! And his response was simply "I don't argue with idiots". The sidekick blew up again & was like but this & that and his response was again, "I don't argue with idiots". I remembered that old saying "never argue with an idiot, they'll only bring you down to their level & beat you with experience", which is the conversational version of "don't feed the trolls".

I've gotten somewhat better at not feeding the trolls online, but it's so hard to remember to do that in real-time conversation because you expect everyone else to be on the same page as you, to be logical, to be rational, to look at ALL of the emotions & not be emotionally bullied into just one way of thinking or into adopting a knee-jerk reaction. I hate it when people run with an incorrect perception of what I'm trying to say, but I loathe being willfully misconstrued by people who have an agenda or are just plain mean, and until I heard that "I don't argue with idiots" line, I never really put it together that while I do have some measure of responsibility to provide correct, factual information about a situation, I can't fix someone who's not open to hearing truth, and an awful lot of people out there have INCREDIBLY high internal barriers of denial, to the point where I'm just banging my head against the wall. In general, I've found that people have three types of self-limiting beliefs that act as truth-barriers in conversation & in reading:

1. What they hope to be true
2. What they fear to be true
3. What they've decided to be true

The impact this has had on me is two-fold, in terms of finding the actual truth in a situation:

1. I've learned to "dig for gold" in terms of working past people's personalities, misinformation, etc.
2. I've learned to let things go, in terms of the sunk-cost fallacy

So basically, the ability to persistently pivot past barriers has been the magic key for me learning more stuff & doing better in life, and also adopting the mentality of "I don't argue with idiots", which is a mean way to say it lol, but simply means that unless someone wants to have a rational, non-emotionally-driven conversation about a topic, there's just no getting through to them because they've already made up their mind about what their version of the truth is & aren't interesting in diving into what the situation really, truly entails.

And it's interesting because each self-limiting belief has to be handled differently. For what people hope to be true, we have to work on "managing customer expectations". In the IT field, I call this "SEP Magic". In the sci-fi classic novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", they land a spaceship in the middle of a sports game, but nobody sees them. The main character wonders if there's an invisibility cloak, but the author hilariously explains that it's an "SEP Field", aka "Somebody Else's Problem", which causes people to straight-up ignore a spaceship sitting in the middle of the ball field lol. People expect things to just happen by magic with no time, money, or effort invested & no kinks in the hose to success along the way (Murphy is alive & well, people!), thus people who hope for something to be true need to be recalibrated by changing their expectations to match reality, rather than writing it off as "SEP Magic" - that's somebody else's problem, just make it happy by magic please! We've all had bosses (and family members) who have this very hopeful approach to complex situations hahaha.

As far as what people fear to be true, this is often anxiety-driven & just requires a little hand-holding to get through the situation, because 99% of the time, it's not as bad as we think, and even if it is, we ALL have a 100% track record of getting through what life has thrown at us so far! As long as people are willing to try, then progress can be made! It's that third self-limiting belief, the one where people have already pre-decided what the "truth" is (re: "your perception determines your reality"), that creates the most problems. If you've already decided what your version of the truth is & aren't interested in learning anything more or being open to new ideas, then you're not (1) going to dig for gold, and (2) going to let false beliefs go.

I've been working on making "I don't argue with idiots" my default M.O. as a habit, because it's so easy to see other people as "equals" in terms of being on the same page as you, when really, they may be stuck with their own version of the truth, aren't open to discussion or adopting new beliefs based on truth & reality, and all we're doing is hurting ourselves when we get frustrated arguing with them, because they simply don't want to hear it! i.e. don't feed the trolls! lol

I like your treatment here because it's thought out.

Of course, I didn't see that sitcom with the line "I never argue with idiots." I saw or heard somewhere about not arguing at all, and I've kind of taken that on. When it comes to an argument, I'm out of there really really fast. My fuse usually blows before it gets to that. When the party I'm interacting with is clearly not participating honestly, I'm done, I look for my out and find it fast. Sometimes it's "may I speak to your supervisor," but that's rare. And I almost never go off on a person who's paid to assist me. I'm polite. It seems like the norm that they aren't going to be personal with you, and I'm OK with that. I don't expect it. In fact I try to to expect anything but I'm bringing my situation before them and try to explain it well (I'm good at that), and I take what I get after making sure I've explained myself clearly. I'm unemployed now but I used to do support for customers and for staff. Never worked in food service, though, I'm sure that interacting with those people has daily difficulties. Retail too, in many many situations.

 

[Muse]

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find that Russia or China (possibly both) are behind a long-term plot to destroy America from the inside by turning us against each other.

Worst part is that it seems to be working quite well.

And what depresses me is that it seems to be so easy to do. I'm afraid that social media has facilitated this.

 

[Captante]

And what depresses me is that it seems to be so easy to do. I'm afraid that social media has facilitated this.

Refer to the Pink Floyd album Animals.... tells all you need to know about people sadly.

Pigs. (the real 1%) Dogs. (most of us here at ATOT) Sheep. (most big social media users)


"Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a screeeeaaam!"



"What do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise

The look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream"

~ Roger Waters/David Gilmore

 

[manly]

And what depresses me is that it seems to be so easy to do. I'm afraid that social media has facilitated this.

History may show that Mark Zuckerberg has been as dangerous for America as anybody not named Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin.

 

[Muse]

History may show that Mark Zuckerberg has been as dangerous for America as anybody not named Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin.

You know, looking at him I'm not sure he doesn't have his doubts about his usefulness himself. He doesn't look like a happy person to me. He appears to work at it (time in the gym), but I don't see it on his face.

 

[gill77]

Natural immunity to covid is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so.

The incorrect hypothesis that natural immunity is unreliable has resulted in the loss of thousands of American lives, avoidable vaccine complications, and damaged the credibility of public health officials. Given the recent mandate announcement by the White House, it would be good for our public health leaders to show humility by acknowledging that the hypothesis they repeatedly trumpeted was not only wrong, but it may be harmful. Let’s all come together around the mounting body of scientific literature and real-world clinical experience that is telling us not to require the full vaccine regimen in people who recovered from covid in the past. Public health officials changing their position on natural immunity, after so much hostility toward the idea, would go a long way in rebuilding the public trust.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/