I don’t understand how you DON’T read this as making light of the 5 million dead from COVID.

And if you don’t like the Holocaust, how about World War I? About 10 million soldiers died in that war over 4 years. World War 2? About 20 million soldiers dead over 6 years.

And if you don’t like that one how about calculating what percentage of the US population died on 9/11? That make you a little squeamish?

The question is why is it ok to use a percentage to make the deaths from COVID seem less significant but not ok to do it in other mass casualty world events?

North Dakota legislator misses his antivax rally - because he has COVID. But don’t worry, he’s taking Ivermectin.

https://nypost.com/2021/11/10/rep-jeff-hoverson-misses-his-anti-mandate-rally-after-getting-covid/

It's not a straw man question.

Do we have therapeutics? Do we have vaccines? Therefore, is it just going to be living in fear forever?

73,000 x 365 = 26,645,000

Average flu cases: 25 - 50 million per year.

What number is low community spread? Or is the answer always going to be "it isn't low enough"?

As i've said before, any high risk individual that hasn't been vaccinated by now, shame on them.

Taking literally any precautions is not the same as "living in fear forever".

Is wearing a seat belt "living in fear forever"? (Funny enough, if you look back at the intro of seat belt laws, there was insane amounts of misinfo and pushback).

What about the flu guys?!

Don’t even mention that at current death rates these same calc’s would put Covid at 10x the amount of deaths vs the flu annually. It’s a dumb compare to begin with though so don’t worry about it.

7 day average of less than 10,000 Covid cases per day.

7 day average of less than 100 Covid deaths per day.

With a 7 day average of under 10,000 cases a day in the US. That is when you start being able to judge the risk locally. If the numbers are low in my town, county, state, and surrounding states, sure, I’ll party like it’s 1999.

We were close to that in June.

Currently we are down to 76,000 cases and 1200 deaths a day. That’s a nice improvement. But it’s still 1200 people being shoved into boxes every day.

To me that 1200 too many. If you want to make the therapeutics argument of Covid being done, why are 1200 people a day dying of Covid? The answer is that they couldn’t get those therapeutics, or they didn’t work. So for deaths, I’d say under 100 deaths a day is in the range of being acceptable. That is still more daily deaths than the flu, but reasonable, because no matter what, people die every day.

When the hospitals aren’t under constant threat of activating their crisis of care protocols, I will be much more willing to entertain victory declarations.

Wife’s clinic is under threat of being shutdown again and her being shuffled off to work covid shifts again.

This time she has masks and won’t have to wear a garbage bag. At least that’s the current plan.

Also triple vaxxed, but the concern of bringing it home doesn’t go away.

So yeah, I’m a little moody and intolerant of some of these arguments right now.

Seat belts were being pushed hard in the early 60s. I used to hear all kinds of crap about someone being cut in half with their seatbelt during a car crash. Or the guy's seatbelt would not release and his car had caught fire and killed him.

This was. also back when the newspapers used to paste the front page with gory car wrecks. They were B & W, of course; A color pic of a bloody car wreck would not have been published, I think.

That's also not counting the number of people who "Survived" having Covid that are still having Long Haul problems, or people that have died because they couldn't get hospital care because of over crowded ER's and hospital rooms that came in with Covid.

The safety on a gun = living in fear
Seatbelts = terror
Window washer safety harness = hysteria
Wearing a mask on a plane = pure panic

The only brave people left are those running Marathons to annoy us.

Oh, it definitely reads that way. You cannot NOT see it as anything else just based on that last sentence. The implication is that 5 million deaths is not significant in this poster's mind...certainly not enough to be labelled a pandemic, which, by definition, doesn't factor in # of deaths anyway. So yeah, if it wasn't meant to come across that way, it certainly missed the mark by a long shot.

Applause Deadpool.gif

A good rundown of the legal aspects of several of the (incorrect) claims concerning health info, heath requirements, and HIPPA.

Good overview video.

Bottom line is, it’s not a HIPAA violation to ask Marjorie Taylor Greene whether she is vaccinated.

On the other hand if someone asked her doctor whether she was vaccinated and that doctor gave an answer without her consent that WOULD be a HIPAA violation.

Of course that won’t stop people from crying HIPAA for years to come.

Ahh, HIPPA: the one that started it all!!! And of course, you gotta spell it with two Ps.

Who can forget? “don’t we have HIPPA in this country?!”

Pretty sure the first "Angry Karen berating a poor bag boy who is just trying to enforce store policy at Trader Joe's" video I saw in this pandemic was some lunatic screaming "HIPPA!!!! HIPPA!!!!! FREEDOM!!!!!"

Who needs to actually know anything they are arguing for or against when you have those five magic letters? Who need science, logic, the truth, compassion, or any intellectual curiosity at all when you've got HIPPA?

Nothing sums up the pointlessness of arguing with anti maskers, anti vaxxers, or “it’s just the fluers” better than “HIPPA!!” If COVID-19 were a classic rock band, truly, the encore, the song everybody came to see would be HIPPA!

"Man I didn't think they were gonna play HIPPA...and then BOOM!!! HIPPA!! It was awesome!!"

What a long strange, painful, deadly, pointless trip it’s been.

I pray we all handle the next pandemic better, but let’s just say I’m not filled with optimism.

Not. Good.

7FE5409E-D959-4C85-996B-969088E0ED22.jpeg

A summary mask chart that might tease out where folks stand.

EC76C7C2-14EB-4222-9174-148F19BFB78E.jpeg

I'm just going to demand mental health evaluations if they ask me my "vax" status. It's no one's business but mine.

I have a hard time believing you can go more than 5 minutes without telling anybody within earshot your vax status and your opinions of everything COVID.

Suddenly you'll clam up when a restaurant wants to know?

Why do you keep insisting on this fake "living in fear" scenario. Following basic recommended precautions in a global pandemic to reduce the infection rate is not living in fear. I kinda wonder how you fantasize we are all living, I do about all the things I used to do before the pandemic, I've just wear a mask indoors in public. It's a super easy basic precaution to take and hardly equals living in fear.

I would like to know which variant is predominant in these spikes.

Delta mostly, although in Britain they have a growing delta+ variant.

Many factors, none of which fully explain what is going on, but I think it is mostly a combo of weather + limited restrictions AND most people being:

1) vaccinated 6 months or more ago (immunity wanes but good protection from severe covid)
2) got sick with covid already over a year ago (immunity wanes and so-so protection from severe covid).
3) not vaccinated, never sick (prime targets for severe covid).

I think this is the exact same problem the northeast, Midwest and west are or are going to see. Better booster up and fast to protect those that have no protection.

Ah, the ever-present “they”.

You don’t have to share your vaccination status with anyone unless you need something from them. I support businesses being able to defend themselves any way they can.

The only thing I'm sure of is, nobody knows what to do or we'd be done with this by now. There is no absolute proof of how the virus works on certain individuals. Some people have severe disease, some have no symptoms at all. All these mandates etc. are just throwing shit at a wall and hoping something works. The inventor of the glorious PCR test has stated on the record that it's not designed for testing for covid. No one has come out with the gene sequence of the virus and the biggest question I have is why is there a US patent on the virus itself?

In NJ, 100% of the cases are Delta.

I will not answer, but will not make a scene about either. Since current data confirms vaxed and unvaxed are both able to trasmit the virus, the answer is not relavant to anyone else. I will not be angered by the question though because not everyone is aware.

Got my J&J booster today. I never had any problems with the first one, but this one is making me a lot more tired and sore than normal.

You can not patent nature, so covid sars 19 is copied ( possibly weaponized, then a vaccine made ) . Then both can be patented. If I recall Pfizer is at ( projected to be) around $15 Billion made so far in the money made on their vaccine.

Now Gates is projecting 'Terrorists ' will/may release further deadlier toxins...

False. Absolutely false. You are pretending humans don’t know how to protect themselves from a respiratory virus. You are pretending we don’t know how it spreads. We know all of that. Barriers and gaps. You block the virus from getting in, or you have such a large gap that it cannot cross. It couldn’t be more straightforward or simple.

Again, this is false.

These mandates are attempting to push people towards barriers and gaps, because they are unwilling to do it on their own. It doesn’t matter if it is a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate, they are both attempting to push people towards protecting their society.

And no mandate will work now. That’s also obvious. But it is NOT just throwing shit against a wall. It’s the correct course. And even if it pushes 10% of antivaxers to get begrudgingly vaccinated, that shortens the pandemic a bit. But overall it won’t work.

False. And misleading.

Kary Mullis died August 7th, 2019 (how many COVID PCR tests happened before his death in your misinformation?). The quote you are misleadingly using comes from 1996 and is about HIV and AIDS.

His issue was twofold. First is that PCR detects genetic sequences of a virus, but not the virus itself. The second issue was that PCR does not count viral loads. Leaving lots of information still unknown.

Neither of those concerns matter now. We are using it to detect the genetic sequence, and we don’t care about the count. Positive or negative. Viral loads are measured differently.

False. Oh my, you are full of conspiracy theories and misinformation today.

The word coronavirus was around long before Covid. But when some people go searching they find keywords they don’t understand. I was going to ask you for the patent number, but I’m pretty sure you are falsely identifying some work in 2015 around coronavirus as this Covid patent you are pretending proves your point.

So now I have questions for you. Why did you type these here? And more importantly, why did you believe them? I’m genuinely curious.

Am I part of the conspiracies? Let’s explore these statements so we can understand them together.

Ok, let's break this down a bit. Some oldies but goodies in here.

1) "All these mandates etc. are just throwing shit at a wall and hoping something works. "

Based on previous experience with other viruses. Guesses yes, but educated guesses. Yes, we have altered course as we have learned more, but we now have lived long enough with this to know a good deal about mitigation efforts. Shame on the powers that be for muddying things a bit, but if you have been following along, it is pretty clear what the current best practices are.

2) "The inventor of the glorious PCR test has stated on the record that it's not designed for testing for covid."

Misleading. Also, it was invented in 1985 so...yeah, times change and inventions get modified/improved/revised.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr/fact-check-inventor-of-method-used-to-test-for-covid-19-didnt-say-it-cant-be-used-in-virus-detection-idUSKBN24420X

3) "No one has come out with the gene sequence of the virus"

False. Was sequenced early on and often. Currently it has been sequenced over a million times.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01069-w

4) "why is there a US patent on the virus itself?"

False. There is no patent on the virus itself. From over a year ago.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-pseudoscience/patently-false-disinformation-over-coronavirus-patents

I think we need to update the definition of fully vaxxed to 3 doses for mRNA and 2 doses if the first dose was J&J, and continue to update the definition as needed.

If vaccines are kept up to date, then yes, transmission stays low. But, it is a moving target which policy makers and the public HATE.

It got worse. I had severe chills for over 4 hours, and aches and pains all night and I just tossed and turned.

Now I have a very bad headache.

I wonder why the first shot did not bother me at all but the 2nd one has been so bad?

I’ve only been asked for proof of vaccination twice. One was my employer, and the other was a pinball league.

Thinking about this takes me back to 1987, when I started my first job at out of college. Smoking indoors at work was very common, even in shared workspaces. When they banned smoking indoors, a few people quit. But most smokers just got used to stepping outside for a cigarette. About a dozen smokers decided to finally quit the habit. It was an interesting time for sure. We had an open bar at our quarterly technical meetings. Then everyone got into their cars and drove home. Lol.

The inventor, Kary Mullis, died in August 2019, before we were testing for COVID.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr/fact-check-inventor-of-method-used-to-test-for-covid-19-didnt-say-it-cant-be-used-in-virus-detection-idUSKBN24420X

Here it is, but I'm a big dummy and have no idea what I'm looking at.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT072688

Is this a Gish gallop attempt? Otherwise I'm going to need a source on that.

At the same rate? My understanding is that if you’re vaxxed you’re significantly less likely to contract Covid, and therefore less likely to spread it, than someone that’s unvaxxed. Do you have current data to the contrary?

Yes. The 1st worldwide pandemic in 100 years. There is no roadmap. Only many caution signs of hazards ahead. New Zealand had sort of been a poster child for shutting the virus down, but it looks like a new day is dawning for NZ. I have not been paying attention to NZ and have idea what is happening there.

Not in my wheelhouse.

These charts look just like some of the USA charts in early 2020. The last worldwide pandemic in 1917-18 came came in 3 waves before it burned out. Early on last year, IIRC, the conventional wisdom is that this pandemic will act like the last one 100 years ago. But that is an assumption only.

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To me, the worldwide chart for active cases looks like it is trying for wave 4. And Daily Deaths is not even remotely headed to zero. Looking at the charts only, makes it difficult to say anything has worked. All we are left with is, is to compare it to how bad we thought it could get if we did nothing; And that is a comparison that can never be made; All we know is how bad it has gotten, so far.

Screen Shot 2021-11-13 at 2.57.18 PM (resized).png

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An overview of the immune system:

A micro-cellular animation on how the virus attacks, how the mRNA vaccine works, and how the immune system defends against the virus:
https://vimeo.com/579667076

Dude, you sound completely nuts. Just stop it, reel it in and stop casting into the ether, your family and friends will be less concerned.

I remember those times, I smoked for a little bit outside and then quit. I'd been smoking for 15 years. I credit those laws in saving my life. I did a pinball panel at PAX, we all had to show proof of vax. And in bars and restaurants here if you eat/drink inside it's mandatory. I like it, it feels safer and it encourages people to get the vaccine. I was at my favorite dive bar and a drunk dude started to come in yelling and screaming and the bar tender kicked him out. She said he was her worst customer and he's anti-vax, she is so happy to have a reason to not let him in now. She went on to say all of her worst customers are anti-vax and now can't come into her bar and her job is so much easier without all these jerk dudes and she makes way better tips.

My understanding is that the vaccine lowers the likelihood of a serious symptoms only and does little to prevent spread. I was not aware of this and saw it discussed in an interview with Bill Gates from about 10 days ago (link below). I know Bill Gates is not a doctor, but I believe he played a role in the creation of the current vaccine and is the type of person who is aware even if he wasn't the creator. I find it interesting that he believes there should have been more of a push for therapeutics.

A quick search reveals some other details about the effectiveness of the vaccine on transmission. Some studies show you are correct, but only temporarily..some showing there is no difference. Choose the one you like.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

There was a post about vaccine "myths" from a couple days ago and I happen to believe some of them. For example, I am worried about the safety of vaccines to women during pregnancy. Common practice for decades has been to avoid medication during pregnancy, but now it's suddenly ok? It makes no sense to me, but I'm sure many disagree. I've discussed this with a few vaccinated women and most of them say they would have avoided during pregnancy.
So who is right, the people who say avoid medication during pregnancy or the people saying the vaccine is safe for pregnant women? Here is where i get accused of JAQ..

I work with a woman that refused the jab until she was finished breast feeding.

Another has already been twice jabbed but is wondering about the booster as she's trying for another child. I was told it more of a trimester concern.

I believe you have some valid, serious questions and concerns. Shame more people don't ask questions. Finding out a hypothesis may be incorrect is no shame. Better to ask. Unlike a seatbelt, we can't just remove the jab at the end of the day.

Thanks for the info to answer my questions. Stay safe!