Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
Is it even worth it to engage with these people?
They're immune to facts and they will not change their minds no matter what happens, which is interesting psychologically. But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational yet "on the fence"?
I struggle with this.
[Edit: I added flat earthers to the original list.]
They're immune to facts and they will not change their minds no matter what happens, which is interesting psychologically. But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational yet "on the fence"?
I struggle with this.
[Edit: I added flat earthers to the original list.]
Comments (1445)
Yes! What was that new name for polio again? Dysentery?
I usually don't take advice from hysterical people. You really have to calm down. The Covid virus will never be eradicated. We'll all have it inside of us forever. You can thank Dr. Fauci for funding gain of function research.
Oh no!!
“No mom, it’s heroin- I swear!”
In think that’s exactly why no one takes your hysterical rantings seriously.
Besides your buffoonery, of course.
That's why no one listens to you for guidance.
Quoting Xtrix
Oops! Beat me to it. :grin:
:rofl:
It writes itself.
The unarmed has a higher risk of becoming a virus replication/propagation/mutation factory. ?
And higher risk of long COVID-19, getting (seriously) sick, up to and including death. ?
Seems foolish not to, and also remains the general recommendation of doctors and hospitals.
:lol:
That cartoon is fantastic.
Quoting MondoR
Truer words were never spoken.
There are tens of millions of people who don't want that crap injected into their bloodstreams but the crazies have seized control.
We know.
I didn't want to either. But I considered it my civic duty. Oh, and I'm not afraid of needles.
Here's your tens of millions:
You took one for humankind. Good luck!
BTW, you realize there was something more in that needle that they injected into your bloodstream don't you?
To the Front lines! This is War!!
Proof positive that Darwin was wrong. Humankind is most assuredly regressing at a faster and faster pace.
I'm glad you don't hold anybody in contempt.
I'm glad to see that its just you think people are delusionally wrong.
I think people could take things the wrong way at times.
It's either that or spit on the troops and aid and abet the virus.
It's War! But it's just begun and be prepared for a long fight. I'm sure the pharmaceuticals are dreaming up all kinds of new stuff to inject into your body. I hope you are tough enough to get through it. I'll be rooting for you!
I think we already lost, thanks to the likes of you.
Read the OP again, it’s full of contempt.
Oh well. Do you best. As far as I'm concerned you are just an incubator for yet more virulent vviruses (similar to super-bacteria), but I too will do my best.
Your best is to get the free shot. But if we lost the war, it's due to the incubation of non-vaxxed, non-distanced, non-masked folks; not vaxxed folks. (Delta, etc.)
Better check with your doctor. Antibodies from infection don't last. I would ask you, but you're not an expert and don't know what you are talking about. Dr. Mondo. LOL!
Natural immunity has been shown to be substantially better. Maybe permanent. I had the measles, chickenpox, mumps, German measles, etc. as did most of my generation. Sorry, you shouldn't have listened to the co-creator of the virus. Shrug
We can agree that you are sorry. As to the rest: "The findings highlight an advantage bestowed by natural infection rather than vaccination, but the authors caution that the benefits of stronger memory B cells do not outweigh the risk of disability and death from COVID-19.
“While a natural infection may induce maturation of antibodies with broader activity than a vaccine does—a natural infection can also kill you,” says Michel C. Nussenzweig, the Zanvil A. Cohn and Ralph M. Steinman professor and head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology. “A vaccine won’t do that and, in fact, protects against the risk of serious illness or death from infection.”
https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/30919-natural-infection-versus-vaccination-differences-in-covid-antibody-responses-emerge/
No, this is a complete lie. Which is why you can’t back it up with any evidence whatsoever. But keep trying. It’s worth a laugh.
Contempt is a strong word. Don't confuse petty defensiveness for true contempt.
Stop being hysterical and read the research.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-vaccine-natural-immunity-infection-israel-study-cdc-11632151556
Natural immunity is 27 times more effective. And it's a Israeli study, but the B.S that comes out of the U.S. I feel sorry for all those who listen to Fauci, but that's the pharmaceutical business. A real, true to life, Pied Piper. But so is the whole thriving medical industry.
BTW, did you put a limit on the number of jabs you are going to take, or are you going to turn your body into one giant vaccine.
Then why don't we just give Covid to everyone? You know, kill off the weak.
Did you ever think it might not be about those who survive it?
They are now that you and your ilk are killing them.
You probably passed on the virus to tons of people. Shame on you for being a silent killer.
Ditto for carrying the flu virus, and any other pathogens.
Is there no end to the insanity?
No, because I also distanced and masked.
Quoting MondoR
Did you see what happened to flu numbers because of distancing and masking? Remember when this all started and the people like you kept trumpeting the number of flu deaths every year, as if Covid wasn't any worse? DOH!
Did I hear a thank you for having the far superior natural immunity?
No, this was before they had Covid tests but they have had flu tests for a long time. You stand corrected.
Quoting MondoR
They stopped both. Imagine how bad it would have been if everyone was like you!
Quoting MondoR
I thought you didn't trust "they." LOL! Seems you cherry pick what you want to rely on.
Quoting MondoR
No, you heard me accuse you of negligent homicide.
No testing was required by the hospitals. Very cute. Quoting James Riley
Stopped both!!??? You have to be kidding. It was a catastrophe among the elderly, obese, and others with immune problems. The U.S. had the worse record because it's totally profit driven.
As for killing people, vaccination does nothing to reduce the viral load. Natural immunity is 27 times better. You took the jab. Live with the consequences. Don't expect other people to follow your lead. Unfortunately, people are being forced to experiment with their lives just to satisfy hysterical people such as yourself.
"Read the research" and then cites the Wall Street Journal opinion page -- one of the most conservative in the country. How predictable.
I actually laughed out loud.
Apparently you didn't even read it:
Quoting MondoR
You don't know what you're talking about.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article254437818.html
Hmm...DeSantis or Fauci? Such a hard choice (for some).
Here
And some that say the opposite:
Here
"Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection"
It's an interesting question. My guess is that natural immunity has similar benefits, but also of course wanes. It probably does better with mucosal infection, and so nasal administration should be explored further to make up for this. Vaccinating a few months after infection, as Fauci mentioned (and the previous citation mentioned), is also probably wise (as booster shots will be as well).
Here
https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-public-engagement-resources/covid-immunity-natural-infection-vaccine
Yeah yeah yeah -- Fauci and the medical establishment aren't worth listening to, because you know more than they do. Why? Because you found an Israeli study. THOSE guys have it right! Why? Because we like those results! That's how you know they're telling the truth: if they agree with us (since we have the truth).
Doesn't have to be "required." It's a matter of course. I had a flu test in November of 19 (negative) just because I was under the weather. Dr.s do it all the time. DOH!
Quoting MondoR
Man, are you that stupid? Let me dumb it down for you with analogy I've been using with stupid people since they said masks don't work because their glasses fog up. It's like emission control devices on cars: they don't stop all the pollution. But they stop a lot of it it. So, when I say "stopped both" they did. They stopped flu and Covid. Did they stop all of it? No. But the flu tanked compared to normal and it was attributed to distancing and masking. See how that works?
Quoting MondoR
The U.S. had it worse because 45% of our country is Republicans who refused to help America. DOH!
Quoting MondoR
Did you do the research? LOL! Dr. Mondo! :rofl:
No, but when asked to do so, I will.
Quoting MondoR
And you are a disrespectful, inconsiderate, selfish person. I have reduced this to the shorthand of POS. Carry on.
Maybe the anti-vaxxers would be more amenable to this sort of thing?
I think it would all depend on who's asking them to take it.
Quoting James Riley
:up:
If only we could figure out a way to make them think it was their idea. Maybe bury it the bowels of a Qanon web site, along with Ivermectin and other such things.
:up:
The crazies and hystericals haven't completely taken over.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/natural-immunity-covid-19-legality-substitute-vaccination-123106323.html
The 673,676-person Israeli study found that people who recovered from prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and remained unvaccinated were 27 times less likely to experience symptomatic reinfection from the Delta variant when compared to those who had not been infected and received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The study also found that previously infected people who received a single dose of the vaccine received additional protection against the Delta variant.
In a smaller study conducted by Washington University School of Medicine and published in Nature, senior author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, an associate professor of medicine and of molecular microbiology, found antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of 15 of 19 study subjects 11 months after their first COVID-19 symptoms. "These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity,” Ellebedy said
We need to mandate that people can't eat junk food.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-severe-covid-higher-viral-loads-immune-response-linked-obesity
Who needs to ask you? I believe the President said you should have a booster. Your immunity is waning and you are a menace to mankind. Who knows how many people you are going to kill. You are an obedient lemming aren't you? What else will you do, if asked to? Take opioids? The FDA approved them. Has killed 10s of thousands of people.
My doctor.
Quoting MondoR
And the experts say wait (I had the J&J).
Quoting MondoR
It is, but you're the menace to intelligence.
Quoting MondoR
Not as many as you.
Quoting MondoR
No, but I am humble enough to know I'm not an immunologist, a doctor or an expert on this matter. How about you, Dr. Mondo?
Quoting MondoR
Depends.
Quoting MondoR
Yes, as a matter of fact. You take them just to the point where the pain stops and no more. No euphoria. Follow your doctor's orders.
Quoting MondoR
They did. And they work, if used properly. You should not use them, though. You think you know it all.
Quoting MondoR
Yes. And how many people have been killed by the Covid vaccine? Covid?
No, you are just an obedient little lemming who listens to I don't know who, but not the President.
A friend of mine. Someone who was forced to take it against her will to hold on to her job. Murder?
The President isn't an immunologist either. I'll abide the CDC and my own doctor. You, however, are an obedient little lemming for Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. LOL!
First of all, I think you are a fucking liar. But even if you lost your friend to the vax, she wasn't forced to take it. She could have and should have forfeited her job. We don't need anti's out in public. Either way, it's collateral damage in the war against the virus that has killed way more, by huge orders of magnitude, than any death caused by a vaccine. Besides, you can't prove the vax killed her. It was a comorbidity. Yeah, that's the ticket.
It's so much healthier to be informed, than to a obedient lemming.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965703047/vaccines-could-drive-the-evolution-of-more-covid-19-mutants
My advice is to avoid listening to b.s politicians, and a totally corrupt pharmaceutical industry. Do your own research before sticking crap into your body.
Well, I think you should be an obedient lemming. Let me know how it turns out.
Maybe I should be, but I'm not. So there's that. LOL! Jeesh, if you had another brain you'd be a half wit.
Yet every study you cite highly recommends everyone get vaccinated. I guess they’re both “hysterical” and not hysterical…normal anti-vaxxer consistency. :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl:
The article quoted (but not read by Dr. Science):
“Your own research.” This means: Google something, find an article that you think supports your beliefs, don’t read it or understand it in any way, post it, and then call everyone else dumb for being such fools for listening to experts.
I'd bet anything NPR wouldn't publish an article that is anti vaccine.
But Dr. Science thinks it supports his delusional rantings. Which is why I checked it out. Turns out it doesn’t—what a shocker!
For some people (very dishonest people), checking out their 'sources' is always necessary.
I wouldn't date someone who never goes to the doctor. :chin:
How would you find that out if you won't go on a date with them? Do you find it out when you are asking them out?
Lol, just like jehovah witnesses and Christian scientists and rastafarians
They probably smell. :lol:
Quoting MondoR
Done. Now what?
Quoting MondoR
Done. What did "your own research" consist in exactly, that others should believe you? Anything like Robert Steele? What you've posted thus far? :snicker:
oh yes, like decaying corpses? You should stop looking for dates at the cemetery. You should try the morgue, the fermeldahide is still pretty fresh
Yuck! :vomit:
It was a joke :vomit:
If that were so, then why do they complain about it?
Why do the vocal pro-vaccers complain about having empathy or compassion for the unvaccinated?
Why do they complain about having to go to some lengths to help them, medically?
That's a strange thing, to feel sorry for acting ethically.
I said: As long as the discussion is limited to philosophy forums, there should be no problem.
I'm not talking about watercooler or family dinner conversations, nor about public appearances in mass media.
What we're seeing in this pandemic is that criticial thinking is being pushed out of all venues. Even at a philosophy forum, the one place in the world that should allow for some nuance and detail, we're now supposed to be all politically correct and superficial.
It was a she. I think she made a good point. So much of what people do, or don't do, depends on whether they trust the government. She pointed out that typically, countries with high vaccination rates are those where people trust the government.
Don't assume that this is your usual 'Mary's room' amateur philo discussion. It's a matter of life and death for people.
We are supposed to be responsible citizens of the world and of our communities. What we write can either be part of the problem, or be part of the solution. Exercise caution. Keep your head cool. Speak of what you know. If you know nothing about vaccines, then don't try and play the expert. If you heard a rumor, verify it or look at the source before spreading it. This sort of things.
Quoting baker
Yes, that makes sense.
The verbiage of these sorts of things are often attempts at capturing ethics, though, technically, counter-examples can usually be found (yet another topic in ethics).
Anyway, despite cynicism there are drivers and concerns.
Say, if my neighbor was an anti-vaxxer, then that doesn't mean I'd like to see them suffer/die or rejected by the hospital. I might have a chat with them.
What does the right thing consist of anyway...?
Quoting jorndoe
(n) ?
Drag all unvaccinated off to a facility and inoculate them at gunpoint?
(n) (some have expressed things a bit in this direction)
Somewhere in between?
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting jorndoe
If rejecting "mainstream media" means turning to garbage, then it's neither smart nor doing the right thing. Wary of all the bullshit. :fire: Allow revising the outlook on the matter. (y)
[sup]• Persuasion, not coercion or incentivisation, is the best means of promoting COVID-19 vaccination (Jan 26, 2021)
• The vaccinated are angry. That's understandable but unproductive, health experts say (Aug 8, 2021)
• Companies mulling charging unvaccinated employees more for health coverage: report (Aug 14, 2021)
• To protect our kids from COVID-19, we have to be grown-ups (Aug 16, 2021)[/sup]
There is no need to do that, so long as we have "No shoes, no shirts, no service" for the vax. But we haven't even arrived there yet. We're still trying to be nice. At least where I live.
"Our patience is wearing thin" (Sep 9, 2021)
:100: At the beginning of this, with mask "mandates" I would see many unmasked at the grocery store, notwithstanding signs and audio messages. I thought the answer was the same as any bar: bouncers at the door. I'd pay a small mark up for that.
As to my focus on the political side of things, I think that if we are going to go to war with a virus then it is reasonable to know who is with you and who is with the virus. Anyone who wants to try "diplomacy" or mediation is free to talk to the virus and try to make peace with it, so long as their efforts don't interfere with the tactics and strategies designed by our generals, intelligence and other experts. Policy can always be argued. I'm fine with that. But don't pretend to be an expert at killing viruses unless you are.
But maybe it's too late. Maybe the virus and it's supporters won and now we have to learn to live with our new master. Even so, those of us who fought the good fight will still harbor a grudge. At least I will.
[sup]• ‘So frustrating’: Doctors and nurses battle virus skeptics (Oct 8, 2020)
• Swedish officials report ‘escalated’ threats and hate in coronavirus debate (Feb 19, 2021)
• Joe Mercola: An antivaccine quack tycoon pivots effortlessly to profit from spreading COVID-19 misinformation (Jul 26, 2021)
• Parent rips face mask off teacher in confrontation at school, Texas district says (Aug 17, 2021)
• London transport staff warned of anti-mask posters with razor blades (Sep 9, 2021)
• A Teen Called For Masks In School After His Grandma Died Of COVID. Adults Mocked Him (Sep 10, 2021)
• UPDATE: Shock in Germany after cashier shot dead in Covid mask row (Sep 21, 2021)[/sup]
:100: If only the virus would stick to those who don't believe in it. I guess war is never like that. Collateral damage is the old and the weak. Back in the day we used to protect the old and the weak; and not throw them under the bus. But now we want to just lock them up while we go on with our merry little lives. After all, distancing, masking and vax is a big ask for a culture of pussies.
https://youtu.be/pAIsK9tosck
Jon Stewart was spot on in the way humanity will destroy itself:
https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8
Are people who wouldn't distance, mask and vax.
You are right: the whiners are basically afraid of the needle. When they were kids, i bet you they were too ashamed to say it, but now as grown-ups they can rationalize their cowardice.
It's always a matter of life and death anyway. Where some people go wrong is in assuming that this covid crisis is something special, rare, extraordinary.
Why do the vocal pro-vaccers complain about having empathy or compassion for the unvaccinated?
Why do they complain about having to go to some lengths to help them, medically?
If the matter is really so simple and so black-and-white and so true and so obvious as the vocal pro-vaccers claim it is ("Just get vaccinated and all will be well"), then why not make it into laws?
Quoting jorndoe
Given the hatred and contempt that some vocal pro-vaccers show for the unvaccinated and everyone else who isn't particularly enthusiastic about vaccination, I surmise that those vocal pro-vaccers are completely inthe clear about what "the right thing" is. So it shouldn't be hard for them to explicate it and to take according action against those who differ.
Thanks for the laugh. So questions about qualia are a matter of life and death for you? You're taking philosophy too seriously...
I don't agree with this because pandemics which threaten to overwhelm medical resources are rare and extraordinary. And even if only in terms of the fear the pandemic engenders it is rare and extraordinary and would threaten our economies even if there were no lock-downs, because if thousands of people were dying and medical resources overwhelmed people would lock themselves down out of fear
You take yourself very seriously, that's for sure, and you're a hero in your own mind, but to me you're just another coward running away from a needle, and rationalizing his fears.
Usually not. To come to a belief like this requires a ton of indoctrination and confirmation bias, not to mention that you can find an echo chamber for just about any topic online nowadays so it’s a constant reinforcing and regurgitation of the same views and “evidence” for their view over and over again. They’ll move the goalposts for just about anything and will maintain their arguments by any means necessary.
There’s a saying that goes “I can’t reason you out of something that you didn’t reason yourself into first.” And I find myself calling back to that quote to check myself, and other people if I am arguing with them.
i had thought this was an exercise of satire, has this thread really dragged out all of the closet conspiracists? is that the reason for this many pages?
Will the irony never end!
You're so far off the mark that I'm at a loss what else to say.
Rather, I nailed you, reason for which you are now speechless...
And things like this are the reason why mankind doesn't deserve to be saved.
Cowards with a big mouth and a tiny brain don't deserve to be saved alright. They are a waste of perfectly fine vaccine.
There are already situations where whatever vaccinations are mandatory and have been for some time. Like hospitals, nursing homes, kindergartens, schools, military, whatever. And there are situations where COVID-19 vaccines are being made mandatory, as per whatever current (scientific) recommendations. In some cases, frequent testing is accepted.
Similarly, standard protocols are implemented here and there, like restaurants, grocery stores, whatever. Commonsensical minor inconveniences — mask, distance, sanitize — yet has fools misbehaving.
Dragging all unvaccinated off to a facility and inoculating them at gunpoint is a rather extraordinary measure beyond the above, one that you might expect would lead to violence (if the behavior we've seen from deniers thus far is an indication), might lead to secret cults hiding, who knows what. What if some of them are afraid fearful anxious, say, because of the long-running mis/dis/malinformation campaigns, or maybe just needle-phobic? Typically, health departments have some goal, like 80% immunized or whatever, but, maybe 100% will become the norm some time, depending on political thrust/will and scientific findings.
They are called vaxcsists. And nothing is stopping them from doing that, other than their inability to make it a reality. But you can be certain they are working on it right now.
I like that -- thanks.
Quoting Ignance
The original purpose was different -- but apparently it's hit a nerve.
To be fair to @Baker, she has been vaccinated.
Absolutely. You can get anything on the black market. And nothing can stop it. It's hard to argue against it, but it's equally hard to argue for it.
If an individual takes the choice to go the black market route, I support and respect their right to choose for themselves; equally, if an individual takes the choice to go the socially legitimate route, I support and respect their right to choose for themselves.
Don't worry about the merk, I always stay nuanced with my strangelovin'
How long until a person can identify as vaccinated and be considered a valid exemption?
So what's her beef then?
Just because you choose to be vaccinated doesn't necessitate that you should require everyone else to. For example, If one respects the right of the individual to choose for oneself.
I'm not so sure about that. If covid is a matter of qualia, it is indeed a matter of life and death. And at this point, we are standing at the edge of a great philosophical debate.
Are you game?
Where we may disagree here is that choices are never just for the self.
Allergy to the vaccines I guess. I don't think conscientious objection will cut it. If someone who has a phobia about injecting anything at all into themselves, would that count as grounds for exemption? Would natural immunity from prior infection count? If someone is paranoid and has an overwhelming and insurmountable fear and distrust of the vaccine would that count? I don't know really.
There are contraindications for vaccination.
Here the list from a Slovenian hospital -- https://www.zd-ms.si/
I can't translate the whole list, but it includes:
people who are allergic to substances in the vaccines or who have had severe reactions to the first dose of a vaccine,
people with transplanted organs, including those waiting for a transplantation,
some people with cancer,
people on dialysis or stage 5 kidney disease,
people with severe lung diseases,
people with Down syndrome,
people who are HIV positive (there is a specification for the number of white cells etc.),
people with congential immunity diseases,
people receiving immunosuppresive therapy,
people with multiple chronic diseases who are deemed too vulnerable for vaccination by their doctor.
I doubt that there's anyone who has that kind of phobia (or it's extremely rare).
But people generally do have an overwhelming and insurmountable fear and distrust of being abused and taken advantage of. They're just not always able to put it into exact words.
No, this is taking the discussion in the wrong direction.
There actually exist laws about issues of public health. The matter is largely settled, legally.
What is not legally settled are things specifically pertaining to covid, with its specifics. But many people act as if this was settled.
There are aspects in which covid is like other infectuous diseases endangering public health.
There are aspects in which covid is not like other infectuous diseases endangering public health.
These differences need to be taken into account. It is wrong to fearmonger by presenting covid as if it were as bad as smallpox. It is also wrong to try to instil a false sense of security by presenting covid as if it were no worse than a cold.
Covid has a wide range of potential symptoms, ranging from nothing to death and everything inbetween. This makes it a complex disease and our response to it should reflect that responsibly both on the part of individual citizens as well as on the part of the government.
Is he really an "anti-vaxxer", or is it just your projection that he is?
You yourself have implicitly accused another poster of being an "anti-vaxxer". I pointed this out to you. You quoted a post of his, and you omitted from your attention the sentence where he clearly said that he was vaccinated and that he wears a mask. That sentence of his post was just before the one you quoted. Yet you talked to him as if he was an anti-vaccer.
And this kind of thing just keeps happening. Vocal pro-vaccers often don't read what people are actually saying. They jump to conclusions. They project. They attack. As if all of that was justified, in the name of a "good cause".
When you mistreat people like that, don't be surprised if some actually do become anti-vaccers.
The government has the power and the authority to subdue any and all opposition. That's why it is the government.
If the government believes that it has the truth about covid, then it can use any means necessary in order to enforce the acceptance of said truth, up to and including lethal force.
If the government believes that the covid crisis is so grave that it warrants mandatory covid vaccination, then it should pass the legislation needed for such, including restitution for those damaged by the covid vaccine (as is standard practice for mandatory vaccinations). If the government cannot of will not do this, then it should declare a state of emergency and enforce martial law.
People base their health care decision on how they get treated on an online forum? How stupid can some people get?
This reminds of the claims made about Trump voters. I think it’s mostly true that we should be polite to one another, but to make blatantly bad choices for yourself, your family, the community, the environment, etc., simply because you’ve been made to feel stupid, or condescended to, or feel dismissed, or perceived to be looked down upon— that’s as irrational as the person is who’s doing the condescension.
So I say to the “vaccine-hesitant” crowd the same as to “on the fence” voters: grow thicker skin, ignore those who are rude, and find someone to educate you or answer your questions and concerns who’s more friendly, polite, and compassionate.
You probably won’t find much of that online. But there are plenty of credible web sites that do explain these things. That’s where I get my information. It’s very easy. If you’re looking to be educated on a philosophy forum, I think that’s a mistake.
Yes, not to mention how easily such people can be manipulated, and how condescendingly they also behave themselves.
This is not the big one. This is the rehearsal for the big one. Given the lessons drawn from the rehearsal, martial law may become necessary once a really nasty bug reaches pandemic proportions. For now, I think voluntary vaccinations should suffice, together with mandatory masks and other measures in some contexts.
Never? Ever?
Seems to me that every choice begins with the self. From there we can begin extending out choices to others when applicable. But, it is not necessary to extend a choice beyond the self, and if a choice stops at the self, then the choice is just for self.
It also seems that many complications can arise from choosing for others. Do we choose the others we choose for? Because that clearly seems like a choice for just the self. Or, do we choose for everybody by default? Then, what are we to make of disagreement and conflict? Do we choose to choose for some and not for others? But that takes us back to the problem of choosing who we choose for.
No, that all sounds too complicated and confusing, and I didn't even mention how personal responsibility and accountability factors in. So, personally, I will stick to choosing for just myself, and I will respect and support anyone who chooses for just oneself.
More like, in a different direction. And in certain democratic states which hold the protecting the right of the individual to be the primary concern of government, it is relevant.
Quoting baker
Yes, it is very complicated. This means we need to be very careful how we proceed, or else the new world that we are creating right now will suck much more than pre-covid world.
Senate hearing exposes the arrogance and authoritarianism of Big Government.
https://youtu.be/DiYugWSc0cg
What Really Happened in Wuhan
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sharri-markson/what-really-happened-in-wuhan/
Why aren't politicians telling people to stop eating junk food, since obese people are 3X more likely to develop severe symptoms?
You mean THE Israel study -- the one you keep clinging to and pinning your hopes on, which has not been peer reviewed, and with which there are other studies that show quite the opposite. Incidentally, the Israeli study also emphasizes the importance of vaccination -- completely contradicting the point you're trying to make.
But you go with the Republican politician on youtube. I'll stick with the medical experts.
I don't agree that any decisions should be made without considering others, without considering the community as a whole, because we all are dependent on the state in so many ways. Or if you prefer a less impersonal framing, we are all dependent on the community, and I think we owe it our allegiance to the utmost degree we can manage, especially in times of crisis, because those times are the times solidarity is most needed.
We disagree right here. The public health advice being acted on now does not contravene the "largely settled" "laws about issues of public health".
Also, I think there is an ethical side to this as well, as I said in the post above.
The "specifics of covid" are a moving feast and to an ever-diminishing degree remain to be seen.
Sure, but I don't see how it would be reasonable to claim that anyone is being abused and taken advantage of in the current covid situation.
I can accept that we are dependent on community, in a symbiotic manner. But the community and the state are not the same thing. Any state that is a true democratic republic is set up to serve and protect the individual's rights. Where I live, the state no longer serves the individual, but rather corporations at large; perhaps this is why the opinion that the indivual is dependent upon the state and should give allegiance to it is fast gaining popularity in the so-called free world.
Unfortunately, with that attitude toward the state's purpose, it is only a matter of time before we to go to the grocery store and hear: "show me your papers". Luckily we will have an administration of corrective labor camps set up for undocumented citizens, so they will have a place to eat dinner and won't have to starve.
Yeah, we’re all really convinced of that. :lol:
The Democratic Party has become the party of Totalitarian Corporatocracy. A disgusting bunch of weasels socking away their kickbacks in Bitcoins. Now, I have to inject crap into my body because they Pharmaceuticals have found a money trove. Forget it. Bidens polls are crashing, and hoping the Corporatist is gone quickly. Midterms should cook the Democrats goose.
Do you mean you'd like to fuck my mailbox?
No wonder there is a bed shortage in hospitals, each of those fatties must require 5-6 beds minimum
Oh I know the answer for that one: Because politicians are ghouls sucking up people precious bodily fluids. All of them without exception. They have a secret room in the senate for it. The fatter the better for them canibals...
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/last-1000-years
Say nothing and just post the data.
I think he just meant he wanted to expose himself to your mailbox.
I can post the security cam pictures and make him famous
:lol:
I don't think that's enough to get attention. You'd need to add a cat somehow.
Nearly 50k Medicare patients died soon after getting COVID shot: whistleblower (Sep 28, 2021)
It's been investigated before ...
• Conspiracy theory claims Biden covered up 45,000 vaccine deaths (Jul 21, 2021)
• “45,000 confirmed dead from the COVID-19 shots within three days… and they’ve covered it up.” (Jul 22, 2021)
• Did 45K People Die Within 3 Days of Getting COVID Vaccine? (Jul 22, 2021)
• Fact check: There is no evidence 45,000 people died from vaccine-related complications (Sep 10, 2021)
... and, by the way, a record like this might warrant some caution: mediabiasfactcheck, adfontesmedia, wikipedia
The accusations are dead serious, but making them is cheap, especially with no independent verification and corroboration.
But, such likes matter little once the story (or just the headline) has made a sufficient number of readers afraid fearful anxious, or confirmed the biases of entrenched/incorrigible readers (who may dismiss investigators with a casual handwave and some yelling).
And so you have it, damage done, history ignored, lingering suspicions added to would-be deniers (and gullible fence-sitters), mission accomplished.
...well, here now. Since you've not replied to anyone who actually raised it here all you've done is given it more airtime.
Still, made a nice little straw man for you to knock down.
Here comes the pat on the back...
Well done.
Don’t forget another misconception that is being knocked down:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/the-vaccinated-arent-just-as-likely-to-spread-covid/620161/
Now that one has been mentioned. But I see no mention in the article of the issues raised (at least by me)
Quoting Isaac
None of the actual studies cited in the article address transmission directly. I'm sure someone as astute as you will spot that the actual claim in the title is only directly addressed by the authors own comments with citations limited to support for peripheral claims (such as vaccination reduces infection, most cases are in the unvaccinated...). The actual premise in the argument (that a lack of measured infection means you won't transmit the virus to others as much) is only directly addressed by assertion.
I'm not saying the evidence to support that claim isn't out there, but the article is good example of why people oppose this stuff. It's little more than "believe me because I'm right".
Maybe we’re taking about different things. I thought you were advocating against young, healthy people getting vaccinated because there was wasnt clear evidence it would significantly slow the spread of the virus. Aren’t the “peripheral’ claims, that vaccination reduces infection and most cases are in the unvaccinated, enough to support recommendations for vaccinating the young?
Or are you arguing a different point?
I don't see how. To counter an argument that the spread of the virus isn't sufficiently slowed in young healthy people to justify vaccination, you'd need a study showing that the virus spreads quickly among unvaccinated young healthy people, no? What's been presented in the article are studies showing that the viral load is reduced in those who take the vaccine immediately after doing so, and that vaccination largely eliminates hospitalisation in those who were prone to it over the study period. I'd disagree with neither of those claims.
Since none of the studies stratify by cohort, nor measure the actual spread of the virus (but rather the viral load in whatever test medium is used), I don't really see how they address the claim.
A study that addresses the claim would be stratified by age and health, would measure viral load in both blood and airway mucosa and would contain follow-up data for at least six months (since any vaccine which needs repeating at that interval would be as good as useless). We'd then need to multiply the ORs from that study by the risk for catching the virus in the first place (again stratified, by behaviour here), to get the OR for transmitting the virus for young healthy unvaccinated people relative to young healthy vaccinated.
I know of no such study.
It depends what you take as your default assumption. Assume it probably works and you'll need a study to show it doesn't to change your mind. Assume it probably doesn't and you'll need a study showing it does. Given the atrocious history of the pharmaceutical industry, I'm in the latter camp.
But you made no point, other than indicating that you're a pervert.
My default assumption is that epidemiologists in general are in a better position than you are to make policy recommendations. Why is this? I don’t doubt your knowledge in empirical methodology. But epidemiology also involves also sociological and political kmowledge. The ability to Interpret research studies is only part of what is needed to make policy recommendations.
As science is consensus based , so too is policy recommendation.. Epidemiologists are polled all the time concerning thes things. I want to know what sorts of consensus there may or may not be be concerning such questions as the value of universal vaccination. Partly this is because I don’t have the time to read every study , and partly because I appreciate that there are other considerations besides the conclusiveness and validity of study results , considerations which can allow for reasonable recommendations even in the absence of definitive conclusions.
Maybe you could point me in the direction of links to statements by epidemiologists who recommend against policies advocating or requiring vaccination of young people.
Your questions and demands for evidence will always outweigh whatever can be given, and will shift once the answer or evidence has been given. It's like whack-a-mole. That's why I encourage others not to get into the weeds, but to always keep in mind the bigger picture. It's not driven by good-faith assessment of the data -- it's picking and choosing data. It's the same tactic that Creationists use: poke as many holes as you can, identify apparent contradictions, mis-quote, tell half-truths, etc. When all else fails, shift to an entirely different question.
What this all comes down to, ultimately, is the fact that this issue has been politicized. Like the issue of climate change, because it's been politicized there are all kinds of laymen, especially online, making claims about the sun, about natural variation, about climate scientists, etc. You see them on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter. But they're all repeating things they've heard from their sources, and their sources happen to be completely and demonstrably wrong, and their arguments don't hold any water when analyzed in detail.
The anti-vax crowd (forgive the label) are doing exactly the same thing. It's a mistake -- simple as that.
If you're afraid to take the shot and want to find reasons for not taking it, even after 9 months and 6 billion doses given, and after every major medical organization in the world recommends vaccination, then you'll certainly find reasons.
If you're already convinced the medical establishment is untrustworthy, and that overwhelming scientific and medical consensus and advice can be ignored, then you'll find reasons for believing that -- and no amount of debate will change your mind, especially on the Internet.
The question is: why so afraid of vaccines in the first place? And why so distrustful of medicine and science?
It seems to me it's a selective skepticism.
There's really no point looking up statistics or reports or articles or citing experts -- none of it will be good enough, none of it will matter. Once someone has taken it as part of their identity, arguing the matter is like arguing someone out of religion. It's a fool's errand, as tempting as it is (after all, most claims are pretty easy to refute).
What we should be discussing is why these people are showing up to begin with. It's the same question we should be asking about Trump voters, it's the same question we should be asking about climate deniers.
This doesn't come from nowhere. They don't realize it themselves, because they're stuck in the middle of it, but in my view it's simply being manipulated by misinformation, exacerbated by social media.
So you're just deliberately being provocative, right? I thought for a minute that was the case, and this was satire -- but you've now gone on several posts with this kind of thing. Is this what you really believe?
Thank you for effort, and the references.
Quoting Isaac
Except me, right after it was posted. The fact that you ignore things you don't like doesn't mean they haven't been addressed.
Or recommendations against vaccinations.
Remember, importantly, that despite all these citations about side effects, death, ineffectiveness (the Israel study being the one used over and over again), and lack of knowledge -- all of experts end up recommending vaccinations, stressing their importance. This should tell you something.
It should also tell you something that after 6 billion shots have been given, 170 million people in the United States alone, and 9 months having passed, full FDA approval, and numerous studies -- the vaccines have been shown to be safe, effective, and help slow the spread of the virus. This is something that's been tested for safety more than anything else in memory.
The "skeptics" persist. Fine -- we always need them too. But it's getting harder and harder to argue this position. It's getting absurd, quite frankly. Some of the claims, like by Mondo (If he's being serious), are just ludicrous and embarrassing.
Or: don't take the vaccine, and have the decency to isolate yourself as much as possible so as not to potentially infect others. If you do this, I have no issue with you at all, despite believing that you're wrong (unless you have legitimate reason, like an allergy or something to that effect).
That's the choice, at this point. Rightfully so.
You're indulging in all or nothing thinking if you believe that the state serves only corporate interests. The state may be more beholden to corporate interests than it should be; obviously the state is never perfect and where there are human beings there will inevitably be some degree of corruption.
Your second paragraph as I read it is alarmist nonsense; you can do better than indulging in that. The question is: if you see injustices and corruption in your community, in your state, and they really bother you, then what are you doing to try to help the situation? Whining about it and petulantly refusing to do a simple thing which carries little risk to yourself will only make the situation worse. So are you happy to become part of the problem?
As opposed to the infantile title of this thread?
Let's it, you are nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry who will milk your fears and the fears of all others who live in dread of viruses. The pharmaceutical industry has done a great job of brainwashing the lemmings of the world.
You believe the vaccination is safe.Because the pharmaceutical industry said so? rofl. As far as being effective, get ready for a life time of boosters. I'm sure they are equally safe. Nothing ever is better than natural immunity. The innate intelligence of life. Just don't eat Kentucky Fried Chicken or pop immunosuppressant drugs in your body. That might really help.
NO, no, no... the experts are just toeing the line because they're all afraid of losing their jobs or their research grants. :wink: :roll:
And getting permanently ostracized. There are lots of experts that see whole thing dangerous experiment, but they are quickly silenced, so that the pharmaceuticals get the "consensus" and MONEY they are seeking.
First biomedical scientists make the virus and then the Pharmaceuticals profit from it. Same with computer viruses. I love them symmetry of life.
Anyway, soon there will be much safer, early drug treatment for this virus (I used my own natural treatment), and this current hysteria will be over. However, I am sure it will happen again in a different form. It's just too profitable scaring the crap out of people, for Big Pharma to ignore.
It doesn't matter whether you are serious. I am. What's going on in the world is just a giant certain of the Salem Witch Trials, where mass hysteria, created by Big Pharma and the financial community, has destroyed all semblance of Life as it was one enjoyed. The Walking Dead have taken over.
I like when points are made clearly and directly, I respond much better. Thank you for that, and please excuse me for stringing you along with my bullshit, but that porch analogy deserved it in my opinion.
You should have included this with your porch comment. Now I will give you a real answer:
That is not my argument. Rights are not based on wants. One can want all sorts of rights, but want is not the basis for the existence of rights. I hold to the traditional US definition, that rights are self-evident and inherent to the individual, they are also inalienable, meaning that no power in existence can contradict any right established in the constitution (at least on paper, unfortunately, in reality it happens all the time).
Obviously, covid is not mentioned in the US constitution, so no specific right has been established concerning covid, but that also means that there is no constitutional law regarding covid vaccines (nor vaccination in general for that matter). So, as per tradition, until the specifics are officially defined, this leaves it all up to interpretation.
I find it quite simple to extrapolate from preexisting constitutional rights, the right of the individual to choose for himself: whether to accept or reject the covid vaccine. I think you will find it to be quite a difficult contrivance to interpret the constitution in such a way so as to use it as an argument for the necessity of universal vaccination. But if you can, I would love to hear it.
And as to your porch analogy. Inherent to the right of the individual to choose for oneself is something called accountability. When an individual chooses, it is very easy to place direct credit/blame on the one who chose, and with credit/blame is what we know as consequence. In your porch analogy, you might have to face the consequence of my old lady blasting an unknown intruder with her shotgun while your dick is in the mailbox. On the other hand, I respect and support the right of the individual to accept or decline the covid vax. As such, I will have to face the consequences (for my opinion, i suppose) . . . whatever the consequences might be, we have no clue at this point, it is all speculation.
Throughout history fear in the form of mass hysteria has been the foundation of control and wealth. Fear of viruses in people is just the latest and most catastrophic version of this age old device.
Let's not forget that it was biomedical science that created this catastrophie. Something that is often omitted from discussion.
I would say a democratic state is the result of the choices of many communities. Nevertheless, the pertinent question is: how do we determine and measure the potential "harms" that the individual is capable of? With Covid, this is highly open to debate, as is evident on TPF.
Forgive my absolutist rhetoric, I can agree that the state does not serve only corporate interests. However, we are far beyond "some degree of corruption". It is no secret that there are high levels of corruption in the US government, and it is well documented. And in many critical areas, it forsakes the individual in favor of corporations. Issues like polution, wealth disparity and opiod addiction can be directly tied to the relation between corporations and government.
Thus, I have developed a very cynical attitude towards the state. Not all of it, but much of it. And at this point, I would rather fool myself and be wrong, than let the state deceive me into error yet again. How can you blame me?
You are right, I can do better.
For me covid is a minor problem with neglible risk, so I have no problem contributing to that problem. As I see it, there are much greater problems that carry substantial to severe risk. If I were to put forth any effort toward resolving socio-political problems, instead of simply whining about it on tpf, I would focus on those. One example is the the alliance between corporations and politicians. Have you ever heard of citizens united?
I wasn't deliberately being provocative with the title of this thread. I consider those mentioned completely wrong.
Quoting MondoR
Those who prefer to get infected and take their chances with natural immunity are welcome to do so -- provided they don't infect others in the meantime.
Ditto for those who've been vaccinated. In Israel, the most vaccinated country in the world, more vaccinated people became infected than vaccinated, and total infections were higher after vaccination than before. No difference in the amount of virus in a vaccinated and unvaccinated person. Now The crazies have to use threats to force people to participate in this dangerous experiment. The myth of vaccinations decimated in less than 6 months, and people still believe the gods of politics and medicine. What a joke. I'm going to take the Father of Covid's advice? I don't think so.
But not in the US, or UK. In the US, infections, hospitalizations and deaths are overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated.
And breakthrough infections, when they do occur, are less severe than in those who are vaccinated.
So you can continue harping about the Israeli study, but even if we accept it all as true, it’s still an outlier and still does not recommend against vaccinations.
Yeah, humans are different in the U.S. and Israel. Gullibility of the brainwashed. Like masks prevented the flu virus last season but somehow Covid went wild. Vaccinated people carry just as much virus as unvaccinated, and since their symptoms are milder they are much more likely to infect others. Vaccinated people are a menace to society carrying all that virus and spreading it because they have been brainwashed to believe they are virus free. The "educated" class. Education=Thoroughly brainwashed in college by approved industry courses. Trust politicians. Trust biomedicine.
These are simple facts. You can look them up yourself. If we accept the Israeli data, as we should, we should accept the data of the rest of the world as well, including the US.
We find that the unvaccinated are being hospitalized and dying at much higher rates. I’m sorry if that doesn’t conform to what you’d like to believe.
Probably, but policy recommendations are made by public health authorities. Epidemiologists advise them. As I said on the other thread, public policy is a tool to accomplish government objectives. It is not, as should not be treated as, a statement of scientific consensus.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, I totally agree and I wouldn't want there to be any confusion between what I'm arguing here and what might be good public policy. As I've said before, I'm sure vaccination is a good and necessary public policy, I just don't think that translates to a moral requirement to adhere to it.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, but why 'consensus'? You're an academic right? We don't all patiently check everybody else's work for errors. Especially not over the sorts of timescales involved here. Consensus is far more determined by the popularity of key starting assumptions than by the result of some mass error-checking exercise. I can definitely see the sense in trusting someone else to check through papers for you, we rarely have time to do so personally, but consensus adds little to nothing.
Quoting Joshs
Sure.
This is Wesley Pegden questioning the ACIP presentation - https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-failed-to-balance-the-harms-vs-benefits-of-2nd-doses-d7d6b3df7cfb
And Here including Stefan Baral - https://medium.com/@wpegden/covid-19-vaccines-in-children-6cdff15b2415
Carl Henegan - https://jme.bmj.com/content/47/8/565
Pete Doshi - https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/13/covid-19-vaccines-for-children-hypothetical-benefits-to-adults-do-not-outweigh-risks-to-children/
Ruediger von Kries -
Vinay Prasad - https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/91972
Ruchi Sinha -
Daniel Hungerford -
Nitpicking, eh? Well, I was using "constitution" liberally. I'll try to be more precise in the future.
Concerning the video, nice speech. Best quote, when Souter says: "the constitution is the embodiment of the desire of the American people [...] to have things both ways."
He goes on to refute the notion that all constitutional law lies within the constitution in advance and merely requires a fair reading by a judge to settle conflicting matters of constitutional fact. He mentions how the constitution must be viewed as a whole to be interpreted correctly, or in his words: "[...] to understand the meaning of those [constitutional] facts for living people").
Makes sense, and supports what I was saying: (fair reading was never the case here), it is far easier to interpret the constitution as supporting the right of the individual to choose for himself whether to accept or decline the covid vaccine. I would be interested to hear an interpretation of constitutional fact that supports mandatory universal vaccination. The only thing I can think of, is if Covid can be convincingly presented as an imminent threat to national security, like islamic terrorism.
Elsewhere, someone posted a flurry of anti-whatever stuff, including this sample ...
Epidemic of heart attacks: Graphene Oxide and EMFs (rumble·com; Sep 20, 2021)
... which fronts ...
Epidemic of heart attacks: Graphene Oxide and EMFs (orwell·city; Sep 20, 2021)
... which refers to some elusive "biostatistician and researcher Ricardo Delgado" character. It goes on to tell a story about a magnetic compound in vaccines on which cell towers have a deadly effect, and an epidemic of such deaths no less. Whereas the Spanish news article (laprovincia·es) likely is true about a bicyclist having died from a heart attack, nothing else checks out. No independent verification, no corroboration, including other news articles, definitely no such epidemic, nothing. It all strands on elusive characters, creative story-telling, grand conspiracy theories, ...
Can Vaccines Make Our Body Magnetic? (Jun 11, 2021)
Fact Check-COVID-19 vaccines do not contain graphene oxide (Jul 23, 2021)
Graphene: 'Miracle material' singled out for Covid conspiracies (Oct 1, 2021)
When I called the poster out on it, they had nothing either (apart from the usual bullshit, personal attacks, hand-waving, all that, some of which we've seen here as well). Regardless, that was just one rumble·com page now anti-informing people out there. That's all it takes apparently.
So, maybe YouTube's move is for the better.
So again. Why the hell are you re-posting it all here?
By the way, I typically argue for free speech, and the usual suppression accusations against YouTube are bound to come up. The sort of thing that may have led to sites like rumble·com.
The bill of rights will also be hard to get around. Even if those rights are conditional, they are still constitutional facts that cannot be ignored. As Souter said, the constitution has to be viewed as a whole to be interpreted correctly.
Yes, that the constitution supports the right of the individual to choose for himself whether or not to accept or decline the vaccine.
Who is the final say on how reality is judged? Your reality is based in the fear of a disease with indeterminate risk, involving a fascist imposition over others. My reality is based on the potential rights of individuals and the assent to the consequences of individuals choosing for themselves. I say your reality is mistaken and not correct, it is an error of perception and quite irrational.
Quoting Isaac
Apparently , Dr Pegden is something of a professional
contrarian. Here’s a rebuttal to Dr Pegden’s article( Baral and Prasad were co-authors)
To summarize, the article by Drs. Pegden et al. does not mention that:
482-582 children have died of COVID-19 in the US.
A non-trivial percentage of children who contract COVID-19 will need to be hospitalized.
One-third of hospitalized children require ICU level, care and 6% require invasive mechanical ventilation.
Over half of children hospitalized with COVID-19 had no underlying health condition.
19% of American children are obese and therefore “high-risk.”
COVID-19 may cause long-term complications in children.
Tens of thousands of children have lost a parent due to COVID-19.
Millions of teenagers older than 16-years have been safely vaccinated so far.
A highly successful trial of the COVID-19 vaccine has been completed in adolescents. (Another successful trial has also been completed, with preliminary data just released).
Further vaccine trials (and presumed approvals) are proceeding in a purposeful, stepwise fashion by age.
An EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine requires a two-month waiting period and data “from at least one well-designed Phase 3 clinical trial that demonstrates the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in a clear and compelling manner.”
Vaccine side-effects almost never emerge after two months.
The core difference between an EUA and full FDA-approval is four additional months of observation after already-completed trials.
Vaccine rates in the US are unlikely to be high enough to achieve herd immunity, especially in certain regions.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-vaccine-children-under-an-emergency-use-authorization/
general are in a better position than you are to make policy recommendations.
— Joshs
Quoting Isaac
Yes, my interest is in consensus of epidemiological advice to policy makers.
Quoting Isaac
You make it sound like the arrival by scientists
at risk-reward profiles for therapeutic interventions is merely a matter of error checking. It has never been that, nor will it ever be. How one weighs the import of the various factors involved in such determinations is filtered though pre-existing assumptions. Error checking alone is unlikely to convince Pegden et al to change their minds about child vaccination. If I’m not going to be reading through every research paper that comes along , I want to hitch my wagon to the most popular starting assumptions.(note that those popular starting assumptions are not impervious to evidence. On the contrary, they are necessary to give order and meaning to the evidence. Furthermore , this assumptions have continually shifted as new data emerges).
The most popular starting assumption ( dominant paradigm) earns its stripes by offering a particularly useful way of interpreting empirical phenomena.
Scientific naysayers, conspiracy buffs, climate change deniers can’t be shown the ‘error’ of their ways by error checking. They have to be able to join a different normative community from the one that informs their views.
I don’t think anyone, anywhere, is arguing in favor of forced vaccinations.
You have the right to smoke as well — no one is forcing that on you. But when what you do or don’t do has an effect on other people, things get complicated. We have all kinds of laws in place for these things— including smoking bans. If you go into most restaurants, if you want to smoke you’ll have a designated area outside. That’s an infringement on rights, but a legitimate one in my view — as it is in most people’s eyes, because we have all come to agree that the jury is in on second hand smoking and cancer.
The same goes for vaccines. You don’t want to take them? Fine— no problem. Your choice. You want to smoke? Fine— no problem. I may not do it myself, but I would never stop you from doing so using physical force.
You see where I’m going with this I think.
The issue then becomes “they’re essentially forcing people by threatening their jobs.” Yes. Many think this is illegitimate, I don’t. But either way, do employers have the legal right to do so?
Yes, they do. In most cases that’s unfortunate— like telling people what to wear and when to eat. I think corporations have too much power in general.
What’s strange, however, is that it has been mostly conservatives arguing in favor of employers’ rights over the decades. “If you don’t like it, go elsewhere,” is the common refrain given to employees. They’re also been deliberately destroying unions for decades. But now that they’re getting a taste of something they don’t like — suddenly they turn into Eugene Debbs.
It’s hypocrisy.
It’s not a matter of whether you agree with a policy or not — it’s whether we allow corporations to control us in this way, where the workers have no input over major decisions— not just vaccines, but also profit distribution, wages, automation, outsourcing, layoffs, etc. The whole system seems out of whack — especially without union representation or some other form of input from workers.
But that’s how it is, and it’s completely legal. This happens to be a policy I agree with— I think it is as legislate as banning smoking, but the underlying issue is still relevant: corporations have too much power and too little worker representation.
The same goes for censorship and free speech on social media platforms. Is it legal? Yes.
They’re private tyrannies, so they can do what they want — and the people crying the loudest right now helped them get there.
That’s not how consensus is reached.
Overwhelming consensus, given the scientific process, is pretty rare. When it is reached, a layman can be far more confident of the results than not. This should be easy.
What’s happening in your case is that you’re taking the minority view and want to justify this as the correct choice— as a layman.
But it’s as ridiculous an argument as when climate change deniers go with Roy Spencer over the IPCC. They’ll argue until they’re blue in the face about how science is often wrong, consensus means nothing, it’s an establishment conspiracy, it’s groupthink, etc. I take them about as seriously as I take you.
Others should do likewise. This is a waste of time.
We all know about the inflated statistics concerning covid fatalities, don't be naive. Plus, dead people don't have a say.
Another standard tactic of those holding unfalsiable claims: simply dismiss the evidence and the data. Try to undermine the sources of the data, the data itself, etc.
If anything, it appears much more likely that 700k is an understatement.
Then why have you cited an article written by a psychiatrist and science-journalism hack as evidence against one written by three epidemiologists with professorial posts at some the top US universities? You say you're interested in what epidemiologists say, I give you the responses of eight epidemiologists and you respond with some science blog entry.
Quoting Joshs
And how are you going about finding out what they are? Are you conducting a poll?
Quoting Joshs
Oh come on! In any other area would you be arguing that the dominant paradigm earned it's position by being more useful than the others? This whole line of response is bullshit, you've favoured some interne blog over the actual experts cited and now you're giving me some crap about the dominant paradigms in science being all there entirely as a result of some merit-based approach as if Kuhn had never set pen to paper.
So you are in favor of the individual's right to choose? What are we arguing about then? Do you mean that when you say:
Quoting Xtrix
Are you not implying that there should be legislation that mandates vaccination and locks out of society all who decline? It clearly sounds like you are.
The data must convince me. If it does not, it needs to do a better job of creating a believable narrative. If you are so gullible as to be easily convinced by a soft and rehashed narrative, so be it.
No, I'm savagely honest. And the only thing that has deflated is your argument. Let me ask (even though I know you won't answer) are you simply regurgitating someone elses beliefs? How can you diminish the importance of the individual through all of this and then think that your individual opinion is of any relevance?
But, no worries, your argument is a weak and derived contrivance anyway.
Once in a while I peak in here to see what's been happening.
Scientific data just flows logically -- that's the believable narrative. You're not supposed to force yourself to accept it. You're supposed to understand it, because with understanding comes acceptance,naturally. If you're not convinced of scientific data, then something else is happening here. You know the saying, have faith in science. By faith, we don't mean blindly. We mean there's a society we live in that ensures that science is behaving like science.
Are you aware of the "scientific method"? It does not dictate how individuals "should" behave. Narrative is entirely interpretive.
Quoting Caldwell
Yes, it is just another born fascist pretending to telling me what I "have to do". As if there are not three sides to every narrative.
Quoting Caldwell
Sounds more like religion.
Okay, fair enough. No one can force you to accept facts or reality. But then, there's also the law, which could make a convincing narrative that you should be put in jail (as an example) for being a menace to society and ignoring facts.
Now that I think about it, some facts should be a law automatically. Actually there are things that are both facts and laws at the same time. Jumping off a bridge above the freeway is both a fact of death and a prohibition at once.
Okay, forgive me for implying you are fascist.
Wait a sec ... what law is that?
Quoting Caldwell
That is fascist. What about the constitutionally established process of lawmaking that protects the individual from possible forms of state tyranny.
Terrible example. And worse analogy
What if I reject the narrative of law making process the same way you reject the scientific narrative?
First let us be clear about what we are talking about with "narrative". Since I introduced the term to the conversation, I should better define it. It is the bullshit story we make up, using our empirical knowledge and reasoning capabilities, which sometimes turns out to be true, but not usually.
I am more than happy to answer your question, providing you give me an explanation of the "scientific narrative".
What we are talking about here with the law making process, is the individual's right to choose for himself whether to accept or decline the covid vaccine. The right is granted on the basis of interpreting constitutional fact, and this has not yet occured so that it has become a law of the land. Since nothing in the constitution officially opposes this idea ( via fair reading), it is wide open for debate.
There is no force in the world that can convince you to accept some data that you want to reject. Try and talk to a holocaust denier or a 9/11 truther if you don't believe me.
So all this 'consensus of experts' we've been hearing about are only dealing with the data they've previously decided they're willing to accept?
Why yeah, it doesn't include tarot reading or the position of Saturn in Virgo, if that's what you have in mind.
Why not? We're talking about 'data' here, not conclusions. Presumably scientists are willing to accept data on tarot reading and astrology, that's how they know it's bunkum. Are you suggesting they dismissed it out of hand because they refused to even accept the data?
If they know it's bunkum, why would they accept it?
Yep. Likely this is the case.
But of course likely people will simply deny the facts and just accuse of others being naive. Deny all those rented cold storages that had to be used when the morgues were having problems to deal with the dead. And as now the health sector has adapted to fight the virus, who cares if the most deaths for instance in Florida happened this August, not last year?
deleted
I’m in favor of individual choice, yes. Same with smoking.
If people want to smoke, or reject the vaccine, that’s their choice. But you have no right to infect others — or blow smoke in their faces.
When I say isolate themselves from society, I really mean crowded places— obviously they have to eat, and so go to the supermarket and whatnot. But they should be decent enough to wear a mask and social distance, as any sane person would during a pandemic.
As far as the workplace goes, that’s their choice as well— take the vaccine or be laid off. This is the ultimatum United Airlines gave -- and less than 1% of their workforce had to be fired.
That’s the level of power these corporations have, which I've never liked, but which the Republican party, conservatives, libertarians, and neoliberals (but I repeat myself) have all helped to create. Interesting that they're now the ones crying about it. Not when it's something like massive campaigns to undermine unions, unlimited campaign contributions, endless lobbying, excluding workers from major company decisions and policies, and monopolization. No -- they take their stand over masks and vaccines. It's laughable.
No, it doesn’t. You’re nothing. And you’ll never be convinced anyway. The only reason you’re interested in any of this is because of misinformation. I’ll go with the overwhelming medical consensus.
:rofl:
:100:
A nice pop-culture view of science, with a shallow nod to the fact/value dichotomy.
Quoting Caldwell
An excellent question.
They're related. You may "not believe" in "man-made" law, and you may "not believe" in natural laws (like gravity). But if you violate the former, you're arrested regardless; if you violate the former -- say by attempting to fly out the window -- you'll quickly find out that what you "believe" doesn't mean anything either.
It's good and proper to question the world, to question authority, to question prevalent dogma. Questions are important, and an essential component of philosophical thought. But it has to be motivated by a genuine search for truth, and an openness to learning.
The problem with anti-vaxxers, creationists, flat-earthers, climate deniers, etc., is that they are not motivated by a search for truth. They're motivated by other factors -- usually emotions. But why? Why is their identity tied to these false beliefs?
Ultimately it is an outgrowth of the education they've received, in my view; not only in schools but through the media as well (which is where most people are "educated" on these matters) -- social media now being the worst of it, as has been shown.
Back in the 90s we thought the Internet and the "information age" would give everyone access to knowledge and education. We see it in the online Brittanica, in Wikipedia, in things like the Kahn Academy and "Crash Course" series on YouTube, and so forth.
Yet here we are, on an Internet philosophy website, where you would expect to attract people with a modicum of education and thoughtfulness, debating six or seven (essentially) anti-vaxxers.
It's pretty sad, and scary for the future. They of course cannot see this, and never will, but they're in the same boat as these other people. Why? Because they're making exactly the same psychological mistakes. They will also, along with creationists and flat-earthers, throw all of these descriptions back at us, and of science -- they'll go so far as to question the foundations of truth itself just to avoid admitting that they're radically wrong (who wants to look stupid?).
But I digress.
(1) There is a consensus of experts about vaccines, which is what was being discussed.
(2) They're safe, they're effective, and they slow the spread of the virus.
(3) There's consensus about this because the evidence is overwhelming.
True, anti-vaxxers disagree about the evidence. Creationists disagree about the evidence for evolution. Neither are motivated by a search for truth. No evidence will convince them otherwise, despite their claims. The hallucination (or delusion) belongs to them alone.
https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-wanted-genetically-enhance-bat-viruses-study-human-risks-documents-show-1631784
Quoting Isaac
Because I found his argument convincing enough to suspect that your authors are offering a fringe position without my having to delve deeper into the literature. Apparently I was on the right track, as the link below suggests. I’m sure I can find plenty more rebuttals
from medical experts. Look, if you find their claims convincing them by all means act accordingly. Having read their assertions and the rebuttals I don’t find them convincing. At any rate , I think we should
encourage others who cannot wade through research studies to do what I have done, start with a particular policy recommendation, find medical experts who support it based on the science , and try and see if there is some kind of convergence of thinking among a majority of experts. I think there is such a convergence concerning childhood vaccination , despite your naysayers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8358829/
Quoting Isaac
No, there are already plenty of polls out there , plus opinion pieces by medical experts. I also find it useful to do what I did here , suss out contrarian opinions and see how the medical mainstream responds to them.
Quoting Isaac
I didnt say the dominant paradigm is more useful than all the alternatives , only that it has to be respected for convincing its many adherents that it is the most useful approach. In that sense it has earned its stripes The reason we’re dealing with so many climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers is that they don’t believe there is a legitimate consensus. That is, they either dispute the numbers of experts who are on board , or impugn their motives.
Quoting Isaac
Kuhn did indeed set pen to paper , and what did he say? He said that choice of paradigms was essentially an aesthetic choice. There’s merit in aesthetics.
— Krugman, NY TIMES
Nails it. So much for principle.
Quoting MondoR
How are they running the vaccination programme?
Fauci's fingerprints are everywhere at the crime scene. It's a massive crime against humanity that he is at all involved with anything.
Shh…just let the crackpot scream his conspiracy theories. He’s the best thing for the vaccine program.
People are being suspended or fired from their jobs for not being vaccinated. As long as vaccination is not actually legally mandatory, suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal.
Quoting Janus
Indeed, in those times, solidarity is needed the most. But it is unreasonable to expect people to practice solidarity after beating into them for decades the doctrine of rugged individualism.
Solidarity isn't just about what a person "feels in their heart", but it has to be embedded into the whole structure of society, for a long time.
Quoting Janus
It does, precisely because in the current situation, some (many?) governments are not acting in accordance with laws. (Or else, existing laws have been found to be unconstitutional.)
The response of right wingers surely depends on whether they live in a country where they have the majority or not.
I live in a country with a right wing government who is vocally for vaccination; the right wingers here are overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination. (So are the centrists and leftists, although less violently so.)
From a political perspective, whether someone is vocally in favor of vaccination or not seems to be related to whether they or the political party they support is in a position of power, and has less to do with where on the political spectrum said party is.
The legality of requiring vaccination in certain industries is open to question and will be determined in courts if it is challenged. Whether such requirements are ethically reasonable is another question. The Right has generally supported the right of proprietors of businesses to hire and fire, for whatever reasons they like, as they see fit. And now it is mostly the Right that is squealing about it and calling it an infringement of individual rights.
Quoting baker
It is mostly the Right that has promoted the idea of rugged individualism; not everyone has swallowed it, though.
Quoting baker
Here in Australia it is (some) industries and business who are mandating vaccination and our Liberal (Rightwing) prime minister has issued statements warning businesses who do that that they may be subject to legal action for doing so. Such actions by businesses and industries may or may not be tested in court, but beyond that, the actions seem reasonable enough, since having a vaccination is hardly much of an inconvenience.
If people have serious problems with it (mental or physical) they may be able to obtain medical exemptions, and I believe some people here already have done so. The downside there will be that some people who simply don't want to be vaccinated will rort the system and obtain unwarranted medical exemption. I know of at least one case of that and also one case of a person gaining an unwarranted exemption from wearing a mask in the workplace.
Indeed, the people who ended up with strokes or dead from the vaccine experienced hardly much of an inconvenience.
Perhaps you don't see it, but you yourself are using the language of liberals and rightwingers.
This isn't merely about how people interact online. Listening to you and other vocal pro-vaccers here at the forum is like listening to some of the high politicians in the country where I live, and in some other EU countries as well. The same cynical attitude, the same threats, the same simplificationism, the same not listening, the same diversions.
It's so pervasive, so consistent that it cannot be written off as incidental or irrelevant: rather, everything indicates that it is part of their message.
No, I am not. There are such risks with other vaccines and with all or most medications. Everyone is required to accept some risk in order to participate in work and life. What about the risks on construction and mining sites? What about the risks to health from the air-conditioning systems in high rise buildings? Or the risk of fire in such buildings? Or vehicle exhausts in the cities? The risks of air flight and indeed the risks of driving and traveling on public transport? There is always going to be some small percentage of unlucky people. But exactly the same is true of the natural world. We and the other animals we share this planet with are potentially subject to natural disasters. In fact we are by far the greatest risk to the other animals, unfortunately.
What justification do we have for demanding that life is absolutely risk free? On the other hand it doesn't seem unreasonable to require people to do everything they can to minimize risk if there is most likely to be little personal cost involved in doing so. I took the vaccine and I felt like shit for about 24 hours, but I'm not complaining. Most people I have spoken to didn't suffer even that, but just had a mildly sore arm for a day or two.
Likewise, there is no force in the world that can convince you to reject some data that you want to accept.
Because might makes right.
That's an interesting point. If someone died as a result of being forced by the state to take the vaccine, should his/her family be entitled to retaliate?
In the case of mandatory vaccines, yes.
In Slovenia, a 20-year old woman died this week after complications from a vaccine. The minister of health hastened to point out that since the government merely recommended vaccination but didn't mandate it, this means that the state isn't liable.
It's so underhanded it's sickening. On the one hand, the government is using threats and being downright vicious in getting people to get vaccinated. But when something goes wrong, the government plays coy.
There you go, making wild accusations that I am going around infecting people with covid. Where is your hard evidence that I am doing that?
If we proceed by your logic here, it is perfectly reasonable to accuse you of going around infecting people with HIV at your homosexual orgies. Afterall, I don't need any hard evidence to prove this is in fact the case, I only need a rationale for the possibilty, and it becomes truth.
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh.
Sure, there are democratic states which hold the protecting the rights of _some_ individuals to be the primary concern of government.
But generally, it has been my experience that one's "constitutionally given" rights are things that one has to fight for and defend, with one's own money and power. And that if one doesn't have those, then it is one's own fault is other people don't respect one's constitutionally given rights.
You know, what eventually moved me to get vaccinated (even though medically for me, this was not a good time) was that I reached the point where I finally lost faith in the system.
You are gravely missing the point. It's conveninent to harp on people's risk aversion because that's a simple truism.
But the actual issue isn't risk aversion. It's a simplistic, zombified outlook on life that promises people a good life, but sooner or later lets them down, and then blames them, or, at most, shrugs its shoulders.
Also, see my comments about luck in my reply to Mr. Storm.
Enough said.
Quoting Xtrix
:up:
Quoting MondoR
The article you provided a link to suggests documents leaked by scientists show the Wuhan Lab had an extensive collection of coronaviruses which they intended to genetically engineer and test in bat caves (only a few years before the pandemic).
Where does Fauci or those running the vaccination programme come in? If I remember correctly, there was a photo of Fauci at the Wuhan lab. Is there any other evidence of his involvement?
You need to follow the trail from there beginning, including his advocacy, funding, and then lead in the cover-up. Is there a Nobel Prize for Idiots who helped destroy the Human Race? And this is the savior that everyone is listening to with awe, particularly the highly educated/indoctrinated who think they are sooooooo smart listening to the scientists that helped create the whole disaster.
Quoting Xtrix
42 pages later, any nearer to the answer?
This is completely wrong. Ask United Airlines, who did exactly that.
I'm very leery of the amount of power corporations have. They employ millions of people, and control when they eat, what they wear, what they can say to customers, etc. -- I don't like it. But, unfortunately, it's perfectly legal. Why? Because these are private tyrannies who can do what they want to do, basically.
In this specific instance, I agree with the policy. But that doesn't mean I like the fact that a handful of executives and boards of directors get to make all of these decisions without any worker input whatsoever.
I don't know what point you think I am missing unless it is that I don't share your cynical view of what I imagine you take to be the "normal outlook" as expressed in "It's a simplistic, zombified outlook on life that promises people a good life, but sooner or later lets them down, and then blames them, or, at most, shrugs its shoulders."
I can see a certain "caricaturistic" sense in which things could be looked at that way but I think that characterization is simplistic, and completely unhelpful when considering any real world issues.
This is a point I try to keep reminding people of over and over -- and NOT to stick it to Republicans or conservatives, but to encourage them to change their minds about this one thing, at least.
Quoting baker
Well what can I say? I can't help how you perceive me, really, but being as objective as I can be, I don't think all of that is fair. I never claimed to be a nice guy -- but I feel I'm almost always giving evidence to support arguments I make. I'm not simply launching insults. And I don't feel any sense of self-righteousness or cynicism and, despite your claim, listening happens to be my specialty. (That last part is a joke.)
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I never once said that.
What is wrong?
Did you see the actual notice of termination, the actual wording?
You got me there. I think the second to last line is my justification for continuing.
What is wrong? The statement that "suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal." That's wrong. It's being done right now, and has already been done. If there are court challenges, they will lose. Just as the "freedom of speech" cases lost in court over banning Trump from Twitter and Facebook. These companies can do what they want to do and, as I mentioned, I don't like this -- but unfortunately, it isn't illegal.
As far as "seeing the actual notice of termination, the actual wording": no, I haven't. I don't work for these companies. But it's been reported pretty widely that some employees (though fairly few) have been terminated for not complying with vaccination policy. I don't see this as any different than what's been happening for years at many companies that require hepatitis or TB/tests and shots.
Never. Ever since humanity replaced geocentric theory for heliocentric theory, there was nothing but horrid weapons of war and disease. Nobody ever got hurt (or at least disintegrated and their homes irradiated) when we listened to our religious overlords.
As long as vaccination is not actually legally mandatory, suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal.
The actual wording of the termination is important. If it said something like "failure to comply with vaccination law" in a jurisdiction where covid vaccination is not legally mandatory, then it can be challenged in court.
But if the wording was something like "failure to comply with the demands of the employer", then it cannot be challenged (or hardly).
IOW, the actual reason for why a person was terminated needn't be the one specified on the termination document. Every day, people get fired for being fat, for getting a tattoo, for being of the wrong religion (all of which would be illegal), but the termination document doesn't list those as reasons, but something more general.
And again: this is completely wrong.
Last month, before Biden's announcement, many companies had implemented COVID vaccine mandates. Especially after it was FDA approved.
In the United States, which is what I'm talking about, beyond some laws about discrimination, an employee is expected to comply with the terms and conditions of employment. They can be fired for not doing so. Period.
The terms and conditions of employment do not have to be legally mandatory. You can be fired for not wearing appropriate attire, or for a host of other violations of conditions and rules internal to a company. None of it has anything to do with the general laws of the country. There are no laws about wearing green, for example.
Quoting baker
It is openly stated that if you are not vaccinated (unless there's a legitimate exemption), you will be terminated. That is not illegal.
Good piece. The repukes have managed to politicize a medical issue into yet another identity crisis. So now any wako who thinks of himself as republican opposes vaccination, for fear of losing his republican soul... Criminal, really.
The JCVI in the UK have just advised against rolling out childhood vaccination, so I don't know where you're getting your 'consensus' from.
Quoting Joshs
Well then cite one. I've not seen any.
Quoting Joshs
That's not what you did. You found an article written by a science journalist which disagreed with three professors in epidemiology and the entire UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Why? Because it supported a view you already had - come on, you know this stuff, why have you suddenly become an absolutists about narratives on this one topic. You know about confirmation bias, you know how we build our representations to reflect our expectations and interact with the world to construct our beliefs (or belief/world constructs). I can't think why I'm having to go through all this as if you were a freshman.
Quoting Joshs
How does this 'convincing' take place? The trial of disinterested peer testing? C'mon, you're not into that crap are you?
Quoting Joshs
Really, not anything to do with social roles and membership tokens for their social group then, we'll throw all that sociological understanding out of the window and go back to a fourty year out-of-date model of the hyper-individual rational actor crunching the numbers?
Quoting Joshs
Indeed, so we can drop all the bullshit about weighing up articles and polling the numbers of experts. You know as well as I do that people adopt beliefs as interactive parts of the social narrative and change them only when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Quoting Isaac
Welll , then , there’s your consensus. That’s good enough for me. I was never particularly interested in the topic so just did a cursory search of articles. If I were serious about it I would have been a lot more thorough. I entered the conversation because I was concerned you were promoting the ideas of a minority of researchers over a majority scientific view. Looks like we’re in agreement that the recommendation by members of a well regarded scientific body should be good enough for most people.
Quoting Isaac
Since I wasn’t all that that invested in the issue I could have been swayed in either direction. His was just the first one I stumbled on. I knew I’d find others, but apparently I would have had do do more reading to appreciate that the risk-reward issue here, whichever way a particular study comes down on it , doesn’t strongly favor one direction over another. I did notice that the JCVI said the risk reward profile favored vaccination, in contrast to Pegden, but not by enough to justify the risk. So they are situated somewhere between Pegden and my links. It’s not surprising that the situation turns out to be complex and ambiguous.
Quoting Isaac
Becuase you’re missing something vital about how bias, expectations , frames of reference and paradigms organize our thinking.
Quoting Isaac
That’s not what Kuhn said at all. You’re confusing him with Popper, whose approach is much more consonant with yours than Kuhn’s is. Kuhn insisted that what constitutes ‘evidence’ changes along with paradigms, so we cannot use ‘overwhelming evidence’ as a means of convincing someone to accept our theory. This is the whole point of a theory being an aesthetic product. Evidence doesn’t change minds in situations of competing paradigms. A gestalt shift in outlook is needed. You’re trying to make a distinction between bias and empirical objectivity that Kuhn wanted to dissolve.
Read again. I'm stating a truism.
No, it's not a truism. As I already pointed out -- it's completely wrong.
So I'll re-post:
Quoting Xtrix
Property rights allow a business to fire people who aren't vaccinated. If Baker comes from a very socialist country, there might be more restrictions on firing people.
True. But that's why I stressed the United Airlines and the United States, which was the topic to begin with.
No, the issue is the exact wording of the termination, not the actual reason for the termination.
The wording has to be in accordance with the law for the termination to be legal.
The actual reason for the termination can be whatever the employer wants it to be, even if it is illegal.
In the US you can sue for wrongful termination. Any large employer has guidelines for firing to protect against lawsuits.
Which is extremely difficult to prove, and even if the person wins the case in court, their career in the industry, or altogether, is probably over. Employers know that. Employers don't like potential employees with a track record of suing their employers.
The legal option of a wrongful termination lawsuit is a false hope.
So help me out. What is it that I'm missing.
Quoting Joshs
This is why this place fascinates me so much.
I've been in psychology for over 30 years, my views have changed a little over that time (rejecting behaviourism being the most significant) but generally I've been consistent enough that if people I know were to read anything of mine, they'd be fairly unsurprised by it's leanings. I don't seem to have trouble, out in the real world, I don't find even my worst critics have so totally misinterpreted the things I say as to make them appear almost opposite on any given issues. And then there's here... Do I write differently, I wonder, the brevity of the medium? Or perhaps I've always written so poorly but having my name on top of a paper, people know what to expect and interpret my nebulous and inaccurate writing accordingly? Who knows.
Anyway, it's been a pleasure, as always, to write something I thought fairly clearly expressed one thing, only to have it presented as almost the complete opposite by your good offices. It makes, at least for an element of genuine surprise in what can from others be fairly predictable responses. It does also make it quite difficult to actually get to grips with a topic though...
There's that saying -- "People of substance don't post much on internet forums."
I agree with this, and its obviously ironic implication.
In face to face interactions, people tend to consider the tone to be more important than the actual words, and it's the tone they actually respond to, not the words. Then they take this communication habit online, except that now, since the tone is obviously missing, they fill it in on their own, based on their own prejudices and biases. This can explain the frequent misinterpretations and misrepresentations.
Another factor is that when people communicate online, they often communicate from the privacy of their homes, their bedrooms, sometimes, dressed in their pajamas (or not even that). This is akin to allowing (hostile) strangers into one's privacy and vulnerability. This is bound to have important psychological implications for communication, among other things.
Online communication would probably look quite different if everyone would post from their offices, fully dressed and presentable, with laced shoes.
To be honest, I find the whole notion of agreeing and disagreeing in a medium like this completely baffling, but I'm here to learn.
Quoting baker
Social media, and the way it shapes social beliefs, is the issue in the social sciences. Any social scientist who isn't deeply invested in finding out how these new modes of interaction work simply isn't doing their job properly, and any who think they can do so from the sidelines alone represents exactly the problem with social science.
Quoting baker
That's is entirely, without fail, the conduct of my posting habits. Except maybe the train or the canteen on occasion.
Why? Don't you disagree all the time with me here? Ask yourself where does this compulsion to disagree come from.
I was referring to the disagreement/agreement alone. The thumbs up, the "I agree", the throwaway, emoji...
You mean where you live? It's not a false hope here.
‘The virus is painfully real’: vaccine hesitant people are dying – and their loved ones want the world to listen (Sep 14, 2021) ? to listen
What role, if any, do the machinists of the long-running anti-vaxxer machines play? Do they assume any responsibility (of avoidable suffering/death)? Do they care about the consequences of their yelling? I don't recall them telling the friends/families of ? victims that they're sorry anyway.
[sub]• 12 prominent people opposed to vaccines are responsible for two-thirds of anti-vaccine content online: report (Mar 24, 2021)
• The Disinformation Dozen (Mar 24, 2021)
• Covid anti-vaxxers: 'Shut down fake news sites,' begs daughter (Aug 6, 2021)
[/sub]
Firing someone for not being vaccinated, here in the US, is completely legal — both in wording and in reason.
That’s now the third time it’s been explained. But please don’t let that stop you from repeating lies.
Is there a law in the US -- and do name it, post a link to it! -- according to which covid vaccination is mandatory?
The issue in some EU countries is precisely that: Covid vaccination is not mandated by law, so the whole burden is placed on employers.
State/federal law is one thing, company policy is another thing.
You mean there is a country on this planet where suing your employer will not end badly for you in some way?
You're not "explaining" it, you're merely stating it. Still waiting for a link to the covid vaccination law.
(And even if the US has one, many other countries don't.)
You should ask yourself that.
I agree with plenty of people on plenty of things.
The onus is on those who want to persuade others.
The terms of engagement stopped being equal the moment you express the expectation that some other people should be different than they are. So the onus is on you.
And let's not kid anyone: You don't care about the wellbeing of the vocal anti-vaccers. You don't want them to get vaccinated for the sake of their own health. You want them to get vaccinated for your sake, so that they wouldn't be a threat and a burden to you and your camp. They know that, and they're returning the disfavor.
Yes. The US.
There is no such law -- and there doesn't need to be. Just as there doesn't need to be a law that people have to wear green hats -- yet a company can still fire you for not wearing one.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-refusal-employment-firing-mandate/
Quoting baker
True -- but we were talking about the US.
Quoting baker
Not when it comes to public health. Anti-vaxxers are refusing to "do something," in this case -- threatening the health of others. So the onus is on them to justify why -- if they want to participate in normal activities like school and jobs. Just as the onus isn't on those who want others to stop smoking inside a restaurant, the onus isn't on those who don't want contract a virus.
Odd that you get this completely backwards and take the side of those deluded individuals who continue to refuse the vaccines.
I hope people in the military in the US don't get vaccinated because it will weaken the position of the government in effectively forcing people to take medication.
'Anti-vaxxers' - where I'm from - are generally people who refuse to give their children immunization against horrible diseases. Protesting for the right NOT to take a vaccine is fine by me. I guess if I agree with the rights of people not to take vaccines then I'm an 'Anti-vaxxer'?
This is clearly sensationalism at its worst caused by mass media. Covid isn't particularly terrible and we've got a much better understanding of it now so it makes no sense not to get back to normal asap ... and perhaps deal with things that actually kill far more people globally like heart disease (due to greed in the food production industry) and basic poverty (which has been intensified due to lockdowns).
I'm glad people are sensible enough to protest against governments backing employers and actively encouraging them to refuse work to those who cannot, or will not, take a vaccine.
Have you done that kind of calculation for Covid?
That is a very bizarre idea. A debilitated army is what you want? An army sick in bed so that anyone can attack and destroy your nation? The militaries all over the world are vaccinating because nobody wants to have to fight a war when all the army is sick... It is as simple as that.
You disagree with yourself, though. First you vaccinate, then you argue against vaccination online... Not very logical all that, and quite confused.
Wearing hats (as someone mentioned above) is not really equivalent to medication.
You have a right to refuse a vaccine, you don't have a right to infect others.
I'll repeat this as many times as necessary.
Quoting Xtrix
I think that’s a pretty poor argument anyway. If other people have taken the vaccine then the chances of the, getting infected and dying are very very small. If the chances are not very very small then those refusing to take it have an even better reason not to take it as it wouldn’t be effective.
All I’m trying to do here is a make what I thought was a reasonable and common sense argument against effectively forcing people to have injections they fear and/or don’t believe in. A large number of people who have no problem with taking the vaccine have voiced exactly the same concerns here - including nurses threatening to go on strike at the suggestion of this.
That is all. My point about the army is that if a huge proportion refuse then I doubt they’ll kick thousands of people out fo the army. If they cannot the next step might be to fine them for refusing? That would be pretty horrific but many horrific things happen.
Well, unfortunately, Covid is especially virulent because it was designed to be so by some stupid. effing scientists, the same ones that are running the stupid effing vax programs. This is what happens when a works goes mad.
However, the human body's immune system is adapting and hopefully the stupid effing scientists don't invent any more effing viruses, but let's face it, the scientists are stupid, which is why they just earmarked billions more for gain of function research. What a stupid effing world we live in.
Other people can still get infected and although their risk of hospitalization or dying is greatly reduced there is still a risk. Also if they have a breakthrough infection and then infect others who are vaccinated the chances that someone will be hospitalized or die increase. Being vaccinated is such a minor thing to do for the sake of those you are close to and the community as a whole that there is no good argument for refusing vaccination. Given that, any reduction of risk to others is a good argument for being vaccinated. Not to be vaccinated is simply a selfish act unless you have a good reason not to be, end of story.
It isn't all that terrible in terms of the cost of life - it will be in terms of the knock-on effects for the poorest people but that is more about how the problem has been handled in a highly politicised environment globally under the shadow of sensationalist media.
The far deadlier repercussions are the manner in which it has been handled and the winding down of the urgency to deal with the problem. I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone backing a mandatory vaccination (even if this hasn't been made 'law' in an absolute sense we're talking about effectively FORCING people to take medication).
Is it really 'effing stupid' when I put those words in this context:
Quoting I like sushi
The 'terrible' part comes slowly drip by drip over the next decade. We've already seen several problems start to rise due to prolonged lockdowns (backlog of untreated/undiagnosed medical conditions), isolation likely to lead to spike in colds and flus, and the glaringly obvious economic costs that are not immediately being felt (on top of those that are).
As I said, it isn't that terrible as we now have a better understanding of it and vaccines produced. The difficultly was producing the initial vaccine for a new virus now it is basically a job of updating vaccines every year with new strains (NOT completely unique viruses) much like the flu jab in winter.
NOTE: I can already hear the reactionary wheels whirling in people's heads as they read this because they'll say "he just said it's the same as the flu!" NO I DIDN'T! And it is seriously tiring having to point this out.
To repeat, my point here is this ... People shouldn't be effectively forced to put something into their bodies. This is the law for all vaccinations. I may not agree with people's choices for not taking a polio vaccine but it is their choice for their children and if we wanted to protect our children at all costs we'd break the law to do so, but we shouldn't be forced to break the law when it comes to these decisions (that is authoritarian).
Is that clear enough?
Read my previous post. It isn't a 'minor thing' for everyone. You don't need to educate me about Covid trust me on that ;)
The good argument is that it is demanding people do something with their bodies (medical) without a say in the matter. Do you not see how this is dangerous?
Nobody is being forced except provisionally; that is if you want to do X. The choice is still yours. In any case, why shouldn't People be expected to join in the community and effort and put something into their bodies when there is only a tiny risk to them personally? If you don't want to take the risk along with the rest, then you have the option of not coming into contact with people at all; so the choice is still yours. By the way the case fatality rate for Covid still stands at around 2%, making it about ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu. That said, this situation shows that there is a strong moral argument for getting vaccinated against seasonal flu too. Something good may yet come out of the covid pandemic.
You're not showing any knowledge or intelligence on the subject, so why should I believe you don't need to be educated?
That's an alarmist "slippery slope" argument; it has no rational bite. People are not being asked to do anything remotely dangerous.
The 'subject' is forcing people to take medication in the terms I am arguing.
And yet no one is being forced; so you are arguing against a strawman.
If I am wrong about how the difficulties of creating a vaccine show me how?
Really? Based upon what? Your guess? Show me the research on the long term effects of any vaccination. I guess there was is no reason vaccine manufacturers demand immunity from all all lawsuits. And how about all those who are even suffering immediate effects of unknown duration. You know, opioids were also supposed to be "safe".
Get it?
The situation is not as extreme largely on account of vaccination. Also people may be taking covid more seriously. This is a new situation and we learn as we go along. What possible justification could there be for saying that someone who accepts the official data regarding deaths and hospitalization from both covid and the vaccine is brainwashed? What other reliable source can there be? If there were no reliable source, then all bets would be off, and we would be truly fucked. But we have no good reason to believe that is so.
Agreed. That isn't my point though.
In any social group some people will carry the weight more than others, and in other situations the roles may very well be reversed. I can judge people on how they act but I don't particularly agree to coerce, manipulate or force them to act differently (especially if it is clearly against their own 'better judgement').
Evidence? What, you've been asleep for a year? And I'm supposed to have guys like you running my life? Wackadoodle yes. The crazies have taken over.
My case is that I don't see the current threat of Covid as justifying companies/governments to prevent people from working. I understand that you may disagree. I don't have a big problem with you disagreeing, but I would still ask where the line is and to what extent such ideas are best implemented?
I can sharpen the other sedge of the blade too if I wished. I don't really see the 'point' then though
Note: Calling people whackadoodle helps how? I see you follow this up with 'crazy'. What is the point of doing this (genuinely curious to know if you've actually put any thought into this or you have to invent a reason on the fly when I ask?)
Conspiracy!! The last vestige of the stupid effing scientific community that tried to cover up.
I tell you what. Before trying to make the whole world a guinea pig for your insane experiment, at least pick up a newspaper. The EVIDENCE has been all over the news for 8 months! Even the illustrious (and totally corrupt) Dr. Fauxi has called for "further investigations". Of course, the CCP has burned all evidence including the whistleblowers, but the trail is a mile wide. It's ludicrous to ignore the overwhelming evidence, but if course science isn't interested in evidence, only protecting their godlike image they have nurtured so well.
All EVIDENCE points to the Wuhan Lab (and Dr. Fauci). There is not one scrap of evidence for a jump from a bat. It's all another "scientific" coverup, because what counts most is not human lives (opiods), but MONEY.
Actually, forget it. Comments like this repulse me.\
bye bye until next month. you're in the sin bin :)
The whole world has become one big scam, and the crazies (really thugs) have taken over. I works advise you only trust your mother, assuming that she is not invested in Pharmaceuticals.
That this virus was created by mad scientists that are running loose is almost incontrovertible. For heaven sakes, there is a DARPA proposal to fund research to create exactly the type of virus that was created. It was turned down because it was sheer lunacy, so they took the job over to the CCP labs, where human life is pretty much worthless.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and we have the Crazies on this forum calling everyone else crazy.
The last vestige of the Crazies.
You are so far out of touch with reality, that you don't even know that only the Crazies are still calling it a conspiracy theory.
I can understand from a US perspective. Having literal inside info into companies like Astra Zeneca I'm not convinced in any particular danger there when it comes to vaccine production.
Quoting MondoR
Almost isn't certainty. I wouldn't judge it as 'almost incontrovertible' though. I looked into it a while back and didn't see much other than speculation for or against. Suspicious? Yeah, but again, there is the political manipulation of governments and the sensationalism of mass media to create revenue. I'm more concerned about the later tbh
Look again. A lot more has been revealed. The best the scientists who were involved with the cover-up can do at this time is, 50-50. You gotta love them. If nothing else, they've got chutzbah, and a bunch of fanatical followers.
ROFL Thank you. Humans.
You are such a joke. Too ignorant to even do a google search. Rofl. And people are supposed to listen to you??
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-virology-origins-pandemic-11633462827
So medical conditions are ok to refuse vaccine and also religious reasons. Not sure exactly how someone 'proves' a religious inclination though. In terms of jobs outside the military the ability to sue for such reasons would be implemented too I imagine.
The atheist with no underlying medical conditions who refuses though has no way to 'opt out' and retain their job.
You're implying that those who won't accept the vaccine won't be able to quit military service? You may be right, but they may be dishonorably discharged instead, which could be thought to amount to the same thing/
No. It stopped being harmless the moment the patent holder of the vaccine officially published its side effects, ranging from mild to deblitating to fatal.
Like I mentioned previously there was, and is, a lot of politicking surrounding anything that has the attention of the public eye. The mess gets even more complex and messy when sensationalism is the bread and butter of many media outlets (private and publicly owned).
Then why call it "harmless"?
Also, what justifies the hatred and the contempt that the vocal pro-vaccers express for anyone who is in any way not enthusiastic about the vaccine?
I can't say I'm not in awe of your strategy, though. It's a typical right wing strategy, extremely effective.
Why is it so hard for you to read what I say?? Why??
Do I really need to repeat myself over and over again?
Quoting baker
Not here. In Slovenia, as of yesterday, the percentage of people who are hospitalized for covid and who are fully vaccinated is around 30%. In Croatia, too, it's keeps growing; a couple of months back, it was about 3%, now it's 20 to 30%.
In Israel, the vast majority of those hospitalized for covid are fully vaccinated.
Quoting baker
You owe me an apology.
People aren't allowed to smoke indoors either. I don't consider that a bad thing. It affects other people. Likewise -- if you decide not to be vaccinated, you're more likely to contact and spread the virus, and whether other people are vaccinated or not isn't the point. It's not the point with measles either.
Quoting I like sushi
This line of reasoning is completely wrong, as has been pointed out over and over.
The onus is not on those who are vaccinated -- the onus is on those who refuse to vaccinate themselves. Breakthrough cases happen, as is well known, and those who are not yet eligible are also left vulnerable -- that's all a given, but it ignores another feature: allowing the virus to spread among the unvaccinated will encourage more variants, perhaps to the point where one emerges that is resistant to the vaccine. That also has huge public health effects.
Companies have every right to say "Vaccinate or find work elsewhere." Another option is to be tested regularly. It's not about physical force, it's about conforming to the rules we've all agreed on in civilized society -- like smoking. If you want to smoke, fine -- just don't do it around me. If you want to refuse vaccination, fine -- then voluntarily quit your job or be tested regularly, and have the decency to stay away from large crowds.
Quoting I like sushi
We "effectively" force people to do all kinds of things at work, including when to eat and what to wear. But beside that obvious point, there's another one: vaccinations have been mandatory for many jobs and in schools for decades. So why is this so different? One reason: politicization. That's all. That's why it's even being talked about here, where people who know nothing about it feel they need to pick a "side." There are no sides, there's just the same common sense behavior we employ in everything else: we listen to doctors and other experts. We know the vaccines are safe and effective and slow the spread of the virus -- there's no reason not to take them, beyond an allergy.
People don't get to claim religious exemption, fear, or "belief" when it comes to a choice that affects others. If you want to put yourself at risk, that's fine -- you're free to do so. That freedom ends when you're around others, and the choice becomes whether you want to comply with the rules or not. If not, you're out. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
You've heard of vaccinations for schools, haven't you? Where was the outrage about this? Where is the outrage for flu shots among healthcare workers? Is it ONLY about medication? What about being asked to work long hours on a moment's notice or be sacked? Or being told when to use the bathroom?
Companies, and society, create rules and laws (respectively) based on many factors. This specific instance (mandates) is a clearly legitimate use of power, because the vaccines are safe and effective. Those who refuse are free to do so, but they're mistaken if they're refusing because they believe the vaccines are harmful somehow. It's no different than refusing becomes you believe COVID is a "Chinese hoax." It doesn't matter -- that's not a reasonable excuse. It wouldn't hold up in court, it doesn't hold up in any other area of life...that hasn't been politicized.
That's fine -- but the companies and the government do see it that way, and rightly. They're informed by medical experts (and medical ethicists), who guide these decisions. They've made a calculated move which wasn't arrived at lightly, and in fact has been avoided for months. Given that people were allowed the choice to get vaccinated on their own, and because a significant number of them chose not to there was a spike in cases and deaths, this was the alternative. It seems to be working quite well, in fact.
If you don't "see" why these decisions are being made, I'm sure it can be explained to you. The heart of the matter: vaccines are safe, effective, and slow the spread of the virus. That's all. That's been shown empirically. Over 6 billion doses have been given globally, and it's been about 10 months -- the jury is in. If that's not in dispute, then arguing about these mandates is absurd. If you are disputing it, you're essentially like the person in the 80s or 90s who was arguing against smoking bans in restaurants on the assumption that the link between second-hand smoke and cancer was "unproven" (which was argued by many).
You mean the hatred and contempt towards you, which at this point I must say is completely justified, given that you shamelessly repeat the same lies after being corrected over and over again. It wasn't long ago you were talking up the potential harms of strokes, if I recall -- which upon reflection was something like 150 out of 10 million, according to one study. Which is 0.0015% -- which I'd say is so low as to be non-existent. But you insist on playing it up as if it were a significant threat, which is completely irresponsible, especially given the misinformation about the vaccines, which you're aware of.
You feel the need to nit-pick things like "harmless" and other such statements, knowing full well that the odds of being harmed by these vaccines are extremely low, apparently in the name of some crusade against the evil "pro-vaccers [sic]" who are "hateful and contemptuous."
Better than being a liar and enabler of misinformation and dangerous ignorance. Not to mention that you're exceedingly arrogant, condescending in tone, and almost always write with a self righteous and authoritarian air.
Why don't you give it a rest already.
Sorry if this comes a bit off left field, but related to the title of your thread, one problem with Climate Denialism or whatever one wants to call it, is that the conclusions reached are so dire and overwhelming, that it's just easier to shut off one's brain.
I mean, saying that we won't really have land to live in and that many of us will die miserably and that most intelligent life on Earth will perish, is some Biblical level shit. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but that from looking outside one's window know and seeing say a nice sunny day to looking at the same window in some short timespan and seeing dead birds on the floor and not being able to go out is just a massive leap.
It also doesn't help that "end of the world" scenarios pop up time and time again. But this time, the reasons are quite legitimate. So there's some cognitive resistance at play too.
I agree wholeheartedly. That's why "denial" is exactly the right word -- as humans we're good at denying or putting things out of our heads, like death -- or even the facts of our lives, like our daily actions (what we DO with our time). It's very difficult to look scary things in the face.
That's why it's good to also discuss all the positive and encouraging trends in the world today, despite a long way to go. There's lots of work being done right now, and lots of progress being made. It's not all doom and gloom. If these infrastructure bills pass in their current form, that's undeniably a good thing. Many colleges are divesting from fossil fuels. Many asset managers are doing so as well. The business community's largest lobbyists, the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce, have changed their mission statements to "stakeholder capitalism" because of the pressure. The media, and even fossil fuel companies themselves, now acknowledge -- accurately -- the threat of climate change. We see, therefore, more greenwashing and more "delaying" tactics, but the baseline has still shifted -- this is still progress. The Republican party is starting to loosen a little with this, but not nearly enough. Younger Republicans seem to be far more interested in climate action than older ones.
So there's plenty being done, there's plenty to be hopeful for. Sitting in a corner and putting your head in the sand does nothing. But yes, that's what a lot of people do -- no doubt. I myself think about it a lot but often feel like I'm not doing nearly enough, nor do I know exactly what to do. Which is why it's important to join forces with others, exchange ideas, compare notes and strategies, be exposed to tactics you would have never thought of alone, etc.
Statistically speaking it is harmless to almost everyone. Common medications like ibuprofen, statins, PPIs, the contraceptive pill, etc, etc all harm some people. Some people are even allergic to the point of fatality to some foods that are harmless to most people.
Yes, the silver lining must be there, otherwise it would be a waste of time.
I don't know if this is pessimism or simple objectivity, but the scary thing is that even if we continue (or begin) to act on these things, odds do not look good at all. Granted, we'll have a shot only if we try. But prospects are not good.
Still, one must grab onto what one can or slip into insanity or something.
The solutions are there, and ready -- it's a matter, ultimately, of political will. It'll cost roughly 2% of GDP a year. We've seen what governments are capable of doing thanks to the coronavirus, and we saw here in this country major coordinated changes that took place during WWII. There's plenty of money, plenty of financial incentive, plenty of rational incentive, and the technology and solutions are already available. That's the good news.
The bad news is that, as you mentioned, and as the IEA pointed out today, that we're not doing nearly enough despite some encouraging signs. So what is it going to take? Well, like any major beneficial change to society, it's going to be bottom-up, not top-down. The rich and powerful, the politicians and the corporate leaders, are going to have to be forced into doing the right thing -- because clearly they won't do it themselves, as they perceive it as a loss of power. But that's really just a mistake. We can have capitalism and action on climate change -- just not the form of capitalism predominant in the US today and for the last 40 years, which is extremely right-leaning (i.e., neoliberalism). If we simply move towards what other countries are doing, and towards what we had in the 50s and 60s (regimented capitalism -- New Deal era stuff), then that'd be a start.
So it's really a problem of the isolated, divided, apathetic, or otherwise hopeless (and heavily brainwashed) population. Unless we can break through the lies perpetuated by the algorithms of social media sites and the lies of the corporate media (conservative and liberal), educate ourselves and organize ourselves, then it's likely we're essentially doomed -- because the people steering the ship and driving the bus are taking us right off a cliff, knowingly, all in the name of profits and power.
Your analysis is accurate. You are preaching to the choir in my case, or close to it.
The work is far from easy and change won't come without struggle. The concern for me is mostly one of timeframe, not any of the other aspects which you correctly point out. This wouldn't be such a mental mess if we have, say, 30-40 years to build things slowly. We don't have that luxury anymore, the relevant companies involved hid it under the rug, as you know.
Not attempting to be defeatist, but one must at least be somewhat strategic here. It's fine to argue with people if one wants that, it's good to listen to other ideas even if you despise them. But changing minds on polar opposite people is less effective than getting those who are already on the fence on these issues.
After one manages to get most of the people on the fence to see and act on the problem, can we focus efforts on trying to get others to see what the issues are, assuming we ourselves don't get some things wrong, which we will inevitably do in cases as complex as these. But the large picture is clear enough, either change this system suitably, or our future will be hell on Earth, almost literally.
I used to think that. And I agree the prospects do not look that great. But the future is unknown, and the more positive the general attitude is towards dealing with an existential threat is, the better the outcome will be. And better remains better even if the outcome might be bad from our present standpoint. If everyone just gave up and said "we're fucked", then we would be truly fucked.
:lol:
Is a distressed laughter, not mocking.
Clearly, there's no real alternative. The future is unknown and we can only hope that efforts will make the world better. In fact, there are people working on this from many perspectives, decent people, but I don't think they understand the consequences fully. But it's probably best that they don't, cause that could lead to inaction or paralysis.
Thanks for the reminder.
:cry:
*positive thinking*
I think that’s a good summation.
@Xtrix How do you feel about people refusing for religious reasons then? They are exempt yet their ‘wrong thinking’ is okay in the eyes of the law.
I’m not saying, and have not said, that the vaccine isn’t effective. My point remains with allowing adults to make a choice or not. If private companies choose to stop people working then my position here becomes more hazy. I’ll grant you that. That they are right to do so, as you say, I just don’t agree. The situation is relatively under control and the threat is pretty low now. The big danger and fear was the fact that humans had little to no protection due to lack of exposure. Now we have. New strains are not completely different (it’s essentially the same beast) and new strains of the flu virus occur every year and new flu jabs are made every year too. What we now have is a world with an annual flu viruses (that kills 200,000-600,000 a year) and Covid viruses (that look set to kill maybe 2 million once people resume life as normal).
There have been certain comparisons to war too. Some people will step up and fight for their country and lay down their lives. They do so because they feel impelled to do so. Not everyone feels this and yet they may very well reap the rewards. If you want to make comparisons with clothing and medication then I think this point is strong enough unless you’re not opposed to conscription (but if you are not everyone would agree with you and it doesn’t necessarily make them right and you wrong, or vice versa).
People are NOT turned away from work when they have the flu … perhaps they should be tbh because I think that is wrong. I don’t see a measured approach now that we are more knowledgable about Covid.
I think this is a good point; the same should apply to flu and any other potentially lethal infectious disease as applies to covid.
They tried to go the other way, and it wasn't working. Mandates are working. If that's what it takes to get people to push through the lies they're ensnared in and do the correct thing for fellow coworkers and the community at large, I think that's a legitimate use of corporate power.
I find it ironic that this is the hill mostly conservative people want to die on when it comes to corporate power. They've been anti-union and pro-business for years, pro corporate tax cuts, pro trickle-down economics -- and now, when these companies actually exercise their power for legitimate, medically and scientifically sound reasons, they become Eugene Debbs.
I think I mentioned elsewhere that this is fine with me -- provided the employees pay for it themselves.
Er … what?
Btw I grew up in a country where paying for medical care was not something anyone really considered doing so maybe asking someone to pay for such themselves doesn’t quite sit as well with me as it does with you. Either way, a test would resolve the issue and as the vaccine isn’t infallible why not just test everyone every day if the concern is so great.
We’re not going to agree here so no point in continuing. You’ve shown your hand now and we’re clearly not playing the same game.
Likewise I find it disturbing that at the first whiff of danger to their own health most of those on the left will just obediently lie down let the corporations walk all over them on the strength of nothing more than a few in-house tests, the usual lobbying of government departments and a tight funding leash over academic institutions.
Although actually doing their corporate public image work for them is new low - "these companies actually exercise their power for legitimate, medically and scientifically sound reasons" - are you really that naive? These companies have done fuck all about the thousands dying under their charge from environmental pollution, poor working conditions, poverty... and you think they're imposing these restrictions on medical grounds? Just coincidence that one of their own stands to make billions from the exact course of action they're mandating?
Quoting Xtrix
..straight out of the fucking Thatcherite playbook. You don't have to accept the private corporation's solutions...so long as you pay for the alternatives yourself.
Quoting I like sushi
Tests would lead to workers having to go home too frequently and so production would drop, mandatory vaccination means productivity remains high and their hedge funds get kicked up a few points in the process. Neither, of course, have the slightest thing to do with public health.
...but virtually zero action on worker safety in the last twenty years...https://apps.publicintegrity.org/blowout/us-oil-worker-safety/... now they're suddenly wracked with concern for their beloved workers?
It's got nothing to do with public health, it's to do with getting workers back to their job (being exploited for profit) as quickly as possible. Typical corporate whitewashing, but I suppose the taboo on criticising corporations now extends to the oil industry because...covid.
I don't think a single person involved in this thread would, under normal circumstances, assume corporations act for the public good. Also, none would hesitate to believe governments to be entirely betrothed to corporate interests. In fact, our most vocal pro-vaccers are elsewhere arguing exactly that case.
So why, when an industry produces a solution to a problem (a problem that industry may well have caused in the first place), do these same people believe this time their solution is in the public interest, believe that this time their complicity in the problem is unlikely...?
...The prevailing view of the academic establishment. That's it. The sole reason why the corporate line is not being treated with the same suspicion-bordering-on-contempt that it usually receives (and deserves), is because the academic establishment are also broadly in favour of it.
So the relevant discussion, it seems, is over the justification for thinking that the academic establishment is beyond being tempted, bribed, coerced, threatened and subject to popularism, just like any other establishment. I wonder if that's why that infamous survey threw up so many vaccine hesitant PhDs, we know better than to see academia as anything other than just another capitalist industry.
It's a choice over who to trust. Something people seem to find impossible to grasp is that the question is not about actual consequences either way, it's about potential consequences because the question of trust is measured by the risk, not the actual outcome.
I would trust my fellow publicans to look after my pint whilst I pop out, I wouldn't trust them to look after my baby. Why? Has their trustworthiness changed between the two examples? No. Has the actual consequence changed (in terms of their intent to harm either my pint or my baby)? No. What's changed is the risk each instance of trust entailed.
What matters here is that injecting a newly developed medically active chemical into someone's body has high potential consequences, so we need a higher degree of trust in the person doing that than we do putting a seatbelt on, or not driving over the speed limit. Reassurances of safety and efficacy are irrelevant here because until we've resolved to trust those institutions their reassurances are moot. The decision to trust them has to precede the use of their data, it's simply a-synchronous to use an entity's own data in an argument that we ought to trust their data.
All these questions are perspectival, because we're talking about trust, not facts. So people are asking "what's the worst that could happen?" Note this is not a question about actualities, it's about parameters, and their answer will determine the threshold of trustworthiness they require before accepting any further information on trust - including information about safety and efficacy.
Vaccines are safe, effective, and slow the spread of the virus. It's as sound as banning smoking from the workplace. That's legitimate.
Quoting Isaac
This is so obvious it barely needs to be mentioned. But the same is true of smoking bans. True, it's not solely about public health -- but it just so happens that it aligns with it.
These companies would do all kinds of things if it increased profits, like polluting. When that behavior becomes too costly or illegal -- or "repetitional damage" occurs -- then they change. Like with smoking bans. But that doesn't make the change scientifically or medically unsound.
Quoting Isaac
No one, so far as I have read, is arguing that.
No, what the issue is, for you, is that you don't trust the enterprise of science. That's generally not a bad thing -- one should question authority of all kinds, not just political and religious, but scientific as well. That's how change occurs.
But when the evidence is overwhelming, and there's vast consensus, and one persists in taking the "skeptical" position nonetheless, we have to start questioning the motives -- just as we do with creationists who vehemently argue against the evidence of evolution. Should we take them seriously? Why or why not? After all, it's important to question things, is it not? They're the first to argue that point. Is there a deeper psychological issue at play here?
Yes, there is. It's simple: they've been brought up believing in a literal interpretation of Genesis, and so evolution, which conflicts with these cherished beliefs, has to be wrong. Ditto for many arguing against vaccines, against medicine, and against the government. It all has some truth to it, of course -- like the arguments against Big Pharma, or about how corporations care only about profits and don't give a damn about their workers or customers. Throw in a few "truths" like that, with the obligatory story about how everyone once thought the world was flat, etc., and now you have a much more convincing argument, at least on the surface.
I personally don't give a damn about the coronavirus for myself. I'm not afraid of it. I don't even care if those who are unvaccinated end up dying - so be it. What I care about is this dangerous level of stupidity that lies at the basis of the decisions that lead to these outcomes. It will, eventually, blow up in our faces if we don't confront it head on. We're seeing that right now with global warming, in fact. We saw it with 4 disastrous years of Donald Trump. Ideas and beliefs and attitudes and perceptions and interpretations -- all of the things upon which we decide and act and justify ourselves -- are what matters.
The issue, at heart, is truth. Or to put it more accurately: epistemic responsibility.
Nor for the public bad either, presumably?
I suppose, in capitalism, supply and demand type mechanisms + profit-maximization drive what corporations do. As noted somewhere, GlaxoSmithKline got busted and paid substantially. :up:
Having disregarded the shaman out in the woods, maybe government-run research + production would do? Just established universities? Well, no, we still get into Us-versus-Them narratives, or at least that's what it seems like. (Even though "They" aren't quite Kafkaesque, ghostly entities.)
How many (and what sort of) offenses to render blanket distrust/dismantling and what would a realistic solution look like anyway? As to the ethical dimension, a project to cultivate and nurture moral awareness?
A good point -- yes, it is largely about trust. Who do we believe? Since we can't be experts in everything, we have to trust all kinds of people.
Trust is also ubiquitous and necessary in a functioning society. We have to trust in others whenever we're driving on the road, for example.
It's true that trust in authority, especially institutional authority, is at an all time low. That's across the board, and well documented: media, government, business, academia. We're skeptical of politicians, religious leaders, corporate leaders, advertisements, salesmen, teachers, scientists, doctors, pollsters -- and even our neighbors.
People's lives are so crappy, despite having followed all the rules and done all the "right" things, that they're rightfully distrustful and looking for something or someone to blame.
And yet we're also as polarized and tribal as ever before. We're as dug-in about our beliefs as I can recall. So we're still clearly listening to someone. We're clearly "throwing in" with some group or religion or dogma or system of beliefs -- and so we're trusting something, even in the political or academic or medical realm. A good example of this is polling. If a poll reflects what we want to believe, we "trust" it -- it's accurate. If someone says something we already want to believe, they're on our side. We see this manifest now in election claims: we don't like the result, so there must be fraud. Doesn't matter if there's no evidence of it and 3 audits find nothing -- there's still fraud.
So then the issue isn't really about trust, because we're all trusting someone or something. Whether it's Donald Trump or Sean Hannity or Thomas Sowell. The question is really about why we happen to trust this particular person or institution over others? Why do we refuse a vaccine? Why do we believe the election was stolen? Who are we listening to, exactly?
Not in the least. The aim of the smoking ban was to prevent illness from passive smoking, there was only one way to do that (cut down on smoke). Hence the ban.
If the aim here is to reduce covid infection there are several ways that can be done - regular testing, distance working, hygiene practices, antibody tests for natural immunity...
They've chosen vaccination. The one option that aligns with the agenda of the most powerful industry in the world. There's an absolute need to mandate something. There's no reason at all why that something has to be the product of a private corporation.
Quoting Xtrix
Well then I would have chosen an extremely self-defeating career path wouldn't I?
No, I have no problem with the enterprise of science. I don't agree that it's conducted by vote, that's all. We don't take a poll of who thinks what, and whatever comes out top is 'the truth'. It doesn't work like that. There are standards for entry into the canon of scientific theories. If yours meets those criteria it's just as valid as any other. Science is a methodology, not a popularity contest.
Quoting Xtrix
If the 'overwhelmingness' of the evidence for anything is a function of the corporate influence on academia you can't very well hold it up as evidence that there is no such influence can you? Just hypothetically imagine that corporations did indeed have academic establishments under their thrall, how would overwhelming evidence within those establishments be evidence of anything except the corporate agenda?
Quoting Xtrix
Well, we agree on something.
Coffee money compared to the profits they made.
Quoting jorndoe
It used to work reasonably well. Governments might not be too much better than corporations, but it's an improvement.
Quoting jorndoe
The rap sheet of the pharmaceuticals is way beyond any reasonable threshold of "oh, it was only a few rare cases", but yeah, interesting question in general. I don't see why we shouldn't have a very high standard indeed. It's not as if they accidentally marketed suicide-inducing medication to children. I don't think not doing so should be too much to ask.
Quoting jorndoe
Or a guillotine.
There were multiple ways of doing that, actually. There were different sections for smoking, at first. That's now stopped as well, until we have an outright ban.
The aim of the vaccine mandates is the prevent illness from passive inhalation of the virus from those who are unvaccinated. Hence the mandates.
Quoting Isaac
Not sure who "they" are, but there have been multiple approaches, and social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, and testing still go on as well. Where I work, they test everyone every week, vaccinated or not.
But even if they exclusively chose vaccinations -- it's still legitimate. Just as they require them in schools, and have done so for decades. And workplaces, for that matter.
Quoting Isaac
So it's a conspiracy to make money, pushed by Big Pharma. That's essentially what you're saying. And the entire medical community is in on it, apparently.
Unfortunately for you, the exact same argument can be made for all the others vaccines which have been required for decades in schools and workplaces. It's all "big pharma." Never mind the fact that these vaccines are perfectly safe and effective -- apparently that's irrelevant.
But it isn't. It's exactly the point. If you accept that, then your argument is absurd. You have said before that you agree the vaccines are safe and effective. So...
Quoting Isaac
No one is suggesting it is "conducted" by vote, least of all me.
If you're referring to scientific consensus, which is an important factor to consider as a layman, that's a different subject -- and one you apparently still don't understand.
It's not by vote. It's by overwhelming evidence. The overwhelming evidence shows that these vaccines are safe and effective. That they were manufactured by large pharmaceutical companies is irrelevant.
Quoting Isaac
Then you really do believe in conspiracies.
No, the overwhelming evidence is available for all of us to see and learn about, if we so desire. Same with the theory of evolution -- overwhelming evidence, if we want to learn about it. Same with climate change -- overwhelming evidence, if we wish to learn about it. Teachers, experts, doctors -- all should be able to explain things to you and show things to you, if you have questions or are skeptical or are simply interested in learning. That's true for everything.
If you start down this line of argument, without any evidence for it presented, then you can justify anything -- climate denial, creationism, holocaust denial, a flat earth...anything. But it's not exclusively a matter of trust or consensus -- it's the fact that you too can check yourself, through your own observations, experiments, research, data analysis, etc. If you choose to throw it all out with a wave of the hand, claiming all evidence is faked and all the experts are bought off, then you're off in cloud cuckoo land and there's little that can be done to remedy it. But that's your choice.
Achieving behavior change for public health benefit is always a long row to hoe. "Eliminate Smoking" has been the public health goal for decades. States that are doing really well still have 15% of their population smoking (and percentages probably won't drop till hard-core smokers die). Second-hand smoke is clearly a huge risk for people who work in bars and restaurants where smoking is allowed. A shift exposes a bartender or waiter to high levels of smoke for 8 hours at day, at least (assuming he or she doesn't also smoke).
But in pursuit of smoking cessation, public health workers have to use whatever persuasive levers are available -- and passive smoke has become a pretty good lever. I suspect that very light exposure to passive smoke is probably a pretty small risk, even if people hate the smell. Especially, when you consider all the other indoor / outdoor polluting chemicals people are exposed to.
(If you live in a basement with high levels of radon (a radioactive element gas that accumulates to hazardous levels in areas like the upper midwest), both active and passive smoking would significantly increase one's risk of lung cancer. Radon atoms get attached to smoke particles which are more likely to get caught in the lung, along with its little radioactive load.
I took me a very long time to adjust to smoke free bars, even though I wasn't smoking when the ban went into effect. It just didn't seem right to have clear air in the bar.
Wow. The idea that you might be wrong isn't even on the agenda is it? It's not even an addendum to a footnote in 'Any Other Business'.
Your dogmatic self assurance is astounding. You genuinely do believe that you only need to think something for it to actually be the case. It's really disconcerting arguing with you, I keep expecting a counter argument, or some supporting evidence, or some sign of engagement with an alternative viewpoint and yet, nothing. You just repeat the thing you said at first, as if the only possible explanation for why I disagree with you must be that I didn't read you correctly the first time, or that I'm insane... After all, what other possible explanation could there be for someone disagreeing with you?
I argued that the choosing of vaccines was not legitimate because other options existed to achieve the same ends which were not made available your response...?
Quoting Xtrix
Just a repeat of the original claim. No counter argument, no contrary evidence, nothing. You claim it's legitimate, I give reasons why it's not, you just repeat that it's legitimate. Why? Well, because you said so. What more reason could possibly be required than that, eh?
And here...
I raise the idea that evidence is not overwhelming but appears so because of a bias in study design, funding, media reporting and government influence - all backed up previously with actual cited evidence of these things taking place - and your response...?
Quoting Xtrix
No counter argument, no contrary evidence, just restating that same assertion you opened with. "No, the evidence is overwhelming because I said it is".
Astounding.
Yes. I've made the point in other posts on the covid crisis. Public health policy is a very blunt instrument and has frequently simplified and on occasion outright lied in order to get a message which is simple and universally applicable. I don't think it's even necessarily wrong that they do. What's wrong is then taking this tool and mistaking it for a statement about scientific theory.
The test takes 15-30 mins. I stated that if employees were willing to show up early and take the test before work then it would be a way around the issue for those who feel that taking the vaccine isn't in their best interest.
This, in place for people with medical reasons for not taking the vaccine would make perfect sense too rather than just expecting them not to work at all.
I'm still perplexed about the distinction between someone not wishing to take the vaccine and someone with religious reasons for not taking the vaccine. If we're applying reason and rationality in this case how do we allow one rule for religious persons and another for non-religious persons. This is being applied in the US military tbh (as in by 'law' dismissing someone for their chosen career). Just to buff this up I wouldn't say joining the army is sensible in terms of your personal rights but they exist in terms of religious distinction.
I was more thinking along the lines of if they failed the test (as many would) they'd have to go home - and so not be available for work at all. With the vaccine, everyone's back to work, infected or not, because employers have been given the 'get of of jail free' card that "hey, they were vaccinated, not our problem".
Never mind the fact that the evidence for lack of transmission among the vaccinated is significantly weaker than the evidence for lack of symptomatic infection. That would be an inconvenient block to continued productivity, hence the whitewash over that. Repeat a claim often enough along side other indubitable claims some of that confidence simply rubs off.
What would be much better would be the option of antibody tests for previous infection. No one who's already had Covid should be forced to take the vaccine as well, that's just a totally unreasonable imposition. If anything shows their hand it's this.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes, something I doubt the most fervent pro-vaccine enthusiast would want to stick their neck out on. I had an argument with @Hanover earlier about this where he claimed some sort of categorical objectivity over what was and what wasn't a legitimate 'lifestyle choice'. apparently religion is, not taking prophylactic medicine isn't - and that's that.
What's odd is that all the risks proponents like to take seem to fall into the category of 'lifestyle choices' and anything that's outside of their personal experience seems to fall outside of that category. But I suppose that's just an astounding coincidence.
That's the same thing.
Eight studies concluding one thing, two studies concluding another. All ten studies meeting the minimum threshold for acceptable science.
My claim is that all ten are equally legitimate because they've all met the threshold for acceptable science.
Your claim is that the two are unacceptable because fewer people support them. A popularity contest.
OK, so provide some evidence to support this assertion.
My 'line' is...
1. I can support my view with citations from bone fide experts in the appropriate field who have no discoverable conflict of interest or evidence of previous bias.
and
2. I have indubitable evidence of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry (criminal convictions), evidence of their influence over the FDA and academia, which casts doubt over the strength of evidence contrary to my view.
Now prove your point by doing the same for the view that climate change isn't real, or that the earth was made by God 6000 years ago, or that the holocaust didn't happen, or that the earth is flat...
Find suitably qualified bone fide experts in their field with no discoverable conflicts of interest or previous bias supporting the view and indubitable evidence of corruption and lobbying influence in those opposing it.
Otherwise, your argument is just hot air. You can't just sling mud and hope something sticks, we expect a higher standard than than here. If my view is just like those others, you should be able to prove it.
He is not arguing, he is simply pointing out that your mental health is on a slippery slope. If you don't shake off your political paranoia soon, if you cannot understand what people tell you on this thread about the dangers of paranoia, then you will most certainly lose your mind. Paranoia tends to get worse over time. Next thing you know, Big Pharma people will be aliens from another planet.
Get help before it is too late. I don't mean this rhetorically. This is my last word on the topic.
Really? The people on this thread are all experts on paranoia? Who'd have thought it. There was me thinking they were just random people on the internet so utterly unable to conceive of the idea they might be wrong that their only recourse in the face of opposition is to assume some psychological damage on the part of their interlocutors.
But no. Turns out they're all highly qualified psychologists capable of diagnosing paranoia. And to think I nearly missed it...phew!
The story is absolutely disgusting but also somewhat fascinating, the fascination involved in seeing a whole culture crumble into total confusion and chaos, just because a few obsessed assholes wrote books after books, article after article drooling hatred of les Juifs, and of course about Dreyfus, whose innocence was his greatest crime.
And the thing is, the inventors of modern antisemitism had some good arguments, among all the lies. The Panama affair, the affaire des fiches: there was something rotten in the Third Republic. But then, this rot was structural, not racial. Like in any democracy, MPs can be bought, newspapers can be purchased, journalists can lie, the truth can be manipulated, etc. To racialize the problem like Drumont (and later Léon Daudet) did was a way to externalize it -- to say that France was corrupted only by them Jews, and that therefore there was nothing wrong in the system per se.
Note that it's the very essence of scapegoating to try and save the system from its contradictions by blaming them all on some random villain.
We all know how this little game ended. The Third Republic failed to prepare for the war and lost it, and then all these so-called 'nationalists' worked diligently for Marshal Pétain, to try and find a "final solution to the Jewish problem".
One of the most absurdist part of the book is about how the two main French antisemitic newspapers of the time, La Libre Parole and L'Action Francaise, started to target the Swiss society Maggi.
Yes, them
[img width=500]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Maggi_logo.svg/768px-Maggi_logo.svg.png
[/img]
Why Maggi? 1) it was a foreign firm making big progress on the French market with its revolutionary soup concentrates and its pasteurized milk distribution system in Paris, and this created anger among traditional French milk retailers whose labor union formally approached various politicians including the extreme right to try and break the rise of Maggi; 2) the processes involved were technically new, even revolutionary, and touched on something important for the French: food; 3) the company founder Julius Maggi was investing massively in advertisement in newspapers, but had decided against advertising in those two newspapers (Libre Parole and Action Francaise), therefore constantly criticizing the company in the newspapers columns might also have been an effort, at least originally, to blackmail Maggi for advertising money...
Maggi's pasteurized milk distribution system most probably saved lives, because milk had been a contaminant until then, e.g. for Cholera. This is precisely why urban costumers liked it so much and why the French government ultimately gave them a public health medal.
And yet Maggi was seen by some as the personification of capitalism that artificializes and profits from good traditional things such as a vegetable soup or milk, replacing them with their unnatural industrial processes. It was also branded as foreign because the founder was Swiss, although Maggi had the poor taste of being neither Jewish nor even German... But that didn't stop the Libre Parole and the Action Francaise. In the decade before WW1, they pretended that Maggi was spying for Germany, that each and every time a milk truck was passing by a French military compound, it was taking notes and photographs that would ultimately be sent to the Kaiser... Maggi was branded as a fifth column.
It seems totally crazy to read this nowadays, and of course it never stopped the company in France, but it is also remindful of the 5G haters and of the anti-vaxxers. RNA vaccines are a new technology coming from abroad, and they are seen by some wackos as some sort of Trojan horse, just like Maggi was.
And yet...
Cue long spiel hopelessly trying to smear distrust of pharmaceutical companies with the taint of antisemitism
...whilst thinking about pro-vaccine posts here I'm reminded of a story about the Nazis...
It was on a different topic.
Yeah, right. A completely different topic, me thinking the pharmaceutical companies are untrustworthy to a story about how people thought a foriegn company's new technology was untrustworthy. Like chalk and cheese, I'm amazed you even managed the segue. Have you considered a job in news anchoring?
The history of Maggi and the French antisemites is about something else: about how people can get very suspicious of new technology coming from abroad, and about how some economic interests threatened by such development may fight back by spreading disinformation in the press, often the nationalistic press. IOW it is about economic chauvinism as a factor of systematic disinformation.
E.g. climate deniers have been funded by Big Oil to misinform people systematically, though mainly in the US. Remember how the 'Kyoto protocol' was mocked and trashed, thanks in part to its very label as a foreign (non US) accord? The same is happening now with the Paris accord. If Americans were ever to commit to any climate change mitigation plan, it would need to be labelled the "Huston Texas Plan", or the "Salt Lake City Accord", or the "Star-and-Stripe Agreement". Baring that, FAUX News is certain to shoot it down.
What I wonder is this: Who profits or hopes to profit from vaccine hesitancy, and would they be behind some of the misinformation currently being spread about vaccines?
I appreciate that. As I'm sure you'll understand, the revelations about my descent into madness are still quite raw for me, I'm welling up just thinking about it...we're all very upset here...
Quoting Olivier5
That's hilarious. There's an existing industry who've netted more than $72bn (£52bn) in sales for this year alone, in deals for supplying follow-up shots and also the initial two doses for those being inoculated for the first time in less wealthy countries and you're frantically searching around for who might profit from vaccine hesitancy?
No doubt it's some clandestine organisation with secret ties to Trump. I'm thinking the lizardmen must be in on it. Now if only there were anyone who might profit from vaccine enthusiasm that would complete the picture...but no, no one comes to mind...
Not frantically, no. It's just a question I am playing with. Cui bono?
So with pro-vaccine sentiment it's a sign of mental illness to ask who benefits, with vaccine hesitancy it's just a sensible question.
What if you can't find any? Does that change anything? It seems like such a disingenuous enquiry. If you find something you'll say "there, told you so, that's why they're doing it", if you don't you'll just be left muttering "they'll be something I'm sure... somewhere....". You've already made up your mind that it's impossible for anyone to be vaccine hesitant as a result of having intelligently weighed the evidence and just reaching a different conclusion to you. So what's the point of all this faux 'investigation' charade? Do you really think anyone's fooled by it?
Not at all. It's just a matter of what people value in life.
You for instance think that the risk you are taking by not being vaccinated is quite small -- perhaps you don't mix up with others a lot; perhaps you are in good health and not overweight -- and that giving money to pharmaceuticals is a much larger risk. You would rather catch COVID and get sick for a week than use the protection of a vaccine, because you see the latter involving the risk of profiting an evil pharmaceutical company.
I wouldn't call it rational, but it's not totally stupid either. You just hate big pharma enough for it to tip the risk calculation.
Quoting Isaac
Looking for cui bono is precisely what you do, though. Ergo you are being disingenuous, by your own account...
No, if you continue reading I give plenty of reasons why.
Quoting Isaac
I see no cited evidence. Whatever you've posted before, I have no idea.
Quoting Isaac
No, it isn't.
Quoting Isaac
I haven't once claimed that.
What I claim -- and forgive me for "repeating" myself, but I have to do so often with you -- is that it's the overwhelming evidence that determines what to do, not votes or popularity contests.
Quoting Isaac
You haven't done so with me. Where are these citations? And what are they regarding, exactly?
Quoting Isaac
They all claim exactly what you're claiming. They also cite "bone fide experts," etc.
Quoting Isaac
I didn't say "exactly like," I said you're on the way.
All the hot air you've blown has nothing to do with the fact -- the overwhelming evidence -- that shows the vaccines are safe, effective, and slow the spread to the virus. If you have "citations" from credible sources suggesting otherwise, I'm happy to take a look. But that's all that is relevant here -- not that Big Pharma has too much power or other truisms. If you can show Big Pharma is faking the data, or that there's institutional pressures that biases the results, by all means do so. But again, that's a very big claim, and until you show it it's nothing more than conspiracy theory. When you have nearly 7 billion doses given around the world, I think the jury is in on this one.
I've seen no evidence so far to suggest that vaccines aren't safe or effective, and I believe you even conceded that beforehand. So once again, are you arguing against this or not? Because if you're not, then your stance about vaccine mandates are completely absurd -- and it was precisely this that was being discussed when you once again interjected.
I read your whole post, you don't even mention the matter again, let alone give reasons why restricting the choice of preventative measure is 'legitimate'.
Quoting Xtrix
Then follow the conversation. I'm not going to conduct six different conversations all saying the same thing to six different people. The beauty of a forum is that we can have multiple-way conversations, if you're going to just ignore anything else being said then I'm afraid you're just going to miss out on half the conversation.
Quoting Xtrix
How does evidence determine what do to do? Evidence, to me, is a stack of studies with statistically significant correlations between variables. How can they be either overwhelming or prescriptive? Scientists develop theories and determine whether those studies support or contradict those theories. So again, if eight scientists, having read all the studies, think theory X is valid and two think theory Y is valid, then how is it anything other than a popularity contest to say X is the only valid theory because it has most votes? Evidence doesn't tell you stuff on its own. We have to have a theory, which has to make testable predictions, which then either are confirmed or not by the statistical outcome of the study. If there are competing theories, it's either because different scientists have different theories and neither are dis-confirmed, or because different scientists have different opinions about whether a study dis-confirms a theory or not. This idea you have that overwhelming evidence just speaks to us somehow, is nonsense.
Quoting Xtrix
They absolutely do not, hence my request that you back up this assertion with evidence. Your consistent failure to do so just incriminates you further. Cite the bone fide expert with no history of bias or discoverable conflict of interest who claims the holocaust never happened or that the earth is flat. If you can't cite one then you're clearly just making this up.
Quoting Xtrix
Safe and effective are not binomial states. Things are safe enough, effective enough, depending on that which they are pitted against. The vaccine is safe and effective enough to be used in those at medium-high risk, it is not safe and effective enough to be used on those at very low risk. This is not even a particularly controversial view, it's the opinion of the UK's vaccine advisors, for example who have withheld support for child vaccinations for exactly that reason. In addition, I also believe that the proven track record of deceit on the part of the pharmaceutical companies shifts that balance further toward the higher risk groups only. A universal vaccine mandate is therefore completely unjustified.
As for the rest, I'm not going round in these ridiculous circles. The Covid threads are several hundred pages long, I've written hundreds of posts and I'd wager every fouth or fifth one contains a citation. If you're not interested enough to follow the whole thread then I've certainly no incentive to have the entire conversation with you personally, just follow the conversation as whole.
That's it.
A physicist who built a model of one flat-earth description so you can see for yourself why it doesn't work: Try it.
The article points out the inconsistencies between what you will see in the model and what you will see if you look up.
Might be of use to some.
Then don’t complain about it. You said you cited evidence— you didn’t. I’m not going up follow conversations I’m not involved in. Next time, don’t interject yourself in others’ conversations.
Quoting Isaac
You truly have a superficial understanding of science I’m afraid.
Quoting Isaac
“Speaks to us somehow”?
It’s fun watching you try to squirm your way out of this.
That vaccines are safe and effective is supported by overwhelming evidence. That climate change is real — overwhelming evidence. That’s why we “believe” these things. Not because of “votes.”
Quoting Isaac
I have— in other conversations. You’ll have to follow them. I can’t conduct six different conversations saying the same thing, after all.
Quoting Isaac
No. The vaccines are safe and effective, as has been demonstrated over and over again. That’s science. That’s mathematics.
Not “safe enough,” or any other home-brewed bullshit you now need to invent to save face in your quest to justify a nonsense conspiracy theory. They’re safe.
But please continue.
You’re truly an intellectual fraud.
Of course the vaccines are safe and effective.
The problem is that vaccines are dangerous
Safe, effective, and dangerous.
Very sensible, as always.
The science is pretty unanimous about the fact that for healthy, young people below 35, the chance of getting seriously ill from a covid infection is much smaller than the chance of experiencing serious adverse effects from a vaccination. This is why countries still governed with a shred of sense, like Denmark and Norway, have stopped advertising vaccination for these demographics.
So why do you so readily wish to expose others to these risks? Is it a blind trust in authority? A subconscious urge to power perhaps?
Can't help but see parallels between the arguments put forward by you and those of anti-abortionists.
If vaccine safety and efficacy meant that vaccines weren't dangerous, then I should think everyone would be on board with them. But I am not hearing anyone claim vaccines aren't dangerous.
No @Yohan is spot on. It's exactly the question the medical ethicists are asking.
No. This isn't true. But even if it were true, as usual it excludes the point about slowing the spread -- which the vaccine also does.
"Seriously ill" and "serious adverse effects" are meaningless until explained. Feel free to cite credible sources.
Quoting Yohan
Everyone is on board with them. This is why experts are overwhelming advocating vaccinations. Precisely because they're safe and effective.
If something is safe, it doesn't mean risk-free. Planes are safe, but they crash occasionally. Does that mean planes are "dangerous"? If you want to play word games, sure. In that case: everything is dangerous.
Maybe this needs pointing out: an activity cannot be safe and dangerous at the same time. If you want to create your own semantic universe (which is usually necessary for anti-vaxxers and other deluded individuals) to justify your position, feel free. Excuse me while I laugh, however.
:lol:
No kidding. Notice this person doesn't ONCE say that vaccines are "dangerous." They're not: they're safe and effective. Safe does not = "absolutely no risk of harm." Dangerous does not = "0.000015% chance of harm."
I think the real question is why I even bother with this nonsense...
Good question.
I engaged with 9/11 truthers once.
Edit: not to say you shouldn't speak out when you have the energy to do so. I found you did very well so far.
Everyone enough. Not everyone.
"Vaccine Mandates Are Surviving Nearly All Legal Challenges"
https://apple.news/AZEFfw-igSJ23VzV_69gwFw
What a shocker.
Too bad some of our patrons here weren’t asked to testify.
Genuine medical progress, a great scientific achievement, if it pans out.
What will the anti-vaxxers say, though?
I think you are very right here. It's what one perceives that counts. It's not my idea of reality (creation 6000 years ago), but you can always tell me that it is my idea that I have about this matter.
Genuine medical progress: 6000 people born with grave birth defects, due to a mix-up between a left-handed molecule and a right-handed one.
Genuine medical progress: 4000 people die unnecessarily each year in hospitals.
Genuine medical progress: millions of animals die every year, in the name of science.
Genuine medical progress: just a propaganda slogan. If it pans out.
I try not to attack anyone's identity because the ensuing debate inevitably turns personal.
[sub]• Breast Cancer Prognosis: Survival Rates by Stage, Age, and Race
• Breast Cancer Statistics
• Breast Cancer: Statistics
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Where did I say I didn't. You imply this from reading my words. As a matter of fact, my mum needs a lower-back operation to relieve her from her pain. Somehow, a lot of people have a lower back thing. Curiously, as the work has become much lighter these days. They should send the colonists home! They occupy almost all beds and get only some extra oxygen A huge amount of technical stuff surrounds them. Mostly unnecessary. Just relocate them to their beds at home and give them an oxygen supply! And my mother can be treated next week.
I merely pointed at the failures of the scientific approach. Opposite to the successes.. Mostly these are not mentioned in propaganda.
CNN had their head medical person on Joe Rogen's show and this doctor admitted it was incorrect of CNN to call it horse medicine. Though, man, he was very evasive until finally admitting the obvious. It's in the PDR for god's sake. It's really amazing what can be repeated over and over as if it's true by people claiming to represent science and rationality. They'll call this the Irony Age in the future.
Official Government Reports suggest the Fully Vaccinated will develop Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome by Christmas (Oct 27, 2021)
The executive summary: if you had COVID-19 vaccines, then you'll probably have AIDS before the end of the year.
Yes but in asymmetric way and always for fun because that almost always works.
By "asymmetric" I mean you never engage into flat-earther discussion by either denying or supporting their flat earth ideas, but rather accept their game and start fiercely preaching aliens.
You said "for the sake of others who are rational", you bring fallacy to attention in an interesting and funny way but in same time irritate flat earthers.
My answer has increasingly become more solid: it’s not worth engaging. The area to attack is distribution of resources, education, and media.