COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[MT Treasurer]

It’s increasingly becoming clear that Democrats will not win another national election for a generation.

Sad to see so many in the party of normalcy resort to "If you don’t subscribe to my world view, I will take the entire party down with me" Trumpian methods/authoritarian fantasies! When will Biden disavow?

[MT Treasurer]

Texas mother allegedly put son in trunk of car to avoid being exposed to Covid-19.

A Texas mother has been charged with endangering a child after she allegedly placed her 13-year-old son, who had Covid-19, into her car's trunk to avoid being exposed to the virus, according to a warrant from the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

Sarah Beam, 41, was charged after authorities arrived at a Houston-area Covid testing site on January 3 following a report that a health services official had found the child in trunk of Beam's car. According to the warrant, the director of health services stated she was gathering information from cars in a line for Covid testing when "she found a female driver, later identified as Sarah Beam, having her child in the trunk of her car."

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/10/us/texas-mother-son-trunk-covid-19/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

What the hell is this?
Is she nuts?

Anyone, and I mean anyone who is worth their salt and possesses even a modicum of psychoanalytic knowledge knows that you’re inevitably going to get cases like that if you ceaselessly (quite literally every single day) subject an entire populace to fear and hysteria in a manner that’s completely, utterly disproportionate to the matter at hand. You don’t need a PhD in Psychology or have read Gustave Le Bon or George Orwell to predict how certain individuals will behave in an environment like that! Now, of course we’re supposed to react to this story the same way Gotfan, computocomp, etc. want us to react to other cases of this kind, mask mandates, school closures, businesses going bankrupt, families being torn apart, mental health disorders in general proliferating during this pandemic, etc.: classify it as "collateral damage" amidst a broader good cause and a slight incovenience/outlier in a "necessary new normal" borne out by and in fact necessitated by science.

When the same people indifferent to and supportive of this gradual erasure of empathy, critical thinking, and levelheadedness call those who dare entertain a return to a normalcy which at least allowed us to breathe normally "sociopaths," it’s not that hard to figure out where their fondness for the designation "sociopath" comes from. I sincerely don’t mean this in any polemic way when I say that many of these individuals are very, very sick — this, while of course very tragic, frankly wouldn’t be any of our business if it were confined to three or four individuals on an obscure online forum and not of a mindset that likewise pervades some of the highest positions of government. As evidenced by this thread, the former will have no qualms about displaying their abject views and (for once in their lives) feel worthy/listened to/in control as long as they feel protected by the latter, which is why the only way to deal with both is to strip enough of the latter of their power (which, one can only hope, will happen in this year's elections). I mean, I’m just a Manic Montanan who’s fine with killing all his grandmas, but trust me, I very much prefer that to any of their issues.

[MT Treasurer]

Since posters here seem to be supporting the Canadian "trucker protest", have a look at yet more extremists taking part:

*snip*

So in this protest, I've now seen flags of
-Nazi Germany
-CSA
-Three Percenters
-QAnon

These are the folks you are siding with now? Are they "very fine people" like Trump used to say? Have you gone crazy? Have COVID restrictions warped your minds to the point that you'll accept any ally in your fight against them?

No offense, computocomp, but this forum contains some of the demographics least susceptible to cheap rhetorical tricks (e.g. excessively emotional rhetoric, loaded questions, sweeping generalizations, distractions from the issue at hand, subtle threats which pit a powerful/'reasonable' collective against the powerless 'outlier'/'irrational' individual) and blatant propaganda, so you’re really wasting your time if you’re going down this path (similarly, the people browsing this forum/thread are unlikely to have their minds changed by this). I think you should stick to statistics and studies, which to the audience you intend to reach can have a far more powerful propagandistic effect (if presented in an appropriate manner) than such tabloid talking points, which one might say work more on the less 'intellectual' and more shallow members of society whose self-esteem is contingent on societal status and approval by the masses. I’m not denying that the approach you opted for in your post isn’t effective on the average member of society/media consumer who fears repercussions from society (and can’t hide behind a random avatar on an obscure online forum), it’s just not going to work on a semi-anonymous, hyper-involved, highly political, predominantly male and young audience like this.

Really telling (one might say revealing) that you would invoke the Canadian trucker protest and the Charlottesville events given that you proclaim to be hyper-focused on the sober presentation of science and purport to have no agenda in this. But good luck anyway — I (and I mean this sincerely) always learn a lot from your posts.

[MT Treasurer]

One more week of masking kids outdoors at school.

They are just absolute ghouls.

The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of the Left's America

[MT Treasurer]

Please implement new lockdowns & vaccine/mask mandates in October 2022 and October 2024. We can’t eradicate COVID as long as those anti-vaxxers refuse to get their fifth (and final) booster shot.