COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron
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Author Topic: COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron  (Read 548780 times)
Pericles
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« Reply #9025 on: January 10, 2022, 02:47:28 AM »

Obviously masks have a cost, and they shouldn't be legally required forever. It's a pretty mild cost, and it's fine to wear it for many hours at a time. It has so far provided a much greater benefit in terms of the reduced spread of Covid and lives saved to the cost. It's the wrong time to abandon all measures when it's still sensible to spread out how many people get infected and use the easy measures to prevent infections if possible. Once the death toll is not in the thousands every day and hundreds of thousands every year, then it will be sensible to cautiously take the final steps out of legal restrictions. I have mixed feelings about what people should do with their personal responsibility-it would be good for public health if we wore masks more than in 2019 but I don't actually like wearing masks and once I don't need to I'd prefer to not wear them.
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YE
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« Reply #9026 on: January 10, 2022, 02:50:26 AM »

Still have not heard a rational argument against using hospital capacity as the primary metric in determining whether we need restrictions or not in certain areas.

Biggest problem these days though may not even be capacity, it could be just that so many staff are infected that they can’t go in (and having infected healthcare workers treat already at risk patients is…not really an option for obvious reasons lol)


In early 2021? Sure. During delta? It was debatable but that was mostly an issue for the unvaccinated. Now? Are restrictions even accomplishing anything meaningful with something so contagious? Western Europe is having less severe cases due to high vaccination rates but their cases are just as steep as ours except they are a week or so ahead of us in terms of experiencing the wave.
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Vaccinated Russian Bear
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« Reply #9027 on: January 10, 2022, 04:46:30 AM »

This week will be the 4th week since Omicron surged in US, which means the first Omicron deaths will be seen now. Real world data from US about how mild it is.

The current deaths # is likely ~95% due to Delta.
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Oakvale
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« Reply #9028 on: January 10, 2022, 07:24:56 AM »

Obviously masks have a cost, and they shouldn't be legally required forever. It's a pretty mild cost, and it's fine to wear it for many hours at a time. It has so far provided a much greater benefit in terms of the reduced spread of Covid and lives saved to the cost.

Is this even true? I'm skeptical that masks have anything but a marginal benefit (particularly the normal cloth masks everyone wears, and particularly with omicron).
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Calthrina950
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« Reply #9029 on: January 10, 2022, 08:21:10 AM »

The last few pages are seemingly an exercise in collective sociopathy and lack of any coherent idea part from rubbishing anyone who says that restrictions are still necessary, even if the evidence backs them up.

So I see we've reached the point where the zero COVID crowd just calls anyone who understands transmissibility and basic science a sociopath.

Waah! I don't want to wear a tiny bit of cloth on my face! Waah!

What offends me most about the mask requirements is that it disproportionately impacts people that are out trying to do their jobs, which are disproportionately the lowest-paid people in the country. Why should a waiter have to wear a mask while AOC gets to take hers off at the table? It's totally arbitrary, unless leftists just can't bear to let their servants breathe the same air as them.

It's ironic that you mention Ocasio-Cortez, because she tested positive for coronavirus today. She was recently seen vacationing with her boyfriend in Florida, maskless and among large crowds of people.

This is the first I'm hearing of this. I wish her the best and hope that she does not have any symptoms. I didn't single her out knowing that she had contracted the virus.

I didn't think you implied anything against her, with regards to that.
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Meclazine for Israel
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« Reply #9030 on: January 10, 2022, 09:19:55 AM »

It will be interesting to see how the US fairs with Omicron.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/africa/south-africa-offers-clues-to-life-after-omicron-1.4772352

South Africa are near finished and they are saying a lot less pressure on hospital beds, but rapid and high transmissibility.

The World just dodged a bullet with that variant.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #9031 on: January 10, 2022, 09:59:14 AM »

How long has this thread had Star War references as it’s titles?

COVID-19 is the "Evil Empire" of respiratory diseases.
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Vaccinated Russian Bear
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« Reply #9032 on: January 10, 2022, 01:09:35 PM »

Normal people:


Democrat Evil Empire unleash School Death Star once more:

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« Reply #9033 on: January 10, 2022, 02:14:24 PM »

Even though Omicron is supposedly "flooding" hospitals and causing mass deaths, isn't it clear that these deaths aren't really caused by Omicron but just is the regular flu season wave that occurs this time of year?

Of course Omicron hospitalizations are up, if everyone has Omicron then all hospitalizations will be counted under that variant name even if there really is no major divergence from previous years.

I'm pretty sure what's going to be most important moving forward is going to be excess death counts and total hospitalizations, not Omicron-specific data (if everyone has Omicron this data's useless).
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ProudModerate2
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« Reply #9034 on: January 10, 2022, 02:32:45 PM »

Quote
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?
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It’s so Joever
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« Reply #9035 on: January 10, 2022, 03:29:36 PM »

Still have not heard a rational argument against using hospital capacity as the primary metric in determining whether we need restrictions or not in certain areas.

Biggest problem these days though may not even be capacity, it could be just that so many staff are infected that they can’t go in (and having infected healthcare workers treat already at risk patients is…not really an option for obvious reasons lol)


In early 2021? Sure. During delta? It was debatable but that was mostly an issue for the unvaccinated. Now? Are restrictions even accomplishing anything meaningful with something so contagious? Western Europe is having less severe cases due to high vaccination rates but their cases are just as steep as ours except they are a week or so ahead of us in terms of experiencing the wave.
Fair enough, and given the ability of omicron to spread super fast, there will obviously be many missed "preventable" cases due to simple data and policy lag. The reduced incubation period makes this worse and is probably a huge reason why the rise was so sharp. That being said, omicron still is bound by the basic rules of respiratory virology and physics. Although it is early, the suggestions of very early studies show the main reason for omicron's increased transmissibility in immune escape (vaccinated people can and do spread it at high levels now) and potentially a lower dose of omicron being required to infect a human. However, omicron still is a tangible object that must spread physically. High quality masks do likely protect against omicron, and even cloth/surgicals reduce dosage of virus, which has been strongly correlated with how severe a case is (and thus whether hospitalization is needed or not) The same logic applies to capacity limits (but I would not implement those in 99% of the country in my own plans)
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/31/1067702355/omicron-is-spreading-like-wildfire-scientists-are-trying-to-figure-out-why

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It’s so Joever
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« Reply #9036 on: January 10, 2022, 03:31:51 PM »

Quote
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?
Do you have to even ask if she is?
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MT Treasurer
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« Reply #9037 on: January 10, 2022, 04:20:52 PM »

Quote
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.
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compucomp
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« Reply #9038 on: January 10, 2022, 04:37:42 PM »

Quote
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.

Here's the problem with the anti-restriction mob on this forum; they're intransigent ideologues and there's no middle ground possible with them. You give them an inch, they demand a mile. I've already conceded that you have won the battle for NPI's in the US, and the government is doing and will continue to do absolutely nothing despite 1m cases a day and hospitalizations about to exceed the winter 2021 peak. But no, you can't be gracious about this, reduce the temperature, and look for compromise, instead you demand unconditional surrender and insist that we pretend that COVID doesn't exist and we're back to 2019. You're even bitching about entirely voluntary business closures as if it were some kind of injustice, when it is the result of grassroots action by virtuous people who consider COVID a threat and adjust their behavior to protect themselves. You claim to be on the side of freedom but yet it is you who is authoritarian for you would deny us the right to take COVID seriously. When faced with this why would I do anything other than stand my ground and dig in?
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Aurelius
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« Reply #9039 on: January 10, 2022, 04:40:06 PM »

Quote
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.

Here's the problem with the anti-restriction mob on this forum; they're intransigent ideologues and there's no middle ground possible with them. You give them an inch, they demand a mile. I've already conceded that you have won the battle for NPI's in the US, and the government is doing and will continue to do absolutely nothing despite 1m cases a day and hospitalizations about to exceed the winter 2021 peak. But no, you can't be gracious about this, reduce the temperature, and look for compromise, instead you demand unconditional surrender and insist that we pretend that COVID doesn't exist and we're back to 2019. You're even bitching about entirely voluntary business closures as if it were some kind of injustice, when it is the result of grassroots action by virtuous people who consider COVID a threat and adjust their behavior to protect themselves. You claim to be on the side of freedom but yet it is you who is authoritarian for you would deny us the right to take COVID seriously. When faced with this why would I do anything other than stand my ground and dig in?


How many f**king times do we have to tell you no one is denying you the right to take covid seriously? You have the right to never leave your house again. You have the right to avoid all businesses and shop through instacart. You have the right to shut down a bar or restaurant out of poor risk/benefit analysis, and I will cheer its demise as a new restaurant takes its place. You do not have the right to force others to do the same.
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Roll Roons
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« Reply #9040 on: January 10, 2022, 04:48:18 PM »
« Edited: January 10, 2022, 07:12:30 PM by Roll Roons »

Quote
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.

Here's the problem with the anti-restriction mob on this forum; they're intransigent ideologues and there's no middle ground possible with them. You give them an inch, they demand a mile. I've already conceded that you have won the battle for NPI's in the US, and the government is doing and will continue to do absolutely nothing despite 1m cases a day and hospitalizations about to exceed the winter 2021 peak. But no, you can't be gracious about this, reduce the temperature, and look for compromise, instead you demand unconditional surrender and insist that we pretend that COVID doesn't exist and we're back to 2019. You're even bitching about entirely voluntary business closures as if it were some kind of injustice, when it is the result of grassroots action by virtuous people who consider COVID a threat and adjust their behavior to protect themselves. You claim to be on the side of freedom but yet it is you who is authoritarian for you would deny us the right to take COVID seriously. When faced with this why would I do anything other than stand my ground and dig in?


Just saying that I don't know of any college students or parents who are happy to pay $80K a semester to effectively go to the University of Phoenix. Especially considering that most campuses are almost uniformly vaccinated.
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Donerail
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« Reply #9041 on: January 10, 2022, 05:00:15 PM »

Here's the problem with the anti-restriction mob on this forum; they're intransigent ideologues and there's no middle ground possible with them. You give them an inch, they demand a mile.
After two years of delegating ever-expanding power to public health officials to dictate rules for society, what do you expect? The tactical lesson here is clear: Public health officials are loathe to withdraw a regulation, even when the science clearly supports doing so. How else can you explain the continued devotion to plexiglass barriers and obsessive surface cleaning, the widespread opposition to the CDC's shortened quarantine requirements, or the insistence on masks for populations that face basically no risk from the disease? It only makes sense that opponents of such excessive measures are unwilling to compromise — when we've compromised, we got burned. Not gonna make that mistake again.
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DINGO Joe
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« Reply #9042 on: January 10, 2022, 05:28:09 PM »

How long has this thread had Star War references as it’s titles?

Since 1977
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Aurelius
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« Reply #9043 on: January 10, 2022, 05:31:43 PM »

My sister's college just announced mandatory KN95 masking, closure of in person dining, and that social gatherings that are unmasked or more than 5 people "should not occur" (their words, I guess they know the impossibility of enforcing this). Re the latter, my sister is a rules following type, and this really sucks. She transferred from community college to four year college right around the start of the pandemic, spent her first semester there fully remote, and I was really hoping she'd finally have a normal-ish term.
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It’s so Joever
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« Reply #9044 on: January 10, 2022, 07:53:46 PM »

Quote
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.
Okay then, all Republicans are responsible for January 6th and Charlottesville.

Why were you driving the car, Montana Man?
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It’s so Joever
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« Reply #9045 on: January 10, 2022, 07:57:39 PM »

And yes, wanting to end restrictions does mean being okay with grandmas dying. Even my desired Covid plans would let some people die, it’s only the Manic Montanan who thinks he can have it both ways in his fantasy world. His shallow beliefs are almost as shallow as the “election analysis” he has provided on here.
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Calthrina950
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« Reply #9046 on: January 10, 2022, 08:11:21 PM »

Delaware's Governor Carney is renewing that state's indoor mask mandate. It seems as if many Democratic politicians have already written off the midterms, because these aren't the kinds of policies that are going to be helpful to them. And it's a reliance on a policy which is of but dubious value at this point. That means the number of states with mask mandates in force stands at ten, along with the District of Columbia. All of these jurisdictions are under Democratic control.
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Hammy
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« Reply #9047 on: January 10, 2022, 09:53:49 PM »


At least this makes more sense than restaurant mask mandates, if nothing else.
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Malarkey Decider
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« Reply #9048 on: January 10, 2022, 09:54:49 PM »

Obviously masks have a cost, and they shouldn't be legally required forever. It's a pretty mild cost, and it's fine to wear it for many hours at a time. It has so far provided a much greater benefit in terms of the reduced spread of Covid and lives saved to the cost.

Is this even true? I'm skeptical that masks have anything but a marginal benefit (particularly the normal cloth masks everyone wears, and particularly with omicron).

Cloth masks basically have no protection with Omicron, and their effectiveness was marginal as best previously. However, the N95 / KN95 masks are still very effective, especially if properlly fitted.
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/n95-masks-covid-19-infection-cloth
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Frodo
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« Reply #9049 on: January 10, 2022, 09:58:49 PM »

It is ridiculous we are being asked to take these vaccines every six months or so when once a year should suffice:

Pfizer: Vaccine targeting Omicron will be ready in March
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