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Negatory

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Everything posted by Negatory

  1. It is overly simplistic to say that all humans are innately religious. I’m not, and I think you’ll find that is true for many others.
  2. Unbridled libertarian policies that prioritize individual liberty over all else sound good until you implement them. Just like socialist policies. It’s why unbridled capitalism in the 1800s HAD to be regulated, for example. I am of the opinion that there should be a balance of individualism and collectivism in an ideally functioning society. I believe your viewpoint is unrealistic for the same reason that I believe a communist viewpoint is unrealistic. If individuals are not expected, even to the smallest extent, to make sacrifices for the good of their country or countrymen - in any case - what is the point of that society? See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
  3. I know you, specifically, want COVID to be over. You can tell by how every about 3 weeks you post that you personally are over it. Cool. But you lack ability to provide a coherent fact based argument or use statistics, which significantly hurts your point. If 1 out of 100 people die in a population die due to a disease it is not a 1% death rate. It would only be 1% if 100% of the population got the disease. Currently, they’re estimating that only about 50-100M people in the US (15-35% of the population) have had COVID, which means it is more like a 3-7% death rate in that population. Incoming “Doesn’t change anything.” Tell me, what sort of mortality or long term effect is worth vaccinating society? I’d like to set the stage, before you answer. Polio has about a 1 in 200 chance of causing paralysis. In those cases 5-20% of the population dies. So the overall mortality risk for polio is less than 0.1%. Also, you probably know, we are approaching double the total casualties of WWII. Same comment. Your statistics are intentionally misleading and wrong. There’s about 212M folks in the 0-49 age range. There have been 52.8k deaths. That right there is a .024% chance of death. Oh wait, not everyone was infected, as previously talked about, so in reality it’s closer to .075-.15% chance of death. I can still buy that maybe that’s acceptable, but we’re talking you being off by a factor of at least 100. For those 50-64, there’s about 62M people. There have been 145k deaths. That is 0.2% of the population. Which means a CFR on the order of 0.6-1.2%. Population size source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ COVID deaths source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ All of your guys’ analysis also conveniently ignores the fact that over 80% of those infected by the disease have a long term symptom or side effect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95565-8 I am all for having a debate about whether blanket vaccine mandates are useful, or what the cutoff is. But I am not at all interested in BS statistics, lies, or just plain feelings, which is what significantly reduces both the effectiveness and credibility of the anti vaccine side’s arguments.
  4. Which is why your point is asinine. 800k people have perished. 1 out of every 100 folks over the age of 65. With most of the cases being mild. https://dnyuz.com/2021/12/13/as-u-s-nears-800000-virus-deaths-1-of-every-100-older-americans-has-perished/
  5. Cool. Always nice to be reminded of why society is ultimately going to fall apart. You think in the golden ages of America people said stuff like this? I’m all for people having informed opinions and not getting vaccinated, but supporting people just being assholes is stupid.
  6. Hope so, but we probably need to wait and see. If you remember, this is what everyone said back in 2020 as well.
  7. That's unironically a good point. The "there's not enough data" argument has very little evidence behind it. I think getting away from feelings-based arguments is in everyone's best interest.
  8. Careful trying to use math as your high horse, because there is actually validity in what Ratner is saying from a mathematical perspective. Marginal changes in R0 for an extremely infectious disease do not significantly affect the ultimate end state. This is because a population is limited, so exponential growth is ultimately only possible at the beginning. And logistic limiting effects are basically unimportant until a huge amount of society has been infected. This is due to the fact that, even with masking and vaccines for the entire population, the vaccine would spread with an R0 well greater than 1. That’s what actually matters. None of this feel good, I have less likelihood to give COVID to my kids when they are at home, bs. The truth is, they’ll just get it in the future. In reality, with an R0 estimated around 5, with vaccines that are 50% effective (many studies dispute this and estimate it closer to 10-30%), you’d still need masks and social distancing to be close to 60-70% effective. Good thing the CDC, in internal modeling, estimates masking effectiveness around 20-30%. For a good summary, just read the delta predictions on the last source below. Bottom line is that it is nigh impossible to stop this with the vaccines we have. Sources: R0 of Delta: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34369565/ Vaccines are not that effective after a short period of time: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y Masking efficacy is estimated at 20-30%: (page 20) In reality, all that these mandates do (for a shot that is not as effective as we wish it was) are draw out the inevitable - most of the population will get infected at some point. If hospitals are fine - and they ARE right now, from a national perspective - what’s the benefit to society of the blue curve vs the red one? Yeah, people are going to die. But there actually isn’t much you can do about it, and most of it really is their own choice as to whether they want to be vaccinated or not. We should do what we can to “flatten the curve” to a level that is sustainable from a healthcare perspective. The vaccine has been extremely effective in reducing hospitalizations and death for society to a sustainable level. Curve: flattened. If we’re sustainable now, then we have won. Mandates aren’t going to help society any more, and instead will only serve as a tool to continue politicization of the masses. The only thing that would actually work is having people stay home and actually limit contact - a la China - but we’ve seen the disastrous effects of that policy on both the economy and society. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
  9. To be clear, a 38% vs 25% is more like 50% more likely to be infected. Just like if it was 10% vs 1% it wouldn’t be 9% - it’d be 1000%.
  10. Yep, sure have. Basic training and tech school. More to follow, probably. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-11-02/how-the-military-is-handling-troops-who-refuse-coronavirus-vaccines?context=amp
  11. Yeah. When you put it that way, f$&% that. I’m not interested in being a pawn in another failed war like Vietnam. At the same time, if we don’t use our military for things like this, it begs the question as to what’s the point of even having the military we have? Do we only exist to police Iran/N Korea/etc?
  12. That is like 5% of the total force. Time to do more with less I guess.
  13. I think you really only need to look at the USS Theodore Roosevelt to invalidate almost all of these arguments. They can just apply the lessons learned from that experience to basically any potential combat scenario and, bam, everyone in the military must be vaccinated. In this case, does nuance of one's opinion really matter?
  14. I can agree with this for children. At least I can agree that the evidence supporting the need to get vaccines for healthy youth is shaky. But do you guys support boosters for those over the age of 50 or 60? Boosters for those with BMIs > XX? Maybe boosters for those with certain immune issues? Because there are very little actual analytical or data based reasons not to other than political propaganda says to be a pain in the ass to the “liberal” branch of society. Thats the main issue with a lot of this conversation. Many folks on here are taking absolutely indefensible black and white stances (no boosters whatsoever, no shots whatsoever!) with no justification other than their political circle wouldn’t like it disguised with an “I don’t feel like it.” Also, it’s a fallacy to say that an argument is incorrect (some people should get boosters) just because they said something else that may not be true (it’s imperative for children to be vaccinated). You don’t get to conveniently ignore all of the evidence of science or experts or whatever just because you disagree with one conclusion.
  15. I talked personally with Gen Moseley about this ~10 years ago and think it was genuine. But everyone is entitled to their opinions. Agree with everything you said about Bob.
  16. One example: Gen Moseley fell on his sword for the F-22.
  17. Duh, it’s to defend your god given right to buy an iPhone for $1000 as opposed to $2000. The price of outsourcing important manufacturing.
  18. Appreciate the words but I didn’t try hard enough. What actually happened is I got lazy. I took a preconceived notion about my perception of the world and looked up only supporting evidence because I didn’t have time to figure out if my viewpoint was actually correct. Its something I’ve called other people on here out for, so it’s extra embarrassing. My bad. In this day and age, you sometimes legitimately have to spend 5 minutes to figure out if the sky is actually blue, or if it’s just another stupid democrat talking point.
  19. Yep, sure, they changed. I never had an issue with parties - voted Republican from 2000-2008, voted for Obama in 2012, then voted Trump in 2016. I just couldn’t vote for Trump again in 2020. Some days recently, though, I wish I had. There are plenty of independents that are immensely disillusioned with wokeism, double standards, and equity BS. Also, hating on America is so fuckin lame. If an election was today, I’d put big bucks on not the Dems (if Rs can find a single person other than Trump). I just wish I could find a party that combines republican independence/foreign policy ideals with a desire to both effectively tax/deal with the folks that exploit our economy (99% of people with NWs > 50M) and acknowledge scientific evidence on things like global warming. Need more scientific populism. Geniocracy anyone? But instead, because both those things are in drastically different political parties, I - and tons of others like me - have to compromise in a dumb way.
  20. Yeah. I will say it is and was very hard to remain unbiased in news sourcing since the Trump presidency for both sides (maybe it actually began around Obama?). I’m wrong in this case, for sure. COVID, ironically, has been the biggest eye opener of people being brainwashed for me. I think I’m doing better now.
  21. Great bait, man! Adds nothing to the conversation. And the joke about the “high side” was apparently entirely lost on you. Let’s keep this forum unclass because, well, it has to be. And with that, I’d like to point you to the wargaming scenarios that resulted in the idea of “NGAD” that showed that we get crushed without a fundamental rearchitecting of AirPower in 5-10 years. I am 100% certain Lockheed/Boeing, the pentagon, and our entrenched leadership will fail to deliver the actual change we need to win overwhelmingly. And I am certain that the American people won’t go fight a war of attrition against China a la WWII. It’s all fun and games until every single fourth Gen fighter is shot down without firing a shot. https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2021/04/12/a-us-air-force-war-game-shows-what-the-service-needs-to-hold-off-or-win-against-china-in-2030/
  22. I hadn’t seen or followed the Pelosi thing. Although it was in January before we were in pandemic mode, I’ll say I stand corrected. I just never felt like people were mad about travel bans once we agreed Covid was a thing. Whoa buddy, calm your tits. But overreaction is a specialty on this forum.
  23. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ I didn’t really recall outrage about Trump travel bans from a racism perspective. Turns out, that’s because it’s more of a republican talking point than reality. Show me some examples if I’m wrong.
  24. After Crimea, I think we can pretty much say we can do nothing. Taiwan will also fall with nothing more than a sternly worded letter from the UN.
  25. To be clear, vaccination does reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by on the order of 90%. I mean, check out the percentage of people who are vaccinated in Scotland - virtually everyone at risk/over 60. But you end up with 30% of hospitalizations and 15% of the deaths in the unvaxxed groups - which are extremely small portions of the at risk population. It’s not like 30% of the population is unvaccinated. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58548727.amp A better argument is that we have reached the point of diminishing returns with vaccines and should stop. We have protected the at risk population - CDC reports that 99% of those 65+ are vaccinated. And as has been pointed out, transmission isn’t effectively curtailed, so getting a relatively healthy 25-50 year old to take the shot doesn’t help the population almost at all.
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