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My personal take on it is that it’s time to move past the vaccine/not vaccine, mask/no mask discussion… The vaccine is free and widely available, get it if you want, don’t if you don’t. Wear a mask if you want, don’t if you don’t. Don’t come crying to me when you get COVID, and I won’t come crying to you when I can’t have kids in 3 years. Make your personal choice and let’s get back to business. Hopefully this policy stays local to us so no one else has to deal with this painful step backwards

And that's how you end up with everyone wearing a mask, because the anti-vaxx people are too selfish and dishonest to follow the guidance without enforcement. I'm looking forward to mandatory vaccination for the military. Then we can put a stop to these asinine policies.

I know this doesn’t count, but I also got covid recently after vaccine. Doctor told me that “60% of the people getting it coming in here are vaccinated”. Not scientific but that’s what the doctor told me.

Shack. More people die every day from random accidents (e.g. falling off a ladder) than Covid. Heart disease kills 6x more people daily than Covid. So why is our policy “zero cases!”-driven for something that’s not even in the top 5? Why do we continually move the goalposts on Covid, yet don’t do shit public-policy wise for heart disease prevention/cure, cancer prevention/cure, etc. Covid is a thing and kills people, got it…but the data does not remotely support the totalitarian reaction from the gov/some portions of society, expressed or implied. Get your shot, or don’t…do what’s best for you and the people you regularly interact with, then STFU about your opinion of what someone else’s personal decision should be.

threw a mask in my bag for work....totally expect a 'everyone will wear diapers' response to this...

The HQ I work in put out guidance about two months ago: "vaccinated = no mask. not vaccinated = mask." Since they legally cannot ask, it is on the honor system. I had a good laugh the first day this policy was effective, 90% of the people there were not wearing masks....to include the most anti-vac conspiracy tout'n folks I've ever met. Fast forward to this past week when the chief of staff puts out an email that says "while we cannot ask if you have had the vaccine, we do know what the vaccinated rates of the staff are. We have noticed a large discrepancy between the vaccinated rate and those not wearing masks inside the building." Oh no shit? Didn't see that coming.....

Yes. Snort died in his L-1019 up in Lewiston. Got the word from my warbird / airshow buds. He was heading back to Ft Snort when he crashed. Quite the character, and there are a lot of opinions about him. But Snort was part of the dying breed of old school fighter pilots that the current military really doesn't want around much anymore. My Tomcat buds that flew with him and worked for him think the world of him. Even the ones that didn't care for him! The fact he flew the way he did, and was able to live as long as he did... well, that's quite a feat. Snort was a Brother in Arms, and I raise a glass for him tonight. edit: for those not aware, Snort was the pilot of the famous knife-edge Tomcat pass. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-and-video-behind-dale-snort-snodgrass-legendary-super-low-banana-pass/

Should be a great time. The people at Oshkosh generally aren't the woke, virtual signaling part of the American public. Looking forward to getting back after being gone for a few years.

Yeah but I think his point was survivorship bias. You are only deciding the best criteria for selecting students based on the criteria currently used to select students.

We were talking about this 8 years ago. Bottom line: Yes, it is a thing for RegAF. https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/topic/19851-sanctuary/?tab=comments#comment-354790

How severe was your case of Covid? How severe are the cases that the doctor is seeing in vaccinated people? if all of the people that got the vaccine and then got Covid or able to fight it off without ending up in the hospital I think that is a win for the vaccinated crowd.

Actually this is really plausible and believable. Remember the vaccine only has ~90% efficacy. So 10% of people are still getting COVID. If 100% of people in the UK were vaccinated, 100% of your hospitalizations would be vaccinated. The UK has a very high vaccinated population (70%) that is disproportionately weighted by people who are at risk individuals (were able to be vaccinated earlier.) Hence, the 10% of 70 people vaccinated probably holds a lot of weight against the 30 unvaccinated people who are predominantly low risk. The most important statistic regarding the UK though is their overall hospitalizations which; are only 1/10 of what they were 6 months ago when their infection numbers were nearly identical. This big pretty problem I see with COVID policy at the moment is we lost sight of the goal. The goal was the reduce casualties by minimizing hospitalizations. Somehow the mindset has shifted to the goal being 0 case #'s. That will never happen and why do we care?

Did that job 2 years ago. You'll be a JOPESter validating requirements and have a few people you supervise on shift, and also help with other logistics related tasks, like working with the different TF mobility shops in planning. You'll be working for CENTCOM CCJ4, but a lot of time will be spent interacting with the Army, and living on an army base, though you'll be in a joint unit. O-4s/O-5s (and O-4 selects) get a roommate, though when I was there they let FGOs have single rooms if they were available. O-3s live in bays, though when I was there the unit had a handful of rooms for the night shift where CGOs were 2 to a room as well. 8 hour shifts, 1 full day off and a half day off per week. Chow halls are good, plenty of restaurant options. We had people get forward deployed as well to work specific logistics problems, such as dips. It was interesting to see logistics from the other side, especially since I had done an AMD deployment as well. Can't say there necessarily a career benefit, but you'll get a joint medal out of it.

I didn't say they were false. Your personal experiences aren't a good way to make policy. It's like me mandating that the speed limit on the highway is 35 MPH because I know someone who got killed in a car accident doing 65 MPH. We have reams of data that show what safe speed limits for highways are...my anecdote doesn't invalidate those reams of data. Similarly, we have a dataset of over a billion people vaccinated, with a very low rate of breakthrough infections and side effects. Someone telling me their buddy had side effects doesn't undo the millions of people who didn't. Someone telling me they know a few people who got Covid after getting vaccinated doesn't undo the huge drops in cases where vaccination rates are high. Here's my data. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fcf43d9731c76c16e7354f5d5e187 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/14/covid-cases-vaccination-rates/ Love to see the data set on 40% of hospitalizations in the UK being vaccinated.

No, ARTs are explicitly denied Tricare. You get the standard range of options available to Federal civilian employees. The retirement is the federal pension. The base calculation is off your highest three years of civil service. Get 1% (1.1% if you retire later) of that amount for each year of creditable service. So if your high three average is $100k and you have ten years of service, your pension is $10k a year. You pay 4.4% of your paycheck for this. You need five years of creditable service to get anything, and that can include military time if you pay a few thousand bucks to "buy it back."

UK reporting 40% of COVID hospitalizations are from double vaccinated. Maybe we can at least agree that more is going on than headlines reveal, and more data with less censorship will help the public be informed. ”your actual experience means nothing because I have government figures indicating otherwise” has proven to be an unconvincing tactic. But I see you will continue using it regardless.

So...in over a billion vaccinations worldwide, you present a half dozen individuals as proof that there's no difference in the infection rated between vaccinated and unvaccinated people? The plural of anecdote is not "data".

I’m fully vaccinated and recently tested positive. Also, everyone of the positives we’ve had recently have been fully vaccinated— I can see the vaccination status of my members. There has been a peculiar phenomenon during this entire pandemic: people like you certain that things are true or false without actually knowing at all.

Do you have anything at all to back that up? Because its false...

How many ended up dead or hospitalized? Something like 99% of covid deaths and 97% of hospitalizations since Jan 1st are unvaccinated people. If everyone is vaccinated then sure, you might catch it...but the severity becomes so low that it doesn't really matter.

Being vaccinated is no obstacle to having and spreading COVID. All of our recent positive cases are fully vaccinated. The whole thing is a charade.

The long awaited Masters of the Air is finally in production now. Sucks it will be on Apple TV+ and not HBO. Which means you won't be able to buy the DVD or digital rights, as the only way to watch it is via Apple TV+ subscription. See Tom Hanks Greyhound film. ☹️ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Air

Hey, trust the science…or something.

No, def not toxic. I’ve been in shoes similar to you in a deployed environment. At a certain point we are appointed with executing the mission. I’d look at any of my ACs sideways if they cancelled due to WX being 300-3/4 when mins are 200-1/2. Just go out there and get er done dude. However, like you, I was sensitive about having my AC’s backs if they did make the tough call even if I disagreed with said decision. Tinker, different story. Crews were not safe to fly and got their butts chewed for ORM. Not to mention it was a training environment. That’s a huge foul on part of said OG. Let’s cultivate a climate where ACs are empowered but at the same time are willing to lean forward and get the mission done in the grey zone.

I’ve never understood the reluctance to use medicine to improve performance. If I have an infection that makes me DNIF, I take antibiotics. If I have a sleep schedule that needs to be shifted to operate safely, I take ambien. Need to be awake? Go pills. (Edit to be clear for OSI: I’m describing the ideal, not what I do or current practice. Also to be clear for OSI: get fvcked.) You’re asking me to strap into a fuel-laden tube, filled with fire but balk at altering body chemistry? Thanks Nancy. Smarter, stronger, and better at our job… of killing and not getting killed. Give us the pills. Can you imagine how great the MPF could be if we gave them Dex and locked them in for 12 hour days twice a month?

I’m pro getting the Covid vax, but I’m still not convinced these shenanigans end just because we hit the targeted vaccine milestone. LA County is the reason why I believe that. LA County has 70% of residents with at least one dose and 62% fully vaccinated, one of the highest rates in the nation. Cases have risen though in the past few weeks and the county leadership immediately shit its pants and reinstated a mask mandate for both vax’d and unvax’d, even though the overwhelming majority of cases are among the unvaccinated. Also, when asked what they would do if cases kept rising, the county responded that all options were on the table, including lockdown again. So no, I’m not convinced that hitting a vaccine milestone will cause this bullshit to stop. There is always going to be another crisis for the nanny state to step in and try and manage, and we have certainly given lots of power to the nanny state in the last year and a half. I would honestly not even be shocked if places like LA County mandate masks during flu seasons in the future.

Amazing how many Trump supporters want to shit on what was probably his greatest achievement as a president. Operation Warp Speed is a triumph of modern scientific research and biomedical engineering, funded and supported by Trump...and it's mostly Trump supporters who won't take it because "I don't trust Fauci" and "I don't trust Biden". I wonder how many of those Trumpers would be vaccinated if Trump had been re-elected then tweeted non-stop about how awesome Warp Speed turned out to be and what a genius he was for finding the "cure to Covid".

Jesus people. The Trump administration, for all of its faults, knew that the way to get back to something approaching “normal” was heard immunity, and that the fastest way to get there is through vaccination. Hence ‘Operation Warp Speed’ which, to give credit where credit is due, was an unqualified success. No, not “everyone” needs to get vaccinated. Seventy percent or so will do. When you have half of a population unvaccinated it leaves plenty of room for a virus to mutate. Hence Delta and probably Echo and Foxtrot and so on until we have heard immunity. We can wait a few years for that to happen naturally or we can all get a shot and watch this thing disappear within a few months. It’s not a fucking difficult concept to grasp.

The only thing that stops this is when we collectively say we’ve had enough.

Smoke and mirrors. They are essentially just executing phase 3, but with wings. I don’t understand how this changes anything, except maybe gets them a form 8 earlier so the MAF bound guys can be softened up to Q3s and re-quals earlier in their career.

Or Grand Forks AFB. That base should have been shuttered when the tankers left. Especially now that the Global Hawk is gone.

Too bad we can't trust the unvaccinated people to wear a mask without screaming "HIPAA" at everyone who asks.