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There should only be one big ass thread on BO.net Just one. The topic of this thread is “The Next President is….” and you guys are talking about Test Pilot School and ARMS products. This place is just one big argument.

Nikki Haley with Dan Crenshaw as VP. I think that'll get you 16 years of Republican rule pretty easily. The debates would be a blood bath. I'm not sure even the most ardent democrats can defend Biden through this either tactically, strategically, or politically. The guy is just losing it. I'm amazed at how many "press conferences" he openly starts with "they gave me a list of people to call here." Watching Stephanopoulos literally coach Biden into saying we wouldn't leave Americans behind was another low point. Imagine the irony of the American people choosing the most boring democrat candidate (against the will of the party machinery) to escape the insanity of Donald Trump only to get a whole new type of insanity.

Jesus help me. One more time for the people in the back… The vaccine does not prevent COVID. You can still get COVID if you’ve had the vaccine just like you can still get the flu if you’ve had the flu vaccine. The vaccine allows the immune system to mount a more effective response so you are far less likely to die, end up in the hospital or suffer long term damage from the disease. The vaccine also helps your body fight it faster so you are contagious for a shorter duration. It’s not that cosmic folks. Of course the case rate is gonna go up. They all got the vaccine and now they are back to Ops normal. But, what’s the rate of hospitalization between vaccinated and unvaccinated? What’s the intubation rate between the two? What’s the death rate? You need more than one crayon to paint this picture.

Desantis is a bully (my opinion) and I despise bullies. And the next President should be under 60yo. Biden is done. 1. He is incompetent and I'm being kind with my words right now; probably well into dementia. He will get heavier and heavier to prop up. Any decision he makes is dangerous because he lacks the mental ability to make them. 2. The fucked up AFG exit will stick to him and his administration forever. There isn't a story or image available to paint a better picture. From people falling off the C-17 on takeoff, to the picture of the Marine holding a baby that was then killed in the Kabul attack, to the story of former operators going in on their own to rescue people they worked with and promised a better life, this complete and utterly inept group must go. Every time I see Bidens picture ...... When he said he will make them pay in regards to the Kabul attacks, he should include himself. 3. No leader of any country, organization, company, or political entity will, nor should they, ever trust Biden and his inept administration ever again. He is completely ineffective. Zero influence, or more accurately, zero positive and most likely just negative influence. Out

Shack. Very likely that “Scheller rambling in the abandoned bus” becomes synonymous with Washington crossing the Delaware.

Some of you guys are just looking for shit to be mad about. I flew one flight in a Japanese UH-60J, I made sure that ARMS folks put that thing in my flight records cause I thought it was cool. Should I feel terrible about it? Give me a break.

I’m not a Commander or anybody worth much of a crap in the military, but I’d be willing to be a part of that movement. I don’t think those actions are disloyal or anything like that. Hell, I’d say Lt Col Scheller’s actions epitomize the USAF’s core values in asking for integrity, putting the service before the individual, and a demand for excellence.

So standing your ground makes a person a "bully?!?" If so, we need more bullies! You are suggesting he ever started in the first place?!?

https://www.wired.com/story/would-it-be-fair-to-treat-vaccinated-covid-patients-first/ Some salient points on the topic in this article, despite being published in Wired. There is already an established triage hierarchy in medicine, and adding vaccination status into it introduces a whole new wave of other ethical decisionpoints that are unwelcome to the medical profession writ large. Bottom line: by the time someone gets to the point where they need to be admitted to inpatient hospital treatment, they certainly medically "deserve" that level of care just as much as any other patient.

https://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/documents/AFD-131008-020.pdf?ver In my humble opinion, if you get accepted to Test Pilot School as a pilot you can log every airplane you flew there because…it’s Test Pilot School.

So are we...finally done in Afghanistan?

Moot, as in "having little or no practical relevance." We know that the vaccine dramatically reduces the chance of hospitalization. Therefore a more vaccinated population will have fewer hospitalizations per capita, resulting in a less strained health care system. If the hospitals are only half full, turns out you don't have to worry about who to give the last ventilator to. Instead, we live in the stupidest possible timeline where these hypotheticals can and have actually happened. We have the privilege of living in a timeline where people are more interested in fish tank cleaner and horse de-wormer they heard about on a podcast than a vaccine endorsed by virtually every epidemiologist in the western world. **caveat** love JRE. Just not a great place for reliable medical guidance.

We're cool, not trying to offend you either man. Sorry if it feels like I am saying someone who didn't get the shot's life would be easy to cast away/is worthless, that's not what I am intending to say. 1) So I am onboard with you on the argument if she's vaxxed, what is the problem than? She should be protected if the shot is so good like the drug companies/CDC/FDA supposedly say it is. We have talked about this, travel nurse salaries are insane right now. If she get's her booster (if it is recommended) I am fine with her going to work and taking care of vaxxed/unvaxxed people with the same level of care. The issue is only if there is a mutation that renders the shot ineffective, do I send her in to work? Am I going to send her into a hospital that is getting lit up with some new form of COVID to care for people who did not at least try to proactively defend against COVID? It's a crummy thought but it is very possible scenario. For humanity's sake let's hope this winter isn't a shit show regardless of anyone's vax stance. I am sure both you and I would rather be talking about anything else besides this issue. 2) I don't think saving/taking a life boils down to just vax status. Like you said...there are so many factors. But if all else is equal and hospitals are full, who do you save? Now if someone verified HAD COVID, and didn't get the shot, yes I concur that person is no different than a vaxxed person, so if you are a reinfected vaxxed person vs. a had actual COVID before the shot was available and got reinfected, same difference to me when you show up in the hospital. I think we're on the same page here. If you have never had COVID and won't get the shot, I think you're making a poor call. 3) What isn't the same difference is saying that getting REAL COVID is a "better" first time way to get the antibodies than the shot. This is very much a YMMV situation I guess. My friends mother in law didn't get the shot, ended up in rough shape in the hospital. Her Dad had already died from a heart attack too when his wife was little and was an athlete (heart defect), mother is fit. I got the shot, and was tired for a day. Was it worth her maybe not making it just to get the antibodies the natural way? Was it worth a 24 year old daughter potentially having no parents left because her mothers first exposure to COVID was the real deal? I don't think so, thankfully she recovered but damn, what if she hadn't? At the end of the day tho that was her decision, and I respect her rights, even tho I think it was still a bad decision. Immunity drops off over time, seems to be agreed upon not matter if you had the shot or real COVID. The difference is getting the antibodies by the shot isn't nearly as risky as getting them by going out and getting real COVID, at least per the FDA/CDC. Her getting real COVID landed her in the hospital. I sat in my bed and watched Netflix. If the damn thing didn't mutate I don't think there'd be anything wrong with stamping COVID out long term via a combo of natural immunity and vax. But it seems to me like in order to get rid of it you gotta squash it real quick by having everybody immunized at the same time. If it's only half the population that's immunized at a time, be it natural immunity or vax, the virus will just keep festering and mutating. Could we get everyone immunized naturally at once by spreading COVID rapidly? Sounds nuts, but I do think that would work, but we might lose some people. The shot seems like a better/safer way to do it. The border thing was just an analogy...that sometimes we cannot save everyone, even if we want to/they deserve it. Handshake.

If only there was a safe, effective, and fully approved vaccination that radically reduces your chances of hospitalization from covid, rendering these hypotheticals completely moot. Wouldn't that be nice

That is definitely a RC for small popcorn. In our case, lately, it has been too much oil. It slow roasts the corn and doesn’t allow it to fully pop. You can tell because it’s super greasy and tastes burnt.

Ok, so the other option was what… +200 dead over at the airport?

Having seen these shit heads carry out their dead, then drag dead civilians into the rubble to use as propaganda, tend to jade ones view on "suspected civilian casualties." I'm not saying it didn't happen, and with this rusty coat-hanger abortion of an operation, nothing would surprise me. I'll just forever be skeptical of these types of reports.

Brother, I get all that. But here's the way it seems to me: The most embarrassing bumblefcku in American military history had just occurred due to poor decisions and assessment of risk, leading to the conditions that caused to 13 of our military brothers and sisters and countless civilians being killed at the airport gate. We're further shocked and humiliated, and Biden announces that this evil attack will not go unpunished. The same leadership, same decision process, same intelligence methodology that missed the attack at the gate miraculously finds a VBIED in a Kabul neighborhood the next day. So we shoot at an explosive laden vehicle in a dense neighborhood just before our final exist and blame civilian casualties on secondary explosions. Occam's Razor.

No. Don’t believe they hype, he was and is a political creature. That he was fired because his underlings were undisciplined and foolish does not equate to speaking truth to power and being willing to fall for it.

It is sad that the only person likely to face any real punishment or personal admonishment in this whole ordeal bares no responsibility for the shit show. His punishment is completely based on the method at which he said the emperor has no clothes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

would be fucking hilarious if they opened the cash bags and it was all just aafes pogs.

So you agree they allowed politics to motivate their health policy to censor some groups and promote others. Fantastic!

Here’s one for you. You have a heart attack. You’re vaccinated and did not have any risk factors for a heart attack. You eat well, don’t smoke, exercise, etc. Should unvaccinated people - who were offered a vaccine for free and actively decided not to protect either themselves or society - be prioritized over you for treatment in the ICU? There’s only one bed left and it’s you and a new unvaccinated COVID patient that showed up right before you. Only one of you gets it. There are no helicopters or magic buttons. You or the COVID patient need to be in the ICU in the next 15 minutes. Choose. Oh, it’s not so black and white.

It’s a nuanced medical question that makes people uncomfortable, because it turns out the Hippocratic oath doesn’t cover everything when it comes to ethics. There are already numerous papers written right now on culpability of patients in prioritization of care and how to apply that to caring for a population. You don’t have to actively deny care for anyone - that would be against the core values of medicine - but prioritizing someone lower is standard practice in medical triage. Also, severity is not the only variable taken into account during triage. Turns out there’s no universal standard, and it comes down to specific hospital/doctor standard operating procedures. https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2020/04/29/should-culpability-or-negligence-of-the-patient-affect-triage-decisions-a-question-the-state-needs-to-answer-for-healthcare-professionals/

Two questions: -How do you think the vaccine was sold? By whom? Because some of us have understood for quite a while this is much more similar to a yearly flu vaccine situation than a polio vaccine one-and-done situation. -How would a vaccinated person's immune system encourage mutations any more than the immune system of a person with natural immunity from having had the virus, and then re-encountering it?

Great post, I appreciate the thoughts. I can sort of follow your train of logic, but I still have problems with it. When, not if, the mutation of the virus turns up in the hospital where your girlfriend works and she is at risk because her vaccine is ineffective against it, being vaccinated/unvaccinated has no longer has any meaning. My point being, once a variant exists, everyone is effectively unvaccinated, so it shouldn't be factor in determining who gets treated. There are currently an untold number of variants, and we're told Delta is the predominant one. Let's add that there is no way to know which variant anyone has unless an individual sample is genetically sequenced. That's not happening. The obvious solution is to prevent variants, right? (I'm probably rehashing someone else's argument in another thread here, but I don't know.) Many of us are led to believe that getting everyone vaccinated prevents the mutation and spread of variants. Is that how it works? No. Do vaccines destroy the virus? No. Do vaccines create antibodies? Yes. Do antibodies improve an individuals immune response and perhaps lessen the viral load? I think so. Do vaccines prevent mutations from occurring? No. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965703047/vaccines-could-drive-the-evolution-of-more-covid-19-mutants Are natural antibodies more robust and longer lasting than those resulting from vaccines? Who am I to say? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot Check out the phylogenetic tree lineage for viruses. Coronaviruses are distinct from influenza viruses, which are distinct at a higher level than, say, the Polio virus. Until recently, coronaviruses have always been known as the "Common Cold", for which a cure or a vaccine has never before been found. One major reason is because they can never be eradicated from animal reservoirs. We do have annual influenza shots, but how effective have they been in eliminating the flu? The point being, coronavirus variants will always exist because they will always lead the cure. None of this is about curing the virus.

No the argument is mute. A dilemma for a MD to choose between a vaxed or un-vaxed patient? If that is a true scenario the vax has failed. We are being told that 99% of all patients are un-vaxed. Israel is hte most vaxed population on earth but pushing a booster now? The US is about 50-60% vaxed now not factoring in hte under age 12 group. So a huge chunk of hte population has the needle. Therefore the pool of ppl to be infected should be pretty small at this point. Considering 60% would show no symptoms, 28% would be mild and 12% would need hospitalization. This is why some ppl are questioning the shot in the first place.

If we have vaccinated people needing ventilators en masse… Something has seriously gone wrong, as the whole point of the vaccine is to at least prevent that outcome. Do we have any data showing such a hypothetical is even happening in small samples? How many vaccinated people are being hospitalized?

First, I apologize if it seemed I am being hostile and condescending. I know I'm being direct, but I'm trying not to make it personal. I've had this debate with a few friends and although we get charged up over it, we remain friends. I'm assuming your girlfriend is vaccinated. If so, what's the problem? Why do you worry? The specific issue in this debate that I might seem passionate about is the logical leaps one must make to justify actively taking one life in the belief you're saving another on the basis of vaccination status. You're talking about what kind of pants I'm wearing and open borders. Your argument is a mess. What is the goal of vaccines? Is it to create antibodies to fight COVID? If that is the result you are trying to achieve, why would you differentiate the method by which it was achieved? Again, I'm being direct. Don't take it personally. I often don't have time to disarm my language with delicate words and subtle suggestions. I don't think you're an idiot. CS Lewis, circa 1948:

My asthmatic GF is a soon to be nurse. Nothing hypothetical about that. She'll be exposed to the hospital environment all this fall, nothing hypothetical about that. So for me it isn't just a keyboard warrior issue. Should I send her into work to care for COVID patients, vax or unvaxxed? What if she gets it and can't pull out of it? Am I going to feel responsible? Would I feel better if she got sick trying to save a vaxxed person over an unvaxxed one? Not a surgeon, neither is pawnman, neither are you I'm assuming. And guess what, you aren't the CDC or the FDA who are telling you the shot is safe and effective. Nice appeal to a surgeons technical authority while also blindly ignoring the ones that are inconvenient for you. And nope, won't decide who lives or dies. At least I could decide tho. You'd just sit there with your "I don't know, let's help everyone" pants on. Let's open the borders than, every South American is a human just like you, let's help all of them get the American dream. Also...way to go with the condescending tone, nice civil debate turned hostile.

As I told pawnman, it's really easy to set up a hypothetical scenario that allows you punt the football out the stadium. As I did earlier, I could introduce a few complications and complexities to your example and you, also, wouldn't be able to create such an obvious answer. You're not a surgeon, pawnman is not a surgeon, and neither of you have been faced with these false dilemmas, nor do you know of anyone who has. I know that's sort of blunt, and I risk raising your ire by pointing that out. However, I can be reasonably certain that you will never be in that situation or have the ability to comprehend all the nuances and variables required to make such a decision. So... for you to profess that you have the knowledge and moral authority to make a life-death decision in a this unrealistic hypothetical is more than a little off-putting. You don't get to decide who lives or dies in the ER and, thankfully, you never will.

Applaud your indiscriminate empathy but you cannot hide behind "my action is no action/I don't know" if you are a leader. If there were to be another harsh outbreak, and hospital were to be over run, decisions have to be made. Do you save someone who at least tried to save themselves? If you had two car crash victims come in, identical traumas, your the only surgeon on staff, do you save the one who wore a seatbelt or the one who did not? I do want to point out that there are two "no shot" groups. I think there is a group who is legitimately scared about the shot not being tested enough. I empathize heavily with these people, they are just trying to stay safe and make the correct call like anyone else. The other group is trying to prove some political point/live up to some tough guy ethos/fvck covid I ain't no bitch. Some people are just difficult for the sake of being difficult and it has complicated this entire process.

Retirement outprocessing is mind blowingly simple. I probably spent about 1/2 a day emailing/geting signatures and was done. Medical takes the most lead time.

So until the solution is as bad as the problem, only then will you be open to looking into possible risks of the solution? How is that reasonable? People should know all the risks of CV19 and all the risks of the potential solution. I’m not suggesting taking VAERS completely at face value. To draw an analogy, sexual assault is largely self reported. Are victims always telling the truth? some guys at Duke would beg to differ. But every self reported sexual assault case should be given due diligence. Bottom line, VAERS data needs to be given due diligence and to my knowledge it hasn’t. I could be wrong though… (Pawnman isn’t that tough to say?)

This is fascinating stuff. However, that's an unfair caveat, because there are no equal medical situations. A scenario where you would have to choose between two identical human beings and the only basis for your decision being, one is vaxxed, one is not, simply cannot exist. The important information I gather here is that we have reached a point where I can give a person an unlikely hypothetical scenario, and their beliefs over such an unclear, widely debated issue allows them to so quickly attest that they would be willing to remove someone's life over it. Dark times are ahead.

I completely agree that we need to go to great efforts in order to keep our economy open and running. If only there was an easy, relatively cheap, safe, and effective way to treat a disease that has killed hundreds of thousands and has the potential to sicken and kill many more, all while keeping main street open. Hmmmmmm 🤨

Last time I checked, one of the tenets of Western medicine is that we don't make morality judgements when deciding who to treat. I kind of prefer it that way. Here's my answer to your old age example: It depends on what he died of. Old age? Well, kinda hard to argue with that one, but if he was murdered we wouldn't just say "well he was about to die anyway" and then decline to investigate and prosecute the murder.

Mosley sort of did. He refused to invest in expansion of forces CENTCOM wanted in favor of forces necessary vfor 5th gen war and was fired for it.

The irony... Quibbling when a test pilot and 11F tells you it's legit, then you start slinging WO around. With no idea who else is talking to you. Take a breath, maybe if everyone is telling you you're wrapped around the axle about nothing, just maybe it's you. And yes, I put the UH-60J in my bio.

Guessing you don’t like patches either if you don’t like nitpicking

I have to agree. The irony is this kind of nitpicking is exactly why the really smart people want nothing to do with politics.

It isn’t only fat f*cks and 87 year olds with diabetes cramming Twinkies down the hatch who are getting snuffed out tho. Known of a few who have gotten taken out/ended up hospitalized and they weren’t the “roll through Walmart in a scooter with 4 boxes of snickers” types. The ones who died were older, but not anything where you’d be like “he was going any second anyways”, tho I am sure those people are much more likely. To say well “death is part of life, oh well” and “appeal to emotions” is kinda weak. Why not jump off a bridge tomorrow than? All of us are checking out in the end no matter what, that is indisputable. Wanting to live for yourself and help others/your emotions are what makes you “alive” in the first place. It is the reason I’d bet you’d fight with everything you have if you thought you were about to eat it (pretty sure you fly fighters if I recall). Nihilism is dangerous way to live, even if it does appear to be scary true. Seen Collateral?…great movie. Cruise’s best performance IMO, makes Top Gun look like amateur hour. I will back your actual argument tho. Everyone makes choices based on what they are comfortable with. Some are comfortable popping a wheelie doing 100 on a bike with no helmet on in Connecticut. Is that person an idiot? Depends. Maybe to him it’s worth the risk. Just like it’s worth it for some to fly a blob of metal with missiles hanging off the wings. I know people who think stepping into a single engine plane is “bat shit crazy”, but smoke a pack a day. We all have different risk tolerances/opinions on “when it’s worth it”, and "when it's not". Hey, alcohol is legal. Don't like 15K die a year from DUI accidents? Why not ban alcohol again? Because society has decided the risk "is worth it". Some people would rather risk it with the shot, some with all natural COVID. To each their own, but I am sick of the conspiracy theory BS. People should not be forced to get the shot IMO, even if all the smartest people in the world tell them “hey, you should get the shot”. But be consistent. The idea that a cruise line is "oppressing" you for wanting you to have a vaccine before you jump onto a crowded boat and head out to the ocean is just baffling. If you get sick are you going to cover the tab for an airlift off the boat? For those who feel so strongly about the “oppressive” shot issue, they should also agree that every hard drug in the United States needs to be legalized tomorrow. You have no right to tell someone what they cannot put into their body, any more than you don't have the right to tell them what they have to put in their body. Why should some 13 year old girl in Mexico be raped and have her head chainsawed off from cartel violence so that a bunch of NYU prep school kids can do lines of blow in the club? Where's the outrage? Legalize it all and end the violence chain.

Indeed. Neither does the F-15 listed in her bio. To move the thread back on topic... I can't help but wonder if the admin is partially relieved for Hurricane Ida to distract from Afghanistan. I imagine we will see a huge national relief response with lots of media coverage. Good for the folks dealing with yet another hit, but I hope we still see some accountability on the the Afghanistan debacle.

I threw up in a -141 once, should put it on my resume?

5-10 years, based on the historical timeline for vaccine discovery/testing/authorization. I’m down for cutting red tape (of which we know there’s a lot of), so that’s taken into account for the lower end of the range. Now, if we come across a virus that has a 69% death rate, then you bet your ass it’s worth the risk to EUA something as fast as possible. But that’s not what COVID is, despite so many people acting like it is.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/afghanistan-debacle-fuels-general-officer-crisis?fbclid=IwAR0VjSz-rb_E4TlObu2uYtC82Umxg358nA9wgs9Pa0eHqAlSICijzKkWzEA

Your argument incorrectly categorizes everyone in medicine into the same bucket, from the whackos pushing crystal healing to the PhDs at the CDC. No matter what, “they” are the “medical professionals.” The truth is the folks that were saying that protests for BLM were not super spreader events - purely because it fit the liberal political agenda - do not represent the wide body of science. Pretty sure there are very few papers out there that would corroborate MSNBCs claims that protests are no big deal. Remember when Fauci bought off on the liberal agenda and said that the BLM protests were okay? Oh, right. He didn’t. He said “avoid crowds of any type.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/healthcare/509961-jim-jordan-presses-fauci-on-protests-covid-19%3famp You provided an absurd overgeneralization that wasn’t related to the discussion at hand, I provided an absurd point back. Trying to discredit scientists by cherry-picking idiots that went on CNN for political gain is disingenuous. For the record, I am equally as disgusted by how liberal media - not scientists - treated the BLM protests in regards to COVID as I am by the current conservative media is in regards to the vaccine.

I mean there is more than enough reporting sources flat saying advice was given and overruled. They just aren’t stating it near as loudly and with outrage as if somebody else had done it. I mean yes I’m in the military and I’ll carry out orders even when stupid… but damn sure I’m gonna say to my boss this is F’ing dumb and will get people killed in the process of reminding us we could have done it better this other way. Fact is Biden and his staff gambled this wouldn’t happen, and lost. Now they are trying to slip out of that ownership with any chaff and flare they can throw. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I am trying to find some sliver of optimism in all of this catastrophe. Is this our "Suez moment?" If I wanted to be an optimist, I guess we can say few things were more humiliating than Saigon, but less than 20 years later, the Soviet Union was dead, Saddaam was spanked, and they had to coin a new phrase since "superpower" didn't seem adequate - "hyperpower." Similarly, Yorktown must have been pretty humiliating for the Brits back in the 1780s, but they had a helluva good run for the next 170 years or so. But man, oh man. I am racking my brains to try and find a more horrific month for American prestige and national security. I honestly think it's worse than Pearl Harbor, because AFG was so self-inflicted, and Japan was a helluva lot more formidable than goat herders yearning to live in the 7th century. I guess it doesn't quite rise to the torching of Wash DC during the War of 1812, or the Union incompetence circa 1862, but this is all absolutely unbelievable. If all this somehow puts the brakes on wokey wokey wokiness/defund the police/COVID tyranny/southern border/$3.5T "infrastructure" bills, as the left's appalling incompetence and callousness becomes obvious and indisputable, and "orange man bad" starts to ring really, really hollow, then at least that's something.

I think that one of the very old posts, someone mentioned squeezing them in paper towels for the best results.