Lord Ratner

There it is, the overstep. Definitely a troll. You had me for a while, well done 😂🤣

I find those who have difficulty understanding the convictions of others rarely have particularly meaningful convictions of their own. So he probably won't.

My mistake, I thought we were in a thread talking about COVID mandates. If I knew we were going to quibble over context-free interpretations of my post, I would have made it simpler to follow for you.

I don't have to, we have a pandemic that tested the theory for us. We also have countries and states with vastly different vaccination rates and preventing policies and guess what, the spread doesn't correlate. Univariate analysis works in a petri dish, not a society. Two weeks to stop the spread. Masks. Six feet spacing. Pre-travel testing. Vaccines. And according to the figurehead of the American effort, the plan until only recently was to "beat" COVID. Not slow it down, beat it. Do I need to Google the many times he claimed we needed to get to effectively zero cases before we can be humans again? I'll take my cursory understanding of human nature over your cursory understanding of growth dynamics any day. And what was even better, the self righteous pricks (like some in this very thread) who screamed the loudest about the callous disregard for human life and the raw selfishness of those who just wanted to accept COVID, maintain individual freedom, and move on with life, those "leaders" were caught in hair salons, destination weddings, expensive restaurants, public parks, Thanksgiving dinners, and ask manner of other normal human activities at the exact time they were being us for wanting the same. Math is great, but when 2+2=5 maybe you should take another look at the assumptions.

Correct, butt the actual delta matters. For example, a lot of medical studies talk about risk of rare diseases tripling, but it's from .06% to .19% Going from 38% to 25% is not going to have an effect on the outcome of a highly infectious disease.

Some strange banner ads are back. I'll see if I can get a screenshot

It's astounding people have been tricked into a risk management philosophy for COVID that they do not apply to any other aspects of their life.

Per studies already cited in this thread, the effectiveness of stopping the spread tapers off after about 4 months, depending on the variant it goes as low as completely ineffective, or somewhere around 10% more effective. If that's your standard for a mandate, then I think you're just the type of guy who loves being told what to do.

Ok. So why should a <21 get the shot then, if they don't want to? Again, it does not meaningfully stop spread. So... Why mandate it?

Do you though?

Tell me you've never been involved in a legal battle without telling me you've never been involved in a legal battle

As long as you also admit that the entire decision to mandate the vaccinations is equally political, I'll accept your premise. But if you think the mandates are somehow apolitical (justified using illogical reasons that don't hold up to reality) while those against the mandate are political (justifying their stance using illogical reasons that don't hold up to reality), then I'd say you are throwing some pretty big stones from a glass house. And with omicron, the mandates got even sillier.

No, you've actually been quite helpful in demonstrating that no amount of scientific evidence or reality is going to change California's mind, so why should the rest of us suffer? In the hopes that they'll stick to whatever new reopening metric they invent and subsequently disregard? If they fuck their ports up enough, it'll just cause new ports to spring up elsewhere. I'm sure Mexico would love the port business, and you can drive trucks from Mexico straight into Texas. Remember, the business interests that made California an economic powerhouse were born of a much more conservative governance. Stray too far from that and the business will (continue to) leave.

This is rather ironic to come from someone who believes in mandates, if I understand your position correctly. I'm a huge fan of the states' rights concept, so if California wants to lock down forever, more power to them. But mandating citizens in Texas wear masks or get vaccinated because California politicians have terrified their population is retarded. And anti-American.

If you live in a red state you'd know that commerce needs no such encouragement. People are uncomfortable because they are being told they should be. In the places where they aren't being frightened they are back to regular life. This stopped being about disease spread a year ago.

You completely ignored the study I posted, which is undisputed, that shows almost no infection prevention after a few months. Infection ≠ Serious hospitalization or death, which is reduced by the vaccine. But it doesn't reduce the spread for more than a few months, which means mandates are unjustified. But you're just trolling at this point, so carry on.

We need to get away from this idea of "what party you will vote for in the future." If you look at the electoral college in the past, presidents from both sides won overwhelming majorities of the country, and the states swung from left to right like a pendulum. We need to go back to that. There should be no Democratic or Republican voters. Those are teams. There are certainly liberal-minded and conservative-minded people, but those people should make a decision on which politicians and which parties represent their priorities at the moment they cast a vote, and just like those priorities change regularly and in response to the world around us, so too should the people you vote for each election. I know you aren't advocating for party loyalty, but I think we're at a point where even the language we use to describe politics is inadvertently reinforcing the notion that each of us belongs to a political team, and the voting trends support this notion.

*On the internet.

@pawnman, focusing on mandates specifically, how much do you feel they need to reduce the spread to justify a mandate (outside of the military)? A few posts back I posted the research showing minimal effect on spread. To be clear, I'm not arguing about hospitalizations or death. Clearly the vaccine works to reduce that. But it's that justification for a mandate?

Yup. Expect this story to disappear from the national coverage. But it'll get (R)s elected in WI.

If you were talking about a disease that had low transmission rate, *maybe* you could justify a minor reduction as successful. But you would also have to have a massively high infection fatality rate. Covid-19 is exactly the opposite. "Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus. A reduction was also observed in people vaccinated with the jab made by US company Pfizer and German firm BioNTech. The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab was 42%, but increased to 58% with time." So no, it does not meaningfully prevent transmission. Should we mandate things for "almost negligible" effects? You do have Google, right?

They (the political/activist class) are not ignoring reality, they are attempting to redefine it. It's the well-meaning liberals who fall for the lie who are ignoring reality. For now.

I've tried answering that question for a long time. Since the Kavanaugh hearings. The voters' mindset I get, they just believed the lie they were told. But the people in that picture know they are lying. Why? I think it's because this has become the religion of the progressives. The dogma of power hierarchies and systemic oppression (that old friend, Marx), the original sin of slavery, and the requirement that you proclaim your faith despite what your lying eyes see. There are hymns (SJW vocabulary like antiracism, unconscious bias, systemic racism, white rage, whiteness, privilege), prophets and priests (Ta- Nehisi Coates, Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo), tithing (political campaign donations), confession... The list goes on. And just how the Catholic Church reacted horribly to the enlightenment, and nearly every scientific discovery that even remotely challenged the church's narrative, the progressives *hate* anything that threatens the "perfect word" of their God: the evil and racist nature of the American system, in which there is no justice for the oppressed. That's why they hated Rittenhouse so much, and it's especially why they hated the Darren Wilson case so much, and why they completely ignored the Eric DeValkenaere case. The first case attacks the purity of the cause. If Kyle was justified, then that night in Kenosha really was a riot, not "mostly peaceful protesting" for black rights. The second case reminds us that cops are more likely to be killed by black people than black people are likely to be killed by cops. There are very few actual cases of cops killing unarmed black people on which to build this vision of wide-spread sport-hunting by the police of minorities; Michael Brown was a martyr turned villain. And the last case proves that there is infact justice for minorities in America. Once you accept that the people driving the progressive movement know the narrative they are promoting is false, it becomes a lot easier to predict the behavior. The things you focus on and ignore when protecting a lie are different than when protecting the truth. Gaslighting, straw men, ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority, false equivalency... All tactics to distract from a weak position. They have committed to the fundamental notion that America is broken and needs to be radically changed. Build back better, right? They want the "new America" but lack the justification, considering the wild success of the American experiment for *all* citizens. So they are just making it up. Now that they are committed, and their power is tied to that cause, what choice do they have?

When did the burden of justifying mandates fall on the mandated? Vaccination does not stop the spread of Covid. I wish it did, but it does not. In light of this unfortunate news, the case for mandates fails. The virus is too transmissible and the vaccine is too short-lived. And contrary to 18 months of catastrophism, there are no longer wide-scale hospital overloads beyond what hospitals usually operate at. People shouldn't have to resort to religious or medical excuses to avoid doing something they don't want to do when it doesn't even serve the greater good. Vaccinating protects yourself. It does not offer long- or medium-term protection to others. You are either ignorant of the science or subconsciously turning this into a disciplinary fight. Because I said so...

Don't call them that, please. I know what you are trying to convey, but this war is going to be won through a split in the Democratic party, where the more temperate liberals cast out the progressive/socialist/Marxist radicals. That split is going to take *a lot* of dialog between conservatives and liberals. "Woketarded shitlibs" does nothing but shut off the listening part of the brain for anyone who remotely identifies as liberal. It's a free country, so do what you want, but realize you are exacerbating the problem and empowering actual "Woketarded shitlibs" by using childish language that they will use to keep the rational liberals on their team.