ViperMan

Mkay. I'm glad you never said it directly. I suppose you're unfamiliar with the concepts of implication or multiplication. You did strongly suggest those numbers, however, with the 5-15% death rate you quoted numerous times. Sooooo, 5-15% of 1.0M people per week is 50K - 150K. Since approx 16% of people in the US are over 70 yrs old, that means we should have seen approx 8K - 24K people (only those older than 70!) dying every week. We didn't see that. And many of us knew we weren't going to see that. And the actions our government took during those early weeks of January reflect their knowledge that we weren't going to see that, either. Some on this board are overly disturbed by others' lack of faith. Your numbers were and are wrong. So sure, you can state under oath that you didn't say it, but you said it. Anyway. The point is some of us knew this wasn't going to be as big a problem. Many others were running around freaking out and imploring everyone to share in their panic. I just felt like it was worth invalidating some of the previous BS on this thread a little bit more neatly now that we do know for sure.

I fail to see how this is ever the case. If my calculations are correct, you ALWAYS make more money by taking it as terminal leave and collecting BAS + BAH + Base Pay > Base Pay. Am I missing some detail?

@Negatory @Prozac : Now that we have more data, I would like to close out our conversation from back in late December/early January re: how bad Omicron was going to be, how worried everyone needed to be (i.e. panic, NOW), and what our society's response should have been going forward. The Science™️, is in, and it is settled: there weren't ~15K deaths per day from Omicron. Deaths did not exceed the 4x multiplier cited as panic porn - which is what was predicted for you guys on this very thread, since we knew then from South Africa that it was 70x more contagious than Delta. So I hope this can be at least one data point that you should be careful which "experts" you trust and who you outsource your thinking to. There's my credentials. I should now be more credible than Fauci in your eyes. It turns out out that my non-expert opinion was better than all the other "experts" out there that were cited by you guys. What's more? The "news" cycle this morning: "We may not have reached the peak, yet, but let's go ahead and drop all the mask mandates." So says Phil Murphy and other democrats (NJ, RI, NV, IL). I'm sure that has everything to do with the fact that it's as deadly as you all said, and nothing to do with the fact that the midterms are pending...yeah, couldn't be. I'm personally wondering why they're not sticking to the CDC's advice, which is "not so fast" when it comes to dropping the masks. What about the experts!?! LOL. The cognitive dissonance is so loud I can hear it outside their own rattle cans. Our response was and still is almost wholly subject to political calculation at this point. I can't wait for all those Dems to be taken to task on NBC/ABC/CNN/MSNBC next week for 'bucking' the experts as the R's were. I won't hold my breath though. https://www.nj.com/opinion/2022/02/the-end-of-mask-mandates-sheneman.html https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/local/2022/02/11/ri-covid-mask-mandate-indoors-schools-planes-buses-colleges/6736653001/ https://www.fox5vegas.com/coronavirus/gov-sisolak-lifts-mask-mandate-in-nevada-effective-immediately/article_78ae3250-89cf-11ec-b5e6-470f4b068c75.html https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-11/did-mask-mandates-work-the-data-is-in-and-the-answer-is-no CA, WA, OR, and a bunch of other Dem states to follow: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/covid-19-more-states-end-204102454.html Anyway, now that the data is there to support it and none of us needs to hypothesize (or appeal to the authority of so-called "experts") anymore, I thought it was important to publicly state, for the record, that I was right and you were wrong.

I would like to take a moment to note that NBC, this morning, is choosing to carry coverage of curling and ski-jumping on fake snow instead of covering the pending war that's about to break out in Europe. To be sure, Chuck Todd is a complete tool, but for one of the networks (and anchors) that couldn't stop squawking about Russia for four long years, you would think that this story would be right up their alley. Instead, they are making a conscientious choice to cater to their funding stream to serve advertisements to us in lieu of informing the public about the most consequential foreign disaster since Vietnam or maybe even Korea or WWII. At least on CBS I can witness Jake Sullivan stating for a second time in only a few months that "Americans should go ahead and evacuate themselves from harms way." What a great look. Here's a story about Russia and China using the Olympics as a platform to "partner up" against the West. And no one finds it odd that NBC is airing this event instead of putting Putin on "blast"?? Who's side is NBC on again??? JTFC. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-china-tell-nato-stop-expansion-moscow-backs-beijing-taiwan-2022-02-04/

Maybe this will help refresh your memory; I don't think it's a smart bet for ya...here's Mitch imploring his colleagues to not change the rules, in no uncertain terms, lest they come to regret it. So no, Rs have not been the ones in recent memory changing the rules of the game to suit their position - that is a distinctly democrat mode of operation. The whole reason for the filibuster is precisely so you don't have a group of 51v49, puffed chests, running amok with a "mandate" to "get things done." The Ds have 0 mandate. They need to govern with this as their reality - because if they do change the rules, you better believe it's gonna come back on them - hard.

Let's be honest, they're all 1's. The x/10 scale is just how close she is to "1".

https://www.timestables.com/ If you scale the populations of Japan and South Korea to make them equivalent to the US, you would get deaths in those countries to be about 50,000 and 38,000, respectively (they're actually 18,600, and 6300). This is minuscule when compared to the "850,000 OMG" deaths in the USA. Like 20x more people are dying from this thing on this side of the Pacific because...because...why, again??? In statistics class, we call this an outlier, and it points to something significant going on. Why, WHY are there so many fewer deaths in those countries when compared to ours? Do you not find this curious? No wonderings at all?

@nsplayr: first, I didn't, and I'm not, writing off old people. COVID kills people. Duh. Also, COVID has not killed everyone that the PTB say it has. If you can't see the distinction, that's fine with me. I don't really care. But there it is for you in black and white if you care to read it. If you also think that counting people as COVID deaths has not been incentivized, then I don't have much for you. The point of this discussion in my view, is to discuss all things related to the COVID pandemic - that includes what is counted as a COVID death, because, news flash: the more people the PTB tally up as COVID deaths, the more money they get. A few of these things smell suspicious to a lot of people who are voluntarily engaging in this conversation. Some of those are Why it took the WHO so long to declare the outbreak a pandemic, considering it had met the book definition LONG before it was actually declared as one publicly. Why it was verboten to question the origin of the pandemic. Why shutting down borders in some cases is ok, but not in others. Why our death rate is apparently worse than many other countries. I could go on. In short, though, the point is that the political response to this mess has been undeniably, nakedly, political. What has been acceptable for one party has not been acceptable for another - for reasons which are clearly political. If you've got space in your queue for a podcast, I recommend this one with Bari Weiss (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bringing-sanity-to-the-omicron-chaos-three-doctors-weigh-in/id1570872415?i=1000547881659). It was excellent. I don't care to make this personal, but if someone is in a hospital getting treated for lung cancer and they get COVID, did they die of COVID? Maybe, but not in my opinion. What about someone who is obese? Did they die of COVID? Maybe, but not in my opinion. Probably need more detail in most cases. I'm certain we disagree on these points. But to be clear, I don't dispute that it's a bad disease. I dispute that it's as bad a disease as those who are benefiting from it being the worst thing ever are calling it. ~850K people are dead. Ok. There are a lot of people in that group who had underlying conditions for which COVID was the straw that broke the camel's back - it was not the root cause. Here's a couple (https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-state-classifies-covid-19-deaths/article_297e3550-4131-11eb-9f01-ffe3e11d0f46.html, https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nypd-man-shot-officers-dies-coronavirus-70941694). It sucks people die. It sucks worse when their memories are dishonored by using them as pretext and justification to implement whatever policy goals they wanted anyway.

To address your quote directly, not every American has gotten, or will get, COVID. So 6.8 million Americans aren't going to be killed by COVID. You can multiply that by 340M, but you're going to get a ridiculous upper bound on how many people will die. And no, I'm not ok with that, but it's also not something that's going to happen. I hadn't even read Buddy Spike's comment about 98%. Whatever. But to do the math, if you get 2% "death rate" X 9% as deadly Omicron variant, you get .0018. Multiply that by 340M, and you get 612,000. That's how many people would die if every American got Omicron. 1/10 of your quoted rate. BL, I was only critiquing the propaganda that 850,000 Americans have died FROM COVID. That's a BS statistic used to fear monger, and is the only thing I was pushing back against. I guess I'm not sure what you're saying or what point is being made. IF 840,000 Americans have been killed by COVID, then out of 340M total Americans alive, you get a 0.2% COVID "death rate" - which to be clear, is completely invalid math. My point was that the government's figures re: COVID deaths have marked everyone who has died with COVID as a COVID death. This includes people who were likely to die anyway from whatever condition they had, or because they were in a nursing home and were part of an extraordinarily vulnerable population.

In no universe is this statement true. Deaths due to COVID or dying with COVID is undifferentiated in our tracking, which to be clear, is a feature for the PTB, not a bug. It has allowed them to propagate a narrative to justify all manner of policy-making that would be otherwise impossible. It's a bad bug that takes advantage of comorbidity. Now that Omicron is on the set, it's only a matter of time before the inevitable happens - that being the left in this country wakes up and admits the game is over. The new variant (and its derivatives) will be endemic, forever. It's breaking through three shots, masking, and everything else. Even they are going to have to wake up and realize that all the restrictions they're trying to implement are futile.

Here's the thing. If it was total bullshit, it would have warranted and received zero response. Absolutely zero response. The fact that it has received a major response, being addressed by the man himself, and also is now "under investigation" is all you need to know that the allegations are fully credible. And you know what? Someone acting with integrity in the face of other people acting with none is never a foul.

Dude, I'm sorry, but no. Just no. The obesity rate in Korea and Japan is approx 4% and 3% respectively. The obesity rate in the USA is 10x those numbers. So no, I'm sorry, it was not diligent masking that resulted in less death in those cultures. It's the fact that they weren't twinkied tinderboxes. https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/obesityandtheeconomicsofpreventionfitnotfat-koreakeyfacts.htm https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14321/?ln=en https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/health/covid-fat-obesity.html https://www.science.org/content/article/why-covid-19-more-deadly-people-obesity-even-if-theyre-young https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211020/even-with-mild-covid-obesity-may-mean-worse-symptoms#1 https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html Occam's Razor suggests that this is the, or close to the, root cause of why our populace has had a relatively hard time with this disease when compared to other cultures. Standing by for correlation does not equal causation flags.

Well fine, @Pooter, but to be clear, a pandemic is defined as spread of a disease affecting a large population over multiple geographic areas. If you're just going to willy nilly change the definition to mean a pandemic equals people dying, then yeah, sure, you can argue anything you want. But over here in my world, words mean things, and those meanings are imbued with importance, especially when you're arguing or debating a point. It's fine if you don't care about people getting the sniffles, but I assure you, infectious disease experts care about the uncontrolled spread of disease, not solely those diseases which are killing people. And to your point about mandates, this is where we depart ways. YOU don't think it is an undue burden on SOMEONE else? So therefore it isn't? That's our logic now? My, how bourgeois and enlightened of you.

It seems you skipped over my first attempt to provide you clarification. Please post my statement where I said cases would not exceed 250K per day. You know what, nevermind. I'll do it for you. Here's the first re-attack again if you choose to read it. From this point forward, I'm going to have to defer to someone else on this forum to help explain to you that I was doubting the sincerity of the people in charge given the assumptive death-rate you panic-stricken posters seem to think is imminent. Not that we would get to some arbitrary number of infections per day. Anyway, I guess the big guy (and maybe #2 also?) is giving some speech right now about how Jan 6th was supposedly the end of America as we know it. I think you should keep screaming from the mountain tops, @Negatory, because it's not possible in my world for them to be so highly dedicated to political theater in the face of impending doom. I feel like you know something they don't. Hell, you probably do, and if so, you really need to be spending your time reaching out to people who can make some substantive change, rather than enlightening all of us air force pilots on this small corner of the internet called baseopsforums.com because I really feel that we're not your intended audience. You have received knowledge that needs to be delivered to the people at the top of our government, because it's obvious to me that they don't have the same information you purport to have. No one here is going to be able to implement any further societal restrictions, or enact a lock-down that will save us from the tidal wave of death that is headed our way. You're really wasting your time with us. Sorry to say, you have been standing in the wrong line at the DMV. By way of implication, you seem to believe that for a few weeks starting in ~ mid-January the USA is going to experience about 300-500K deaths, right? This approaches Civil War deaths. They PTB cannot both know that we're going to experience that level of pandemic death and destruction, and simultaneously be placing focus on a riot that got out of control a year ago to make a political stump speech. Or hell, maybe they can because they are that cynical. I guess we'll see. In the meantime, I'll continue to scoff their sincerity, competence, and your reading comprehension.

What platform?

LOL "Hey, 2...what the hell's with all the bbq sauce in your helmet bag???"

Fine. But are YOU ok with those things I've listed, and if so, why? If not, why not? What is your opinion?

So in-restaurant dining, football games, and the like are all ok with you then? Football playoffs are all good? If so, what is the big deal then and what is this conversation even about anymore? I'm just so confused at the apparent inconsistency between what we have seen thus far, and what the prediction is, and the difference between the two. I'm not an idiot, and I just can't reconcile it. Also, I'm not predisposed to giving these people the benefit of the doubt anymore just playing my violin and being polite to all the other people who seem content to just go down with the ship.

Mmmmmm...I think they know, because it's what the preliminary data shows. If it was 70x as infectious with the same death rate (or worse, possibly) do you think they'd be justified in not locking down again? Would they be justified to allow college football to continue? How about in-restaurant dining? Seems to me that it was all well and good to lock down last year, but now for some reason it's unacceptable. Why is it different now? Why aren't we locking down? Not why won't we lock down in a week or two, why haven't we already locked down? Ask yourself that.

I'm not surprised by this. Omicron is like, what, 70x as infectious as the other variants? And it can break through multiple shots? My point - which I include again below for your convenience, so you can read it again - is to say that I don't believe the HYPE around this next variant. All I'm saying is that they are either: Lying about what they think will happen re: the death rate. So cynical that they are right about impending doom and don't have the balls to act, or just don't care. It's one of those two things. Neither one is complimentary to the administration. Now, if they suspect that literally a 100,000 people will be dying every week with this thing and they don't lock down? Hmmm...I'll be looking for LOTS of resignations from the people in charge of this thing. They have the power, and if they don't exercise if for political reasons, then they are done. More than they already are. Thus far, Omicron has not been the scourge it could have been. It's highly infections, but not very virulent. 14 people have died in the UK (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-says-14-deaths-129-hospitalised-by-omicron-2021-12-22/) as of a couple days ago, and more will. Here are some unavoidable facts: This bug is EXTRAORDINARILY transmissible. Regardless of vax status. This bug is highly likely to infect you. Regardless of vax status. If you get it, you are highly likely to spread it. Regardless of vax status. If you wear a mask, you're probably doing something, but not much to help avoid spreading or catching it. So, with that established, what is the point of all the panic? What is the point of mandates? What is the point of calling it a "pandemic of the unvaccinated"? How about we just let people be educated about the disease and their options, and call it a day? That's my vote.

No, to answer your question directly, but please don't miss the point of mine. There is an important distinction to be made here. All those vaccines have been around for years (decades), they are well-understood, old technology, and most importantly, they have become part of the array of things the public accepts (see: seatbelts, no-smoking in public places, airplanes, catalytic converters on your car, etc.). There is a long list of things the American public finds acceptable that could be construed as restrictions on muh'freedom. For some reason, all those things are cool. The difference, though, is that our government has done an absolutely first rate job over the last two-ish years, giving people all manner of reasons to be suspy of what the hell is going on and in many cases to not accept the COVID vaccines as part of that "array" of things. For example: Democrats feigning suspicion of a vaccine having anything to do with Trump Republicans feigning suspicion of a vaccine having anything to do with mandates Our whole-of-government response to any discussion surrounding the origin of COVID (i.e. our attraction to the natural-origin story sans evidence) The PTB labeling anything suggesting a lab-leak to be "conspiratorial" Our holyamazeballz! response to the initial reports of 94-95% vaccine effectiveness! Our subsequent lack of an accountable discussion that recognizes these vaccines function more as therapeutics, rather than as vaccines as we all traditionally understood them Our initial government response to call travel restrictions 'racist' Our later governmental response to not call the same travel restrictions 'racist' The initial edict to not mask up - the later mandate to do so The encouragement to go eat out in China town, followed by silence two weeks later when COVID exploded in NYC The focus on passing BBB with all manner of social hand-outs and goodies, as opposed to you know, focusing on this disease that is supposedly going to destroy the world The contrast between what was considered "ok" last year (BLM protests, tearing down statues, rioting, calling racism a 'public health crisis, etc) and what "wasn't ok" (going to work, going to school, going to visit your family at Thanksgiving) In short, our collective response to this situation has been fully inept from the word "go" and it has continued to be inept. Worse yet, in the backdrop, there has been a constant drone of misinformation and a steady unwillingness of people on both sides of the isle to fairly address critiques coming from the other. All that to say I'm not anti-vax. I'm merely saying that when you take the sum total of the above self-contradictory set of environment variables, you are creating and enhancing the conditions that give people legitimate reasons to push back - and not all of those people are tin-hat types. Moral of the story, we screwed up, and now we need to eat our humble pie. Which in this case, means you encourage people to get vaxxed, while the rest of us move the F on with our lives. ///////// And as far as the FDA is concerned, they have a very important role to play, but I also think their function has been largely co-opted by other industries in our corporatist society. For example, in order for something to be considered "food" in America, it can't be shown to cause harm. For something to be included in food in European societies, it must be shown to contribute nutritional value. Forgive me, because that is a complete paraphrasing of something I was made privy to a long time ago, but it stands out in my mind as an important contrast between how our society functions vs how others' do. Why is our system like this? Probably because our governmental organizations are run by industries that write rules to benefit themselves (see Agit Pai as the FCC chairman). That's a huge problem. So yes, while a properly sanctioned FDA would and can serve a vital public health function in the USA, ours currently is functioning sub-optimally. For example, we should probably have laws that preclude high-fructose corn syrup from being in everything, but we don't.

Douchebags often serve an important roll in our society. Here's one saying the emperor has no clothes, and even though it's offensive and uncouth, it does a great job highlighting the lengths to which the rest of the establishment is failing to hold power accountable and failing to have important conversations. But yeah, it's probably more important that we all just continue playing our violins.

Dude, this is the prototype of an ill-formed hypothetical, meaning: it has to intentionally side-step and ignore other 2nd and 3rd order things that would happen in such a situation in order to produce its "point." Ok, so in your construction here, you posit a virus that will kill 320M Americans? Meaning it is going to both infect, AND kill EVERYONE? Ok, I can roll with that. Mandates still aren't required. If such a disease arrived on set, you'd have people locking themselves down, and killing each other to get the vaccine. You think you'd need to mandate it at that point? Lol. Move down the continuum from there, and people's collective behavior appropriately balances it all out. No one is "accepting" any excess deaths.

I guess, but not really? I was really just making a point about how people love to discredit a person or a group of people vs. engaging with the idea and addressing it directly - something I think you were doing by referencing that website. Boy cries wolf. Broken clock is right twice per day. The emperor is wearing no clothes. Whatever. Plenty of allegories illuminate our tendency to miss the truth intentionally or accidentally. Either way, I think a better way to engage is to look at the object, vs look at what someone else is saying about the object because no matter what, you're taking it through their filter. Honestly, I think we have all lost the thread of what we're talking about. What are we all even arguing about anymore? People are right/wrong about different things to varying degrees. Bottom line, proof is proof. Calling it "extraordinary" is much more a statement knowledge state of an individual, rather than a statement about the evidence itself. Plenty of good pilots have crashed good airplanes - you know this. Does that make them bad pilots, or people who made a mistake? Again, it's just better to address the topic rather than the person/group.

I know nothing of the CCCA, but if we're attacking organizations based on who they are vs what they're saying, we are probably masking a weak position. Remember, the WHO is not allowed to acknowledge that Taiwan is an independent nation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM). That in and of itself means they have at least some level of inside political discourse - which indicates their positions and policies are beholden to those same politics. I suppose that discredits them in your eyes, right?