OT: The Official COVID/Omicron Variant+ thread

[Jeff Van Gully]

and y'all know my stance on these conversations. i don't care for the tone and approach of the people i agree with. i understand the frustration and i share in it. but we're not going to get anywhere if all we're trying to do is "a ha" and "gotcha" one another.

[HarthorneWingo]

and y'all know my stance on these conversations. i don't care for the tone and approach of the people i agree with. i understand the frustration and i share in it. but we're not going to get anywhere if all we're trying to do is "a ha" and "gotcha" one another.

Tone is important

[Jeff Van Gully]

Maybe he’s a closet Knicks fan and now he can’t go to any game at MSG because he’s not vaxxed. By from what I’ve heard of him, this is all shtick. Could it be that he is vaccinated? That’s all I can come up with.

I don’t ever recall him being pointed out at Knicks’ games. I mean people hate his fcking guts.

my guess is that was negative coverage against the knicks/MSG vaccination mandate for entry.

I thought it was a City law.

i don't know. i don't live in NYC, so i am not sure about what's going on with the local ordinances. my hands are full with the death piles down south.

i did pop by real quick for game 1 at MSG and i sat in that upstairs vax section. then after that, if i recall correctly, MSG decided to only let fans with proof of vaccination in. and the market makes that an easy call. you'll find enough vaccinated knick fans to fill MSG in the postseason for sure.

[Jeff Van Gully]

and y'all know my stance on these conversations. i don't care for the tone and approach of the people i agree with. i understand the frustration and i share in it. but we're not going to get anywhere if all we're trying to do is "a ha" and "gotcha" one another.

Tone is important

sometimes the most important. i know i have missed out on valuable life lessons because of how i was approached. i'm a proud man and will shut someone out (or worse) pretty easily.

[iLLmatic860]

Whats a good rebuttal to people who say something along the lines of “To the people who take the vaccine and say “theyve done their research “ well guess what, you are the research”

My girlfriend has her friends getting in her head and lol ( we both took our first shot yesterday)

why would you think that's a productive conversation?

the overwhelming majority of people wouldn't know research methods if they beat them in the face. it takes time and training to learn how to research. i suspect you are talking to people who define google searches as research. the literature review for my doctoral dissertation took months -- on one subject that i am considered a subject matter expert in. so...

i am far more interested in having real, human conversations in good faith. that whole energy is wrong and a big part of the reason why we can be manipulated to where we are. why do algorithms push us into extremes? because people are having ridiculous zero-sum polarization discussions about everything on social media.

as for your loved ones (such as your girlfriend), i would just kindly and empathetically guide them toward reputable and trustworthy information sources. but there's the rub, right? who knows what's trustworthy? who trusts?

wish i had an easier answer for you. but for me, regardless of viewpoint, people coming together to discuss things in good faith usually yields good results.

Yes that’s true I agree but For the record her friend doesn’t even know we got vaxxed. She just shared an anti vax post which made my gf think about something along the lines of what you said. ( who should we trust) Either way with how everything is going in Florida we don’t regret our decision. I was more just trying to tell her, don’t listen to your friends. I’m just not very educated on these vaccines. I try to avoid these conversations in real life especially with anti vaxxers. Imo there’s no point. People will always believe what they want.

[Jeff Van Gully]

Whats a good rebuttal to people who say something along the lines of “To the people who take the vaccine and say “theyve done their research “ well guess what, you are the research”

My girlfriend has her friends getting in her head and lol ( we both took our first shot yesterday)

why would you think that's a productive conversation?

the overwhelming majority of people wouldn't know research methods if they beat them in the face. it takes time and training to learn how to research. i suspect you are talking to people who define google searches as research. the literature review for my doctoral dissertation took months -- on one subject that i am considered a subject matter expert in. so...

i am far more interested in having real, human conversations in good faith. that whole energy is wrong and a big part of the reason why we can be manipulated to where we are. why do algorithms push us into extremes? because people are having ridiculous zero-sum polarization discussions about everything on social media.

as for your loved ones (such as your girlfriend), i would just kindly and empathetically guide them toward reputable and trustworthy information sources. but there's the rub, right? who knows what's trustworthy? who trusts?

wish i had an easier answer for you. but for me, regardless of viewpoint, people coming together to discuss things in good faith usually yields good results.

Yes that’s true I agree but For the record her friend doesn’t even know we got vaxxed. She just shared an anti vax post which made my gf think about something along the lines of what you said. ( who should we trust) Either way with how everything is going in Florida we don’t regret our decision. I was more just trying to tell her, don’t listen to your friends. I’m just not very educated on these vaccines. I try to avoid these conversations in real life especially with anti vaxxers. Imo there’s no point. People will always believe what they want.

i feel you. i say, if they are people you know, try to take the convo offline and have it in a place of trust. i had to dead facebook because everything was what you're talking about. someone lobs a grenade looking for a fight. people come at them with the smoke. everyone leaves worse off than where they started.

definitely try to ignore what you don't think is healthy. maybe pull the closer ones aside and ask to have a solid offline convo?

i wouldn't even touch the research quip. but i think it's a damn good conversation to talk about reasons why and why not. and fortify every point with data wherever possible. a lot of people talk research and are doing nothing but lobbing opinions and anecdotes around. we all lose when we do that.

[ophdog]

I just laugh at my antivaxx friends who are worried about what's in the vaccine meanwhile regularly take drugs from the sketchiest of people.

[Clyde_Style]

and y'all know my stance on these conversations. i don't care for the tone and approach of the people i agree with. i understand the frustration and i share in it. but we're not going to get anywhere if all we're trying to do is "a ha" and "gotcha" one another.

what also concerns me is how easy it is for anyone to turn any conversation about complexities of this nature into victories and defeats. The need to win is married to distrust of that which does not comply with your belief. Gamesmanship becomes phrases like Fake News.

Follow that logic and you end up with the current distrust of science. Belief overrides data much of the time.

Since most of us are not scientists we either defer to or deny the work of other scientists. You end up denying or tuning out large data sets of peer reviewed facts if your default position is distrust of scientists in government positions or pharma.

Even if there have been abuses of trust historically, even atrocities perpetrated at the hands of medical practitioners, if there is no longer an ability to agree upon what constitutes scientific method and how it should be employed for the public good, then I'm afraid social order and democracy will dissolve over time. It will ultimately result in a majority willing to cede its rights to authoritarianism

It is actually counter-intuitive to surrender to oppression if you don't trust authority, but that is exactly what happens when society loses the ability to achieve consensus based on a collectively agreed upon set of principles for determining fact and fiction

The right wing propaganda of the past half century was designed to soften the minds of the populace and make it more susceptible to rule by demagogues. Seeding a distrust of science is fundamental to that agenda

[ophdog]

The choice is different for everyone to get it or not but a few points I wanted to make was

1. Don't let politics or news anchors sway your opinions. this is medical advice not a vote.
2. A majority if not all of the people on TV are vaccinated
3. Try to think of families like mine I have a son born with a breathing disorder.
4. If your not going to take it carefully consider how it will weigh on you if that decision cost you someone. There are people across this nation right now dealing with some major guilt and as time goes this will be much more of a topic.

[Clyde_Style]

The choice is different for everyone to get it or not but a few points I wanted to make was

1. Don't let politics or news anchors sway your opinions. this is medical advice not a vote.
2. A majority if not all of the people on TV are vaccinated
3. Try to think of families like mine I have a son born with a breathing disorder.
4. If your not going to take it carefully consider how it will weigh on you if that decision cost you someone. There are people across this nation right now dealing with some major guilt and as time goes this will be much more of a topic.

Fun FACT. Fox News requires its anti-vaxxing employees to be vaxxed. Tucker Carlson is vaxxed.

[Meat]

Whats a good rebuttal to people who say something along the lines of “To the people who take the vaccine and say “theyve done their research “ well guess what, you are the research”

My girlfriend has her friends getting in her head and lol ( we both took our first shot yesterday)

the unvaxxed are the research too, there control group

[dukeknicksirish]

4 of my relatives got the vaccine. There are 14 of us. 1 had a stroke with no medical concerns prior, 1 is sicker than ever before and 2 others have covid again. The other 10 have had no issues medical wise or have not gotten covid (again). Guess which ones got the vaccine?

I am not anti vax, but after seeing those few of my family members state after getting it, no thank you. If you want to get it and it works for you, awesome ! I am not getting it and will not after seeing results with my eyes, not "facts and numbers" i see come across my screen that I don't even believe are true anymore. Sad that we can't believe what the "news" says anymore as both sides are biased.




Also, pray for Australia ... not for the "covid" but because they literally have nation wide curfews and are arresting people who want to live their lives without fear. Sad

Which vaccine did they get?

and what do mean Again?

from your post it sounds like 2 our 4 vaccinated got Covid AGAIN and the 10 unvaccinated did not get Covid (Again). What does that mean? Did the 4 vaccinated get their vaccine after being infected? Did the other 10 get Covid originally?

I believe Johnson & Johnson

And the 4 that had Covid before all got vaccinated and then got Covid again recently . 10 of us who have not received it , 3 had Covid once prior and all 10 , who haven’t been vaccinated, have not gotten it again.

[Zenzibar]

I'm very curious to know where each of you believe this virus originated from: the Wuhan lab or wet market as originally reported?

I don't know. I consider the origins question above my pay grade and it's not really of interest to me. The virus is here and that's my problem.

If the USA was looking at war or sanctions with China over it I might consider the question further.

But if by investigating it's origins and have a discourse as to what our government knew or did not know, would it not lead to further examining the current direction we're being directed towards?

By avoidance of such discussion and beating down those with different and questioning attitudes, it only exaberates push back. Do you not think this is possible?

[HarthorneWingo]

and y'all know my stance on these conversations. i don't care for the tone and approach of the people i agree with. i understand the frustration and i share in it. but we're not going to get anywhere if all we're trying to do is "a ha" and "gotcha" one another.

Tone is important

sometimes the most important. i know i have missed out on valuable life lessons because of how i was approached. i'm a proud man and will shut someone out (or worse) pretty easily.

That Ron Mexico guy can get nasty.

[Barcs]

Watch on YouTube

Just curious. Did you post this because you believe it is truthful or not?

Exponentially more people have died from the virus than from being vaccinated. It's not even close. I can't imagine taking anybody seriously who has an Ivermectin sign. It's clearly just a grift, just like the hydroxychloroquine. Modern day snake oil, deceiving people into forking over money to them.

[Clyde_Style]

4 of my relatives got the vaccine. There are 14 of us. 1 had a stroke with no medical concerns prior, 1 is sicker than ever before and 2 others have covid again. The other 10 have had no issues medical wise or have not gotten covid (again). Guess which ones got the vaccine?

I am not anti vax, but after seeing those few of my family members state after getting it, no thank you. If you want to get it and it works for you, awesome ! I am not getting it and will not after seeing results with my eyes, not "facts and numbers" i see come across my screen that I don't even believe are true anymore. Sad that we can't believe what the "news" says anymore as both sides are biased.




Also, pray for Australia ... not for the "covid" but because they literally have nation wide curfews and are arresting people who want to live their lives without fear. Sad

Which vaccine did they get?

and what do mean Again?

from your post it sounds like 2 our 4 vaccinated got Covid AGAIN and the 10 unvaccinated did not get Covid (Again). What does that mean? Did the 4 vaccinated get their vaccine after being infected? Did the other 10 get Covid originally?

I believe Johnson & Johnson

And the 4 that had Covid before all got vaccinated and then got Covid again recently . 10 of us who have not received it , 3 had Covid once prior and all 10 , who haven’t been vaccinated, have not gotten it again.

OK, I'm assuming you're aware that the J&J vaccine is fundamentally different from the mRNA based vaccines provided by Pfizer and Moderna. IOW, the protection levels of the 2 shot mRNA vaccines are superior by a significant margin

[Clyde_Style]

I'm very curious to know where each of you believe this virus originated from: the Wuhan lab or wet market as originally reported?

I don't know. I consider the origins question above my pay grade and it's not really of interest to me. The virus is here and that's my problem.

If the USA was looking at war or sanctions with China over it I might consider the question further.

But if by investigating it's origins and have a discourse as to what our government knew or did not know, would it not lead to further examining the current direction we're being directed towards?

By avoidance of such discussion and beating down those with different and questioning attitudes, it only exaberates push back. Do you not think this is possible?

No, I don't believe this is a conspiracy, because it inherently presumes there is complicity from tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals from executive branches to dozens of independent research teams, manufacturers, doctors, government bureaucrats, manufacturers and on down through the supply chainwhich is what it would require. If such a cabal existed there would be countless opportunities for whistle blowing.

The only people blowing whistles are conspiracy makers and those willing to spread them. It is naive to think this was cooked up in a lab in order to inoculate and control humanity and everyone in in the supply chain is in on it. There is no boardroom keeping those secrets and enlisting scientists and knowledge workers en masse to do their bidding like puppets. It's ludicrous.

You get puppet masters inside cults and autocratic regimes. We are nowhere near the situation of a global cabal that has obedience from the whole planet. We have competing interests instead, not coordinated masterminds on that scale.

Is it possible that lab experiments on viruses could escape and cause havoc. Sure. The problem with perceiving those activities as bio-weapons is you can only use them against enemy nations if you have a cure for your people and you're willing to vaccinate your own population before you release it. And that will not happen without it being discovered either. Viruses don't care about their own origins. They just breed.

The paranoia around shadowy operatives trying to control you with vaccines is an excellent distraction. The planet is dying and you think some group of bad guys need to weed out the population and plant chips in the rest? The planet will take care of that for us and you don't get chipped by a vaccine. That is one of the worst conspiracy theories ever. Just bizarre and ridiculous

What we do have are billionaires and future billionaires building fortunes on catastrophy products. It is going to be a booming business in addition to the water purification and immunity supplement billionaires who will take advantage of our failing environment

Animal to Human virus migration is just going to accelerate because of this destruction. You want justice? Save the environment, the animals, the bees, the plankton and then the humans might have a place to live too. If not, you won't need any labs to produce multiple animal to human viral outbreaks

[Jeff Van Gully]

Tone is important

sometimes the most important. i know i have missed out on valuable life lessons because of how i was approached. i'm a proud man and will shut someone out (or worse) pretty easily.

That Ron Mexico guy can get nasty.

[Zenzibar]

I don't know. I consider the origins question above my pay grade and it's not really of interest to me. The virus is here and that's my problem.

If the USA was looking at war or sanctions with China over it I might consider the question further.

But if by investigating it's origins and have a discourse as to what our government knew or did not know, would it not lead to further examining the current direction we're being directed towards?

By avoidance of such discussion and beating down those with different and questioning attitudes, it only exaberates push back. Do you not think this is possible?

No, I don't believe this is a conspiracy, because it inherently presumes there is complicity from tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals from executive branches to dozens of independent research teams, manufacturers, doctors, government bureaucrats, manufacturers and on down through the supply chainwhich is what it would require. If such a cabal existed there would be countless opportunities for whistle blowing.

The only people blowing whistles are conspiracy makers and those willing to spread them. It is naive to think this was cooked up in a lab in order to inoculate and control humanity and everyone in in the supply chain is in on it. There is no boardroom keeping those secrets and enlisting scientists and knowledge workers en masse to do their bidding like puppets. It's ludicrous.

You get puppet masters inside cults and autocratic regimes. We are nowhere near the situation of a global cabal that has obedience from the whole planet. We have competing interests instead, not coordinated masterminds on that scale.

Is it possible that lab experiments on viruses could escape and cause havoc. Sure. The problem with perceiving those activities as bio-weapons is you can only use them against enemy nations if you have a cure for your people and you're willing to vaccinate your own population before you release it. And that will not happen without it being discovered either. Viruses don't care about their own origins. They just breed.

The paranoia around shadowy operatives trying to control you with vaccines is an excellent distraction. The planet is dying and you think some group of bad guys need to weed out the population and plant chips in the rest? The planet will take care of that for us and you don't get chipped by a vaccine. That is one of the worst conspiracy theories ever. Just bizarre and ridiculous

What we do have are billionaires and future billionaires building fortunes on catastrophy products. It is going to be a booming business in addition to the water purification and immunity supplement billionaires who will take advantage of our failing environment

Animal to Human virus migration is just going to accelerate because of this destruction. You want justice? Save the environment, the animals, the bees, the plankton and then the humans might have a place to live too. If not, you won't need any labs to produce multiple animal to human viral outbreaks

You don't believe in the straight-up experimentation of viruses on people by pharma and governments?

[Clyde_Style]

But if by investigating it's origins and have a discourse as to what our government knew or did not know, would it not lead to further examining the current direction we're being directed towards?

By avoidance of such discussion and beating down those with different and questioning attitudes, it only exaberates push back. Do you not think this is possible?

No, I don't believe this is a conspiracy, because it inherently presumes there is complicity from tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals from executive branches to dozens of independent research teams, manufacturers, doctors, government bureaucrats, manufacturers and on down through the supply chainwhich is what it would require. If such a cabal existed there would be countless opportunities for whistle blowing.

The only people blowing whistles are conspiracy makers and those willing to spread them. It is naive to think this was cooked up in a lab in order to inoculate and control humanity and everyone in in the supply chain is in on it. There is no boardroom keeping those secrets and enlisting scientists and knowledge workers en masse to do their bidding like puppets. It's ludicrous.

You get puppet masters inside cults and autocratic regimes. We are nowhere near the situation of a global cabal that has obedience from the whole planet. We have competing interests instead, not coordinated masterminds on that scale.

Is it possible that lab experiments on viruses could escape and cause havoc. Sure. The problem with perceiving those activities as bio-weapons is you can only use them against enemy nations if you have a cure for your people and you're willing to vaccinate your own population before you release it. And that will not happen without it being discovered either. Viruses don't care about their own origins. They just breed.

The paranoia around shadowy operatives trying to control you with vaccines is an excellent distraction. The planet is dying and you think some group of bad guys need to weed out the population and plant chips in the rest? The planet will take care of that for us and you don't get chipped by a vaccine. That is one of the worst conspiracy theories ever. Just bizarre and ridiculous

What we do have are billionaires and future billionaires building fortunes on catastrophy products. It is going to be a booming business in addition to the water purification and immunity supplement billionaires who will take advantage of our failing environment

Animal to Human virus migration is just going to accelerate because of this destruction. You want justice? Save the environment, the animals, the bees, the plankton and then the humans might have a place to live too. If not, you won't need any labs to produce multiple animal to human viral outbreaks

You don't believe in the straight-up experimentation of viruses on people by pharma and governments?

Did you even read what I wrote?