The Frankish Reich

Yes. https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/07/19/andrew-pekosz-delta-variants/ Of course, the problem is that with a pandemic it isn't enough to vaccinate the vast majority of people in a single country; the unvaccinated throughout the world provide the laboratories for mutations. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/01/1055803031/the-mystery-of-where-omicron-came-from-and-why-it-matters

So you're saying you took ivermectin because, after all, you didn't trust Big Pharma, and you took Big Pharma-created monoclonal antibodies because, well, having COVID is no time to be a political purist?

https://www.si.com/nfl/buccaneers/news/tampa-bay-buccaneers-bruce-arians-says-buccaneers-are-100-percent-vaccinated-against-covid-19 It's a Belichick-worthy form of "cheating" - the intense pressure brought by Arians (and I suspect Brady) on his players to all get vaccinated violates at least the spirit of the NFL-NFLPA agreement. Some may call it unfair, some may call it leadership. They had it, we didn't.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-booster-shot-anti-vax-reaction-1275660/ Even if he ultimately doesn't run again, he's definitely reading the polls and, umm, "adjusting" his messaging. I noticed this a couple weeks ago when formerly mainstream Romney Republican Hugh Hewitt interviewed Trump an openly encouraged him to run on two great achievements: 1. Operation Warp Speed - seize credit for pushing vaccine research and production! Claim to have shown the leadership necessary to turn the corner on the COVID situation in America. 2. The Abraham Accords - claim this as a huge turning point in U.S. foreign policy! https://hughhewitt.com/former-president-trump-on-boris-johnsons-woes-sidney-powells-dough-and-more/ Anti-COVID vaxxers, he just pulled the rug out from under you. It now has to become something wishy-washy like, "Yeah, it's a personal choice, and he made his choice and I'm making mine." But ... what's left of the "it's poisoning us, it's an instrument of government control," or [and these people show up here from time to time] "they are using it to monitor us/rearrange our DNA" opposition? I mean, a core belief is that the Democratic controlled government is forcing all of this vaccine nonsense on us, and if Trump isn't the Marvel Superhero standing alone against this, at a minimum he's the "guy who knows what's really going on." And face facts: he's decided it polls better to present himself as the Vaccine Savior rather than the Personal Freedom Anti-Mandate Defender. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-was-angry-at-capitol-mob-only-because-they-looked-cheap-and-poor-report/ He used you when it was politically expedient. He's kind of done with you now.

Rebel without a Brioche!

Well Chef Jim is all about retirement on here, so is Medicare not public money?

It matters to me because you are not signing a waiver that says "if I ever get a severe case of COVID, do not expend any public monies on me."

Read this thread - it makes a lot of sense to me.

Assuming is a lot of what goes on here. Was it you (or was it one of your fellow travelers) who just got through suggesting I'm busy hand-wringing, mask-wearing even when not required? Because I'm neither of the above. I want you - all of you - to get vaccinated. That's been proven effective. Masks? Not even close. At best we can say "probably a good idea in certain situations." And I believe those situations are very limited.

Agreed. And I think Mac will be exposed as perfect passing conditions become rare in December and January (assuming they don't draw all dome/warm weather playoff locations). But ... when you can run for 222 yards without even pretending to try to pass, well, then I can't argue with your strategy.

I pointed this out after the game - 1974, Jets at Bills. Joe Ferguson - nobody ever accused him of having a noodle arm - threw 2 passes. (He actually threw 4 - the first two were picked off but negated by penalties. After that, Lou Saban decided that trying to throw the ball at all was stupid.) The Bills won in the rain and wind. Joe Namath's coach wasn't afraid of him throwing the ball. He threw 3 INTs. You play to win the game. https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2021/12/07/patriots-three-passing-attempts-are-nfls-lowest-since-1974-bills-jets-debacle/

Now "they" are GIVING PEOPLE ANTHRAX in order to silence "their" critics who've revealed the ruse!! "They" are truly evil!!! "Their" evil knows no bounds!!!! https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wz5a/people-got-sick-at-a-conspiracy-conference-theyre-sure-its-anthrax

I am no youngster, and I regularly visit my elderly parents. The risk-benefit calculus clearly weighed against attending thousand-plus people events at this time last year. I am triple vaccinated now, so our my parents, and there is good reason to believe (in fact, it would be truly surprising if the opposite were true) that the recently vaccinated/boosted are very unlikely to have a severe case of COVID. My response was rational then. It's rational now. It's the world around us that's different, at least for those of us not cowering in fear at a little jab. That may have been what you meant to say. What you said is "they lead (sic)* us to believe that the virus hovered over mass gatherings," as in they led* us to believe something that isn't true. Otherwise your sentence made no sense whatsoever. *May we pause for a moment to consider the irony.

This is exactly what you said. Those damn fools (or manipulative liars; sometimes it's one, sometimes the other, sometimes, paradoxically, both) "lead (sic) us to believe that the virus hovered over mass gatherings." That. Is. Exactly. What. An. Airborne. Virus. Does.

Hmm, a deep suspicion of the profit motive. Veiled references to cabals and what "they" are trying to do to "us." Talk of opening ones eyes, to stop blindly believing what "they" tell us to believe. Tastes just a teensy bit like Das Capital to me, perhaps with some grated antisemitism on top. To make the society" [which of course consists of non-workers] "happy and people easier under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant as well as poor; knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied.

Well, o.k., but I'm not the one wringing my hands over a little jab. Man up, get the shot! Don't run off crying like my 4 year old daughter used to.

Again ... this has nothing to do with Amy Coney Barrett or Black Lives Matter protests. Your contention was that we were told - erroneously in your view - that large gatherings may be superspreader events. And yes, the ACB nomination event proved that that was true. The outdoor protests, it turned out, weren't superspreader events in and of themselves. That was just dumb luck since after the fact we discovered that outdoor events are generally safe. Just substitute "Sturgis Biker Rally" for "BLM Protest" and the same analysis applies. The bikers gathering outdoors = no problem. The bikers gathering in bars = big problem. Stop trying to inject the political character of the event in this discussion. Large indoor events were a terrible idea pre-vaccination, and are a pretty terrible idea for the unvaccinated today, regardless of whether they are a Rage Against the Machine Reunion Concert or a Ron DeSantis Is Definitely Not Running for President Rally. We are getting there. I am vaccinated/boosted, and I am about to attend a large Christmas concert event tonight. I wasn't able to do that last year, and even if I had been, I wouldn't have gone.

Let's call them "Capitalists." Let's call you a "Marxist."

Interesting. What is the little "Do Not Comply" button Ben has next to his name? Do Not Comply with what? Why not? Some of this seems to be anticipatory non-compliance. If they mandate this thing, I ain't gonna do it! What is the abstract value of "noncompliance" when it is not tethered to any specific mandate or request? I must conclude that this is political signaling. Except that ones unaware of the fact that they are parroting standard Marxist analysis, e.g., "They will never let it be over."

Just flagging all conspiratorial buzzwords for everyone's convenience. Here's a test for you. Many commenters here throw around terms like "commie" or "Marxist." The test: substitute the term "Capital" or "The Capitalists" for these vague ones like "they" (as used above) or even the more specific ones like "big pharma." So this one becomes: "Capital (the capitalists) have no intention of ending anything." Which almost perfectly aligns with how Marxists analyze such phenomena. I won't go there, but some do, sometimes explicitly, using "They" in an open anti-semitic fashion.

Bring it on ... ... seriously, though: I don't keep track of exactly who said exactly what. I am simply uninterested in carrying on DM conversations, etc. If I got it wrong, well, my mistake.

That was a terrible idea at the time. Since that time we've learned that the risk of transmitting COVID (at least the pre-omicron COVID; we have good reason to believe that omicron will behave similarly, but we don't know for sure yet) is extremely low in outdoors environments.

^This is what I was refuting with my reference to the ACB nomination event. We were led to believe this, and, interestingly, it was true. The virus did, indeed, hover in the air in that room and it did, indeed, infect many attendees, who then brought it into other rooms where it hovered until it was inhaled by the previously uninfected. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/03/politics/trump-covid-amy-coney-barrett-event/index.html The article lists the cases directly traceable to the event. There are no doubt many, many other cases two, three, four, or more degrees of separation from direct contact. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/03/us/rose-garden-event-covid.html Of course one of the people who probably got COVID at the ACB even was a fat 74 year old man who had to be choppered to a hospital to be given an experimental treatment developed by a Big Pharma company.

Funny, but I look forward to a future in which this comes true - a future in which biomedical innovation renders a pandemic a manageable problem.

Says one of our "Big Pharma is bad; they are profiting from this pandemic" crowd. Hmm, commies? Do I hear commies?