Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I like wearing masks. It cuts down on small talk and allows one to hide tells during contentious interactions. It also allows one to avoid interacting with annoying people ("I didn't know that was you in that mask...")

My critique is of the performative act of wearing masks in restaurants, or anywhere else, where large numbers of people will not be wearing masks. The way I see it, which seems the scientifically accurate assessment, is if one is vulnerable, there is no safe restaurant. People have to take off masks to eat, and drink, and if even only 1/5 of the people are doing that in a tight indoor setting, all people might as well be doing it.

A vulnerable person, or a person who aggressively seeks to avoid acquiring a variant, simply ought to avoid restaurants, bars, concerts, and anywhere else people are tightly packed or eating/drinking.

The futile performative acts of vigilance/compliance, such as requiring masks on the first floor of a courthouse, but not the floors above (yes, that's common), or forcing masking while walking but not while seated or eating, don't make sense, and are clearly designed merely to pay lip service to virus concerns, and in so doing also provide a false sense of security for some.

I guess it's understandable. The owners of establishments don't want the CDC saying, "If you're concerned or vulnerable, stay out of restaurants and concerts." But that's the truth.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

At 8 months pregnant, kiddo is pushing up on my lungs and diaphragm, giving me some shortness of breath. It's not my favorite way of moving around, but I can certainly tolerate a mask. Those who can't really need to seek some mental health treatment for the panic attacks.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

When I was just starting out I traveled a lot. One night a partner took me into the DC Northwest World Club. After a few free drinks I got the bright idea to buy a lifetime membership- I think it was about $2500- this was like 30 years ago. It became the Delta SkyClub- They don't even offer it anymore.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Yes, my office invented this rule. I had to give my former brilliant para a job rec so talked to em and mentioned "You don't have to wear a mask at your desk but have to wear one if you take a step away" and em broke into hysterical laughter "Oh they have force fields?"

The only rules I think have to be lived with are "You don't have to wear a mask when something is going into your mouth" whether it be a dental appliance or food. Not because there's some sense that it's OK -- it's not -- but because you don't have a choice about covering your mouth in that instance. Reducing viral load helps.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I just wanted to see this again.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

There is logic to the seating/eating thing, because you can set up social distancing at tables that you really can't while walking. But it's marginal as put into effect because, of course, you walk through the seating areas and they always want tables a bit closer than they should. and, of course, the wait staff are exposed to every diner if people don't mask up when they come over.

Boston is now checking vax cards for restaurants. That is a more effective policy.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Conservatives are violently opposed to COVID vaccination requirements, but don't have a problem with other vaccination requirements. There's no principle involved. It's just oppositional behavior.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Oh really? Read about HPV vaccine requirements.

And what other vaccinations are required? My state may vary from yours, but I know of no fed govt mandates for vaccines. It's optional. At the school board level, and perhaps the state or municipal level, yes, vaccines are mandated. If you don't get your kid vaccinated, the child can't attend or play sports.

And I love your use of the term "oppositional." As if people objecting to a mandate are all petulant little children. None may actually hew to the principle that people may choose for themselves (or be better incentivized at the municipal or state or school level). The inescapable corollary to comments like yours is that you, who assume you know what's best, are in a position to tell these people what to do.

I know what's best. But I don't think I should have the right to tell people what to do. I figure they can learn the hard way for themselves, or for those who do not get the vaccine and suffer nothing as a result of contracting Covid (the overwhelming majority of people), not learn anything.

"Oppositional," sure, in some cases, but no more laughable than the know-it-all authoritarianism with which your comment is freighted. As if you're of a unique position from which to judge.

You're so tone deaf sometime you don't realize it's voice exactly like yours that are half the problem. Those of us in the middle could probably corral these dimwits and get them to take vaccines. But dipshits make comments like yours and turn it into an argument of "real Murica" versus "coastal elites." And then any chance at compromise is lost.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Part of what I really like about Boston's vax card requirement is that it keeps people who get all upset about vaccines out.

Yeah, oppositional is the wrong word. Assaholic is the right work. Fucking assholes.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We have several businesses - for some reason described in the press as "restaurants" - suing the city over it's vaccine or test requirement. It definitely makes me more likely to dine in, but then again, I'm not dining, so hard to say what the net impact on business is.

One of the "restaurants" is a "sports" bar connected to a strip club that's owned by the local mogul of such establishments. I can image it is costing his other businesses.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Actually, calling them assholes would be better. It admits they have agency.

It's near impossible to change minds in this crazy polarized country, but from my experience with pains in the ass (and probably everyone else's), you've a slightly better chance if you call them assholes than if you call them mindless sheep with Pavlovian oppositional tendencies.

It's also worth noting, Libertarians call people sheep all the time and are pilloried for it. It's a joke, a meme. But when progressives do it, it's fine. ("Because, well, people are stupid sheep... But only when we say they're stupid sheep... Not when the libertarians say it.") Another double standard (one of a thousand) regularly found in current politics.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

There is a real minority of people who oppose vaccines generally, but they have not had a conservative valence, at least not until quite recently. A few years ago, lefty vaccine skeptics were in the news, and a number of prominent conservatives who have recently discovered principled opposition to vaccination said exactly the opposite a few years ago when some crunchy lefties were concerned about vaccines.

I love your conceit that conservatives don't mind vaccine requirements, they're just all stoked up about federalism and the idea that the national government is taking a power that ought to be reserved to the states. And you say I'm tone deaf? Get real.

A vaccine requirement reflects that you don't let people choose some things for themselves, like whether to get vaccinated, when their choices impose costs (deathly illness) on others. That's the principle. Almost no conservative is committed to the sort of extreme libertarianism that says that individual rights always trump the common good in the case of illness. As I was saying, most conservatives have never felt that way, and have recently discovered their "principles" because of the political moment. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives thought that people who might have been exposed to Ebola did not have civil rights and should be locked up to prevent exposure, which shows a strong commitment to contrary principles. Obama was the President then, and they were committed to saying he wasn't exercising enough federal power to protect everyone, not that those decisions should be made by local government or that people who might carry Ebola should just decide for themselves. Can you see why HPV is similar? It's not about the vaccination there.

In other words, "petulant little children" fits the bill much closer than your effort to put lipstick on a pig.

No, that's not a corollary, logically, but it does tap into the aggrieved conservative mindset and the fact that the conservative "principles" are more about some sort of resentment about what the rest of the country might be thinking about them than any kind of abstract commitment to libertarian ideals.

In a pandemic, I'm not the best person to tell these people what to do. Public health professionals are, because they have training and expertise in this area. Similarly, when I board a passenger jet plane, I do not insist that every person on board has the independent right to determine safety protocols, but that does not mean that I think I'm the person to tell them what to do. I put on my seatbelt and listen to the crew's instructions, even if I think I think some of them are stupid.

Yes, yes you do. If someone runs a red light and hits you, because they think they have the right to decide for themselves whether or not traffic laws apply to them, you will absolutely think they are a selfish idiot and an asshole, and should not be allowed to act that way without consequences.

What's the chance of compromise with people who are, fundamentally, oppositional? How does that work?

You trotted out Mike DeWine as a paragon of sensible leadership, in contrast to Democrats like Gavin Newsome. A Republican like DeWine gets to do shit without as many conservatives reacting oppositionally. I live in California. There are no moderate Republicans left -- the wing nuts have run them out of the party. Whatever Gavin Newsome does will be opposed by the conservatives here, and then thoughtful people like you will tut tut that Newsome's choices have made compromise impossible. Compromise is fundamentally impossible by people who form their "principles" by acting oppositional, and that is who most conservatives are now, on any issue that becomes politicized.

eta: BTW, I understand your wistful desire for some sort of compromise, that everybody just find a way to get along. That would be awesome. The problem is the significant minority of the population that forms their political views oppositionally, not those of us who point it out. The throughline of conservatism is greivance and trolling libs.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Earlier in the pandemic, the owner of a sushi place we used to go to sometimes was on the local news complaining about restrictions on dining in person at restaurants, and complaining about why the hospitals weren't doing a better job of increasing ICU capacity and staffing up. I understand why he wants to keep his business open, but at bottom it is an attitude of pure selfishness and indifference to whether other people get sick, and I'm really tired of people trying to dress that shit up as if there were some higher principle involved.

As John Kenneth Galbraith said, the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

And you’re engaged in Utopianism.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The city of Detroit, which voted 97% for Biden, has a 40% vaccine rate. Stop pretending it is only Trumpers.

It is a foul truth but people of color are very vaccine resistant. I believe everywhere, not just south of 8 Mile Road.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A jaded, world-weary fellow like you needs to call other people idealists.

The Galbraith quote didn't there. I don't know that the sushi shop owner is a conservative at all. He's just behaving selfishly.

And "selfish" is not the best description of the conservatives who have decided that having to wear masks or get vaccinated is an intolerable threat to civil liberties they hadn't thought about a few years ago -- the point is that they way they define their self-interest is malleable, not a simple fact in the way that an economist would think, but a posture they'll change for other reasons.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I certainly don't think it's only Trumpers who are reluctant to get vaccinated. Try reading harder. There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about it. The ones who are pretending that it is some sort of profound civil rights issue are, for the most part, conservatives who did not feel that way about vaccines until the last two years.

And then there's Sebby, who apparently has no problem with the infringement on his freedoms so long as his municipal government or school district is requiring vaccination, but sees an intolerable threat to his conception of federalism if the national government should do the same thing.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It’s pretty to think the “why” someone isn’t vaccinated matters, especially to a blog obsessive. But Covid doesn’t care why someone isn’t vaccinated.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That's funny, I could say something similar about conservatives. It's pretty to think that the elaborate principles trotted out to explain conservatives' behavior matter, but they don't. The point is, they are just acting oppositionally, and the make-believe principles are beside the point. It's turtles all the way down.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I’m a conservative? Sad. Read harder.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Yeah, there is resistance in all kinds of places, the Trumpers just get the biggest megaphone for it.

Some of Detroit is certainly vaccine resistance, but might some of it be related to access or fear of access? Especially among the undocumented or recently documented, there is a lot of fear of accessing services.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I like having you around to protect me from the neoliberal label. There are plenty of progressives who like to throw the neoliberal insult at me, but I can always say, no, you mean Hank, next to him I'm right there in the trenches next to you, AOC, and that schmuck Bernie. Hank's the real neo-liberal.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You can walk into pretty much any drug store and get it, so it isn’t access. And all resistance is fear; thinking Bill Gates puts chips in it is fear. Undocumented fear might explain some, but Detroit is heavy majority African American. For the total number to be so low, the % of vaxxed black people has to be quite low. They’re citizens.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I didn't say that, Sparky. Sad, indeed.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

As long as you have time to wait. And can get off from work to get it or if you have a reaction to it. Access isn't just the shot.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We have a lot of variation by city here that people worry about. Boston is actually pretty good, the burbs, both inner and outer, are excellent but the smaller cities, Springfield, Lowell, and Worcester, are not so good and the truly rural areas' rates kind of suck.

At least here, access does seem to matter, in terms of where cities have gone out of their way to do outreach and let people know of how to get the vaccine - where there is local leadership in Churches and among politicians we do better. And in Boston the local hospitals have been doing great outreach for years, giving them a lot more credibility.

In the rural areas, it isn't just the conservatives who are problems, there are hippy anti-vaxxers as well.

All in all a complex scene, but anyone working against vaccines, which includes virtually the entire Republican party (except our Republican, health-care experienced governor, who is actually pretty good on them). But on the left it's the Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy types and in the black community here it really isn't the Boston leadership (leadership in places like Lowell among the Hispanic community is much more suspect).

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Our rural counties are also way worse than even Detroit.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Man, I never knew you were so high handed and pompous.

The sushi joint owner is just trying to economically survive. He's a small businessperson who is willing to put himself at risk to stay afloat and inviting others who are willing to put themselves at risk to do so. Caveat emptor. (Particularly now, as omicron is a variant so weak the only thing he's likely to give patrons is an annoying cold-like experience.)

Do you really think this little guy was supposed to just roll over and watch his business get hammered?

I'd say your high-handed elevation of what you think is most important over his, and the temerity to judge the guy on top of it, demonstrates exactly the voice that needs to be eliminated from policy discussions.

And it's also worth noting the sushi restaurant owner isn't much different than Jeff Bezos, who invited me into his store every day thru the pandemic, and whose invitation I accepted - Daily.

I wore a mask, I distanced, and I warned anyone who visited me: "I go out every day, to buy all sorts of things." If they were scared, they could avoid me. I gave them the option. (I had to tell my in-laws to stay away because I found their devil-may-care attitude a bit scary for folks their age.)

There's How Reasonable Sane People Really Dealt With This Pandemic, and there's How Utopians Think Everyone Should Have Dealt.

You're in the latter camp - fucking loony.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

In Tyland, it's all binary. Ye shall be made a member of a group.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If your kid doesn't get vaccinated, it's because you're a shitty or delusional parent. The state has an interest in making sure you don't harm your kids.

If an adult doesn't want to get vaccinated, at this point, the overwhelming majority (like 90:10) of the harm is going to come solely to the unvaccinated moron.

If you wanna die because you believe in some lunatic conspiracy theory, I say have at it. I say the state has no interest in keeping alive fools who'll needlessly put themselves at high risk of death for no discernible benefit. One could make a good argument that, when they die, society benefits from their deaths.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I cited the HPV vaccine controversy for the position that conservatives have previously been anti-vaccine.

Except now, that's not the case. Omicron is killing unvaccinated and uniquely vulnerable. And here's the thing about the vulnerable. You or I, vaccinated people, can carry the virus and kill them just as easily as the unvaccinated.

Many "conservatives" are hypocrites. Are you expecting me to dispute that?

My critique wasn't so much the accuracy of your assessment. It of course holds some accuracy. It's also the sort of haughty comment that winds these fuckers up and makes things worse.

It isn't terribly hard to manipulate these new "conservatives." It's all about showing them respect (they hold vestiges of honor culture). You can bend them to your position if you can make it anodyne, or if you can describe it in a way that makes it seem an independent decision they reached without pressure or cajoling.

Treating them like children doesn't work. (This is a strange facet of progressive thinking. They dig in, as stupidly as conservatives, and speak in a manner that alienates others. And all the while they could have been manipulating their enemies.)

< It's also really easy to manipulate progressives. Pretty similar tactics. You just have to listen and elevate empathy above everything else you display. >

The first thing about Conservative Club is there is no Conservative Club. Most of them are, like progressives, people who want everyone else to behave they as they think is best. They're assholes who think they ought to be in charge. A million miles from Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

Yeah, except this isn't a five hour trip from NY to LA. People did that. Then they started saying, wait a minute... these "experts" sound like they're making it up as they go along.

If these "experts" had all stayed off the TV (I blame Trump for starting the daily news spectacle), and issued directives impersonally, by some form of press release every week, I think the directives would have been given a lot more respect.

But we can't have that. Our media had to give Fauci his 15 minutes of fame, and that Orange Imbecile had to politicize it all.

This analogy fails for the reasons I cited in response to your first analogy.

Manipulation. I've had to deal with tea party people. You manipulate them. The same way the moderate democrats manipulate progressives to shut them up. The same way the GOP manipulated the pro-life lobby for decades.

The hysterical focus from CA was virus paranoia w/o a balancing message on the need to protect economic interests. That's what one gets when one has govt run by people most of whom never held real jobs. They focused exclusively on the HC aspect and conveyed an attitude that the damage to businesses was of very minor secondary concern. That was a colossal fuck-up.

That's a tango. Cue Stealers Wheel...

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Well, since you've been arguing with me here for years and you seem to have just figured it out, I guess I can't be *that* high-handed and pompous.

First of all, pretend I work in an industry severely impacted by the pandemic, and have just spent the last two years surviving an existential threat to our business. I don't have to pretend it, but apparently you do. There is a difference between surviving, and surviving by doing things that will make other people sick and threaten their life. The sushi owner is choosing a path that hurts other people, and that's what makes it selfish. Not all of us impacted by the pandemic did that. But he didn't stop there -- he went on TV to bitch about the hospitals, as if it's their fault, some imaginary mistake in hospital management that is killing people, not the fact that jackasses like him are making selfish decisions that are putting people in this hospital. Sure, blame the nurses.

Are you shitting me? What about that guy's viewpoint needs to be represented in policy discussions?

If someone built a business picking up garbage in your neighborhood and dumping it in your yard instead of taking it to the landfill, you wouldn't say we need a policy discussion that reflects all viewpoints. You would say, fuck that.

There is a big, big difference between following the rules, flawed as they may be, and going on television to bitch about the rules and blame things on the hospitals. I like restaurants. They're not typically run by public health professionals. They shouldn't be making the rules in a pandemic.

What I don't get is why you think there's something "pompous" about not wanting people to sick, go to the hospital, and die. Like good health is something that only pointy-headed intellectuals should care about? Why is it "high handed" for me to want people not get sick, but not for Mr Sushi not to care? WTF is wrong with you?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

IT IS NOT TRUE that when an adult doesn't get vaccinated, they pose a risk solely to themselves. They infect other people. They demand health-care resources. THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT. That's why I said, the problem with your little spiel about wearing a mask was missing the point -- you wear a mask to protect other people. Pull your head out of your libertarian ass and accept that the decisions people make about their health affect other people too -- you can't just wave your hands and imagine it away.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Without saying what industry you pretend work in, I'm going go out on a limb and call bullshit that you ever turned work down. I felt for you, as I know you were impacted, but that was outside your control.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I have heard so many horror stories about having to go to an ER for non-covid reasons. In fact my local hospital has stated (a few months ago, probably no longer true) don't come to the ER unless you've something life threatening. Otherwise go to Urgent Care clinics.

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That's like saying that if I root against the Cowboys, I'm opposed to football.

No, that's false. If you are vaccinated, you are much less likely to develop the load of vaccine that can infect others. Also, a uniquely vulnerable person who gets hit by a truck is dead, and would not have been if the truck had been parked. It's a cute little rhetorical trick that you're pulling, but it's a lie.

If you think that, then why would you take their "principles" seriously?

I'm not talking to them, so how am I making anything worse? Other than confusing Hank, I mean.

A second ago, you were bitching at me for calling them petulant little children. Pot, kettle, black.

I'm not treating them like anything. I'm talking to you on an internet chat board.

You go to pandemic with the public health officials (and President, and media) you have, not the ones you wish you had. But I'm not talking about any of that.

That's lovely. You're so smart. How do you do it?

Another rhetorical trick you have is to call people to the left of you with whom you disagree "hysterical". Are there people who find it convincing?

California's death rate from COVID is well below states like Florida and Texas. (You seem to find mortality statistics irrelevant when talking about the pandemic. I would be more impressed with your talking about balancing people's health with the economy if you cared at all about people's health.) Since you seemed convinced that it was too expensive to save all those lives, what was the cost? The site I'm looking at says California's mortality rate has been 204/100,000, and Florida's has been 325. If California had matched Pennsylvania, that would be about another 50,000 deaths. Why do you think saving those people was too expensive?

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What the fuck is your problem? As you know, I'm a C-suite executive at a start-up in an industry particularly hit by the pandemic. We went from hiring to RIFs almost overnight, and we survived largely because we happened to be very well capitalized. Did I turn work down? No, I worked on firing people and cutting costs. So what if it was outside my control? That's the whole point?

You don't see me telling everyone that they ought to be going on trips, or complaining that the CDC is making it too hard for the cruise ships to sail.

Mr Sushi's restaurants are still open, by the way.

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It's a huge staffing problem at Ms Slothrop's hospital and ICU, and most of the patients there don't have COVID.

I will tell you the most heartbreaking thing, though, is the restrictions on visitors to the ICU. We are talking about family members of people who are dying, who are limited in getting to see them for the last time, because COVID. The people who want to pretend that the unvaccinated are only harming themselves should have to sit in on those conversations.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Get used to staffing issues. They’re bad everywhere. But if we’re the old Soviet Republic, your state is Pripyat.

The delta between transmissible load among unvaccinated and vaccinated is minimal. Right now, as to B.2 and Omicron Classic, it’s a difference of 29% household infection and 39%. And B.2 is even weaker.

The rest of humanity is moving on. And I’m closer to HC management than you (I was in a HC office dealing with non-mask wearers back in 2020, and I got the fucking thing, so sing your song elsewhere). You’re free to stay nuts, and good for you. You do you, the rest of us will do us.

And we don’t care about your judgment. No one does. But you. There. Which is partly why everyone is leaving.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Exactly why a mandate is a back asswards way of handling things.

Hospitals should instead ban intentionally unvaccinated Covid patients. And the states should pass laws to shield them from liability from the turds among us who’d sue them for turning away those people.

And HC insurers should be allowed to cancel plans for the intentionally unvaccinated. And states, under McCarran Ferguson (No Feds needed) could grant them immunity on that.

That which cannot be done by mandate (almost everything) can often be done by punishment for refusal. Sure, they’re the same in effect. But the difference is, punishment allows for a game of good cop/bad cop. The state and corporate interests get to blame each other, and the nitwit who’d prefer to be unvaccinated never has a clear enemy upon which to fixate. The anger is diffused, confused, and he’s manipulated.

It’s kinda like the “That was done by committee” explanation for atrocious corporate behavior.

Much more effective than setting up a “We’re the incompetent ‘Eat Your Peas, Peasants’ State, and we’re going to tell you you’d better follow our confused ‘experts’ from week to week or you’re a bad person who is selfish and killing others.”