Random Rant Thread

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Certainly looks like it.

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If I were serious about beating the GOP and winning the elections, I would wage *my* cultural war against the Republicans - namely, I would blame the crap out of them for everything Covid. Every death. Every single sense of loss felt by long-haulers. Every bit of lost revenues. Every bit of inconvenience. Everything.

Because 95% of Democrats have been vaccinated, whereas only a God-knows-how-low percentage of Republicans have. The latter kept ignoring all kinds of NPIs. All the facts would be on my side. I would blame the fuck out of them for every fucking thing, even to the point where it gets kind of unfair.

Yeah, it would be "divisive". But if you still care about being "divisive" at this point, you are simply not serious about winning power. We are way past that faux-civil point.

I'm just being perfectly honest and frank here. I know I don't sound like a true leftist. But what's left for us? They are trying to kill us all.

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Oh, and they are largely paper tigers. Way overrated. It wouldn't be THAT easy to fend them off, but Democrats are making it harder for themselves.

So, at least in terms of sentiment, It's hard not to agree with Sirota.

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WHEEEEEEE

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Let's just hope that every country will basically follow the South African trajectory when it comes to Omicron. In the case of the US and UK, the case count is perhaps already too high for their situation to be exactly like South Africa's. It will probably be worse. But it's the general trend that matters at this point, and let's hope the healthcare system will be able to whether the storm.

It seems that Denmark and Norway are indeed on the South African trajectory now.

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These people hate Fox News too, Matt.

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You can say, "Hey, Bulgaria is a lot worse!" and shit like that. Bulgaria, BiH, Hungary, Slovenia, Peru, I don't give a shit, especially since you don't seem able to see some critical differences between those countries and the US.

Whatever. You can list all the countries who have done "worse than America" all day long, by looking up deaths per capita or something. I can assure you that they won't put a dent in my argument, and if you still don't understand why they won't ever, well, I don't even know why you are reading this.

The fact of the matter is that the hyperbolic liberals are mostly right when they say that the US response to the pandemic has been absolutely shambolic. Because it has been. It has been frighteningly bad, and excruciatingly embarrassing. The government is part of the problem, but only one part, and not even the biggest part.

It's not fucking Afghanistan but this whole Covid shitshow that has crippled America's already diminishing reputation.

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Unvaccinated fools are getting hospitalized left and right, with Omicron too. Fucking losers.

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It seems that they are expecting a lot of people at Times Square on NYE. It will be a spectacular super-spreader event.

Some people are simply out of their fucking mind. I felt that way about it even in 2019.

I'd like to know what their definition of "pleasure" is.

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Oops

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It's probably silly coming from someone who just called the unvaccinated "fucking losers," but let's have a bit more empathy in our life. Just a little bit more. That would make a world of difference.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

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As you know, I know quite a few doctors and nurses in both the US and Japan. And some of them have been working at Covid wards. All completely exhausted, particularly the American ones, and one remarkable thing is that they told me unanimously that they didn't know a single person in an ICU bed, of the ones who could talk, who did NOT express their deepest regret over their decision not to get vaccinated. And it goes without saying that a vast, overwhelming majority - nearly all - of the patients with severe Covid were and still are unvaccinated. 

They ALL regret their decisions. That's about how deep/shallow their conviction was, how solid/fragile their philosophical backbone was. It's the "freedom" that you can buy at your local 99c Store/100yen Shop. It's tremendously easy to stay unvaccinated after all; You literally wouldn't have to do a thing. 

In a nutshell, it's just narcissism. Again, and again, and again. It's almost always that, and I'm getting absolutely tired of it.

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This shift may be one positive thing that Covid has done for the world.

The Dutch government abandoning that "frugal" crap.

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You know, a lot of people, particularly the data analysis/economist types who have no scientific background, predicted that the efficacy of masks would be proven much less than claimed as we conduct more real-life experiments.

In case you don't know, that has never happened. Partly because none of the experiments/researches have been perfectly conclusive, but that's because, like I said many times before, the actual meaning of "I'm wearing a mask" ranges between "Blocking most of the aerosols" and "You might as well just wear a clown mask" depending on the behavior of the wearer and quality of the mask.

There are so many different factors involved - masks are largely powerless in a certain kind of settings indoor too - that it's extremely hard to conduct an experiment that could yield "conclusive evidence" to begin with. 

But seriously, man, if you still argue against the efficacy of masks at this point because "It hasn't been proven conclusively," you are just being pedantic. I admire your rigorousness, but just try to understand some basic physics first will you, would be my message to you. Clowns like Anders "False Sense of Security" Tegnell, of Sweden, are simply too high up in the tree that they can't climb down. There's absolutely nothing more to it than that, and you are a world-class fool if you think they are opining on any kind of sound logic at this point.

So, the quality of masks. There have been some Japanese studies that suggest it matters. Perhaps a lot more than you think, in fact. And here's a dude who actually understands aerosol science talking about masks.

I mean, you would think the mechanical engineers who understand aerosol science should lead the debates on the efficacy of masks. But no, it's somehow medical doctors, economists, mathematicians - or, indeed, epidemiologists - who keep saying "There is no conclusive evidence for that," and as far as I'm concerned, they can just fuck off with their useless knowledge.

Some Covid masks are better than others. I know – I’m the Mask Nerd
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/27/best-masks-covid-tests-cloth-surgical-respirators

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One of my favorite activities since Spring 2020 is to tell people who are transparently of the Covid-skeptic/anti-lockdown/anti-mask type that I suffered a hell of a lot worse from the flu that I had three years ago than I did with Covid-19. They go, "See? Right? Right!?" and I go, "See what?"

Because very clearly that doesn't prove shit about anything, but somehow they think it does.