Random Rant Thread

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There you go, China blaming the domestic Omicron infections on "imported goods" again. Every single fucking time.

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In real life I'm like, can we just talk about anything other than Djokovic now, please, so I totally talk about that here like that's the only thing that matters.

I mean, seriously, when I saw Aussies panic-buy like there was no tomorrow early in the pandemic, I had my doubts on how effective the NPIs will be over there. But it turned out that they were remarkably patient with all the rules and restrictions, and for a country with a sizable New Age/Alternative/Eastern Medicine market, the vaccination rates have been almost disconcertingly high. There were some protests against the NPIs, lockdowns and vaccines, but compared to the European ones, they were pitifully unorganized and insignificant.

So much for "individualism" being the cause of the problems, you know. Aussies were always considered some of the most "individualistic" people on Earth, much more so than the English. You can be individualistic and also socially responsible. We should stop calling that thing in the US "individualism". It's something very different and far more toxic than that.

Anyway, so I can imagine how Djokovic offended the Australian general public. He didn't mean to, but that doesn't matter. I mean, Australia has had some of the longest lockdowns in the world, strict travel restrictions not only for aliens but also for the citizens, and this sheer collective determination to get through it with vaccination. Djokovic managed to push all these buttons in one fell swoop.

He seems to be saying that he wouldn't have come and gotten into such a mess if they hadn't given him the visa to begin with. But common sense, dude. Common sense. If you have any semblance of interest in the Covid situation in Australia, you should be able to see that you would be in major trouble if not vaccinated no matter what. You have only yourself to blame if you failed to see any "exemption" was simply too good to be true - meaning absolutely no Australian government would ever allow for that given the public mood - and thus was going to turn out to be a mirage. Or even a trap, if you are in the mood for some conspiracy theory.

Or, you have the people around yourself to blame. He desperately needs non-idiots around him instead of those, you know, idiots.

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With such a huge barrage of idiocy and disinformation amplified into the stratosphere in a huge echo chamber everywhere, Captain Obvious can hardly catch his breath these days.

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It's kind of remarkable that Boris Johnson's defense comes down to one single thing, which is that he has been too incompetent to notice things happening around him and too powerless to do anything about them even if he did anyway.

I wonder how Humphrey Appleby would assess this defense.

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He was *39* then.

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I always, always wished that I had the composure, clarity, and conciseness of MLK Jr. Unfortunately I was just not born with any of that.

He was a good man of course, but I always *envied* him.

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This is another subcategory of the Fallacies That Continue to Make Our Lives Miserable that you should remember.

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Just got boostered. I was under the assumption that a Pfizer/Moderna cocktail offered the best protection, but I got my third straight Pfizer shot whereas my mom got boostered with Moderna.

The man working there explained that I got Pfizer, because men under the age of 45 don't always respond well to Moderna (i.e. heart issues). He didn't clarify whether that applied to a Pfizer/Moderna cocktail or just Moderna in general, but interesting nonetheless.

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Yes, the vaccines have been known to cause some young people myocarditis, and the cases per capita is highest with the Moderna vaccine (it's generally known as the vaccine that causes the strongest side effects to begin with). They are very rare, and overwhelmingly people in their 10s and 20s though. I think your local government is being extra cautious.

You are more than six times as likely to get myocarditis with infection than with vaccination, by the way.

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I looked at the data, and the immunity built through Omicron infection is indeed absolutely piss-poor against Delta, unless you have been vaccinated.

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The risk-reward calculation between infection and vaccination is seriously fucked up with the unvaccinated. Where is the reward? The immunity that is overall no better than what you get with vaccination?

OK, LiBeRty Is pRicElEsS, of course. The mask requirement at a grocery store is equivalent to the Siege of Leningrad for them.

It's a mental disease.

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Hahahaha.

Wäre es da nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung löste das Volk auf und wählte ein anderes?

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It's amazing that Paul Begala is still somehow relevant.

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LOL @ the Japanese right-wing blowhards saying, "Look at the UK and US, they aren't doing shit, so why should we?"

These are overwhelmingly the right-wing/nationalist types (sounds familiar?) who overreact to anyone saying "We should learn from XXX to improve our society" by accusing them of being 欧米崇拝者 (Western worshipper) or whatever their poor vocabulary vomits out, yet somehow it's preferable to follow the example of the very foreign countries when they are obvious failures*.

"The losers gave up, therefore we should give up too" is a hell of an argument.

Pathetic. These people are universally pathetic.

* failure in that their previous series of failure left them with no other choice than basically taking it on the chin and hoping for the best.

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LOL

I mean, this kind of stuff is even worse here in Japan - we still use *FAX* like it's the king of communication tools - but this reimbursement form hell is very uniquely American.

I wouldn't blame the White House too much for this, though. Believe it or not, this kind of a social structural problem is one of the hardest things to fix, and you can't just make it drastically better in a few months. It doesn't happen that way. The White House is not capable of doing that, at all.