Random Rant Thread

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Good! Then I'll check it out tomorrow after work. I can see the absence of Temuera Morrison being a positive thing. I can see that, unfortunately.

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I've said this before in this thread, but this, anyway:

This total inconsistency shared by most anti-vaxxers is a huge giveaway. Legal drugs kill a staggering number of people every year globally, and the long-term effects of many of them are almost completely unknown.

Many people die because of the side effects of drugs that wouldn't have even worked for their particular disease at all anyway (because, you know, most drugs don't work for everyone). Why aren't they railing against that?

Conservatism is supposed to be largely about recognizing and accepting these limitations and risks in the society, yet half of US Republicans are at least "vaccine-skeptic" now.

It's just fucking turtles of tribalism all the way down. Everyone is a pathetic fucking crybaby.

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I've always said that if you treat those dangerous anti-vaxx/anti-public-health-measure fools with kid gloves, you'll have to suffer the serious consequences.

Almost all the sensible people that I know criticized my combative, confrontational stance toward them. Now, could you care to tell me how the whole "considerate", "reaching out" strategy has worked out? What was the result of that?

Yup, the near-total normalization of kooks and cranks. Congratulations!

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No, I wasn't talking about the vaccination rates above; I was talking about something far more fundamental - the goddamn public health policies even outside Covid. Now they learned that they can mess with the policies with no serious repercussions to worry about.

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So, Boris Johnson might be kicked out because of a surprise party that he genuinely didn't know about and didn't even like? Is that it?

Everything about the story is absurd even beyond the issue of whether it's true or not. I just don't understand how things work in that country, man. I get a strong "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" vibe.

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LOL @ anyone who seems to seriously think that many countries/governments' decision to lift restrictions/mandates in the middle of an Omicron wave was due to The Science.

Nope, they just gave up. Understandable, and I'd probably reluctantly support the decisions in a majority of the cases, but no matter what they say, that's what they did: giving up, checking out. You are incredibly gullible if you ever thought it was The Computer punching out answers like let's lift the restrictions now because X and Y according to some rational epidemiological calculations.

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It seems that masks are even more crucial with Omicron than with the other previous variants and strains. That's what the Japanese data clearly say. Think of the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in terms of ICU admissions. It's about as stark as that one with masks in terms of infections in many settings.

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And the material too. At least a surgical mask, or bust.

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I'm VERY familiar with the madness that occurred around the seatbelt mandates because I wrote two long-ass papers on it. That's why I have somewhat different, or dare I say deeper views on this pandemic.

That really made a huge difference for me.

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Your "considerate" "reaching out" strategy ended up with this.

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You fight like hell in a war. Obviously you can't win it unless you recognize it as one.

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The sad truth is that most professionals, including public health professionals, don't quite understand the world that we live in, the people that we have to deal with. It really shows in this pandemic, particularly in countries like the US.

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I'm talking about these people.

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I'm not much of a hard rock/metal guy, but can confidently say that heavily distorted electric guitar sound through Marshall amps is one of the most beautiful sounds ever invented/discovered.

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Cases and deaths lag by several weeks.