Isabeau wrote:



+1

 Isabeau wrote:



 

Meanwhile, in Texas people are dropping like flies from Covid. Gov Abbott is seeking nurses to help. Already born, breathing kids are playing Covid Roulette with the 'rights' of the few who feel a child wearing a mask is akin to working in a textile mill for 12 hours. Kids in Texas are now little more than targets for bullets and viruses — in the name of personal freedom. Yet this cavalier attitude is absent when it comes to controlling Texas women's bodies in the name of 'pro-life.' A blastocyst, embryo and fetus carry FAR more value than the already-born ... because they don't cost anything. No mask mandates. But if you have a uterus, THAT will be mandated.

Having a baby in Texas is a lot like buying a brand new car: As soon as that baby leaves the lot, it's 'value' immediately depreciates.

Pro Life. People keep using that word. 
I don't think it means what they think it means.

This Is the Moment the Anti-Vaccine Movement Has Been Waiting for

G.O.P. Governors Fight Mandates as the Party’s Covid Politics Harden
As several Republican-controlled states confront their worst outbreaks yet, their leaders — following the base — have doubled down on resisting vaccine and mask requirements.

Skepticism about masks, vaccines and the rules governing them is increasingly intertwined with the cultural issues that dominate the modern Republican Party. The fear over losing “medical freedom” has become part of the broader worry that “cancel culture” is coming for conservatives’ way of life.

And while opposing pandemic edicts is a limited-government stance, the forceful approach of governors is at odds with the long-held principle of local control, making it the latest Republican Party orthodoxy to be cast aside since the beginning of the Trump era, along with free trade and limited spending. (...)

One outlier among Republican governors is Larry Hogan, a moderate who leads Democratic-dominated Maryland. He recently required that hospital and nursing home employees be vaccinated.

“Frankly, it’s confusing to me as to why some of my colleagues are mandating why you can’t wear masks, or mandating that businesses can’t make their own decisions about vaccines, or mandating that school systems can’t make decisions for themselves,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview. “And then they’re talking about freedom? It just doesn’t make sense to me.” (...)

Republican leaders’ posture, particularly on keeping schools from requiring masks, does not appear popular across the wider electorate. In Florida, a Quinnipiac poll released last week found that 60 percent of residents supported compulsory masks in schools.

But among Republicans, that figure was inverted: 72 percent of Mr. DeSantis’s party said they opposed universal masking requirements in schools. The poll showed that a plurality of Republicans in the state also opposed a mask requirement for health care workers, a measure that is popular among independents.

“Many Republicans are out on an island by themselves,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran G.O.P. pollster. “It may be a safe political place for some primary electorates at the moment. But ultimately you have to win a general election.”

2021, 2022, 2023, 2024...

Kaupmees posted something about Martin Luther during a plague that was basically about staying home and isolating to avoid catching and spreading the disease. I thought "oh that's too perfect" and hit the interwebs for some confirmation. Turns out he had more to say:

If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually that would be suicide.
     It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over.

More, much more.

 sirdroseph wrote:
As of this morning 640,000 Americans have died of covid and we add about 1,500 to that a day. That's just the dead people; that leaves an awful lot of sick people, some of whom will get very very sick. To put that in perspective we lose about 659,041 a year to heart disease and 599,601 a year to cancer. Covid has killed more than the annual toll from the next four causes (accidents, lower respiratory diseases, strokes, and Alzheimer's) combined and it's sneaking up on the 5th.

"watch the science"? Dude, science starts with math, and  the memesmith you're trusting with your life and the lives of those around you can't even do that.

Against the circulating variant of the moment the covid vaccines are about 66% effective at preventing infections, and about 95% effective at preventing death once infected.

If you catch covid vaccines give you a 19:1 (95/5%) advantage over the unvaccinated against dying. 

If your age bracket's unvaccinated infection survival rate is 99.5% (assuming you are an aging boomer like most reading this) the infection survival rate advantage brings the vaccinated survival rate up to 99.974%, essentially giving you the outcome of someone 10-20 years younger. Here's how that math works:

The unvaccinated death rate for those infected is .5%. The vaccinated death rate is 1/19th of that, or .026%. The survival rate is 100% - the death rate, or 99.974%.

But we're not done.

You can only die from covid if you catch it. Vaccines give you a 2:1 (66/34%) advantage against catching it in the first place. That cuts the effective death rate in half again, to .013%—which boosts the survival rate to an effective 99.987%, somewhere between grown-ups and teenagers.
Stop listening to ignorant people.

I've read your justification for not getting vaxxed; it's your body and you have complete sovereignty over it. No one is going to hog-tie you and pump you full of life-saving medicine. Just understand what you're signing up for; if you believe the meme above then you don't. You're being misled by glib charlatans and your chances are not near as good as you think.

Education Department to probe 5 states with ‘unacceptable’ school mask bans

 sirdroseph wrote:

As usual, so close and yet....

No, not everyone who is unvaccinated is dying. But nearly everyone dying (https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... )is unvaccinated. See the difference?   Due to people like you, we will have to live with this problem for a long time.  But we have reached the point where deaths are effectively preventable. And you claim to be rational.

 sirdroseph wrote:
From the Reason link you provided:

The post also erred in comparing the vaccine efficacy rate of 94 percent to the COVID-19 survivability rate. This is an apples and oranges comparison; it does not mean that the average person's natural immune response is better at fighting the disease than the vaccines. At present, the overwhelming majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated. Since the beginning of the year, 98 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Virginia were among the unvaccinated. The vaccines are not in competition with the body's natural immune system—they render COVID-19 even more mild, and even more survivable.
To the extent the post is implying that most people have no use for the vaccine, it is indeed a piece of misinformation.

 miamizsun wrote: 
+1

If one stays away from people I guess it would be easy to not see that the reason you get vaccinated and wear a mask is right there. It seems that so many now have lost their sense of compassion and empathy for their fellow man. I wear a mask also because then I don't have to trim my face as often and I can smile and tell someone to f-off silently to their face. So, for the good of the many we do the right thing and then we can put this crap behind to the degree that the long term damage will allow us to.

 sirdroseph wrote:

waiting and watching is ok, especially if you have that option
the vast majority of people don't
i certainly don't and i deal with a lot of older people-florida is chock full ;-)
if i gave this virus to someone and they had a poor outcome i'd never forgive myself
so i prep and plan with the best data i have at the moment
we know (without a shadow of doubt) you've got a date with covid, we all do, we just don't know when
we also know playing cat and mouse with exposure will eventually run out
this genie isn't going back into the bottle
risk is a funny thing and bias can distort it
if you knew the date that you were going to be exposed, what would you do to prep?
make a list/written plan and act on it

 islander wrote: 

 Red_Dragon wrote:

All over the shop!
And if you're lucky someone'll help you load your toolbox into the back of your truck when they give you your last check. (And make sure they included your vacation time... because if they didn't...)

 Manbird wrote:

SWEET, SWEET EYE JELLY

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Take a hex nut and slip it over a drill bit and hit it at a tangent with the air hose. What a sound when it gets up to about 450,000 RPM! And for even more fun let it slide off at full speed and watch it go crazy and ricochet into the eyeball of the dude running the CNC mill.

 kurtster wrote:
So which pronouns should we use for your obituary?

 kurtster wrote:
Hilarious.

More identity politics please.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Nothing better than shop hijinx!