Posts by boldotter2

Megan Harris said:Fine, walk me through how that actually works in practice:
1. First, a pharmaceutical giant develops a vaccine.
(Even though they, the governments, and the public all know cheaper therapeutic options exist.)
2. Then, that pharma company bribes every single politician on the planet to sign contracts for overpriced, inefficient vaccines—even when producing a better, cheaper drug would be easy.
3. And then, nations spend years clashing with their own citizens over vaccine mandates, risking civil unrest, riots, and losing upcoming elections or total political control.
That’s not even touching on the fact that national economies tank while bribed politicians bleed money on useless shots, waste billions on hospitalizations that could have been avoided, implement new lockdowns (bleeding trillions in lost revenue and stimulus), and watch tourism and manufacturing collapse globally.
Essentially, the whole world—politicians and citizens alike—ends up in the red. Why would they do that? For a kickback from Pfizer? Please.

Does that actually hold water for you?
You really only have two paths here:
1. A million conspiracy theories involving massive fraud, bribery, and lies just to make this logic work.
2. Or the simplest reality: they haven't found an effective enough cure yet, and vaccines are simply more efficient at scale.

Do I even need to bring up the Russians or the Chinese?
Are they also in bed with Pfizer to harass the rest of the globe?
They are perpetually positioned against America, the EU, and the West.
They would be the very first ones to expose the "truth" to the world if there were any substance to these top-down conspiracies.

For your little theories to make sense, eighty-six thousand unrelated variables would have to align perfectly into one singular global mafia targeting the average person.

Go Google Occam's razor.
In the vast majority of cases, the simplest explanation is the correct one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

It’s not even about real conspiracies. It feels more like just scared people dealing with paranoid fears.

If they actually cared about exposing corruption, they'd be shouting about how hundreds of millions of dollars are being siphoned off through "creative accounting" during those new fighter jet purchases happening right now—it's getting wilder every day!

Has anyone even mentioned it? Any protests? Nope.
But if those Rafal jets were anything else, everyone would be out in the streets immediately.

So, I don't think they're uncovering conspiracies here. It seems more like they're just covering up their own insecurities and paranoia.

Henry Williams81 said:Generally speaking, I tend to be quite skeptical about quoting scientists until a few weeks have passed—especially when they're coming from abroad. Believe me, it won't be long before some overseas researcher pops up claiming the world is ending. Those types can get rather extreme.

Based on what we're seeing with those infected in Europe, it seems like the virus itself isn't causing much harm, though the secondary illnesses certainly do. Everything that has hit the media so far has looked like nothing more than a common cold. Still, we can't say for certain regarding the infection rate itself just yet.
On top of that, we have Jordan, where things are nowhere near being in chaos.

The big thing with Omicron is that, so far, it's mostly just caused a stir because of all its mutations and how different it is from the original strain. So, again, right now, caution is really just a scientific precaution. For the third time now, I don't think there's a medical reason to panic.

As it stands, Omicron is way more contagious than Delta, and usually, high contagiousness means the virus causes milder illness.

Let's hope—knock on wood, fingers crossed, and maybe a little prayer or meditation—that we're finally moving into a phase where the people in charge catch up to our level...

We might actually find a historical precedent for this. Like the H1N1 virus transitioning from a pandemic to seasonal flu. Or maybe that OC43 coronavirus that people think caused the 1890 pandemic before it became a regular cold. It took flu two years to settle down, and maybe five or six for the other one.

Or maybe this is all just more wishful thinking, just like every other time we've dealt with this junk. The next two weeks will be the real test. ☕

John Ross7 said:I don't want to go down a Google rabbit hole right now, but is Japan actually hitting zero cases, or are they just going to be reporting zero cases in the very near future?

Well, Japan had 120 cases yesterday. That's for 125 million people living packed in there like sardines! It's less than one in a million, I guess.

Just for comparison, New Zealand—which had some of the toughest measures outside of China—had 146 cases yesterday for their 5 million people.
Just as a quick comparison, the US last saw fewer than one in a million infections back on June 17, 2020, though even then, numbers were probably lower since they mostly tested symptomatic folks, maybe even slightly skewed because of election season.

The big thing here is that Japan isn't really doing a zero covid policy.
It seems like high vaccination rates and everyone being pretty smart about safety measures helped push COVID back. How long that lasts, well, we'll see!

PS: Japan ran 46,000 tests yesterday. With 120 cases out of 46,000 tests, that's a positivity rate of only 0.26%.

Students in grades 1 through 4 won't be wearing masks—only those in classrooms with enough space between desks or where the local Civilian Headquarters of Čabro decides to ease things up. It’s pretty much the exact same setup we had last school year, I guess.

mellowskipper said:So you'd just be shoving a stick up kids' noses every single day?!
That sounds like a total disaster, and thank God we don't deal with that kind of madness here.

Sent from my JNY-LX1 using Reddit

Up the nostril. I mean, it’s basically what 99.99% of kids already do with their fingers anyway. And it's not even every day, maybe just once a week.
Plus, so many parents jam cotton swabs into their kids' ears, which is super unrecommended, yet nobody goes on an online moral crusade about it. On the flip side, cleaning a nose with a swab is actually a suggested method—it's literally printed on every label that says ear cleaning isn't.

jadetinker85 said:Are you sure those tests actually work? My niece is in isolation right now with a fever of 99.5, she took one, and it came back negative. We're pretty skeptical about them.

Well, they're definitely more reliable than just guessing. They aren't quite as perfect as a PCR, but you can do them at home. People around my way have had pretty good luck with them. Statistically, the accuracy hits around 98%, even for people without symptoms.
I went for a PCR test once with my kids, but I'm probably not doing that again. It's honestly just a hassle for them. I guess I don't really care about the official paperwork and stuff.

Why don't we just start letting kids do self-testing, like they do over in Canada or Mexico? You get results in 15 minutes, it’s just a quick swab in the nose, way less invasive than a PCR, and I guess the accuracy is more than enough. They only cost about 50-$20.
Instead, they'll probably just let everything spiral out of control so we can have that classic showdown again—the geniuses in the emergency headquarters versus the geniuses on the internet. Just endless nonsense and pointless arguments.

If they would just test the kids who show up to school with symptoms, I think they’d actually see better results in slowing down the spread than all those other measures combined.
I honestly get the feeling they want to trigger maximum chaos over the next month just to ramp up the fear factor for people who aren't vaccinated. It's happening through the kids again.

jadetinker85 said:Nowhere, really. But look at what’s going down in France, Canada, and Austria—parents are pulling their kids out of school because of mandatory vaccination laws. Compare that to the vibe here, and my impression is that people have just decided to sit back and eat popcorn. 🍿
And then they give us those nice little warnings that the peak of the epidemic will hit in a month, just so they can say "we didn't know."

Something like that, just washing hands.

I mean, damn, whoever wanted to get vaccinated did it. The older folks are holding up relatively well since they mostly got the shot. Now the big question is whether we need to keep slowing down the pandemic through measures all year long—which might mean three more small waves—or if we should just let everything unravel in a few months.

The President is just looking at the piggy bank and the US economy for 2023. He’s gotta WinCoronavirus© before then, and hopefully before the next major crisis hits.
Instead of following official rules, we're probably going to see schools and businesses shutting down on their own initiative, simply because there won't be anyone left to work when we all get sick at once.

The funniest part is going to be that loud minority shouting right now about how the vaccine is garbage, only to spend next month attacking the system because it didn't do enough to stop or soften the blow. I bet you anything. 😵

Robin Anderson44 said:So why don't we just lock ourselves away completely for a few months and call it a day?

That’s a fair question. And honestly, it's a logical one. It’s basically what Rudy Giuliani said back during that interview on the news when everything first started blowing up. His quote was something like, "Worst case scenario, they'll lock us down for two months and the army will just be carrying sandwiches."

Looking back now, we know that wasn't even the worst-case scenario. In hindsight, we can see there’s going to be plenty of ignoring the pandemic entirely, plus those half-baked, impossible rules that just drag out the misery.

And then you have to factor in how inconsistently everyone follows the rules. I mean, just walk into any government office with service counters, like a DMV or a local hardware store. Every single one of those places is basically a tiny little box of Wuhan, seriously! 🙏
Božinović can talk all he wants about courts or public hangings, but if he can't even get Stefan at the local gas station to pull his mask up above his chin, then forget the courts and the hangings.

Schools and kids are just collateral damage in this whole mess. They're always the ones caught in the crossfire when these unsolvable crises finally reach a breaking point. Once the problem hits the kids, it's not just at the source anymore—it's hit the target. It means you've lost on every single front and the situation is basically laughing in your face.

Susan James said:No one is denying that kids get hit hard sometimes, but those cases are rarer than other childhood illnesses and fatal outcomes. Plus, the overall damage from those cases seems smaller than the collective harm done to all the kids and teens who feel like they're under house arrest or stuck staring at screens because they're being shielded from COVID, which many pass without any symptoms or with very mild ones.

There aren't enough vaccines for everyone. That’s why we started by vaccinating high-risk groups—to minimize fatalities and ensure people survive with milder symptoms.
(And within that specific group, vaccine side effects represent much less harm than death or serious complications from the virus itself.)

To me, it makes sense to prioritize the workforce first, especially those in constant contact with people—healthcare workers, daycare staff, teachers... but if supplies are limited, then you focus on the most vulnerable groups and let everyone else make their own choice so the economy can keep moving forward.

I'm not quite sure why it sounds like kids are being used as cannon fodder just by sending them to school.

Just a few years ago, the pneumococcal vaccine wasn't mandatory; instead, parents vaccinated their kids if they were well-informed by their pediatrician or online forums (which I wasn't) and/or if they could afford it (not everyone can). Some kids suffered nasty consequences, like pneumonia or chronic ear infections, and some even died from bacteremia... And some grandparents got sick while babysitting. Others didn't, because they had already fought off those same illnesses as kids and were immune.

By "protecting" our little ones—those we keep isolated from the community or force to stay home—we aren't giving them the chance to build immunity through natural exposure. It's not just about COVID; lately, there have been fewer cases of chickenpox and measles. These are illnesses kids usually breeze through, but encountering them for the first time as an adult can be fatal...

Man, this is some heavy misinformation. Like, seriously.

First off, let's talk about scarlet fever. That isn't really a disease you just "get over," it's something you have to TREAT. Before we had antibiotics, scarlet fever was a massive killer of children. Entire cities used to go into quarantine because of outbreaks! It’s only thanks to science that we even call it a "childhood illness" today. I guess anyone sane 150 years ago wouldn't have just let their kids "get over" scarlet fever.

And regarding this whole "building immunity" thing, does that apply to tuberculosis, polio, measles, or anything like that? Of course not. The only reason those aren't around anymore is because of progress in science, medicine, and better hygiene for everyone.
Does that logic work for HPV? For a long time, people thought it was harmless, until they realized it could cause some pretty scary consequences. Should we have just let it run through the population then? Just a side note, we've only known about SARS-CoV-2 for about a year.
Even the chickenpox myth—the chance of a grown adult getting a severe case if they didn't have it as a kid is actually LOWER than the chance of someone who *did* have it getting a nasty case of shingles later on! Plus, there's a vaccine for those who haven't had it.

If you really look at it, there isn't any disease worth "getting over." There just isn't.

Even from an economic standpoint—the biggest growth and most stable economies happen where sickness is at its lowest! I feel like I've said this a million times on this forum already, and I guess I don't even want to argue about it anymore. Nobody, anywhere, ever let a disease run wild while maintaining a stable economy. No one.
If you look at how the pandemic played out, the virus situation was actually worst in places where the economy was already struggling before the pandemic hit.

The bottom line is that attitudes like "this is just how it is," "there's no other way," or "whatever God wills" are just really defeatist and loser-ish. It represents a total surrender. Maybe it's not obvious right away, but in the long run, it's inevitable.

frozencanyon14 said:In my county, schools have been doing remote learning for about four weeks now—both elementary and high school. And you can probably guess what’s happening: the daily case numbers just keep climbing. It’s wild, too... you’ll be driving down the road in broad daylight, it’s a beautiful 65 degrees out, and you see a 15-year-old walking around with a mask on. Is that actually sane?

I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at countries that implemented much stricter, longer lockdowns—lockdowns just don't work. In my neck of the woods, the infection rate is spiking because we haven't had much exposure over the last year, so now it's our turn. The moment we step out of the bunker, the virus hits. But honestly, living in a bunker forever isn't an option just to protect that 0.5% of the population who might be at risk... if we go that route long-term, everyone ends up losing in different ways. Right now, our local hospitals are practically empty. Only about 20% of the hospital staff is vaccinated. I think that speaks for itself.

I work in an elementary school, and from what I've seen, when someone in a classroom tests positive, they rarely pass it to anyone else in that room. I know of several cases where elementary teachers were positive—though they weren't actually "sick," if you catch my drift—losing their sense of smell or having a mild fever for half a day, and they didn't infect a single student. I even have a case from a 7th-grade class where one boy, who has a medical exemption from wearing a mask, caught it—but he didn't spread it to anyone else, not in class and not even at home. The whole class ended up going into precautionary isolation after testing positive, but it seems contained.
At the daycare my kid goes to, they occasionally test a child who has a slight fever, and they come back positive. Even then, that child hasn't passed it to any of the other kids so far. I'm sure others have different experiences—this is just what I'm seeing firsthand. I'd say the younger the kids are, the less likely they are to show any symptoms at all.

We should let the younger generation build up natural immunity and just get on with life. If people want to get vaccinated, fine—let them. But let everyone else live normally. And please, stop living under the illusion that a vaccine is some magic bullet that solves everything. It's the same deal with masks; they don't solve the core issue. I mean, the analogy is pretty clear: wearing a mask is like riding a bus while trying to dodge a fly.

The fallout from letting kids just "deal with it naturally" includes about thirty cases of severe long COVID in children who were perfectly healthy before, plus one child who died. Are those really acceptable casualties for "natural immunity," just because it didn't happen at YOUR school or right in front of YOUR eyes?

What I really want to point out is that these serious cases definitely happen in kids, even if they don't spread the virus as easily. Actually, since so many kids get infected, statistically there are way more of these cases than any potential deaths or side effects from vaccines!

So, wouldn't it be better to just vaccinate the adults to protect the kids? Instead of using children as cannon fodder just so adults can grab a Starbucks and act like anti-vaxxers at a local pub?

electricnomad8 said:I’ve said this before: after issuing nearly half a million passes without even verifying infection status, this kind of measure is just psychological warfare against our own citizens. Other countries suggested limiting movement rather than banning it outright. It’s clear our leadership doesn't trust the American people. However, looking at the data, it seems we actually do respect the experts. The vast majority are following the guidelines set by headquarters, and the results are becoming increasingly evident.

Honestly, that was just a pure panic reaction after everything went down. It was almost instinctually totalitarian: "Freeze, civilian! Attention!"😵

Instead of actually monitoring healthcare workers—so they aren't out wandering around ski resorts or traveling the world during a pandemic—they decide to go after some guy like Duke who's just trying to get to an ATM or a gas station in the next town over. And let's be real, those two towns combined have maybe 1,000 people, most of whom are watching those fancy ski resorts or Milan stadiums on TV and only heading to nursing homes when it's absolutely necessary.

Joshua Gray75 said:It shouldn't—but it absolutely does. And from what we're reading, those people are the ones hit hardest.
But then again, they are in the minority (we all know where the bulk of the American population resides—https://america.eu/index.php?view=article&lang=1&id=15) — and their voices simply... go unheard.

Nearly 60% of Americans live in urban centers, with 25% of the entire population concentrated in just four major cities (Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, and Indianapolis).

Yeah, in rural areas, this whole thing is just totally absurd. I was actually writing about those small towns in the Midwest a few days ago where people couldn't even drive to the local bakery without a permit! 😵

Actually, it’s pretty ridiculous in cities too, I guess. People living in big cities have almost zero reason to leave their "municipality" because they have everything right there—probably more than they even need. Plus, it's way easier for things to spread in a crowded city, whereas folks out in the country can easily just stay tucked away in their houses and yards.

Honestly, I think this decision was just a panicked reaction to the (totally understandable) panic people felt after the earthquake.

electrichound22 said:The decision was made specifically to avoid forcing everyone
to flee to the rural towns and islands all at once.
If they did, local doctors wouldn't stand a chance against that kind of sudden surge in patients.
Still, I can’t wait for this restriction to be scrapped
so we can finally get back to normal traffic flow and have the borders fully reopened.

Honestly, this whole decision feels like it was made in a panic just to stop a panic, and it's only happening in Washington, D.C. That’s where the real absurdity lies. It seems like the government is actually panicking more than the actual people are!
As for the rest of America, especially the rural areas, this rule really shouldn't have anything to do with them.

And I guess the islands should have handled their own quarantine stuff much earlier if they needed to. I mean, isn't the whole point of a quarantine to keep the disease from getting in, rather than keeping sick people from leaving?
Plus, they really need to keep an eye on the summer tourist season. The chance of things spreading and the strain on the system will be way higher then than it is right now.

It'll be pretty interesting to see how the islands and other vacation spots behave this summer—things might calm down by then, but the problem won't be solved by a long shot. If it took Chinese people a month to sort things out after the peak, it'll probably take Italians at least three, and they haven't even hit the peak yet.
It would be super hypocritical if they start letting in tourists with big spenders later on while blocking Americans from going to their own homes right now.

Nancy Rivera3 said:@Bryan Taylor6

I seem to recall the Chinese authorities mentioning that once this whole epidemic settles down, they plan to conduct an extensive study on a massive sample size—something in the ballpark of 100,000 randomly selected individuals—to check for the presence of antibodies. The idea is that this will finally reveal what actual percentage of the population actually came into contact with the virus and developed immunity.

If we look at the official statistics coming out of China, about 80,000 people fell ill and 3,000 passed away. That works out to roughly 0.006% of the Chinese population, with a mortality rate of about 4% among those infected... So, according to the official numbers, the death rate sits at a rather "terrifying" 4%.

But just imagine if it turns out that 50% of the Chinese population actually encountered the virus, while the death toll remained at that same 3,000 mark. What would the mortality rate be then? It would be practically negligible!

Here is another interesting observation: in Italy, about three-quarters of those who died from COVID-19 were men. Furthermore, the median age of the deceased was 80.5 years, which happens to be exactly the same as the average life expectancy for an Italian man... I wonder what kind of conclusion one might draw from such a coincidence?

Could it be that the people dying from COVID-19 are simply those who, statistically speaking, were already reaching the end of their lives anyway, yet their deaths are being selectively attributed to the virus just to fuel the ongoing hysteria?

Just because someone had a confirmed case of the coronavirus in their system when they passed doesn't necessarily mean they died *because* of the virus. I stumbled upon some data suggesting that for only about 12% of those deaths can it be indisputably proven that the virus was the direct cause, rather than some other underlying condition that would have claimed them regardless.

In fact, a staggering 99.2% of those who passed away had at least one serious chronic illness.

That just can't be true. No way.

We've already chewed on this topic forever on political forums, even back when things were just starting to kick off in Italy. We were all saying the virus was milder, maybe mutated, or that we might have already moved past it... stuff like that.

In the end, though, the virus is totally the same thing and behaves and shows up identically everywhere. Maybe the only difference is how people react to it.
If you look at any country, you'll see the exact same patterns in how the virus acts. I think it's really the countries themselves that decide what the consequences will be. Countries with solid epidemiology and surveillance systems seem to fare the best. Those with good healthcare or high discipline do better too. But the ones where healthcare and discipline are a total mess? They definitely have it the worst.

Looking at the experiences in the United Kingdom and the USA, I feel like it's finally time to stop with those "it's just a flu" mantras. If someone wants to believe that, maybe they can wait to see what happens in Russia, Turkey, or Brazil, but I bet they'll follow the same patterns we've already seen.

One thing people don't seem to get is that the virus doesn't just explode instantly; it kind of "simmers" for up to a month before that exponential growth kicks in. It's done the same thing everywhere so far, including Wuhan.
I mean, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Johnson, and a huge chunk of Europe all messed up in the exact same way.

Matthew Jackson2 said:The thing about a major hub is that all the essential services—the ones tasked with actually making a quarantine functional—are scaled to handle the sheer volume of people living there. It's the same deal in smaller towns, too, but those local resources are calibrated for the permanent residents, not for some sudden influx of tourists or commuters who have all descended on the place at once.

That’s a fair point.

It’s kind of like how coastal towns in Florida or California get totally overwhelmed every summer. They just don't have the bandwidth when it comes to healthcare or police coverage. Most of those small vacation spots barely even have a local deputy or an ER nearby.

So, I guess it doesn't bother them when the summer crowds clog up the sewage systems and potentially spread stuff like cholera or the plague...

This isn't some brand-new issue, really. Today, we're just seeing more sickness and less money flowing in. But the potential for a mess has been there for a long time.

Matthew Jackson2 said:Look, if that local clinic is referring you to a major hospital in the city, they’re essentially issuing you a transit pass right then and there.

The real headache here is how incredibly vague the whole thing is. On my own paperwork, it lists me as living in a "suburban" area within the city limits. But there isn't a single pharmacy in my immediate neighborhood—so am I allowed to drive into the downtown district to pick up medicine, or does the local sheriff's office have to issue me a formal permit first? And if the authorities actually do have to issue a permit, can they just email it to me, or am I stuck driving all the way down to the station just to pick up a piece of paper?

Most of the USA is basically split up into these tiny little municipalities.

Like just yesterday, they were setting up checkpoints between rural counties (which shouldn't even be considered separate entities!) and the main cities they rely on.
People weren't just blocked from getting to Walmart; they couldn't even reach an ATM, a pharmacy, a gas station, or sometimes even a bakery! And we're talking about maybe 15,000 people total between the town and the surrounding areas. Of course, there was zero warning, nothing. Just a patrol sitting at the "border."

Meanwhile, you can drive between Brooklyn and Queens in Washington, D.C. without any issues at all—and there are more people living there than in the entire Midwest... yet this whole rule was clearly made just to stop people from fleeing Washington, D.C.

Luckily, it looks like they finally snapped out of it today and loosened things up a bit... I guess the local sheriffs just wanted their moment of glory.