I need to just type out some of my brother’s thoughts on COVID here. His basic premise is that vaccines don’t work at all, but are causing a lot of harm, and there is a conspiracy to all of this, but he can’t quite figure out the end goal just yet.
He says the vaccine is injuring or killing ‘a lot’ of people (he doesn’t have a number). Cool, I asked for a source. He sent me a Facebook link to an ABC news story about the vaccines, it’s your vanilla story, about what you’d expect. Then he tells me no, not the story, read the comments, that’s where you’ll see lots of people talking about people dying from the vaccines.
Then we get around to discussing Georgia, where he lives. I found a nice slide deck from the dept of health showing the relative rates of illness/hospitalization/death between vaxxed vs not. He skips right over that and notices that the cases/deaths are lower on Sat/Sun. So that’s part of the conspiracy, people aren’t getting sick on the weekends??? He thinks all of this data is being fabricated, so apparently all of you actuaries working for payers are just making things up, come on!
Which brings us to today. Biden’s vaccine mandate doesn’t apply to congress, how can I not see that this is a conspiracy? If politicians aren’t getting the vaccine, what does that tell you? Forget the fact that a lot of them are vaccinated (maybe they lied and didn’t actually get it). So I had to explain that Biden is in the executive branch, so it’s politically hard for him to do this to the other branches of government.
Those little foil packs pills come in. The ones with paper backing. Those things are really not made for adult hands or anyone who keeps their fingernails short.
Apparently people are pointing to VAERS and not understanding not only the difference between correlation and causation but also don’t get that anyone can report whatever they like, whether or not it’s true. I was surprised to learn that some anti-vaxxers will shitpost there.
He has mentioned VAERS and I tried to explain that. And I asked him… if he doesn’t trust any of the data, why is he citing this as evidence? If we’re all just making up numbers, why wouldn’t they just say nobody has ever died from the vaccine? Mark it zero.
Because then no one would believe them. This way, at least they’ve suckered jacksheepleasses like you and me into believing their lies, lies, damned lies, and more lies…and also statistics.
Why is that? There are certainly more than 100 Representatives, at least.
I guess if you count the Senate separately there are not more than 100 Senators. But they get the same pay as Representatives… wouldn’t we say they have the same employer???
The mandate applies to other federal employees, right?
So I don’t know quite how this works. I heard (but didn’t confirm) that this won’t apply to state employees. I’m not sure how this works with OSHA being the ‘muscle’ here. I think it’s more complicated than ‘literally any employer with 100+ EEs.’
Aren’t state employees exempt from the order? I think I read that.
Oh, someone introduced a bill to mandate vaccinations for congresspeople, I don’t know where they are with that.
I’d be curious to know how many of them are vaxxed. I’m guessing that it’s a pretty large percent for both parties. I’d be particularly interested in knowing the status of a select few.
Well that’s dumb and basically begging for criticism. As a show of good faith in the mandate it should certainly apply to all federal employees in all branches.
And if Biden doesn’t have the legal authority to require it for federal employees but he does for private… well that’s just bonkers. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but if it is…
I think that’s exactly how it works. Biden is relying on a law passed by congress in 1970, allowing OHSA to promulgate an emergency temporary standard. Congress OFTEN passes laws that apply to everyone other than themselves.
Apologies for starting the thread drift, I didn’t want to clutter up the actual Covid section with tin foil hat stuff. Someone is probably annoyed by all this thread drift. If that’s you, then express it in this thread!
I am annoyed at my boss. He will not read all of an email, even if it is 3-5 sentences long.
I am annoyed at myself. I have worked with him for years, and know he does not read all of emails, yet still write them as if he will read them.
Sometimes it’s useful to send the email anyway, just for documentation purposes. But yeah… even 5 sentences and certainly 3 is not too onerous for a boss to read and it would be annoying to deal with that.
I mean, possibly if they are super long run-on sentences or something. But still…
I’m curious how your boss seems to want you to communicate with him? Phone call? Wait until your one-on-one? Walk over to his desk and discuss face-to-face?
In the before times, walk over to his office.
Now, phone call.
I have found a work around. If I put something in a word document and attach it, he seems much more likely to read it fully. I am guessing he often reads emails on his phone, but uses his computer for docs. Or maybe he views things as more formal and worthy of focus if in a doc.
Probability counting problems. They’re stupid and ugly. and also, they’re stupid. I didn’t like them then, I don’t like them now.
Screw all y’all’s elevators and red and blue balls.