One of the nice thing about this forum is I have an opportunity to see things from alternate points of view. So a big thanks to Nick, AV, and Marcie for making the effort on this whole mask and vaccine resistance thing.
My take away, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that the opposition is to the procedures used to get community participation. Over reach by executive branch and suspect use of ill defined powers. I certainly get that. I do not get the sense that peeps deem the objective wrong, it’s the process that needs to be scrutinized.
I feel similarly regarding laws which mandate businesses cannot have vaccine or mask requirements. Big time over reach there in my book.
I think that this is a fair summary of my position.
I would add that it’s imperative that the people call out “suspect” governmental behaviors (like executive over-reach) at the small-ish levels to ensure that we don’t see a big over-reach become “within grasp” of power-hungry individuals.
One could argue that it created a power vacuum filled by Joseph Stalin who murdered millions of his own people in securing power while subjugating numerous satellite states around Russia.
One could also argue it was a sort of a failed war. Like, sure it was better than many wars, since we won a big fight against actual bad guys… But pretty much everybody died.
I’m curious what WW2 would have been like if the UK and US had no conscription.
Those both happened. I’m not sure that WWII was the cause.
Stalin was in control by 1930. All the murders “in securing power” would have happened by then.
Subjugating numerous satellite states was going on before WWII. The Ukrainian starvation killed millions in 1932-33.
Hitler and Stalin agreed to split Poland in 1939, and Stalin also got the okay to pick of parts of other countries. I’ll guess that Stalin wanted to subjugate neighboring territories with or without the war. I expect repeats of Poland - the people would either get Hitler or Stalin.
My mother just died of covid despite being “fully vaccinated” because she was immune compromised, so the vaccine didn’t help her much. My brother’s partner is also immune compromised. He’s quarantining 10-14 days before going home, because he was exposed to mom as she died.
People being treated for cancer are also immune compromised. So are people who’ve had organ transplants. It’s not super common, but it’s not a weird freakish rare thing. I’m sure you know a few people who are immune compromised.
I agree with this. And I’ve been very frustrated from the start by CDC guidance that says “do this” instead of saying “while these conditions hold, do these things for this reason”.
At the start, they should have said, “community transmission is still low, and there aren’t enough masks for our healthcare workers who face infectious people every day. Please don’t buy medical-grade masks until we have an adequate supply, unless you are caring for someone with COVID.”
They would never have had to “change” that.
When vaccines first dropped the numbers, instead of saying “vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks” they should have said “masks aren’t necessary in communities with transmission rates less than X except for people who are at unusually high risk, such as the unvaccinated”. Again, when Delta came rolling in, every community would have climbed above X and no change in messaging would have been needed.
Now they should be saying that people in communities with infection rates above Y should take extreme precautions to avoid spreading covid to protect hospital capacity. Again, this is something that would change on its own.
You do realize that the REASON it’s “a bad cold” for most people is because they have prior exposure, either from a previous case of covid or from vaccination. Once again, it’s still deadly to some.
Basically, deaths have been overwhelmingly concentrated in red counties throughout 2021. That’s not the same as hospital utilization of course, but I think it’s an okay proxy.
To my eye, this shows vaccination offers the vaccinated some protection from death, but it would be extremely difficult to show that vaccination is slowing the spread of Omicron at all.
I don’t think it’ll be as simple as that, though. I do not disagree that using this as a “proxy” for many cases, but I think the one thing it does miss is the “distance to nearest medical facility capable of treating it effectively” factor. In many of those fly-over states, that distance is not small, nor the travel time short. The facilities are likely to be concentrated near the larger cities in the state, but many of those “red counties” are a couple of hours away from those cities.
Those red state ratios are likely be even worse than that considering the bias in undercounting COVID deaths is also concentrated in the same red areas.
Right. I guess you could say as long as the populations and hospitals are far away, then the regulations and leaders should be different. I agree it makes sense.
I just wanted to back up my claim that Covid is mostly a rural epidemic right now.
