2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

[tstorm823]

Out of interest, which Democratic candidates would you have considered voting for in the Presidential election if they'd won in the primaries?

Gabbard and Klobuchar I would argue are both closer to being a Republican than Donald Trump is. And if you go way, way back to the beginning of the primary campaigns, Tim Ryan and Hickenlooper were saying things in favor of nuclear power, so they had my attention early. Cory Booker was also seemingly pro-nuclear, but I was never going to seriously consider New Jersey Spartacus.

And like, I guess Yang is a curveball. Would have been an interesting general election with him on the ballot for sure.

 

[Agema]

That statement came from here: https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/i...ls-about-injecting-and-ingesting-bleach-spike

Fox. Oh, we should have guessed. Honestly, though, a low impact article on the webpage of a low-rated, local station falls into my category of trivial.

 

[Silvanus]

Gabbard and Klobuchar I would argue are both closer to being a Republican than Donald Trump is.

I'm really interested to see what leads to this conclusion. Gabbard has supported M4A, UBI, and endorsed Sanders in 2016. Half of her record is easily further left than Biden's (though that's hardly difficult).

 

[tstorm823]

I'm really interested to see what leads to this conclusion. Gabbard has supported M4A, UBI, and endorsed Sanders in 2016. Half of her record is easily further left than Biden's (though that's hardly difficult).

There's plenty of room for progressive stances in the Republican Party. Progressivism in the US came out of the Republican Party to begin with. But Gabbard's rhetoric is always that of her own positions, what she believes is a proper moral and constitutional stance, without much of the "this is what the people want" pandering. Her political view of herself is clearly as a leader more than as a representative, she talks in the sense of "this is the problem, this is how I believe we solve that problem" rather than trying frame her positions as some inevitable product of the current or future Zeitgeist. And when the Zeitgeist of the left clashes with her, she doesn't seem to capitulate.

 

[SupahEwok]

There's plenty of room for progressive stances in the Republican Party.

For once, I agree with you. In at least, I agree that there's room for progressive or reformist stances in conservative politics. Such would actually be a place, politically, that I personally would find most comfortable, having been raised as a conservative and still having a natural inclination towards personal rights. If there were a modern Eisenhower, he'd have my vote in a heartbeat, and I could feel much more relaxed over the state of the country.

Sad, then, that I do not see a reformist stance in the modern conservative party. Republicans, in my view, have become just as much of a special interest party as Greens or Libertarians, revolving around just a handful of key issues to play obstructionist over, just with over a century of inertia and financial backing.

 

[tstorm823]

For once, I agree with you. In at least, I agree that there's room for progressive or reformist stances in conservative politics. Such would actually be a place, politically, that I personally would find most comfortable, having been raised as a conservative and still having a natural inclination towards personal rights. If there were a modern Eisenhower, he'd have my vote in a heartbeat, and I could feel much more relaxed over the state of the country.

Sad, then, that I do not see a reformist stance in the modern conservative party. Republicans, in my view, have become just as much of a special interest party as Greens or Libertarians, revolving around just a handful of key issues to play obstructionist over, just with over a century of inertia and financial backing.

The issue the Republican Party has right now, in my view, is the legacy of the Cold War. Republican success decades ago became about uniting its own big tent, and the unifying characteristic was the opposition to communism. That's how you get a conservative, a libertarian, and a hardcore evangelical to unify under a single banner. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for opposition to communism, but it's a horrible unifying principle on which to build. The old party is in there somewhere, the threads of consitutionalism, individualism, and love of the country's founding principles still hang about. But it's gonna take a big moment to flip the script from "what are we against" back to "what are we for", and that's gonna be tough with the things we're against having such a big voice at the moment.

But to be fair, I think the Democratic Party is stuck in the same trap, a wide coalition that can only be properly motivated to agree on what they're against.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, here's some words regarding herd immunity:

 

[tstorm823]

Well, here's some words regarding herd immunity:

The problem with these words is he questions a single percentage and not all the other statistics, or even knows what they mean. I don't know how anyone who has even attempted to be informed could not understand there are far, far more infections than positive tests. Who thinks to question the percent needed for herd immunity but then doesn't consider untested infections? His math ignores 80-90% of the people who've been infected.

Mississippi's case reporting pattern is sporadic at best, but it looks to be plateaued at the moment and could be about to come down the other side. It doesn't matter what his math or mine says, that's the indication you've gotten through most of the infections you need. He's gonna have herd immunity whether he wants it or not.

 

[tstorm823]

So I've been frustrated by people not noticing that places that avoided the coronavirus are getting hit harder now because they hadn't be exposed to it. But now we can branch out that frustration to age demographics. We've had several months of pieces like this explaining that older people take quarantine much less seriously than younger people, and now the rules are loosening and it's disproportionately affecting the young people who locked themselves inside the whole time. 'surprised pikachu face'

I've been out and about myself basically the whole pandemic, and I can tell you it was disproportionately old people the whole time, and relative to normal it still is. But "it must be those darn millennial bars" is their explanation for more young adults getting infected now. Like, I have no great love for bars, I'm not a drinker myself, I'm just really tired of all the people who actually flattened the curve by following restrictions being condescended to now for not being done with the virus yet.

 

[Buyetyen]

Well, here's some words regarding herd immunity:

That the Dunning-Krueger squad are never going to listen to. If someone desperately needs to believe that their lack of an education makes them better suited to take on a global pandemic than the world's medical and scientific community and their knee-jerk assumptions about the science must be revelatory, then that person cannot be reasoned with.

 

[Revnak]

Good news he caught it again
Yes I know this just means it hasn’t worked through his system but I prefer to imagine that the virus is destined to kill him.

 

[Ezekiel]

Three months ago, I could very clearly see the mountains all the way on the other side of my valley. Now that everybody is driving again, the closer mountains are obscured by smog again. Why is the coronavirus-obsessed media not talking more about the environmental impact of quarantines? Cars suck.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Three months ago, I could very clearly see the mountains all the way on the other side of my valley. Now that everybody is driving again, the closer mountains are obscured by smog again. Why is the coronavirus-obsessed media not talking more about the environmental impact of quarantines? Cars suck.

620,000 people are dead. Sorry about the view from your room.

 

[Houseman]

620,000 people are dead. Sorry about the view from your room.

Air pollution kills 7 million people a year, so does that mean you've lost this round of the moral high ground competition?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Air pollution kills 7 million people a year, so does that mean you've lost this round of the moral high ground competition?

People's own hearts kill twice that amount in less that time. This is about discussing the deadliest ongoing pandemic in modern history. Don't All Lives Matter the argument. Don't detract from the issue.

 

[Ezekiel]

Some snide remark, I'm sure. I don't know why you keep responding to me with your negativity when you already know I've blocked you.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Some snide remark, I'm sure. I don't know why you keep responding to me with your negativity when you already know I've blocked you.

I know. I don't care. Blocked or not makes no difference to me (or you apparently, since you keep responding).
As far as I'm concerned it's more "negative" to block someone altogether than to refute an opinion with another opinion.
And if hundreds of thousands are dead or dying and you complain about the view, I guess you lack perspective in more ways than one.

 

[Buyetyen]

Can we please take our dicks off the table so that we can get back to the subject at hand?

 

[Revnak]

Can we please take our dicks off the table so that we can get back to the subject at hand?

I refuse. I exclusively want to talk about the possibility of Bolsonaro dying horribly. Also clothes suck.

 

[Buyetyen]

I refuse. I exclusively want to talk about the possibility of Bolsonaro dying horribly. Also clothes suck.

Permission granted because fuck Bolsonaro and that was the topic at hand anyway.