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Dr Strangetroll : or how I learned to stop arguing and be amused by the intransigence

Shale MacGregor

Solar Enthusiast
Joined
Sep 5, 2021
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641
There has been an influx of articles basically saying very little to nothing about this new variant.

Did the same thing happen with Delta or is this being pushed in a weirdly aggressive and premature way?

So far the general reporting is that it has a ton of mutations, but we don't know what they do. It may or may not be more transmissible. It may or may not cause vaccination and natural immunity to be effective. It may or may not be more deadly. It may or may not have milder symptoms.

They've managed to trigger the worst day this year for the stock market indices, on Black Friday of all days. Is this all to explain why we are about to start locking down international flights and pave the way for new lockdowns and mandates or is it just an abundance of caution?

It is the holidays, people are going to travel and visit whether or not this variant spreads. I guess I am just trying to figure out the motivation or why things are being handled this way this time.
 
This is so polarized and I have reached the point that discussion is pointless. No one wants to hear what others are saying and fear is king. "If it bleeds it leads". People are afraid of the virus and shouting "get the vaccine. Others are afraid of the vaccine and shouting "personal freedom". I have given up on trying to talk with a group, I just sit back and watch the $hit show and try to pick up as much as I can. As far as I am concerned if you looked after yourself you will be fine. If you die from the virus, You win the Darwin award for being stupid and making a lifetime of poor diet and life style choices and good riddance to your lazy overindulgent a$$.

 
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This is so polarized and I have reached the point that discussion is pointless. No one wants to hear what others are saying and fear is king. "If it bleeds it leads". People are afraid of the virus and shouting "get the vaccine. Others are afraid of the vaccine and shouting "personal freedom". I have given up on trying to talk with a group, I just sit back and watch the $hit show and try to pick up as much as I can. As far as I am concerned if you looked after yourself you will be fine. If you die from the virus, You win the Darwin award for being stupid and making a lifetime of poor diet and life style choices and good riddance to your lazy overindulgent a$$.

I have a current mindset but I am always willing to hear new things. If someone comes out with a 1 in 1000000 conspiracy theory type thing, yes, I will most likely dismiss it out of hand. If they make claims, and then when asked to back them up, don't bother, then I will ignore that claim or investigate it myself.

With the feedback mechanism that we have socially and moreso with our online social systems, it is easy to get stuck into a perpetuating echo chamber. This is why it is often easy to see completely wrong talking points (Hermain Cain dying of cancer) spread as fact. People aren't making these things up, they are just all repeating one thing that has been repeated by others which started with one person.

I think if this virus were deadly to all age groups in the 5% or higher range, we would have a different discussion and different mindsets on vaccination and prevention, but the reality is it appears to affect mostly the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions (overlaps in the higher age groups).
 
Calculated and timed announcement on black Friday when the only people minding the markets were intern and Jr traders who's only instruction was "don't rock the boats" while there bosses party in Nantucket.

Omicron was known about 15 days prior to press releases. So why did they wait?

Head of the South African medical association says Omicron variant causes ‘mild disease', that hospitals there are not over run and does not understand all the hysteria.

But let's lock everything down because, well , science. So.
 
The regular news is dying, and doing anything they can to get the views that YouTube, IG, and Facebook took from them. They will literally say anything just to get a pageview.

Check out the articles about the FLU they (the regular news) pushed every winter before 2019; you would think the world was ending every year. News is pretty much fear porn at this point. IIRC, sometime around 2009 the news got caught inflating the swine flu story, I always thought that there wasn't as much optic on that as should have been.

This whole thing is kind of like the boy who cried wolf. The media and the government have been fear-mongering so long that I'm completely desensitized to it.

There's a bajillion ways that I can die; car accident, heart attack, stroke, covid, or even possibly an adverse reaction from a new type of medicine. To expect me and my family to stop living our lives because something "might" kill us is absurd.
 
Virus's that kill usually don't spread as much, virus that have mild symptoms spread....
It isn't quite that simple. There is still a lot of information missing before we can make predictions. In general, yes, but there is a counter-argument to the Law of DV and that is the trade-off argument which generally states that as a virus becomes more transmissible it can also become more virulent without impacting is evolutionary selection. If two variants are equal in transmissibility but one is more deadly in the short term, the less deadly one would have an advantage. If both are no longer transmissible after , lets say, 2 weeks, then being deadly would not be a negative selection pressure unless another variant extended its transmission time into that range.
 
Delta was significant. I am guessing Omicron, not so much. I believe this could be the beginning of the end where we just start living with covid similar to the flu with an annual shot that is optional.

War on Christmas? No
Invented for the midterms? No
Manipulate shopping or the stock market? No

Just a random mutation and discovery.
 
Delta was significant. I am guessing Omicron, not so much. I believe this could be the beginning of the end where we just start living with covid similar to the flu with an annual shot that is optional.

War on Christmas? No
Invented for the midterms? No
Manipulate shopping or the stock market? No

Just a random mutation and discovery.
Definitely seems like someone could have made money on shorts by announcing it in this super aggressive scary way.

I would not liken this to the flu. Can you imagine if it kept most of its traits and just became seasonal? There are long-term features of COVID that would not be enjoyable. How long until half of the world has permanently lost its sense of smell?
 
My previous stance:
Potentially open-minded about getting a jab for a Covid-19 vaccine, if necessary to keep my job (which brand would be best to go with if I did do it?), me never really being one to ever get shots, never really saw flu shots as important, having faith in my immune system and the cosmos plan for me (never got any kind of vaccinations before), never gave those thoughts any energy, generally living a healthy lifestyle (good vitamin D levels, not overweight, generally good physical condition), would get sick once in a rare occasion (with something, never getting checked to know what it was), maybe had been pondering about which brand vaccine I would potentially go with, wondering how much I would trust any particular brand since they pushed them through FDA approval so fast (circumventing normal process). So I was generally procrastinating the potential decision to vaccinate for as long as work wasn't pushing it. Generally my default answer to things is to not do something before inventing a reason to do something.

Then this happened:

New stance:
F our government (bunch of fools running our country and the world). I must stand with the few left, for the little freedom we still have left (if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything), definitely won't get a jab, willing to lose job over it, willing to die over it if necessary, fine with whatever outcome. Also noting all brands of vaccine tend to lose their efficacy by great degree over a few months anyways. Appears the fearful in the world will eventually want the everything people to get regular jabs every few months (what are they so worried about, they got the jab, they're all 'protected' from everyone else if it's so good and effective).

Work is now pushing deadlines, threatening me with potential termination if I don't file for a jab exception request, filled out exception request form, submitted to HR, waiting response for approval/denial.

Currently, I got sick over Thanksgiving, don't know what it is, I'm over the fever part, energy levels back to normal again, still coughing a bit, sinuses still a bit messed up, make my voice sound funny, don't really care, just live life like normal, being polite and considerate around others, not getting too close to people like I always would do if I was sick. Life continues for me as normal, starting to get over whatever it was I had.

A little faith and trust in the life/Earth experiment with the creator forces goes a long way, I am not an atheist, I do believe in a divine order and higher plan (not religious either)... Business as usual... Willing to take my chances, if I pass on over, I'll see you on the other side, glad now I don't have kids, one less factor to have to think about in the whole equation on my stance ✌️
 
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I would not liken this to the flu. Can you imagine if it kept most of its traits and just became seasonal? There are long-term features of COVID that would not be enjoyable. How long until half of the world has permanently lost its sense of smell?
You are basing the assumption that loosing smell is a feature of infection that will continue after the virus becomes endemic. That is a feature of being infected by the virus when it is novel. Subsequent infections are very likely to not be as severe or even present with the same symptoms spectrum of symptoms.
 
You are basing the assumption that loosing smell is a feature of infection that will continue after the virus becomes endemic. That is a feature of being infected by the virus when it is novel. Subsequent infections are very likely to not be as severe or even present with the same symptoms spectrum of symptoms.
No, I am basing the assumption that losing sense of smell or not would not positively or negatively be selected for, so depending on the mechanism behind it, it would be likely to stay around, or likely to fade, depending on if mutations could occur to remove that symptom without affecting transmissibility.
 
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