[Chas_P]

kenberg, on 2021-September-14, 10:40, said:

Face reality. This is a time of need. Do what clearly has to be done. Enough with the "gotta defend my liberty to spread the disease" crap. Get with it. Now. Jesus X, it's effing obvious.

Both my wife and I have had three doses. We aren't opposed to the vaccine. One question asked of us was "have you ever had myocarditis?" We could truthfully answer "no". But our younger son was born with viral myocarditis and therefore has refused the vaccine up to this point. Do you think he needs to "do what clearly has to be done"? I will grant that there's probably a very small percentage of the unvaccinated who have had myocarditis. But I don't know that. Nor do you. But, whatever the reason, I think we should all be allowed to do whatever we deem to be in our own best interest. You know... the old "my body, my choice" argument. And that's not intended as a condemnation of the pro-choice crowd. I agree with them. If a woman wants to abort her baby, that's her business. The government has no right to interfere. If my son doesn't want the Covid-19 vaccine, that's his business. The government has no right to interfere. Just my opinion.

[kenberg]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-14, 19:29, said:

Both my wife and I have had three doses. We aren't opposed to the vaccine. One question asked of us was "have you ever had myocarditis?" We could truthfully answer "no". But our younger son was born with viral myocarditis and therefore has refused the vaccine up to this point. Do you think he needs to "do what clearly has to be done"? I will grant that there's probably a very small percentage of the unvaccinated who have had myocarditis. But I don't know that. Nor do you. But, whatever the reason, I think we should all be allowed to do whatever we deem to be in our own best interest. You know... the old "my body, my choice" argument. And that's not intended as a condemnation of the pro-choice crowd. I agree with them. If a woman wants to abort her baby, that's her business. The government has no right to interfere. If my son doesn't want the Covid-19 vaccine, that's his business. The government has no right to interfere. Just my opinion.

Going back to my analogy with the draft, exceptions were made. I won't try to sort through when that would be right with the vaccine, but I can imagine cases when I might be so. With my shot, actually with the second but not the first, after I answered a question about my health history the one who was to give me a shot excused herself for a brief discussion with her superior. And then she said it was ok and I got my shot. So yes, sometimes special cases arise.


But that's not what's holding up the train here. It's I don't wanna and you can't make me, nanyh, nanyh, nanyh". Large numbers are dying, the virus is spreading, the virus is mutating, and as I said before, delta is not the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Sure, we have to make allowances in special cases.
A country addresses a problem of this magnitude and some coercion is clearly needed. I was a serious pain in the butt as an adolescent, partly I am proud of that, partly I am embarrassed by that. partly I regret that, but anyway I grew up.

[akwoo]

I don't like coercion.

I also think, given how many people are refusing the vaccine (and I agree a few of them have good reason), that God should admit He made a mistake in creating humanity with so many idiots and jackasses, wipe us out, and start over.

[kenberg]

akwoo, on 2021-September-14, 21:43, said:

I don't like coercion.

I also think, given how many people are refusing the vaccine (and I agree a few of them have good reason), that God should admit He made a mistake in creating humanity with so many idiots and jackasses, wipe us out, and start over.

I don't like coercion either, which in a way gives my argument strength. For example, I do not like the community service requirement that many high schools have. I was a Boy Scout, and we did some community things, but I joined voluntarily. And that's why I used the draft as an analogy. I do not at lall like the proposal that surfaces from time to time that young people should now be subject to some draft-like thing to serve the country. That's both intrusive and stupid. So we should go very slow on coercion. But we have a serious issue before us, and God, or who/whatever, did create these people that seem indifferent to a deadly virus that is spreading, mutating and killing.
Time to bring in the coercion.
There are such times, this is such. Live in a cave or do what is needed.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2021-September-15, 06:32, said:

I don't like coercion either, which in a way gives my argument strength. For example, I do not like the community service requirement that many high schools have. I was a Boy Scout, and we did some community things, but I joined voluntarily. And that's why I used the draft as an analogy. I do not at lall like the proposal that surfaces from time to time that young people should now be subject to some draft-like thing to serve the country. That's both intrusive and stupid. So we should go very slow on coercion. But we have a serious issue before us, and God, or who/whatever, did create these people that seem indifferent to a deadly virus that is spreading, mutating and killing.
Time to bring in the coercion.
There are such times, this is such. Live in a cave or do what is needed.

Ken, I think you nailed it yesterday when you wrote these people are acting and thinking like teenagers (my paraphrase). They must be required to experience the legal consequences of their choices - higher cost for health insurance, inability to go to public spaces such as grocery stores, no access to public transportation, and no jobs.

If they want to act like a children, they should go to their room and stay there until they grow up.

[hrothgar]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-14, 19:29, said:

If my son doesn't want the Covid-19 vaccine, that's his business. The government has no right to interfere. Just my opinion.

Getting vaccinated against an infectious disease is not an individual choice.
The failure of individuals to get vaccinated increases the spread of the disease in communities and the likelihood that new variants will develop.

State and federal governments in the US have mandated vaccination for centuries.
This situation is not an different.

In the case of COVID hospital rooms across the (unvaccinated) South are full of unvaccinated individuals suffering from COVID.
Trauma patients are being stacked up in hospitals
Cancer patients are being denied treatment

This is the cost that idiots screaming about their freedom are imposing on society.

I sincerely hope that hospitals stop admitting COVID patients who refused vaccination without a damn good medical reasons.

They have the freedom to choose not to get vaccinated.
And we have the freedom to watch them die in the streets.

[kenberg]

Below are some thoughts I agree with. More extensive and careful than what I say, but refecting my line of thinking.


https://www.washingt...d-anti-vaxxers/

A sample:

Quote

Before the magnificent multibillion-dollar project to find a vaccine for covid-19, there was a guy from Montana with the brilliance of a great scientist and the swagger of a cowboy. Hilleman created more than 40 vaccines. In the 1950s, he and his team stopped a rampaging pandemic. Across his career, he saved millions of lives. A person who saves one life is a hero. What do we call the person who saves too many to count?


Don't answer that. Not now, amid the anti-vaccine backlash of a spoiled, forgetful species. Hilleman worked his pinprick miracles at a time when Americans knew and feared the deadly terrors of communicable disease. We will know, and fear, them again if anti-vaxxers prevail.

[Later his own reflection on when he was 10:]

I was not at all afraid of measles, mumps or rubella. Like covid-19, they were all diseases that infected children but rarely killed us. They wrought greater havoc on adults in our lives, and on their unborn children. What I feared — deeply, desperately — was needles. That walk from the gym to the library, perhaps 100 feet, was the longest of my life. If a man with a scar, a dripping knife and a white panel van had appeared and offered to save me, I would have run to him. The room swam as I felt my shirt sleeve pushed up. Then I was stung and swabbed with cold alcohol, and staggered away like a branded calf.




[And then he remarks:]




Can you imagine what hay Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ® and his fellow vote-grubbing vaccine skeptics would have made with the picture of 300 alphabetized schoolchildren shuffling along to be stuck? At age 10, I would have greeted the demagogues as liberators — but as the Bible advises, I've put away childish things. I thank heaven for Hilleman and John Enders, Albert Sabin, Jonas Salk, Emil von Behring and countless other virologists who transformed the world with their life-preserving vaccines.

This stubborn refusal to cooperate with efforts to beat back the virus is wrong on so many levels. Personally, it is stupid. And it is irresponsible. And it goes against history, as the comments above suggest. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Chas_P]

hrothgar, on 2021-September-15, 08:18, said:

Getting vaccinated against an infectious disease is not an individual choice.

Really? REALLY? BIG BROTHER is now in complete control? REALLY?

[Gilithin]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-15, 18:28, said:

Really? REALLY? BIG BROTHER is now in complete control? REALLY?

Do you think it should be a personal choice to wear a seatbelt? To get car insurance? To wear (some minimal amount of) clothes in public? To shoot someone on 5th Avenue? To be able to have sex with children? Not everything should be a free choice.

[kenberg]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-15, 18:28, said:

Really? REALLY? BIG BROTHER is now in complete control? REALLY?

yes, really. for this issue, really

In the op-ed piece above the guy describes childhood as I remember it (although with different vaccines0 I could get my shots or I could... well if there was an alternative I was never aware of it I suppose mothers could home school. If a person or family wanted to become cut off from society, that was possible then and I suppose it is possible now. But for those of us who wish to live in society, some rules apply, getting a shot to help bring a vicious multiplying virus under control should be one of them.

this is not some crazy idea thought up by crazy lefties or crazy anybodies. Requiring vaccines seemed natural to me and to my mother and to everyone I knew when I was 10 and it seems natural now. I never minded getting shots. I do recall crying when the nurse said I needed glasses but then I got my glasses and no one could have taken them from me.

I repeat I do not like coercion, I also make exceptions and then can favor coercion. And we, and by "we" I can mean anything from "everyone I know" to "the nation as a whole", always have made exceptions, always will make exceptions, and always should make exceptions. It is very possible to support freedom, oppose oppressive government, and still believe that we need to impose rules to fight this virus. Free choice is very good, but we are not cavemen, and we have responsibilities. Actually, I think even cavemen realized that.

[Winstonm]

Along the same lines,this is one of the more troubling articles I have read recently:

Quote

Thousands of Los Angeles Police Department employees plan to seek exemptions to rules requiring city workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to figures released Tuesday by city officials.

More than 2,600 LAPD employees have indicated that they plan to pursue religious exemptions, while more than 360 plan to seek medical ones.

That could amount to roughly a quarter of the LAPD’s workforce planning to seek an exemption, based on data in a memo sent by Wendy Macy, who heads the personnel department. Among city employees as a whole, fewer than 11% have indicated that they will seek an exemption.

Granted that a few of these could be legitimate. Still, to give the power of the state and a gun to minds stuck at age 15 is more than troubling - it's chilling.

[hrothgar]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-15, 18:28, said:

Really? REALLY? BIG BROTHER is now in complete control? REALLY?

No, but not for the reasons that you think...

George Washington mandated smallpox vaccines for the continental army.
The army mandates vaccines to this day
US states have mandated vaccines for well over a hundred years.

The traditional libertarian position recognized that "Significant network effects justify substantial public health activities: maintaining the purity of water, assuring proper sewage disposal, controlling contagious diseases."

Big Brother has been in complete control on this one since at least the days of the Black Death

[kenberg]

As many have probably noticed, there is a lot of argument about booster shots.
For example at https://www.washingt...t-live-updates/ :

Quote

A planned booster shot campaign in the United States is dividing experts, as the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee prepares to meet Friday for a nonbinding vote on whether the agency should approve a third dose of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

The Biden administration has come out in strong support of giving booster shots to most Americans, and some states have begun preparing to distribute them as soon as next week. Immunocompromised people have been authorized to get booster shots since August — and many people with healthy immune systems have not waited for FDA approval to get theirs.

But the scientific community is split on this matter. Two senior outgoing FDA officials recently wrote a review with other scientists that was published in the Lancet medical journal, in which they argued that "current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations." The World Health Organization, for its part, has called for a moratorium on booster shots until the end of the year to ensure sufficient supply for poorer countries — a call that the White House has characterized as a "false choice."

A quick note on my experience. I got my Pfizer shots in January and February. I agreed to participate in some follow-up monitoring. I fill out a daily questionnaire (it's short) and every month they send me a kit where I prick myself and send back some blood spots. in return they send a brief summary of what the blood samples showed. Until this month, there have been two results. One showed that I had anti-bodies that could come from either having had the vaccine or having had covid, and a second result saying that it is highly likely that the first result was from the vaccine. This month the first result was equivocal "may be consistent with antibodies" and there was no second result, that being reasonable since there is not much to say about results that may be consistent with antibodies.




Ok, that's the result for one person so not proof of anything. But it seems like a reasonable guess that my protection is wearing off. I agreed to this post-vaccine monitoring simply because they asked me to, but I plan to mention the results when I call to see about a booster. I have been planning to wait until the 20th since I understand that to be the day the FDA is supposed to fully authorize it, but I am now thinking I will call today. The sooner the better.

And it seems to me that we, all of us, want to be doing boosters. What's wrong with a little magnetism between friends? (Ok, skip that last joking comment. I couldn't resist.)

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2021-September-16, 07:31, said:

As many have probably noticed, there is a lot of argument about booster shots.
For example at https://www.washingt...t-live-updates/ :
[/font][/color]




A quick note on my experience. I got my Pfizer shots in January and February. I agreed to participate in some follow-up monitoring. I fill out a daily questionnaire (it's short) and every month they send me a kit where I prick myself and send back some blood spots. in return they send a brief summary of what the blood samples showed. Until this month, there have been two results. One showed that I had anti-bodies that could come from either having had the vaccine or having had covid, and a second result saying that it is highly likely that the first result was from the vaccine. This month the first result was equivocal "may be consistent with antibodies" and there was no second result, that being reasonable since there is not much to say about results that may be consistent with antibodies.




Ok, that's the result for one person so not proof of anything. But it seems like a reasonable guess that my protection is wearing off. I agreed to this post-vaccine monitoring simply because they asked me to, but I plan to mention the results when I call to see about a booster. I have been planning to wait until the 20th since I understand that to be the day the FDA is supposed to fully authorize it, but I am now thinking I will call today. The sooner the better.

And it seems to me that we, all of us, want to be doing boosters. What's wrong with a little magnetism between friends? (Ok, skip that last joking comment. I couldn't resist.)

[/font]

I will try to be first in line for a booster as I don’t mind the government implanting a microchip in me - after all, I want them to know where to send my social security check as my communist party dues are late being paid.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2021-September-16, 10:03, said:

I will try to be first in line for a booster as I don't mind the government implanting a microchip in me - after all, I want them to know where to send my social security check as my communist party dues are late being paid.

My efforts so far to get the booster have run into another of my gripes. The hospital where I got my shots last Jan/Feb belongs, as they all do, to some system where you go through a patient portal, and after getting through this portal there is nothing much of any use there. I finally found a telephone number, I called and got, much to my pleasure, an actual person. I explained why I was calling, giving some details, after which she explained that she answers the phone and will give my name to a patient advocate who will call me. Uh-huh. Been there done (well, sorta and eventually done) that. My last patient portal experience was very trying. Abandon all hope, ye who try to enter here.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2021-September-16, 12:15, said:

My efforts so far to get the booster have run into another of my gripes. The hospital where I got my shots last Jan/Feb belongs, as they all do, to some system where you go through a patient portal, and after getting through this portal there is nothing much of any use there. I finally found a telephone number, I called and got, much to my pleasure, an actual person. I explained why I was calling, giving some details, after which she explained that she answers the phone and will give my name to a patient advocate who will call me. Uh-huh. Been there done (well, sorta and eventually done) that. My last patient portal experience was very trying. Abandon all hope, ye who try to enter here.

I read something yesterday that I'm embarrassed to say is something I had not considered - that the U.S.A. already has healthcare rationing. It's called ability-to-pay rationing. As rationing of health services is one of the red herrings served cold to every attempt to improve U.S. healthcare to a single payer system, it is important to understand that rationing has always been part and parcel of our healthcare.

Covid is simply shining a huge spotlight on how bad our system remains.

[Chas_P]

kenberg, on 2021-September-16, 12:15, said:

My efforts so far to get the booster have run into another of my gripes.

I had absolutely no problem. I went to Publix. They asked, "Are you you immunocompromised?" I said, "Yes". They said, "Sign here." 30 minutes later and I was out of there............bulletproof.

[Chas_P]

Gilithin, on 2021-September-15, 19:37, said:

Do you think it should be a personal choice to wear a seatbelt?

Well yes I do. The first car I owned was a 1954 Chevrolet 210 coupe. I had seatbelts installed (they weren't mandatory back in the olden times). But that was my choice; even at age 16 I had sense enough to know that seatbelts were a desirable feature. I didn't need "the government" to tell me that. There are road signs all over Georgia saying, "Click it, or ticket." I resent that. I never hit the road without my seatbelt fastened, but that's my personal choice. I don't need Big Brother telling me he's gonna fine me if I don't.

[Gilithin]

Chas_P, on 2021-September-16, 17:58, said:

I had absolutely no problem. I went to Publix. They asked, "Are you you immunocompromised?" I said, "Yes". They said, "Sign here." 30 minutes later and I was out of there............bulletproof.

This sounds as honest as a statement from your idol #45. Congrats on being the biggest liar on BBF.

Chas_P, on 2021-September-16, 18:22, said:

Well yes I do. The first car I owned was a 1954 Chevrolet 210 coupe. I had seatbelts installed (they weren't mandatory back in the olden times). But that was my choice; even at age 16 I had sense enough to know that seatbelts were a desirable feature. I didn't need "the government" to tell me that. There are road signs all over Georgia saying, "Click it, or ticket." I resent that. I never hit the road without my seatbelt fastened, but that's my personal choice. I don't need Big Brother telling me he's gonna fine me if I don't.

I am glad for you that you were lucky to be in a position both to get enough information to make an informed decision and also to be able to afford the modification. That is of course not true for everyone. So not having such a law would have the effect of killing a disproportionate number of poor Americans, particularly those from racial minorities. Perhaps therein lies the attraction for you?

Should I take your limited response as tacit approval of the other items on my list as well?

[Chas_P]

Gilithin, on 2021-September-16, 18:50, said:

Should I take your limited response as tacit approval of the other items on my list as well?

Take it any way you like. Your list is totally insignificant to me.