Mods, how about being fair and deleting this post also? But you won’t, you only delete conservative opinions.

Pretty much the usual stew of rational thought mixed in with idiotic brain-dead opinions based on conspiracy theories. Why are the latter all coming from conservatives?

(The conservatives here seem to be preoccupied with whining that "liberal" posts aren't being blotted out.)

Please, folks, can you snap out of your Trump-love trances for just a little while? The pandemic isn't about politics. Mask wearing isn't about politics. Vaccines aren't about politics. Public safety isn't about politics. Medicine isn't about politics. You don't really show your fealty to the Orange One by bleating all this conspiracy theory nonsense. Bonus tip: he got HIS shots long ago.

Why in God's name do you people feel compelled to inject your political lunacy into every discussion? Why do you let Tucker Carlson lead you around by the nose to the point where you endanger your health and that of others? Why do you think you know more than America's top scientists and doctors?

I truly don't understand how tens of millions of people can be THIS delusional. Maybe I just don't understand the gravitational pull of the RepubliQ ideology.

Calling people idiots when you can't read and interpret data is funny

Not to play the 2p2 therapist in yet another virus thread, but I have a useful thought exercise for you.

Imagine a world in which you are WRONG. Not just a little wrong, or wrong about one or two minor details. A world in which you are very wrong frequently. And before you say, "I'm just following medical experts" imagine that they are very wrong too. Perhaps it's unlikely. Perhaps it's even extremely unlikely. But admit to yourself that it's POSSIBLE, and then it will allow you to treat the opposing side with more respect and empathy.

Most human beings, including top doctors and other experts in their fields (especially top doctors and experts, actually) try to appear much more competent than they actually are. It's just in our nature. We cannot escape it. It's part of the ego.

Ultimately, admitting our own ignorance, our own drooling idiocy, is what sets us free. It's the Socratic paradox. "I know that I know nothing." Once you really believe that, and you've taken it to heart, genuine dialogue and learning can commence. Maybe a lot has changed in the last 2,500 years but also a lot hasn't. Ancient Greek philosophers can still teach us a few things.

Conservatives should play this game too. What if YOU are wrong, and the liberals are actually making some good points? I know that seems impossible to believe, but maybe they are right about some important stuff. It's at least possible? Okay. Good. When both sides can admit that the other side might be partially right and has some legitimate concerns that is called progress. And it allows for communication. And with communication, maybe the country and the world can reach a reasonable middle ground, instead of this nightmare we insist on perpetuating.

I'm not particularly informed about most things, including this virus, but I'm smart enough to know that everyone is wrong about nearly everything. Always. The goal is to be less wrong than we were yesterday.

Did you ever meet a poker player who thought he played the game perfectly, and had nothing he could possibly learn from other players? Do you think that trait was a weakness or a strength? Treat this virus the same way. This is a forum of fairly intelligent people. It really shouldn't be that difficult to find plenty of common ground among people with opposing views.

Good thing kids are fully autonomous beings who have limited exposure to those pussy ass adults

average efficacy of mask aside, holy **** at this take. ripped straight from tucker carlson

Take a look in the mirror. You're one of them. Assuming you're not completely closed-minded (and you stop following corporate media), there will come a time when you realize the response to COVID was many magnitudes worse than COVID itself.

Sure, we can all be on the wrong side of things now and again. But this is not really what this is about. It's about a large fraction of society living in ignorance and believing anything and everything their self-confirming "news" sources tell them. The election was stolen; January 6 was loving tourists visiting the capital; COVID cases are spiking because Biden is letting immigrants flood the borders; vaccines don't work . . . This is not reasonable difference of opinion. It's living in alternative realities.

At some point, rational thinking folks get fed up, particularly so when the behavior of these right-wing dolts starts to impact the rest of us, like it has been with COVID.

Were there peaceful protesters at the capital on January 6? I'm sure there were; but let's not close our eyes the what really happened on that day. Has the CDC given inconsistent guidance on COVID? Yes, but let's consider that the CDC is dealing with an evolving and unprecedented event, and stances change based on developments in information. Are vaccines effective? EmpIrical evidence strongly indicates that, while not perfect, they are. Look at who had been vaccinated - Presidents (INCLUDING TRUMP!), CEOs of the worlds largest corporations, doctors. Smart, successful, highly educated (well, aside from Trump) individuals. Yet, we should keep open minds that these right-wing dolts who are "researching" vaccines on their own may be on the right side of the issue? If your 6 year old claims she saw a monster under the bed, calling bulls*t on it does not make you close-minded. It makes you a rational adult. There's very little difference nowadays between how reasonable people view the BS that many "conservatives" spout off on daily.

Here's what she actually said, which is not how the original poster framed it:

Asked by CNN's Dana Bash in a clip released Saturday whether she would get a vaccine that was approved and distributed before the election, Harris replied, "Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us."
"I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about," she continued in the clip from an exclusive interview airing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" at 9 a.m. ET. "I will not take his word for it."

Its actually taken directly from the CDC website.

Amazing the reaction of people these days to turn everything political. If you don't fall in the line with a gov't that has always lied and continues to lie to the people, you are labeled a "right-winger". The same gov't who has flip flopped on the COVID related matters over and over. Oddly enough it was liberals that used to fight against a tyrannical gov't. FWIW, I'm neither a democrat or republican, not that it matters.

Obviously the thought is that being vaccinated prevents Covid from prospering inside of you. The vaccine is not a bubble around you, but instead does not allow Covid to thrive inside you and infect you. This would lead one to believe that the virus has a very short life inside of you, thus you have less time to pass it on. A non-vaccinated person that gets Covid will be carrying the virus around for 10 or so days, a vaccinated person in theory would be carrying it around much less, thus having less opportunity to spread it.

In that thought process there would be less spreading of the disease and less spread would lead to less mutations. I am not smart enough to determine if that is correct and I do not read a bunch of studies to confirm that is correct or not, but I believe that to be the reasoning behind the belief that more vaccinated people would mean less spread and less mutations. The virus needs a host and a non-vaccinated person acts as a much better host than a vaccinated person.

I would also assume that since the average vaccinated person is exhibiting mild symptoms that the virus is weakened in them, thus if it gets passed on to someone else they are receiving a weakened version.

There will always be examples of vaccinated people getting Covid and dying, but that has more to do with the individual than the vaccine. Not all treatments effect all people the same. That is true of any issue/disease, so Covid and it's vaccine is going to be no different.

Not all of what you post sounds accurate; but I am no epidemiologist.

Sounds pretty reasonable as an explanation however. So, close enough for NVG. I'll go for it.

Thanks.

My response comes from a local children's hospital having a full ICU with some of those patients having covid. If covid didn't affect children like you claim, there would be no covid patients in their ICU.

And children have died from covid.

Thus disproving the claims of you and the other guy.

I guess you're right if you take the one guy quite literally (which is pretty obvious you shouldn't), but the other guy just said "kids aren't really at risk from COVID," which is unequivocally true. You're being ridiculous here Doc.

Whether vaccinated people can spread the disease is not a settled question. As this article notes, the CDC has not released the data on which this contention rests, rendering suspect the conclusion that vaccinated people carry viral loads high enough to transmit the disease. https://www.chron.com/news/article/E...y-16347545.php. Experts in infectious disease therefore would like to see the data to evaluate the proposition.

What is established by a tremendous amount of data is that the risks to vaccinated people is near zero. According to the CDC, a grand total of 4,072 vaccinated Americans had been hospitalized with symptomatic breakthrough infections out of more than 161 million who have been fully vaccinated as of mid-July, 2021.

Even better, of those hospitalized, only 849 died. In other words, the death rate from those breakthrough infections is 0.0005 percent. The chance of dying from a lightning strike is 0.0007 percent. The chance of dying from the seasonal flu is 0.1 percent.

Furthermore, the vast majority of those who do require hospitalization as a result of a breakthrough infection are older or have underlying conditions like cancer or heart disease. This particular fact -- that Covid presents its greatest risks to the elderly and to those with serious health conditions -- has been a consistent data point about Covid infections since the beginning.

Those who have been vaccinated have done their part. They have slowed the spread of the disease -- infection rates are way down compared to pre-vaccine days -- and they have created circumstances such that our medical resources are more than adequate to treat those who do become infected.

I respectfully submit that mask mandates are neither going to encourage the stubbornly unvaccinated to change their minds nor going to change the trajectory of current infection rates. If the problem is the unvaccinated, then government needs to come up with a policy that causes changes in their behavior, not the behavior of the vaccinated population that have taken the steps necessary to protect themselves to the point where the risk of serious repercussions from Covid infections is, practically speaking, zero.

This.

The idea and net effects of zeroism with COVID is very dangerous. CDC numbers show that there is very little risk of serious illness/death in children. Based on historical data, for children, its about as serious as the flu and much less deadly then pneumonia.

Meanwhile lockdowns have had serious effect on children's development, see various studies/data on school performance, and mental health.

Nonsensical. Yes, there have technically been kids that "died from covid" but first off with extremely ill people claiming they died from COVID is often misleading as they had cancer or whatever would have died not from COVID too. You have to do pair or population studies to find excess deaths.

Second, the death rate in children is so incredibly low as to be of no concern. For example, in CO those age 0-19 (that's how the state does the breakdown):

• represent 24.62% of the population
• represent 17.11% of COVID cases
• represent 0.26% of deaths among COVID cases

In other words those under age 20 with COVID are roughly 100x less likely to die than the rest of the COVID-infected population. If you look into it a bit more those are deaths among cases, not deaths *caused* by COVID so if a kid with COVID gets in a car accident or dies of cancer, it counts. The actual number of child deaths due to COVID is effectively zero. There are quite a few other menaces to children's welfare that we should be far more concerned about.

I would have somewhat less concern if my daughter contracted COVID than if she contracted influenza A.

That is not the clip I was referring to. I was referring to the vice presidential debate when she said “if Donald Trump tells me to take a vaccine then I will not do it“

I found the clip that you're referencing and she says essentially the same thing:

"Sen. Kamala Harris said during Wednesday's vice presidential debate that she would take a COVID-19 vaccine only if medical professionals recommended it, not on President Donald Trump's word alone.

"If Dr. Fauci, the doctors, tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it," Harris said. "But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not going to take it.""

And why would she or anyone else, for that matter, take the word of a politician, Democrat or Republican, over that of a doctor, with regards to vaccines?

But was there ever a time when the vaccines came out too early and only Trump was recommending people take them while the medical professionals didn’t? That was just a hypothetical she brought up.

Yes, almost exactly what I said in the first post. She said that she would not take the vaccine if Trump told her to. And with how many times Dr. Fauci has been wrong or flip-flopped on Covid issues then her statement about medical professionals giving her advice is flawed too. And this is coming from someone who is mostly pro vaccine

Again, you're taking her comments out of context and leaving out the beginning of her statement. The question asked was if the Trump Administration approved a vaccine, would she take it. She said specifically that if the health professionals tell her to take it (when the Trump Administration approves the vaccine), if Dr. Fauci tells her to take it (when the Trump Administration approves the vaccine), if the doctors tell her to take it (when the Trump Administration approves the vaccine), then she'll take it. She then added that if it was (merely) Trump telling her to take it, then she wouldn't. What part of that is so difficult to understand?

And if you don't believe that's what she said, here is the clip itself from the VP debate:



What she said is no different than being asked if she'd take hydroxychloroquine since Trump recommended it, and her saying that she'd take it if the doctors and health professionals recommended it, but that she wouldn't do so just on Trump's recommendation.

This is a profoundly silly argument.

In terms of medicine and science, I actually don't form my own opinions. I try to find out what the experts say--just as I don't make my own medical diagnoses or try to fix my computer myself for that matter. So the only way in which I can be "right" or "wrong" in such areas is whether I choose to listen or not listen to the people who know more than I do.

You see, it's not just one side versus another, with the fallacious assumption that the arguments of both sides are equally valid. In this blighted and torn nation we call America, one side believes in conspiracy theories as a matter of doctrine and faith; that elections they lose are ipso facto fraudulent; and that rather than the vaccines that have been developed being a lifesaving blessing and the product of literally billions of person-hours of arduous work, they are sinister mechanisms of mind control concocted by an evil cabal of pedophile Democrats.

I'm tired of the kum-by-ya approach. The anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists cannot be reasoned with. If there's one persistent blunder that liberals make, it's thinking/hoping that the other side can be reasoned with--that they're fundamentally ethical and sane, just ideologically different. No. At this point, they have a different perception of reality. For them, that "Trumps" ethics and reason. And that makes any "unity" discussion a waste of time.

On a related matter, I love how ex-waiters and other poker players who barely have a high school education are all of a sudden experts in epidemiology.

I was not refuting your point re: Covids effects on children

100% this...just get your damn vaccine, you ****ing idiots