Looks like vaccination is going away

[Jarhyn]

The problem here is that vaccines don't hurt anyone; at best they cause much more mold versions of what happens during a normal infection.

That's not actually true. Vaccines don't cause mild versions of the actual infection. Vaccines can cause generally "flu like" symptoms, and that's true for almost all vaccines, regardless of what symptoms the actual infection causes. Vaccines prompt the body to produce antibodies for the inactive virus strains included in the vaccine - and the production of antibodies causes inflammation and soreness, and often a slight fever over a short period of time. Tetanus vaccine doesn't cause any of the symptoms of tentanus, not even mild ones - it causes generally "flu like" symptoms. Same for diphtheria, and for rubella, and for shingles. Arguably, one could say that influenza vaccines cause mild flu symptoms, but that's largely because the symptoms from influenza are almost entirely a result of antibody production in the first place .

Most vaccines do not have specific symptoms, just the general flu-like from fighting the "infection".

But we do sometimes see mild myocarditis from the Covid vaccine--which is a Covid symptom.

And dengue fever has the nasty effect of a subsequent infection being worse than the original--and the vaccine has exactly the same effect. Thus the vaccine is only given to those who have already had dengue fever.

It's also not entirely true that vaccines don't hurt anyone. They don't hurt many people, but there are people who have allergic reactions to the vaccines pretty much across the board. Additionally, people with certain types of immune system conditions shouldn't take vaccines because it can cause severe reactions in them that can lead to serious injury or death. Vaccines in general come with warnings for certain types of allergies and immunocompromising conditions. Additionally, although it's rare, there have been some few vaccines in the past that have been associated with unexpected deleterious outcomes.

Which is why the VICP exists.

Jesus fuck her reading comprehension is as bad as she accuses me of having, here.

Just read the text, it's right there in the original quote: at best they cause much more mold mild versions of what happens during a normal infection.

This isn't to say it's a full gamut of the results of a full infection, but the reaction the body has is necessarily similar when exposed to a spike protein as when exposed to a whole virus; the immune reaction is what causes the majority of symptoms. Until your body stops reacting to the spike protein, it acts as if there is an active infection.

The result is brief, and generally mild, but it is, in fact, at best for those claiming to be vaccine injured, for the most part, really just a much more mild version of what happens during an active infection, because it is caused by the body's reaction to part of the virus.

I can't see why she even bothered to argue this?

 

[Emily Lake]

From the kff page:

Operating margins were lower among hospitals in rural (nonmetropolitan) areas than hospitals in urban (metropolitan) areas (3.1% versus 5.4%, respectively). Operating margins were especially low among the nearly 1,000 hospitals in rural areas that were not micropolitan areas (1.7%) (i.e., that do not include and are not closely connected to any substantial population center).

Hospital closures outpaced openings in rural areas from 2017 to 2023. During that seven-year period, 61 hospitals closed compared to 11 that opened, a net reduction of 50 hospitals. Over the twenty-year longer period from 2005 to 2024, 193 rural hospitals closed.

You should dig a little deeper, it's not nearly as clean as you think it is.

Large hospital corporations - many of which are for-profit - have been buying up rural hospitals and facilities. Those rural hospitals have always operated on thin margins. Personally, I think hospitals and medical providers in general should have narrow margins; high margins is profiteering off of people's illness and injury in a rather unsavory fashion.

But here's the catch - those large hospital corporations buy the rural ones, scrape what narrow surplus they have, roll it into the larger corporation, then go build new fancy hospitals with lots of pretty bits and unnecessary pieces in urban areas that already have plenty of available hospitals. So they're putting their incomes into expansion in places that don't need more hospital, which reduces their booked margins. Then they turn around and say "Oh, this rural hospital that we just bought isn't bringing in money, we're going to close it".

They're busy gentrifying health care and fucking over rural areas in the process. And they're passing on the cost of unnecessary prettification to people with insurance coverage, while simultaneously arguing that Medicare and Medicaid need to pay them more. For profit hospital systems are essentially running a really nasty protection racket.

 

[Emily Lake]

Just read the text, it's right there in the original quote: at best they cause much more mold mild versions of what happens during a normal infection.

Tradition vaccines do NOT cause mild versions of what the primary infection causes. They all cause essentially the same reaction - aching, fatigue, mild fever. That's not the symptoms that the primary infection causes - those are the symptoms of high antibody production, which is exactly what the vaccine is supposed to do!

Diphtheria vaccines do not cause sore throat or difficulty breathing. Tetanus vaccines don't cause neck stiffness and difficulty swallowing. Measles vaccines don't cause koplic and rash. Mumps vaccines don't cause swollen salivary glands. Pertussis vaccines don't cause deep-chest coughs. Hepatitis vaccines don't cause jaundice. Smallpox vaccines don't cause papules and pustules. I could go on, but I assume you get the picture.

Traditional vaccines don't cause the symptoms of the infection that's being vaccinated against. They cause general "flu-like" symptoms, all of them.

Now, if you want to dig in on Covid vaccines in particular, go for it. They're not traditional vaccines, they're mRNA vaccines, and I don't really have a good handle on how those work. They might very well cause mild covid symptoms. But for the rest of them... the claim that they cause mild versions of the illness they're vaccinating against is just plain wrong.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In my twenty plus years working in the finance department of the largest healthcare system in the region I've seen some pretty damned stupid spending. The board and top admin get free memberships and dues to the local private golf country club. Free membership and dues to the snobby private social club. Their personal tax return processing is paid for by the Hospital at over a thousand dollars a pop. Monthly (sometimes more) luncheon meetings with the board and entire management team at the before mentioned social club (meals and drinks not covered by monthly dues) that the hospital pays for even though there are very nice and large conference rooms off of both of the main campuses cafeterias. Probably more.

I was never privy enough to get the full total of all that spending but I could see it reaching probably a half million.

I'm sure there's stuff like this. But what % of the total is it? Drop in the bucket.

The previous poster nailed it--it's not all ERs, it's the ones without adequate trauma income or adequate insurance coverage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

From the kff page:

Operating margins were lower among hospitals in rural (nonmetropolitan) areas than hospitals in urban (metropolitan) areas (3.1% versus 5.4%, respectively). Operating margins were especially low among the nearly 1,000 hospitals in rural areas that were not micropolitan areas (1.7%) (i.e., that do not include and are not closely connected to any substantial population center).

Hospital closures outpaced openings in rural areas from 2017 to 2023. During that seven-year period, 61 hospitals closed compared to 11 that opened, a net reduction of 50 hospitals. Over the twenty-year longer period from 2005 to 2024, 193 rural hospitals closed.

You should dig a little deeper, it's not nearly as clean as you think it is.

Large hospital corporations - many of which are for-profit - have been buying up rural hospitals and facilities. Those rural hospitals have always operated on thin margins. Personally, I think hospitals and medical providers in general should have narrow margins; high margins is profiteering off of people's illness and injury in a rather unsavory fashion.

But here's the catch - those large hospital corporations buy the rural ones, scrape what narrow surplus they have, roll it into the larger corporation, then go build new fancy hospitals with lots of pretty bits and unnecessary pieces in urban areas that already have plenty of available hospitals. So they're putting their incomes into expansion in places that don't need more hospital, which reduces their booked margins. Then they turn around and say "Oh, this rural hospital that we just bought isn't bringing in money, we're going to close it".

They're busy gentrifying health care and fucking over rural areas in the process. And they're passing on the cost of unnecessary prettification to people with insurance coverage, while simultaneously arguing that Medicare and Medicaid need to pay them more. For profit hospital systems are essentially running a really nasty protection racket.

Disagree. That's not the way economics works. Doesn't matter if they are directing the profit to big city hospitals, they're going to evaluate any given hospital on the income vs expenses. Doesn't matter if that rural hospital is less profitable, if it's making money they'll keep it. If it's losing money they'll close it. And note the fact that they were able to buy it at all says it was most likely in trouble in the first place.

The reality is a hospital needs enough patients paying the bill. The rural ones don't have that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Just read the text, it's right there in the original quote: at best they cause much more mold mild versions of what happens during a normal infection.

Tradition vaccines do NOT cause mild versions of what the primary infection causes. They all cause essentially the same reaction - aching, fatigue, mild fever. That's not the symptoms that the primary infection causes - those are the symptoms of high antibody production, which is exactly what the vaccine is supposed to do!

Diphtheria vaccines do not cause sore throat or difficulty breathing. Tetanus vaccines don't cause neck stiffness and difficulty swallowing. Measles vaccines don't cause koplic and rash. Mumps vaccines don't cause swollen salivary glands. Pertussis vaccines don't cause deep-chest coughs. Hepatitis vaccines don't cause jaundice. Smallpox vaccines don't cause papules and pustules. I could go on, but I assume you get the picture.

Traditional vaccines don't cause the symptoms of the infection that's being vaccinated against. They cause general "flu-like" symptoms, all of them.

Now, if you want to dig in on Covid vaccines in particular, go for it. They're not traditional vaccines, they're mRNA vaccines, and I don't really have a good handle on how those work. They might very well cause mild covid symptoms. But for the rest of them... the claim that they cause mild versions of the illness they're vaccinating against is just plain wrong.

Doesn't matter if they're traditional or not.

They cause the symptoms that would come from the presence of the pathogen in your body but do not cause the symptoms of the pathogen attacking your body. For most diseases there are no specific symptoms from it's presence so it's just flu-like. Dengue isn't mRNA but it still has the same sensitizing consequence that real dengue has.

 

[Jarhyn]

Just read the text, it's right there in the original quote: at best they cause much more mold mild versions of what happens during a normal infection.

Tradition vaccines do NOT cause mild versions of what the primary infection causes. They all cause essentially the same reaction - aching, fatigue, mild fever. That's not the symptoms that the primary infection causes - those are the symptoms of high antibody production, which is exactly what the vaccine is supposed to do!

Diphtheria vaccines do not cause sore throat or difficulty breathing. Tetanus vaccines don't cause neck stiffness and difficulty swallowing. Measles vaccines don't cause koplic and rash. Mumps vaccines don't cause swollen salivary glands. Pertussis vaccines don't cause deep-chest coughs. Hepatitis vaccines don't cause jaundice. Smallpox vaccines don't cause papules and pustules. I could go on, but I assume you get the picture.

Traditional vaccines don't cause the symptoms of the infection that's being vaccinated against. They cause general "flu-like" symptoms, all of them.

Now, if you want to dig in on Covid vaccines in particular, go for it. They're not traditional vaccines, they're mRNA vaccines, and I don't really have a good handle on how those work. They might very well cause mild covid symptoms. But for the rest of them... the claim that they cause mild versions of the illness they're vaccinating against is just plain wrong.

Doesn't matter if they're traditional or not.

They cause the symptoms that would come from the presence of the pathogen in your body but do not cause the symptoms of the pathogen attacking your body. For most diseases there are no specific symptoms from it's presence so it's just flu-like. Dengue isn't mRNA but it still has the same sensitizing consequence that real dengue has.

Exactly. I just find it so banal that she's somehow trying to nitpick wording not intended to even evoke what she's trying to talk about.

She's just arguing straight past me, and at this point I have to really ask why.

The "what happens" that I'm talking about is specifically the component of "what happens in the immune response". It shouldn't need to be spelled out.

 

[ZiprHead]

In my twenty plus years working in the finance department of the largest healthcare system in the region I've seen some pretty damned stupid spending. The board and top admin get free memberships and dues to the local private golf country club. Free membership and dues to the snobby private social club. Their personal tax return processing is paid for by the Hospital at over a thousand dollars a pop. Monthly (sometimes more) luncheon meetings with the board and entire management team at the before mentioned social club (meals and drinks not covered by monthly dues) that the hospital pays for even though there are very nice and large conference rooms off of both of the main campuses cafeterias. Probably more.

I was never privy enough to get the full total of all that spending but I could see it reaching probably a half million.

I'm sure there's stuff like this. But what % of the total is it? Drop in the bucket.

Is that the purpose of a (non profit) hospital? That's all money that could be spent to improve patient care. Two new hospitalist physicians (starting pay $180K), five more registered nurses. The list could go on.

Your apologia for the rich and greedy by just saying the word percentage is sickening.

 

[Emily Lake]

Just read the text, it's right there in the original quote: at best they cause much more mold mild versions of what happens during a normal infection.

Tradition vaccines do NOT cause mild versions of what the primary infection causes. They all cause essentially the same reaction - aching, fatigue, mild fever. That's not the symptoms that the primary infection causes - those are the symptoms of high antibody production, which is exactly what the vaccine is supposed to do!

Diphtheria vaccines do not cause sore throat or difficulty breathing. Tetanus vaccines don't cause neck stiffness and difficulty swallowing. Measles vaccines don't cause koplic and rash. Mumps vaccines don't cause swollen salivary glands. Pertussis vaccines don't cause deep-chest coughs. Hepatitis vaccines don't cause jaundice. Smallpox vaccines don't cause papules and pustules. I could go on, but I assume you get the picture.

Traditional vaccines don't cause the symptoms of the infection that's being vaccinated against. They cause general "flu-like" symptoms, all of them.

Now, if you want to dig in on Covid vaccines in particular, go for it. They're not traditional vaccines, they're mRNA vaccines, and I don't really have a good handle on how those work. They might very well cause mild covid symptoms. But for the rest of them... the claim that they cause mild versions of the illness they're vaccinating against is just plain wrong.

Doesn't matter if they're traditional or not.

They cause the symptoms that would come from the presence of the pathogen in your body but do not cause the symptoms of the pathogen attacking your body. For most diseases there are no specific symptoms from it's presence so it's just flu-like. Dengue isn't mRNA but it still has the same sensitizing consequence that real dengue has.

Exactly. I just find it so banal that she's somehow trying to nitpick wording not intended to even evoke what she's trying to talk about.

She's just arguing straight past me, and at this point I have to really ask why.

The "what happens" that I'm talking about is specifically the component of "what happens in the immune response". It shouldn't need to be spelled out.

I'm arguing with you because your premise is essentially that homeopathy works, and it expresses a considerable misunderstanding of how traditional vaccines actually work.

Now, if you'd like to cop to expressing yourself poorly, that's fine. I'll happily accept that you just did a bad job of it, and move on.

 

[Jarhyn]

... Wow. Emily is calling actual researched immune response science "homeopathy" now.

Just...

Wow.

Vaccination works because the body only assembles defenses after exposure to something; it's too expensive in a biological system to prepare for everything it's ever needed to defend against.

Instead, the body has had to evolve to adapt to things on the fly and spam solutions after-the-fact.

Some immune functions are "momentary reflex responses" that "harden" the body against things in the presence of foreign unrecognized metabolites and other chemicals in unrecognized levels.

In the skin, this often triggers a cyst to form, in the lungs, mucous production increases, the bowels and the stomach empty out and produce more caustic chemicals. With generalized systemic levels being abnormal, the whole body tries to cycle fluids out.

But the more specialized immune system needs to identify, do some recombinant processes, and then trigger massive production of signalling chemicals and preparing response cells to those signals so that it can be identified.

Vaccines universally target this process, mRNA and otherwise, by triggering this arming process against the identified segments of the pathogen.

Every vaccine works this way, and it's not "homeopathy", it's well studied chemistry. It requires the presence of viral features that the adaptive immune system can access to be present in the body.

For smallpox, the cowpox virus is used, live. You are literally vaccinated with a less severe mutant of the same virus sometimes.

For some viruses, it is done by making the body produce the protein it's going to need to respond to later (the mRNA coronavirus vaccines). This has the benefit of not needing whole viruses or needing to chemically isolate parts of the virus.

In all cases, it's tricking the immune system to prepare what it needs to fight a viral infection before the virus comes in.

This inevitably triggers parts of the generalized immune system because the responses are fundamentally linked. You feel mildly bad, and then your body will already be ready when the real virus comes in.

This is... Why do I even have to explain this?

Just fucking quit it.

 

[bilby]

... Wow. Emily is calling actual researched immune response science "homeopathy" now.

No, she isn't. She's quite reasonably objecting to your minor misconceptions about how it works.

And they are minor. Most of what you are both saying is in agreement with each other.

She's just got a more detailed grasp of it than you appear to have.

Smallpox vaccine is was the 'exception that proves the rule'; poxviruses are (lucky for us) unusual in that different viruses carry very similar antigens, so cowpox can be used to carry smallpox antigens into the body, without first requiring any modification. It's essentially a naturally occurring preventative treatment, and was the first vaccine, for which all others are named.

All vaccines work by exposing the patient's immune system to the antigens associated with the pathogen in question, without exposing them to the actual pathogen.

There are several ways to do this. You can use a related, but less dangerous, pathogen (eg cowpox/smallpox), but few such pairings exist. You can make your own less dangerous version, and infect people with that (most polio vaccines work this way). You can generate a quantity of virus, kill it without denaturing the key antigens, and then inject the dead viruses (flu vaccines do this; The virus is grown in chicken embryos, which is why they ask patients if they are allergic to eggs). You can extract the antigen from (or simply in) the blood plasma of infected patients. You can manufacture the antigen by splicing genes that code for it into yeast. Or you can take those genes, in the form of RNA, and inject them into the patient, who will them become his own vaccine factory (that's what COVID vaccines do).

But the point Emily is making, quite correctly, is that none of these ways of displaying antigen to your immune system are well described by the folk myth that vaccines "give you a mild case of the disease"; At best this is a very poor approximation, and in the vast majority of cases, it's just plain wrong.

If a vaccine gave you the disease, it would give you the disease. You can't get a case of 1% of influenza, you either have influenza, or you don't.

 

[Jarhyn]

But the point Emily is making, quite correctly, is that none of these ways of displaying antigen to your immune system are well described by the folk myth that vaccines "give you a mild case of the disease"

It seems you made the same mistake she did, or she coaxed.ypu into her snafu: I never said anything about "a mild case of the disease".

This is a misconception you both had.

I said "what happens", not "mild case of the disease". The thing that happens is the immune response. I have said this twice, maybe three times now. Every vaccine requires that part.

I'm just describing the antigens and how the body works in a more direct way, without using the word "antigen" because it's not actually a descriptive word, it's jargon.

Of course, most diseases don't use whole viruses or inactivated viruses these days.

It's not really a *valid* complaint about what I said because I never said it. She invented it from what I said because she wanted to quibble pointlessly. I'm surprised you fell for her straw-man claims.

The visible symptom of most disease, absent immune response, is going to be some kind of direct organ failure. This isn't a notable symptom of most diseases most humans get because of the rest of the immune response, both the quieter specialized response AND the big loud flashy 'flu-like symptoms' response.

The result of nearly all immune response is "flu-like symptoms' because the body really only has the one bag of tricks and it rolls out all the tricks every time, so every vaccine causes some variation of that in lesser degree usually because the whole point of a vaccine is to motivate the immune response.

And what's even her point? That because she is arguing against a straw-man that she is somehow right about some unrelated point wherein she tries to defend some RFK bullshit?

Or is it just a front at this point for trying to harass me?

 

[bilby]

without using the word "antigen" because it's not actually a descriptive word, it's jargon.

Like all jargon, it is both.

Apparently (and ironically), you appear not to know what 'jargon' means, and are using this to dismiss your ignorance about what an antigen is.

You also seen to be unaware that you don't disagree with Emily on anything substantive. You just have a less nuanced and less detailed grasp of the subject - as indicated by your ignorsnce of the relevant jargon.

 

[Swammerdami]

Social services are being gutted, you are equivocating and evading.
My own patience has limits as well.

You said they're "ordering the agencies and insurer who used to pay for their medical care to fold up shop and give the money (aka fraud and waste) to billionaires as a tax break." That's false. Total funding for social services is going up. So if some particular service is being gutted, they are giving the money to the users and providers of other social services. Billionaires are not getting the money. More and more money is being taken from billionaires.

There are various ways to present numbers. Sometimes a method is chosen NOT because it supports a partisan point, but because that method is easier or clearer.

More important than specific numbers or the "spinning" to get those numbers to support one's partisan point is the net effect of ALL changes. The CBO, Congress's "non-partisan' arm to research budgets, has a page which "illustrates the distributional effects of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It allows users to explore how H.R. 1, as passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025, would affect the economic resources available to households grouped on the basis of their income."

Here's a table from that page which shows the effect of H.R. 1 on households, by income decile. This seems FAR more relevant than nitpicking different manners of accounting.



That H.R. 1 effectively transfers funding from the poor to the rich is plainly visible.

 

[Jarhyn]

without using the word "antigen" because it's not actually a descriptive word, it's jargon.

Like all jargon, it is both.

Apparently (and ironically), you appear not to know what 'jargon' means, and are using this to dismiss your ignorance about what an antigen is.

You also seen to be unaware that you don't disagree with Emily on anything substantive. You just have a less nuanced and less detailed grasp of the subject - as indicated by your ignorsnce of the relevant jargon.

I know what an antigen is, thanks. I just tend to have a lot of friends who don't, and we are on a forum with a lot of people who don't and don't care. It's not useful to assume everyone does, and I don't build my patterns around it.

So excuse what you assume is my "ignorsnce" and actually look at my point: I KNOW Emily hasn't been making substantive disagreement with me. My question, and my point, is why the fuck is she making such vocal and unsubstantive disagreement with me, someone who thinks vaccines work and "vaccine injury"* is a fucking scam and that RFK is a grifter?!?

What is even her purpose of the nitpick? To pretend I don't understand science because I ELI5'd this time rather than using the word Antigen? To clown around and muddy waters?

Seriously. Wtf.

*As claimed by the likes of RFK

 

[Emily Lake]

But the point Emily is making, quite correctly, is that none of these ways of displaying antigen to your immune system are well described by the folk myth that vaccines "give you a mild case of the disease"

It seems you made the same mistake she did, or she coaxed.ypu into her snafu: I never said anything about "a mild case of the disease".

This is a misconception you both had.

I said "what happens", not "mild case of the disease". The thing that happens is the immune response. I have said this twice, maybe three times now. Every vaccine requires that part.

Dude, whatever you might have thought you were trying to say, you absolutely suck at actually saying. Just own up to it and move on. As bilby pointed out, we're not in disagreement on the big stuff here. I was correcting something you said that leads to a considerable amount of misunderstanding about vaccines, and which contributes to vaccine hesitation.

And what's even her point? That because she is arguing against a straw-man that she is somehow right about some unrelated point wherein she tries to defend some RFK bullshit?

I've done so such thing.

Or is it just a front at this point for trying to harass me?

Are you fucking joking? Seriously, do you even read your own posts, and what you have said about me?

 

[Emily Lake]

without using the word "antigen" because it's not actually a descriptive word, it's jargon.

Like all jargon, it is both.

Apparently (and ironically), you appear not to know what 'jargon' means, and are using this to dismiss your ignorance about what an antigen is.

You also seen to be unaware that you don't disagree with Emily on anything substantive. You just have a less nuanced and less detailed grasp of the subject - as indicated by your ignorsnce of the relevant jargon.

I know what an antigen is, thanks. I just tend to have a lot of friends who don't, and we are on a forum with a lot of people who don't and don't care. It's not useful to assume everyone does, and I don't build my patterns around it.

So excuse what you assume is my "ignorsnce" and actually look at my point: I KNOW Emily hasn't been making substantive disagreement with me. My question, and my point, is why the fuck is she making such vocal and unsubstantive disagreement with me, someone who thinks vaccines work and "vaccine injury"* is a fucking scam and that RFK is a grifter?!?

What is even her purpose of the nitpick? To pretend I don't understand science because I ELI5'd this time rather than using the word Antigen? To clown around and muddy waters?

Seriously. Wtf.

*As claimed by the likes of RFK

Dude, you really need to chill the fuck out.

I disagreed with you because the way you phrased it contributes to vaccine hesitation. The false narrative that vaccines cause a mild version of the illness itself is part of the talking points associated with vaccine avoidance. It gives the impression that it's possible for someone to get the illness from the vaccine 'if something goes wrong', and that's not true.

I understand that wasn't your intention, that wasn't what you were trying to say - but that's what a lurker reading this would very likely infer. So I responded with a correction.

 

[Jarhyn]

<Mod Edit>

All you're accomplishing is to nitpick over bullshit, Emily. You could have just left me the fuck alone.

The fact is that vaccines DO cause immune reactions. We know what causes those reactions and why they happen, but the body necessarily reacts.

Not being honest and open about why is as disingenuous as anything else.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I accept the idea of vaccine hesitancy as a broad social right in the first place; I don't respect most people's claims to rights to not take a vaccine, especially when there are alternative versions available.

"You're gonna get the jab, get some sniffles, and get over it, because not doing that means exposing people to disease risk, and you don't have the right to expose people to preventable disease risk".

 

[crazyfingers]

without using the word "antigen" because it's not actually a descriptive word, it's jargon.

Like all jargon, it is both.

Apparently (and ironically), you appear not to know what 'jargon' means, and are using this to dismiss your ignorance about what an antigen is.

You also seen to be unaware that you don't disagree with Emily on anything substantive. You just have a less nuanced and less detailed grasp of the subject - as indicated by your ignorsnce of the relevant jargon.

I know what an antigen is, thanks. I just tend to have a lot of friends who don't, and we are on a forum with a lot of people who don't and don't care. It's not useful to assume everyone does, and I don't build my patterns around it.

So excuse what you assume is my "ignorsnce" and actually look at my point: I KNOW Emily hasn't been making substantive disagreement with me. My question, and my point, is why the fuck is she making such vocal and unsubstantive disagreement with me, someone who thinks vaccines work and "vaccine injury"* is a fucking scam and that RFK is a grifter?!?

What is even her purpose of the nitpick? To pretend I don't understand science because I ELI5'd this time rather than using the word Antigen? To clown around and muddy waters?

Seriously. Wtf.

*As claimed by the likes of RFK

Dude, you really need to chill the fuck out.

I disagreed with you because the way you phrased it contributes to vaccine hesitation. The false narrative that vaccines cause a mild version of the illness itself is part of the talking points associated with vaccine avoidance. It gives the impression that it's possible for someone to get the illness from the vaccine 'if something goes wrong', and that's not true.

I understand that wasn't your intention, that wasn't what you were trying to say - but that's what a lurker reading this would very likely infer. So I responded with a correction.

Yes. I don't think that using a "Weakened" virus has been a thing since around 1796-1820. In 200+ years there have been other ways.

 

[Bomb#20]

You said they're "ordering the agencies and insurer who used to pay for their medical care to fold up shop and give the money (aka fraud and waste) to billionaires as a tax break." That's false. Total funding for social services is going up. So if some particular service is being gutted, they are giving the money to the users and providers of other social services. Billionaires are not getting the money. More and more money is being taken from billionaires.

There are various ways to present numbers. Sometimes a method is chosen NOT because it supports a partisan point, but because that method is easier or clearer.

More important than specific numbers or the "spinning" to get those numbers to support one's partisan point is the net effect of ALL changes. The CBO, Congress's "non-partisan' arm to research budgets, has a page which "illustrates the distributional effects of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It allows users to explore how H.R. 1, as passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025, would affect the economic resources available to households grouped on the basis of their income."

Here's a table from that page which shows the effect of H.R. 1 on households, by income decile. This seems FAR more relevant than nitpicking different manners of accounting.

View attachment 51686

That H.R. 1 effectively transfers funding from the poor to the rich is plainly visible.

Why on earth do you think that's a substantive argument? What the heck makes you think when you pick one manner of accounting out of all the different manners, your method is "FAR more relevant" while the alternatives are "nitpicking", apart from the circumstance that you like yours better? You understand, don't you, that "the net effect of ALL changes" is just another way to say "We're using the previous law as our baseline."? So you're simply choosing to place the origin of your axis at the same utterly arbitrary point as the one Elixir's Artificial Imbecile used. At least his AI has the excuse that it didn't know it was doing that -- it just inherited that origin from the media's collective abuse of the word "cut" in its training data. So what makes "the previous law" the correct baseline for measuring "give the money to billionaires"? The previous law authorized the government to massively increase the amount of money it takes from billionaires!

Let me present a hypothetical for your consideration. I read that Trump enacted a 36% tariff on imports from Thailand; then they negotiated it down to 19%. I'm guessing the Trump tariffs probably ticked off the Thai government quite a bit. So I invite you to imagine a scenario where Thailand retaliates against the 36% tariff by ordering the immediate confiscation of 36% of all property owned by all U.S. expatriates living in Thailand. Then after making its deal with Trump to reduce the tariff, the Thai government partially rescinds its command and reduces the expatriate property confiscations to 19%. The government accountants figure out how much stuff you own and send you a bill for 19% of it. When news of the deal and the reduction gets out, some nationalist newspaper inevitably trumpets "Government transfers funding from Thai citizens to immigrants, enriching every American in Thailand by 17%!". So my question to you is, would you agree with the newspaper? As you look at your bill for 19% of your assets, would you think "Score! The government just transferred me 17% more wealth!"?