• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Covid-19 miscellany

I summarize the first few minutes of these Rachel Maddow highlights.

Remember when right-wingers were shrieking that Obama would appoint death panels to ration care, and send Grandma to the death camps? Well, the U.S. has death panels now, but they are mostly in red states. We think of ICU's as the hospital ward for the patients in greatest need, but the neediest in North Idaho are given minimal care, even left in corridors. The goal is to save the ICU beds for less ill patients, more likely to survive. (Nurses as well as beds, are in short supply in some regions due to some medical personnel quitting in response to dangers and abuse.) Despite this triage, 95% of ICU patients in Idaho are unvaccinated.

In Central Idaho the distinguished Dr. Ted Epperly has been kicked off the District Health Board (not yet relabeled as Death Panel) and replaced with Dr. Ryan Cole. Cole (an Ivermectin advocate) calls Covid vaccines "needle rape" and "a Poisonous attack on our population [which] needs to stop now."

The Governor of Idaho has made addressing the Covid crisis a priority. He is calling a special session of the legislature and charging it to PROHIBIT mask or vaccination mandates for health workers!

Just when I thought Republicans had plumbed the utter depths of human stupidity, I see something like this and learn that their stupidity has no limits.

0.3% of the population of Mississippi has already died of Covid-19 (probably more, since GOP governments lie) and its death rate is still accelerating; Louisiana is close behind.
 
So Biden orders employees of big businesses to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face weekly testing.

Completely fair assuming, in this executive order is also included a plan for how to finance it, and organise it in a way that doesn't unnecessarily complicate the lives of unvaccinated. Is there? If there isn't he's a fascist totalitarian bully. If it is, he's a good competent president. It would have been nice if this information was in the article.

Does anybody know?

I’m thinking a fascist totalitarian bully.


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis

They are not going to stop.
 
The fact that CS Lewis said that does not make it true or wise.

Or not hypocritical from a guy who prayed to and evangelized for a god that punished you for your own good.

And again, the mandates are NOT “for your own good.” They are to keep you* from harming others.


(* you = the anti vaxxers)

At this point, all of us would be just fine with letting the antivaxxers isolate themselves as a group, together with their freedoms, and stay the fuck out of hospitals, grocery stores and workplaces.

But they don’t quarantine themselves with their beliefs. They want to infect everyone around them.
 
The fact that CS Lewis said that does not make it true or wise.
Right. Also, "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims" would have been how the Inca and Aztecs described Christianity...or it could be a citation of Christianity in general, through at least the 18th century...or many a whackadoodle Christian sect today. Didn't know C.S. Lewis had any freethought leanings (actually, he had the key quality of apologetics, flexibility with analysis so that one's own orthodoxy isn't held to the same standard as the opposition.)
 
Those fascists who are instituting sane measures to deal with a deadly pandemic!

The sick deluded anti-vaxxers that want their silly delusions to count as much as sane medical practice should be punished for their bad decisions that harm others.

Just like anybody who deliberately harms others should be punished.
 
Same people who want nothing in the way of climate change abatement to interfere with the country's vehicle fleet. "I don't care if 77 is the coastal highway. Hands off my SUV!!"
 
We need OSHA to mandate no donuts in the company kitchen; weekly weigh-ins; $14k fines for employees with high BMI.

Patience Grasshopper, that time will come.

You can already detect the busybodies getting that out there in the form of dictating the largest cup a soda can be served in (remember that actually happened) and banning soda vending machines in schools and colleges. The less than subtle attacks on red meat and agriculture in general in the name of “climate apocalypse”. Slowly but surely they walk us (well not all of us) down that path, holding their hand like a trusting child holds the hand of their abductor.
 
Those fascists who are instituting sane measures to deal with a deadly pandemic!

The sick deluded anti-vaxxers that want their silly delusions to count as much as sane medical practice should be punished for their bad decisions that harm others.

Just like anybody who deliberately harms others should be punished.

Part of the problem here is the culture of victimhood and entitlement, in this case amongst antivaxxers.

Making choices usually comes with consequences. Having consequences result from a choice freely made isn't punishment, necessarily. In this case, it isn't. It's just consequences.

Heck, if an unvaccinated person gave the infection to someone else, getting sued for damages still wouldn't be punishment. It would just be consequences, like hitting their car means you owe damages. The difference is that an infected person could spread the virus for days, to people who don't even notice them. Before they even develope symptoms.
So assigning responsibility is nearly impossible.

But I'm pretty sure that if choosing to remain unvaccinated left you open to lawsuits there wouldn't be many unvaccinated people.
Tom
 
We need OSHA to mandate no donuts in the company kitchen; weekly weigh-ins; $14k fines for employees with high BMI.

Patience Grasshopper, that time will come.

You can already detect the busybodies getting that out there in the form of dictating the largest cup a soda can be served in (remember that actually happened) and banning soda vending machines in schools and colleges. The less than subtle attacks on red meat and agriculture in general in the name of “climate apocalypse”. Slowly but surely they walk us (well not all of us) down that path, holding their hand like a trusting child holds the hand of their abductor.

Never observed a trusting child hold the hand of their abductor. Will take your word for it.
 

I'd never wish death on anyone but in this place in history, the Death by Covid of multiple prominent and high profile anti-mask, anti-vaccine morons could save thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives.

I wonder how many lives would be saved if DeSandis were to die of Covid.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/poli...-biden-donald-trump-covid-politics/index.html

But De Santis is almost certainly double vaxxed, like Taylor Swift, er, i mean Greene; Pucker--whoops, Tucker Carlson; Laura Schlessinger, er, I mean Ingraham", Donald Drumph. We do have a dumbknob politician here in Canada, Maxime Bernier, leader of a fringe right-wing party, who, despite being 60'sh and stoutish, flaunts his unvaccinated status.
 
Dictators do that to serve themselves.

Protecting idiots from harming themselves and society is not what dictators do.

To think the government has no right to protect the public from the deluded and dangerous is infantile stupidity.

That dictator he outlawed murder and rape.

The FASCIST!

So, slight quibble here, you can be a dictator and still not be an asshole. The issue is that is the exception rather than the rule, and the bad dictators use good dictators as justification for their own bad dictation.

Being a dictator is being an asshole.

Not letting deluded dangerous children harm others is not being a dictator.

Stopping your child from walking into traffic is not being a dictator.

So if the dictator makes decrees you agree with he's not a dictator. That's another part of your pro-government totalitarian anarchism.
 
Being a dictator is being an asshole.

Not letting deluded dangerous children harm others is not being a dictator.

Stopping your child from walking into traffic is not being a dictator.

So if the dictator makes decrees you agree with he's not a dictator. That's another part of your pro-government totalitarian anarchism.

Do you even make a distinction between a leader leading and a dictator dictating, other than your personal preference? It doesn't really seem so.
Tom
 
Being a dictator is being an asshole.

Not letting deluded dangerous children harm others is not being a dictator.

Stopping your child from walking into traffic is not being a dictator.

So if the dictator makes decrees you agree with he's not a dictator. That's another part of your pro-government totalitarian anarchism.

So the man who stops his child from walking into traffic is a dictator?

You are clueless.
 
Biden is right. Fauci is right. Get the damn vaccine in your veins. Our health care is going to be paralyzed and our economy shackled to this virus until we reduce the unvaxxed numbers drastically.
Utter -- crazy -- nonsense. The worst public health disaster in our collective memory (unless you were around in 1918) and the right wants to play it like they're the Minutemen of 2021. Thanks, idiots, for steering us toward 700,000 dead.

When you allow your animal brain prejudices and infantile reflexes to be hijacked, the hijacker can insert any story at all. Any fucking cartoon narrative fed into it will be asserted and defended as long as it is based in some variation of "they're out to take your freedoms/property/speech/children..." etc. Our white males, particularly younger ones, and some of the women who love them, have no way of discerning what's fascism and what's not, or what's true or false or right or wrong. Their frontal lobes have been converted into after-the-fact belief justification centers.

Great post. Actually gets to the root of the problem. Not that it's going to make any difference.
 
So Biden’s mandate is all federal employees vaccinated, no exceptions no or weekly tests. Companies with 100+ employees either vaccinated or weekly tests. Except for postal employees. The post office is a branch of the executive office of the federal government, but they are not subject to the vaccination or termination order. They are treated as a private company with 100+ employees why?

https://www.postaltimes.com/postalnews/update-on-required-covid-vaccines-for-postal-workers/

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/b...s-workers-federal-mandatory-vaccination-order
 
We need OSHA to mandate no donuts in the company kitchen; weekly weigh-ins; $14k fines for employees with high BMI.

Patience Grasshopper, that time will come.

You can already detect the busybodies getting that out there in the form of dictating the largest cup a soda can be served in (remember that actually happened) and banning soda vending machines in schools and colleges. The less than subtle attacks on red meat and agriculture in general in the name of “climate apocalypse”. Slowly but surely they walk us (well not all of us) down that path, holding their hand like a trusting child holds the hand of their abductor.

Cry Halfwit, And Let Slip The Dogs Of Woo!
 
So Biden’s mandate is all federal employees vaccinated, no exceptions no or weekly tests. Companies with 100+ employees either vaccinated or weekly tests. Except for postal employees. The post office is a branch of the executive office of the federal government, but they are not subject to the vaccination or termination order. They are treated as a private company with 100+ employees why?

https://www.postaltimes.com/postalnews/update-on-required-covid-vaccines-for-postal-workers/

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/b...s-workers-federal-mandatory-vaccination-order

Is what's-his-dick still postmaster?
 
Back
Top Bottom