Covid-19 miscellany

[Jarhyn]

I reject that people without COVID are pointing a gun at anybody.

That you misunderstand how this disease works is quite clear to us all.

That's not clear to me at all, actually. There's that other alternative I mentioned. I'm keeping my mind open, as it were.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Humans can be plague rats.

Calling humans 'plague rats' is dehumanising. It is a textbook example of it.

English has no proper term involving humans, "plague rat" is the generic not limited to one species.

The closest human term we have is Typhoid Mary, but she knew she was infected and thus not a good parallel.

 

[TSwizzle]

Estimates are that on the order of 40% of people with Covid don't know it and/or are asymptomatic.

Amazing. 40% of people that have contracted this virus don’t even know it.

When you put it like that I really do wonder why there are any restrictions at all. A disease so deadly that you have to be tested to know if you have it.

 

[Metaphor]

English has no proper term involving humans, "plague rat" is the generic not limited to one species.

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The logic appears to be that if people who don’t own or ride motorcycles are forced to wear helmets it will stop the pandemic.

The people that don't ride motorcycles aren't being expected to wear masks. It's just virtually everyone rides motorcycles. About the only exceptions are things like those who overwinter in the Alaskan bush country. (I'd add the ISS crew except they're not really in this country.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Protests in DC;

Thousands gathered in Washington D.C. - a city that mandates vaccines - to protest vaccine mandates, with protesters blaring ballads by Meat Loaf, a musician who is feared to have succumbed to COVID-19 complications at 74 after vocal hesitation about the jab.

Daily Mail

Apparently DC has an outdoor mask mandate. How ridiculous.

Recently I saw a number on this: Indoors has 19x the risk of outdoors. Thus at the current risk level a large outdoor crowd is a substantial risk. I'd certainly not enter a large outdoor crowd in less than an N95 and I would avoid it entirely if possible.

 

[Toni]

Estimates are that on the order of 40% of people with Covid don't know it and/or are asymptomatic.

Amazing. 40% of people that have contracted this virus don’t even know it.

When you put it like that I really do wonder why there are any restrictions at all. A disease so deadly that you have to be tested to know if you have it.

I'm sure you realize that pre pandemic, if you show up at your doctor's office with respiratory distress, coughing, fever, etc. that they test to see if in fact, you have influenza, right? Lots of people walk around carrying influenza virus but are not sick or are only mildly ill. Some do end up in the hospital and do die.

With COVID19, a much higher percentage of people who show up sick with respiratory distress, fever, etc. end up requiring hospitalization, ventilators and die compared with those diagnosed with influenza. And yes, they do test to see if it is COVID or flu or some other respiratory illness so that they know how to treat the patient and what to expect as the disease progresses.

With measles, about 1 in 4 cases of measles requires hospitalization and about 1 in 1000 die from measles. Of course, this is much less common now because everyone except those whose children are immunocompromised or those who belong to a religious cult or are so selfish that they are happy for everyone else to bear the brunt of providing them with herd immunity are vaccinated. Huh. We vaccinate to prevent serious health risks and death from a highly communicable disease. We also vaccinate against influenza and a host of other diseases and by doing so, prevent thousands and thousands of deaths each year, as well as hospitalizations, missed work/school, etc. And vaccination works. Huh. Imagine that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What metric is anyone using when they decide it is right and proper to force medical procedures on unconsenting adult group A, solely for the benefit of group B?

In any case, I do not think it is any longer productive to argue public policy with people who are so callous that they dehumanise their targeted group as 'plague rats'.

Is it OK to force you to not pull the trigger of a gun when it's pointed at "Group B"?

By your thinking it's perfectly OK to knowingly take chances with other people's lives. What ever happened to personal responsibility?

People with COVID should isolate like anyone else with COVID.

I reject that people without COVID are pointing a gun at anybody.

The problem is that people are infectious before they show symptoms and may never show symptoms. You're pointing a gun, you just believe it to be unloaded. May I remind you of the basic rules of gun safety?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Furthermore, nothing is being forced. Go be unvaccinated if you want, just only associate with As, stay away from Bs and especially Cs. The basic impossibility of this is irrelevant.

Of course it is being forced. That's what a vaccine mandate is. You and your fascist brethren don't want the unvaccinated to form their own associations. You and your fascist brethren don't want a grocery store to be able to say 'unvaccinated people welcome here'. You and your fascist brethren want a situation like Germany and Austria, with fines in perpetuity and/or indefinite house arrest for the unvaccinated. You and your fascist brethren advocate this openly. The only outrage that I have not seen anybody advocate is the government physically kidnapping citizens and forcing the vaccine on them. Presumably though some people advocate that, too.

Is any place mandating that you get the vaccine if you don't associate with others?

It's just that outside some awfully narrow conditions you associate with others.

 

[TSwizzle]

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

Didn’t the Nazis portray the Jews as rats?

I can see where things are headed.

 

[Metaphor]

What metric is anyone using when they decide it is right and proper to force medical procedures on unconsenting adult group A, solely for the benefit of group B?

In any case, I do not think it is any longer productive to argue public policy with people who are so callous that they dehumanise their targeted group as 'plague rats'.

Is it OK to force you to not pull the trigger of a gun when it's pointed at "Group B"?

By your thinking it's perfectly OK to knowingly take chances with other people's lives. What ever happened to personal responsibility?

People with COVID should isolate like anyone else with COVID.

I reject that people without COVID are pointing a gun at anybody.

The problem is that people are infectious before they show symptoms and may never show symptoms. You're pointing a gun, you just believe it to be unloaded. May I remind you of the basic rules of gun safety?

So every person who had COVID is pointing a gun.

Yet, you continually treat one group (the unvaccinated) as if they were another (people who had COVID).

They're not the same group. If you want people punished for passing on COVID, then propose a law that punishes them.

 

[Metaphor]

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

Didn’t the Nazis portray the Jews as rats?

I can see where things are headed.

And cockroaches.

Dehumanisation is a common way to demonise a disfavoured group of people. The idea that Loren (and others, apparently) thinks calling a human being a rat isn't dehumanising shows that they either don't understand the meaning of words, or they already think the unvaccinated are not humans, so there's literally nothing you could say about them that would be dehumanising.

 

[Metaphor]

Furthermore, nothing is being forced. Go be unvaccinated if you want, just only associate with As, stay away from Bs and especially Cs. The basic impossibility of this is irrelevant.

Of course it is being forced. That's what a vaccine mandate is. You and your fascist brethren don't want the unvaccinated to form their own associations. You and your fascist brethren don't want a grocery store to be able to say 'unvaccinated people welcome here'. You and your fascist brethren want a situation like Germany and Austria, with fines in perpetuity and/or indefinite house arrest for the unvaccinated. You and your fascist brethren advocate this openly. The only outrage that I have not seen anybody advocate is the government physically kidnapping citizens and forcing the vaccine on them. Presumably though some people advocate that, too.

Is any place mandating that you get the vaccine if you don't associate with others?

I wasn't able to visit my unvaccinated brother last year in his house, because he was unvaccinated. (I was fully vaxxed at the time).

So yes, they wouldn't even let the unvaccinated associate with anybody. It was forbidden for them to go out or to have social visitors.

 

[TSwizzle]

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

Didn’t the Nazis portray the Jews as rats?

I can see where things are headed.

And cockroaches.

Dehumanisation is a common way to demonise a disfavoured group of people. The idea that Loren (and others, apparently) thinks calling a human being a rat isn't dehumanising shows that they either don't understand the meaning of words, or they already think the unvaccinated are not humans, so there's literally nothing you could say about them that would be dehumanising.

It’s disgusting.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Estimates are that on the order of 40% of people with Covid don't know it and/or are asymptomatic.

Amazing. 40% of people that have contracted this virus don’t even know it.

When you put it like that I really do wonder why there are any restrictions at all. A disease so deadly that you have to be tested to know if you have it.

There are very few serious diseases that can be diagnosed without testing.

(Please, nobody else identify the diseases I'm talking about.)

Lets consider the deadliest disease known to man. Do you have it? A solid diagnosis can only be made when symptoms are advanced, no reliable test even exists in it's early phase. How can that be?

Or, consider the second most deadly disease known to man. This one at least has a reliable test, but otherwise a solid diagnosis can only be made when the symptoms are advanced. How can that be?

(Note that I am measuring "deadly" as in the lethality rate if not treated, not in terms of how many people it kills.)

 

[Jarhyn]

English has no proper term involving humans, "plague rat" is the generic not limited to one species.

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

the mostly vaccinated who encourage others to not be vaccinated.

This, the things which de<person>ize people by treating them as playthings. It gives consent of the visceral and symmetric kind to do the same.

These we de<personize>.

And might I add only enough to hopefully shame them (oh the terrible pain of shame) to be less evil.

 

[Metaphor]

English has no proper term involving humans, "plague rat" is the generic not limited to one species.

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

the mostly vaccinated who encourage others to not be vaccinated.

This, the things which de<person>ize people by treating them as playthings. It gives consent of the visceral and symmetric kind to do the same.

These we de<personize>.

And might I add only enough to hopefully shame them (oh the terrible pain of shame) to be less evil.

Non. Toni and others have been using the term 'plague rat' to refer to the unvaccinated in general, in this thread and previous threads.

 

[Jarhyn]

English has no proper term involving humans, "plague rat" is the generic not limited to one species.

Oh for fuck's sake, if comparing humans to rats isn't dehumanising then fuck nothing could be. This is fucking ridiculous.

the mostly vaccinated who encourage others to not be vaccinated.

This, the things which de<person>ize people by treating them as playthings. It gives consent of the visceral and symmetric kind to do the same.

These we de<personize>.

And might I add only enough to hopefully shame them (oh the terrible pain of shame) to be less evil.

Non. Toni and others have been using the term 'plague rat' to refer to the unvaccinated in general, in this thread and previous threads.

Toni used the exact phrase "the mostly vaccinated who encourage others to not be vaccinated".

This I used specifically, and continued to use specifically, because it is her treatment you were going after, specifically surrounding the discussion of active malevolence.

We are discussing this thing in this thread, according to current outlooks.

 

[TSwizzle]

And vaccination works. Huh. Imagine that.

Hmmm, for covid it’s not working as advertised.

 

[TomC]

And vaccination works. Huh. Imagine that.

Hmmm, for covid it’s not working as advertised.

In what way is it not "working as advertised"?

I think you're confusing the earlier assumptions that competent adults would get vaccinated with reasonable alacrity. Turns out that there's a powerful group trying to convince U.S. folks that vaccines are more dangerous than they're worth.
Even people who are personally vaccinated.

The main point to mass vaccination is herd immunity. Too many people opposed that to squelch C19 before it spawned variants. So now everything is even more difficult. And going on far longer than need have been.

Sorry, it's the people who are helping prevent herd immunity who are the problem. Not the government. Not the vaxxed. The plague rats.
Tom