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Why is this still true?


TheX

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Cross post: what if a non-vaccinated person was approaching, coughing and I could immediately tell that their sense of smell and taste was altered. I yell “I fell threatened, don’t come any closer!” The sick individual keeps approaching, so I pull out my concealed handgun and drop the MFer. I blow the smoke out of the barrel and smile into the camera. With a wink I say “social distance, scum bag”. [roll credits]

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In addition to the more transmissible Delta variant, there's not a Lambda variant, which might be even worse. people who are vaccinated are not totally protected from the original strains, but they are far better off than the non-vaxxed. the longer we drag this out, the longer it will go on.

two relevant stories:

a member of my family, an older man we might call a "boomer," has gotten the virus once already, gave it to his wife, and refuses to get the vaccine or wear a mask. his brother has a similar outlook and he, along with his wife, have gotten it twice. they still refuse to get the vaccine because "God is in control." when we told him we would skip an upcoming chance to visit him because we don't fee safe, he went on an email tirade about how we're "living in fear" of lies from "doctor FAUXci." he stopped just short of blaming a cabal of baby-eating lizard people, but I know that's where he was going. we cut off communication, he's just a stranger now. no longer a part of our lives because it's too painful to have any contact with him because he aggressively seeks out every opportunity to turn every conversation into a zero-sum, knock-down-drag-out brawl about the fate of civilization, no matter how hard we try to steer the conversation into normal topics. honestly, it's more of a relief than pain to divorce yourself from an emotional abusive relationship.

another man in my family of the same age had an almost identical ideological position, until he got sick. after that, he admitted he was wrong and got his vaccine like a normal adult. now he enjoys visits from his grandkids and has mitigated—to the best of his ability—the risk of infection and spreading to others as best he can. this is what rational people of any age do.

the former story is a man-child driven by his pride, the latter is a mature person driven by love. unfortunately, people of all generations, whether they were "given participation trophies" or "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" (neither of those narratives is true), are absolutely full of this kind of nonsense.

and to be honest, if I sound angry on here, it's because I am indirectly fighting the person described above. apologies if I project some of that vitriol to people here who don't deserve it.

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there's an old parable I've heard that might resonate with these folks:

a man had climbed on the roof of his house to escape a flood. as the water rose higher and higher to the eaves of the house, he prayed to God to rescue him. along came a person in a rowboat to invited him to jump in and paddle to safety and he declined, saying "thank you, but God will rescue me."

then came a rescue team in a fan boat who offered him a ride. again he declined because he was waiting for a sign from God.

finally, just as the water started to engulf the whole house, a helicopter dropped a ladder and the crew begged him to climb on.  he declined, saying that God would rescue him. the helicopter crew didn't have time to wait, so the flew off to find willing people to resuce.

the man eventually fell in the swirling waters and drowned. when he met God in heaven moments later, he asked his creator, "why didn't you save me from the flood?"

God replied, "you idiot! I'm glad you're here, but I sent a rowboat, a fanboat, and then a helicopter! you refused every effort that I sent. what, exactly, were you waiting for?"

Edited by mack_turtle
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49 minutes ago, TheX said:

It gives them something to appear concerned about. The fashionably offended and outraged rule the media right now.

I think most are just naturally scared, and the media ramps it up to get clicks/eyes on screens and control of the masses. 

Things in my lifetime I was told to live in fear of:

  • Antichrist
  • Soviets
  • Crime
  • AIDS
  • Y2K
  • Terrorists
  • Covid
  • Each Other

Care to guess how much of that actually happened to me? If your first answer was none, then you'd be 100% correct. 

Edited by ATXZJ
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12 minutes ago, ATXZJ said:

I think most are just naturally scared, and the media ramps it up to get clicks/eyes on screens and control of the masses. 

Things in my lifetime I was told to live in fear of:

  • Antichrist
  • Soviets
  • Crime
  • AIDS
  • Y2K
  • Terrorists
  • Covid
  • Each Other

Care to guess how much of that actually happened to me? If your first answer was none, then you'd be 100% correct. 

You forgot zombies. Being uninformed leads to fear as well. The media desperately needs people to keep clicking to follow links. They are very good at herding sheep for profit...and people are very good at following their lead.

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leave it to Carl Sagan to take an allegory literally and miss the point. Newsflash, Carl: Star Wars is not science fiction. it's a fantasy set in space. Narnia is not about lions and fauns and witches, either. I agree about Chewbacca not getting a medal though.

the rest of it tracks as well.

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1 hour ago, mack_turtle said:

leave it to Carl Sagan to take an allegory literally and miss the point. Newsflash, Carl: Star Wars is not science fiction. it's a fantasy set in space. Narnia is not about lions and fauns and witches, either. I agree about Chewbacca not getting a medal though.

the rest of it tracks as well.

I was really only referring to his statement from his book. Could care less about Star Wars.

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I'll give Sagan a pass because he's Carl Freaking Sagan, but anyone who is that dense about Star Wars deserves my skepticism.

(that was my attempt at humor: going off about someone's take on Star Wars and ignoring the otherwise poignant take on the trajectory of civilization.)

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full quote, so it does not get lost in a silly conversation about Star Wars* :

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or my grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantative content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

 

*(we can have a very serious conversation about that in another thread!)

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Vacation in PNW is coming up and we're making two sets of plans

A. Visit Vancouver and Squamish if we can cross the border at all, and if we can cross without prohibitive hassle if so.

B. More time in Seattle, Portland, mountains, coasts, etc. We're flying in to Seattle and out from PDX, so there's lots of wiggle room.

Supposedly the Canadian government will update restrictions on July 21, but even then we'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to cross. North America in particular could have put this behind us by now of people had not been such a bunch of childish idiots.

 

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12 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

America in particular could have put this behind us by now of people had not been such a bunch of childish idiots.

 

At this point, I don't think america has the market cornered on idiocy. All of the responses currently seem to be a mess.

We're trying to do a trip to Victoria BC in December, but who knows what the response will be then.

Edited by ATXZJ
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I play on a coed beer league softball team. Currently 4 players (2 couples) on our roster have covid. None of them vaccinated. I don't think they got it from playing on the team together due to the way the timing of each one's symptoms, their resulting quarantine, and the game schedule has played out. (Not that this really matters. Just an interesting sidenote.)

At this stage if you are not vaccinated, it's pretty much a choice not to due to your political leanings and which news channel you watch. I feel bad that my friends are sick, but this was preventable. Now we are going to have to forfeit all our games the next couple weeks if we can't find some replacements.

Yes, I realize that beer league softball games are very trivial when so many have been hospitalized and killed. It just sucks. We all have fun playing softball. The choices of a few are now affecting everyone on the team.

It feels like a metaphor for America right now. Those screaming "let's get back to normal" a year ago are now the ones who are not getting vaccinated and preventing everyone else from getting back to normal.

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On 7/17/2021 at 11:05 PM, ATXZJ said:

At this point, I don't think america has the market cornered on idiocy. All of the responses currently seem to be a mess.

We're trying to do a trip to Victoria BC in December, but who knows what the response will be then.

We've discussed this, but for the benefit of everyone else: getting across the Canadian border for the next few months is HARD. we are going to Seattle in a few weeks and have abandoned our plans to go visit Vancouver and Squamish because of all the red tape involved. I'm not complaining because all that red tape is warranted, but it still sucks. if I were Canadian, I supposed I'd tell the American tourists to stay on their side and keep their cooties to themselves as well.

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