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[Starver]

False false false false false [......] false false flag?

[Telgin]

After a certain point it starts to take on a ridiculous quality when questioning everything, but...

...actually, I guess I can't think of a reason for someone to send a fake version to Fox News.  Can't think of a good reason to send a real version to them either though.  Disregard me.

[Bumber]

I'm so glad I simultaneously need a new vaccine and Biden Is Bad for not having it yet and already have a vaccine and need to move on with life and forget this whole covid thing.

You don't need the new vaccine to move on with life, just for the eradication of COVID, which Biden ran on.

There are also treatments for COVID that are quite effective if used early. Don't recall Biden giving much recognition to them, except when he wanted to stop Florida from using too much of the monoclonal antibody supply because they were actually bothering to treat people with it (even while Biden was ordering more, anyway.) Of course, if he pushed treatments too hard, people might not feel the need to get vaccinated, and that's obviously more important than the actual death rate.

On the other hand, Bumper comparing the two south Africa travel bans because they both target Africa is absurd because they are fundamentally different things.
One was a racist and xenophobic ban based around Muslims=Bad with a surface justification of Muslims=Terrorists, and the other revolves around trying to control the coronavirus.

Then compare to the China travel ban, which Biden called "hysterical xenophobia".

I mean - it literally isn't. The unvaxxed, unmasked population is high enough to not only make covid endemic, but to give it a higher mutation frequency that even influenza. We failed to contain the virus, then failed to stop if from being endemic, and now we're on track to fail to prevent multiple variants from developing.

It wouldn't matter if 100% of the world population were vaccinated at this point, because post-delta variants can spread to, mutate within, and reinfect the vaccinated.

Likewise for the masked, because only N95's are effective against viral particles, and people are unwilling/unable to fit and clean them properly even if we had the supply. (Hint: You should have a difficult time breathing without even walking.)

Edit: Masks are the Ivermectin of the Dems. You don't have to prove actual effectiveness in clinical trials, you can just assert they seem to work and say it's better than not using. Difference is one gets you banned from Twitter, the other is mandated in several states. (Was going to make this point in response to Ivermectin and free speech, but obviously still haven't gotten around to that reply.)

I just find it hilarious that Bumber is trying to compare Biden to the guy that said for months that Corona wasn't real. Get outta here with that shit.

No, you get outta here with that shit.

Tucker Carlson already saying that the Russian troop buildup at Ukraine's border is just "Putin wanting his Western borders secure."

Full context is:

"Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium. He just wants to keep his western borders secure. That's why he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO, and that makes sense."

Seems like he's actually just saying that Putin isn't bent on world domination, and his troops are a response Ukraine's request to join NATO, which Putin obviously won't allow. IIRC, Tucker went on to portray Ukraine as another Afghanistan, and was alarmed at an assertion that that nothing was off the table in dealing with Russia, including nuclear strikes.

[Bumber]

Here! Speaking of coups, have another stomach-churning read!

Just want to point out that the QAnon shaman did nothing but parade around, and got a 41-month (3.4 year) sentence for obstructing Congress. (Compare to this crime, where the perpetrator smashed up a GOP Senator's office with an axe, got 5 days in jail, and apparently received his axe back.) Most being charged with serious crimes doesn't cover all the ones that aren't. Some are just punished harshly to be made an example of. (Not to mention cases of mistaken identity.)

Some extra footage of Jan 6 was released in September, if anybody missed it.


Oh, and apparently DeSantis says that the State Guard thing is to fly Florida's illegal immigrants to Biden's home state.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[delphonso]

You don't need the new vaccine to move on with life, just for the eradication of COVID, which Biden ran on.

There are also treatments for COVID that are quite effective if used early.

I'm going to stop you here - there is no reason to preclude one for the other. Vaccines do not prevent any other method of virus control. We should always be using everything that we have on the table. I don't think Biden is doing a perfect job, but vaccines are plentiful, cheap, and super effective at preventing people from going to hospitals. Giving them to people is the easiest, cheapest strategy.

I mean - it literally isn't. The unvaxxed, unmasked population is high enough to not only make covid endemic, but to give it a higher mutation frequency that even influenza. We failed to contain the virus, then failed to stop if from being endemic, and now we're on track to fail to prevent multiple variants from developing.

It wouldn't matter if 100% of the world population were vaccinated at this point, because post-delta variants can spread to, mutate within, and reinfect the vaccinated.

This is absolutely not how it works. For an extremely fast-mutator like influenza, yes, this is the case - however covid19 as it currently stands is a virus we could eradicate with something upwards of 80% vaccination. That number keeps getting higher because people (like you) have been convinced by antivax pseudoscience. Covid could certainly mutate into something that we could never eradicate, and the likelihood of that goes up every day that a huge population of those who could be vaccinated are not.

Likewise for the masked, because only N95's are effective against viral particles, and people are unwilling/unable to fit and clean them properly even if we had the supply. (Hint: You should have a difficult time breathing without even walking.)

Edit: Masks are the Ivermectin of the Dems. You don't have to prove actual effectiveness in clinical trials, you can just assert they seem to work and say it's better than not using. Difference is one gets you banned from Twitter, the other is mandated in several states. (Was going to make this point in response to Ivermectin and free speech, but obviously still haven't gotten around to that reply.)

Bumber for someone who is constantly trying to pick a fight on this stuff, you need to do at least some amount of research. I am honestly flabbergasted that you've got such a fundamental misunderstanding of masks and epidemiology.

Masks prevent large droplets from spreading from an unknowing infected person. Any mask will do that. A piece of cloth will do that - your hand can do that.
Masks do not protect you from being infected.
Masks prevent you from infecting others.
This is stuff you should have known nearly 2 years ago.

But fuck it, while I'm at it, here's some studies for you. Please, feel free to search in any reputable journal and you'll find a literal shitton of articles shooting down this preposterous premise.

Bumber, if I send you a book on skeptical reasoning, will you agree to read it, if I read whatever conspiracy-thing you're into? I'm willing to make that deal with you. I don't think you're a fool - I think you've been fooled, and it would make me elated if we could discuss this further and less...adversarially.

[Starver]

You don't have to prove actual [mask] effectiveness in clinical trials, you can just assert they seem to work and say it's better than not using.

Usefully, there are actual clinical trials that say that masks are good: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
And, surprisingly for the fuzziness you'd expect and the desperate attempts of anti-maxxers to support their theories, very few that show that masks cause any even vaguely significant harm to the general population. Certainly not on a par to their advantages, though certain individuals with specific needs[1] might

[1] Of which there will be some, like those with already fragile breathing capacity[2], but far less thab those who 'need' to be exempt and deliberately muddy the water.

[2] Who should therefore be comforted by other people wearing masks, if not insist upon it!


Regarding Putin, the worrying viewpoint I've heard about the "nudging even more of his troops even tighter up against the borders[3] of Ukraine" is that Putin is smart enough to know that he can't afford to have his bluff called. If he were actually bluffing (to try to force the West to not, certainly from his POV, powergrab territory ever closer to Moscow) and yet still the hint isn't taken then he'd have to follow through on his bluff or lose the face he carefully tries to maintain (both domestically andl internationally). So, even if it's a bluff, it can't turn out to be one. Parallels abound with that time Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry. Except that in this day and age you're more likely to go straight into a Flash Conflict rather than a fuzzy false-war of mobilisations between various national states. The merest skirmish on the wrong bit of border could quickly ramp things up in a way that, pre-WW1, would have been a 'regretable incident' that was over and done and back to a passive-aggressive stalemate across nominal lines of control, perhaps even before the respective capitals even got word of any exchange of fire, let alone casualties.

Maybe Putin can just get away with it (prior movements into Ukraine, Georgia, etc, suggest that he might), but even the Judo-Chessmaster himself might find that his next "whoops, I did it again" trips just too many alarm signals if he actually goes through with it.

One way to prevent(/defer) it is for the West to fall back and never tempt the bluff into becoming real. But that leaves a bad taste in the mouth (with plenty of recent examples of acquiescing any foot-forward stance, and in several instances seeing Russia stick their own foot into the door in lieu) and at some point even the most mild-mannered and competent Western leadership is going to rail against that. Never mind the less well disciplined types.

[3] Either the real ones, or the ones between the already invaded bits and those not yet done so.

[dragdeler]

a

[LordBaal]

[anewaname]

Are masks effective? Well, if you absolutely require a "100% yes" or "100% no" that will allow you to go around living with certainty that you made the right choice, of wearing a mask or not, then you are screwed. It is not about "wearing a mask", it is about, "not dying from coronavirus".

This applies to every form of protection.

Some unfortunate person inhaled a seed and was found to have a fir tree growing in their lung. The fool wasn't wearing his mask.

[None]

Goddamnit, come on. They reduce the spread and that's the point. You wear that fucker for every other person that crosses your path. 100% yes they are effective at reducing the spread (not 100% effective, but that's pedantry and besides the point), this isn't up for debate.

'Not dying of coronavirus' is more a consequence of other people choosing not to wear masks for other people, and since doing the considerate thing is incomprehensible to some people, people are still dying in droves, and personal responsibility falls back to 'staying the fuck away from everyone else.' Which, given the psychological damage the last two years have done as a result of needing to stay the fuck away from people that won't do the right thing, is somewhat untenable.

Fuck, I can't even trust people to wear their masks the right way, and we've had instructions on how to wear fabric over your faceholes for the better part of two years now because the party of Family Values and Personal Responsibility has absolutely neither.

[nenjin]

I just find it hilarious that Bumber is trying to compare Biden to the guy that said for months that Corona wasn't real. Get outta here with that shit.

Oh please. I read the quote. You want to try and split hairs on this one, from the non-sequitor in chief?

I stand by what I said. Your comparison would be laughable if it wasn't also completely disingenous. Much like the man you're defending.

"Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium. He just wants to keep his western borders secure. That's why he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO, and that makes sense."

Right. Because Ukraine freely joining NATO is an excuse to militarize the entire border, like NATO is going to invade Russia. And NOT LIKE Russia didn't annex Crimea and spend the last couple years paying separatists to fight in Ukraine.

So how DO Russian boots taste Bumber?

[anewaname]

Just to be clear, I do believe wearing a mask is the 2nd most effective protection (a healthy immune system is 1st).

The covid conversation had an original crux of "you should avoid exposing your body to any overwhelming amount of virus or toxin, covid or otherwise" and masks give protection greater than 0% and less than 100% for that purpose so the question of mandatory masks was brought up.

The current covid-mask conversation has a crux of "you are not the boss of me so I won't mask or vaccinate", and there is no compromise in that stance.

This current covid-mask discussion will never be resolved because each side is arguing over a different crux.

Probably all of the current political footballs fit this model; the opposing sides are arguing over different cruxes.

[delphonso]

You're correct, anewaname - however, when Bumber comes in with "masks aren't effective", they've crossed from a rights issue (subjective, debatable, and defensible) to an evidence issue (objective) and are squarely incorrect.

Most of this strategy (not by Bumber, but by the rightwing twitters they follow) is just to feed into confirmation bias, and to give them Shapiro-level ammunition in arguments. Flood the argument with bad-faith points and walk away feeling victorious.

[Micro102]

I had a customer come in once, shows me a picture of teachers not wearing masks and little kids wearing masks in a school. He asks me what I think about it and I tell them that I'd prefer the teachers wear masks even though they are vaccinated. But he didn't want to hear that. He went on a rant about his this shows that the government is just using masks to control people! Apparently some random elementary school teachers are in on the big global coronavirus plot. He continued his rant about how masks are useless because the virus is smaller than the holes in said masks. Now, you would think it would be pretty straightforward that obstacles slow things down, and since air molecules are even smaller than viruses, if air can be blocked, viruses can be blocked, right? So I start "Well I can prove it works, do you have a mask on you? Or at home?" The entire time I'm trying to tell him this he keeps yelling "no!" louder and louder and then tells me I'm brainwashed. So fuck him, I repeatedly tell him that he doesn't care about facts or evidence until he storms off.

Never underestimate how hard people will fight for their ability to believe in their favorite global conspiracy

[hector13]

face masks can’t melt steel beams