Joined: November 02 2018
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 13:35
rushfan4 wrote:
Ultimately, the benefit of others is probably the overriding factor in how I vote and what I believe in on most issues. I think that human nature is more about self-preservation and about what is going to help yourself the most. This might be selfish, but it is also human nature. I tend to be more fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, which can be contradictory on certain issues. I would love free health care and free education and free housing and a living wage for everyone but this contradicts my fiscal conservativism. Somebody has to pay for the free stuff.
I am a strong believer in freedom of choice and everyone's individual rights to make whatever choices that they want to make no matter the circumstances, but the line is drawn when those choices cause harm to others. The problem is finding the compromise between these opposing positions.
Yes, I did get that you were caring about others, and I do thank you for that. It is also true that if you are not at least stable, it's very hard to look out for others as well.
It's indeed hard to see sometimes what effects certain legislations will have, the unintended consequences.
"Into every rain, a little life must fall." ~Tom Rapp
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 13:30
Snicolette wrote:
rushfan4 wrote:
Separation of church and state is probably my #1 consideration. While I respect people's right to have religious beliefs, as an agnostic/atheist I need them to respect my right not to believe. Any candidate who says that he is running for office because it is what God wants, will automatically not get my vote. Of course this spreads up and down throughout the various issues. I fully believe that people of religion have the right to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs. And I believe that the church should have the right to punish their parishioners by making them say as many hail Marys as they see fit. If the church wants to exclude people because they have abortions or because they are gay then that is the church's right and choice to kick them out of their congregations. In my opinion, however, the government should not have the right to prevent its citizens from having abortions or being gay because God says so.
These are odd hills to stand on, since I am not gay, and have not/will never have an abortion. As a white, middle class, middle-age male every indicator is that I should vote Republican but being the party of the moral right turns me off from voting that way. The hard part is that many of the hills that the Democrats stand on really do not personally benefit me so other than my belief that these are the right choices I have no strong reason to vote Democrat either. (Protection of pre-existing conditions has become personally very important in recent years. My employer provides my insurance, so universal health care, not so much).
With you on much of this (although I am also not gay, I am female, but never had to have an abortion, but don't feel it's my business if anyone else does and certainly remember the days of back alley abortions). I do not need assistance of any kind, but will look forward to being eligible for Medicare when I am, my health insurance is my second-highest monthly expense.
That all being said, I do commend you on your stances, despite their not benefitting you personally, but I have to ask, what about the benefit for others, for the commonweal? I only bring this up because we'd been having a discussion elsewhere, with some people and one of the younger ones brought up that he didn't want to vote for any candidate that didn't have policies that benefitted him, and we asked him about caring for your fellow man...we eventually did seem to persuade him that that has merit, but I do see this general feeling amongst many younger people. When did everyone become so selfish? I am NOT calling YOU selfish here, for the record. Just a matter for discussion if anyone else feels this way or wonders how it came about.
Ultimately, the benefit of others is probably the overriding factor in how I vote and what I believe in on most issues. I think that human nature is more about self-preservation and about what is going to help yourself the most. This might be selfish, but it is also human nature. I tend to be more fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, which can be contradictory on certain issues. I would love free health care and free education and free housing and a living wage for everyone but this contradicts my fiscal conservativism. Somebody has to pay for the free stuff.
I am a strong believer in freedom of choice and everyone's individual rights to make whatever choices that they want to make no matter the circumstances, but the line is drawn when those choices cause harm to others. The problem is finding the compromise between these opposing positions.
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 11:25
Snicolette wrote:
rushfan4 wrote:
Separation of church and state is probably my #1 consideration. While I respect people's right to have religious beliefs, as an agnostic/atheist I need them to respect my right not to believe. Any candidate who says that he is running for office because it is what God wants, will automatically not get my vote. Of course this spreads up and down throughout the various issues. I fully believe that people of religion have the right to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs. And I believe that the church should have the right to punish their parishioners by making them say as many hail Marys as they see fit. If the church wants to exclude people because they have abortions or because they are gay then that is the church's right and choice to kick them out of their congregations. In my opinion, however, the government should not have the right to prevent its citizens from having abortions or being gay because God says so.
These are odd hills to stand on, since I am not gay, and have not/will never have an abortion. As a white, middle class, middle-age male every indicator is that I should vote Republican but being the party of the moral right turns me off from voting that way. The hard part is that many of the hills that the Democrats stand on really do not personally benefit me so other than my belief that these are the right choices I have no strong reason to vote Democrat either. (Protection of pre-existing conditions has become personally very important in recent years. My employer provides my insurance, so universal health care, not so much).
With you on much of this (although I am also not gay, I am female, but never had to have an abortion, but don't feel it's my business if anyone else does and certainly remember the days of back alley abortions). I do not need assistance of any kind, but will look forward to being eligible for Medicare when I am, my health insurance is my second-highest monthly expense.
That all being said, I do commend you on your stances, despite their not benefitting you personally, but I have to ask, what about the benefit for others, for the commonweal? I only bring this up because we'd been having a discussion elsewhere, with some people and one of the younger ones brought up that he didn't want to vote for any candidate that didn't have policies that benefitted him, and we asked him about caring for your fellow man...we eventually did seem to persuade him that that has merit, but I do see this general feeling amongst many younger people. When did everyone become so selfish? I am NOT calling YOU selfish here, for the record. Just a matter for discussion if anyone else feels this way or wonders how it came about.
Hmm. I once heard someone say that sooner or later everyone falls off the gravy train. Isn't it better to know that you'll have a soft landing?
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Joined: November 02 2018
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 11:16
rushfan4 wrote:
Separation of church and state is probably my #1 consideration. While I respect people's right to have religious beliefs, as an agnostic/atheist I need them to respect my right not to believe. Any candidate who says that he is running for office because it is what God wants, will automatically not get my vote. Of course this spreads up and down throughout the various issues. I fully believe that people of religion have the right to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs. And I believe that the church should have the right to punish their parishioners by making them say as many hail Marys as they see fit. If the church wants to exclude people because they have abortions or because they are gay then that is the church's right and choice to kick them out of their congregations. In my opinion, however, the government should not have the right to prevent its citizens from having abortions or being gay because God says so.
These are odd hills to stand on, since I am not gay, and have not/will never have an abortion. As a white, middle class, middle-age male every indicator is that I should vote Republican but being the party of the moral right turns me off from voting that way. The hard part is that many of the hills that the Democrats stand on really do not personally benefit me so other than my belief that these are the right choices I have no strong reason to vote Democrat either. (Protection of pre-existing conditions has become personally very important in recent years. My employer provides my insurance, so universal health care, not so much).
With you on much of this (although I am also not gay, I am female, but never had to have an abortion, but don't feel it's my business if anyone else does and certainly remember the days of back alley abortions). I do not need assistance of any kind, but will look forward to being eligible for Medicare when I am, my health insurance is my second-highest monthly expense.
That all being said, I do commend you on your stances, despite their not benefitting you personally, but I have to ask, what about the benefit for others, for the commonweal? I only bring this up because we'd been having a discussion elsewhere, with some people and one of the younger ones brought up that he didn't want to vote for any candidate that didn't have policies that benefitted him, and we asked him about caring for your fellow man...we eventually did seem to persuade him that that has merit, but I do see this general feeling amongst many younger people. When did everyone become so selfish? I am NOT calling YOU selfish here, for the record. Just a matter for discussion if anyone else feels this way or wonders how it came about.
"Into every rain, a little life must fall." ~Tom Rapp
Joined: April 11 2014
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 10:55
This is the problem with the Trump republicans, and Lindsey Graham in particular this time:
(CNN)Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood firm Monday on his account that Sen. Lindsey Graham had hinted that he should try to discard some ballots in Georgia, where a recount is underway after the state went for President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential election.
"He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters," Raffensperger told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Monday evening. "And then he, I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any, if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So that's the impression that I got."
He later added, "It was just an implication of, 'Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.' "
Raffensperger's comments come after he told The Washington Post on Monday that Graham had cast doubt on Georgia's signature-matching law in a conversation on Friday, and had also floated the possibility that biased poll workers could have counted ballots with inconsistent signatures.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also inquired if Raffensperger could discard all mail-in ballots from counties that had shown higher rates of unmatched signatures, the Republican secretary of state told the Post on Monday.
Graham denied Raffensperger's claim on Monday, telling CNN that he had said he wanted to understand the process for verifying the signatures on mail-in ballots. He said President Donald Trump did not urge him to make the call.
Asked if he was trying to pressure the secretary of state to toss legal ballots, Graham said, "That's ridiculous."
"What I'm trying to find out was how do you verify signatures on mail-in ballots in these states that are the center of attention? So like when you mail in a ballot, you got to have some way to verify that the signature on the envelope actually matches the person who requested the ballot," Graham said. "It seems to me that Georgia has some protections that maybe other states don't have, where you go into the portal to get your ballot. But I thought it was a good conversation. I'm surprised to hear him verify it that way."
Graham added: "So they expanded mail-in voting, and how you verify the signatures to me is the big issue. If you're going to have mail-in voting, you've got to verify that the person who signed the envelope is also the person who requested the ballot."
Raffensperger told Blitzer that Georgia's election systems already require signature matches when voters request mail ballots and when completed ballots are returned to election systems. He also said the online absentee portal has a photo ID.
"We feel confident the election officials did their job," he said.
On Friday, CNN projected that Biden will win Georgia and its 16 electoral votes. Unofficial results put Biden ahead of Trump by about 14,000 votes, or about 0.3 percentage point. But due to the tight margin, state officials decided to use the preplanned audit process to recount every ballot in the presidential race.
At least six small counties in Georgia have finished their presidential recounts without finding any discrepancies. A seventh county, Floyd, reported that 2,600 uncounted ballots had been found during their recount -- the ballots hadn't been scanned when the county tallied its early vote. An investigation is underway but human error has been deemed responsible.
Experts say it would be nearly impossible for Trump to overcome his 14,000-vote deficit in a recount.
The audit process is expected to conclude in the coming days, and Raffensperger reiterated Monday that he plans to certify the official results by Friday, as required by state law.
"We want to make sure this vote is very accurate. We understand the national importance of this, and we're in the process of doing it," he told Blitzer on Monday. "The counters will be done by the 18th and we will certify this by the 20th."
The Republican spent part of his Sunday fact-checking Trump and pushing back against false claims of fraud in the presidential election and the hand recount ongoing in the state.
Raffensperger, among other things, defended the integrity of absentee ballots, signature verification, and the vote counting machines. He posted images of Trump's tweets that falsely claimed that mail-in voting "will lead to the most corrupt election in USA history" and result in "fraudulent ballots." Raffensperger responded that his team "secured and strengthened absentee ballots for the first time since 2005" by outlawing absentee ballot harvesting and also addressed the "disinformation about signature match," writing that "GBI trained elections officials match your signature twice before any vote is cast."
He also posted links to news articles debunking Trump's tweets, including one alleging the Dominion voting software used in Georgia for the presidential election "deleted" and "switched" millions of votes. He also wrote, "Dominion voting system. America owned. America. 'Merica. Not Venezuela," in a reference to conspiracy theories spread by Trump's lawyer, Rudy Guiliani.
Underscoring the contentious atmosphere between Raffensperger and fellow Republicans, he went after US Rep. Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, in one post writing, "Failed candidate Doug Collins is a liar — but what's new?" Collins is leading the recount team for Trump in Georgia and has criticized Raffensperger's handling of the election.
CNN's Amara Walker and Jason Morris contributed to this report.
Edited by SteveG - November 17 2020 at 10:58
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 08:21
Man With Hat wrote:
But I do have a question...what would be your most important issue (or issues) that you consider when voting (either for president, congress, local boards, whatever)? (I do often wonder about the processes that people use to determine their vote, so I like to ask this question in real life when politics gets brought up)
Separation of church and state is probably my #1 consideration. While I respect people's right to have religious beliefs, as an agnostic/atheist I need them to respect my right not to believe. Any candidate who says that he is running for office because it is what God wants, will automatically not get my vote. Of course this spreads up and down throughout the various issues. I fully believe that people of religion have the right to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs. And I believe that the church should have the right to punish their parishioners by making them say as many hail Marys as they see fit. If the church wants to exclude people because they have abortions or because they are gay then that is the church's right and choice to kick them out of their congregations. In my opinion, however, the government should not have the right to prevent its citizens from having abortions or being gay because God says so.
These are odd hills to stand on, since I am not gay, and have not/will never have an abortion. As a white, middle class, middle-age male every indicator is that I should vote Republican but being the party of the moral right turns me off from voting that way. The hard part is that many of the hills that the Democrats stand on really do not personally benefit me so other than my belief that these are the right choices I have no strong reason to vote Democrat either. (Protection of pre-existing conditions has become personally very important in recent years. My employer provides my insurance, so universal health care, not so much).
Joined: February 07 2009
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 05:24
Man With Hat wrote:
But I do have a question...what would be your most important issue (or issues) that you consider when voting (either for president, congress, local boards, whatever)? (I do often wonder about the processes that people use to determine their vote, so I like to ask this question in real life when politics gets brought up)
Well for me it's a balance of who gives me the most freedom to live my life while supporting/building a system that provides reasonable financial equity. What always gets me is this is the 'bill of goods' that conservatives sell (even here in Canada) but seem to put laws and policies in place that are contradictory to that.
Current example:
Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican businesswoman/future congresswoman)
She challenged the House mask rule during the first session of new member orientation.
Greene cited “my body, my choice,” a term previously used by the pro-choice movement regarding abortion.
How hypocritical does a person need to be and why don''t people jump all over her for that?
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 02:36
rushfan4 wrote:
Man With Hat wrote:
rushfan4 wrote:
[QUOTE=Man With Hat][QUOTE=rushfan4]
In response to your first paragraph, I would say that is the politics/messaging side is winning. The squad and bernie and their allies make up such a small portion of the dems in power that using them as the boogieman is pretty laughable. Maybe one day more of these types will gain power, but that won't affect Joe Biden. Also, Harris more progressive than Bernie and Warren? I have a hard time believing that. She also has gotten sh*t from the left, although this mostly is from the time she was a prosecutor not from her time as senator. But still...people don't change that drastically, and again Bernie and Warren have been senators for a bit now. I won't mention the military much, as we seem to be in agreement for the most part. But I will say, if we are going to spend government money to keep people employed why can't we do this is other avenues (such as healthcare via a universal healthcare)? Why does it have to be military spending to keep these jobs? (That said, I am in favor of government jobs to keep people in jobs, which the right seems to be generally against. Of course military money does get spent to private companies so that's not really government jobs, even if government money is being used.)
As for the last two paragraphs...I suppose this will just be a disagreement in philosophy between us. I don't want to choose, but if I'm forced to I will choose a vigorous social safety net system that some people can take advantage of over a system of just being reliant upon private businesses. (I suppose I should say, obviously welfare fraud and similar things are bad and should be rooted out and not encouraged.) Also, I feel like you feel like getting a well paying job with benefits at a generous company is quite easy and everyone should be able to do so. I'm pretty sure everyone would choose one of those types of jobs...but there just aren't enough of those available. (Just an example...I interviewed for a job once where they justified their below living wage salary because they offer 'the best healthcare package available' and that should be worth being paid less money to do the job.) Corporations aren't just going to choose to be nice to their employees...that's why we needed laws amount minimum wage, standardized work week (which of course is being eroded by the pervasiveness of the service industry), and similar initiatives. Also, a question...do you extend this idea to people like the coal miners and similar industries that are fighting so hard to retain their low paying, physically demanding, and harmful (to their own bodies) jobs? I've always felt like these are types of people that could be shifted into more green energy fields, but they just seem so anti learning new skills and growing professionally that they dig in (no pun intended) and seem hostel towards anything else. (I will also say I don't know any coal miners or frackers personally, this is just what is being presented on the news and in political situations (such as Trump Digs Coal signs and similar things)).
Two further points...you say healthcare should be a choice (which I do fundamentally disagree with, it should be a right) but in a universal healthcare system there would be no forcing people via the individual mandate (which I believe was struck down by the courts anyway). This way everyone that wants healthcare would be able to get it and if you choose for some reason to not want it, then you can and it wouldn't affect others that need healthcare. And secondly...you have a fair point about Jim bob being able to afford nicer TVs than a 'hard working american'...but I look at it from the opposite side. Not as why is this guy being paid so much in welfare but why should someone that is working a full time job not earn a living wage?
Also, I don't want to be a dick, but I suppose I could bring up an argument about choices...you could choose to buy a bigger TV. Sure, it may come at expense of your rent, but choices have consequences... But I guess my philosophy comes down to helping people regardless of choices because its the right thing do to. I don't want to see people have to choose between rent and food, or food and medical supplies. I don't want to see lives get ruined because they made a bad choice (if they even had a choice in the matter at all). I know it probably makes me a communist in some circles, but I honestly do believe that being we live in a society, the society as a whole is better when everyone is better off. Having that safe floor where no matter what happens you can't slip below is something that helps everyone in society and thus improves the society as a whole. And to me programs like unemployment, universal health care, food stamps, etc help make that vision a reality.
I feel like I might have been a little helter skelter in my response. So I apologize if I talked in circles at one point, or didn't express myself coherently at times. (I also feel a little bad about the choices joke at the end...but it lead to a bigger point so I'm going to leave it.)
156 million Americans get their health insurance from their employers. That is a lot of people who universal health care might effect negatively. I don't know the specifics of the math. If employer, who now pays $10k per employee now pays $10k in additional taxes per employee instead then it is a wash. But if the employer/employee combination is now paying $12k in additional taxes to cover that employee plus throwing in $2k to cover other people, that math doesn't work as well. In theory, if employer doesn't have to pay $10k for health insurance, they could pay the employee an additional $10k in wages...but reality is that some employers will, but most will pocket the additional amounts.
In regards to ObamaCare, the math worked from the standpoint of having the individual mandate. In order to provide "affordable" insurance to everyone, everyone had to have insurance. i.e. the healthy 28 y/o male has to pay $5k a year for insurance that he never uses so that the unhealthy 60 y/o can also only pay $5k per year for insurance. By removing all of the healthy 28 y/o males who choose not to get health insurance and leaving all of the unhealthy 60 y/o buying the insurance, the math no longer works and the insurance can no longer be affordable. Of course, this isn't fair to the healthy 28 y/o males who choose not to purchase health insurance, because they're able to/willing to risk not having insurance. And when they break their legs while skiing down a mountain in Colorado there is no reason we should feel sorry for them because choices have consequences. Which of course leads to the argument on whether or not we should make our evil government larger to oversee this entire universal health care program versus leaving it in the hands of the evil insurance companies. I think that we can agree that there are pros and cons for both arguments. Our government is highly inefficient...but insurance companies are greedy and add their own inefficiencies. Bottom line is that I am not opposed to universal health care, but it has to be done in a way that the 156 million people who already have health care aren't being screwed in the deal. In theory, I support Biden's plan but I don't support Bernie's plan.
Please understand with my previous comments, I am not making a blanket statement. There are obviously going to be differences between theories and realities. The fact is that every American is offered a free education from the age of 5 until 18 (evil socialism!!!). It is up to each of those Americans to take advantage of that free education. That is a matter of making the right choices. i.e. studying, learning, getting good grades, but also making appropriate school/fun life choices. That is the theory. The reality is that there are systemic cycles of failure; there are bad parents that don't help their kids to take advantage of their free educations; there are kids with learning disabilities; parent that abuse their kids; parents who are sick or die so the kids don't have parents; kids that are at a disadvantage because of the poor choices made by their parents. Quite frankly, the kids in the Detroit school district are just not going to get the same quality of education as the kids in the Birmingham school district (suburb of Detroit and home of the 1%ers). That is an unfortunate failure of the system.
I will stick to my being a jerk about minimum wages. These jobs are not meant to be lifelong jobs. They are meant to be starter jobs to get work experience to eventually move on to better jobs. Go to college. Go to trade school. It is about supply and demand. The more skills you have the more that you can ask to be paid. (Again...not a blanket statement. Theories versus realities, etc....)
Government jobs generally pay less than industry jobs...but they also generally provide better insurance/pension benefits. And again this comes down to choices made. You can choose to work for less wages in order to have better benefits. Or you can choose to take a job that pays more but doesn't offer benefits. In regards to the coal miners and the frackers, they have chosen to work in those jobs. I also don't know anyone who does this and my exposure is via reading and movies. In the movies, everyone in that town's grandfather before them worked in the mines, and their father, and their brothers and when they have children their children will work in those mines too. That is the system...but these are choices. They can choose to break the cycle and not follow in their father's footsteps or they can continue to follow. Yes, I know, this is easy for me to say from my golden throne behind my keyboard but the reality is quite different. In 1863, slavery was ended in this country. In theory, since this point in time, no one is forced to work a job that they do not want to work. (Although how many of us really like the jobs that we do work???)
Again way to many words in response, but not everything I am thinking and not everything that I want to say. You have to again understand that I fully support the social safety nets. I do think that more money needs to be put towards them...helping veterans, helping people with mental health issues, helping children. This might surprise you, but I actually support open borders. I think that all human beings need to be treated humanely. We should support people coming to our country looking to improve their lives and to improve their families. That is one of the foundations of what the US is founded on. That support should be temporary though, not permanent.
I would like to see welfare improved. I would like to see there be a requirement that if you are collecting welfare, you have to (1) work for it (i.e. you become a de facto government employee performing whatever unskilled labor that might need to be done to beautify/improve the community); or (2) you have to use your time to learn a trade/skill so that you can limit your time on welfare. (3) maybe performing "volunteer" work at shelters or hospitals, etc. (exceptions as determined necessary due to disabilities, family matters, etc). I would also like to see welfare incentives to go back to work. Again I don't know the math on this, but let's say we pay you $500 per week and you are not working. In order to provide incentive to go back to work, let's say you get a job that pays you $400 per week. As an incentive, the government would still pay you $250 per week to supplement the new job. (Again these are theories. The current situation is unique due to the pandemic so I am not certain how something like this would work in these times).
Yadda yadda yadda
You are correct in that government run healthcare would be dependent at the type of system that is put in place. But being we would be creating it from nothing, it can theoretically be anything we (read: the government) wants. Ideally, nothing would really change in terms of actually going to the doctor. Instead of the insurance card you have now, you would just get a different card from the government. You would just give this card to your doctor and then go about the visit. Obviously different countries with UHC have different systems, so I mean you can poke around and investigate how they differ and how they would translate to an american world. And I do hope Biden is allowed to do his public option idea, but given that it will come down to those two Georgia senate seats, I'm not hopeful at all.
The rest seems to be philosophical differences between us (minimum wage, work requirements, being forced to work, etc etc), which endless debate will not bridge, so I hope you don't think I'm being dismissive, but I'm not really going to comment on. But I do have a question...what would be your most important issue (or issues) that you consider when voting (either for president, congress, local boards, whatever)? (I do often wonder about the processes that people use to determine their vote, so I like to ask this question in real life when politics gets brought up)
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 02:19
I agree that a lockdown is a last resort option, but looking at the US at least we are pretty much at the last resort now. We've bungled this thing from the beginning...we never really got out of the first wave (although certain states did manage to control things somewhat over the summer months) and now things are spiking out of control. Hospitals are filling up again (a friend of mine works as a nurse at a hospital where they are now filling up the pediatric ICU with covid patients as they are currently out of room in the normal ICU), transmission rates are steadily rising, and the holidays are coming up. My state just issued a rule of no more than 10 people at an indoor gathering (which will obviously be broken with Thanksgiving coming up next week) and has had a non mandatory quarantine list, for people traveling from out of state which currently has nearly every state in the union on it. But being its non mandatory I don't know anyone who follows it (and no one checks up on you to see if you are).
The problem with half measures is eventually things will collapse and you will need harsher and harsher restrictions until the last resort (and in the interim many people will die), especially when you have a very large, very dumb, and very self centered populace that at least 40 percent think this whole situation is a hoax or completely overblown because it's just a flu or some other bullsh*t. I understand the fatigue factor (it hard to be vigilant all the time and miss out on 'normal' life activities) and kind of understand the economic angle (although I know we emphasize $$ over human life as a society, but this isn't a philosophy I believe in), but the slog is hard and long but hopefully these vaccines will pan out and we will be able to turn the corner for real in a relatively short period of time.
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Posted: November 16 2020 at 21:40
Another thought concerning the new vaccines:
In a sensationally short space of time, a vaccine is announced with a success rate almost unheard of among other vaccination products. Then, about a week later, another company comes along with a vaccine based on an entirely different principle, and even ups the apparent success rate by a few and a half percentage points. Sh*t, why not go the whole hog and say 100%?
Sounds like BS to me. I wonder what effect these announcements have on their shares in the stock market, and it would be even more interesting to know who's selling really fast by the bucketload.
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Posted: November 16 2020 at 21:19
kenethlevine wrote:
there is nothing wrong with some understanding that sometimes one must sacrifice for the greater good. People did it during the world wars. Today people are so whiney about having to deprive themselves of anything for any length of time that they will reject guidance just because it's somebody else strongly suggesting that they should do or not do something. Add to it that their sample size of friends and acquaintances either haven't had covid or they had it and the symptoms ranged from non existent to equivalent to a typical bout wit the flu.
And this is where Trump's messaging made matters even worse. To be clear, even European leaders were guilty of underplaying the virus in the early days, but at least they corrected course.
I don't like Modi at all and he is a master demagogue and the 'influence' for Steve Bannon and Trump. But I was extremely thankful that during the covid outbreak, he exercised the tremendous power vested in him with responsibility for once and told the nation that this pandemic was comparable to the world wars and would need the concerted efforts of the entire nation to fight it. Those are exactly the terms in which the seriousness of the pandemic needed to be impressed upon the people. But Trump and his blonde buddy BoJo went in the opposite direction "look ma I can shake hands". Yeah, and you got the virus.
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Posted: November 16 2020 at 21:12
there is nothing wrong with some understanding that sometimes one must sacrifice for the greater good. People did it during the world wars. Today people are so whiney about having to deprive themselves of anything for any length of time that they will reject guidance just because it's somebody else strongly suggesting that they should do or not do something. Add to it that their sample size of friends and acquaintances either haven't had covid or they had it and the symptoms ranged from non existent to equivalent to a typical bout wit the flu.
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Posted: November 16 2020 at 20:51
npjnpj wrote:
This super fast vaccine development has me worried, and I'm in two minds whether to go for a vaccination.
Usually a vaccine takes up to 10 years to develop and make sure there are no serious late side effects.
Obviously this hasn't been tested for time constraint reasons. I worked at Sanofi (Sanofi Aventis at the time) for several years and was strongly involved with the IT side of such development projects, so I have first hand experience with the processes required.
Look at it this way: If you have a closed balanced ecological system, you don't know exactly what's going to happen if you introduce or remove even a single factor. You can surmise, but you can't be sure that the manipulation won't cause a major disturbance at some later point, the danger of which you weren't aware of.
Now, if you view the human body as such a balanced ecological system, the same thing might happen when the vaccine is introduced. Effects might show itself themselves in a few years or so.
My deepest fear is that such caution is discarded because of the economic and political urgency. We don't know how much pressure is being applied behind the scenes. I fear, a lot.
Again: I'm very worried.
Colour me cynical but the vaccine is mostly a placebo as well as a fait accompli to give permission to govts to throw everything open. I hope to be wrong but I think we have reached a point of despair. Exactly what happened with the Spanish Flu as well. Learning from history isn't so easy because the decisions weren't easy to make then either.
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Posted: November 16 2020 at 20:49
Have a friend who lives in Singapore. During April or so when cases in Singapore unexpectedly spiked and they had to enforce tough restrictions, he shared a video of people practically scampering to get to wherever they wanted to be during the lockdown. The reason was that if you were found not to be in compliance from the date on which the measures became effective, the penalties were yuge. You don't have that in democratic societies. We respect the people's will but sometimes even when these people are adults, they behave like children.
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Posted: November 17 2020 at 13:35
The American Politics Thread
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rushfan4 wrote:
But I guess my philosophy comes down to helping people regardless of choices because its the right thing do to. I don't want to see people have to choose between rent and food, or food and medical supplies. I don't want to see lives get ruined because they made a bad choice (if they even had a choice in the matter at all). I know it probably makes me a communist in some circles, but I honestly do believe that being we live in a society, the society as a whole is better when everyone is better off. Having that safe floor where no matter what happens you can't slip below is something that helps everyone in society and thus improves the society as a whole. And to me programs like unemployment, universal health care, food stamps, etc help make that vision a reality. 