You make assumptions on what the other side wants and build your arguments on that. It's not about blaming China, you're already doing that. If you ask me Fauci and Dazsak are much more interesting as culprits. The Chinese are completely irrelevant.
My conclusions by looking at the facts are very sinister. If I told you you were going to vaccinate 5-year olds with new tech for flu-like symptoms 5 years ago you'd call me crazy. But here we are, and you're asking me about masks.
Masks are the last thing on my mind, but that doesn't mean I don't wash my hands and run around coughing on old people. I care about some people answering difficult questions and getting jail time, but we'll see their friends asking fluffy cute questions.
The greatest trick they pulled was to politisize it and get normal people fighting eachother over facemasks while they're swimming in profits.
We've long given vaccines to children 5 and younger, and yes, people made money from that. I'd love to see some structural changes to for profit healthcare in the US, but if it's a problem, then it's hardly limited to vaccines. I suppose I am just not all that bothered in retrospect by the pandemic response of the US. If anything, I wonder how it could have been improved so that the 1 million Americans who died would not have, but I also learned that living through a pandemic is still not something we have all that much control over even with modern technology.
The difference is we used to care what was in those vaccines and their effects, not just that everyone got them no matter the cost/benefit ratio. I don't mind smallpox vaccines but putting kids on subscription vaccines for a disease that has no risk for them is just brain dead. And this was known before they were rolled out in that age group. It was entirely political at that point.
I'm not really aware of the risk/reward levels of different vaccines for different age groups, but to imply that we used to care about what got put into vaccines but no longer do seems quite silly - the "vaccines cause autism" idea got going in the early 90's. But low as the risks of either may be, I wonder - did more children die of covid or of covid vaccination?
Almost no children died of covid, a rounding error. It wasn't a problem for them and shouldn't have been made out to be. Old people died from the flu before covid but we didn't vaccinate kids to protect them back then, what changed?
The problem is we really don't know what effects mRNA can have and anyone who claims they do are lying. So why was it pushed so hard?
I've gotten an annual flu shot since adolescence and I'd recommend that everyone of every age do so as well, mostly because of the consequences I suffered when I failed to do so.
Again, I'm far from an expert, but I've been told that RNA vaccines have been studied for a couple decades now, but the recent vaccines were the first widespread use. But won't a virus deliver several orders of magnitude more RNA to you anyway? Speaking for myself, I've personally known many people including myself who have gotten a variety of vaccines with zero long term consequences, though I did have one friend who gets knocked on his ass for a day or two by them. It's those that chose to forgo the vaccine who have suffered life altering consequences as a result. I actually was talking to a friend yesterday who's thinking about applying for disability since he's tried several times to return to his job as a waiter and been too weak to do the job.
Of course, new technologies will always have the risk of novel effects I suppose. Frankly if I had kids, I'd be more concerned about their constant attachment to phones/tablets and social media like Tiktok or the like. It's hard for me to tell if that's just me getting old and grumpy about technology or if these are in fact new and novel risks, but it's impossible not to notice all the children being carted around with their faces essentially attached to some screen or other.
Interesting, I know that some middle-aged people do get flu shots but never met one. To me it's something the elderly need. I'm raised with the notion that a little bacteria now and then is only good for me. My vaccine is the disease.
But don't get me wrong, I don't blame anyone who got the shot, I'm questioning those in power who had the same data I did but still claimed it was so necessary for everyone and their mother to get vaccinated or the world would go to shit.
If you looked at the numbers it was just a bad flu season. They definitely knew because I knew, from their own official data. And to my knowledge no other country than the US is pushing it to kids below 12.
But I've let it go, it's no longer a thing and I was lucky enough to dodge any mandates. This thread started with me pointing out the revisionism in claiming democrats are the right people to get to the bottom of the origin. I'm not getting into the details of if/when mRNA started testing and roll-outs.
I had not had occasion to look into it, but the US CDC recommends flu shots starting at 6 months. From a quick search, it looks like EU guidelines differ a bit but some do encourage that children and the elderly get it. To me it was always just one of those things responsible members of society do - pay for your car registration, go to the dentist, keep your area clean, get your shots, etc... I'm far from 100% on all that stuff, but the vaccines never struck me as being all that far out of line - maintaining my car is more expense and trouble than that at least, and I hate going to the dentist. But I fail to see how my flu vaccination needs would change if it turned out that the flu had been somehow a creation of a foreign nation.
I don't know who "the right people" are to get to the bottom of the origin of Covid, but if it is Republicans, then I doubt their motives are for a blameless post-mortem style investigation that ends with a list of plausible recommendations for improvements in response to future pandemics. That skepticism was were I got started.
Still with blaming a foreign nation. I already answered that. Look into Fauci and Daszak, gain-of-function and everything related. It's a rabbit hole I know but you have to ask the question to understand where the other side comes from.
Dazsak himself even mentioned his conflicting interest when he was appointed by the WHO to investigate if his own lab was the source of the leak. And the democrats did everything they could to suppress this and calling anyone curious a conspiracy theorists. All because the bad evil Republicans made the claims first. The same conspiracies that are now pretty mainstream and many people backing down from earlier claims.
Try to be less partisan and get to the bottom of the truth. My conclusions as I mentioned are sinister, and very ugly. And the entire world media dancing to the same tune just reinforces that. I don't want to believe this but it's the only explanation I see, I don't believe they're incompetent, they're evil...
For many it was just the right-thing-to-do™ (how many times has that been used throughout history), but those pulling the strings are different. And they're not partisan, they play both sides.
Let's say I cast aside all partisan and national interests sufficiently and actually get to the bottom of the truth - how would I live my life any differently in response to this truth?
That's a question much bigger than covid. I would like our elected to fix the accountability for us, but they don't since the accountable are their donors and friends. So the last resort was added to your constitution.
We all want to avoid it but how long are we going to stay occupied fighting over bullshit reasons while some live like gods on everyone's expense without even a slap on the wrist?
Oh this dictator likes Putin to much we have to replace him with this other guy. For centuries it's been like this. Is it ever going to change? Probably not, one can hope though.
If you're asking me what you can do today? Put higher standards on truth from your allies than your enemies is a good first step. A lot of people today just regurgitate whatever is the topic of the month making the exact same points never questioning the source.
Orange man bad, Biden is senile, bla bla bla. You're the most powerful nation in the world start acting like it instead of bullying any country that opposes your truth into submission.
My question is pretty specific to covid, as is this HN post, so that's pretty much what I was focused on. Beyond that is pretty grandiose, but you may have some misconceptions about political power in America and how it works, particularly if you are exclusively deriving those from our media.
It's all connected though. Cause a mortgage crisis and crash the world economy? Just a hickup and the responsible still get millions while normal people lose their homes.
What you can do regarding covid is ask "how does this help me and society?" instead of just rolling up your sleeve when someone asks you. You need to start asking questions, all the time. They don't have your interests in mind. Neither does my own government so I'm not acting like we're any better.
Demand answers. Why was Fauci smirking behind Trump on press meetings knowing full well that the US was funding research on covid virues in fucking Wuhan? Textbook James Bond villain. How people are not outraged is a mystery.
To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in Fauci or outraged about him myself. I don't know what his motivations would be for smirking or anything else. I was in a state where our governor quite literally said that the old should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the economy, so he wasn't too fond of Fauci either. I will say that I spoke with my grandmother on that one and she decided that she'd prefer to live lol.
What a cute anecdote as response to the head of NIAD conducting gain-of-function research and covering it up when it "leaks". I'm sorry about my tone but it's incredible to see the denial.
He's the biggest reason your grandmother was even at risk and you go out of your way to ignore it because "Republicans" I assume? I don't know. I will never understand people.
Well, I haven't seen much evidence that would pin responsibility so squarely on Anthony Fauci, but say that he engineered the virus himself and released it into a Wuhan market as a cover and this was all proven beyond dispute. So what? I presume you'd want to punish him with life in prison or something stronger than that. That's fine with me, woodchip him for all I care. But what difference would it make to the way I should have lived my life for the last couple of years?
You haven't even looked for the evidence. Government files prove it. He knew and should've made it known instead of covering it up. Regarding your second question I already answered it. But honestly I don't expect you to do anything different, keep your head in the sand, do "the-right-thing" and live as you've always lived. You don't matter. Is that the response you want?
We're going in circles and I'm done spoon-feeding you. Best of luck.
Oh, I've been shown bits and pieces of evidence for awhile now, but nothing I'd consider a smoking gun. But I always come back to the same question - what does the source of the virus matter? Humans have lived with viruses for as long as they've been humans, and our ancestors have as well, I'm assuming back to the protozoan era. I suppose we used to blame god for them, but perhaps now we can blame someone else, and I'm sure in the future the technology will exist such that they can be manufactured by students at home. Regardless, it still seems that the best defenses against them have not changed drastically in recent history.
My conclusions by looking at the facts are very sinister. If I told you you were going to vaccinate 5-year olds with new tech for flu-like symptoms 5 years ago you'd call me crazy. But here we are, and you're asking me about masks.
Masks are the last thing on my mind, but that doesn't mean I don't wash my hands and run around coughing on old people. I care about some people answering difficult questions and getting jail time, but we'll see their friends asking fluffy cute questions.
The greatest trick they pulled was to politisize it and get normal people fighting eachother over facemasks while they're swimming in profits.