Bug man, I agree. Having written a 23 page paper many years ago on the subject of Propaganda....
Propaganda still sells ratings on a 24 hour news cycle. Where you get your news clearly defines your thought processes and positions taken on the various issues.
Humans are competitive by nature and thus we tend to fight for our positions.

Now, with social media, humans have a platform (arena) to carry out the battle.
We arm ourselves with the weapons of propaganda fed to us by politicians, lobbyist, and social media. We are losing our ability to be free thinkers.

With the increase of news outlets, social media outlets, and our lazy azzes stuck to cell phones, the fight is on for ratings and "likes". In the past, propaganda was used to keep us united. Example; we united during world wars and the attacks on 9/11. We seem to be divided by propaganda today because we now are brainwashed to takes a sides. You are either a left or right wing thinker, you are a seat belter or anti-belter, you are vax or anti-vax, you are siding with funding or defunding police. Well, you get the point.

Before Covid-19, most never paid any attention to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) but, some did. The CDC has always tracked things such as death rates not only attributed to viruses but to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, even suicides. This information was used to set regulations, fund research, and to educate the public.
Going back to my sarcastic post about providing a vaccine for car accidents, the CDC data sent the alarm about vehicle death rates. The auto industry responded with airbags, side impact rails, along with regulations over seat belts and speed limits.
Along with my Nuclear career, and time spent with the Army, I was also a State Certified Vehicle Rescue Technician for 12 years. Over the years I would approach what seemed to be a minor accident and found no survivors and as years went on I would approach a total disaster and there were no deaths.
This link shows some of the items tracked by the CDC and a free thinker can see why regulations and research surround thes items: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm.

If you can get past the propaganda surrounding Covid-19 by politics and the news cycle ratings, you will see that the non-political wing of the CDC has shown the Covid-19 vaccine (yep I took it) is only for the Covid-19 virus. NOT the variant(s). Governments, world wide, don't want to panic folks over this finding. Top Immunologist are working to modify or create the vaccine against the variant(s). This sh*t is new and still requires more data.

I guess that when you look at past history, propaganda, and what the world was like before the 24 hour news cycle and the internet (I am old so, I remember) you see how we went from free thinkers to taking up swords and battling each other to defend our "side" of the story(ies).
John Ford was a famous movie producer who worked with the Government during the early stages of WWII to create the propaganda used for what is now identified as a major source of our military recruitment during those times. He used a man named John Wayne to help in this recruitment. Prior to JW being used by Ford, JW was used in other movies like westerns to show what is good about the country....now we are being bombarded by what is bad. Side note: JW never served in the military.

I see things getting better. Look at your personal life, then your family, and your children. Then look at your neighborhood and community. Then look at your county and State followed by the Federal Government. In that order, be a free thinker and do what's best, NOT what you are told to do or think by others. Parents had stopped going to Parent-teacher conferences, PTA meeting, School Board meetings. Home schooling as a result of Covid, opened up the propaganda and free thinkers united to battle things like CRT. This is an example only of what happens when you learn to think on your own.
Another example, the news cycle and social media made a sh*t load of money over Trump and now Biden. As a free thinker, I never bought into that Sh*t. I looked at there policies and the affect on my family, my children, my neighborhood and community, my county, my state and the Federal Gov't. As a free thinker you can have your own opinion over their policy results.

Have a great day. Peace be with you.

bah your post is so long, and I cant be bothered quoting you a ton.

I wrote some stuff but then I found I was venting again..

PS. I'm an Aussie.. so I barely care about the fall of Trump and the Rise of Biden.

I will how ever quote you from an article put out by the CDC (yeah in my spare time I peer review articles)
"We don’t know how effective the vaccines will be against new variants that may arise."

They also suggest that people should be vaccinated as soon as is possible.

And the main reason why that is so is the variants, so far we are on a highly infectious strain, and its making life hard again. But you know whats worse? a Zeta strain.. a strain of this virus for which we are unable to vaccinate against, one for which it will completely fluff the fragile life we all live.

That is what I am scared for. And to be honest what most people would never even think of, but if this virus produces a new strain and the medical world isn't able to adapt to quickly enough it may cause you or your loved ones pain and death.

Now I'm sure people will disagree with me, and they can if they wish. But I would prefer not to have my loved ones lives be put at risk because I refused to get vaccinated or wear a mask.. Which is why I will be as soon as its available in my country in the area I live, because even first world economies are struggling with supply issues..

Excellent post Sui, I love it :-)

Bug, the worst part of this is.... It will mutate again, and again and again, that's inevitable with world population of 6-7 billion, unless they (researchers) find a vaccine that actually kills it's contagion rather than boost your immune system, and that's highly unlikely TBH, even if you are vaccinated the virus can still roam around your body until you're immune system kills it or it transfers to a new host, that's where the scary part comes in, the reprogramming (mutation) of the virus begins in the name of survival, at least, that's how it was explained to me many many moons ago when I took a biology class and briefly covered mutation of viruses, yeah scary fluff.

Is this really a thing? :P

That said, Bug and others, it is very unlikely that the virus mutates in a way that it is both transmissible and deadly and the vaccines we use today have no efficacy on. You gotta remember these mutations are still small dissimilarities in a vast and complex array of similarities so even tho we started vaccinating with the original january 2020 wuhan strain spikes and the virus had already mutated for about year since then to what we now refer to as the UK strain or alpha variant, as in most of europe and North america this strain was taking over around this spring before the delta variant was noticed and started spreading faster.

The data we are seeing in terms of efficacies on various strains of the virus is that the vaccine reduces risk of transmission ever so slightly less(generally the data suggest ~80-95% down to ~40-85% efficacy depending on vaccine and variant, tho much of this is very spotty research as its ongoing studies) on these strains as they diverge further from the 'strain' the vaccine is based on but the risk for serious disease, hospitalization and death is still essentially unchanged (not eliminated but down a factor 10-20).
Theres no benefit to the virus in developing extra capabilities to kill us, it wants us feeling healthy, walking around as nothing happened and spreading the virus to 5, 10, 50 people who also dont realize they have it. Now this virus is a bit stupid and slow to get there, but essentially the virus is developing in a direction we can not only accept but welcome, in the long run.

What I'm basically saying is that the pandemic is NOW, fix the NOW, and the later will be good. Europe is about done with vaccinations afaik. Everyone 16-120 yo have been able to start and most have finished their vaccinations, IF they wanted them. Same goes for US and Canada.
Personally what I worry most about now is the stuff we been postponing because of the restrictions like all the influenza viruses which no one had to worry about as there was no outbreak last winter, no RS virus, no stomach flu, etc... all of those will come back at once and with a greater force than in a long time if we lift the wrong restrictions too fast at the wrong time. And while it perhaps doesn't help as much against covid we really should keep the habit of hand washing and hand sanitization.

I for one have had 1 mild cold since covid came along ~1.5 years ago, and I normally have 4-7 a year... from what I hear of people around me its about the same for them. So we lack immunity to about a half a dozen cold/flu viruses that will eventually catch up with us. :(

Interesting info, I agree we need to continue with what works, not too long ago (couple months) I heard a doctor talking about how low (almost none) cases of regular flu we had since the COVID-19 protocols went in place, down side of course is not being exposed to less dangerous viruses so that our bodies build immunity, I haven't had any kind of cold related illness in past few years, I my last mild cold was pre COVID-19.

most if not all of the common colds are 4 main coronaviruses which maybe used to be a lot worse hundreds of years ago, i dont think they will become much more dangerous but its possible

but with flu they tend to pick the 4 most likely strains to vaccinate against each year as it mutates quickly and its actually quite dangerous its just were complacent against the risk, though the recent awareness has raised vaccination rates so we might become aware of how bad it really is, but i dont think it will actually be a lot worse than it was

flu has interesting effects on excess morbidity though, with less people dying of that making it harder to identify how many people died of covid

They showed some slides from our version of the CDC (swedish) that showed the incidences of certain other transmissible diseases by month comparing different years. I wish I had the link but it was a while ago. Basically all those diseases were eliminated one or two months before their summer decline last year as covid recommendations were implemented (without a lockdown of any kind) and some of them didn't really come back in the fall as they usually used to do.

We are hearing news report of RS viruses spreading now tho, which is earlier than usual. This could mean we get a bad wave of RS infections. I think of this more of like an indicator than something to be worried about. They measure RS infections because it's problematic for some young children.

Sadly, not even close to the most radical part of the murdoch media in aus. That falls to things like the Herald Sun, THe Courier Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the like.
Sky is rather a lot of a joke though, but taken as gospel by the more right wing aussies, who think Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones are neutral political commentators.

Lockdowns don't work. the last two years can contest to that.

I would have to disagree with you there.

Lockdowns have helped every country who instigated them, The only other way around it is if you let people get infected and allow a % of your own population to die. But almost every country has had some form of lockdown to slow the spread, some countries/states have done it slow, and its cost them a lot in the long run, in both time and avoidable deaths.

chinas probably the best example of lockdowns working

maybe new zealand next best

Lockdowns do work but at what cost? There are also negative consequences to implementing them, especially in the US, where the government wanted to lockdown but not help people/businesses survive? You cannot have it both ways. Lockdown? Ok, pay people to stay home then. Also, don't tell a small family-owned business they cannot be open and do nothing to Walmart, Homedepot, Amazon (warehouses), etc... Inconsistency and lack of reason are what drives me crazy.

Also, I think it's time to talk about keeping our bodies healthy. Much of the 1st world is very unhealthy due to abundance and lack of willpower. Keeping your body healthy will help you fight off any virus not just Covid.

Things that make you go hmmmmm......

A person is collecting unemployment/week, getting $600/week add-on then reduced to $300/week added to the unemployment.

On top of that a $1400/person followed by a $1200 check per person.

And then, some were provided rent/mortgage relief.

What the hell?

Why wasn't that money used to pay the rent/mortgage? Asking for a friend.

I know people who lost their business because of this. You are entitled to your opinion, but if you think our Government did anything actually to help people, they shut down, we will not be able to agree on much regarding this.

Agree, Gov't screwed this more than WeeZy in a San Fran bath house.....they gave relief to the wrong folks and forgot about businesses

Yeah I know several people that lost their businesses, all got shafted by the government, there are more jobs than people willing to work ( thanks to government handouts) and that's not sustainable at all.

So lockdowns can look very different and has in different places during this pandemic, they were all a panic measure and not very well thought through.

If you look up official pandemic plans dated from a few years before this, of UK, USA, all of EU and some others, you will see that the plans look an aweful lot like what Sweden did.
In the end I think the restrictions/recommendation, either including or not including a lockdown, had two main intentions;
1. to bring the burden on health care to a level possible to manage in the short term.
2. to show "look we are doing stuff".

Now we have vaccines tho, and everyone in Europe, US, Canada who wanted them and is above 16 has already been vaccinated, mostly fully, but some only with one shot so far. And those who have taken this opportunity have a very low risk of ending up either in a hospital or ICU or dead from covid, which is why if you look at the numbers in countries with good coverage, the number of covid infections per fatality has increased by an order of magnitude(tenfold), and the healthcare burden is mostly not problematic, and made up by patients mostly in the unvaccinated minority. So while the cases are ticking in at a rate that is sometimes comparable to the worst waves in the pandemic, the death toll is no longer problematic. In Sweden for instance presently about 0.25% of daily deaths are attributed to covid19 - which, unless this starts rising very rapidly again as the seasons shift or the restrictions/recommendations are lifted, makes it very questionable if maintaining any burdensome restrictions are really defensible.

I mean isreal is 80% fully vaccinated 12yrs and older and are Currently in a covid crisis. Another large portion of their population somewhere around 45-50% had already a booster and they are currently talking about boosters every six months to keep travel visas active. Our company last week had 6 positive cases only one hospitalized was fully vaccinated. Also now looking at the MU variant thats said to be unnaffected by immunization vaccine and natural is now "sweeping" the globe. Nothing in the end is really going to help.

business owners that failed during the pandemic should've been more bootstrappy and skipped their 10$ starbucks mochafrappachino and their 20$ avacado toast!!!

I caught covid for the first time.. it sucks. Just started a new job, was there for one week and somebody there got me sick.

Either israel has a lower vaccination level than Europe or a more transmissive variant is there, OR since they were first to get large volumes of vaccines, it might be that the effect has somehow decreased a bit already. Anyway your CDC suggests vaccines reduce risk of death and hospitalization more than tenfold in most age-groups:


https://www.cdc.gov/...37e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w

Again as I said before, you can shrug that off all you want by saying some version of"you are still not safe from covid19 after getting vaccinated" but as true as that is you are essentially lying to yourself by equating the risks.

How do you achieve a 90% risk reduction in any other area of your life? Wearing seatbelt? No, thats way less. And you would be really stupid to opt against wearing a seatbelt as you know.

Europe and the UK(which opted to not be part of Europe) is essentially opening up and more or less cancelling all restrictions that were previously in place, and Im sure we will have backlashes in some areas, and maybe the restrictions will have to be put back in place temporarily and/or will require boosters at some point, but right now the vaccines are clearly working very well.
They would be in the US as well if you didn't have as many anti-vaxers. Sort the states by covid deaths per capita per day and then compare it to a list of the states by vaccination rate. I did this 2 weeks back and it was fully obvious that the states with the greatest outbreaks(in terms of fatalities per capita per day) were the least vaccinated.
Nevermind cases, cases don't mean anything if people dont die from them or get hospitalized.

Nobody in their right mind consumes that rubbish.

Also, not vaccinated, traveling every week within two hot spot states and still COVID-19 free, just saying.

Hi all. Just trying this game

I've had the flu several times before. Covid is just a fancy new word for the flu.