Winnie the Flu

[lisarea]

That's a really good point.

It's not wrong to be suspicious of authorities.

Conspiracies happen, including some really wacky ones. You can't just do MK-Ultra and Tuskegee and all those other unethical things like that and then expect people to fully trust the US government. (Or any other, for that matter.)

It might help to show him this paper, which charts how long it takes for conspiracies to be exposed based on the number of participants. And then imagine how big and unlikely a large scale conspiracy about COVID would have to be. How many agencies, independent researchers, and scientists, in how many countries, would have to all be in on it to suppress information like this if it were true?

[Dragar]

It's difficult to know how bad things are going to get.
If you scale the UK deaths per day up to India's population, you get something like 25,000 deaths per day. I don't see why that should be an upper limit with a collapsed healthcare system.

Millions of people dying in the space of a week starts looking plausible.

[Ari]

I’ve found when talking to people who are suspicious it’s best to mirror their concerns first.

If someone gets a pet theory that the FDA is evil (as opposed to legally tied down so scams can run amuck) and everyone tells them, “nah don’t be silly” the first person who agrees will get a ton of their attention, and can drag them down the rabbit hole of books and supplements.

Some version of, “I don’t trust the FDA either *but* in this case...” doesn’t always work but people are often more likely to believe an evil group occasionally says true things, than their whole suspicion was off.

Only partly related but I was just thinking about security theater and how tamper seals on a good portion of products are for looks only and can be removed or reapplied without notice. (Many of my spices still have the break to open plastic band on the lid because you can just unscrew the whole thing, and screw it back on with less effort than removing the plastic ring).

[Limoncello]

4 people called in sick today - they were all vaccinated yesterday.

[JoeP]

[beyelzu]

ES and I got our first jabs Saturday.

Pretty excited.

[BrotherMan]

I got my #1 today and I'm mostly okay. #2 is already scheduled.

[Qingdai]

The whole family Shadow, Chunksmediocrites and I got our second shots late Febuary. I guess having a son who I set up with SS as disabled (autism diagnosis) finally pays off?
I do feel better knowing we are at least slightly harder to kill. We've both been working this entire time. Son is 16 this last fall, so just barely old enough for his shot.

Both of them were fine (just sore arms from the jabbing), but of course I had a fairly strong reaction for about 30 hours. Based on that alone, I'm glad I didn't actually get coronavirus.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

slightly harder to kill

[BrotherMan]

[LarsMac]

Today marks the 1 month since 2nd Moderna.
So, I guess I am fully immunized and healthy.
Now to stay that way, I have fully adopted Social Distancing as my new way of life.
I still wear a mask when I go out into a publicly accessible building, and always wear and over-shirt that can be tossed in the laundry when I get home.
I have also developed an auto-response to people getting too close. I have a kind of a wheezing cough that begins as soon as a stranger gets within 3 feet of my position.
(It works wonders)

[ChuckF]

I am wearing masks indoors in public for the foreseeable future, not least in case it should agitate anyone inclined to be agitated by that sort of thing. (I also plan to wear a mask on airplanes for the rest of my life.)

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Ready for Goblinization Day?

[lisarea]

The Little Muffin got his second shot today. This is a big deal because he developed a serious needle phobia after the dog attack when he was a kid. He'd improved, but it's gotten much worse again lately.

He was shaking uncontrollably ahead of his appointment. I had to fill out the form for him because he couldn't even write legibly, then I sat with him and showed him how to play Loopy* while he waited. Then one of the ladies came over to the other side and told him a story to distract him while the other gave him the shot.

He did it. Our whole family is vaccinated now, and Mabel's son should be getting his second one soon too, so we're going to be able to do some relatively normal stuff before too long.

* Thank you, Ceptimus! Neither of us had really played that one yet, so I'm just learning myself right now because you were talking about it.

[beyelzu]

The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban schools from requiring students to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, despite the fact that the state already requires students to receive a long list of shots.

....

However, the state of Florida already requires students to submit proof of vaccinations and immunizations in order to attend public school, and has for decades.

"Florida requires certain vaccines to be administered before children may enroll and attend childcare and school," the Florida Department of Health website says.

Covidiots continue to make this worse than it has to be

[BrotherMan]

Not only worse but actively, maliciously, dumber.

[beyelzu]

according to reuters Russia has 400k excess deaths during the Rona

That's one prodigious undercount. I mean we have a 30 percent or so undercount, they have a 300 percent undercount.

They are claiming officially about 110k deaths.

Hmm.
According to the Moscow times it's a bit worse.

Russia recorded more than 460,000 excess deaths during the first 12 months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to analysis of official statistics published by the Rosstat federal statistics agency.

note that while other sources say 110k deaths (like worldometers, according to moscow times the count is 167k.

Turns out denial doesn't actually stop a pandemic.

[Miisa]

This was predicted, although the scale is even worse than I thought. From a year ago:

Originally Posted by Miisa

BTW, the Russian numbers of dead (and sick) are complete fantasies. They do autotopsies on pretty much all the dead and only count as COVID-19 deaths those who have died due to lung issues, i.e. drowned in their own fluids. So any deaths from heart attacks or strokes or the like are not in the count, even if the person was actively sick with verified COVID-19 at the time.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

367287BC-DC51-4F79-A975-B4E1EADDB8F3.jpeg

[Ari]

With India taking such a beating it would be stupid to assume we are out of the trenches just yet.

So of course, first to stick it’s head up, Florida!
Florida Gov. DeSantis suspends all remaining Covid restrictions: ‘We are no longer in a state of emergency’

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Need lots of brown people brewing up COVID variants and keep that sweet sweet vaccine revenue up.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Maybe your proximity to loss and risk is such that this has been easy for you. Or maybe you deal with these things by charging ahead. But it’s...not remotely strange to *not* be that way

— Esi Sogah (@esisogah) May 3, 2021

[JoeP]

Where has that become mainstream?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Congratulations on your champion level of isolation. You’ll do fabulously in Finland.

[JoeP]

Missä veitsini on ...