BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

Image getting clapped by someone in a Prius.

This is a bit of a wild ride:

Police seek public help after Florida political staffer killed in road rage crash that ended in shootout
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 92384.html

Opening with "may have instigated," then in the next chunk of wording about police "looking for help and any information" makes as if the Prius driver fled the scene or something, before halfway through saying that they went back to their car to wait. A tweet from his wife declaring him the victim (Kuczwanski was assassinated!). This one also playing up John's victimhood along with a mix of agreeing/disagreeing comments. And then finishing with yes, he'd been charged in another firearms-related road rage incident years ago where he drew on another driver. No contest to assault.

Should road ragers who draw on people be allowed to continue to have firearms?

In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … ews-526973

Hmm. Pig people indeed

What if I told you - people without degrees do vote.

People are stupid, nothing has changed and er, no they didn't, no-one voted at all.

All the polls I've seen suggest people were happy with the govt response before 'living with covid' was inflicted on us, haven't seen any since.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n … ore-deaths
https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu. … ril-FV.pdf
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publicati … dpoll-2021

Everything I'm seeing suggests the govt knows its fucked up and the people are pissed.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n … -backflips

nice poll from may 2021. not equipped with advance research skills, are you? as usual the dilbert ‘school of one’ research method of hastily googling something and pasting the first result delivers again.

you do realise delta wasn’t even detected until 31st may right? the entire ground changed after highly detectable variants started escaping ‘zero covid’ regimes. lmao.

‘no no you don’t understand, your polling isn’t up to date. here’s an opinion poll that’s 8 months old’.

great straw man chap. nobody has advocated for that as part of ‘living with covid’ or as the only alternative to permanent border closures.

have you been checked for dementia or alzheimer’s lately? you have a tendency to repeat yourself. and the same tendentious arguments.

lockdowns failed across the world in multiple states. because delta is much more transmissible. and omicron much, much more transmissible (by about 70x). no, they weren’t all half-assed. when china, NZ, and two australian states are all failing to contain the same variant, use your fucking head.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-14 22:38:04)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58406526

The Delta variant upended Australia's playbook. In June, it took hold in Sydney before spreading to Melbourne and Canberra.
State governments plunged their capitals back into lockdown. Currently, one in two Australians must stay home.
It has helped to suppress the spread. In Sydney, the R number - the rate at which the virus is spreading - has dropped from 5 to 1.3.

But authorities have said Covid zero is no longer achievable.

hey look - just as i said. delta and highly infectious strains have made zero covid an impractical and unrealistic burden.

hey look, a news article actually after the inception of delta and which is relevant to today. not from early summer 2021. wowsers! thank you, master’s degree research skills!

But is everyone happy?

Polling shows 62% of Australians support the government's reopening plan.

But many Australians baulk at the idea of "living with the virus", after being used to low infection rates.

hey look, 62%. let me check my maths, but i think that’s a ‘majority’. and more than supported brexit. weren’t you telling me to sit down and shut up and listen to ‘the people’s 3% margin? take your pill and swallow it, chap.

(safe to assume you are one of the ‘baulkers’, who has been so shitscared by his government’s zero covid line that he now regularly recycles vaccine-skeptical claptrap on this forum.)

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal … 58lk5.html

Voters back national vaccination targets to ease restrictions.

/end discussion

only 24% of the people from the same poll thought ‘states should go their own way’ on covid. which you have been stressing time and time again, going on about WA and SA to the cherrypicked exclusion of all else.

it sounds to me like you’re in a serious minority, chap.

Not really 'Australians are happy living with covid' at all.

you have a seriously slippy grasp on tenses and causality - some would say opportunistically so.

you glide into ex post facto/a posteriori arguments as if they can magically reorder the sequence of events. not so.

let's make this very simple for you:

• you keep saying 'australians are happy to remain in a covid-free bubble forever/australia has been fine with this system forever'.
• you cite polls from before the delta wave, i.e. before 'zero covid' policies were stretched and then abandoned globally (with CCP vacillating).
• i cite polls from post-delta/post-breakdown of zero covid policies. these polls clearly chime with the consensus: reach widespread vaccination and begin reopening.

this has always been my argument. vaccination, with frequent boosters if it is necessary (for now or until further vaccines) is the main tool to achieve a reopening of society. travel, work, schools/universities, can all reopen on a cautious and prudent basis so long as the population are vaccinated and boostered, which is to say, effectively protected from serious illness and death (don't make me quote those 90%+ effectivity figures at you again for the delta variant). now, to resume:

• you now cite the current state-of-affairs, viz. your federal govt's mismanaged reopening, to say 'see, australians are happy staying in a covid-free bubble forever; see my previous comments'.

but that's just not the case. the majority of australians clearly are clamouring for reopening. they already expressed their desire to trust in vaccines and to start relaxing measures. it's just not the case that 'almost al australians are happy with living in a zero covid bubble'. every in-depth news report that covers the last 6 months of the pandemic makes out that it is clearly disproportionately focussed on your most populous/most urban states. they're not happy with dysfunctional and ineffectual 'zero covid' lockdowns. it isn't 'working perfectly' there, as you continually describe whilst citing SA numbers and opinion polls from may 2021.

you have never actually acknowledged the fact that pretty much every 'model' nation on earth abandoned zero covid after delta. and omicron is only far, far worse on this score, i'm afraid. all the east asian 'success stories', new zealand, and even china have made very clear throat-clearing noises that the era of covid suppression is finished. discredited. instead you keep talking about 'half-arsed measures' and 'idiot people'. really? all these governments which were winning every plaudit from you for the last 2.5 years are now made up of numpties and slackers?

you can't use present dissatisfaction at the federal fuck-up in argument of suppression strategies. the population's polling already expressed that they'd moved on and wanted the next stage, 4-5 months ago.

you pointing to evidence of mass discontent and protest at the government's messy reopening now, the present pinch-points and pain in the system, is a bit like me saying that brexit should be reversed because a decent proportion of brexiteers express regret or changed their mind. lmao. 62% of aussies still said they were ready for 'living with covid' in september, chap. you've been the one here for years reminding us how little we know with our 'expertise' and saluting the wisdom of the common crowd.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-15 02:12:21)

uziq wrote:

only 24% of the people from the same poll thought ‘states should go their own way’ on covid. which you have been stressing time and time again, going on about WA and SA to the cherrypicked exclusion of all else.

it sounds to me like you’re in a serious minority, chap.

Not really 'Australians are happy living with covid' at all.

you have a seriously slippy grasp on tenses and causality - some would say opportunistically so.

you glide into ex post facto/a posteriori arguments as if they can magically reorder the sequence of events. not so.

let's make this very simple for you:

• you keep saying 'australians are happy to remain in a covid-free bubble forever/australia has been fine with this system forever'.
• you cite polls from before the delta wave, i.e. before 'zero covid' policies were stretched and then abandoned globally (with CCP vacillating).
• i cite polls from post-delta/post-breakdown of zero covid policies. these polls clearly chime with the consensus: reach widespread vaccination and begin reopening.

this has always been my argument. vaccination, with frequent boosters if it is necessary (for now or until further vaccines) is the main tool to achieve a reopening of society. travel, work, schools/universities, can all reopen on a cautious and prudent basis so long as the population are vaccinated and boostered, which is to say, effectively protected from serious illness and death (don't make me quote those 90%+ effectivity figures at you again for the delta variant). now, to resume:

• you now cite the current state-of-affairs, viz. your federal govt's mismanaged reopening, to say 'see, australians are happy staying in a covid-free bubble forever; see my previous comments'.

but that's just not the case. the majority of australians clearly are clamouring for reopening. they already expressed their desire to trust in vaccines and to start relaxing measures. it's just not the case that 'almost al australians are happy with living in a zero covid bubble'. every in-depth news report that covers the last 6 months of the pandemic makes out that it is clearly disproportionately focussed on your most populous/most urban states. they're not happy with dysfunctional and ineffectual 'zero covid' lockdowns. it isn't 'working perfectly' there, as you continually describe whilst citing SA numbers and opinion polls from may 2021.

you have never actually acknowledged the fact that pretty much every 'model' nation on earth abandoned zero covid after delta. and omicron is only far, far worse on this score, i'm afraid. all the east asian 'success stories', new zealand, and even china have made very clear throat-clearing noises that the era of covid suppression is finished. discredited. instead you keep talking about 'half-arsed measures' and 'idiot people'. really? all these governments which were winning every plaudit from you for the last 2.5 years are now made up of numpties and slackers?

you can't use present dissatisfaction at the federal fuck-up in argument of suppression strategies. the population's polling already expressed that they'd moved on and wanted the next stage, 4-5 months ago.

you pointing to evidence of mass discontent and protest at the government's messy reopening now, the present pinch-points and pain in the system, is a bit like me saying that brexit should be reversed because a decent proportion of brexiteers express regret or changed their mind. lmao. 62% of aussies still said they were ready for 'living with covid' in september, chap. you've been the one here for years reminding us how little we know with our 'expertise' and saluting the wisdom of the common crowd.

Like I said, NSW and Vic make up the numerical majority of the country, what happened there will distort any poll results. The outcome is NSW and Vic fucked up their covid response and forced the other states down the path of 'living with covid' because they had no real choice.

Most people would have assumed that full vaccination meant no more covid, thats what we were told, this clearly isn't the case.

It would be interesting to see an up to date poll. Apparently 80% want Jerkovich detained and expelled for coming in unvaccinated so that might give a flavour.
90+% of Perthlings were fine with living in a bubble and still are, WA not opening and 'living with covid' any time soon.

The fact is NSW and Vic make up half the population.

The line spun here was 80% vaccination meant everyone could relax and life could go back to normal with restrictions gradually eased.

In fact we're at 90%, hospitals are overwhelmed, there isn't the capacity in testing or tracing, people are dying, the economy is doing worse than when we were in lockdown.

In fact we're at 90%

meaningless for delta/omicron if the 2nd dose was administered 6+ months ago. you need boosters, and now. boosters provide high levels of protection but you need to keep them topped up.

in fact australia has some of the worst rates of booster uptake in the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n … ysis-shows

Australia could take until well into next year to hit an 80% booster vaccination rate, with the rollout currently ranking almost last out of 70 countries, Guardian analysis shows.

this is not an immaterial fact. hint: it's not that the vaccines 'don't work' or are 'broken' or any of the other antivaxx bullshit you want to peddle. it's that australians are formally advised to wait 5 months to get a booster, and many of them are badly out of date (5 months is really cutting it fine based on our current data).

so when you say 'we are 90% vaccinated and amazed that covid hasn't disappeared for good', you should perhaps be aware that only 24.5% of australians have been boostered. pitiful.

people are dying

your 7 day average is up into the 30s, after being between 5-15 for the last 8 months. omicron is not quite the apocalypse you were predicting, is it? in fact, i'd wager that if you weren't one of the worst nations in the world for seasonal booster uptake, you'd barely be noticing this 'gigantic' new wave of omicron.

120,000 cases a day and yet 30-40 deaths. do you remember what 120,000 cases a day looked like pre-vaccine?

in january 2021, with 60,000 cases a day, the UK had 1,200 deaths a day at its peak.

i'd call that progress or at least a seriously improved situation, wouldn't you?

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-15 05:55:10)

The CDC clarified something to the effect of COVID still being able to be caught by some people with the vaccine, but that the unvaccinated make up the greatest number of COVID cases.

Fully vaccinated people made up about 9% of reported COVID-19 deaths in 13 U.S. jurisdictions between April and July, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC studies have also shown unvaccinated people are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.

"Yes, it is true that vaccinated individuals can also be infected by and spread SARS-CoV-2 to others," Shweta Bansal, an associate professor of biology at Georgetown University, said in an email. "However, the evidence is crystal clear that risk of transmission for a vaccinated individual is significantly lower than for an unvaccinated individual."

USA Today - https://blog.mass.gov/publichealth/flu- … accinated/

And with the flu:

Unfortunately, some people can get infected with an influenza virus that is included in the vaccine even if they have been vaccinated.  Protection provided by flu vaccination can vary widely, based in part on the health and age of the person getting vaccinated.  In general, the flu vaccine works best among young healthy adults and older children, although it does not provide 100% protection even among these groups.  Some older people and people with certain chronic illnesses may develop less immunity after vaccination.  However, even in people that do not respond as well to the vaccine, the flu vaccine still provides some level of protection, and may result in less severe illness if they become sick with the flu.

https://blog.mass.gov/publichealth/flu- … accinated/

Take flu shot, still get flu, post on facebook about how the flu shots are fake news.