I'm not admiring or excusing anyone. I'm saying you probably find a whole range of IQs among them. Because why wouldn't you? Whose to say if the userbase of this site grew up in the wrong conditions, a portion wouldn't be terrorists too?
> This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots.
What even is a terrorist?
If your definition of terrorist is "person on the news involved in some FBI entrapment scheme", then yeah they're probably not that bright.
But more generally, terrorists are probably pretty hard to define (one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter, etc), and I would imagine include a whole range of intellectual capacities.
> reminder to the myocarditis-maxxies, the actual virus causes that too and the 2020-2021 variants caused it worse
Do you know if the vaccine prevented the virus-induced myocarditis? Cause the vaccine didn't do much to stop people from getting covid, multiple times even.
So many people frame this as either/or, you either had the risk of covid induced myocarditis or you had the (supposed) lesser risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. But if you got the vaccine (x times) and then covid (y times), isn't your risk roughly x + y?
This is the gospel that is taught. It seems to help people tolerate the fruits of their labor being quietly separated from them over time. Just another tax, except the people have even less of a say in this one.
The relevant question for me would be how many people would be combat ineffective for how long with and without the flu vaccine. Your Claude conversation says things like this:
"The best recent direct measurement is the FLUTES study (JAMA Network Open, 2024), which tracked secondary infections after flu entered US households across 2017–2020. The result: the estimated effectiveness of influenza vaccines for preventing secondary infections among household contacts was 21.0% (95% CI, 1.4% to 36.7%). Note how wide that confidence interval is — the lower bound is nearly zero."
And
"This is consistent with older household work. A 2013 study found no evidence that vaccination prevented household transmission once influenza was introduced; adults were at particular risk despite vaccination — strikingly, 9 of 11 adults with household-acquired influenza were vaccinated in that sample."
So most people on base who were going to get infected and transmit are still going to do so. Some portion of them have a better time with the illness if it does come around, which won't happen all the time. Contrast that with the costs of the program (side effects, time, whatever cons you can think of), and it seems like you might not be in slam dunk territory.
> Combined with the brutal arithmetic at higher R0R_0
R0 , this is a large part of why flu vaccination programs are generally justified on individual protection against illness and severe outcomes rather than on a realistic expectation of achieving herd immunity and stopping circulation.
On the one hand, in a military setting you can feasibly achieve 100% compliance. But if you don't stop transmission (which it sounds like we don't have good data saying it would), you don't get herd immunity.
So I think you're back to just the benefits of reduction in disease, which is not nothing, but it is marginal like I said originally.
> They're not. They're not particularly effective for preventing flu in an individual. But at the group level, they have a clear and useful effect.
This is my understanding. It basically would have marginally reduced the cost of the flu coming through, right? But thats not the impression that I would get from any of the discussion here. Am I wrong?
> I can control government more than I can control Google or Anthropic
How true is this really? With the government, you can vote in various elections, or contact your representatives, and when it comes to important issues that will do exactly squat. You can also buy politicians or legislation, or run yourself, if you have the wealth and connections to do so.
With corporations, you can vote with your dollars, which again on important issues will probably do squat. Or you can try to get hired and change the company from within. Or if you have the wealth, you can buy the company (partially or wholly), or start a competitor and win in the marketplace.
In both situations there are options, and most of them are basically impossible for the small folk.
Are you saying this because you only recognize the name from breathless covid propaganda? Or because you know ivermectin is pretty important in livestock management.
This seems like a poor tool to keep in your logical toolbox. If some line of logic would lead to some sacred cow getting slaughtered, then that logic must be false?
I do wonder if either the interviewer or interviewee are aware how insane this must sound to people with regular jobs. They did mention something about feeling privileged, but it feels like they don't necessarily understand what that actually means.
Realistically, you hit the lottery and had (still have?) it better than most. I'm not at faang, but I do pretty well at a tech company myself, and I've never thought of any of it as permanent, and I arrange my life accordingly.
The financial support point seems like it could have some legs. The other ones aren't terribly convincing. "They went on the bad guys show" or "they said the same things the bad guys say" isn't all that compelling to me.
I don't see how any of it rises up to "lol they've been completely debunked"
As someone who has no dog in the Russia/Ukraine fight (other than my tax dollars), I never liked how if one side said the sky was blue and you entertained the idea, suddenly you love the enemy, and you're parroting their talking points. Nevermind that neither of them are my friend.
If we're talking context, isn't there more to include? Like why those protests were happening in the first place? Did the hostile government cripple your economy first and potentially fund and arm agitators within the legitimate protest movements?
> This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.
How confident are you that will clarify anything for the families of those children?
There are no good guys in this situation. Just the people supporting this calamity and the growing number of people affected by it.
The Trump admin has pretty low approval ratings. If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing?
You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?
I'm all ears if you've got someone that we can put in power that won't rat fuck us when it comes to privacy or civil liberties. Bonus points if they aren't just slightly less bad than the other guy.
Generally safe is meaningless in this context. That's not a reasonable way to talk about entire classes of drugs. All that matters is for a given person with a given medical history and context, does the specific drug have a net benefit.
Here's a good test case: have you had the rabies vaccine? If not, does that make you an antivaxxer? How about vaccines that have been pulled off the market? Are those no longer vaccines?
Something reasonable to say would be there are vaccines that have a net benefit, and you should take those if that applies to your situation.
This whole "say the slogan or you're an antivaxxer" is like giving kids the nontoxic glue because you know some of them are going to eat it. The adults in the room don't need this shit.