Build Back Better? Bitch Please!

[broncofan]

$165 Billion for expanding Obamacare. I'm also in favor of socialized medicine now that I've witnessed the U.S. pharmaceutical juggernaut utterly fail to create an effective vaccine for Covid, sooo...

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pub...any-deaths-and

The vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer had demonstrated 90% plus efficacy against infection and death. This was demonstrated by comparing vaccinated people to unvaccinated people. I'm in favor of Republicans not offering opinions on anything scientific as your views are childlike. How effective do you think a vaccine should be? How effective have vaccines been in the past? If efficacy is less than 100% doesn't that require lots of people to get the shots for a broad public benefit?

You have a virus circulating all over the world....is it that surprising that trillions of copies of virus in millions of people have resulted in variants? Do you think pharmaceutical companies were negligent for not anticipating exactly what mutations would take hold and spread?

[Nick Danger]

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pub...any-deaths-and

The vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer had demonstrated 90% plus efficacy against infection and death. This was demonstrated by comparing vaccinated people to unvaccinated people. I'm in favor of Republicans not offering opinions on anything scientific as your views are childlike. How effective do you think a vaccine should be? How effective have vaccines been in the past? If efficacy is less than 100% doesn't that require lots of people to get the shots for a broad public benefit?

You have a virus circulating all over the world....is it that surprising that trillions of copies of virus in millions of people have resulted in variants? Do you think pharmaceutical companies were negligent for not anticipating exactly what mutations would take hold and spread?

I don't think anyone was negligent, Bronco, I am simply not going to continue to support private medicine if they can't produce results. For years I've made the argument that sure, healthcare in the USA is expensive, and everyone else has socialized medicine, BUT...when the chips are down our for-profit medical industry will shine! It didn't. So fuck 'em, I'm socialized medicine from here out, my speculation that they had achieved a heightened level of competence based on free-market pressures was the only factor in their favor.

Far as the vaccine being effective, eh, I don't buy any of the statistics, from you or anyone else. Even the numbers have become propaganda thanks to the partisan media. One thing I do know is that a lot of fully-vaccinated people continue to get and transmit the virus. Also, I'm a bit of an unreasonable hardass about this thing anyway, you tell me 5 million people have died and I think that's not nearly enough.

Again, though, and for the umpteenth time, if you think the vaccine will help you, you should get it. I don't hold you in contempt at all for trembling in fear over a virus that's barely dangerous. Tremble for decades for all I care.

[broncofan]

The immune system is a quirky thing. It's not a reflection of someone's character or toughness. It might be a reflection of how well someone slept the night before they were exposed to a virus, what their diet has been like recently, or whether they have a lot of stress in their life. I am going to get vaccinated whenever it's authorized and try not to get infected. In my defense, I deal perfectly well with physical injuries like a broken foot or a torn muscle but I've gotten sick before and not cleared it well so I'd be stupid not to be careful.

It's simply not true that the virus is barely dangerous. It's killed 800,000 people and is killing 1,000 more a day. Yes most of those people are older but there are plenty of 30 and 40 year olds who have died or been ventilated for an extended period of time and have permanent complications.

BTW Pfizer just tested an antiviral pill that is 89% effective in preventing serious disease. It's called Paxlovid. You're free to think the clinical trial results are fraudulent.

Maybe one reason you're having trouble with the numbers is because of the magnitude of them. If a vaccine is 90% effective in preventing infection and 100 million unvaccinated people got infected, you'd still see 10 million vaccinated people who are infected. 10% is not a rare event but it's a lot better to be ten times less likely to get sick. But feel free to not wear a seatbelt because they don't prevent every death.

[Nick Danger]

The immune system is a quirky thing. It's not a reflection of someone's character or toughness. It might be a reflection of how well someone slept the night before they were exposed to a virus, what their diet has been like recently, or whether they have a lot of stress in their life. I am going to get vaccinated whenever it's authorized and try not to get infected. In my defense, I deal perfectly well with physical injuries like a broken foot or a torn muscle but I've gotten sick before and not cleared it well so I'd be stupid not to be careful.

It's simply not true that the virus is barely dangerous. It's killed 800,000 people and is killing 1,000 more a day. Yes most of those people are older but there are plenty of 30 and 40 year olds who have died or been ventilated for an extended period of time and have permanent complications.

BTW Pfizer just tested an antiviral pill that is 89% effective in preventing serious disease. It's called Paxlovid. You're free to think the clinical trial results are fraudulent.

Maybe one reason you're having trouble with the numbers is because of the magnitude of them. If a vaccine is 90% effective in preventing infection and 100 million unvaccinated people got infected, you'd still see 10 million vaccinated people who are infected. 10% is not a rare event but it's a lot better to be ten times less likely to get sick. But feel free to not wear a seatbelt because they don't prevent every death.

Bronco, no disrespect to your argument or the fact that you're making it, but you're wasting your breath on me. We will never see eye-to-eye because you consider 800,000 deaths to be a lot of deaths. 800,000 is a gift, with a big bow on it. It will surely rise to a million. How high would the death toll be if we hadn't taken any "precautions" at all? Not much higher. Our precautions were ridiculous.

I know I haven't told you this because I don't think I've told anyone this, but I was in Shreveport on business last Spring, at the height of the lockdowns and mask mandates. Went out to a local bar to shoot some pool and drink a few beers, and couldn't help but notice that the volume of the music in the place was WAY too low. I mean it was less than background noise, you couldn't even tell what was playing. I made a comment about this to my waitress and she told me that the governor had just mandated VOLUME LEVEL controls for bars and restaurants - the theory being that loud music would draw crowds. Then I had one beer, shot a couple balls off the table, and the place closed at like 10 o'clock, also part of the new mandates. A new miserable experience. Anyway how many Covid cases do you think that little stroke of authoritarian genius prevented?

The masks are garbage, social distancing doesn't happen unless you've got an armed guard directing traffic, half the work force kept going to work and continued to mingle freely with the other half, it was all a big joke, we saved maybe one guy, Ralph Farnsworth, a railroad retiree in Columbus Ohio. In exchange for what? The collateral damage is incalculable. Classic example of the cure being worse than the disease. What does shutting society down for 2 years cost? What's 2 years worth of social development and primary education worth in a 7-year-old? How many honest merchants were forced out of business and likely into a way-too-early retirement? What is the real cost of saving Ralph Farnsworth? We'll never know, but it sure seems like we've traded a purse full of gold for a handful of beans to me. And the subtlest irony of all is that Ralph Farnsworth could have just saved himself.

It was early in the pandemic, Bronco, when I realized I had an amazing genius for how to handle pandemics. I'm a pandemic savant and it's more of a curse than a blessing when you have to watch people badly mishandle the one thing in the world that you understand better than anyone. All we had to do was quarantine the vulnerable and let everyone else deal with the flu. We'd have been long done with it, same or fewer deaths most likely, and no shutting down of anything. But you can't soar with the eagles when you live with a bunch of turkeys.

[broncofan]

In the past I've tried not to take joy in stupid people suffering the consequences of stupid decisions. I have to tell you I have mixed feelings about all of the right-wing radio hosts who say stuff like "I'll never take the vaccine" and then get really sick and from the hospital say "I'm gonna beat this but I urge you all to get the vaccine." And then they don't beat it and never leave the hospital and people tweet messages under one of their old tweets where they're accusing a prominent infectious disease doctor of scamming them. It's a pattern that's recurred often enough that I ask myself if it's dejavu or whether all of these stupid faces have blurred together in my mind.

I've accused Republicans of engaging in voter suppression before but it seems like your efforts have been more bipartisan recently. So follow your gut.

BTW, my last post on the last page asked you what sort of tax you're worried will change your standard of living. I've paid different amounts of tax in my life but it's never been something that's kept me up at night.

[Nick Danger]

Nick, you are not averse to sharing personal details and while I'm not asking for anything really specific, what kind of tax is it that you are fearing? I don't love material things as much as the average person but do like being comfortable and being able to buy what I want without stress (in addition to paying for necessities and out of pocket healthcare costs). What kind of tax is changing your standard of living? I never understand this.

I never shared this but I own some commercial real estate. The number of tax benefits and write-offs that our tax code provides is unreal. If for instance depreciation schedules were not as aggressive or the irs changed how much could be written off as 5 or 15 year property my taxes would be different. My life wouldn't. And frankly, I'm not paying attention to every penny the government spends but if my tax dollars could buy healthcare for people or student loan forgiveness or disability payments wouldn't we be a better country?

I'm not going to lie, Bronco, I don't pay a lot in taxes. I'm a single-owner business so my tax rate is about half that of many privately-owned companies or any publicly-owned companies. I don't pay myself a salary so I pay zero in federal income tax. Fact is I'm in the middle of selling my business right now, to the guy who's been doing most of the work for the last 15 years. And I'm going to retire, I'm pretty much already there. Most of my income from now on will come from capital gains, which, yes, the Democrats are looking to nearly double taxes on those.

But that doesn't bother me MUCH, I'm not a day-trader or anything, I follow the Warren Buffett school of thinking and almost all my investments are long-term. I have never minded paying my share of taxes anyway. I just don't want people living off the government, I thought I'd been fairly clear about that. We're the strongest country because we've always been the hardest-working country, and I know that sounds like bravado but it's the truth, pretty sure it's easily shown statistically. We don't take as many vacations as other countries, we work longer hours, more days, and I daresay harder. We do that because we have to if we want to...I dunno, impress our neighbors, whatever the fuck it is we Americans do. But the point is you can't change horses in mid-stream and expect to win the race, our system works. It impoverishes some, but it works, we genuinely are a force to be reckoned with. And nuclear arsenals big enough to maintain the mutually-assured destruction paradigm that keeps the world from blowing itself up don't build themselves.

[broncofan]

I don't hold you in contempt at all for trembling in fear over a virus that's barely dangerous. Tremble for decades for all I care.

https://news.yahoo.com/washington-st...ity&soc_trk=tw

I'm trying to figure out whether Doug Ericksen owned the libs before he died. Just wanna know the estate tax consequences.

[Nick Danger]

https://news.yahoo.com/washington-st...ity&soc_trk=tw

I'm trying to figure out whether Doug Ericksen owned the libs before he died. Just wanna know the estate tax consequences.

You've lost me here Bronco. I read the entire boring-ass article too. Was this guy some kind of known anti-vaxxer or something? All it says in the article is he had opposed vaccine mandates and pushed for social distancing restrictions to be eased.

I mean if you want me to say it's poetic justice when a vocal anti-vaxxer dies of Covid, I mean sure, I'll say it. But once again, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Full disclosure, I've already essentially decided I'm going to get it, not because I want it but because I can't travel without it. So that's that, no need for further encouragement here, I will be vaccinated by mid-January or so. I just want it to be CLEAR...that I have not been sold on this vaccine by anything other than my own selfish interests.

[filghy2]

Bronco, no disrespect to your argument or the fact that you're making it, but you're wasting your breath on me. We will never see eye-to-eye because you consider 800,000 deaths to be a lot of deaths. 800,000 is a gift, with a big bow on it. It will surely rise to a million. How high would the death toll be if we hadn't taken any "precautions" at all? Not much higher. Our precautions were ridiculous.

I know I haven't told you this because I don't think I've told anyone this, but I was in Shreveport on business last Spring, at the height of the lockdowns and mask mandates. Went out to a local bar to shoot some pool and drink a few beers, and couldn't help but notice that the volume of the music in the place was WAY too low. I mean it was less than background noise, you couldn't even tell what was playing. I made a comment about this to my waitress and she told me that the governor had just mandated VOLUME LEVEL controls for bars and restaurants - the theory being that loud music would draw crowds. Then I had one beer, shot a couple balls off the table, and the place closed at like 10 o'clock, also part of the new mandates. A new miserable experience. Anyway how many Covid cases do you think that little stroke of authoritarian genius prevented?

The masks are garbage, social distancing doesn't happen unless you've got an armed guard directing traffic, half the work force kept going to work and continued to mingle freely with the other half, it was all a big joke, we saved maybe one guy, Ralph Farnsworth, a railroad retiree in Columbus Ohio. In exchange for what? The collateral damage is incalculable. Classic example of the cure being worse than the disease. What does shutting society down for 2 years cost? What's 2 years worth of social development and primary education worth in a 7-year-old? How many honest merchants were forced out of business and likely into a way-too-early retirement? What is the real cost of saving Ralph Farnsworth? We'll never know, but it sure seems like we've traded a purse full of gold for a handful of beans to me. And the subtlest irony of all is that Ralph Farnsworth could have just saved himself.

It was early in the pandemic, Bronco, when I realized I had an amazing genius for how to handle pandemics. I'm a pandemic savant and it's more of a curse than a blessing when you have to watch people badly mishandle the one thing in the world that you understand better than anyone. All we had to do was quarantine the vulnerable and let everyone else deal with the flu. We'd have been long done with it, same or fewer deaths most likely, and no shutting down of anything. But you can't soar with the eagles when you live with a bunch of turkeys.

How does this man manage to write so many words based on absolutely nothing of substance? Yeah, we know what you think on this and your limited number of other fixed viewpoints because you've already told us ad nauseum. No need for a long stream of consciousness essay every single time.

You should have stuck with your previous conclusion, bronco.

You're a person for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists. There's no other explanation for your views. The only information you assimilate is that which supports your priors. Anything inconvenient is waved away or quickly forgotten.

Are you deplorable? Worse than that. You're boring and limited. You've decided to fear what you don't understand, which is a great deal, while telling yourself you're a big alpha predator. Your next debate is with your mirror.

[filghy2]

Again, you ignore the empirical point that every other developed country is more generous is assisting people with lower incomes, yet they have not ended up with more poverty. In fact, the US has much more inequality than most other developed countries, which seems to give the lie to your claim that limiting benefits helps the poor.

Edit: Sorry forgot to address your first point. I really think you should move away from holding up American-supported European countries as models of how not to be like America. Yeah, you guys have plenty of peace and prosperity and equality and all that. Meanwhile we have a devil's bargain to keep. On your behalf.

You needn't have bothered. This is like a random association exercise where you respond to a question you can't answer by addressing some other question that is only vaguely related at best.