I want people to be able to calculate risk for themselves rather than have GOVT decide what risks people can and can't take. If one doesn't deem it risky to themselves, perhaps because they are in their 20s and the average age of covid mortality is 80, then it is up to them and it is their personal freedom to choose what to/not do. If you are 90 and have 5 more years left to live, then my all means, stay indoors. Or don't and spend your last years with your family rather than dying alone in some care home that you are locked in and can't leave... Forcing/mandating mask wearing in democratic countries does more damage to democracy.
This will probably get downvoted/flagged but I wanted to say it.
When you calculate the risk for "yourself", you're not actually just making a decision for yourself, you're making a decision on the health of those around you, because the existence of a viable breeding ground for the disease keeps it active in the population, and capable of mutating, and escaping vaccines.
Besides, the government isn't even forcing you in the sense of "you're going to go to jail if you don't do this." There's forcing you in the sense of "You can't fly on this plane if not vaccinated." Private businesses could refuse you service, like "You're not coming into this movie theater unless you're vaccinated or wearing a mask." Can't libertarians decide who to associate with and if they don't want to associate with non-vaccinated, isn't that their right?
Governments force lots of things in democracies. Education is forced for example. Truancy is illegal. You as a parent cannot make a decision to never educate your child in many countries.
> the existence of a viable breeding ground for the disease keeps it active in the population, and capable of mutating, and escaping vaccines.
You assume that when a person does not get a vaccine, that person is helping to get more people infected. But that does not always happen; many people have natural immunity and in case they are nevertheless infectors, they are quite less effective at infecting others, similar to how vaccinated people seem to be so; and such non-vaccinated person can limit their infecting risk to others in various other ways, such as by wearing a mask in close encounters with strangers and by limiting such contacts.
It is not true that getting vaccinated is the only way to help limit the spread of COVID-19.
There is another issue, that many people do not want the vaccine, but they do want natural immunity. Those people actually want to get infected, by a weak variant of the disease, and let the nature do its process and get natural immunity.
Statistically, people who are not vaccinated contribute to the spread of the virus. The fact that any one person who isn't vaccinated may not be infected is not relevant. You're using the existence of a few exceptions to prove the rule. We know there are a few people who were born immune to the HIV virus. Does that mean it's ok for everyone to assume they have this kind of immunity and not practice safe sex? Crazy.
> It is not true that getting vaccinated is the only way to help limit the spread of COVID-19.
Except that the people who don't get vaccinated overlap with the people who refuse all of the other mitigations -- many antivax people are also anti-mask, anti-social distancing, anti-lockdown, etc.
> There is another issue, that many people do not want the vaccine, but they do want natural immunity. Those people actually want to get infected, by a weak variant of the disease, and let the nature do its process and get natural immunity.
You have no control over which variant you get infected by. If you're not vaccinated, you could get infected first by the Delta variant for example. I mean, you're proposing a quite frankly bizarre process: 1) "natural immunity" vs "vaccine immunity". In many cases, these are identical, for example if you get a vaccine based on a weakened form of the virus. 2) An assumption that "natural immunity" confers some kind of better protection than vaccine immunity. This is unscientific, and in the case of COVID-19, factually wrong.
And that's the point of Linus's rant A lot of antivax people use pseudo-scientific reasoning. It's like you bring the same rigor to pandemic prevention that some quack brings to analysis of GOOP supplements.
> Does that mean it's ok for everyone to assume they have this kind of immunity and not practice safe sex? Crazy.
It is a personal responsibility of the participants. When people have natural (no rubber) sex it is none of anybody else's business to control how they do it, except if there is intentional spreading of disease. You have to prove bad intent to harm or spread disease, then you are right that intervention is justified. Without that, forcing condoms on everybody having sex is an autocratic policy that should have no place in civil democratic society. You can politely suggest getting tested and using condoms though.
> Except that the people who don't get vaccinated overlap with the people who refuse all of the other mitigations -- many antivax people are also anti-mask, anti-social distancing, anti-lockdown, etc.
That may be. Reasonableness of these positions depends highly on actual local health situation. These people are not always wrong as you seem to imply.
> bizarre process: 1) "natural immunity" vs "vaccine immunity"
It's simple: natural immunity is something you get without powerful interests being in control; vaccine is subjecting your health into hands of some other party. Some people do not want to their health to be controlled by powerful interests/institutions in general, some just in case of vaccines. It's perfectly valid and respectable personal stance. It does not matter whether it's scientific, almost no society is run by science, scientists or scientific consensus. We use rather political process and respect individual freedoms even if those are unscientific (religion, refusing transfusion, refusing vaccines, etc.)
"We use rather political process and respect individual freedoms even if those are unscientific (religion, refusing transfusion, refusing vaccines, etc.)"
You're welcome to die in ignorance if you want. But the rest of society is free to ostracize you. Businesses can deny you access. Schools can deny your kids entry. And through the political process, can restrict your interactions in other ways.
Your "freedom" stops when you run up against *my freedom" to have a diseased lunatic close enough to spread their disease to me.
You shot some strawman here. You don't have a freedom or right to be in sterile environment when you are out in public space. The germs are out there, deal with it rationally and with respect to other people.
Private business owners can put whatever restrictions they want on their spaces. And parents can decide what rules they want for their school, that's why we have schoolboards.
I was just listening to NPR's Freakonomics discussion of the Cialdini's the science of persuasion, and in that book, he talks about people who will reactively rebel again anything, even if they know they are wrong and it is against their interests, purely because it limited my choice.
In other words, how dare you tell me I can't drink poison, I'll do it because you don't have the right to tell me what to do.
This childish attitude precisely describes your attitude in the previous posts where you admit to doing things even if scientifically wrong. This sums up to a T, the problem with reactionary conservativism. It isn't about doing what's right, what's ethical, what's scientifically correct, what's efficient, it's about "elites can't tell me what to do!" Hence you get stupid shit like people deliberately making the exhaust of their trucks put old huge clouds of black smoke, because it's a finger to the face of everyone else who says that exhaust pollution is bad.
The temper tantrum of the anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers, is largely such a childish overreaction.
> Private business owners can put whatever restrictions they want on their spaces.
Not "whatever restrictions". For example, you cannot announce "only white people". And similarly should be that you cannot announce "only vaccinated people". It is a very similar thing, rejecting group of people based on fear of interacting with them because they are different.
> In other words, how dare you tell me I can't drink poison, I'll do it because you don't have the right to tell me what to do.
And that should be the allowed and accepted thing to do. I don't want some institution to decide which substances are OK to drink and which are forbidden. In some cases, that poison may save your life. Whether a chemical is a medicine or poison often depends on details of the situation, for example health status, tolerance and dosage.
> It isn't about doing what's right, what's ethical, what's scientifically correct, what's efficient, it's about "elites can't tell me what to do!"
What's right and what is ethical and what's scientifically correct can be very different for different people. Some like you believe that is determined by authorities (medical, scientific, government) and some like me don't, we prefer to make our own minds.
Since you believe in science, this discussion (of very knowledgeable science-respecting and science-informed people) may interest you, it is about the increasing evidence of problems of the current gene therapy COVID vaccines and other strategies for handling the pandemic:
The personal freedom to make choices for one's self should absolutely be up to the individual - but only insofar as those choices only affect the individual making them.
Once you talk about things like being contagious and infecting others, personal freedoms must be balanced against societal well-being.
Where that balance lies is, of course, where the debate should be. Ignoring one side and focusing solely on the other is unproductive in my opinion.
> it is their personal freedom to choose what to/not do
No, your freedom ends where my starts. If you are propagating a deadly desease it's not about individual freedoms anymore, this is the same as deciding your personal risk is fine with running red lights at intersections; we don't accept that as a society.
If one's actions were only risky to themselves, then I would agree with you. However, that is not the case with a pandemic.
> Forcing/mandating mask wearing in democratic countries does more damage to democracy.
Frankly, politicizing mask wearing, fake news, lies and proud ignorance does more damage to democracy than anything else. If everyone would have worn masks from the beginning, we would be in a very different place right now.
I agree with your second comment but not so much the first. Infectious disease control 101: Lock up the infected people but leave the healthy alone. Or else you may have a dwindling economy due to excessive spending, people too scared to work and a rapidly inflating currency... I may sound like an armchair epidemiologist but given that there are so many proclaimed 'experts' out there, the bar can't be thaaat high?
> Infectious disease control 101: Lock up the infected people but leave the healthy alone.
Maybe try getting some real education on infectious diseases. Incubation periods during which you can be contagious, and the generally non-zero latency between becoming symptomatic and highly contagious and getting positive test results back and getting into isolation mean your proposed strategy is stupid.
Yes but no because it is the law. It should be law that car companies provide a seat-belt but not that I wear one. Your one sentence straw-man wont suffice here. Again, it's all about personal risk. I could go climb a cliff face with a rope or I could do it without. I don't need GOVT to tell me not to do the latter.
Did you know that seatbelts save lives besides those of the people wearing them? That in even minor collisions being untethered to a seat can injure others?
The justification for mandatory seatbelt laws is the same as the justification for covid mitigations: you’re protecting more than yourself.
If the driver is not wearing a seatbelt but the passenger is and the car gets into an accident, would the passenger be worse off than if the driver was wearing the seatbelt?
> If the driver is not wearing a seatbelt but the passenger is and the car gets into an accident, would the passenger be worse off than if the driver was wearing the seatbelt?
Potentially, yes. This wasn’t an analogy! I meant it literally. People not wearing seatbelts can injure or kill others in collisions. Their bodies can be projected into others’ and even a waif of a person can be deadly with enough force.
my point in comparing the seatbelt to vaccines was about the passenger being compared to the vaccinated person, who is responsible for his own risk.
Analogies are never perfect, and in this case, it is the first time, the disease has been so politicized on both sides that we need to resign ourselves to potentially never coming to a complete agreement.
Time of course will prove it, but for some, it will be too late.
However, I just think that (even stupid) people are in general selfish for what they care about ( not logical enough for the rest of us) and that in general, they should have agency.
I see it in the same category as regulating alcohol, drugs, etc. In fact, there is unanimous opinion that alcohol is not good for you at all, where there is discussions,even prior to covid, that is often debunked (but not completely in the eyes of some people) that vaccines pose their own risks (see autism, etc ), and also affects people's sensibilities (see usage of aborted fetal cells)
I believe the core issue here more than vaccines is trust. Trust that is lost, and attempts taken to understand why, and solutions to rebuild it.
The problem is that other people have to pay for your negligence. People not wearing masks means doctors and nurses have to work harder, and expose thenselves to unnecessary risk. It means you may infect vulnerable people and they could die. Not wearing a seatbelt means the firetruck has to be called to peel you off the asphalt after an accident. Not wearing a rope while climbing means a helicopter full of medics is going to have to airlift you out. This behavior creates a drain on the system, and that is why there are basic public safety laws.
Honest question: where is the line? I assume you do want there to be some laws regarding public health and safety. On a spectrum of health/safety violations from terrorism, to murder, to assault, to reckless driving, to spreading a virus during a pandemic, to harassment, to causing a noise complaint - where should the line between legal and illegal be?
Edit: although, my question doesn't address your concern about personal risk. But the laws don't address personal risk, they address the public risks caused by your actions. If you don't care about public risks, then my question is a non sequitur.
Your conflating your right to risk yourself (declining a vaccine) with your right to risk others (refusing a mask mandate). Those are very different things.
"Do what you want to yourself, but leave the rest of us out of it" is the definition of freedom.
That said, any actual calculation of the risks should send people flocking to be vaccinated. But you do you. Just please don't vote.
My bad, I'm not talking about vaccines here. More replying to this general comment about people that don't comply with governmental decree. Leaving out the fact that GOVT was saying at the start of the pandemic that masks do little to protect you or others and they made a u-turn on that, the real way to let people keep their freedom is to let people decide the risks they want to take. If you are old, fat or otherwise ill, don't go outside if you think you might die? I sounds harsh but don't impinge on my freedom to not have to wear a mask because you can't go for a jog once in a while.
My only objection to the legalization of weed will that the smell is horrific (IMPO!) and it will begin to plague busy streets. How would lawmakers address this because I don't see them making designated areas?
I think it will go the way of cigarette smoke once full legalization is achieved nationwide. You'll get a whiff occasionally, but as the novelty wears off, most people will smoke indoors in the comfort of their own homes. I think weed inhibits some motor functions too much for it to become commonplace in work places or in public areas like cigarettes were.
There are also vapes, which don't have any of the smell, and coincidentally are much more convenient to smoke in public, likely for that very reason.
I live in a large apartment building. Every once in a while, I'll walk outside my door into the shared indoor hallway and get a whiff of something. This is rare, though if I was a betting man, I would bet that of everyone on my floor, someone is likely smoking every day. Some days it's stronger, other days it's faint. I can't smell it in my apartment at all, and it doesn't seem to linger as long as the area is well ventilated.
Would I prefer it didn't smell? Yes. But, it's not much different than when some other neighbor decides to smoke a brisket on their balcony. It's just a different smell. And for the record, I also don't like the smell of weed.
Okay. How do you feel about ciggies, cigars and pipe? That also smells horrendous? Or car exhaust fumes?
The thing here is: you can be against something because it will be "yet another annoying thing"... But that ignores the freedom aspect: if behavior X is less-than-or-equally annoying (unhealthy, addictive, etc.) compared to Y, and Y is legal, then that is a good argument that X should be legal too. If not we get into "unfair discrimination against behavior X" territory.
Or you make Y illegal as well. Smoking is all but illegal today in Sweden, they banned smoking in restaurants 16 years ago and has since extended that ban to most public places.
Smoking weed in your home is already all but legal in Sweden. In the super unlikely case you get caught you pay a small fine and is free to go, the people I know who smoke weed aren't worried about the Police, more annoyed than anything. And regular tobacco smoking has mostly disappeared since it has became so inconvenient.
You mentioned tobacco, which is recently saw laws made against it in Sweden.
I then also take the approach in what laws should then be remove in order not to unfairly "discriminate against certain behavior" (which is sadly so common nowadays).
I live in Canada on a busy urban street, and I don't smell it any more often than I did before it was legalized here. (It might help that our smoking laws disallow smoking anything near building entrances.)
Smoking cigarettes is legal but I don't see people smoking in public that often. Besides, most people smoke weed at home so I think the concern, while valid, is overblown.
Weed has a much stronger smell than cigarette; I can easily smell my neighbor's weed when I walk on the sidewalk, even though they are smoking inside, and there are about 10 meters from their house to the sidewalk.
That said, I still support the legalization. As much as I find weed's smell revolting and disgusting, the freedom simply outweighs the concern.
Weed smell dissipates way faster in my experience since it doesn't tend to cling as well to fabrics. You smoke a bong in your apartment with the window open, an hour later someone can walk into the room and probably couldn't tell. You smoke one cigarette inside and everything from your clothes to furniture reeks for weeks.
It’s extremely available already so there’s not a big market that’s just waiting for it to be legal and it’s not really an issue in states where it’s legal and easily accessible. Legal weed also enables manufacturing smokeless versions at scale. Edibles and vapes are basically odorless and very popular
So to get this straight, you are just going to be getting free money for doing nothing, what from your dad? How is this in any way related to UBI? I can already predict the outcome. You are just going to accumulate next thing and consoom product...
I don't see anyone one here talking about this. It is already happening with the furlough scheme. Isn't that the experiment already run already? If the furlough scheme meant (some) people don't want to go back to work because they are already earning enough to live comfortably whilst doing nothing, then why would we want UBI?
Another problem is the risk of inflation. If everyone in the country has a certain amount of money coming in then shop-keepers are just going to raise their prices. Why wouldn't they? After a few years of this, we are back to square one and the only solution would be to keep raising the UBI.
> If the furlough scheme meant (some) people don't want to go back to work because they are already earning enough to live comfortably whilst doing nothing, then why would we want UBI?
The situations are not the same. At all.
With the current setup, the options are 1) don't work and receive $x, or 2) work and receive $x.
With UBI, the options would be 1) don't work and receive $x, or 2) work and receive $2x.
Would some people rather not work and get $x than work and get $2x? Certainly. But not all of them would. Not even close.
I'm not necessarily advocating for UBI, but your presentation of the situation is not accurate.
The furlough scheme is conceptually very different as the furlough system explicitly disincentivises going back to work as you lose the furlough money if you do so.
If you watch a lot of YouTube (i try not to these days), might I just shill for the "Sponsor Block" extension [1]? It blocks those sponsored segments in youtube videos. You can also submit segments to save others time so they can consoom more content.
I have saved 2.5 hrs and saved others nearly an hour through my submissions.
If you want to watch less YouTube, you can use uBlock element picker to remove everything but the search bar. My YouTube web interface is just that now, no recommendations, no nothing. Bliss.
3: Right click on any element in the page and click "block element". Do this for anything you don't want to see. If you make a mistake you can unblock it by deleting the line in the "filters" part of Ublock settings.
It can take some trial and error to get it working properly but once you do its so nice. I don't even have a sign in button anymore because I don't have a google account.
Edit: For maximum procrastination prevention you can even block those end card recommendations once a video finishes.
Youtube is also massively better with "enhancer for youtube" [1]. It's not FOSS I don't think but it is too good to not use.
I still love the patent name for it: "Catastrophically buckling compression column switch and actuator". Still wondering what is catastrophic about it.
A couple of years ago, a buddy convinced me to sign up. Personally, I’ve only found them to be expensive. Like, they show it as a bulk sales price drop, but it feels more like gimmick original prices (though I don’t think they are doing that, maybe it is just normal prices outside my comfort level).
Thanks. How was this one company able to distort the market? Is this an American thing? Here in the UK mechanical keyboards are readily available with no such issues. I don't think we suffer from any "money grab" situation.
A few months ago, I finally built my own board from scratch. I used an Arduino-alike (based on one of the bigger Atmega parts)
It was an interesting endeavour-- designing a PCB, mounting plate/casing, sending them out to be be drilled, soldering it all together, configuring QMK firmware. It's the order of something like assembling Heathkit audio gear was in the 1960s-- the finished product is on tier with a good quality commercial product, but you also get complete control over any substitutions and customizations you like.
Unfortunately, due to low economies of scale, I paid about $500 for the board.
It's like most things. You can buy most things at a decent to good quality easily, but if you want something bespoke, it costs more.
I like building things, so I'm making my own keyboard. I decided on a switch type. I like a strong tactile switch so MX Browns are too soft for me so I'll pay a bit more for something that suits my taste.
My PC is in the living room, I like having a pretty living room, so I'll pay a bit more for a pretty keyboard case, a pretty rotary encoder and pretty keycaps.
I'm French and the problem to me is that the hobby of building custom keyboards is increasingly popular in the US and in Asia but very little of it is European. This means few keycap sets have the big ISO enter key that doesn't exist on ANSI keyboards. Pretty keycaps are expensive. Shipping to/from the US and Asia is also expensive.
I also use a non conventional keyboard layout (Canadian Multilingual Standard) which has small differences with more standard layouts and though I can type mostly without looking at my keyboard, I still look a it sometimes and it's confusing to have something completely different printed on the key. I've started working with blank keycaps but those aren't much easier to find. Especially in some profiles. (You can have an idea of profiles here : https://www.keycaps.info/stack)
Another factor to the cost is that a lot of the parts are produced for limited runs. I'm not exactly sure how it's organised but a designer submits a new design, if enough people are interested they order a bunch of them with a little extra but they can't easily buy a lot of stock to keep selling. I feel like a lot of the designers do it a side thing and can't afford to invest in it.
Compare it to cars, where people will buy extremely powerful cars, with crazy interiors and using enough petrol to power a small country when a good old second hand Voxhall would be enough for their needs.
I like it a lot and it is very responsive. One thought though, is there any way to reduce the amount of JS/ trackers you are using? UBlock blocking is at 10% and it is still working fine.
