Hodad

Stop calling desperate migrants animals. You are disgusting. Dehumanizing others as an excuse for poor treatment reveals who among us is truly the least human. And transporting minors (or anyone, for that matter) to qualified detention facilities in other states (rather than just leaving the burden on Texas) is a world of difference from just dumping them in some random city with no notice or preparation. DeSantis is heartless, cruel and a first-rate a-hole, treating desperate people like pawns in a sick game. I hope he's indicted on human trafficking charges.

I think there's probably a lot less need for a big vaccination campaign in a country where participation is already so high. I'm not sure why you wouldn't get a booster though to fend off an evolving, endemic threat the same way we do flu vaccines. The data is clear that you're a lot less likely to become seriously ill or die if you are actively vaccinated. What's the hesitation? I've never heard "Fill your boots" before, but I find it delightful. Is that another awesome Canadian thing we don't get in the US, like Timbits?

There's nothing arbitrary about it. If you want to evaluate whether the vaccines affect COVID mortality there is literally no other question to ask. That's it. Is an individual who contracts COVID likely to fare better after vaccination? Are they less likely to become seriously ill or to die? You want to just count "toe tags," but that's very faulty logic. It brings in a lot of variables and noise that not only aren't necessary to answer the question of vaccine efficacy, but also likely to bring you to the wrong conclusion. Again, I'll illustrate with the automotive example. In the US, shoulder belts became mandatory in 1968, yet the next year and every year after, fatalities increased. The 1969 version of you is just counting toe tags and would say that shoulder belts were ineffective or negatively effective at saving lives. Pointless big government mandates costing us and killing us! ^^ Reading that in 2022, especially given what we know about seat belts, your neurons should be firing coming up with a dozen different reasons why that logic sucks. Were more people driving? How far were they driving? Were there more accidents? Were cars designed differently in other ways? Was it a bad winter? Etc. And you'd be right to be asking those questions, and then hopefully looking for a cleaner way to answer the core question. What might we examine instead to get rid of all that extranea. -- What if we looked at individual accidents to see whether use of a shoulder belt resulted in fewer fatalities per accident? And that's exactly what you should be doing regarding vaccine efficacy. Your brain should be firing off reasons that counting toe tags is not a smart way to approach the question. How can we get past all the noise of a busy, inconstant world to see whether or not vaccines save lives? It's an easy answer and I've given it many times. You look at the COVID cases, you look at vaccine status, ideally you control for risk, and then you look at the differences in the outcomes. We have the data and we have the answer--there would be a lot more toe tags to count without the vaccine-- but for whatever reason (likely political) you are dead-set on clinging to poor logic. The barrier at this point is simply obsinance.

No, regardless of trend, I'm telling you it's utterly irrelevant to outcome efficacy. Whether 1000 people have COVID or 1,000,000 people have COVID, whether infections are steady or display seasonality, you measure efficacy in the exact same way: are the individuals who have COVID faring better with vaccines? Are they less likely to become severely ill or to die? That's it. One simple question. How do you not understand this?

No, you are absolutely tripping over random extranea. No, the "flu season" doesn't matter. Nor percents of vaxxed vs unvaxed. Nor total deaths or deaths last month. Nor any of the other nonsense. Again, what matters is if individuals who have been vaccinated are any less likely to become severely ill or die. That's it. That's the only question in terms of outcome efficacy. If you're talking about the motivation of extreme marginal cases like the homeless or stage 4 cancer patients named Bill who had a cough last week it's a red flag that you're in trouble. We don't need to know about every Bill in the world or his specific health history. That's what proxies are for. And you can see that age stratification works well by looking at the pre-vaccine outcomes. We can see big jumps in negative outcomes with increasing age--and we don't need Bill's medical records to do it. And, we can compare the same age groups post vaccination to see if there is any change in outcome.

We've had a nice break and I'm ready to talk again without immediately joining you in the insults. ? You are talking about all kinds of stuff that doesn't matter. I have a third grader who is getting into more and more word problems in his math homework, and he is constantly tripping over the extra numbers that they slip in--the ones that aren't essential to the problem. That kind of thing is not restricted to math homework though, happens all through life and it's exactly what's happening to you. Forget about summers and flu seasons, total deaths last month and the raw number of multi-vaxxed people and when and for how long anyone has been vaxxed. None of that stuff matters. It's all extranea. None of it speaks directly to efficacy. In terms of outcomes, what constitutes efficacy? It's pretty straightforward. If an individual is vaccinated and contracts COVID, are they less likely to become severely ill (hospitalized) or die than if they had not been vaccinated. And if so, how much? Basic question: did the vaccine work for this person? That's it. You don't need any other questions to get at outcome efficacy. So, how would you actually measure it? Ideally, you'd have multiple versions of the same person and could address on an individual level with controlled testing, but obviously that's not possible. We're talking about the real world. Next best option is to track outcomes in groups of similar people, i.e. stratified by risk to compare like to like. We can't quite do that because individual risk is difficult to get from the data that is collected. But age is a pretty good proxy and would be an appropriate way to compare the outcomes. That is indeed the best viable scenario in the real world. Can we at least all agree on that much?

I don't think any of this is remotely true. Your posts are delusional and even in Florida I don't think people can finish college without learning the difference between fact and opinion, or what a primary source is. Nice try. Not buying it.

Sure you are. In exactly the same way that Florida has the best schools and how Trump had the largest inauguration crowd in history. So smart a lot of 'em don't need no edumacation

A. Yes, Clinton did balance the budget. You just don't know what that means. B. What the fark are you talking about that there is no evidence of Trump running massive deficits? Are you brain damaged? Deficits are not a matter of opinion. They are not a case to be argued and supported with evidence. They are matters of fact. Numbers on a balance sheet. The "evidence" of Trump's massive deficits is the massive deficits. That's like saying "there's no evidence of the moon." Trump years highlighted And, for good measure, the outgoing POTUS usually gets tagged with the year they transfer power. They leave office in Jan and their budget is in place for that coming year, spending is committed, etc. The new guy can change things, but it takes a bit to do it judiciously. In typical evaluations, the other giant bar is also Trump, but if you can't grasp basic information I think we can put a pin in that.

He already murdered all of the sinful dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Hasn't he done enough to fuel your car?

That's a lot of words to post without coming even close to the topic of discussion. You wanna try again? Anything to say about the demonstrable systemic racism?

Yes, we all know that you don't like facts,b figures and charts. They get in the way of your totally delusional nonsense. Any literate person can click the link (or look at any primary source), read the facts for themselves and see you are compulsive liar. Like Trump, you simply can't help yourself. Sure, Trump didn't run massive deficits, Clinton didn't balance the budget, Florida has the best school system in the country, and the moon is made of green cheese. You are hoot, like a compass that only points south.

This is sad. Again, you don't even have the basic facts correct. A. There is a difference between deficit and debt B. Of the two parties, Democrats are the more fiscally responsible, reducing deficits consistently while Republicans consistently raise them. Though to be fair, in the modern era since Reagan launched the debt skyward ONLY Clinton wins any award for fiscal responsibility. Democrats being better than Republicans may just be a product of how truly awful the Republicans have performed. C. Trump increased the deficit electively, for no reason beyond his ego, his first year in office, and it rose every year after. He ran huge deficits every single year, including the largest in modern history, adding to the debt at over twice the rate of Obama and the Great Recession. Note that this doesn't even include the COVID explosion - this is just policy Reminder that this is the same fool who claimed he could pay off the debt in 8 years. -- Instead he just raised it every year at an increasing rate! There's a sucker born every minute.

Please, please give us the link to the Pinterest post from which you learned this fact. We crave legitimate political information and cookie recipes and know that only social media posts can deliver. Help us find the truth!

Right. That has all the justice of "the whipping boy." Torture the innocent to punish the guilty by proxy. This is the plan of a just and noble and perfect being.

Jinx! In the rich tradition of secular humanism finding purpose is the purpose.

I believe it's both richer and more rewarding to come to one's own purpose in life. The only people who need to imagine a heavenly father to assign purpose and meaning to their lives are those who think like children. Which, again, I'm okay with. If you need the crutch, by all means lean on it. Just don't use it as a bludgeon against the rest of us. The "truth" you imagine probably feels very real to you, especially after long exposure, but it's not truth for the rest of us, so don't force it's precepts upon us.

No, you ONLY agree with pseudo science, claims which cannot be validated or tested-- or worse, claims which have already been falsified. Creationism in it's standard form, or in the form of pseudo science like "intelligent design" is not scientific. I don't mean I dismiss it or disagree with it. I mean, in a totally literal sense, it is not science. Science seeks explanation through empirical testing and observation. Intelligent design is neither testable nor observable. It's just a semi-educated person shrugging their shoulders and saying. "If I can't explain something, then it's proof god did it." And then more intelligent and more educated people come along and explain it just fine.

Yes, if I were gullible enough to accept your hand-waving nonsense non-explanations then I would be a believer. But I'm not. That's sort of the key difference. What you are saying doesn't have even a shred of reason to it. It's the "just because" explanation, which seems incredibly trivial when you talk about lifelong devotion to a being who tortures and murders children. You should probably demand a better answer than that. And remember how a perfect being needed a do-over and a new set of rules for the New Testament? I mean sure, being perfect, he could have gotten it right the first time, but you know, he has mysterious ways. There must be a reason that totally makes super sense. Tee hee.

Yes, that's what will probably happen. I don't even have a problem with people believing in private, for themselves, as the Bible seems to encourage. But when people want to inject their private delusions into science, education and public policy they start causing real harm.

This apologetics tripe really satisfies you? It's like when a child asks how Santa comes down the chimney or what the tooth fairy does with teeth. It's just a shrug of the shoulders and mysterious ways. If you met on the street some torturer and murderer of children who wouldn't explain his motives you'd revile him and lock him up - or worse. Yet when "god" tortures and murders children with no explanation you launch into apologetics. He's really a loving god. He must have some mysterious reason for torturing and murdering children. And then you flip some switch in your brain that turns off reasoned thought to prevent it exploding from cognitive dissonance. None of this is helping your argument. Rather, it highlights how terribly and profoundly empty the whole thing is. I appreciate that the idea that someone is in charge brings you comfort, but it's simply not a logically or intellectually viable concept. There's no evidence. There's no reason to believe and every reason to doubt.

That's the most vile bullshit I've ever seen. Yes all those sinful, sinful babies, toddlers and children.They've really got it coming.

I grew up in a religious household and did seminary training, scripture work, etc. I was probably 12 when I realized the whole thing was an exercise in circular logic and couldn't stand up to even the slightest logical probing. I realized that the world was full of people of differing beliefs (thousands before Christianity and there will be thousands after) who all think that their god is the real deal. In the best case scenario, one of them managed to get it right, but the odds aren't good. Far, far more likely that *none* of them are right. As is often said, the difference between an atheist and a devout believer is just one religion. The believer thinks all the religions of the world are false except for their own. The atheist has that one is as false as the others. You deal in feelings? If you want to feel "proof" that there's not divine being shepherding the righteous, go visit a pediatric cancer ward. Look those kids in the eye and reconcile your loving father slowly, painfully torturing and killing the most innocent among us while their parents sob and pray quietly in the corner. All part of His divine plan, and there's a quota for the misery and suffering of children.

There are a LOT of religions in the world, all claiming to be correct, and viewing those outside of the faith as blinded, lost, etc. You know what none of them have? Any evidence whatsoever. Just multitudes of credulous people banding together because someone told them "this is the real truth." Your faith is not special. You haven't been selected by a divine being as one of the chosen few with the right answers to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. The universe is a mostly dark, mostly empty place and the only thing in it that cares about humans are other humans. There's still time for you to change and get past the hokum and start living life for your fellow human beings and not for books or pamphlets idolized by simple men seeking easy answers.

In infallible because I say I'm infallible. This logic is airtight. And infallible.