Moonbox

Happens a lot, sure. What's interesting is how if it's a Black Lives Matter protest, folk will point to the handful of hooligans causing problems to try to delegitimize the whole movement, but when the same thing happens to a flag-waving white-guy freedom parade, all of the sudden the MSM and government is planting agitators to make them look bad and it's all just so unfair.

So says you. That's what an anecdote is.

and you don't think there are equally foolish/rabid posters from the other end of the political spectrum? That's not a very useful anecdote. I think most intelligent people would realize that within the trucker's convoy there are some especially rotten eggs and that the most militant and toxic elements of the right (like nazis wannabes) would latch on to a cause like this in the same way the confederate flags would show up at pro-police rallies in the USA. I think the most reasonable explanation is that there are exceptional idiots within the protest standing out and making it look worse than it is.

That's the problem with your arguments. For you, if it quacks like a duck, it's almost certainly not a duck. Instead, you convince yourself that it's awfully convenient for there to be a duck there, so that probably means it's someone pretending to be a duck, perhaps a cosmetically augmented chicken planted by the MSM or deep-state or...something. When you're so ready to dismiss the most obvious and reasonable explanation, and instead opt for a far more convoluted and overcomplicated one, you can convince yourself of almost literally anything.

Ah there it is. The omni-tool for every conspiracy argument. "Fake news, MSM lies - that was a CBC false-flag operation." It works for everything, so long as you turn your brain off.

and that's where you're not speaking based on fact or science. You're just telling us what you prefer to think/believe.

I referred to unhealthy people in the sense that people with co-morbidity still need to live their lives and be able to do stuff, too, but unvaccinated people make it more dangerous to do so. There was no back-tracking. You're making up my arguments and points for me as you see fit. The 2 weeks period for after-jab is supposedly because you're not protected (properly) until the period is up. If that's the case, how does that change the math? Sure. You're more likely to come in contact with vaccinated people than non-vaccinated people, considering they're 90% of the population. Thank you for that brilliant insight. You're still more likely to get infected and to infect others without the dose, especially if you're hanging out with a bunch of other unvaccinated people. This is what Michael was talking about when he questioned general math skills. You're so off target with this reasoning it's hard to even begin to correct you.

He's not saying anything new. We've known for awhile that COVID's likely endemic and that lockdowns aren't sustainable. Heck even I've been saying it. To conclude that the brave freedom fighting trucker's convoy changed things is...funny.

but THAT bad at math? I have too much faith in people I guess.

I don't see the point you're trying to make. If 50% of the cases or hospitalizations are coming from the 10% of the population that's not vaccinated, then this is pretty easy math. That there may be infected vaccinated people moving about without symptoms is almost certain, but that's the whole point. Asymptomatic "patients" are far less infectious and are far less likely to need treatment or end up in a hospital. Your issue is that you really don't seem to understand how vaccines or vaccination programs work, but I'm hardly going to convince you of anything on that topic.

There's actual scientific arguments (not just pseudo-scientific ramblings) against too many vaccines/boosters in a short period of time. Also, everyone has limits on what restrictions and mandates they'll endure and for how long. I'll happily get a 4th shot sometime in 2023 if COVID is still deemed dangerous, much like I get the flu shot every year. If they tell me in March or May, however that there's a mandatory 4th shot, I'm not sure how much I'd support that.

Well that's pretty damning evidence against non-vaccinated then, isn't it? If 90% of people are vaccinated but half the cases are from the 10% unvaccinated? I don't know the statistics myself but I do think that's true. Probably right, but unhealthy people move around in society as well, so we can't really just keep them safely tucked away in a bubble or something. That's a bit of a red herring. There are certainly other health issues we should focus more on, but they don't have a heck of a lot to do with vaccines and the idea that it's a deflection strategy doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Nobody can tell you how to feel on this issue. These points are fair. This is saying that having boosters too frequently can weaken (not destroy) the immune system. This is certainly something to consider/worry about, and I think if we're asked to take shot #4 or #5 anytime in the near future, you'd likely find a lot of support amongst the general population and the medical community. This is a reach. Vaccinated people are much less likely to spread the virus, though anyone in the media saying they can't/won't don't know what they're talking about. Biden's not saying it's impossible to spread. He's saying get vaccinated so that you do not. The distinction probably doesn't mean much to you, but it's similar to something like "Don't drink and drive so that you don't kill someone on the road." By your logic, that'd be a lie or something because a sober driver could still kill someone driving. There's no context here, but at face value that's just a false/wrong/ignorant statement.

I was sick all day after my 2nd shot (Moderna). I had a bad fever, couldn't eat, couldn't do anything. It sucked, but it was the exact same reaction I had to falling ill with the flu. It was my body's immune response and though it was unpleasant, I knew I wasn't actually getting sick. I also (probably) ended up with COVID after my 3rd shot. That means nothing. Nowhere was it ever advertised that you'd be 100% immune. If you got two vaccines because you were mandated, then that's the policy working. Sounds fine to me. If you lose you house and pitch a tent outside of parliament, say hi to all the other brave freedom fighters who lost their jobs and livelihoods for the sake of superstition.

Mostly agree with what you're saying, though I'm not sure with this last part. Though there are no doubt a lot of angry dinosaurs complaining about free trade and computerized services (folks just don't do business like they used to, y'know?), I think there are a lot of millennials and zoomers diving deep down the rabbit-hole, so to speak. The internet has done a lot to give these sorts a forum to rant and rave at each other (lefties and righties alike) and they can basically get their social requirements from identical minds without ever having to leave their house. I do some crypto trading just for fun and the community lives on discord and telegram and a lot of it feels like the dark weeb.

The problem with free-trade is that the benefits haven't been distributed equally, as you sort of touch on. The middle class has been shrinking steadily for a long time and the economic benefits of free trade have been heavily slanted towards the very-rich. Those with poor educations are the ones who've taken that hit the hardest and so it's not much of a stretch to see how distrustful they become of science/academia in general, especially with how zealously they get shouted down when they voice their complaints (reasonable or not). The contradiction here is that a lot of the folks glorifying the closing of borders and tariffs etc are also the same ones who emphatically opposed the the one-percenters and anti-WTO rallies as "pinko-lefties" etc.

Most of them aren't putting anything on the line in the USA. Most of those doctors are probably from states that are mostly/fully open anyways. Regardless, the assumptions you make with this data are that these doctors' opinions are anything other than hardline appeals to freeeeedom. No I don't, I assume it's more like 75-80% (which is what the polling is telling us), and that the difference between that and the 90% are the 10% who got the vaccine because of the mandates.

Though I agree with most of what you're saying and also think he's failing, I don't think he's very dangerous. Trudeau is a marshmallow. He's soft, he stands for nothing and doesn't really do much. He's proving himself to be the lame talking-head everyone said he was going to be. That said, he'll still get re-elected as things stand thanks to how out-of-touch the most vocal parts of the CPC base are with the rest of the country.

There are over 1,000,000 active doctors in the USA, so even if that's 17,000 signatures from active physicians, it's not really saying much, is it? When they say they have more signatures than the CDC, what is that even supposed to tell you? Only half of the CDC even have advanced degrees and a far smaller percentage of them are actually doctors, so the fact that 17,000 is a much bigger number than a fairly small number is remarkable how, exactly?

I've actually given a ton of thought to this and to be perfectly honest I think a lot of the fault lies on what I'd say is "over-liberalization". I don't know how to explain it perfectly, but I think there's a lot to be said about how liberal governments have been ignorant/dismissive of more conservative viewpoints, specifically in rural/non-metro areas. I've lived in both over the years and it's like two different worlds sometimes just driving an hour away from Toronto. We can mock and ridicule a lot of the conspiracy nonsense that gets rambled about here, but there's a kernel of truth to some of the rage we're hearing. Things like excessive government bureaucracy (like the public sector's salaries rising faster than private, and their unions' power), over-reaching political correctness and public services that rural provincials pay for but don't have access to are all things that have contributed (I think) to a general sense of disenfranchisement. Cancel-culture and self-righteous outrage have (IMO) wildly overreached and gone well beyond keeping people safe and giving them fair opportunities. The conspiracy theorists aren't completely bullshitting us when they talk about the "woke mob" and how quickly and sometimes unfairly they'll judge and dismiss someone because they're not agreeing 100% with whatever the prevailing viewpoint of the day is. That doesn't excuse some of the stupider bullshit that some of them come up with, but when they see the "woke mob" overreact too many times, it's hardly surprising they grow resentful and mistrusting. The fact that such a sizeable part of Canada's population has convinced themselves that COVID is a conspiracy and that the vaccines are some sort of scheme is pretty damning commentary for how off-the-rails everything's been getting. For most of these folk, it's not even really about the vaccine. It's about being forced to do something that the government and media they can't trust is telling them to.

There's really not much to discuss with this sort of thread. Up until you posted it looked like it was just going to get ignored, which was all the attention it deserved.

No, it just means that their editors think what the truckers are doing is stupid, as do I and most of the rest of Canada. The only thing you have any legitimate complaint on here is whether there's any merit to a politically biased media outlet being propped up by tax money. On that, you'd have some sympathy for me. On their bias being a some sort of evidence of collusion with...authority or...whatever it is you're saying...get a grip.

I'd agree that CBC is left-leaning and biased. It's why I don't pay it a moment's notice or read much of anything they have to say. The Toronto Star is even worse. There's a big difference between editorial bias and making shit up, however, so though I don't agree with a lot of the spin and opinions posted on these news sites, I don't automatically assume that everything they post is false. That's juvenile. The funniest part about the this whole red-herring is that you're paying more attention to CBC than anyone else here. Why exactly are we talking about the CBC anyways? I think if you want to complain about the merits (or rather lack thereof) of a politically biased news agency receiving billions of public funding, we could start another thread on that.

Surely if you're going to post a link or you can cite a specific article or commentary if you're legitimately trying to deliver a coherent argument?

Another "HERE: LINK" reference with no commentary, insight or specificity. Just like most conspiracy nonsense.