Bison06

I said covid long term effects will be no worse than other viruses, I didn’t say they wouldn’t exist. Influenza can have nasty long term effects as well, but we don’t shut down the world for it. We would all prefer not to catch covid or any other viruses, but the risk/reward of protecting yourself from the worlds negative things leads to a pretty meager existence. Let’s all take the precautions that make sense for each of our unique situations and move on. It’s the only way we move forward because cases aren’t going to get to zero. Ever.

Long term effects will be no different than the long term effects of other viruses. It’s easy to produce fear by saying “we just don’t know” that’s true. But we also have no reason to think it’ll be different than other coronaviruses in this respect. We’ve discussed this a lot the last two weeks, so you know my stance on the total death count.

I can’t agree with anything you’ve said here in my experience. Being obese is a death sentence, diabetes is a death sentence. Covid for nearly every person who gets it is a two week inconvenience, if that.

My point is to say, six months ago you didn’t care about your neighbors health. If we had cared enough to take care of ourselves previous to the pandemic, we would be fairing much than we are. Healthy people are far less susceptible and we are incredibly unhealthy as a country.

So the most important things to address are diseases that are contagious, not the ones that kill us at the highest rates? It’s ironic that our lack of giving a sh*t about our health in this country and our obsession with quick “fix“ pharmaceuticals has made us much more susceptible to covid-19 than other countries who are much healthier.

I agree, it’s important to allow protests and rallies. This topic is tricky for the reasons you stated. Protesting police brutality with violence and destruction of public and private property is going to be a self fulfilling prophesy. The police have a duty to take action in those circumstances and methinks that is the point for the instigators within the protests. “Good people” within the group of protestors have a duty to denounce and take action against those within their groups that break rank. Violence to protest against violence will never accomplish what they hope.

By policies I’m just referring to allowing the violence to escalate.

I’m sure everything you’re saying is true. I live in Minneapolis and the chaos and burning buildings were relatively isolated to a particular area, so it’s easy to write off the violence as a small problem. However, the policies that allowed it to take place are problematic in my opinion and I think Portland may be able to be described similarly to Minneapolis in that respect.

I just simply do not understand how the american people allowed this to take place. We have been lied to at every single turn, with the current goal post, do people not realize that we will never reach it? I mean never. So then what will change? A vaccine rushed to market over 5 years earlier than any previous vaccine?

Unless normal exemptions will be voided with the Covid vaccine, vaccine exemption laws are different from state to state. Minnesota for example still has three options for opting out of any vaccines. Medical, Religious and simply a conscientious objection. As another example, California recently took away all three of those exemptions. So my guess is it would be state to state with the Covid vaccine as well.

I think this is such an important point that nobody who is advocating for restrictions seems to be able to answer. When is it ok to return to our previous normal? If you don't have an answer to that, people are rightfully going to find it difficult to comply. People can manage the most unmanageable situations if they are given a finish line. Right now with no finish line to the pain, people are unwilling to comply and I don't blame them one bit.

This is a serious question. How legitimate is someone being "discredited" when they are being "discredited" by the very people or person who has the opposite viewpoint and benefit from people thinking the opposite viewpoint is invalid?

I consider both of these to be right in the center. They tend not to even write on controversial topics, which isnt necessarily a bad thing. My point in asking you is it seems as though you, like most of us, consume one sided news. So when the opposite viewpoint is presented(if you ever even get exposed to it) the agenda is to immediately discredit the writer of said opinion. Not a personal attack on you, just an interesting observation that if you consider reading WSJ and Forbes to be your version of "the other side of the story" I'm not surprised that you think conservative people are all extremist right wingers.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/us-news-world-report/ Any others that are actually right leaning that you consider credible?

I’m asking you a direct question. Who or what news source that leans right do you consider to be credible?

So do you have an answer?

Out of curiosity, who is someone you believe to be a credible news source that is objective and/or leans slightly right of center?

I really think the left is being overconfident right now. We'll have to see how it plays out, but Trump isn't as far off as some would like to believe.

That certainly is one approach that he could've taken. I don't envy any politicians job, these are difficult decisions. As far as him being toast, the election is still a long ways off and the economy is doing great considering everything that has happened. If the unemployment rate is under 8% by November, I think he has a chance. Who the hell knows though with Biden/Harris, that isn't exactly a winning combination.

Given the political climate, my perspective is whichever approach Trump took would have been harshly criticized. Take a broad federal approach and he is a fascist tyrant abusing his federal power, take a "the states have to make their own decisions" like he did and he is not doing enough. It's a heck of a pickle for him.

But how would you even do that logistically. Didn't they completely close their borders and isolate/quarantine all inbound travelers for 14 days? No way we could do that on a US scale with all of the possible entry points. Also, if this herd immunity deal ever gets figured out and we can develop some sort of community immunity to Covid, New Zealand will be susceptible all over again.

Asia is a fine analogue, but we can learn almost nothing in the US from New Zealand IMO. They are an isolated island with a total population the size of the Minneapolis area on a landmass roughly the size of Colorado.

Has the idea of asymptomatic carriers who spread the disease been fully vetted out? I've heard so many different things in the last 5 months.

Thanks for all the info, that is helpful.

I am by no means an expert on immunity or vaccinations, though I have some formal education and read about both regularly. The question I can't find an answer to in any of the discussion I've seen online or in this forum is, if we are somehow unable to achieve herd immunity naturally through wild spread, how will a vaccination help protect anyone if the virus can be contracted more than once(this hasn't been fully decided yet)?