Banks may have some sort of edge or primacy in the scheme of things, (I don’t think they do but I’ll concede I don’t triage these things) but there are plenty other interests barking at the same time and all have their effect.
Is ‘Corelli’ a web handle, or your real name? (Loved the movie, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.)
Anyhow, my point in being mistrustful of most governmental actions is that the so-called problems they are trying to fix were of their own causing. So, no I’m not a modern-day Libertarian, nor a classical Liberal, nor a classical Conservative.
“Independent” is a wishy-washy term unless it means a willingness to examine all sides of question and then opt for a solution that minimizes costs and harms. Right now, the CDC and FDA are experiencing regulatory capture, and true public health is suffering as a consequence.
So, who’s to blame? I’d say anyone who is naïve enough to think that our dear government acts in good faith and that all the mistakes it makes are only due to faulty info.
It certainly seems that way but, in general, viruses tend not to. At least in the short term because if they’re too successful doing that, they die off too.
I read this article a while back on my FB feed and it describes viral “thinking” pretty well, I reckon.
Viruses don’t “want to pass on their genetic material”. It is just that the next generation is more fully populated by those who are more successful in passing on their genetic material.
I say get the vaccine or don’t get the vaccine natural selection will sort it out.
I don’t know anybody that has died by taking the vaccine, not saying it hasn’t happened just don’t know anybody. I know quite a few people that have died because they haven’t taken the vaccine, I also know many more with long covid.
So do what you want, because natural selection is a b**Ch.
Andy
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Faith is the human’s ability to deeply believe in the truth of something that can’t be proved.
Jeff
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Andy,
Of the 30 people in my boat-building club, only two of us rejected the covid shots, and neither of us has had even a sniffle. Of the rest who did get the shot (and boosters), two have died. (One from a heart attack and the other within a week from cascading organ failures.) Of those who have survived the shot, every one of them has had covid at least once AFTER getting the shot(s).
Yeah, yeah. Small sample and anecdotal evidence. But I’ll trust what I see happening and make my decisions accordingly.
Fortunately the folks making real Covid policy decisions experienced what was happening in hospitals and ICUs during the height of the pandemic and acted as was necessary to preserve the health system.
And one should completely ignore the opinions of those with no expertise.
Speaking of that, anyone on this thread have any expertise in virology or medical epidemiology? I’m curious because folks seem to be making very bold conclusions about Covid with very little supporting evidence, other than from watching a few guys building boats.
This is the problem with social media, particularly free platforms. They eventually sink to the lowest common denominator.
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Pretty much it seems that there are experts on their own political beliefs here. And they’re promoting the notion that if you are sufficiently ignorant and simultaneously have sufficiently paranoid beliefs about the government, then you don’t need a vaccine.
Me, I’ll go by the statistics that the vast majority of deaths in every age group is among the unvaccinated, so I and my family has gotten every vaccine as it becomes available. But what do I know?
-IGU-
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As I said Arindam, you get to make your own decisions and Natural selection will tell us who makes it out alive. I harbor no ill will towards anyone. But are you trying to tell me that the covid vaccine caused the heart attack or the cascading organ failure? The covid shot wasn’t designed to keep you from getting covid but to help you survive covid and keep you out of the hospitals that were being flooded.
Andy
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So, I go to plan A: take reasonable precautions to not catch it in the first place, rather than be stupid and then demand the doctors bail me out of the consequences of my own carelessness.
Steve
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If you read my posts with a critical eye you’ll notice that I’m discussing Clown Fauci, not the epidemic.
Early on I took the shots because it seemed reasonable based on the evidence at hand. Later we learned that the shots were being peddled by a snake oil hawker.
Who you wish to ignore is your privilege.
The Captain
The difficulty is that they can’t talk to you! 
The Captain
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It would be astounding if you did know someone. Vaccine deaths even for the ‘most dangerous’ earlier covid vaccines are measured in ‘cases per million’.
Additionally, since many people were picking up covid at the same time vaccines were being given out, it’s very hard to tell what the cause was.
On top of that, vaccines for old people are going to result in a certain number of deaths anyway just from old age; so you have to determine that too.
In the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics (a non-partisan, non-medical ‘just the data’ authority). During the 2021 period of the vaccinations, around 1645 people out of 65 million died in the days after getting a vaccine, but this is ‘all cause death’ - old age, sickness, car crashes, etc.
But only 9 deaths were directly and provably linked to the vaccine out of about 65 million people vaccinated. In the UK, a non-MRNA vaccine from AstraZeneca was used for the bulk of initial vaccination, and that vaccine had a small risk of causing a deadly brain clot.
The second table shows that ‘deaths due to covid’ fell from 38% of deaths among unvaccinated people to 0.8% after a full course of vaccination is completed.
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A hefty case of the Dunning-Kruger effect amplified by the phenom described in Andy’s letter.
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But you would still know them wouldn’t you. 
Andy
That makes it easy to tilt the statistics any way you want.
Any change someone was hoping to make money selling more vaccines? 
The Captain
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The second table shows that ‘deaths due to covid’ fell from 38% of deaths among unvaccinated people to 0.8% after a full course of vaccination is completed.
There you go, trying to baffle us with facts.
I got vaccinated early on as I work as a first responder in search and rescue. I’ve had all the vaccinations and boosters. But until 3 weeks ago, I had avoided covid. Felt like I had a cold, tested positive and got over it quickly. I’m inclined to think the vaccine help keep the case quite mild.
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A coroner might know what they died of. An untrained observer might guess it was the last thing that happened to them.
Just today I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson comment on eyewitness testimony, a most powerful source of evidence in a court of law but discouraged in science. Science wants measurements and zero personal bias. Curiously I wrote a paper in college, complete with experimental proof, about how the eye did not know the wavelength of the colors it was seeing and could be easily deceived. Got an A! 
The Captain
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I’ve never seen this idea expressed so well. Are two people that are clueless about a topic smarter or dumber than a single person who is clueless? The conclusion is that two people working together can easily be dumber than one person working alone.
I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before.
—Peter
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