Relaxation of Restrictions, Part XII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Fragile supply chains put under pressure by vaccine mandates. Hopefully the protests against this in Canada can help to ensure the future food supply.

Trucker protest against vaccine mandates in British Columbia.

Anti-science was another one thrown out there.

If people said they wanted to wait until the long term side effects were known then they were anti-science. Most people using the term anti-science in any of the debates on vaccinations didn't seem to understand what science even is!

To be fair, they are happier working from home, they don’t mention anything about being happier with restrictions

"Science" has come to mean (to some) something like "the stuff that the 'experts' (as decided by the media and politicians) say on any given day". It is ever changing, but treated as an institution all the same.

Knowing that science is a process that requires the errors of today for the progress of tomorrow is not very in vogue right now.

Speaking of science - I bumped into an acquaintance in Tesco earlier. She was one of the only people wearing a mask and, despite me not asking, made sure to let me know that she was only wearing it out of consideration for others, just in case she's infected, you know.

She'd gone to the trouble of acquiring an FFP2 mask... with a valve. 🤦‍♀️

See, you're still.posting complete nonsense about the effectiveness of vaccines, its still the binary works or doesn't work when even at the very beginning, everything was percentages, now, hopefully we're at the end stage of this and it won't matter soon and this is one last attempted mental gymnastics.

I mean, nothing you've posted is in any way scientific, why pretend.

That's a nice big pile of horseshit.

I love how people like to pretend that Covid remained static and unchanged but the "science" changed its mind.

Vaccination status became less important when a new variant came along which reduced the burden on hospitals.

Anti-vaxers naturally have a victim complex, so they'd like to think that the purpose of the certs along was punishment.

The reality is that it was always about the pressure on the hospitals. Once a variant came along that demonstrated that it posed no threat to the hospitals, restrictions were dropped.

Funny that. Doesn't satisfy the victim complex though.

The unvaccinated are still at considerably higher risk of death and serious illness from Omicron, but there's no longer a risk to the hospitals, so we don't care about that. Let them at it.

the analogy isn't accurate. The pressure to give up smoking is weak as piss.

You don't have the state / media whipping people up into a frenzy saying "cos of those people we can't have nice things"

You don't have people excludedfrom pubs/restaurants/gym etc... or told they weren't welcome at home for Christmas based on their smoking status?

They don't have to have a pcr thing rammed up their nose when flying for their smoker status or risk haven't their jobs impacted.

at worse they get loaded for their life assurance and have to smoke in the rain. It's hardly the same .

@foxsake wrote:

It's nearly exactly the same. If someone wasn't welcome at home, that's not the state or the media's fault. That's other people making decisions for themselves. The unvaccinated can't bang on about the right to their own opinion, and then bitch about others also having their own opinions.

Any road, the point is that refusing to heed public health advice doesn't make someone a hero. Especially if they do it out of principle. Just because someone has a right to choose, doesn't make their decision a correct one.

I forgot to say in the previous post, but I appreciate the apology.

There’s no doubt about that. My mother is one of them. I heard that J. McNulty ( brother of Fran McNullty) on the radio the other day slamming the government over the easing of restrictions. She’s a cystic fibrosis campaigner. Saying she’s vulnerable and scared. She expects society and businesses to remain closed just for little old her. She also claims by March we will be in a bad way because of the easing.

i know her personally and always got the impression that it’s all about herself.

Leaving out a hell of a lot of reality there kaiser

Masks are not only "cheap cloth masks". I reckon one in three people regularly wore medical type masks. Others I know wore multiple layer cloth masks which come with filters. But yes no maybe a number just wore "cheap cloth masks" and some of those only because they were a "legal requirement" without any concern for anyone else.

You know what else is a legal requirement? Seatbelts and I'd be fairly certain some also bizarrely believe that they only provide a "false sense of security".

We know Face masks combined with other preventive measures, such as vaccination, frequent hand-washing and physical distancing, can help reduce the risk of infection.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449

We also know that the Omicron variant was many times more infectious than previous strains. That doesn't mean that you get to throw all caution to the wind.

Look we get it - you don't like masks despite the scientific evidence that they and other measures help reduce the risk of infection.

And you seem to believe everyone should act like selfish morons Fine. Can we move on now that we've esestablished you believe that?

The one constant through all this is how upset the pro-maskers get when their worldview is challenged ("selfish morons" indeed!) Prams... toys everywhere... springs to mind!

Anyway, the reality is that mask wearing has done little if anything to slow Omicron, but as it's so mild that's not a problem and indeed may be a benefit as it increases the rate of herd immunity in the population - unlike earlier variants, almost everyone knows someone who's had Covid over the last 2 months.

The effectiveness generally has to be questioned considering most people don't wear them properly or maintain/clean them properly. Sure, there are some with higher grade masks but these are a minority I'd say from what I see around the shops. Speaking of shops, there were no outbreaks in those settings in early 2020 when we had no masks at all and more "deadly" variants, and masks did little to stop significant increases in cases through the latter half of 2020 when there was almost universal compliance - funny that! Maybe they're just not that effective after all? Luckily though, the OUTCOME of cases is what matters and they have always continued to be overwhelmingly positive regardless.

But I admit, I don't get why retaining masks has become the new pearl-clutching of 2022. No-one is stopping (or will stop) anyone from wearing a mask if they feel safer doing so, or feel that they are "protecting others" by doing so - but you cannot force people to accept what is an unnatural state of living and limits on their social interactions because you personally may feel there's sufficient risk in not doing so.

Covid does not affect everyone equally - many don't even realise they have it unless tested - and you can't make someone behave like a plague carrier for something that doesn't significant affect them or almost everyone around them.

That is the reality!

There was always going to win though. Covid certs weren't going to last forever. Omicron sped the process up.