With the CDC recommending only 5 days of “quarantine” now, it begs the question where is the science to justify containment camps in Australia versus 5 days of self imposed isolation in the US, and everything inbetween in western nations. There’s an answer, and it’s going to be degrees of risk where you slide it. Point being “Democratic” nations are allowing one individual to make that assessment unilaterally with no real consideration for human rights or consent to do so.

The AP article on this news says “ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.”.

That isn’t new news and has been the consensus on the virus since at least late last spring in the northern hemisphere.

For the “Trust the science” folks who applauded lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and all the misery associated with that (mothers not being able to sit by their child’s bedside as they die, ban on funerals/weddings/etc), what say you on the US effectively having no quarantine policy compared to what other nations are allowing?

I hope it has all the esoteric stuff you guys are listing, but if you just expect vinyl remasters of UYI 1&2 with a couple CDs of demos, you won’t be disappointed. Including Adler tracks means they need to pay Adler, and I don’t think that’s likely.

I’m hoping they include the dvd version of the making of trilogy, but am expecting what I got with the $200 AFD collectors. If they start the UYI box at $500 instead of $1000 this time, I’ll seriously consider it.

I just finished it, and I enjoyed it. I thought they did a reasonable enough job explaining why Neo and Trinity were back.

I had zero expectations going into this, and thought the 2nd and 3rd movies were major letdowns. So with low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised.

What do you think the odds are Manchin cuts a deal with the GOP?  He declares independent, caucuses with the GOP and HE becomes majority leader?

I’ve been pondering how this social spending bill will play out in 22. Let’s assume each person means what they’re saying right now, and that they’re also interested in furthering their own power. I think that is a fair assumption when talking about Senators.

Schumer has said he’ll hold a vote in the new year and keep working to pass it. Manchin has said the personal attacks from his party and Biden’s staff are what led to him voting No. The AOC wing of the party is calling him a racist right this moment all over National TV. I don’t know if Joe Manchin can negotiate with his own party, if Schumer and Pelosi don’t get the progressives to stop calling the man a bigot. And I don’t think they can do that - progressive politicians are solely dependent on calling dissenters racist - you can’t find a single national issue where this isn’t true.

If Manchin isn’t willing to lick Schumer’s boot, why would he lick McConnell’s? Becoming a Republican and making McConnell majority leader helps Manchin how? So Manchin makes a play if McConnell realizes this would all but assure a GOP landslide in the midterms, making him Majority leader. Manchin gets to try to build the moderate, bipartisan talks he’s been advocating for the past 6 months.

Maybe I’m really stoned, but I think that’s a real possibility in a few months.

The government has an interest in protecting the population and keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed, so I’m all for a carrot. A $500 tax rebate seems like a fair measure. But how do you validate any of this?  We have 3x5 card stock where some nurse scribbled the vial batch and date on. I certainly don’t want government systems getting a hold of my electronic health record.

My cousin was adamantly against the vaccine. Can’t give you specifics for his rationale, but I can say it was deeply rooted in a sense of self-determination and autonomy. Then in September, he finally realized he was wrong, and he and his wife got their first shot. She unfortunately tested positive a few days later and it put her on her ass. She’s a completely healthy mid-30s woman, and she was out of it for a solid week. They’d already opened their eyes, but it was too late. Point being there are people out there willing to change their minds, just maybe not as fast as the rest of us.

Demonizing them won’t win many converts. At this point I just look at it from the macro level. We know a large subset of the population isn’t going to get the vaccine. The ven diagrams of what ideologies and groups encompass this statistic is so diverse, trying to persuade them with a coherent message isn’t going to get a return on your investment. So we see numbers fall and rise, and hope that having 3 shots makes us individually much less likely to contract it.

I saw one chart that said 25% of new cases are breakthrough. They say Pfizer and J&J are useless against the omicron variant. I read two separate articles citing studies out of the UK, both saying omnicron is more virulent, but in disagreement on impact with one saying it’s on par with delta and the other saying significantly weaker. Somehow the US has gone from 3% of omicron infections in the COVID population to 73% in just a couple weeks. All if that is saying the media and the people they’re quoting really don’t have a clue.

From that macro view, I know that more people died from COVID in 2021 with the vaccine than died in 2020 without the vaccine and mandated lockdowns for half the year.

If someone asks me their opinion on the vaccine, I’ll tell them to get it. But since that has never come up organically in conversation, I’ll continue to shake hands with strangers and friends and go on living knowing I have a 1/9000 shot of being killed when I drive my car.