The risk incurred when you contract Covid still seems to be way way way worse than the risk incurred when you have any of these vaccines:

Covid Risks: death (small percentilte but still in the 0.001% - 2% depending on your age and health), loss of smell and taste (a lot more common but many of all different ages and health have had it and still have these issues a year later), other health complications (these range from neurological all the way to general longstanding fatigue). On top of that, chances of long term immunity are much lower

Astra or J&J Vaccines: 1 in millions chances of developing a blood clot issue (0.0000001%, sadly some of those incidents will be fatal), much high chance of reliable Covid immunity, maybe a few days of feeling sick.

Only downside of the latter is you actively choose to have the vaccine whereas you could theoretically dodge Covid.

Beyond all of that having one of these vaccines is really not about protecting yourself. It's really about protecting others, it's a really communal thing - you are cutting off possible pathways of transmission and therefore mutation, overtime leading to this virus just dying out. If folk don't take vaccines this thing just keeps transmitting and mutating and eventually rendering the vaccines that have been developed useless and then the world is back to square one or worse. Sure, you would expect later mutations to eventually be less dangerous, but there is no guarantee and in the meantime it just rips through people.

AZ is not a shit vaccine. It was developed with the sole purpose of being produced and sold at cost, it sadly has some side effects, hopefully later versions of it that they develop won't have it. A vaccine that is produced and sold at cost is fanastic. A vaccine that is one shot and can be stored at normal fridge temperatures is also fanastic. For getting the world out of this mess, poorer countries and remote places will need these vaccines. They aren't shit.

Yeah, the vaccine is super super unlikely to kill you. Whereas the virus relatively speaking is a lot more likely - and even if it doesn't kill got a decent chance of having long term health effects afterwards. James, hope you get the vaccine and stay safe.

I can still think the tone Flagg takes when he posts here is rude, abrasive and not constructive even if I don't jump in this thread frequently. Don't think it was outrage either, just pointing out that he always seemed intentionally inflammatory and condescending. I'll add that from what I've observed when just reading lately that Mitch does the same and not just in this thread.

On topic: I am always amazed with how what's going on in Ukraine keeps being forgotten by Western media.

Edit: Amazed, but sadly not surprised.

Even if what they were doing wasn't to do with music. If they were just active in any meaningful way it would provide something to talk about.

Yeah, he was considering implementing a sort of prototypical UBI. It's not a new idea, I don't get why it isn't at least experimented with in a country like the US. It's the kind of thing I'd think could be worth trialling in Alaska or Hawaii because the issue of a someone just hopping across statelines and using their UBI spending power in a different state is less likely to be an issue.