I question how many people are vaccinated but actually unwilling to refuse to patronize an establishment if they require showing vaccine cards.
So just assume that nearly everyone who is vaccinated patronized businesses as normal. Based on how relatively quickly even the most liberal places like New York were to drop vaccine mandates, that shows that the percentage figures they quote are bald faced lies. If the entire country were 80% jabbed, then you can bet liberal New York is more like 90% jabbed. With those numbers, they could maintain the mandates forever, and you know they want to. Clearly those numbers are lies.
It's already over, but if we let them take similar measures again in our lifetime for a different disease, it's really over.
Like, the new "variants" and corresponding power grabs are a sign its over, but a completely different disease following a "once in a lifetime pandemic" means it's truly over.
Because being "web-based" makes it far easier to censor. Not even a conspiracy, that's literally the talking point they're making.
Eh, I don't see anything about this app that's actually a "social credit score." All it really is is digitization of records you already have (drivers license, vaccination status, passport, etc.).
So, sure, this is one step closer to social credit scores, and it can be misused and abused by the government. BUT, the real problem isn't the digitization of these records; it's the records themselves and how they're used.
Conservatives seem to insist of preserving "loopholes" and making laws harder to enforce, rather than fighting to actually change the underlying laws. Instead of fighting for vaccination records to stay paper-based so they're easier to forge, we should be fighting for vaccination records to not be used for anything except a person's personal health with their doctor. Instead of fighting for pistol braces to not be considered stocks, we should be fighting for short barreled rifles to just be legal outright.
The other issue is that the videos never have accurate context. The descriptions/captions are always a person's interpretation of the same video we're watching, sometimes passed down from the source the uploader got the video from, usually rephrased and misquoted.
It doesn't help that Ukrainians and Russians look exactly the same. So any atrocity you see you just assume is the fault of the Russians, if you "support" Ukraine. Even going as far as literally saying "Russian soldiers in Ukrainian uniforms driving a Ukrainian tank." Maybe that's true... but... come on, at least show an ounce of skepticism.
"Why doesn't natural immunity/antibodies exempt you from a vaccine mandate?"
"Because we don't know how long natural immunity/antibodies is effective"
It's very important at this point to not get hung up on "I told you so" and push away people who are starting to see the truth.
If just one child's life is saved by not giving anyone the vaccine, it will all be worth it.
This is building back better!
This is what they will springboard off of to begin a stronger push for booster shots in America.
Why wouldn't you get the vaccine? It's so heckin' fun. Now daddy says we can mix and match just like my FUNKO POPS on my shelf!
It was/is a fear of mine that these mandates would be solidified if the line got pushed. The good news is that, at least in America, the line was pushed to vaccine mandates, but mask mandates and lockdowns essentially went away.
It's still shitty because there are a select few places that still have and enforce mask mandates, and because they're so infrequent, they're not a strong inconvenience like a general mask mandate, that they may stick around forever.
Some employers are still requiring masks for employees, but I don't see any near me that actually require them for customers. And only about 5-10% of customers choose to wear one anywhere.
And lockdowns? That shit's long over in America, right? I live in a rural area, so I don't know about the hellholes, but are any businesses closed anywhere in the country?
Everyone who pushes the "safe and effective" tagline without fine print should be sued.
If a drug company has to list all side effects verbally, even the rarest ones, in a damn TV ad to avoid liability, anyone who pushes "safe and effective" should have to qualify each of those statements. It's safe (except for the possible side effects) and it's effective (for a little while, maybe).
This line is especially important to hold. Even if it's "too late" for 90% of people who were tricked into getting it under threat of losing their jobs in the future, the line here will stop them from mandating it for passengers. I can't imagine how they would get away with a passenger mandate without having an employee mandate.
Exactly. Ironically, in many, many ways crypto currency is far less private. Put aside government surveillance for a moment. Let's say I send some money to a coworker or friend to buy a game from him. He goes home that night and gets bored, so he decides to look through my wallet's transaction history for the hell of it. He now can see that I sent some money to PornHub's wallet, the value of my weekly paychecks, and the money I'm sending to his sister's wallet for some reason.
Even if I transfer money to a separate wallet before paying him, all he has to do is look at that wallet's transactions to find my real wallet, then we're back at square one.
Are you asking why the news reports on celebrities and not any random bloke on the street?
Crypto doesn't save you. The government at least needs to pass a law to monitor your bank transactions; they don't need to do shit to monitor the blockchain. With most, if not all, cryptos, all of your transactions are public record.
The only thing crypto has going for it is anonymity. But if you, you know, use your wallet for anything, it will be linked to you. If you get paid in crypto, it will be linked to you. If you spend crypto, it will be linked to you. If you get paid in one wallet, but send it to another wallet to spend, those two wallets will be linked and they might as well be the same wallet.
Sure, the government won't be able to seize your crypto, but they can do a whole lot worse. And as crypto becomes more and more mainstream, it becomes more and more centralized, so they'll even have control over that. They may not be able to take your crypto, but every business will use one of a few "processor" services, that they can prevent from allowing your wallet.
It's truly wild how much power the federal government has usurped. They have twisted other parts of the constitution so much that they can argue virtually anything they wish to do has constitutional basis.
This is where following the "letter" of the constitution doesn't make sense. There is no way in hell that the founding fathers wanted the federal government to have unlimited authority, so long as they can make a claim that whatever they're doing has some smidgen of an impact on interstate commerce or the "general welfare."
The examples of endless. If the founding fathers wanted the federal government in charge of education, for example, they would have written that down explicitly. Yet, here we are, with a federal department of education because it "promotes the general welfare" and "affects interstate commerce."
I cannot think of a single potential action the federal government could take that could not be argued to promote the general welfare or affect interstate commerce. As such, we're very much interpreting the constitution to simply not have the 10th amendment.
It's as if she has never heard of the 10th amendment.
She did get arrested for not wearing a mask. The charge was just for trespassing. She wouldn't have been charged with trespassing if she was wearing a mask.
If I walk into your restaurant butt ass naked and am told to leave, so you call the cops and they arrest me for trespassing, you'd still say I was arrested for being butt ass naked, even if I wasn't charged with indecent exposure.
This is such a bullshit line of reasoning and it just gives these mandates their power. If you're trespassed because you're not wearing a mask then you get arrested for trespassing, you were arrested for not wearing a mask (in a given area).
In the state I live in, carrying a firearm somewhere that is posted "no firearms" is actually a trespassing offense by law. But you'd be retarded to say that you "weren't arrested for carrying a firearm."
It's a layer of obfuscation that prevents people from fighting it as easily.
I think the number of people who got the first dose, but didn't get the second dose combines two huge variables, but is still useful information:
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People who got the first shot, but had a bad reaction to it and chose to not get the second one.
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People who got the first shot, but subsequently heard negative things about the vaccine as they got revealed and chose not to get the second one.
We know that it's not lack of access or time to get the vaccine, which is why they say black people don't get the vaccine, which is hilarious given how incredibly easy and obvious it is to get the vaccine right now: your damn grocery store gives it out.
And there's also the idea that some people will think one dose of the vaccine will be enough, and choose to not get the second. I think these people are rare as there's not a push of that idea anywhere and it would be a strange thing for people to conclude themselves in any notable numbers.
Huh? This sounds like BS to me because I don't think websites would have direct access to USB devices like that and, if they did, that's a huge problem that "privacy" browsers should very much fix. Why would the browser require your permission to access your camera/microphone, but not any other USB devices? This just doesn't make sense.
Both sides agree that changes need made to section 230. And they both propose similar changes, but for completely opposite reasons. This is a very delicate situation where just some minor phrasing within the change can create the exact opposite result.
In short:
Conservatives want websites which heavily moderate their content to be treated as publishers wherein they share legal liability for anything posted on their site.
Liberals want all websites to be treated as publishers wherein they share legal liability for anything posted on their site.
The former would encourage many big websites to reduce their moderation to continue to cover their asses legally while protecting small websites who allow users to post as they please. Some of the bigger websites may choose to moderate/censor heavier, accepting legal liability, but censoring so hard that it would be hard to bring a case against them.
The latter would force all websites to moderate/censor so heavily to avoid having a case brought against them. As implemented, the government will likely put out strict guidelines for you to be able to "earn" your liability protection. Because the government wouldn't outright be making a law that says you must follow these guidelines, they'll likely scoot right by the first amendment. It's a way to force you without really "forcing" you.
The main difference will be what constitutes "earning" your liability protection. Per the spirit of the law, it absolutely should be the conservative way of if you don't censor, you're taking your hands off of it and letting the people do as they please. If you do aggressively censor, when people see the content get posted, they practically assume it was vetted first and therefore you are co-opting it, so you share some liability if the content is illegal.
But the liberal way would set arbitrary standards that really have nothing to do with being a publisher versus a platform. Instead, they'll simply use it as a tool to make things that aren't illegal de facto illegal, like "misinformation."