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(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 08:14 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-18-2020 10:01 PM)Blazer88 Wrote:  Masks mandates don’t do a damn thing, there’s nothing you can do to stop a spread of a virus.

You're correct. Mask mandates won't work because people will ignore it. You can slow the spread of the virus but you need to cooperation of the citizens to make it happen. But since it infringes on people liberties, threaten their rights to own guns, and opposes the views of pro life folks, a mask mandate would be useless.

Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 08:14 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-18-2020 10:01 PM)Blazer88 Wrote:  Masks mandates don’t do a damn thing, there’s nothing you can do to stop a spread of a virus.

You're correct. Mask mandates won't work because people will ignore it. You can slow the spread of the virus but you need to cooperation of the citizens to make it happen. But since it infringes on people liberties, threaten their rights to own guns, and opposes the views of pro life folks, a mask mandate would be useless.

Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 08:14 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-18-2020 10:01 PM)Blazer88 Wrote:  Masks mandates don’t do a damn thing, there’s nothing you can do to stop a spread of a virus.

You're correct. Mask mandates won't work because people will ignore it. You can slow the spread of the virus but you need to cooperation of the citizens to make it happen. But since it infringes on people liberties, threaten their rights to own guns, and opposes the views of pro life folks, a mask mandate would be useless.

Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

You’re an idiot

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 08:14 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-18-2020 10:01 PM)Blazer88 Wrote:  Masks mandates don’t do a damn thing, there’s nothing you can do to stop a spread of a virus.

You're correct. Mask mandates won't work because people will ignore it. You can slow the spread of the virus but you need to cooperation of the citizens to make it happen. But since it infringes on people liberties, threaten their rights to own guns, and opposes the views of pro life folks, a mask mandate would be useless.

Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

And why would I? Seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask.

(11-20-2020 04:33 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 08:14 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  You're correct. Mask mandates won't work because people will ignore it. You can slow the spread of the virus but you need to cooperation of the citizens to make it happen. But since it infringes on people liberties, threaten their rights to own guns, and opposes the views of pro life folks, a mask mandate would be useless.

Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

And why would I? Seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask.

If seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask, why WOULDN'T you?

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

No, but I see State Troopers writing tickets so you get fined if you don't.


It wasn't that long ago in this country that if you or someone in your family caught a contagious disease, say scarlet fever or polio, that the health department came and nailed a quarantine notice to your door and no one was allowed out. Food was delivered to your doorstep.

(11-19-2020 02:38 PM)tceaz Wrote:  [ If you don't think they work then next time you have a procedure done go tell the doc...no need for the mask doc, my buddy Tina on facebook posted a link saying they didn't work.

You can try to get them to, but they won't. The risk of infection is too high.

If you can get one to, you can bet that he'll make you sign a waiver from lawsuits first. They won't though, they won't risk their malpractice insurance that way.

All those folks heading back to work, fresh off of Thanksgiving and Christmas with their family and friends. Our state is run by pinheads.


https://twitter.com/ConnorASheets/status...4947981312

Connor Sheets
@ConnorASheets

The University of Alabama has floated a plan to require all faculty, staff & employees to resume full-time, in-person work on campus beginning Jan. 7. Also, students could be punished for refusing to attend face-to-face classes.

UA may require staff, students to return to campus in January

https://www.al.com/news/2020/11/universi...nuary.html

The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa may require all faculty, staff, employees and students to return to campus full-time in early January unless they have a medical excuse.
al.com
3:03 PM · Nov 20, 2020·Twitter Web App

(11-20-2020 07:07 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

It wasn't that long ago in this country that if you or someone in your family caught a contagious disease, say scarlet fever or polio, that the health department came and nailed a quarantine notice to your door and no one was allowed out.

Correct- if you or someone in your family got it. Which is quite different that mandating behavior of every man, woman and child in the state, regardless of whether they are sick or not.

(11-20-2020 07:07 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

No, but I see State Troopers writing tickets so you get fined if you don't.


It wasn't that long ago in this country that if you or someone in your family caught a contagious disease, say scarlet fever or polio, that the health department came and nailed a quarantine notice to your door and no one was allowed out. Food was delivered to your doorstep.

And I can assure you, State Troopers aren't out looking for people not writing seatbelt tickets. Or even looking for people not wearing seatbelts. In fact, if someone is being stopped for not wearing a seatbelt, it is likely that the seatbelt violation is only being used as probable cause to stop the driver to investigate some other offense they are suspected of. Like drugs. And seatbelt laws are the most nanny-state law ever- a law to protect us from ourselves. But I digress- this conversation isn't about seatbelt laws. That was just an example, but it is illustrative of my larger point.

There has to be some balance in all this. The mask mandates I don't have too much of a problem with (state and local mandates anyway, because they have the authority to issue them, unlike the federal government, which does not). Now we have governors saying you can't gather in your own home. Last time I checked, the First Amendment protects the "right of the people peaceably to assemble." They going to send the cops into your house while you're eating Thanksgiving dinner? Because the last time I checked, the Fourth Amendment protects "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Restricting the ability of people to worship? Yeah, First Amendment also guarantees the right of the people to the free exercise of religion. You talk about how things used to be? Once upon a time, we as a country valued these rights. As I keep saying, the rule of law doesn't stop in a pandemic. What frightens me is how the people in this country seem willing to completely forget about that. Everyone should always be closely guarding their rights, ESPECIALLY in times of crisis. Because it is during a crisis when people are more willing to relinquish those rights, ostensibly for a short amount of time, only to find down they road they're gone. It would seem to me that the people who've been accusing the sitting president of acting like a dictator should be mindful of this. When discussing this, I always encourage people to read about the Reichstag fire in 1933. (And to be clear, I'm not doing the cliche thing that people love to do and call the other side Nazis- I'm saying it is the quintessential of using a crisis to curtail individual liberties).

A lot of this stuff is Public Health 101, attempting to control the spread of a pandemic. I understand where you're coming from and don't particularly want to argue about it, but if Trump had stepped out and asked for cooperation from the nation in taking some basic safety measures we wouldn't be where we are now, with another 9/11's worth of dead every day and a half. Remember when 9/11 was a national tragedy, a horrendous loss of life? How long does it take to read 260,000 names?

You want to hear draconian measures? Say someone carrying Ebola gets off of a plane and out into the population, or smallpox jumps out of a lab somewhere, something like that. First, you find Patient Zero. You grab him and isolate him hardcore, and there's nothing voluntary about it. You then debrief him about his movements. You take his phone and check the GPS to be sure you know *everywhere* he has been. You find every single person that he interacted with, and who interacted with them, and you isolate them all, every single blessed one of them, forcibly if you have to. You also set up ring barriers around the hot spot, probably three layers of them, and *everyone* in those areas is forced to stay in those areas, period, NO exceptions. At All. You surround the outer ring with the Army and make it clear that as a matter of National Security, anyone who thinks that the rules don't apply to them and tries to sneak out will be SHOT. Period. If you missed some of Patient Zero's contacts and they are out of the zone and another outbreak starts, you do exactly the same thing again. Find them, isolate, trace contacts, and set up another set of rings, same terms.

That's what you do if it's a really no-s--- serious pandemic germ loose. There are other steps, and that's the pretty high end of it - but you can bet that the Pentagon has contingency plans on file for exactly that. You do this so that if you have a wildfire epidemic only the people in the inner circle die, or the second ring, or the third. You fight like unholy hell to prevent the outbreak from getting out into the population at large, because every single leaker has the potential to kill thousands of people. You stamp it out on the front end, because if you screw around and let things slide you wind up where we are now, setting new records day by day for the number infected in a day, hospitalized in a day, dead in a single day.

I'm not saying that sort of thing is needed here, but what I am saying is that asking people to stay home, wash their hands often, and wear a mask isn't creeping fascism, it's doing what it takes to get the rate of infection down to where the hospitals are not completely overrun. Those temporary Covid wards that they built in parks and hospital parking decks are not viable during winter in the Dakotas, and the entire Midwest is rapidly approaching the point where there is no room in the hospitals, and if you have a heart attack or a car wreck it's gonna be tough cheese. There are going to be family Thanksgiving and Christmases that kill their own family members because they refused to listen, probably thousands of them. Watch how the numbers start to spike a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, just like they did in the Dakotas after they insisted on going ahead with the Sturgis motorcycle rally, which is the root of the infection spike happening there right now, as well as in surrounding states.

No one involved in running the fight against Covid-19 is making a power grab. Freedom and independence are wonderful things, but "You can't tell me what to do! I know my rights!" isn't an appropriate answer to "Don't stick your hand in the blender, you'll get hurt really badly" - or to "Please don't travel and have big family gatherings while an infectious disease is spreading". Don't screw around and infect your Dad or Granny because you miss them and want to see them, 'cause if they die you won't see them again, period.

(11-20-2020 04:56 PM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 04:33 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 10:25 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  Yes, a mask mandate does infringe on peoples' liberties.

As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

And why would I? Seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask.

If seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask, why WOULDN'T you?

Lol. Simplicity is not your style. And your stormtrooper reference proves you're bi#ching to just be bi#ching.

(11-20-2020 04:56 PM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 04:33 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-20-2020 11:12 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-19-2020 06:43 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  As well as wearing a seatbelt, prohibiting smoking in buildings and restaurants, and checking ID's to see if you're old enough to purchase alcohol and buy cigarettes but I don't see people bi*ching about these laws and restrictions infringing on people's liberties.

I also don't see storm troopers like you making it their mission in life to go on endless tirades about people not wearing seatbelts.

And why would I? Seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask.

If seatbelts protect lives like wearing a mask, why WOULDN'T you?

Ask the people refusing to wear a mask. I buckle up and wear a mask.

(11-21-2020 06:08 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  Simplicity is not your style.

No, it isn't. Nor is naivety. Some of you seem to love simplicity, because it's easier on the brain. I like to dig a little further below the surface.

Band Dad- what you're doing is a classic example of relativism. Give an ultra-extreme example to show that, hey, by comparison it isn't so bad. And your assertion is detached from fact. I'm not talking about "asking people to stay home." That's perfectly reasonable, and a good idea. I agree that having a big Thanksgiving dinner probably isn't a good idea, especially if you have vulnerable people in the family. But that isn't what is going on. Government officials are issuing orders, which are in many cases enforceable by the full weight and authority of the state's police power, that in effect outlaw a gathering like that. People have been threatened with criminal prosecution for gathering in a house of worship. That should chill you to the bone. It in antithetical to who we are as a countty.

Gathering in numbers for an extended period of time is known to a be high risk for infection. Doing so while singing, as in a church, or cheering loudly, as at athletic events in an arena, raises the chance of airborne particles substantially. How many articles have have been written about outbreaks in churches where the pastor defied guidelines not to do this?

What has been asked is for the country as a group to pitch in and do the things that make us all safer. Trump and the R's chose to make not wearing a mask a political statement, and took them from being a simple public health measure and into being a way to "own the libs". The state governors who followed his lead now lead many of the states with the worst infection rates. The easiest example is South Dakota, whose governor has yet to go along with such measures. Trump is on tape telling Bob Woodward how dangerous Covid was back in March, but he thought that wearing a mask would make him look weak, and he can't stand that, so he refused, fought against them, and the half the of country who follows him took their lead and set their opinions from that example.

As to my mention of Ebola response above being an "extreme example", I stated that it was from the jump, as a response to your assertion that the measures being asked were extreme and violated our freedom.

During WWII, the American people sacrificed for the greater good. People left their jobs, their university, their farms and families and risked their lives. Scientists abandoned their fields of study to work on war related things. There were no new cars to buy, because none were being produced as those factories were making tanks and war planes. Things like food, gas, car tires and much more was rationed. We all sacrificed to win the war, because it was a greater good and the right thing to do. We were asked to wear masks to slow the spread of disease and acted like it was this huge horrible sacrifice, and it simply isn't that bad. There are thousands of people in various occupations who wear masks every day at work, and none of them "starve for oxygen" the way some snowflakes whine.

If people simply did what was asked of them without making it into a huge issue, because it protected the sick, the old, the weak, no one would be talking about enforcement.

My feeling is that the single biggest reason that people don't want to wear masks (other than that they're hot, fog your glasses, etc) is that they're selfish. We were all told early on that the primary reason to wear a mask is to reduce the risk of infecting others, that they're 90+% effective in preventing the wearer's cough or sneeze from spreading infectious particles. They do protect the wearer, but probably more at the 60 to 70% range. Funny, guys who work with asbestos and have to wear a mask so they don't get cancer need very little push to wear them. Sure, there are morons who resist, just like there are people who smoke while they pump gas, but most folks are not that dumb. But tell them that they're wearing them to keep other people safe and they're just not a priority.

(11-21-2020 09:14 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-21-2020 06:08 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  Simplicity is not your style.

No, it isn't. Nor is naivety. Some of you seem to love simplicity, because it's easier on the brain. I like to dig a little further below the surface.

Taking something simple and making it difficult it counterproductive and counterintuitive.

(11-21-2020 09:14 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-21-2020 06:08 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  Simplicity is not your style.

No, it isn't. Nor is naivety. Some of you seem to love simplicity, because it's easier on the brain. I like to dig a little further below the surface.

Taking something simple and making it difficult just for the sake of doing it is counterproductive and counterintuitive.

Look at the comparison of Florida to Taiwan here. Look at Taiwan's numbers. The difference is simple to explain. Taiwan is right off the coast of China. All the viral epidemic outbreaks, SARS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, whatever, they've lived through them. The government knows what needs to be done, and the public does too. So they all just sucked it up and did what it took to smother it. Taiwan has virtually no cases recently, and what they do have lately is mostly brought in by travelers. As a result they have increased their testing requirements to enter the country.

Contrast with the U.S., where our government did little, there was poor leadership, spotty cooperation, and then outright defiance by state governors and populations of the advice of immunology experts which was largely politically based. Our President didn't take it seriously and still does not. He's at a G20 meeting today, where he skipped a special session on combating Covid to go play golf. (And since we're in an unmoderated space, if I were President and the election was really being stolen I would not have gone to play golf the two days after the election and several times since. /politics off)

To be fair, as in the case of New Zealand, Taiwan is an island nation and better able to control people entering the country. The other side of that is that the actions they took once Covid-19 was inside their nation were very different from ours.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl...322040002/

(11-21-2020 01:58 PM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(11-21-2020 09:14 AM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(11-21-2020 06:08 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  Simplicity is not your style.

No, it isn't. Nor is naivety. Some of you seem to love simplicity, because it's easier on the brain. I like to dig a little further below the surface.

Taking something simple and making it difficult just for the sake of doing it is counterproductive and counterintuitive.

Taking something complex and calling it simple shows your mental feebleness and laziness.