This Is Fine - 2021-12-08

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1:39 AM

@Fredy31 Ha! That’s hilarious actually.

@ToxicFrog I guess my personal objections are primarily based on freedom (very original, I know). To me, taking away the rights of someone actively, in preventing their participation in public and private business, events and life in general is much less desirable than inadvertently preventing people from participation as a result of them being at a higher risk because of potential exposure.

We don’t ban peanuts from being served, even though it can very easily kill a portion of the population. Not a perfect comparison but it helps to illustrate my idea in a more extreme case

1:55 AM

We do in fact ban peanuts from some places, like schools.

More generally, though, someone eating peanuts is only putting themself at risk, at worst. Someone willfully wandering around unvaccinated is a public health hazard to everyone around them in the immediate sense, and contributing to the overload of the public health system and the lengthening of the pandemic more generally.

I think that you’d agree with me that the ones at the greatest risk of contracting, or more accurately, dying from Covid are those who are unvaccinated as well

But that still leaves the risk there for those that are unable to get vaccinated

Which I will concede doesn’t seem fair

Yeah, that is all a strong argument in favour of mandatory vaccination.

There is a subset of the population who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons; because of this, the total vaccinatable pool is smaller, and thus we need a hhigher proportion of that pool to be vaccinated to protect the ones who can't be.

Furthermore, the more COVID infections there are, the more mutations there are, the higher chance of getting a variant that existing vaccines are ineffective against, putting everyone at risk -- we're already seeing the possibility of this with Omicron.

So yeah, if people who didn't get vaccinated were only putting themselves at risk I wouldn't care beyond a "sigh, people are stupid", but they are a direct threat to everyone around them and an indirect threat to literally everyone, and since we apparently can't trust everyone to get vaxxed without leaning on them, some pressure is warranted.

@ToxicFrog this part to me is the best argument for mandatory vaccines

And, again, it's not like vaccine mandates are some shocking new development; but antivaxxers and the don't-tread-on-me crowd are larger than they've been in a long time, possibly ever.

I think the problem is government mandate on private entities. With other vaccine mandates such as in pubic schools and other individual private entities that’s fine

It’s the sweeping mandate that gets me. If the government mandated that you notify customers that you dont mandate vaccines, so they know not to go there, that would be much more palatable

Perfectly reasonable in fact

2:07 AM

Since when are public schools "individual private entities"?

I meant those as two as separate

Like public schools … other private entities (schools, stores, offices etc)

Should have said “or” instead of “and” I suppose

Government can mandate anything in public venues, since that’s their responsibility: the public. But in a private institution, the government shouldn’t have much say. Enough to mandate a warning for sure, but not to ban it outright

@ToxicFrog I guess you could include me in the dont-tread-on-me crowd, but I agree with you that a lot of those people are really pushing this stuff wayyyy too far

The thing is -- ok, say we go with your prospective "notify customers that you don't mandate vaccines".

Best case, most businesses mandate vaccines, the ones that don't go out of business

The more realistic case, though, is that we enough antivaxxers circulating to keep them in business, keep spreading COVID, and keep us from ever reaching herd immunity levels

Again, these people are not just hazards to themselves, or even to themselves and their families, but to the populace at large

2:25 AM

What are the stats on percentage of the population that’s vaccinated? In the US at least

Also -- requiring vaccines to patronize businesses is not just a way of exerting pressure to vaccinate but is a public health issue in and of itself.

A place of a business is an enclosed space where people who otherwise would not interact in their day to day life are breathing the same air.

With an airborne disease, that means you want as many layers of safety as you can get away with there.

> What are the stats on percentage of the population that’s vaccinated? In the US at least

In the US? No idea. Here we're sitting at 80% with at least one shot, 75% fully vaxxed, 5% boosted, and most estimates place the minimum to actually stop the uncontrolled spread of the disease at 85-90% vaxxed -- assuming no new, more transmissible variants.

2:44 AM

I guess I had always heard of the herd immunity being quoted around 70% which is what I was gonna mention we have probably already passed that but I must be wrong there

It's 60% apparently

71 1 dose

I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure 70% is not the herd immunity rate but it's complicated

Hmm okay, I though we had more

Measles is estimated to require 95% to maintain herd immunity

Due to how highly infectious it is

Oh, one other thing I’d like to ask y’all about is whether you think it’s fair to attribute the variants and their spread on unvaccinated Americans?

I mean it's more related to patents and such on the macro scale, but on the micro scale yeah

Absolutely

2:57 AM

I'm not sure how much can be laid on America specifically, there are antivaxxers everywhere

They do seem to be more prevalent in the US though!

God damn it I'm glad I have >2 minute edits

I dunno, it just makes me uneasy when people lay blame on Joe Schmoe down the road because he didn’t get vaccinated as the reason that the whole country is in shambles

maybe that’s my real gripe with it all

Also the fact that it’s so polarized on party lines, that’s the worst part

And the fact that there’s party lines at all tbh

3:19 AM

yeah one would hope that "let's not become worshipers of Nurgle" would have omnipartisan support, and yet, here we are

3:31 AM

That’s funny right there

3 hours later…

6:21 AM

@Flats The herd immunity depends on R0, which is almost double now with Delta compared to the original virus. So the threshold was around 70%, but because the virus changed it is now much higher

6 hours later…

12:26 PM

BioNTech, Pfizer say test shows 3 doses of vaccine neutralise Omicron reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/…

mobile.twitter.com/c_drosten/status/1468479630281785348

> Very important data, Sandra! Now we have three groups finding ca. 40-fold loss of serum neutralisation activity in fully immunized people, using slightly different virus and cell setups. Good convergence of results. Does not look good for twice vaccinated. Third dose necessary.

Hey peeps how's it going

12:43 PM

@MadScientist Luckily countries are already starting to roll out booster plans

Although I imagine this also means poorer countries are going to fall even further behind now

@Oast It's going well. If you were looking for the general gaming chat, you'll want to pop into the bridge:

The Bridge

General Arqade Chat. We tried to leave once, but the door lock...

This is a news chat. You're totally welcome here! But your greeting gave me the impression you may have jumped into the wrong room, so just a friendly FYI

1:18 PM

@Wipqozn Ah thank you, you are right, my bad!

@Oast No worries. It's a common mistake.

2:04 PM

I wish that the shots would have been presented like the flu shots since the beginning. I'd imagine there'd be less animosity if it was just expected that you'd need to get a refresher shot every so often to combat variances rather than people grasping desperately at "but you said it was just gonna be two shots! >:("

cause no one has an issue with the flu shot every year but the concept is the same, get another shot so that its effective against the variants. if only politicians never talked about it, and it was purely the medical community releasing info. I think we could be in a much better place

2:19 PM

@Wipqozn so get your booster then? i'm still months way before mine

@Flats problem is that the vaccines are just copping the flack that came from politicizing the virus in the first place

@Memor-X ^this

for real though, I think a lot more people would agree on a lot more things if the politicians just didn't open their mouths about it

lol, true. one issue and politicians will twist it several ways. one way each that suits there side and all the back flipping and updating they do to attack the opposing view

good example was last month where Scott Morrison (Prime Minister of Australia) backflipped and started to support Eclectic Vehicles. when asked why he supposed it now when the last election he was against it saying that EVs would kill the Australian Weekend, he said ne never said that despite the video evidence

Sadly it seems that attacking the other side gets more attention

you have EVs, one way to support them, one way to not support them and that latter way twisted again to be "i never said that, i was just against their idea because..."

whats the Australian Weekend and how would electric cars kill that?

2:27 PM

@Flats it's being able to travel long distances and the attack vector there was that EVs wouldn't last the distance and run out of power

ah I see

Well, unpopular opinion in here maybe but I think that electric cars are terrible except as a catalyst to promote renewable energy

obviously a solution is more recharge stations, EVs being able to charge/run off solar as they run. but the attack was simplified to be just that EVs wouldn't go the distance so we should encourage people to get them and instead make petrol cars cheeper

the way that they are used now provides no benefit to the environment at all until we stop producing electricity by burning stuff

I'd be fine with cheaper cars too though ;) cheaper is best

@Flats which is actually one of the bigger things we need to tackle in solve the climate crisis. we need for electricity and the electric infrastructure needs to be upgraded to support it and the new sources of electricity

What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage?

Nuclear

Energy

Please

2:32 PM

while we know the gist of what happened, that video goes into how the power grid works in the US and i get the feeling it's much the same the rest of the world

Have y'all heard of the various fusion endeavors around the world? It's so freakin' exciting to me

@Flats it's going to be needed but i see it as a stepping stone we'll later phase out

iter.org/proj/inafewlines

while cleaner Uranium is still a limited resource like Coal. Soloar Energy we're going to have for billions of years and so long as we don't fuck up the planet's climate we should always have wind energy

This one I think is the closest to operation for Net production, but it wont be for electricity, rather as a tritium breeder for other reactors in the future hopefully

@Memor-X but uranium is so incredibly energy dense

it could last us for millions or billions of years if we figure out how to manage breeder reactors efficiently

I'd say that's a decent amount of time to figure out another solution, or start mining uranium from places other than earth

longer if we start using fusion

2:40 PM

@Flats if by that you're talking about the waste material that is produced and recycling it that would solve the waste problem

Nuclear power proposed as renewable energy

Whether nuclear power should be considered a form of renewable energy is an ongoing subject of debate. Statutory definitions of renewable energy usually exclude many present nuclear energy technologies, with the notable exception of the state of Utah. Dictionary-sourced definitions of renewable energy technologies often omit or explicitly exclude mention of nuclear energy sources, with an exception made for the natural nuclear decay heat generated within the Earth.The most common fuel used in conventional nuclear fission power stations, uranium-235 is "non-renewable" according to the Energy...

@Memor-X Waste production is already quite minimal, and with Fusion it would be essentially non-existent

plus Id rather have waste that I can keep in a barrel and bury in a mountain to stay for thousands of years than waste that I put directly into the atmosphere to stay for hundreds

actually carbon would be better because it can be reabsorbed by nature

but we are producing far too much for nature to balance it

doesn't help we are also destroying the plants that would absorb it

reason why Brazil gets alot of flack what they are doing to the Amazon Rainforest

idk, I'm still leaning towards nuclear waste. Maybe eventually we figure out how to build a space elevator and we can just send it off into space. No more waste no more problems ;)

as of right now bringing it to space id imagine is a little too risky...wouldn't wanna blow up a shuttle and dust half the country with radioactive bits in the atmosphere lol

3:13 PM

The big problem with nuclear waste its that its gonna be dangerous for millenia. You are stuck with that shit until kingdom come. This is an interesting video about the subject.

Inside The Tunnels That Will Store Nuclear Waste For 100,000 Years

@Fredy31 right, but if we put it in a tunnel and leave it alone, I don't see how that's an issue really. If I put a gun in a safe, and then bury it in a mountain, it'll be pretty hard for me to get shot with it lol

Thing is: 1- It must not leak. Not now, not in a thousand years.

plus, to my mention of a space elevator above, eventually we may not be stuck with it

its fine if it leaks in a mountain, theres nothing in there

And the thing the video touches on, if society collapses after you did your containment, how to you ward against it

@Flats There are underground water sources pretty much everywhere, and thats then goes into rivers and oceans

if society collapses after we contain it and it becomes threatened, I think I'd have been already pretty worried about why society collapsed

3:23 PM

places that 'if it leaks its 100% fine' are VERY rare.

And for the society collapse, you dont want them to break your containment in 1000 years and make any small upstart of society after the collapse die from nuclear poisonning

this is not to save our skins, but to prevent a tragedy that would come in tens of generations from now

@Fredy31 eh, I'll be dead so

;)

jk

I mean I will be dead, but I also get what your saying

@Fredy31 also, the way everyone talks about fossil fuel emissions makes it seem that the issue is coming much sooner than 1000 years from now, so at the very least it could give us some time to figure it out ya know?

For the 'throw it in space' well right now the cost of throwing all that in space would be expensive AF. But I think there is also a tought that you need to throw shit far because if you don't, it will come back down, and get shredded everywhere in the atmosphere, and do small poison everywhere

@Flats Even if nuclear is a problem, shit is a lot less of an immediate and long term problem that is fossil fuels

@Fredy31 Right that's the key. But we have such a thorough understanding of how gravity and astrophysics work, it would be trivial to make sure it doesn't come back to Earth. As long as we figure out how to get it up there safely in the first place

@Fredy31 Exactly :) and it would hopefully spark discussion into Fusion research and if we figure that out, well then we don't have to worry about waste hardly at all!

1 hour later…

4:46 PM

Omicron variant has "robust ability" to evade COVID vaccines, but Pfizer says booster shots "neutralized" it

> South African scientists have released early data showing the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has a "robust ability" to evade the immunity offered by inoculation. But, as CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta reports, it's not all bad news.

> Pfizer and BioNTech said on Wednesday that while the standard two-dose regimen of their vaccine was "significantly less effective at blocking the virus," a booster shot "neutralized the Omicron variant in lab tests."

Wide variety of headlines on this one, depending on whether they emphasize the "Omicron can evade vaccine immunity" part or the "but Pfizer says a booster is effective" part

Russia fired on Ukraine today according to the Press-Service of the Ukrainian Army glavnoe.ua/news/…

6 hours later…

10:22 PM

@Fredy31 well we put up signs like they did with that Vault in Fallout New Vegas *watches The Courier walk in shoveling Rad-X*

joking aside i don't just companies to do the right thing with containing any waste

proper containment costs money and it's cheaper to just put it in a pit, chalk mine or a tree

@Memor-X Nuclear is so highly regulated, I don't think that this is a particularly worrying issue

unless the waste can be converted 100% (doesn't have to be on the first go, can be a cycle recycling the recycled waste's waste) it's hard to not be concerned

@Flats until some lobbyist or Politian waters it down

@Memor-X my love for it is that the sheer amount of energy that is produced makes the amount of waste seem minimal. If uranium is millions of times more energy dense than coal, I need a whole lot less of it to produce energy. and even less than that is left over as waste

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Dec '218

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