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The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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COVID-19

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  • https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com...-first-place-4

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    • Man I can not imagine being charged 54,000 dollars for 2 covid test. Absolute insanity in Texas.

      https://khn.org/news/article/pricey-...billing-texas/

      Comment


      • Vaccination rate for NBA players rises to 95 percent, sources say

        https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...nt-sources-say

        In the end it can be only one....who is the last to take it....Kyrie Wiggins or Beal?
        Last edited by Ozys Nepimpis; 10-01-2021, 06:48 AM.

        Comment


        • https://theathletic.com/2853219/2021...t-on-vaccines/


          Aldridge: An all-pro in so many ways, Bradley Beal comes up short on vaccines

          David Aldridge Sep 30, 2021 613
          This is not pleasant to write, that Bradley Beal is all kinds of wrong when it comes to vaccines. But, he is.

          It is not pleasant because Beal is a centered, thoughtful dude in a league full of look-at-me egomaniacs. It is not pleasant because Beal — against all advice from many of his fellow NBA stars, and certainly all of you terry0873s out there — has been ridiculously loyal to the team that drafted him, loyalty being in short supply just about everywhere these days, and not demanded a trade out of Washington. It is not pleasant because Beal is a smart and caring member of the community, who has been a benefactor for multiple classes of kids at the Ron Brown College Prep High School in Northeast, among myriad other local charitable endeavors. It is not pleasant because Beal and Natasha Cloud led their Wizards and Mystics teammates in marching for social justice in downtown D.C. in June 2020.

          It is not pleasant because I don’t like calling out brothers that, otherwise, do the right thing almost all of the time, and are role models in the truest sense.

          But he is wrong, the way Kyrie Irving and Andrew Wiggins are wrong, the way that the portion of the country that still, for varied reasons, refuses to get vaccinated, is wrong.

          “I would like an explanation to, you know, people with vaccines, why are they still getting COVID?” Beal asked Monday during the Wizards’ media day. “If that’s something we’re supposed to be highly protected from, like it’s funny that it only reduces your chances of going to the hospital. It doesn’t eliminate anybody from getting COVID, right?” Why he was unvaccinated, he said, was private.

          No reputable doctor or medical agency has said the vaccines “cure” or “prevent” COVID, as Beal seemed to be asserting — just as no reputable transportation expert has, or ever would, assert that wearing a seat belt and driving at the speed limit “prevents” you from being involved in or dying from car accidents. What doctors and other health experts have said is that getting the vaccine mitigates the risk of death or serious illness if you do get COVID. In short: you can still get COVID after getting vaccinated, but you have much less chance of winding up on a ventilator in ICU – or, in the morgue.

          Yes, as Beal noted, there are breakthrough cases of vaccinated people getting COVID. But this is happening because so many people are still unvaccinated! The Delta variant, as with all variants, is a mutated version of the original COVID-19 virus. Variants survive and evolve in populations of, primarily, unvaccinated groups – and then cascade, like the ocean water over the decks of the Titanic, weighing the whole ship down. (If you saw the Denzel flick “Fallen,” when he’s a cop battling the devil, you remember how the devil bounced from person to person, “infecting” those who couldn’t resist him? That’s what variants do. The fewer people who are vulnerable, the less damage the viruses can do.)

          So I asked Beal Tuesday if the “why” was private, what about the “how?” How did he arrive at his current position?

          While asserting he stood by what he said Monday, Beal — who contracted COVID last summer, which knocked him off of the U.S. Olympic team, which went on to win the gold medal — took pains to note he is not an anti-vaxxer, nor is he anti-science.

          “Along those lines, I also said I’m still considering getting the vaccine,” Beal said. “So one thing I want to make clear is I’m not sitting up here advocating or campaigning that ‘No, you should not get the vaccine.’ I’m not doing that. I’m not sitting up here doing that. I want to get that straight. I’m not sitting up here saying vaccines are bad, or saying this vaccine’s bad. I’m not sitting up here saying you shouldn’t get it. It is a personal decision between every individual. That’s it. And I have that personal right to keep it to myself and keep it between my family (and me). And I would like everybody to respect that.”

          OK. Except that, in this case, as you know, you aren’t just impacting yourself. You’re impacting everyone with whom you come into contact. (The false equivalency of saying “my body, my choice” — implying similarity between having the right not to be vaccinated and women having the right to autonomy over their bodies — again, rather conveniently ignores the fact that you can’t get pregnant by coming into close contact with a pregnant woman.) Beal and other unvaccinated players won’t be living in a hermetically sealed village this year; they’ll be engaged with other players, with coaches, with medical staff and athletic trainers, with food preparers, with maids, with airline crews – any of whom could be vulnerable, for whatever reasons, public and non-public.

          And, parenthetically — no team had a bigger and more devastating COVID outbreak last season than Beal’s Wizards.

          And, parochially — Black people, as ever, are among those catching the most hell from COVID. I do not need lectures on the Tuskegee Experiment or other examples of medical racism. I also know, for myriad reasons, Black men tend to visit doctors less than they should. So it shouldn’t be a shock, I guess, that there’s a segment of the Black population among NBA players who are vaccine-hesitant. (This is not the case in the WNBA, where 99 percent of players are vaccinated.)

          But it’s still difficult to understand the ineffectiveness of both the players’ union and the NBA in pushing public opinions on vaccinations. The union voted multiple times against vaccine mandates for its members, as other unions in other professions have. But why are there no public service announcements advocating getting vaccinated plastering the airwaves? Where is the SuperFriends PSA from LeBron, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul and Carmelo, or by other influencers? Why is a group that took the lead for two years in demanding attention be paid to the Black Lives Matter movement so docile on this subject?

          If 90 percent of the NBA’s players are vaccinated, as the union noted this week, that would indicate an almost unheard-of majority of its constituents agree that vaccines are effective and safe.

          “We should be applauding them, rather than criticizing them, and that’s not fair,” National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts said Tuesday.

          Fair point.

          But, why doesn’t that 90 percent then speak up with a unified voice — and, with the help of the league’s powerful PR apparatus, repeatedly? (I know the code of the NBA — players don’t take shots at other players on things like this. But the pro-vaccine players don’t have to mention the anti-vaxxers in their midst in appealing to the public to get vaccinated.) One suspects that the late David Stern would have had no problem browbeating all the relevant constituents into submission, demanding that if they want to participate this season in “my league,” as he would have put it, that they get the damn shot.

          Per the CDC, more than 214 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of the vaccine as of this week, with 185 million of that total fully vaccinated. There have been more than 390 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in the United States since last December. In the same time frame, there have been, per the CDC, 19,136 reported cases of breakthrough infections among vaccinated people, who have either been hospitalized (14,643) or died (4,493).

          We’re not dealing in absolutes here, of course. But if 214,000,000 people have gotten at least one shot, and 19,136 of that number have had breakthrough infections – 77 percent of which were non-fatal – that means less than one-hundredth of one percent of all vaccine shots have yielded breakthrough cases. Or, if you like, more than 99 percent of vaccines administered have not produced any breakthrough COVID cases.

          There is nothing political about either COVID-19, or Delta, or the vaccines now in place to fight them. Neither the viruses nor the vaccine know if the bodies they inhabit are Democrats or Republicans, or whether they love or hate Joe Biden or Donald Trump, whether they vote every election cycle or not at all, or whether or not they believe Anthony Fauci. Both the virus and the vaccine address the physical host’s strengths and weaknesses, and attack them. The young and healthy tend to react better than the old and infirm, which is why Beal’s assertion that he had no symptoms after getting COVID this summer other than losing his sense of taste misses the point entirely.

          Beal acknowledged Monday that his parents, and his older brothers, have all been vaccinated, leaving the question of why he isn’t looming in the air. I know a lot of other people are in his ear, too. At the least, Washington currently doesn’t have the restrictive protocols for in-town players to be able to play in their home arenas that the Knicks and Nets and Warriors have.

          So Beal can play at Capital One Arena even if he’s not vaccinated. But he should get vaccinated.

          Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on the Hugh Hewitt podcast this week that he “wouldn’t want to be pointing a finger” at Irving for his stance, “but I would hope to be able to get him to understand that by allowing the virus to infect you, even though as an individual you say I’ll take my own chances, I don’t care, I’m young, I’m healthy, the likelihood that I’m going to get a serious disease is low, which is true. You can’t deny that. But what happens is that when you do get infected, it’s very well likely that you might pass that infection on to someone who would suffer very terribly from that virus. So you don’t want to be a vehicle for the propagation of an outbreak that unequivocally has devastated society.”

          The miasma of misinformation about the vaccines in which so many still, unfortunately, traffic, continues to lead media companies like Facebook — and, as of Wednesday, YouTube — to ban people who continue to spread lies and confusion about the vaccines from their platforms.

          It took a century — from the first polio epidemic in the U.S., in 1894, to 1994, when the International Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication in the Americas declared that wild poliovirus had been eliminated from the Americas — to finally get rid of polio, according to a timeline by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. And that’s with most everyone cooperating and taking the various polio vaccines when they became available.

          The mind shudders when considering how long it may take until we get COVID under control, at this rate, with this much misinformation and unsupported skepticism in the air.

          It will require people like Beal and Irving and Wiggins, and those others who remain hesitant, to think about not just the lowest common denominator, but the common good.

          Comment


          • Rural Americans dying at twice the rate of urbanites of Covid-19:
            https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/...p02XylRyG_MjFA
            Nuntius was right for a while. I was wrong for a while. But ultimately I was right and Frank Vogel has been let go.

            ------

            "A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that’s teamwork."

            -John Wooden

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Bball View Post
              Rural Americans dying at twice the rate of urbanites of Covid-19:
              https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/...p02XylRyG_MjFA
              amazing given the natural advantages that rural living gives here...imagine the slaughter if the nation's rednecks were in cities...

              Comment


              • According to Sports Illustrated, the Mavericks are looking to trade Burke. The report states that Burke is still "studying" whether or not he wants to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and that is possibly factoring into Dallas' desire to find a deal for him.

                He should be cut and should never play another NBA game in his life ....unvaccinated fringe role players should all be cut....Who TF they think they are....

                Comment


                • Originally posted by dal9 View Post

                  amazing given the natural advantages that rural living gives here...imagine the slaughter if the nation's rednecks were in cities...
                  There are some big disadvantages too though. The lack of access to healthcare being probably the biggest.

                  I am personally curious how much education is a predictor on vaccine uptake and how that is evolving. Back in February it was a greater predictor than race.

                  https://news.usc.edu/182848/educatio...sks-usc-study/

                  Comment


                  • The NBA and the NBPA have agreed to a reduction in pay of 1/91.6th of a player's salary for each game an unvaccinated player misses in their home market because of local laws. For example, Kyrie Irving would lose roughly $381,000 per game.

                    Comment


                    • I saw an article saying there are more Covid-19 deaths in 2021 than 2020. I then saw someone spinning that as if it was either a bad job by Biden, or proof Trump did all he could do.

                      I'm sure all of this is out there but there has to be a fairly big spike at the first of the year as all of the holiday gathering infections were hospitalized and a certain number obviously didn't make it. That's also during a period of time when the vaccine was not widely available.

                      Then there will be the Delta surge on the graph. And that would have to be a lot of unvaccinated deaths unless someone is hiding something. I don't know where the majority of 2021 deaths fall though. If someone knows LMK. Otherwise I'll have to look it up when I get home.

                      So in a country where we have a vaccine, we have a higher death total in the year of the vaccine. We also have a political party, and especially wing of that party and base that is vehemently against vaccines.
                      I suspect a huge number of the 2021 deaths will have been of that party. I could be wrong, but with the surge of Delta in red states, the refusal to mask up, the refusal to take the vaccine, the belief in conspiracy theories to the point of thinking it's all a hoax all predominantly coming from that base pretty much seems to make my assertion a safe bet. But, I could be overlooking something and not knowing what I don't know in the equation.
                      Nuntius was right for a while. I was wrong for a while. But ultimately I was right and Frank Vogel has been let go.

                      ------

                      "A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that’s teamwork."

                      -John Wooden

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Bball View Post
                        I saw an article saying there are more Covid-19 deaths in 2021 than 2020. I then saw someone spinning that as if it was either a bad job by Biden, or proof Trump did all he could do.

                        I'm sure all of this is out there but there has to be a fairly big spike at the first of the year as all of the holiday gathering infections were hospitalized and a certain number obviously didn't make it. That's also during a period of time when the vaccine was not widely available.

                        Then there will be the Delta surge on the graph. And that would have to be a lot of unvaccinated deaths unless someone is hiding something. I don't know where the majority of 2021 deaths fall though. If someone knows LMK. Otherwise I'll have to look it up when I get home.

                        So in a country where we have a vaccine, we have a higher death total in the year of the vaccine. We also have a political party, and especially wing of that party and base that is vehemently against vaccines.
                        I suspect a huge number of the 2021 deaths will have been of that party. I could be wrong, but with the surge of Delta in red states, the refusal to mask up, the refusal to take the vaccine, the belief in conspiracy theories to the point of thinking it's all a hoax all predominantly coming from that base pretty much seems to make my assertion a safe bet. But, I could be overlooking something and not knowing what I don't know in the equation.
                        It's sort of a meaningless argument really since most people with an agenda don't really care about viral prevelance in a community or the relevant factors you mention.

                        The country did not start out with the same level community spread in Jan 2020 as it did in January 2021. The exponential growth of the virus was completely on a different scale since it was not in every community all at once when Trump was dealing with it early in the outbreak.

                        Even with that the worst deaths per million 7 day rolling average was at that time of Trump in Jan of 2021. That average plummets from Feb to May and keeps going down until this latest surge in late July early August.

                        The difference now is that nearly all of the deaths are in the unvaccinated group.

                        Comment


                        • For those that are interested I wanted to explain how the vaccines and the waning antibody response and yet still have good protection from severe disease.

                          Protective immunity is much more than just antibody response to an infection or a vaccine. The B cells which make the antibodies eventually either die off or fall asleep. They fall asleep to keep from dying essentially but they need to be told to wake up again. This is why antibodies drop but will rebound quickly if you get infected. Keep in mind these cells that fall asleep can stay like that for over a decade.

                          The T cells also have memory but they are the ones that actively target infected cells. These guys are why some people are asymptomatic with an infection since they are like mob bosses to the viruses. People who do really poor with the virus basically do not have great T cells or not enough of them.

                          So as you here the immunity wanes in the media this really is talking about antibodies that prevent the virus from infecting you. I haven't seen any data really saying the most important cells lose the memory of the virus from the vaccines which is probably the most important part on whether or not you get hospitalized with an infection.


                          Comment


                          • Now I’m getting called a sheep by somebody I know for getting the vaccine lol

                            He talks about giving up my “freedom” but I’m the one traveling and going to concerts while he has to stay home because he doesn’t want to risk it
                            @WhatTheFFacts: Studies show that sarcasm enhances the ability of the human mind to solve complex problems!

                            Comment


                            • Interesting article. Normally I would start a new thread but I think it could fit here with the COVID implications to some parts of the article. Super interesting how some things were tied to POTUS Trump and now POTUS Biden and others were long before POTUS Biden/Trump

                              WHY SOME OF AMERICA’S DIPLOMATS WANT TO QUIT

                              https://warontherocks.com/2021/09/wh...-want-to-quit/

                              Comment


                              • Just got back to Europe after a much needed rest and recuperation. COVID passports are now required to stay out past curfew, masks are required indoors and outdoors, and restaurants are now being mandated to close at 1700.

                                There was talk of schools going back online but as of today that has not happened yet

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