I wonder if they’ll segregate the vaccinated, just to keep us safe. We need to slow the spread.

Most reported U.S. Omicron cases have hit the fully vaccinated -CDC

Most of the 43 COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant identified in the United States so far were in people who were fully vaccinated, and a third of them had received a booster dose, according to a U.S. report published on Friday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that of the 43 cases attributed to Omicron variant, 34 people had been fully vaccinated. Fourteen of them had also received a booster, although five of those cases occurred less than 14 days after the additional shot before full protection kicks in.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-reported-us-omicron-cases-have-hit-fully-vaccinated-cdc-2021-12-10/

The basis of the entire pandemic response.

Inverted or turnkey totalitarianism in a nutshell.

I reserve my right to speak in dysphemism, especially when it comes to matters of injustice and tyranny. These kids didn’t go to the internment camp on their own free will.

And the protocols are not sensible, but stupid; they treat healthy people as threats to public safety, in potentia. They are literally premised on fear and ignorance.

Humans should colonize mars. Until such a landscape is explored and studied we can never know either way, and colonization will be the first step to performing that task.

They tested negative. They contained exactly zero SARS-CoV-2. What they did contain were innocent, healthy children.

(None of this is to say you're necessarily wrong on the facts, of course. It just seems fair to mess with you sometimes.)

Hey, I can take it. So fair enough. But since it only applies to me you must forgive me for disregarding the remarks about my consistency.

I don’t think it’s very useful.

To me it has a confusing grammar. “Quale” is a noun, so it becomes a subject and we apply predicates to it, without it being worthy of such. One can search forever for what we are talking about and never find it, while the person, place, or thing we should be talking about is thrown out with the bath water.

I already mentioned why they were interred, and none of it mentioned any gas chambers.

Consistent fallacy doesn’t do much to convince me, unfortunately. Perhaps a better tactic is in order.

Were they interned in order to send them to the gas chamber?

I wrote:

“The authorities had initially rounded them up and interned them, it appears, for the non-crime of being in contact with covid-positive people, not because they carried any virus or posed any sort of threat.”

ur skewed verbiage betrays an ideological ulterior motive.
SARS-CoV-2 doesn't care.

Ur disapproval of my verbiage betrays yours.

Trump and an appeal to hypocrisy… I’m not surprised.

White House quietly tries to reshape economic coverage

The White House, not happy with the news media's coverage of the supply chain and economy, has been working behind the scenes trying to reshape coverage in its favor. Senior White House and admin officials — including NEC Deputy Directors David Kamin and Bharat Ramamurti, along with Ports Envoy John Porcari — have been briefing major newsrooms over the past week, a source tells me.

The officials have been discussing with newsrooms trends pertaining to job creation, economic growth, supply chains, and more. The basic argument that has been made: That the country's economy is in much better shape than it was last year. I'm told the conversations have been productive, with anchors and reporters and producers getting to talk with the officials...

https://t.co/s3tNP28Lae

That’s hilarious. If you’ve seen this administration’s propaganda, you know they’ll stoop to any level to paint themselves in a certain light, even though it is comes off as phoney as a three dollar bill. Remember this one?

“Berlin: Homeless people without 3G (fully vaccinated, tested, or recovered) proof are no longer allowed to seek refuge from the cold on platforms. The Senate regrets the decision, but remains tough.”

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/3g-in-berlin-senat-verbannt-obdachlose-von-bahnsteigen-l

It’s not surprising how cruel the Covid authoritarian is, but they do it under the guise of protecting others. We should start asking for proof of how many people they’ve protected. Get them to point to one.

That’s true about Americans, as far as I can see.

I would go on and on about collectivism mostly because it is immoral. It is premised on compulsory cooperation, and if that doesn’t work, force, coercion and violence. All one needs do is evoke the common good to justify immoral behavior towards one’s fellows.

Note the collectivist reasoning. “Sometimes you have to do things that are unpopular” (not moral or immoral) for reasons that “clearly supersede individual choices” and are “directed at the common good”. So many rights have been sacrificed on the alter of similar reasoning.

I just don't wanna be vaxed. That's all.

That’s the only excuse one should need to provide, as far as self-ownership is concerned. Anything else presupposes a slavish relationship between individual and “public health”.

We’re limping into year three of Covid fascism and Germany is now working to ghettoize the unvaccinated as cases and deaths rise in the country. Far from being immune, though, from both government overreach and the virus, the vaccinated may soon lose their vaccinated status 9 months after the last shot, so those who have complied will just have to comply again and again and again, lest they lose what’s left of their piddly state-sanctioned freedoms.

No matter. Vaccination will soon be mandatory in Germany, anyways.

What a job they’ve done already. Their systems failed at each and every step, yet they still present themselves as the solution. We’re coming up on year three of their tinkering and it’s been a racket.

It would have taken less time to say why it is right. Once again you’ve taught me nothing.

It looks like zen and stoicism taught you a lot.

There is no point in bringing up speed zones and other false analogies, nor quibbling about terms, unless this is an exercise in casuistry. I am saying why it is wrong to threaten people with fines if they don’t comply with what I consider a stupid mandate, so maybe you can tell me why it is right. Until then…

The government is forcing businesses with the threat of fine. The edict is the imposition. There is no “allowing” involved here.

That’s not the case. Where I live, if the business doesn’t enforce the government edicts, it is subject to fine. No individual gets to decide on any of this. This is just another example of the government skirting its duties, working around human rights, and forcing the burden on citizens.

The problems aren’t the radical or extremist views, but the acts committed in their name. So it isn’t clear to me why we would mitigate the view and not the act.

I would argue the concept mind is not equivalent to the brain but to the entire body. No other entity, least of all parts of that entity, engage in any act of minding. Besides, what is a brain absent the blood or oxygen or energy or support from the rest of the organism?

It seems to me that we were promised something that they are unable to deliver. Given the denial of rights and other sacrifices the tax-payer has to make, we are also left to pay for these shortcomings, sometimes with our lives and livelihoods. Even the mask mandates and vaccine passports are left to the tax-payer to enforce at their own expense.

It’s a good cheap shot, in my opinion. But the Dunning-Kruger effect applies as much to the competent as it does to the incompetent.

I like Kant’s idea of enlightenment:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

Though it's more applicable to his time, in some sense it pertains to the old sage, too.

I’m talking about what one should or should not do.

Indirect democracy can do no better than to legitimize authority and give a man or party the right to control us and steal the fruits of our labour. Representative democracy is democratic in name only.

Only the state gets to legislate. In the absence of referendum the “people” have had no say in any of it.

As for rights, in my view no right shall be infringed. One should not exercise a right that would infringe on the rights of others.

But what if the overwhelming majority who do not kill or injure others? What do they give rise to?

Positive rights confer a duty to act upon another person. So if you believe in positive rights such as the right to healthcare, welfare, employment, you also believe in the duty to provide them. Negative rights confer a duty to refrain from acting upon another person. So if you believe in the right to free speech, conscience, liberty, you also believe in the duty to refrain from suppressing them.

Here's another question for you, since it's clear not enough people will distance our take a vaccination, how do you propose to deal with the fall out that causes? Eg. overrun healthcare systems.

I would not propose any government solution beyond the ones I have always stipulated: the protection of human rights. As for dealing with the potential of disease and infection, I deal with it by protecting myself.

It seems to me that the solution to overrun healthcare systems are better healthcare systems. This is especially true of so-called "universal" systems, where everyone is assured healthcare. The people pay for universal healthcare and they are owed universal healthcare. If a government has to restrict and confine people because of their failure to uphold their end of the bargain, then they are the problem. But if the lockdowns are any indication, the government would rather violate the most basic of human rights to skirt that responsibility.



I cannot see it like you because I’m left wondering how someone like you or me “gives rise” to a 30 zone, as if I had any hand in legislation. Do I give rise to a 70 zone if I drive too slow?

As for rights, I speak only of the negative rights, not the positive privileges.

I don’t see how I can blame someone else for the actions of some government official. The people who have shuttered my livelihood, restricted my movement, banned friends and family from society, banned funerals, weddings, and religious gatherings, are not those who flout state-sanctioned medical advise.

But that’s the way collectivism works in a nutshell. The actions of one individual makes the rest guilty by association. Rather than consider things on a case-by-case, individual basis, lazy collectivist solutions come to the fore. This is not because they are right or more just, but because they are easier and involve less effort.

Principles like due process were devised to protect the individual from the state. It is because of the state’s malfeasances that it exists. It wouldn’t exist, in the Magna Carta or the American constitution, for example, if the state had its way. The protections of these individual rights are the proper sphere of government, in my opinion, but beyond that it should not go. But, as you mention, they have taken on collectivist tasks like providing health and welfare, so rights be damned.

The assumption that no individuals privately and voluntarily respond to risks is the greatest friend to authoritarianism during the pandemic. One wonders if they factored individual risk-mitigation into any of their models at all.

Look at the fantasies you have to tell yourself to justify all this. “You know these kids would flaunt the rules! Their escape is proof of the necessity of mandatory quarantine! The kids escaping is an obvious example that quarantine centers are a good idea!” You present a counterfactual and use weasel words to prove the necessity of authoritarian measures. No concern, no pros and cons, no rights-based approach, just counterfactuals and weasel words.

You say there is no effective difference between my normative claim “people should isolate” and “the government shouldn’t put people in internment camps”, as if people are unable to isolate and stay away from others without government internment. I’m some sort of hypocrite for making too big a fuss because government internment is no different than staying home.

No matter. Just as the Centre for National Resilience let’s us know that people should not look at their confinement like prison, but as a moment to reflect and learn about themselves, Benkei says we should look at it like a sacrifice and pat ourselves on the back for being good team players.

What is this but the most laughable, slimiest sort of propaganda?

It was only a criticism of the idea that by paying tax dollars you are somehow working with others, coordinating your defence. That’s not the case, to me. It appears more like ignorance, in the sense of “not knowing”. Since one is unable to follow his tax-dollars to their final destination, so he is unable to say he is coordinating education, a police force, or the toilet paper in a public washrooms. Far from coordination, he is ignorant of it, and has no say in all coordinating aspects of its application.

Some would rather delegate the responsibilities and the means for their defence on to others, to “professionals”. So in times when defence is required, he has long absolved himself of any responsibility and can let others handle it for him. Far from efficient, it’s laziness. It isn't without irony that we find a dutch John Oliver ridiculing Americans and their guns while benefiting from the liberation and defence of American firepower.

And since they confer their responsibilities to the state, they correspondingly confer it the power to govern their own lives. The monopoly on violence hints at who is serving whom.

I used legalism in the pejorative sense. I mean that ethics is dismissed in favor of appeals to law and authority. Law shapes the "mindset of the people", rather the other way about. I fear we cannot discuss the ethics of defending oneself from a mob or a right to bear arms without limiting ourselves to state-sanctioned principles, many of which are younger than the disco era.

The point, anyways, was that in the view of my erroneous ideology I have yet to see anything better on offer.

Denying fundamental rights on a hunch is ludicrous. The just and ethical thing to do would be to fix the testing, not toss them in an internment camp just in case.

Sure, the fact that someone can hear birds and see the sun is nice, but it isn’t much a consolation when you are confined against your will.

As for the toys, fair enough—even though it says toys are prohibited, gaming systems, puzzles and cellphones could be considered toys—but that wasn’t the only thing I listed.

I already did link to the Centre for National Resilience in my first post. It was my mistake to think you had read it.

If people are in contact with a Covid-positive person they should isolate, stay away from others, and get tested as much as possible.

You obviously don't need to commit a crime to be sequestered. We also lock up crazy people when they haven't committed a crime. And in this case, being in close contact with a covid-positive person means you can become a vector for transmission as it takes time before viral load is sufficient to be picked up by a PCR test. About 24 hours before a PCR test is positive, you can transmit the virus. In Australia they've opted to quarantaine such people in separate facilities to ensure the disease doesn't spread any further. By comparison, in the Netherlands you're supposed to self-quarantine for five days after the last close contact with a Covid-positive person.

You’re either a “vector of transmission” or not. You don’t jail people who cannot spread the virus. If you don’t know whether they can spread the virus or not, you figure it out.

A frightening place? Sure. That's because you're apparently a pussy and your confirmation bias doesn't allow you to quote the upside of the experience. So let me:

Aah yes, hearing birds and smelling eucalyptus trees are the upsides to being interned in a camp, confined to a small building. Are you serious?

Kids under 12 do not have to quarantaine, so the "no toys" doesn't seem like a huge problem but is in any case not true because only balls, skateboards and swimming and playing in drains during rain are prohibited.

The following are not permitted in either quarantine facility;

Toys or recreational items such as swimming pools (plastic or inflatable), scooters, skateboards, bikes, balls and roller blades. These will be stored until your exit.

I’ll just say that there is a fine line between efficiency on the one hand and laziness and ignorance on the other. You would rather delegate the right to bear arms and to defend yourself to other people. You don’t know where your tax money is spent—out of sight, out of mind—but are confident authority will spend it on some “public good”. Your sense of justice has been reduced to strict legalism. In short, Tobias, your ideology is servile and unjust and immoral.

But again, thanks for the funny video.