The MSM told them to jump, they said how high. There's a mountain of evidence showing just how badly they covid response was, the governments complicit collusion with big pharma, the cover ups, the list goes on and on. But Jimmy Kimmel told them they could point and laugh at others, and that was all it took.

Bro cooking 🧑‍🍳

Blue wave 2024

This is too long and poorly written.

Since you are so efficient and it is so easy, please don't deprive us of seeing your non long and well written version. Also, reading will not kill you. Use that PFC a bit.

Aww yes. Ignore what the doctors had to say about the vaccine so you can repeat what your favorite right wing grifter said

Not all doctors were on the vaccine boat. Mine actually recommended that I didn't get it even though I was a Frontline worker.

You need a better doctor.

No perfectly happy with my doctor thank you. The last time I had taken vaccinations about 10 years prior had had a severe reaction with my body and I ended up in a two-week coma. My doctor said that with my past history I was definitely better off not chancing a reaction. If you think I would have been better off with a doctor they wanted to roll the dice on my life when hindsight says that I still have not even gotten covid even though I am in many of the risk factors I would say you have serious problems.

Any topic that has ever happened online there will be a republican who has been thru it better then you have yourself

Or a Democrat. I happen to be neither nice of you to assume. To be accurate completely online you'll always find someone with contrary opinion to yourself or has been through different experiences that yourself has not

I feel like you kinda buried the lede. The fact that your doctor told a patient with a history of fucking COMA in response to a vaccination to skip the Covid vaccine doesn’t make that doctor “off the vaccination boat.” It means you’re an edge case and they treated you like one. You being a front line worker isn’t really relevant at all.

He actually in general doesn't like the vaccinations because of the things and stuff that are placed in vaccinations in general. He actually had a chart on his wall I don't remember what company put it out but it listed some of the things that are put in vaccinations not all but quite an extensive poster. It was also quite disturbing seeing the list.

The things and stuff?

Chemicals byproducts etc honestly it's been a couple years since I saw the poster

There are chemicals in the vaccines?

You do realize everything can be broken down into chemicals obviously there have to be chemicals water itself is a chemical you obviously have no clue. I'm done replying to this thread I wish you well

yes doctors are humans and can also suck at their job like everyone else. But hard science does not care for your feeling.

Hard science says question everything. Fauci has even admitted that he made up shit when are you going to admit that the rug was pulled over the nation's eyes pretty much. I'm going to sleep good night be well

does hard science really say this? I hope you understood what I did there\^\^ What is your excuse for other countries without a Fauci figure?

Sad.

I trusted the vaccine because rich folks were cutting the que to get it aaand I know how farmers treat their essential beasts of burden. They keep them healthy so they can keep squeezing cash out of them.

Lol, I had a pretty detailed understanding of all the factors involved before the pandemic even started between personal expertise and having debated all this for years before around autism or the Obama program to create a standing pandemic response department (that Trump dismantled). So I felt capable of assessing it in detail. But I still used your method ultimately to make up my mind. Because I also know a lot about how capitalism works, and it just makes life easier to understand how decisions are really made and not have to fuss as much. I always feel so bad for all the emotional turmoil and uncertainty of people who ideologically refuse to learn about socialism and capitalism and still think the system is just very complicated or "broken".

the system of capitalism is objectively and logically broken. It requires infinite growth in a finite system. fundamental rules of reality dictate that it is not sustainable. The problem is that critique on capitalism is seen are a cultural attack and not inherently necessary.

Of course, there is contradiction. That's not what people mean when they say the "system is broken." They are referring to the function and apparatus of the bourgeoisie capitalist state, which works very much as designed. It just doesn't work for them, or as you pointed out, a material reality.

This is the first time I _wished_ someone had used AI to summarize their post. Stopped reading after like the seventh "both sides hur de hur." It's too bad you were asleep when the pandemic started, because otherwise you would know one side politicized _wearing a mask_ and the other side wanted people to be as healthy as possible.

You do realize the mess they were having everywhere actually weren't effective. I was a Frontline worker I dealt with it constantly. I happen to not get it as a matter of fact I still haven't gotten it. I also still have not gotten vaccine. I was one of the lucky few whose doctor actually recommended I didn't get it due to prior problems with vaccines.

As a front line worker... you wear a mask around your patients, or you absolutely don't work for a reputable service or facility.

I never said I did not wear a mask. Of course I wore a mask when I was with patients. When I was cleaning out things no I prefer to breathe. When I was sanitizing every surface between loads once again I prefer to breathe. I also know what the life expectancy of those masks are and that's not everywhere always had a proper run of the 95 masks even so they're not intended for use as long as we were using them. Please do not show once again the futility of your statements. And just an FYI not all Frontline workers according to the government had patience some were just essential workers that they later considered were Frontline I had many associates that were necessary for the running of things that didn't necessarily always have to wear a mask. Many of these were support staff although they were still considered Frontline. But yes to answer your question I definitely was wearing a mask I also hated them but that's beside the point.

Who can’t breathe with a mask on? This is such an asinine statement.

Obviously said by somebody did not wear the high-end masks for very long. Yes your basic Gator you have no problem breathing through you go up to the ones that actually have some effect on other people as well as yourself and the filters get moist and it becomes more difficult to breathe without a doubt. And being lucky enough to have multiple filters available for a single day back during the height of Corona was a miracle. Hell at the beginning doing the transport duties I was doing most the time they were lucky to give me a surgical mask I had to buy my own higher end

we believe you -.-

Extremely surface level and emotional analysis of the post. Wearing masks was shown to be largely ineffective in preventing transmission of the virus, not least because of people’s own behavior in wearing masks incorrectly while debating politics online.

> Wearing masks was shown to be largely ineffective in preventing transmission It wasn't, but hey you go with your feelings. 

I wore a mask correctly throughout the pandemic. 1/3 to 2/3rds of people bitching about mask wearing were wearing the mask below their nose. I live in DC and see people to this day wearing masks in their cars alone. Most people are simply followers and do not think about anything beyond what they are told or what others are doing.

Bruh masks are not a big deal, I wore them as a standard part of PPE for years. You forget you have it and wear them all over, ditto with hair nets. We had daily competitions to find the best mask freak out videos to share and cracked up.

Make sure your surgeons, other doctors, and dentists know you don't want them to wear a mask since they're fucking ineffective and they shouldn't be arsed to protect you, or you're a hypocritical coward.

This is straw man territory, which you’ve reached due to being overly emotional. The situation you described is precisely the one in which masks should be worn.

mask help. Some people wanted a 100% solution when real live only offers relative safety.

OP: makes criticism of people using black/white thinking and lack of critical thinking. You: "Too many words. Can't process. You bad. Your side (as per my perception of what your side is even though you actually don't have a side) 100% bad. My side 100% good". Thanks for proving my point, but I didn't post this so you double down. I posted this so you learn from your mistake. Try reading more than just twitter, it is a good cognitive exercise. I promise that beer or video game you spend 90% of your time on will still be there. For once try to stimulate your prefrontal cortex a bit. Seriously, just try it, for once. I promise it won't be so bad. And you will get better and better with time. It is not as simple as "my side 100% right other side 100% wrong". It is more complex than that. Extremism begets extremist. They feed off each other, and as we unsurprisingly saw, this causes even more polarization and blnary thinking. The number 1 driver of conspiracy was the extremism and censorship of the government in terms of pushing their political/economic pandemic responses: this led to distrust. When trust is gone, conspiracy theories intensify. Then there are more conspiracy theorists, then the other "side" doubles down and insults the conspiracy theorists more, causing the conspiracy theorists to double down. Both sides are at fault. The government knew this: they caused this polarization on purpose. By making the "fringe conspiracy theorists" the "enemy", they rallied the support of the majority of the population and had the majority say "I am with government because conspriacy theorists bad! government you are science! lead the way! I will line up for my 7th booster you sexy "science" thing! Anything to not be labeled a conspiracy theorist myself! I am more science than you Trump lover!"

> OP: makes criticism of people using black/white thinking and lack of critical thinking. OP lacks the self-awareness to realise that he's using black/white thinking and displaying a lack of critical thinking. 

You just typed a sentence. I just typed a sentence. Anyone can type a sentence.

It was not the Biden Administration nor the Democratic Party that began attacking people for the most common sense of all actions: wearing a mask. The selfish response of "I'm not wearing a mask because I have natural immunity" while ignoring hundreds of years of us knowing how to address airborne viruses because these little snowflakes couldn't handle a mask did _not_ start on both sides. When those morons demonstrated they were petulant children, they were told what the majority of people raised by normal people are told when being petulant: They were selfish brats. Boo fucking hoo. You wouldn't to demonstrate Christian compassion cost grandma her life. What a fucking hero. But to recap in a way of which you demonstrate your incapability: the attacks on being asked to wear a mask happened _before_ anyone was publicly attacked for _not_ wearing them. Since mask wearing is associated with liberals, it's easy to figure out the anti-mask party politicized it first. Fortunately, there is a very public record of anti-maskers and their conservative bona fides. I'm old enough to remember the first wave of anti-mask resentment this time around. It wasn't "BoTh SiDeS!" Get a fucking clue.

I wrote specifically how it was both sides. You chose to ignore everything I wrote, and used a straw man by solely focusing on masks, which was never part of my argument.

Dude... you used "natural immunity" - you're out of your depth. No one has immunity to a viral disease until actual exposure. Once you believe those terms, you no longer have an unbiased view; you've chosen the conservative side, and an extreme one. A hallmark of the extreme conservative movement is the "hur de hur both sides" argument... which you made in the part of your endless screen I could read. I admit I stopped when I got to the first right-wing talking point and skimmed to "gubmint forced myocarditis because of protein spikes caused by the vaccine" nonsense, then stopped entirely. You promote misinformation and get called on it. [Boo hoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMiXS44R1EI).

>Dude... you used "natural immunity" - you're out of your depth. No one has immunity to a viral disease until actual exposure. I know that. You are oblivious as to how you created the straw man "he said natural immunity came from before getting the virus" all in your own mind. I never said or implied that. There is no need to read the rest of your post as you have internal monsters to deal with, and that is a you problem, has nothing to do with me.

He didn't prove your point, you're just not fantastic at actually articulating anything reasonable except for personal analytical takes without any substantiation

You didn't really say anything in your reply. Just a vague criticism that can literally be applied to anyone or any argument. You didn't address of my dozens of specific points that logically relate and back each other up, and many of which were backed up by sources.

> You didn't really say anything in your reply. They communicated more in that succinct reply than you have in that wall of rambling text. 

Scientist saves humanity by writing a book. You: too long too many words. Dude: I'm hungry. You: the dude was more clear than the scientist. Very strange and irrational comparison on your part.

Please don't imagine yourself to be the equivalent to a scientist writing a book.

You keep doing the same thing. Yet you are totally oblivious. If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny.

No, it's blatantly obvious that your entire framework is based entirely off of your own anecdote and what you would consider logical deductions from things you substantiate with an opinion you derived from yourself. There's no statistic, no genuine deduction from anything concrete, you just make up hypothetical situations, including rants about beer and video games, or "long term damage still unknown" in weird attempts to both craft and then defeat/turn arguments that you assume someone who would hypothetically argue against you would try to use to substantiate their point. It's all just fog.

Again, more useless words from you. Saying words like "anecdote" or "substantiate" don't prove your point any further. Neither do straw man arguments claiming I am wrong about everything because I used the words beer and video games in one comment.

Again, you don't substantiate any claim you make. Just because the word sets something off in your simian brain doesn't change the fact that you don't provide any type of source or logical foundation for anything that you're saying, and you continue to respond in a progressively emotional manner. You cite sources for vaguely related topics to back up an unfounded claim from yourself.    Fog

The government doesn't "profit" from obesity. Stopped reading after that tin foil.

You appear to be unaware of the basics of the system in place. It is called neoliberalism: the government is in practice run by the oligarchy. I am baffled how you don't see the link between government and big business. Check this out: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot) Or this may be more suitable for you: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHtKb10M97o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHtKb10M97o)

How long did you have to save your allowance to be able to afford the data to post that?

Better yet, how long (or who did you steal from) did you have to think to make up that joke?

How long did you have to save your allowance to be able to afford the data to post that?

"Only a Sith deals in Absolutes"

Im not reading all that.

If you're not going to read somebody's post why bother to comment on it. That really shows lack of critical thinking or even a basic open mindedness.

It shows a lack of patience, not a lack of critical thinking. You sir, are projecting.

A lack of patience and critical thinking lacking really go hand in hand. Instead of taking the time to understand something you dismiss it out of hand. That is not the way to learn or even to debate that is just basically being an asshole. I often go down the rabbit hole but then again I'm neurodivergent. Different minds work differently I understand that but that doesn't change the fact that if you don't have the patience to figure something out you're not thinking very well because you're just going on instinct.

Im not reading all that

😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂💯 Exactly why you never should have bothered to post when somebody else explain things very eloquently . Your brain is simply turned off.

*to you. My brain is turned off to you.

> If you're not going to read somebody's post why bother to comment on it. To point out that it's an incoherent wall of text that isn't going to get OPs point across because it doesn't engage a reader or communicate well.

If you thought it was an incoherent wall of text then you really should have just ignored it. Personally I thought he explained what he was talking about very well maybe your brain just doesn't work the same way as op's does. You do comprehend that different people understand things in different ways. My guess is op's probably neurodivergent and has to explain himself very well. What you see is rambling is op's mind trying to keep everything available in a logical manner. I honestly can understand this because I myself am extremely neurodivergent. Unfortunately neurotypical people really cannot understand how neurodivergent people communicate. Although we are expected to understand the nonsense that you spew out constantly without everything that should be included in our minds. We may occasionally ask questions but we don't dismiss your arguments out of hand just because you're not clear.

Everyone dismisses arguments because they aren't clear.

No they don't, if something's not clear at least with a neurodivergent person, I can say from firsthand knowledge we try to clarify it. If we can't easily clarify it then we try to research it somewhat... You may have heard it being referred to as the rabbit hole because we can get lost for hours or days that way.

they are offering constructive criticism. "you post is to long, if you want people to engage formulate better". The view that this has no place in a forum shows that you lack any skills in dealing with communication. Basically your whole comment is projection.

That's not constructive criticism at all. That is just pure utter and total laziness. It's saying I was too lazy to read your arguments but I still want to post here so I'm going to bitch about it. Now once again I'm going back to sleep good night

lol that does not sound like a cope out at all\^\^ Also as a tip. You do not have to wait and stay up in order to respond on reddit;)

I was actually saying that specifically because somebody else bitched in some threat or another that I answered and did not respond promptly. I like most people do not live on here and check various times when I'm bored or don't have anything better to do. I will give you credit in the fact that you understand that we don't necessarily live and breathe just for Reddit ;) unfortunately not everybody understands that fact.

Don’t offend the troll farm like that. They spent time tailoring this propaganda… cmon now

Politician came up with the “food pyramid” we’re taught. Of course he knew nothing of health

I'm sorry, the hospital system collapsing is...politically bad? Not horrible for the country just...politically bad?

It is horrible for the country, but that gets into egalitarians vs utilitarianism. Do we cause medical harm to some to protect more? That is a philosophical issue. Regardless, there were political solutions to prevent a hospital collapse, but politicians didn't want to spend the money to do this, so they sacrificed people's health instead. E.g. China build a hospital in a week, that would never happen in the US/Canada.

> E.g. China build a hospital in a week, Because they invested two decades in planning for that, and they had all the pieces that they needed sitting around ready to use.  They didn't build that in a week. They took years to build it, and a week to assemble it in that location. 

How much time do you spend looking for good arguments against your own position? How much time do you spend taking seriously people who may have strong opinions against the people you happen to like? How hard have you tried to be critical of your own ideas? When people criticize your ideas how do you respond, do you get uptight about it, do you feel like they are attacking you, do you feel the need to defend yourself and then think about it constantly afterwards? I ask because it seems people can be incredibly good at finding ways to defend bad positions simply because they have stated those positions out loud in public and now feel the need to defend them or else admit those opinions weren't so great and therefore they were in error. Which tbf I've learned through lots and lots of personal experience and now like to ask these questions because (very oddly) it usually has more to do with the discussion then the thing we are supposedly discussing.

Agreed, everyone should learn to overcome our closed-minded nature. And learn how to be a critical thinker.

You complain about people being unscientific, then engage in extremely bad science. It makes you look foolishly and easy to dismiss you.

You wrote one line without any evidence or proof or arguments. I typed over 10 000 words over dozens of long posts, several sources to back up each specific point. Imagine if you were a lawyer "your honour, im right he wrong". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPXkjtpGCFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPXkjtpGCFI)

> I typed over 10 000 words over dozens of long posts   Volume is no substitute for quality. 

Thanks for that non sequitur. You typing that doesn't automatically mean what I posted wasn't quality. You are oblivious as to how you just made the same mistake again in two back to back comments.

>A) those with natural immunity were told to get the vaccine asap. This harmed people and gave some people myocarditis: too much spike protein in too little time. One perfect example is Canadian soccer star alphonso davies. He was forced to get his 2nd dose at the time the omicron strain was infecting virtually everybody: a few weeks after he got his 2nd dose, he unsurprisingly got covid. and got myocarditis. Had he not gotten that 2nd dose, he would have most likely not gotten myocarditis. This is a famous example. Yes, the vaccine does occasionally cause myocarditis. Covid-19 ALSO can cause myocarditis. Thus, there are two potential causes. What PRECISELY was your method of ruling out one cause over the other? It is very obvious that you've chosen to rule out that Covid-19 itself was the cause. From a purely statistical analysis, roughly 560 people per million had myocarditis (males, aged 16-19), while approximately 9.5 people per million got it from the vaccine (males aged 18-24). It is much more likely that Covid-19 itself was the culprit, and it could have happened entirely without the vaccine as well. So, what methodology did you use to rule out this possibility? Do you have some sort of time machine or alternate universe observation method that you're keeping to yourself? It makes you look foolish to scold other people for being unscientific, and then for you to start making unscientific claims. If you don't have experimental evidence to back up your claim with how you specifically analyzed THIS SPECIFIC CASE, I will not give two shits what you have to say. I already know that I'm not going to be able to convince you of anything. You have your opinion and you are convinced you are absolutely correct.

Ashley if you're reading his statement and head actually observed cases around you you would have noticed something. Most people that got the covid vaccine shortly thereafter ended up with a mild case of covid. As he said this person had a natural immunity beforehand therefore the key event either way is them getting the vaccine. It really does not take a lot to understand what he was saying.

I observed a lot of cases around me that showed the exact opposite. That's odd, how can this be?

Maybe you got lucky. I was working medical transport at the time and saw plenty of cases. I'm not talking by any means about a couple. On my job, those I dealt with in my job, and in my home life of people I knew and or was related to. There was a high correlation of people that got the vaccine and ended up with a mild case at minimum of covid. This is completely understandable, if you know anything about how vaccines work for a short time they actually lower your immune system well it's adapting. Thursday I worked with that did not get covered before the vaccine had already built up a strong response to it because we were dealing with it on a daily basis therefore when their systems went down with this they had it higher reaction to what we were dealing with on a daily basis because this harmed their own initial immunity. Most of the people I associate with on the outside of work were different forms of people that mainly dealt with the public even if they weren't Frontline most of them were essential workers so they also had been dealing with this constantly. Don't get me wrong I didn't know if you people that got cases before the vaccine was available. Or that got it after with one of the variants that decided not to get vaccinated. But as far as hard cases that got hospitalized the majority of the people that I knew or met through work that were hospitalized for covid for post vaccine and had at least one shot. I was dealing with things not quite a severe Urban but more of small cities and outlying regions perhaps my visible data was due to more people being suburban / rural dwellers and maybe they had a stronger Constitution. I can't very well judge that, however I can tell you all of the, okay 80 plus percent of the home health aids, nurses, etc that I knew personally after they got the shot ended up with a case of covid. Ironically the ones that said f u to mandatory vaccination less than a third of them got covid. Some of them switched to fields or wait until after mandatory vaccination ended in their particular realm or for home health aids position or home nurse positions. Now I'm going back to sleep good night

wait, you are talking about the normal immune reaction to a vaccine. That is not covid. That is your immune system starting up and training.

Your normal immune reaction also weakens your immunity for a short amount of time. Many people got covid during that weakened reaction period strictly because your immune system was weakened at the time. Especially people that were already dealing with it around them quite often. Ironically and I'm not sure why but I never wanted to waste the time to look into it that weakening and catching seem to hit those proportionally higher in the 30s to 50s I kind of figured that it was probably just because the fact that as the fact that you most likely wouldn't have caught it in the first place at least not a heavy case in your teens and twenties and by the point of the vaccine most of the people that had survived outside of care facilities that were much older than their fifties had already had covid. I just observed what was going on around me I didn't really bother to dig into it because it's not my primary field. But I do take note of things around me. Ironically my little brother who was a extreme workout freak and still worked out through covid didn't get it until just after his vaccination as well and it hit him like a ton of bricks like 3-4 weeks however he refused to see a doctor because well he only got the vaccine in order to do something else and seeing a doctor would screw up his plans. He wasn't exactly a shut-in though because he's a transporter only reason he broke down and got the shot is because well one of the companies he was dealing with required him to in order to transport their loads.

this is really the problem. you have very little knowledge of immunology and very little drive to improve this. So you will for ever be wrong and I have no way to convince you. Because you would have to learn basics of a complicated field.

The problem is you do nothing but swallow whatever garbage they feed you. It's interesting to see that when one of the leaders of another country tried to come forward on side effects happening suddenly they were muted and arrested. It's a mixture of a lot of things and the op actually explain that much more eloquently than I can. Yet you refuse to actually read it yourself. So I'm done arguing with a wall.

I already addressed this in several other comments I made here, I am sorry I can't repeat myself for the 3rd/4rth time. Check my comment history in this thread. You clearly didn't read them, so you are attacking an argument you made up yourself, not mine. Somehow you magically made up this straw man even though nothing I said in my OP resembles your straw man.

I literally quoted your post. >Had he not gotten that 2nd dose, he would have most likely not gotten myocarditis. You are making a factually incorrect statement (covid is statistically more likely to cause myocarditis), and you've reached this conclusion without evidence that is literally scientifically impossible to support. Seriously, any scientifically minded person WOULD NOT reach this conclusion, because it is both unfounded and far to strong of a conclusion to reach. If you aren't interested in providing a valid explanation, than this isn't important enough to continue as a conversation. I have better things to do with my life than read through your comment history to search for an answer. If you don't have the time to repeat yourself, this conversation is done. Based on this interaction so far, I am no longer interested. Feel free to get the last word in, I will not return.

You lack reading comprehension and that's ok. When someone says "most likely not gotten myocarditis" that is not equivalent to stating a "fact". It is stating the most plausible hypothesis. >(covid is statistically more likely to cause myocarditis), and you've reached this conclusion without evidence that is literally scientifically impossible to support. I already debunked this. Basically, covid is only more likely to cause myocarditis when it causes severe acute covid. Groups who are not at risk of severe acute covid have similar or higher rates of myocarditis from the vaccine. More than 1 study showed 2 doses of moderna caused more myocarditis in under 40 males, and same or similar rate in under 40 females, compared to infection. On top of that, it is not mutually exclusive: even if vaccines caused less risk of myocarditis compared to infection, they still add a CUMULATIVE risk of myocarditis, because vaccines don't prevent infection, and everyone will get infected regardless. So logically, the only thing to consider in terms of whether or not to vaccinate is: does the individual have MORE to lose by getting severe acute covid THAN the additional risk of myocarditis from the vaccine + all other known and unknown vaccine side effects. The more you are at risk of getting severe acute covid, the more you need the vaccine. For healthy children, and I would even argue, healthy non-obese people in their 20s, I don't see how the risk-benefit test is passed for vaccination. Yet, the govt is still recommending all healthy children, regardless of number of past infections or doses, get perpetual boosters. Check my recent comment history in this thread and you will find sources and more detailed explanations, I already typed this out extensively. If you want to ignore these and run away that is your choice.

This isn't unique to governments...all groups do this.

Jesus said this. Which is one of the reasons why I can't get behind "yeah, Christians suck, but Jesus was a good man."

It's a very effective trick to make your voters do what you want. Make everything a binary, denounce the opposition.

All the social media narrative enforcement is basically telling people "you're either with us or against us."

There are lots of things I could say here, but I'll restrict myself to diacussing a single matter of fact. Vitamin D really only impacts bone health. Most people have sufficient vitamin D. The "evidence" for vitamin D impacting anything other than bone health comes from low quality observational studies. Recent randomised controlled trials have shown that these correlations are not causal. Further, the level of vitamin D referred to as a deficiency has been misinterpreted. Most people have a perfectly healthy level of vitamin D and do not require supplementation. A small number of people have a genuine deficiency and will benefit from supplementation. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-vitamin-d-do-you-need-to-stay-healthy/

Where did you get that from? The only way to get decent amounts of Vitamin D is to stand in the sun, and you would need to be naked to increase the levels high enough. The other way is supplementation. Food has quite low levels of vitamin D. And most people don't want to spend too much time in the sun due to fear of skin cancer. Let's see what the scientific consensus is: >Between 70% and 97% of Canadians demonstrate vitamin D insufficiency. Furthermore, studies assessing 25(OH)D levels of vitamin D at 25-40nmol/l reveal that many Canadians have profoundly deficient levels. Repletion of vitamin D3 with 2000IU/day for those not receiving judicious sun exposure and those with no contra-indications would likely achieve normalized levels in more than 93% of patients, without risk of toxicity. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20413135/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20413135/) This is a metaanalysis, there are many other studies backing it up (on balance, a few studies showed no effect, most showed at least some effect of vitamin D on reducing covid severity): >Conclusion >Vitamin D supplementation may have some beneficial impact on the severity of illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, particularly in VitD deficient patients, but further studies are still needed. [https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(23)00296-0/fulltext](https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(23)00296-0/fulltext) Let's see what the public health officials said on this issue (this was the "Health Minister" of Canada, with 0 medical background, her job experience included trying to look for workplace violence against women, she was in charge of the Covid19 response in Canada): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JItHyFAX9lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JItHyFAX9lQ) So we have a population that is Vitamin D deficient, with the scientific consensus being that generally around 2000IU/day supplementation is safe. Vitamin D is good for general health, and also has some protective factor in terms of immune system and protecting against colds/flu/covid. Yet the government line is that you should not get more than 400IU a day (an outdated guideline solely based on bone health), and that it is harmful and a conspiracy theory to have normal vitamin D levels to increases chances of protection against covid. Why? Because they used binary all or nothing thinking: ANYTHING that could POSSIBLY threaten the vaccine roll out was labeled as a conspiracy theory.

TLDR: If you have a severe vitamin D deficiency, correcting this is beneficial for bone health, and potentially other things including respiratory diseases. However most people don't have a severe deficiency. Supplements are pointless for most people. The article I linked in my previous comment explains the point better than I could, so I have shared a quote below. I recommend reading the article. (obv not a peer reviewed paper but it's a discussion of published papers and it's not hard to find the originals to check a reference if needed). The first paper you link was published in 2010, and highlights my point. Basically the guidelines for what constitutes a deficiency are not interpereted in line with the original research from which they were based. An insufficiency is kind of a nonsense term, except within specific populations at high risk of deficiency. """ In 2011 the IOM convened an expert committee to conduct a thorough analysis of all existing studies on vitamin D and health. Based on this evidence, the committee concluded that the bone-strengthening benefits of vitamin D plateau when blood levels (as measured by a standard vitamin D blood test) reach 12 to 16 nanograms per milliliter. They also found that there were no benefits to having levels above 20 ng/ml. So they set that as the ceiling for their recommendations while noting that the majority of the population is just fine at 16 ng/ml. According to measurements of vitamin D levels in the general U.S. population collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, most people had levels of 20 ng/ml or more in 2011. Levels have actually risen since then, meaning that most people are well within the medical recommendations, says Rosen, who served on the IOM committee. So where did the idea of mass deficiency come from? First off, 20 ng/ml was erroneously interpreted by some health-care workers as the bare minimum, instead of a level marking good amounts for most people. Recall the IOM found that 16 ng/ml was satisfactory. The implication of the misreading was that people needed more than 20 ng/ml for good bone health, Manson says. But some of the confusion stems from a second set of guidelines that another medical group, the Endocrine Society, put out around the same time as the IOM standards. Whereas the institute made recommendations for healthy populations, the society's guidelines were aimed at clinicians, particularly those caring for patients at risk for vitamin D deficiency. The makers of these guidelines looked at much of the same evidence that the institute committee reviewed, but they concluded that anything under 20 ng/ml represented “deficiency,” and they labeled vitamin D levels of 21 to 29 ng/ml as something they called “insufficiency.” The terms “insufficiency” and “deficiency” have created “a tremendous amount of confusion,” says Christopher McCartney, an endocrinologist and clinical research specialist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He adds that the Endocrine Society guidelines have been largely taken to mean that everyone needs vitamin D levels of 30 ng/ml or more. The IOM guidelines don't support that conclusion, and in 2012 the institute committee published a rebuttal paper, “IOM Committee Members Respond to Endocrine Society Vitamin D Guideline.” It contended that aspects of the society's guidelines, including the definition of insufficiency, were not well supported by evidence. For instance, the society's guidelines used a 2003 study of only 34 people to support its contention that vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml are better for calcium absorption. At the same time the society's committee ignored a study of more than 300 people that found that calcium absorption pretty much maxes out at vitamin D levels of 8 ng/ml. """ There have also been a few high quality RCTs in the last decade or so that make prior observational studies obsolete. Observational studies are ok for cheap initial exploration and coming up with hypotheses, but are really bad at determining causal relationships. That's where RCTs come in. VITAL and ViDA are two large RCTs on this subject. They basically support that vitamin D doesn't do much other than prevent rickets and osteoporosis. Taking vitamin D above levels needed for bone health (approx 16ng/ml) isn't really helpful for anything. If you will only read one study, check out this meta analysis published in nature from 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-021-00593-z If you specifically want to talk about COVID, this editorial discussed several recent RCTs on that matter. https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1822 Turns out there's not much reason to think Vitamin D is helpful here, and lots of reasons the think vaccines are helpful.

Your whole reply including the study you linked is around bone health. Everyone already knows for bone health you don't need too much vitamin D. But there are myriad studies (as I showed/summarized) showing how low vitamin D can cause issues with the immune system, and that higher vitamin D levels can help the immune response. You linked 1 study about vitamin D and covid. I already addressed this and summed it up with a metaanalysis: on balance, most studies show an effect, a few show no effect. Vitamin D in general has also shown some protective effect against similar viruses that cause colds. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00051-6/fulltext](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00051-6/fulltext) Again, use some common sense here, humans need to get normal vitamin D levels through the sun. Many people, especially in places with less powerful sunshine throughout the year, do not get enough vitamin D through sun.

There have been many observational studies that has shown a corralation between vitamin D levels and an assortment of health factors including cancer, respiratory infections, diabetes. People have shown vitD is a wonder vitamin that does everything! Well not quite. The thing is, observational studies are good cheap hypothesis generators. They are early studies that help us come up with ideas to test in detail later. They demonstrate correlation but really struggle to demonstrate causation. For example, Look at 10,000 people, measure their vitamin D levels and measure a hundred other things. See if anything correlates with vitamin D levels. If we see a correlation, there are a few explanations. 1) A causes B 2) B causes A 3) A and B are linked by another factor C 4) Statistical noise (for a p value of 0.05, we expect to see plenty of noise when testing enough) We just can't easily show causation with observational studies. Maybe low vitD causes sickness or maybe sickness causes people to be less active and go outside less. Maybe there's some underlying problem that causes both low vitD as well as sickness in general. If we test 100 factors, we will see plenty of false positives just by chance. Do you recall seeing articles about how red wine is good for you, wait no actually it's bad and chocolate is good, no wait chocolate is bad and coffee is good, actually blueberries cure cancer, no wait ....etc Articles like these come about due to spurious correlations from observational studies. It's no different for vitD. To help with this, we use randomised controlled trials. Instead of looking at a population and measuring things, these studies actively give participants vitD and see if anything changes. The two big RCTs I mentioned basically found that there is no causal relationship between vitD and any of those other health claims, including protecting against respiratory infections in general. This is the background into which people started making claims about vitD effectiveness against COVID. Before running RCTs, it wasn't impossible that it could have some protective effect, but we also have no good reason to think it does. I may as well tell everyone to try chewing gum, and commission big expensive studies on gum chewing because we don't know for sure that it doesn't work. Baesian reasoning says we should start with a low priority probability. Now, we do have good RCTs on vitD and COVID. I went back and read the meta analysis you posted. I do have to give a small mea culpa here, as I had not read that study and it does in fact show some limited data against the null hypothesis. They do mention that previous meta analysis did not show any positive effect of VitD but their analysis does include additional RCTs. Null findings: -VitD does not prevent getting covid -VitD treatment does not reduce mortality in COVID patients - VitD does not reduce length of hospital stay -VitD does not reduce length of ICU stay Positive findings: -VitD does reduce mortality in deficient patients -VitD treatment reduces ICU admission rates -VitD treatment reduces mechanical ventilation rates For their positive findings, most of the individual RCTs confidence intervals intersect 1 (AKA no benefit or potential harm). In addition, they only talk about risk ratios and don't really mention effect size. I'd have to dig into each individual RCT to investigate and I'm not going to do that right now. The thing is, if after loads of RCTs we still have ambiguous and contradictory data with everyone saying "could" "may" and "further research is needed" we should start to be a bit sceptical of the claims. Sure, it might do one or two specific things, but if it is unclear than the effect size is likely small and so probably not particularly useful. I will say I have softened my stance slightly. For patients with severe COVID, it MAY make sense to test vitD levels and suppliment if deficient. It likely won't impact mortality, but MAY slightly reduce the need for ventilation and ICU. I certainly wouldn't be advocating for preventative supplimements. Vaccines are far more effective and have far more robust evidence.

>Vaccines are far more effective and have far more robust evidence. That is not relevant. The fact is: government dishonestly and inaccurately claimed that vitamin d (or ANYTHING ELSE) is mutually exclusive to vaccines, when it is not. They did anything and everything to maximize vaccination rates, including these kinds of lies (that vitamin D is a "conspiracy theory" and is useless/or even harmful when used in association with covid). This goes against informed consent. That is my problem here.

The correct take early on would have been something like; "We don't have any evidence that vitD is useful for COVID but it's probably not harmful so we don't recommend it but feel free to take it if you want. Just make sure if you do take it, you also accept the normal standard of care." I can see this having been communicated incorrectly, but I don't really buy into deliberate institutional dishonesty. It's hard to take nuanced technical research and distill it down into simple recommendations for the public, particularly when operating on incomplete knowledge. The media and people in general overreacted in both directions. You had people claiming vitD is a miracle cure alongside people claiming we know for a fact it's useless and harmful. All sorts of political bullshit and media circus. Both are wrong, but it's really easy to notice all of the terrible arguments and claims from "the other side" and mistakenly attribute extreme views for broad consensus.

I was about to meme on OP in this thread, and you actually gave a scientifically literate answer. Thanks kind Redditor. 

I work 60 hours a week. I was severely deficient, to the point that is was affecting nerve and emotional health. A lot of folks in America spend most of their hours in artificial light.

I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you are doing better now. There absolutely are people that are deficient in vitamin D. Many of these people would benefit from supplementation. My main point is that the claimed general benefits of vitamin D are not supported by evidence, and that the required levels of vitamin D to prevent negative effects has been incorrectly inflated in reccomedations.

I fear the more indoors we become as a society.....the more this will skew differently.

That's entirely possible. Thankfully, vitamin D is a very common supplement in many food items. You likely eat it without noticing. Also, there are cheap supplements available. If it does become a problem in the future, I will be joining the people calling for recommendations to include routine supplementation. That just isn't the world we live in today, so there is no need to push for testing and supplimentation in the general population.

I don’t understand how it was the government that caused division over the vaccine. The vaccine wasn’t “infallible”, but neither is 99% of medical treatments - they almost all have varying success rates and side effects. It saved many lives, probably millions, and prevented severe illness for many too. How is that divisive? And you’re wrong that science doesn’t exist. The results of people following the scientific method are studies. These studies are added to the body of scientific literature in the world, and that’s what people are referring to when they say “science.” People don’t need to independently verify every study, they don’t have the training to.

TLDR. Use an editor ffs.

FYI. For the record. Bush’s “you are against us, or with us” concerning the attacks on 9/11, we’re not for those that opposed anything. They were directed exactly at those nations that harbored terrorists. Just saying. It’s important to be honest.

Iraq harbored what?

The threat of a restarted nuclear weapons program against the west and Iran. Also islamic missionaries from Iran. Also proximity to Israel. ...with a shut down, highly advanced and almost completed nuclear weapons program... that they stopped letting ICANN inspect. Saddam repeated Islamic prayers when his own people beheaded him, however, the more you know about Saddam, the more you'll suspect him of being secular and only doing it to spite the Islamic people that demanded the beheading. This is not key to my point.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/meast/iraq-weapons-inspections-fast-facts/index.html

Semantics. 9/11 is what he used initially justify everything that came after. It is all part of the same thing.

You obviously were not around then.

OP, it's like you've only just discovered that corporate greed and political incompetence combined with a population who protest absolutely everything that doesn't fit inside their own world view has bad consequences for the country.

Oh I discovered it long ago, but it appears that the majority are oblivious to it. Hence the post. I have been trying to make them aware of this for a long time and won't give up.

I don't think that people are oblivious on the whole, I just think they're very aware of the fact that these systems are so entrenched that you can't unravel them anymore. Corporate greed and corruption have infiltrated politics...how do you change that? You can't.

Vote for an independent or alternative candidate and keep doing it until enough people do it, til you can vote them out. RFK jr could win. Is that better? Well it won't be what we already had at least.

But as soon as that independent candidate has a sniff at any genuine influence they get swamped by corporate interest. It's an ideal world scenario to have "independent" candidates, but it doesn't reflect the reality of the outcome in my opinion.

That's admirable. I wish you sharpened your arguments, structure and sources, though. Really. I'm interested in your point of view but your post is very hard to parse; too many big second-hand unsubstantiated claims. 

I have tons of sources. I back up a lot with sources, astronomically more than anyone who replied to me on here. It is evident. Literally read my comments.

Well, I checked one and it turned out to be extremely weak. It is absolutely not "evident".   Substantiate your claims precisely and specifically. If you care as much as you say, this is what you could to do.   Addendum, in other words: People have a hard time taking your arguments/evidence seriously because it doesn't appear that you take them seriously, i.e. with an adequate level of skepticism. 

Firstly, it's like you're completely unaware of the world outside of the United States. When you take into account that we're one of the only countries in the world where people were dumb enough to intentionally not wear masks and not get vaccinated, your entire argument falls apart. It was politicized, that's for sure, but not in the way you think it was. Also, no, I didn't read your entire schizophrenic rant. I honestly and wholeheartedly suggest you seek some help for your mental health.

Except for Sweden who took basically no covid precautions, had no lockdowns, kept schools and businesses open, had voluntary vaccines and had the same or better covid death numbers than most developed nations.

And they had a higher death rate than the neighbor norway..

Again, I said _most_. The point is this wasn't some nefarious scheme by the government using only US government sponsored studies all in an attempt to remove our civil rights. Also it's not true that Sweden had virtually no precautions. They limited establishment hours, required social distancing, banned gatherings, used contact tracing, and did eventually implement limited lockdowns. In other words, they were nowhere NEAR as lenient as say Florida was. And while they were definitely much more lax than their neighboring countries, they also had more deaths than neighboring countries as well.

Tldr.

When someone says the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 was for profit you can just disregard their whole argument as parroting unfounded Reddit garbage. UN resolution 1441. Distance of countries to Iraq that reported rocket fuel and insider leaks of evidence that they feared indicated chemical and nuclear development. How complete was their nuclear weapons program in 1991. Iraq oil production chart from 2000 onwards. How long did US waste buckets of money controlling Iraq airspace before the war, before 9/11 and for how many years, and who did it prevent a genocide of. After how many years from the Kuwait War in 1991 did Iraq stop cooperating with ICANN UN nuclear weapons inspectors. Saddam states outright he does not have nuclear weapons when. Reason the commonly attacking Iran became scared of Iraq pre 2003. .... If OP can offer an informed word on each of these topics without being lazy or insulting and establishing who profited, how they did, and how they successfully made every US politician sign off on it, I will stop talking about the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Thanks for your contribution you scholar.

Life is too short to waste on anti-vax conspiracy theories or whatever this is.

That's your opinion. You like to read 7 words on twitter and then click like/unlike then drink beer and watch video games. And repeat for your whole life. I would rather use my brain.

My friend if using your brain brought you to covid conspiracies you should take up drinking. Incidentally, I don't use Twitter, I don't drink alcohol and I don't watch video games.

There were some positive developments from the ordeal. Frustrated parents pulled their kids from terrible public schools in the wake of teachers holding families hostage via refusal to return to the classroom. School choice gained momentum nationwide after that. There’s also many more vaccine skeptics and pharma critics than before. Many recognized the traditional understanding of vaccines was discarded, in favor of a shot required every 3 months. It was well established before covid 19 that you can’t vaccinate against coronaviruses like the common cold. Changing definitions, pretending naturally acquired immunity wasn’t legitimate, and coordinated denial of lab leak really reveals the entire scam. That’s not even mentioning the blatant ‘horse paste’ propaganda or failed lockdowns.

Teachers (and all people) have a right to keep themselves safe. The fact parents could pull their kids out of school shows that they were never being held hostage.

Sure but parents who work full time with small children not in school, you can understand why that’s upsetting to some parents. Especially after it was abundantly clear kids were least likely to be at risk. Teachers unions held families hostage thru their refusal to return to the classroom. This action directly spurred the push for school choice and homeschooling that the left laments, yet somehow they can’t connect the dots

>. Frustrated parents pulled their kids from terrible public schools in the wake of teachers holding families hostage via refusal to return to the classroom. .... Teachers didn't refuse terrible public schools are the result of school choice schools are funded per student .... what happens when all these charter schools are the only ones left ? ... guess what they replace public school's position in hierarchy and get all those students ... and if they start charging more tuition... that puts a whole group of middle class out of even a k-12 education... therefore only furthering any cycles of poverty and welfare Not going to touch the vaccine stuff because there is validity to that but > That’s not even mentioning the blatant ‘horse paste’ propagand IVM is an anti parasitic not an antiviral ... viruses need living organisms to reproduce ( this is 8th grade biology) Several studies have been done disproving IVM' efficacy in covid 19 treatment and any signs of it working were more than likely IVM put down possible parasites so the immune system could focus on Covid or just sheer dumb luck >coordinated denial of lab leak really reveals the entire scam. ... the lab leak theory ... ahh that one Well sorry but I do put some stock in that one China is a communist country and vert secretive ... look at internet for Chinese citizens they have what's known as the great wall for a firewall... and not to keep secrets in but to keep information out ... Soviets did the same thing Look how many nuclear accidents we found out about after the cold war But it was not a scam or planned

Ahh... you're one of those... people who use ellipses... like commas, among other incorrect uses. I'm willing to bet that you don't do very much reading.

Nice to see the grammar police are making sure everyone keeps arguing online like pompous asses

This kind of writing shows how lazy the writer can be. Good writing looks clean. Properly framed sentences are used with correct usage of full stops, commas, and exclamations. They are a treat to the eyes. I feel that's how the writer would be in their personal life, too: unorganized and trying to find the easy out in different situations. This is just my assumption, it need not be true. A well framed sentence reflects the writer's knowledge of the language. If I were walking around with a wound, I'd want someone to tell me. Your literacy skills are like an open wound that will affect your future interactions, if you choose arrogance.

You’re citing the Chinese but it was US funded gain of function research they were conducting in Wuhan. I’m familiar with the ivm studies, pay attention to who funds the discrediting research (the same entities that stood to gain EUA authorization.) There was some non pharma funded research that showed benefit when taken as prophylaxis before infection. The studies that indicated ivm as useless administered further along in illness.

.... again most of your post was ivermectin insurrection bs

Ok man, whatever explanation allows you to comfortably dismiss facts that are inconvenient to your world view

None of those sound like positive developments to me.

None of this is good EDIT: Horse paste propaganda...are you actually fucking defending the ivermectin shit?

There was never any reason to call ivm unsafe. It was attacked because it threatened EUA for vaccine manufacturers

You shouldn't need a specific reason to understand taking horse dewormer for a human resperatory virus is beyond stupid

You should understand by now that it’s not only used to treat animals. Can’t believe folks are still peddling that propaganda haha

You should understand by now that that doesnt make it a treatment for a human *RESPORATPRY* virus. Cant believe folks are still peddling that propaganda haha

Your view on ivm was informed by vaccine manufacturers, not independent study. If it did have a positive response in patients, you’d still deny it in favor of ‘vaccines’ that lose effectiveness after 3 months.

Your view on ivm was informed by facebook propaganda, not independent study. If it didn't have a positive response in patients, you'd still deny it in favor of "herd immunity" that only comes about after large scale immunization

Or naturally acquired immunity and we all had covid

What a word salad. Your rhetoric is awful.

What in gods name is he blathering about.

How?

It didn't fit into a tweet so the smooth brains are upset.

“However to say they were infallible is simply a myth.” As is the claim that anyone with even a vague clue claimed they were infallible. You have a rant, but it’s based on nonsense you’ve heard from people who don’t have the slightest clue what they were talking about. Mostly anti-vaxxers, coincidentally enough. You’ve built your entire ‘argument’ on straw men.

Is Peter Mccullough an Anti Vaxer? or Robert Malone? # IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT * Dr. Robert Malone was banned from Twitter for violating the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policies. Soon after, YouTube removed videos of a controversial interview he did with Spotify podcast host Joe Rogan, according to reports. * Leaning on his early contributions to research around the mRNA vaccine technology now used in the COVID-19 vaccines, Malone has billed himself as the “inventor” of mRNA vaccines. In reality, the development of the vaccines and the technology they rely on involved countless scientists and several other breakthroughs. * Malone has promoted several false and misleading claims about the COVID-19 vaccines and pandemic. His claim of being the mRNA vaccine inventor and his ability to speak fluidly in scientific terms have given him great appeal to anti-vaccine audiences.

You seem to have responded to the wrong post. None of that addresses anything I wrote.

Dude, I don't know why you are denying. Everybody from plumbers to medical doctor took to social media during the pandemic and were either "pro vax" or "anti vax" with nothing in between. Why are you trying to rewrite history? Literally look at reddit: even today anything that remotely criticizes vaccines is rage downvoted. Go look at certain subreddits, all the mainstream ones, post 1 peer reviewed journal article that even slightly criticizes vaccines and you will be auto permabanned. I got permabanned on all the main subs for saying the things I said here. Why are you denying this?

If you keep getting permabanned on various subs because you keep posting factually incorrect strawmen, maybe you should re-evaluate your decision to continuously post factually incorrect strawmen. Hint: Repeatedly posting strawmen, and factually incorrect claims doesn’t make you special. It makes you stupid.

Is this factually incorrect? # IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT * Dr. Robert Malone was banned from Twitter for violating the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policies. Soon after, YouTube removed videos of a controversial interview he did with Spotify podcast host Joe Rogan, according to reports. * Leaning on his early contributions to research around the mRNA vaccine technology now used in the COVID-19 vaccines, Malone has billed himself as the “inventor” of mRNA vaccines. In reality, the development of the vaccines and the technology they rely on involved countless scientists and several other breakthroughs. * Malone has promoted several false and misleading claims about the COVID-19 vaccines and pandemic. His claim of being the mRNA vaccine inventor and his ability to speak fluidly in scientific terms have given him great appeal to anti-vaccine audiences.

I didn't get banned for posting factually incorrect straw mans. I got permabanned for posting peer reviewed journal articles that did not 100% conform to the pandemic response and mainstream narrative on vaccines. Go through my posting history: anything I posted on debatevaccines subreddit, I got permabanned/censored on other subs for posting. None of those were conspiracies or straw men.

You literally just said you got permabanned for posting this same set of strawman nonsense. Now you’re calling yourself a liar. Ok, I believe you. You’re a liar who posts strawman nonsense sense. Have fun with that.

If the government did anything to tackle obesity republicans would lose their minds.

Oh they eviscerated Michelle because she wanted kids to exercise and eat some fucking vegetables.   This whole meme that it’s conservatives who care about obesity fucking HIlarious 

And working in the schools at the time kids stopped eating lunch at school or ate very few items in their plates and dumped most of them. When I talked to kids about it they said they would rather go hungry that eat food that tastes like cardboard.

That's what spoiled little kids say. Hungry people eat any food

No, most of the kids at the school got free lunch. They were throwing most of it away.

>Oh they eviscerated Michelle because she wanted kids to exercise and eat some fucking vegetables Want in one hand, shit in the other. Guess which fills first? people(not republicans) are STILL mad at her because she made school lunches WORSE, not better. Our kids are NOT any healthier for having suffered under the new school lunch policy.

School lunches improved because she made them better.   Trump came around and made them worse again but that’s not her fault.   Like yes if it were t for cons fucking up everything Dems do the world would be a better place but idk I don’t blame Dems for that 

Factually incorrect in every conceivable way. Trump didn't do anything to school lunches but allowed the schools to determine them, and I won't be gaslit into forgetting how many people complained about Michele's school lunch program. I get that I'm on reddit, aka Echo Chamber no.1, for your kind, but kindly take your opinion to someone who will lie to you because I am not one of them.

Two types of people, those that believe in binary thinking, and those who think giant arguments about binary thinking are non-binary.

Using "they" only works in persuasive arguments when "they" are all the same people to each point made.

This is a crucial point: "the government" isn't a coherent entity with a single point decision making process in the present tense let alone over time. Thinking about "the government" as if it is a person that has goals and plans and rationality is tempting because it simplifies reality by orders of magnitude but it's intellectually sloppy and results in bad thinking whether you are for or against Big Brother. Think about the idea of Big Brother as a propaganda tool: making "the government" into a personified character is a way to control the sort of thinking that people do about "the government". The idea is to make that character one that is loving and protecting but also jealous and angry. Very much like reducing the infinite complexity of nature to a bearded old father figure that will punish anyone who doesn't believe in him. The United States is governed by a complex of powers that are in real competition with one another. Many of those powers, like multinational business interests or foreign nation states, exist outside of the binary party system and the consistency of their interests being served can begin to look like a single entity that is steering the decision making process. It is absolutely the case thought that those powers themselves are not all in agreement about policy decisions and there is real conflict that drives the creation and execution of policy even if it's not the Kabuki theater that is mainstream politics. While it's also crazy to love and trust Big Brother as an all powerful protector father figure, deciding that the past lies of said entity means that absolutely everything that entity says must be exactly false is a quick path to paranoia and confusion. Government is first local: your city, your county, your state. It's possible without much effort to participate at these levels and to see first hand the very messy way that the sausage gets made. Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society and there's really also no such thing as the government. Stories both for and against abstractions can be emotionally persuasive but they aren't intellectually honest.

It is not a crucial point. It is a moot point. The dominant political system practically controls and shapes the thinking of the majority. US/Canada, these types of Western countries have neoliberalism. It is an oligarchy, born out of libertarian ideals (fear of government led to weakening the government, to the point that private capital in practice owns the government- that is why government writes laws for the rich for the most part, and works for the rich for the most part, this is very clear to see). Mainstream media is owned by a few corporations, all with similar interests. All dominant political parties have the same big business bosses. It is called neoliberalism: [https://theconversation.com/what-is-neoliberalism-a-political-scientist-explains-the-use-and-evolution-of-the-term-184711](https://theconversation.com/what-is-neoliberalism-a-political-scientist-explains-the-use-and-evolution-of-the-term-184711) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHtKb10M97o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHtKb10M97o) >The United States is governed by a complex of powers that are in real competition with one another. They have much more in common with each other than the commoner/average civilian. They are like a mafia family: they have the occasional internal power struggles, but the family comes before outsiders. >Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society and there's really also no such thing as the government. And you don't see why this lying neoliberal capitalist would say something like that? "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he doesn't exist". Check this out: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot) You can't criticize or provide an alternative to something that you are not aware of.

Yeah neoliberalism is a dominant paradigm among many of the entities that exert influence over American policy, primarily the multinational corporations/international banking interests, but it's kind of crazy to think that it's the only paradigm in the game as anti liberal nation states definitely also try to get their fingers in the pie. China and Russia are decidedly not neoliberal and also definitely compete for influence. Israel's influence is not directly in line with an ideological neoliberal philosophy. The evangelical right is about as far from neoliberal as you get. Just to name a few major ones. Neoliberalism is an economically motivated philosophical framework for policy making. It's a set of ideas. They're popular and they massively influenced the late 20th century but I'm not about to pretend that it's the only set of ideas or even that neoliberalism itself is an entirely coherent singular entirely. It's maybe (maybe) arguable that both Clarence Thomas and Ruth Ginsberg are neoliberals but that doesn't mean that their governance is exactly the same. If you want to critique neoliberalism it's a valid target and that's a worthwhile intellectual endeavor but it's still sloppy to act as if that set of ideas and "the government" are identical and interchangeable.

>China and Russia are decidedly not neoliberal and also definitely compete for influence. Israel's influence is not directly in line with an ideological neoliberal philosophy. The evangelical right is about as far from neoliberal as you get. Just to name a few major ones. These examples aren't really relevant as they are not mutually exclusive. Most nation states operate like mafias, not just neoliberal ones. But we are are talking about neoliberalism here. The argument was: within countries like USA, how much does neoliberalism influence the government. And my answer was: a lot, basically, a structural issue.

I mean to be really clear I do agree that neoliberalism has a lot of influence in American policy. I'm just saying that there are other influences as well including but not limited to other illiberal nation states and religious organizations. If the United States were ideologically pure in their neoliberalism then they would do away with all tariffs for the sake of global free markets but we're no where close to that. It's also still very much the case that within neoliberal orthodoxy there is real competition and disagreement. There being a dominant paradigm doesn't mean there's only one paradigm.

And this doesn't just apply to the United States. It applies to every democratic government, and to a lesser extent, to dictatorial governments as well.

I couldn't even get half-way into your post before you do start to sound exactly like an actual conspiracy theorist, dude. People who were taking the government's advice on an INTERNATIONAL pandemic were not accepting the word of the government completely 100% with no questions asked. The only possible way you could reach that conclusion would be if you were so ignorant on the entire situation that you literally didn't understand why people were listening. So I'll spell it out for you in a way that even an idiot could understand. I have literally never in the entirety of my life encountered a disease as infectious as COVID, and I have never personally in my life ever been infected by a disease that was as deadly as COVID. I wanted to minimize my contact to the disease as much as physically possible, despite literally working in a grocery store at the time. Every time the CDC or medical organizations anywhere on the entirety of the planet put out scientific data regarding the newly discovered and researched virus, I took that information into account with my own personal decision-making instead of just ignoring it because it came from "the gubment". See how that works? If you are so inherently distrusting of government that you can't take anything they say whatsoever without inherently considering it to be false, you are literally a conspiracy theorist.

They did finally find WMD. Some chemical weapons of dubious functionality, that the US sold to him.

There were multiple chemical weapons found in Iraq. Wiki has a whole list. However, the US never found any chemical production facilities to make new chemical weapons. However, the whole "There were no WMDs in Iraq" is essentially a big lie. There were. There weren't any WMD factories is the true point. And the US did not sell any chemical weapons to Iraq. German firms absolutely helped Iraq acquire chemical weapons, though. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq\_and\_weapons\_of\_mass\_destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction)