Ryan754326

The statistics are overwhelmingly in my favor.

I’m young, healthy, double vaccinated, and already recovered from an infection. Why would I be worried about catching Omicron?

I’ve been vaccinated, and then got covid afterwards. Some scientists mights say I’m “super immune” now.

How much time do you spend riding motorcycles around out in the countryside? I’ve seen 6 dead bodies up close on the roads, in my time in Southeast Asia (which really hasn’t been that long at all). 2 in Thailand, and 4 in Vietnam. I saw one accident as it happened, where a car hit a bike with 3 people on it. One of those people appeared to be very dead, but I can’t say for sure. Another one I saw was where a guy on a bike was hit head on by a dump truck on the wrong side of the road. I was at the scene before the cops or ambulance, so he was laid out for everyone to see. Traffic just separated around the accident scene and kept moving. None of these fatal accidents that I saw happened inside of cities, it was always out on the highway. Aside from deaths, I don’t think I can count the number of relatively light motorcycle crashes I’ve seen happen right in front of me, while I sat and drank a coffee at restaurant near an intersection. All of the Thai, Viet, and Cambodian people I know have seen a dead person on the road at some point, and most of them have crashed a bike at some point in their lives as well.

Don’t need to. Already had another version.

Why would they need to go to the morgue? The mangled bodies can be seen laying all over the road. I’m just a tourist, and I’ve seen a few dead bodies myself. Anyone who was born here should have plenty of first hand experience.

I don’t get it. It seems like it took no effort at all to scare the majority of Thais into complying with covid related social restrictions, face masks, and all that, but no amount of these gruesome pictures seems to be enough to get them to stop driving drunk or wear their helmets. Maybe tapping into their inherent xenophobia is the key; start a campaign to show them as many stories as possible about drunk driving deaths in Europe, and convince them that only irresponsible falang drive drunk. It worked with the masks!

From what I’ve read, it looks like being infected by Omicron gives wide ranging immunity to other variants, so I would think that immunity would mostly extend to newer variants as well, but I’m not a virologist, so maybe I’m wrong.

Can you elaborate? I don’t really feel any control over my life by big business. I would like to see more transparency in the dealings between big business and government, but… I know… I’m dreaming.

No hyperbole there whatsoever. Happens all the time. The paramedics know many of these people by name.

This is exactly what worries me about the way things are going. Now is a great time for many governments to set the precedent that if you want your healthcare to be paid for, you do what you’re told in regards to personal health choices. I see it being very unlikely that they would allow people to opt out and pay for their own coverage, so how long before they want to control what we eat, what we drink, what we smoke, and what we do? I know I’ll be called a conspiracy theorist for writing the comment above, but let’s be real: Do you honestly think that the government really cares if you die of lung cancer from smoking cigarettes? Of course they don’t. They only care because it costs the system money. Cigarettes would have been illegal in western countries ages ago if the people running things actually cared about each individual life. They only remain legal because the taxes collected on them more than pay for the people who do end up in hospitals because of them. The Canadian province of Quebec is now considering a tax on those who refuse to be vaccinated in order to cover rising healthcare costs, and they say the tax won’t be small. What they haven’t done is considered whether those people who will be forced to pay the tax might have already paid much more than their fair share into the pot. If we’re going to start scrutinizing everyone’s personal decisions and taxing them more or less based on how much they might be costing the system, then we might as well throw the whole idea of socialized healthcare out the window. I’m not saying that’s what I want for my country, but I could afford American style healthcare if I had to, and I would be willing to pay for it if it meant that I didn’t have to cover the cost of all the people who do unhealthy or dangerous things that I would never do.

The way things are going, everyone will have been exposed to Omicron before their updated booster gets here.

I don’t pay attention to what anti-vaxxers say or post on Facebook/YouTube, so I don’t see how it affects my life. I also don’t believe that any significant number of normal people are being converted by the misinformation they post online. it’s just people gravitating towards others who already think the same way they do; the Internet has made it far easier than we ever could have imagined to do this. To be honest, I really don’t care if someone dies after they refuse a vaccine that might have saved their life. I see it as a poor choice, the same way people smoke, drink, do drugs, eat junk food, or go skiing out of bounds. All of these things put unnecessary stress on our health systems, so why is the lifelong smoker, who always knew that cigarettes cause cancer, any more entitled to healthcare than the guy who refuses a vaccine that he should have known would lessen his chances of dying from covid? I understand your argument that’s it’s about the healthcare system being overloaded, but they were overloaded long before covid. How much extra capacity might there be if we didn’t already have our hospitals full of people who are past the average life expectancy, with a bunch of chronic health problems that probably could have been avoided if they had just taken better care of themselves throughout their lives? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s pretty ridiculous myself that hospital beds are being taken up by people who refused to get vaccinated, but no more ridiculous than the paramedics here in Canada having to repeatedly revive junkies after their bi-weekly overdose. The big difference I see, is that when I say the junkies should be left to die, I get scolded for not being compassionate enough, while if I said the anti-vaxxers should be left to die, I think many would probably agree, and press the heart button.

The virus has the potential to mutate in any person who becomes infected, and plenty of vaccinated people are getting infected. I was one of them.

If we’re going to try to stop every single preventable death from happening, then there are much bigger problems to focus our attention on than covid. How many starving children could have been fed with all of the money that the world has thrown at covid in the last two years? It doesn’t matter; if covid had stayed in China and killed a few million rural peasants every single year until the end of time, very few people in the west would pay any attention to it, the same way that most of them pay no attention to all of the other people dying of preventable diseases and hunger in third world countries that they couldn’t find on a map.

So I guess not all of the foreigners who don’t wear masks are tourists then.

Thais ride around drunk with 3 adults on a scooter, no helmets on any of them, but they’re the smart ones because all of them have their masks on like they’re supposed to. I pointed this out to a friend of mine, and she laughed, and said she’d been riding motorbikes since she was a young girl. No problem, but covid very scary.

East Asian countries also have a lot less old, fat people who require medication on a daily basis to stay alive in the first place.

How do you tell the difference between expat retirees and tourists?

Rabbit is good. I don’t know why it isn’t eaten by more people around the world. My best guess is it’s because they’re cute. My cousin used to breed Giant Rex rabbits, and some of them were huge. Easily as much meat on them as a turkey.

I can see where you’re coming from, and I’d like to agree, but I see a problem here. I live in Canada, and for as long as I can remember, the hospitals here have been swamped at some point during every flu season. If they couldn’t keep up before covid, I don’t see how they ever expect to be able to keep up now that covid is most likely here to stay. I don’t have any suggestions on how to solve this problem, but if hospitals being overwhelmed is now reason enough to keep society in a perpetual state of rolling lockdowns, then it looks like we will be in the same mess every winter, for the foreseeable future. vaccines are helping to keep people alive, but we are in worse shape now in terms of hospitals being overwhelmed than we ever were before vaccines were available. I don’t see any number of vaccinations solving this problem, which seems to be the biggest hurdle to properly opening things up. Going by what I read about the severity of omicron, it appears that if it weren’t for all of the hype and paranoia surrounding covid, a good portion of those infected would be sitting at home taking a few days off, rather than running to a hospital and taking up resources.

Why do all you guys respond to me as if I’m an anti-vaxxer? I’ve had the vaccine. I believe they do a fine job of preventing unnecessary death and serious symptoms, and now that they’ve been readily available to anyone who wants them for nearly a year (at least where I live) I think it’s time to let people make their choice and move on with life. Those who can’t accept that life has become a little more dangerous, or who don’t have enough faith in their vaccinations to protect them, should be the ones who stay locked in their homes, if that’s what they think they need to do.

It seems like the only people who consider this a return to living a more normal life are the people who didn’t have a life in the first place.

Looks like I’m not the only one who’s pessimistic. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/7/never-ending-pandemic-asias-omicron-response-points-to-jjj

I never said they didn’t. What I’m saying is that they haven’t changed anything in terms of us being able to live and work like normal humans, and I don’t see any reason to believe that a third or fourth jab will change that.