Wiggins vaccination appeal denied

[thedoper]

Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses are two fairly popular Western offshoots of Christianity that regularly refuse certain types of medical treatments. There have been some Christian teachings that I have heard that have tried to link this process of vaccine mandates to the end of the world. There was recently a case of a black female musician who the NFL wouldnt let play the national anthem on opening night because she had refused to be vaccinated on religious grounds. She is as far as I can tell an Evangelical Christian. There are many reasons people seem to reject vaccinations, I find it sad when people are using religious excuses because most of these religions were developed well before vaccines. My assumption is that they already made their minds up, probably as children when they were afraid to get their first shot.

[Wolvesfan21]

The big problem we also have is a media that is highly controlled by State Sponsored Propaganda. Greed over morality. They have been a sellout for a very long time.

Trust in the media were at all time lows just a few years ago. Most people know it's biased, wrought with fear mongering and sensationalism, but the fact is it is much much worse.

It would not surprise me one bit if the media leaders were involved in the creation of this virus. If anything sells it's fear. If you want control over people use their own fear against them. Which is why propaganda works so well. While much of the news is completely fictional, some of it is very real. They just create it themselves.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

The big problem we also have is a media that is highly controlled by State Sponsored Propaganda. Greed over morality. They have been a sellout for a very long time.

Trust in the media were at all time lows just a few years ago. Most people know it's biased, wrought with fear mongering and sensationalism, but the fact is it is much much worse.

It would not surprise me one bit if the media leaders were involved in the creation of this virus. If anything sells it's fear. If you want control over people use their own fear against them. Which is why propaganda works so well. While much of the news is completely fictional, some of it is very real. They just create it themselves.

I don't think the US has a media that is state-sponsored, although you can count on at least one major media outlet to be very supportive of whatever govt. is in power because the US has a media like the population itself--totally polarized. So there's always going to be one end of the media praising the govt. because they'll basically be on that side, and another criticizing the government because they're on the other. Then when the government switches, media outlets will switch from a defender to a promotor of the new administration, or vice versa.

It shouldn't be that way. It's not good when the media is polarized like this, and there shouldn't be overlap between the media on either end of the political spectrum and the party that they support, but unfortunately, it's clearly happening. Those are bad choices media members and politicians have both made to get too close to each other. But to me, it's not really top-down, state-controlled propaganda where literally the prime minister or president directly owns or controls most major media outlets like in North Korea, China, Russia, or to some degree, Italy under Berlusconi. That doesn't mean it's not a concern. You've got people in politics and the media on both ends of the spectrum making choices to blur the lines and turn media outlets into transparent champions for one political side and constant critics of the other, and that polarizes us further, erodes our faith in facts and reality, and cultivates distrust between us even more.

Additionally, I think online media is totally polarized because we can choose what we want to read or hear, and because of our own confirmation bias, most people pick media outlets and content they likely agree with. If they pick others, they view them skeptically. Plus, YouTube, Facebook, etc. all use algorithms designed to feed us content designed to hook us and keep us watching, which is mostly stuff we agree with. Our choices and these algorithms together incentivize the production of more polarized content that elicits outrage, because that's what makes us click, read, and watch. And the more we click it, the more the algorithms recommend it to us. YouTube specifically rewards watch time, so long-winded theories about how the other side is somehow involved in nefarious plots get boosted even more, which helps explain why people are turning so frequently to conspiracy theories. All the while, our echo chambers become even more isolated and intense.

WolvesFan, you say it wouldn't surprise you if media leaders were involved in the creation of this virus and are lying about it while fictionalizing other news as well. I don't see it that way, but I think it's important to listen to people with different views. Can you explain how you think they would have done that? And are you talking about just American media or the media globally?

[Phenom]

My wife's cousin works at one of the Stony Brook hospitals as a nutritionist for children. She is far removed from the Covid wards but has colleagues that are in it and that have had covid. It's been shared with her that the employees on campus that have had it were given the opportunity to be part of a study of long term effects of exposure. Most of them have revealed that the testing, which ranges from blood work to CT scans and everything in between. What they are finding in the tests are abmormalities.abnormalities. The abnormalities come and go and these people are not in a life threatening situation. It's unclear how these abnormalities will manifest themselves later in life.

To me, this is the biggest thing to fear for most of us. Although I do know of a few students (I'm a middle school teacher) in my community that are less a parent due to dying from the virus. I also lost a coworker to the virus and the way his wife describes his last days is horrifying. As an aside they were very anti mask, as is a large number of my community.

I teach the sciences to middle schoolers and part of the standards is teaching them about vaccine history and efficacy. If you don't know about Edward Jenner and smallpox variolation, look it up, it's fascinating.

With what I know about vaccines I feel more comfortable calling it a booster since it is meant to put your body on alert to invasion and not made with a virus in the same family as the smallpox vaccine was. To me, the vaccine was designed not to eradicate covid. Something like that will take time to create. Rather it is meant to slow down the spread, which some have already mentioned.

That said, I have the vaccine and still wear a mask. I'm basically the only one at my school doing so as the AZ governor has all but criminalized mandating masks in school. I noticed something in the previous year though when we were required to wear masks. Our instances of days missed due to illness dropped dramatically and for the first time being in a school in 14 years I didn't get sick once. I think it says alot about the effectiveness of masks.

All that to say I am most definitely in fear. Not of what some news report said, not even of dying tomorrow. I'm afraid for the long term health of my children and my family if we contract covid. Will my child die of some disease in their 40s because they got covid as a kid That? That to me is a valid concern. Remember when it was said children couldn't get the virus? I do. It seemed like everyone in the state of Arizona argued that as their kid sat home. Quarantined. Away from the virus. Then they went back to school. Masked. Now most everyone is unmasked and my son's daycare has closed twice in the span of a month due to a child under 5 bringing it in to the building.

[Lipoli390]

- Jester, get well soon buddy! We love your contributions on this board!

- Lip, Good stuff on the history of vaccine mandates in this country. Coherent legal recitations and history is a welcome addition to the dialogue.

- Most NBA players, if religious at all, are Christian. I don't know what Wiggin's faith is, but there is absolutely nothing I can think of within the Christian faith that could justify a religious exemption from a vaccine. Whatever hesitancy exists would be for either legitimate health reasons (doubtful in Wiggins' case) or purely one's made-up ideology.

- The difference between a vaccine mandate and, say, a motorcycle helmet mandate, is that one is trying to address the collective health of the populace while the other is related only to the health of an individual. Big difference.

- The vaccines were not rushed from an R&D perspective. But anyone that works in this area knows that bringing something out of the lab and into mass distribution is a very heavy lift. The coronovirus vaccines were built upon years and years worth of prior research. We should thank President Trump and his administration for putting in place Operation Warp Speed to get shots in arms so quickly!

- While it's true that the virus is primarily a threat to folks 65 and older, there are a LOT undesirable outcomes that fall short of death. For example, do I really want to be laid out for a full week with a fever, chills, and aches!? Hell no! Do I want to go two months without a sense of taste (like my 24-year old niece experienced)? Hell no!

- I'm straight down the middle on this. One "side" has overblown the risk of the virus by obsessing over confirmed case counts and using that as the denominator in calculating death rates (when we damn-well know that the real case count is about 5-7X whatever the confirmed count is), which in turn leads to an unrealistic dream of "zero covid" and the accompanying draconian policies. The other "side" tends to brush it all off as a nothingburger that natural immunity by itself can take care of, which in turn leads to disastrous results for the immune-compromised and older folks, neither of which live in a bubble from the rest of society. Both "sides" are wrong in my opinion!

Good stuff, Q.

[Coolbreeze44]

The big problem we also have is a media that is highly controlled by State Sponsored Propaganda. Greed over morality. They have been a sellout for a very long time.

Trust in the media were at all time lows just a few years ago. Most people know it's biased, wrought with fear mongering and sensationalism, but the fact is it is much much worse.

It would not surprise me one bit if the media leaders were involved in the creation of this virus. If anything sells it's fear. If you want control over people use their own fear against them. Which is why propaganda works so well. While much of the news is completely fictional, some of it is very real. They just create it themselves.

I'm not sure if the media itself was involved in the creation of the virus, but I think the power brokers who control the media were. The media is currently a joke in this country. None of it is worth watching. We don't get any real reporting and I find myself searching for something, anything to trust.

[Sundog]

The vaccines *do* reduce transmissibility: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates

"COVID-19 vaccines appear to help prevent transmission between household contacts, with secondary attack rates dropping from 31% to 11% if the index patient was fully vaccinated"

I think of the vaccine as something we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, but also the community at large. Reducing transmission of the virus is protective of all of us, and the more of us that get vaccinated, the better off we all are. A civic duty to get the vaccine.

[Lipoli390]

The vaccines *do* reduce transmissibility: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates

"COVID-19 vaccines appear to help prevent transmission between household contacts, with secondary attack rates dropping from 31% to 11% if the index patient was fully vaccinated"

I think of the vaccine as something we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, but also the community at large. Reducing transmission of the virus is protective of all of us, and the more of us that get vaccinated, the better off we all are. A civic duty to get the vaccine.

Well said, Sundog!!

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

The vaccines *do* reduce transmissibility: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates

"COVID-19 vaccines appear to help prevent transmission between household contacts, with secondary attack rates dropping from 31% to 11% if the index patient was fully vaccinated"

I think of the vaccine as something we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, but also the community at large. Reducing transmission of the virus is protective of all of us, and the more of us that get vaccinated, the better off we all are. A civic duty to get the vaccine.

This is commendable on some level, though I think it's worth mentioning that I am not responsible for your health nor are you responsible for mine. I certainly don't engage in various debates with people over their lifestyle choices that include consumption of unhealthy vices such as cigarettes, alcohol, highly processed foods, etc. I also don't find myself arguing with those who are obese -- over 40-percent (!) of Americans -- about why their individual decisions are harmful. And I certainly wouldn't support a federal mandate that Americans must be within a healthy blood pressure range or diagnosed with a normal body mass index to participate in everyday society, for example.

The natural response to this is going to be, "Well, none of that impacts other people's health!" But my problem with that rationale is that COVID-19, by all accounts, can be devastating to those that have weaker immune systems. That's why those that are elderly and those with underlying conditions -- such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, etc. -- are at a higher risk than someone who has no medical issues. I could simply argue that perhaps if this country was healthier in general that this virus wouldn't have been as threatening to begin with and the spread of said virus would be drastically minimized. But rather than face those issues people would rather focus on individuals who have chosen to simply not receive an injection and introduce mandates to separate them from the workplace and other aspects of life.

[Crazysauce]

Also can someone explain to me why we're changing the definition of vaccine to fit covid 19 as a vaccine?