proletariat resistance in china? they're about to learn a hard lesson ccp style
translation:
The Shanghai government forced the peopleâs apartments to be used as isolation points, and suppressed them if they refused. Shanghai is now like a concentration camp in Xinjiang and a street of protest in Hong Kong.
The Final Pandemic Betrayal Millions of people are still mourning loved ones lost to COVID, their grief intensified, prolonged, and even denied by the politics of the pandemic.
The number of people who have died of COVID-19 in the United States has always been undercounted because such counts rely on often-inaccurate death certificates. But the total, as the CDC and other official sources suggest, will soon surpass 1 million. That numberâthe sum of a million individual tragediesâis almost too large to grasp, and only a few professions have borne visceral witness to the pandemicâs immense scale. Alanna Badgley has been an EMT since 2010, âand the number of people Iâve pronounced dead in the last two years has eclipsed that of the first 10,â she told me. Hari Close, a funeral director in Baltimore, told me that he cared for families who âwere burying three or four people weeks apart.â Maureen OâDonnell, an obituary writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, told me that she usually writes âabout people who had a beautiful arc to their life,â but during the pandemic, she has found herself writing about lives that were âcut short, like trees being cut down.â On average, each person who has died of COVID has done so roughlyadecade before their time.
In just two years, COVID has become the third most common cause of death in the U.S., which means that it is also the third leading cause of grief in the U.S. Each American who has died of COVID has left an average of nine close relatives bereaved, creating a community of grievers larger than the population of all but 11 states. Under normal circumstances, 10 percent of bereaved people would be expected to develop prolonged grief, which is unusually intense, incapacitating, and persistent. But for COVID grievers, that proportion may be even higher, because the pandemic has ticked off many risk factors.
Deaths from COVID have been unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable. The pandemic has replaced community with isolation, empathy with judgment, and opportunities for healing with relentless triggers. Some of these features accompany other causes of death, but COVID has woven them together and inflicted them at scale. In 1 million instants, the disease has torn wounds in 9 million worlds, while creating the perfect conditions for those wounds to fester. It has opened up private grief to public scrutiny, all while depriving grievers of the collective support they need to recover. The U.S. seems intent on brushing aside its losses in its desire to move past the crisis. But the grief of millions of people is not going away. âThereâs no end to the grief,â Lucy Esparza-Casarez told me. âIt changes. It morphs into something different. But itâs ongoing.â
Hell, I want a fifteen minute break to go outside every hour. Do I have to take up smoking to get that, or can it be another habit like a sugar addiction? Asking for a friend.
Hell, I want a fifteen minute break to go outside every hour. Do I have to take up smoking to get that, or can it be another habit like a sugar addiction? Asking for a friend.
Smokers are the only people who get fresh air anymore
Smokers, and their higher rates of absenteeism and medical utilization cost employers billions.
Hell, I want a fifteen minute break to go outside every hour. Do I have to take up smoking to get that, or can it be another habit like a sugar addiction? Asking for a friend.
On the smoking. About 10 years ago now IIRC, I went and investigated the tax revenue generated by smokers. Then it was about $100 billion per year. 0% of those taxes collected go towards the medical care of those paying these taxes. Instead it goes to all kinds of activities unrelated to smoking. Smokers generate enough tax revenue to pay for all the medical costs associated to with the activity of smoking with plenty left over. If the taxes collected went to the medical care of smokers, then your insurance premiums would be unaffected, maybe even lowered.
Gasoline taxes are used to benefit the infrastructure used by the gas tax payers. It should be the same for smokers.
This is just another example of cost shifting and dishonest politics and taxing policies.
Cigarette taxation is primarily a deterrent, and much of the money raised is used to discourage future users. Price increases are incredibly effective in lowering teenage smoking.
Smokers, and their higher rates of absenteeism and medical utilization cost employers billions. Should we put the money aside to pay for their dangerous activities, or pay the people whom they harm by doing so?
It's not cost-shifting if the costs could be avoided. It's not a zero-sum game.
That's a pretty common discussion point regarding helmets on motorcyclists and even smokers: your behavior turns into increased health care demands on the public. Should we, therefore, mandate something that is your choice to do/not do simply because of the cost consequences down the road?
That is, your "lung cancer" takes up hospital resources and increases my insurance premium.
(Now substitute other things like "diet" or "sport" and it gets a little trickier...)
On the smoking. About 10 years ago now IIRC, I went and investigated the tax revenue generated by smokers. Then it was about $100 billion per year. 0% of those taxes collected go towards the medical care of those paying these taxes. Instead it goes to all kinds of activities unrelated to smoking. Smokers generate enough tax revenue to pay for all the medical costs associated to with the activity of smoking with plenty left over. If the taxes collected went to the medical care of smokers, then your insurance premiums would be unaffected, maybe even lowered.
Gasoline taxes are used to benefit the infrastructure used by the gas tax payers. It should be the same for smokers.
This is just another example of cost shifting and dishonest politics and taxing policies.
When you get down to it, as far as being infectious, there is no difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. The only real difference is that the vaccinated will likely suffer less than the unvaccinated.
And the unvaccinated die more. I'd say there's a BIG difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Agreed. No arguments from me on that point.
I was only directly commenting on what you said earlier. Addressing the issue of infectiousness, not the mortality rates. I thought that was your point you were making.
Steely_D wrote:
That's the issue here: you can do what you want - except you're hurting other people if you're infectious. Then it moves from being a personal choice to being something related to living in a society where we look out for each other.
In Honda's, the dinging stops after about 10 minutes, even in my 2017. And I did say I will buckle up if asked, didn't I ?
My body, my life. I've already dealt with a very nasty cancer and still do. I'll live it my way, stupid and as crazy as it might seem to you, but I live for me, not you.
Please go and live it as foolishly as you like⦠no skin off of my ass.
When you get down to it, as far as being infectious, there is no difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. The only real difference is that the vaccinated will likely suffer less than the unvaccinated.
And the unvaccinated die more. I'd say there's a BIG difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.