VaporTrail

The loss of Bagram is the only thing about this that could be considered a strategic failure. And that would only be the case if we plan on going toe-to-toe with China or having a proxy war with them. Both of those options would be bigger strategic failures for the US.

I do have insurance. In spite of that, it's still very possible for any well-off American to get financially ruined from an emergency room visit and subsequent hospitalization. The high taxes in Europe and Canada suck, but bankruptcy because of a hospitalization is something that they don't have to worry about.

I can echo Cysko's experiences. Diabetics and hypertensives are the vast majority of people hospitalized. More socialized medicine has its benefits. I'd rather get emergency care and surgery in Canada or Europe because that kind of shit can bankrupt financially responsible people here. For everything else, I'll get my care here.

I feel like you could say that about every president, especially the last 3, who were champions of the executive order. The US is out of Afghanistan. That's a positive. I'm surprised that neither Trump nor Biden seem to be focusing on that.

My god the cognitive dissonance on this subject is incredible. Trump blames Biden. Biden blames Trump. They need to stop assigning blame and assume responsibility for what is ultimately the right choice, moving forward. Globalist MSM is seething towards Biden. The DNC media arms of MSNBC and CNN are blaming Biden and the Afghanis. I feel really bad for the Vietnam vets who got to watch this same shit go down for the second time in their lives. The Afghanistan vets are now realizing that they weren't sent there to fight for freedom or democracy or to fight the opioid epidemic, but instead to line the pockets of politicians and their lackeys. I don't like Biden, but I'm pleasantly surprised that he's continued the trend of US withdrawal as the world's police force. I actually respect him more because of how much he doesn't give a fuck about the optics. Neocons are seething. The Democrat establishment is seething. It sure would suck to be Ukrainian or Taiwanese right about now, but those really shouldn't be problems for the US tax dollar.

Who else is hyped for the last Olympic death march ever? They're unfortunately getting rid of the event (I'd rather them kill park skateboarding or at least replace it with vert). There is a once in a hundred years heatwave in Sapporo, where the event is being held, and temperatures are in excess of 88 degrees with 72% humidity. I, for one, can't wait for some pants-shitting, heat stroke having action. I predict 15 DNFs, 12 collapsed runners. This stupid ass event requires more energy expenditure than jogging. LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOO.

There's a difference between verifying the identity of a source and verifying the validity of what the source is saying. The last 5 years have demonstrated that Pulitzer winning organizations aren't above skipping the second part. Media coverage of the Mueller report, for example, had unnamed sources damning this, that, and the other. This was the foreplay that worked edging liberal audiences into the worst blue-balling in political history when Mueller couldn't legally verify any of the wild shit the MSM was suggesting had occurred. I believe that Vice probably verified this person's identity. Did they verify any of the claims? And because they're keeping things under wraps, admittedly for a valid reason, none of what they're saying can be verified by an independent observer. Multiple times I've read posts from you complaining about how social media cancer polarizes the country. Here, you've used social media cancer to demonstrate how stupid and obstinate you think the posters here are. Now you're indignant when they raise an eyebrow because the source of this story is reddit? Please, I'd love to hear your explanation as to how them rolling their eyes at the validity of this story is any different than you rolling your eyes at say, some of the posts here on CRT. The difference between you and the other posters here isn't as big as you think.

Story originates on reddit, a site that's overrun by corporate and political astroturfers. Vetted by Vice, publisher of the recent hit, "Dear White Vegans: Stop Appropriating Food." Story hits every heartstring and is the perfect headline to go viral in the media vacuum that Trump left. The account cannot be independently verified due to safety concerns. Is the story plausible? Sure. There is a jump in logic from "plausible" to "probably true." And here you are again, using it to slam dunk on conservatives, all the while complaining of social media polarization in other threads. Maybe you should look in the mirror, too.

That fucking subway commercial made me root against Rapinoe. Sucks for the rest of the team, but truly, fuck her and fuck that commercial.

Unfortunately, when you're there to see it, gallows humor is often the only defense mechanism left to keep your sanity.

Hahaha, lacked appropriate context, what the fuck. Anyways. Good on Biles for getting out. Fuck the haters. Strug got the gold, which cost her the rest of her career, and she got carried to the waiting arms of Larry Nasser.

No. All standardized testing is out. Source: University of California Board of Regents unanimously approved changes to standardized testing requirement for undergraduates | University of California I never said that was the reason there were unwanted pregnancies - there's obviously personal responsibility involved. I'm more concerned the GOPe has celebrated the efforts they've made in restricting abortions without any regard for the downstream effects, which is exactly what the UC board of regents is doing in this case. I'll concede that "zero resources" is an exaggeration. Bingo

My concern was not of the cytokine response - that's the concern for people spiraling the drain in the ICU. My concern is with the long-term effects of antibodies that your body creates in response to that. I don't know the answer to your question. It's very low, and if I had to guess, probably a fraction of a percent. If you're healthy and less than 50 years old, your likelihood of having severe COVID is on the same order of magnitude as having severe side effects from the vaccine. If you don't take care of your body, you should get the vaccine. The polio virus is not comparable to COVID. You had otherwise young and healthy children being crippled and put into iron lungs. The vast majority of people who go to the ICU for COVID are fat, old, and have a tobacco history. If COVID was doing to young and healthy people what it's doing to old and unhealthy people, I would be singing a different tune. If COVID starts killing and crippling kids, then obviously I'm going to change my view on the vaccine. There was a hepatitis outbreak where I was seeing otherwise healthy 20 year olds with fulminant liver failure. I got the hep A vaccine as soon as I could because I don't want that shit happening to me. I've seen more young, healthy people with severe post-vax side effects than severe post-covid effects. Once that proportion flips, I'd happily change my view on the subject.

While blood clots are common, the neuromuscular stuff I've seen is not. Is fear of rare side effects a valid reason to skip the vaccine? The number of neuromuscular cases that I'm seeing following vaccination is alarming to me, personally. That shit scares me much more than COVID does. We are on the same page with social media being a deleterious scourge on society. The only differences I see in between myself and the anti-vax crowd is that they have a lay understanding of the issues, and I choose to avoid social media (except for thebrownsboard). The 99% deaths from unvaccinated versus vaccinated is the obvious point for Fauci to focus on as he is trying to control it from a population standpoint. It's a fantastic argument for the obese and COPD'ers to get the jab, but poor reasoning for the healthy, young American to get it. My biggest problem with what you're doing is that you are blaming some coach's decision to not get vaccinated on "misinformation." You are contributing to the problem of social media and polarization that you often complain about. You are making the divide between my patients and their decision to get the vaccine even wider. The issue of vaccine hesitancy is not a partisan issue, and if you take social media out of the issue, it pretty much boils down to being concerned over some side effect or another. Yes, I think we have enough data for the short term side effects and for me to speak in an educated manner about them. The chances of having these side effects are small, however, if you happen to get these side effects, the magnitude of its effect on your life is comparable (worse IMO) to the worst outcomes of COVID (I'd rather die than be quadriplegic). As a young, healthy person, the vaccine doesn't necessarily provide me personally with any tangible health benefits - the benefit I get is that I can rest easier knowing that I'm less likely to spread it to my patients or people that I care about. If you're over 60 or fat or a smoker, then your health benefits of getting the vaccine are pretty obvious. I don't think there is any evidence out there that allows anyone to say with any confidence that the long term effects are "mighty doubtful." I posit that this vaccine in particular would make you more likely to have long term effects than pretty much every other vaccine I've had the pleasure of getting. What concerns me is the massive immune response that the second dose of this vaccine elicits. Your immune system is a finely tuned machine and needs to work in the goldilocks zone. Too little and you get stuff like bubble boy (SCID), AIDS, and HIV. Too much, and you get stuff like MS, GBS, TM. The question I want to know most of all, and this is something I won't have an answer on for another 20-50 years is this: Does the vaccine increase your lifetime risk of neuromuscular disease? That second dose absolutely destroyed me for a day, and I have to wonder if any of those antibodies my body created are going to have a cumulative effect over time. Anecdotally, the young, healthy and otherwise no risk factor cases I've seen have been jacked dudes who look like they can bench press a volkswagen. The data, last I looked, shows that the virus tends to hit men harder than women. I wonder if testosterone or muscle mass somehow plays a role in it.

Here are some responses this week to UC's decision to eliminate the SAT from their admissions process. I have articles from The Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan and Substack's John McWhorter on the topic. Flanagan Article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/why-university-california-dropping-sat/619522/ And here's an archive link to get around the paywall: Why Is the University of California Dropping the SAT? - The Atlantic (archive.is) To summarize her article, the UC system organized a multi-disciplinary task force for the mammoth task of making recommendations on improving the admissions process. The UC Board of Regents ignored the findings of this study and eliminated the examination outright. Much of this study included the analysis of SAT and ACT on UC admissions and outcomes. There was a "Hail Mary" pipeline of 22,000 students, half of them black or hispanic, who were initially filtered out by GPA, but tested high enough on SAT to get accepted. Now this pathway for underrepresented students is gone. Here is some of what the task force wrote about - emphasis mine Source: sttf-report.pdf (universityofcalifornia.edu) And here's one from John McWhorter: RACIST ANTIRACISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IS BACK - by John McWhorter - It Bears Mentioning (substack.com) As someone who's been in academia for a long time, I can't help but see this decision to cut out the SAT as a mistake. From an admissions standpoint, the SAT/ACT is the only 1:1 comparison you'll get in an application pool. The goal of it appears to be to make the demographics of acceptances match the demographics of the population. It's going to hurt qualified students of Asian descent (this is the systemic racism part) as they're actually the only overrepresented demographic in the UC system. This "solution" does nothing to solve or improve the root issue of poor education standards in low income areas. This is the liberal equivalent of the GOPe lecturing people on respect for life, restricting abortion, and then giving zero resources to these mothers with unwanted babies.

The CDC having a history of doing experimentation on humans that's on par with Dr. Mengele, in my book, is a reason for anyone of any skin color to have hesitation to trust us, even today. The FDA didn't put warning labels on tobacco products until around the time we were born. Opioids were being used to treat pain, which was being sold to doctors as "the fifth vital sign" up until I entered medical school. The opioid epidemic sure is fun to deal with. Medical authorities have gotten it wrong in countless more terrible ways. This list alone should be enough evidence to validate anyone who says "Hey wait a minute, I don't want to be in the first wave of these things." If you want me to take fear of malicious intent out of the equation, I'd be happy to do that below. How do you define "legitimate medical concern?" You could ask me and 5 other doctors and I'm sure we'll all give you a different list. History of allergic reaction to vaccines? Might be worth getting if you're in a high-risk population. Pregnant? If you're a high-risk pregnancy sure, but I personally think it's fucking nuts to get a vaccine that elicits this heavy of an immune response while you're carrying child. Look at all the immunosuppression that people go on for an organ as simple as a kidney, then compare that to a lung or liver transplant. Then look at how immunosuppressed pregnant women must be if they have their blood circulating through an entire fetus. When you start getting into history of autoimmune and neurological diseases, the line gets really blurry there. Ignoring social media, there are documented cases of Bells palsy Bell’s palsy following COVID-19 vaccination (nih.gov), GBS Neurological Complications of COVID-19: Guillain-Barre Syndrome Following Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine (nih.gov), transverse myelitis COVID-19 vaccination-associated myelitis (nih.gov), and many other neuromuscular sequelae following the vaccination in otherwise healthy individuals. My source here is NIH's pubmed library, not twitter. Anecdotally, I've seen cases of Bells palsy, Guillain Barre syndrome, and mononeuritis multiplex in otherwise healthy individuals in the 4 weeks following the vaccine. I'm not saying that the vaccine caused these cases, but I certainly can't rule it out. I've seen plenty of blood clots in post-vaccinated hospitalized patients (who also have a ton of other risk factors for blood clots). Is hesitancy after reading about these cases because of "misinformation?" The best I can give patients who ask me about these possible side effects is "The percentage of people who have these symptoms following the vaccination is minimal." When they ask about long term effects, the best answer I can give them is "The vaccine hasn't been out long enough for long term effects to be studied at this time, but we will learn more with time." If the patient is in a high risk patient population, I can add, "Your risk of a hospitalization with COVID is likely much higher than the risk of those side effects." At this point, they'll do their own risks/benefits analysis and if they don't want to assume the risk of vaccine side effects, then that's a valid reason too. I can't ask an individual to put the health of the population over their own health. If you think this isn't a valid enough reason to decline the shot, then I congratulate you on the armchair quarterbacking, but that's really not how it works in real life.

Calling people who gotten the vaccine, including myself, guinea pigs doesn't downplay anything. Yes, a ton of work has gone into researching the side effects - but who are the test subjects? Just because the virus affects others doesn't mean that an individual should give up their autonomy as a patient for the greater good. If they feel the urge to get the virus in order to protect others, then wonderful - Let them. That's why I got it. If they prioritize their health due to possible side effects of the vaccine over that of at-risk populations, then for the lower risk populations, it would be unethical for me to persuade them to go against their wishes. What you're suggesting is fine from a population-level point of view and Fauci is doing his job by encouraging the vax, but all that goes out the window at the individual level of the doctor-patient relationship. Can you admit that there are reasons other than "misinformation" to be hesitant to take the vaccine?

I too would like to know how you answer that question, Woody. It's really easy to slam dunk on conservatives for distrust of the vaccine, but are the 64% of black Americans or 59% of hispanic Americans who didn't get the vaccine wrapped up in misinformation too? As a doctor in this day and age, we are taught that patient autonomy takes precedence over pretty much anything else. In the Tuskegee experiments, the US government conducted unethical experiments on people that were thought of as lesser. The FDA ordered 60 million J&J vaccines destroyed last month. The long-term risks of the vaccine are not and will not be known for years. Nothing of what I've said is misinformation. There are reasons other than misinformation to be scared to take the vax. Every time I recommend the vaccine to someone who is not in an at-risk population, I am essentially asking them to put population health over them being used as a guinea pig. Shaming people who don't want to be a guinea pig is not going to get us to herd immunity any quicker. The majority of attacks I see on people who are hesitant to get the vaccine is partisan bullshit.

At least it's not the Spiders.

I'd take anything the ADL has to say with a very large grain of salt. They're the liberal version of Bill Donahue (the asshat with no sense of humor who is known most famously for being cut in half by Jesus Christ in South Park). They love manufactured outrage and fall victim to idiocy of 4chan memeing "white milk" and the "ok gesture" into symbols of hate. Even The Atlantic and NYT did stories on it. Gotta get them outrage clicks. They followed the Fox News formula to greater successes than Ailes and Murdoch could have dreamed of, with MSNBC and CNN's combined viewers eclipsing that of Fox News during the Trump administration. Outrage sells. Thankfully, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel now that Trump's out of the picture. CNN and MSNBC's ratings have collapsed. Independent outlets like Substack are growing in popularity and giving journalists an opportunity to report without worry of upsetting the corporate sponsors.

I was hoping for him to pull a Columbia.

Bro, shut the fuck up and show us some cool AR/VR shit. This is quite possibly worse than the Black Eyed Peas Super Bowl halftime show. /edit Exceptions to the above: Hiromi was great, as usual. Pictogram thing, kinda funny.

That is a data harvesting effort going viral. Same thing with the "look at my picture 15 years ago and look at me now" posts. The amount of information you share that can be monetized is ridiculous. I started getting advertisements for dumpsters presumably after copious usage of the term "dumpster fire" in gchat in the Hue Jackson era.

I'd still argue that it's not ridiculous to draw a comparison between ABC and The Blaze. Your argument is essentially, if you don't count the fringers on the station, it's not that bad. ABC is just as much Jimmy Kimmel and The View as it is 20/20 and Good Morning America. If your argument was that 20/20 was not comparable to The Blaze, I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. As it is, ABCs worst offenders are every bit as bad as The Blaze. So long as network news keeps putting these clowns out there, the comparison will remain apt.