Taiwan’s vaccination rate is the same as New Zealand, but it’s not really a good parameter. Korea and Singapore have even higher vaccination rates and they are doing worse than New Zealand.
Hong Kong is a mess because they used bogus Chinese vaccines.
I agree. I just don’t know why you do it.
I don’t.
Although I usually produce facts and figures to support my argument. I’m sure that annoys you no end.
I disagree, often since you’ve written off anything the government says or does and written off vaccines entirely. I have to say that I have to listen to you with a grain of salt because your posts are biased by nature.
I charge people rent to live in my head.
If you want to annoy me and live in my head, cough up some chiang kai shekels.
Because they’re full of it. I’ve pointed out several examples of the CECC actually lying. Why would you trust these people?
Because they don’t work. Even national authorities are admitting that they don’t work. Why you would cling onto your magic potions in the face of such an overwhelming about-face is beyond me.
My objection is not merely to the government obsession with vaccines as the route to salvation (and the inevitable lying that goes along with presenting such a picture to the public) but also their denial of effective treatments and preventative measures. There’s nothing unique about COVID. It’s a very ordinary respiratory disease, and two years in, plenty of doctors know how to treat it. The members of the CECC don’t, because they’re so far up their own colons that they’re not interested in listening to people working at the sharp end.
Because they’ve done a good job, not only has my experience been good here for the last two years, there is plenty of evidence that counters yours. I could spend hours and hours and hours of my day arguing the same thing over and over again with you but I don’t, primarily because I don’t have the time to be here full time, and it’s not worth my time to argue with you. It doesn’t annoy me, my energy is just better spent elsewhere. You can have the last laugh on an internet forum. Be my guest.
Because there remains substantial evidence that they do work. And I think as @yyy said,
Your musings require that hundreds of millions of people all keep a secret worldwide about some conspiracy. It flies in the face of intuitive thinking. I’ve had the vaccine. I had an immune reaction to it. It obviously did something. Deaths are down, severe cases are down. I’m willing to go in the middle and attribute it to a less severe variant, better methods of treating it and vaccines. There’s plenty of evidence supporting this.
While other musings like this cause people to be sceptical of your musings. You very conveniently downplay or hype up…or rather underexaggerate or overexaggerate depending on your argument. No @finley. A VERY ORDINARY respiratory disease does not spread as fast as measles. A VERY ORDINARY respiratory disease does not kill QUINTUPLE the amount of people the ordinary flu does. This is why I remain sceptical of your posts. I wanna know why your posts suggest there is nothing to see here. Just an ordinary virus. Nothing to see here. Your under and overexaggerations and loose rules on definitions is beyond what most would consider reasonable.
It being ordinary or not does not affect whether I personally think we should live with the virus or attack it with a zero covid policy. But I don’t feel that calling something that has very clearly different [practical] properties is deserving of the word ‘ordinary’. If it was another rhinovirus and a mutation made no practical change, while technically different, I’d agree.
But the way you describe things almost always arouse a suspicion with me that few, if any members on this board are able to achieve. Perhaps others may agree or disagree. I don’t speak for them. I wanna know, why in the back of my head, you are so adamant to dismiss and sweep under the rug a [potentially, yet increasingly less so] lethal virus, but quick to hype up a vaccine’s [potential] dangers. The sceptic in me wants to know what you are hiding and what agenda you are trying to push every time you rush someone in a wild-eyed hysterical manner. The sceptic in me wants to know why I am being told my entire experience from start to finish is completely and utterly wrong. Am I being gaslit? Who the fuck knows. Because I know 100% someone confident in their ideas wouldn’t be this hysterical. This is rhetorical by the way. I’m certainly not looking for a reply because it’s already too late. Quite a few have clocked out and will forever remain sceptical.
Perhaps if we were working from within at least a common-ground basis of reality that at least acknowledges that over/under exaggerations are by no means necessary, I probably would be at this time, more receptive of your ideas.
Because honestly? In many ways, it sounds like you are trying to convince a Kiev resident that bombs and missiles aren’t going off around them.
All.
All the restrictions. Let’s live with it like most other countries are learning to do.
But if it flies in the face of intuitive thinking, it’s probably not magical thinking, since the two concepts have significant overlap.
Just sayin’.
For the past 2 years, the CECC demonstrated that they understand fighting a prolonged global pandemic is about balancing ending the spread of this deadly disease and the economy. So instead of flipping back and forth from strict lock downs to no restrictions at all like most of the world, Taiwan never truly locked down, and restrictions measures are moderate until a more virulent variant arrived through international travel, which Taiwan never shutdown either.
With most of the population getting their booster shot, and Omicron epidemic is about to be cleared from local community, CECC would no doubt ease measures, especially when it comes to masks. Although I feel the people here already treat it like Omicron is over. The malls and tourist spots are packed with people on the weekends. At least most of them are still wearing masks.
They achieved their initial success by … well, not lying exactly, but by making certain facts inaccessible and by framing other facts in such a way that it avoided mass panic. And that was the right thing to do. Now they’re just lying, particularly about vaccines, and I have no idea what they think they’re up to. It’s causing immense harm and it needs to stop.
Then why aren’t we opening up? You can’t have it both ways. If the vaccines work, then we’re golden. We don’t need to hide behind the immigration department anymore. But if they don’t work - and I’m 99% sure that Chen and his masked-up chums know that they don’t - then it would explain why they’re worried about losing their status as magicians.
Now, you’re probably go off on a rant about those stupid old refuseniks who don’t trust The Science holding the country hostage. It’s quite easy to do a spitball estimate of how many of them are actually likely to need treatment, based on global figures. Do the calculation and see if your assumptions are justified.
No they don’t. They just require that a large enough set of powerful people are assholes, and have interests that nicely align. That happens all the time. And it’s not as if anything is secret. The likes of Alfred Bourla, and the world’s more authoritarian politicians, have made it quite clear where they’re going with all this.
No, it flies in the face of your beliefs.
It did all sorts of things. In terms of COVID, you’re now one of those people who are somewhat more likely to contract omicron when you encounter it. I’m not sure why that’s something you would want to achieve, but each to his own.
More people died in 2021 than in 2020. A significant number of excess deaths were unrelated to COVID, and haven’t been satisfactorily explained.
Funnily enough, that exactly matches the outcome of the (fraudulent) Pfizer trials, in which the control group experienced fewer deaths than the vaccine group.
I’m being facetious there, of course: IIRC the difference wasn’t statistically significant (mostly because their study was hopelessly underpowered). But neither did they prove any overall benefit from vaccination over placebo. Back in the real world, not only did vaccines fail to “solve” COVID, we got a big dose of vaccine fascism at the same time. The upshot is that the world is worse off than if they’d never been invented.
I meant that it was ordinary in the sense that it does similar things, it can be treated in similar ways, and in the rare instances that it kills people, it targets a very predictable subset of people, and that subset is the exact same subset who have historically been at risk from respiratory diseases. And those people can also be treated in historically ordinary ways.
Seriously, you need to go and do some proper research instead of listening to talking heads on CNN. Not just about COVID, but about respiratory disease in general. And if you take the time to do that, you’ll realise that there really isn’t anything remarkable about COVID. The idea that 100% vaccination and quarantine are the only solution is a belief that has no factual basis.
My agenda is that I don’t like living in a world run by pathological liars.
As for hysteria, I’m not the one running around in circles screaming “omicon is coming to get me!” while waving my triple-boosted vaccine passport like it’s a bottle of holy water and a string of garlic. I’m just sitting here waiting for the CECC to come to their senses.
What experience is this? Have half your family died of the plague? Is your office down to a skeleton staff because everyone has “long COVID”? Do you know anywhere on the planet where that has actually happened? If not, then it’s not me who’s got the facts wrong.
Look man, if you’re not interested in having a conversation, please don’t bother me.
Similarly with your previous reply to my request to elaborate, was similarly combative.
You’ve lost me man. Try again later.
As I said before: you’re happy to dish it out, but you can’t take it.
Please avoid making this personal.
I have no interest of what you say if you continue to post in bad faith.
You personally have an extremely confrontational manner of debate. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but if you’re going to stomp off in a huff if someone takes that same tack, it just makes you look like you can’t argue your point.
No I don’t. I speak for me. You don’t speak for me. Understand?
Argue in good faith.
You wanna prove to me you’re arguing in good faith? Remove the paragraph and take it back. I stopped at that paragraph because I was disgusted you went there again.
I will tell you how i feel and how I will respond to and about a topic. NOT you.
Take it back or this conversation is over. I am fine with walking away and leaving you with the last laugh.
Same with this jab.
None of this has anything to do with ‘dishing it out and taking it’. I’ve explained, politely, in good faith why I am sceptical of your posting and you continue to do the same thing that makes me sceptical. I will not lend an ear to you until you begin to post in good faith.
You used the word ‘faith’ three times in that post 
No you didn’t. You accused me of being a wild-eyed hysterical conspiracy theorist. That’s fine. You can think what you like. I gave you a comprehensive reply regardless.
So you’re twisting my words now? Show me such an accusation.
If you want to argue in this manner, that’s fine with me. It really doesn’t bother me. But I would appreciate it if you do at least bring a few facts to bear. You jumped into an exchange with drumbrake with an irrelevant (personal) remark about what I “say all the time”, and now we’re back in another flame war about who is and is not arguing in good faith. I don’t care if you’re arguing in good faith. But at least argue about something of substance if you’re going to argue, OK?
That’s not an accusation calling you an wild-eyed hysterical conspiracy theorist. Pulling parts out of context and putting them together to create a false narrative does not make it so.
Perhaps you’d like to start thread on whether finley is a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist? We could take a vote.
Incidentally, check out this guy:
His expression gets madder every time he pops up on TV. That’s the sort of person who’s running the show.