Don't you have to be charged with some sort of crime to pardon yourself?

In any event -- I'm a bit disappointed Snowden wasn't pardoned. Probably some Washington DC hacks convinced him out of it. They sure hate it when someone exposes their corruption.

But again, even here whether you are asymptomatic or presymptomatic, you still aren't someone that is going around spreading the virus at a high rate. Social distancing is 100x more effective which is why you ban large gatherings. Telling a small business they can't operate hardly does shit.

I'm sure that was the case for some people. It's usually how the game goes. These government sponsored programs won't always be 100% effective. I just don't think the solution is more unconditional checks.




The small business loans are disgraceful. Like setting money on fire. Let's send money to movie theatres, a dying industry that will never recover. Great idea!

I've seen liberals and conservatives upset about this and I'm not sure why. $600 was offered PER WEEK for months in addition to the normal unemployment insurance people got, meaning you would get your normal fraction of salary from unemployment + 600 bucks no questions asked. That works out to $15/hr for 40 hours of work per week. Then, on top of this, they gave $1200 in stimulus months ago on top of the unemployment bonus. Even now, they added $300 per week in additional unemployment insurance if you are still unemployed. It's like people don't understand that the government can't just foot the bill for Americans out of work for 9 entire months. At some point, that's on you for not getting a different job in another field. Having the fed print money like it grows on trees is going to make the inflation rate go out of control. I'm more concerned that people seem to be ignoring the growing debt of the world's largest economy.

Enough of government backed monopoly money. Open up the economy entirely, let people work.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-retreat-from-early-covid-treatment-and-return-to-basics-11608491436

Very scary and concerning admissions in this article. Doctors/nurses were knowingly sedating patients who had the virus unnecessarily so they could control the spread. A sedated patient means they require less attention from the medical staff. They also admit that they would intubate patients early because they thought it would reduce the chance of the infected person from spreading the virus. All this wasn't necessarily out of malpractice, but more so out of self interest not willing to do everything you can to save a patient.

If you look at the cases in March/April with the fact we were losing 2k people a day compared to the 5x case load we have today and ~1.5x the deaths per day currently, if you were an older person and got infected in March, good chance you were dead, and it might have been preventable.

Unfortunately, this gives the anti-vax crowd a lot of ammo. Why trust the doctors?

There's probably a lot more overlap between 5G COVID towers and fluoride mind control than you might think, unfortunately. In fact, I like to think that people that who believed in those things needed something a bit more outlandish, so they went with the flat earth.

Well of course they are for deaths/hospitalizations. Even when the UK was top 5 in deaths per capita, they didn't necessarily have lockdowns in place. Even top doctors in the U.S. say asymptomatic people aren't the ones that act as super spreaders (which also makes me wonder why it's so important to mask up if you're asymptomatic, but that's another discussion).



I'm curious, what is your solution if people don't follow lockdown regulations? Jail them? Fine them?

Even objectively the idea my belief is that you should go down to the polls, ID in hand, and vote for whoever you want to vote for. I don't like the idea of mail in ballots, because it's one step away from online voting.

Vaccine works by having your normal cells produce proteins that are similar to the proteins present on the SARS-COV-2 virus. It's an mRNA virus, and mRNA is the intermediate between DNA and the final proteins produced by your body.

Since the proteins are foreign, the immune system will attack them and produce antibodies for any future spike proteins of SARS-COV-2.

Problem is, a mutation, could render the vaccine if the mutation causes vastly different spike proteins to be expressed. The vaccine is based on targeting the spike proteins.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/europe/coronavirus-uk-new-variant.html


Hmmm, so what happens when the vaccine strategy does not work as intended? What happens if the vaccine does not get distributed fast enough causing a new mutated form of the virus to begin spreading? UK reports that there's a new fast spreading virus which is starting up lockdown talks again.

Passing out after getting a vaccine isn't usual though?

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vasovagal-syncope/symptoms-causes/syc-20350527

Sometimes people will see blood, needles, and pass out. Other times nurses might lock their legs which I think is what happened here. There isn't even a physiological link between passing out and getting a vaccine.

I am for more voters that actually go down the polls and vote. Mail in ballots cause people who would never vote in the first place to vote based on what they saw on CNN. It's easy to coerce someone through mail in voting. 

If you're going to have COVID regulations in place, at least make sure they're reasonable so people will bother following them.

If you are going to shut down restaurants when outbreaks aren't linked to restaurants, why would people bother taking what the government suggests seriously if the policies they're introducing aren't data based?

Texas did it right. Shut down bars, kept restaurants open with capacity limits. Didn't shut down major industries.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/california-coronavirus-cases.html

Southern California reportedly has just hit 0% ICU bed availability. COVID cases are skyrocketing in California, and remember - they had the most stringent lockdown regulations across the country akin to places like NYC.

So why are cases surging? Turns out, this thing spreads regardless of what you do, and unnecessary regulations on small businesses do absolutely nothing. You have some businesses and industries closed AND a surge in cases. You destroy jobs and the local economy, and get to enjoy hundreds of deaths per day, with hospitals swamped.

Something doesn't add up. Strategy from day 1 should have been to protect the most vulnerable, not focusing on stupidity like putting regulations on small businesses or relying on masks to act as magic pixie dust and solve this thing. Texas followed a similar model with a speedy reopening but laid off the government regulation of businesses. And I THINK, (could be wrong), that the movie/hollywood industry in California is completely open while small businesses, restaurants for example, are forced to do take out.

Basically, the elite get to have their way.



Yup. Lockdowns, even if they do work, end up pushing off what's going to come regardless.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/gop-legal-war-absentee-voting-georgia-runoffs-447266

For the record, I think mail in ballots is a joke, so yes, I am bias.

BUT - Republicans are pushing hard to limit mail in voting by filing lawsuits. I hope they are successful. If you are legitimately sick, in service overseas, then yes, you should be able to vote by mail. It's different by state, but I'm sure that's the case in Georgia.

COVID is not an excuse for universal mail in voting. If you can go to the grocery store, you can vote. If you can go to the liquor store, you can go vote.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/we-want-them-infected-trump-hhs-appointee-said-in-email-pushing-to-expose-infants-kids-and-teens-to-covid.html

Uh oh, someone said the quiet part out loud!

Trump appointee claimed in the summer that the goal was to reach herd immunity by having young people and children go out and about, get infected, recover without incident, and then no longer act as vectors of transmission.

The far left is having a field day with this and the story hasn't even been out for 24 hours. The unfortunate truth is that virtually no children have died from this, and you have a lesser chance of dying from COVID than you do the flu if you are reasonably young and healthy. A study was released a bit ago that suggested asthma is not even considered a pre-existing condition with the focus being on obesity related illnesses (heart disease, diabetes, ect.), so even if you are young and asthma, you should be fine.

I'd consider herd immunity a more viable strategy than masking up pointless thinking that will solve the pandemic...

Scalpers depend on what country you're from honestly. Plenty of people in the U.S. are in no rush to take the vaccine. Something like 50 percent said they wouldn't take it, another percentage said they would take but would wait.

Realistically, vaccines need to be targeted to people with preexisting conditions and the demand for the vaccine doesn't seem all there.



Apparently you are usually clear 8-10 days following the second dosage of the vaccine. Can't remember the exact time frame, but it's a few weeks before you need to get the second dosage according to Pfizer (which is the major vaccine being rolled out). So realistically the pandemic won't even be over until the vast majority of people get their second shot of the vaccine.

Where are you reading that the efficacy rate of these vaccines are 95%? The only actual confirmed vaccine with an efficacy rate that high is the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. They went through clinical trials and got FDA approval in the U.S. and is rolling out in the UK.

I wouldn't believe any numbers from a shady Russian vaccine or Chinese vaccine. Pretty sure they released a vaccine months ago without having gone through any clinical oversight. Far from the 95% efficacy we see with Pfizer/BioNTech...

I could see it reaching 30k at the end of the year with economic recoveries from numerous countries due to the COVID vaccine roll out. But as with 2017, I'm afraid of the bubble burst that usually happens when the prices grows exponentially. You can pull up the price charts for Bitcoin and literally every year there's been a massive collapse in price after the FOMO bandwagon hops in which staggers the growth.

This isn't an issue for anyone that's holding obviously unless they plan to sell soon, but I'm fearing some dumb fucks hopping on the train will eventually cause it to crash again.

We'll see...

Interesting source. It mentions that a survey found over 50 percent of Republicans believe that Trump actually won.

I'm not sure if there's a twist to this. You can't misinterpret "winning" an election, there's no ambiguity. Hope there's not that many delusional Republicans.