Angry at the unvaccinated? Here's a better way

Rawley said:

You are not wrong. Unfortunately his divisiveness started in his inaugural address and has gotten nothing but worse.

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It's a shame for the country especially during a pandemic. Blaming, finger pointing isn't a productive strategy for uniting and healing the country.
My suggestion is for the federal government to keep enouraging vaccination, and forget the public shamings. It comes across as their moral and unpatriotic failings of the unwashed masses.
He's made a lot of big, BIG mistakes while messaging.

trixare4kids said:

So much for his pledge to heal and unite the country.

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He didn't actually mean "unite" as in "with you guys".

It was more about us. Which is to say all of us that aren't You People over there on the right.

trixare4kids said:

It's a shame for the country especially during a pandemic.

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Oh, hey, now the pandemic is a concern.

trixare4kids said:

Blaming, finger pointing isn't a productive strategy for uniting and healing the country.

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Nobody on the left is going to kiss anyone's ass over this.

Luce said:

Oh, hey, now the pandemic is a concern.

Nobody on the left is going to kiss anyone's ass over this.

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By all means, you keep on being you...

trixare4kids said:

It's a shame for the country especially during a pandemic. Blaming, finger pointing isn't a productive strategy for uniting and healing the country.
My suggestion is for the federal government to keep enouraging vaccination, and forget the public shamings. It comes across as their moral and unpatriotic failings of the unwashed masses.
He's made a lot of big, BIG mistakes while messaging.

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Particularly in light of the changing nature of the virus. Hopefully it will pan out that omicron is much less of a threat and signals the end the pandemic (although it certainly seems too many politicians do not want to see an end to it). We personally have 6 people in our circle of friends and family that are quarantining after testing positive. Ranging from feeling flu crappy to no symptoms at all.

Luce said:

He didn't actually mean "unite" as in "with you guys".

It was more about us. Which is to say all of us that aren't You People over there on the right.

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I'm not surprised that this is what you hear.

Luce said:

He didn't actually mean "unite" as in "with you guys".

It was more about us. Which is to say all of us that aren't You People over there on the right.

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Yup You seem to be his target audience for spreading the the hate.

trixare4kids said:

By all means, you keep on being you...

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Probably better not to waste your time if you know what I mean.

trixare4kids said:

I'm not surprised that this is what you hear.

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Who wants to unite with these guys? Not me.

Rawley said:

Yup You seem to be his target audience for spreading the the hate.

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That's nice. I was waaaaay ahead of him.

trixare4kids said:

What do you hope to achieve by the above? How will it reach the unvaccinated that you hope to get to see it your way? Obviously you thinking hurting the feeling of the unvaccinated serves a purpose. What purpose does it serve? How does your crticism change anything in the way of getting them vaccinated?

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The strategy outlined in the original post is useful in most circumstances. If you are trying to persuade someone to adopt a particular opinion it is not helpful to berate them. However, if you have a situation where you are dealing with an asshole who doesn't care about what you're concerned about, it doesn't matter what you say to them or how nice you are. Their opinions just aren't going to change. And in those circumstances if you pursue a polite, persuade-and-wait approach you are accepting the fact that in most cases someone's opinion isn't going to change, and you are accepting the cost of their refusal to change. There are some things a society has to deal with that rise to the level where the acceptance of that cost is unacceptable. I think global pandemics are one of this things. And in that case, if you are dealing with an asshole who is not going to change their opinion, you have to draw a line in the sand and impose costs on the asshole. If the costs are significant enough to the asshole you can force an asshole to change their behavior. The costs might be legal costs. The costs might be social or professional costs. The costs might be in the form of criminal punishment. With respect to social costs, it's helpful to let an asshole know he's going to be criticized, condemned, and ostracized. These are very effective strategies communities can use to force compliance with community norms. These are things we do all the time with other issues. The difference for anti-vaxxers, however, is they accept the fact that something like drunk driving is wrong and they already agree with the strategy of forcing an individual to comply with community norms in those cases.

Rawley said:

Particularly in light of the changing nature of the virus. Hopefully it will pan out that omicron is much less of a threat and signals the end the pandemic (although it certainly seems too many politicians do not want to see and end to it). We personally have 6 people in our circle of friend and family that are quarantining after testing positive. Ranging from feeling fur crappy to no symptoms at all.

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Wouldn't that be a blessing? Hoping your circle of good buds is on the mend soon.
It hit our family hard in December. My youngest son and his family, all vaccinated. I had something nasty but didn't get tested. I'm going to assume though that I didn't have it...

Yesterday, I had to make a quick trip out but for the most part, we are homebound. I wore a double mask because we live in an area where people are ignoring the state imposed mask mandate. Maybe they are vaccinated and have had omicron already?

I'm going to order the N-95 masks from Amazon today.

We are being overly protective of ourselves because we are going up to Portland to see our other son and his family soon. Don't want to be ill and have to cancel our plans. My granddaughters both have had covid despite being vaccinated. My son and his wife haven't caught it. though they are both vaccinated and boosted.

trixare4kids said:

So how would you go about forcing and coercing the unvaxxers to get poked?

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1. I think in the near term the problem be solved with good and honest and truthful propaganda and a good public relations campaign. The problems we have now are mostly the result of right-wingers fighting back against prudent pandemic policies for political reasons, and pushing disinformation.

2. In the long term, I think the States and Congress should pass laws, even to the extent of amending the Constitution, to allow the government to force compliance with anti-pandemic procedures such as forced or coerced vaccinations. We will always have to deal with pandemics. And the next pandemic may be far more deadly than this one. And we should do this even if it pisses off anti-vaxxers. We use the coercive power of government for other things like instituting drafts for major wars, except in the case of getting vaccinated the cost imposed on the individual is far less (a free, safe, and effective vaccine that takes no more than 30 minutes out of one's day).

trixare4kids said:

Wouldn't that be a blessing? Hoping your circle of good buds is on the mend soon.
It hit our family hard in December. My youngest son and his family, all vaccinated. I had something nasty but didn't get tested. I'm going to assume though that I didn't have it...

Yesterday, I had to make a quick trip out but for the most part, we are homebound. I wore a double mask because we live in an area where people are ignoring the state imposed mask mandate. Maybe they are vaccinated and have had omicron already?

I'm going to order the N-95 masks from Amazon today.

We are being protective of ourselves because we are going up to Portland to see our other son and his family soon. Don't want to be ill and have to cancel our plans. My granddaughters both have had covid despite being vaccinated. My son and his wife haven't caught it. though they are both vaccinated and boosted.

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As Saint Fauci said, "it's going to find everybody." I'm tempted to go get exposed, like we used to do with the kids and chickenpox, but I'm not enough of a gambling man.

Rawley said:

As Saint Fauci said, "it's going to find everybody." I'm tempted to go get exposed, like we used to do with the kids and chickenpox, but I'm not enough of a gambling man.

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Lol, I've thought of doing the same... Bring it on so we can get natural immunity! Like I said, maybe omicron is a blessing in disguise.

trixare4kids said:

Lol, I've thought of doing the same... Bring it on so we can get natural immunity! Like I said, maybe omicron is a blessing in disguise.

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I encourage you guys to do this.

W_Heisenberg said:

1. I think in the near term the problem be solved with good and honest and truthful propaganda and a good public relations campaign. The problems we have now are mostly the result of right-wingers fighting back against prudent pandemic policies for political reasons, and pushing disinformation.

2. In the long term, I think the States and Congress should pass laws, even to the extent of amending the Constitution, to allow the government to force compliance with anti-pandemic procedures such as forced or coerced vaccinations. We will always have to deal with pandemics. And the next pandemic may be far more deadly than this one. And we should do this even if it pisses off anti-vaxxers. We use the coercive power of government for other things like instituting drafts for major wars, except in the case of getting vaccinated the cost imposed on the individual is far less (a free, safe, and effective vaccine that takes no more than 30 minutes out of one's day).

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I think the government shouldn't stop with pandemics, it should also punish the obese, the smokers, the drinkers, essentially anyone who doesn't strictly follow the government mandated health requirements. How about punishing people who don't get regular exercise which promotes good health. I think the government should mandate a specific diet for every american, except od course for the elite and the politicians that serve them. Let's do good health right.

Luce said:

I encourage you guys to do this.

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Do I detect a sarcastic tone coming from you?
You had it, right? Aren't you glad to have it over with?

trixare4kids said:

Do I detect a sarcastic tone coming from you?
You had it, right? Aren't you glad to have it over with?

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1. Nope. It is not sarcastic at all. If we can't have 93%+ vaccination, we may as well use this as Darwin's door knocker.

2. The first man in America to die of Omicron had already been sick with covid prior to his fatal case.

TearItAllDown said:

I think the government shouldn't stop with pandemics, it should also punish the obese, the smokers, the drinkers, essentially anyone who doesn't strictly follow the government mandated health requirements. How about punishing people who don't get regular exercise which promotes good health. I think the government should mandate a specific diet for every american, except od course for the elite and the politicians that serve them. Let's do good health right.

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Don't forget Michelle's healthy school lunches..

TearItAllDown said:

I think the government shouldn't stop with pandemics, it should also punish the obese, the smokers, the drinkers, essentially anyone who doesn't strictly follow the government mandated health requirements. How about punishing people who don't get regular exercise which promotes good health. I think the government should mandate a specific diet for every american, except od course for the elite and the politicians that serve them. Let's do good health right.

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If you eat too much, you aren't harming someone else. If you smoke, you can harm someone else, and that's why in many places in the country smoking has been banned from public buildings, and even places like restaurants. If you drink too much you only hurt yourself, unless you drive drunk, which I'm sure you know is illegal. The problem with respect to contagious and deadly viruses is that the selfish behavior of someone who refuses to get vaccinated can lead to the injury and death of other people in their community. It's for this reason that it's appropriate for the government to interfere and force an individual to change his or her behavior. That is the essential reason why governments exists to begin with. We need a structure in place to resolve and mitigate disputes. We need a structure in place to hold individuals to account for bad behavior. The problem we have is not that we disagree on whether or not government should perform this role. For instance, every single anti-vaxxer already agrees that it's appropriate for governments to force individuals to modify their behavior with respect to the bad actions they agree are bad actions. The problem we have is that anti vaxxers are either assholes who don't care that their behavior hurts other people, or they are just too ignorant to understand their selfish behavior is hurting other people. In short, they don't recognize this is something the government should interfere with. In either case, this is a situation where using government power to modify the behavior of individuals within a society, is appropriate and necessary, despite what anti-vaxxers think.

Luce said:

1. Nope. It is not sarcastic at all. If we can't have 93%+ vaccination, we may as well use this as Darwin's door knocker.

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Fauci said we're all going to catch it, so why not get it over with sooner than later?

Luce said:

2. The first man in America to die of Omicron had already been sick with covid prior to his fatal case.

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He was or was not vaccinated?

trixare4kids said:

Fauci said we're all going to catch it, so why not get it over with sooner than later?

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Because the hospitals are a little full right now.

trixare4kids said:

He was or was not vaccinated?

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Not vaccinated.

Here's the thread in which this was discussed:


And here's the external link:

mrjurrs said:

I concur.
View attachment 67369207

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I won't bother insulting what little intelligence that required to post by countering it with one of my own showing liberals destroying government and/or businesses' buildings. I'll simply concede that there were "some people that did something" (Omar) on 1/6.

W_Heisenberg said:

If you eat too much, you aren't harming someone else. If you smoke, you can harm someone else, and that's why in many places in the country smoking has been banned from public buildings, and even places like restaurants. If you drink too much you only hurt yourself, unless you drive drunk, which I'm sure you know is illegal. The problem with respect to contagious and deadly viruses is that the selfish behavior of someone who refuses to get vaccinated can lead to the injury and death of other people in their community. It's for this reason that it's appropriate for the government to interfere and force an individual to change his or her behavior. That is the essential reason why governments exists to begin with. We need a structure in place to resolve and mitigate disputes. We need a structure in place to hold individuals to account for bad behavior. The problem we have is not that we disagree on whether or not government should perform this role. For instance, every single anti-vaxxer already agrees that it's appropriate for governments to force individuals to modify their behavior with respect to the bad actions they agree are bad actions. The problem we have is that anti vaxxers are either assholes who don't care that their behavior hurts other people, or they are just too ignorant to understand their selfish behavior is hurting other people. In short, they don't recognize this is something the government should interfere with. In either case, this is a situation where using government power to modify the behavior of individuals within a society, is appropriate and necessary, despite what anti-vaxxers think.

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Why haven't the states forced a vaccine mandate yet if what you're saying is the way to go?