Part of the problem is the training they receive. Way too many officers get training called Killology. In this, they are told that they are going out to war and everyone they encounter is going to try to kill them. In response, they're told, they need to be ready to end the other person's life at a moment's notice. It makes officers look at every action as if it's an upcoming fatal attack. Old lady you stopped reaching for her purse? She must be trying to grab a gun and shoot you, better shoot her first. Kid playing with a Nerf gun in the park? That must be a real gun in disguise and he'll shoot you with it so he's going down first. Handcuffed suspect isn't complying 100%? He must be trying to figure out how to kill you so you'd better take him out first.

Killology courses should be completely banned and better training courses provided to teach police officers 1) how to deescalate a situation and 2) how to tell the difference between a situation where de-escalation will help and one where they are in actual danger. (I don't deny that officers do encounter "he'll kill me if I don't fire first" situations. The issue is that Killology tells them that EVERY situation is one of these.)

They didn't consider him "on their team" because he refused to overturn the election for them. The fact that he didn't have the authority to do this (the Vice President's role is basically ceremonial) didn't matter to them. Pence refused to say "no matter what the electoral votes say, I declare Trump the winner" and therefore they viewed him as a traitor.

It's a little bit of both since the government takes corporate donations and, in a totally separate decision *wink* *wink* doesn't look too closely at the figures the corporation is reporting.

And for a lot of the country, there's only one broadband option. I looked up my house and it's not listed as a Broadband Vacuum, but I only have 1 ISP to choose from: Spectrum. If Spectrum decided to raise their rates to $100 a month, decided to block Netflix and Google, or just plain decided to kick me off and permanently ban me from having their service ever again, I wouldn't have any other option. There are no competitors. I might still be able to get DSL (for more money and slower speed), satellite (even more money and low caps), mobile (caps galore), or dial up (hell no), but none of those are viable options for how I use broadband (work + streaming). Without a healthy competition in the ISP market, too many people are left to the whims of a single company and are unable to switch to someone else.

A lot of states place onerous rules on who can install broadband service. It's designed to help protect the ruling ISP's monopoly - even if the ISP doesn't provide service to that area. Google found this out when they tried rolling out Google Fiber and a lot of towns ran into it when they tried to deploy municipal broadband.

The vaccines have been through all the trials that normal vaccines go through. They've been tested and found to be safe and effective. They aren't "poorly tested" at all, All the "rushing" that people claim happened really was was that the companies could do multiple phases concurrently instead of one at a time. So they could run Phase 1 and 2. Then, as Phase 1 was ending and the vaccine looked promising, they could launch Phases 3 and 4. The paperwork with the FDA was also expedited. So a process that normally took years (apply for approval to start trials, wait, do Phase 1, send in results, wait, do Phase 2, send in results, wait, etc) instead took months (send in paperwork, get a speedy reply, do Phase 1 & 2, send in results and start Phases 3 and 4, etc).

Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for full authorization and are expected to be granted it. The only difference between the EUA and the full authorization was some paperwork. Will you still call the vaccines 'beta vaccines" when they get full authorization granted?

If you're talking about the mRNA being the "beta" aspect of it, then you're wrong there too. mRNA has been studied as far back as the 1990's. mRNA vaccines have been considered for years. We just lucked out that the technology reached the point where we could deploy these vaccines when this pandemic struck. Has this hit in the 1990's, we'd have been out of luck and might have had to wait years for a vaccine.

Moderna submitted the paperwork also. And that's really the only thing separating EUA from full authorization. A bit more paperwork. They're not running additional trials or anything. They just need to file some forms with the (already available) trial results. Then, the FDA looks at everything and decides whether to approve it or not. Given that millions have already gotten the vaccine under EUA and it's been wildly successful, it's almost guaranteed that they will be approved for full authorization.

I agree with you on the moved goalposts as well. The second the vaccines are approved, the anti-vaxxers will drop the "it's not fully approved" argument and switch to some other "reason" why they are refusing the vaccine.

From memory, there were 6 cases in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine out of 6 million doses given. One or two of those cases were fatal.

This is possibly 226 cases (they need to go through them more to see if all of these cases count) out of 130 million vaccinated. Since the mRNA vaccines need two doses, that might be between 130 million and 260 million doses. Also, none of these people have died and most have recovered.

The chances of this occurring seem minute at the moment so it wouldn't require a general pause on the vaccine. Now, if they find some commonality, they might change the recommendation for some subgroup of people. For example, "all people age 13 to 25 with a history of heart problems shouldn't get the mRNA vaccines or should be observed for cardiac irregularities for a week afterwards." That could reduce the incidence of this rare issue while still allowing most people to continue to be vaccinated.

go look up hbomberguy's recent youtube video on the origins of anti vaxx, it's all a scam to make money

One of the "doctors" that the anti-vax community loves to prop up is Andrew Wakefield. He's the one with the famous study "proving" that vaccines cause autism. (A study that was later not only debunked and retracted, but proven to be fraudulent.) What most people don't realize is that Wakefield wasn't trying to stop MMR vaccinations. He just had his own MMR vaccination that he wanted to sell. His pitch wasn't "stop using MMR vaccinations because they cause autism." It was "stop using THIS vaccination and buy MY vaccine instead!"

It was only after he was discredited and he smelled money from the anti-vax folks that he turned full anti-vaxxer. It's a scam to get him money, the anti-vaxxers fall for it, and their children (as well as people who can't get the vaccines for valid medical reasons) pay the price.

And the right wing is very, very clearly anti-vaxx. They usually stick to the "just asking questions" variety, where they install doubt where there is none, using the fact that scientists tend to use vague words because a scientist is always open to being proven wrong, but then if you look up those Tucker Carlson videos he has literally said that we were told to keep wearing masks because the vaccine doesn't work (look it up).

I can't stand Tucker Carlson. Every video I see of him is just him asking question after question. They're obviously designed to lead you to a conclusion, but he provides no evidence and his defense if he's taken to task is "well, I was just asking questions." If you want to give a well reasoned argument as to why some policy is bad, great. Give your sources and we can have a discussion. But don't just sit there "asking questions" with no actual evidence and then fall back on "I was just asking questions" when challenged.

People also misunderstand the VAERS system. I've heard people point to "3,000-4,000 people died after getting the COVID vaccine." That's half true. Yes, that number of people died AFTER getting the vaccine, but not necessarily BECAUSE they got the vaccine.

First of all, anything can be reported into VAERS. I could report that the vaccine turned me into the Incredible Hulk, but that wouldn't be true. A follow-up on my case would reveal that it didn't happen.

Secondly, a lot of people are getting vaccinated so by sheer chance some will die after getting the vaccine. Suppose you have an 85 year old man with a history of heart disease, and who barely survived three major heart attacks in the past 2 years. If he gets vaccinated and drops dead from a heart attack a week later, this will go into VAERS. Did the COVID vaccine cause his death though? Or was it his severe heart disease/heart attack history? Most likely, he would have dropped dead without the jab and the vaccine isn't to blame. His death will be included in VAERS, but will be excluded once a review is done.

Still, people look at VAERS, see thousands of reported deaths, and jump to the conclusion that each and every one of those is due to the COVID vaccine.

True. That's the other part of it. If a movie studio stole my novel and produced it into a movie, thinly veiling the theft by changing the character names and that's it, they would have a team of lawyers ready to battle me in court. As a normal person, I wouldn't be able to afford a big legal fight. Maybe some lawyers, smelling the payday, would do their work "for free" while the court was in session, taking a chunk of any settlement or judgement. Still, I'd need to devote a big chunk of my life to this fight, possibly taking time away from my family/day job/hobbies/etc. Meanwhile, the movie studio could be fighting the case and still doing dozens of other things at the same time. They could drain me dry before I ever saw a penny from them.

Copyright law not only needs sane penalties, but it needs protections from big companies either suing small individuals or stealing small people's IP. (I'm not a lawmaker, so I don't know the legalese to get this done, unfortunately.)

Why would you think this? Fauci wasn't mentioned in the excerpt at all.

There is precisely ZERO data available on the long term effects of these "vaccines" (they are actually experiment gene therapies and NOT vaccines).

The components of the vaccine (the mRNA as well as the spike proteins produced by your cells when they read the mRNA strands) are gone from your system in a matter of weeks. We have people who were immunized with the Pfizer and Modera shots for about a year now from the trials and all of the symptoms manifest in the first few days as the immune system sees the spike proteins and attacks. (Just what the vaccine is designed to do.)

What we do know is that there are quite a few adverse side effects that compromise fertility, cardiac functionality, severe arthritis, nervous disorders, and has even lead to death in thousands of cases so far.

There is zero proof that there is any fertility, cardiac, arthritis, or nervous system impact. This is all just Internet conspiracy theories with zero scientific backing. "I read it on Facebook" doesn't equal scientific proof.

As for the "thousands of deaths," yes, thousands of deaths after vaccination were logged into the vaccine reporting system VAERS. However, there are two important points to remember. First of all, ANYTHING can be logged into VAERS. I could log that, after my vaccine, I turned into the Incredible Hulk. It wouldn't be true, but it would be in VAERS. So data in VAERS needs to be verified before it is used. Secondly, correlation doesn't equal causation. If an 85 year old man with a history of heart disease dies of a heart attack two days after being vaccinated, it will be logged into VAERS. This doesn't mean that the vaccine caused his death, though. More likely, it was his history of heart disease and the vaccine's proximity was just a coincidence. We've given over 300 million doses of the vaccine - a few thousand people dying around when they got the vaccine could be due to pure chance instead of being caused by the vaccine. (And, in fact, scientists looking into this came to exactly this conclusion - the deaths were unrelated to the vaccine.)

Important to remember, none of these vaccines has FDA approval. They only have emergency authorizations. So maybe we should save the fan fair for a couple years until we can breath a little easier that this isn't going to be another "thalidomide" situation on a global scale.

The only difference between the EUA and full authorization is some paperwork. All the trials are done and the data collected. Pfizer and Moderna have both submitted the paperwork for full authorization. They'll likely get the full authorization as soon as the FDA processes this paperwork.

Being sent to jail actually can be financially ruinous. You'd be gone from your job for a few months and chances are wouldn't have a job when you got out. Then, as you applied for a new job, prospective employers would find out that you were in jail which would dissuade them from hiring you. There's a huge stigma towards people who have been sent to jail which makes it harder for them to find legitimate work even if they're trying to go straight.