Donald Trump is too emotional to be president
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Good point, although somewhat crudely communicated.
Lots of petty men said that women are too emotional,
and that's why they couldn't vote for Kamala Harris.
Trump has about 10 temper tantrums per day, 100 if you count his nightly tweets.
I've never seen Kamala Harris be that emotional, even once.

Oh sure, NOW it is getting addressed in congress, but that was AFTER your side's attempt to do it through your corrupted Supreme Court has failed. So far, they are just not corrupted enough. It looks like most of your justices still care just enough to NOT be remembered as complete traitors to The Constitution.

You keep thinking of immigrants as abusers of the system, but they are mostly hard working people, who are looking for a future for their children. Your country was built on the backs of them.

If enough people agree with you, it could be easily changed.
That's democracy; you don't always get what you want.

Your assuming incorrectly that I was talking about shooting someone.
You were making it sound like upsetting the apple cart is good and that people
doing that always have good intentions. That's what I was reacting to.

You're assuming that liberals don't want to upset the apple cart, which is only true in the current little piece of history. When your liberal democracy was created, it very much did upset the apple cart. Many violent wars were fought over creating liberal systems. Seeing how politics is moving, it looks almost inevitable that more horrible wars have to be fought to maintain some of those liberal systems.

Once there is a liberal system, you are probably right that liberals want to maintain it, and therefore don't want to upset the apple cart.
However, while some forms of liberalism prioritize economic stability and market freedom, other liberal traditions accept substantial economic disruption, when it is necessary to protect rights, competition, or democratic values.

It's however also a symptom of capitalism. The main people who don't want the profitable apple cart to be disrupted, are the ones who profit from it the most.

People can react violently, when someone is trying to take something away from them.
That could be the profitable apple cart, power or rights. People who don't upset the apple cart are mostly not a danger to anyone's income, wealth, power or rights,
so it stands to reason that they're less at risk of being murdered.

It depends who they were upsetting the profitable apple cart FOR.
Kennedy did it for the average American.
Reagan did it for the wealthy and corporations.
Trump did it to get accepted by the elite and worshiped by stupid people.

When a bridge was built in 6 months, while other similar bridges take 2 years, does that mean that construction codes must have been ignored?
I am explaining that such a bridge would normally be constructed by 50 workers, but because it had collapsed and it was a very important transportation route, they allocated a crew of 350 workers, reassigned from lots of other projects, to get a new bridge in working order in 6 months, while 20 inspectors were on site 24/7, reacting to all issues immediately to not keep the workers waiting, and to make sure everything was constructed safer than the last bridge that collapsed.

In my opinion, the American FDA is the best agency that Americans ever created. I'm not saying that they are perfect, but I've seen their professionalism and knowledge first hand. Pharmaceutical companies shit their pants when they walk in unannounced. When the Covid vaccines were ramped up and tested, they were on top of that. That delayed other clinical tests, but the world needed them to act. It was similar for the pharmaceutical companies. All of the effort and money went into getting those processes on-line, leaving other manufacturing processes on just life-support. All other projects were on-hold, with full priority on the Covid vaccines. Personally, I got the workload of 3 FTE, because many colleagues left to the Janssen vaccine plant. All people with ambition, who wanted to join the most important project in vaccine development in years or even decades. Why? Because this was a pandemic hitting the developed countries. There were stories about shipping containers full of dead people in Italy. That made people feel differently than when it was people in Africa dying from Ebola. Actually, the development of an Ebola vaccine was put on hold for the prioritization of the Covid vaccine.
Do you understand now why the Covid vaccines were available so quickly?
And no, I don't just trust the FDA. All countries have their own scientific evaluations. We have both the Medicines Evaluation Board (CBG College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) doing very similar assessments. Pfizer-BioNTech is partly German and AstraZeneca is developed by the University of Oxford in the UK. The FDA was not the main regulator there.

OK, you found one mistake; "My 4 year old brother" was a typo, he is 4 years younger than me. I'm explaining that everyone has their anecdotes. Only the government has access to all the data.

"they can still lack common sense" If you mean logical reasoning, I agree.

"do you think it actually jumped from a wet food market into humans?"
I told you, IT DIDN'T!!! Corona viruses have killed people for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Neanderthals probably had it already. SARS is 80% identical to COVID-19. Viruses mutate like crazy. They survive long periods in animals, but they hop on to humans any time that people come into contact with animals too closely. Those food markets are very much a risk of it. That doesn't mean that I BELIEVE ANYTHING. I'm an atheist, I don't believe ANYTHING, accept some claims with certainty, when they are supported by overwhelming evidence and I accept other claims with much lower certainty, when they are supported by less evidence. both the wet market and lab leak scenarios are plausible to me. The idea that it was intentionally done by China is ridiculous to me. They only hurt themselves more than any others, and they are incapable of that incompetence. I wouldn't say the same of the US, because their incompetence knows no limits.

Patriotism is a feeling of love, loyalty, and commitment to one's country and countrymen. That very much includes sacrificing a bit of risk to your own life or health, to save the lives of your countrymen, or to reduce the burden on your hospitals, who are trying to save the lives of your countrymen. People who call themselves 'patriots' didn't even want to bother themselves with a fucking piece of cloth on their mouths, so they don't cough the virus into grandma's lungs. How much do you love your country, if you distrust it that much?

Yes, I had the app, and I got fully vaxxed when they asked me. I was very careful to not get infected and then infect any others. I was fully vaxxed, when I finally did get it. Then I went to get officially tested, and I was in self-isolation, until I was safe again. We both were, because I got it from my girlfriend, who got it in the hospital she works in, from colleagues who were not being careful. There's no saying how many weakened patients died because of their behavior. I protected my family, friends and countrymen. Did you?

Google was never left or right. It absolutely NOT hiding conservative content, it may favor mainstream sources, it's blocking criminal websites that are only out to scam you. People like you are an easy target for scammers, because you'll believe anything. Just like Christians are easy targets for people who sell essential oils and other bullshit.

U.S. congressional hearings and lawsuits have repeatedly examined allegations that Google censors conservatives. To date, no investigation has definitively established that Google has a company-wide policy of suppressing conservative viewpoints in search results.

Since Google bought up YouTube, it has been actively helping conservative channels and actively suppressing left-wing channels. Right-wing channels with hardly any views end up with millions of subscribers, while left-wing channels with hundreds of millions of views hardly get any new subscribers. Also, right-wing or even downright hateful comments are much less often deleted than lift-wing comments with numbers or facts. Racism is allowed to almost the extreme, but saying something negative about Israel can get you banned, quickly and without any explanation.

X blocked the "Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker" account, which was showing all the insider information and other corruption of Trump.
There were NO claims that the information was incorrect.
It was just blocked by X, without ANY reason given. A clear First Amendment violation, because the president's finances and potential conflicts of interest are within the main reason for the first amendment, which is allowing citizens to openly hold their leaders accountable.

The following 'liberal' media platforms were bought by right-wing/conservatives in the last 10 years and turned more right-wing:
- Twitter (X)
- CNN
- The Washington Post
- Los Angeles Times
- CBS News

There are now not just less left-wing opinions being voiced, there is lots
of evidence of ACTIVE suppression of the TRUTH which might hurt your administration. ACTUAL First Amendment stuff.

These are HUGE outlets, while you are probably referring to the website of some bigot in his basement, making up hateful bullshit.

What your thinking is literally the opposite of reality.
Give me your list then.

Well, maybe it's a cultural issue then.
Dutch people are direct by nature, as you probably might have heard.
We think that it's impolite to be dishonest or say something you don't mean or to expect people to read your mind. You might be blunt in tone, but you are being cryptic as hell about your opinions on what actually matters in the world we live in.

The Birth of America - Part I | Claysplained
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In honor of your 250 years of independence.

I really don't understand your thinking.
Who are you fooling by thinking that those two t-shirts are funny?

The first t-shirt: Very accurate, but what a dumb reason.
How about picking a president who will improve YOUR life?
Why would ANY Americans be pissed off, if America actually IMPROVED?
Is YOUR LIFE improved by pissing off people?
How about pissing off people who didn't want a war with Iran?
How about pissing off people who like to be able to afford food and rent?
How about pissing off people because they cannot afford health insurance anymore?
How about pissing off people who wanted Trump to end the Russia–Ukraine war?
How about pissing off people who wanted the Epstein club investigated?
How about pissing off people who want a president with some class and intelligence?

The second t-shirt: You HAVE free speech.
The only speech that was not/never free was:
• Incitement (advocating imminent lawless action)
• Defamation (libel and slander)
• Fraud (perjury and false advertising)
• Obscenity (hardcore pornography meeting the Miller test)
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
• Fighting words (face-to-face insults likely to cause violence)
• True threats (statements meant to put someone in fear of bodily harm)
• Intellectual property violations (copyright and trademark infringement)
• Speech integral to criminal conduct (solicitation, conspiracy, and extortion)
• Commercial speech violations (misleading commercial claims)

Freedom of Speech was intended for protect political dissent, prevent government tyranny, and allow citizens to openly hold their leaders accountable. No Democrat ever restricted your side to criticize them. Even the dumbest lies were completely free to you. The only times that your side got in trouble for it, is when you BROKE THE LAW. For example; when Dominion sued Fox'News' for clearly and intentionally lying about the voting machines, causing them a lot of damage. That was clearly DEFAMATION.
Was Fox'News' shut down or threatened by the Democrats? NO!

George Washington: "For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences... reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter."

Thomas Jefferson: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

These are some of Trump's Anti-Free Speech actions:
• Massive Defamation Lawsuits against the Press: Filing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against prominent outlets—including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC—for critical coverage or unflattering investigative reports.
• Financial Retribution: Forcing media and tech companies into multi-million dollar settlements over unfavorable reporting, creating an unprecedented stream of personal revenue from media litigation.
• Restricting Press Access: Barring major news organizations like The Associated Press from the White House press pool and restricting media access at the Pentagon.
• Threatening Broadcast Licenses: Publicly threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of major television stations over critical or satirical coverage.
• "Jawboning" Private Entities: Coercing private companies and entertainment executives using the threat of government consequence to cancel shows or suppress critical content.
• Targeting Academic and Protest Speech: Threatening to pull federal funding from universities that allow specific protests or student activism he deems anti-American.
• Sanctioning Legal Opponents: Issuing executive orders and using federal channels to penalize or target law firms that legally represent his political adversaries.
• Punishing Dissenting Lawmakers: Threatening to leverage federal agencies to investigate and pull grants from members of Congress who vocalize opposition to his administration.

Because you are pretending that Democrats are worse on Free Speech than Republicans,
then you should be able to give me multiple examples of situations in which your freedom of speech was restricted by a Democratic administration, and that was NOT a clear case of a violation of the law by Republicans/MAGA/Conservatives/ the right-wing (media).

how about a CO2 concentration rising from 300 ppm in 1950 to 430 ppm today?
It's basic physics that CO2 absorbs infrared light from the sun.

I understand that many people want protesters to shout in their basement about it,
but that doesn't really help to get anyone to listen and do something, now does it?
If you can tell me how people can best communicate the urgency of doing something
to prevent the worst of climate change, so that people will actually support action,
I'm open to suggestions. I would actually be able to use good ideas politically.

If you, my biggest fan, is saying that, I will try

If the gays disappear, it will be the doing of your side.
If women will be reduced to incubators, it will be your side.

There are a lot of similarities with Rome felling apart and how the US is doing:
- Political polarization
- High government debt and fiscal pressures
- Large military commitments
- Economic inequality
- Questions about institutional trust

Freedom of speech is one of liberalism's core principles. Liberalism argues that people should be free to express, debate, and challenge ideas, including liberal ones. If an ideology fears free speech, it's moving away from liberalism, not toward it.

You are the one acting like a snowflake, I'm not.

If you call the labor party 'socialist', you're on the right, because they have been very centrist and neo-liberal for a long time now.
I don't see you defend any progressive ideas or values, which means that you are a conservative. If you were on the center of progressive and conservative, I would expect you to at least defend some progressive ideas or values.

If you don't want me to label you, or you think I'm labeling you incorrectly, then you could explain what you actually stand FOR, instead of spouting your grievances.

If they don't raise taxes on the rich, they WILL raise YOUR taxes.
They are not crooks, they are doing what you are voting for.

You think that America needs to wake up because a Muslim was voted in for mayor? He's mayor now, are you seeing him do anything that you consider 'Muslim'?

There is this ONE guy, who is ACTUALLY doing what his voters want him to do.
You don't see that, because they are distracting you with fear-mongering.

Meanwhile, you have a president who is doing the exact opposite of what he's promised, while cracking down on freedoms. I hope you are objective enough
to see at least some of that.

Rory Sutherland on the unwritten rule that held businesses together for 150 years.
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The Christian Nationalism viewpoints are pretty damn similar to Sharia law.
There are more Americans every day arguing that being gay should be illegal.
Maybe not slavery, but techno-feudalism isn't much fun either.
The manosphere considers women subservient to men.
They think that serving their husband is their only right.

Trump himself couldn't care less. He was pro-abortion for his whole life, until he needed the votes of the Christian fundamentalists.

"He's not Muslim" is a very low bar for a country that shouts FREEDOM from the rooftops.

By the way, there are lots of Muslims who care about freedom more than you.
That's why they protest their horrible regimes at the risk of death.
I don't see you fight for your freedoms like that.

Most definitely, Bella is respected and liked by most members, including me, because she doesn't engage in the 'factionalism' as much as others.

I'm not getting personal, I'm addressing opinions.

- Addressing someone's opinions means responding to the ideas, arguments, evidence, or conclusions they present. The focus is on what they SAID.
- A personal attack (an ad hominem attack) targets the person's character, intelligence, motives, or identity instead of engaging with their argument.
The focus is on who they ARE.

Fun is what originally attracted me to this site, but what I found was lots of heated discussions, about every subject imaginable. The original use of sharing nude photographs is made impossible for me, because of the site demanding registration for that. The discussion about sexual subjects are not getting much interaction. The things that mostly keep me coming to the site are topics around politics and science.

Of course it is directed at you, I am answering your comments.

I'm referring to this:
bella! 27d ago
This is definitely not questionable, it’s the truth. WAKE UP AMERICA!
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The person in the clip is saying that you cannot trust Zohran Mamdani, because he is a Muslim. He is clearly linking him to 9/11, ONLY because he is Muslim. How would you react if I said that Gidi Markuszower, a Jewish person, shouldn't be trusted with his Dutch House of Representative seat, solely on the basis that he is a Jew, and Israel keeps mass murdering civilians in Palestine? Would you call it antisemitic?

I agree with you that one person's asshole/bully is another person's funny person. There's a lot of Factionalism going on in these forums. People tend to defend other people from their 'faction' and I'm not claiming innocence on that.
I feel differently about the blacklisting. I am here defending a certain world-view. I care about my freedom of speech and blacklisting someone feels to me like taking away their freedom of speech, even if only towards me. I have done that only once ever, and I don't like to do it again.

No, I do not understand where you're coming from. Your country is NOT your family. Your Constitution is written for allowing critique of your country as one of your most important rights. It is the same for the Constitution of my country. As soon as you see your country as immune to criticism, that's when democracy dies.

It's a little bit of a hassle for me to get my ideas printed in a book
and get them in your local library.

I saw it in the list of recent topics.
I understand that the person who started this is no longer active.
That doesn't stop me from venting my opinions. They need to be out there.

A growing share of the world's heat records have been set in recent years,
and many countries have broken all-time national heat records within the last decade
as the climate has warmed.

The current record for the highest global annual average surface temperature is 2024.
It surpassed the previous record set in 2023.

The ranking is currently:
#1: 2024
#2: 2023
#3: 2025 (based on major global temperature datasets available so far)
#4: 2016
#5: 2020

The global instrumental temperature record is generally considered reliable from about 1880 onward. Considering that 145 period, the probability that the five warmest years would all fall in the last 10 years (2015–2024) is 1 in 1,000,000 (= 0.0001%).

I'm just addressing an inconsistency between the TOS and the status quo.
See my long comment.

I'm trying to only start political discussion in the topics that are intended for it. If someone starts a political discussion in a topic that is NOT, then I'm just joining in.

You seem to think that googling something is cheating?
You first need to know something exists, before you can google it.
More people should check their facts, before they put it out there.

I might get a bit exuberant with the arguments sometimes, but as I pointed out before:

That discussion has come up before. People consider an account “fake” when it's full of photos that do not belong to the person who made the account. It's very difficult to determine that, so there is no clear 'who and how', but it has been done in the past, by using the Abuse panel.
My personal definition of an “asshole” is someone who keeps personally attacking a member with extremely vile language and very personal insults that are on and even over the legal limit of even your First Amendment protections. As you know, in the US there is no Absolute Free Speech.

When you read my whole comment, do you come to the conclusion that I want to ban those "fakers and people who act like assholes"? Why do I say "Just one problem"?
Didn't I say: "if the site starts policing more strictly, it's possible that it loses the very thing that makes it great"?

I'm doing the OPPOSITE of what you think I'm doing. I'm addressing the Terms Of Use, which says that people should be polite here. That is NOT the status quo. I'm not in any way polite, I'm very direct, sometimes insulting. Almost everyone her is doing the same or worse. I usually don't deal the first punch, when it gets downright nasty, but I can get nasty too. Maybe you even think that I'm being an 'asshole' sometimes or often, but I actually don't engage in my own definition of continually "personally attacking a member with extremely vile language". I hope you see that. I have called some Americans "traitor" before, if they CLEARLY completely disrespect your own Constitution. I have called someone a 'racist' before, if they CLEARLY make racist remarks. Meanwhile, I have been called much worse, repeatedly, for no reason whatsoever.

At one point, the verbal abuse towards me exceeded every limit of what is described in the TOS. That was the only time ever that I used the Abuse panel. No one agreed that the verbal abuse was out of line, so I’m using that as the standard of what is ‘acceptable’ here. However, that means that the part in the TOS that deals with ‘aggressive behavior’ is in my opinion completely useless. I don’t see it being applied consistently, so I cannot judge what is the standard for the Abuse panel. That’s why I don’t vote, when members report members for deletion. In the case of ‘fakers’, the TOS is saying: “However, administration of this site does not have any authority to make background checks on every member of the site. Therefore any member of this site may be not who they claim to be”. If admin doesn’t have any authority to make background checks on members of the site, then certainly members don’t have it either. Therefore, I don’t vote for Abuse panel claims about fake accounts. I expressed agreement with the person who said they don’t like it. It’s possible that people are doing revenge porn, but as you just argued yourself; it’s very difficult to recognize. That leaves under@ge pornography, which is the responsibility of the site administration. Do you now understand why I don’t vote in the Abuse panel?

I agreed with the person who didn’t like ‘fakers’ and ‘assholes’. However, I clearly said that more strict policing could hurt this site. This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech, and I am using THAT privilege. You are doing the same, even if you don’t realize it. You just posted a comment related to the Muslim faith, that if a similar comment was against the Jewish faith, would have been called Antisemitic by everyone here. You CAN criticize a religion, but that is different from expressing dislike and distrust towards a specific person, based ONLY on the fact that they belong to a religion. That’s called ‘prejudice’. I dare you to find one post from me where I do that.
Still, this is done by lots of people all the time, so it’s allowed. Like I said; “This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech”. I might be happier with a little more policing,
but I’m all about democracy. It looks like most people here would like an even ‘more Absolute’ Free Speech. That means that there is an inconsistence between the TOS and the status quo. That is calling for rule being applied inconsistently. I don’t like THAT.
It means that some people can break the law without consequences and others are being punished under the same law. That’s when I say; either apply the law consistently OR CHANGE THE LAW (to something that DOES fit the demand of the people).

That's because of money in politics. If they need lots of money from billionaires
to win an election, they might promise to do something for you, but as soon as they try, they get a phone call from their wealthy donor saying:
"Who the hell do you think you are working for?"

If their career only depends on your vote, their "what's in it for me" question
is the same as "what's in it for my voters". Of course, you also need to end their ability
to trade in individual stocks and end the 'revolving door'.

Best Democrat Ad Yet
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That's horrible. The most dangerous animals in my country are probably wasps or bees, with about 4 deaths per year in total.
I would not be swimming in any water that looks like there could be gators in it.
She looks like Phoebe from friends. Sad!

When do some people connect the dots between
"Damn, I have NEVER experienced heat like this!"
.
.
.
.
and
.
.
.
.
Something that scientists have predicted damn accurately, for decades now.

(If the first thing doesn't apply to you right now, it will soon)

When the public wants one thing, and both party elites want something else...
What's the difference?
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Don't agree? Argue why he's wrong.

Thanks for waiting till I was finished editing and editing and editing.
I was made aware that I tend to do that, to the point of annoyance.

Sorry, I couldn't let it be. I changed the last part to:
"I don't see this site rule being applied consistently. If it isn't practical to implement,
than I think it should be changed to represent the status quo.
If you don't like the status quo, then please propose a practical solution."

Sure, I think that this is a great site too.
And this site would indeed be better without fakers and people who act like assholes.
Just one problem: there is no community that polices itself, and if the site starts policing more strictly, it's possible that it loses the very thing that makes it great.

However, the site could be more clear about "to conduct yourself in an adult manner".

"By accessing the site, you agree to conduct yourself in an adult manner. This specifically means being polite to all members in chats and in the discussion forums. Aggressive behavior will not be tolerated by any member. If Site Administration is informed of aggressive behavior, we will check the discussion forums and logs. Please ensure that you provide specific examples and remit for review via private message. Site Administration reserves the right to determine what is deemed aggressive behavior on a case by case basis."

I don't see this site rule being applied consistently. If it isn't practical to implement,
than I think it should be changed to represent the status quo.
If you don't like the status quo, then please propose a practical solution.

If they could deny something THAT explicitly written in the Constitution,
America would be completely dead already.

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But how the fuck can so many Americans and their elected representatives deny this text:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

If you don't agree with it, OK, get the majority that you need to change it in the way that
The Constitution demands of you. Stop cheating democracy!

When you need heart surgery, you don't get a second opinion from a pastry chef.
Your ideas about Covid are not supported by ANY specialists.

What are you talking about with "the same conclusions" related to Covid?
Scientists and academics were very much debating each other on how to best approach the pandemic. But the science around it was just science. Not everything was known for 100% sure at all time, but that doesn't mean that the "I'm just asking questions" crowd ever had any decent points. The main actors in that movement were in it to destroy confidence in science and vaccines. Their motivation can be traced back directly to Christian fundamentalist and big corrupt money.

Are you now calling what scientists do "anecdotal evidence"? The vaccines were tested on over a hundred thousand people, before the general public got their shots. During that process, no one involved knows who gets the vaccine and who gets the placebo, but every little possible side-effect gets documented and investigated. Two cases involved people who died. Production of the related vaccine was immediately stopped. The FDA investigated the deaths. Usually, this takes months. Because of the priority of the Covid vaccines, the FDA reported back in only a few days. The people who died had the placebo, and died of natural causes. That WILL happen, if you test something on 100,000 people. There were no other cases like that. However, afterwards the results were presented, see below. Is that "anecdotal evidence"? Maybe, but it's better evidence than most vaccines and most medicines. They could have tested the vaccines for another few year, but then the pandemic would have been over,
and many more people would have died.

Pfizer–BioNTech (BNT162b2)
Participants randomized: 43,448
Vaccine: 21,720
Placebo: 21,728
Symptomatic COVID-19 (primary endpoint):
Vaccine: 8 cases
Placebo: 162 cases
Estimated efficacy: 95%
COVID-19 deaths: 0 in both groups during the blinded period.

Moderna (mRNA-1273)
Participants randomized: 30,420
Vaccine: 15,210
Placebo: 15,210
Symptomatic COVID-19:
Vaccine: 11 cases
Placebo: 185 cases
Estimated efficacy: 94.1%
Severe COVID-19:
Vaccine: 0 cases
Placebo: 30 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 1

Janssen / Johnson & Johnson (Ad26.COV2.S)
Participants randomized: 43,783
Vaccine: 21,895
Placebo: 21,888
Moderate to severe/critical COVID-19 (≥14 days after vaccination):
Vaccine: 116 cases
Placebo: 348 cases
Estimated efficacy: 66.9%
Severe/critical COVID-19:
Vaccine: 14 cases
Placebo: 60 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 5

Oxford–AstraZeneca (AZD1222)
Participants randomized: 32,451
Vaccine: 21,635
Placebo: 10,816
Symptomatic COVID-19:
Vaccine: 73 cases
Placebo: 130 cases
Estimated efficacy: 74.0%
Severe or critical COVID-19:
Vaccine: 0 cases
Placebo: 8 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 0

Why are there differences in efficacy? Mostly because the vaccines were tested at different times, when different Covid strains were active.
And why did only 6 people die in total? Even though some old and unhealthy people attended as test subjects, these are people who trust the science. If they are old or unhealthy, they would not get themselves into danger of getting Covid, because they know they have about a 50/50 chance of having received a placebo. The test subjects who actually contracted Covid, were very likely to be the healthy young ones, who are more sure that they would survive. Even a test person isn't motivated much to sacrifice their life for science.

"it was get the jab or loose your job"
If your job was literally to care for old and sick people, yes.
Can we expect something of those people? Do you understand patriotism?
Another nice piece of anecdotal evidence: a member of the extended family works in a nursing home. Before the vaccines were available, they were demanded to be very careful and not come to work if they had symptoms. She had symptoms but went to work anyway. An old lady who she liked very much got infected and died. She felt guilty, but her husband is a real science denier, and made her forget that very soon. Literally death on their hands from being ignorant, but they don't care (long).

"yet people still got COVID after vaccination" Yes, but less of them DIED!!!

If you were actually skeptical, you would be open to facts and logic.

I'll show you same patronizing and condescending comments:

Blah blah blah ,you see what you want to see
so yeah bro,keep rocking that academic brain...
Too long in the laboratory and not actually talking to people in real life who have a different view than you really makes you a sheep...
I thought you liked critical thinking. Your side is what exactly?
acting morally superior over everyone here with your chat gpt crap......
Acting like you're so much better than Americans.. Pretty fucking funny to me....
Blindly believing anything is stupidity at it's finest even if you are presented with endless facts and data..
So rigid are you in your thinking that you can't even see someone playing devil's advocate....
I know you have this academic itch going on where you need to show the workings out of your views.... But geez man...
that's gotta be satire from you?
And you think you have a say in how governments are run I guess...
I think you have to put people into boxes to satisfy your own egotistical nature....
And you're so condescending,you need to be right...
I can see what is going on,you just want to feel superior and lecture everyone about how they know nothing about their own country and politics....
You're part of the same system...
you needed a big list to satisfy your academic thirst to show that....
Sheep....baa baa....I think you're pretty ignorant...you understand everything related to the problem....what absolute arrogance on display.....
Explain ..., Explain ...
I think you still have to show how clever you are,with your chat gpt stuff.
...in case you haven't figured it out...
You just want to be right that's all it is,
all I'm trying to say to you is don't believe everything blindly,
Don't be a dick about things .... look between the lines a little.....

"It's your right to express your opinion,and it's my right to say that opinion is crap.."
That's my right too.

You're a much bigger dick than me in these discussions.

Are you actually reacting to my arguments?
You are doing more personal attacks than me.
So who is being condescending?

If all politicians are crooks, does voting even matter?
Do you think that the wealthy aren't voting?
The political system suits them very well.
They always get what is best for them. How about you?

You can have a bigger influence than just voting, if you are an active member of a party. You can then also see what kind of other people are there. Have you ever seen the annual conference of your Conservative Party? What does the crowd look like? Maybe lots of older white well groomed people in expensive suits, looking like they are living a life of comfort? Not necessarily a representative sample of all members or voters, aren't they. Those people get to vote on who is the next MP. After the conference, it's mostly the people who are wearing the nicest suits, who get to talk with the people who were on stage.
Only once, I got to see the crowd of our VVD, which ChatGPT calls the "centre-right liberal party". I call it the "corporate party", because they support lower taxes, a market economy, entrepreneurship, and fiscal restraint. That crowd was filled with people who scream CEO with their whole look. There are lots of normal people member of that party, but they are somehow not showing up in those meetings. Now look at the Socialist Party meetings, and they are much more a representation of the average Dutch person. Only the people on stage might be wearing a suit, and it's clearly not an expensive one. I am a member of that party, and I have been in that crowd several times. People around me were all sociable and outspoken and informed, but not necessarily highly educated. None of them show the attitude: "I'm above you, so don't talk to me!". That's because my party gives easy access to all layers of the representation. Just show up at the right meetings, and you get to present changes or even propose whole chapters for the core values statement, the statement of principles, and every letter in every election program. Then you get to vote on the proposals with all other active members and directly control the politics of the party. The actual politicians are just representatives of what their voters want them to represent. It's nice to see them fight for everything that those active members have decided. I see some of the 'elected officials' of my municipality at least once per month. I'm damn annoyed that you think
of them as crooks, because they're sympathetic and empathic, honest, outspoken, smart, experienced and hard-working people.

So THEN you do trust a specialist?
When you need to get a science question answered, you call a SCIENTIST.

I'm a bio(process)engineer working in biotech pharma.
I worked in the production lab for 10 years, and I am now working in a supporting department, in which we as a team improve processes, equipment and procedures, implement new products, improve quality and safety and reduce costs. I have not produced vaccines, but I worked closely with people who were involved with the development of one of the Covid vaccines. We got almost daily updates of the trail process.

How much do you need to know about cars to buy a car without getting scammed?
Do you need to be an expert, or is a good basic level enough?
Do you have a good basic level on how viruses infect cells, mutate, and spread, virus research, immunology, vaccines, vaccines research, vaccines production, clinical trial processes, adverse event reporting and signal detection, pharmacovigilance, causality assessment, and which statistics are trustworthy and which are not. Every link in the chain of pharmaceutical approval has its problems, but overall they are pretty damn reliable. Billions of people use pharmaceuticals and not many of them die because of a bad product. Are you afraid to take a pill for your headache or get a local anesthetic when you need a tooth pulled? The same process that makes you trust those were used for the Covid vaccines, even though people want to make you believe it was not. All their predictions of what was supposed to happen with Covid and the vaccines turned out to be nonsense, but you pick the smallest things to keep believing failed predictions. Why?

That's not skepticism, that's cynicism or anti-intellectualism.
A Skeptic discovers the truth through objective evidence and the scientific method.

Vaccines are tried and tested science as well.
The pivotal Phase 3 trials for the first COVID-19 vaccines were among the largest vaccine trials ever conducted.
Pfizer-BioNTech: about 43,500 participants in the pivotal Phase 3 trial.
Moderna: about 30,400 participants.
AstraZeneca: over 32,000 participants in its U.S./Chile/Peru Phase 3 trial, with additional participants in UK and Brazil trials.

The typical cancer drugs are tested on much less people before approval:
Phase 1: 20–100 patients
Determines a safe dose and identifies side effects.
Phase 2: 100–300 patients
Looks for signs that the drug works against a specific cancer.
Phase 3: Typically 300–1,000 patients, though some studies enroll several thousand.

If anything you were saying was true, I didn't need to keep correcting you.

"why did everyone come to a conclusion about COVID so quickly"?
BECAUSE THERE WERE MILLIONS OF ILLNESS CASES
ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!
It takes longer to see if your polio vaccine works, because not many people get polio. You need to have a certain percentage of people get the illness in your trial group to determine how effective it is. That can take many many years for a rare illness, but it only took a few months for Covid.
And all of the drug regulatory authorities were on top of the tests to get them through the process. Just the paperwork can take YEARS, but not if everyone prioritizes this one important regulatory approval process.
Normally, pharmaceutical companies are not producing many millions of dollars worth of product, before they actually know that they can make a profit on them. They didn't do that for Covid, because it was a global pandemic killing millions of people. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build production capacity and started making product for many millions of people, to be able to distribute it to as many people as possible, as soon as they got the green light from the FDA and EMA.

I am a dick about this, because this is all VERY BASIC STUFF.

Exactly, politicians who lie, what a strange concept.
Again, they failed to make things better, but the conservatives are the party that broke everything.

Are you denying that you are a right-winger? You show it in everything.

The current Labor Party is NOT democratic socialists at all.
They would even privatize your NHS, if they could get away with it.
When was the last time that they turned a private system into a public one?
They are fully capitalist, not socialist.

"And you think you have a say in how governments are run I guess"
What are you even trying to say here? No, I just don't fall for stupid labeling tricks.

If you understood at all how the Socialist Party in my country is organized, you wouldn't say something that uninformed. We are probably the most grass roots organized party in the world.

"the status quo must be preserved for the rich...." Are YOU saying that?
Do you understand HOW that is done?
- Tax-cuts for the wealthy
- Privatizing public utilities
- Allowing large political donations
- Allowing lobbying
- Reducing transparency
- The wealthy buying up the media and turning it into propaganda
- Tax loopholes and preferential treatment
- Strict laws for the poor, weak laws for the wealthy
- The revolving door
- Weakening labor unions
- Restricting voting access
- Underfunding public education
- Corporate subsidies and bailouts
- Extending patent or copyright protections to increase monopolies
- Awarding government contracts to politically connected companies
- Weak inheritance or estate taxes
- Austerity politics
- Trade and investment rules favoring large multinational firms
- Banking and financial deregulation
- TELLING POOR PEOPLE THAT POLITICS IS NOT FOR THEM

The more they make you believe that voting is useless and all politicians are corrupt or crooks anyway, the more you will look away or vote for fucking fake populists like Nigel Farage, who are doing the bidding of the wealthy even more.

You lot are only capable of thinking binary.
Since when are any pharmaceuticals 100% effective?
Will you turn down chemo therapy, if you have cancer, when they tell you it will only have a 95% of saving your life?

Have you not heard of SARS? That is a Corona virus too. Corona viruses didn't end up transferring to humans with Covid, they have for all of human history. COVID-19 was just another instance of that.

And I know of several people (family of friends) who died of Covid before the vaccinations were available. I don't know anyone who died of Covid after being fully vaccinated. My 4 year old brother had Covid as one of the first people in my country. He survived, but he felt worse than with any flu ever and his condition was affected for months after. I had Covid after I was vaccinated, and it wasn't a big deal. I've had worse colds. This is all just "anecdotal evidence". You can pick and chose which ones confirm your opinions.
I accept statistics from trustworthy public sources, who provide all their data to the public. Who do you trust? Do you trust people who say: "I'm only asking questions!", but never even try to honestly answer them?

The labor party does NOT say they're socialists.
Only stupid right-wingers say that.

And so what? Some people call Trump transparent.
And he calls himself the peace president. Are you fucking kidding me?

I don't care about the labels that politicians give themselves,
I use the correct terms for what they are actually doing.

Your labor party has failed the working class for decades.
That's not a failure of socialism, that's a failure of those politicians.
How about pointing blame at the politicians who did the most damage, instead of the politicians who failed to repair it?

Freedom of speech is implemented by liberals. There have been lots of governments calling themselves 'socialist' that were crushing free speech, but none of them were actually socialist by official definitions. The countries that are actually the most socialist are the Scandinavian countries, and their freedom of speech and freedom of the press is the best in the world.

You DON'T have a socialist government, the labor party has fully turned to neo-liberalism. The only party in your country that can be called 'socialist'
by some stretch of the definition is the Green Party, and they are strongly supportive of civil liberties and freedom of expression.

What did your conservatives do?
Tougher restrictions on protests: The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gave police broader powers to impose conditions on protests that were deemed excessively noisy or disruptive.
Expanded surveillance powers through the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
Arrested anti-monarchy protesters around the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla under new public order laws.
The National Security Act 2023 introduced new offences aimed at foreign interference and espionage, which journalists and legal scholars expressed concern about, because parts of the legislation could have implications for investigative reporting, although the government said it was directed at hostile states rather than ordinary journalism.

True, but if you lack that competence in a given subject, you're much more susceptible to believing lies or nonsense related to that subject.

If you don't know shit about cars, a used car sales person has a much easier time to sell you a lemon. That doesn't mean that the car mechanic who isn't fooled by cheap trickery is smarter, they just have the necessary knowledge and skills that makes them recognize lies or bullshit.

When mr_blue is talking about Covid to me, it's like a used car salesmen saying:

"This model has the upgraded turbo flux capacitor. It actually makes the engine run smoother by pre-aligning the spark molecules before combustion."

"Don't worry about that knocking sound. This engine has adaptive self-healing pistons. They wear in reverse after about 10,000 miles."

"These tires are filled with premium dealership air. It reduces gravity by about 15%, so you'll save on fuel."

The first variant of Covid was actually suppressed by the vaccines for 75%. Later variants were harder to suppress. Still the vaccines do protect against contracting Covid. But that's not important. They reduce the chance of dying of getting severely ill from Covid by up to 95%.
There are lots of vaccines that don't protect you for 100%, like Influenza, Whooping Cough, RSV, Mpox, Rotavirus, Malaria.
Even the smallpox vaccine was only 95% to 97% effective, but it did completely eradicate smallpox globally in 1980.

Gain of function research is done on multiple virussen. They also closely follow bird flu. It means research to determine what genetic mutation or cross swapping with other virus strains can cause the virus to be more lethal or resistant to treatments. That's not intended to make that happen, that's intended to predict it, warn about it and propose preventative measures for it. That is in Wuhan, because the risk is in that area.
We have similar labs in the Netherlands (Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR)). They study bird flu, because lots of migrating birds use our country as feeding grounds, and we have lots of chickens in open air. We also have the RIVM monitoring for zoonotic transmission and providing national public health guidelines.

It's your basic distrust in governments that make you think that these labs are doing something nefarious. That distrust is useful for right-wingers, because their main goal is making the government smaller and privatizing everything. This is why they want you to believe that the governmnet is evil. Most of the time they are not outright saying that, they are "just asking questions", which you fill in with your indoctrinated brain.

OK, but that doesn't matter much. The UK has the same problem.
Margaret Thatcher did the same things as Ronald Reagan; tax-cuts for the wealthy and harsh spending cuts on everything that is important for the working class people.
I've never seen right-wingers increase freedom for working class people, but the wealthy got lots of freedom to exploit, scam and pollute. Point me out one important freedom for working class people that wasn't achieved by the left or liberals fighting for it and/or wasn't fought against tooth and nail by right-wingers/conservatives.

You really don't understand lefties; freedom is our base motivation.
Our basis is humanism; the idea that everyone has equal value, which is exactly what your Declaration of Independence starts with. That means that there shouldn't be a small group of people who control everyone else, with their money.
What's America based on more and more? Billionaires running the country.
And when one politician promises some good things for normal people, what are you saying? We cannot do that, because the billionaires will leave! Do you want to cuck yourself to billionaires?
Explain how that is a lefty not liking freedom.

I don't have to trust scientists about Covid, because I understand everything related to the problem. Corona viruses have existed for tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years. We can trace back likely Corona outbreaks for hundreds of years, and there is evidence of Neanderthals dying from it and building up resistance to it. Saying that Covid is man-made is nonsense. It's still possible that it was a lab-leak, but there are Corona viruses in nature all around the area that Covid first occurred, in lots of different animals. That's why they are studying it there. No one is studying Corona viruses in the arctic. There are also no scientists studying wild elephants in Canada. I'm not morally superior or that much smarter, I just have some knowledge on several subjects that you don't understand the slightest thing about. You lot know so little, that you don't understand how little you know. Still you are talking very confidently, repeating absolute nonsense, from people who want to distract you with nonsense. You need only a little bit more knowledge to understand how much false ideas they are planting in your head.
When experts were talking about Covid on TV, it all made sense, but when politicians or journalists were trying to explain things, and I recognized all the mistakes. But those were honest mistakes from people who don't have the required knowledge. When your right-wing media was talking about Covid, EVERYTHING WAS WRONG. You didn't know, because you CAN'T know. It requires a level of knowledge. Understand that.

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To the well-thinking Americans; I'm very sorry that Trump is screwing up your 250 years
of independence celebrations. It's hard to see.

If you prefer opinions over facts and logic, he's your guy.

"Facts" are an accurate description of reality. If everything only came down to belief, then medicine, engineering, and science wouldn't work consistently. A bridge doesn't stay up because people believe it will, it stays up because it follows the laws of physics. Beliefs are personal, facts are constrained by reality.

Yes, you are on a side, a side that denies reality.

"I am pretty sure someone here can call out a lie from your side"
Wow, I cannot remember the last time your side said anything truthful.

"common sense" is untrustworthy, it's based on intuition, not necessarily on reality. You can have a natural logic, but what you are most commonly referring to as "common sense" is just mostly "group think". It depends on culture and era.
What feels "obvious" is often wrong, especially in complex subjects. Knowledge provides accurate facts, and logical reasoning tests whether conclusions actually follow from those facts. Without both, common sense can confidently lead to mistakes.