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chris2024's avatar

"What does it mean that many hardcore Trumpists might now see their standard-bearer as a lib?"

He's always been fairly liberal, just not insane, which is portrayed as hard-core conservative white supremacist since current year minus 6, or thereabouts. He doesn't want to believe that the vaccines don't work as well as we had all hoped; they seem to prevent the worst outcomes for those most at risk, but there are no grounds for this experimental pharmaceutical product to be mandated for all and this is what most of us object to.

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miles.mcstylez's avatar

"there are no grounds for this experimental pharmaceutical product to be mandated for all"

Health care system capacity limits. There. Them's the grounds.

I'm from the most conservative part of Canada (Alberta, which has enough oil, cattle, and bibles that we're often compared to Texas). Being a more libertarian-leaning electorate, our government naturally tried as hard as they could to avoid vaccine mandates.

But eventually, our hospitals were so shitpacked with covid cases that we had to bite the bullet and roll out vaccine passports. Now our government is shitting their pants, hoping Omicron won't force them to make boosters mandatory. They don't want to, but it might come to that.

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Bruce Miller's avatar

Why on earth would the omicron variant warrant mandated boosters? It's relatively mild. Have you lost your collective minds in the Canadian West? You used to be the normal part of Canada.

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miles.mcstylez's avatar

Because it looks like that small percent of people who get really sick from it could still be enough to swamp hospitals, based on how contagious it is.

It's always a numbers game.

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Bruce Miller's avatar

What small percentage?

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miles.mcstylez's avatar

Under 1%, too early to pin down an exact figure.

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Deep Turning's avatar

Rural areas often have few hospital beds. Even a moderate surge of serious cases could be a problem. That's what happened in parts of Florida in 2020. It was reported nationally as the whole state swamped with cases, which was not true, a hysterical exaggeration. The serious cases were transferred to areas with more hospital beds.

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miles.mcstylez's avatar

Up here in Canada, even the areas with more hospital beds ran out of space for a while. The fact it's -30 here probably has something to do with it; we can barely be outside for 5 minutes without getting frostbite. More time indoors --> more community transmission

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Shane Gericke's avatar

Occasionally, real life its very own self makes the political narrative utterly irrelevant.

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