Long and Tedious Path to the Truth

The whole thing seems like a wildly downstream effect anyway. If you’re living in a place and working in a place where people are being allowed or encouraged to go to the workplace and are allowed or encouraged to be unvaccinated AND apparently advertise it to their colleagues, I mean dear God why in the fuck are we arguing about how to deal with that in an interpersonal level. This is like having the government not enforce a requirement that cars have brakes and then tut tutting people who are mad at anti-brakers going 50 MPH over the speed limit and cutting them off on the highway. Society isn’t supposed to let it get to the point where we’re fretting about the feelings of the anti-brakers on the highway because, I don’t know, he thinks brake pads involve fetal testing.

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Right, which is why there’s no tension between me saying that I don’t judge antixxers and saying that I support vaccine mandates. Supporting polices that promote vaccination doesn’t mean that I can’t and don’t treat people who have fallen down a rabbit hole of bad information with compassion and respect, regardless of whatever wrong views they hold on the covid vaccines.

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To add a little: I wouldn’t go after somebody at work, but I would lose a ton of respect for them. Luckily I don’t have to worry about it, because we fired everybody that refused to get vaxxed.

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I’m with you 95% of the way. I am not so sure about compassion and respect. I have a nagging feeling that a lot of the antivaxxers aren’t just random unfortunate people that have fallen into bad times totally of no fault of their own. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but I do think a lot of it falls on the antivaxxers. There’s a reason these views have the most traction in Trump country - I didn’t respect the willfully ignorant, privilege denying, anti science assholes BEFORE Covid, and I’m not going to start treating them with respect now when the society wide impact of their choices is more acute. I have empathy for their brains getting manipulated by social media assholes, but many of them were already assholes in the first place.

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I mean there are even more Trump supporters than antivaxxers at my work and I try to treat all of them with compassion and respect as well.

Maybe try talking to him and find out exactly what his issue with the vaccine is and see if you can convince him it’s not a big deal. I did that with one of my direct reports and others have talked about convincing people who work for them in the COVID thread.

Your options are not limited to letting a high risk person remain unvaccinated or ruining your working relationship with them.

Right, but “treat them with respect” can basically involve ignoring them to the extent possible. It doesn’t mean you have to actually accept their views as legitimate Personal Choices. A legitimate Personal Choice is chocolate ice cream of vanilla ice cream, not Science is Real vs. No It’s Not.

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That’s very true, but I was responding to someone who said I should respond to antivaxxers in the workplace with scorn and derision. Maybe I should do what you suggest but that’s a different discussion.

This part of the argument is the second weirdest to me, only behind “bans are bad but we DEMAND you ban this poster, this poster, this poster, and that poster”.

Full disclosure, the number of PMs to me or the mods from wookie, jman, or CN asking for someone to be banned is 0 but in the past 10 days I’ve had a request to ban wookie, jman and CN to see if that calms the COVID thread down and another request to ban the main account of whoever’s IP matches badpostingdog because their profile said mean things about some users.

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To be fair you only got that request because they incorrectly assumed that was me. Meanwhile the only person I have ever advocated to permaban was David Sklansky.

But that hurts me! I like having good relationships with my coworkers. There’s a reason why traditionally forbidden conversations among acquaintances are politics, sex, and religion. I’m going to go ahead and add vaccination status to that list. Those topics are not polite because people have wide ranging opinions on them and strongly held beliefs. What’s the point of getting into that shit with coworkers? You have to be around them and it’s better that you like them and enjoy being around them. Why manufacture conflict by asking why they support Trump, or if they’ve been vaccinated, or why they’re a Lutheran. Just mind your own business and don’t bring up subjects likely to unnecessarily introduce conflict into the workplace.

Yeah, I didn’t say that at all. My joke was about how many people are off work right now because their employers have encouraged them to take a break and try to recharge and work on their mental wellness because people are suffering mentally across all of society right now. It’s not a personal attack at you, it’s an observation of the irony that our “relaxing down time” descends into interpersonal bickering on the forum. It’s funny. Wait a minute - are you trying to CANCEL my comedy!!! OMG DAVE CHAPPELLE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG HELP HELP I’M BEING REPRESSED THIS IS CANCEL CULTURE RUN AMOK!!!

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That’s because they don’t need to ask.

BTW I’m sure the fainting couches are all at max capacity due to a mod sharing details of user/mod communications.

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From the Q thread. A physician quitting because he csnt take anymore relays this story about an anti-vax family and the father dying.

"He begged me to bring in his family. A nurse called them, because they had never come to the hospital. They refused to wear masks, and so would not be admitted. The nurse told the wife that her husband was likely dying, and was begging to see them. All she cared about was masks. She would only come if she and her daughters didn’t have to wear any.

The nurse came to me and told me the wife wanted to speak to me. I got on the phone and she ordered me to cure him with ivermectin and vitamin C & D. I explained to her, those do not work, they have been extensively studied and the amount of ivermectin needed to treat even mild COVID would kill a human being. Once again, I was told I was ignorant. I asked her to come down to the hospital, to bring her children, to at least wait outside. Somehow, she agreed.

The nurses were all busy, and I took over the role they usually perform, comforting the dying. I sat beside the man’s bed. Through tears, he rasped out sounds I could vaguely understand as a question. I guessed at what he was asking, and assured him that yes, his family was coming. He was so frightened, and I could tell he knew death was unavoidable. I’m not religious, but I knew he was, and I talked about the comfort of Jesus as I held his hand. About a minute later, he coded. We tried to save him, but there was nothing to be done. He died.

Twenty minutes later, I heard from a nurse that the family was here, that they had made a ruckus down in the lobby demanding to be let upstairs without masks, and had been thrown out of the hospital. I consulted with a few colleagues who agreed to cover me so that i could speak to them in the parking lot. I took the elevator down, and asked security to point out the family that refused to wear masks. Fortunately, they had not left.

I stepped outside, went to the wife, and identified myself. I told her that I was sorry, that we had done everything we could, but her husband had passed a few minutes earlier. I did not manage to get the words of the sentence fully out of my mouth when I felt the fist strike my face and heard the screamed words “You murderer!” I fell backwards, tripped, and plopped onto the pavement, the back off my head striking asphalt. I vaguely heard the words being screamed about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and god knows what else. I heard “you could have saved him if you listened!” I tasted blood from the top of my lip. It took a moment to know it was seeping from my nose, which she had broken. My mask was getting wet, and thus useless. Security grabbed her. They were getting ready to call the police, but I knew if they did, I would become the next national target for the Q maniacs. I told them to just put her in her car. I wasn’t going to press charges. I went back to the hospital."

This is what becomes of those who “know the truth” and hold “sincere beliefs.” They become monsters too stuck in their own head to protect their own loved ones or even see them into the great beyond because of their selfishness and greed to JUST BE RIGHT.

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Is this happening? I haven’t noticed it, but since I’m not the target, maybe I didn’t see it.

I would support a ban for anyone taking this angle.

Is that thing attributed to an actual doctor? Because if not, it’s basically on the same level as right wing chain emails.

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Can we re-ban Skalansky?

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Inso0 too.

Everyone understands most members here are not a party to the ongoing and unending fight right?

We just want it to stop. By that I mean go away. I want moderators who make it stop.

I don’t care who gets punished, if they are perpetuating this war they deserve it imo. I am done with it all.

The self righteous is the most amazing part to be honest.

Stop all being aholes.

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One of the previous mods set the standard that sharing private communications was no big deal and wouldn’t even result in so much as a “you shouldn’t have done that.” Where was your outrage and scorn when a former mod shared the private message he recieved from CN detailing CN’s safety concerns so that he could mock CN?