4 ms·

On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who

On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour.

AlexandrB 2y ago
I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest made no sense and probably made life for the average Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think that freezing their bank accounts was huge government overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the government for doing it have been basically non-existent. In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up government power against what they perceive as their political enemies. It's going to end in tears.
- whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    I don't think the "untested"* COVID-19 vaccine was given to anyone in the US, so if you "vote democrat" you wouldn't have been in any danger – except if you chose not to vaccinate yourself. Are you talking about something else? *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV... actually was tested: they had suspicions it caused blood clots for a few people, then they found some slightly more suspicious data. Even then, taking it was better than taking nothing for the average person – just, there were other, safer vaccines available, so nobody informed would want to take it. Its administration was halted in most countries it was approved in, once there was some evidence of harm. But the correlation's still so weak that we're not really sure it's the vaccine causing it, or even if the effect is real. Blood clot risk is still higher if you get COVID-19 than if you get this vaccine. In general, the worst thing an uncontaminated vaccine can give you is mild symptoms of the disease it protects you against. We are very, very, very cautious about such things (I'd argue, too cautious, but when I take my utilitarian-debate-club hat off, I am similarly paranoid, so I don't begrudge them overmuch).
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      But of course there's different demographics; nobody is the average person. And even people that had already been infected with COVID-19 were required to get the vaccine. But it's also interesting to think about it from the perspective of immune system compartments: the vaccine is effective in preventing severe illness and death because it's injected. But people with mild to asymptomatic cases only ever "fight it" in their mucosal immune compartment, which doesn't share antibody recipes, so people who have only received a vaccine can still spread COVID-19, because the mucosal immune compartment is not trained by the vaccine. (Hopefully, there'll be an intranasal vaccine soon.) In general, this may also be related to your general health; the stronger your immune system is overall, the less likely you're going to develop a severe infection (barring a thousand other variables) because the virus never makes it in real numbers to your bloodstream, but if you do get a severe infection the immune reaction by itself is likely to be dangerous. At least, that's why I assume two COVID infections prior to vaccination were barely noticeable, while the vaccination itself knocked me on my ass for days and also gave me a really weird neurological episode. If I had not been required to, I would not have gotten a vaccine, since I already had a verified COVID-19 infection and recovery. So unfortunately, our policy made me pretty sick for basically zero gain, and I knew going into it there was no real upside for me (but I didn't expect the downside.) ed: it's also worth noting that "in general" is not very useful; in this case we're talking about vaccines leveraging new technology to deliver their payload. It's not implausible to believe that the LNPs are not safe - it took several years to identify LNPs that were not obviously toxic, and it would not be wild to imagine that years down the line we find the LNPs used in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are unsafe in the sense that you might be 20% more likely to develop RARE_CANCER_X 15 years from now. Great article on their development here: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-lipid-shells-mRNA-vaccines/99/i8?PageSpeed=noscript https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-li...
  - sqeaky 2y ago
    > force me to take an untested shot You are simply not operating in reality. It wasn't untested, you weren't forced. You don't know how to model trust and because of that you distrust experts even trustworthy experts.
    - tracker1 2y ago
      Not forced, meaning you may be fired and potentially unable to find work.
      - sqeaky 2y ago
        Somehow the people who often take umbrage at this are also the same sorts who are free market absolutists or oppose public health care, and then we are here on a VC discussion board which leans that way frequently. Explain to me how willingness to take disease preventing treatment isn't just a feature of Whatwhaaaaat as an employee, that makes one more or less desirable on the free market? We are able free to work "at will" most places and any employer who will have you based on your marketability and desirability. Whatwhaaaaat could even start your own company where you mandated people not be vaccinated (and then die the first time someone sneezes). More seriously, because this is a serious topic even if Whatwhaaaaat isn't a serious person: We should all have a right to be healthy, where such things are within our power to understand and effect. Whatwhaaaaat should have a right to opt out (even if I think it is childishly stupid). The only way to make those both fit in reality is to have those who opt out of the incredibly but not quite perfectly safe and life saving vaccine in contradiction to all the evidence, is to have them opt out of activities where safety is desired by the majority. So you have a choice: opt-out of both the vaccine and some professional activities, or opt-in to both. Note how this isn't a choice that Whatwhaaaaat, as a possible unknowing carrier of covid, is willing or even capable of offering immune compromised people in a work place. This is the only sensible way to structure a society that isn't literally forcing vaccines on people like Whatwhaaaaat.
        whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
        You can keep playing tribalism all you want. I voted in the primaries for Bernie. I’ve been advocating for a public option my whole life. I’d be willing to bet I am more active in progressive causes than you are. Everything in America is tied to one’s employment. It was take the shot or starve. Luckily I’m a decent enough engineer to be able to say go fuck yourself and they had no choice but to keep me. MANY of my co workers were not in that position. I will never vote for democrats again :-)
AntiEgo 2y ago
Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC--they are being removed at gunpoint, having property wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got treaded with kidskin gloves.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  There's a case to be made that a naked display of force - at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very unsavoury images that the government has to contend with during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger the same visceral reaction.
tivert 2y ago
> ...now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour. That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to win elections...to protect Democracy!
- nuclearwast 2y ago
  Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka. Students? Don't want another 2012 printemps érable. Truckers? Well I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most? Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there? They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing bank account ended it without any police lifting a finger, it's best no?
rustcleaner 2y ago
I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click (while looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles in the moment).
- mikem170 2y ago
  > I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click That's what happens when there is change in the world. Conservatives resist change, but change often has a momentum of it's own. The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone together. Transportation made the world smaller place. The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice. These are all game changers. For better and worse. We can't un-invent all that stuff. The reason older people tend to be conservative is that they are used to the way things were when they grew up. They don't like the changes. They want the good old days back. Young people don't have these notions about the good old days, they weren't around. They started off with a different view of things. The Overton Window moves with them. Progress ratchets, as you said. p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists or whatever else.
frabbit 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart Recently we've seen a functional alliance of those on the bottom half of the diagram.

AlexandrB 2y ago

I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest made no sense and probably made life for the average Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think that freezing their bank accounts was huge government overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the government for doing it have been basically non-existent. In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up government power against what they perceive as their political enemies. It's going to end in tears.

whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  I don't think the "untested"* COVID-19 vaccine was given to anyone in the US, so if you "vote democrat" you wouldn't have been in any danger – except if you chose not to vaccinate yourself. Are you talking about something else? *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV... actually was tested: they had suspicions it caused blood clots for a few people, then they found some slightly more suspicious data. Even then, taking it was better than taking nothing for the average person – just, there were other, safer vaccines available, so nobody informed would want to take it. Its administration was halted in most countries it was approved in, once there was some evidence of harm. But the correlation's still so weak that we're not really sure it's the vaccine causing it, or even if the effect is real. Blood clot risk is still higher if you get COVID-19 than if you get this vaccine. In general, the worst thing an uncontaminated vaccine can give you is mild symptoms of the disease it protects you against. We are very, very, very cautious about such things (I'd argue, too cautious, but when I take my utilitarian-debate-club hat off, I am similarly paranoid, so I don't begrudge them overmuch).
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    But of course there's different demographics; nobody is the average person. And even people that had already been infected with COVID-19 were required to get the vaccine. But it's also interesting to think about it from the perspective of immune system compartments: the vaccine is effective in preventing severe illness and death because it's injected. But people with mild to asymptomatic cases only ever "fight it" in their mucosal immune compartment, which doesn't share antibody recipes, so people who have only received a vaccine can still spread COVID-19, because the mucosal immune compartment is not trained by the vaccine. (Hopefully, there'll be an intranasal vaccine soon.) In general, this may also be related to your general health; the stronger your immune system is overall, the less likely you're going to develop a severe infection (barring a thousand other variables) because the virus never makes it in real numbers to your bloodstream, but if you do get a severe infection the immune reaction by itself is likely to be dangerous. At least, that's why I assume two COVID infections prior to vaccination were barely noticeable, while the vaccination itself knocked me on my ass for days and also gave me a really weird neurological episode. If I had not been required to, I would not have gotten a vaccine, since I already had a verified COVID-19 infection and recovery. So unfortunately, our policy made me pretty sick for basically zero gain, and I knew going into it there was no real upside for me (but I didn't expect the downside.) ed: it's also worth noting that "in general" is not very useful; in this case we're talking about vaccines leveraging new technology to deliver their payload. It's not implausible to believe that the LNPs are not safe - it took several years to identify LNPs that were not obviously toxic, and it would not be wild to imagine that years down the line we find the LNPs used in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are unsafe in the sense that you might be 20% more likely to develop RARE_CANCER_X 15 years from now. Great article on their development here: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-lipid-shells-mRNA-vaccines/99/i8?PageSpeed=noscript https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-li...
- sqeaky 2y ago
  > force me to take an untested shot You are simply not operating in reality. It wasn't untested, you weren't forced. You don't know how to model trust and because of that you distrust experts even trustworthy experts.
  - tracker1 2y ago
    Not forced, meaning you may be fired and potentially unable to find work.
    - sqeaky 2y ago
      Somehow the people who often take umbrage at this are also the same sorts who are free market absolutists or oppose public health care, and then we are here on a VC discussion board which leans that way frequently. Explain to me how willingness to take disease preventing treatment isn't just a feature of Whatwhaaaaat as an employee, that makes one more or less desirable on the free market? We are able free to work "at will" most places and any employer who will have you based on your marketability and desirability. Whatwhaaaaat could even start your own company where you mandated people not be vaccinated (and then die the first time someone sneezes). More seriously, because this is a serious topic even if Whatwhaaaaat isn't a serious person: We should all have a right to be healthy, where such things are within our power to understand and effect. Whatwhaaaaat should have a right to opt out (even if I think it is childishly stupid). The only way to make those both fit in reality is to have those who opt out of the incredibly but not quite perfectly safe and life saving vaccine in contradiction to all the evidence, is to have them opt out of activities where safety is desired by the majority. So you have a choice: opt-out of both the vaccine and some professional activities, or opt-in to both. Note how this isn't a choice that Whatwhaaaaat, as a possible unknowing carrier of covid, is willing or even capable of offering immune compromised people in a work place. This is the only sensible way to structure a society that isn't literally forcing vaccines on people like Whatwhaaaaat.
      - whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
        You can keep playing tribalism all you want. I voted in the primaries for Bernie. I’ve been advocating for a public option my whole life. I’d be willing to bet I am more active in progressive causes than you are. Everything in America is tied to one’s employment. It was take the shot or starve. Luckily I’m a decent enough engineer to be able to say go fuck yourself and they had no choice but to keep me. MANY of my co workers were not in that position. I will never vote for democrats again :-)

AntiEgo 2y ago

Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC--they are being removed at gunpoint, having property wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got treaded with kidskin gloves.

AlexandrB 2y ago
There's a case to be made that a naked display of force - at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very unsavoury images that the government has to contend with during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger the same visceral reaction.

tivert 2y ago

> ...now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour. That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to win elections...to protect Democracy!

nuclearwast 2y ago
Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka. Students? Don't want another 2012 printemps érable. Truckers? Well I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most? Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there? They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing bank account ended it without any police lifting a finger, it's best no?

rustcleaner 2y ago

I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click (while looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles in the moment).

mikem170 2y ago
> I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click That's what happens when there is change in the world. Conservatives resist change, but change often has a momentum of it's own. The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone together. Transportation made the world smaller place. The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice. These are all game changers. For better and worse. We can't un-invent all that stuff. The reason older people tend to be conservative is that they are used to the way things were when they grew up. They don't like the changes. They want the good old days back. Young people don't have these notions about the good old days, they weren't around. They started off with a different view of things. The Overton Window moves with them. Progress ratchets, as you said. p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists or whatever else.

frabbit 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart Recently we've seen a functional alliance of those on the bottom half of the diagram.