...unalienable Rights, that among these are Life...

Life requires food, water, clothing and shelter so that means government should provide them.
Not my line of reasoning or one I agree with, but I've seen similar.  The meaning of "rights" appears to have been altered by a lot of people to allow that kind of argument to appear valid.

I rather agree, though I disagree on the government's ability to mandate a medical intervention like a vaccine.  My reasoning is as follows: keeping the citizenry safe has ever been a function of government.  We have a giant military to keep us safe from foreign invasion, the government should be able to take steps to limit our harm from a pestilential invasion.  Governments have been doing this sort of thing for centuries trying to limit the impact of plagues. The word "quarantine" came from medieval Dubrovnik, whose city fathers decided that incoming sailors needed a period of isolation to ensure they didn't bring in the Black Plague.  They isolated them on a nearby island for 40 days, the period of the biblical flood.  40, hence quarantine.

Was COVID sufficiently dangerous to warrant such a response?  I'd argue it was, since it killed 1% of its victims and maimed many.  You might argue otherwise, and that's fine. At the time it seemed plenty dangerous and threatened to collapse our medical system, indeed it nearly did so in many places.  Thankfully the vaccines had high efficacy in preventing serious disease (the function of a vaccine, by the way) and the pandemic was largely halted.

The difference is that today we have a total global economy.  Back before the last century or two, the overwhelming majority of one’s survival needs was locally produced. You could isolate without doing too much economic damage and damage to people’s livelihoods relative to today.  But now, the first red flag was the great toilet paper shortage. You make a sudden large change in social habits you instantly create disruption in a supply chain that wraps all around the planet.  There is almost nothing in your household or pantry that doesn’t consist of multiple parts or ingredients that originated hundreds or thousands of miles away from you if not from another country on the other side of the planet.

The net effect of lockdowns was to drive small suppliers out of business and concentrate wealth and goods in the hands of large monopolistic corporations. Walmart was allowed to stay open but mom and pop closed down for good because they couldn’t survive months of not being allowed to operate. Large corporations could use their connections and wholesale contracts to more easily get supplies. Even then they had to scramble and we had lots of empty shelves.

At some point you have to face the death and maiming caused by this economic damage and measure it and compare it to the death and maiming of Covid.  It is possible the damage caused by the draconian policies to the world economy is net worse.  But the government and pro-lockdowners refuse to even address it much less try to figure which is less harmful overall.  You would think a SCIENTIST would want to do that!

I don’t believe for a second that the hospitals were crowded with unvaccinated Covid patients and here’s why.

Hospitals were overloaded at the beginning of 2021 because the elderly, most with comorbidities, were being struck down by Covid and most eventually were put on ventilators and most died.  Very quickly the most vulnerable were taken. And the hospitals virtually emptied. The hospital ship in New York Harbor provided by President Trump at the request of that city remained unoccupied. Nurses in hospitals famously were making dancing videos. Hospital workers and nurses across the globe made videos, many posts on uncensored media, and debunked the trope of crowding. The virus already had begun to weaken, as viruses do. But the fear had to remain stoked to sell the (now known to be ineffective) jabs.

Enter the vaccines. We still have no reliable record of how many people were vaccinated, but it is now very clear that far fewer received it than previously “reported,” and an amazingly low percentage of people received only one shot of the two-shot series. Officially, a person was not considered fully vaccinated for an approximately 30-day period: The second shot was received two weeks after the first and not until two weeks after THAT was a person considered vaccinated.

My stepdaughter was insisting we should get vaxxed and was doing rotations in hospitals and said she saw Covid signs on rooms down every hall and all were unvaccinated patients. When we asked about the timeline and whether they were just considered unvaccinated because the full post-vax time criterion had not been reached, she got angry.  When we asked, because we were sad that she was angry at us for not getting the jabs, if any if her co-workers and colleagues had decided not to get the jab, and if so why, she said they did not ask each other that.

It was very soon after the vax rollout that people who’d been jabbed started getting Covid. It was stunning and unforgettable. They’re still getting Covid now, multiple times even, if the dubious tests can be trusted, which is up for argument. And the reason I started this thread was not only the RFK interview, but the massive body of evidence now emerging after the Covid Vax debacle that THE FEWER VACCINES ONE GETS THE HEALTHIER THEY ARE.

This is not to say all vaccines should be done away with. But informed consent is a joke when the real-world consequences of a vaccine are hidden and fear of the vaxxed-against disease is stoked.

I’ll close with this. Over the last three years I’ve been in hospitals and clinics for a number of reasons, including a colonoscopy and ER visits and wrist surgery and follow ups and routine doctor visits. NOT ONCE have I been asked if I’ve gotten the Covid vaccine. NEVER has that question shown up on forms or been asked in person. It’s my belief the medical community is in full knowledge of their gross incompetence and wants it to go away. I ask you, if they’re not asking, how can they know if a person’s illness may be vaccine induced? They can’t, because they don’t want to know.

Once all the fake data gets weeded out, COVID was more in line with the common flu with regards to hospitalizations and deaths.  Of course hospitalizations we’re up over COVID (never at the levels predicted) but that was due to the media and government fear mongering.  And don’t forget the government incentivizing hospitals to report all illness as COVID. 

Also amazing how influenza all but ceased to exist during COVID.  Could it have been people with the flu were given highly inaccurate COVID test that was rife with false positives?

FJB warned us of a “dark winter of death” that never materialized.  More fear mongering?

You are dissing vaccines, which were the only thing that stopped Polio.  A bit of a conclusion on my part.

Actually it’s not the only thing.  Better sanitation played a big role in stopping polio.  And nobody dissed vaccines in this thread. What we are dissing is government involvement in how the vaccine is presented to the public. Lies, forced mandates, policies that enrich politicians and bureaucrats.

  It's fascinating to watch a lot of this play out.

  What it shows me is how shallow the establishment republicans are when it comes to candidates.  RDS has fallen for this and jumped into bed with them, when IMO had he just sat out 2024 and kept the establishment at arm's length, he would have been better positioned for 2028.

  And I agree with you, it would be bad for Youngkin to jump in the race at this time, especially with the backing of the establishment.

 

It’s like the establishment Republicans are throwing everything at the wall hoping something sticks because they are desperate to prevent another Trump term.  It’s not well thought out or well managed.  They are in total denial about Trump’s popularity and about MAGA in general because MAGA is about the middle class, the working man and the common man and the establishment Republicans are completely out of touch with all of that.  The Democrats are even worse. They aren’t even bothering to throw anything against the wall because they are confident their upcoming cheating will reinstall their mindless puppet.  And they aren’t simply out of touch with the common man, they actively despise us. They are contemptuous and dismissive of us and of the Constitution itself.  RFKJr is not one of their profferings.