[ExI] I caught the covid

[spike at rainier66.com]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 1:29 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

>>…Have you been wearing a mask?  Anybody around you wearing them?   bill w

 

### I am not wearing a mask, unless directly forced to. They have been proven useless in the context of the Wuhan virus spread.  Rafal

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> On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] I caught the covid

 

>…Nice to have the voice of reason back!  Dylan

 

 

 

Ja, there is more to it than that, a subtle but important distinction.  We have had government mandates to do this and do that, but over time we have had little evidence these mandates are working.  Instead of focusing on the evidence, often the focus is on the mandate: some keep insisting that if everyone wears a mask (everywhere) and everyone stays home always, the whole problem will go away.  Now however we have every indication that the problem wouldn’t go away even if everyone did comply: even if it did work, borders cannot be completely controlled anywhere on the planet.

 

Government mandates can be made, but governments everywhere operate under (intentionally) limited power.  When it makes a mandate without the means to enforce, then next time it makes a mandate, it has less authority than before.  The government cannot make people stay home, it cannot make people wear masks.  Businesses can make people wear a mask in their place of business.  But no government at any level owns us.  China, North Korea, perhaps.  Not here.  No one posting here lives in a place where government has the authority to enforce demands such as shelter-in-place and mandatory wearing of masks outdoors.  Here we do not work for the government, the government works for us.

 

I can end on a cheerful note: if we imagine the government actions taken at least slowed the virus some (sure, they migha) then we can conclude that lives were saved.  Reasoning: the vaccine is shipping out by the truckload every hour, around the clock, as fast as they can cram the stuff into syringes.  The end of this nightmare is in sight.  It isn’t completely clear to me that the mandates slowed the virus, but we may legitimately indulge ourselves into thinking they mighta.  OK sure, fair game, let’s do that.  T

 

In May, the medical people and mainstream “news” agencies confidently opined in May that it would be a miracle if a vaccine could be developed and deployed in 2020.  I agreed at the time.  Well, it happened: the medical research community pulled off a miracle.  Do let us give credit where credit is due, shall we? (stopping short of calling for their being collectively declared saints (they still need to actually perish to be eligible for that honor (so what if… one is a really saintly and pious person, the world champion of humility, and performs miracles, then perishes but is a client of Alcor (so they are in a state of kinda deactivation, then declared a saint (but is later uploaded (and everyone is calling me Saint spike (but I decide to mess up everything (which you know I would do (I am such a bastard that way (and demand proles pray to me (and buy my figurines to stick to the dashboard (causing me to make a buttload of money (with no actual literal butt in which to cram my ill-gotten wealth (how shall I virtually cope? (the mind boggles.)))))))

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

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