Saturday, January 29, 2022

Not what conservatives need

Representatives like Sarah Palin.  She was done dirty by the press, I'll admit.  But since then she's done nothing but confirm the insults and mockery aimed at her.  Her instance on answering any question with ''I'm just a mamma grizzly' was one in a long line of actions that solidified the Left's contempt for her, and made defending her all the more difficult. 

Here, she's reported to openly flaunt Covid restrictions by eating out a mere two days after testing positive.  Even with Omicron, the standard is five days if symptom free. Now, I'm the last one to say I agree with the way Covid has been handled.  And it isn't hard to see that much of what is happening has more to do with control and money, and far less to do with our well being.

Nonetheless, that doesn't give me or anyone a blank check to do anything we feel like doing.  As I have said, Covid is unlike anything I ever had.  It's a bugger to get, and we count ourselves blessed by having been infected by a lesser strain of the virus, if this is what the lesser strain is like.  Hopefully the resistance from this infection will match others, and will go toward that immunity down the road.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone, however.  A month later and we still have slight traces of the thing.  If she has tested positive, then the basic, decent, common sense, humane response is to avoid others.  If I get the flu, I don't run to the theater or the health club.  I  stay home and avoid my family and friends.  That's because I don't want to infect anyone.  Ancient wisdom and common good thinking that still works. 

This is clearly 'flaunt the rules' thinking, hoping conservatives will cheer her on. Oh, she may infect others, but what of it?  She's sticking it to the Left!  No.  She's being, for want of a better word, a jerk.  Some day conservatives will figure out how to fight to win, not fight to live up to the negative stereotypes. 

6 comments:

  1. But since then she's done nothing but confirm the insults and mockery aimed at her.

    ?


    The mode of transmission is indoor air. She was outdoors. The contention she was indoors at one point was couched with 'reportedly' and it is not clear whether it's attributed to a point in time before or after she 'tested positive'.

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    1. It spreads less outdoors, but still spreads. That's why so many were upset with medical pros condemning the outdoor anti-lockdown protesters while giving the outdoor BLM protesters a pass. Plus, we know some who likely contracted it at outdoor events. But again, basic decency says if you know you have a contagious disease, hang home for a few. She did this as a statement, but it's just what the Pro-Vax gang like to accuse critics of - not caring. I've often said conservatives need to learn to pick their battles more carefully. This was a case of not doing so.

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    2. I'll admit that it's been about a year since I really dove into it (and in particular things might be different w.r.t. Omicron) but when I did investigate transmission there had not been any documented cases of outdoor transmission. Some had been reported as occurring in Singapore, but this came from the fact that the Singapore government did not track whether contact at construction sites occurred indoors or outdoors, and a later CDC study using this data decided to classify them all as outdoors (even some construction, such as renovating office buildings, definitely would count as "indoors.") One of the most telling things was the number of times people pointed to this company as rock solid proof the outdoor transmission happened frequently, but the mere fact that they had to point to a few ambiguous cases from Singapore only highlighted how rare outdoor transmission must be, since there were no other examples.

      Even the New York Times estimated outdoor transmission as being well under 1% of all cases:

      https://archive.fo/K4HCy

      Now I don't doubt that in the right circumstances that outdoor transmission is possible. I've heard anecdotal cases of people saying that they must have gotten it outdoors. (But I also know people who got sick with it despite not having any extended contact, indoor or outdoors. For example, my father got sick with it when the week before he had not been in contact with anyone outside of the house except for very brief stops in a gas station, where he wore a mask and disinfected afterwards, and a visit to a nursing home with very strict procedures for stopping the spread of disease. I'm sure that if he had attended an outdoor event on top of that he would have said that that's where he got it from, since it was "impossible" for him to get it anywhere else... but he still got it.)

      But while it may be possible to get infected outdoors, the chance is minimal. So small as to be completely irrelevant, honestly.

      Now you say that it is just basic decency to not go to such events, despite the miniscule chance of getting anyone else sick. But we live in a world where people say that it is just basic decency to wear a mask 24/7, even if the chance of preventing transmission is small. And we live in a world where people say that it is just basic decency to take every new experimental vaccine and booster, even if you are at high risk for side effects, and even if the vaccine does practically nothing to prevent transmission!

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    3. That's sort of my point. I've been paying attention to politics since the 1980s. And I've concluded conservatives don't do a great job at choosing their battles. Knowing the press will never be with them, that isn't bad. I know of people who say they got Covid from outdoor events. The medical community - take it for what it's worth - in 2020 insisted gathering in outdoor places was also dangerous, changing that only in 2021 and after. Even then, there appears to be caution.

      This is something she could have sat at home and eaten in. Heck, order delivery. But she chose to make a statement. If one person got Covid from that, and they could trace it, imagine the backlash - and it would be backlash deserved. That's what I mean. Choose battles and don't do things that could swing around and bite the cause in the rear.

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  2. And I've concluded conservatives don't do a great job at choosing their battles. Knowing the press will never be with them, that isn't bad.

    And something I've learned from Romney is that the entire concept of "choosing a battle" is just plain impossible. No really, I would love to hear how any [insert conservative politician here] is supposed to do anything. Like you pointed out later, a school board held a vote on Jan 10th, and the media waited 17 days to then bring up the vote result about a book on holocaust remembrance day.

    Or how about Kavanaugh? So conservatives should pick their battles and not do anything bad when they are 16?

    We conservatives need to really absorb just how rigged the game is. No matter how well you behave, they'll distort it to look worse. And even if you're perfect, then they'll just make up lies instead. That's how they get you. They keep taunting that if you were just a little bit better, did things just a "little" more right, then you'd win. But it's a lie. You can't win, you can never be better, there is no right play, the game is rigged.

    "The con isn't in getting you to pick the wrong shell. The con is in getting you to accept that the basic premise of the game is still being followed. The con is in getting you to pick a shell at all."

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    1. That's the strongest case against conservatives worrying about such things. We know the reason why liberals can do or say anything no matter how looney is that they have the press behind them. Hence the insistence that January 6th was the first time anyone ever challenged an election result, or that violence had ever come to Washington, or that nobody challenged the 2016 election. Really? What planet do you have to be from to believe that? Yet if you listened to the press it was true.

      I think conservatives need to do more than admit the game is rigged. By now that is true, and everyone knows it. They need to call it out. They need to cut off the press and stop giving interviews until the press changes. They need to say it in interviews. Mention that not a single press outlet reported on BLM in 2020. Promoted, cheered, advocated and blindly accepted its talking points yes. But reported? Not close.

      I think that's a battle absolutely worth picking.

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