So I mentioned this months ago, but my dad was part of the Pfizer vaccine trials. He got the placebo, caught the coof a couple months later, and then when they offered to give him the real shit, he went immediately, not even bothering to think about how retarded that was when he already had natural immunity. Anyway, he went back today because paperwork, and he found out that they're now preparing for booster shot trials. Apparently there are four groups: getting reinjected with the original, the Alpha variant, the Delta variant, or the Alpha and Delta variants combined. If I understood him correctly, you can choose which group you want to be part of, and he said he wanted to be in the Alpha/Delta group. I might have misheard and he just said he was hoping to be part of that group, but still, he's being retarded and I can't convince him otherwise. Never mind that his coof case was pretty mild and he got over it in a few days, never mind that he has no complications that would make it worse for him, nope, he wants
more!
Seriously, everything about how these trials have been run is absolutely retarded to me. Not only are they a rush job, they're doing their best to get rid of their control group by injecting all the placebo candidates with the actual vaccine, and now they're charging ahead with seeing what happens if you keep pumping people with more. All for a virus that barely kills anybody and was well on its way to fading into the background before people started taking leaky vaccines.
But yeah, good luck getting a true believer to think about this rationally. It's practically impossible once someone has accepted the idea that these shots are the end-all-be-all for getting over the coof. It's worse when you try to argue that natural immunity is just as good as getting jabbed, if not better. It always ends up going back to appeals to emotion and those poor dead grandmas.
Those who are more medically knowledgeable than me, let me ask a question. The current narrative that people are just accepting is that coof boosters are a perfectly normal idea, generally bringing up how you get flu shots every year and equating the two. I know that both the coof and the flu have multiple variants out there, and the flu shot is just a best guess as to which variants are going to be most prevalent, which is why the flu is generally more severe in years when they guess wrong. What's the difference between how coronaviruses and influenza mutate? My general understanding is that cold viruses like coronaviruses and rhinoviruses mutate much more quickly, which is why nobody's ever really bothered trying to vaccinate against them. I mean, we've already seen that with how many coof variants are out there, with more popping up all the time. It seems a fool's errand to stay ahead of the curve.
Update from my flyover red state. Keep in mind no current mask mandate or any other restrictions.
It feels like we're at peak terror from the delta variant, and it didn't really stir up much. Last month I would maybe see 1 or 2 masks out all day, and usually on feeble old people. Now it's back up to 10% tops. But what is weird is a lot of people are just fucking over it, and the 10% that are masked up are being weird. Very cautious, avoiding people, eyes darting around, imagine Chantal eating alone in her car, that level of weirdness. It's like if you are susceptible to being panicked then they have turned it up to 110%, but if you aren't it's pushing you in the other direction? I dunno something is just off, but I can't quite put it into words, anyone else feel like that?
They better have something bigger up their sleeve, because it feels like what meager panic they've drummed up isn't going to last another week. But I can only speak for my mid-sized city in the middle of flyover country.
In my own red state, I've noticed more people masking up, but not very many still. Most people seem to be done with the idea, and I've yet to see anybody actually get mad about people who don't bother. Also have more people masking up at church, but the council voted this month not to force masks on people again, instead leaving it up to people's judgment. I'd say roughly half of the congregation is wearing masks again, the other half not. Nothing else has changed or been canceled either, so I find myself laughing inwardly when we have fellowship after church and everybody removes their masks for the rest of the day. If you're comfortable not having a mask on then, why weren't you fine during the service? It's the same group of people in the same area (smaller, actually), so why do you bother putting one on to begin with?
Still glad I don't live in a blue state, and glad I canceled my Dragon Con plans before I'd even bought my badge. Now they're requiring proof of vaccination or a negative test to attend, which is probably gonna end up turning at least some people away at the door who didn't realize things had changed. Sounds horribly unfun.