Kammekor wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 9:06 am

AE86 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 9:50 pm You were mentioning a general claim (the way I saw it) about people being hesitant to take vaccines even if the infection is still possible and you could spread it...and my point I was trying to add to that was that the whole implementation of the mandates drove people to deny the vaccine because it was an authoritarian move with no guarantee of success. Probably didn't come across too clearly on my part.

It also didn't help that a huge push was made in media about the "proven" 90% effective vaccines and that life would go back to normal if you just took the shot, and now there's a 3rd and 4th booster already with a 3 month efficacy rate...it's just terrible optics at this point. If you act decisively you need to come out on top of the situation, not with pie on your face and the situation is no better than it used to be.

Yes, the vaccines were introduced as the solution for the pandemic, and maybe they actually expected it to be the solution, but reality was different. I don't judge 'm too hard for that. With hindsight we're always right, what we know now wasn't known a year ago and people were eager for good news (and still are).

AE86 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 9:50 pm Truth be told, about my friends (especially the Americans), most of them have lost all their faith in the US medical system now so probably not. I'm not far from that camp myself given I've seen way too much shady shit first hand being close to the pharmaceutical side dealing with drug reps from the likes of Pfizer, Merck and others for a few years.

If people lost their faith in the US medical system maybe they should come to Cambodia to re-calibrate their feelings. This thread:

help-wanted/blood-donation-needed-pleas ... 48353.html

by @AndyKK would be a good start.

I would advise them not to think of the medical situation whatsoever in the country unless they can afford the very best. And believe me that may be the end of them.

Vaccines as even part of a solution requires that people actually take them. 15 US states are less than 40 percent boosted (and same states tend to forgoe masks). Pretty freaking fertile ground for further continuation of Omicron and further variants.

Still waiting on the My Pillow guy news.

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I heard an interesting commentary on, wait for it MSNBC, By Ali Velshi who is a Canadian journalist with MSNBC. Some of the images of the truckers protest look like there are tens of thousands of people who are involved. However if you take away the monstrous trucks and think of the impact that the protesters would have there is a dramatic change. A few thousand protesters without the truckers would be at most national news and the impact would be of much less consequence and life in Ottawa would be at most mildly affected.

Same with the Ambassador Bridge being blocked. A crucial $300M dollar per day trade route between Canada and the United States disrupted by about 75 trucks and maybe a couple hundred people. Take away the trucks and again their impact would have been negligible. So really a few thousand people have disrupted the lives and commerce of a country some 35 million people, really only because of a couple hundred trucks.

A group of ANTI freedom convoy protesters blocked some truckers attempting to join the convoy.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... side-drive

The Ambassador bridge has been cleared the good old fashioned Canadian way with patience, no violence and only a couple of dozen arrests with minor mischief charges.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ ... -1.6350120

Also Ottawa has negotiated a partial withdrawal of the most disruptive truckers that block the downtown core, parliament and interprovincial bridges between Ottawa Ontario and Quebec. Not all truckers have been consulted but their leadership group have agreed and are proposing it to the truckers.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/o ... -1.6350170

sammycooke wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:55 am I heard an interesting commentary on, wait for it MSNBC, By Ali Velshi who is a Canadian journalist with MSNBC. Some of the images of the truckers protest look like there are tens of thousands of people who are involved. However if you take away the monstrous trucks and think of the impact that the protesters would have there is a dramatic change. A few thousand protesters without the truckers would be at most national news and the impact would be of much less consequence and life in Ottawa would be at most mildly affected.

I feel like this sort of analysis is very typical of the "educated" left (wait wait, I honestly don't mean it in a scathing attack sort of way. But what I'm trying to say is that, as someone who has worked on the ground as an uneducated person but always had to deal with "smarter" people with higher degrees of education, they can't see the forest from the trees.

You could put these kinds of people in front of a tree and say "It's a tree." They would argue "NO, you don't KNOW that!!" and look at every leaf, every twig, the roots, the dirt, the bark, etc. and then come back to you an hour later and say "Wow! It is a tree, how did you know?!" And the same sentiment goes for the Ottawa protests.

It's not about the amount of truckers in terms of numbers, it's the fact that this movement even exists in the scale that it does already at all. $10 million raised for the truckers, $3 million raised by Trudeau during his campaign, that ought to tell you something.

You might hear of people (again, educated leftists who make up 90% ish of the media these days) who will shout you down saying "You don't KNOW that!! Look at our finely curated metrics that say otherwise!" but anyone who has been on the ground with truckers and logistics (me for example) already know that crap's going to hit the fan because trust in the institution at this point is rock bottom amongst them and that things aren't not headed in a peaceful direction.

-My loonie's worth of opinion here.


@sammycooke You seem much more together and level headed in your posts and recent replies. That's good to see, just want to make note of that given I called you out before on sounding childish.

Or you could, I don't know...allow the truckers to voice their concerns instead of nit picking numbers or pretending they don't exist...??

I think their pissed off because we're seen as expendable idiots, not as members of society...

@SlowJoe can you tell me your source for the amount raised by Trudeau? I know there is a max that any individual or corporation can contribute:

As of 2021, the maximum yearly contribution limit is $1650 to a given federal political party, $1650 to a given party's riding associations, $1650 to a given party's leadership candidates, and $1650 for each independent candidate. The maximum total contribution is set at $3300.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal ... %20%243300.


I also know that there is a maximum amount that a party can spend during an election campaign:

The Conservatives spent nearly to the limit in the 2019 federal election — more than the Liberals did and almost triple the amount shelled out by the New Democrats.

Campaign returns filed by most parties and posted to Elections Canada's website show the Conservatives spent $28.9 million during the fall election campaign, nearly hitting the $29.1 million limit. This was narrowly more than the $26.1 million the Liberals spent.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5622721

I'm not that familiar with election finance laws so this is just what I could find. Also financial aid for the truckers came in large part came from sources outside of Canada and were not restricted in the amount that donors could contribute, so it's kind of apples to oranges.

sammycooke wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 11:58 am @SlowJoe can you tell me your source for the amount raised by Trudeau? I know there is a max that any individual or corporation can contribute:

For the statistic, I'll be honest, I saw it over the weekend while watching news and I don't remember where it's from. I've been looking but haven't been able to find it again, but your point makes sense about donations coming from overseas, so yeah, I was probably not right to quote that out of context.

I really just want to add though, being a blue collar guy (from a very white collar family), I get personally get so ambivalent towards those whom I call "pencil pushers" at the top because I feel (just my opinion) very few of "us" blue collar people get to voice their opinions in a way that others deem "worth listening to" if that makes sense.

Whether it be the way we talk or what (I have a pretty strong accent, even for a Canadian), and the feeling I always get is that everyone just looks at people like me as just village idiots with nothing useful to say, and as a result, I feel like our opinions don't matter and no one is listening to our concerns.

Even in this thread, there is a general tone from some posters towards the truckers is that they're all low IQ idiots who don't understand science. I feel (yeah I know, feelings) but I feel like it's just only mutual disrespect right now, and admittedly I get really pissed off about it, so sometimes I feel like latching onto a statistic that makes me feel better about the situation to hit back.

Don't get me wrong, I still don't "trust the science" because all these medical "experts" and politicians I see pushing vaccines strike me as weasels, so I don't care what science they quote, but I don't want to let my own frustration in my life be the source of bad info either.

Sorry if I misquoted something, I'll keep looking to see if I can verify it.

Joe