Peter Todd @pete@petertodd.org

@dsmatthews@mastodon.online Fair point. But still, a straight-forward vaccination sounds less risky than that. :) More stable too too: what would cause the bacteria to retain those useful-to-us genes? I don't see how they're useful to the bacteria. So they'll likely diminish over time.

@jamesob ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

@dsmatthews@mastodon.online Thing is, that shouldn't be thought of as an inconsistency! It should be perfectly ok for governments to just tell the truth: we don't have enough data yet to know if these vaccines are safer than the risk of covid for many populations. Yet, we do have the data to be pretty sure of that for other populations, eg elderly. That's just the truth, not inconsistency.

Re: the lactobacillus bacteria thing, why bother? Surfaces aren't a significant source of infection.

@121 Regardless of side, learning about how others' have dealt with trolls is useful. Like it or not, they *are* one of the biggest threats to decentralized communication systems. Because you can censor communication channels effectively by flooding them with nonsense.

@Jeremiah23 Things are so uncertain I would *not* rule out a military and/or police coup against Biden, just as I wouldn't against Trump now, and the Republican politicans in the future. Who knows what's going on behind the scenes?

@dsmatthews@mastodon.online Well, like I say, you should provide a specific source for that. :)

But yes, the UK's official guidance does not recommend vaccination for pregnant women:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210109213111/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/949063/COVID-19_vaccination_programme_guidance_for_healthcare_workers_December_2020_V3.pdf

They previously were not recommending it for women intending to become pregnant in the near future either. But looks like that was dropped in the version above.

@Jeremiah23 Honestly, at this point who knows how effective the laws will even be? Would Biden actually respect that? It's an open question.

@Jeremiah23 I'm not confident hospitals and doctors will report the raw data required to find that out either.

Sad really, because they're destroy the trust required for vaccination in general. And that's a very real destruction: without honest monitoring, we really can't know if vaccines are safe. And vaccines absolutely can be more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. That's what the testing and science is for! But subvert that, and...

@Jeremiah23 At this point, hell yes we could see that. If not government mandated, mandated in practice with vaccination passports.

But there is a good chance that the very high rates of side effects we're seeing keeps vaccination voluntary. Probably 100x the anaphalactic shock risk as typical flu vaccinations, over both shots, among other problems.

Could go the other way though: the high rates of refusal - for good reasons - push govts to just mandate it.

@Jeremiah23 Sadly the best outcome for society would probably be that one of these vaccines turns out to be clearly dangerous, and the problem turns into a major disaster, localized in one country. :/

This _will_ happen again. And it's just a medical fact that rushing into vaccinations is dangerous - we've literally never succeeded at it before without some kind of screwup.

@dsmatthews@mastodon.online Source for that specific claim?

Autoimmunity is certainly a risk, because autoimmunity is a risk with COVID-19 itself. Vaccines could either induce more or less autoimmunity risk depending on the specifics.

Remember that our body's mechanisms to avoid autoimmunity evolved in the context of real infections, not fake ones... So no surprise if those mechanisms don't work as well when vaccinated. OTOH, like I say, depends on the specifics.

@Jeremiah23 I wonder how many cops who would refuse vaccination, would actually refuse to enforce mandatory vaccination? Might be the correlation you'd hope for.

Conversely, I'd hope many cops who accepted vaccination, would refuse to enforce mandatory vaccination...

@lupyuen brb, buying more Raspberry Pi's. :P

https://www.dailynews.com/2021/01/05/20-of-lapds-sworn-civilian-employees-say-they-wont-take-covid-19-vaccine/

At just 20% refusal cops are actually much *more* likely to take the vaccine than nurses:

"An American Nurses Association survey of 13,000 registered nurses showed 34% said they would take a COVID-19 vaccine, with 36% saying they would not and the rest saying they weren’t sure."

That's more rational than you might expect: a significant % of them have probably been infected already at work, and the vaccines haven't been safety tested in people who were already infected.

@ajtowns @stephanlivera @kalle @verretor Though seriously, looks like we're getting our first bot-like trolls. It'll be interesting to see if the blocking tools we have work well enough to keep that under control. A good solution might be to use Lightning to make it nom-free to create endless bot accounts.

@ajtowns @stephanlivera @kalle @verretor your wrong!! stupid dumb dumb head!!!

@drgo @ibz The state has more power(1) than the mob. But the mob is much more willing to use their still-significant powers.

...and when shit hits the fan, the mob and the state fracture, making it unclear as to where the dividing lines actually are.

1) The US and Russia can destroy the world with nuclear weapons. That's just a fact. But it's not a power they're inclined to use - not very useful...

"WATCH: Some residents in Montreal, Quebec are protesting the curfew by turning on the alarms of their cars.

If you received a COVID fine go to http://FightTheFines.com" - @RebelNewsOnline@twitter.com

This is actually kinda clever, and easy to do with remote panic buttons.

Police going down streets, sirens blaring, is straight up fear mongering fascism.

@lupyuen Almost certainly yes. Remember from an epidemiology point of view, lots of people were saying the privacy-preserving versions wouldn't work very well anyway. So no surprise there was pressure on multiple angles to have privacy in name only.

Fact is the contact tracing efforts have found that it mainly spreads at hospitals, at essential jobs, and within families. The short encounters that tracing apps monitor best don't matter anyway. You need relatively long exposure to get infected.