Midrange Weekly Aug 30

Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention

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Welcome back to Midrange Weekly and truly we hope it’s been a good week out there for everyone. A bit of existential dread tends to creep in around this time of year as summer ends and we are forced to endure the more contemplative autumn season. Also, are we seriously doing another federal election in Canada? Everyone is no doubt upset that we aren’t going to hit that Sept 7 everything is back to normal target on the pandemic time line so we understand if people are a little glum. If it helps or cheers you up just a little, we’re pretty sure Biden fell asleep on camera in a meeting with the Israeli PM and that’s objectively hilarious. Let’s see what’s worth talking about this week.

 

Let’s Talk About Vaccine Mandates (And Everything Else)

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I’m going to try and do all this as tactfully and delicately as possible; at least for as long as the increasingly throbbing vein in my forehead that is probably adjacent to whatever logic circuitry is in the brain will allow me to. Now that vaccine mandates are upon us, oh wow do people have opinions on them. Our IG feeds have all no doubt been inundated with info graphics or hastily worded diatribes. Analogies ranging from communist Russia, to fascist Germany to really just a lot of other out there references have been attempted to add historical import and gravity to hot takes that cannot reality muster neither. Therefore it is with no small amount of resignation and exacerbation that I’m compelled to throw my remedial two cents in. God help us all for having to this, but let’s see if we can dismantle some of the anti mandate or anti vax in general arguments.

 My Body, My Choice

This is one of the most common arguments against a government mandated vaccine requirement. While I acknowledge that the Venn diagram of draconian conservatives and neo libertarian anti mandate folk is not a perfect circle, it’s still extremely rich hearing this from anyone that ever proselytized anti abortion laws. Nevertheless the prevalent idea of personal liberty and privacy animates this argument. That the government has no right to regulate your personal choices on how you affect your body. Fair play friend- in theory. In reality, it absolutely is not your body we are talking about. A person who chooses to forgo getting vaccinated affects far more than just himself or herself. This is a contagious virus we are talking about here; by choosing to allow yourself to remain susceptible to Covid you’re putting others at risk of spreading it to them. By making yourself vulnerable you are affecting the economic health of your work, coworkers, and community by potentially taking yourself out of play. By remaining unvaccinated and at risk of infection you are allowing the virus more opportunities to mutate thus diminishing the protection those who are vaccinated can enjoy. Obstinacy to the vaccine has resulted in some ICU wards across America and Canada to be full of patients that didn’t need to be there, draining and annexing the resources of our health care system in deeply egregious ways. Observe below the story of a Texan with a treatable illness that died nevertheless because the hospitals and urgent care centers in his area were all full with Covid patients. 

 Your choice is not limited to your body in this case. It’s selfish and naïve to think otherwise. This is a public health issue.

 

It’s Government Overreach To Mandate This

It’s not really! One of the government’s primary functions in a modern context is actually to mitigate public health issues. For example it is up to the government to make sure that we have access to clean drinking water in public and at home. It’s even quite the big scandal when the government cannot fulfil that duty. This being a public health issue, it cannot be left up to individual responsibility to address this thing. All it takes is a relatively small minority of recalcitrant individuals and the personal responsibility of everyone else is rendered null and void through the virus’ continued spread and mutation. 

Look at it this way. If you choose to get shit faced at home in your back yard for the day, knock yourself out. But as soon as you enter public space you are potential risk to the public; hence anti intoxication laws. Same goes for why you can’t drive drunk. Once you enter public space, it’s up to the government to regulate how you can and can’t interact in that public space when those interactions could hypothetically pose a risk to others. Because if we left it up to personal responsibility there is always going to be enough drivers on the road that simply won’t exercise that responsibility and make a real mess of things. And yes, there are already too many drunk drivers- do you want there to be even more? Probably not!

 

I’m Not Anti Vax, I’m Just Anti This Vax

Why? The AZ shot is based on the same antibody technique for all sorts of immunizations ranging from polio to typhoid. Many of those vaccines were in injected into all of us upon birth. The MRNA technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna dates back over 30 years. This isn’t new or experimental stuff. Vaccines usually take several years, sometimes even a decade to make it from conceptualization to FDA approval, and it’s true the Covid shots did it less than two years. But almost all of that long period for other vaccines is not research and development but waiting for grant money. Drafting a proposal, waiting months or years for a governing body to read that proposal, and then waiting even longer to receive funding. That’s only if the governing bodies deem it a worthy endeavour and expenditure of resources. The governments of the world simply all agreed to not make the firms responsible for developing Covid vaccines wait. Proposals for immunizations were bumped to the top of the line. Funding was allocated right away to those with viable designs. We simply cut out all of the bureaucratic red tape to make the process as efficient as possible. This is objectively a good thing. Hundreds of millions of people have taken the vaccine with encouragingly few small side affects- far lower than say complications from COVID 19. Don’t be discouraged by the intentionally misleading or negligent journalism behind the anecdotes that say otherwise. Think of it this way- no one ever reports on the thousands of planes that land safely every day, just the one that doesn’t. Are you anti plane also? Media literacy in this sense is important, as a lack thereof is one of the driving factors behind anti vax rhetoric. Notice how outlets like Fox news questioned the efficacy of the vaccines due to the lack of FDA approval. No sooner did the FDA give it approval did Fox find new reasons to not be for it. You can’t move the goal posts in your own argument and expect that argument to be viewed as credible. 

 

The Vaccine Doesn’t Even Work That Well So What’s The Point

As someone who had Covid, had to isolate for 10 days, and had exactly zero symptoms the entire time- ya, they work.  What could be an illness that has killed over a million people worldwide turns into a mildly boring stay-cation in your room; there’s a pretty discernable difference. A lot of skeptics argue that if it works so well, then why are those who are vaccinated so concerned about Covid still or who has or doesn’t have the vaccine. To reiterate, the reason is that people who are unvaccinated are susceptible and provide and opportunity to the virus to mutate, thus potentially diminishing the efficacy of the vaccine for those that have it. In other words, the limitations of a vaccine’s protection are literally exacerbated by those who don’t get the vaccine. People who suspect there could be a problem are the problem and the source of the discourse around ‘maybe the vaccines aren’t as good as we think’. This is frustratingly tautological and indeed quite obnoxious that vaccine skeptics would have the nerve to challenge on these grounds. 

 

Vaccine Mandates Signal An Ominous Reworking Of Society

Again, not really! Like I said immunization records at birth and throughout child hood are common in the developed world and we are lucky to have them. Traveling to certain parts of the world also requires you to get specific immunizations before hand. During the Spanish Flu pandemic of the late 1910s, mask mandates were implemented. George Washington even required his entire army be vaccinated against Small Pox during the Revolutionary War. Government intervention in various forms like this have existed throughout our lives, which begs the question why are those so vehemently opposed to them now suddenly upset with the idea if it? A toxic stream of online trolling mutating into ideological passions (not unlike a virus) and news outlets that have a financial stake in people being angry and therefore tuning in to learn what they should be angry about are likely culprits. Again, media literacy matters. 

 

This Is Segregationist And Discriminatory

This is where whatever little tolerance and tact I had on the matter starts to evaporate. You can’t be discriminated against for something you choose to do. A person does not choose to be gay, or black, or disabled- things that they can and have been discriminated against for. You can choose to be a racist, or choose to be a homophobe, or choose to be unvaccinated. At that point it is simply facing consequences for your actions. Those consequences are not however denial of essential public services such as health care or public education. If you don’t like the options presented to you elsewhere or lack thereof, it’s within your power to change it; that’s not the case when it comes to the aforementioned minorities who are either born the way they are or have a similarly immutable characteristic. 

 

The Vaccine Cards Are Just Like The Yellow Stars They Made The Jews Wear In Nazi Germany

Grow the fuck up. Are you hearing yourselves? Pretty sure the issue the Jewish population in Europe was facing during the holocaust wasn’t that they couldn’t go to concerts or clubs. Comparing every inconvenience you suffer or public policy you disagree with to the systematic slaughter of 11 million people is reductionist and an especially pernicious form of erasure. You are not going through what they went through. To pretend that you are, or that vaccine mandates or vaccine cards are the beginning of a slippery slope that will end with people in gas chambers or being euthanized diminishes and disregards what really did happen to people. You don’t have the right to claim even adjacency to such a heinous event and to cast actors within our current situation in similar contexts. Stop it. 

 My final thought on the matter would be: if you don’t like the vaccine, and don’t support the vaccine mandates, how does all of this end in your mind? How and when do we get past this pandemic if collective action isn’t taken? Or do we just resign ourselves to this forever? -Tristan

 

Things From The Internet We Liked

 

Vox Drops An Excellent Explainer About The Disaster The US Created In Afghanistan

Vietnam was a disaster. Afghanistan is no different. Two trillion spent and 20 years later, what did the US accomplish? As this video explains, not very much.

 

Show Me The Spiderman Trailer. I Said The Real Spiderman Trailer.

Ya ya the tailer for Spiderman: No Way Home looks pretty great. But it looks even better when it’s recreated entirely from footage from the 90s cartoon. God bless whoever got to work on this presumably the second the trailer for the upcoming film dropped.

 

Dave Grohl Meets His Nemesis

If your not familiar with the story of Nandi Bushell, the 11 year old mortal enemy of Dave Grohl that smoked his ass on the drums several times over, it’s quite the tale. After coming to his senses and realizing he is no match for her, Grohl did the only sensible thing and brought Bushell on stage to perform Everlong together. This is awesome.

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MIDRANGE WEEKLYdavid mcleod ringuetteCovid, Spiderman: No Way Home, Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl, Nandi Bushell, AfghanistanComment