Flu ShotFollow

Oh, I'm sure they almost definitely are unrelated. But it's like how you stop wearing your black socks if you notice that you keep almost getting hit by cars when you wear them. It's indescribably silly, but fairly normal.

Careful, talk like that will get you pulled off all your flights. Spoiler

I'll just post this bit again for relevance:



For liberals, it's not that you think that you fight for less government intrusion and conservatives fight for more, but that you fight for "good" intrusion, while conservatives fight for "bad" intrusion. Which is precisely the point I was making. That assumption is incorrect, which causes liberals to fail (repeatedly) to understand the conservative position entirely. Which then leads to like the Dark Side or something.





Wrong. In your opinion it does, but that's not what conservatives are talking about when we talk about "small government". Perhaps instead of demanding that our positions fit into your assumptions, you actually listen to what we're saying? Just a thought.

One of my issues with the whole flu shot thing is that those who work hard to debunk the idea of not taking a flu shot tend to use very misleading language to do so. While the flu shot wont give you the "flu", it can often produce "flu like symptoms". This is because the symptoms are your body's response to the virus. The whole point of a vaccine is to expose your immune system to a weakened or inactive version of the virus so that your body can develop anti-bodies to resist it in the future. To do this, you have to trick the body into thinking it's got the flu. So, not surprisingly, many people get the same symptoms from taking the vaccine as they'd get if they had the flu.

Why is this a problem? Because it's almost never the flu itself that kills people, but the weakened state your body is in while fighting it that leaves you vulnerable to things like pneumonia that does. So while your immune system is busy spending energy fighting the fake flu you introduced to it in the shot, it's temporarily weakened and may result in you getting something more serious. Now, these symptoms are *usually* less severe than if you had a real flu, and *usually* last a lot less time, thus decreasing your odds of getting seriously ill compared to actually catching a real flu, but you're taking a 100% chance of being exposed to a minor flu with a short window of vulnerability to something more serious in order to protect yourself against the relatively small chance that you might contract the flu at all, much less one of the 3 or 4 strains that the vaccine actually protects against, during the 3 month time period when the vaccination is actually effective anyway.


So yeah, choosing not to take the flu shot isn't that nutty of a decision to make at all.

Well, gee, gbaji. Just say "I'm a social Conservative".

Clarity and all that.

Except that would not be clarity. It would be a misrepresentation. The term "social conservative" has a completely different meaning than what I'm talking about.

A closer term would be "fiscal conservative", in case you are curious.



Movies being equivalent to anything that is not a necessary function of a federal government (I thought I was abundantly clear on this). That generally includes social programs, but the motivation is not to oppose the social change/improvement/whatever, but because those things aren't necessary functions of the federal government. This is part of what I'm talking about. Liberals think in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with the thing itself, and thus if you oppose spending on that thing, you must oppose the thing. Conservatives think in terms of necessary functions of government and believe we should limit government action (and spending) to the greatest degree possible to just those things that are necessary.

A liberal supports federal funding for food stamps because he doesn't want people to go hungry. He assumes that a conservative views funding for food stamps the same way, and thus the conservative's opposition to that funding means he wants people to go hungry. But the conservative's reason is that this isn't a necessary function of the federal government, and thus we shouldn't fund it that way. The conservative doesn't want people to go hungry, but believes that there are better ways to feed people than creating "big government" programs.

It's a disconnect regarding motivation that I'm trying to point out. I find it interesting (and a bit frustrating) just how hard it is for most liberals to even see that it's possible for personA to oppose something for completely different reasons than PersonB supports it.



Sure. And that's a perfectly valid argument. But that's not the argument I responded to. The argument I responded to was "How can you claim to oppose spending on <some social program> on small government grounds, when you don't oppose spending on the military?". That's a totally different argument.

Edited, Oct 13th 2014 7:11pm by gbaji

A fiscal conservative doesn't cherry pick the budget. He/she would insist that all spending be reduced. See, a social conservative decides whats' "good" or "bad" budget-wise based on an ideology. THAT'S YOU. Denying that after your years of clearly expressing otherwise is just ludicrous.

.Oh, OK. Please point me to a Conservative site that expounds on "better ways to feed people" that does not include help from the Federal Government and I'll go read that and get back to you.not a necessary function = wasteful, not needed....................frivolous




Edited, Oct 13th 2014 8:45pm by Bijou

Not according to the definition.

Both sides would be wrong. This is why we have things like dictionaries, to create standards so people can't go around making stuff up.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

Big versus small government isn't just about the dollars being spent, but what they are being spent on. I've explained this at least a dozen times over the years on this forum. Do I have to explain it again? Operating a military is one of the small list of things that a federal government must do. Ergo, operating a military is not a violation of the principle of "small government". Spending taxpayer dollars to encourage people to eat their vegetables is *not* on the small list of things that the federal government must do. Ergo, spending money to do that is a violation of the principle of small government. What the relative costs of those things are is irrelevant to that determination.

We may also want to reduce spending even on necessary things, but that's a different issue. It's like arguing the difference between spending money on rent versus spending it going out to the movies. Sure, I'd like to make sure I'm not overpaying on rent, but only a complete moron would justify spending money on movies based on how much is spent on rent, much less demand that any reduction to the dollars spent on movies to meet a budget must be matched with a reduction in the dollars spent on rent. Yet, that's precisely what the Democrats demanded in the very shutdown(s) you're referring to.

I never mentioned anything about the cost of programs. I specifically said that Republicans talk bad about big government unless its something that they like. So the argument is not about "big government", but certain things about big government. There's nothing wrong with arguing against/for certain things, as it is not all or nothing. However it becomes hypocritical when you generally speak ill of big government when your problem is only certain parts.

If you're a healthy person, this risk is essentially nil. If you're not a healthy person, they recommend against getting the shot.

This is your classic "My downhome common sense thinkin' sure did show them fancy-pants Ivory Tower college people with their white coats and degrees...."

Sneeze so much that Punxsutawney doesn't leave his burrow.

Got my flu shot on Sunday.

ENTIRELY UNRELATED I came down with norovirus on Monday. We know the vector - restaurant that served lunch to my husband and a friend last Thursday - his friend got sick the same day he did, on Sunday. I was sick as a dog Monday evening and yesterday. Felt like someone was unwinding my intestines through my bellybutton.

My tummy hurt so much that I completely forgot that my left arm was sore from the flu shot unless I touched it by accident. The arm is fine now. Tummy still hurts. I'm drowning myself in hand sanitizer here at work and washing my hands obsessively to avoid spreading it. (Apparently those two basic hygiene practices cut the transmissions of illnesses at work down by ~80%.)

Edited, Oct 15th 2014 2:29pm by Catwho

You don't need a parachute to skydive. You just need one if you want to do it more than once.