Been reading up a lot about these jabs, esp as I know they are going to be a condition of a return to normality

Was on a zoom call last evening with a testing company that had some fascinating evidence on protection etc.

I have more reading to do.

I do not want to be coerced into something I don't want, BUT i want normal back as soon as possible.

Basically i'm at the point in my isolation and thinking that I'll take whatever just so this bullshit can end.
That is a desperate mindset, but so is 12 months of being cut off from the world.

All i have is what goes round and round in my head.

There's no one else to help balance it.
So i'm in group 6, and my surgery are doing group 6 right now. And i am at the point i want to do it to get it DONE.

And also to study what happens. Because i have that kind of mind.
I remember Pandemrix.

But we live with risk every day.

I risk my life climbing walls with only a harness around my waist to catch me as i lean back and fall off

And rational risk assessment is at the heart of everything going wrong these last 12 months
I want to be rational in all my decision making. Not a refusenik for the sake of it.

I have a lot of thinking to do.
I'm also aware that it may come down to interfering with my job if i refuse.

This is on my mind a lot.
Visiting my family in the US is also on my mind. It's been 11 years. I *need* to be able to go. And as vaccines are mandated in the US for accessing education, I *know* they will be a precondition of entry to the country.
So @ClareGerada i appreciate your offer the other day and I may hit you up for some info

It's about rational risk assessment. Weighing up the pros and cons, not just of the jab, and not just "what happens if i do" but "what happens if i dont"

It's so much more to consider.
And absolutely nothing to do with "needle phobia" as so many people think is the reason people say no to jabs
Also fascinating to me is that 2 panodyne cartridges have been faintly positive for antibodies

But 2 Roche anti-N assays have been "negative" - 0.05, and 0.08 quantitative

So What is the actual answer? Do i just have t cells that mop it up and antibodies aren't necessary?
I'm the person who lost rubella titre when pregnant and had to have the MMR after her birth

I also have an autoimmune thyroid disease that has only once tested positive for antibodies - otherwise they're almost always under the threshold. Present, but low
So what really is the answer? Am i protected already? I think i am but am i really?

According to the testing company last evening and the expert they had on, if you've already encountered the virus and you're primed, the jab acts as a booster.
If i want to visit family in a care home, want to see my family in the US, want continued employment, is the risk of ADE / pathogenic priming worth the payoff?

It would be a more compelling argument not to be masked if i have had the jab and can prove it.

So yeah.
I can recall objecting for absolute years to the LITUK test. Why did i object? It was insulting. Absolutely pathetic. Created to pander to those who thought immigrants got an easy ride. All it did was punish me, and I had bigger things to do, autistic kids to sort, etc.
So i objected. for 13 years.

And who did it harm? Me. It did not change the situtation, which was that i *had* to pass that exam before i could obtain the citizenship i was entitled to for nearly 15 years.
This is also on my mind. Refusing for refusing's sake when the world is going to change and we are powerless to stop some of the bigger changes, like what the US demands for entry, it will only harm me.
I'm not acquiescing to vaccine passports, they are still wrong and I will still stand up for that because it's absolutely heinous discrimination.
And i'm not encouraging anyone else to do, or not do, whatever suits their personal life.

We all have our circumstances and none of them are the same. No one else walks in my shoes.

There should be no coercion and no punishment to any of this.
But reality is, there has been, and there probably will continue to be. And it would be stupid to not evaluate all of it and the potential of this stuff continuing whether we want it to or not.
The government seem hellbent to do whatever they want - look at the tests being rolled out to kids for schooling. Professionals are screaming about why it's a bad idea but the government are DOING IT ANYWAY

That's been the biggest lesson i've learned through all of this --
if the govt want to do something, they bloody well will. No matter how much evidence tells them not to.

THEY WILL DO IT ANYWAY

look at masks. no evidence of their effectiveness, mandated anyway and repeatedly the thumbscrews are tightened, shops harass us, etc etc.
it's all illegal, unethical, immoral, and discriminatory

AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY

Isnt it realism to consider that they will make being a jabbed a precondition of so much of life, that it's better for my QoL to go on and acquiesce?
So that's where I'm at.
Sorry for the huge self indulgent thread.

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On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/

1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/
https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/

4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x