Grrl Power #1017 – Nants ingonyama!
I’m not pleased with how this page turned out, because it’s mostly backgrounds, and I’m disappointed with my results. Backgrounds take so much longer to draw than I ever allocate. The Alari ship is barely just past the draft stage. I needed to put another ten hours into making it look like a hive of activity and showing how it’s expanding. Actually, right now it looks like a Level 1 structure in a RTS game, and someone just hit the button to upgrade it to Level 2.
And the Galytn city… well, it’s pretty basic looking. I didn’t want to make it look like Wakanda, Galytn isn’t that far along, but I wanted to make it look like a city that’s had a ton of new infrastructure put into it. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded something closer to Gaia City from Appleseed, but really that’s far too advanced as well. Still, a few buildings with curved metal roofs that collect or reflect the sun or buildings with rooftop gardens would have been nice. I just sat down to draw the city and started putting in some basic looking buildings, and that took so long I had to start moving on to other stuff.
Clip Studio Paint (and a lot of other drawing programs these days) has perspective rulers you can set up to keep your background from looking like it’s been hit with an acid trip warp effect, but the limitation of those guides is that they don’t have anyway to handle things like arches or 45 degree architecture, like rooftops or rafters or flying buttresses. What that means is you have to turn the rulers on and off about 2,000 times while drawing the average background.
There are ways to do perspective correct curves and angles, but it honestly requires a fuckton of intermediate measurements and is not a terribly fast process. It makes me appreciate artists that do amazing backgrounds. Not landscapes. Those are easy. Relatively speaking. There’s still a ton of skill involved, just less fiddly measurements.
Update: My wife pointed out that chasing nyquil with a tumbler full of Goldschlager* might not be the best idea, so I ditched the booze plan but somehow wound up getting a pretty decent night’s sleep. I think all the previous insomnia caught up with me. Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I’m not 100%, but I think I’m over the hump. Took about 5 days to get there. Hopefully I’m on the mend and this isn’t just a temporary boost because I’m well rested, but we’ll see.
*Yeah, Goldschlager. I’m not a whiskey guy or scotch or whatever else, I like drinks that taste good. Actually, my favorite drink currently is Dr. McGillicuddy’s Apple Pie Liqueur, but Goldschlager has twice the booze which makes it better for getting knocked out.
So, I’ve got Covid (probably Omicron). Not because I’m some dumbass anti-vaxxer, but just because we have a high-schooler in the house who managed to go a whole year without bringing anything back with him, but there’s like 2,000 kids in the school, so it was basically inevitable. I got my shots, but never got around to the booster, and so far it’s like a pretty mild case of the flu, although one point on my side is starting to get awfully sore from all the coughing. Except, I seem to be having some fairly weapons grade insomnia, and my energy and attention is suffering for it so. Sometime it takes me 5 days to draw 2 comic pages, this week it took seven. Haven’t even started on the nudie pinup yet this month. Well, actually each time I sit down to do one, I spend half a day drawing and discarding ideas, so I probably have some half-finished pencils I can dredge up and polish. But I’ll probably start a new one, hopefully keep it to a single character this time.
I’m so tired.
Melatonin fucks up my blood pressure and also I basically can’t wake up until about noon the next day, so I’m going to try the time-proven method of drinking a bunch of booze. Wish me luck! Skål!
BTW, if you are a dumbass anti-vaxxer, DO NOT POST ABOUT IT HERE. I will ban you from commenting forever. On the plus side, you will have more time to go and Darwin yourself out of our gene pool, thereby reducing your drag factor on the rest of humanity.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Two chapters left to proof. I’m going to work on it after I post this page, but I’m so tired. We’ll see how far I make it.
January’s vote incentive is titled “The Origin of The Might Halo.” Hopefully the reason is evident.
Nude versions available over at Patreon. Along with a bonus comic page.
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Evil Smurf!
Love Sydney’s reaction to Lorlara.
Lorlana is just adorable.
Yeah, adorable like a Piranha.
What is up with those TEETH?
Well, Lorlara has great teeth. It could be considered a strong genetic marker. Show off your strengths, in such a cutthroat society.
What is more interesting is the shift around Lorlara’s eyes as her expression changed.
Perhaps a different layer of grey blue shift like a human’s blush but with excitement.
Adorable can apply to piranha!
https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w768/upload/24/73/17/shutterstock-564404089.jpg
Look at the widdle piranha. Isn’t he adorable! Just a widdle scaly fishy wishy ball of teeth arent you?
Oh yes you are! OH YES YOU ARE!
Challenge.
It looks like a grumpy cartoon librarian.
Grumpy librarians can be adorable too!
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a0/08/26/a00826ed7f952918e444f6a4e64dc5f5.jpg
Who’s the cutest widdle gwumpy librarian kitty! You are! Oh yes you are!
Aww….now I’m sad, thinking about Grumpy Cat. He passed away, you know. /=‘(
Yeah :(
Dangit now I’m sad too.
Now THIS is adorable {fond smile}
https://denverzoo.org/animals/komodo-dragon/
But the Alari will have to put up with these for a while, but they are equally charming:
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/nile-crocodiles-florida-dna-study-03883.html
which says a lot about popular attitudes toward “Leave the bloody things where you find them! DO NOT bring it home!”
i heard about other invasive species with breeding populations in the everglades, like the pythons, but hadn’t heard the one about nile crocodiles. i keep expecting to hear about cobras showing up somewhere.
Now there’s a scary thought :[
What do you think their reactin will be to Sydney given she triggered the refugee movement and has an arsenal which blew chucks out of the army which decimated their planet?
Also that reminds me of our villainess and the mass amount of alien spirits rushing about, distinct from the refugees and survivors. thats going to collide badly.
It would be nice if some of the Alari recognized Sydney as the person who helped them, but that’s probably the OTHER refugees that Cora space-lifted.
Yes, these Alari arrived in a damaged ship. Syddles’ group was transported to an extant Alari colony world.
It would be an interesting side-story to find how the Alari treat their… less fortunate… people.
I am extremely curious as to what happens when the Alari lower orders of society start getting exposed to Terran political philosophy.
Particularly Rousseau, Marx, Kropotkin, and Ho Chi Minh, not to mention the various African Marxists.
Wait until the mad mahdis start proselytizing. Not to mention the Religious Right and Left…
There’s a religious left?
You mean Quakers and The Satanic Temple?
There are certainly religious people on the political left. They just tend to be less unified and authoritarian than the Religious Right.
I think religiosity (or at least theism) and authoritarianism, left or right, tend to go hand in hand with most religions unless it’s something like Jainism or Buddhism. If you’re a theist, it’s generally meaning you follow an authoritarian figure or figures, or a set of dogma that are usually going to be at least somewhat strict if you want to be part of the belief system.
Left and right tend to be about government involvement (left) vs individualism (right). Statism tends to be on the left extreme, anarchy tends to be on the right extreme, until you add into it the second axis of authoritarian vs libertarian.
I wouldn’t say religion is a bad thing, or most philosophies are necessarilty bad, like with all things, it’s the extremes that getcha. The more extreme it is, left or right, the more likely it’s going to be negative.
Also, Quakers have both liberal and orthodox versions. It depends on the branch of Quakerism. Also depending on what you mean by ‘left’ and ‘right.’ The only reason I know this is when I was younger I was confused about if Amish were like Quakers after watching The Frisco Kid (starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford) and so I did a deep dive in wikipedia about it. :) Apparently they’re rather different.
> I wouldn’t say religion is a bad thing, or most philosophies are necessarilty bad, like with all things, it’s the extremes that getcha.
Eh. I think that religious people can do good things but overall religion is a bad thing. Religion requires a lack of evidence-based thinking, e.g. Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” which is saying “faith is what you use to justify belief when you have no evidence.” I can’t see any way that can be justified as a beneficial attitude for society.
As a primo example of this: **40%** of Americans are young-earth creationists[1], meaning that they believe (a) the earth is only 6,000 – 10,000 years old and (b) God created humanity in our present form and evolution is a lie. This requires denying basically all of science, and I regard that as harmful.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx
“As a primo example of this: **40%** of Americans are young-earth creationists[1], meaning that they believe (a) the earth is only 6,000 – 10,000 years old ”
While I commend you using an actual polling data for your argument, I sincerely do not believe this Gallup poll is even remotely a true and accurate statistic. I heavily question this sampling size and grouping. I also question the questions given and how they came to their conclusions based on the question they’ve mentioned in the article. For example (and I’m not religious), but ‘belief in god’ or ‘going to church’ does not equal ‘belief in young earth creationism.’ Even ‘belief that God created man’ does not equal ‘belief in young earth creationism.’
In addition:
It was a cell phone interview, for 70% of the interviews. Only thing worse would be website poll interviews. It was an EXTREMELY small sample size considering it was from throughout all 50 states. Only 1,015 people from 50 states. This is the typical sampling size from gallup, so not surprising. The polled people are anonymous. It doesnt show where the surveys were taken from – high population centers, rural areas, suburbs, etc. Mostly because it’s an anonymous poll. It doesnt show anything about the religious observances of the inteview-ees – were they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheistic?
So… sorry, I can’t really take the poll seriously. Especially Gallup, which is literally the least accurate polling service of the 23 major polling forms.
And while yes, religion does require a lack of evidence-based thinking for the dogma, it does not necessarily mean the people who are religious do not use evidence in their scientific pursuits. For example, Max Planck, German theoretical physicist and father of quantum mechanics was actually an extremely religious man, as were many other scientists in history – Copernicus, Pascal (Pascal’s Triangle, inventor of the calculator), Tristram, Boyle (discoverer of the first gas law – Boyle’s Law), Lavoisier (founder of modern chemistry), Euler, Faraday (discoverer of electromagnetic induction), Maxwell (scientist who unified electricity and magnetism to discover one of the four fundamental forces of the universe, electromagnetism), Mendel (father of the science of genetics), Compton (discoverer that light is both a particle AND a wave, discoverer of the photon), Fisher (unified evolution by natural slection and Mendel’s rules of inheritance), Newton (law of universal gravitation, laws of motion, inventor of calculus, inventor of the reflecting telescope), Townes (discoverer of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way), Gibbs (founder of modern statistics and also father of chemical thermodynamic), Gauss (Gauss’s Law for Magnetism),Collins (invented positional cloning, directed the Human Genome Project), Walton (scientist that actually proved that Einstein’s E=mc squared was accurate by splitting the atom), Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage (inventor of the first general purpose computer, the Analytical Engine), Heisenberg (one of the primary creators of quantum mechanics, along with Planck), Davy (first scientist to produce barium, boron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium and strontium as usable samples, discoverer of iodine and chlorine), etc.
So I don’t see religion as a bad thing, even if I am not personally religious. If anything, one could argue pretty easily that lack of religion has been FAR worse. You only need to look at people like Mao, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, and others who believed in the State being put in place of religion as an example of what happens when there’s no religion at all.
Man does tend to be a religious animal as part of our basic collective psychology (even when we’re atheists, we tend to have a sense of morality derived from a society which was built upon religious tenets), and if we don’t have some sort of religious stories to base our civilization on, we tend to turn the state into the de facto religion instead. Which is sometimes as bad, and usually a lot worse unfortunately.
(Unless you want to worship Deus, in which case all praise Deus amen because he’s the exception to the rule) :)
> Left and right tend to be about government involvement (left) vs individualism (right).
You’ve got that so very, very wrong there.
The left is about changing the world for the better.
The right is about preserving old systems for no decernable reason other than that they’re old.
And yes, it *IS* that simple.
The modern conservative movement has its roots in the aristocracy figuring out how to maintain their power in the face of the rise of democracy when they saw what the French did to their aristocrats.
“You’ve got that so very, very wrong there.”
I’m very, very not. Left/Right is about political axes. The vertical are based on how many rules the government imposes on a person – authoritarian vs libertarian, the horizontal is based on the strength of the ruling party – the left involved strong/powerful government (the further left, the more statism), the right involves weak/minimal government (the further right, the more anarchic/individualistic). You can have a right authoritarian (Salem Witch Trials, Torquemada) or a left authoritarian (Stalin, Mao), and you can have a right libertarian (modern libertarians, aka ‘classical liberals’) or a left libertarian (‘commune-living’ collectivists, aka hippies). The ones that scale up the easiest tend to be right libertarian and left authoritarian, but there’s a range in all directions that can shift depending on the overton window.
“The left is about changing the world for the better.”
I wouldnt say Mao or Stalin changed the world for the better.
“The right is about preserving old systems for no decernable reason other than that they’re old.”
There’s a saying – I forget the origin of it but it goes like this:
The left and the right will see a fence in a field. The left will say ‘Tear down this fence! It’s serving no discernable purpose! We can use the wood to build something more useful!’ The right will say ‘Hold on – we have no idea why this fence is up. Is it keeping something in? Is it keeping something out? Don’t tear it down yet until we know why it was put up in the first place.’
There’s also a philosophical aspect of the left-right access. The left is going to be more ‘change’ while the right is more ‘hold back.’ Too much change is bad, not enough change is bad. Too much holding back is bad, not enough holding back is bad. It depends on what aspect of society you’re talking about changing or holding back from changing.
axis, not access. Stupid voice translation.
> I wouldnt say Mao or Stalin changed the world for the better.
Fucking tankies giving leftists a bad name again.
Well 160 million non-war state-based systematic murders of their own populations do tend to hurt a politicsl philosophy’s reputation quite a bit.
While I agree that there is a strong correlation between authoritarianism and most religions, though not necessarily religion in the abstract, I must disagree about how you’ve categorized the political left and right. The idea of the left as promoting strong government over individuality is an invention of the modern American right. The political left throughout history has been opposed to both traditional power structures, and often structure in general, being commonly associated with anarchism, communism, labor, and democracy.
When the left is supportive of strong government, it’s usually in recognition of the fact that without one, the strong oppress the weak. Preserving individual rights and freedoms requires something to prevent people from using their freedom to take away the freedom of others. On the right, there’s a belief in a natural, correct order, and freedom lies in allowing that natural order to rule, meaning that some people rule, and others serve.
As for your fence analogy… The one thing missing is that the right isn’t interested in the reason for the fence. Not only do they insists that the reason must have been good, simply because the fence is there, and it isn’t worth researching, but they will also seek to punish anyone who goes digging for the answers.
Actually the right IS interested in the reason for the fence. Its why they dont want to tear it doen until they know why its there and give benefit of the doubt that its there for a good reason. Its all about the persoective of the reason the fence exists.
The right wants to conserve the fence until it knows for sure that its not necessary.
The left wants to tear down the fence unless you csn definitively prove that it isnecessary.
The problem is once the fence is torn down before knowing why its there, it might be difficult to rebuild it if it turns out to be important. But if its not torn down right away you cant use the wood for other things that might be more important, especially if the fence is no longer needed.
That is what the right claims to believe, but their behavior says otherwise. They make up a reason, and shout down anyone who asks questions. According to them, no investigation is necessary.
You don’t think they’re at least as brainwashed into accepting both their society, and their position in it, as the lowers orders of Terran society are?
Never stick your in crazy, I’d tell Deus – but it’s probably too late….
At least she has cleavage…
I will point out Comic #609 and Deus’ Little Black Encyclopedia
setREFERENCE SECTION…He already had an Alari so no need for a second
Deus did say he’d “always wanted to nail an Alari”, but that was when they were rare visitors to Earth.
There are some significant differences in both appearance and temperament between Lorlara and Sciona, suggesting that they’re from different strains of Alari society. Maybe that’s aligned to the social difference between a ‘Dutchess’ and a commoner, or maybe it’s aligned to ancestors’ geography (or the interplay of both, as with Humans). Either way, it could make Lorlara a plausible choice for a collector like Deus. It’s as if an alien (“I’ve always wanted to bang a Human”) took their chance with the first available passing traveller, then met a large group and realised “I haven’t had a Galytni Human before” – or a Mexican, or a Chinese, and so on.
Get well.
Liking your btw comment too.
Hope you get better soon dude! Good luck! I’m getting my booster on Wednesday.
I got my booster Dec 29, but I got my Omicron from a co-worker just before that. I had mild symptoms Christmas through New Years, peaking Dec 31. I was already scheduled to get that week off anyway. :( I finally got a clean COVID test last week, so now I get to go back to our stores. Too bad all the vaccines are targeted on the Alpha variant (the one identified 2 years ago in China), and only have some effectiveness on the others. Hopefully, if I get exposed to Delta, my immune system will figure out how to clobber it quickly.
If I get exposed to Detla, that would be a whole other story.
Personally, I was looking forward to getting the vaccine, but the ‘vid nailed me in February last year before it was available to my cohort. Right as rain in the morning, feeling a bit off by lunch time, had to bail from work an hour early. Never had a fever the whole time.
2 days bad head cold, followed by 2 weeks cabin fever; Glad they finally backed down on the over the top quarantine period. But a week later I could still break into a sweat just bringing the empty garbage can back from the curb.
Dave, I think I speak for everyone (or at least many people) if we say that if it came down to it, we’d rather you take it easy and miss a day or even a week of updates (maybe a guest comic week?) so you can recover on your own pace, rather than you forcing yourself to work while tired and potentially have much more severe consequences. Omicron, though it is weaker, can still wreck your system if you aren’t careful.
Rather a fanart week then or full silence.. Guest comics are generally very low quality from what I have seen with other comics.
Second that, we can survive :-) one week for you to recover is not as hard as having this comic stop entirely due to you not recovering properly now.
or 2 or 3 weeks.
Your health must have priority. I say this for selfish reasons ;^)
Better to get your health fully back in order than get permanent or long-term damage to it.
I second this motion!
Agreed
Just remember to KEEP VISITING THE PAGE even if there is no new content so his ad revenue doesn’t drop. That said, I’m sequestered right now myself, and feel kinda crummy, so I can commiserate.
…. thanks for reminding me to turn off my adblock for this site >.>
Just adding to the generall cacophony of “take care of your health”.
Get well, take a sick month if you need to.
Same here. Get better soon. Bunch of people I know (all vaxxed) have gotten covid lately but I am in NYC so its not surprising. Get lots of rest and whatever else the doctor says.
Definitely agree. Dave, take the time you need to get better.
Take all the time you need Dave. I can wait a while longer for my favorite webcomic.
Joining in with the others to say take care of yourself and get better soon, DaveB. If you need time off take it. We will still be here when you get back.
I am still waiting for comics, that published, 20+ years ago. I am waiting to see them again.
Please don’t take 20+ years, DaveB. :)
Seconded, thirded and post-plussed. Get well soon.
I thirds, seventh, twenty-eighth this sentiment … Whatever it takes to keep you healthy, Dave. I don’t say this real lightly, but you are a treasure. If you needed a month off, do it. You could update your blogpost under this page (or whichever one you take a break at) just to keep us informed, then go back to sleep or whatever you can manage. All I personally want to know is that you’re OKay and I can wait for whatever hiatus you need. Or want.
tl;dr — Don’t stress. Rest. Thank you for sharing Grrl Power with us!
Oooohh, what an idea. I’d like to see what Sean Harrington of Spying With Lana could do with some of these characters, especially Maxima and Xuriel.
As a freeloader, I FULLY agree. As much as I get tempted to stay up WAY, WAY past my bedtime to get the update, your health is WAY, WAY more important.
Take care of yourself. We’ll be fine.
Get well soon Dave! Dont over work yourself.
Dude, if you’re sick and not sleeping, don’t push yourself, we can wait if needed. Get some soup, get under a blanket and binge some Disney or something, anything with bright colours, fun sounds and doesn’t require any attention. Any energy you expend is energy that your immune system could be using.
I advise you take a week off and get some rest. The last thing you need to do is exhast yourself and make it worse. We’ll be here when you feel better, Dave.
I suspect the only knee bending that is likely to happen is from Max in the direction of Deus family jewels!
Phrasing >.<
Nope. Grammar: Possessive case of “Deus”.
Dittoing everyone suggesting you take a break. Sick days are a thing
Mean, hell, If he finishes off the TE2 book, we could just all enjoy that for a couple weeks while he takes a nice long break. Would be easier than doing comics for a bit.
Sucks that you got Covid. My brother just did and found out he got marked down as ‘unvaxxed’ because he didn’t get the vaccine at the hospital he went to.
He just moved to the area and got jabbed in April.
Greetings from Denmark! How the DEVIL do you know about Skål? Even spelling it correctly? A guy from Texas is about as far from Scandinavia, as can be imagined? No offence intended! Also, Covid is no joke. Get well, and take your time!
You would be surprised how famous certain words and phrases are, especially from the Nordic Nations! And for sure “Skål!” goes down better than “Bottoms Up!” (it’s a Pommy thing…).
I’m helping DaveB to get comfortable with a Peroni, here. I may have to repeat the dose, if he doesn’t improve. Cheers!
Prost, Na ZDorovie (had to check the spelling) and L’Chaim. I’m an Aussie, we know every word for drinking.
BUNCH of Swedes & Norwegians made it to the Central Texas area a century or so ago. So..not really _that_ surprising…
Don’t forget the Czechs down the Interstate from Dallas in West. Czech out http://www.czechstop.net/ or the brick-and-mortar Czechstop that has an exit off I35 that was pretty much all for the one place. Their kolaches are out of this world.
BOOOOOOOOOO! HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, probably. You learn pretty fast from context during drinking contests what “Skal!” means…
Hope you get well soon, with no after effects. I am glad that you are vaccinated, there is no reason to give any disease any advantage.
I laugh at it all, having gotten covid in March of 2020 – the ultra-mild version. So I’ve never had the slightest fear of it or need for vax. I certainly think anyone at elevated risk should get a vax, if they haven’t had covid yet, and omicron will take care of naturally vaccinating the rest of the global population very shortly.
100% agree with your comments. Similar situation myself as are many, many others I know.
with the work I do, we were pretty much forced to take the Covid vaccine. I’m a freakin’ crossing guard. We also HAVE to wear medical masks. So, it looks to me like they’re saying ‘well, the vaccine is worthless, you’ll have to wear this mask, and not a cloth one’
Your employers might be idiots, but, well…
We do have quite a few cases of breakthrough infections (post-vax) as well as repeat infections (especially with different variants). These tend to be mild or asymptomatic. Remember: You get the vax so the thing does not kill you. You wear a mask so the thing (that you don’t even know you have) doesn’t kill someone else.
No vaccine works 100%, but they will drastically reduce your odds of [i] catching the disease and [ii] becoming seriously ill from it. Of course, individuals only see their individual data point, not the overall statistics: you just know you caught the thin end of the odds, not whether it was a 10% or a 1% chance that you were on the wrong side of.
Exactly. This is survivorship bias. The fact that you survived doesn’t mean anything, because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here to have thoughts about not-surviving. When it comes to self-reporting, death is the ultimate sampling bias-creating filter. Everyone underestimates the probability that they survived until this day.
but. What about the probability that I didn’t survive and am now a non-existent entity or a member of the undead? I mean, people always say ‘nothing’s impossible’.
“people always say”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people are morons. (Myself included, obviously)
personally, I like to think that nothing’s impossible literally means that the state of nothingness cannot exist
You wear the mask to protect others, not yourself. The vaccine reduces your risk of getting the disease and the severity of the symptoms if you do, and it also protects other people by reducing the time window during which you are infectious.
Hi there Mrs crazy anti-vaxxer.
You don’t get vaxxed for yourself you selfish bitch. You get vaxxed so that you don’t pass it on to the people who *you do* think need the vax.
No need for any of us to have a vaxx argument. Lets talk about the comic instead.
I’m nearly as bad as Sydney – if a topic gets forbidden, it’s that much harder to refrain from talking about it! I’m actually NOT anti-vax, but I DO consider prior infection to be BETTER than vax, as it always has been throughout all medical history.
Oh I understand that and dont have anything personally against your post.
But I just think the last thing DaveB (or anyone currently feeling under the weather from omicron) would want are flame wars about covid vaccines on either side, whatever the nuance, while they are sick from covid. I know my patience gets frayed when I am not feeling well also. So it would just be courteous for everyone to not go looking for a fight on this subject.
It’s just a suggestion since I could see this spiralling way out of control where it doesnt really have to.
There’s an XKCD about that.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2557:_Immunity
There is *always* a relevant XKCD. It’s brilliant that way.
Also related to (if not a direct retelling of) the parable of the broken window. I personally have had several arguments about the supposed virtue of black-hat hackers because “their actions are responsible for such high-quality security software practices.”
Except risking an infection with a death rate is stupid when there’s a number of safe vaccines in the world.
Even when we could only immunize by blowing smallpox scabs into your nose, that was still better than gaining immunity from an actual infection.
So, they’ve developed a vaccine that will keep you from passing it along? Because the last blather we’ve heard about it, is that the MRNA vaccine just tamps the symptoms down a bit, you’re still contagious, you’re still going to get infected, you’ll just be more comfortable while you have it.
In a sense, you’re basically not doing ANYTHING mass vaccination is supposed to do. If you’re getting the shot for yourself, well, that’s rational and reasonable, but if you think you’re protecting anyone else? You might as well be mainlining Ringer’s Lactate (Saline solution).
Uh… Even if you have previous exposure, you may still be able to get infected again. Calling it “natural immunity” is a bit of a misnomer, since you’re not actually “immune”, you’re simply more resistant, much the same as if you’d been vaccinated, though in a much less safe manner.
For example, when I was a kid, prior to the existence of the vaccine for it, I got chicken pox. Twice. Mild cases both times, but I was still both infected and able to infect others the second time, despite having it once prior to that.
Furthermore, vaccination does help greatly reduce the odds of passing it along, since it gives your immune system a head start on defeating it. And yes, reducing the odds of passing it to others certainly does help protect other people.
I’m sorry, but you’re simply terribly misinformed about both what “natural immunity” and the vaccines do.
And then there’s Shingles, where the evil chicken-pox virus, having lurked in your body for decades undetected, resurfaces!
“… but I DO consider prior infection to be BETTER than vax, as it always has been throughout all medical history.“
You are free to believe that, but it is demonstrably false.
But that hasn’t always been the case throughout all medical history. You’re demonstrably wrong there.
For example, with COVID in California, you would have been wrong on May 30, 2021, where people who were vaccinated without a previous infection were the least likely to get infected. However, would have been right on October 3, 2021, where the Delta variant, which the vaccines weren’t formulated for, became prevalent.
See:
“COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis — California and New York, May–November 2021” by Tomás M. León, et al., – CDC: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (January 19, 2022)
A few extremely important points.
1. Getting immunity through infection risks death. Getting immunity through vaccination doesn’t.
2. Getting immunity through infection makes you contagious which risks *other people’s* death. Getting immunity through vaccination doesn’t.
3. Getting immunity through infection gives the virus a host to replicate and mutate into new fucking strains in. Getting immunity through vaccination doesn’t.
4. Immunity isn’t bulletproof. Especially with all the new strains constantly cooking mostly in the unvaccinated population. So whether you’ve had it already or not GET THE FUCKING SHOT. Because no, Getting it through prior infection is absolutely NOT better than getting it through vaccination.
Antibodies are neither guaranteed nor as reliable as the vaccine. There are people who had Covid and got reinfected within a year. I should also point out that Daveb was pretty explicit about spouting anti-vax bullshit and saying something akin to ‘I didn’t need a vaccine’ is pretty anti-vax, especially when the science doesn’t support your false beliefs.
Vaccines work by creating antibodies. They just tend to create a broader range of antibodies than infections do which provides better immunity to mutations.
“They just tend to create a broader range …”
Often not true. The B and T cells create the patterns for the antibodies based *only* on what the vaccine presents. It’s worth remembering that the process of {vaccination\immunisation} is supposed to be exactly equivalent to being infected, it generates the same immune response mechanism. So, if the vaccine is deficient in its sample size, then any immunity will be substandard — and it looks very much like the velocity with which the Big Pharma developed the initial varieties may have resulted in deficiency.
I’ve never seen “hurry hurry” produce really useful outcomes. Tortoise and Hare. Better I think to have spent the initial period working with weakened virii, then use the breathing space to get a bit more technical. Oh well, the damage is done now, we’ll just try and live with it.
And by what standard was/is the usual processor correct?
This has always been a matter of risk/reward. For the usual death rate (1/1000) and infectiousness (? but way under 2!), the usual process was well-justified. For a death rate of 1/100 and infectionsness at 2+, the risk of delaying the vaccine was clearly greater. Therefore, the accelerated approval.
BUT NOTE: it is not as if the final rounds of testing never occurred. In fact, Israel took a hard look at the data, and basically jumped in front of Pfizer in order to be the whole-population stage 3 trial. That had a lot to do with why they did so well in the first rounds.
The recalls? Expected & validation that the usual process is in fact correct in normal years.
When you are talking about millions dying from this thing globally, you really do need to adjust your response.
Agreed that a deficient vaccine creates a deficient immune response. Disagreed that this is the case for the COVID vaccines. The efficacy rates are pretty impressive. Also disagree about “hurry hurry” never producing something useful. There are often good reasons for urgency and creating a good product now is just as important as creating the perfect product later as long as it doesn’t slow down the development of the perfect product. The covid vaccine is a great case for that – saving millions of lives now while the slower to develop vaccines are being made makes a lot of sense.
Becoming infected is NOT ‘naturally vaccinating’ people, because the purpose of vaccines is to protect someone from the consequences of contracting the actual disease, either by rendering you effectively immune or at least resistant so that the symptoms are limited and harmless overall. The latest variant is sufficiently deadly that only the most callous and ignorant of people would talk like they welcome everyone in the world contracting it.
Oof, your immunity is probably pretty down or gone by now, though. You can easily catch it again. A teacher I know who got it right around the time you did got it again last year, and I think she might be on a third now, but I might be mixing that up with someone else getting it again. She didn’t get vaxxed either.
Not that immunity from disease or vaccine guarantees not getting it again, but it helps.
I consider Omicron a TRUE “vaccination” by the original definition – a milder version of a disease that will act to strongly resist or immunize vs more virulent forms. This is also the way that pandemics naturally end – via a fast-spreading, less severe form developing.
Also, most studies of natural immunity vs vaccines are badly flawed due to the high rate of asymptomatic infections, as anyone with a good background in statistics can recognize.
Sydney…she’s a space drow, not a space smurf. Dabbler is closer to that in appearance. Sort of.
original evil smurfs turned black when bitten. But I think she said smurf ’cause nobody can pronounce svirfneblin.
I thought evil smurfs turned purple and said ‘Gnapf!.’ Then I looked it up and yep! They were originally based on a story where they turned black.
Purple is better clearly. :)
yes, true.
just ask the one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater
Still rock and roll to me.
Bitten, by whom??
In the cartoon the first purple smurf was bitten by a purple fly. After that it was like zombie stuff, where a purple smurf would bite another purple smurf on the tail.
Or to put it in smurf language…
In the smurf, the first purple smurf was smurfed by a purple smurf. After that, it was like a zombie smurf, where a purple smurf would smurf another purple smurf on the smurf.
You are so totally Smurf!
(also, it’s fun to say none of the Smurfs had tails, they just all ‘tucked’)
Here’s I guess one way you can determine your situation with Omicron: How long ago was your second shot? In my case, it was May of 2021. My booster was in November, I believe. If it had been more than six odd months since your second shot, be careful, and rest. I think we can all endure a week of you taking it light and not doing posts if necessary.
I’m going to call that Deus doesn’t know that Anvil is there. Nothing can get through Mr. Bubble and Deus might be able to guess Sydney and Dab will be there but he can’t scan to see how is in Mr. Bubble
Eyesight can get through the shield. It’s transparent, not opaque. So satellites would bevable to tell who is in the shield, one would assume.
Lorlara, always a ray of sunshine. Or, given her behaviour, perhaps of moonshine. I didn’t say it, though.
Good luck with healing from that nasty virus!
Sadly re: antivaxxers, one issue with extremely-contagious and not-extremely-lethal illnesses like this one is that people who refuse to take any precaution are more likely to not Darwin themselves out, instead infecting and indirectly killing others who did take precautions in their entourage.
FYI Your having caught covid back in March 2020 doesn’t mean you won’t catch the omicron variant.
Then again I know several people in my extended family who got the booster November/December and who have caught omicron this January.
And I have heard of people of who got covid then vaccinated, booster-ed and still caught omicron.
Fortunately vaccination and/or previous exposure does seem to reliably result in milder cases.
It just means it will probably never fully go away.
Having had COVID is absolutely and positively no protection against getting it again.
I’ve had it TWICE, the first time before there was even a test (I work at the US Navy base where promotions are decided – IN THAT BUILDING – and the promotion boards are chosen randomly across the fleet. Yeah, we had it early.) and then again six months later, just in time to keep me from taking the vaccine for another two months. And I’ve had both shots and the booster.
COVID immunity lasts about six months at most. PERIOD! This is a fact. Absorb it. Believe in it. Plan for it.
Take the damn boosters. They hurt, yes. They hurt WAY LESS than the virus. And they don’t leave your brain foggy for months.
TAKE THE SHOTS!!!!!!!!!! (At which point Terry Pratchett would have said I was insane for having too many !’s.)
Being vaccinated against it is also no protection against getting it again. The FDA has been saying that since June/July.
As far as I can tell, the sole use of the vaccine is to mitigate the effects of it when you get Covid. Its nice, but its massively overrated.
That’s not the sole reason, it’s the main reason. The vaccines DO prevent getting it but there are a couple problems with that. 1. Not everyone has the vaccine so people are still spreading it. We have successfully killed off several viruses with vaccines. Just because it’s not 100% protection doesn’t mean it’s not protection. 2. The current variant of the diseases is different from the one the vaccine was made for, thanks to all the idiots from problem 1.
Don’t say things about science when you don’t know the science. Originally the vaccines had about an 80% chance on average to prevent you from getting the virus entirely. Since the mutations it’s dropped down to about 40%, from what I remember reading, but it might be higher or lower. HOWEVER the vaccine still reduces the chance of suffering severe complications by about a 90-99%, again depending on various factors. It has literally saved lives and it is not overrated in the least, so please don’t be a shit head Antivaxxer dumbass.
Also I’m hoping your comment gets scoured from the comments section with the rest of the anti-science folk.
I hugely disagree. Getting a mild case is vastly better than possibly dying of a severe case, but nowhere near as good as not getting infected in the first place. No vaccine EVER was a perfect defense; it just trains your immune system on what to look out for and how to fight it.
I have family members who caught a BAD case early on. They have since been vaccinated and caught a later variant (because my nephew is a teacher). Trust me, a downgrade to a merely mild case is not overrated at all.
Actually, the FDA — and every other Drug Adminstration office — is saying that Vaccine A will not give you good results against Disease B which mutated from Disease A.
@marillius — “all the idiots from problem 1” are not solely to blame. Virii mutate in transit as well as in vivo. And, vaccines do NOT prevent getting whichever disease, they exist SOLELY to give the body a chance to learn how to build its defenses. In fact, a good vaccine will actually infect you, to wake up your immune system in a measured manner, which is why most people will experience a mild fever post-jab. However, I totally agree: no matter how incompetent the Big Pharma has been, GET VAXXED.
The Vaccines also PREVENT the Virus from Mutating as fast as it has, Gor. Anti-vaxxing morons are literally LETTING it mutate into new forms by not getting Vaxxed.
You know why Smallpox and a couple other diseases are virtually EXTINCT apart from a couple vials in The Center for Disease Control? Because EVERYONE TOOK THE DAMN VACCINES.
Well, no. Because almost everybody took the vaccine, (Which is easy to convince people to do when the IFR isn’t running about a tenth of a percent, and the CDC finally admitting that 75% of the fatalities were people with *at least* four comorbidities.) AND because those viruses had no non-human hosts.
You basically can’t eradicate a virus that has a non-human host, because the animals don’t listen to the PR campaign. Unfortunately a wide range of animals can catch Covid, so we’re never going to be rid of it.
Fortunately, it’s evolving into another cold virus, which coronaviruses tend to do.
“Having had COVID is absolutely and positively no protection against getting it again.”
True, though it is pretty good protection against having a severe enough case to worry about, so I wasn’t getting it until December. When I did go out and get boosted a couple months ago, because of Omicron; Not particularly afraid of the virus at this point, but why risk burning my PTO on a quarantine?
I hope you and your family are feeling well soon.
I’m surprised no one thought to mention that an aircraft carrier’s worth of damage would probably not do much to Syd’s shield. And probly not Maxima either but we dont have much recent incoming damage for her. Syd was killing the mooks who were still on the Aleri Home Planet after the Aleri fled. By transitive power, that makes Syd stronger than all of the Aleri.
Hope you feel better Dave.
I wish people would realize that getting sick does not mean that you shouldn’t also get vaccinated. As was possibly the kid-borne vector that brought it to you…” oh I can’t get sick because I’ve had it” does not necessarily protect you or anyone you transfer it to, from a varient.
Get Vaccinated. Small pox used to kill millions but its mostly is a non issue now that we vaccinate against it in most countries someplace around 80% of the world population. Since it isn’t all countries, cases still occasionally crop up. It isn’t a huge problem because we have reached herd immunity levels of vaccination. For for SARS-2-COVID we are less than 30% vaccinated world wide And nowhere close to herd immunity levels. People want the world to go back to ‘normal’ Get vaccinated, stay vaccinated.
Speaking of Mr. Bubble….why is her communicator not blocked? I lose a bar when the trees leaf out.
Archon does not use 5G, thats kept for the plebs. Archon’s tech is very secret, but is probably on a MUCH longer wavelength, so far less environmental interference.
And Mr Bubble probably knows to selectively allow certain wave-lengths in and out — all organised by har comms orb.
Smallpox was declared globally eradicated in 1980. There hasn’t been a case since 1978.
And yet we still keep samples of it around for gain of function, and a CRISPER, some cowpox and $100k worth of other gear would enable you to replicate it at any time in the future. The situation is an accident waiting to happen. Stupid quacks.
Stupid like foxes.
Given the bioweapons research that is out there, what are the chances that there are some undeclared samples being held someplace just for use under the right circumstances?
It’s being kept in order to prepare defensive measures.
Considering how many times they have discovered samples in discarded labs/boxes/breakroom fridges … the chances are pretty damn good that there are many undeclared-yet-intentional stockpiles out there.
Example: https://www.science.org/content/article/six-vials-smallpox-discovered-us-lab
There are no more cases of small pox. Perhaps you’re thinking of Polio?
Do I get banned from commenting forever if I point out that the date in the image’s filename is off-by-one?
Only if you follow it up by discussing the difficulties of cache invalidation and proper naming.
I’d think not. That’s a provable fact, not misinformation that gets people killed.
I greatly enjoy the fact that you included a couch in the small shot of everyone in the shield.
It was one of Sydney’s or Gwen’s suggestions I believe. :)
But is it a couch? It looks more like a box. Maybe an air scrubber?
Why not both, an air scrubber inside a padded box? Take care of two functions at once.
That’s true – it could be. It just doesnt look that comfortable. Looks like a box instead of a cushioned sort of thing, but it’s not like I can see a lot of detail.
You can see that Anvil is sitting on top of it, not recessed into it, so it’s definitely not couch-shaped.
True true. I also don’t think it looks like an ottoman though or cushioned. Just easier to sit on than sitting on the ‘floor’ of the shield bubble.’ I really do want to know what that thing is.
Yeah… effectively vaccinating a population against Corona viruses is a bit tricky. The mufuggas tend to mutate faster than rabbits breed and a new dominant variant spreads every 6 to 8 months. I wonder what the name of the next variant will be. I think it will be Epsilon. We’ll know in 4 to 6 months.
There’s already an Epsilon variant; first observed in July 2020, as of July 2021 no longer considered a “variant of interest” since it got overtaken by Alpha.
The remaining letters of the Greek alphabet are Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi and Omega, they skipped Nu because it sounds too much like “new” and Xi because it’s a common Chinese last name. Presumably, once it gets to Omega it turns into a zombie plague or something and brings about the end of the world as we know it.
Buy Max Brooks’ book, ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ and stay ahead of the curve.
I thought they skipped Xi because its the name of the president of China. It would make the people who think it started from a deliberate link to happy to have a variant thus named.
Hey, if Corona beer and Delta Airlines can get over it then emperor Xi can wear it too.
It’s sort of funny that most of the variants apparently were failures at spreading aside from Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. To the point where I’ve only even heard of a few others – Beta, Gamma, and Lambda being variants of any significant concern in even a single country. Although you’re correct about why they didnt use nu (too confusing with the word ‘new’). And they didn’t use xi because it was politically problematic since the President of China is named Xi Jinping.
I haven’t heard anything about epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, or mu variants, though, except that mu was ‘a variant being monitored’ but only had 10 examples of infections.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211006/mu-made-splash-disappeared-quietly
Well, part of the reason why it keeps mutating is because so many people remain unvaccinated, thus it continues to be able to spread easily, and thus it has more opportunities to mutate.
If everyone who could have had gotten vaccinated as soon as possible, it’s likely we’d already be done with this.
Sadly, too many ill-informed idiots for that to happen. :-/
Then count yourself among them.
By the time the vaccine was available, this thing had already become endemic. Moreover, production had to be spun up, which is why it took months for it to be declared available for all adults even with the slower-than-desired uptake in the first tiers.
I remember my wife asking me in March of 2020 (BEFORE mask mandates outside of the Czech Republic), “When will this be over?” “Never.”
The only chance we had was strict global lockdowns in Jan with an instant switchover to using only agents for things like shopping. Never would happen.
Alpha doubles every five days in fresh populations, and, even with the accelerated development, it took ten months for the first vaccines to become available for the first responders. The vaccine was like fire fighters arriving at a forest fire: you’re not going to win it quickly.
Not in the slightest bit true.
Look at the New Zealand *case* rate. Not death rate, *CASE* rate.
They had it beaten until Omicron, and if the world had done the same as them, there wouldn’t have *been* an Omicron.
Sadly their ability to do that is mainly because they’re an island nation, and very far away from other landmasses at that. Due to their geography, strict control of who enters the country is feasible, whereas most of the rest of the world doesn’t have that capability.
If the whole world had done the same thing them being an island wouldn’t have mattered.
Non-island nations have to contend with people crossing borders despite the border being closed. Island nations close to other landmasses also have to deal with people crossing the water unauthorized.
Never mind the number of nations that are essentially failed states, unable to enforce their laws in large portions of their own country.
If all your neighbours (and their neighbours, recursively) are also doing proper plague handling, then it doesn’t matter if people can cross the border.
Yes, it does. Unless they’re going around in a hazmat suit their proper plague handling doesn’t completely protect them. It drastically reduces it, but if someone gets into the country with the disease and isn’t quarantined it’s probably going to spread to someone else.
Plus, what you’re demanding is strict adherence on an individual level across all of society, which is laughably impossible to achieve. Whereas a government-level program of ensuring no one with the disease enters the country without quarantining when strict control over entry is actually feasible isn’t impossible.
> It drastically reduces it
Yes, that’s the point.
> if someone gets into the country with the disease and isn’t quarantined
If the country they’re coming from is also acting in a way that, in your words, “drastically reduces” the chance of infection, then they’re much less likely to be a carrier.
Go read Issac Azimov’s essay “The Relativity of Wrong” to learn what elementary mistake you’re making here.
Except that’s not a demand of a country. That’s a demand of the populace at large. Which you aren’t going to get.
Controlling access as a sufficiently-isolated state is possible. Getting enough of society to take long-term actions to mitigate it enough to kill it isn’t (as opposed to a vaccine which requires a few moments for an individual to get and then it’s done)
Yes…
Haning *all* countries take sensible actions in regard to a global plague *is* what I was talking about.
Other countries that took sensible action didn’t have the level of success of NZ or other isolated island countries. Because the primary source of their success is keeping it out entirely, which is only possible due to their geography.
How many of those sensible countries’ neighbours were also doing sensible things?
How many countries could even get their populace to take the (pre-vaccine) measures needed to kill it even if the country’s leadership was trying to do the sensible thing?
Umm, most of them without stupid right-wing groups being loud about not doing that?
These viruses have moved into animal populations. Wiping out SARS CoV2 would, at this point require a solar flare. Or the Death Star.
No, cobber, they didn’t, they were already there. From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32700664/ :
“… evolved directly or indirectly from a β-coronavirus in the sarbecovirus (SARS-like virus) group that naturally infect bats and pangolins in Asia and Southeast Asia.”
The big thing is that Covid-19 will likely move into the rodent populations endemic to cities — if they have not already. So yes, in that you are right.
Currently, it’s only affected a very small number of canines and felines (albeit not seriously or fatally), and apparently a significant number of minks in Denmark (which resulted in Denmark killing (culling) a LOT of minks in Denmark mink farms (about 17 million minks were killed, although only about 12,000 were reported to have contracted COVID-19). There was also one case of a ferret possibly getting it, although with only one example that might be more difficult to prove as not being a false positive. And obviously it has been found in bats and possibly pangolins.
Cats and dogs? Dayammm. That’s serious.
Also, Ozzie (at the time of his death 2 days ago, the world’s oldest recorded male gorilla in captivity) tested positive for COVID-19 in September, though it doesn’t appear to have been related to his death.
And thus my favorite alien secretary returns right as the group gets her. Seriously, Lorlora is the best kindnof extra obnoxious.
Isn’t she? :)
I particularly like the sound effect that implies she has been lying in wait, eagerly awaiting Max’s inevitable appearance and possibly spring-loaded into the floor in order to commence gloating just that little bit sooner.
*popup* :)
Thank you for the clear statement on Anti-vaxxer dumbasses. I’m boostered all the way, no kids yet, and got spared of covid so far. Get well soon and feel free to skip a few pages to get some more rest. You haven’t taken any time off for years by now, haven’t you?
Anyway, I like the backgrounds. I’ve been hearing from multiple artists multiple times how time-consuming they are, and I rarely ever look at them in all that much detail. E.g. the author of Replay draws the backgrounds blurry and simplified on purpose to take shortcuts and I didn’t even notice until she pointed it out to me. I mean, when we look at something (which is mostly characters) our eyes see blurry backgrounds regardless.
You have been living a blessed life. COVID is no fun at all for me, I’m 68 now and it hurts all over. The virus I meant, the age isn’t that bad.
The worst of it is that you get horribly tired and can’t get over it, and you can’t think as well as you should.
I’m finally past all that now, fixed the pulls on a recliner couch yesterday, and I’d had the parts for about half a year. Ridiculous! This virus has a horrible lasting effect.
63; I got the same tiredness after it, but just stubbornly did aerobics anyway, and six months later I was hiking at Cedar Breaks, 10K feet, without trouble.
Dirty little secret of exercise is it does you good even if you’re too under the weather to want to do it. Aerobic capacity comes back pretty fast if you push it, not like muscle mass, unfortunately.
I hope you feel better soon.
Lorlara vs Sydney! THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY IS ABOUT TO COMMENCE!!!
Sorry to hear you got COVID, DaveB. Glad to hear you are vaxxed. That should hopefully make your case shorter and less severe than otherwise might be the case. Get your booster!
They* say that everyone will get COVID. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the idiots actively working against the fight against a deadly pandemic, or if that was inevitable for COVID. But this is why we have three different flavors of vaccine so far, and probably more on the way. And ever since I got the 5Geen shots I get at least one more bar on my cell, even in tunnels!
.
* This isn’t some Deep State™ ‘they’ I am referring to. I mean people who should know what ‘they’ are talking about, like Fauci and the CDC and other smart people who are educated in the ways of virology.
It’s endemic, we’re screwed. We weren’t able to get ahead of it like we did polio and smallpox.
Hopefully it’ll mutate to a less deadly form and join the annual flu shot.
If the next mutation ups the fatality rate, we won’t be able to develop and distribute a new vaccine before mass casualties. It’ll make the shutdowns of early 2020 and the height of Delta look like nothing. That hypothetical variant will also be the death of my parents and my niece.
We didn’t get ahead of Polio and Smallpox overnight. They were incredibly widespread, damaging and deadly, but they mutate far slower and their vaccinations are good for almost a lifetime, not months. Even with vaccines that provide long-lasting protection, it took decades of comprehensive vaccination campaigns to get those knocked down.
Not to mention the sheer political and societal effort to get into places that considered bicycles the highest form of travel technology. And still consider cameras to be soul-stealing machines.
Each new variant will have to become a pandemic all over again. Virusses don’t send updates over the internet, they need to physically travel.
So each variant we get a new chance to stop it. You want to know why nothing seems to prevent the spread of each new variant? Because borders aren’t closed and people keep flying to other continents. Travel is what is spreading the virus again and again.
You’d have thought they would have learned from the constant onslaughts of influenza… But no, people gotta have their rights to go where they want, when they want.
“They* say that everyone will get COVID.”
I’ve always said this. It’s not THAT different to the flu, we see this changing every season, sometimes more than one change.
COVID-19 happened, COVID-19 changed, then it changed again… Soon it’ll be G1K1 etc,and we will all line up for our annual/seasonal jabs and wonder what all the fuss was about… Business as usual.
The only reason everyone will get it because of antivaxxer assholes. We could have stopped this thing in it’s tracks the moment vaccines became available.
I responded to you up the page a bit, but I’ll repeat what I said here:
“Virii mutate in transit as well as in vivo. And, vaccines do NOT prevent getting whichever disease, they exist SOLELY to give the body a chance to learn how to build its defenses.”
You also said: “Don’t say things about science when you don’t know the science.” I strongly suggest you yourself read up about the science. I don’t normally recommend Wikipedia, but in this case it will probably work. Search for “Vaccine” and “Immunisation”.
Right, but if you reduce its ability to infect others through vaccination (which reduces transmissible period) and techniques such as masking, social distancing, and quarantines (further reducing transmissibility), then it may be possible to contain it. So they’re actually right in most cases, though not all. It all depends upon both the infectiousness of the disease and the effectiveness of the vaccine.
That’s why most diseases don’t become endemic.
I’d recommend you stop being so haughty to others, when you yourself appear to not know the science.
There was an interesting article I read in October regarding COVID vaccine research being done with nanoparticles at Scripps Research. Short form is than the nanoparticles provoke a wider immune response. Details at:
https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2021/20211020-zhu-covid-vaccine.html
Before then.
Lockdowns and distancing beat it in New Zealand long before Vaccines were available.
Idiot right-wingers making it into a political thing made it more than a 12-month thing.
I’d like to say it was selfishness and self-centered-ness, rather than right-wing-ness, except there’s a huge amount of overlap between those categories.
I do think a lot of the problem was messaging though. If the preventative measures had been promoted as patriotic self-sacrifice, for the sake of community and country? They’d do that. They’re willing to die for their in-group. But the messaging didn’t really clarify who was supposed to benefit, and people took it as for their own, which they didn’t think they needed — it challenged their ego to suggest that they weren’t tough enough to fight it off on their own, challenged their boundaries for the government to intervene in their health decisions. I think policy-makers were afraid to focus on how measures like masking protect people other than the wearer, out of fear that selfish people wouldn’t do it, because they don’t care about other people.
Fucking Wakefield is starting to encroach on Hitler’s death toll now.
We were told two years ago that everyone will get it (we are now entering year three of “two weeks to flatten the curve”) and we were told a week or so ago that everyone will get it. Don’t sweat it. Everyone gets it, vaxxed and not. I had it before I got the jab, so I have both vaccine and natural antibodies going for me. If you’re going to worry, worry about the next plague.
“Natural antibodies” are no different from any other antibodies. I’m not sure why the need for a differentiation there.
Some people are convinced (wrongly) that somehow an antibody formed from a vaccine is somehow different than from the actual disease, leading often to anti-vaccination nonsense under the belief that getting the disease is somehow better because now you’ve got ‘natural immunity’ instead of ‘artificial immunity.’ They just tune out that the entire point of vaccinating against something is done because the consequences of contracting the disease are so horrible you don’t even want to actually contract the disease. It’s why some of these idiots have brought back Pox Parties for things like Chicken Pox because they’re ignorant as to why they existed in the first place and that vaccines against chicken pox were developed to save kids from the need for those things.
Much of it stems from growing up in this sheltered world of widespread vaccination. Go back 50 years or so and people regularly were aware of or even personally experienced seeing the victims of polio, smallpox, measles, etc. They knew how horrific these things are from first or second-hand experience so understand the vital necessity of vaccines. Anti-vaccination nuts though have never seen a crippled victim of polio or someone covered in horrific scars from surviving smallpox, it’s not real to them so it’s easy for them to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it’s all exaggerated or some conspiracy by some group than accept the terrifying truth.
I usually don’t comment; but figured I’d drop in to say:
Please don’t add more stress to yourself and take care of your health first.
As someone that had both doses, and the booster before I (likely) got the Omicron variant, I assure you not to worry too much about not “getting around to the booster”. It didn’t make much difference when it cycled through our household right before the new year.
Symptoms were shitty, but drink/eat some soup, drink water, and I hope you get better soon. :)
Surviving a zombie apocalypse should be easy: just walk slightly faster than the shuffling horde and use places to sleep that require a ladder to access.
By the way: I always wondered what happens if a human bites a zombie.
Probably would infect the human. Tainted meat, as they say on The Walking Dead.
(insert Beldar narfling the Garthok sequence here)
I loved that movie.
Btw G, follow-up about a post yesterday on the difference between puns and wordplay in general….
What Dabbler did in the last panel is a type of wordplay that is not a pun. The double entendre. ;). Loved it, and Sydney’s reaction to it too.
oh i’m sure Dabs enjoys other orders of magnitude entendres as well
Very well, hence fourth our entendres shall be doubled, and doubled again.
See G. What Brichins just did was a pun. Barely, but still a pun.
The ninja hit squad that will be visiting him will explain it. I’ll only send one this time because it was not too terrible as far as puns go.
Send two, wearing running shoes, so we can be sure I get both sides of the issue. Or if they’re still doing the hire-2-get-1 free deal, ask if they can all be named Charles – I feel like pun-Chucks would get better results than a regular pair of sneakers.
Lol, Lorlara seems to just be living her best life. As kinda evil as she probably is.
Also, ew, “chewing out”? That’s a new euphemism.
If it is one thing I have learned… Never trust anyone that smiles that wide.
“There is no war in Ba Sing Se”… need I say anything else?
So, DaveB, your position on vaxxing is…. neutral, then? :-)
Take the time, get better, I’d rather you miss a week or two now than a month or six in the ICU later, especially since you told us what’s up. Several comics that I used to read were REALLY bad about that.
Mate, your health is more important than the strip. Yes, I really, REALLY like the comic, but I would much rather you were hale and healthy.
I had COVID a full three months before it became “popular” — I like to joke I’m The Original COVID Hipster Douchebag… You damn kids and your variants and your shots — back in MY day we made our OWN antibodies as MEN do.
Yeah. Humor and stuff aside take it easy and you’ll be back to what passes as normal for ya in no time. :)
Dude! My screen!
Nope. If you can keep avoiding getting it for the rest of this year, there’s a decent chance you’ll never get it with the next-generation vaccines.
https://www.cnet.com/health/the-armys-universal-vaccine-aims-to-end-all-covid-pandemics/
That’s in phase 1 trials now, expect an accelerated phase 2/3 testing path and if it clears that (and it probably will) expect availability early next year.
So, that was supposed to be a reply to the “everybody’s going to get it eventually” comments, not sure why it didn’t show up there.
OK, now *these* people I trust.
Get well soon dave.
with Covid sleep is your friend.
it took me out for most of January. Slept a lot during the days i had a high fever. but for the most part lingering chest congestion just saps your strength.
Oberon:” Idiots Actively working against the fight against a deadly pandemic” is thea great way to sum those types up.
Evil Smurfs already exist. They’re called Nac Mac Feagle (look them up, They’re blue cause they’re covered in tattoos)
Oi, they’re not evil, they’re just misunderstood and fond of wee coo beasties and ships.
It’s the accent, vurry hard ta understand.
Nac Mac Feagle can’t be evil, they’re in the good afterlife!