For ****s n giggles I picked a couple of randoms, 1980, 160k ish, think 82 was 300k ish.

I don't doubt there are higher years.

I just don't understand the point of comparing the two, COVID and smoking.

What's the argument?

That smoking is a choice despite the burden it places on healthcare so we shouldn't consider vaccine mandates?

Who cares, they are not the same.

People who have never smoked get lung cancer too and I'm sure some if not most of those cases are 2nd hand smoke.

No one is getting 2nd hand smoke induced lung cancer by standing too close to a smoker for 5 minutes one time. Can't say the same for COVID.

Healthcare systems should be geared up to handle smoking related issues, people have been smoking since forever.

How do these comparisons help address the current issue?

Sorry I'm just not seeing a purpose here.

I was chatting with my stepson's GF last night about vaccines. When she told me she had to get a HPV shot, I laughed. Texas Governor Perry did issue a mandate for girls, but the legislature whacked him over the head with a 2x4 and it was reversed.

Anyway, she was informed that the shot was to control genital warts. I suppose it might, but she had no idea that it might be tied to the prevention of cervical cancer.

Lot of people here like that, but you can't shoot'em.

Vacc dont work, this is a nightmare we are living in....

Time to increase my stock of old cars. Forget ammo, this is today's million dollar idea! :cool:

How about if the rest of us stipulate that you are correct about the consequences of smoking, other than the mistake about the comparable numbers? Covid is currently killing more plus there is a cross-morbidity factor, i.e. smoking+Covid multiplies the morbidity of each/both.

What I don't understand is the argument that because there is already a health hazard in society, (really more than one), that therefore a worldwide pandemic that is killing an American every two minutes is really no big deal and efforts to stop it are a waste of time? :confused:

THat seems to be the only logical assumption I can make from your argument or example of smoking. But then maybe you are not using conventional logic, in which case, my bad.

I quit smoking 10+ years ago, my wife 25.

Our history as smokers is the primary factor that got us in line for a shot early.

We are only in our 50's and at the time we got on the list TX was not taking anyone under 65 without other conditions / considerations.

This is the one that says "I get it", the push back on mandatory.

My daughter got the HPV shot and so did my son.

Bit of a bone of contention in my home.

While not adamantly against it I was certainly not in favor of it.

Why? Risk profile. From my perspective at the time the risk did not justify the vaccine and the associated issues that had been reported.

Took nearly a year of discussion at home before I was comfortable getting on board.

But we had the luxury of time, it was not an imminent threat.

COVID is different, there is a legitimate urgency.

Hopefully not while fresh out of the oven.
Infants need to build up natural immunity a while, before being embellished.
It's why we are immune to 99% of the little stuff floating around daily.

A kid must be at least 9 to receive HPV. Recommended 11/12.

Not in this household. We've all had it. She succumbed to her sisters' peer pressure to get vaccinated and got sick again, and then again.

No way I want that to happen.

That is not an option in real life, why make it a choice on the poll?

Read the responses and tell me "live and let live" would be on the schedule for most of the respondents.

Only going to be about 6 weeks until it gets the FDA rubber stamp and is mandatory for everyone. I guess that will make half the people in the country happy.

If you can't understand how the discussion on mandating restrictions to freedom for the good of the public health is lax in one area and a political talking point in another then have a nice day.

I understand that.

But this is not that.

If anything it’s financial.

There is a reason they call them sin taxes.

Made me think of a study Phillip Morris had done in what I remembered being the 90’s but apparently was in 2001.

Original report from web archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111001035336/http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/courses/Econ/Classes/cbacea/czechsmokingcost.html

While searching for it came across some other interesting reads.

This one is pretty in depth, a bit of a read but page 2 Main Results reinforces that for some economies smokers provide a net positive fiscal benefit.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4502793/#!po=79.8077

I think you guys need to look deeper into why something so seemingly logical like banning smoking has not happened.

Like most things that defy logic, “follow the money”

Well, might change my mind about not getting vaxxed after seeing this. They convinced me..:rolleyes:

WTF are they thinking??? This is sickening..


https://twitter.com/obianuju/status/1424819369633320966


.

They might avoid killing some innocent folks as an infected carrier walking around for 3 days like so.

https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/news/brisbane-international-airport-worker-infectious-for-three-days-at-work/news-story/36c1fcf7e0bed358ee4a24c6420e6489

Brisbane international airport worker infectious for three days at work

An airport worker who worked three shifts and went to a major supermarket while unknowingly infectious has put Queensland on edge.

Dr Young said her team was urgently scouring key details of the woman who lives in Tarragindi and worked on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. She also visited the Woolworths at Annerley on Monday morning and Chemist Warehouse in the same suburb on Wednesday.
The woman, in her 40s, was fully vaccinated with Pfizer but Dr Young is anxious given the case’s high exposure potential and said she intends to zero-in on the airport.

The only correlation I see is addiction. Nicotine is addictive and these people are addicted to the idea that their government, and the whole world for that matter, is out to get them. Turn them into Zombies.

Mental illness is a terrible thing.

People are saying that $13B of the infrastructure plan just passed by the Senate is slated for more 5G COVID towers that will activate the vaccine chips.

"On Monday, Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez offered an insightful chain of thoughts about the overlap between those who believe false claims about the election being stolen and those who reject the coronavirus vaccine as dangerous.

In both cases, Sanchez wrote, the conspiracy theories “have the superficial trappings of real science. Links to journal articles on the one hand, or on the other, impressively hackery looking hex dumps & spreadsheets full of IP addresses” — a reference to Lindell’s information.

“[I]n both cases, this evidence is absolutely useless to the target audience,” he continued. “They have neither the training nor the context to evaluate the quality or relevance of technical articles in medical journals — or even to understand what the article is claiming in many cases. … They are, however, being flattered by the INVITATION to assess the evidence for themselves — do your own research, make up your own mind!”
"Instead of offering their trust on experts in their fields to explain complicated subjects, the audience is convinced that it needs only to trust itself — though, of course, they’re actually simply trusting the hustlers presenting incomplete or misleading information. What the hustlers offer the audience, Sanchez says, “is the illusion of not trusting an authority — unlike all those sheep who trust the mainstream authorities.”

Do other countries have the same amount of conspiracy theory wingnuts as the U.S.? It seems like a fad, like the pet rock, but it's really the destruction of our republic.

There is a name for it, Apophenia : “the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)”.

Explained here.

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5