Vacci-Nation [CLOSED DUE TO DISRESPECTFUL, INSULTING, POLITICAL POSTS

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Maybe it varies by State, but what you describe is not the situation with a public (state) university in Georgia.

Below is the estimated cost for going to the University of Georgia on CollegeSimply.Com.

If you are an in-state Student from Georgia and have the appropriate GPA from high school, (3.0 or 3.3) it covers 80% to 90% of tuition as long as you maintain that GPA. I would argue that if your high school GPA is less than that, College is not a good choice for you. Keeping the GPA up in college is challenging but a 3.0 average isn't exactly knocking it out of the park these days.

That leaves the other charges. Most can be controlled and you can come well under the number shown, if you are willing to make the required sacrifices (living at home, rent books instead of buy, etc). Work part time during the school year, and full time+ in the summer and you can pay for the education out of pocket, even without your parents help. Go to Community College the first two years and cut the cost even lower.

Now, mind you, you won't be spending Spring Break in Tahiti, or even Ft. Lauderdale, and you won't be driving a late model car, but you won't be in debt either when you get out because you spent "student loans" on lifestyle.

It seems you think that is a reasonable cost. I'd need to take a closer look at Georgia' program to evaluate it, but states in the south are generally not known for their forward thinking or generosity when it comes to education. Texas has similar sounding programs that, once you get through all the fine print, are remarkably narrow in scope.

When I started college a year's tuition and and fees were less than a thousand. Granted, that was a while back. But, even adjusted for inflation todays figures are substantially higher. My son graduated from UT Austin in 2016. His cost for five years was close to $150,000. That's not out of line with your "window" sticker. We and he borrowed probably 60% of that. That's a non-trivial amount of money. We managed it on two salaries and he works as a software engineer for MicroSoft so he is in fairly good shape. Many in the middle class are not so fortunate. They end up borrowing lots of money from (often) predatory lenders and graduate with degrees that offer only middling salary prospects. I had colleagues in their mid 40s who were borrowing money to send their kids to college while still paying off their own student loans.

The big fallacy I'm buying into there is that the primary function of education is job preparation. I would argue that nothing is further from the truth. The thing to remember is that when people complain about rise in the "cost" of education they don't realize that the cost of education has not grown, in Texas at least, even as fast as inflation. What has changed is who pays the cost. 40 years ago most folks thought that education future generations was an investment in the future of society. Today that consensus has evaporated. Our self interest is, in many cases, no longer enlightened.

[Spuds]

Well this got off topic quickly...

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

It seems you think that is a reasonable cost.

It is a reasonable cost for what you receive, but I agree it's a non-trivial amount of money. An amount that is manageable with sacrifice, and then assistance for those that truly need it.

Of course, we didn't pay close to $150,000 over 5 years either, so that makes a difference. Both our sons graduated within 4 years, and it was at a a cost of about $12,000 a year paid to the school and for board (they lived either off-campus or at home).

Obviously, we paid much less for some of the items listed here. But, we didn't have some secret formula either, anyone could have done it.

BTW, I'm not saying you did anything "wrong" in the way you helped your children pay for college, different situations call for different solutions. And some situations don't have a solution, you have to look for an alternative plan.

In the end, pretty much anyone that wants to go to college in the US can, and you can do it with minimum or no debt. You can do it the the way your family did, you can do it the way mine did, you can go through the Military, you can go over a longer period of time so you can pay as you go, there's lots of ways besides going $200,000 in debt.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Well this got off topic quickly...

Nah, we're on page 82. I'd say that's pretty rare for us!

[JD001]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Well this got off topic quickly...

Quick, let's rally the troops, soon get back on track..

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by JD001

Quick, let's rally the troops, soon get back on track..

My piece is said, I'm back on track, sorry for the side trip!

[JD001]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Well this got off topic quickly...

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

My piece is said, I'm back on track, sorry for the side trip!

You mean "side effect".. keeping it on track..

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by JD001

You mean "side effect".. keeping it on track..

Lol isn't keeping it on track a topic for the F1 thread?

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...22405&page=178

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Nah, we're on page 82. I'd say that's pretty rare for us!

Oh I'm not surprised it went off topic, just that I was just reading this one yesterday and then had to do a double take as to what thread I was in today with all the education posts. Lol

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by JD001

You mean "side effect".. keeping it on track..

Absolutely, my bad...

[Opie]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

How have you assessed that the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus? You survived the virus, but think you are going to die or get cancer from a vaccine or something? You are running a COVID re-exposure experiment on yourself and others, but think the big experiment is the vaccine? Don’t you see the irony? Are you one of those cigarette-smoking, anti-vaxxers who “doesn’t put anything unnatural in their body”?

While I have had concerns, I haven’t had fear. My concern as a healthcare worker was that I would be exposed repeatedly and could develop long term complications, but I was more concerned that I would get it and pass it to others who could die. Healthcare workers take a vow to do no harm. Most specifically, and selfishly, I had the concern that I would pass it to my parents who are at retirement age and who could die. The mortality over 65 is worse than 1 in 150 or something (I haven’t done the math in a while). The other real concern was overwhelming the healthcare system, which we saw all over the world at different times, especially in the US.

You say this was manipulated to cause an unnecessary amount of fear. If anything, the former administration did everything to downplay the severity of the virus, and 550,000 deaths later, we see the consequences. I don’t think we needed to have fear. What we needed to have was concern for our fellow countryman and acknowledgement that this virus was a threat to our systems. When we look around the world at countries that took this virus serious, who’s people took the virus serious, who are experienced with pandemics, they succeeded with fewer deaths, with less time in lockdowns, with more financial success or less losses, etc. I think the biggest problem was the propaganda that this virus could be ignored, and it would just go away on its own with minimal casualties or disruptions to industries. In fact, the opposite was the case; ignoring the problem only made it worse.

Show me where I said any of those things. I'll wait.

And I don't smoke...never had, and have previously had all necessary, standard vaccines. I don't get the flu vaccine because of a severe reaction to it previously...and I hardly ever get sick.

Stop sounding like a pompous authority on my health.

What made this worse wasn't ignorance by a previous administration. It was, and is because of the constant, incoherent changing of information by our so-called expert on infectious diseases that has back tracked, changed direction and contradicted himself so many times no one know who to trust. Less intrusive approaches to virus prevention were adopted by other areas and had similar, if not better, infection rates.

The science says the virus is survivable by 99.x% of the population, and current reports from the CDC say the Covid vaccine appears to be safe for 99.x% of the population. I have an equal chance of dying from either.

See the data yourself on deaths related to Covid vaccines since January 2021 here.
Source: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

[surfwaxsmitty]

Originally Posted by Opie

What made this worse wasn't ignorance by a previous administration. It was, and is because of the constant, incoherent changing of information by our so-called expert on infectious diseases that has back tracked, changed direction and contradicted himself so many times no one know who to trust. Less intrusive approaches to virus prevention were adopted by other areas and had similar, if not better, infection rates.

The science says the virus is survivable by 99.x% of the population, and current reports from the CDC say the Covid vaccine appears to be safe for 99.x% of the population. I have an equal chance of dying from either.

See the data yourself on deaths related to Covid vaccines since January 2021 here.
Source: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Comparing percentages for individual risks of a vaccine vs Covid doesn't account for transmissibility. If a person has a reaction to the vaccine, that only affects them. If they get Covid and transmit it to another person, or 20 others, now there are many people facing the risks and effects of Covid, and they may also then infect others.

Regarding the national response to a pandemic, how would anyone expect all the answers from day 1? The most natural course would involve gaining insight over time and thus modifying our response. What doesn't help is when extreme measures are taken to obstruct the process of learning and improving the efficacy of our response as a nation.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Opie

Show me where I said any of those things. I'll wait.

And I don't smoke...never had, and have previously had all necessary, standard vaccines. I don't get the flu vaccine because of a severe reaction to it previously...and I hardly ever get sick.

Stop sounding like a pompous authority on my health.

What made this worse wasn't ignorance by a previous administration. It was, and is because of the constant, incoherent changing of information by our so-called expert on infectious diseases that has back tracked, changed direction and contradicted himself so many times no one know who to trust. Less intrusive approaches to virus prevention were adopted by other areas and had similar, if not better, infection rates.

The science says the virus is survivable by 99.x% of the population, and current reports from the CDC say the Covid vaccine appears to be safe for 99.x% of the population. I have an equal chance of dying from either.

See the data yourself on deaths related to Covid vaccines since January 2021 here.
Source: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Which part? I’ll wait.

No. Experts were ignored. What country did less and had less problems? We have examples from 50 states with different population densities and different policies and different outcomes per capita, so we have examples of what worked and didn’t work well. Of course, we have some hindsight bias going on, but clearly, the former administration’s general approach to downplaying the severity was problematic, which it later admitted it did, so that point isn’t even contested by them making it odd that it is contested by you.

Your assessment of the numbers is poor. The number depends on age, genetics, prior health conditions, exposure rate, strains exposed to, etc. If we are just looking at statistics, how many people have died from the vaccine? Either they had an anaphylactic reaction or developed cancer or anything. At best there might be highly frail individuals who elect to take the vaccine who might compromise their immune system temporarily enough to open themselves up to pneumonia or something, but I am unaware of a prevalence of this. The numbers on prevalence of deaths for COVID vary by area, but the current metric in NYC is 49,648 deaths out of 8.4 million people, so 0.5897% of society has died there, and 99.41% are still alive, so it doesn’t sound bad, but said another way, that is 1 in 170 people in NYC has died of COVID. Maybe that doesn’t sound bad to you, but it is bad. If we consider just those over 65 then the mortality rate was closer to 1 in 75 or something; it’s been a while since I checked so it might be lower now. The exposure is not 100%, so this rate will only get worse. If we had done nothing then the mortality would have included victims of an impacted healthcare system besides those who got COVID, but it would still be just millions or just a small percentage of society. Meanwhile, the vaccine isn’t killing hundreds of thousands of people in the US or millions in the world like COVID, so I don’t know how you can compare the two and conclude the vaccine is just or more dangerous to you or others you could infect.

[spike021]

Originally Posted by Opie

Show me where I said any of those things. I'll wait.

And I don't smoke...never had, and have previously had all necessary, standard vaccines. I don't get the flu vaccine because of a severe reaction to it previously...and I hardly ever get sick.

Stop sounding like a pompous authority on my health.

What made this worse wasn't ignorance by a previous administration. It was, and is because of the constant, incoherent changing of information by our so-called expert on infectious diseases that has back tracked, changed direction and contradicted himself so many times no one know who to trust. Less intrusive approaches to virus prevention were adopted by other areas and had similar, if not better, infection rates.

The science says the virus is survivable by 99.x% of the population, and current reports from the CDC say the Covid vaccine appears to be safe for 99.x% of the population. I have an equal chance of dying from either.

See the data yourself on deaths related to Covid vaccines since January 2021 here.
Source: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Maybe this will be a poor example.

But you rebuild cars, right?

At some point years ago you probably didn't know very much about the cars you rebuild now.

Maybe the first couple times, you screwed up on something. Maybe you didn't realize something needed a certain tolerance to hold up or ft/lb of torque, etc.

If you posted on forums about your builds at the time, you probably would have said what you did and that it "worked" (I don't know if you did or not), only to later do more builds or whatever and find out there were better, safer ways to do things.

Now you write up a new post about the process, which contradicts what you said earlier.

But people say they don't care about your write-ups anymore because you've changed how you did things since the first time.

Obviously that doesn't affect people on nearly the same level.

But you must agree that when you go through an empirical learning experience with multiple iterations of new discoveries and attempts and results, you find better ways to work the problems, right? And come out with a better build?


Why can't you apply this same logic to the researchers who didn't know much about the virus but slowly iterated on their knowledge as time went on, more patients got it, etc.?


I don't feel as strongly as everybody in here so this is just a purely honest question.

And FWIW, the most primitive example of this is when you're a baby and grow up. You learn so many things by iterating on situations you've come across. No person is born an expert on the world who cannot ever find something to improve upon. A kid sometimes needs to touch a hot object to realize it'll burn them and decide to never do that again.