What do you tell it now?

Defcon 1 is white? I’d expect it to be red.

People often think of vaccine development as being all about immunology, but we need to think about the manufacturing side as well. It was very important that we create a safe and effective vaccine. We had to make it in very large quantities for a low price. Not only that, we had to ensure it could be stored in the fridge to be used in a wide range of global health situations

patent waivers were a thing after the Gates Foundation endorsed them.

Too late to damage the share price of their Pharma holdings.

Gates flew to Oxford and forced (as a provder of funding) the University into an exclusive deal with AstraZeneca.

There has been no Oxford vaccine production by any other company.

Late patent wavers are shutting the door after the horse has bolted. The mRNA technology already had its population scale field test.

Reversing opinions after the damage has been done is nothing but a PR stunt. My question again.

Which other companies produced the Oxford Vaccine?

Tata (volume), Scott(uncontrolled), Carnegie (proportional) all beat Gates.

A Celebrity Deathmatch?

It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.

This is bullshit. The Oxford vaccine was specifically designed to be manufactured using existing processes and distribution channels.

AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales.

If the whole world got effective covid vaccines at cost of production then no-one would pay Pfizer for their novel (and expensive) technology. Gates Foundation secured a return of over 15 times more than its initial investment in BioNTech.

Sorry? Exactly when did Oxford open source it’s vaccine and allow manufacturing by companies other than Astrazeneca?

Disagree.

The rugged individualism is what makes it popular, not the desire to be a serf.

We agree there. I’m highlighting that creating an aristocracy is a side effect, not a goal.

Right wing politics is ultimately about concentrating power in the hands of the aristocracy

Disagree. It’s about enriching the self. It’s about stonewalling or reversing social power.

It results in aristocracy but poor right wingers are not driven by that goal.

all we’re left with is people being mean and ugly toward each other.

Disagree. There would be some people being mean and ugly toward each other, but those subthreads can easily be hidden by the user.

rage is monetized on social media platforms

Yes, we certainly don’t want to encourage rage for attention and clicks. But locking a thread always seemed over-authoritarian to me.

Obviously I’m only talking hypothetically here. I’m trying to understand the logic behind locking threads in general. Nothing against you or regarding this topic in particular.

this conversation has some seeds for productive discourse, but that doesn’t seem to be the direction that things are headed toward right now.

Why is some unproductive discourse a problem? Why is it so severe that a (hypothetical) thread lock is needed?

I agree with your stepfathers reasoning, but not his method.

There is no “of” to take 21% from.

Independents are not a homogeneous group. A fairer statement is that 100% of assholes are assholes.

It may be what lawyers do, but it is not what a democratic system is supposed to do.

If voters decide Jill Stein is what a democrat stands for, she is a Democrat. It’s not up to whoever controls the DNC to decide that she shouldn’t be a candidate.

Was it unclear that by “inside”, I meant “inside the DNC”.

outside influences were promoting Bernie on social media to create a spoiler effect.

Inside influences were promoting Hillary on mainstream media to create a spoiler effect.