https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-wont-have-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-for-2022-23-season-per-report/

"While the NBA still strongly suggests that all players, coaches and staff members receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the league will not introduce a vaccine mandate for next season, according to Yahoo Sports. Unvaccinated players may be subject to periodic testing, however, pending discussions with the National Basketball Players Association."

-->

would have been a weird direction to go in at this time.

After all - they didn't even institute a mandate last year (as the overwhelming majority of the players opposed it) and just left it up to local jurisdictions/states.

But there has been some outside pressure criticizing sports leagues for not instituting blanket mandates (many of those voices here on this board) - so in that respect it's interesting to see how they're operating when making these decisions in concert with the NBPA.

Perhaps the most notable piece of news here is that places like California and NY (once staunchly pro-mandate) are also backing down and not signaling any further appetite to enforce blanket mandates.

-->

for monkey pox (along with Illinois/3 biggest cities in the country)

What’s the benefit of making this declaration now?

It’s interesting that the antivaxx movement became so vocal in recent history

and now there’s a monkey pox outbreak…that a small pox vaccine does provide protection against

The Covid pandemic is not over, continuing to mutate
and now there’s a new virus outbreak

What’s the science for not mandating employees be vaccinated?

it's more about demanding better vaccine products/treatments that have more of a sterilizing effect (as is the case with many other vaccines) to where you're actually curbing transmission in a very significant way with the deployment of the vaccines. These aren't those kinds of vaccines.

The protective benefit is clear for keeping people out of the hospital and preventing death, but not clear at all in terms of how efficacious it is at stopping spread (particularly as we get further and further away from the ancestral strain of which these vaccines were calibrated for). There have been significant studies demonstrating that there's no discernable difference at this point (in August 2022) between how likely one is to get infected based on vaccination status. These Omicron subvariants don't care if you've had prior infection or if you're vaccinated - they're infecting everyone - but thankfully are far less lethal than prior strains (particularly Delta).

Now the landscape may change when these bivalent vaccines are introduced later this year. If they prove to actually be what these original vaccines were purported to be (effective at halting spread) - then perhaps there's more of an impetus to mandate vaccination.


-->

Especially since your reply contains benefits of the vaccine
…but I digress…
Saying the vaccine, which was developed in a year
To combat the initial novel virus
Does not provide meaningful protection against the 5th variant of the initial virus
Is ridiculous
Continuing advocate for anti-mandate measures will only compound the issue
Once a more effective vaccine is developed

We briefly discussed the idea in another post
Mandates were removed in March
Hello summer 2022 surge!

I believe each surge has been attributed to a new variant
So the vaccine has obviously been effective at eradicating the initial covid strain

You also ignored the small pox vaccine/monkey pox outbreak correlary

Continuing to advocate for the removal of mandates
Has the potential to set us back to step 1
= lockdown.

Given that the measures being prescribed are the only weapons to combat the pandemic currently
I thinks your stance, and the NBA’s, are very dangerous

The people who are buying in to anti-vaxx logic
Aren’t going to be convinced when the perfect vaccine (by your criteria) exists.

...and pretend that COVID has gone away. But it hasn't. And it never will if people keep acting dumb.

...has probably put us firmly past the point of no return. But there's no reason to actively feed into the dumb shit.

But sometime in...I dunno...late 2020? It became pretty obvious this shit wasn't gonna go away. At THIS point though - I'm no longer mad at people who didn't get the vax. It's been kinda freeing, TBH.

i survived. not sure how many people i killed.

Willfully endangering lives because "no one is going to tell them what to do."

So this shit will never be over.

>But sometime in...I dunno...late 2020? It became pretty
>obvious this shit wasn't gonna go away. At THIS point though -
>I'm no longer mad at people who didn't get the vax. It's been
>kinda freeing, TBH.

I've got close family members, close vaccinated family members, that are currently dealing with the fall-out of dipshit, galaxy-brain, Joe Rogan-listening sub-morons who ignored science and facilitated the development of COVID strains that or more contagious than ever before.

I am in no way letting these dinguses off the hook. Letting ignorant shit slide is how we get shit like climate change denial, flat-earthers, and election "truthers." They will always be the object of my scorn and I'll always let them know.

>>But sometime in...I dunno...late 2020? It became pretty
>>obvious this shit wasn't gonna go away. At THIS point though
>-
>>I'm no longer mad at people who didn't get the vax. It's
>been
>>kinda freeing, TBH.
>
>I've got close family members, close vaccinated family
>members, that are currently dealing with the fall-out of
>dipshit, galaxy-brain, Joe Rogan-listening sub-morons who
>ignored science and facilitated the development of COVID
>strains that or more contagious than ever before.
>
>I am in no way letting these dinguses off the hook. Letting
>ignorant shit slide is how we get shit like climate change
>denial, flat-earthers, and election "truthers." They will
>always be the object of my scorn and I'll always let them
>know.

But the world is burning and I'm not going to change those assholes' minds. I honestly just keep it moving because stupid is as stupid does and life's too short to anger myself consistently. Because holy SHIT is there a lot of ignorance and stupidity out there - hell in each of our families there's probably more than their should be, let alone all the rest of it.

I get it though. Don't begrudge you for doing so. I, personally, am just exhausted of being angry at people all the time.

Name-calling, calling people "ignorant" and basically saying "fuck your thoughts" is going to increase vaccine coverage somehow?

There are many countries (like Japan for example) which placed an emphasis on informed consent (weighing risks/benefits openly and transparently) and persuasive strategies to encourage vaccination - and they experienced significantly higher vaccine coverage than we have. I don't think coercive strategies of trying to force people to take a vaccine (while not fully disclosing the facts) is nearly as effective as persuading them to do something for their health in a way that respects their agency in making that decision.

>I've got close family members, close vaccinated family
>members, that are currently dealing with the fall-out of
>dipshit, galaxy-brain, Joe Rogan-listening sub-morons who
>ignored science and facilitated the development of COVID
>strains that or more contagious than ever before.

What are you talking about when you say "sub-morons facilitated the development of COVID strains"? The development of Omicron - for example - had nothing to do with your characterization here as the consensus now is that it developed out of a prolonged illness in someone with a compromised immune system in South Africa. Is that person in South Africa a "sub-moron"?

There's been extraordinary evolutionary pressure on this virus to mutate both in vaccinated and unvaccinated hosts - as it's mutating in unvaccinated hosts and also learning to evade vaccinated immunity in vaccinated hosts - which is why we're seeing such significant immune escape with Omicron whereby these subvariants are masters of immune evasion.

But I'm curious: why aren't you calling for flu-shot mandates as well? Are the people who aren't taking flu-shots dumb ignorant fucks as well who are complicit in murder? Up to 650,000 people die of flu-related illness every year around the world, yet we don't have a flu shot mandate and I don't see people saying that those who carry the flu without a flu-shot are "killing people" using the same logic.

The flu-shot is also a bit more analogous to these covid vaccines in terms of efficacy than traditional sterilizing vaccines. In any given year, the best we can hope for is around ~65% efficacy with the flu-shot as it's a bit of lottery to calibrate each annual flu-shot to match the emerging strain of that season. In most cases, the efficacy is significantly less than 65% and falls below 50%. Still, you could easily make the argument that the flu-shot is *more* efficacious at stopping spread than these covid vaccines (especially now) - yet I don't see the same energy to mandate the flu-shot and characterize those who don't take the flu-shot as willful murderers.


-->

We're two and a half years into this, so these sub-morons have had more than enough time to educate themselves and get vaccinated. You have a legitmate medical reason that you can't vaccinated? That's one thing. But that's a very small percentage. Otherwise, these shitheads who aren't getting a shot to "pwn the left" or because they've "educated and enlightened themselves" can eat shit. They're very much the reason that this is still going on. If a new strain of the COVID developed that would make the Joe Rogans and Aaron Rodgers of the world drop dead, I wouldn't bat an eye.

And let me be clear: I think flu shots should be mandated too.

>And let me be clear: I think flu shots should be mandated
>too.

I can respect that.

people have made up their minds.
i think they're dumb. they think i'm a dumb sheep, but whatever. do you.
mandates only get us so far. in some fields they make perfect sense, but in others they almost seem counter-productive.
i'm not trying to waste energy on it.

>But sometime in...I dunno...late 2020? It became pretty
>obvious this shit wasn't gonna go away. At THIS point though -
>I'm no longer mad at people who didn't get the vax. It's been
>kinda freeing, TBH.
>

that's guiding how folks in positions of power make decision regarding mandates for COVID at this point. I have to think the economic impacts of placing additional mandates are key in most folks mind at this point, for better or for worse.

This is true outside of a sports context and unfortunately is the guideline for how I think government officials at the city and state level operate.

>that's guiding how folks in positions of power make decision
>regarding mandates for COVID at this point. I have to think
>the economic impacts of placing additional mandates are key in
>most folks mind at this point, for better or for worse.
>
>This is true outside of a sports context and unfortunately is
>the guideline for how I think government officials at the city
>and state level operate.

I agree. Lots of people in power leaned HARD into the lip service of 'hey, we want to keep our people safe damnit!'.

Then, after a while, things drifted to 'fuck it, let's roll. The stats say you're probably not going to die even if you get it. And we gotta get this money or you're going to have other problems!'.

and it's ridiculous to see the NBA take this stance as a corporation after all this point.

I know the Raptors are an outlier but are they going to force the team to play in the States again?

and you have to use the ARRIVECAN app to verify your vaccine status. So unvaccinated players are still not allowed to travel to Canada to play road games. It's likely that will change (or perhaps will at least change in Ontario even if other provinces remain more strict (like Quebec for example))>

-->

to play in Canada.

The Kyrie Irving Rule.

SMH...not even a week later... terrible messaging by the NBA.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/05/new-york-polio-case-tip-of-iceberg-hundreds-of-others-could-be-infected.html