Plus they can make voodoo dolls

I don’t suppose you remember what the magical ingredients were in those products? Call it morbid curiosity.

You know now that I think about it, I’m not sure how much of dental products are actually FDA approved. I think they might fit into a weird zone where they’re not technically medication or food so FDA doesn’t really look too closely. Dental machinery and appliances for sure need to be FDA-approved, but mouthwash and toothpaste I’m not so sure about. I’m fairly sure the active ingredients within mouthwash and toothpaste, such as fluoride, need to have FDA approval before they can be used, but I don’t think the toothpaste or mouthwash itself needs FDA approval. I think for the most part the FDA oversees marketing claims and manufacturing standards for toothpaste/mouthwash, whereas the American Dental Association (ADA) is the body that “approves” them.

“I set this bottle of dasani by a bank for like three months so it would absorb the essence of currency. Don’t trust ‘big money’ out there with their ‘coke covered paper.’ This is organic! Water is natural!”

😆

an innocuous supplement treatment

Healing crystals are an innocuous treatment that have been involved in multiple studies also, so yes.

Let’s not dwell on the outcome or legitimacy of those studies at all, for either treatment.

Your doctor did a review? Such a nice claim to authority there with zero evidence. It is nice that everything and everyone on the internet can be trusted.

I stand by my statement. Anyone suffering medical issues should seek help from a medical professional and ignore random internet advice.

No, but the attitude where the opinion of ignoramuses should be sacrosanct and considered over the opinion of experts and authorities is mainly USian.

Hell, USians invented the idiotic notion of “sovereign citizen”, which is predicated in the insane importance they assign to their own opinions and the notion that their beliefs override reality.

This is mainly US problem

Hey, if people don’t want to get their kids vaccinated, that should absolutely be their decision. It’s a shitty decision, but I do believe that parents should have the authority to decline.

That being said, if they choose not to vaccinate, their children should absolutely be banned from any public school or community rec league sports, or anyone else publicly funded.

And the private institutions that focus on children (day cares, private schools, etc.) should have a requirement in their license agreement where all children they serve must be vaccinated as well or else they lose their licensing.

Basically going non-vax should be handled in a way similar to how they should handle these idiot sovereign citizens: sure, you don’t have to have your vehicle registered or interacted or even plated…but if you choose not to do that, you better keep it on your own property. The minute you turn onto a public road we’re gonna throw the book at you.

I’m not trying to encourage anyone. There are rules to society and people are having full on temper tantrums rather than accepting the rules. I’m just sick of fighting over things they are not qualified to assess. It is insulting to everyone that goes to school for a decade to save their life, do the research, come up with a solution and then “dO yOu KnOw WhAt’S rEaLlY iN iT?!”

Someone trying to justify allowing soft policy on vaccinations.

I consider any person who thinks they know better than the medical professionals a lunatic, yes.

I feel you. The psychological aspect of crisis management was a complete disaster because it was made yet another political battleground and news panic sensation. The lack of nuance in this discussion even today is proof of that.

It was so mishandled and used for politics that they were desperate and heavy-handed because it was already allowed to go wildly out of control.

I understand vaccines have worked for many years and are a wonder of medical science. I’m all caught up. I also know all the conspiracies about microchips and “5G receptors” and other ludicrous claims are obviously bunk.

But even I had to pause for a second when, in the middle of a tornado of bullshit from every direction, they’re like “You better get this pharma-corporation-product injected soon as possible or else.”

Like, it just automatically triggers that “You can’t make me” response in everybody. I got over that, but in a country that has such abysmal education already, and a ton of people who fill that education gap with Facebook? Holy crap. Misinformation was a viral pandemic as well.

I can pity and empathize with people, not the crazy ones pushing stupid insane agendas, but the ones who were simply confused and panicked, especially with how often we’re burned by megacorpos on the daily.

To people who don’t understand the details, it had a feeling of beta testing. “Uh, we rushed this through. Just take it, we’ll worry about potential side effects later!”

Such a mess.

Problem is those people didn’t want to listen to doctors who had the nuanced view of “there might be issues with a vaccine which development we’ve had to accelerate, but the alternative of not taking it is demonstrably worse for everyone”, they only wanted to listen to the people who shared their position.

Believing people on the left care for everyone on the planet equally while people on the right only care for the nation they tax to is a strange take.

Don’t be disingenuous (or worse), you’re distorting what I said. Refer to the first and third paragraphs of the very comment that you’re replying to.

Now, if you really want to pretend that your hometown should “magically” coincide with the territory controlled by your government, by all means, do it. But then let’s call a duck a duck - then you are a nationalist, and should be treated as one.

This comic is probably made by someone American. They made it for a target audience. That’s why it’s specified.

I’m not going to guess the author’s “intention”. I’m focusing on what the character says, on the light of the maxim of quantity (refer to this or this for further info).

If I told you “I have two books”, and I actually have three, you’d correctly point out that I’m saying something untrue, right? Because of that maxim - by saying “I have two books” I’m implying that I have no more than two books.

Now look at what the character says within that context:

• [A] “It’s the anniversary of a great tragedy.”
• [B] “I know, over a million Americans have died.”

The exact same maxim operates here; the implicature being created is that the tragedy does not include non-Americans dying. It’s probably an accidental implicature, but the very fact that people don’t pay attention to this shit is concerning.

It’s called pathos.

It’s pathos only in the original meaning. Because damn, it’s a really miserable discourse! /s

Etymology aside, “pathos” in the meaning typically associated with the usage of the word in English can be easily conveyed without that nationalistic discourse.

You’re allowed to be proud of your country or people without being a q-anon nuthead nazi.

Let us not fool ourselves that the only nationalists out there are the Q-Anon tier Nazi. In that situation you’re still a nationalist, and promoting a harmful discourse.

“Hometown” is not a metaphor. A country is not a hometown.