I’ve just read a very interesting book called “Thinking In Bets” by Annie Duke. She was a professional poker player but the main thrust of the book isn’t about poker; it’s more about how to use the skills of a good poker player to make better decisions. Basically, she advices, don’t get caught up in results but rather look at whether your decision was a good one based on likely outcomes. In poker, betting your pile on the slim chance of getting an inside straight with the last card is not a good move, so the fact that it worked doesn’t mean that you should pat yourself on the back and do it again.
Similarly, in life, the fact that you made it back from the pub without having an accident or getting done for being over the legal limit wasn’t a good choice. It’s not the result that matters it’s the thought processes.
I started to remember my thought processes when I had the opportunity to get a Covid vaccine. I had to balance the fact that Covid was killing people against the fact that it was a vaccine produced in a relatively short amount of time. I had to balance my age (over 60) and the mild asthma against the possibility that the vaccine would do more harm than the virus.
I decided to get the vaccine, and I’ve since had further ones when recommended.
I didn’t actually contract Covid until late 2021 and while I felt ill, it was no more than a mild flu or cold… Of course, when I say mild flu, I am after all a man and it’s highly likely that I invented the term “man flu”.
So, I could say that it was thanks to the vaccine that I only experienced mild symptoms. Or I could say that I actually have a great immune system that fights off things like man flu really well and I could dispense with the vaccine because, well, I just don’t need it. Or I could say that it wasn’t all that bad and the people who died from Covid were just people who exaggerated how bad the symptoms were.
Which is it?
Well, I’m going to say one of the most intelligent things I could possibly say here:
I just don’t know!
Of course, this is surprising because I’m a man and generally men know everything, so to hear one say that they don’t know is quite the surprise… Mm, again I feel the need for an irony font…
Anyway, this is very intelligent because I’m resisting the temptation to use the result to justify a position that I took before I knew the result. I’m not saying, Yes, trying for that inside straight was a genius move.
And this is part of the problem with some people who decided not have the vaccine. I’m sure that a number of them were – like me – unsure about whether to take the risk. However – unlike me – a number of them probably decided that the risk of the vaccine was greater than the risks associated with Covid. Part of the problem with life is that it IS like a game of poker where you decide not to call and you don’t get to see if your opponent is bluffing.
In other words, you only know that your course of action didn’t kill you or have major consequences, so you pat yourself on the back and tell yourself that you picked the right thing. Perhaps a great example of this was a person who wrote on social media that they didn’t know of a single person who regretted NOT getting the vaccine… The obvious question would be: How many dead people did you ask?
Once a person has made the decision to refuse the vaccine, there were all sorts of potential consequences such as being denied work or losing friends and family, so it makes absolute sense that such a person would start to look for evidence that they were right and… what do ya know… even the person in charge of Health in the USA knows how dangerous vaccines are and there’s a tonne of stuff to say that all those poor fools who got vaccinated are going to be dead by 2022 or at least before the century is out… Hey look, Ethel was struck down in the prime of her life at 94, a mere 38 months after her first vaccine!
And once one has started to do one’s own research, one can find – thanks to the wonderful way that the internet works – any number of things that prove to one that one was right to start searching…
Of course, many of the things I say can be applied to people who DID get the vaccine so what’s the answer?
Well, as I so intelligently said before:
I just don’t know!
I frequently tell teenagers that they’re wrong about at least half the things they currently believe. They don’t believe me, which sort of proves my point. However, I could make them feel worse by pointing out that by the time they’re my age, they’ll probably be wrong about even more and it’ll be harder to change their mind…
Yeah, that’s true… Although I’m probably wrong about that!
Also by Rossleigh:
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
the astra – pfizer cock up was a gov failure. Whist I was leaving after astra google suggested was far less effective. A woman in the line said the hospital has opened a large batch of pfizer and everybody left.
A golf mate is 5 days a week catholic mass man and, at 88, he has had all the injections and caught covid 3 times but was hardly ill. If you are an anti-vaxxer the vaccine is a failure if you are a provaxxer it is a success.
If you are Rossleigh you don’t know but he cares and voted yes.
The best cure for any ailment is a regular daily dose of Rossleigh ”inspiration” available on AIMN for a small subscription.
Humour is the best medicine and Rossleigh always makes me smile in appreciation.
Covid was a scam…. I caught covid and three days later after taking the banned IVERMECTIN i was fine. Read the Great Reset by the ex head of the WEF…. Its called Eugenics. Gates openly admitted reducing the worlds population wih Vaccines.. Now thank about that statement. I refused while both my children took the vaccines against my advice. Both Now have serious life threatening medical problems.I have none and Im 62 years old and I have also never had a flu jab or any other vaccine except the Polio oral sabine and anti malaria for a trip to Peru, or I couldnt enter the country. I dont get sick because I have a functioning immune system.
Great to see such a joy for the all-knowing all-seeing Thomas’s of the world. A great reminder there’s no ‘open misère’ in poker 😎
Thomas, if Covid was a scam, how did you contract it if it doesn’t exist? 🤷🏻♂️
When I was young, I used to, in my utter naivety, think that old age had a functional corollary with wisdom. Then I spent three years working in a psychiatric hospital, and saw the complete fallacy of that belief, albeit it was within a community of madness & lunacy and not exactly the right environment to be searching for the three wise men.
Nonetheless, the illusion was shattered and has remained so, and as some of the itinerant contributors to these pages attest, despite their age, they’re still full of the brown stuff that occasionally gets flung up to the ceiling. With my marginal comprehension of the operations of the human psyche, its potentials and its limitations, the absence of wisdom in humanity is no longer a puzzle, instead, more of a commonplace and to a certain extent default outcome of how the inner life is prosecuted.
A great pity indeed, given the extraordinary possibilities that we possess in latent form.
Thomas:
Covid was a scam, but you caught it. Ivermectin was banned, but you got it and used it … have you ever heard of this thing called “consistency”?
Interesting discussion Rossleigh and like most people we all have our opinions; the real challenge is the source of that opinion!
I have this file in my desktop system form way back around 2021/2022 coronavirus plague of corruption + Dr Luc Montagnier, who happens to be the 2008 Nobel Laureate for the isolation of the HIV virus and its quite an interesting read at 318 pages long.
In summary, like another commenter here, I spent 20 years rebuilding my immune system post Glandular Fever and CFS from very, very poor allopathic medical diagnosis using a different medical system altogether, have even recovered from a diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin’s B-Cell lymphoma, which was not surprising given ageing however critical to working with better informed choices and information. I’m now at six monthly blood tests and very, very stable, which means remission and don’t expect that to change at all, given the work I do on a daily basis.
I also choose initially to have the Moderna vaccine which is for immune compromised people and have not had any further vaccinations, none required as what has been promoted as Covid is influenza, the last bad flu we knew was Spanish flu post WW1.
The whole thing was an exercise known as Event 201, read it and weep
https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exercises/event-201-pandemic-tabletop-exercise
I spent 7 years working for a Patent Attorney and know that any vaccine takes at least 5 years to build reliable research data for positive and adverse reactions and group sample studies; during the pandemic when you have young people who died of heart attack at 25 y.o. it was not underlying disease that caused their deaths, it was the vaccines. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624002569#sec2
We seem to have very short memories here with vaccines as well, namely thalidomide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Change_in_drug_regulations in addition to The Cutter Incident – polio vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories
There is a lot of misinformation out there from vaccine developers in addition to other vested interests as well as this new AI stuff is only going to make things worse as vested medical and big pharma interests will attest to.
heather:
Thalidomide was not a vaccine. Talk about misdirection …
Also, the reason it usually takes so long for vaccines to get through all the approval processes is due to funding and bureaucratic protocols. The mRNA vaccines produced to help with Covid had at least 20 years of research and development behind them; that’s research specifically into corona viruses. The usual roadblocks were dealt with rapidly due to the level of the crisis, through international governmental co-operation.
Those vaccines also had probably the largest testing cohort in human history, with hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide.
All medication and medical procedures have risks. The decision to proceed depends on benefits outweighing risks. There is a very small percent of serious vaccine injury, up to and including death; this is vanishingly small compared to the damage done by unchecked spread of various illnesses. You want to go back to a world where three out of five children died before they were five years old?
Thomas and Heather, it was thems Chem-trails I tells ya!! When you have the first vaccine shot that’s when “they” put the chip in. The second shot was when “they” put the batteries for the chip in. Jest sayin’😆
In 2020 the authorities rebranded the ‘flu which is why the ‘flu almost disappeared from the statistics to be replaced by COVID 19. Rebranding is standard business practice when sales are falling.
Vaccines are designed to cause disease, even if only mildly. They call it training the immune system, but this is nonsense. Having a shot is like playing Russian roulette with your body; exciting to some perhaps but ultimately harmful.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2023/08/10/why-vaccines-do-not-work-in-a-nutshell/
“The usual roadblocks were dealt with rapidly due to the level of the crisis…”
The road blocks are there to test the vaccines thoroughly in trials over 10-15 years. The authorities decided to test it on the world instead, so billions not hundreds of thousands.
Although they were not volunteers as far as I know..
By the way, in 2020 they rebranded the ‘flu. Rebranding is a common business practice and there are plenty of suckers who fall for it every time.
In 2020 the authorities rebranded the ‘flu which is why the ‘flu almost disappeared from the statistics to be replaced by COVID 19. That was the scam as much as anything.
The game with COVID 19 was Russian roulette rather than poker as people were having the gun loaded with vaccine shots. A rather mad thing to do, but some people like it for some reason.
Of course poker might be a suitable thought if one considers people were being poked with the needles. 🙂
I’m an old codger, I walk my dog with another old codger. He opposes all vaccines, he caught Covid and it progressed into pneumonia and he was hospitalised.
My wife and I took the scientific advise and were vaccinated with the periodic top-ups recommended, we didn’t acquire Covid.
We don’t think it was a fluke or a blessing from above, we think it was common sense and herd immunity that contributed.
I note, incidentally, that measles is on the rise in the US and that the level of vaccination has dropped off in recent times, particularly in those communities who rely on serendipity and the blessings of a deity. There may be a clue there!
alphaandomega21, along with others who peep through cracks in doors and imagine they see the bigger picture, ignores the statistical evidence of vaccination efficacy that is, unlike conspiratorial beliefs, actual and verifiable.
Global vaccination programs eradicated smallpox, minimised the occurrence of polio and significantly reduced the incidence of measles and rubella.
alphaandomega21 is welcome to refute these facts, as he is also to test his beliefs via exposure to the poliomyelitis virus, or for that matter, mumps, dengue fever, ebola, rabies or lyssavirus… all of which can be avoided via the prophylactic measure of being vaccinated against.
Comment from thrusting ignorant loudmouths with I Q’s like a corpse’s pulse are of no use. Some controversy always exists in matters of faith, science, fashion, gossip, fixations. Our national health authorities publish c. twenty five booklets on vaccines which have saved countless lives, no doubts there over time. Vaccination has saved you, and many millions, like me.
There are lies, damn lies and statistics dear boy, hadn’t you heard? Anyway, I hope you are up to date with all your boosters. Big pharma need the money. :<)