Day of the Dead really doesn’t get ripped off enough. I don’t know if this would be too huge of a departure from the games, but I’d like to see a Bub-like specimen who has partially regained autonomy from the Cordyceps fungus after a lot of experiments and treatments. Sam’s question of “if you become a monster, is it…

TLoU is doing zombies-with-a-twist the same way 28 Days/Weeks Later was doing zombies-with-a-twist. The Rage virus was a fun variation on the Romero zombie rules because it introduced a vaguely scientifically plausible explanation for the phenomenon, and the virus conceit also allowed for tweaks to the rules, like…

It must feel so morally satisfying to dismiss most of humanity as sociopaths and eugenicists. Going back to my original point, if you’re still hectoring the public about their evil maskless genocide in 2028, I suggest you learn to accept the society you’re in rather than the society you imagine should exist.

Yeah, and most people are like me. We tolerate speed limits because we came to a democratic consensus that they were necessary to protect everyone. We came to a democratic consensus that masks were “actually that hard” and an intolerable inconvenience on a permanent basis. You’re stating that something should be a…

Yes, and here’s the problem — mask mandates are implemented by elected officials, who are accountable to voters. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner.

Eh, I’ll guess I’ll mask if I feel like I’m at serious personal risk in the future, but I promise never to lobby the government to mandate it for everyone else.

What I find interesting about this debate is that it’s much more of a political discussion than one that can be objectively determined by science. Scientists can tell us the vaccine is X% effective against infection, but they cannot tell us when X is high enough to warrant the government mandating vaccination. Like,…

My wife and kids love me.

You keep talking about moving goalposts, but I didn’t lay out the initial goalposts you think I did. I said the vaccines didn’t halt transmission against current variants. A reduction of 24% doesn’t “halt” transmission, it’s more of a dampening. We’d still have high cases with 100% vaccine coverage.

Oh sweetie, you’re really so delusional as to think you have an audience that’s reading this and going “I stopped masking a year ago like everyone else, but I want to be more like that condescending jerk, so I’ma mask again.”

Softball prompts? Communicating?

I suggest you accept that broad masking is never coming back instead of insulting anyone who points out that broad masking is never coming back.

May 2020? That was a lifetime ago. It’s time to move on. 90% of the American public didn’t become Trump-loving fascists when they gradually took off their masks in the 2 years (!) since vaccines became available. In fact, Trump isn’t president anymore because most voters didn’t approve of him and he lost the 2020…

I loved that moment where Tommy feels he has to be like “Naw it ain’t like that, we’re not commies!”. I got the sense Tommy hadn’t seriously questioned or disavowed the commune’s political order at any point, and he was just slipping into his pre-apocalypse political persona in front of Joel to save face.

I didn’t move the goalposts. I said “It turned out, it had very little effect on transmission due to waning vaccine efficacy and variants that outpaced our ability to formulate boosters,” and you initially posted a study regarding a variant that’s been extinct for over a year.

I don’t have to wear a mask, so I’m winning.

I’m a healthy vaccinated person under age 65. Very few people like me died.

Interesting that your article is from 2021, before Omicron. The vaccines did prevent some breakthrough infections with Delta. With Omicron, we saw record case counts even in areas with 90+% vaccination coverage.

Now explain why masks failed in China, Japan and South Korea. 80% of people in China are estimated to have been infected in just the last few months since zero-COVID was abandoned. Chinese people were wearing masks. Why did almost everyone get it anyway?

And 10 years from now, approximately 10% of the population will still be masking while calling 90% of the public “toddlers” and patting themselves on the back for keeping the faith. Really sad, honestly.