Bootstrap wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:05 pm
If I were an employer, I would want to make room for people who have religious exemptions to vaccines, perhaps by changing roles, perhaps by allowing remote work, requiring masking and testing in situations where people would be face to face. In this situation, I would be able to enforce rules. This would make it easier for me to accommodate people who have religious objections to vaccines.
All of this is hypothetical. There are, in fact, a few people I could fire, they are vaccinated and they work remotely. But I would not disapprove of an employer who did the things I suggest above.
So your hypothetical mandate would not include cloth masks. What about eating and drinking, people pulling their masks down, touching their masks, not replacing them frequently enough?
I think that the links I provided demonstrate that for real people, in real life situations, masks make a significant difference. And yes, cloth masks are less effective than better masks, people do eat and drink and touch their face, etc., but they still seem to make a difference.
For every answer I give, you can ask more questions, but I think there are more answers. And I don't think there's any end to the questions you can ask, but there are limits to my time and energy.
I started that thread because I feel there is often very little attention given to real concerns.
Falco Underhill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:37 pmThis thread was supposed to be about that as far as I was concerned and this was my thread!
*I* never claimed vaccines were the mark, I said the mandates could be a slippery slope to (the beast system.)
Well, there's a lot we agree about. And I agree that privacy concerns are important for vaccine mandates too. To me, the slippery slope to authoritarian government is a real concern.
There's a separate discussion about the beast, what it stands for in the Bible, what the marks of the beast are according to the text of the Bible. I don't think vaccines are closely related to any of that.
I started that thread because I feel there is often very little attention given to real concerns.
Falco Underhill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:37 pmThis thread was supposed to be about that as far as I was concerned and this was my thread!
*I* never claimed vaccines were the mark, I said the mandates could be a slippery slope to (the beast system.)
Well, there's a lot we agree about. And I agree that privacy concerns are important for vaccine mandates too. To me, the slippery slope to authoritarian government is a real concern.
There's a separate discussion about the beast, what it stands for in the Bible, what the marks of the beast are according to the text of the Bible. I don't think vaccines are closely related to any of that.
Let me be clear I'm not making little of other people's arguments about whether the vaccines are immoral and/or dangerous. Not at all! There's good arguments there, too. But I'd rather other people make them because they're better at it than I am, and I learn from watching the arguments.
As for what part the mandates might play — they have made us become accustomed to using QR codes. That's half the battle right there. They could never have gotten it forced on us (worldwide) through Democratic means. They needed an emergency excuse to make it suddenly "normal". The rest can just be added later.
Falco Underhill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:24 pm
As for what part the mandates might play — they have made us become accustomed to using QR codes. That's half the battle right there. They could never have gotten it forced on us (worldwide) through Democratic means. They needed an emergency excuse to make it suddenly "normal". The rest can just be added later.
Speculation? Yes.
Just my suspicions as I've admitted before.
I've never used a QR code for anything related to Covid.
I have been in restaurants that wanted me to use a QR code to open their menu. I chose not to. That's the main place I have encountered this. And I do think that's where it is most likely to be normalized.
Falco Underhill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:24 pm
As for what part the mandates might play — they have made us become accustomed to using QR codes. That's half the battle right there. They could never have gotten it forced on us (worldwide) through Democratic means. They needed an emergency excuse to make it suddenly "normal". The rest can just be added later.
Speculation? Yes.
Just my suspicions as I've admitted before.
I've never used a QR code for anything related to Covid.
I have been in restaurants that wanted me to use a QR code to open their menu. I chose not to. That's the main place I have encountered this. And I do think that's where it is most likely to be normalized.
Most QR codes I've used have directed me to websites. I gave my wife a small Lego set for Christmas and the instructions had a QR code that led me to a Lego app in the app store. I've used QR codes to sync my streaming services with my Smart TV. I use Evernote and it allows me to create QR codes for images that I have in my notes.
QR codes have become common in consumer advertising. Typically, a smartphone is used as a QR code scanner, displaying the code and converting it to some useful form (such as a standard URL for a website, thereby obviating the need for a user to type it into a web browser). QR code has become a focus of advertising strategy, since it provides a way to access a brand's website more quickly than by manually entering a URL. Beyond mere convenience to the consumer, the importance of this capability is that it increases the conversion rate: the chance that contact with the advertisement will convert to a sale. It coaxes interested prospects further down the conversion funnel with little delay or effort, bringing the viewer to the advertiser's website immediately, whereas a longer and more targeted sales pitch may lose the viewer's interest.
Although initially used to track parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are used over a much wider range of applications. These include commercial tracking, entertainment and transport ticketing, product and loyalty marketing and in-store product labeling. Examples of marketing include where a company's discounted and percent discount can be captured using a QR code decoder which is a mobile app, or storing a company's information such as address and related information alongside its alpha-numeric text data as can be seen in Yellow Pages directories.
You don't need a global pandemic or emergency in order to normalize QR codes -- it would be a lot less disruptive to just allow commercial companies and industries to "naturally" adopt them for marketing and tracking inventory.
Falco Underhill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:24 pm
As for what part the mandates might play — they have made us become accustomed to using QR codes. That's half the battle right there. They could never have gotten it forced on us (worldwide) through Democratic means. They needed an emergency excuse to make it suddenly "normal". The rest can just be added later.
Speculation? Yes.
Just my suspicions as I've admitted before.
I've never used a QR code for anything related to Covid.
I have been in restaurants that wanted me to use a QR code to open their menu. I chose not to. That's the main place I have encountered this. And I do think that's where it is most likely to be normalized.
Most QR codes I've used have directed me to websites. I gave my wife a small Lego set for Christmas and the instructions had a QR code that led me to a Lego app in the app store. I've used QR codes to sync my streaming services with my Smart TV. I use Evernote and it allows me to create QR codes for images that I have in my notes.
QR codes have become common in consumer advertising. Typically, a smartphone is used as a QR code scanner, displaying the code and converting it to some useful form (such as a standard URL for a website, thereby obviating the need for a user to type it into a web browser). QR code has become a focus of advertising strategy, since it provides a way to access a brand's website more quickly than by manually entering a URL. Beyond mere convenience to the consumer, the importance of this capability is that it increases the conversion rate: the chance that contact with the advertisement will convert to a sale. It coaxes interested prospects further down the conversion funnel with little delay or effort, bringing the viewer to the advertiser's website immediately, whereas a longer and more targeted sales pitch may lose the viewer's interest.
Although initially used to track parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are used over a much wider range of applications. These include commercial tracking, entertainment and transport ticketing, product and loyalty marketing and in-store product labeling. Examples of marketing include where a company's discounted and percent discount can be captured using a QR code decoder which is a mobile app, or storing a company's information such as address and related information alongside its alpha-numeric text data as can be seen in Yellow Pages directories.
You don't need a global pandemic or emergency in order to normalize QR codes -- it would be a lot less disruptive to just allow commercial companies and industries to "naturally" adopt them for marketing and tracking inventory.
They are quite common and useful in personally non-intrusive situations, I think the gist of the concern, whether founded or unfounded, time will tell, is that they can/are be/being weaponized for nefarious purposes.
silentreader wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:55 pm
They are quite common and useful in personally non-intrusive situations, I think the gist of the concern, whether founded or unfounded, time will tell, is that they can/are be/being weaponized for nefarious purposes.
In precisely the same way that opening any website on your mobile phone can be weaponized for nefarious purposes. No more, no less. So the same considerations that involve QR codes also apply to opening a website on your mobile phone, and often to opening a website on your computer.
If we ever fall under an authoritarian government, they will use this information. Internet privacy is important. The things that protect democracy are important, too - let's not tear them down.
Szdfan wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:45 pm
You don't need a global pandemic or emergency in order to normalize QR codes -- it would be a lot less disruptive to just allow commercial companies and industries to "naturally" adopt them for marketing and tracking inventory.
Exactly. I mean, look how accustomed most Americans are to opening up websites with no concern for privacy at all.
Bootstrap wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:32 pmI've never used a QR code for anything related to Covid.
I have been in restaurants that wanted me to use a QR code to open their menu. I chose not to. That's the main place I have encountered this. And I do think that's where it is most likely to be normalized.
Something else to consider - nothing else would necessitate giving everyone in the world a globally unique medical indentification number but a worldwide pandemic. That identification will ultimately carry far more information than whether you have been vaccinated or not.