I want to say something sarcastic, but I am in genuine disbelief that this could be anyone's vision for the future of humanity. What an abhorrent nightmare.
We're already half-human half-chemical half-cyborgs. We drink coffee which includes caffeine, we use alcohol and THC regularly to "socialize", we take ibuprofen et al when feel pain, we eat sugar because we're fucking addicted. We use internet almost all the time except when sleeping and taking a shower. We check reddit, twitter, HN, facebook, instagram as if our lives depend on it. We're on track to build virtual reality googles that'll entertain us in an entire different simulated reality that we can only experience via our eyes. Not to mention most people look at monitors most of their lives anyway.
We regularly vaccinate against tetanus, HPV, chicken pox, flu etc. Do you not get the flu shot every year? I vaccinate my cat against rabies and distemper every year. I take antidepressants (anxiety) and antihistemics (allergy) every day, because I kinda need them to live normally. My girlfriend has to take pain medicine once a month due to her basic biology.
And the problem is we'll add COVID and cold to our annual flu shots, and that somehow makes our world any more dystopic. Makes absolutely no fucking sense. There are trillions of shit to be outraged about, this ain't one of those. Just chill.
Incidentally, only half of people or less even in affluent countries get the annual flu shot. It is frequently believed to be relevant only for the elderly and at-risk demographics.
This was never the case. If you didn't understand that COVID is here to stay indefinitely, like flu, after April 2020 I'm sorry but you aren't paying attention. Not to mention, if we follow perfect vaccination around the world, we can eradicate COVID like we eradicated smallpox etc, although this will be a lot harder.
So, I still don't see your point. Yes people need to take yearly vaccines not to die of horrible diseases. That has been the case for the last few hundred years.
> Yes people need to take yearly vaccines not to die of horrible diseases. That has been the case for the last few hundred years.
No, it hasn’t. The only common annual vaccination is for influenza, it was introduced only in recent decades, and, as I mentioned, only half the population or less take it annually.
You only take flu annually but there are other vaccines you need to take periodically. E.g. tetanus booster every 10 years etc. For example, I'm supposed to take my last HPV vaccine this summer and this is the 3rd shot. I'm 25 and I took approx. one vaccine every year for the last few years. I'm not saying strictly one every 12 months, it's just that it doesn't make sense to be outraged about COVID vax since regular vax is already part of our lives.
This isn't even remotely true. There's a set of vaccines taken in childhood, a few later. And that's it generally.
Had the situation been reversed, you'd have had to get Yellow Fever vaccinations a lot more often if you were travelling into those regions, and the COVID situation would be one-and-done. It just happens that this is the way it worked out, instead. There's nothing dystopian about this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...
I know the IFR is lower in developing countries, I never meant to imply otherwise.
Even if nasal sprays bought from a corner pharmacy are on the horizon, they would probably only reach developing countries years from now – and merely buying a product from a pharmacy in most countries might not get you an internationally recognized certificate of vaccination.
The only way that changes is if some new and extremely deadly variant is out there, but again past vaccinations are likely still helpful. Thus, regular vaccination deployment would be a pure win for travelers.
You are right as far as about half getting it, at least for the United States. Quite a few people who are not elderly or at risk get it. Here are the age breakdowns.
About 60% of the people under 18 get it [1]. Under 18 is about 25% of the population.
About 34% of 18-49 year olds get it. They make up about 42% of the population.
That makes under 18s who get flu vaccine about 15% of the population, and 18-49s who get flu vaccine about 14% of the population. If only 50% of the population get the flu vaccine, that would mean that 58% of the people getting flu vaccine are under 50.
I do not. I have never had a flu shot in my life.
You do not have to feel that you cannot live without pharmaceuticals. The value of a tetanus shot is obvious, but it can be something you choose, not something which you are burdened to bear as the price of birth. Depressive disorders are wholly a disease of our malignant society. I would encourage you to examine the work of Stephen Ildari, for it has helped me greatly. I encourage you to see what happens to you and your gf when you eat plants instead of processed <product>.
You can be more than a tax cattle, or someone else's paycheck, or the reflection of the vision and will of powerful strangers. You are still very young. Take control of who and what you are.
We should be celebrating science, the discovery and advancement of vaccines, and their ability to give immunity or strong protection against diseases that have previously debilitated individuals or worse.
The fact that I have never known anyone with Polio is because of the strong global efforts to irradiate the disease from the face of the planet. Tragically the anti-science and anti-vaccine messaging has made that not possible for covid... something that's already resulted in near equal death of WWII in just over a year and will only continue.
Are you saying that every covid vaccine has 100 % efficacy? ("everyone", "a vaccine"). AFAIK this is not true for any extant vaccine.
Meanwhile those who do choose to take it will hopefully be able to live a life largely free of these annoyances and dangers.
One specific thing I do find freeing about the vaccines is that I don't really need to worry about being asymptomatically infected and passing the disease onto others who are more vulnerable. I guess I could simply say "fuck those people", as many have done, but I guess for me, responsibility is a counterpart to freedom.
FWIW, Stephen Ilardi appears to support vaccination, so you may want to dig a little deeper into his thoughts around them.
Who is we? I don't consume caffeine or THC, don't eat much sugar or drink much alcohol, and don't remember taking painkillers at all in 2020 or 2021 so far. I don't use social media like FB or IG. I don't remember getting a flu shot ever, maybe in childhood and I forgot.
Despite telling the other commenter to chill, your comment is bafflingly aggressive. It's possible to live without drugs and social media and we should encourage that, not take for granted that everyone should be forced to use drugs just to socialize or eat sugar.
(I say this as someone who fortunately almost never gets sick. People who are often sick would relish this even more.)
Well the ONLY year of my life (I'm 33) I wasn't sick was 2020-2021. I think... the mask helped a lot. I feel like I understand now all these people telling me getting so sick every year wasn't normal...
Wild poliovirus has been eradicated in all continents except Asia, and as of 2020, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries where the disease is still classified as endemic.[5][6]
Polio certainly has been eliminated from the United States. The point is, polio is no longer a significant problem here.
So what is suddenly giving you pause here? Just the idea that these shots may be needed more regularly, rather than a few times during childhood?
Do you think we should return to a life in which we forage naked for berries in the forest?
Assuming the answer is no, where do you draw the line as to what technologies you're willing to accept, and which you aren't?
Why would anyone's vision for the future of humanity be an animal that can only exist in the context of an advanced civilization? Why would anyone's vision of humanity be an animal that is dependent for survival on <product> from <company> as though they were cattle? To reduce a human being to a dependent component of a pharmaceutical production chain is an abhorrent moral hazard.
Smallpox was made extinct, and other diseases may be made greatly reduced because they are unique to humanity. But the many coronaviruses are shared between mammals, and are an eternal component of the environment. We have a moral obligation to evolve to suit the environment. That is what it means to be a successful animal.
So tools as a whole are just... sins? How far down this line do you want us to go? No plastics? No computers? No structures? No roads? No clothes?
That is a textbook description of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, IMO. We are not very impressive without an advanced civilization.
Dolphins are evolutionarily unfit to occupy the niche they had back on land. The bacteria that precipitated the oxygen crisis were very successful until they weren't.
There are many reasons to care about environmental destruction, pollution, and the loss of biodiversity, but at the same time it's neither particularly rational nor natural to obsess about preserving exactly the niches which existed at a particular point in time, nor our fitness for them.
If civilization crumbles, then natural selection will take the reins and a lot of people will die, but that's not a goal we should aim for.
And we've done that by evolving our mental capacities and developing a wide range of tools that have enabled us to survive and prosper. We are apex predators of apex predators, to the point that we kill other predators for sport rather than food.
Stick me naked and toolless in the wilds of Siberia and I'd estimate my survival time in hours rather than days. Without our tools we're a pretty useless species that hasn't even evolved far enough to be able to walk on two legs without developing back pain, unlike penguins.
Vaccines taken once in a lifetime, or taken annually, or taken daily are just another tool. Why is this any worse than brushing your teeth, showering, taking medication or even getting dressed. If a doctor told you to take heart medication on a daily basis to stay alive, would you refuse on the grounds that it's better for humans to evolve hearts that are less prone to heart disease?
I'm not sure how any of this related to morality. What is your moral framework here?
However, if we accept it, the unique success of humanity clearly does not stem from blindly accepting whatever nature throws our way. Humanity's success, and defining characteristic is that we're able to bend nature to our will, and when that isn't possible, consciously bend ourselves.
The vaccines are another example, and the mRNA vaccines are incredible example of this. We engineered a way to use our own body as a factory.
Humanity's progress doesn't depend on giving up on technology, it depends on increasing our abilities with it. Evolution is too slow and too random, humanity can do better altering our own genome. If we survive, humanity will eventually be able to manipulate entire solar systems or even galaxies. Possibly the whole universe. That's our destiny, not dying of smallpox on our home planet.
Continually applying harsh selection criteria just homogenizes a population to a local maxima and leaves them vulnerable to future change.
By far the largest problem of any genetic pool (animals, plants, whatever) is not having enough genetic diversity in it. See: Cavendish bananas, the Tasmanian devil.
I doubt you do any of these things, because you aren't willing to accept the low chance of survival-to-adulthood that typical wild animals have. It may keep their genetics in tip top shape, but is that really what you want?