Now states are combating such hesitancy by drawing lottery for vaccinated folks.
Like, having this magic, absolutely mind boggling potion that prevents serious illness and death *isn't* already the lottery win of our lifetime??
People in India and elsewhere are dying because of lack of vaccines and here we have educated, first world countries struggle to get their citizens vaccinated.
Unfortunately shaming such people will only push them further into antivax territory.
Funny that you say that, I had the same thought when buying groceries last week. The cashier started telling me she'll never get it because it's being mandated to cull us and there's some secret database of deaths yada yada yada. Mind you I didn't ask. I felt sorry for her, even worried. She's a kind enough middle aged lady, she's been at the same grocery store for years. Somehow she's convinced that she's privy to some super secret knowledge only to be disclosed to a chosen few. It's like a nigerian email scam or Q thing.
I was a little worried because she could've gotten herself fired for talking like that to the wrong person who would get mad and tell the manager. I just smiled, nodded, spoke in a low tone and said "I used to think so too but THEY want us to think that way because it weakens America if people here keep getting covid while they're over it and starting to beat us economically. Our vaccine works the best so they're spreading propaganda to scare us from getting it" I have no idea if it helped but she at least seemed intrigued that I didn't roll my eyes or scold her.
People who get suckered into this stuff are in some imaginary role-play where they're the hero of the story, this article explains it. https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analy...
I hope it works. I've done some similar on reddit comments. It's hard not to want to hit them over the head though...
A lot of it boils down to people not trusting what they're seeing. Frankly, governments have done the world a disservice by speaking before they really had all the information at the start of the pandemic. In Canada at least an insane amount of what was said turned out to be completely false, or worse harmfully false (ie: no masks, isn't airborne, ect). As a result, lots of people see what looks like the "story changing", and distrust anything coming out of their government, and experts, at this point. I think if we approach the problem with that in mind we might win more people over than telling them "listen to experts", since for the past year and a half experts have been wrong almost as often as they have been right.
Changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in is a fundamental ability that underlies numerous activities from scientific research to debugging software to driving on a congested road network. Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus?
Would it really be preferable if policy remained frozen to whatever people thought best on day one?
The only thing students get is material presented as the truth that they have to faithfully accept. They are almost never taught how to deal with unreliable material. It made sense in the pre-internet age where finding information was the hard part, but now, it is the opposite: too much information. So we should focus more on how to filter it.
We had a "general knowledge" class in college and it was an important part of it. We had to make essays and presentations about random subjects and we were judged by our ability to synthesize and verify information. Copy-pasting was actually encouraged, and long as it was from a good source and presented in a way that isn't misleading.
The unfortunate thing is that we should have done exercises like that in primary school and not wait until college.
It is taught in schools, and taught young. The people who understand the scientific method have been doing it every year since the sixth grade. They did science fair projects, etc.
I just looked up modern educational standards, and kids are taught in grade six the scientific method and how to execute experiments using it.
The problem is, lots of people suck at school. They didn't care about it and their parents didn't care about it, so they didn't retain anything. There are an awful lot of adults in society that couldn't pass a fifth grade math test.
You don't even need to follow a 'scientific method' for that.
The ability to embrace uncertainty is hard to learn, but one that we all should strive for. One that should be praised and lauded.
A politician, leader or CEO making a bad decision on a wrong premis, and publicly acknowledges the mistake (and learns from it), is now often end-of-career. This is toxic. Because such mistakes are a fact of life and the best teacher.
I think the inability to accept uncertainty in the world is, unfortunately, a big reason conspiracies thrive.
Too frightening to grok that a random virus can emerge and maybe kill us all or at least turn society upside down? There’s a conspiracy that makes it an easy “good guys vs. bad guys” story for you.
Because when it comes to persuading hundreds of millions of people, it is often better to be certain than to be right or to flip-flop. That's a fact of leadership, regardless of whether you or I as scientists like it.
Also, they didn't just revise their statements with new information, they actively lied (the no masks thing) in a paternalistic way to deceive people into thinking they didn't need masks (so the masks would stay available for front-line medical staff).
That plan obviously backfired terribly.
The moment a governor goes in front of cameras saying "no need to hoard toilet paper" is the moment right when everybody rushes and hoards toilet paper. So they tried saying "toilet paper does not work". (Not literally, but I'm using it as a metaphor for masks, obviously.) That strategy backfired a bit, but worked better than outright saying "Don't buy masks cause front-line workers need them". Had they said that then next day front-line workers wouldn't have gotten any.
The only alternative I see is to remove the necessary supplies from the free market and put them under government control so that front line workers get them no matter what the mob does. But in freedom land, the free market is holy, so that doesn't work over there.
That's not the problem. Arrogance is the problem. We were led to believe that X was established scientific consensus one week and ¬X the next. Real science has error bars and confidence intervals. If you're projecting from a small amount of data, the responsible thing to do is to disclose how uncertain your conclusions are.
(Edit: maybe the real science did have confidence intervals; the public communication certainly didn't though.)
Secondly, we had many clear contradictions over the past year. How can it be dangerous to attend an outdoor soccer game but safe to attend a BLM protest? How can it be shamefully unsafe to walk past someone in a corridor without masks and 6ft of social distancing but totally fine to sit and eat in a restaurant for an unbounded amount of time?
Also it really doesn't help public trust when for example Fauci openly admits that he lied to the public about mask efficacy to preserve supplies for hospitals, but of course now you can trust him to be telling the truth on this other thing here.
They didn’t lie, they made a mistake. And when it became apparent they changed the advice.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
Perhaps if our masters in government had heeded the story of "the boy who cried wolf", then things might have been different.
I’m not saying that’s what I believe, but if you’re admitting that we’re “changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in”, that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions.
We have to make the best decision for ourselves and the society around us based on the best knowledge we have. Yes science always allows for things to be disproven, but if we follow your logic we’d not use any medicines or treatments. Come on.
Just saying that we can’t be too hard on the folks that are a little hesitant with the vaccine as things evolve. Simply have a bit of empathy, at least for folks that are simply uncertain about how to handle things for themselves and their family (vs. those trying to stop the world from getting vaccinated).
I’m fully vaccinated, but I know some that I wouldn’t consider “antivaxx” but are just not sure about this one for them/their families, and I’m trying not to be judgmental of them.
I would also like you to consider, that many of the anti-vaxx community, as virologists by profession. Many find the risks associated with vaccines (not just Covid19 but all), as often outweighing the benefits they purport to provide.
My family and I won't be getting the vaccine for many reasons (we have several professional medical practitioners in the family by the way). One being, we know someone directly involved in creating a mRNA-based vaccine at a large gov-funded biotech co.: their job on the project was based on proving that their employer did undertake the burden of attempting to get the compound that surrounds the mRNA bits and keeps them stable inside the solution, to pass through the human or other mammalian system. Here's the kicker, they can't, and everybody in the business knows they can't (at least not yet), as they've been unable to get this compound out of the blood and organs once introduced. It is synthesized largely from plants, so they consider it "natural". :-D But the truth is, we don't have any data on long term exposure and retention of this compound inside of our blood stream, organs, and other tissues. The mRNA-based vaccines would not have passed scrutiny had they not been granted emergency approval, and yes they've been working on them for a decade+.
We surely don’t - but we have more data than a year ago. And a year from now we’ll have even more
Let's take the current debate over the "lab leak" hypothesis as an example. A large amount of the evidence, both for and against the lab leak hypothesis dates back to March/April/May of 2020. Yet, when the lab leak hypothesis was raised around that time period, it was immediately and vociferously dismissed by the media as a racist ploy to distract from the government's shambolic handling of the pandemic. When the hypothesis was raised again, this year, it was treated as a serious possibility that deserved a full and thorough investigation.
What changed? It wasn't the evidence -- the evidence has been present all along. What changed was the political environment that suddenly made it possible to speak of a lab leak without sounding like tinfoil-hatted crackpot. As a result, now this previously unmentionable hypothesis is now getting its due consideration by the media.
However, the media isn't admitting that a change occurred. Instead, what the average person is seeing is mainstream media outlets shifting seamlessly from, "The lab leak hypothesis is a racist lie," to "The lab leak hypothesis is a serious allegation that deserves a thorough investigation." It's like the scene from 1984, where the Inner Party representative switches seamlessly mid-speech from discussing the ongoing war against Eurasia to the ongoing war against Eastasia.
We saw a similar phenomenon take place last year over masks. There were warnings about the virus being airborne as far back as January of 2021. As late as March, you had Time magazine saying that wearing a mask was "superstitious behavior" [1]. Over the next two to three weeks, the advice rapidly shifted, from "masks are a sign of unreasonable paranoia" to "masks are mandatory, and anyone not wearing them is putting everyone around them in danger". Was that due to a shift in the evidence? No. As noted above, there was ample warning that the virus was airbone, and many people were taking appropriate precautions even in the absence of official guidance. What shifted was the political environment.
Moreover, then, just as now, no media outlet ever admitted that it had given incorrect advice. There were individual journalists who (to their credit) admitted a certain level of responsibility, but, as far as I know, no major mainstream media outlet has come forward and said, "You know what? We screwed up, and we apologize." Instead , we see silent corrections that rewrite the past without admitting any kind of fault. Heck, just compare the headline on the Time article today [2] to the headline on the archived version. The headline was silently updated with a much more moderate point, and a caveat about changing CDC guidance was added. But there was no formal correction published anywhere that said, "You know that article we printed last week about masks being bogus? Yeah, that was wrong, and we're sorry."
Honestly, after seeing the performance of the media in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, I'm surprised that more people aren't as cynical about the "official story" as the cashier in the sibling thread.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200305052928/https://time.com/...
Now, maybe its reactance, but i believe the zoonose more likely.
Similarly, the presence of the "furin cleavage site", which supposedly makes the virus ideal for spreading in humans is less significant than it appears. There are numerous other coronaviruses which have the same feature, and it's plausible that SARS-COV-2 picked up the feature via recombination somewhere on its way to becoming a virus that spread primarily among humans.
But all that is beside the point. The point is that many voices that took on the air of authority during the pandemic changed their view for no reason other than shifts in the broader political climate. It has made people suspicious and frustrated with the experts, which then leads them to embrace crackpot theories peddled by those who (correctly) point out that the authoritative sources in the media have been lying to them.
The solution, as I see it, isn't that the media should get its facts and story right the first time. That's impossible, especially in a fast-changing situation like the early stages of a global pandemic. What the media (and by "the media", I mean major newspapers like the New York Times, and major news outlets, like CNN) ought to be doing is stating clearly when one of their stories contradicts a story that they've published in the past, and stating clearly the reason for the contradiction. "We were wrong about masks, because we misinterpreted a directive to preserve masks for emergency workers as meaning that masks were ineffective," would have gone a long way towards helping convince mask skeptics about the need for masks when the media suddenly reversed its advice.
Not only did they take an air of authority, they also actively censored contrary opinions. Twitter, facebook, youtube...
"Lab-leak" is non-sensical in all forms which don't begin with "lab evolved/bioengineered" and while not completely implausible, the methodology for selective rapid-evolution of a virus requires the exact same conditions as are trivially recreated in the population and human-animal contact regime of greater China.
That's exactly the allegation circa March 2020 though: scientists collect various bat-borne coronaviruses (e.g. RaTG13) in Yunnan province around 2013, evolve one of them at the Wuhan Institute of Virology though gain-of-function research, and then due to lax safety protocols end up accidentally leaking an evolved virus in late 2019. For example, see this podcast from a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
> ... no media outlet ever admitted that it had given incorrect advice... Instead, we see silent corrections that rewrite the past without admitting any kind of fault.
As I read this I was overcome with the realization that I have more discipline editing my 2-3 point HN comments--labeling new remarks, striking out original text instead of deleting it outright, and so on--than do professional journalists from the New York Times or Washington Post editing national news stories. Unbelievable... and unforgivable.
Note: I'm fully-vaccinated with Pfizer, but got severe palpitations for days after the first and second shots (which are symptoms of myocarditis), my wife had the same plus a pretty rapid heartbeat for 3 days, and I also got some never seen before skin issues (extreme dryness of certain areas of the skin.
Fully-vaccinated people still an spread the viruses, just not as well as unvaccinated, and people who went thru the course of the disease probably should not get vaccinated as they get a better protection (immune to more than the spike protein), and should spare the doses for the billions still unvaccinated. The drive to vaccinated people who had COVID-19 was an economical and political, not scientific. Removing the face mask mandate early is also non-scientific, but political and economical. So, why should we blindly trust authorities? The vaccine manufacturers have no liability, their practically have emergency use authorizations, not approvals either.
Using certified masks (like in some European countries), getting adequate Vitamin D3 (along with vitamin K), and zinc with zinc ionophores should have been #1 priority, but this basica and benign prophylaxis has been totally underplayed, which also contributes to the lack of trust in the government.
I think you nailed it on the head there. Really the number one priority should be to stay the hell out of the medical system. Once you're in the medical system, you know you've fucked up (or just had an accident, whichever). My wife is a triage nurse now after 20 years bedside, and spends her days trying to talk people, who are calling their doctors to get a magic pill, into changing their lifestyles (diet largely) so that they don't require a pill. Most often, these people are not interested in a no-pill solution. They are happy to keep treating the problem, especially since most of them seem to be highly uninformed by the negative long-term health consequences of the meds they're taking. We have a close friend whose long-term doctor just prescribed her statins, for a flutter which was noted by her Apple Watch. She and her family, has no history of heart or other health issues. Actually, she's in her 60s and has never even had the flu or as much as a cold, until Cov19 got her in Feb. of 2020. They did not draw any blood work, but she had an echocardiagram which came back clean. When she asked the doctor why he would prescribe statins without doing any blood work, or having any other evidence, he said "this has become our standard procedure for anyone reporting a flutter or palpatation, plus those Apple Watches are very accurate!". I shit you not. This is the medical establishment we're all trying to stay healthy despite of.
And the experts haven't been wrong for a year and a half, the experts were working with bad or incomplete data for a few months. Their advice for the past year, wear masks, socially distance, get the vaccine, has been correct.
What happened to the Precautionary Principle?
If people used masks properly, I wouldn't have much of an argument, but they don't, so I do.
You have just chosen to believe some idiotic conspiracy theory and are grasping at some vaguely plausible objection to continue holding that belief.
The "environment that the masks are designed for" is the same Euclidean 3D space containing the same air as all other environments.
Stories of children either passing out or dying because they were required to wear masks during track outdoors. Or hell, walking my normal pace (quite fast), I breathe pretty heavily and the amount of oxygen my body takes in with a mask is markedly reduced versus when I'm not wearing one. It is a stark difference, and one I hope I never have to experience again due to disproportionate government and private business mandates rooted in paranoia around the most absurdly low risk levels for the majority of age groups.
Do you have any citations for these events, because they seem to be absurd misinformation.
The country I'm in (Singapore) has legally required masks in public since last year (as have many other countries) so everyone is wearing masks, and so far, I have not heard of a single case of people suffering due to wearing masks.
In fact, I even wear my mask when I go running and I have never felt any significant issues with breathing, even after hours of vigorous exercise.
If masks could reliably cause breathing issues in any significant way, given the number of people in the world who are wearing masks every day, we should expect a statistically significant number of such cases, not just a few cherry-picked anecdotes.
(2) After Multiple Deaths, Officials Call for No Masks in Gym Class https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005609/after-multiple-deaths...
(3) Oregon high school junior breaks 800-meter school record and falls face-first at finish line as mask restricts breathing https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1387212971399540737
(4) New Jersey driver crashes car after passing out from wearing N95 mask https://nypost.com/2020/04/24/driver-crashes-car-after-passi...
(5) Medical Doctor Warns that “Bacterial Pneumonias Are on the Rise” from Mask Wearing https://www.globalresearch.ca/medical-doctor-warns-bacterial...
Enjoy! :)
Your initial answer does not disprove or refute their more nuanced response, which very much does matter on this subject.
I was educated to fear more those who are never wrong.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/coronavirus/study-one-age-...
They were doing the best they could to manage a crisis that it was their job to manage in an unprecedented situation. If people expected them to have perfect answers and solutions, they had unrealistic expectations.
The archetype of a current anti-covid-vaxxer is one who had no problem getting their kids vaccinated for polio, for DTAP, the chickenpox, and usually had no hesitation about getting the annual flu shot.
These people are categorically different, and much more numerous, than the tinfoil-hat-vaccines-cause-autism crowd.
One should surmise that the motivations are also categorically different, and I think you'll find if you actually speak to them, that distrust of the enormous governmental and institutional pressure is a significant factor.
Really? At least around here, flu vaccination rates aren't very high. I don't have data, but there's plenty of potential for overlap between anti-covid-vaxxers and people who don't get flu shots (most of which are perfectly normal).
The expected value of getting a vaccine is very high, but people choose not to anyway, presumably due to misinformation or miscalculation.
Lotteries here are exploiting miscalculations of expected value to incentivize behavior (0.1% of saving my life? phaw, but $100 expected value?!).
It feels a bit like patching a security bug with its own vulnerability.
COVID-19 being old news makes the risk appear much smaller than it is.
Of course we ideally should also take into account the community benefits, but even on a personal level it is a net plus.
No, because a lot of people trust their friends or personal gurus more than any scientist or research. It doesn't matter what crap their social bubble is filled with, they can relate more to it.
I was at a loss of words...
Why do people still have to attack religion?
Because religions are still dangerous animals, if you would indulge this metaphor. Just because we managed to declaw and tame one (values of Enlightenment supplanting values of Christianity), it does not mean that we can treat all of them imprudently.
I suggest that you are arguing from the point-of-view that "my $ANIMAL is well-behaved and has not and would not hurt anyone". Is that true?
Removing religion completely has been tried in a larger scale experiment in the Soviet Union and the results were very much worse than the most barbaric religions.
When arguing about religion one shouldn't forget that they have a number of good attributes as well.
Otherwise you are just fighting against a straw man and then it is no wonder why you win every single time : )
Besides:
> Just because we managed to declaw and tame one (values of Enlightenment supplanting values of Christianity)
This is putting the cart before the horse.
It wasn't enlightenment that ended blood revenge, brought herbs and fruits and medicine and and and to Europe.
It was monks.
Enlightenment grew out of the fertile soil of literacy and surplus and relative peace and quiet that this created, not the other way around.
What am I supposed to say here? "Good thing I'm not Stalin"? Just because he's against religion, too, does not mean I want to use his methods.
> When arguing about religion one shouldn't forget that they have a number of good attributes as well.
I've heard that often, but that argument isn't very good. When the $ANIMAL mauls the offspring, one does not reminisce about how well it plays fetch, this does not counter-weight or undo the damage.
It is entirely possible to have the good attributes (let's say social cohesion or introspective peace of mind) entirely divorced from the gods-and-religion business (let's say by joining the local ping-pong club or taking up a meditative practice). I posit there is no attribute that uniquely belongs to religion and cannot be had otherwise.
> [monks] ended blood revenge, brought herbs and fruits and medicine and and and to Europe.
That result is a function of smart and persuasive people, not a function of belief in and worship of Yahweh. Mentally substitute the monks for hypothetical missionaries adhering to Voltaire/Smith/Kant &c., we could imagine the result is similar, just without the gods-and-religion business.
> Enlightenment grew out of the fertile soil of literacy and surplus and relative peace and quiet that this created, not the other way around.
I did not say that this fertile soil grew out of Enlightenment. I said that values of Enlightenment supplanted values of Christianity.
Maybe you should then extend the same courtesy to us who have religions too then? After all most of us aren't Spanish inquisitors.
> Mentally substitute the monks for hypothetical missionaries adhering to Voltaire/Smith/Kant &c., we could imagine the result is similar, just without the gods-and-religion business.
Yeah and if cats were dogs they would bark.
Mentally substitute Nelson Mandela with Hitler and South Africa wouldn't have a Nobel prize winner.
> I didn't say
No, but you said:
> Just because we managed to declaw and tame one (values of Enlightenment supplanting values of Christianity)
I'm pointing out that the peace came with Christianity.
There was no need to "declaw" Christianity.
Absolutely, and I hope you can recognize the price that society has paid as a result.
With all but one preaching peace, and not hate, please explain.
Just because you aren't evil doesn't mean the rest of us will happily accept that you can argue from a position where everything bad a religious person said or did is held against us while simultaneously nothing bad that non-religious people did can be held against you.
Choose one option.
I know this is hard but this isn't young atheists debate club.
We are real humans and some of us have experienced too much good to just let you or others try to tear it apart.
Oh ffs evidence plz.
Hmm yes that's a time the catholics created that most don't agree with. It's widely considered a time when evil ruled the religions. And biblically there will be religions that do not follow what is preached. Which is what I said. Nowhere in Catholicism or Christianity does it preach hate or war. Now how people interpret things are up to them.
> Ahlam Tamimi bombing
This would be that one religion preaching that if people don't convert, kill them.
> wars of suppression against Bön
I have not read the Bonop canon, so can't speak for this. This could either be a group not listening to their faith, or yet another preaching hate.
Then explain how religion is not used to control (read: enforce moral standards).
God himself throws a temper and kills entire cities when they don't obey him, like any good dad would do, am I right? Murder their kids if they misbehave... (Sodom/Gomorrah).
Cause that’s the whole story right? Both of those cities weren’t destroying humanity at the time right? Have you read the part about cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin? Do you understand that saying your human body is who you are is equivalent to saying your name defines you? Do you understand religion at all other than some minor studying you’ve not really done?
> Assume for a minute that you don't believe in God. Then explain how religion is not used to control (read: enforce moral standards).
Is this how you also explain laws? As control? What about discipline? Is this also control? Clearly both are. Do you now understand how control != bad? What argument are you trying to make exactly? Anarchy? But you'll also note, in religion it's said you will try to not sin and fail. And always be forgiven. So there's no punishment here. None. So you're arguing against discipline, laws, morality and civilization in general.
1 Corinthians 14:34
1 Corinthians 11:5-9
I don't know, why do people still have to do that?
Next question, why are you spot picking the negatives for females but not males?
Final question, do you know at all the story as to why these restrictions are in place?
90-95% reduction of risk.
Maybe even greater reduction of serious disease?
Most common side effect people seem to talk about is something like fatigue and fever for a day or two after a shot?
That's a pretty good tradeoff. Especially when you consider that getting large populations vaccinated pretty much ends the pandemic.
Only in 60+ patients with co-morbidity.
The bug is statistically less dangerous to that group, but it is still pretty dangerous.
> Only in 60+ patients with co-morbidity.
That's false. See [1] for data on deaths by age in the US. There's about 115,000 deaths in the age groups < 65 as of May 2021.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
Digging into the <60yo cohort, it's shockingly uncommon to find one who wasn't obese.
A year of largely ineffective masking hysteria and not one noteworthy public health figure suggested putting down the donut to reduce the risk of death from COVID-19.
We shuttered gyms and discouraged outdoor activity instead.
Great point. The overweight should have just lost 50 pounds in 30 days.
We welcome any better suggestions. Have you ever tried to have a respectful, adult discussion based on facts with antivaxers?
The flu vaccine very very rarely causes vasculitis and almost all cases resolve favorably. One meta study of the literature identified 65 cases ever.
Meanwhile it's not unusual to see 20-60k annual deaths in the United States.
Statistically not getting a flu vaccination for fear of vasculitis is like not wearing a seat belt in case one wants to escape the car quickly in case one happens to get out quick in case you decide to drive into a lake today.
You have misunderstood the figures on flu vaccinations. It's commonly 30-60% effective at preventing infection. If this was just true about the under 65 it would still mean fewer under 65 able to spread it to 65+ but fortunately it isn't true.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-benefits.htm
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_requirements_for_i...
So as per your wiki article no country is requiring them. So really not sure what you’re talking about. There are absolutely some vaccines required for travel, but COVID is not one of them. Just like influenza and a whole host of other vaccines.
The EU one I think allows for immunity from catching covid so if you are anti vax and want to go that route you can.
At the time vaccine rollout began we weren’t sure of this effect, but the evidence from places like Israel is showing it pretty well.
I find that Black Mirror level dystopian personally.
What about me, should I risk shot number two now that I've seen a flame heme show up on a routine retina scan just yesterday and am reading that this is one of the things they are seeing increase from the AZ vaccine? Will I be limited in travel and employment if I don't?
Also suddenly we care about how much tax revenue we spend?
The idea isn't remotely new, and is nothing so odious as critics claim
I think schools and colleges requiring vaccination are also offering accommodations (distance learning, etc.) to avoid legal fights, while if the vaccines were fully authorized they would not.
This is only a technical, legal distinction. They have been administered rapidly to a significant fraction of the population; their specific legal status is mostly irrelevant at this point.
They are GA in practice, the release has been cut and people are running it. Paper pushers slapping an ass-covering "beta" on the splash screen are behind the times.
From the viewpoint of a healthy young person, the risk/reward ratio of taking a vaccine is bad.
Absolutely false. The disease can and does have severe and sometimes long-lasting impacts on young healthy people. The mRNA vaccines don't have any impact worse than a sore arm.
And we aren't getting to a herd immunity level of vaccination if young people are unvaccinated.
Lets not go too far with statements like that. People with history of allergic reactions are told to not take it, and the Pfizer–BioNTech mRNA has a rate of about eleven cases per million doses of vaccine administered.
As with any medicine, there are a risk/reward aspect to it. If you take a over-the-counter pain pill there is a small but detectable risk of getting a serious side effect. Most people still take it because the reward out weight the risk.
I would rather go with the carrot then the stick when it comes to getting people vaccinated. Getting a vaccination protects against some of the really unlucky consequences of covid, including permanent injuries like decreased lung capacity. The risk involving the vaccine is to my understanding much lower, so the math comes out in favor of the vaccine.
Then they should not get the vaccine and be shielded by herd immunity. There are also several other illnesses which are not compatible with vaccinations but the number of those people are small. So healthy people should partake in the vaccination as for them, the risk-reward ratio is definitely worth it.
How can you make this decision for someone else?
Do you know everybody’s medical condition? Are you a physician or nurse in any way? You’re just regurgitating Fauci’s ramblings without regard to individuals concerns demanding they get the vaccine. How many people do you think you’ve convinced to get the vaccine?
Does a layperson know about how his/her condition is relevant to vaccination? No. They will ask a doctor about that - who will give them an answer whether they can or can’t get the vaccine. And I’m not even living in the US, I’m just not crazy and know that it is the only way to protect ourselves and our community.
Hmm, maybe this is what you do, but do you really thing everybody goes to the Dr for everything? Some people are well within the means of deciding for themselves, some not. And when you have the “top” Dr in the nation failing to build trust by opening his mouth before he’s sure then all sane people have is themselves. It’s insane to me how many people blindly trust the vaccine when we have new information nearly weekly about how it effects different cohorts differently. But we’re sure it’s safe right? No, the reality is people don’t care if someone gets the vaccine and dies, “just do your duty”. I’m good.
The context that we were discussing was "achieved herd immunity, epidemic goes away". In that context the healthy young people do not get any severe and long-lasting impacts, because they don't get the disease at all, thanks to the herd immunity provided by mass vaccinations.
> And we aren't getting to a herd immunity level of vaccination if young people are unvaccinated.
This is true. If you were to say "it's your responsibility to take a vaccine, even though the risk/reward ratio is bad", then that would be an argument that I would respect. However, that's not the argument you're making. You're trying to claim that the risk/reward ratio from a personal standpoint is good, which I disagree with.
> The mRNA vaccines don't have any impact worse than a sore arm.
This is false. I personally know people who have had considerable side effects from the vaccine ("getting sick").
That said, I'm personally taking the vaccine today.
This is just logically untrue. The absolute most you can claim is that "these vaccines don't have any impact worse than a sore arm, that we know of, within the 18 month period that they've been available". Neither you nor anyone else can speak to long-term effects until we wait it out and see, nevermind true "unknown unknowns".
Even vaccines provide reduced protection from new variants. I read today that most effective vaccine only provides a ~70% chance or so of protection from the Delta variant in the UK. Hence the talk of booster shots before the initial vaccines were rolled out.
Herd immunity comes from vaccination. It's not really feasible for it to occur naturally because the virus will continue to mutate and reinfect people indefinitely.
Not taking a vaccine if you’re young and healthy is a purely selfish move. Not taking a vaccine should be reserved for only those people who cannot take a vaccine: those who are far too young, or who are immunocompromised. Everyone else should vaccinate to protect the truly vulnerable.
I fully agree! So be honest and make that argument! Don't say "taking this vaccine is good for you", be honest and say "taking this vaccine is not necessarily that good for you, but we all have a responsibility to do it, and then we all benefit from herd immunity".
Why does this always resort to force and control? Do you really not understand how that just turns people off?
It's crazy to me that I see more insane opinions on HN about this than on reddit. Always considered HN a more rational crowd but I'm very disappointed by the users in this thread.
I wish that was the point, but it's not. You can see in this very thread people who are disingenuously arguing that the personal risk/reward ratio of these vaccines is good, as opposed to arguing for moral duty.
By potentially harming myself? Who exactly charged me with this duty and was it by my choice?
Do you assume that HN harbors the same groupthink that reddit does? Do you not want discourse? Do you assume all others believe what you believe (that we have some obligation to potentially harm ourselves for the good of the many thing)? That’s exactly what I love about HN, that thing called diversity.
Also your attempt to shame me into alignment of your believes failed.
You are right, all those children 60 years ago shouldn't have gotten the polio vaccine, look at them now, being disabled and whatnot, that vaccine was super risky /s
Even for healthy young people, the risk of the vaccine is orders and orders of magnitude less than the risk of the virus. This is true almost by construction, because it's strictly less spike protein.