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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

I am pro-vaccine (and fully vaccinated), but I don't support this policy at all.

I don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate, I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations in NYC who already have a bad/mistrustful relationship with health care and government, and it is obviously a huge new governmental intrusion into our daily lives. It might well lead to anger and violence (as similar moves have across Europe).

These are my opinions, but I think the strongest arguments against it are facts: if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2. And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

This policy comes from an almost hysterical fixation on "cases", which are not a metric of any meaning. SARS-CoV2 is not going away. We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC, thanks to the very high vaccination rate amongst the vulnerable population:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-trends.pag...

One can certainly argue that there exist small groups of people for whom the vaccine is not perfect protection. This is true, but it's no different than all other viruses, which have threatened immunocompromised people forever. We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals. So while I empathize with them, this still seems like over-reach to me.

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> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

Terrible first order logic. The threat from the virus is not only immediate risk to the individual, it is also further transmissions increasing the risk of creating new breakthrough variants. Every infected person is a gamble that risks nullifying the effectiveness of vaccines, so the goal must be to bring down infections as strongly as possible.

>We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals

we should have. Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous. Maybe this finally shakes people awake and puts public health and safety to the top of the agenda rather than people throwing tantrums like children about government incursion.

edit: and another point I forgot, with such a significant unvaccinated population we will very likely see surges in admissions in winter again. Public health resources are limited. Unnecessary Covid hospitalizations cause immense opportunity cost in the form of crowding out care and driving costs. Which in many cases other sick people and the public will have to carry.

Won’t there always be a variant popping up somewhere in some part of the world though?

The idea that “if we all got vaccinated, we could have zero variants” reeks of “zero COVID” thinking

More unvaccinated people -> more people getting covid -> more chances for mutation into variants

It's really that simple. We want as few active infections as possible globally so that existing vaccinations can work for the variants they were made in mind with. Otherwise we will be at the disadvantage in a perpetual arms race trying to quickly stamp out the global "fires" of new variants.

In a world where the delta variant can infect fully vaccinated people fairly easily, aren’t the vaccinated the real problem? The unvaccinated aren’t putting any particular pressure on the virus when it comes to evolving around the vaccines, but the vaccinated are.

Unless we could magically get the cases to zero this problem isn’t going away. Mask mandates will slow things, but eventually you’ll need enough people to actually get infected to drop the replication rate.

Variants occur in both unvaccinated and the vaccinated.

Given enough time, a virus will tend evolve to become more infectious period.

Somebody else could confirm this, but it seems to me that the current known variants of concern are not responses to vaccination.

Only the vaccinated will preferentially evolve variants that are resistant to the vaccine. The vaccines are leaky, as evidenced by the recent outbreak in the Northeast. A saner strategy with leaky vaccines is to vaccinate the small population that is vulnerable and let the rest of the population of develop a natural herd immunity. Otherwise you are creating a fitness advantage to resistant strains.

This is not how it works, and "natural" herd immunity has never been a real concept in epidemiology - which it is clear you are speculating on without bothering to read about but should also be trivially obvious from the fact that until vaccines none of the vaccine preventable diseases ever went extinct on their own.

Or how the flu hits every single year.

> Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity.

Right from wikipedia.

It is misleading though, since this definition is merely ‘flattening the curve’ for the rest of human life, and accepting the increased death rate every year. By contrast, a successful vaccination effort also ‘flattens the curve,’ but additionally substantially reduces the rate of deaths. The latter is what we have observed happen with high confidence in the vaccinated population for COVID: deaths of vaccinated individuals is much less common than for unvaccinated (back of napkin math seems to currently be somewhere between 100-1000 to 1 across most age ranges)

Yes, and wikipedia is not the study of epidemiology.

Epidemiology as a field did not publish papers or study the idea of "natural" herd immunity till last year when politicians started throwing the term around and a whole lot of researcher's scrambled to see whether this insanity had any merit.

Of which the answer is what we already knew just spelled out more specifically: no, this doesn't actually happen in the wild without vaccines, because it's literally just spreading the virus. Viruses burn themselves out after infecting basically everyone, provided immunity is long lasting.

I don't think when people talked about herd immunity they meant that the coronavirus would be wiped out, just that it'd get the replication rate down to a manageable level. Just like those diseases that vaccines wiped out, the young would always be at risk of being infected. In this case though, the young (babies excepted) are also fairly protected from it getting serious.

This is incredibly wrong.

Evolution is incremental. To become vaccine evading, the virus has to have a host it can replicate it, and a host that is a resistant target.

In fact it needs a big pool of them, since once infected develop immunity they no longer produce trial mutations.

So you need a pool of the unvaccinated, coming into frequently, regular contact with the vaccinated in order for any specific vaccine escape to evolve.

This is because, any incremental improvement needs to become a population dominant strain within the unvaccinated population: that you survived in a vaccinated person for a little bit is irrelevant if at the end of the day every virus with that trait dies without spreading.

Even if you successfully do spread from a vaccinated host, you need to either land in another vaccinated host (who then spreads you around: so isolation measures are effective), and while you're doing this you need to develop a better escape system: not guaranteed, because if overall viral loading or time to immunity is shorter, that's less time to generate variants.

But...a good way to optimize this, is to just spread to a pool of unvaccinated people. With luck you retain the vaccine-escape mutations, become dominant within the unvaccinated pool, and then get lots of opportunities to try and infect vaccinated people and get a little further.

This, incidentally, why viral evolution tends to consist of "the virus jumped between species several times" - because crossing a species barrier requires ongoing persistent contact between a host you can replicate it, and one you're trying to cross over into.

> To become vaccine evading, the virus has to have a host it can replicate it, and a host that is a resistant target.

Can you please explain more?

Why can't both hosts A and B both be vaccinated folks?

Is'nt there a 3rd category - those who have immunity via past infection? How do it work in that case?

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If what you say above is correct, then why do we see new strains in flu?

Has'nt pretty much every person on earth been exposed to flu or vaccinated against it?

If host A and B are both vaccinated, then either the virus has achieved vaccine escape (it is spreading amongst the vaccinated population effectively), or if it hasn't then it still dies out.

If 1 vaccinated person infects another say 3, but then those people fail to infect anyone else - then it doesn't actually matter what selective advantages that viral strain had - 100% of the virus has died out.

But if the same chain terminates in the vaccinated people then infecting an unvaccinated person...then the new mutation escapes and potentially becomes dominant within the reservoir (unvaccinated people) and a failure to spread through the vaccinated population doesn't lead to the destruction of the mutant strain.

thank you for explaining this. Is there some literature that provides a reasonably clear explanation ( ELI5) around this.

the next question is what happens to those with acquired immunity, and why are they being forced to be vaccinated?

I see many studies that show that their levels of antibodies seem to be even better than ones from the vaccines.

Right, but aren't you assuming that the delta variant can't go from vaccinated to vaccinated effectively? I don't think we really have solid data on this yet but it seems possible, at the very least.

If that is happening, and the R0 from vaccinated to vaccinated is above 1, aren't we creating immense evolutionary pressure to defeat the current vaccines?

If you actually want that, then you need some kind of megaproject to build vaccine factories to supply the entire world and to distribute them to the whole world's population. This virus doesn't respect borders.

Yes in fact, that's the core of what a lot of people have been wanting by trying to get an IP waiver from the WTO. You don't even need new factories, as there's tons of factories out there that are itching to make the various vaccines.

It was my understanding that the developing world doesn’t have the required infrastructure nor qualified workers to manufacture the complex covid vaccines. So the whole patent point is moot.

Your understanding is incorrect, hence the ongoing process for the WTO waiver. Even the mRNA vaccines aren't that crazy, it's a culture of e. coli that's been genetically engineered to produce the vaccines; the manufacturing steps themselves are pretty run of the mill bio reactor stuff with slightly more stringent temperature controls on the tail end. The non mRNA vaccines are pretty much equivalent to any other standard vaccine.

With an IP waiver, you make it less likely you'll have a vaccine for the next one, defeating the entire purpose.

No you don't; the vaccines were funded almost entirely with public money anyway.

Their manufacture was. The mRNA research was a huge private bet (after some companies had given up).

The largest source of Moderna's R&D funding was nearly $1B in grants from the US Government.

This has already happened. There's a world organization distributing millions of vaccines, and soon billions.

the dynamic is a feedback loop in either direction. More vaccinations means slowdown of spread which means slower rate of mutation and in turn easier ways to control the virus. Faster transmission means faster rate of mutations and having a harder time controlling the virus.

'Zero covid' or near-zero covid anyway does not 'reek' because it is perfectly attainable. The virus could be squashed pretty much completely. The fact that we cannot do it is the result of institutionalized failure, resignation and normalization of dysfunction, not actually a matter of fact.

We have in fact eradicated one highly transmittable, airborne virus through a global vaccination effort already, namely smallpox. And that was almost half a century ago.

Haven’t we seen several recent papers suggesting animal reservoirs for the virus? If those papers are correct, it seems that elimination from the Earth is never going to happen (well, it’ll happen when the sun turns into a red giant).

> We have in fact eradicated one highly transmittable, airborne virus through a global vaccination effort already, namely smallpox. And that was almost half a century ago.

Exactly. It was half a century ago when the global population was half what it is today and travel (especially international) was massively lower as well. Also Smallpox had a much lower mutation rate than COVID does, and it's not transmissable until obvious symptoms develop (much different than COVID). Thinking the same strategy would work today is kind of a pipe dream.

>The virus could be squashed pretty much completely.

In Korea, we tried, succeeded for a couple of weeks, then failed.

A core difference is the smallpox vaccine had/has sterilizing immunity while the covid vaccines do not. I think given non-sterilizing immunity and the rate and scale of global vaccine roll outs, zero covid is virtually impossible.

This point needs to be stated more loudly.

People here pretend that if only USA was 100% vaccinated, then there will not be another variant.

There will always be another part of the world where a variant will arise, and eventually make its way here to the US.

OTOH, the USA is unique in the freedom it offers compared to any other country in the world, and a key ingredient in my opinion to its success.

One of the most shocking aspects to me is how the US citizens have changed to so nonchalantly willing to give away their freedoms and those of their neighbours.

I would not have believed if someone told me this 2 years ago.

And in the past years, I had often wondered about the 'good' Germans during the time of the Nazis, and why they did'nt first lift a finger when the atrocities against the Jews started, and later, a good number of them actively participated in elimination of the Jews.

the last year has been quite an eye opener. My hope is that more US citizens, regardless of their political persuasions and belief about the vaccines step back and think about the uniqueness of the freedoms they enjoy, and their willingness to throw it all away.

Most people's moral framework isn't deontological, fortunately for everyone.

And that's why governments managed to kill over a hundred million people in the past century, because they convinced people it was for some "Greater good".

Are you comparing vaccines and masks to genocide?

Are you intentionally missing the point?

The mindset of fear that is inculcated that pits one group against another is the similarity that starts it off.

1940s Germany: Germans were convinced that Jews were the outer, not deserving of protection

20th century communism, too many examples - China, Russia, Cambodia, etc : Different classes - writers, teachers, scientists were identified as the outer group, and hate was inculcated

Today's scenario: the 'unvaccinated' are made as the other group.

That’s not a particularly good analogy. The persecution of the Jews by Nazis was based on immutable characteristics (such as whether or not one’s grandparents were Jewish). Likewise, if you had built a career as an intellectual, teacher or urban professional in Phnom Penh in the 1970s, you couldn’t suddenly turn around and pretend to be a peasant to avoid persecution. Even being short-sighted and wearing glasses was enough to be marked as an enemy of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Choosing not to be vaccinated is not an immutable characteristic. It’s a behavioural choice and a better analogy would be choosing to drink and drive – behaviour that is rightly frowned upon by most of society.

'Drinking and driving' is not a good analogy either.

There is no one that argues that 'drinking and driving' is good for anyone at all.

OTOH, regarding vaccines, there are so many different human conditions, side effects and issues seen with vaccines that it is fair to be skeptical.

The other big factor is the time that has elapsed, and different folks have different levels of comfort.

All of this being brushed aside - to identify a group of folks to crush -- is the evil being discussed.

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that they are immutable or not is quibbling, in my opinion.

Using the Khmer Rouge, the system decapitated the intellectuals not because they are learned, but because they had the ability to think and decide for themselves.

Now, in the US, I argue, that people who chose to think differently are being targeted, with the carrot being provided that they can change...

Is this not coercion? There is a line between persuasion and coercion, and very clearly, it has been crossed.

A completely separate problem. If you're not grounded in reality, it doesn't matter if you're operating in a deontological or consequentialist mode. You can justify bad outcomes with either.

Think about the end game here - we have evidence of ~4 covid viruses that have adapted to humans, one of which may have been responsible for an epidemic a couple of 100 years ago. Now days they are relatively benign, they make up part of what we call "the common cold".

This is historical evidences that covid viruses in humans evolve to become relatively benign, likely this happens faster if we let it kill more people more quickly, but, well, modern medicine. So what will it take for the current covid variant to reach this state - we'll need it to evolve a benign version that out competes the current covid-delta .

A benign version of a virus that out competes its more lethal cousins is something that we also call a "live vaccine".

So why shouldn't we help it along? if we know it's going to happen naturally why not make it happen faster? past attempts to generate live vaccines have mostly worked but have not always gone well, but they were made with technologies that essentially consisted of whacking them with a mallet and hoping they would stay dead - the mRNA vaccines are much more like engineering. Why not take an existing relatively benign vaccine and fit it out with a protein coat similar enough to C19 and release that?

Obviously this is not something one would do blindly, it would require lots of testing, especially with immunocompromised people. And testing (without releasing it early) would be hard - tested people would need to remain in lockdown.

Of course the crazy anti-vaxxers would scream bloody blue murder - but given that their current propaganda already paints the current vaccines as "live vaccines" and warns people to stay away from the vaccinated that horse would seem to have already bolted

He says : It's irrational. It's intrusive. It's over-reach.

You reply : But the threat is so great that such is justified.

I have heard this dialog before.

> The threat from the virus is not only immediate risk to the individual, it is also further transmissions increasing the risk of creating new breakthrough variants

> Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous

Those are very different justifications with very different policy implications, it is best not to conflate the two.

If breakthrough variants was the major concern (and it should have been) vaccine rollout should have been fast in addition to very high percentages, and vaccinated/unvaccinated population mix should have been minimized with policy. Anything less gives the perfect arena for evolutionary algorithm to learn its way around the vaccine immunity.

Second issue is the fading immunity of current vaccines in comparison to natural immunity. Vaccines got disproportionate attention and funding at the expense of covid treatment bets, which would have helped with developing higher natural immunity levels. To what degree conflicts of interests due to EUA play in this, we don’t know. But once booster shots enter the “mandatory” territory, that will cause an additional drop in compliance. How many boosters can we really mandate, for how many years?

How in the world could vaccine rollout have been any faster? This is the fastest a vaccination program has ever been run, for anything, ever. We're at 60% population vaccination after SIX MONTHS, which is absolutely insane -- polio was slower, and they were allowed jet injectors! Vaccination is going as fast as possible, and policy was implemented to minimize all mixing of people, not just Vax/unvax.

You misunderstand the problem.

We’re not talking about the total vaccination rate; it is a matter of how diffuse or concentrated it had to be for a particular locale to minimize variant training. Obviously it brings up questions of fairness thus was avoided by politicians.

> Vaccination is going as fast as possible, and policy was implemented to minimize all mixing of people, not just Vax/unvax.

It was a lofty aspiration but wasn’t/hasn’t been good enough. We could have had different levels of strictness from the beginning when lifting lockdowns, instead of going a full open and betting on a no variant scenario, instead of now with too late of an attempt, which will anger people and won’t be likely to work well.

Please cite a recent source that natural immunity is better/longer lasting.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176

That study (at least the abstract) does not support your contention.

It makes the case that previously infected individuals do not need to be prioritised for vaccination, not that natural immunity is better than vaccine driven immunity.

Perhaps you shared the wrong paper?

Perhaps you misread the paper? You cherry picked a portion of the abstract and made it seem like that conclusion was made. Here, let me help you:

"Conclusions: Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before."

You can prioritize those who have not been infected before BECAUSE those who HAVE been infected are unlikely to see a benefit in vaccinating to begin with.

Your point was that natural immunity was better than vaccine induced immunity. The paper does not support this contention.

Like, I'm academically interested in this, and I know how easy it is to share the wrong paper, hence my final comment.

> we should have. Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous. Maybe this finally shakes people awake and puts public health and safety to the top of the agenda rather than people throwing tantrums like children about government incursion.

You can certainly go down this path, and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as "children", but what you value is not the same as what everyone else values.

I am willing to balance the risk of never having a normal life again with an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive.

Eventually, I too will become old and frail, and become vulnerable to some virus or another. If I ever become so afraid of death that I demand that other people give up their basic human rights to "keep me safe", then I hope that illness takes me quickly after that. I don't want to live in the world you propose.

Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have.

With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?

> With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?

Because I have been "statistically likely" to infect N other people every time I had a cold, a flu, or any number of other viruses, most of which are fatal to at least some segment of the population.

Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice.

Being alive is risky. You can try to eliminate all of that risk, but you will be dead long before anyone puts you in the grave.

My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice.

> My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice.

The good news is (assuming that they're not immune compromised in a way that would make them vulnerable to a panoply of other viruses) they're at essentially no risk from Covid. The data on this is unassailable:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775

The far bigger risk to children, at this point, is panicky parents doing things that negatively impact their psychological well-being.

The article seems to not considering delta variant.

You're (intentionally?) leaving out the part where we don't know how the vaccine will pan out as more resistant variants get spread. This great vaccine might not hold, and getting a vaccine now helps prevent that from happening. You talk about choice of vaccine, as if those who get the vaccine have a choice against death.. but as the virus gets resistant, it becomes less and less of a choice.

With your argument standing on the foundation of choice of vaccine+no death vs no vaccine+death, why are you accepting of the fact that lower vaccination rates has a non-trivial chance to strip away the individual choice of life or death of themselves and their loved ones?

> You're (intentionally?) leaving out the part where we don't know how the vaccine will pan out as more resistant variants get spread. This great vaccine might not hold, and getting a vaccine now helps prevent that from happening.

I don't know a lot of things.

I don't know that I won't die in my sleep. I don't know if I won't walk out the door tomorrow morning and get hit by a taxi. I don't know that I won't get botulism and die from a bad pickle. I don't that I won't choke on that pickle. I don't know if the next SARS variant isn't festering in some pile of bat poop in a Cave in Kunming right now. I don't know that I won't end 2021 in a hospital, dying from some cancer that hasn't yet been diagnosed.

Life is risky. On the spectrum of "things I don't know but worry about", the third-order effects of someone else's personal decisions is pretty far down the list.

...in fact, this risk is way below the risk that other people seem to be actively trying to take away my freedoms on a daily basis, because they're scared of what "might" happen, and want everyone else to live according to their rules.

But yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with my level of protection from SARS-CoV2.

I've never heard the willingness to host and incubate a virus to develop further and possibly more infectious variants described as a "freedom".

Just because you're the one smoking, doesn't mean that second hand smoke is harmless.

> I don't know that I won't get botulism and die from a bad pickle.

Well let me at least put your mind at ease here. The high vinegar content means getting botulism from a pickle is extremely unlikely.

The problem is, there are other possible outcomes for a COVID case besides death, hospitalization, and recovery. There is absolutely no reason to think that we understand 100% of what this bug can do. For every uncertainty one might perceive about the "unapproved," "experimental," "insufficiently-tested," or "novel" vaccine, that goes double for the virus itself.

Allowing the virus to propagate freely is asking for trouble in the form of mutations as well. If it had been possible to inoculate the majority of the population in India, for example, we probably wouldn't be dealing with the delta variant right now.

Edit: if a single assertion above is wrong, please reply with citations, and we'll all be that much better-informed for it. Downvoting something that's objectively correct just because it disagrees with your political agenda is the weakest of weak sauce.

You’re being downvoted for flagrant abuse of the precautionary principle.

Interesting... some good food for thought there, because I'm usually vehemently opposed to the precautionary principle. It's good to see HN'ers agreeing with me on that for once.

When it costs us virtually nothing to do the right thing, though, I don't see how the precautionary principle applies. Usually we see that principle come up in arguments over nuclear power, large-scale environmental projects, major technological paradigm shifts, or medical therapies with a real potential for harm. It just doesn't seem to be in play here. Wear a mask in public, exercise reasonable social distancing practices when possible, and get vaccinated with something that has already been used successfully over a billion times. Is that really asking so much?

Yes. The harm is mostly psychological, but it is an existential threat to society. You might not agree, but that is my take, and I would bet it is shared by the others who are downvoting you.

Yes. The harm is mostly psychological, but it is an existential threat to society. You might not agree, but that is my take.

OK, understood. It's good to see where people are coming from on this subject, even when disagreeing.

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply sincerely.

> There is absolutely no reason to think that we understand 100% of what this bug can do.

If that's true, there's no reason to think that we understand 100% of the long term effects of the novel vaccines for this bug.

Well, I (literally) can't argue with that, having just failed spectacularly at attempting to do so.

But you did make a great case for banning unhealthy food and enforcing mandatory exercise. Fewer shorter work days - we have viruses to fight!

And if the effects of poor diet and exercise were contagious, maybe you'd have a point.

The eco system is really one giant life form. In a way we are all part of the same organism.

I saw that Star Trek episode too. Seemed like kind of a bummer to be assimilated, although I suppose it wasn't so bad once you got used to the idea.

My understanding is the manufacturers of the “great vaccine” are still immune from liability, at least in the US.

https://www.phe.gov/emergency/events/COVID19/COVIDvaccinator...

“Following the money”, it would seem neither the industry nor the Government share your sanguine view on the vaccines. It would be easy enough to revoke the legal immunity now…it’s been nearly a year and a half since COVID was introduced into US, it’s not the emergency it was in the beginning. Yet I think it is still in place.

If the COVID vaccines are so good, why the failure to accept the typical financial liability that comes with every other medical intervention? There’s a difference between being an anti-vaxxer and an anti-inject-stuff-in-my-arm-without-professional-liability-er. Those who “follow the money” in such things would have reason to be skeptical.

Many unvaccinated people don't have a lot of faith in the medical establishment. And if they stayed in when they got sick, then died quietly in their homes, it would be different. But they don't. Once they're sick, they suddenly believe in the miracle of modern medicine again. They fill up the hospitals and drain their community's limited medical resources, leading to excess non-covid deaths. This behavior is widely perceived as selfish and hypocritical, because it is.

Some of their "freedom" is now being stripped away by their vaccinated counterparts, who are growing increasingly impatient and frustrated, and who outnumber them.

This may also be selfish, but at least it's democratic.

> Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice.

Except for the people that are unable to get it due to a medical condition. Or unable to get it because they're too young. Or able to get it but it didn't work for them.

And then the fact that, as it spreads, it has a chance to mutate, so the more it spreads, the more we have to worry about dangerous variants.

Anyone who chooses not to get the vaccine just because "they don't want to" is putting the rest of society at risk... purely because they're selfish. As far as a lot of us are concerned, that's a pretty horrible type of person to be.

Of course, such people are welcome to not interact with the rest of society (nobody, not even other unvaccinated folks, per risk of mutation); live on farm and grow your own resources, etc. At that point, you're not putting anyone else at risk, so it's no longer selfish. However, I very much doubt many of such people, claiming "it's my body, so I can do what I want" are willing to actually follow through what's required to avoid putting _other people's bodies_ at risk.

> Except for the people that are unable to get it due to a medical condition. Or unable to get it because they're too young. Or able to get it but it didn't work for them.

> Of course, such people are welcome to not interact with the rest of society.

People who's bodies are at risk are free to avoid participating in society. Being sick sucks, but doesn't give you the right to force others to do medical procedures in order to protect you.

Yes, in our world, participating in society is often mandatory, and not a choice that you can make. That equally applies to people who are sick, and to the people who don't want to be forced to have things done to their body against their will.

There are many communicable diseases, and many things healthy people can be forced to do in order to protect the sick. The choice whether or not to force them is a tradeoff - safety for the society versus freedom for the individual.

People who value individual freedom more than they value safety are simply making a different tradeoff than you do. At some point, a society designed to minimize the risk at the expense of human freedoms becomes a nightmare to live in.

For example, we could significantly reduce the risk of rapes and murders (especially of vulnerable people) by forcing everyone to wear a bodycam and an ankle bracelet. We don't do that because we have decided that this is not a tradeoff worth making.

On the other hand, we did decide to reduce the risk of people dying from drunk driving, we have sacrificed our freedom to drink and drive for the sake of the safety of the other people on the road.

My point is, where you draw the line is a question of your values. Neither side is being "dumb" or "selfish". Some people value social prosperity and safety and are willing to sacrifice their (and other people's) freedoms to increase it. Others value individual rights and freedoms, and are willing to accept some risks and sacrifice some safety in order to not have these rights taken away.

Society without freedoms is better able to protect the vulnerable, and also the life in such society is less worth living.

“People who are not willing to be vaccinated are free to not participate in society” - argument goes both ways

False equivalence. Actively requiring someone to take an action to participate in society is not the same as someone making a personal risk assessment for themselves and deciding whether or not to participate in society based on that.

Besides, if we go with your standards, those that can't take the vaccine would not be allowed to participate in a mandatory vaccine society anyway. So either they're forced to avoid participating, or they at least have the option to based on a personal assessment.

Alternatively, you can look at it as

1. We all go a little out of our way to help those who need help (the sick, those the vaccine doesn't work for, those who cannot get the vaccine for other reasons), OR

2. Some people are selfish and only care about their own self gratification, so are unwilling to sacrifice a tiny bit to help everyone else.

I'll take the society with more 1 and push back on 2.

No one knows what the level of sacrifice is, that's the problem. The long term effects of both the virus and the vaccines are unknown.

You're weighing guaranteed exposure to potentially unknown effects vs a non guaranteed risk of contracting the virus.

Yes, and I'm weighing it based on various well educated professional (scientists, doctors, etc) putting forth the opinion that it is well worth the risk given the benefit to society as a whole.

Versus a bunch of people that refuse to get the vaccine because ... they feel like they are better able to analyze the facts than those well educated people.

There was literally an interview with a woman on NPR recently who said, "I have grand children, so I'm not getting the vaccine". Like... she thought that having grand children was a reason _not_ to get the vaccine. And she followed it up with "they don't think we're smart enough to make good decisions for our families". Here's the thing; "they" are clearly correct.

I just get so frustrated by this stance of "Science and facts are propaganda; _I_ know better, because I trust my gut. The welfare of society be damned".

The food pyramid, demonization of fats, antibacterial soaps, and countless other examples were touted as "factually beneficial for society" by well educated professionals until there was sufficient data to definitively prove them wrong, and those that challenged them based on the insufficiency of the data were considered "crazy" until they were proved correct.

> until there was sufficient data to definitively prove them wrong

Yes, and that's precisely how good analysis and decision making is supposed to work. You're supposed to change your mind when the information you based your decision on changes. That's a _good_ thing.

For any given discussion, given enough people, there will always be a set of people that believe each of the possible things that _can_ be believed. We have people that believe the world is flat. However, the fact that _some_ of those people happened to believe what turned out to be true when the set of input information changed... doesn't make them smarted than everyone else. Unless they were basing their conclusions on a known and defensible set of arguments... it just makes them randomly lucky. You can have a watch to tell time... then ignore it and say it's always 12pm. When it happens to get to 12pm, you'll be right. But you'll still be stupid.

lol no, the burden of proof for efficacy and safety is on those pushing the idea. It's perfectly reasonable to reject something based on a lack of, or questionable, empirical evidence.

There's nothing stupid about rejecting "expert consensus" when the data backing the experts doesn't exist.

We know what the efforts of Covid are. I personally know people who have lost their sense of taste, one for over a year and no sign of it coming back and hates cooking/food now - I’ll vaccinate up just to avoid that.

Hope you understand how ridiculous this statement is: "However, I very much doubt many of such people, claiming "it's my body, so I can do what I want" are willing to actually follow through what's required to avoid putting _other people's bodies_ at risk. "

Most people are healthy enough to beat flu, coronaviruses, strep infections, etc. etc. etc. Most people are "good enough" immune-system wise, and are not at all a risk to anybody.

With an R0 value of 6

What is effective R with the mRNA vaccines?

Irrelevant so long as vaccination levels are as low as they are: there's no population where infection starts in a vaccinated person and spreads amongst the vaccinated only that we can reasonably track.

What we do know is that vaccinated people seem to be getting COVID Delta and spreading it to close contacts: but that's a self-selecting the sample too - people who are getting vaccinated are also vastly more likely to take adequate precautions if they get infected.

What is the specific acceptable level of risk to expose others to? Please quantify, and show your work. If you're criticizing others on that basis then there must be a quantitative limit.

And note that the limit can't be 0. Real life always involves some risk.

We just need to look at what society and the law have determined is acceptable risk for one individual to put others at. Driving a car puts others in danger, but not as much as driving drunk or recklessly. Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others, simply because one such spreader can put exponentially more people in danger than any single drunk driver.

> Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others, simply because one such spreader can put exponentially more people in danger than any single drunk driver.

Worst possible case regardless of likelihood is not a good metric. I'll bet the average drunk driver, and indeed the average sober driver, causes many more deaths than the average unvaxed unmasked person in a post-vaccination world.

In a post-vaccination world, you'd be exactly correct. And no one is advocating for a permanent mask mandate. But in the present world, where large sectors of the population are not vaxed, the likelihood of an unvaxed spreader killing someone versus a drunk driver, for any individual on any given night, is probably equal or greater.

I'll admit something. I happen to love driving twice the speed limit after a few drinks. Feels great. And I indulge that sometimes on country roads when there's no one around. I know I'm a better driver after a few beers than most people are sober. If it were up to me, there would be a test, and a rating on my license that let me drive with a higher BAC than other people. But you know what? My personal pleasure isn't worth the damage of taking someone's life, or of entitling everyone else in society to do the same. So, on the whole, it's obviously better that it's illegal. Even though it infringes on my personal freedom and pursuit of happiness.

In the US, all of the at-risk population who wants to be vaccinated has been. The only people who can't get vaccinated are children under 12, and they are at virtually zero risk.

Yes, but the at-risk who don't want to be vaccinated are soaking up enormous resources, including hospital beds and doctors and nurses that should be attending people with other health emergencies. Moreover they're a breeding ground for variants that can evade the vaccine. And beyond that, even if they only kill each other, how is that okay?

You'd bet wrong 1.3 million traffic deaths in a year. double it to 2.6 m for 2 years.

In the 2 years of covid we have had 4.25 million deaths with still 90% us and 97% of the rest of the world left to catch it.

You only need a unmasked person to have an R value 1.64 times higher than a vaxed/masked for the proportional deaths to not reach parity even with 90% people vacinated.

That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal. Where as most of the reasons people give for not wearing a mask are either easily debunked or work just as well as a retort to someone asking you "why are you continuously punching yourself?".

Where are you getting 90%? The CDC estimates that 36% of Americans have been infected.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

WHO confirmed cases so using your numbers that does change it to just another 1.2 million dead americans assuming no change in death rate due to other strains the vaccine rather than another 5.5 million.

And you are assuming that the next variants will be more deadly.

> In the 2 years of covid we have had 4.25 million deaths

And how many of those were of fully vaccinated people?

If we have 100 people responsible for a bad thing happening to 10 people in that group that is proportionally the same as 10 people being responsible for a bad thing happening to 1 person in that group and having 90 unrelated people to the side when we are divvying up blame.

Yes and no; if you're accusing unvaccinated-by-choice people of recklessly endangering others, then it's quite different whether they're endangering random other people or only other unvaccinated-by-choice people. (Similarly I have no problem with drivers on private car-only roads, only those who endanger pedestrians and cyclists on the public roads).

Also the dynamics of how far any given infection would spread are very different in a post-vaccination world.

Sure now your only recklessly endangering those who can't get vaccinated and those who opt in. So maybe at steady state the numbers do work out in favour of it being less dangerous than driving proportionally(excluding the people who opt in to this danger). But you realise we're talking about driving, an activity that actually accomplishes something, as opposed to not getting vaccinated which accomplishes at most nothing. If driving accomplished nothing you can bet you wouldn't be able to do it in the city were you are involving others it'd be relegated to tracks.

Technically, I was talking about drunk driving, which kills a lot fewer people than (productive) driving. That's why I selected the limited case of people who innocently die because of a driver's wilful negligence, which is exponentially fewer than those who die because of antivaxers' wilful negligence. Probably even when there isn't a pandemic with an R6 replication rate.

>> That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal

And most antivaxers and the unmasked are welfare cases with nothing to do but look at reddit, and so are a burden on the state and a direct cost to me as a taxpayer even when there isn't a pandemic. Hey, maybe this will work out great in the end.

I’m a member of society, and I (along with many others) believe that we are way across the acceptable boundary between my individual rights and the risk everyone else should bear.

What do we do now? Do we need to fight a war to decide who gets things their way? There won’t be any real winners in such an event.

> Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others

Mandating an unapproved novel 'vaccine' while removing all responsibility from the manufacturers for the side effects is extremely reckless toward others.

Really, if you look at the history of this vaccine, it's the complete opposite of reckless. It was a great technology that had been in progress for years and was essentially held back by too much government regulation. Solving a vaccine for this virus within days was an incredible outcome of American soft power capitalism, and letting the free market pursue a profit. That's why the Bernie/communist crowd are so desperately eager to force Moderna and Pfizer to hand over the patents. How dare we invest in and make something so successful and lifesaving for some reason as ugly as profit. Remember, loosening responsibility is the norm and the ethos for a capitalist society. And the only people asking to see a vax card are private enterprises. It's good news all around, good for the economy. It's only bad for the mentally crippled who are so mired in conspiratorial thought that they can't see what's obviously good for themselves. But no one's ever going to make you get it. I just think we should turn the wilfully unvaxed away from the hospital when you get covid. Why should we pay for your mistakes?

I don’t get “nihilism” from any of that. It is just a healthy attitude about life and death, an attitude that is apparently not even close to universal in our culture.

I can try to understand the other side, but please do the same. Pretty much everyone has been disappointed by humanity this year, and we’re all feeling roughly the same emotions even though we have radically different worldviews.

I reread what he wrote and.. yeah, pretty nihilistic still. More-nihilistic-than-not? Hmm. Nah, that's too wordy.

And to point your point back at you, please re-read my post as someone who is trying to understand them. I honestly have no freaking clue why you think otherwise, other than the fact that I disagree with them. I literally asked them a question so that I can understand them better!

> please re-read my post as someone who is trying to understand them.

You may have convinced yourself that this is true, but I don’t believe it. Your comment was mostly passive-aggressive rhetorical sniping:

> Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have.

And the “question” you ask at the end reads like just another attack:

> Why is that acceptable to you?

I'll admit that the first paragraph was passive aggressive. The question, though, was genuine whether you want to believe it or not. This thread's ancestor posters were only sharing rebuttals and not really trying to understand each others' reasoning. My question was in-mind that the OP was only talking about themselves, despite the issue at hand being about other people. The question I asked was written to attempt to get a genuine answer that took into account their own loved ones instead of themselves. I was hoping for a genuine answer, and I believe that they responded genuinely, even though I disagree with them.

You gotta understand, friend.. what I think is at stake here are the lives of the people that I love. With that in mind, the seemingly callous disregard of even their own loved ones is... a difficult thing to parse. So again, please try to read my words from the perspective of someone who's desperately frustrated, and at least attempting to figure out why someone is explicitly okay with knowing that their actions will get others killed.

R0 of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.

We are nowhere near all people in a population being susceptible to infection with the vaccine rollout (and the people that are susceptible, it's their choice.)

> an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive.

The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you, but more importantly:

> If I ever become so afraid of death that I demand that other people give up their basic human rights

Are basic human rights really what we're talking about here?

If so, they've always had limits when it came to impacts on others. The freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone's nose; the freedom to spread certain pathogens might end there as well.

Of course, the article here is talking about vaccination as a condition for participation in venues where density and proximity is a concern. "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities." Hell, it's hard to actually make an totally unqualified case for bodily autonomy itself, even though that's a good principle to start from, it isn't the only one.

Basic human rights were not lost from the world by smallpox or other vaccination mandates. They wouldn't be destroyed even if there were going to be a federal mandate for covid vaccination, which doesn't even seem to be on the horizon. They are certainly not going to be destroyed by proof of vaccination being required for entry to restaurants and gymns.

> The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you

What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like?

> "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities."

This is disingenuous. Freedom of peaceful assembly is widely recognised as a basic right.

> What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like?

VAERS currently reports 11,000 deaths (50% in USA mainland) after Covid vaccines. VAERS only has a subset of data on vaccine adverse events, so the true number when private/HMO databases are included will be some multiple (5x to 100x) of the VAERS total, https://openvaers.com/. A German pathologist has estimated that 30% of post-vaccine deaths were caused by vaccination. We need more autopsies in other countries, along with earlier post-vaccine clinical observation, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

> pathologists therefore worked with public prosecutors, the police and resident doctors, reports Schirmacher. More than 40 people have already been autopsied who died within two weeks of being vaccinated. Schirmacher estimates that 30 to 40 percent of them died from the vaccination. In his opinion, the frequency of fatal consequences of vaccinations is underestimated

Existing Covid vaccines are non-sterilizing, i.e. they do not prevent infection or transmission. In fact, because a non-sterilizing vaccine suppresses symptoms, an infected vaccinated person doesn't know to isolate (unless they get tested after exposure, as recommended by CDC) and can infect others. A non-vaccinated person would show symptoms and can self-isolate, ending the transmission chain.

Natural immunity is sterilizing, i.e. NYC essential workers who have already recovered from Covid are much better for public health than anyone vaccinated with a non-sterilizing Covid vaccine, https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advise...

> During the pandemic, the professional laptop class protected themselves by working from home while exposing the working class that brought them food and other goods. It is now the height of hypocrisy to recognize immunity from vaccinations but not immunity from those exposed while serving the laptop class.

US Covid deaths peaked in early January, three months before US daily vaccines peaked in mid-April (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do...), and VAERS deaths peaked in March-April, https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?GRAPH=ON&GRO...

If you're going to use VAERS data to support your argument, you really must take extra care to demonstrate that you understand what those data actually are, and explain why your conclusions should be taken seriously.

Otherwise, you risk being lumped in with the multitude of bad takes made by people who misunderstand what VAERS is, and don't understand statistics.

> US Covid deaths peaked in early January, three months before US daily vaccines peaked in mid-April, and VAERS deaths peaked in March-April.

I find an April peak in VAERS deaths entirely unsurprising, since that's exactly when the rate of vaccination was highest.

If you know of non-VAERS public sources of vaccine adverse event data, references would be appreciated. A link was provided to one pathologist autopsy study, more are needed. CDC VSD (Vaccine Safety Datalink) is not public, sometimes we get data snapshots when CDC is investigating specific adverse events, like blood clots, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27464528

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I wasn't complaining that VAERS was a bad source of data. I was pointing out that your post is hard to distinguish from the large body of bad posts that misinterpret those data because their authors fundamentally misconstrue what the data actually represent.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

Just to clarify for those worried about what looks like legitimate numbers. The 6000 (unverified though there are legitimate reports) deaths on VAERS (down from the 11,000 when those that were posted from overseas sources were removed) means that the death rate for the vaccine using this number is 0.0018%.

To put that number into context, you are 944 times more likely to die if you catch covid than if you get a vacine in the US. That's right the anti-vaxer take on the VAERS numbers say getting a vaccine is 1000 times better than not getting a covid vaccine. Even in the country with the lowest reported (0.1% which is not necessarily the actual) death rate per covid case you are 100x better off getting the vaccine.

A more local statistic is the list of adverse events by age group, for the specific lot number on a vaccine card. One vaccine lot number can be distributed across multiple geographical regions. To run the query, replace 123456 at the end of the URL below, with the lot number from a vaccine card. More granular results can be found via the query wizard.

https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GROUP1=...

People dying from covid are old, to very old, and/or in poor to very poor health. People dying from and having adverse reactions to the "vaccines" are young to not that old, and in good health.

Big piece of the puzzle you are ommiting there.

Let's put those puzzle pieces together:

In the US, over 300 million doses of covid-19 vaccines have been administered so far. Reported deaths of any cause (regardless of any established connection with the vaccine) among this group was on the order of 6000 people as of the end of July. [0]

US covid-19 cases are around 35 million and 600k deaths. How many of those were "young to not that old"? Well, one count[1] would put us at about 28k under 50, 10k under 40.

Let's be generous to the "vaccines are a threat to the young" position and assume for the sake of argument that ALL of the 6000 VAERS reported deaths were in fact caused by the vaccine and were ALL people under 40. Even making those assumptions, the order-of-magnitude difference in vaccination events vs infection events makes it utterly clear that covid itself is at least 10x more dangerous to people under 40 than receiving a vaccination is.

And if you dig into the adverse vaccine event specifics, my bet is that you find a pretty similar distribution of adverse effects -- sure, some of them are young people, just like some covid deaths are young people, but not most of them.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

Shouldn't we take into account that someone dying earlier is worse than someone dying old? Not sure if that would flip the balance, it may for people around 20-25 maybe, or at least balance things.

If we've established that the vaccine is 1/10th the risk of covid itself to younger people (which I think I did in my comment), as far as I can tell any extra weight that might be assigned to preserving young life just falls out of the problem.

People do work with numbers like "Years of Life Lost," and FWIW I think that can inform some conversations even though I don't think it helps much with this one. It is not the end-all-be-all, though. You could, for example, look at the social costs of losing the accumulated experience/wisdom/social capital of people over a certain age, which may be why some societies emphasize respect for the elderly.

You did for people under 40, and I agree with your point, but I'm wondering if the results are the same for people that are between 20 and 30 for example. I find that 75% of the people that died of COVID under 40 were under 30 and 40 with https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm. So the risk would be more around 1/3rd (give or take) of the risk of covid itself, following your calculations. So you're betting that less than a third of people between 20 and 30 will get covid (again, give or take and highly in "my" favor, as you yourself pushed the data on this side already).

Considering that we still don't know the long terms effect of the vaccine, I can understand that someone between 20 and 30 without comorbidities would think that it's reasonable to wait and see, especially if he's less at risk (lives in the countryside for example, remote work, things like that).

> You could, for example, look at the social costs of losing the accumulated experience/wisdom/social capital of people over a certain age, which may be why some societies emphasize respect for the elderly.

That's a good point. You could also add a different value for years depending on the age, as people often value their youth more. 1.5 years lost when you're in college or starting your first job is not the same as when you're in your 70s and retired.

Peaceful assembly is protected in the constitution for people "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Who's doing this in a movie theater? It's clearly meant to protect public protests.

they're saying it's a sit-in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in

Peaceful assembly without being killed by your neighbors seems like an even more basic subset of that right.

Is this an absolute or relative thing? If I have Ebola and actively contagious, would I still have to right to peacefully assemble in a crowded venue? Or is there some cut off of potential harm where this is true?

No basic human right is absolute. Nowhere has completely unrestricted speech, everywhere puts some restrictions on voting rights, all regimes have cases in which your property rights are forfeit. But it should be a very high bar.

It depends on whether you consider liberty, self ownership and free contracts between consenting adults to be basic human rights.

Eroding liberty by restricting free association would have certainly been considered a violation of rights by the folks that listed them in the Constitution.

In fact, they put it first.

And yet, quarantine of infected people/places has a long, long history in the US. Weird.

Great point!

Like when we put barbed wire up in Chinatown, San Francisco in 1900 after allowing all the white people to leave? [1]

Or when we incarcerated 30,000 women in WWI because they may be "unclean" and held them even after their mandatory STD tests came back negative? [1]

Or what we did to immigrant Russian Jews in 1892? [2]

Did you know that up until 2009 we banned HIV positive people from entering the U.S.? [2]

Yes, of course the U.S. has a long history of quarantine. We also have a long history of abusing those powers for racist and political reasons.

The PA Supreme Court, at least, agrees. [3]

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/10/30/3601204...

[2] https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/cure-worse-dise...

[3] https://www.alston.com/en/insights/publications/2020/09/cons...

> The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you

Independent of the rest of your argument, this one is not a good one to hinge on.

"Excess death" is a pragmatic term, not a normative term. The baseline death statistics doesn't mean those deaths were OK, or natural and acceptable to endure. They include many peer to peer (e.g traffic accidents) or institution to peer (many "lifestyle" diseases') deaths too, which in themselves are also excess deaths in comparison to another baseline (e.g. obesity related deaths in comparison to 1960s).

These feeds back to the arguments of risk tolerance and freedoms; there is a mutually tolerated, implicit risk of peer-to-peer death in driving too. I am not saying this is comparable to the risk of death by covid (it is obviously not), but we can't make principled arguments of absolute safety nor absolute freedom without keeping things proportional to the risks and freedoms we're already been balancing.

> Basic human rights were not lost from the world by smallpox or other vaccination mandates.

If we're being anal about it, it is not entirely true. People have a right to keep the functional and structural integrity of their bodies; and even enhancing immunization would be a change in that, and that has an element of intrusiveness to it. Again, being a transmitter of the virus and harming other people's bodies is also a threat to the functional and structural organization of those bodies, and that is (very) intrusive too, but two things can be true at the same time, and therefore this is not the principle to argue from.

The honest argument would be accepting the need for striking a balance, accepting the sense of anxiety from both sides, and not pushing conclusions into people. We have to have people participate in the rationality of the decision making, from a place of empathy and growth.

I hope this is a moment we can also realize that just like public health is a shared resource and lack thereof is a shared liability, public rationality and sound decision making capability is also a shared resource and lack thereof is a shared liability. We've been turning a blind eye to all sorts of media training people to be more and more polarized, using shaming as a short-term compliance tool that has long-term stupefying consequences. Now we depend on all of us coming to our senses to survive this thing; we need a herd immunity against irrational self-deception just as much.

> "Excess death" is a pragmatic term, not a normative term

Fully aware of that. The reason I invoked them is to make the pragmatic point that those statistics alone and the correlated rise with covid should tell an analyst that risks associated with the virus aren't the same as "every other year they've been alive." That's a descriptive observation.

Of course, it also invites a normative judgment...

> If we're being anal about it, it is not entirely true.

It's essentially true, and this is important. There have been genuinely compulsory vaccinations in modern free societies... and these compulsions turned out not to be slippery slopes into totalitarian oppression, but the corner case that you'd expect from societies that, as you say, realize this isn't about "absolute safety nor absolute freedom," that both risks and rights can be qualified (and in fact, for rights to be meaningful at all, they must be qualified, since there are always cases where a right reaches a point of tension with another right).

And NY isn't even talking about genuine compulsory vaccination, it's proposing vaccination as a condition of participating in things that people can opt out of. It's not even as compulsory as a fine or paying your taxes or any number of other carrots/sticks that states regularly use to "push conclusions into people" because if you're going to have a society, you're going to blow past the limits of voluntarism at some point, as lovely as it is to try and maximize it within those limits.

> People have a right to keep the functional and structural integrity of their bodies

Yes, I anticipated that and you can see it in my comment where I refer to bodily autonomy. It's a good place to start, but like every other right it isn't unqualified.

and in fact, for rights to be meaningful at all, they must be qualified, since there are always cases where a right reaches a point of tension with another right

What? I have never heard anything like that at all. Rights are absolute.

That sounds like it is coming from the "Sure free speech is fine, so long as it doesn't offend me," crowd.

it's proposing vaccination as a condition of participating in things that people can opt out of.

People here are generally highly attuned to one of the big surveillance ad corps trying to massage people into accepting some invasion of their personal sovereignty, how is this different? You think if something like this is accepted there won't be pushes to go further?

If this infrastructure is put in place, it will be abused, and it will coopted for other things.

> What? I have never heard anything like that at all.

Sure you have. It's embedded in the common phrase (invoked earlier) about the right to swing a fist ending at the edge of people's noses. Or in the oft-invoked expression about yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Or the frequent refrain about rights being paired with responsibilities.

> You think if something like this is accepted there won't be pushes to go further?

We don't have to "think" it, we can point to historic and present examples where like compulsory actions existed without devolving into totalitarianism because we have a society shaped by people who understood it's possible to have both substantial general protections and specific exceptions.

>We don't have to "think" it, we can point to historic and present examples where like compulsory actions existed without devolving into totalitarianism...

If there are, that should be the exceptions, rather than the norm.

Also, the parent asked if there won't be "pushes". So the implication is that there will be an overwhelming push in that direction, and very weak countering "pull" in the opposite direction.

And it is clear what direction it will ultimately go. So that is the danger in setting a precedent. So that further pushes in a "bad" direction will require much less effort, and only matter of time it is accepted to be the "new normal"..

The precedents you're invoking as fearsome are scattered over a century old, some older. Past vaccination requirements have been examined and upheld -- all without leading to an overwhelming push to eliminate general autonomy.

So the idea that "it is clear what direction it will ultimately go" is... kinda correct, actually. It is clear that general autonomy can remain a valued principle with specific exceptions. It is clear that they are the exceptions rather than the norm. And that the pull in the other direction isn't weak.

> It is clear that general autonomy can remain a valued principle with specific exceptions.

Sure. It is the ever increasing number of "specific exceptions" that people should be worried about.

> Rights are absolute.

Incorrect.

https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/there-are-no-absolute...

> What? I have never heard anything like that at all. Rights are absolute.

1A text: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [0]

So is the right to the freedom of speech absolute? Not according to the body authorized to definitively interpret the law, the Supreme Court, which ruled that laws abridging the freedom to defame people through speech or press are constitutional.

Thus the right to the freedom of speech has limits and is not absolute.

"In United States constitutional law, false statements of fact are statements of fact (as opposed to points of law) that are false. Such statements are not always protected by the First Amendment. This is usually due to laws against defamation, that is making statements that harm the reputation of another." [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_Unite...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_statements_of_fact

There is a rich literature about the origins/generation/properties of “human rights.”

As an easy example: how do you reconcile that rights are absolute with the over-used “can’t shout fire in a theatre” case that curtails freedom of speech. Many would argue that rights must be qualified, or exist in relationship with each other. All of these are humanist arguments, mind you. Nobody is trying to throw human rights out with the humans.

Now we depend on all of us coming to our senses to survive this thing

Am I missing something? It seems to be clear for well over a year that "this thing" is not some existential threat that threatens our very survival. Why are people talking as if it is, and seeking to craft policy as if it is?

Perhaps not my survival, or your survival, but a bunch of countries' health systems have collapsed as part of this pandemic, which has definitely lead to excess deaths.

Personally, I believe that the global excess deaths figures will be bigger this year than last, due to all the developing world where vaccines are not available.

Really excellent comment. I liked the line about your different values from GP. I cannot prove this, but I feel as if it is becoming more “normalized” to not be able to reconcile this fact.

What are the odds that anyone is right about everything? We ought to be confident in our reasoned decisions, yes, but then not be surprised that someone else’s reasoned decisions disagree with our own.

> The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you,

I think you're misunderstanding the conversation. The thread is talking about the risk _to vaccinated people_. What excess death statistics are you thinking of that show a categorical increase in risk for those vaccinated?

Are basic human rights really what we're talking about here?

If so, they've always had limits when it came to impacts on others. The freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone's nose

Whoa, you've got that horridly twisted.

It's not a human right to demand that others undergo a medical procedure for your own perceived interest. It's not a human right to demand others undergo a medical procedure, or be injected with something, because you've been told it will benefit you in some way. Every individual has complete choice and autonomy as to the medical procedures they undergo. That is the human right.

>Article 6 – Consent

1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TO...

This isn't a medical procedure. You are certainly not allowed to make someone go through a medical procedure, since, you know, it doesn't affect you. Not being vaccinated affects everyone, so your choice of whether you get it or not is now going to have consequences on what you can do publicly. I've still not heard a single good argument for not vaccinating despite reading most anti-vax comments on this post.

>I've still not heard a single good argument for not vaccinating despite reading most anti-vax comments on this post.

Because if I put something in my body only because my master tells me to, I am a slave. Through and through. Bodily autonomy is absolute. It's different than the Modern American definition of slavery, which is mostly based on the New World forms of slavery, which are related to but different than the Old World forms of slavery. But they are all slavery. Either you have control of your corpus or you do not.

You were vaccinated as a child and you're presumably perfectly fine. And it's not about you. It's about not being selfish to end a pandemic that affects other people a lot worse than it does you.

We allow parents to make decisions for children up to a certain age. I'm definitely not arguing that.

It is about me. A population is made up of individual people. Those individual people have rights. Given a choice of a population of X size who surrender the rights to govern their body, vs a population of free willed humans of (X - (00.03 * X)), I would gladly take the latter, including as a casualty. Humanity under authoritarianism is never morally acceptable, regardless of how benevolent my dictator appears to be.

This is an argument against tyranny, but it isn't an argument against vaccination.

From your comment:

> Because if I put something in my body only because my master tells me to, I am a slave.

So don't do it for that reason. Do it because it will save your (and other people's) life.

That's an entirely reasonable position to take.

Sure, but it's not the only reasonable position to take.

What are your concerns if you were to do it? Is it purely to take a stance?

Concern over long term effects of mRNA therapy, of which I've found little evidence

Concern over long term effects of the spike protein presented by COVID-19, both attached to the virus and free-floating within my body as a result of mRNA therapy.

Concern over long term ability for my cells to accurately recreate the spike protein. From what I've read, this is actually low concern on my scale, the capping seems pretty thorough.

Concern over my body creating an immunoresponse to organs/nearby cells/systems where the spike protein has accumulated

Concern over my immune system being able to form a strong defense in the future over different coronaviruses when it's been trained to work outside it's normal operational parameters.

Concern over the hubris of mankind and the house of cards that is our trust in the peer review system.

Concern over the lack of experiment replication done in the modern medical fields

Concern over the fact that some of these companies have shady history, including knowingly selling me asbestos to keep my testicle dry during the summer heat.

Concern over the lack of transparency in the bridges between pharma lobbyists and government, politicians and media, and media and pharma corps.

Concern over the lack of transparency in more broader sense.

Concern over the obvious astroturfing on social media, of multiple "influencers" posting the same copy and pasted messages, the bot responses, the general fiscal funding behind this debate.

Concern over the future implications of us accepting, as a society, the weaponization of fear, and the saving graces of corporations.

Concern over our willingness to change our lives in drastic manners because of the justification that it may save a life, which I see as an endless justification opportunity for future world leaders.

Concern over turning fear into a virtue.

This is why the pandemic is nowhere near over. People who don't read data taking a political stance just because it's their right.

definitely not the issue of people handwaving away concerns as being unfounded or uneducated. thanks for showing me the truth.

I read data. A friend is working on the vaccine for Novavax - him and his family will not be vaccinated anytime within this decade. This is very quickly turning into an endemic virus cycle like most others throughout history. We've been trying to eradicate the coronavirus family for at least 70 years with 0 results. This is a leaky vaccine, and breakthrough case numbers reported by Pfizer to the FDA don't paint a rosy picture (somewhere between 14-24%; they don't know, they didn't really test those people in their initial trials, they just assumed they had Covid based on symptoms, which is why they keep stressing that even though you've had your vaccinations, you're still at risk of infection and spreading the disease). Look at the numbers of fully vaccinated people in Israel currently hospitalized. I'd rather NYC enforced high quality diet and mandatory exercise than a newfangled vaccine. But I know, people just want the magic pill....every year...for the rest of their lives.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-644288348135

Your anecdotal evidence from a friend isn't data.

Not just my friend, my friend. Everybody who worked on encapsulating the mRNA vaccine knows why the compound was not allowed for human use previously, and why they've all had to show the same diligence (because it caused clots which lead to stroke-outs and heart attacks in animal trials).

Your link shows what exactly? That yes, the majority of people with Covid currently, and majority of hospitalized (severely ill other words) are fully vaccinated.

Read the article, then respond. #1 you don't know everyone who worked on it, and #2 the entire point of the article is this is WAY lower than their prevaccinated days in January.

I'm not arguing wether the vaccine keeps some people out of the hospital, I've read the article broski. The article points out what some Israeli doctors are seeing; to quote one "80-90% of my covid cases are 100% vaccinated". This vaccine is coming up short and is probably causing more harm than good in the long run; we're heading into an endemic cycle. Everyone (each company) that has worked on mRNA vaccines in the last 10 years+ are facing the same ethical dilemma, as all of the compounds have not been approved for human use. Just saying what the virologist tells me. Go nuts with your vaccine ingestion (I don't care what you do one way or the other), but I would stay with Sputnik or the Sino vaccines especially if you have a history of blood clots or genetic predisposition to heart conditions.

> The article points out what some Israeli doctors are seeing; to quote one "80-90% of my covid cases are 100% vaccinated".

You seem to think this is bad or something? As the vaccine rate increases of course more patients will be vaccinated. If the vaccine rate was 100% then 100% of people seen would be vaccinated!

The number of people being hospitalised has decreased hugely though.

> Everyone (each company) that has worked on mRNA vaccines in the last 10 years+ are facing the same ethical dilemma, as all of the compounds have not been approved for human use.

Well this isn't true at all.

> I would stay with Sputnik or the Sino vaccines especially if you have a history of blood clots or genetic predisposition to heart conditions.

I don't know much about the Sino vaccine, but Sputnik is a adenovirus-based vaccine (the same as AstraZeneca). It probably has the same blood clotting issues as AZ, but the places it has been deployed have much less robust post vaccine medical surveillance.

But it's good you'd take it! I'd encourage you to do so ASAP.

It is bad. When 80% of your hospitalizations (serious conditions) have gotten two jabs of the mRNA vaccine. Hospitalizations in my state are only increasing, and its not the un-vaccinated, it's those that believe being vaccinated means you no longer hold any risk with relation to spreading the virus.

The blood clots from AstraZeneca have not been thoroughly investigated - we don't know the pathways involved. By the way, the mRNA vaccines are producing many more blood clot calls into triage lines and offices than AZ (prolly because of slow rollout here).

>I'd encourage you to do so ASAP.

Why would you encourage me to do something my body doesn't need?

> Look at the numbers of fully vaccinated people in Israel currently hospitalized.

The country’s Health Ministry reported last week that the two-dose vaccine is now just 39% effective in Israel where the highly transmissible delta variant is the dominant strain. The shot still works very well in preventing people from getting seriously sick, Israeli officials said, demonstrating 88% effectiveness against hospitalization and 91% effectiveness against severe illness.[1]

So 88% effective against Delta-strain COVID causing hospitalization. That seems pretty good!

I think many people saying "look at Israel" are looking at the decreased effectiveness in stopping any symptoms against Delta-COVID and think that - disappointing - headline figure (39%) is the protection against hospitalisation rate. It's not, fortunately.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/delta-variant-israel-to-give...

I mean that's fantastic. My immune system is also highly effective against corona viruses, fungal infections, and other pathogenic microbes. To each his own.

> My immune system is also highly effective against corona viruses, fungal infections, and other pathogenic microbes.

It sure is! Once it has had a look at the virus to know to act against it.

That is literally what a vaccine is - a way to give your immune system an early look at a pathogen so it knows to act next time it sees it.

Thanks for the lesson. This is exactly how your immune system already functions. No need to set yourself up for risks with jabs if you've got a genetic precondition for various diseases related to routine vaccinations. I'm glad we agree.

> him and his family will not be vaccinated anytime within this decade.

because of the nanoparticle adjuvant that enacpsulates the subunit? yeah that's been on the top of my mind too, but covaxin is a traditional inactivated virus and it confers 70+% efficacy. my question is, if a vaccine that is the same genetic material (maybe a little less, but not heavily modified like mrna or run through the moth/tree approach like novavax) then why are we ignoring those who were actually infected?

food for thought: long covid is H O R R I B L E, and that should be everyones reason to take a vaccine.. but if you don't want to, just be prepared to sit on the sidelines for a year or maybe more. once the pandemic, as defined by the government, ends then you are on your own. there is already less patience for those who need to take extended time from work for a covid positive result

Long covid is highly debated as the evidence for such a disease is currently very weak, but we will see it crystallize in the next few years I suppose. Many in the health field see it as another psychologically-induced disease. Who knows? Let us not forget that every single viral infection that attacks the body, is likely to leave at least some long term damage or change (no matter how slight), and certainly the unlucky few have severe long term damage even from the flu.

>save your life

How do you know he wasn't already infected and thus has natural immunity? So how is this saving her or his life?

Why aren't we testing for those who actually need this vaccine or not (because antibody tests don't work very well and no one wants to improve that metric because thats not where the money is)

You have the choice to be vaccinated or not - businesses and have the choice to refuse to provide service to the unvaccinated, private property and all. And society has the right to insist on vaccines to participate. We all have rights and yours don’t cancel out others.

TLA is about a local government mandating that businesses check for vaccination status. That's infringing on rights of the businesses, "private property and all."

In the US, you most certainly do not. Are you unaware of drug laws, for example? By your logic, you are now and always have been a slave, and so is everyone else. What was once a useful word is now meaningless.

What? Vaccination absolutely is a medical procedure. How could you say otherwise?

It's now clear that these injections do not have the efficacy of what has traditionally been termed a "vaccination," but they're definitely being marketed as a preventative, or therapeutic medical intervention.

Weird comment this one...

Getting a shot is not a medical procedure and more than going to the dentist is. The efficacy is still much, much higher than not being vaccinated. I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.

>I've still not heard a single good argument for not vaccinating despite reading most anti-vax comments on this post.

The obvious good reason is you have one of the many pre-existing conditions that prevent you from getting the vaccine without causing yourself further risk of long term organ damage/failure caused by you previously taking other mandatory vaccines on a regular basis (healthcare workers, vasculitis is one such group of diseases common among the RN population - but what do they know, those front line workers with their anti-vaxx mumbo-jumbo).

The other obvious reason is another simple one - it seems its completely unnecessary for any relatively "healthy" person such as myself to worry about this virus. Our immune systems are designed for this battle, and based on the death rates, it seems despite the US population being very obese and largely unhealthy with a fairly high diabetes rate, we're somehow not dying in droves.

Third reason, vaccinations against every single little virus that comes along is effectively practicing negative selection. I think we all can assume where that leads especially with a leaky vaccine like this one - large scale true extinction event. We're breeding superbugs by vaccinating large scale populations, instead of small targeted vaccine administration.

>the freedom to spread certain pathogens might end there as well.

There is a false equivalence here that freedom to opt-out of a commercial product, is excising one's freedom to "spread diseases".

To make it clear, would you want to pass a law that prevents someone with a genetic defect from marrying and having children? Because they would be "spreading" generic disorders, and by having offspring, they are "exercising their freedom to spread a genetic disorder", right?

Comparing vacination to forced sterilisation is pretty extreme. What makes you think that these are on the same level?

Basically, it is the same reasoning. But it does not have to be force sterilisation.

You can say that any one that is not breathing through a mask is exercising their freedom to spread diseases, and so everyone should wear a mask all the time..

Basically, the point is there is a line where your right to be safe and the right of the rest of the world to exist in freedom is in balance. And arguments like the one that is being made is pushing that line to reduce the latter, and if we are not careful, the latter will be reasoned out, in the name of increasing the "protection" of the 0.01% of people from 95.02 to 95.03% (Just made up numbers to illustrate the point).

And it is not hard to imagine who benefits from it.

May be we need a "Citizen freedom index" for every country so that we will know when we are draining it.

Because if it is hard to improve what that cannot be measured, its hard to know when you are draining it as well..

Thanks for having the courage to write this. I couldnt agree more. I find the risk assessment argument of the thread parent really twisted. Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have. And now, the left is trying to force everyone to vaccinate, no matter how good or bad their immune system might be. This world has become a place I actually really dont want to live in. If this trend really wins and people accept a world of forced vaccination and masks and restrictions of public areas, I prefer to contract covid and die.

What you are describing could be called geritocracy, which is a bit of a pejorative, implying negative outcomes, particularly for the young. But then consider Florida, with the most old folks per capita, and what their policies and outcomes have been.

> Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have

Not true. Delta is showing increasingly worse numbers for younger people. Some children's hospitals are full from it. If you have another argument besides that one let's discuss.

I think you are spreading FUD. So no need to argue with you.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/04/covid-19-cases-in-children-sur...

So, yet another article about "cases" that are "surging"...however:

"The study does note that “it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children.”

"Among the 23 states and New York City reviewed by AAP, children’s hospitalizations made up 1.3 – 3.5 percent of all COVID-19 hospitalizations for the week ending July 29."

"According to the study, children were 0.00 – 0.26 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and seven states reported zero child deaths among data from 43 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam, with 0.00 – 0.03 percent of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death in those areas."

If you're trying to provide evidence that Covid does not present a serious threat to children, it'd be hard to do a better job.

Jesus christ. Did you go to public school? In most cases vaccinations for common diseases is required to attend. Vaccines save lives, is very little burden to you especially if you "have a good immune system". The faster we get everyone vaccinated the faster we get rid of the need of masks and restrictions. It's morons like you elongating things.

If you get on that ventilatior you won't be thinking you made the right choice. You'll be wishing you took the vaccine like so many stories we see today. What an idiotic hill to die on.

Keep your FUD to yourself and to your family. I am young and healthy enough that I will not need a hospital if I get a covid infection. Your FUD does not change my attitude.

Will everyone you know with that attitude be so lucky? Or those that actually can't get the vaccine. You sound like a selfish jerk. Did you ever stop and think that maybe your family and friends won't be so lucky as to not need a hospital? It's not just for you!!!

Even if your young and healthy there's still a non-zero chance something could happen to you.

Why not just get it on the off chance?

Yet another FUD-spreader.

> there's still a non-zero chance something somethin could happen to you.

That was true before the pandemic, and it is still true today. If I die, I die. No need to restrict the lives of everyone else just because you are afraid of death.

Just because you don't like the message it's not FUD. Do you not wear a seatbelt in the car too? If you die, you die. Why bother wearing a bike helmet? If you die, you die. Unprotected sex with strangers? Sure, why not. If you die, you die. Why bother mitigating any risk that you can? I mean if you die, you die. Live your life free am I right? No need for silly restrictions like seatbelts, helmets or condoms.

Now you're finally getting it. I don't do any of those things you describe....and I don't particularly value or even like life. You stick to your value system and live however the fuck you want, and let everybody else value what they value and live however they want. If you're afraid of a virus potentially killing random people, I am not sure how you've made it this far without sheltering in place your whole life (hint, we have much scarier superbugs spread in hospitals that are almost immediately deadly to the immunocompromised).

Wow. So you're a moron. Doesn't even have to be random people. I don't want any of my friends or family dying from a currently preventable cause.

The problem with you "living however you want" is that it can impact other people...living. Every person the virus infects is a new chance for it to mutate and potentially get worse. We've already seen that happen once with the delta variant. You have an easy way to prevent deaths and you won't because?

Would you let someone "live their life" running around stabbing people? Some people might just get a nick, some could die, what does it matter?

So you call me a moron, and then you go on to compare stabbing people to not getting a vaccine...hmmmm.

People are largely unvaccinated in New York city (70% unvax), and yet, somehow, we don't see people lying in the streets (at least not from Covid). Hmmmm. Could it be that people's immune systems are functioning despite the human hubris and hysteria?

If you don't wear a seatbelt you absolutely are.

Where did you see that 70% of NYC is unvaxed? Over 50% of people in NYC are fully vaccinated against COVID and those under 12 are still not eligible.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.p...

Your obsession with death avoidance is clearly anxiety inducing. Embrace life, embrace death, embrace (bad) luck and embrace decay are my personal keys to a stress-less life. I grew up in a country and in a household, where the car we owned had no seat belts. We also rode our bikes without helmets (shock! horror!). It was not a big deal. Never got into a car accident and I've personally been driving for over 30 years. For about a decade I drank and drove without incident. I jump out of airplanes with suspect and haphazard inspections on a regular basis. Had some close calls, but I'm still here (broken bones mend). My grandmother died at 99 (by choice mind you), her husband died at 30 of cancer. Life is a roll of a dice, you cannot escape your genetic lottery, a vaccine (especially this one) is highly unlikely to save much of your life if you're a person with 2.8 comorbidities.

I got the 70% unvaxed from a nytimes.com article; apparently it was dated. Looks like only 40% are unvaxed now according to your link. What's the Covid death rate in that highly congested and dense city? In my state, it is .13%, and that's counting many many deaths that have nothing to do with Covid as a "Covid death" (according to my wife [RN] and her friends who work in local ERs and ICUs as well as a head administrator of our largest public state health network).

Survivorship bias. Look it up. Congrats. You didn't die or kill any one drinking and driving or not wearing any seatbelts. Lucky you.

But guess what? They do save lives. That's why it's against the law to not wear a seat belt or bike helmet in most places or to not drink and drive. The vaccine can save lives too but it works best if as many people as possible to protect those who can't, to prevent breakthrough infections etc.

I'm not "obsessed" with death avoidance. I'm just not such a selfish asshat that I can give an hour of my time to go get vaccinated, reduce spread and maybe save some lives.

It's not like those people with comorbidities were going to die tomorrow without COVID anyways, they were going to live 5, 10, 20 extra years. Time to see children and grandchildren grow up, spend with friends etc.

I know, its all survivorship bias, none of it has anything to do with my OCD genes or the thousands of little mitigations to risks I take every day.

>The vaccine can save lives too but it works best if as many people as possible to protect those who can't, to prevent breakthrough infections etc.

What works best is for sick people to stay the fuck home until they're not sick anymore. Healthy people's immune systems, won't allow a large viral load to allow for transmission. This is not a magic virus, there is nothing new here.

>I'm just not such a selfish asshat that I can give an hour of my time to go get vaccinated, reduce spread and maybe save some lives.

Homie, if you believe you're saving some lives by getting vaccinated...I don't know what kind of propaganda you've been feeding on along with those cheetos you were complaining about the other day.

The vaccine will not stop you from transmitting the virus to other immunocompromised people. Don't take my word for it, take Pfizer's.

> the left is trying to force everyone to vaccinate

If you believe that the left is pretty much every public health organisation in every country in the world, then yes.

Otherwise, your statement is false.

If Trump had won, and he had encouraged vaccination, would you be blaming the right?

You don't have a basic human right to go into buildings that other people own.

You do if they are open to the public. We once lived in a country where people were banned from entering buildings based on the color of their skin.

If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter.

Places open to the public can almost arbitrarily ask people to leave (at which point their presence becomes trespassing), they just can't ask people to leave for being members of protected classes.

So if I don't like what your t-shirt says, that's all it takes.

And for instance, Walmart doesn't have to open to the public tomorrow just because they opened to the public today.

> If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter.

You actually can. It might help the discussion for you to tell us where you picked up this idea.

> private public space

Please explain further what that means.

Also please explain how setting restrictions on use of the space based on conduct, such as being vaccinated or not, is more arbitrary than, say, a dress code.

Discrimination is largely legal. You absolutely can discriminate on any characteristic you like, with several well defined exceptions (such as race or sex).

But you have the right to invite people into buildings you own, right ?

Certainly not an absolute one. For example, fire codes typically have occupancy limits that prioritize public safety over the desires of owners and patrons.

(There's a stronger argument for refusing a vaccine being an absolute right)

Sure, self preservation or self preference first. I get that. What about empathy to frail or at risk people? What about people on cancer treatments that diminish their immune systems? Those people even vaccinated may be at higher risk.

Are you saying that the greater good in overall societal health is less valuable than your individual preferred method of existence? Genuinely curious.

You're not being asked to give up your basic human rights though. What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm.

>What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm.

A vaccine that also has a known chance of causing current harm, and an unknown chance of causing future harm.

> a free, readily available vaccine

Nothing is free. How much did pharma companies make from the vaccine? I don’t know the answer.

That's a bit dramatic, no? The proposal is wear masks and get a needle in your sholder, we aren't putting people in concentration camps here.

I see it as on par with indoor smoking bans and seatbelts. You are giving up a relatively small degree of freedom in order to stop a highly contagious, highly mutable virus; and yes, to protect people who aren't you.

I am willing to balance the risk of never having a normal life again with an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive.

It’s not about you. It’s never about you. There are plenty of people who cannot legitimately get vaccinated. Since these people have no choice to get the vaccine, then your rights to choose for yourself are rightly curtailed.

I’m always curious about these arguments. Why do you think your rights are superior to the rights of others?

Everyone here has never been able to go to school in the usa since they were kids unless they proved they were vaccinated against the standard diseases we've been giving out shots against for decades. Same goes for most high education too.

It's just become "a thing" now thanks to the rightwing using it as another way to aggravate their base, and thanks to "experts" who have an internet connection and think they know more than epidemiologists.

Unless these steps are taken this will never end and the daily hassles will be worse and go on longer for everyone.

The flu virus can and has mutated in the past to become extremely deadly (see 1918). Why is it different this time? Why should it be treated differently than the flu, when it comes to variants? I think everyone should get vaccinated, but I want to fill in all logical holes to help this debate.

This time, we've got effective vaccines.

I don't follow - are you saying that the flu vaccine shouldn't be mandated because it's not effective, and if there was an effective one, it should be mandated?

I'm saying that we have effective vaccines in 2021 against COVID-19 but we did not have effective vaccines in 1918 against influenza.

You misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not talking about 1918. Covid vaccines are being pushed to tamp down breakthrough variants. There is also as much risk of a deadly breakthrough variant of the flu right now. My point of bringing up 1918 is to show that deadly flu breakthrough variants are possible. Considering that this is still the case in 2021, should we mandate flu vaccines as well, right now? If not, the argument for mandating covid vaccines is inconsistent.

> Public health resources are limited. Unnecessary Covid hospitalizations cause immense opportunity cost in the form of crowding out care and driving costs. Which in many cases other sick people and the public will have to carry.

We have already decided as a society that individual choice outranks the cost to the health system. See obesity, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, workaholic culture with very limited vacation days, etc

Ask yourself if you would be ok submitting your photo ID, proof of citizenship, and phone's unique ID in any of the settings that the mandate will cover.

Do you honestly think they will dismantle it one day? Especially if Apple is making it so easy for them.

For the record, no I don't think I should have to present my ID to get a Metrocard or ride a train. I do think that is oppressive. Because by that point they will have intruded into our lives way too much.

NY state has been encroaching for years. They have been fantasizing about a "no ride" list for Amtrak.

And many officials have invited the TSA and ICE to set up surprise mobile checkpoints for commuters at bus terminals.

All under the justification of protecting us from terrorism.

This is just the thin edge of a wedge to expand their control over us. And yes, most of them do want more power and money, and our civil liberties stand in the way of that.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/train-security-is-a-no-ride-lis... [2]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/tsa-swarms-8000...

> We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC,

No. No. No. No. No.

Why is this so hard for people to understand? A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away. In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness. This isn't a point of question, it's a known FACT that is all too often left out of the discussion entirely.

I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms. They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.

There's absolutely no reason to say things like "hysterical fixation on cases". Bringing cases down means LESS LIVES LOST and less HEALTH lost.

If the ultimate goal is saving lives, how much of your daily life are you willing to sacrifice for public health? Willing to forego car ownership? End two day shipping speeds for non essential purchases?

I don't think the ultimate goal should be saving lives. It should be avoiding the spread of COVID. Saving lives would just be a side effect of lower COVID cases (and vaccination).

I'm all for re-opening businesses and promoting vaccinations. We have to get back to living our lives. I'm just tired of the idea people seem to have that it's entirely about lives.

Since SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population plus some animal species it's impossible to avoid the spread. We can slow the spread to a limited extent but eventually all of us will be exposed.

Hmm, this is a very serious hypothesis. While not disputing it as a viable hypothesis, do we have good models that support this conclusion? Also, how do these (SEIR?) models distinguish E=100 from E being an aggregate of different variants, delta etc? Finally, what is the relationship between E=100 and R0? I wouldn't expect it to be fixed (model independent) but rather a given model will assert some relationship between E and R0.

Sorry if this is a lot of questions, I do think it's valuable to address this with actual models and supporting data.

Maybe it is - if so, not fighting it consequently in many regions of the world certainly helped with that. But slowing the spread is still of essential importance. We do have vaccinations, which greatly reduce the risk of getting infected and especially the risk of severe consequences. Still, the very vulnerable groups of our society are carrying a considerable risk even when vaccinated. That alone should mandate to keep infection count low. And the more we vaccinate and have other limiting means in place - like wearing masks in indoor public places where it is possible - the lower the infection count is. That directly saves quite a few lives and a lot of health, but most of it, it buys us time.

Yes, probably everyone gets exposed to the virus in the future, but we can decide how quickly. Every month later means we might get vaccines which protect close to perfection, that we find better medication or at least better understand what Covid-19 is all causing and can treat better. Also, with any additional infection the risk of another significant mutation increases. Even with current vaccines, with a high enough vaccination rate any outbreaks should be much smaller and more localized. This does make a difference.

Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2448/

Yes, totally — we are only as healthy and as happy as the least of our neighbors. If I had to forgo two day shipping or driving in order to bring down traffic crashes, improve air quality, etc. that seems like a totally fair trade-off. The alternative doesn't look all that good.

Thank you for providing an excellent example of the fear-based reasoning surrounding "cases". I understand that you are scared, but is incorrect to imply that my opinion comes from a lack of understanding of what you're talking about.

> Why is this so hard for people to understand?

I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long education in this area, a deep understanding of the data, and personal experience.

> A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away.

Some do not. This one does.

> In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness.

In some, rare cases, we see examples of post-viral syndromes. We have seen these for many different viruses.

> I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms.

Again, lingering symptoms following an illness are not unknown. Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. By ~all current evidentiary standards for "long covid", I have had "long cold".

Similarly, my grandmother lost her sense of smell to a head cold when I was a child. She never got it back, entirely. Sad, but not something that we took extraordinary societal interventions to prevent.

> They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.

Neither of these are objectively defined. I have an "itch" in my lungs, right now (probably allergies). I have never had Covid. When I don't sleep well (which is often, thanks to the state of our society), I have trouble focusing. Is that "brain fog"?

Point being: some people are going to have after-effects from infection. That's unfortunate, but it's not unknown, and the virus isn't going away. If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed.

> I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long edudcation, and a deep understanding of the data.

Where's the data? I didn't see a single source listed, just anecdotes from you and your family.

Where's the data in the OP's comment? Remarkable how fear and speculation has a lower evidentiary standard, isn't it?

So you bring up the "I have the DATA!" Trump card and then when asked to provide it your response is, "well, no, where is YOUR DATA?"

That long Covid is a pernicious result for many people with debilitating effects is well established in the literature, it's not controversial.

That refusing to get the virus under control will lead to further variants potentially worse than Delta that perhaps the vaccines are less able to guard against. Not some crazy conspiracy!

What this is ultimately about is many of our fellow citizens believe "my choice" and "freedom" means the "freedom" to infect other people with a potentially debilitating virus rather than they be mildly inconvenienced.

We obviously don't know much about PASC/long COVID, but the initial data is worth paying attention to. This Swedish study says ~10% of healthcare workers who got COVID had lingering symptoms.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825846/

What about the lingering effects of the vaccine? Many seem to have this tiredness or general unwellness.

> “Many seem”

Citation needed for such an extraordinary claim.

If you don’t mind, could you share data on the UK, a place where nearly all adults aged 30+ have received two doses of the vaccine? It simplifies the discussion because there’s no question about self selection bias. If there’s any negative effects, it should surely have manifested in a large subset of this group of tens of millions of people, across ages and ethnicities.

Not just a handful of cases here or there. I’m talking about 0.01% or more of this population suffering some persistent harm. Not something that disappeared after a day or two.

VAERS records around 10k deaths post-vaccination in the US. Around 150 million Americans have been vaccinated. If all those deaths were caused by the vaccine, that would be 0.006% suffering the extremely persistent harm of death. In fact it's not known however whether those deaths following the vaccination were necessarily caused by covid, but unfortunately very little follow up (autopsies) is being conducted, so there's no way to know. Counter-balancing that is the fact that previous research has found "Adverse events from vaccines are common but underreported, with less than one percent reported": https://digital.ahrq.gov/ahrq-funded-projects/electronic-sup...

0.006%. That’s minuscule. Does that statistic also include people who got a vaccine and then got in a car accident?

Generally, yes.

I'm not saying that there will not be people who do not have lingering symptoms. We already know this happens with other viruses.

I'm arguing that most of the science here is bad, and even if these things hold up, the risk of ~10% of the population having anosmia for a few months is not worth the permanent restructuring of our society to fixate on the prevention of a single illness.

Well on the one hand it sounds like what you're saying is that there's a high degree of uncertainty, but on the other we can be certain that there's not a severe long-term problem.

I don't think the fear is about 10% ending up with anosmia. The fear is that the 10% of detectable problems might be indicative of much more severe and/or much more prevalent problems going undetected. You're right that the problem is lack of very good data, but the folks who live and breathe this domain appear to be very concerned by the data we do have.

For what it's worth, I don't think many (any?) people are arguing for a permanent restructuring of our society. They're merely asking that we don't consider death to be the only endpoint that's relevant to the conversation.

Self reported data on things like this is absolutely useless, even though I’ve had lingering taste issues myself. If the media is constantly talking about long COVID it’s no surprise that people will think “gee, I have been kind of tired since I got infected.”

Even my own taste issues might be something else - the only reason I’m confident they’re there is that it’s intermittent and takes me by surprise. I have two friends that think their sense of taste isn’t quite the same as it was and it’s steadily that way, which to me sounds like it could just be all in their heads (or not).

What other measures do you think we have? We have reported symptoms (suffers from what you mention) and physical evidence [1] - what other forms of evidence are even possible?

[1] Imaging data has also physically confirmed lasting damage from COVID which could definitely be affiliated with some of the symptoms we lump under PASC.

I wasn't saying it doesn't exist, I was just saying that "blah blah percentage of people think they have long COVID" is a useless statistic.

In an alternate universe where the media took and ran with the 5G conspiracy theory for over a year, you could survey the population and find the same amount had symptoms from that.

And thus no substantial change was made today on HN, besides to people who get fatigues seeing 4+ level deep comment debates: only reading a few comments before going back to reading tech articles.

> Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks.

Just a heads-up, that can turn into asthma if you are susceptible. Take care to properly heal every time.

(That'd be 'long cold' I guess. We don't need more of that stuff.)

Thanks! I'm already allergic to a lot of stuff, so it probably is related.

Yes, that sounds plausible, it's the same for me.

(It's not hard to guess how I know about the asthma potential. -.-)

Came here to say this. Had this enough times that it turns out I do have asthma (now medicated).

> Some do not. This one does.

I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree.

Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized.

As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. You likely maintain SOME impact from that infection, its just a question of how severe, or in some cases WHEN (see: chicken pox -> shingles). Viruses wreak havoc, and that is a point which is well documented, and slowly but surely people are starting to pay attention.

My gripe with your comment is that it completely disregards this point and treats the risk of viruses and either death, or no risk at all. The truth is far more nuanced than that, and there's legitimate reasons to want overall CASE COUNT to come down. It's about saving quality of life, including, actual life. Vaccination is the path to do that.

I also don't agree with your comment that "If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed."

Asking for proof of vaccination is not "completely up-ending" our society. It's quite reasonable to ask for certain personal hygiene requirements (shirts, shoes, etc.) but we can't ask that someone be reasonably protected from a getting and spreading a very dangerous virus? You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader?

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

> I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree.

Reasonable people can disagree on questions like this. But you came out of the gate insisting that I "didn't understand", which isn't true.

I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response.

> Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized.

FWIW, that study is terrible. It is a statistical fishing expedition, is improperly controlled (i.e. are the changes due to Covid, or something else? You can't tell!), and the whole field of "looking at MRI for reductions in gray matter" is littered with spurious findings. Here's a comment where I go into this in much greater detail:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927568

> As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect.

It's not "flat out incorrect"...as I said before, we know that post-viral syndromes are real. This is not new information.

Having a cough or shortness of breath (by FAR the most common "long covid" symptoms) after a infection are no more an indication that the virus is lingering in your body, than leg pain after a cast is removed is an indication that you continue to have a broken leg. It takes time to heal.

That's fair, my apologies for proclaiming that you don't understand. I should have known better especially on this forum.

I see where you're coming from and I don't entirely disagree with your conclusion. The post you linked, makes a strong case for not jumping to conclusions based on grey matter studies, which I think is sound advice.

That said, I maintain that given the option to get COVID or not get COVID, I would greatly prefer the later. You similarly won't find me gaming long hours, and I make sure to get plenty of sleep. In other words, taking precautions that avoid injury is generally a good idea. And FWIW, I don't find the controls in that study to be terrible? I'm not exactly an authority of statistical analysis though, so I'll trust that this is outside my scope of understanding.

Where it sounds like we disagree most is whether or not the risk of COVID causing injury is worth something as small (or large) as asking for proof of vaccination.

It just so happens that I think asking for proof of vaccination is a relatively minor thing given the possibilities of COVID.

It's not "asking for proof of vaccination" though is it? It's denying access to restaurants, bars and so-on to those do not or will not accede to such a demand. I don't see that social apartheid as minor thing.

I had all these concerns prior to this announcement. I wouldn't say all of those are now gone. However I must point out that the vaccine, at least in the US, is not being hoarded by the elite and wealthy. It is in most urban areas being made as readily available as possible. NYC even started providing a pre-paid $100 debit card which offsets time lost from work for those who could not afford that. Perhaps I am missing it - what sort of divide is being drawn?

Please let’s not throw around words like apartheid and Holocaust in situations that don’t warrant it. Both of those are commonly used by anti-vax community to draw attention to their perceived pain at being requested to vaccinate. But they trivialise the incredible violence done to millions of people, some of the worst crimes committed by our species. Trivialising these just to score points is unconscionable.

And let me be clear, taking a shot that is safe and effective is not an unreasonable ask. Restricting access to leisure to people who are willing to take this precaution isn’t unreasonable. And no, it’s in no way comparable to some of the worst crimes committed by humans.

There's no "holocaust" in my post, please don't tar me with that brush. Apartheid, "separateness" in Afrikaans, seems entirely appropriate here. Except that there won't be vaccinated bars and non-vaccinated bars, there will just be vaccinated bars, those who refuse to show a vaccine passport will just have to go sit in the park or something.

For the record, I'm fully vaccinated, but if/when bars start demanding vaccine passports in the UK, I stop going to bars.

Don’t play semantic games. “I was just using an Afrikaans word” is a sorry excuse. We know exactly what that word means and what specific historical crimes it refers to. You are trying to evoke the memory of those crimes to make this situation look unjust. It’s exactly that behaviour that I’m requesting you not engage in.

> they will have to go sit in a park

Seems fine to me. That’s hardly the worst thing that could happen.

If you’re already vaccinated, like nearly everyone aged 30+ in the UK is and refuse to open an app on your phone to show that … I can only hope that you’re in a small minority. I guess most people just want to get on with it, rather than sticking to some principle. Im not even sure what the principle is here. Hardly anyone will be negatively affected by this mandate because nearly everyone is vaccinated.

> i stop going to bars

Cool. Parks are better for your health anyway. Good day.

Well it seems we won't agree on the substantive point, but in case you're interested, that principle is a hostility to ID cards and demands from the state to provide them in various circumstances.

And refused entry to a bar I wouldn't dream of going to the park, I head home with two bottles of decent white wine.

Good day to you too.

@jjgreen (can't reply another layer of nesting)

> that principle is a hostility to ID cards and demands from the state to provide them in various circumstances

Can't a bartender legally obligate you to show your id to prove you are old enough to drink? Your argument makes no sense.

They may refuse to serve me if I appear to be under 18 and refuse to show proof of age. I do not appear to be under 18 and have only once or twice in my life been asked for proof of age, in each case I declined, chuckled, and moved on the next pub.

Hahaha. What do you do when you’re travelling past international borders and they ask you for a passport? Do you chuckle them too?

Or let me guess, you don’t travel out of England at all so you can avoid the tyranny of passport checkers?

Or do you do the sane thing and show your passport? So then you concede that in certain cases at least the State has a compelling interest in verifying a person’s papers.

I was responding to a question about bars, not about international travel. I have no objection to showing a passport at a national boundary, I do object to doing so to buy some eggs or a glass of wine; don't you see those things as being different?

I don't see them as being different. I'll show ID when I'm asked in both places. You seem to think they're different somehow. In both cases the State is enforcing a rule for the good of society (keeping out Undesirables(TM), restricting access to alcohol from children). I think both of these are reasonable, and I'm happy to comply. You will only comply with one of these seemingly, and I can't see why.

Btw, it's beneath you to try an innocent "some eggs". We know exactly what Tesco is going to card someone for, and it's not eggs.

Then we understand each other completely.

Sure, but you can't see a reason why they should be able to check? For someone you know, besides yourself?

Apartheid was a system of separation based on essential personal characteristics. Vaccination-admission requirements would lead to separation based on behavioral choice, probability of disease transmission, and liability risk.

It seems like an inappropriate and needlessly emotive choice.

I disagree with you but upvoted for the first point about using hyperbole to further one's point. That's not acceptable and undermines those atrocities and their weight.

Both sides are doing it - left considers the entire right-wing populace as 'Fascists'. The right considers the entire left-wing populace as 'Communists' and along with it comes calling out atrocities, historical turning points, etc to further their agenda.

>that is safe and effective is not an unreasonable ask

There are more post-vax deaths recorded in VAERS for the covid vaccines over the past 6 months than for all other vaccines over the past 20 years. It's definitely not 100% safe. Sure the risk is low, but the risk of dying of covid is also quite low for a significant subset of the population. There's also absolutely zero long-term safety data on the vaccines, because it's impossible to know what the effects 3-5 years down the line of a new treatment will be when that treatment's only existed for under a year.

Go look at VAERs more carefully – not what someone on TV told you to believe it says but the actual data and its collection rules. The CDC requests reports of deaths following vaccination, even if there isn’t a suspected connection to the vaccine – they’re not going to want someone who died in a car crash but the whole point here is getting a large amount of data for analysis. The emergency authorization includes unusually broad collection because they’re trying to maximize the odds of seeing a real problem earlier.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

“FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.”

Now, think about how broadly the vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions of people. Beyond the obvious conclusion that there is very little chance of a hidden serious complication which hadn’t yet manifested at that scale, think about how compressed that is in timing: if you take 100M people and look at that population for 6 months you’re going to see many deaths with or without vaccination. Now, remember that the elderly and other high risk populations were sensibly prioritized, so those rates will be even higher. Anyone looking at the data has to carefully adjust for things like that – it’s not just a query for the number of deaths but seeing whether it’s unusual for the cohort: are 70 year olds with pre-existing conditions dying at a different rate than they used to, not compared to a global rate covering kids to retirees?

“Apartheid” is a very serious term referring to a brutal system of racial discrimination. I think you are being extremely disrespectful to its victims by using the same term to describe people who suffer inconsequential consequences because they’re unwilling to be safe around other people.

The vaccines are available free to everyone, take minimal time to get, and extremely safe. This is an inconvenience on the level of having to wear pants on a hot day or wash your hands (which takes far more time in aggregate), and it’s only for voluntary activities which nobody needs to do to function.

Apartheid was being shut out of decent schools or jobs, packed into bad housing conditions, and being beaten if you complained about it, all enforced by a brutal prison system.

The vaccines aren’t safe for everyone. Lupus runs in my family, I already have an autoimmune condition, and I’ve already had COVID. For me, getting the vaccine would be all risk (even if it’s unlikely) with no gain.

I said “extremely safe” for that reason - there are always people who have problems with just about anything, but from a population perspective the numbers look quite good. People like you, young children, etc. are also why it’s important for the rest of us to do our part – as long as there’s so much community spread, they don’t have a safe alternative.

really? which strain/mutant of COVID did you get? There are quite some people get COVID twice, I hope you won't. One way to reduce such chance is to get the vaccine.

From https://www.lupus.org/resources/covid19-vaccine-and-lupus:

"The American College of Rheumatology COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Guidance recommends that people with autoimmune and inflammatory rheumatic disease (which includes lupus) get the vaccine unless they have an allergy to an ingredient in the vaccine."

and

"In general, you should get the vaccine even if you have already had COVID-19."

Right, and my father that has lupus absolutely got the vaccine. I, however, don't - and don't want to get lupus. It's a small risk, probably the same as getting sick normally, but it's still a risk with basically no benefit to me.

Let's be clear: the primary reason the messaging has been "previously infected people should still get the vaccine" is primarily because there are a lot of people out there that think they had COVID when they didn't. I had a friend who thought he had it twice, and then finally did get it on the third time. I had another friend think he got it back in February of last year and then actually got it late last year. They're both relatively intelligent (if not ignorant about certain things), and that's just in my little friend group.

I understand why they went down that road, but there's no reason for me to take it.

If that upsets you then you should in no circumstances watch Seinfeld's The Soup Nazi, which is a pity, one of the best episodes in my view.

Oh, don’t worry - I appreciate the difference between humorous and serious usage. The Seinfeld writers were not arguing that more people should become seriously ill because the alternative was a rather minor inconvenience.

Obviously it’s not just asking. What would be the point of asking if the response to any answer was the same?

No matter what you do, at some point you'll likely catch a SARS-CoV-2 infection (or maybe you already have). This is pretty much inevitable, just like with the other endemic common cold coronaviruses. Fortunately vaccination can greatly reduce the risk of having clinical COVID-19 symptoms.

This implies that getting the vaccine for the sake of others is far more pointless than we thought right? This would make getting the vaccine a much more personal matter, rather than a societal one.

No, it's not. Vaccinated individuals - even those who catch the virus - have far lower levels of the virus in their bodies, which means fewer chances for mutations.

> CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said recent studies had shown that those vaccinated individuals who do become infected with Covid have just as much viral load as the unvaccinated, making it possible for them to spread the virus to others.

This is why the CDC started recommending masks again.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administr...

right, so in reality, the vaccine is little more than an invisible, permanent but intrusive mask that protects yourself, and not necessarily others...

So the vaccine is for people who want to protect themselves against a serious reaction. Makes the case for vaccination far less compelling than what most people believe.

No. It's still significantly less likely that a vaccinated individual catches it in the first place, thus dramatically slowing community spread.

Seems like that is also up for debate. In this CDC study[1], 74% of cases were in the vaccinated. Probably around 69% of the population were vaccinated, meaning the fact that more than 69% of the cases were in the vaccinated suggests that the vaccinated were even more susceptible than the unvaccinated. I'm sure there are plenty of considerations with this study, but it certainly isn't glaringly obvious that vaccination reduces susceptibility.

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

Thank you. The majority in this thread seem to assume a higher net effect in preventing the spread through vaccination than is really the case.

Misleading/debunked: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/142224191618851636...

Blog discussing this from shaklee3's Twitter link:

https://inguyun.medium.com/the-provincetown-outbreak-is-actu...

Are you trying to make the claim that the vaccine makes you more susceptible to catching Covid than being unvaccinated?

You prefer death to being ill?

The new data for the delta variant shows reduced protection for unvaccinated people (e.g. public benefit) from being around vaccinated people, but still shows benefit to vaccinated people.

I'm not sure I'm getting your second sentence.

What about it? To attempt to restate it: due to the emergence of the delta mutation, it is becoming less reliable to rely on the shared benefit of others being vaccinated to protect unvaccinated or immunocompromised individuals. So the risks to all populations is increasing, but not proportionally: the speed of spread to those without the personal benefit of being vaccinated is increasing much faster.

Edit: note, I’ve seen your other link, and do wonder why that was observed for that community. Here I am referring to current CDC estimates for the country and reports of hospital utilization averages overall.

Viral loads in the sinuses such that it's transmissible. This is not the same as viral loads in the body.

Still means it's comparably transmissible right?

But it does not mean the same risk of generating new variants.

This has been debunked in a way. Viral load does not translate to how well they transmit it. Vaccinated people do not transmit covid as easily.

> You similarly won't find me gaming long hours, and I make sure to get plenty of sleep. In other words, taking precautions that avoid injury is generally a good idea.

That's awesome for you, but not what we are discussing here.

What we are discussing here is you mandating that all drivers of cars gets to bed by 10PM and have a good sleep, on the chance that lack of sleep leads to bad driving which leads to higher chances of accidents, including to those who slept well last night, yet were involved in the accident.

The post I was replying to included links to studies, in which grey matter was assessed in people who play too many video games, don't sleep enough, etc. I was merely making the point that evidence of gray matter reduction in other studies, isn't reason alone to write off the one I linked. We should probably take them all seriously (assuming sound practices).

>What we are discussing here is you mandating that all drivers of cars gets to bed by 10PM and have a good sleep, on the chance that lack of sleep leads to bad driving which leads to higher chances of accidents, including to those who slept well last night, yet were involved in the accident

Not even close to the reality of the situation, but you wouldn't be the first to take a very hyperbolic approach to it.

It is indeed rhetoric, but the underlying difference of opinion that is being highlighted is the agency that is being denied.

We are not disagreeing on the benefits of a practice ( vaccination or taking a nap ).

> I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what was just being discussed. There is hard data which says COVID has a huge range of long term side effects, that’s simply a fact you can personally feel it’s an acceptable risk but nothing about your personal beliefs change the reality of long term impacts of severe viral infections.

I personally feel that the US has given people long enough to get vaccinated it’s time to open the floodgates of infection and open things up. Yes, the unvaccinated and many vaccinated will simply get very sick and die in large large numbers based on their personal choices, but such is life.

I expect most people will disagree with my personal options and that’s fine, but don’t argue about objective facts.

> There is hard data which says COVID has a huge range of long term side effects

If you can cite this "hard data", it'll be amongst the first I've ever seen.

So far, all I've seen are anecdotes and poorly controlled surveys of self-reported symptoms, the vast majority of which are mild. Reports of "cough" and "fatigue", three weeks after a respiratory illness are not exceptional, they're the expected case.

Just today, this paper was published in a Lancet journal, looking at symptom duration in a large cohort (259k) of children under 17. The most enduring symptoms? Loss of smell, headache, sore throat and fatigue. Virtually everything else fell to background in a week.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...

If you’re happy with literally any longer term impacts here’s one documented though very rare one: “Most patients were treated with a single course of intravenous immunoglobulin, and improvement was noted within 8 weeks in most cases. GBS-associated COVID-19 appears to be an uncommon condition with similar clinical and EDx patterns to GBS before the pandemic.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32678460/

I bring it up not because it’s a significant risk, but as a demonstration that immune responses themselves are one of the risk factors associated with viral infections. Critically though there are a lot of rare conditions that individually may not be a factor but collectively are.

Hospital-acquired infections for example aren’t directly caused by covid, but start talking about 100’s of thousands of people being hospitalized and it’s a common risk.

As to that study, people under 17 aren’t even close to representative of the larger population when it comes to viral infections. It’s an important consideration but people 35-44 while generally considered low risk are literally at 100 times the risk of death as 4-14 year olds. Youthful immune systems are simply vastly better.

If we're down to talking about Guillain-Barré, then I'm definitely not concerned.

37 cases of "covid-associated" GBS falls in the category of "lighting strike risks" in life. Yeah, it can happen, but it's pretty damned rare. I'm not changing my life for it.

Also, of course...GBS is associated with at least one of the covid vaccines, itself:

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/guillain-barre-syndrome-a...

Great, you just made the first step and admitted yes there is at least one long term risk from covid infections. I picked a tiny one specifically because it was so easy.

Next, what about hospital born infections? Clearly people who aren’t in hospitals are at lower risk and clearly people are hospitalized in large numbers from Covid-19. So is that another slightly larger step you’re willing to take?

If not we can talk about tissue damage. Blood vessels for example: https://epi.ufl.edu/articles/covid-19-blood-vessel-damage.ht...

> Great, you just made the first step and admitted yes there is at least one long term risk from covid infections. I picked a tiny one specifically because it was so easy.

I've never said anything different. I'm not sure what victory you think you've won.

Some people will have long-term symptoms of Covid. Just like pretty much every other virus.

Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me that there's an unprecedented risk for a lot of people, I'm not on board with taking unprecedented actions that affect everyone.

> I've never said anything different. I'm not sure what victory you think you've won.

You just said so in this thread:

“ > A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away.

Some do not. This one does.”

No qualifications just absolute dismissal of all long term symptoms.

> Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me there’s an unprecedented risk for a lot of people

Sure, because the only evidence you can infer is that which you already agree with. Raising the bar arbitrarily isn’t science it’s a logical fallacy.

However, the exact data you’re asking for is quite simply hospitalization rates. Severe cases of covid include the normal risks of severe viral infections, but it causes severe infections at significantly higher rates thus it also causes those normal complications at much higher rates. Along with it’s own unusual risks from blood clots causing all the things blood clots cause.

> Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me that there's an unprecedented risk for a lot of people, I'm not on board with taking unprecedented actions that affect everyone.

What kind of evidence would convince you?

Bear in mind (as I'm sure you know), it's gonna be very difficult to get accurate before and afters while in the midst of a pandemic, and it's likely that this evidence will only exist if enough people don't get one of the vaccines.

For retric: is there any actual evidence this “blood vessel” damage isn’t simply repaired by the body?

I haven’t read a definitive answer to how much that blood vessel damage sticks around. Of course secondary effects of that damage such as strokes have their own long term progression.

OPs point is that many of these long term symptoms can be observed after other infections too. Influenza is also known to have longer term side effects especially in children (sound similar?)

Unrelated but important: I think a lot of people miss that this pandemic has infected millions of people, so all of the one in a million events happen with enough frequency to where you will find significant proportions of the population displaying ever symptom you could imagine "due to COVID".

We had a woman who started hemorrhaging a week into her infection. Do you think that was caused by COVID? Probably not, but I'd bet you could find a thousand people where that happened just because of the sheer size of infections.

Many long term systems are common with viral infections, however it’s important to realize their normally a function of infection severity. As such the reality that COVID causes a disproportionate number of hospitalizations means it also disproportionately increases the risk of these side effects.

>Yes, the unvaccinated and many vaccinated will simply get very sick and die in large large numbers based on their personal choices, but such is life.

Those who are unvaccinated because they're immuno-compromised, allergic or under the age of twelve aren't unvaccinated due a "personal choice."

What should be done about those folks? Are you arguing that such people have "made their choice?"

I believe the immuno compromised are safer hiding through a final huge surge than risking infection over a much longer covid swan song.

People under 12 with healthy immune systems are at extremely low risks from covid.

>People under 12 with healthy immune systems are at extremely low risks from covid.

I'm sure that's a great comfort to the parents of the ~2000 children that have died COVID related deaths[0] in the US during the pandemic.

And to the parents of the children who will die before we get this scourge under control.

Perhaps you should volunteer to speak at the funerals of such children so you can assure everyone there that it's no big deal?

[0] https://www.aappublications.org/news/2020/12/29/covid-2milli...

How many of those children do you think had healthy immune systems?

Kids with compromised immune systems are at risk, and there at increased risk the longer this goes on. Are you willing to talk at the funerals of all those kids?

Also, your link is: At least 172 children had died as of Dec. not 2,000.

>Are you willing to talk at the funerals of all those kids?

I'm not claiming that it's no big deal, nor am I advocating for just letting people die as you are.

Or did I somehow misunderstand your point of view?

I think you misunderstood that I expect this would kill fewer kids than our current approach.

Enforcing restrictions that are excessive in order to just keep cases down is in most case even more detrimental to the long-term quality of life of the majority of the population. What so many of the restrictions enthusiasts don’t seem to understand, is the long term mental health impact this upending of society has had on all of us, and especially on the younger generations. I say this as a fully vaccinated individual.

Regarding the specific case, to make my position even more nuanced, I don’t have a specific problem with having to prove vaccination or positive test for indoor dining. Here in Berlin that’s the rule they used when reopening last May, and it never went away. This way, nobody has ever really debated it.

> You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader?

So natural immunity should be included then? I hear all these arguments but then people pretend like natural immunity is not a thing. Sure maybe it isn’t as effective as a vaccine (though some argue it is better), but it definitely makes you at least unlikely to spread.

I might believe this isn’t just a huge power grab and people are actually concerned with the health of individuals, if folks would acknowledge “the science” of natural immunity.

Saying it isn’t as good as vaccine means nothing, because we are only trying to eliminate more likely spreaders, not any statistical chance of spreading.

I used to think natural immunity was a thing. Most people in India thought so too. Based on surveys, a majority of people in cities had been infected in the first wave of Covid in 2020. So confident in herd immunity was the Indian government that they were happily organising programs to give away vaccines to countries around the world, thinking it wasn’t necessary in India.

As the events of April-July 2021 proved, the new variant ripped through a population that was supposed to have reached herd immunity. As it stands, 80%+ of people in major Indian cities have had an infection. Does that mean that covid will never bother India again? I’m guessing no.

I think that speaks to the rapid evolution of the virus, more than to the lack of a natural immunity process. It's terrifying how quickly COVID has evolved, and given more time in the human species, it will evolve further. That's why the push for vaccination is so important. There's even people pushing for prophylactic use of other medications to completely stamp out COVID for the simple reason of - you do NOT want this virus evolving any more than it has.

Absolutely. I firmly understand that natural immunity is as good, if not better, than the vaccine.

The trouble is, how do you prove it? There are antibody tests that maybe are positive even months later? I'm not sure, honestly. The tricky part is just the recording of the matter, not the science behind it.

How does someone know if my fake vaccine card is a fake?

How does someone know that even though I’m vaccinated I’m one of the very very small few who will have a breakthrough infection?

We could probably do things to ensure these as well, but at what point do we just say “yep there is a risk”, and accept that risk as part of living life?

I think there is a part where the principalities and powers that rule, actually want us to get so angry and divided.

That is why things are forced, and mandated, rather than appealed to. One side gets mad that they ask, the other side doesn’t give a chance for the good natured to help voluntarily.

There is no conspiracy of people plotting in a room coming up with how they can gain more power to take over the world (unless they’re two mice trying to do same thing night after night), but nonetheless there is a spirit of division and hatred that is very much present in our country that is tearing us apart.

> I think there is a part where the principalities and powers that rule, actually want us to get so angry and divided.

Totally agree.

> There is no conspiracy of people plotting in a room coming up with how they can gain more power to take over the world (unless they’re two mice trying to do same thing night after night), but nonetheless there is a spirit of division and hatred that is very much present in our country that is tearing us apart.

Yup, there sure is and it's really disheartening to watch it unfold day after day. The country seems more divided than I've ever seen it in my 30ish years, and certainly more divided than rose colored glasses of past decades.

It's a shame but, maybe it's also a sign of healthy country? Maybe united countries are also the ones that go to war and invade others?

It depends what they’re united on. If they’re united on something evil, it is good they lose power, if united on something good then they will use that power for good. Our wars for example in the Middle East, our unity was on security and safety as the highest good, so we were willing to do something awful to pursue that thing. The letters next to their names have changed, but we’ve still made a god of security and safety, and have allowed it to blind us to the evil we’re doing.

Sure: if they can prove it. But since that's hard and expensive and there is no effective risk to a vaccine (particularly if you definitely are naturally immune, as it would be an antigen response your body is already mostly familiar with and not trigger any primary immune responses), we do the other thing.

I am literally working with vaccination registry APIs right now which have an explicit system for registering and tracking natural immunity.

I’m glad to hear that natural immunity is considered. I might get one dose as a booster for my natural immunity, but not two. Regardless even if I got two, I will behave as if I had none, and will not go dining if they require proof of vaccination and whatever other things.

I will never report someone for violating a vaccine mandate, or a mask mandate. Or if they forge their vaccine card.

If they are knowingly sick, going out with a fever, and a cough in public places and essentially trying to get people sick, I will report them. Even if they’ve been vaccinated but “just” had the Flu.

And that person exists by the way. People who essentially knew they had covid, were feeling symptoms, yet went to a party anyways. But I’m sure there is the person who proudly goes out with their vaccination card showing both doses sick with something else like the flu, judging those who have no symptoms of sickness but aren’t vaccinated also being out.

> I might get one dose as a booster for my natural immunity, but not two.

Why? This is basically you doing something random for absolutely no data supported reason.

This was actually recommended by the Irish vaccination committee, as long as your infection was within the last 180 days and you actually had a seropositive Covid test.

No that would be getting two doses when I’m already effectively immune. One dose as a booster if you have antibodies. It would essentially be like getting a 2nd dose for those who haven’t had it.

The point is that it is pretty much impossible to overdose on vaccine shots - they just get less effective.

So if the requirement is to have be received a full vaccine course for COVID-19 there is no risk to that, just potential waste of doses.

Making up a decision about your natural immunity is you doing exactly that. It's not supported by data.

One more example: itch in one's throat and nasty suffocating cough that does not stop for an hour. Surprisingly, this might be caused by reflux (without the accompanying stomachache).

I imagine it would be pretty easy for someone not used to dealing with gastritis on a regular basis to attribute such a symptom to "COVID".

Yeah, all of these "long covid" symptoms overlap substantially with other, common things, or have otherwise been defined so liberally by these terrible, self-reported "studies" that anyone with a normal human immune system and a head cold would qualify. Just consider the three most common complaints (by far):

Cough & Shortness of breath: allergies, asthma, typical recovery process from any cold or flu

Fatigue: depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from most illness

Brain fog (whatever that is): depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from illness...

It's not that "long covid" isn't real...it's just that the scientific data for it at present are so vague that you can "have" it by being a normal person.

Does it bother you that schools ask for proof of measles vaccination? Most people recover from that too if infected during the school age years.

Most being the operative word too: 1 in 1000 get encephalitis and brain damage, 1-3 in 1000 die!

Measles R0 is also something absurd like 15, with spread characteristics of "a person with measles goes in an elevator - the next day a person gets in the same elevator and catches it".

Fine, but if it's just a matter of degree, why would anyone want to keep spinning the evolution roulette wheel that might lead to a variant with significant vaccine breakthrough? This is a global pandemic that we have effective tools to fight not being fully utilized.

>I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID.

vaccinated people get covid and spread it like unvaccinated[1]. Then what is the point of vaccination mandate? I really don't understand.

Add to that that since May CDC stopped counting breakthrough cases which don't result in hospitalizations.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of...

"About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated, according to new data published Friday by the CDC.

The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that fully vaccinated people who get infected carry as much of the virus in their nose as unvaccinated people. "

Potentially related - "How major media outlets screwed up the vaccine ‘breakthrough’ story" [1]. Outlines media mis-interpretation of an unfinished, internal CDC presentation last week (roughly lines up with your July 30 story).

[1] https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/cdc_date_media_coverage_...

I found that while reading daily news from AllSides[2], as recommended in a recent HN thread. I really like it so far. [2] https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

Your link is multipage propaganda spin full of media distrust FUD without data, and deja vu - White House tweets blaming the media for wrong coverage of hard CDC data.

Whereis if you compare the CNBC link i posted with the official CDC report linked below you'll find no screwed up nor mis-interpretation on the part of CNBC (though CNBC didn't mention the 69% vaccination coverage and obvious correlation with the observed 74% share of infections). And the CDC report is crystal clear:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

"During July 2021, 469 cases of COVID-19 associated with multiple summer events and large public gatherings in a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, were identified among Massachusetts residents; vaccination coverage among eligible Massachusetts residents was 69%. Approximately three quarters (346; 74%) of cases occurred in fully vaccinated persons"

It's weird that you are certain this study is a gold-standard for medicine when nothing anywhere close to this has been shown in any other country.

It's an incredibly small sample size, directly after an unusual event after very large indoor public gathering of many people.

This is not how science works.

Your response is extremely typical mix of mis-information (see below), generally stated principles bordering in their generality on banality and absence of any data.

>nothing anywhere close to this has been shown in any other country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-gu...

"This echoes data seen from studies in other countries, including highly vaccinated Singapore, where 75 percent of new infections reportedly occur in people who are partially and fully vaccinated."

>Your response is extremely typical - just generally stated principles bordering in their generality on banality and without any ounce of data.

Y'see in SCIENCE we have this generally stated principle that we don't draw empirical conclusions from a dataset of a few hundred observations.

How banal!

"This echoes data seen from studies in other countries, including highly vaccinated Singapore, where 75 percent of new infections reportedly occur in people who are partially and fully vaccinated."

This does absolutely nothing to back up your claim that vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the Delta variant.

But please ask for help next time you move those goalposts, I wouldn't want you hurting yourself.

>Y'see in SCIENCE we have this generally stated principle that we don't draw empirical conclusions from a dataset of a few hundred observations.

the statistics would disagree with you on how representative a random draw of several hundred would be in this situation. Anyway, just an example related to the situation - Moderna stage 2 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7871769/):

"Between 29 May and 8 July 2020, 600 participants were randomized, 300 per age cohort. [...]

Conclusions

Vaccination with mRNA-1273 resulted in significant immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 in participants 18 years and older, with an acceptable safety profile, confirming the safety and immunogenicity of 50 and 100 µg mRNA-1273 given as a 2 dose-regimen. "

>This does absolutely nothing to back up your claim that vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the Delta variant.

beside obvious statistical arithmetic clearly showing it (whihc i guess is pointless to discuss giving your statistics statements above), you probably missed the part about nasal viral content in vaccinated people being similar to that of unvaccinated and hint - this infection is airborne. This is why CDC introduced mask mandate for everybody.

And you can read this too https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

"The higher the amount of coronavirus in the nose and throat, the more likely the patient will infect others. In one Wisconsin county, after Delta became predominant, researchers analyzed viral loads on nose-and-throat swab samples obtained when patients were first diagnosed. They found similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, with levels often high enough to allow shedding of infectious virus. "

"the statistics would disagree with you on how representative a random draw of several hundred would be in this situation"

The observations in your original citation were NOT NOT NOT a random sample.

Are you really this deeply ignorant of basic statistical methods or are you just being dishonest?

There's actually a really robust-looking study just out in the UK sampling the population to find how much less likely vaccinated people are to be positive for Covid than non-vaccinated people: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/latest-react-1-study-...

Apparently the answer is that they're a third as likely to have it as the unvaccinated. Which certainly isn't nothing, and it's definitely better than the flu vaccine managed, but it does suggest that there's probably no way we're going to stop the spread of the Delta variant through any level of vaccination no matter what the US media claims. It also means that any hope of avoiding selective pressure for vaccine escape by just vaccinating people quickly enough is likely to prove futile. We also don't really have any special exemptions or privileges for vaccinated people yet outside of laxer requirements for international travel, so that wouldn't explain why the gap is so small.

(Incidentally, the "quick peak and decline in countries with high levels of vaccination" like the UK almost certainly isn't simply a result of vaccines working, despite the CJR article's attempt to spin it that way. All our experts over here seem to be in agreement that not only are the vaccines not effective enough to explain that, it just doesn't make sense to have such a sudden peak and decline as a result of our vaccination program - which has actually been slowing down as it runs out of willing recipients - or from natural immunity in combination with it. They reckon it must be caused in part by people's behaviour, and if we return to normal or autumn hits cases will go up again.)

>they're a third as likely to have it as the unvaccinated

In the week ending 07/31 MA was getting about 600/day, 200 of them are vaccinated. The number of vaccinated are 4.2M out of 7.1M. Thus according to that data the probability for a vaccinated is just under 40% of unvaccinated.

Giving that Delta is several times more virulent the current situation can be thought that way - the vaccinated facing Delta today is like unvaccinated facing original year ago (year ago totally unvaccinated MA had 400-500/day, and if MA was totally vaccinated today, 7.1M instead of 4.2M, it would as result be 350cases/day instead of the 200). I.e. these numbers also suggest that there is no good way to stop the spread until Delta capable vaccine comes.

That also highlights the propaganda spin of "just 125K breakthroughs out of 160M vaccinated since January", the widely tweeted 0.08% (especially giving that CDC hasn't been counting non-hospitalizations breakthroughs since May, and that number seems definitely incorrect as MA having 2.5% of vaccinated has 7K total breakthroughs - almost 6% of 125K) - the Delta is pretty recent and the total number isn't the point, the point is the current infection rate of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

Just chiming in to add some data I ran across earlier today. The spreadsheet showcases data from Israel which was updated yesterday, 8/3/21. I found it very valuable as it broke down demographics by age and vaccination status.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mg6NEp4iKcSR1O8l47bL...

The source for the data is linked in spreadsheet. You can copy/paste the link in google translate.

Imgur links of relevant translated data: https://imgur.com/a/uV2wP5B

This clearly shows a significant portion of the new cases are among the vaccinated.

Anecdotally, those I know who have "breakthrough" cases are having fairly moderate flu-like symptoms. I am quite confident those who are symptomatic are capable of spreading illness even if the vaccinated as a population are less likely to transmit disease.

To my knowledge (which can be wrong), vaccinated people do have a much less chance to get infected, and if infected on average have a much less viral load (thats whey they don't get as sick). As a consequence, they are less contributing to spreading the virus than unvaccinated people. And as they get less often seriously sick, they also reduce the load onto the health sytem.

>vaccinated people get covid and spread it like unvaccinated[1]. Then what is the point of vaccination mandate? I really don't understand.

The point is to greatly reduce your chance going into ICU. Trust me, nobody like the intubation. Physicians don't like it, patients hate it.

Also if you're American the short answer is you can't afford that medical bill.

> One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms. They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.

They'd might want to look into the I-RECOVER Protocol for treating Long COVID:

https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-recover...

https://youtu.be/ZCYM2HW2Ayw?t=321

Also there's emerging data suggesting Long COVID symptoms are being triggered by the reactivation of the Epstein Barr Virus.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmH7IpUpbI

> No. No. No. No. No.

This kind of attitude turns people away from wanting to engage with you, even if your idea has merit.

> There's absolutely no reason to say things like "hysterical fixation on cases". Bringing cases down means LESS LIVES LOST and less HEALTH lost.

It's naive to think that some people want more lives lost. That's the goal of everyone. In the same way, you're asking people to understand your perspective, try to keep an open mind, and understand the perspective of others. Even if you're correct, the only way to help is to understand the root of why some people are hesitant.

I'm obviously pro vaccines (in general) and are vaccinated for covid, but I'm also pro informed decision making, which from my perspective is very lacking (in some contexts) and very simplistic (summarized into TikTok-style videos and "cute" guitar songs) in others. There is of course valuable information out there but it's very difficult to find and is mostly lost in the ocean of influencer-driven media, turning science into MTV style top 10 countdowns. I happen to very rarely watch TV or news related to Covid from any source other than Sweden's official organizations, and I'm very happy with their information. I also noticed that it's very different in cadence from what I usually read people trying to say anywhere [1] (contrary to generic Swedish media for example, which follows the American example mostly). I believe this is one of the main reasons we have 40% fully vaccinated and ~60% with at least one shot). And there's no noticeable animosity or friction between vaccinated or unvaccinated people. There are also very few masks going around (mostly older people and 1 out of 100 young people I see).

From what I understand, scientists doing the research are working very hard on this, and they are still not 100% clear on all the details. It's naive to dismiss side-effects no matter how rare they are, and even more dangerous to dismiss fears of people. When you say "everyone must get vaccinated whether they understand or not" you're not aiding those people who are hesitant (regardless of why). Just the other day I watched a supercut of different "officials" some saying people can "top-off" with a second jab from another kind of vaccine while others saying that it's extremely wrong to do so. Similar to how the whole mask thing changed over time (and even now again with the new variants). This is all to say that difference of opinion and understanding is not only expected, but it's inevitable. You can't eliminate it, you can only face it and discuss it openly.

1: https://www.1177.se/Stockholm/sjukdomar--besvar/lungor-och-l...

> And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.

Literally not true. Kids under 12 are not able to be vaccinated, which puts a limit on the activities they and their families can do. If they're able to know that everyone inside a restaurant is vaccinated they'll be more likely to visit.

> It might well lead to anger and violence (as similar moves have across Europe).

Not really. There were some minor protests and then an untick in vaccination rate. As someone living in NYC right now I really can't see this being met with violence.

How could a family under 12 possibly know that everyone inside a restaurant is vaccinated unless the restaurant only allows a single party to have a member under 12?

Sure, other kids are a risk, as they always are. Everything is a risk evaluation, even with a vaccine mandate if the restaurant has two kids at every table with little space between them then it might not be a good idea to go in. Doesn't invalidate the fact that it would be better if all the adults are vaccinated.

Sure, but it seems at least a little unreasonable (at least disingenuous) to me to argue that “I want to be able to take unvaccinated members in my party into a restaurant confident that the other people in the establishment are proven to be vaccinated because it's dangerous if unvaccinated people gather in a public, indoor establishment.”

If unvax’d people represent such a risk to others in your judgment, you should not be part of putting unvax’d people in your own party into that situation.

(For context, I’m pro-vax, got vax’d literally the first day I was eligible, and have a kid under 12 that I can hardly wait until they’re eligible. I’m against any vax passport scheme that even theoretically allows tracking/correlation of my identity/location if shown to a party intent on tracking me.)

> Literally not true. Kids under 12 are not able to be vaccinated, which puts a limit on the activities they and their families can do. If they're able to know that everyone inside a restaurant is vaccinated they'll be more likely to visit.

This policy is also hysterical, and not based in science. Kids should not be under any restrictions due to SARS-CoV2.

Please see my comment from yesterday as to why I believe this is true:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775

(Aside: I generally feel that the FDA is on the right side of history by being exceptionally careful with approval of the vaccine for children, but arguments like the parent's -- I hear this a lot in different contexts -- do sometimes make me wish that they'd just make an extremely limited approval so that the most fearful 5% of people can force it upon their children and stop holding the rest of the world hostage.)

> the most fearful 5% of people can force it upon their children and stop holding the rest of the world hostage

To be clear, as a parent, it's not because I'm fearful, it's because a positive COVID test from any child in my kid's school means that it shuts down for two weeks, completely messing up our lives, jobs etc. I'm not going to defend that policy for a second as I don't think it's a good idea either, but it's what we're dealing with day in, day out. We're not hysterical fearmongers.

> To be clear, as a parent, it's not because I'm fearful, it's because a positive COVID test from any child in my kid's school means that it shuts down for two weeks, completely messing up our lives, jobs etc.

Completely agreed. This is a stupid, hysterical policy, and we should all be against it. I include it with my previous comment that children should face no restrictions from SARS-CoV2. What we've done to kids in the last year is so unethical that it makes me furious.

I don't mean to imply that you specifically, are hysterical, but this stuff is coming from a group of people who are operating based on fear and lack knowledge. And unfortunately, a great many of them are in positions of power.

It's not just kids...

All the young people have given away a year of their lives to "save grandma"... and now, the government wants them to give up another year, because few grandmas don't want to get vaccinated.

Since the vaccines are available to everyone, and enough time has passed, that everyone has had the chance to get vaccinated, then i have no moral issues if a few people die, because they took the risk, and lost the statistics game.

we're seeing an increase in hospitalizations, which is straining capacity and putting doctors under pressure. if capacity is exceeded due to unvaccinated covid patients, what do you do? bar new covid admissions from the hospital and let them die on the street? keep existing triage order, where someone sick with heart failure or accident trauma might not be admitted because the ward's full of sicker, admitted, covid patients?

and before you say "kick the covid patients to the curb," morals aside do you really think that's politically feasible?

What if the triage criteria is to prioritize vaccinated people? Then the segment that suffers from lack of hospital capacity is the same as the segment responsible for unnecessarily burdening the hospital.

This comes full circle on the "show your papers" issue, but at least in this scenario showing papers is directly aligning cause and effect regarding death.

I'm kind of curious how that would be received. If you show up to the hospital for covid and you don't have a vaccine and aren't exempt you don't get treated.

I really think there's a good chance it would be received OK. I think vaccinated people are sick of the shit from the other half or 40% and I think the unvaccaniated think they're immune to everything. I think they're happy taking their chances or w/e

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.10.20210492v...

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7004e4.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7386533/

There is no easy policy win re kids. Sure, we can be like fuck it all, children are mostly safe from covid, but then its almost guaranteed parents and everybody else in household will get it. I know for 100% we both did get it from our son who brought it from kindergarden. We were super careful for almost a year and it worked well. We got covid while my wife was pregnant. Not a nice situation to say at least.

How do you set that restrictions to adults are OK because we want to protect them, but for kids aren't? Those restrictions then kind of become pointless, don't they? Older people also want to see their grandkids desperately, I think that's a simple fact of life.

So unless I am reading it wrong, folks are annoyed because suddenly they have to take care of their kids for 2 weeks. I know I had a rough week+something when I was WFH and caring for our son whose kindergarden got closed due to covid (and he brought it home as we found almost a week later). But fuck, I've managed and it brought me closer to my son, juggling tons of conf calls and so can almost everybody else for few weeks. Its just a work, on all calls in past year there have been kids yelling in the background, sometimes mine too. It is actually properly cool to hear how those voices have their lives running in the background.

Its true that those who physically have to be present at work (like my wife, doctor) had tougher times if kindergardens locked down and no solution in sight. But the amount of couples where both parents were in same situation is properly miniscule, mostly folks that complain don't fall there. Its folks who had their convenient busy lives suddenly messed up a bit and had to fully focus on their closest ones and found out proper parenting 24/7 is hard.

Society doesn't have an easy coping mechanism for this since we don't have robot nannies immune to viruses. That sucks, and will suck. Minor obstacle that builds character and family bonds I'd say.

> Sure, we can be like fuck it all, children are mostly safe from covid

No, children are almost entirely safe from Covid. Don't exaggerate the risk.

> but then its almost guaranteed parents and everybody else in household will get it.

...and they can get vaccinated, and they will face the approximate risk profile of a cold or flu.

Look, it's like I said: there are people who are going to be at continued risk from this. That's unfortunate, but it's no different than any other virus we've lived with throughout human civilization. At this point, we're proposing extraordinary interventions to head off an ordinary level of risk.

Children spread COVID first of all. Second of all, COVID attacks blood vessels. The fact that healthy children seem safe now, does not mean that as they age, we won't see a rising burden of disease due to the long term effects of having their blood vessels attacked when they were young.

The science behind COVID-19 is evolving, I see new information in the news every day that changes how I see this disease (usually for the worse, though not always). To simply assume children are safe and propose a policy of mass infection is extremely short sighted in my opinion.

I'm still undecided re: mandates as this is correctly viewed as a massive authoritarian extension of government power domestically on top of the 9/11 restrictions that never went away (it is already completely tyrannical abroad). However, for a reasonable society (not ours) I believe COVID-19, especially the Delta strain, presents a level of population risk that the consideration of such measures is warranted.

I’m vaccinated and generally quite pro-vaccine but this is just the anxious adults not coping well with reality thing timr is talking about. The whole “it attacks blood vessels” thing. Kids are largely asymptomatic and incur little damage of this sort. Their bodies heal up and it’s done. There is no real “long term” boogeyman with this virus. You can’t find evidence for this with kids because it doesn’t exist. The virus is gone and done within a couple weeks and it isn’t coming back unless you get reinfected. There is just no mechanism for this long term damage theory I have seen. Some kids have severe cases but it’s exceptionally rare. Yes it’s a virus and it does virus things but it’s really not that exceptional. Too many people are misapplying and misreporting the actual science and risk. To prove otherwise I think the burden is on you to prove such an extraordinary claim for such a relatively mundane virus in the scheme of things.

I don't agree. We thought this about adults about a year ago then started to notice brain damage, clotting problems, heart problems, and other organ damage. I'm willing to entertain that children are less vulnerable but I'm not willing to simply assume it and say whoopsie after the fact. Ask me again in a year when we know more.

It's incredibly sad but not at all surprising that so many people so quickly write off everyone that has to come in contact with unvaccinated children.

This society has little respect for the lives of teachers and staff that have to do the job of caring for kids so that parents can have time to work. I hoped that people would come away from the experience with a little bit of growth knowing how difficult it is to do childcare 24/7, but of course the entitlement knows no bounds.

Why not lobby your school board to get rid of such a ridiculous policy?

These policies more often than not come from the state level, and are set by the governor or unelected bureaucrats in state departments of health. Washington and Oregon are threatening local school boards which try to set their own non-hysterical policies with fines, loss of teaching licenses, and loss of state & federal funding.

This is absolutely correct. These policies are being driven by unelected bureaucrats in Oregon Health Authority working with the Oregon Department of Education. And there are fines for failure to comply. https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/healthsafety/...

Then organize and lobby the governor to overrule them. Unelected beaurocrats should not have broad power like this.

My point is to put pressure on the people in power, not to blindly follow and then just mutter under your breath that you’re mad. They do not give a single crap if people are mad unless their power is threatened. Stand up for yourselves for crying out loud.

Many, including my family, are doing what you suggest. Unfortunately, Oregon has a lame duck Governor who does not seem to feel terribly accountable to the electorate. There are more fireworks to come. We’ll see.

Good luck, don't give up - that's what they expect. You have much more on the line (your children's future) than they do (their job) - though they don't feel that way about their power being threatened...can't give up.

The usual argument for mandatory vaccination is for the protection of others rather than the protection of oneself, so the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing death in children should not matter.

...and this is why the US does not and will not have universal health care.

> If they're able to know that everyone inside a restaurant is vaccinated they'll be more likely to visit.

This is why I argue with some fellow libertarians on the idea of private company vaccine mandates. There's a place for it, such as this. Restaurants could differentiate this way. Different people have different needs. A government level mandate like this is insane.

Considering that vaccinated people can still carry the virus, and very few of those services are mandatory to survive, the minority can still stay safe at home, and the others can decide by themselves if they're willing to risk it.

Not sure if this is in opposition to your point, but if there can be businesses that cater to them by lowering their risk profile I think that's great.

"We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals."

That would be false.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/immunization.asp

which points to

https://www.shotsforschool.org/child-care/

https://www.shotsforschool.org/7th-grade/

https://www.shotsforschool.org/k-12/

And then there's

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...

We have never required anything like this to go to a restaurant. Or the gym. Or the beach. This is a huge new step.

Pointing out that children must be vaccinated against viruses that disproportionately harm children in order to participate in public education is true, but irrelevant to the question. Pointing out that we require certain vaccinations of immigrants is true, but irrelevant to the question.

(Not for nothing: we require immigrants to pass a citizenship test and a background check, too. If the standard is "anything that is OK for US immigration is OK for going to Chick-Fil-A", then we're going to have to disagree...)

> We have never required anything like this to go to a restaurant. Or the gym. Or the beach. This is a huge new step.

Indeed, instead there used to be mandatory, involuntary quarantine enforcement, sometimes (typhus, polio) on a per-household basis with the enforcement notice posted prominently on the front door. That restricted not only restaurants and beach visits but all visits of any kind.

I'm not exactly sure which side of the argument you're on here, but ignoring the utility and/or practicality of quarantine on a mass scale, I wouldn't compare it to a policy requiring everyone to show their papers to go to McDonalds.

It's almost like people are arguing "we did {restrictive policy} once, so any form of restriction is of the same form!"

I mean...hell: we had slavery once. So maybe let's set aside the idea that prior infringements of individual liberty justify future infringements of individual liberty?

I’d argue you not getting vaccinated and adding to the potential of a mutation that makes the vaccine ineffective is a violation of MY individual liberties, and the Supreme Court agrees. Which is why just about every state in the US actually can force you to get vaccinated, they just haven’t.

Could you provide the source for the supreme court agreement? It seems to me that forcing someone to get a vaccine would just as much violate their individual liberties so I'm rather curious what issue the supreme court was specifically addressing

Not tw04, but...

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/us-supreme-court-a...

Thanks for the link!

Supreme court acceded to the question of vaccine mandates on the grounds of maintaining public safety and keeping order trumped the 1st amendment.

The background was a polio outbreak in MA around 1905, with something like a 30% mortality among all age groups.

We are back to 1905, but now its not 30% that is at the issue, but some decimal to the right of zero.

I personally know several people who have told me that they would stab or shoot anyone who tried to force them get a vaccine. The logistics of that may be a bit tricky, of course.

How would the logistics of forced vaccination go down, anyway? Do you think people wouldn't forge their vaccine papers, bribe doctors or otherwise get them to be sympathetic, or otherwise circumvent/ignore the system/rules in order to avoid the vaccine?

As stated elsewhere in this thread, it is not going to be possible to stop the virus at this point. We will all eventually be exposed and the best we can do is be as safe as we believe we need to be and can.

this is exactly what is going down in developing countries

as soon as authorities announce a potential paper requirement , the literal next day there are touts selling the paper.

The Supreme Court has ruled that states can mandate vaccinations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

I’m not sure why the misconception that freedom is absolute in the US is so widespread.

Notably, the quarantine enforcement you describe were much more stringent requirements, levied against specific people who were believed to be infected or at elevated risk of infection (such as arrivals from overseas), never as a standing order issued against the population of the state's residents. Moreover, the quarantine laws which authorize this sort of thing in New York City demand due-process protections, such that those who are quarantined must receive notice that they are entitled to judicial review of the quarantine order.

Further reading:

https://regs.health.ny.gov/volume-title-10/content/section-2...

Weren't these quarantines limited to people who actually had the diseases, not just people who weren't vaccinated against them?

Suggesting that Adults must be vaccinated against viruses that disproportionately harm Adults in order to participate in public life is not irrelevant to the question

this just isn't remotely true. There is a long history in the US of cities and sub national governments requiring vaccination, limiting the things the unvaccinated can participate in, and fining people who refuse to be vaccinated. https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-supreme-court There is a long history of case law establishing the rights of subnational US governments to act in the interests of their citizens in protecting public health.

I think it's a practical thing. We don't require vaccination for restaurants, but because vaccination is required at schools, practically you can assume that most people are vaccinated. And for many of these illnesses, we have attained herd immunity (although antivaxers are chipping away at that.)

We should want to be in the same world for COVID. I'm sorry, but I don't see why I should have to risk getting COVID when there is a perfectly safe, free vaccine, that if delivered to enough of the population, will allow us to achieve herd immunity. The risks of long COVID are real. You're either imposing a very safe vaccine on people, or a somewhat dangerous illness on them, it seems very obvious the best option is to impose the vaccine.

>You're either imposing a very safe vaccine on people

It's not very safe; there have been more adverse events reported in VAERS following the covid vaccines than in the past 20 years for all other vaccines. And unlike all those other vaccines, there's absolutely zero long-term safety data, because it's impossible to know the effects 3-5 years in future of a novel treatment that's only existed for one year.

I agree but please note that there are a lot (50x) more people getting the vaccine.

This is true. Or, I think it is, I just checked the last 10 years; the three COVID vaccines have 60% of the reports from that time.

However...

    Death    5,191 1.25%
    Life Threatening   7,110 1.72%
    Permanent Disability  6,103 1.47%
    Congenital Anomaly / Birth Defect   232 0.06%
    Hospitalized   23,990 5.79%
    Existing Hospitalization Prolonged 228 0.06%
    Emergency Room     58,335 14.08%
    Office Visit     84,704 20.44%
    None of the above   274,035 66.14%

Death, life threatening events, permanent disability, birth defects, and hospitalization events accounted for about 10% of the reports. 66% of them were "None of the above". (Multiple events can be reported, i.e. hospitalization and permanent disability, resulting in >100%.)

Further, there are limitations to the conclusions that you can draw from VAERS:

"VAERS accepts reports of adverse events and reactions that occur following vaccination. Healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers, and the public can submit reports to VAERS. While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Most reports to VAERS are voluntary, which means they are subject to biases. This creates specific limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind."

If someone gets a vaccination and is then run over by a bus, that can be reported as a "Death". Additionally, given the politicization of COVID vaccines, I think we can expect that there is a strong bias towards reporting events. The COVID vaccines have a number of common side effects (mine were almost as bad as those of my shingles vaccination), which may explain some of the excess.

But fundamentally, the VAERS data simply cannot be used to determine whether or not a vaccine is unsafe.

On the other hand, consider: There have been 349,000,000 doses administered, with about 428,000 events reported, meaning that 0.12% of doses result in an event and 0.04% result in an event involving health care. I ride a motorcycle. I would be overjoyed at those kinds of safety odds.

This is not true. When the smallpox vaccine was being rolled out many restaurants, social clubs, and other places of congregation required proof of vaccination.

Your children don't need to go to a public school, or daycare. You can home school if you're so opposed to these things.

What alternative do I have for going to the beach - and outdoor space? What alternative does the private gym owner/operator have?

These steps are not the same as your examples.

???

>>> Your children don't need to go to a public school, or daycare. You can home school if you're so opposed to these things.

"you do not need to use public goods, you can stop using public goods and substitute them with private goods that you provision yourself"

>>> what alternative do I have for going to the beach - and outdoor space?

"how dare you challenge my use of public goods, I have no alternatives and this is an imposition on my rights as a citizen"

For real though, in your self consistent thought framework the obvious obligation you have is to buy your own bit of beach or private park.

I was thinking about these categories with the opposite approach: we need a safe way [to educate people without the burden of home schooling] way more than we need a safe way [to eat/exercise without the burden of doing so at home].

At this point in time, children have experienced an infection rate, and complications that are near zero, statistically. To date, no child has received a vaccination.

Why would we punish the vaccinated, and children, for a minority unvaccinated population? A population that largely (entirely?) puts their own self at risk and no other individual that has taken steps to protect themselves from the virus.

Vaccines (in the US at least) are free to anyone that wants one at this point. It's been that way for months. If someone doesn't have a vaccine, it's because they chose to not get one - and therefore take on the risk of becoming ill or death. That's their problem... not children's problem or vaccinated people's problem.

We're doing all this to protect a population that's actively resisting your protection.

With all that said, let's get back to normal here. People who don't want vaccines aren't going to get them even if you made it the law... be realistic.

I'm not saying we punish children. I'm saying it's more important to allow public education to proceed in whatever way works than to allow restaurant- and gym-going to proceed willy-nilly.

I don't like restrictions in general, but I do prioritize these two things in a certain way.

Why don't we let it all go forward, was the point I was making.

We're trying to protect people that don't want protection. Time to move on and get back to normal.

"Normal" is being vaccinated. This isn't the world's first pandemic, nor is it the world's first widespread vaccination campaign.

The fear, paranoia and mistrust around vaccinations against COVID is not normal. "Just let nature take its course" isn't normal, at least not in the modern history of civil societies.

Regardless of your personal definition of normal, you will not convince the unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. You've tried, and failed.

Short of going door-to-door with guys with guns and body armor, forcefully pinning down people and jabbing them with vaccine - nothing you (or anyone) does will convince people to get a vaccine if they've decided at this point they do not want it for whatever their reasons may be.

So... go about your business as usual. Stop trying to protect people that refuse your protection. It's wasted effort, and hurts everyone else that is already vaccinated.

>So... go about your business as usual. Stop trying to protect people that refuse your protection. It's wasted effort, and hurts everyone else that is already vaccinated.

Umm... no. They spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (and COVID) at every opportunity, they consider themselves on a crusade against vaccination and the vaccinated. Society is under no obligation to let dangerous fools remain comfortable in their foolishness.

> They spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (and COVID) at every opportunity

Except they don't. The people who are vaccinated aren't afraid, uncertain or in any doubt. Nor can they contract COVID from unvaccinated people - otherwise what would be the point of the vaccine anyway?

> they consider themselves on a crusade

Who cares? Why do you care what some other people think? If you're vaccinated, their choices literally have zero impact on you.

> Society is under no obligation to let dangerous fools remain comfortable in their foolishness

Last I checked, we were talking about the US... so ya, they are allowed to be foolish, particularly since the only people they are potentially harming is themselves.

So... what is your plan? Are we storming people's houses with armed men to forcefully vaccinate people that don't want it? Or are we just sitting on some high horse?

I'll tell you who's spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt - it's the very same people making these arguments. Get a vaccine - or else! But you'll still need to wear a mask - or two - and quarantine at home and be careful who you're around because the COVID will get you regardless.

It's complete poppycock. Given those choices, why would someone want to vaccinate if literally nothing about their life improves afterwards?

I think what we have here is an intolerance for other people's choices... and a desire to compel people into submission of what some other people believe is the "right way". Both sides are guilty of willfully ignoring facts when convenient... so who's right? Good thing we're in the US and don't have to care - both can be wrong and go about their business without bothering each other.

Sorry but their choices do affect others, from the nurses who have to treat them to the hospitals turning away patients if they are overwhelmed or delaying surgeries.

None of that is happening. You're drumming up the very irrational fears you previously stated you despise.

previously stated I despise? where?

It's not now, but it was as i know people who suffered from delayed treatment. As well my aunts a nurse and covid was hell for her, i'd rather she not go through that again because people think they are too good to get the vaccine and turn it into a political issue.

You can do a lot of things to compel people to get vaccinated, short of going door to door with guns.

You can deny people entry to various places contingent on vaccination, which is what a lot of places are doing now. You may not be able to convince people to get vaccinated for their own sake or the sake of the health of their neighbors, but way more people will choose being able to go to work, school or the bar over staying unvaccinated.

I chose "getting a student loan" over "not registering for the draft" and I was both terrified of getting drafted and morally opposed to killing, as much as any 18 year old can be.

No guns, no goonsquads, just pile on the headaches and most people will find themselves to get vaccinated regardless of their own doubts, beliefs or prior declarations.

And what happens when you still don't have enough people voluntarily vaccinating? Or businesses refusing to refuse business?

Not to mention turning every business into some sort of citizen police is a very weird concept in the US.

Bars already check licenses before serving alcohol.

Schools already check vaccination status for other diseases during enrollment.

Workplaces already check immigration status for all employees.

There will always be non-compliance; there are always a few bars that don't check IDs or accept obvious fakes. But most won't risk losing their liquor licenses.

There are a lot of "what if"s in the world, and in public policy in particular. What if no one pays their taxes? What if a state legislature overrides the popular vote of their electorate in a Presidential election? What if the President orders a nuclear first strike and the military doesn't follow the order?

While all of these questions are interesting, for the most part we can get by without having any answers to them. Why borrow trouble worrying about something that may never happen?

What if workplaces mandate vaccines, what if schools, if bars and ballparks and theaters, and we still don't reach the 90-95% thresholds needed to contain the more virulent viruses?

Well, something else will happen. Maybe we give up. Maybe we try other coercions. Maybe the combination of vaccination rates and post-infection immunity will be high enough that the entire question is moot.

Or we don't do any of these extreme, totalitarian measures because it doesn't matter anyway?

Because doing so is a one way road to more extreme, totalitarian measures next time there's a disagreement about public policy (and next time, perhaps you find yourself on the "wrong side").

Because covid won't be a thing forever, and sacrificing core values of your nation for temporary gain is foolhardy.

Because, again, the people you're trying to protect with these extreme, totalitarian measures don't want your protection and statistically will turn out just fine anyway.

>Short of going door-to-door with guys with guns and body armor, forcefully pinning down people and jabbing them with vaccine

Even this would not work (at least in America), because there's a heavy overlap between the unvaccinated and gun owners, and they vastly outnumber whatever police force would be attempting to enforce the vaccination.

If I'm interpreting this page (https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/COV...) correctly, children less than 5 provide 2.4% of cases of COVID in California; they are 5.8% of the population so they seem to have a lower infection rate (although those 75-79 provide 1.6% of cases from 2.7% of the population). Children between 5 and 17 provide 10.7% of cases from 16.7% of the population.

Children have a very non-zero infection rate while they do have effectively a zero death rate (no actual information on "complications").

The data is listed weird, because someone over the age of 12 can get the vaccine. A 17 year old has a lot more social opportunity to catch the virus, etc.

Regardless, the people who do get sick, typically get only midly-so, and rarely (statistically 0) experience serious complications or death.

Therefore, my initial conclusion that the risk for children is near zero stands.

> Your children don't need to go to a public school

You’ve got this part backwards, if I’m reading this correctly. You must adhere to public health mandates to send a child to public school. If you choose not to abide, then you can opt to send your kid to a private school.

In most states, Private schools are subject to the same rules as public schools.

Source: deparment of health

The country I’m in right now, Hungary, seems to be doing as you suggest.

They have about 75% vaccinated I think (a mix of just about all the vaccines available anywhere) and there is no mask mandate nor proof-of-vaccine mandate as of a few weeks ago. (Airport might be an exception, I haven’t been.). Interestingly it is also against the law to require anyone to NOT wear a mask — and I see about one person in 10 with a mask on the tram, usually none in the shops.

Border controls to neighbor countries are very light so there isn’t really anything preventing the unvaccinated or for that matter infected from entering the country.

I have no idea how this will turn out, I personally expect a big new wave among the unvaxxed in Europe after the summer, but if you’re curious what happens with an implicit policy of leaving the unvaccinated to their fate, keep an eye on Hungary, especially when the cold drives everyone indoors around October.

(And there were a LOT of restrictions before the vaccination rate went up, but unlike Germany nobody was out protesting against them.)

> And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.

Completely false. There's several groups that might want the vaccine that can't get it. Including: children and the immuno compromised.

32 kids were hospitalized in one week in Alabama last month. A state with half the population of NYC.

https://www.al.com/coronavirus/2021/07/infant-among-children...

Not to mention the adults who want to but can’t take sick time in case they feel side effects.

Thank you for bringing this up!

I think immune compromised people can generally get the vaccine, but there are questions about how effective it is. Some have proposed they may need a 3rd dose.

Practically there's next to no data on mRNA vaccines given to immuno compromised indviduals, and almost certainly isn't the case that they're fine to get the non mRNA vaccines. So they end up not taking it for valid safety concerns.

> So they end up not taking it for valid safety concerns.

Are you referring to the mRNA vaccine? If so, source for this? I see lots of articles that question whether the vaccines are as effective for immuno compromised people, but none that say they shouldn't take the mRNA vaccine. In fact, I see many studies testing the efficacy of mRNA vaccines for immuno-compromised people, which would seem to indicate we think it's safe. I only know one immuno-compromised person, and she got the vaccine.

I was referring to both types of vaccines for different reasons.

Like I said, there's practically no data on the mRNA side, particularly with how "immunocompromised" is a very broad term meaning many different underlying issues. Most of the data I've seen is focused on the efficacy rates, rather than safety from complications. IMO it's fair that immunocompromised individuals want to wait a bit when it comes to an entirely new form of vaccine.

The non mRNA vaccines obviously have potential issues for the kinds of people that could die from even a normal flu.

A high vaccination rate is most beneficial for poor and minority populations as they are by far the most exposed to the virus via work.

Except they don't want it.

This seriously needs a cite. First time I've heard this claim.

You need a citation to understand which part? That poor people most often have service jobs such as retail or food service? That service jobs are higher risk for Covid transmission than white collar jobs? Or that poor people have few resources to address health issues if they get Covid?

I'm not a dev, I just like tech stuff. I say this because I actually work with lower middle class Black and Brown people, though I'm White and lower middle class.

Let me explain something to you guys, we worked through each "wave" and didn't really care. We were not "forced" to work. It was never a big deal.

The whole "woe is the working class during Covid" was just an excuse for neurotic professional class workers to WFH.

"We study the spread of COVID-19 infections and deaths by county poverty level in the US. In the beginning of the pandemic, counties with either very low poverty levels or very high poverty levels reported the highest numbers of cases. A U-shaped relationship prevails for counties with high population density while among counties with low population density, only poorer counties report high incidence rates of COVID-19. Second, we discuss the pattern of infections spreading from higher to lower income counties. Third, we show that stay-at-home mandates caused significantly higher reductions in mobility in high income counties that experienced adverse weather shocks than counties that did not. These effects are not present in counties with high poverty rates. Using weather shocks in combination with stay-at-home mandates as an instrument for social distancing, we find that measures taken to promote social distancing helped curb infections in high income counties but not in low income counties. These results have important policy implications for containing the spread of infectious diseases in the future." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7756168/)

Thank you

No I would like a citation that Covid affects minorities more. Your logic is sound, but that doesn’t mean reality reflects that.

High vaccination rates will only exert selection pressure on the virus causing new mutation strains to become dominant.

How is this not understood?

Vaccines should only be used for targeted at-risk population. Everyone else should strive for natural immunity.

The same selection pressure exists for "natural" immunity.

Not exactly. Natural immunity is more durable and more complete. Vaccines are often "leaky", offering only partial protection against very specific markers. Whereas NI is more comprehensive and long-lasting.

"Leaky vaccines" result in catastrophic situations like Marek's disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease

Good thing the mRNA vaccines are at least 90% effective at preventing infection from happening at all from the newer variants.

>newer variants

Against the original Alpha perhaps. However Delta effectiveness is nowhere near 90%...this is precisely the reason for the push for boosters.

Excuse me, the correct number seems to be 88%[1] effective against symptomatic COVID from the delta variant after 2 doses vs 95% for the alpha variant.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108891

[edit] I'm sure with more data that number might change up or down a little, but it seems in line with other findings.

No, the current boosters are the same vaccine as the original vaccinations. The booster shots are given as the antibody count in your blood drops over time and the booster shot keeps them at the maximum for another half year or so.

We don't have precise data about the required level of antibodies to stay healthy yet and in quite a few countries the infection rates are currently high enough to pose a real risk for vaccinated patients in the vulnerable group. The safe play is to give booster shots to keep the immune response at its best.

How does a vaccine exert any higher a selective pressure than the natural immunity that comes from getting covid?

> High vaccination rates will only exert selection pressure on the virus causing new mutation strains to become dominant.

> How is this not understood?

The same way vaccines create selection pressure, so does natural immunity. Letting people get infected instead of vaccinating them actually makes the dice roll much more, as in orders of magnitude more.

Just look how most of the variants of concern, and mainly delta, appeared before any significant vaccine rollout, and further, delta shows high rates of reinfection vs. infection of vaccinated people.

Only vaccinating those at-risk will keep this going and going for God knows how long, and regularly overcrowding hospitals with very corageous freedom fighters.

Just get your shot instead of playing armchair epidemiologist.

>Just get your shot instead of playing armchair epidemiologist.

I've already had covid in 2020 and recently had another antibody test which still showed a strong response...

Antibodies are useless if they don't have the ability to bind to mutated proteins.

> Some monoclonal antibodies, including bamlanivimab, lost their ability to bind to the spike protein and no longer neutralized the Delta variant. We also showed that the Delta variant is less sensitive to sera from naturally immunized individuals.

> In individuals who had not previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2, a single dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine induced a barely detectable level of neutralizing antibodies against the Delta variant. About 10% of the sera neutralized this variant. However, a two-dose regimen generated high sero-neutralization levels against the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants in individuals sampled at week 8 to week 16 after vaccination. [0]

Leave the armchair, get your booster shot.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03777-9

Why then do you need the mask and 3rd shot?

> Only vaccinating those at-risk will keep this going and going for God knows how long, and regularly overcrowding hospitals with very corageous freedom fighters.

The vaccine doesn’t keep people from spreading delta because it’s not a sterilizing vaccine[1][2]. It’s strange there was that big concern over asymptotic spread and the response was to administer an intervention that greatly increases asymptotic cases.

> instead of playing armchair epidemiologist.

You might want to take your own advice here.

[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/02/1017161/covid-va...

You don't need a sterilizing vaccine. You only need to get R0 below 1. However, Delta is so infectious that mass vaccination will still need to be accompanied by social distancing and masking....

You can calculate different (average case) scenarios yourself with % needed to be vaccinated = (1 - 1/R0) for a sterilizing vaccine and add an adjustment factor for the vaccine efficacy. It's not pretty...

How do you assuredly get R0 below one with a leaky vaccine[1]? R0 can stay >1 with 100% vaccination if the pathogen is contagious enough and the vaccine is leaky enough. Note that the reference I provided is from 2015, so we can rest assured it's not particularly politicized. There is a very real chance that we're going to look back on delta fondly if a Marek's disease type scenario unfolds. Then again that's pretty much optimal for big pharma if they have a vaccine that's effective against a hypothetical omega strain that will reliably kill or maim the unvaccinated.

Edit: Here's a nice slide deck elaborating[2].

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

[2] http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~denis/epi/edinburgh11/talks/Pellis...

> How do you assuredly get R0 below one with a leaky vaccine[1]?

Nobody was assuring anything. It won't get it below R0 by itself, parent comment already told you. It's the combination of seatbelt, airbag, while not speeding, drinking, smoking or talking on the phone what keeps people relatively safe on the road, not any single of those elements.

> R0 can stay >1 with 100% vaccination if the pathogen is contagious enough and the vaccine is leaky enough.

Yes. That's why the epidemiological consensus is for vaccinated people to keep wearing masks, particularly indoors.

> There is a very real chance that we're going to look back on delta fondly if a Marek's disease type scenario unfolds

Excuse me from what I'm going to say, but the Marek comparison is an antivax favourite from the gross misunderstanding that you seem to share with them.

The Marek scenario is the result of imperfect vaccination, plus the massification of the poultry industry, plus the fact that infected chickens can carry and transmit the disease for life, including those vaccinated, which is absolutely not the case with COVID-19.

The disease existed before, but outbreaks were relatively local and self contained.

Now, from the second half of the 20th century it started being a major concern with the industrialization of farming. With a vaccine that keeps chickens from having complications or dying, but not from shedding virions for life, all while living on top of each other 100% of their lives, sure, you reach enough selection pressure to make the disease evolve for the worse.

COVID-19 vaccines may let you be contagious for a few days, then the infection eventually clears, and the density of our dwellings is orders of magnitude lower.

> Then again that's pretty much optimal for big pharma if they have a vaccine that's effective against a hypothetical omega strain that will reliably kill or maim the unvaccinated.

Yeah, this goes deeper into tinfoil hat territory. I'd just like to say that interestingly most of big pharma failed to produce vaccines and have been there largely to give the manufacturing power to the small research groups and small/new biotech companies that actually created them.

Luckily there are dozens of vaccines from all around the world by now, I think competition will do the rest.

> Yes. That's why the epidemiological consensus is for vaccinated people to keep wearing masks, particularly indoors.

There's still no reason to believe that adding mask wearing to a leaky vaccine will reduce R0 below one. We'll probably find out though since we're running a huge, albeit uncontrolled, phase 3 clinical trial right now.

We do know on the other hand that a sterilizing vaccine can guarantee herd immunity on its own with vaccination levels well below 100%.

> Excuse me from what I'm going to say, but the Marek comparison is an antivax favourite from the gross misunderstanding that you seem to share with them.

If I were an anti-vaxxer why would I be advocating a (sterilizing) vaccine? And that kind of passive aggressive insult is a common habit of the kind of midwit who vastly overestimates his own intelligence, but let's not waste time on ad hominems shall we? I simply gave the Marek scenario as conclusive proof that imperfect vaccines can select for increasingly lethal variants. It serves as a kind of limit case where everything is maximally unfavorable. Now the question of concern is can similar viral selection occur when some of the variables, such as infection duration of vaccinated individuals, are different. We cannot conclusively answer in the negative with the data we have, so a tail risk exists.

> Yeah, this goes deeper into tinfoil hat territory.

No, it goes further into considering tail risk scenarios, which is something that most people are reliably bad at.

> Luckily there are dozens of vaccines from all around the world by now, I think competition will do the rest.

I will be greatly reassured when competition creates a sterilizing vaccine that eradicates SARS-CoV-2.

A high vaccination rate prevents the spread of the disease. Yes, if you have a consistent rate of spread, then the more people with the vaccine, the more likely mutation is to survive. However, if the virus can't spread in the first place, it's chance to mutate is near zero.

> I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations

Those populations are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, and don't need you to do it for them. You have an opinion, don't dress it up in someone else's situation.

The current leading population for vaccination rate in Alabama is the band of majority black districts (and subsequently case numbers have gone down and down and down) there.

You know what those populations are at risk from? Crippling hospital debt from contracting preventable diseases being spread by people pushing antivax nonsense and who do not take preventative measures. And being shot at their jobs when asking those people to wear masks on private property, for some reason.

Great, let's just be consistent and take this perspective when it comes to voter ID laws, too.

It wouldn’t be inconsistent to advocate for voter ID laws and let minorities disagree.

His point was not speaking for minorities.

The vaccine is free, and widely made available. The communities who aren't getting it, provided they aren't politically conservative, are assumed to be doing this due to lack of trust based on past racism, as you stated.

This is a good faith explanation with no data to support it. These are the same populations most likely to ignore all sorts of laws, rules, etc. I grew up in a trailer park, and the culture was one of die hard defiance to all forms of authority, no matter the cost, or how trivial the guidance/rules. I saw this same cultural trait at play in the inner city when I lived in DC as well.

The reality is that there are several dysfunctional cultures in the US, across multiple ethnic groups including my moron family, that are pathologically opposed to obeying any form of authority. They tend to also be highly fatalistic, have high teen pregnancy rates, high crime rates, etc. And although they are almost always poor, many other cultural groups in the US that are equally poor don't have these issues. Again, my family, and my relatives fall into this category. And so do the urban unvaccinated. Trailer parks and ghettos have more in common than you think.

I say this because you're hitting on a point that is going to really undermine NYC government:

A group of politicians who assume that unequal outcomes are driven by systemic racism are going to run headlong into a law that is going to disproportionately prevent Black and Latino New Yorkers from accessing businesses and restaurants. They are desperately going to continue with a narrative that absolves them of personal responsibility, and continue making the vaccine easier to access.

It's not going to work, and they will get rid of this as soon as they can, rather than go against their own systemic racism narrative.

> don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate

People who are still opposed to getting vaccinated, versus simply apathetic, are probably never going to be convinced. These measures should encourage the apathetic. For the others, it's cutting losses and hoping it encourages quarantine--whether that be staying home or moving. (Being unvaccinated upstate or in Tennessee is less problematic than being unvaccinated in Manhattan.)

If we take the promise of mRNA platforms at face value, we are heading into an increasingly disease-free future with a strong minority self selecting affliction. I imagine we'll see more debates of this form if e.g. there is a population that is inoculated against Covid, most STDs, the flu, et cetera; and one that is not.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2. And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

There are immuno-compromised people who can't get the vaccine for health reasons. By accepting a lack of herd immunity you are throwing those people under the bus. If you are worried about impacts on minority populations then this is something you surely must be considering.

> By accepting a lack of herd immunity

That's the reality. This is endemic and is grouped with the collection of other infections that are going to be around a lot longer than HN (eg latent Tuberculosis infections in around 20% of the global pop).

The vulnerable populations aren't vaccinated. The vaccination rate in Brooklyn for people 65+ is just a bit over 50% (51% white/54% African American).

If cases keep rising I don't see any reason why hospitalizations and deaths won't follow. Unless the delta variant is less dangerous or treatments have improved tremendously.

So, the options are 1)Stop indoor dining 2)Accept the public health implications or 3) Require vaccinations for high risk activities. I feel like option 3 imposes the least harm.

> The vulnerable populations aren't vaccinated. The vaccination rate in Brooklyn for people 65+ is just a bit over 50% (51% white/54% African American).

Yes, they are. In NYC, 73% of adults over 65 are fully vaccinated, and 77% have had at least one dose:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.p...

You're cherry-picking regions of low vaccination, but ignoring the overall metrics.

It's the local demographics that matter. I live in Brooklyn. I don't care what the vaccination rate is in the entire US, or NY state, and I'm hardly ever in Manhattan. I don't dine indoors because the vaccination rate in my neighborhood is 39%. And, while I'm probably not going to the hospital knowing that I might put one of my unvaccinated neighbors in there matters to me.

> It's the local demographics that matter

The local demographics don't matter unless there's a serious impact on the hospitals. That's why we started down this road, remember? It wasn't to eliminate death.

> I don't dine indoors because the vaccination rate in my neighborhood is 39%.

Are you vaccinated? If you are, you're worrying about something that is irrelevant to you. Avoiding restaurants because other people made a different choice is silly.

> And, while I'm probably not going to the hospital knowing that I might put one of my unvaccinated neighbors in there matters to me.

Ever had a head cold or the flu? You've put an elderly person at risk. Sorry, but it's true.

You can never eliminate this kind of risk. If your standard is "I must never present a risk to anyone else, ever" then you're going to have a really difficult life. You can live that way if you like, but don't force it on me.

> If cases keep rising I don't see any reason why hospitalizations and deaths won't follow.

They already have. Hospitalization rates have multiplied by a factor of nearly 4x from the 12,000 COVID hospitalizations in early July to the 40,000 COVID hospitalizations today in early August.

Or you know, let people decide if they want to take a risk. What do I care if someone doesnt want to get vaccinated and put themselves at risk? Thats on them. Just like they can go bungee jump or drive a race car.

Primarily because of the threat to our healthcare system, but also because of those with high risk of breakthrough infection and those who cannot be vaccinated. I find it a little hard to believe that anyone who has lived through this pandemic does not understand this.

Considering a lot of vaccinated people can spread the virus, the immunocomprimised are already fscked, and should stay at home.

For everyone else, there are vaccines, or if they want, they can risk it without. Give priority to vaccinated patients, and you're done.

Vaccinated people do not spread the virus nearly as effectively as unvaccinated people.

And you did not address the threat to our hospital system, which has been the number one concern for a year and a half. Surgeries are already being halted in multiple states... again. You might view it differently if it was your hospital that postponed your surgery because unvaccinated people had filled all their beds because of a preventable illness.

There was a study upthread (from the Lancet?) that literally pointed out that there are the same level of virus load on nasal pathways for vaxxed and unvaxxed. I believe the study was linked by user timr

This was the underlying logic for the cdc to require masks once again

Yeah, we need a lot more data points than one tiny study. Almost all data to date shows vaccinated people do not spread the virus as effectively as unvaccinated people, and that vaccinated people are far more likely to have asymptomatic (not pre-symptomatic) infections, and most data points to those types of infections having a very low rate of transmission. One chunk of leaked data does not negate all previous research.

Here is a link to the actual study. I would take a look at the limitations discussed in the Discussion section.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

Put unvaccinated people who catch covid last in line at hospitals. Problem solved.

> those who cannot be vaccinated

You mean the same people this mandate will prevent from participating in society?

It's an infectious disease. This isn't an issue of "you can risk your own life and health" - unvaccinated people are risking the lives of many others in their communities.

You can't kill your neighbor's grandmother by bungee jumping.

It's odd. When people don't heed fire evacuations to try and save their homes they put first responders at risk and are lionized by the press.

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2009/08/14/bonny-dooners-b...

Can I drive a race car down your street?

I dont get your analogy. You can get the vaccine to protect yourself.

Oh, I think you do. I'm not expressing any worry about my own protection, I'm asking if I can drive a race car down your street.

No I really think I dont because it doesnt make any sense.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

… maybe for currently known variants. New ones will appear, and no one can predict if current vaccines will protect us from them. It makes sense to me that a mixed population of vaccinated and unvaccinated people interacting frequently could lead to vaccine-resistant strains. Keep wearing your masks!

>I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations in NYC who already have a bad/mistrustful relationship with health care and government...

In my day job, I interact with many prisons and jails both across the US and in other countries. Minority inmates reject vaccination at a rate well above White inmates, largely due to trust issues. It's a huge problem, one that's not talked about enough due to the moronic social media meme that everyone who doesn't want to get vaccinated must be a MAGA-hat-owner. This is provably incorrect.

Note that the C.O.s also largely distrust big .gov. I was just out at a facility where half of my escorts spontaneously brought up buying guns before Biden bans them (as he has indicated he wants to do — it's not a crazy notion). I've always been a skeptic, but the degree of distrust in authority has never been greater in my lifetime. It is unfortunate that this trend is costing lives.

I think there is also ample precedent for policy that prevents or discourages people from putting themselves at unnecessary risk of death or injury. If it's illegal to attempt suicide, then it stands to reason that we can pass rules against exposing yourself to Covid even if you are foregoing opportunities to protect yourself.

The core assumptions to your argument are that secondary infections of children are not of concern at all, and that future variants will have similar propagation and impact.

Limited evidence suggests that the delta variant may highly contagious among vaccinated populations and that lambda may be resistant to some vaccines.

your "poor and minority populations" argument strikes me as disingenuous bad faith; if there are poor and minority populations who dont want to be vaccinated, they will be safer by not going into crowded spaces as well.

but above all, some of us have children under 12. we'd like them to be safe. we have relatives who have weakened immune systems, who are in great danger even though they are fully vaccinated. These are the people who have literally no choice between a. hide in fear for years or b. expose themselves to great danger. vaccine mandates allow these people who otherwise have no choice to be more free in the world, by asking those people who totally have a choice to please make that choice by either not entering our public spaces, or getting vaccinated.

Coercing poor & minority populations into bending to the will of the powerful, and saying it's for their own good has a long and tragic history. I am not sure whether your argument is in bad faith, but it does seem willfully ignorant of history.

Try again, the vaccine saves lives, and in that sense is not comparable to past injustices. It is of course comparable in that it's completely understandable that there is mistrust, but prohibiting people who don't want to be vaxxed from going into public spaces and endangering themselves and others is still a life saving policy. It's not "for their own good" , it's for the good of everyone.

I don't think you know many anti-vax people if you think education is the answer. Every one I've met is completely unwilling to look at data coming out, and instead relies solely on headlines they've read that are usually incomplete or outright wrong.

> We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals.

This is factually untrue isn’t it? Children are forced to get vaccinated if they want to access the public school system in at least some parts of the US.

> We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals.

Except for that time doctors were given police powers to enforce quarantine during the "Spanish Flu" spikes...

> We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC, thanks to the very high vaccination rate amongst the vulnerable population

The COVID hospitalization rate in NYC has doubled since the beginning of July, and it has a steep positive rate of change. On its current trajectory, COVID hospitalizations will continue to increase, and sharply.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

For now...

Well then, by that logic, we can never let up on this. You never know what's going to happen in two weeks!

The first thing is to get the number of infections down. If the number of infections is low, then any bad event becomes accordingly less likely. Less mutations, less breakthrough infections.

We should never allow people to go outside. There is just too big of a risk of serious illness.

what about immunocompromised people who don't really have a choice. Some of them get the vaccine but it gives them no anti-bodies, as if they were not vaccinated. What about them?

If you get a breakthrough case of Delta, you have a 19% chance of getting long covid. That’s not to say there should be mandatory vaccinations, but case counts definitely matter.

> I don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate

Chile saw a big uptick in vaccination when a similar policy was implemented.

I have been in Manhattan for the last week with my family. I have seen 10+ free vaccinations locations. If you want to get vaccinated you can, no matter what your means.

Not being vaccinated put the risk on the kids, which is unconscionable.

So I was down voted in this. Let me make this clear...if you are the irrational anti-science anti-vaccine person and have the right to down vote please do so, but have the stones to post a reply saying it so the rest of us can add you to the ignore file.

Get vaccinated. If you do not for other then a real medical reason you are a terrible person that might just cause the death of a young child. Fuck you.

I live in NYC.

I can't tell you how important it is to keep people who are unvaccinated away from those of us who are vaccinated.

For those that don't know, NYC has very crowded indoors situations because of the cost of real estate. We are all close together.

No sympathy whatsoever for those who refuse to get a vaccine and even offered $100 to get the vaccine.

People never have the right to infect another human being. That is just the way it is.

No "rights" supersede the right to not be infected by non-vaccinated people. None.

> even offered $100 to get the vaccine

Must be one hell of a pandemic if that is a greater incentive than immunity.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

This is demonstrably false if you actually look at hospital admissions.

I'm not meaning to take sides here, but there are very real assertions being made that at the very least vaccination lowers the statistical probability of death to <1%, which is obviously seems like something we can verify with admission and fatality data.

I haven't heard anything to the contrary, so I'll assume that's true. But as far as "serious illness" goes, I'd say it's pretty serious once you're admitted to a hospital.

Do you have a cite? I thought vaccination reduced hospitalization to nearly zero. Here's a link where the highest state is at .06% https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrou...

"the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses; the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses"

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaccines-highly-effective...

That's relative risk, not absolute risk. It's not saying 8% of people will be hospitalized, it's saying vaccinated people are hospitalized 92% less than unvaccinated people. Your absolute risk is much much smaller than 8%.

>Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

Yes, but that choice does not only impact them. Being disallowed the luxury of going to restaurants and bars could be seen as a form of payment for creating that externality.

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