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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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?

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.)

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 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)

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