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.
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.
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?
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.
Just because you're the one smoking, doesn't mean that second hand smoke is harmless.
Well let me at least put your mind at ease here. The high vinegar content means getting botulism from a pickle is extremely unlikely.
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.
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?
OK, understood. It's good to see where people are coming from on this subject, even when disagreeing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
You're weighing guaranteed exposure to potentially unknown effects vs a non guaranteed risk of contracting the virus.
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".
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.
There's nothing stupid about rejecting "expert consensus" when the data backing the experts doesn't exist.
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.
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.)
What is effective R with the mRNA vaccines?
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
And note that the limit can't be 0. Real life always involves some risk.
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.
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 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?".
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
And how many of those were of fully vaccinated people?
Also the dynamics of how far any given infection would spread are very different in a post-vaccination world.
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.
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.
Mandating an unapproved novel 'vaccine' while removing all responsibility from the manufacturers for the side effects is extremely reckless toward others.