Would be great to see more remote friendly + no covid restriction places esp as other countries double down.
Or maybe you just think governments have overstepped and are on a slippery slope, as far as goes types of coercion methods, subtle or not, over your personal health choices.
It's not black or white. There's a ton going on in this debate, and I think any healthy skeptic should continue to look at these things closely. I think there was just a Carnegie Melon study the other day saying that those with Phd's are unexpectedly vaccine hesitant vs. general pop. Just saying covid measures - vaccines - quarantines - there is a lot of room for debate right now.
The COVID virus is about 0.1 µm.
The pores in a 3-layer surgical mask are about 50 µm to 500 µm in the first and third layer averaging around 100 µm, and 12 µm to 30 µm in the middle layer averaging around 13 µm.
For a 3-layer N95 mask, it is 50 µm to 200 µm first layer averaging about 75 µm, 40 µm to 120 µm averaging 50 µm for the third layer, and 10 µm to 20 µm averaging 11 µm for the middle layer.
If the only mechanism by which filtering of air worked was to catch particles that were too big to pass through the pores, then the virus would indeed go right through.
However, that is not the only mechanism. Here's a short article from a filter company explaining the different mechanisms [1]. It is quite counterintuitive--as particle size goes down below the pore size efficiency starts to drop as you would intuitively expect but only for a bit and then as particle size continues to go down efficiency rises.
[1] http://donaldsonaerospace-defense.com/library/files/document...
Conversely, some 95% of covid deaths are unvaccinated. It works. Get it and help everyone around you.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/modern...
If you look at some real-world vaccine efficacy data, you will find that it is far from black and white. In the UK, with delta infections, there is no observable risk reduction against death for under 50s.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
> We're approaching 5 billion doses administered with minimal serious adverse effects.
It doesn't matter if the side-effects are minimal, what matters is that the risk/reward benefit pays off. For instance, we still don't know the complete extent to which Pfizer vaccines cause heart issues. There are many cardiac events that aren't clearly linked to the vaccine, because they could have occurred by chance. That doesn't mean they aren't linked though.
Here's some statistically significant numbers out of Israel, showing an increase in lethal cardiac events in certain population groups:
https://twitter.com/RanIsraeli/status/1425002893116166144
If we put this putative risk against the vanishingly small risk of a lethal covid infection in a young person with no risk factors, the vaccine doesn't necessarily come out on top.
In the case of viral-vector vaccines, even the very rare (but often fatal) TTS alone suggests that such vaccination is not indicated for people under 60 in Australia:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2...
> Conversely, some 95% of covid deaths are unvaccinated.
This is a meaningless number. It depends on how many people are vaccinated and when you started counting. In the UK, roughly half of the recent COVID deaths are in the fully vaccinated, though they are also obviously older. In the under-50 group, there is no difference, like I said.
> Get it and help everyone around you.
This is another fallacy, because the vaccine prevents neither infection nor transmission reliably. If you have reason to believe the vaccine gives you a meaningful reduction in risk, get it to protect yourself. If you want to protect others, adjust your behavior. Get tested and avoid close interactions with lots of people. In either case, don't ask me to take a risk for your or anyone else's benefit.
I am really not sure how you reached this conclusion from the 44 page paper you linked. That paper explicitly says that being vaccinated reduces risk of becoming infected, and only mentions that Ct values (detectable virus) are similar in infected people whether they are vaccinated or not, but similar Ct values does not imply similar disease trajectories or outcomes.
The data is on page 18/19. In the vaccinated group 13 out of 25,536 infections resulted in death (0.051%). In the unvaccinated group, it's 48 out of 147,612 (0.032%).
> That paper explicitly says that being vaccinated reduces risk of becoming infected.
Perhaps, but then even if you are infected, your risk of death (under 50) is still effectively the same. It's also not clear how big that risk reduction of infection is. It started out at 95% during the trials, Israel last reported 39%:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...
> similar Ct values does not imply similar disease trajectories or outcomes
We still use Ct values as a proxy for infectiousness.
I’d feel much safer living in a country whose healthcare system isn’t constantly at risk of being overwhelmed by uncontrolled Covid spread.
I live in a country with less than 10% vaccination rate now, and there is plenty of hospital capacity to cater to non-covid related things, esp for ones that see more expats than not.
Ha, I faced more risks growing up when I had to avoid the local gangs walking to school as a kid than I do now. Most people never gave a shit about that (and still don't), esp those that didn't live there. I won't really pretend that people really care about my safety or the safety of others any more so than their personal preferences.
I'm gonna have to fact-check that. In the UK, for under 50s with a delta infection, there is basically no risk reduction for death. For over 50s, the risk reduction is currently about 75%[1]. You would then have to scale that by the risk of getting infected, which would be a reduction of up to 90%, depending on when you got your vaccination and how well your immune system picked up on it. You might hit a single order of magnitude.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
I am really not sure how you reached this conclusion from the 44 page paper you linked. That paper explicitly says that being vaccinated reduces risk of becoming infected, and only mentions that Ct values (detectable virus) are similar in infected people whether they are vaccinated or not, but similar Ct values does not imply similar disease trajectories or outcomes.
The data is on page 18/19. In the vaccinated group 13 out of 25,536 infections resulted in death (0.051%). In the unvaccinated group, it's 48 out of 147,612 (0.032%).
> That paper explicitly says that being vaccinated reduces risk of becoming infected.
Perhaps, but then even if you are infected, your risk of death (under 50) is still effectively the same. It's also not clear how big that risk reduction of infection is. It started out at 95% during the trials, Israel last reported 39%:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...
> similar Ct values does not imply similar disease trajectories or outcomes
We still use Ct values as a proxy for infectiousness.
Following your logic, its a great thing that local authorities didn't do anything stop the local gangs, nor encourage taking any safety measures to protect yourself. Yay freedom?
They did, always another task force this that or another (I was only aware of some of this growing up), but never really changed the realities on the ground that some were exposed to more than others. Just learned to grow up and not expect that much and try to work with the people around me and watch each other, which wouldn't be possible if we were just trying to coerce one another to do things we didn't want to do (and was already kind of hard because I couldn't necessarily trust some around me).
By all means, live where you want to live and shoot your self up with the latest drug someone is pushing (whether that is some kid selling "water" on the corner or Pfizer incentivized doctors in a pop up tent) to your ability to do so.
Based on your response it seems true. You don't care to respond about issues posing more danger than your pet issue
Fair enough, but thats never really how i've been, and old habits die hard.
> So many people have had no choice but to comply with some pretty harsh restrictions
True, but the writing has been on the wall for a while in certain jurisdictions that could even enable governments to do such things. I have a lot of sympathy for those who wanted out but couldn't for whatever reason (this goes beyond covid).
> Colombia, from your list, for example may be open now but a few months ago the cops were beating people for going out. Not "please sir go back inside" but literal beat downs
Yeah, cops like to beat down folks for various reasons everyday throughout the world (some places more than others), with or without covid restrictions, and that sucks in general.
More governmental jurisdictions offering a variety of ways people can try to live the way they want to live is better than less, imo.