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Comment by complianceowl | Hacker News Reader

All of us are right and wrong to varying degrees. I don't think Joe Rogan cares much for people that stop listening because he doesn't reinforce their politics. He never has.

He's also spoken about the whole point of him having FU money is that he is able to say whatever he wants and not care about the blowback.

I'm not anti-vax, but ultimately, my body, my choice. People who are risk averse are free to self-quarantine for any duration they please. Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks - just like people who decide to ride motorcycles, play combat sports, or eat homegrown food.

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I think that's OK, as long as you accept the consequence of being outcast from society - ie not allowed to interact or go into a public place where you are a threat. "Not making other people sick during a pandemic" is a pretty reasonable prerequisite for social interaction.

Unvaccinated people are still allowed to interact and be in public places where 'they' are a threat, and where vaccinated people are too -- to them.

So, no -- I do not have to accept the hypothetical, strawman consequences that you fantasize about.

->ride motorcycles, combat sports, or eat homegrown food.

What an interesting choice of examples.... Can't help but thinking one of these things is not like the others.

I don't know what you are referring to. Homegrown food? It can have parasites bro. If that's not what you're referring to, no need to play guessing games. Be specific.

> Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks

So I assume you agree to not come running to the hospital when you get infected, taking away beds for other patients who shouldn't have to suffer because of your ignorance?

Uhh, no -- although your politics have driven you to salivate at the sight of an unvaccinated person in a deathbead so you can scream, "I told you so!", no -- I will happily go to the hospital if I need to. Why? Because "I'm willing to take the risk" does not mean that accepting death is a requirement (unfortunately for you).

Oh, and getting COVID and needing hospitalization absolutely does not mean that I will be taking away a bed from someone who needs it. You're so desperate to spew your hate that you actually made that strawman assumption; that's laughable. If you were actually honest, you would know that after the shortage of beds and ventilators, hospitals are now much, much better prepared to handle spikes in hospitalizations.

It appears the only ignorance here is yours, buddy.

> Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks - just like people who decide to ride motorcycles, play combat sports, or eat homegrown food.

I think you've got the wrong analogies going there. You, the unvaccinated, are principally putting yourselves at risk but you are also, and more importantly, putting others at increased risk of transmission from yourself.

Adjusting your content for accuracy: you, the unvaccinated, are not allowed by society to do anything you want. Just like you cannot drive drunk, shoot firearms inside city limits, urinate on the street, sell poop sandwiches as a food product, etc.

Fully vaccinated people are both spreading COVID and becoming COVID positive. Following the news can be a good thing, too.

> increased risk of transmission from yourself.

I know. We, the vaccinated, are also not free to do whatever we want. If the chance of transmission between vaccinated & unvaccinated ever equalizes, there would obviously be no reason for different treatment. But just because vaccinated people can transmit doesn't mean they are as likely to.

Why aren't you vaccinated?

Because he's anti-vax. This is the future where everyone says they're not aligned with whatever idea then does everything they can to promote and propagate that idea. They'll even deny that the idea exists while spreading it as far as they can.

There are plenty of situations in which we as a society have decided that freedoms are curbed to protect the masses. Drunk driving laws for instance. If you are putting people around you at risk, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to require you to stay home, not all the other people who have taken the easy trivial precautions (vaccines and masks) necessary to protect those around them.

Thankfully your idea of "perfectly reasonable" is not, and most likely will not, be law. And if it is, I will happily move to a state where it is not.

It is scary what some societies throughout history have defined as "perfectly reasonable".

You are not wrong, you are just incredibly selfish. If it was not for selfish people, we would not have to worry about deciding things at the society-level.

Covid vaccinations have only been proven to protect the vaccinated from severe outcomes. They don't prevent infection or re-transmission. There's no valid claim to pushing this on those that don't want them.

Of course I agree that those who do not want vaccines should not be forced. But they also should not get to ruin everything for the rest of us. The r coefficient for vaccinated people is drastically lower leading to protecting those that can not get vaccinated (whom, I guess, unvaccinated people do not mind screwing over). And vaccinated people are not taking away ICU beds from people suffering from non-prevetable diseases.

By your logic we should penalize obese people. It's more of a factor in icu admission stats than vax status.

This is nonsense. The causal feature of the people saturating ICU capacities is that they are unvaccinated, not obese. It also matters that getting vaccinated is a cheap safe triviality, while getting into a healthy BMI range is an expensive long process (but I would agree that it should be encouraged).

Why is eating healthy and exercising expensive?

Google "food deserts". Some people have 3 jobs and depression: not much time for going to the gym and eating healthy.

And do not be silly: healthy food is way more expensive per calory.

It's the calories that count for obesity, not the "healthiness". It's perfectly possible to maintain a healthy body weight eating chips and drinking soda. Time isn't a factor here, personal responsibility is.

Yes, I am on the same page that all you need is a bit of discipline (and some baseline amount of crucial nutrients not present in cheap calory sources). But we all have about the same "discipline reserve", and some have harder life circumstances that expend that reserve on more urgent things than lunch. And this snowballs after it happens once. But to be fair, I do not really know what is the percentage of "well-off cushy fat people without a modicum of health discipline" vs "money-poor and time-poor stressed depressed fat people". I do suspect the latter group is bigger, and just yapping about "personal responsibility" kinda misses the point in that case.

You don't need to be money-poor to be time-poor and stressed. Just as with other vices, it's a matter of priorities - do you prioritize your near-term comfort or your long-term wellbeing? People can make either choice, but I expect them to take responsibility for the outcome.

They both reduce infections and reduce transmission.

The VE is reduced with delta, but its still nonzero (most of the studies of what it really is are still incredibly poor though, but nothing has show it to be below 50% VE against infection).

The initial comparable viral load studies are also all bad. All they did was compare Ct of RNA loads. We now know that there is less infectious virus in vaccinated individuals, and that Ct values themselves decline faster, which indicates they're producing more viral debris -- we expect studies of transmission to show that they transmit less. Older studies from earlier this year against Alpha found that 80% of vaccinated breakthrough infections produced zero transmitted secondary infections with the other 20% only infecting 1-3 other people.

That is sufficient enough impact on infection and transmission to end the pandemic if everyone was vaccinated.

Unfortunately, everyone, including many scientists are panicking in the face of uncertainty over the delta variant and assuming the absolute worst and spreading worst-case messages which are portraying vaccines as not being worthwhile, when they're still effective enough.

The downvote button is a tool for crowdsourcing the (very large) task of censorship.

Agree?

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