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Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

It’s so weird to have seen the last restrictions lifted this past weekend while the rest of the world is still stuck in a pandemic.

Come on people, get vaccinated and wear a damn mask! If we could do it, so can you!

We still have anti-mask groups demonstrating by the way. Though that mandate was lifted a few months back. Really interesting how Facebook has brought together the stupid people in their common cause… but maybe, just maybe there really is a problem with misinformation on the platform when the crazies are still forming up to protest something that isn’t there. :o

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I am fully vaccinated and will get a booster as soon as offered but even I am so sick of people preaching about this.

You do your part individually and that is the best you can do. All you are doing when you post something like this is causing a visceral reaction in the people that need to get vaccinated of "fuck you internet guy, I am not listening to you, I am not getting vaccinate!"

The people I know that are not vaccinated are this exactly. They are so pig headed that if you preach at them they will dig in their heals and do the opposite almost automatically. We need people to just shut up about this already and dial everything back so it is not some admission of defeat for pig headed people who haven't got the vaccine to actually do so.

If you want to be part of society you have to wear pants and you have to get vaccinated. If you can’t do those things then you can go somewhere else.

Or at least pay for your own covid test that clears you for a visit into society for 24 hours.

We can’t be burdened by the village idiot forever.

wearing pants != getting vaccinated, not in the slightest.

Stop comparing the two.

We've been wearing pants for several centuries now, this vaccine is new. The mRNA vaccines are not the same as past vaccines in either their immediate effect (I was zonked out for three days) or in their long-term effects (which, despite how safe they seem so far are simply not tested long term).

I say this as somebody who is fully vaccinated (Johnson & Johnson).

"wearing pants" is, i believe, an allusion to "engage in adult social behavior", not a literal exhortation to cover one's legs.

the vaccine technology is both new and old. most vaccines come with various levels of immediate side effects, and anecdotally, the COVID-19 ones seems to be at least as safe in this regard as any other vaccines that have been administered to hundreds of millions of people. It is true that the long term effects are unknown, and there could be some. However, most immunologists seem to be of the consensus that most after-effects from vaccines take place within a fairly narrow window, which we are now firmly out of for very large numbers of people. That doesn't rule out some hitherto unknown and unforeseen long side effect, but it does make it rather unlikely.

Consequently, taking the vaccine is reasonably considered "adult social behavior" at this point, and is therefore analogous to "wearing pants".

>All you are doing when you post something like this is causing a visceral reaction in the people that need to get vaccinated of "fuck you internet guy, I am not listening to you, I am not getting vaccinate!"

This hypothetical person was never going to get vaccinated anyway. The only way "preaching" would cause the outcome you describe would be if that adult had the maturity and oppositional defiance of a toddler.

You haven’t met that many adults have you?

Pragmatism is dead.

Are you trying to change people’s mind or show that you are enlightened.

The preaching about damn masks does not change minds. That’s the point. Maybe a compassionate understanding of why people refuse is better. What’s that old saying “before they care you got to show that you care about them”

This IS about society. Only 60? 70% agree that masks / vaccines are imperative. This leaves a large minority that society needs to work with.

This is not an education problem. This is a hearts and minds problem and so to the original OP. Feel before you speak such things to make it counter productive to yours and dare I say society’s goals.

You seem to be coming from a very 'us vs them' place, and misunderstanding why people do or do not want a vaccine.

From my circles, the vaccine/mask defiance is mostly about what is perceived (wrongly in my opinion, but still) as an overreach from the state, and as a risky bet that they might not want to take.

While I agree with you that this thinking is most probably coming from disinformation/propaganda, by countering it with condescension ('If we could do it, so can you!', 'brought together the stupid people') is the most definite way to have those people become defensive and stick to their opinion.

Maybe you don't care about changing people mind and just want to score internet points from people already convinced, but be aware that it is what you're doing.

Fair enough. What do you suggest "we" (anti-anti-maskers and anti-anti-vaxers) say to these people in order to try and sway them to more factual information and keep them along with the rest of our communities safe?

Most if not all of what I have said to such people is often met with responses like "No", "fake news", "watch this video by Dr. So-and-so". Or them flat out talking down to me thinking I'm a dumb person on the fence about it when in reality I'm far from on the fence about it.

Nothing you can say. We feel how we feel. Covid is endemic it continues to mutate and evolve, we are all going to get it. Your health is and always has been your best defense. And smiling in public is not a biohazard.

The big problem with a pandemic like COVID-19 is when it's presented in terms of personal risk.

The reality remains that any given individual's chance of becoming seriously ill, let alone dying, from COVID-19 is extremely small. The problem is not this risk, but instead the risk that large numbers of people will be sick enough to require health care, particularly hospitalization and even more particularly ICU facilities, all within a very short period of time, causing overload of health care systems and many more unnecessary deaths from things other than COVID-19 due to the impairment of the health care system.

But instead, huge chunks of the media/culture discuss COVID-19 in terms of personal risk. The personal responsibility that we have to each other in a pandemic like this is not a question of "I should do X because I might die of it", but rather "I should do X to reduce the risk that others will die of it and other illness".

And no, "your health is and always has been your best defense" is a ludicrous position. It's abundantly clear that none of our socially-understood markers for "good health" are guarantoors of "covid will not kill you".

I think the main problem with hesitancy is enormous mistrust to the government and to the state. The very same problem that led to Trump's victory. For decades people in power fuck the working class over, poor people repeatedly watch the government going against their interest and getting in bed with rich corporations all while lying through their teeth how they totally care about everyone. Now the government comes back and says: "please take this vaccine, it is really for your own sake, trust us, this time for real we truly care about you". What do you expect them to do?

People on here laugh at those drinking bleach to "own the libs", oh those stupid conservatives. Have you ever considered how much you have to antagonize and anger people to push them to do this?!

This is not about the virus, as they say. This is not about the vaccine either. Many people across the world feel angry, ignored for years and powerless to change the status quo. They are miserable and see absolute contempt from the politicians. The same ones who now call for them to end the pandemic ASAP and go back to how things were before. The whole antivax fake news stuff taps directly into people's mistrust. When you live for years with the feeling "omg, these people are definitely lying to me", it takes just a few videos to confirm this: "oh yeah, they are _definitely_ lying to me and I am not alone to realize this". Go figure this out first.

But, Trump voters are not primary poor.

If it is mistrust toward the state, how come it comes from the same groups that treat calls for police accountability as attack on police, support both military and police in pretty much any situation? That pushes for having cops as armed as possible? The same groups that right now managed to make abortion fully impossible in Texas? Whose primary approach to social issues is to make punishments higher?

If it is against corporations, why is it coming from the same party that is actively and systematically working to make corporations stronger?

> People on here laugh at those drinking bleach to "own the libs", oh those stupid conservatives. Have you ever considered how much you have to antagonize and anger people to push them to do this?!

Have you considered that the whole "own the libs" and "trigger the libs" is conscious attempt to make your opponents angry? And that those opponents do react to it too? That is the whole point, antagonize people you are owning or triggering.

And that is somehow fault of people who you go out of way to antagonize?

Why do you feel the need to say anything at all? You feel How you feel, they feel how they feel, telling them “you need to feel how I feel” isn’t going to do much except make people angry.

I got my 2 shots, I wear a mask when required. I don’t care even a tiny little bit what everyone else does. I can’t control them nor do I care to try.

> I don’t care even a tiny little bit what everyone else does. I can’t control them nor do I care to try.

This is not a recipe for solid public health policy. Maybe it's fine as an individual life choice, but COVID-19 is a public health condition, not a private one, and requires public health responses, not private ones.

Hard disagree. The people that are going to get vaccinated either have or will at some point. The people who aren’t, won’t unless somehow forced. Policy won’t do anything except make people even more angry. Fuck policy.

It really drives me nuts when people take the attitude “I know what’s best for you, you’re too stupid to be able to make your own decisions. I’m really smart and I’ll decide for you.”

No, absolutely no. None of this is about "what's best for you". As I said above, one of the biggest category errors with COVID-19 is to treat it as a personal risk issue. The personal risk is almost inconsequential, the real problem is with public health, and the decisions there have very little to do with "what's best for you" as an individual, and everything to do with "what's best for our health systems".

What I’m saying is, policy won’t do bupkis. People are going to do what they want. This ideological idea that “policy will fix covid” is willful ignorance at this point.

My point isn't about policy. I'm retrospectively criticizing everyone and everything that has cast COVID-19 as a matter of individual health and thus allowed the entire constellation of "I know what's best for me" bullshit to spring up.

COVID-19 is a public health issue, not a personal health issue, and the required strategies for public health issues are not related to individual making the choice of "what's best for them."

Had COVID-19 been discussed and described correctly from the outset, this whole angle that "I know what's best for me" would have been appropriately cut off at the ankles before it even got started. Instead, we now face a situation where even the people who have been vaccinated likely did so thinking of it as a personal choice.

For the record, I got vaccinated for a very selfish reason: I didn’t want to kill someone by giving them covid and figure out how to live with that for the rest of my life. It was an extremely personal reason. And I got vaccinated in February as part of an early essential personnel group.

I am really struggling to figure out how you don’t think it’s a personal decision. Surely you don’t think people are anything but utterly selfish and self-centered.

I don’t think it was framed as a personal decision, I think it was an organic bubbling up of how people actually feel. If you’re suggesting we should be trying to manipulate how people feel, we’re on such different pages that this conversation will no longer be sustainable.

In one of the worst cases in the world (Peru), COVID-19 killed about 1% of a country's population. In countries like the US, it has killed/made seriously ill/given long term complications to a vanishingly small percentage of the population. Every year, people face risks at least as bad as COVID-19 without flinching or taking any particular risk reduction approaches. I feel awful and very sad for the people who lost a relative, friend, neighbor or colleague to this disease, but in most developed countries, your own personal risk of direct harm from COVID-19 is very, very, very low.

However, the risk to public health systems is immense. Too many people getting COVID-19 at the same time (let's remember that even with out Delta, it's remarkably contagious), and whatever fraction of them require hospitalization start jamming up the hospitals. Now, your regular everyday trauma, acute disease or sudden worsening of a chronic condition becomes a potentially fatal incident, because the hospitals can no longer treat you (at all, or even just effectively).

That is the actual risk of COVID-19 in terms of a nation-state, and what nation-state would say "oh, it's just a a personal decision whether or not you take steps to help avoid that scenario"? Rhetorical question, because we known precisely which ones have taken that approach, and what the results have been.

I agree with everything you’ve said above. I think most rational people, even those who don’t want the vaccine, would agree.

The issue is, it doesn’t matter. People don’t care. They think they’ll either not catch it, or not need to be hospitalized if they do. Or I suppose, they just don’t trust the contents of the shot. At this point I think it is impossible to get those people to change their minds for whatever reason they’ve latched on to.

I would be more open to this point of view, if the "don't be condescending or insulting" expectation applied to both sides equally.

I have yet to see it deployed toward those who try to emasculate guys who were masks, insist on framing choice to do as cowardly fear and so on. Btw, "nanny state" expression is exactly that. Or against those who exaggerate restrictions that exist in order to paint opposite side as super unreasonable. Sometimes in the future, if that applied to people who brag about triggering liberal snowflakes and such.

As of now, to the extend there are sides, the "be nice dont offend" expectation is put on exactly one side, usually in order to make them shut up.

> From my circles, the vaccine/mask defiance is mostly about what is perceived (wrongly in my opinion, but still) as an overreach from the state, and as a risky bet that they might not want to take.

Then why is it typically those same people that want to remove women's ability to have an abortion?

Who are "those same people"? I'm going to assume you mean conservative white people in flyover states? Do you understand that black and hispanic vaccination rates lag other ethnicities? [1][2]

A couple of my group chats that are exclusively other black male expats, with origins ranging from Canada to the US to Kenya, are full of shared meme images and videos about the risks/dangers of COVID vaccination. Vehement opposition includes our one ER nurse-turned-millionaire-day-trader, and an aerospace engineer in the UK....We're definitely not a demographic screaming against abortion....hell, abortion saves a bunch of us from child support payments. (I'm only being slightly facetious).

Long story short, I would suggest broadening your information exposure if you think only "those people" are hesitant/opposed to rushed COVID-19 vaccines being rammed down our throats by the same governments who approved of prescription opioids and the Tuskegee Experiment.

[1]https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...

[2]https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/07/vaccine-equity-blac...

Many people only care about minorities who are convenient to the point being made, while ignoring the other minorities. I've spoken to people who excuse this as saying that we have to be practical and consider the majority of the minority group opinions (wasn't the point to help minorities?). For example, you never see liberals who virtue signal about giving minorities a platform trying to give a platform to trans people and Hispanics who supported Trump, conservative and anti-immigration or anti-abortion minorities, Hispanics offended by the word "latinx", blacks who disagree with renaming "master" branches in git, and your example of black and hispanic people who don't vaccinate.

I'm one of those black people who disagrees with the renaming of Master branch on Github. I purposely change main to master every time I start a new repo now.

It is incredibly condescending that these people think we can't differentiate between different usages of the word master.

I refuse to be a part of that.

in my experience pretty much every instance of 'we've done away with something due to the demands of affinity group x' actually means 'one or two of the members of my clique are members of affinity group x and happen to share my cultural agenda so we'll force through this change regardless of what's actually desired because because we know what's best for them'

iirc the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy are among african americans, orthodox jews, native americans and pacific islanders. unsurprisingly these are all groups with very valid historical reasons to not trust the government. using public health debates as a proxy to dunk on your cultural adversaries is one of the big reasons why our national discourse has become utterly unsalvageable.

The biggest vaccine hesitancy is among Trump voters. Who are super unlikely to be black.

It was extremely easy to change peoples minds though. You simply have to make them pay to get tested. Then suddenly the vaccine was preferable.

I’m not American, I don’t share your sentiments about letting people be people. A society is you and me and everyone else in it, working together. If you chose to work against the wider us for no good reason, then you’re no longer part of our society. Being anti-science is not a good enough reason for anyone to defend you around here.

> extremely easy to change peoples minds though.

If a serious enough pandemic arises, you won't have to change minds. Real fear of the pandemic will be enough.

I don't know anybody, who knows anybody who died or was even hospitalized due to covid. All the fear and alarm has to be manufactured.

>I don't know anybody...All the fear"

You seem to be extrapolating an n=1 scenario to the population as a whole ("I" --> "All"). Are you then implying anyone who does know somebody sick or hospitalized has warranted fear?

> Are you then implying anyone who does know somebody sick or hospitalized has warranted fear?

I'm not talking about whether it is warranted or not, but if you know somebody sick or hospitalized, the fear you experience from that is likely to be very impactful, and you will be more inclined to get a vaccine based on that.

I agree. But I also acknowledge that type of heuristic probably isn't optimal.

The media definitely had a field year with the smelly feces they call "news", but the alarm is real.

If the virus mutated to be like the Spanish flu antivaxxers would be singing a different tune. But nothing as bad happened.

And these panicky people saying "we're in the middle of a pandemic" are funny, like they haven't been outside for years - go out, the majority, vaccinated or not, doesn't give a fuck about Covid anymore.

Lives are pretty much back to normal, minus international travel and half-arsed safety in stores.

I'm not American either, but I'm intrigued about what could make you think that I was.

Working together implies listening to the other side, even if you disagree and in the end choose to ignore it.

And being reluctant to the vaccine is not "anti-science" : it is after all a relatively new technology (mRNA vaccines have been experimented for more or less 10 years), that is being made widely mandatory, and it would not be the first time a new medicine is discovered to have fatal side effects after some time (the Mediator case comes to mind : https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210329-mediator-trial-f...).

To me, the cost-benefit analysis makes me overwhelmingly pro-vaccine, and I've debated as such multiple time, but what mainly disturbs me is that I find a lot of people from my side debating with ad-hominems (you're anti-science, stupid people, you're with us or against us, etc...) instead of trying to debate actual points and fears.

There are people debating in bad faith on the other side as well, that's for sure, but to me the best is not to engage them at all, and most of all not to debate in bad faith yourself either, as it is not a much better place to be a parrot of government propaganda than it is to be a parrot of conspirationist propaganda.

> I'm not American either, but I'm intrigued about what could make you think that I was.

Not parent, but the thing that made me think you were from the USA was this line:

> From my circles, the vaccine/mask defiance is mostly about what is perceived (wrongly in my opinion, but still) as an overreach from the state, and as a risky bet that they might not want to take.

... and the rest of your post declined / forgot to mention where you were, or what kind of circles you were in.

Typically that's a trait of people that live in the USA.

> And being reluctant to the vaccine is not "anti-science" :

It really is.

Unless you're claiming statistics (epidemiology) is not a valid branch of science, in which case, okay, you really are more likely to die / suffer massive long term health nastiness from COVID19 than from any of the vaccines.

You refer to 'sides' being a bad way to describe things, but seem to rely heavily on the us / them dichotomy to try to make your points.

Unfortunately, I think the U.S. may have laws that complicate this issue. For example, I believe laws make sure the test is administered for free by health insurance and I think there is precedent from the Americans Disabilities Act that employers pay for any testing for those employees do not have insurance.

While I think your idea of a nudge may work, it may not be feasible in the U.S.

I’ve heard this line of reasoning a lot but I’ve never seen anyone back it up with much of evidence beyond the usual platitudes of liberal parenting. (Note that I also find modern American child rearing techniques to be a set of failures where children act as little dictators and their gentle, caring parents desperately try to convince their kids to behave). I can’t help but see the same patterns at work here. Personally I’ll stick with a firm insistence that Covid presents serious risks, vaccines are safe and effective, and the inability to comprehend a scientific paper or even copy off the homework of the smart kids is a shameful embarrassment. If that doesn’t vibe with someone’s AYSO participation trophy mindset, though luck, we have a global pandemic to deal with so man up and take one for the team. If you think babying people with gentle appeals is working, take a cold look at the results of polite messaging campaigns.

My point of view is closer to yours than you might think : I'm definitely pro-vaccination, and I do believe at least some categories of population should have mandatory vaccine (teachers, medical, etc...).

My point was mainly about the self-congratulatory tone of the message above, whose main effect is to :

- create tension with people that disagree

- gain approval from people that already agree

And in the end make the subject more tense than it has to be. No one bats an eye for other mandatory vaccine, this one creates tension because of propaganda campaigns and some valid concerns (like mrna vaccine being pretty new), but the answer to those tensions is not exacerbating an "us vs them" mentality

I noticed in your previous point that you are not opposed to the widespread use of vaccines and that you are in favor of taking action to stop the danger posed by covid. The question I am asking is about tactics for getting everyone working together to put an end to this.

I keep hearing people suggest that we can’t be condescending because we shouldn’t offend anyone or make anybody feel bad and I am not seeing it do much good. Shame is a powerful social mechanism and I don’t see why we shouldn’t use it. What are you actually proposing? A clear statement of facts is a good start, but what do you recommend after that?

at some point we all learned instinctively that the best way to farm internet points is not to extend olive branches but to set them on fire.

I can't speak to the OP's meaning, but it has to do with the way people are persuaded.

>Personally I’ll stick with a firm insistence that Covid presents serious risks, vaccines are safe and effective, and the inability to comprehend a scientific paper

This comes across as based on the assumption that people are rational and, when presented with evidence, will weight that evidence accordingly. Unfortunately, that's just not how humans evolved to extrapolate about reality. Anyone who's ever debated online knows that simply presenting information isn't an effective way to persuade somebody. We're emotional creatures more than we are rational ones. There's lots of research on this (my favorite domain for this subject is behavioral econonmics) but a quick, interesting and related read that touches on this topic is Scott Adams' Win Bigly.

To the OP's point, speaking in condescending tone, regardless of the 'rightness' of your point, isn't likely to persuade someone because it will illicit an even stronger emotional resistance.

This idea that idiots are extremely sensitive and will deepen their belief in nonsense _out of spite_ if confronted seems to have become very widespread, but is there any reason to think it's true? If anything, their nonsense is being taken too seriously; a lot of media both-sides it to some extent in a way that it wouldn't with, say, flat-earthers.

And, while there are a lot of confounding factors, of course, there seem to be fewer people buying all the horse drugs in countries where the media was dismissive of them, vs in countries where parts of the media both-side-ed it.

We've learnt from past medical adventures that things in this domain are frequently not as straightforward as many would like them to be, or as they are portrayed to be. The poster child for this for my generation (I'm 57) would be thalidomide, but there are lots of other less catastrophic examples of "proven" medical technology and treatments that turned out to be not quite as safe and side-effect-free as was initially claimed. For some communities too, there are clear cut cases of the medical establishment and/or the state deliberately and knowingly experimenting on people with unstated/hidden agendas.

This makes media handling of some of these claims in comparison to flat-earthers a bit more understandable, whether or not time eventually shows it to be justified or not.

Thinking Denmark's success is mostly about vaccinations and masks ignores some other characteristics of Denmark and other "successful countries." These countries are largely healthier, more homogeneous societies with significantly lower rates of obesity, avoidable cancer, coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, etc - all which are significant risk factors for covid death and hospitalization. I do think lessoning exposure risk through masks and other measures are wise and useful - which some societies are better at doing.

I also think its premature to think Denmark is out of the woods, considering that covid is following seasonal patterns and high vaccination rates don't seem to be avoid high infection rates. I hope you are right, but I am skeptical. There is a strong possibility you will return to these restrictions by the end of the year when the winter starts. We will see.

> Thinking Denmark's success is mostly about vaccinations…

It’s not thinking. This was our intentional strategy, and we were only capable of opening society and removing restrictions because we followed the plans.

We are now gearing up to start round 3 of the vaccinations.

How you can even debate the effectiveness of these vaccines is beyond me. It’s anti-science for no good reason. The vaccines work, every country that used them is getting to a place where the hospitals aren’t bogged down with dying people.

Meanwhile the “akzhually” anti-science people in America are still dying in droves…

Get vaccinated, stay home if sick and most importantly lose weight. Losing weight will not only improve Covid outcomes drastically, but most of our other main health issues and hospital burden.

> Covid-19 death rates 10 times higher in countries where most adults are overweight

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/04/health/obesity-covid-deat...

How do you explain countries with very high vaccination rates which are having "record outbreaks"?

Delta, in a word.

It's important to note that while outbreaks are definitely happening, hospitalisations and deaths are way down compared to previous waves.

Depends on the country, for example are the conditions identical? I'd argue most aren't thanks to the Delta variant and many countries with high vaccination rates are also not locking down as hard which means there is a lot more transmission. Basically there are many confounding factors to take account of in order to understand the impact of vaccination on infection rate.

For example here in Iceland (84% >12yo are fully vaccinated) we've increased restrictions but not nearly as much as we did for prior outbreaks and have substantially more tourists coming through the country. But at the same times as we've had many more infections we've had considerably fewer hospitalisations. Right now we're having kids go back to school and that's causing a spike in unvaccinated infections.

The problem with looking just at headline numbers is you miss all the context.

Because vaccinated people still get covid.

In a highly vaccinated population going forward, the number of cases is utterly irrelevant. The only thing that actually matter is the number of hospitalizations and deaths.

Remember - long term, literally everyone is going to get covid. That is the only possible future. The goal is hopefully to have everyone double vaccinated before they catch it so their symptoms are mild when they do.

> Remember - long term, literally everyone is going to get covid

Should we stop bullying others to get vaccinated then?

It’s not bullying to expect people to reduce their negative impacts on everyone else anymore than it’s bullying to have you wash hands before preparing food or use the toilet rather than unloading wherever you are. Vaccination is a cheap, safe, and effective way to let humans exist safely in close proximity.

If everyone is getting covid, including person A, how does person B being vaccinated reduce negative impact on person A?

People who are vaccinated spread less, reducing the total viral load. This is a big deal for people who cannot be vaccinated or who are immune compromised since the odds of exposure and total load are what determine whether they can safely function in society.

Similarly, people who are vaccinated are far, far less likely to require medical care. That reduces the load on the medical system — think about all of the complications we're seeing now because people with non-COVID problems are unable to get attention promptly — and a significant percentage of the money for treating more serious COVID cases will be paid by people other than the patients through some combination of taxes, insurance, and overhead costs (e.g. American ERs aren't allowed to refuse care since Reagan socialized them which means those expenses are added to everyone else's bill).

The Delta variant is so contagious that everyone will eventually be exposed regardless of what we do. There will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect people who cannot be vaccinated or who are immune compromised.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Vaccinated people who get infected are probably contagious for a shorter period. However that only marginally reduces the risk of contagion for any individual interaction. Over an extended period of time everyone will be exposed.

Think of it like a soccer goalie defending against an endless series of penalty kicks. He might block the first few but eventually a ball will get through.

Yes: if you notice I used the word less, that’s why. Anything which reduces load or time cuts into the R factor — we still need masks to get the community levels under control but it seems likely that vaccination will let us hit the point where immune compromised people, those with allergic reactions, etc. can live normally during non-pandemic conditions.

Several ways, the most simple being that if A needs a life support machine, vaccinated B is much less likely to be using it already.

Okay so in this case we aren't talking about negative impact being direct contamination, but rather that there is a hospital resource management problem that exists, and people should be vaccinated to help alleviate that resource management problem.

That's fine and understandable, but it suggests different communication. If the problem is resource management / availability then instead of talking about how many people per capita are infected and rates of infection, talk about the resource usage, and rate of availability. I think I did see one interview with a hospital manager nearly in tears about potentially having to make lethal resource based decisions, but it's far from a daily talking point like the simple case rate is.

Hand washing is not widely known to have harmful side effects that sometimes even require hospitalization, and sometimes even cause death. Same for unloading in designated places.

You have to look at the odds: the risky vaccine side-effects are massively less common than those of COVID, which in case you haven’t noticed is raging and causing lots of economic disruption to boot. The trade-off is obvious.

Okay so you're changing your argument now.

Instead of a simple comparison to hand washing, you're saying people should "look at the odds" and somehow make a judgement call. Well, that's a much different request, and is open to a lot of variation, uncertainty, personal bias, etc. It really isn't as simple as "it's just like washing your hands".

No, it's the same comparison: handwashing is mildly inconvenient (consider, for example, the arguments from doctors who opposed it historically) but a population which does it regularly has a lower chance of various unpleasant outcomes. Vaccination is a different technique but similar: mild inconvenience, lower chance of significantly worse outcomes.

The uncertainty and personal bias is what you're trying to inject into a very clear cut decision when you conflate the extremely rare possible side-effects from vaccination with the far more common effects of contracting COVID. If you look at a large population, yes, there are a few people who will have a significant negative reaction to a vaccine but for each of them there are many thousands of people who will have worse outcomes from the actual disease.

I've already had covid, yet people still want me to get vaccinated.

I'm not going to. I'll stick with natural immunity, thanks.

Afaik having immunity and getting the vaccine you'd have even lower chances of any side effects. It'll just renew the antibodies in your system.

There is more to immunity than antibodies. For long term immunity, memory cells are more important than antibody levels.

Natural immunity acquired by recovering from an infection provides more effective protection than vaccination.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

For patients who were previously infected, vaccination cuts the risk of reinfection in half. However it's unclear how long that additional protection lasts.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm

> Remember - long term, literally everyone is going to get covid. That is the only possible future.

Very much not true.

Literally many people will die if they get COVID (f.e. the extremely young, or the many people that are immuno-compromised) so there's lots of other people that are keen to get populations as widely vaccinated as possible, to reduce the effective R0 as much as possible, to make sure they don't die.

Your claim isn't scientifically accurate. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, however there is no evidence that this will produce a significant herd immunity effect or drive R0 below 1.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Fortunately the extremely young are at very low risk of death.

https://www.who.int/news/item/16-03-2021-new-research-highli...

The claims in that article are a bit tenuous - such as 'we have no way to control the spread of delta', when in fact we do - isolation, quarantine, reduced travel, contact tracing, masks, social distancing, vaccination, etc.

A year ago we didn't have a vaccine, and now more than half the population of most western nations are vaccinated. The idea that we have no alternative but to 'surrender to delta' because it's inevitable that 'literally everyone will get it' is depressingly pessimistic.

We can apply the above remedies, while developing and distributing booster shots that cover delta.

Similar applies to various other VOI/VOC's on (or not yet on) the radar.

Apparently you didn't actually read the linked article, or watch the original video on which it's based. Prof. Pollard never suggested surrendering. We should try to vaccinate as many people as possible. But other interventions like isolation, quarantine, reduced travel, masks, and social distancing are obviously not sustainable indefinitely. Most regular people in free societies won't tolerate them. So we'll have to eventually just accept the risks and move forward.

Thanks for the assumption, despite me reading the linked article (I preferred the Guardian's take on the issue, from the same day[0]).

I did not watch the video on which it's based, of course, as time is finite.

GP (and to an extent, Prof Pollard) are asserting these things based on a number of assumptions -- pessimism (perhaps justified) about the callous thoughtlessness of many ersatz citizens, the current set of vaccines are all we shall have available into the future, delivery mechanisms will continue to require injections (slow, difficult, discourages some non-trivial subset of the population), and will continue to not be available to younger children.

If all those were true, then perhaps.

Happily, not all those are true.

Anyway, I was railing against the claim that 'literally everyone is going to get COVID' as an unavoidable future. I shall continue to rail.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-variant-...

> Very much not true.

How on earth can we get out of lockdowns and get back to living our lives, unless we fully expect everyone to catch covid?

We've already proven time and time and time again you can't eradicate it with lockdowns (see Australia & NZ right now), so it will always be around. And we know vaccinated people can still pass it on to others.... so eventually everyone is going to have to have it if they want to interact with others.

I genuinely don't understand how life can go on any other way

> How on earth can we get out of lockdowns and get back to living our lives, unless we fully expect everyone to catch covid?

You're painting two extremes and asserting one's not possible, and thereby concluding the other is ineluctable.

We've proven we can eliminate it (witness NZ and large parts of Australia), and assuming a policy of full vaccination and arrival / subsequent swab tests for visitors, it's quite feasible that once we've got most people in Australia vaccinated, propagation pathways can be well tracked, and propagation rates can be kept very low.

I'm in Australia right now, and they very much have NOT gotten rid of it. Delta has proven impossible to eradicate, and in fact the leaders of both NSW and Vic (where the two outbreaks are) have given up and said that Covid 0 is no longer possible. More than half the country is in severe lockdown, unable to go more than 5 km from their home.

NZ too are in the middle of another outbreak and using severe lockdowns isn't making it go away.

And even still, if Australia somehow did manage to keep a lid on it - anyone that wants to leave the country is surely going to go to a place that has much higher rates, and they'll likely get it. Then they want to come back into Australia - will there be the mandatory 2 week quarantine forever? (I paid $3k a few months ago).

It's simply not a viable long term future.

You're speaking about the current outbreaks - we don't yet know if we will / could eradicate it this time around. Certainly previously we've gotten down to zero, across every state, when there was more political will to do so. Currently the political will isn't there - had NSW implemented the same measures we have now, back when the first outbreaks were being detected, we'd have been sorted a month ago.

Take your pick from vanilla incompetence, hubris, insouciance, or any of the various commercial or political intrigues to explain this torpid initial response that has brought us to where we are.

> NZ too are in the middle of another outbreak and using severe lockdowns isn't making it go away.

I see they've had 25 new cases today. Is this 'out of control'? It feels a long way from 'everyone is going to have to get COVID, there's no other way'.

As to your last question, yes, it's quite palatable for me that anyone who leaves the country and returns would submit to a test on arrival, quarantine at home for 2 weeks with subsequent tests at 7 and 14d.

OK, so in your world Australia gets off it's backside and gets back to Covid 0, and somehow NZ does too.

What happens in 6, 12, 24 and 48 months?

How do you Keep covid out, forever?

Also, what about the other 99.9% of the world's population - surely they're all going to get covid sooner or later.

Hopefully the vast majority are double vaccinated before they get it, but like getting a common cold, it's essentially inevitable if we want to go back to mass sporting events, bars and clubs, mass public transport, planes, etc. etc.

It feels you think I have an answer, just that I'm not willing to share it with you. I don't have an answer, but that doesn't mean I must accept or like yours.

The approach I described (home quarantine & testing regime for people arriving from overseas) is tenable and not too controversial - certainly much more palatable, and probably more effective, than the current (enforced hotel quarantine). Would need to be combined with proper deterrents for idiots wilfully subverting that process (we have been objectively atrocious at implementing or enforcing legal deterrents for anti-social behaviour on the COVID front).

Over the 24-48 month period you're demanding an answer for - my naive expectation is twofold. Many populations will have delta sweep through well within that period, resulting in large demographics of delta-immune people. (Note - this doesn't mean I want to live in such a place, just that it will happen.)

Second, we'll have booster & variant-specific vaccinations developed within that time, possibly with nasal delivery - meaning very fast, less contentious (higher uptake), and probably cheap.

Which countries are these? I live in Denmark. We’re on 600-800 new cases a day and were around 72% vaccinated.

It’s fairly easy to explain why we have 600-800 a day even though it’s not “record outbreaks”.

Part of it is the 72% and who the 20% something that can still get vaccinated are (children), part of it is delta being capable of infecting vaccinated people as well as people who have already had covid, but the biggest reason is that we’ve opened society again with no restrictions.

We are capable of doing this because of the 72%, because even though we have 600-800 new cases a day, which while it’s not record numbers is still significantly higher than what we had when we first locked down, almost nobody ends up with severe cases. Which means our hospitals are empty by comparison to the first lockdown.

You can argue about the morality of opening society with just 72% instead of waiting until we’re near 90% but that’s a different discussion.

The country would probably be Israel. A lot of vaccinated people are getting infected. But it's not a real problem because few of them die.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/israel-doubles-down-on-covid...

The virus is going to be around forever. There's no need for restrictions, we just need to accept the risk and move on.

> Come on people, get vaccinated and wear a damn mask! If we could do it, so can you!

Maybe condescending to people will work this time.

If the condescending doesn’t work then try making them pay for the covid test themselves.

>Come on people, get vaccinated and wear a damn mask! If we could do it, so can you!

I'm not sure if the sarcasm is just flying over my head, but the reason why the rest of the world is in lockdown is because we are discovering that even with 100% vaccination rates health systems can collapse and death rates can still be in the ballpark of 5 per million per day.

The US governments have decided that those are acceptable losses and there is nothing to be done about them.

The rest of the world is not in lockdown. Most European countries are reducing lockdown rules and mask mandates.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-denmark-removes-...

> Come on people, get vaccinated and wear a damn mask! If we could do it, so can you!

The vaccination or natural immunity, whilst not sterilising, has been proven incredibly effective.

Mask wearing on the other hand is a toxic pseudoscience infiltrated by political sectarianism in the US in particular.

From my PoV, wearing a mask is such a simple thing that I don't even notice it.

And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten Covid if I wore the mask (yeah, I half-arsed that and got infected talking to an obviously feverish person with the mask on my chin lol).

> From my PoV, wearing a mask is such a simple thing that I don't even notice it

I'm afraid I have a different psychology and physiology to you. A lot of people unfortunately think their experience dictates that their opinions should extend to how I breathe thus it manifests as policy. Not even to further discuss the real psychology of why they support such policies.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense without mentioning where you are.

I think in most countries it isn't vaccine recitence that's the problem, but lack of vaccine supply.

Yeah because most countries are poor. In rich countries the problem is people who don't want to get vaccinated. We're throwing vaccines in the trash because nobody wants them...

Getting obesity levels lower is extremely important during this pandemic. It's not only their health but they take previous hospital beds.

Get vaccinated, lower the weight and wear a mask is the real message. Unfortunately just like anti vaxxers obesity is something to be praise now and even "healthy".

If you’re in a northern country with a pronounced summer and a winter flu season, I’d wait a bit before celebrating. Europe and Canada celebrated victory in summer 2020 compared to the US. Then it all soured.

Every stats in those countries now celebrating is worse than it was early sept 2020. Deaths, hospitalizations, ICU….all worse. It’s not just cases.

Respiratory viruses get worse in winter. The hope is this one won’t, or that herd immunity is finally reached, despite a higher case load than last year.

> Every stats in those countries now celebrating is worse than it was early sept 2020.

Well, no, we have 70-85 percent fully vaccinated population in Europe, and a lot of the remaining 25 percent most likely has antibodies. This isn't the same as last year.

Experts here in Belgium argue that we should be lifting restrictions ASAP so that the infections are flattened out and don't all happen during winter.

Belgium, compared to sept 2nd 2020:

Cases: 5x

Deaths: 2x

Hospitalizations: 2.5x

ICU: 2.5x

Tiny compared to winter? Yes. But this is a seasonal respiratory virus and this season is worse than last year same time.

Now, the theory is you can go back to normal, massively increase viral doses in the air, and not see a rise through winter. Because of immunity. But, breakthroughs seem to happen more easily at high viral doses.

The other thing is, antibodies wane. Israel had to do boosters, they found greater susceptibility the further people got from their vax date. Boosters have reversed severe disease trends for now, and is optimistic. But they also have restrictions.

I don’t know which way the future goes. My point is just that it is terribly premature to declare victory over a respiratory virus in summer. Europe made exactly the same mistake last year. You won’t know till winter.

The other thing people forget is that efficacy is a relative measure, but hospitalizations are absolute. Ok, so, 95% efficacy in reducing hospitalizations compared to unvaccinated. Great! I got the vaccines myself, but that is a great result.

So, on absolute terms, you have 20x less risk of hospitalization from the wild type variant at case levels at a given point.

But….Delta is associated with a 2x increase in hosp risk compared to wild type. Oops ok so we have only a 10x absolute reduction in hospitalization risk.

And cases are 5x higher than this time last year. Oops, ok, compared to sept 2nd 2020 a vaccinated Belgian has only a 2x absolute reduced risk of hospitalization compared to same time last year. (An unvaccinated Belgian with no prior infection has a 10x higher risk, efficacy vs severe disease still 95%)

If cases go high enough you still see severe disease, even with vaccines. Maybe impossible for cases to hit 100,000 a day in Belgium, 5x winter peak. But Israel already 60% higher than winter peak, in summer, with boosters, and restrictions. So what happens without restrictions, in winter? (I’m assuming Belgium will get boosters)

I wonder where these numbers come from. The three largest countries (Germany, France and Italy) by population have vaccination rates of a little more than 60%, Poland (5th place) has 50% fully vaccinated. How on earth does this accumulate to 70% or even 85%?

Belgium is at 71%. But probably they are looking at percent of eligible population vaccinated, meaning 12+. Common mistake, especially as govts emphasize that stat.

The herd immunity threshold is said to be at 90% of all people, including children.

The herd immunity threshold for the Delta variant is so high as to be effectively meaningless.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

That’s very possible. UK was 94% for adults back in July and they’re rising again. Children weren’t include but I figure they’re over 90% with antibodies now.

You're right, i was talking about eligible population, i should be more careful with my wording.

Still though, I disagree that "all stats are worse than last year". Hospitalizations are near exclusively among the unvaccinated. If we didn't have a vaccine, our hospital system would have collapsed, whereas right now we have little to no restrictions, just masks in public transit and shopping centers.

For those downvoting this:

1. Pick a country in Europe you think is doing well

2. Check the stats for sept 3 2021 and sept 3 2020. The hospitalization, ICU and death stats. For death use the 7 day average

Guarantee the stats are worse. Also any normal respiratory virus gets worse when some ends.

Maybe it will work out well. But Europe had the same hubris last summer.

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