We really need a new frontier. Hopefully space travel happens before human beings become completely domesticated.
It also conveniently ignores the known and unknown long-haul effects from Covid, which impacts a significant percentage (20%?). I, for one, like staying in relatively good health.
And no, you can’t read the minds of long dead people either.
Is it really so difficult to consider that we live in a scared, lazy age?
Spengler in his works has a cyclical view of civilizations, which you might also enjoy.
Many “cyclical” ideologies also have similar ideas going back millennia. Hinduism for example sees the world as occurring in cycles. According to some, we are in a materialistic age, which is a consequence of losing spiritual values and a focus on comfort and pleasure.
And yet that is exactly what you are doing throughout multiple comments.
https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...
How does that make any sense? Don’t you think it’s more reasonable to assume we don’t know either?
And two of the available vaccines don't even give you a dead infection like most vaccines - you can't get COVID from the COVID shot (Moderna or Pfizer)
But it’s not. The question is long term side effects. Unless you have a time machine, I’m gonna say we can’t know those for quite a bit - unlike other vaccines which have decades of testing data.
obviously we can't just wait forever with the worry that in year forever+1 some random side effect completely different from what the evidence currently indicates will manifest itself
Have you heard of DDT?
if you would be so kind as to link it here...
In the past, some substances were thought to be safe, but turned out not to be. The “it’s safe” period of time was longer than a year.
Ergo it is reasonable to assume that we can’t know all of the side effects of current novel vaccines. It doesn’t mean there will be any, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be either.
That’s how science works.
see, in that example, you made up a rule that anything you want will cause Z, but there's no actual scientific basis for the rule
you have to actually prove Y will do Z, you can't just claim something else did Z, therefore anything can do Z
Again, you lack a basic understanding of the scientific method.
to wit, you have not proven there is a good reason to worry about widespread significant long-term side effects of the COVID vaccines -- specifically, DDT is not a past example of a vaccine resembling any of the COVID vaccines
the lack of evidence pointing to widespread, significant, long-term side-effects so far, however, is evidence enough for us to lean in that direction
I do, however, support your right to avoid the vaccine, as well as your right to avoid any place or activity that requires those present to have it, so at least there's that
This is basic medical knowledge. Not a conspiracy.
if I could just offer a piece of friendly advice, for anyone trying to convince the majority that the COVID-19 vaccines show a strong likelihood of negative side effects long-term:
try to show the actual frequency of each long-term side effect you mention, as a proportion of # of those vaccines administered, and explain the physical mechanism by which each of those side effects will manifest in recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines
You seem to have very little understanding of how medicine works.
if you're trying to convince the vast majority of Americans who aren't opposed to vaccine mandates, that they should change their mind, you should probably be able to show that significant side effects occur a significant % of the time in another vaccine,
then explain how that side effect modality would transfer to this vaccine (IE what they have in common which indicates the COVID vaccine will probably have the same long-term side effects)
oh, also, you never answered OP's question: how long do you think is enough?
In 1960, the rhesus monkey kidney cells used to prepare the poliovirus vaccines were determined to be infected with the simian virus-40 (SV40),[36] which was also discovered in 1960 and is a naturally occurring virus that infects monkeys. In 1961, SV40 was found to cause tumors in rodents.[37] More recently, the virus was found in certain forms of cancer in humans, for instance brain and bone tumors, pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma, and some types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.[38][39] However, SV40 has not been determined to cause these cancers.[40]
SV40 was found to be present in stocks of the injected form of the IPV in use between 1955 and 1963.[36] It is not found in the OPV form.[36] Over 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963 when a proportion of vaccine was contaminated with SV40; an estimated 10–30 million Americans may have received a dose of vaccine contaminated with SV40.[36] Later analysis suggested that vaccines produced by the former Soviet bloc countries until 1980, and used in the USSR, China, Japan, and several African countries, may have been contaminated, meaning hundreds of millions more may have been exposed to SV40.[41]
See: side effects section.
"In 1998, the National Cancer Institute undertook a large study, using cancer case information from the institute's SEER database. The published findings from the study revealed no increased incidence of cancer in persons who may have received vaccine containing SV40."
And beyond that, a full discussion requires comparison of negative side effects of the vaccine vs side effects of the original virus, and the rate of such effects. We know, factually, that there are often some side effects from vaccines. We also know, factually, that often the vaccine side effects are either of less severity and/or less frequency than the effects of catching the original virus. In other words, statistically, most of the time you're better off tempting fate with the vaccine than with the virus.
The closest thing was the lingering concern about SV40-contaminated doses (importantly, not the actual vaccine itself) causing increased rates of cancer, although it looks like all major attempts to determine if that was true have so far come back with a null result.
Source? And is it reversible?
https://old.reddit.com/r/vaccinelonghaulers/
So I don't agree the effects of either are well understood.
And until yesterday, that was entirely your choice! Unfortunately, as of today, it isn't any more.
If they fire you, that's a better option if you don't believe the vaccines are safe (they have NOT been fully tested - you are a guinea pig in the safety trials if you got the jab), the vaccines have NOT been approved (the lie of the claim otherwise is that no currently available vaccine has been approved - they are all still in EUA - they are still experimental while the "approved" Pfizer vaccine has never been made yet, has never been tested either and is NOT available to anyone because it's never been made yet).
If you're not willing to give up certain things that are required to maintain that society, you're welcome to go away. You have that choice.
then you should avoid any and all cars as you have a 1 in 100 lifetime chance of dying in a car accident. or birth, as babies have 0.6% chance of dying around birth.
covid suffers severely from availability and recency bias because our lives are so exceedingly safe already. it’s hard to die on accident, even via covid.
Although I feel you were trying to make the opposite case, I think events like COVID should illuminate the dangers and inadequacies of other elements of our lives. If you've read "The Maniac of New York" comic, it makes a similar point: a murderer that can't be stopped eventually just becomes accepted by society. Perhaps we have recency bias with COVID, but we have a more worrying complacency bias with other elements of our lives, like cars. Dramatic life extensions and quality of life improvements come when people stop accepting that "meh, people get sick and die," and instead get curious and start pushing for "burdensome" things like public sanitation.
Perhaps more importantly though, the ICU is getting filled up and causing other unrelated ailments to become worse. This isn't the case with most the other things you listed.
> babies have 0.6% chance of dying around birth
This one is hard to avoid unfortunately, unless you believe in Pixar's "pre life" world from "Soul". Also, arguably avoiding it leads to 100% mortality depending on how you count "not living". Neither here nor there, but I wasn't really a fan of that movie.
the “hospitals filling up” narrative is mediopolitically-motivated justification, not grounded in deductive reasoning nor meant to drive effective mitigative policy.
I think you may have a recency bias towards the mitigation techniques. The reason it seems like there's no hysteria around cars is because we've already gone through that phase and implemented the best safeguards we could come up with: the right analogy here is to see what a stickler our society is for having car insurance, which is the closest thing to a "car accident vaccine" we could come up with. Given the reality of the frequency of car accidents, and how they can potentially affect others just as much as yourself, we've implemented a system where it is a requirement to have a way to compensate the other person if an accident happens (not to mention the various laws we have around driving, the big deal that was Mothers Against Drunk Driving, breathalyzer checkpoints which could be seen quite analogously to covid testing, the fact that we need a license to drive and are tested for driving proficiency, the penalties for driving unsafely, laws requiring you to buckle your safety belt, laws around safety belts and airbags needing to be included in cars, etc. etc.). If we had an actual hypothetical "car accident vaccine," we'd probably just require you to have that instead of this tremendously complicated and expensive infrastructure around driving.
So I'd argue that what we actually don't see is heightened emotion around this onerous car infrastructure, to the point where you are essentially presenting cars as some sort of model for c'est-la-vie attitudes both from the general population and the government, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The reality is you've just gotten used to the burdens we've taken on to make our activities livable with respect to cars. Go watch the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel and you'll see just how much of your life is actually completely governed around accommodating cars (and a big part of that is in making their presence safer).
> the “hospitals filling up” narrative is mediopolitically-motivated justification, not grounded in deductive reasoning nor meant to drive effective mitigative policy.
Source?
no, we've just collectively decided that we're willing to put up with the small risk. it's nowehere near all that we could come up with. we could be much more stringent (stricter licensing & testing, tougher and more diverse training, more danger-apparent roads, better segregating roads from streets, fewer in-car and out-of-car distractions, more rigorous enforcement, higher carbon/fuel taxes, congestion pricing, stricter pollution standards, dense mixed-use neighborhoods, greater transit investment, etc.) and further reduce that risk, but we've collectively decided that the imposition and cost are not worth it (though i personally disagree). cars are a visible and imminent threat every day, in much the same way that covid is perceived to be, as a new member of the constellation of endemic infectious diseases we now live with.
as for the rest, torturing analogies that way merely to coerce them into fitting a desired explication is cruel and unusual punishment imho. i can't partake in good conscience.
It’s OK to just admit you chose a really bad comparison point, there are others that would probably support your case better, you just happened to choose one of the most heavily regulated areas that has had plenty of constitutional challenges (see everything around breathalyzer checkpoints and the 5th amendment), as well as one of the ones that went through the most hysteria: Ralph Nader built an entire career after publishing “Unsafe at Any Speed” and then testifying to Congress which rocked the automotive world and lead to a ton of regulations. This was all in the 60s though, so easy to forget. But for a more recent example, MADD became a huge “hysteria” to the point of the ACLU fighting against them over the constitutionality of roadblocks. Whether you think it’s justified or not (and to be clear, I’m not arguing either side in this instance), it’s undeniable that car safety was on people’s mind in a big way, and not just in one specific moment in time, but on several separate occasions, over many different issues. I mean, hell, the driver’s license is the closest thing we have to the feared “government ID,” so even the expansion of scope arguments apply.
With regard to “how much we could do” — sure, same can be said with COVID. There’s way more we could do than forcing employees of companies with over 100 people to take a free vaccine or be tested. There’s tremendously more drastic measures that could be taken. As such, the investment is at best comparable (and in reality much smaller) than what we’ve done for cars.
these current pronouncements require some significant portion (perhaps 40+%) of 100 million people to give in to political aims or face unemployment and potentially destitution, to slow down a virus that is going to burn through the whole population eventually (and do so again and again). presumably by now everyone who's risk-averse or at elevated risk has gotten vaccinated. so now that those folks are vaccinated, why force others to do so, other than for political reasons (and for no other seasonal maladies killing tens to hundreds of thousands)? it won't stop spread, mutation, illness, or even death, but rather will only prolong the pandemic while shoveling federal dollars at pharma, making it a purely political gambit.
on top of the vaccination levels we have now, we can get the same epidemiological slowdown without the socioeconomic costs via some modest distancing indoors and mask wearing by public-facing workers (like cashiers) and in social settings (like at home, not generally out in public where it does practically nothing), but that doesn't have nearly the same political punch.
Maybe if people were willing to wear masks and socially distance, but even this has caused tremendous pushback, with for example DeSantis and Abbott trying to ban mask mandates in their states. So sure, if you could get people to mask up and socially distance, perhaps it would achieve the same goal (not sure if this is actually the case, but just taking that at face value), but that’s currently a harder task given that it’s a thing people need to keep doing, dat after day, as opposed to convincing them to get the vaccine once (well, twice, but you know what I mean).
also, no one of any political persuasion is masking or distancing at home or at private social gatherings, which is where a large portion of transmission happens, so it's not just a certain group of selfish bad people prolonging the pandemic. it's all of us who are not following this limited but most mitigative measure (as opposed to the performative ones).
Plus then COMPARE that to other probabilities of death such as car accidents, medical mistakes, etc. which are FAR HIGHER.
First off, the baseline survival rate is much better than 99%, between 99.8% and 99.9%. That's already an order of magnitude lower, closer to 1/1000 than 1/100. 1% lethality was a bad estimate from early on, before we realized we were undercounting mild cases by a huge multiple.
Second, lethality is highly correlated to comorbidities, including obesity and vitamin D deficiency. 94% of Covid deaths had another condition. If you don't, then your own risk reduces by another factor of 15.
Third, lethality is highly stratified by age. Under age 50 incurs at least 10x fewer deaths than higher age brackets.
Fourth, the vaccines. That also reduces risk by a factor somewhere in the ballpark of 10x again.
Fifth, Delta variant is also less lethal, as seen by the low death rates in India and the UK, although we don't seem to have reliable numbers on that yet.
So if you are young, healthy, not overweight, and vaccinated, multiply all that out and your risk factor really comes to less than one in a million. You take bigger risks every time you drive in your car. You're losing more life-value worrying about Covid than you actually stand to lose from it.
That all said, there is the point to be worried about Covid not for yourself, but for the possibility of spreading it. That's a valid point, but that is a question of politics, of individualism versus collectivism, not of science and statistics.
I agree. Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;)
I chalk it up to the youth, who are selfish and only able to think about themselves and their Friendster ranks and how many YouTubes they have on the FaceSpace.
Some of our ancestors were almost completely wiped out from novel disease brought by those that crossed the oceans. They were probably also terrified.
Consider that perhaps the best way to honor those "fearless" risks is to not waste the world they made possible for us by unnecessarily cutting our own lives short. I certainly hope my descendants have even longer lives than I do! But perhaps that's just my selfish genes talking.
Also my grandmother mentioned that when she was young girl just a 100 years ago old people were absolutely broken. Today a lot of people spend their sixties and seventies in very good health.
Also I remember reading about grave site on a bluff in California that was eroding away. Contained the graves of sailors that died when a ship sank in the 1880's. Before reburying them higher up on the bluff they looked over their bones. They weren't in very good health despite being in their 20-40s.