It's highly ignorant to call unvaccinated Americans idiots. Over 100 million Americans have already caught and recovered from Covid. I imagine many in that group don't see any value in getting the vaccine (rightfully so).
In the U.S. at least, there is a mass testing regime that many must submit to for work, school, etc. Are you suggesting those who have tested positive in these situations are "making up stories"?
The comment I was responding to claimed "most" people are making claims without proof. Despite the hundreds of millions (billions?) of covid tests that have been administered throughout the pandemic in the U.S.
At least we can agree on that. You're doing it right now.
Funny that you put "a few symptoms" in scare quotes, given that loss of taste and smell is highly indicative of covid and not any other widely circulating illness.
Reason has left the building.
Notice how easy it is to conveniently jettison the science + data and just demand that people "tow the line or else.."
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
The overall IFR is misleading, given how age-stratified the risk is:
Since March of 2020 any kind of statement suggesting covid isn’t as bad as some make it out to be is met with fierce vitriol. The number of times I’ve been called “dangerous” for posting well sourced data that clearly shows the IFR of covid is not 1-2%…
It’s as if people believe that any good news will result in others “not taking this serious”. They must feel that everybody needs to be scared stiff of this thing all the time… the result is the average person thinks if they catch covid they have a 10% chance of dying, which for most age groups is like 1000x off[0].
It’s super evil, really. If people were better informed about the risk profiles of covid, how many would have sacrificed a year and a half of their short life? Wouldn’t that imply that forcing this “new normal” crap by scaring the daylights out of people is a tad misguided and perhaps very unethical and immoral? If the only way you can get people to comply with your draconian interventions is lying to society about the risks of covid… well that is pretty fucked up.
Worse, by the way, is peoples risk assessment for covid is so completely wrong it makes debating public policy impossible. If the average adult thinks they have a 10% of dying if they got covid, of course they will want to mask little kids at school, of course they’ll cheer vaccine passports, of course they’ll rat each other out for sitting on a park bench. If they knew kids were at almost zero risk of covid, and their age bracket had minimal risks, would they have agreed to any of that?
[0] a fascinating data set: https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
Strangely, despite all the pearl clutching about "misinformation", this data-backed and quantifiable instance of covid misinformation never gets brought up. As a result, I now consider government / public health institution claims to be politically calculated fearmongering or propaganda until proven otherwise, and likely not worth my time to pay attention to. I'll update my opinion about them if their stance toward "correcting misinformation" starts to include misinformation like the above as well.
I'm not holding my breath.
I think the point about COVID is that if everybody just ignored it, this is absolutely what would happen, and case fatality rates could get pretty high.
Their choice is this, if they are otherwise healthy and young: With protection as good or better than the vaccinated, should I get a shot that might lower my already minuscule chance of dying or serious disease by a further tiny amount.
I could see rational people coming down on both sides of that.
If it is (a), evidence shows that covid + vaccine is better than either alone and hence no reason to refuse the vaccine.
If it is (b), there is perfect justification for calling that stancy as an idiotic stance.
So regarding option a, it’s moreso the case that there’s no legitimate reason TO bother with the vaccine if you have those antibodies already. A marginal improvement at best over what is already better than two shots of Pfizer, is not worth the long-term unknowns to me.
Source:
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
There is also new evidence that it may be safer for boys to just get covid rather than vaccination.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
Knowing this, will you still say there’s no reason to refuse it? Why would you elevate yourself into a position where you believe yourself to be an arbiter of this? The evidence is clear that the antibodies tens of millions already have from past infection are excellent. So stop coming up with false dilemmas.
Agreed. The correct term for them is "immoral". The only world in which it makes sense to forgo the vaccine is one in which your life is only one that matters. So a healthy unvaccinated person is making a perfectly rational decision, just a morally bankrupt one.
It is immoral for the same reason as refusing to help others survive at zero cost to you.
Isn't that a reason people don't want the shot? Because they're not sure of the answer to that question.
I got my 2 shots. Had to drive 1.5 hours each way both times, find someone to watch my kids and burn up 2 Saturdays that I could have spent doing something I wanted to do that wasn't getting a shot.
To claim there is zero cost is insincere at best.
For me both shots were zero cost, as for every other person I know.
The vaccine does not come with 0 cost.
It sucks to be surrounded by people who won't give a shit about senior Citizens, immunocompromised neighbors or older folks in their own families. It is indeed a lack of morality.
Do you find any irony in your decision being controlled by the government's policy?
When 9/11 happened it united the country. COVID should have done the same thing, but it has been used as a political tool instead, bringing out the worst in people. It makes me quite depressed when I think about it for too long.
I've felt this way too. People have made this so incredibly, incredibly divisive. I'm not sure what blend of fear and tribalism is driving this either. When you talk to some people about covid, what comes out of their mouth is almost word salad--they are so incredibly fearful and panicked that almost none of what they say makes sense. The idea that society should completely alter everything for this one specific illness (aka "new normal") is pretty absurd, yet people will stop just short of spitting on your face when you express any skepticism at all.
Societies reaction to this is all just so freaking bizarre. None of what we are doing adds up or makes much sense when you really start asking questions.
If you think it "united the country" then you either have rose-tinted glasses on, or you had your opinion validated by the pro-war media and never looked elsewhere. The difference is that now the media disagrees with you.
Why do you say they disagree?
Edit: capitalization
Second edit: I didn't say the WAR united the country. You're twisting my comment.
I was wrong when I said the media disagrees with you though. Maybe the difference is that the anti-vax side has managed to organize through the internet and has gotten a lot more coverage, so they look bigger than they actually are?
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I still disagree. I was in high school when 9/11 happened, I remember it well. There was a period of time, I will admit it was on the order of 48-96 hours, where this country was as united as I’ve ever experienced. COVID could have had that same effect, us as country(wo)men against the world. It didn’t. From the jump it was politics. I’m sure you remember Harris and Biden saying they wouldn’t get a vaccine when Trump was president. It’s political all the way down.
Of course it didn't. I don't understand why you think it ever had the chance to.
>I’m sure you remember Harris and Biden saying they wouldn’t get a vaccine when Trump was president. It’s political all the way down.
I remember their comments. I also remember the rest of the statements they made and the context around them. And neither of them said they wouldn't get a vaccine while Trump was president - they said that they wouldn't get a vaccine if Trump was the only one saying to get it, and experts like Fauci weren't.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-pos...
that is another shining example of how COVID and the vaccine were used for political manipulation. Biden and Harris should have not made the vaccine about donald fucking trump.
Their stance was bullshit and you know it. In what world are global pharma companies going to develop a brand new vaccine using relatively new technology to try and stop a global pandemic, and the only fucking person to talk about them is Trump? Nobody else will say anything until Trump does? Trump would be the first and only authority on these vaccines? That's such a crock of shit.
Yeah and if you got vaccinated you probably wouldn't have caught it in August. Great hill to (hopefully metaphorically) die on.