Comment by trts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trts | Hacker News Reader

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There are at least four people close to me who become more entrenched in their anti-vax stance the more this stuff happens.

It's so obvious to me how counter-productive these measures are. However I don't suppose increasing vaccination rates are part of the goal of these measures, but just protecting YouTube from having to do moderation or take responsibility for the content on their platform.

My mom for example, after many conversations and a great deal of effort on my part to present data and evidence that was free from shaming and judgement, has made two appointments to get vaccinated, and subsequently cancelled them. The second cancellation came after Biden's recent speech blaming unvaccinated people being directly responsible for killing the vaccinated, a nonsensical supposition.

This is scary stuff. The moral absolutism that the platforms endorse is creeping into more and more subjective areas, and essentially obliterating any hope of nuance or increased understanding about changing strategies and data.

Hi, I'm one of those people. I already had Covid before the vaccine, and have been exposed without reinfection since having it. I was neutral on the vaccine at the start, but now I'm only going to get it if I'm forced to. I'm not interested in being bullied into a choice that

a) could harm me, and is more likely to given my family history, and b) there's conflicting evidence that it gives me any advantage over the immunity I already have.

If you'd like to change my mind, you can start by not threatening my livelihood, not calling me a murderer, and not treating me like I'm subhuman. Yes, I'm a little angry. Wouldn't you?

Convincing you largely doesn’t matter since you have antibodies already. Your message here sounds a bit like a challenge, “here look at me I’m antivax please convince me” — no, at best that’s an empty request, at worst it’s trollbait.

My ex girlfriend is the exact same as you. I called her out on it, she didn’t like that. Do what you like, but IMO what you are doing is dishonest.

She did eventually get it, though, for no other reason than: it’s harmless, and it’s easier and cheaper than doing a test before every concert she wanted to go to. She eventually apologized and said she was just being stubborn for the hell of it.

Ah well, people change.

Calling the vaccine "harmless" is dishonest. It may have been mostly harmless for her, but the vaccine has caused death and other issues, most notably myocarditisand pericarditis in young men. For a young man who has had covid with mild or no symptoms, the vaccine could pose a greater danger than not. There is no one simple "right" answer here.

And you just described me perfectly. I have valid safety concerns, a healthy immune system, and experienced a total of one day of Covid symptoms.

> Biden's recent speech blaming unvaccinated people being directly responsible for killing the vaccinated, a nonsensical supposition.

Can you explain how this is nonsensical? There is quite a bit of data showing that those who are unvaccinated are much more likely to spread the disease.

From the speech itself, "only 1 in every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans has been hospitalized due to covid"

According to the most recent data from the CDC (https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html), 960 out of every 160,000 Americans has been hospitalized due to covid (this is across all people regardless of vaccination status).

So there is _at least_ a 99% reduction in the rate of hospitalizations for the fully vaccinated, according to the figures he cited.

The message he's sending is that even if you are vaccinated, _you're not safe_. Why is this an effective message for persuading those who might still be convinced?

Is the overall outcome better than if our political leadership continued to transparently emphasize vaccine safety and outcomes, rather than scoring points with their political base? You convince more people to become vaccinated by being convincing. When you get more people vaccinated, you save more lives.

If someone's position is, that it doesn't matter if the overall outcome is worse, because the bad outcomes are more concentrated in selfish/stupid/red-state people, then I simply disagree with that.

Your way at arriving at 99% is quite dubious, as it assumes that from the beginning of the pandemic an equal number of Americans are vaccinated and unvaccinated, and that they are equally exposed to the virus, and that they are in equal risk groups, none of which is true.

From what I have read the those who are vaccinated are about 17 times less likely to be hospitalized. Here is a link to an example article showing that statistic:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-coronavirus-vaccin...

There is very worrisome data coming out of Israel that shows that the risk of breakthrough infections is likely to rise, as delta becomes more predominant and the efficacy of the vaccines wane.

https://www.science.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vac...

Simply put, I don't think the assertion that the unvaccinated are killing the vaccinated is untrue. There is a lot of data that shows that being unvaccinated greatly increases your chance of spreading the virus. The virus is a much bigger part of our lives due to the unvaccinated.

Data is increasingly showing that being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you won't wind up in the hospital, have long term symptoms, or die from the virus, especially if you are in an at risk group.

17x according to the data you linked above is 94% reduction and growing, following vaccinated and unvaccinated people separately since January 2021.

> There is very worrisome data coming out of Israel that shows that the risk of breakthrough infections is likely to rise, as delta becomes more predominant and the efficacy of the vaccines wane.

There has been very worrisome data every week since this pandemic began. The best data we have is that vaccines are safe and effective, and they're important as part of our collective efforts to minimize harm.

To me, that's the harm done by the coronavirus, not the harm caused by the unvaccinated to the vaccinated.

> Data is increasingly showing that being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you won't wind up in the hospital, have long term symptoms, or die from the virus, especially if you are in an at risk group.

I've heard this same thing from the people I know who don't want to get vaccinated. Doesn't change my mind that a) the best data we have suggests it will decrease their overall risk factor and b) calling people stupid and evil or policing what they listen to isn't a good way to win that argument.

Just to be clear, I am not vaccine hesitant, or whatever they want to be called, in the slightest.

94% and growing is not true, it is quite the opposite that the data is showing that vaccine efficacy is growing. Lots of good data shows that the efficacy of the vaccine is lower with delta and as we get further from when the vaccine was administered the efficacy drops significantly. This is the reason we need boosters, but their effectiveness will also wane over time.

Even if the vaccine were 99% effective, if 5,000 vaccinated people were to die from Covid every year, the data suggests that the vast majority of them (if not all) are a result of those who are choosing not to be vaccinated. So it is not a stretch at all to say that the unvaccinated are killing the vaccinated.

I don't think that overstating the positive effect of the vaccine is a good strategy. Yes they are effective, yes everyone who can should get one, but that doesn't mean that the unvaccinated are't responsible when someone who is vaccinated gets sick.

Pointing out that the unvaccinated are responsible for getting the vaccinated sick, in addition to all of the strains they are putting on our society (economy, public health, etc), is a good argument in favor of mandates. I for one am glad Biden and other leaders pushing mandates are making this argument.

The vaccinated aren't dying from COVID, they are dying from other things because they can't get an ICU bed. ICUs are full of unvaccinated COVID patients, which means all the people getting all the other normal sicknesses are being locked out of medical care.

That's what they mean by "the unvaccinated are killing the vaccinated". People who could have lived if they got ICU care are dying because the ICUs are already full.

My friend's father got pancreatic cancer. His chemotherapy was delayed because the hospital was full of covid patients. Now he's dead. People who get mad about being harangued to take the vaccine are failing to see the whole picture.

Your comparing the rate of hospitalization of one group for the entire pandemic then comparing the rate of the second for a few months. That's not going to give you any useful data for comparison.

Same here. Social Environment is hard to overcome. In the battle of social environment (group think) vs. individual reasoning, environment will win almost every time. This is a known bias among professional investors, and well appreciated there. Vaccine hesitancy follows this pattern, where future is unknown and FUD is trending.

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