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Comment by worik | Hacker News Reader

I agree that everybody should get vaccinated. Let's make this virus extinct.

But what you describe is majoritarianism. It is a form of democracy but a very weak form. For a lot of people, who are from minority groups, it is indistinguishable from totalitarianism.

Why do 30% of people refuse to get vaccinated? (here in Aotearoa it is 5%). Something is happening, people are getting left behind, in vast numbers. Forcing them to comply is probably a cure worse than the disease - even a disease like COVID

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Vaccinations are too leaky to "make this virus extinct". Within a few months of vaccination, half or more of people can get mild, but still transmissable, cases of Delta. (Omicron is likely worse; there are already multiple reports of mild cases among those with recent 3rd booster shots.)

Honest epidemiologists have been warning about this risk since 2020, and more forcefully when confirmed by early vax results in 2021. But many people are still on the warpath against the unvaxed, as if that can make a difference.

Well, it can for the unvaxed themselves – winning them a less-severe case.

But every vaxed person is going to be exposed to, and have mild cases of, COVID – via waning immunity & multiplying variants. There is no net increase in protection from harassing the last ~15% (a more honest count of hardcore holdouts) into a vax they don't want. (Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.)

>Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.

Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

By how much? It's really disingenuous to say "more" or "less" or "better" or "worse" without qualification.

Source? The papers I have seen show the exact opposite!

Would you mind sharing which papers you are talking about?

"There is laboratory evidence that persons previously infected with the original lineage of SARS-CoV-2 have reduced neutralizing antibody titers against certain variants (i.e., Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants)"

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

That's an outdated source.

Your reference undermines your claim. From your reference:

>In this review, observational studies appeared to show protection to be higher following infection.

In the executive summary, which lays out how we should interpret the total body of data collected so far:

"The body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity in terms of the quality of evidence... There are insufficient data to extend the findings related to infection-induced immunity at this time to persons with very mild or asymptomatic infection or children."

We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

The data only suggests that people that are severely affected by COVID may have higher peak antibody titers. It's a huge gamble to play with yourself and the people around you.

You are shifting the goal posts.

First you said:

>Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

Now you are saying :

>We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

Meanwhile, all the data coming out of countries with centralized covid tracking suggests natural immunity is as good or better.

Here is another link if you are interested: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Reviewing health data for 2.5 million Israelis, It found:

>SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021

>Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

This study has a rather strange design that might be miscategorizing people who’d both been infected & vaxed (counting them only as vaxed), & among other things, misses the risk that more unvaxed people might seek medical care, or receive more aggressive treatment, for the same level of symptoms.

It’s also an outlier result, as larger analyses from Israel suggest longer & stronger protection from infection.

What we can say confidently is that both the vax & prior infection provide some future protection, ut both fade against re-infection fairly fast, while remaining helpful against severity.

Also more generally: the CDC has not, in this pandemic, proven very reliable in its reporting, recommendations, or weighing/updating of evidence, & its choice of what to report & emphasize has been highly compromised by shifting political pressures. I think their highlighting of this result, over evidence suggesting otherwise, is suspect - more a reflection of them wanting to boost the vax campaign than an honest assessment of all relevant scientific evidence.

Biontech has proven to have 93% efficacy against hospitalization after 6 months [1].

- 1: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Which has nothing to do with making the virus extinct.

Making the virus extinct has nothing to do with reality; it's an utterly unrealistic expectation.

If you sincerely think we can make COVID extinct you might want to do some more research into real science and less propaganda.

The optimal outcome preserving both health and bodily autonomy is an asymptomatic highly contagious variant. That is essentially a communicable vaccine.

But everything with avoiding ERs from getting overloaded, which is what‘s motivating the discussion in Germany.

First of all, there are many millions in Germany, who are neither vaccinated nor recovered (if you have medical proof of recovery, like a positive PCR test in the past, you are treated like a vaccinated person for 6 months). So there are millions which can still be hit by full force. As a consequence, get sick, require ICU care. In some parts of Germany, all ICU beds are currently occupied, patients moved to other parts of the country as we speak. That is the critical situation at the moment. Also, all data available shows, that unvaccinated people are spreading the virus faster than vaccinated people. Those two parts in combination create a situation, where the unvaccinated part of the population do mainly contribute to the severity of things. That is, why the majority of the population cares about high vaccination counts.

Forget how leaky they are - COVID can also be carried/transmitted by animals. For anyone who thinks all we have to do to vaccinate everyone - "everyone" includes all the animals humans do or could come in contact with. You going to do that too?

You cannot make this virus extinct. These vaccines do not accomplish this goal, the end.

The goal is to keep serious cases to a minimum so they don’t clog the healthcare system thus making people die of all sorts of other things because they couldn’t be treated.

Vaccines do help with that, tremendously.

Sure, yet since when do I have to undergo an irreversible medical procedure for the sake of the government healthcare infrastructure?

I'll start by saying I haven't been a supporter of vaccine mandates. It's best if people can make this up for themselves. Given the right information it's not really a hard choice. And of course there can be personal reasons why it'd be wise to not get vaccinated, but those are rare.

The procedure is benign. Describing it as irreversible is technically true but practically it's scaremongering.

And it's for the sake of the people around you. Your society. So they don't die waiting for their healthcare services to unclog. Edit: And it's also obviously for the sake of the person getting vaccinated, let's not forget that :)

Because, sadly, we know that's not true anymore.

>...fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.

Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Yes I know, it was clear early on. The study also says:

>Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination is not sufficient to prevent transmission of the delta variant in household settings with prolonged exposures.

Which is what we're talking about here, preventing serious cases.

Since we have a global pandemic. This is a completely novel and unusual situation, why wouldn't you think that the solutions will be novel and unusual as well?

Because we know that the mRNA vaccines won't effectively end the pandemic and only provide a prophylactic benefit at best.

Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Good is the enemy of great.

That benefit is hardly "at best". That's a fantastic intermediate step. Why is it decried as horrible just because it's not the final solution to the problem?

Source?

From listening to nurses and doctors, I get the impression that most people in hospitals with Covid-issues lately are vaccinated; and I trust real people with real experiences over authorities with agendas.

> I get the impression that most people in hospitals with Covid-issues lately are vaccinated

I read some statistics over that the other day. It is correct when looking only at hospital patients.

The explanation is that most who need hospital care come from a risk group. And risk groups are fully vaccinated by over 90% (here). So you end up with high absolute numbers of vaccinated hospital patients.

If you look at a somewhat comparable group of people, chances to need hospital care are manyfold for the unvaccinated. It's true for higher risk groups and for lower risk groups.

Vaccinations are not perfect protection against anything, but they reduce risk by a high factor.

Wasn't filling up hospitals the problem we were trying to solve by vaccinating people in the first place?

Isn't that the excuse people use to harass anyone who doesn't feel like being experimented on for profit?

>The goal is to keep serious cases to a minimum so they don’t clog the healthcare system...

Reminds me of 2 weeks to flatten the curve. Yet here we are. Why all the sudden are we at risk of clogging the healthcare system with some areas hitting 70%+ adult vaccination rates? Germany already has given out 124,401,062 doses of the vaccine. All I ever see is the goalposts being moved with this stuff.

I have taken the vaccine, but I am hesitant about mandates and vaccine passports.

I find it exhausting that people such as yourself seem to latch onto missed time frames as a reason to just assume all public health policy is bullshit. Yes, because when I say I'm going to finish some software project in 2 weeks, I absolutely always get it done in 2 weeks.

These are estimates. They are sometimes (often!) wrong. Sometimes they're wrong because the problem was underestimated. Sometimes they are wrong for political reasons.

Yes, "flattening the curve" took more than 2 weeks. Big deal. Doing so did absolutely reduce pressure on ICUs and saved many lives. And hell, if everyone had actually followed all the mandates and guidelines at the time, maybe it would have only taken two weeks. But people don't, and it's always hard to gauge how many people will refuse to cooperate, and in what ways, and exactly what effect that will have.

The reason the goalposts are moving is because this isn't a well-defined game with strictly-set rules. The virus doesn't care about our rules or projections. If it mutates, and the new variant does better against our vaccines, then... yes, the goalposts will move. Our utter failure to get high vaccination rates in poorer countries is likely a big cause of the new variants. It's all well and good to be sitting in a highly-vaccinated city in the first world, but all it takes is one person to fly in from somewhere with a new variant, and you're hosed.

You miss a time frame if you say "2 weeks" and end up having to lockdown for 3 instead. If you say "2 weeks" and end up with lockdowns for years you are either incompetent or lying or both.

"Years"? We haven't even had the pandemic for "years", let alone lockdowns.

"1.5 years", nearing in on "2 years" as opposed to "1 year"

I agree, it's getting old and we want to move on.

If we look at the numbers for Germany they're now getting 60 thousand cases per day, which is three times more than any previous period.

More cases mean more people in hospitals. The situation was bad last winter, it can get worse fast. Now, of course many are vaccinated, so that drops the likelihood of hospitalization, but unfortunately for them 30% of people are still unvaccinated. So I can understand why they're nervous.

The thing about the vaccine also is that the effects drop with time unfortunately, so people need boosters. I've already gotten 3 shots and expect there will be more.

If we aren't to keep the world in lockdown, we need people to be out and about, but vaccinated, so this can truly be treated like a few bad flu years in a row.

Until the virus hopefully mutates towards a less severe thing and we can stop talking about it.

The initial estimate was that 70% of population (not only adult) would be sufficient to achieve herd immunity, but the problem is that while the initial virus had R_0 of 2-3, the Delta variant's is about 6.

Sure, but we can make the virus largely irrelevant in terms of its impact on peoples lives. We can reduce the number of people who suffer long term consequences, the number of deaths, and the load on hospitals. We can make it harder for new, more dangerous, variants to arise.

I do think it is important to use the correct terminology here. This disease and the vaccines are already a huge spread of misinformation, so lets expand on the “sure” bit from this sentence a little. It is saying quite a lot:

I don’t think any expert nor any public health department is working with the goal of eradication in mind. So we should acknowledge the fact that these vaccines will probably not eradicate COVID. We will have people getting sick from COVID and we will have more COVID variants for the foreseeable future. Even after most people have been thoroughly vaccinated. And given the slow global spread of vaccines we will also probably see more lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus beyond the current vaccine capabilities.

Now that said, remember that with the vaccines:

> we can make the virus largely irrelevant in terms of its impact on peoples lives. We can reduce the number of people who suffer long term consequences, the number of deaths, and the load on hospitals. We can make it harder for new, more dangerous, variants to arise.

>I don’t think any expert nor any public health department is working with the goal of eradication in mind

I believe I speak for many when I say, "I have no idea what the experts' have in mind" (and that's not a good thing).

So they're trying hard to get everyone vaccinated - a noble goal, perhaps, as our current roster of vaccines diminish symptoms and greatly reduce hospitalization and fatality rates. But..."Stop the spread, get vaccinated"...what? Like the parent said, all of the currently-approved intramuscular Covid-19 vaccines have proven to have a negligible effect on transmission rate.

Early on, experts probably made an educated guess or wish that these vaccines would be sterilizing and started information campaigns on this premise. When this turned out to be not true, their "Stop the spread, get vaccinated" became "You unvaccinated are the problem, you are holding us back, and you will be locked down immediately". Rather than address their mistake, rather than open up transparently, they doubled down on the lie. Not a good way to build trust.

> Like the parent said, all of the currently-approved intramuscular Covid-19 vaccines have proven to have a negligible effect on transmission rate.

Multiple studies show that vaccinated people have lower transmission than unvaccinated.

> In studies conducted before the emergence of the Delta variant, data from multiple studies in different countries suggested that people vaccinated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines who develop COVID-19 generally have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(157, 165-169) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(170) Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) For the Delta variant, early data indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with Delta have similar levels of viral RNA and culturable virus detected, indicating that some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus to others.(163, 164, 177-180) However, other studies have shown a more rapid decline in viral RNA and culturable virus in fully vaccinated people (96, 177, 180-182). One study observed that Delta infection in fully vaccinated persons was associated with significantly less transmission to contacts than persons who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.(181) Together, these studies suggest that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta have potential to be less infectious than infected unvaccinated people.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

We could do that for smoking too, but since smoking is a choice, we let people smoke and die. Why not do the same with the vaccines? As with smoking, the unvaccinated are taking all the risks.

Except that the resources that are going to care for the unvaccinated might block someone who is vaccinated from needed medical care. It also increases the amount of exposure someone who IS vaccinated needs to contend with, and as is mentioned over and over again, vaccines are imperfect. A colleague of mine has an elderly father who is vaccinated and in the ICU with Covid. The odds are much higher that he was infected by an unvaccinated person.

Also smoking is a terrible example - we tax cigarettes highly to discourage smoking because it’s a drag on our medical system. We ban the act of smoking in a wide variety of locations because it has an impact on other peoples health. Some buildings even disallow people to smoke in their private homes, and some cities disallow smoking in offices. We put restrictions on almost every aspect of smoking because it doesn’t only affect the smoker.

I guess the main difference is that covid patients can clog UIT very quickly and there isn't a lot that can be done beforehand. Smokers come in a more predictable and easier to manage way.

Aside from the dangers of secondhand smoke (which we have laws to limit the impact of), you can't "catch" smoking from someone else. Unless they force-feed you cigarettes until you get addicted, anyway.

It has been happening for smoking, at least in some places. Speaking from experience in the US:

Smoking sections in restaurants have all but disappeared, taxes have increased on cigarettes dramatically, warning labels have been placed on boxes/cartons, and so on.

The process has been to try and remove second-hand smoke from those areas where it might affect non-smokers. Traveling abroad to China and Hong Kong a couple years ago it was almost unbearable dealing with people smoking everywhere.

Similar to how as a non-smoker my health risk is non-negligible being exposed to second-hand smoke, so too is my health at risk by unvaccinated individuals running around with higher viral loads increasing the chance and rate of breakthrough infections, and also increased risk of future mutations that could potentially bring about another pandemic.

Very clearly with smoking we've been moving towards a system where you can make whatever health choices you want as long as you aren't impacting the health of others - why should it be any different for vaccines of any kind?

<<Very clearly with smoking we've been moving towards a system where you can make whatever health choices you want as long as you aren't impacting the health of others - why should it be any different for vaccines of any kind?

I think we have long established that just me existing is not something people are willing to tolerate. Hell, just my presence impacts the life of others; sometimes even in a negative way. There is even a system to deal with issues like that. It is called civil law.

But why do we stop at smoking? Why aren't we going after farts and methane. After all, did you know that methane gas poisoning can cause death? Surely, if we researched it a little more, we would maybe find out that it causes cancer of something.

In Louisiana we don't let people smoke in lots of places.

No smoking in schools, no smoking in restaurants, no smoking in workplaces, no smoking in public buildings.

Is that not similar to Germany disallowing unvaccinated (and not naturally immune) from non-essential indoor shopping/leisure activities? Or requiring testing for employees who are not vaccinated/naturally immune?

> the unvaccinated are taking all the risks.

Not if they saturate the health system and you need it for something else.

What do you need your health system for other than treating the sick?

...are you trying to say that unvaccinated people who catch covid are literally the only people that ever get sick of anything? I'm at a loss here...

That's because you apparently can't read. The only thing I said was that treating sick people is why we have the healthcare system. If you think treating COVID patients is too much just triage differently and lower the priority, treat more important things instead. Don't force me to get a medical procedure against my will for the sake of the government healthcare infrastructure.

I can read words, but not minds. You asked a rhethorical question that didn't illustrate your position in the slightest. If you wanted to say "let people with COVID die on the streets so I can remain unvaccinated" then please just say that.

What are you going to do about the 50%+ of americans who are oversaturated with fat and sugar, and the massive drain they put on the health system?

I guess we are pretty lucky that we don’t all have heart attacks simultaneously or it could be a real drag on the hospitals. But yes, the risks and concerns are absolutely equal between those two scenarios.

Obesity is costly and deadly, no doubt about that. But it is not saturating the health system as in filling up all available life support equipments.

Also, obesity "epidemic" is slow, therefore easy to manage, compared to the covid epidemic that is governed by power laws.

Finally, there is no vaccine against obesity.

This is only true, because we've built enough rooms and trained and hired enough teams of people to take care of fat people. In my country, nurses are still paid more working as store clerks than in hospitals, so yeah...

And if many countries can mandate curfews, lockdowns, mandatory quarantenes etc., why not ban sugary foods, sugary drinks, fast food, etc.?

I mean.. I'm against any sort of bans, but generally, more people die from being fat than from covid itself.... if every life matters, why no theirs?

My best guess is that the power law governing covid epidemics growth poses a greater threat (in terms of costs and casualties) than slow evolving obesity crisis.

We have no real studies, but if covid does "irreversible" small damage, even in vaccinated and that accumulates, it could lead to a life-expectancy drop of 30 years.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95565-8

We could all dance the Darth Vader after 20 years of Covid even with vaccination. But we certainly will without.

> We could all dance the Darth Vader

Er... what now?

How can you do that by only vaccinating humans. You do know COVID is carried by animals too, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/covid-deer-animals/ind...

You going to vaccinate all the animals too?

Or just dogmatically stick to the "unvaccinated people are selfish" because it best fits your political world view - damn the science?

Want to make this virus irrelevant? If Omicron is as mild as the doctors in South Africa are reporting then here is our path to herd immunity. Which is going to happen no matter what governments fuss and fume about. Even New Zealand finally gave up on their ridiculous quarantine strategy.

I’m just confused about the argument you are making here - that if our options are:

A) let’s all get a couple of shots to reduce our risk of death, serious illness, and make it less likely that other people get sick, not to mention making it less likely that new variants will emerge by making transmission harder

B) let’s have no vaccinations and let the virus sort it out, like we did with, say, the 1918 flu? Or polio, measles, or smallpox?

C) let people get vaccinated or not, it’s their business, but putting societal pressure on them is overbearing and eventually pointless

That of those options we should choose either B or C? Because B is how we dealt with illnesses until we had vaccinations to make them harder to get and less deadly. Then we started…vaccinating people. And now measles is still a thing, but no one worries about it, except that cases are going up because people aren’t getting vaccinated. So B seems like a bad plan, because we tried that and it sucked, and then we did A with measles and things got a lot better.

C is certainly a lot more personal liberty-oriented, which I get the appeal of, but society is fundamentally about giving up some amount of individual liberty in exchange for shared and communal benefits. C is actually what is happening in some places with measles vaccinations, where individuals say, “I don’t need to be vaccinated because herd immunity will save me”, which not only means that (despite claiming personal liberty) those people are relying on the vaccinated people to protect them, but that they’re willing to put others at risk (because vaccines aren’t perfect) in exchange for their individual liberty. This seems like C is a pretty raw deal for the liberty and rights of the people who would rather not get infected by, say, measles. Or Covid.

B and C both seem like bad plans. A seems pretty good, but I realize you’re not going to be convinced of that. B is pretty indefensible, I don’t think anyone would argue we should just let Covid run through the world and kill millions and millions more people. Or maybe you do, I don’t know. Seems bad.

But with C, the only way you can argue it’s not selfish to look after your own preferences is if you believe that the outcomes of option A, B, and C are the same. That it doesn’t matter - the same amount of people will die, and the same amount of people will get infected, and the same amount of people will permanently lose their sense of taste or smell, and the same amount of people will end up in the hospital. That fundamentally the outcomes of all three scenarios are identical. But there’s no way that’s the case, right? It just doesn’t make sense.

So if there IS a difference, then A is everyone doing as much as reasonably possible to make things better, B is everyone giving up and accepting whatever happens, and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.

> but putting societal pressure on them is overbearing and eventually pointless

> ...

> and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.

This, I think, highlights the fundamental blind spot in reasoning of many who pushes the vax or other measures to 100% "uptake". What do the people think will happen once somebody submits to the pressure? Masked and vaxed and fine and dandy? Quite the opposite, I believe. The resistance in the remaining population is not at the rational level, it is very visceral, primal, fight-or-flight feeling. Even though, I think, it was largely provoked by the initial torrent of equally irrational measures, it is not something that is going to change. Submitting to pressure doesn't mean forgetting or forgiving. The solid foundation is being laid for a very broken society for a generation to come. The internal trust in society is as shaken as never before. Society with 5-10% of people broken, bitter and vengeful is not healthy. The fallout is going to be very bad, in unexpected way. Cruel and unusual.

Sure, you may say it is selfishness. It is not rational selfishness though. As I said, it is a visceral reaction which is very hard to explain, to put into words, therefore all you hear is "we don't want it". It is sort of a mental condition, and pushing through to the end won't cure that condition, only make it worse. Such condition is nothing to be proud of, but punitive correctional measures aren't known to work against diseases, mental included. Even criminals are not prosecuted if suspected to be in acute mental condition.

I would hope the nature of the resistance is properly recognised and not vilified. After all, we've complied with all the past vaccine "soft-mandates" for our children and ourselves, but always thought that generous exemption provisions were very good! Letting people make choices without pushing them into the corner is beneficial for society. I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own. Unfortunately, it is not what transpired.

At this moment I'd be ok with increased insurance premiums, testing regime for travel and high-risk settings, tax surcharge or even mandatory community service as alternative to vax. Something we can rationally discuss. "Bodily autonomy" - face masks included - is simply not something I can engage with rationally.

But what is the end game?

I’m not arguing that everyone should be forced to get vaccinated - I’m saying that people who choose not to are selfish. And they shouldn’t be immune to some level of personal impact, lots of people make personal choices that have negative impact. I once turned down an incredibly lucrative opportunity because I disagreed with the products I’d be working on. The father of a friend of mine was a professional pilot who never got above flying for a regional airline because his cigarette addiction meant he struggled to go more than three hours between cigarettes. Personal choices have impacts.

The argument that you make is odd, though, which seems to be that people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks that they have a “visceral fight-or-flight” response and hence have a “mental condition” that prevents them from adapting - and not accepting that demonstrates a lack of compassion.

That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything from segregation, to fighting gay rights, to objecting to seat belts. Just because people don’t like something they find objectionable doesn’t make them irrational. Saying they are robs them of their agency as humans, and also conveniently obviates them of their responsibility to their community.

“But what is the end game?”

To get to where almost everyone is vaccinated, which is where we are with measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, typhoid, etc. It’s not that complicated.

“ I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own.”

Man, me too. If you had asked me in 2019 if there would be a controversy about adding one more vaccination to the roster of vaccines we give almost everyone (and invest billions in encouraging and distributing), I would have said, “no way - in most of the world, most people see vaccines as something that’s important to help themselves and their community “. In 1947 there was a smallpox outbreak in NYC and millions of people showed up to get vaccinated because it was the right thing to do to protect their community. Their compassion was for others.

To be clear, I don’t think people who don’t want to get vaccinated are monsters or evil. They don’t need to be vilified. No, they’re more in the realm of the person in the community who once in a while has a drink too many and drives home when they shouldnt - probably nothing bad will happen, but it shows a real lack of personal responsibility for their impact on others.

Thank you for the civil answer. I found enough in it to agree with and upvote.

> That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything ...

It may be a tired argument, but it doesn't make it false. Sometimes people really do have deep convictions they cannot be rationalized from. Looks like I do, and I'm not happy about it. Only it was never a problem before covid. I was brought up in the spirit of never asking for help or claiming any deficiency until you absolutely, positively, completely unable to handle the situation on your own. Also you must be sure that who you ask is able and willing to provide such help. I thought society progressed enough to tolerate conscientious objection of sorts. Turns out I was wrong. I struggled to keep up and cried for help, first time in my life - and received a good lesson to never ask for compassion again.

> Personal choices have impacts.

They certainly do. I just disagree that it is purely personal. The other side absolves itself from any consequences of the choice pushed upon individual, while being very happy to trump on them if the "natural" impact of "inferior" choice is not bad enough.

> people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks

I haven't said that. Some may very well be reasonable, but it is very hard to see in the pile of punitive-only measures.

Well, at least I have tried to explain how some people, myself included, see and feel in the situation. I'm getting more hints of my inability to communicate this, and nobody in a position to influence the measures gives any consideration to it. This is why I stand with my belief that the side-effect of "where almost everyone is vaccinated" will be not what these people are expecting, in a cruel and unusual way.

“ it is very hard to see in the pile of punitive-only measures.”

Aka unreasonable. Which sort of makes the point. But also - it’s tough for me to be civil when your argument is, “why isn’t anyone taking my feelings into account?”, when that has literally never been the standard for anything related to a common good. I don’t care how you feel about being allowed to drive drunk, because it’s dangerous to others. I don’t care if you don’t want to allow minorities to live in your neighborhood, they have the right to live wherever they want. And I don’t care if you don’t want to get one more vaccination on top of the 5+ we require for work and/or school, it is part of participating in a functional society.

If no one hears you “crying out for help”, think of how the people whose lives have been affected by this disease feel, knowing that there are people who COULD be helping but don’t want to.

Sorry, I seem to have mistook passive-aggressive for civil.

My point is not that anyone should care how I feel, in particular. I only give it out here, on a semi-anonymous forum, never IRL.

The point is, quite the sizeable proportion of people feel like that, and it is a pain for them which they won't forget or forgive, even if they choose to submit to demands. In fact, many voluntarily vaccinated people feel exactly the same, for them cooperation with any future government initiatives is out of question now. It doesn't invalidate the pain of those catching or dying from the disease, it just another pain in it's own right.

"Common good" cannot be built on pain, history is littered with unsuccessful attempts. Governments all around the world are choosing to ignore this (proving them incompetent) for some reason, and in doing so they may find themselves very unpleasantly surprised. Unless this is the end game they are looking for (proving them evil), but that would be too much of a conspiracy to suggest.

Thank you! It’s this myth that keeps perpetuating that makes people think mandates are acceptable.

And I say that as someone vaccinated.

I have literally only seen people opposed to vaccine mandates bring this up. It's a fake talking point to paint people in favor of mandates as misinformed.

You're saying that a handful of your anecdotes are a perpetual fake talking point? I have seen the exact opposite. People are generally misinformed. In case you need a counterpoint to your anecdotes, read the upthread:

> I agree that everybody should get vaccinated. Let's make this virus extinct.

The person you're quoting was arguing against a vaccine mandate!

However, they do accomplish the goal of stopping it from being a pandemic. With enough people vaccinated to reduce the R-value below 1, reinfections from animal reservoirs will become inherently self-limiting.

Why not? We eradicated smallpox.

Are you serious? Let me ask you why we haven't eradicated influenza?

Not all viruses are the same, and neither are all vaccines.

The smallpox vaccine is a sterilizing vaccine, meaning you cannot be infected and cannot transmit it once you are vaccinated.

The MRNAs are non-sterilizing, as are many vaccines. They may reduce symptoms, reduce infections, and reduce transmission, but they are not considered a sterilizing vaccine.

Secondly, coronaviruses mutate much faster than smallpox, and have other hard to deal with stuff like asymptomatic transmission.

The only diseases we ever eradicated were polio and smallpox. I think we got rid of the guinea worm too. Out of all the many many diseases we have fought over the years.

> The MRNAs are non-sterilizing

The vaccines we have are non-sterilizing - and my understanding is that the reason is mostly because we needed at least something very quickly and sterilizing vaccines for respiratory virus are harder to research. It is not inherent property of the technology as far as I know.

Sterilizing vaccines for COVID seem to be theoretically possible. "Natural" infection generates stronger immune response on mucus membranes as well as deep inside the body and that provides higher protection against infection. There's no reason why that wouldn't be possible to replicate using a vaccine. But nobody succeeded at making one yet, so we'll have to see if it's practical.

Thanks to some Af-Pak mullahs, the world still has polio in the wild. [0]

[0]https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-dev...

You can thank the CIA for justifying their suspicion of vaccination drives.

Because unfortunately the current generation of vaccines doesn't completely stop the spread - they certainly slow the spread in the weeks after the second shot, but then antibodies start to wane over the next months (which is why booster shots are being administered). Vaccines still protect from hospitalisation and death, though.

If you believe most virologists the only realistic scenario is that the virus becomes endemic, similar to most flu strains or other human corona viruses (which makes vaccination even more important!).

There are many treatments other than just the vaccine that can prevent hospitalization and death too. Some countries like India rely on them daily since the vaccines aren't widely available to them.

If you get infected with COVID there are far more options than "Sit around with a thumb up your ass until you have to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM

Every person spreading the "horse dewormer" nonsense should be charged with manslaughter. The politicization of this whole thing is beyond a fiasco.

It's generally considered impossible to eradicate a pathogen that can survive in "reservoirs" among wild animals, which this virus can.

There's at least one exception to this; rabies. Wild animals can be vaccinated using baits containing an oral rabies vaccine.

Yes the vaccine doesn't kill it, but what would kill it is a REAL lock down.

Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.

Its like a pretend apocalypse. They should LOVE it.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't really help long term, because the disease has spread through animal populations by now.

The only way to reliably stop this from being an ongoing pandemic is measures that reduce the R-value below 1 in a long-term manner, like mass vaccinations.

The high rates of breakthroughs mean even very-highly-vaxxed populations have had case surges. Rt is going to oscillate around 1, forever.

Even if it’s around 1 forever, if the effects are mild as they are with vaccinated people, it’ll be manageable as flu is.

Since the weaker among us died with the first wave, it was already as manageable as the flu.

The mortality under 70 is pretty low.

Would we be happy to let 1% of the survivors die? Would 2% be acceptable?

As I already replied elsewhere in this thread, as of 12/02/2021 German CDC estimates 7-day R-value as 0.92. That is below 1.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

The 7-day R-value with current vaccination rates and local restrictions, yes.

And, additionally, with overwhelmed laboratories that are underreporting the infections because they can no longer test all samples.

True. Thank you for acknowledging the point and adding further qualifications. Public discourse is rather disheartening. The options are either 100% vaccination or 0% vaccination, either strict house confinement or nightly clubbing, either masking while hiking in the woods or no masks ever. Life is a rich tradeoff of a myriad factors, somehow we reduced it to a handful of black/white binaries.

COVID fear creates that sort of warped fantasy. But few nations are totalitarian enough to carry that out.

And large reservoirs of COVID would remain in wild animals, and other countries, and groups (like the elites & their children, or remote communities) that can't practically be forced to comply.

One leak in the population of 7 billion and the whole plan is a waste.

Utter insanity. Who told you a "real" lockdown would stop the virus? Where did you get this "fact" from?

In theory, if no household has any contact with any other household, the virus will be unable to propagate and will quickly die off.

A perfect lockdown would stop a human-only pandemic immediately by stopping all transmission.

Unfortunately, this virus infect other animals as well. Good luck locking them down.

There are numerous reasons why we are incapable of a perfect lockdown of a region of any reasonable scale even before economic concerns. So it's use as a solution is more of a whataboutism for not considering reasonable actions.

How will you address the animal reserves? This virus is not eradicable.

Do we know it can actually stay in animals long term in a form compatible with humans?

I don't think this is true. The virus can survive in some for a long time. Same as with the flu. I think the endemic phase is absolutely inevitable. The only question is how long does it take, and how many people will be killed in the process. Both can only be reduced with vaxxination.

>> Yes the vaccine doesn't kill it, but what would kill it is a REAL lock down.

>>> Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.

> Utter insanity. Who told you a "real" lockdown would stop the virus? Where did you get this "fact" from?

It stands to reason. An extreme lockdown as described will cause a virus to go extinct provided: 1) animal reservoirs are insignificant, 2) the immune system can clear the virus within the lockdown time, and 3) people actually comply.

Exceptions to 2 & 3 can likely be dealt if the lockdown is paired with and intensive testing and contact tracing program.

All of these things are likely true, because China and other countries have actually been successful at maintaining a Covid-zero policy (at great cost).

How do you keep things like "power plants" and "water systems" running in this proposal? Either you allow so many exceptions that it's worthless, or you literally shut down modern civilization. It's far from clear that it can be blackstarted.

I agree that is the only way but it better be my day off when the lockdown happens. How would nursing home staff stay locked down? Or other people critical to ensuring we have power or that our water treatment plants keep running. But I do agree a more aggressive lock down could work but we will never be able again to do something like that. Not unless it starts killing people like Ebola and everyone in those jobs says screw it I quit and walks away.

You ignore that this virus lives and will persist in animal reservoirs. It can creep right back in after any real lockdown you could imagine.

Also people with weak immunity e.g. HIV positive, can stay infected for months.

Why stop at that?

Let's just switch to Universal Basic Income and enforce total lockdown to kill COVID and then to save the environment!

Enough of those pesky tourists as well with their polluting jets!

\s because people may, sadly, took it seriously

You can't send everybody home for two months, even if you give everybody two months of shelf stable food. Somebody needs to keep the utilities running. People still need fresh water to bath with, to wash their shit away. You might expect people to buy enough bottled water to drink for two months, but not enough to stay sanitary. And it's not just water; the power companies still need manpower to stay on, garbage still needs to be collected, plumbers still need to clear clogs and fix broken pipes. You clearly haven't given this idea of yours much serious consideration, so why should anybody else take it seriously?

Yep, shut down energy production as well, these key workers will also stay at home. Just 2 months without electricity and internet, I am sure you will manage cowboy.

No, it's not totalitarian.

In Germany we have a constitution that protects all human's right equally. If there's good reasons why you can't receive a vaccination, I'm pretty sure nobody can force you. Not even the state. Go to your doctor to get an attest that exempts you from the mandatory vaccination. Nothing easier than that in Germany.

And again: You are just speculating. Nobody knows if a vaccine mandate leaves people behind it tropes. You cannot know it, because it hasn't happened.

I'd rather make decisions based on facts than just speculating about hypotheticals.

> In Germany we have a constitution that protects all human's right equally.

If Germany's constitution allows vaccine mandates, then your insistence that it protects all human's rights will be of little comfort to the people who are forced to take the vaccination without their consent and in violation of their conscience.

At best you are saying "Having control over what medical treatments are done to you is not a human right", and at worst you are saying "Antivaxers aren't human". Either way, you are putting too much trust in a system that claims to protect human rights, and totalitarians generally manage to find a way to twist the law to justify what they are doing, whether the excuse is "military necessity", "medical necessity", or something else.

> the people who are forced to take the vaccination without their consent and in violation of their conscience.

Your imagination got the better of you here - nobody will be forced to vaccinate, especially not without their consent. Similar to how nobody comes to your car and forces you to wear a seatbelt.

Germany's constitution is quite clear about this, for apparent, historic reasons.

So, how is paying a fine (as in eg. greece) not a form of "force"? In one way, if you're rich, you can pay for your right not to wear a seatbelt.. i mean, get the vaccine, but for normal people, the current measures are basically them being forced to do something that they don't want to do.

The fine is a punishment, not a force.

Come now...

You won't be physically forced to, but you also won't be allowed to do most of the things we normally consider that people have a right to do unless you comply. That's really a non physical way of forcing compliance (like saying I'll fire you from your job unless you agree).

The article says that Germany is planning to make the shot compulsory, literally this article that these comments are ostensibly discussing, in the second paragraph, so I'm not sure where you got the idea nobody is going to be forced to get vaccinated, but the gaslighting isn't appreciated

You won’t be forcefully vaccinated. But you can be fined for not taking the vaccine and you can be restricted in what jobs you work in. That’s how it works with the current limited vaccine mandate for measles.

And how is that not forcing?

Because this is not forcing?

When someone is "forced into early retirement" do you think that means that police dragged him away?

Yep, police or a guard can drag him away if he will show at work. He cannot pay a $100 fine or take a shot and continue to work like before. :-/

I don’t think you are aware of the definition of “to force”. It does not refer only to physical force.

I'm going to stand in front of you and not let you into your home until you give me $100.

I'm not _forcing_ you give me $100, not at all. It's just that if you _choose_ not to give me $100 I will continue to stand in your way and prevent you front getting inside.

It's really disgusting. Some politician invented that "obligation is not enforcement" talking point and now all those tag-alongs just repeat it without thinking about it for a second.

An obligation that is not enforced is not an obligation. A decision that only stays voluntarily as long as everybody complies was never voluntarily in the first place.

I'm usually a very phlegmatic, law-abiding citizen but man, where does this love for newspeak and doublethink come from, all of the sudden?

But it is. All laws are "enforced" in some way, just because sometimes it's not physical force doesn't change that. As soon as there are artificially created "consequences" and penalties, you are forced.

I think I'd rather some people be vaccinated without their consent with a safe vaccine than have some people be infected without their consent with a deadly illness.

We know mask mandates, vaccines, and other medical interventions save lives, reduce transmission, reduce hospitalizations, reduce long term symptoms and long covid rates, and reduce deaths, and they may even reduce mutation rates. So the choice to vaccinate, that you paint as one of conscience and consent don't just affect the individual making the choice, but all the people around them.

Why?

I mean... we let people smoke and die due to that... why not due to covid too?

The vaccines are too weak to actually achieve herd immunity, so pretty much everyone will get in contact with covid, sooner or later,... some will beat it by themselves and some will, sadly, die.

If people want to take the risk of covid, why force them? I got vaccinated and I don't care if some people don't want to do it.

We no longer let people smoke in places where others are affected. If COVID would only affect the unvaccinated person, I’d agree with you. But vaccination reduces the risk of catching the disease and thus the risk of passing it on to others. If unvaccinated people would all stay home and enter voluntary lockdown, this wouldn’t be a discussion. But they do not. They get infected. They pass it on. In Berlin, there’s a recommendation to not engage in dangerous activities, because there might not be an ICU bed if you have an accident. Planned surgery for cancer patients is postponed, because there’s no bed for aftercare. They’re all taken by mostly unvaccinated COVID patients. If the unvaccinated would all voluntarily stay home and suffer there, I’d agree with you. But they don’t. They’re taking the bed that I’ll need if I get run over by a car in the street.

Vaccinated people get infected and pass it on too, what's your point here?

But they are far less likely to get infected in the first place and even less likely to block an ICU bed. If you look at the statistics for Germany, the regions with the lowest vaccination rates have the highest COVID rates and are transferring patient out because all ICU beds are occupied.

I am well aware that's the official story.

But I prefer reality, and I haven's seen any definitive proof that's the case yet, quite the contrary.

It looks to me like the more we vaccinate, the sicker we get.

Because the ICUs are at maximum capacity?!?

With unvaccinated people?

Sources?

Many hospitals in Germany are out of ICU beds: https://www.thelocal.de/20211116/covid-surge-the-german-dist...

I have been unable to find an official/authoritative source on vaccination rates among ICU patients with cursory search. Help for clearing this aspect up is appreciated!

> I think I'd rather some people be vaccinated without their consent

Read the book "Ordinary men" (by Christopher R. Browning). Normal people, like you and me, had "very good" reason to do what they did when they did it.

The vaccine does not reduce transmission; heck it doesn't even prevent infection!

This is really bad since vaccinated people can be infected and shed the virus without showing symptoms! You are far more likely to be unknowingly exposed to the virus from a vaccinated person.

The rest of your assertions are rather baseless and unfounded propaganda not backed up by science in the least.

If the Omicron variant is indeed as mild as the doctors in South Africa are reporting, Omicron is the path to herd immunity. Especially since COVID is carried by animals. You going to vaccinate every animal any human could come in contact with too?

This whole "you are affecting all the people around them" is the biggest lie of all and the biggest pile of utter bull $h!t in this whole fiasco.

Yeah, tag-alongs are always okay with other people being forced to something they themselves don't mind. Often they're even okay with other people being forced to somehting they themselves would hate. That's why they're tag-alongs.

It seems you're not understanding the German situation. But also: consider that your theoretical argument made out of anxiety for some imaginary totaliarism makes, in today's context, no sense:

Triage is happening and people with better chances of survival (e.g. everyone vaccinated) are getting the beds. So already "antivaxers are treated less like humans".

In fact, germany had a vaccine mandate against smallpox until 1975 https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impfpflicht and we have one against measles, though the mandate only requires children and people in certain fields of work to be vaccinated (teachers,caregivers etc.) The German constitutional court ruled in 1959 that the vaccine mandate against smallpox is constitutional.

> If Germany's constitution allows vaccine mandates, then your insistence that it protects all human's rights will be of little comfort to the people who are forced to take the vaccination without their consent and in violation of their conscience.

There is no rational reason not be be vaccinated. Anyone who refuses deliberately chooses to endanger themselves and everyone around them, and ultimately the majority is paying the price for the reckless behaviour of a minority in more than one way.

Mandatory vaccinations are an instrument that has been used effectively and repeatedly throughout history. It has also held up in courts including in the US where SCOTUS has argued that individual liberty is not absolute and finds its limits where its exercise can harm the health and safety of others.

It is not about rational debate or legal argument. Both are red herrings.

> Nobody knows if a vaccine mandate leaves people behind it tropes. You cannot know it, because it hasn't happened.

An immigrant friend went homeless after Berlin required places like hotels & accommodation houses to be 2g (tested or recovered) only.

He got his vaccine as he wasn’t against them in the first place, he was just a wreck less dumb person. I would argue that other measures would have been less catastrophic while still “punishing” the individual.

Isn’t this an example of being left behind on a similar policy? If I misunderstood you, then my apologies.

So I could go to a doctor and ask for exemption on the grounds that I'm a young male and I'm most susceptible to getting Myocarditis from the shots? Or that I've already had Covid and there's good evidence that I don't need a shot?

I don't think so.

I Germany you can go to a doctor and get an attest about practically anything. If you fail, just visit the next doctor.

Your argument appears to be that people should be forced to be vaxxed but with a bureaucracy that allows them to not get vaxxed (by visiting various doctors until one acquiesces) if they don’t want to. What am I misunderstanding here? And what then is the point of having a mandate, why support it?

Myocarditis risk from Covid-19 is 4x higher than from BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475

Vaccination was most strongly associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 3.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.55 to 12.44; risk difference, 2.7 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 1.0 to 4.6)

SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a substantially increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28; 95% CI, 3.95 to 25.12; risk difference, 11.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 5.6 to 15.8)

To be fair, rates are higher in certain age groups (particularly in the 20-30 age range). Here is the WHO advice from July: https://www.who.int/news/item/09-07-2021-gacvs-guidance-myoc...

> In Germany we have a constitution that protects all human's right equally. If there's good reasons why you can't receive a vaccination, I'm pretty sure nobody can force you.

I've received lots of vaccinations in my lifetime, but I ask the question, who decides what the "good reason" is for vaccinating every eligible human?

We know the Covid vaccines aren't 100% effective in stopping spread, or getting ill, but for the sake of argument, let's assume the vaccines are 100% safe and effective.

The reason I don't think it should be mandated is because it sets a precedent for future mandates where the political climate may be different.

Everyone should have the right to choose what happens to their body. Unfortunately that may mean people make stupid decisions (forgoing life-saving treatment, or possibly even making others sick), it's infuriating at times, but the alternative is far worse.

The same argument applies to free speech and personal privacy. Taking away those rights, for what most would say is "obviously the right thing to do" may be all well and good in today's political climate. But it sets a precedent for the future, in which the political climate may be a lot different.

Obviously, this is just my opinion :)

> Let's make this virus extinct.

Here's the core problem - unrealistic expectations. Even the CDC has backed off from the whole "make the virus extinct" mantra; they haven't spouted it for over a year now. Which is a good thing - it was utterly ridiculous from day one.

This virus isn't going away. It is carried by animals. You going to vaccinate every animal that we all come in contact with? Ha! You are not going to shelter in place or vaccinate away this virus. We had better figure out how to coexist with it in a rational and reasonable manner.

The good news with the Omicron variant there are no reported hospitalizations in South Africa. So it's more virulent, but less bad. Here is the perfect path to herd immunity - a variant that people can get a mild infection from and have stronger natural immunity to than the vax would give, as well as broader protection to variants. Actually any protection to variants would be an improvement over the current vax - there has be zero confirmation from the CDC or vax makers that the vax provides any protection against Delta, let alone Omicron. All they make are vague promises about it reducing the reaction. Big deal! If the reporting by South African doctors is correct and Omicron is as mild as they have seen then what exactly is the vax doing? Nothing - except exposing you needlessly to potential side effects.

BTW that Omicron is more virulent but less bad is totally unsurprising to anyone familiar with viruses and who wasn't politically motivated or shamed to pushing the ridiculous narratives around COVID right now; this is totally expected behavior as viruses mature in the wild and was predicted by many virologists last year. Virologists who were then quickly derided as quacks, truthers and worse since they dared to challenge the widely accepted groupthink. Same crap that happened with the lab leak, changing stances on masks, ignoring of massive spike in reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and more - hot takes that turned out to be VERY wrong later but amazingly the corrections never get the same amount of publicity as the initial propaganda.

> no reported hospitalisations

There are lots of hospitalisations, they are ramping up drastically. See SA regional hospital data.

> totally unsurprising to anyone familiar with viruses

Actually no human virus has ever evolved through selection pressure to become less virulent. This is just a (convenient to the deniers) myth.

Lab leak is just as fanciful as it has ever been, masking advice was updated as soon as we knew better, vaccines have been proven very safe.

I am going to accept that you are commenting in good faith. I would ask you to consider your sources, your influences, and the ever rising toll of sickness and death caused not least by the kind of misinformation you are propagating.

> Lab leak is just as fanciful as it has ever been

Could you please recommend me more reading material on that particular point? Thank you.

Hospitalizations with Omicron? Yes, I could have been more precise. If you have actually stats on Omicron hospitalizations, then please share. The more information the better.

Here's an actual doctor in South Africa reporting the opposite of what you are claiming: https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/1465906474270531589/...

Traditional vaccines have been proven to be very safe, mRNA vaccines are entirely different technology that has been in development for over 40 years and not deployed - widely or otherwise - until now. If mRNA vaccines make so much sense than why have none been brought through clinical trials before this "crises"? If it's so safe then why is the approved vaccine nowhere to be found, but all vaccine being pushed still the vax that is only under the EUA? Why did the FDA violate their own protocol and not revoke the EUA as soon as the approved vaccine was approved?

As for misinformation, sickness and death - have you looked at the dramatic spike in reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)?

Since you are so keen on stamping out misinformation - do you think people who already had COVID should still be forced to be vaccinated? If so, under what rational?

Since you want to talk sickness, who's going to apologize to this mom for advocating a perfectly healthy 14 year old get the vaccine when the possibilities of him having a major reaction to COVID are infinitesimal - yet now he will likely face heart problems for the next decade if not the rest of his life: https://imgur.com/a/NeonlLV

Who's going to apologize to all the families for family members killed by secondary effects to the sustained overreaction to COVID in the face of much better information? Sweden would like to enter the chat.

Just curious since you are basically insulting *I'm* causing sickness and death, since it's becoming more and more apparent vax apologists such as yourself are the real ones causing more problems than you are solving.

> So it's more virulent, but less bad

I think you mean more transmissible, less virulent.

Yes, I couldn't pin down the exact terms - thanks.

> there has be zero confirmation from the CDC or vax makers that the vax provides any protection against Delta

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm

For the next secondary analysis, aORs for hospitalizations that occurred before and during SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant predominance (June–September 2021) were compared, beginning on the date the Delta variant accounted for >50% of sequenced isolates in each medical facility’s state (2).

...

In this multistate analysis of hospitalizations for COVID-19–like illness among adults aged ≥18 years during January–September 2021 whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were higher among unvaccinated and previously infected patients than among those who were fully vaccinated with 2 doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine without previous documentation of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Secondary analyses that did not adjust for time since infection or vaccination or adjusted time since infection or vaccination differently as well as before and during Delta variant predominance produced similar results.

...

In this U.S.-based epidemiologic analysis of patients hospitalized with COVID-19–like illness whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity against laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, including during a period of Delta variant predominance.

> Why do 30% of people refuse to get vaccinated? (here in Aotearoa it is 5%). Something is happening, people are getting left behind, in vast numbers.

It's an interesting question and there is lots of debate in Germany at the moment as to why. Some factors are:

* Germany did very well during the pandemic so people didn't experience a Bergamo or Madrid moment

* Germany has a strong esoteric / anthroposophical movement (Steiner, Waldorf et al.)

* Federalism: Vaccination rates vary a lot by state

None of those are the right answer. These are the answers people come up with having never talked to anyone who disagrees.

The right answers are:

1. They don't trust the medical authorities to be honest about the risks.

2. They don't feel a need for it because they're at low risk of COVID and know it.

3. They don't believe it will change anything.

> The right answers

The right answers, but for the wrong question ;)

Not disagreeing with you, but parent was asking why is Germany so bad relative to their European peers.

Pacific peers actually!-)

And

1. The recommendation to take the vaccine goes exactly against anything the doctors said pre-covid. Before covid, nobody would recommend you to take a vaccine against something you are not in a risk group for, and double doses and boosters were unheard of. This makes me suspicious, and I don't think that is unreasonable. 2. You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine, which also is not normal, you are not supposed to get sick from vaccines, you are supposed to take them to avoid getting sick

So the whole vaccination situation is something that's new and confusing, why do what my doctor always said to not do? Why get sick from vaccines, aren't they supposed to stop you from getting sick? Why double and triple vaccines?

> and double doses and boosters were unheard of.

Double doses and boosters are very common in standard vaccination practice. Your kids should be getting them.

Within two weeks?

This is an exceptionally bad disease and we had to develop vaccines in a very short time.

They aren’t perfect.

Yeah except it's not an exceptionally bad disease. For a person who is not in a risk group, it's the same thing as the flu.

> it's the same thing as the flu.

Not at all. How many people experience long-term crippling effects from the flu?

BTW, the care we are taking has reduced the number of flu cases too.

And even if it were just a flu for you, there’s a 3% chance each person you infect will die a horrible death after a month of agony.

3%? I'd take that risk any day, even if I was in a risk group. Who want destroy society over that, only a lunatic

Great. If you want to take that risk, self infect and isolate. You have no right to make this choice for others by willingly being a host that can infect others.

Steady on. Hyperbole does not behove you. Nobody is destroying society. Nobody here is a lunatic.

3% is too high.

Yes, not at all. For young kids flu is way worse.

It's good, then, that the measures we took to contain COVID also reduced the incidence of influenza.

COVID is still new, while flu has been with us for millenia. Give it time and opportunities and it'll perfect itself.

> You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine

What? That's not a universal truth at all. Anecdotally just a few people I know felt a little run down for a day, but everyone else (myself included) experience felt zero ill effects

Everyone I know got really sick from second dose of mRNA, myself included. Probably the people who already had covid in the past and were recovered.

That was exactly my experience! So you think it’s linked to a previous infection?

From what my limited research could find, is that the more immunity you have, the worse the side effects.

So a booster shot would make me feel even worse. I wasn’t gonna take a booster anyway. My heart hurt like hell after both shots. Both times exactly after the same amount of days.

Yeah my heart hurt as well, and it's associated with heart inflammation especially in men and athletic people. I really really don't want to take the booster shot since it's only 100% negative for me with no benefit whatsoever, and an extremely far fetched and vague benefit for society/someone else.

Opposite experience for me. I only knew one person who felt a little under the weather, and they have cystic fibrosis meaning they are immunocompromised, so not surprising. For them they felt a little sweaty one night, that's all

What do your anecdotes matter? The original clinical trial for Pfizer mRNA vaccine has 20% of the treated group (younger than 55) reporting moderate or worse side effects. We don't know how long these last because they did not release any data on that. Could be days, could be a year for some people. for all I know.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

20% is _not_ the same as the general and extremely broad statement made by GP. Making such a broad statement is either ignorant or disingenuous. I'll let you decide which

I didn't get sick from Biontech/Pfizer at all. I was a bit sleepy for a day, that was the whole extend of it.

Truth is, we have no idea about long term consequences from these novel vaccines yet, it's a pretty crazy experiment really.

The actual truth is "long term consequences" from a vaccine, besides immunity are just not a thing.

I bet you can't name one vaccine that has had a "long term consequence" that has emerged more than a few months after the vaccine was administered. It just doesn't happen.

Its a bit like saying I've just developed an upset stomach, from that dodgy curry I ate last year.

Ok, find some significant published studies that tracked side effects (like headache or arm ache) of BNT162b2 over time (not just the typical "there was XYZ in first 7 days, and we don't care further") since the first dose. And tell me what % of people still reported the new onset symptoms still present say 3 months later. I'll wait. :)

Or are you just sharing an opinion?

That's easy. Pandemrix caused brain damage in teenagers and it took five years+lawsuits for the authorities to finally admit it and pay compensation. Obviously, nothing was learned. That was for swine flu which was also subject to a mass hysteria at the time.

Imagine the horrific consequences if Pandemrix had been mandated!

I just read up on Pandemrix, thanks for the info.

However, this does prove my point: The people who developed narcolepsy after this vaccine started showing symptoms one to two months after their vaccine.

I am aware of Pandemrix, but do you know that the likelyhood of getting narcolepsy was much higher when contracting the swine flue than from getting vaccinated? Of course it was not mandated, as the swine flu didn't become that large as initially feared. But if it had, the number of cases would have been orders of magnitude larger than those caused by the vaccine, as they were based on the same effect. And yes, a completely new flu is something to be afraid of, it can have very high death tolls.

You really believe that?

Then why are the hospitals filling up with vaccinated people?

How about developing cancer from whatever?

Yeah and becoming really sick from taking the vaccine is not really a positive sign in any way.

Depends how you define "sick". The purpose of a vaccine is to create an immune reaction. That can be unpleaseant for a short time, but does not qualify as being "sick" in the deeper sense. Especially it doesn't compare to the effects a Covid-19 infection has, up to long suffering or death.

I'm sorry but your post is completely wrong. >Before covid, nobody would recommend you to take a vaccine against something you are not in a risk group for How about the Flu vax? I'm a healthy middle aged guy with no risk factors who gets a flu vax every year. Why wouldn't I?

>double doses and boosters were unheard of Completely wrong. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine is given in two doses. The Chickenpox vaccination is I think three doses? Same with hepatitis B. You need a tetanus booster every 10 or so years.

>You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine Uhhhh myself, my partner, my kids and nearly everyone I know and work with has had two doses of the Pfizer covid vax. No-one I know has gotten really sick from either dose. A bit of a headache and sore arm and perhaps feeling a bit blah for half a day after is the worst I've heard of.

I've learned that it's more common to get flu vaccines in the US, so I have to adjust that statement to Europe where I live. And even if you do get the flu vaccine, isn't that purely a nice to have? Did they really recommend you to take it?

Yeah but you didn't have mRNA, which makes you really sick.

I'm not in the US, I'm in Australia.

And I picked the flu vax just as an example. I should have instead questioned your statement that I wasn't in a risk group. Everyone is at risk from covid, admitedly some much more than others.

According to this data: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort... I'm at a 0.4% risk of dying of Covid, and a 8% risk of hospitalization. Those aren't small risks, the vaccine reduces that approximately 10x so clearly its a good idea

Actually, I've just thought of another good example - Whooping cough. Adults are actually at no risk whatsoever of this, but small babies are at severe risk so parents are reccommended to get this vaccination to prevent them passing on what is a very mild or unnoticeable disease for them to their babies. Oh and when I looked up info on this and the vaccine, yes you should get booster shots for this as well https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/whooping-cough-pertu...

And, uhh yes Pfizer, which was the main covid vaccine used in Australia, is a mRNA vaccine.

Few years ago we asked a GP doc in Melbourne if we should get a flu vaccine, free and widely advertised back then. The doctor said:

- If you really want, go ahead, but it is mostly a waste

- The vaccine is unlikely to help much because it only partially protects against few variants out of hundreds in circulation

- They do not generally recommend flu vax outside of risk groups (small kids, elderly people and medical workers)

- Vaccine is generally safe, but not completely without risks.

Exactly. And I'm just not willing to accept that these recommendations change overnight and now politicians are making these recommendations in place of doctors.

Question is, how much are you going to decrease your risk of hospitalization by force-vaccinating the rest of the unvaccinated population, given that the vaccine doesn't really do much to stop the spread with delta?

If the vaccine was sterilizing - i.e. vaccinated people wouldn't be contagious and spread it symptomatically or asymptomatically - then every vaccination would count. But given the current state vaccination is just going to reduce symptoms and ultimately reduce hospital capacity. Anyone who is in danger (or scared) of Covid can get vaccinated. There's little point in vaccinating children (or even non-consenting adults, although this depends on hospital capacity).

Also, that chart is based on averages. Unless you have co-morbidities (you're fat, have diabetes, heart condition, whatever) the risk is way lower.

You're a 48 year old male? If you're healthy the risks are way lower than the chart indicates (off the top of my head maybe 1% hospitalization, <0.1% death?).

> You're a 48 year old male? If you're healthy the risks are way lower than the chart indicates (off the top of my head maybe 1% hospitalization, <0.1% death?).

And if you're healthy and think about what kind of people are included in the remaining 99% you should feel quite safe.

Your point (1) cannot be true, as Italy has barely better vaccination rate.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Roughly 10 % more people doubly vaccinated (78 vs 71 per hundred) is barely?

In the US, it's because a bunch of demagogues have decided that they will make a lot of money (or retain political power) by saying that vaccines don't work and/or are harmful. Fox News regularly spews this kind of nonsense in its programming and a number of Republican politicians are happy to go along with it.

We should remember that the freedom of the press exists because a well informed population is necessary for a functioning democracy.

The moment the press starts spreading disinformation, it starts to be detrimental to democracy and should be treated as that.

> We should remember that the freedom of the press exists because a well informed population is necessary for a functioning democracy.

The text of the First Amendment does not contain this or any other justification for itself. And rightfully so I think; such a right does not require utilitarian justification.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It's a tyranny of the majority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

I simply don't understand why one person needs to undergo a medical procedure to enable someone else to experience the safe conditions they want. These vaccines don't even grant immunity in the traditional sense (see CDC's revision of definitions here) - all the vaccines do is move things from one nonzero probability of risk to another nonzero probability of risk. If people are SO worried about their health, they need to behave honestly and either quarantine themselves or wear a full body protective hazmat suit everywhere. But requiring others to get a vaccine to attain some arbitrary risk ratio just doesn't make sense.

> I simply don't understand why one person needs to undergo a medical procedure to enable someone else to experience the safe conditions they want.

Me neither, I think it's completely unreasonable.

I think it’s completely unreasonable that people complain about an explosives factory next to a school. The risk of explosion is very low and the economic impact on the company would be devastating. Why do people think their right to be a little more safer trumps the right to manufacture high explosives?

I don't see how that's an accurate comparison at all. It doesn't require people to undergo medical procedures, doesn't violate their right to their own bodies or their basic freedom

It’s about the right to expose others to a risk without their consent.

You don’t have the right to expose others to a deadly disease. If you undergo the “medical procedure” (an injection, not surgery, brain transplant or anything complicated, expensive or risky) you reduce risks for you and others, as well as you avoid the risk of using my taxes to pay for additional medical care you wouldn’t need if you just had the very minor inconvenience of two injections.

Yeah but I'm not responsible for that deadly disease, and I don't control it. It's everywhere all the time. And it's really unclear if me getting vaccinated actually helps anything. It's a completely different thing if you are in 100% control of where a factory should be placed. The equivalent would be to argue that the factory should be banned because someone somewhere are in fact misusing these explosives for evil purposes, and therefor it should be closed forever.

With that reasoning, you are always exposing others to some indirect risk by any activity you do, everything must be banned. There's a certain limit to what is considered within your direct control and can be considered your personal responsibility.

You are expected to allow yourself to be subjected to whatever injections and suffer whatever loss of human dignity for the purpose of some vague "risk-reduction" that ultimately will contribute little towards the actual goal which is never clearly defined and is subject to eternal revision (only in good faith though :)). You are expected to do this to your children as well.

The clearly defined goal is to reduce the number of deaths and avoid exhausting hospital capacity.

Vaccines are helping with that.

Put another way, you have so little faith in the efficacy of the vaccine's ability to protect you from the effects of covid that you want others to take that same vaccine just so that you can feel a little better about your odds. And the other side is the selfish one. That sum it up?

>> But requiring others to get a vaccine to attain some arbitrary risk ratio just doesn't make sense.

Uhm, we do this all the time: licensing, seat belts, etc. Welcome to modern society.

At least with seatbelts it is the idiot who gets hurt. In the case of vaccines, it’s the others, mostly those who, for valid medical reasons, can’t be vaccinated.

Admittedly, it's not a great example, but maybe it can facilitate understanding a bit?

Why do we take away the right to drive a car (free movement) from those who are intoxicated? All that banning of drunk driving does is it slightly decreases a nonzero probability of risk. The risk to be hurt by an intoxicated driver is very low, and the risk to die is even lower. If people are really concerned about street safety, and traffic is inherently dangerous as it is, they should just stay at home.

Everything in life has a non-zero probability of killing you.

We weigh up the probabilities.

Which is why it is a good idea to get vaccinated.

It's 30% of the whole population, including small children who cannot get vaccinated at all.

My younger son (14 years old) is not vaccinated. He will be banned from entering shops, probably from playing tennis, and our family will not be allowed to meet other families this winter.

The reason why he is not vaccinated is that in Germany he would get the same amount of vaccine as a 150kg person. In the UK and Sweden they only give one dose to minors, not so in Germany. He is healthy, and does a lot of sports, so for him I see a higher risk from the vaccine (myocarditis) than from COVID-19.

Also, the federal vaccination commission (Stiko) has explicitly demanded that there should be no social discrimination for minors based on their vaccination status as a condition for recommending the vaccines for 12 to 17 year olds. We trusted this recommendation.

In a democracy nobody has absolute freedom and minorities do not enjoy protections of the rights to threaten others. If 30% of the people do not get vaccinated without valid reason, they violate the right of others to live and stay healthy. It is scientifically established fact that vaccination reduces health risks for the public, so vaccination mandate will be based on the same constitutional grounds as speed limits and other limitations of personal freedoms. Noteworthy is that it cannot be enforced for the people who just stay at home. Anti-vaxxers can lock themselves up for a few years and be free from vaccine if they want.

How do unvaccinated people violate vaccinated people's rights?

If you have so little faith that the vaccine can protect you, then why did you take it and why are you advocating others should be forced to?

Also even if 100% of all humans were to take it you do realize that vaccinated people can carry and spread it (asymptomatically, no less) and that animals can carry and spread it too?

Thinking that unvaccinated people violate anyone's rights is utterly ridiculous; it's far more selfish than what your ilk love to accuse those who don't want to take the vaccine of.

This virus is NOT going away. So people might as well get that pipe dream out of their heads right now. It's time to stop letting emotion drive these conversations and get rational as well as realistic.

Amen

>If you have so little faith that the vaccine can protect you, then why did you take it and why are you advocating others should be forced to?

This question has a really simple and well-known answer, so if you are unaware of the basics, maybe you should educate yourself first? Vaccine does not offer 100% protection to the individual who takes it, but, according to the scientific research, it significantly reduces: a) the risk to get infected, b) the risk of infecting others, c) the risk of complications or death. Only first of those risks is related to the freedom of personal choice, other two impact public health and public is in their right to restrict personal freedom for those, who do not comply - because chances that people may die are increasing. Yes, vaccine is not the ultimate protection. More lockdowns will be necessary and we will have to wear masks for few years more. Virus will not go away. But 5-10 million people are already dead and we must take all chances to prevent as many deaths as possible, until it mutates to the point where it is no more dangerous than a flu. If this means that some libertarians and anti-vaxxers will be pissed off, well, majority of people in many countries apparently does not care.

That is a rational argument. But it is not the only one. There are trade-offs and rational people can disagree.

There is a point at which people cannot be made to do things. That point is not fixed and depends on a lot of things (obviously).

The question is is this going to push many people past that point?

> Why do 30% of people refuse to get vaccinated? (here in Aotearoa it is 5%). Something is happening, people are getting left behind, in vast numbers. Forcing them to comply is probably a cure worse than the disease - even a disease like COVID

Yeah, please please come here and find a way to "unloose" these people, I'm out of clue. We have a lot of failures here in Germany that surface, everything is too slow, from bad organization to corruption (like most western democracies), behind in digitalization, behind in taking the right measures, slow decisions even after 2 years into this pandemic situation.. true, a big chance to clear up and maybe hopefully do better in the future.

But those people (the last 10-20% radical idiotic percent that drives the rest forward)? I really start hating my country and fellow citizens, so many spoiled brats living in prosperity, complaining about everything, believing in total bullshit, it is unbelievable. If you attempt your best in an open and honest discussion, you are called a liar with the first word that comes out of your mouth....

> Want a war? That’s what you’re going to get if you persist with this paranoid hypochondriac fascism.

That's a perfect description for those people, not the vaccination, phew..if we get a war it will be by further catering to the far right. And btw, most of these people who go demoing right now (except the few violent far right ones that are under them), I bet most have never been to a real demonstration in their lives - now standing up for their personal party freedom while limiting the freedom of everyone else - again and again.

And btw please.. everyone who gets triggered by the word "lockdown" get your facts right first - there are lockdowns and there are lockdowns. We had very strict lockdowns over the last year in most our neighbors (e.g. France, Italy, Spain) - fines when you went out on the street at the wrong times .. we in Germany were up to that once close, though I believe noone here ever got fined for anything.

What we discuss and have as "lockdown" right now in Germany is actually just the "lockdown of the unvaccinated" - means 2G in shops that are not essential - oh yeah, poor unvaccinated crowd cannot go Christmas shopping, while health personal is crying for help, ERs and intensive cares are filling up, and a newspaper already appealed to stop driving unless totally necessary, because of injury risk.

Yeah sorry, I'm totally fed up :( Read too much on twitter and also here again, and I feel also a little bad and dizzy. Have been waiting 1h in the cold and another hour inside today to get my booster shot - bad organized Germany, again, but not complaining today! I'm happy to see so many people still trying to do their littlest part to relieve the health care workers and try to help get the hospitals some space for people that really need it for reasons that couldn't be avoided. And a little proud to be part of it - In that sense, the dizzyness is appreciated and better than a Feierabendbeer, the injected chip is working, the 5G in my brain is getting activated and well welcomed. gn8

>I really start hating my country and fellow citizens, so many spoiled brats living in prosperity, complaining about everything, believing in total bullshit, it is unbelievable.

So what do you think getting 100% of humans is going to do, especially since the virus is carried and transmitted by animals too? You aren't going to wipe it out.

And for the vast majority of the population - especially those under 60 and without any co-morbidities the chances of COVID requiring hospitalization, let alone ICU admission is negligible. At worst equal to the flu. Yes, for the vulnerable COVID is not good - but that's hardly unique to COVID too.

So not sure where YOU get off casting aspersions that anyone who doesn't get the vax is selfish - there is ZERO to back that up and rhetoric such as this is the yellow star of David crap reborn in modern clothing.

Doesn't need to be 100% - has been well modelled 85% would be enough.

Also the pressure on the health care system would be much lower then - alternatively, if everyone who is unvaccinated would just sign off that he doesn't want hospital treatment and stays home I would be almost fine as well (still annoyed by the innocent victims they maybe infect..).

> especially those under 60 and without any co-morbidities the chances of COVID requiring hospitalization, let alone ICU admission is negligible.

So wrong, please look again at our numbers, small percentage on big numbers is unfortunately still too much.

> anyone who doesn't get the vax is selfish

Here, in this situation, with all we know, it currently 100% is, 110% YES.

>Doesn't need to be 100% - has been well modelled 85% would be enough.

I can't believe anybody seriously believes that. In addition to the fact that different expers have quoted different figures, and prominent health officials have admitted to deliberately lying about the percentage needed, you have to realize that many of the parameters that go into such a model still have huge error bars.

If the quoted figure was '85%, plus or minus 10%, has a 95% chance of granting herd immunity', I _might_ take it seriously. I think that's still overstating the confidence we have.

Thanks for this. I was stressed out by all the bullshit comments here. This replenished my faith in humanity so I can go to sleep now.

Chur!

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