The Vaccine Moment, part one

But then I look around and see that people who made the same choices as me started hurling turds at people who didn't. Questioning their intelligence. Calling them evil and stupid. Cheering on horrific measures. Now the mask isn't as much a preventative measure as it is a tribal marker.

And I am disgusted.

I don’t doubt the need to have this discussion about authoritarianism, but the exaggeration of comparing it to nazi times or apartheid (as this line of thinking inevitably implies) is utterly disrespectful to the victims of real regimes.

I feel that everyone who makes a "oh no, rates are shooting up" argument is being disingenuous for the sake of it. We literally don't care if every single person in the world gets COVID, we only care that they don't have lasting repercussions from it.

A couple of examples are:

> an active state/media campaign against early treatment of a disease

This contains a link to an article with a headline of "FDA asks people to stop taking animal dewormer to treat COVID-19". It is fine if the author disagrees with the FDA decision on the effectiveness of the treatment but this is not what they say about the link.

> It is the fact that these vaccines, whatever their efficacy in other areas, do not prevent transmission of the virus.

This links to an article about a study which found that vaccinated people who catch the virus are equally likely to infect other people as unvaccinated people who catch the virus. Reading further in the article it states "a fully vaccinated contact has a 25% chance of catching the virus from an infected household member while an unvaccinated contact has a 38% chance of becoming infected". So the overall effect of the vaccine clearly does reduce transmission by reducing the chance of being infected, and without being infected you cannot pass on the virus.

This makes it feel like the author is more interested in pushing an agenda than representing things in an accurate way.

The flagged voice in the wilderness.

The advent is near.

As it was all those years ago.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

* it's known for quite some time that the vaccine doesn't reduce the infection numbers that much (for various reasons); the effect is now measured by the numbers of hospitalizations. almost all of those in intensive care are not vaccinated (the rest are suffering from impaired immune systems). non-icu patient rate is mostly unvaccinated, especially if a 70% vaccination rate is considered.

ireland population: ~5 mil, deaths per day in december 21: between 7 and 12 austrian population: ~9 mil, deaths per day in december 21: between 55 and 60

see https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/austria?count...

* the problem in austria, as in many other affected countries, is the collapse of the public health system due to ICU load and staff attrition. remember, it's not about the beds, it's about the staff. we've got a burnout epidemic which is worsened by unmasked protestors in front of the hospitals while nurses are already completely exhausted. there have been unofficial reports of triage, bodies of the deceased stored in hallways. there are abandoned hospital stations because the whole staff has been relegated to the covid stations. non-essential procedures are delayed delayed indefinitely.

* the bodily autonomy only applies if it only affects you and not the people around it. i can't bring the bodily autonomy principle to justify smoking cigarettes in a day care or driving on public streets under the influence. the problem with bodily autonomy and vaccines is such an idiotic one, thanks to the morons that misinterpreted the financial fraudster andrew wakefield. i know it's a bit more complicated than that, but vaccinations rarely were an issue at all, when, say, you were to travel to an african or south easian holiday destination. it only started to be a problem when it became politicized.

* there have been rare but rising cases of violence, but i can't recall a single one which wasn't by anti-vaxxers against security or hospital personnel. it's actually a huge problem - many doctors stopped vaccinating people because they've been harassed and threatened by irate anti-vaxxers. there are cases of small town politicians being threatened by the mob ("drag him out!").

* there are large scale protests all over the country. almost all of them are organized by right-wing parties and/or neo-nazi groups (there's significant overlap). the FPÖ (the right wing party) used to be pro mandatory vaccinations until very recently, when the policy would affect mostly immigrants. some of those protests are staged in front of hospitals, hindering ambulances and intimidating staff.

* measures like extended lockdowns for the unvaccinated have failed because they were simply ignored, either with fake certificates or just hoping not to get caught.

i used to be against mandatory vaccination and would have preferred a different solution: ranking unvaxxed-by-choice patients lower than vaccinated patients. this proposal has been rejected (for multiple reasons).

tbh i'm not optimistic. with omicron approaching the situation in the hospitals will be even more catastrophic than it ever was. i just hope that there wont be any medical emergencies in my family.

so right now we have 50 deaths a day even though every patient gets a hospital / ICU bed. with omikron those numbers are going to explode.

other than that, i feel like i've read every single of his arguments repelled a thousand times by scientists. lower numbers in africa can be explained by a lower average age. omikron less severe than expected because of high levels of natural antibodies from previous infections, etc. etc. etc.