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Comment by skeeter2020 | Hacker News Reader

skeeter2020

I love what this nurse is doing. I apologize in advance for this rant, but we're almost TWO YEARS into this thing and I have no more sympathy for the self-titled "dumb asses" who didn't get vaccinated, almost died, and now preach their story of redemption to everyone. I'm glad you made it through, but don't look to me for any thanks or recognition. How many cancer patients, transplant candidates, car accident victims, seniors and immune-compromised people died because you directly infected them, or took a hospital bed? How many health care workers will leave the field because you added largely preventable work? How many kids lost (and continue to be deprived of) the single safe place they could learn or get a decent meal when in-person schools shut down? A big part of this is YOUR FAULT and I'm not ready to forgive yet.

Thank you to health care workers who keep grinding away to help others, and individuals like this who fight the ignorance and misinformation. You are heros in a time when we really need them.

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Should we extend this attitude to everyone else that taxes the healthcare system?

If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

If you’re fat and get diabetes should we?

Etc etc. This is inhumane thinking and shouldn’t be encouraged.

It’s a wee bit different to aid and abet an ongoing global pandemic.

HIV and obesity have both been called epidemics, so it's a fair comparison.

I can't catch HIV or obesity by sitting next to someone on a train, so is it really?

> obesity

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/health/25cnd-fat.html

You might be able to in the sense that it normalizes it. It's a little like how suicides can be "contagious."

Actually you can. They might be eating a sugary dessert, and then you think "mmm, I'd like one of those".

And the person might not even need to be there physically, they could just be an image.

Do we need to publicly shame and ostracise employees of all advertising and marketing companies?

All ice-cream manufacturers?

What about smoking? Smoking kills 10 million per year, COVID is a pittance by comparison. Should smokers wear a yellow cigarette badge to distinguish them from others?

1 million die from the effects of second hand smoke - which can come off of clothes, even imperceptibly. Best to know about it, and give them a wide berth. Eg, probably a good idea ban them from going into shops at all. And from buying food, starve them out of the habit, eh?

Do remember here, COVID is NOTHING compared to smoking.

That is, by supporting such measures against COVID and not against smoking or any other preventable cause of death, you're effectively a "murderer".

As such, I'll be giving you and folks like you a wide berth myself, though I wouldn't go as far as restricting your ability to feed yourself.

No need to thank me, it's just common human decency.

> Should smokers wear a yellow cigarette badge to distinguish them from others?

Please put the nazi card back into the deck. You and I both know that we are not in nazi germany, nor is asking people to get a jab (and to accept that their actions - or inactions - have consequences) even remotely close to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust.

I think the rest of your comment is worth responding to, and I will do so in a separate comment. However this is such an inappropriate comment that it deserves its own reply. I've linked some resources below where you can learn more about the Holocaust because it's clear that you're at least a little bit uninformed.

US Holocaust memorial museum - https://www.ushmm.org/learn/holocaust

National WWII museum - https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/holocaust

This one's geared towards educators (and unfortunately requires you to register) but has some excellent resources if you're willing to work through that - https://education.mjhnyc.org/

Thanks for the "education". Your claim of my "ignorance" essentially insults my entire existence. I can guarantee that I personally know a fuck-tonne more about this issue than you ever can.

For your education, look up the several videos of holocaust survivors, and those who lives through other oppressive dictatorships, speaking out against what they perceive as a present-day repeat of exactly the conditions that lead to those horrors.

For example, any recent interview with Vera Sharav or any recent speech/press conference by Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes. (And if you don't find YT serving those up go to bitchute or odysee.)

And do bear in mind please, that one of the defining characteristics of the path to this level of societal degredation, is precisely that the majority of people at the time do not believe it could possibly be happening, and mock those who say it is, whilst simultaneously encouraging their silencing and censorship.

> Actually you can. They might be eating a sugary dessert, and then you think "mmm, I'd like one of those".

Ok? This doesn't _make_ anyone obese, while sitting on a train next to a COVID+ person gives you a pretty high likelihood of getting COVID.

That is, unless there's some new research that shows that simply seeing sugary deserts can turn people obese.

> Do we need to publicly shame and ostracise employees of all advertising and marketing companies?

??????

> All ice-cream manufacturers?

Should they stop marketing towards children? Absolutely. Again, I'm not entirely sure what you're going for here so I'm really just inserting a suggestion.

> What about smoking? Smoking kills 10 million per year, COVID is a pittance by comparison.

In the US but we have effectively banned indoor smoking on those grounds. In ATX you're not even allowed to smoke within (if I'm remembering the numbers correctly) 30 ft of an openable window of a business. Because it directly impacts people's health. Like spreading COVID does.

> 1 million die from the effects of second hand smoke - which can come off of clothes, even imperceptibly.

That's terrible, we should curb smoking if this is proven to be the case.

> Best to know about it, and give them a wide berth. Eg, probably a good idea ban them from going into shops at all. And from buying food, starve them out of the habit, eh?

what the fuck are you on about? root was talking about how people need to accept that they've contributed to the pandemic through their inaction, not advocating for barring people from shops. that's ridiculous.

> As such, I'll be giving you and folks like you a wide berth myself

I'm impressed- you've seemingly judged my entire character based on a single-sentence comment. Have you considered pursuing a career as a judge?

> though I wouldn't go as far as restricting your ability to feed yourself.

how gracious

Advertising and marketing are forms of social manipulation. If they didn't work, and were not effective, they would not be used.

A thought-experiment: how many people would be obese if it were impossible for manufacturers of unhealthy foods to market their products to anyone?

Look at the obesity levels in countries that such manufacturers exclude from their marketing campaigns.

The point is that advertising makes people do things they otherwise wouldn't have done. That's kind of the whole point of it.

It's an entirely valid and important argument for something such as obesity, that advertisers and manufacturers of obesity and diabetes-linked products, may play a major, even dominant and causal role in those diseases proliferation. How could people become obese, for example, to take it to an extreme, if there was nothing but healthy fruit, vegetables lean meat and water to buy - anywhere?

If you're a coder or engineer you'll know you find the faults of a system by pushing it to its extremes. Society/health and the struggles we face in those arenas are no different.

As for the pandemic, there are countries in "free Western Europe" that have violently arrested people for attempting to go and buy food. I've seen elderly assaulted, who - with trembling hands, hold their medical exemptions to merciless and uncaring store security, and a hopelessly split society pouring derision either upon the woman or the security staff. It's up to people such as ourselves to pick up the pieces.

These scenes are familiar to some of us, and people such as yourself discounting it is heartbreaking and frustrating.

Spend a little time rooting out what it is you're "not supposed to see". Maybe your perspective will shift. It's all there, if you're willing to look.

Are any of those easily helped by a vaccine?

If you expand "vaccine" to "medical interventions", then yes. Bariatric surgeries are quite effective at cutting mortality.

>Long-term studies show the procedures result in significant long-term loss of weight, recovery from diabetes, improvement in cardiovascular risk factors, and a mortality reduction from 40% to 23%.

Having your stomach stapled is am extreme and expensive surgery requiring multiple doctors and support staff, lots of recovery time and years to fully take effect. It also carries a high risk of serious side effects.

It is nothing like a vaccine.

If there were a vaccine against HIV, and an ongoing pandemic overwhelming hospitals, then yes I guess?

> and an ongoing pandemic overwhelming hospitals, then yes I guess?

HIV spreads more slowly so it doesn’t threaten to overwhelm hospitals, at least not in developed nations, but it is an ongoing pandemic which has killed at least 36 million people, including 680k in 2020, and is spread mostly by risky behavioral choices like drugs and unprotected sex. The social cost is incalculable let alone the costs to individuals and families!

So, I think the same principle applies and the same judgement ought to be given if any is given at all. Of course it shouldn’t, because the world is a mad house and we’re all inpatients.

...Maybe?

Not in a dehumanizing way, but cultural norms are sometimes there for a reason. As unfortunate as it is, being overweight is unhealthy, and while I don't think people should be looked at as less than human, they should know that their life choices are frowned upon.

You shift from victim to guilty when there s an easy way out of your mistakes. Yes getting HIV can often be the result of a preventable mistake, but if there was a way out once you got it and you refused again and again to take it to relieve the group tax burden and instead relied on expensive insured medication, I d shame you...

Diabete is frankly unclear since you can get it during childhood and again no way to alleviate it that people arent already massively taking.

"If you’re fat and get diabetes should we?"

Under crisis standards of care, the fact that you are fat can be used to allow you to die. Likewise, and especially, if you have diabetes, that will be cited as a reason why you were allowed to die. Likewise HIV or hepatitis, or any other health problem that you might have. Any health problem that makes you less than perfect can be cited as a reason why doctors might be allow you to die. Even a person with no known health conditions, but who is simply old, can have their age cited against them under crisis standards of care.

So it is understandable why some of us are angry with those who drove hospital after hospital to crisis standards of care during the later half of this pandemic, when there was a vaccine that could have completely changed the situation.

In a developed nation, we do not expect many situations to happen during out lifetimes that would drive a hospital to crisis standards of care. That some citizens recklessly put themselves into a situation where they could clog up the hospitals, to the point where the hospitals had to invoke crisis standards of care, demonstrates an amoral style of reasoning on their part.

> If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

Tangentally related: in some jurisdictions[1], not informing your partner that you have HIV and exposing them to the risk of infection is a criminal offense.

1. The United Kingdom, and New Zealand, if memory serves.

> If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

This is already a matter of medical, policy, religious, and national history, and that story has not yet concluded with the many lives already ended. And if you knowingly expose people to HIV, that is generally both a criminal and civil matter. Meanwhile defiance of masks and avoidance of free vaccines is political patriotism — a brave defense of liberty itself.

> If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

If you vehemently oppose the use of condoms, physically and verbally assault people who try to distribute condoms in areas at high risk for HIV, retweet conspiracy theories about how HIV is not real and condoms were made by evil people for evil purposes, attack the doctors who are trying to treat HIV, etc., then yes: shame on you.

Triple vaxxed, here to play the devil's advocate. Stories like these are not to please you, or to recognize the person. But telling them is important for unvaccinated people to see. I'm really hoping that my unvaccinated family members see this kind of story from someone they follow and trust before it's too late for them.

I thought vaccinated or unvaccinated you can still infect others? Mainly it’s vaccinating yourself to have a less severe outcome if you do become infected is what I’ve been seeing be told.

That's correct, you can infect other people if you're vaccinated, and you can still get infected even if you're triple vaccinated. Break-through cases are very common, as witnessed in highly vaccinated nations that are still struggling with huge outbreaks.

Your conclusion is essentially the right one, the leading vaccines (particularly the mRNA vaccines) can dramatically lower the risk of a bad outcome if you catch SARS2. They do not stop the spead of the virus and do not ensure you won't catch it.

Why does everyone seem so obstinately binary on this topic? They slow the spread. They make you less likely to get infected and to spread it. Few things in medicine are 100%. This is nothing new. And even a small reduction in the ability of a vaccinated person to spread the virus makes a huge difference. In fact, it could likely make enough difference to bring the R0 of COVID below R1.

The vaccines don’t stop you getting it, but:

1. They reduce the chances you will get it because they increase the chances your system will fight it off before it gets established.

2. They reduce the time during which you are infectious, and the amount of the virus in your system that you output during that time. As a result they decreases the chances of you infecting others.

The reduction for the original variants was very significant. Vaccinated people were very unlikely to infect anyone else prior to Delta. With Delta the benefits were significantly reduced. With Omicron the benefits in infectiousness are again much reduced.

So for most of the last year the vaccines were a vital tool in reducing the spread of the virus as well as protecting the vaccinated. Now Omicron is so infectious the effect is much lower. Of course the vaccines do still seem to be real life savers against Omicron, and avoiding getting sick yourself still protects others by reducing the load on the health care system.

> They reduce the time during which you are infectious, and the amount of the virus in your system that you output during that time.

Transmission potential of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in a federal prison, July—August 2021 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.21265796v...

> A total of 978 specimens were provided by 95 participants, of whom 78 (82%) were fully vaccinated and 17 (18%) were not fully vaccinated. No significant differences were detected in duration of RT-PCR positivity among fully vaccinated participants (median: 13 days) versus those not fully vaccinated (median: 13 days; p=0.50), or in duration of culture positivity (medians: 5 days and 5 days; p=0.29).

I did say the benefits from vaccination in infectiousness with Delta is much reduced. They do seem to still reduce the time during which you are infectious though.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/231557/covid-vaccines-effect...

I’m not entirely surprised there are studies with small numbers of participants in which it doesn’t show up.

the lack of empathy, and I'm talking about true empathy that results in action when it comes to healthcare workers is still incredible.

The amount of stress physically and mentally that nurses and doctors have been put through, by being exposed to covid themselves from the beginning, being separated from family, seeing people die every day is nuts.

And the amount of people still who basically talk about this like "oh the hospitals aren't even full yet, it's not that bad", and have done so repeatedly really is just plain sad. Also goes for the food workers and delivery people and anyone else who keeps things running.

Honestly, I only hate the ones who don’t see the error of their ways. The ones who realize they’re dumb and make changes should be forgiven. Imagine if there were no room for forgiveness on anything, then you get a calcification of beliefs and that’s not great. Forgiveness is what allows people to change their minds.

This nurse is taking quite a different approach from yours. These photos are empathic and respectful and takes humans as they are, while still getting the message across. I don’t think your mindset would lead to the same quality of journalism.

As of the middle of November 2021, about 30% of nurses had not gotten the vaccine, despite its widespread availability.

Does your condemnation extend to them?

How many of those do you recon had already been exposed before vaccine availability?

These people were putting their neck out almost a full year before the first shot was administeres. Chances are, many of them already acquired immunity via this route.

I wish people did not disregard natural immunity. There are quite many who do. Anyways... for how long does natural immunity last?

I don't think we know yet with much certainty. But I'll tell you this, it's a lot easier to get a vaccine booster than a natural immunity booster.

Not to mention, the body of evidence that point to the vaccines providing super-human immunity (i.e. better than natural) continues to grow.

Much of the original "natural immunity is the best" idea came from a single Israeli study.

So by this logic, would you let "front line workers" that aren't vaccinated off the hook as well, seeing that they were probably "exposed before vaccine availability" and "Chances are, many of them already acquired immunity via this route"?

That makes sense?

My condemnation extends to nurses; no one is beyond criticism. Infact, a surprising number of nurses have insane ideas - more than you'd think. To wit, at my local hospital, a doctor found an abrasion on a patient's back which was later attributed to a "healing crystal" supplied - and installed - a few days before, by an attending nurse.

Frankly, people who buy into anti-vaxx ideology are victims of mass propaganda campaigns. And all of us suffer because of those mass propaganda campaigns.

Do you think it's a propaganda campaign, or maybe it's just a logical extension of longstanding talking points. What happened with Trump and the vaccine (he got booed for saying he got boosted) shows that the movement has outgrown even him, so it's basically self perpetuating.

Trump was never really anti-vax. What Trump did to make all of this so much worse was foment distrust of the media and experts.

Must be nice to live in your fictional alternative universe. First the massive propaganda, enforced by governments, media and tech companies is in favor of the vaccination. There is literally no mainstream media or government on earth I can think of that are pushing an anti-vaccine agenda. Secondly if the vaccine worked, it would have stopped the epidemic already. It didn't made a dent even in countries with 90% vaccinated. This single fact should one think. And think again. The "anti-vaxxers" are the scapegoats of political and health policies that don't work.

Vaccines have saved countless thousands (millions?) from hospitalisation and death, and allowed us to open up without (completely) overwhelming our health systems (or whatever it is you have in the US).

No vaccine is perfect, and herd immunity (like we have for measles) would require nearly 100% coverage in all age groups - assuming it would even be possible for a virus like Covid.

Vaccines could have been used with NPIs instead of in place of NPIs, which could have given us a chance of containing Covid completely. Unfortunately, not least because of the anti science voices you seem to have been listening to, this was not possible.

How do you know that the Government would not have done those things either way? The unvaccinated do make a good scapegoat though. Plus, I think you are greatly overestimating the vaccine's efficacy of reducing transmission, especially when it comes to newer variants. There are also many people who pose little to no risk AND are not vaccinated.

As far as the unvaccinated getting hospitalized goes, well... do you have this amount of hatred towards the obese, too?

Regardless, your comment came across as pretty hostile, you seem to have a lot of hatred.

I would be very, very angry at obese people if the cure for obesity was a tiny needle prick with almost no side effects. But the reality is, obesity is a difficult problem to overcome and requires education, effort, and time.

What do you think constitutes prevention, and treatment for obesity?

I'm not sure if I understand the question.

Nutrition education, access to healthy foods and the means to purchase them would be prevention. Then for treatment, long term dieting and exercise as well as systems to support that.

Prevention - eat less

Treatment - eat less.

You should be very angry at them. If they eat less, they would not be such a burden on our health care right now.

If you are not angry, then you are very selective about it, and you are just cherry picking... double standard, and so forth.

I don't feel this way. It's clearly nobody's fault and I have yet to see a convincing chain of reasoning that faults any particular person or group of people for an ongoing natural disaster. Any attempts at doing so assume a nearly infallible vaccine. Stop watching so much news if it upsets you this much and fills you with hate for healthy people.

Luckily most vaccinated are not this empathy lacking self righteous... No on cares about your forgiveness

In 10 years we will still be analyzing the health implications of the vaccine. And the effects on the health system

Also the unvaccinated tax not only is pay for the public health system, they are also pay for the vaccines, that give billions in profit to the pharmaceuticals, and has little to no benefit for all under 50

Its just a new religion, and the believers in it violently aggressively hate the non-members, which is scary to see.

We as a race haven't eliminated a coronavirus yet, and we probably are not anytime soon, and hatred is starting against anyone weak enough to get bullied, because someone has to be made to pay. Gonna be a rough winter.

I can’t support this mentality at all.

In any case these people are still humans. They have the same right to life as we all do.

"Crisis Standards of Care" are what literally allows the hospital to make a triage decision to give better care for the people who are more likely to survive.

That’s fine, but letting unvaccinated people suffer or die is a discriminatory position.

If there is a underlying medical condition that is present then sure I agree. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes and shouldn’t be left to die because of it.

Let’s stop hating each other, love everyone even the anti-vaxers.

The "shouldn't" can be ignored when the hospital is at 100% capacity; when in crisis, things no longer happen as they "should". Even more so, some "shoulds" must be ignored, or you'll have patients queuing up outside the hospital.

Unvaccinated people literally have smaller chance of survival.

Whether vaccination status is to be included in the triage point score is an ongoing debate -- it currently isn't: https://www.denverpost.com/2021/11/21/vaccination-status-col...

Yes, this needs to be said. What the unvaccinated are doing right now is conducing a DDOS attack on the whole medical system. This is going to cost them dearly, but everybody else will also pay a steep price. Is it really your freedom, if other people have to pay for it with their lives?

Should we be similarly condemning speeders, drunk drivers, obese people, etc., for hogging up hospital beds as a result of their reckless behavior?

>speeders, drunk drivers

Unsafe and drunk drivers are quite condemned.

Obese people don't normally make hospital beds unavailable. If there was a safe, easy to take and effective vaccine against obesity, but they refused to take it, they would be condemned much more.

Plus none of them can infect others with their affliction.

> If there was a safe, easy to take and effective vaccine against obesity, but they refused to take it, they would be condemned much more.

Seriously? What about the good ol' "eat less" (excluding the rare cases where it is related to metabolism disorders)?

In what world is "eat less" as easy or effective as getting a shot?

Losing weight is quite hard and keeping it off is next to impossible, given that very few succeed.

In case you're serious, you can read this. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...

Vaccination is used for prevention. Eating less is also prevention (or would you rather prefer "not eating a lot"?)... from getting obese. Once you are obese, eating less also could serve as a treatment; you lose weight.

Maybe, but it's not easy at all unlike getting a vaccine. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing a global epidemic of obesity. One has to eat less for a very long amount of time.

Are obese people starting off as obese though? I would think that they have to eat a lot to become obese to begin with, which suggests that eating less prevents one from getting obese[1].

Eating less is both prevention and treatment.

[1] Excluding metabolic disorders

None of these are infectious with a doubling rate of 2.5-4 days.

Well, if anything the past two months has taught us, is that vaccination rate in countries has zero impact on the number of cases of the next wave.

That's not what we've learned.

I highly doubt you have data showing that. If you do, I'd be very interested in seeing it.

At the very least though, the vaccination rate has a large effect on hospitalizations and deaths.

That certainly was not true pre-omicron. Here I’m the UK even with Delta, widespread early vaccination made a huge difference. Life here largely returned to normal for much of the past year with very low hospitalisation rates. It saved huge numbers of lives, with a relatively open society.

Now with omicron it’s spreading so fast that even though it seems to be less likely to put you in hospital, it’s infecting so many people the numbers in hospital are shooting up anyway. Vaccination is still saving huge numbers of lives here, but we are phasing in some limited lockdown rules as they become necessary.

On a personal note I caught the virus 2 weeks ago. I was pretty sick for a few days, but shook it off after a week thanks to being fully vaccinated. The rest of my family had it too and my reaction was the worst. I hate to think what it would have been like if I hadn’t had the vaccine working for me as well. I’d probably be dead.

You're making a lot of assumptions, there.

It would likely have been worse if you weren't vaccinated, but not necessarily. It would almost certainly not killed you.

You just need to remember to add 'probably' or 'possibly' in front of most of your statements. People will accept them more, and your mind will be clearer and more rational.

I did say probably. There were two nights when I was gasping for air and hardly slept, it was very distressing. I’m not trying to exaggerate anything, that’s just how I feel about it.

Do you have a source for numbers in hospital shooting up? I normally check here: https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

That’s a lot lower than I realised. I was relying on what is probably only a local change. Looks like the vaccines are doing an even better job overall than I was aware. Thanks.

I definitely think there will be more pressure on the system due to staff absences that isn’t represented in any of those graphs. It would be good to have some visibility of that - actual hospital capacity vs used capacity or something like that.

there's also the possibility that omikron is in itself much milder

Yes

> condemning speeders, drunk drivers

Yes, absolutely, 100%. There's a reason we have laws against those things: to condemn that behavior.

> obese people

The causes of the obesity pandemic in the developed world are too complicated to blanket say that all obese people are "reckless". Certainly some are though.

smokers ? skateboarders ? alcohol drinkers ? rough sport amateurs ? People who don't exercise enough ? Those who eat junk food on their coach the whole day ?

Don't you see where this is going ? Do you really want the government to dictate every single decision in your life, as soon as they're deemed "dangeours for the rest of the society" in one way or another ?

Yes

Drunk and other reckless drivers are already breaking laws, for which many do suffer the consequences personally.

As to the obese and immuno-compromised also ending up in hospitals, many were born with a much higher than average risk for their conditions. Getting vaccinated is likely much easier than maintaining a healthy weight in this age of industrial "food" or being born without a high risk condition.

Already two one word responses of "yes". I have to also echo the "yes" comments given here. Yes, obese people do deserve stigma/condemnation as their condition is not victimless.

What a poor attempt at causing a false choice logical fallacy.

Drunk drivers are some of the most hated people in society.

Obesity can occur without own responsibility or at least be much more difficult to deal with for some people. It also doesn't infect people that walk past.

Speeders and drunk drivers don't overwhelm hospital capacity because there aren't enough of them, and the injuries they cause are usually physical trauma that usual doesn't require as much resources to treat as does COVID.

Obese people don't overwhelm hospital capacity because it is highly variable how long it takes for obesity to result in something that puts you in the hospital. Moderately obese people lose on average about 3 years of life. As far as hospital capacity goes the impact is that the people handling long term capacity planning have to change their forecasts to call for a little more capacity a little sooner.

It's surprising it's only 3 years, and that is for men. For women it's even less. Most people if surveyed would guess figures like 10 years or more, but as it turns out, obesity just is not as big of a killer as the media hype would have one believe.

Simple solution: if you refuse vaccination for a non-medical reason and require treatment for COVID, you pay out of pocket. No insurance, no medicare, no medicaid.

Best of all isn't personal responsibility a classical conservative thing? Don't want to do something simple and free to keep yourself out of the hospital? Fine, but you get to pay for it.

Of course they will just go bankrupt and we'll end up paying for it anyway, but at least it will send a message.

Could be extended to other forms of adherence to flagrant health quackery. I have zero sympathy for this insanity anymore. If you get your health information from YouTube you are an idiot.

Where does that line end? Smoking-related diseases? Obesity related presentations? Extreme sports injuries? Drunk driving crashes? Drug overdoses? Unwanted pregnancies?

There’s a whole lot of reasons people end up in the hospital, plenty of which someone will conclude “well, that was more stupid than I’m comfortable paying for”, and having to do a full circumstances checkup to figure out which price and to whom to charge seems…problematic.

Fun fact, there are insurance exemptions and penalties for at least a few of the things you've listed. Your jurisdiction & policy may vary, but where I live, smoking can increase your insurance rates and make you ineligible for things like kidney transplants; injuries sustained while intoxicated are considered at-fault and aren't insured. I think that includes overdoses. People who engage in extreme sports are encouraged to get specific life insurance because most policies don't cover wanton recklessness. Unwanted pregnancy? Not where I live, but anti-abortion laws are coming fast and furious across the US, and yes, children are extremely expensive and entirely your responsibility.

The unresearched whataboutisms in this thread are truly something else.

> Where does that line end? Smoking-related diseases? Obesity related presentations? Extreme sports injuries? Drunk driving crashes? Drug overdoses? Unwanted pregnancies?

With the exception of drunk driving, the others do not directly pose an immediate risk to others.

But they all do take hospital beds with their stupidity so to speak just like anti vaxxers. Especially the late phenomena of fat positivity needs more criticism, statistics show the pandemic is largely pandemic of anti vaxxers and obese - that's the reality.

Didn’t realize unwanted pregnancies were overwhelming the hospital system.

> How many kids lost (and continue to be deprived of) the single safe place they could learn or get a decent meal when in-person schools shut down?

Given that we're the ~only country in the world who insisted on kicking kids out of school long after it was shown that schools pose miniscule risk, this strikes me as a profoundly disingenuous remark.

Kids weren't deprived of education because someone refused to get a vaccine; they were deprived of education because we overreacted.

This!

There’s a lot of nuance missing from this. Schools pose minimal risk when appropriate measures are taken. These measures are frequently not taken, a friend of mine just caught Covid from the school she works at last week. Masking and distancing are semi enforced, but the biggest issue is kids are being sent to school sick repeatedly. Parents have relied on and feel entitled to schools as free childcare, sometimes without much choice if their jobs are at risk. Framing the school closings as an overreaction to a minimal risk is incorrect and dangerous.

One of the teachers at my old high school died from covid a few months ago. She was in her 40s and left a few children without a mother. She most likely caught it at school from one of the kids that was mostly asymptomatic.

And apparently her natural immunity wasn't enough because she had caught COVID a year prior, also from school.

It's too bad she listened to all the idiots that convinced her that she didn't need a vaccine because natural immunity was best or that she was safe at school because kids don't really spread it. Had she listened to the actual experts, she likely would have lived and her children would still have a mother.

No. Schools pose minimal risk, period. There have been many studies, across countries around the world, that say the same thing. There was a big study from the UK in 2020 -- prior to vaccination -- which showed that teachers under age 65 have an equivalent or lower risk of death as any other job:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10235165/Teachers-N...

Meanwhile, there's no evidence for the "appropriate measures" (whatever those are) that you're using to cast allusions on the safety of schools. There's simply no evidence base to defend the claim that schools are unsafe, and a substantial evidence base showing the opposite.

Want to give elderly teachers leave or early retirement? Sure, fine. But especially after vaccination, the rest is complete theater.

> a friend of mine just caught Covid from the school she works at last week....framing the school closings as an overreaction to a minimal risk is incorrect and dangerous.

So...your friend caught covid, and therefore, everyone else is "incorrect and dangerous". Well, guess what: a friend of mine caught covid outside of work last week. So what's your point? That people get sick?

Also: how did your friend end up, again? You skipped over the part where a fully vaccinated person recovered from a mild illness with no problems.

This is not a rich school district. Many of the children live in multigenerational households, some with grandparents as primary caregivers. They can’t take an early retirement as you dismissively said. My friend will likely be fine, the people these children bring the disease home to might not.

Here are 3 studies from the CDC on the effect of Covid precautions on school outbreaks. The evidence does exist. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0924-school-masking...

>> Given that we're the ~only country in the world

Well you're not the only country on the internet so...which country are you referring to? And how do you define "long after it was shown that schools pose miniscule risk"?

Seems to me many countries did this for a long time and at least in my country cases spike when schools open and infections spread to older family members. This is visible both in cases/deaths correlating with school reopenings + from what I've seen anecdotally.

> country cases spike when schools open and infections spread to older family members.

There have been multiple studies showing that this isn't true. The evidence is simply overwhelming now.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/01/three-st...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10235165/Teachers-N...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/opinion/omicron-schools-d...

Your feelings and perceptions of correlations are irrelevant and hopelessly confounded.

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