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Comment by pcmoney | Hacker News Reader

Vaccines for Covid are available. Vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid. Vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid. Vaccines do reduce the probability of severe/fatal cases of covid.

Masks are available. Most masks in most situations do little to stop the spread of Covid. Well fitted N95s are more effective.

Getting vaccinated or wearing a mask is clearly a personal health decision. Vaccine mandates are ridiculous given the above. Mask mandates are ridiculous given the above. Mandates in general show little impact on actually changing behavior.

The risk to children is incredibly low. The coronavirus is endemic, we are all going to get it.

Lets move on already.

If you are fearful of coronavirus or at risk you can do what you think is necessary to stay safe. You don’t get to use your fear or neuroses to control others.

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When you spread covid misinformation, you help people die earlier than they otherwise would.

The fact is, the vaccines reduce the transmission of covid. Likewise well-fitted quality masks. So when you opt out, or encourage others to do so, there's an incremental harm to other people. To the extent anyone reads and is persuaded by you comments, people are being harmed. Hopefully, no one is, but I see from the responses at least one dummy is encouraged. I wonder how you feel about that?

> The risk to children is incredibly low.

I don't think you're actually unaware there is a substantial number of people in schools that aren't children. So what's the point of this observation in relation to the topic?

What misinformation am I spreading? I think you are misunderstanding me.

I am not saying vaccines and masks have no benefit. Vaccines have a substantial personal benefit and a more marginal communal benefit.

Mask done perfectly have a decent personal and communal benefit. However, masks are not done perfectly and never will be.

The question is should we have mandates? Should we have vaccine mandates along the lines of “get the vaccine or get fired?” for marginal and waning communal benefit. If so should we extend this marginal logic to other marginally communally beneficial prevention measures? Eg. Protests are spreader events. These hurt the community. Attend a protest and you’re fired. I don’t think either is reasonable.

In regards to mask mandates we are forcing kids to wear masks at school but we are not mandating adults wear masks at restaurants, bars, movie theatres, concerts, football games etc. It doesn’t matter if the kids had perfect mask compliance (and they dont) the exposure to adults is everywhere. Also mask mandates do not impact behavior much. So why do we have them for students? I think it is mostly because adults want security theater and are used to telling kids to do something they themselves are unwilling to do.

yes, please copy and paste this at the top of every covid thread. i can't believe people still believe 2 years on that there is "something" we can do to stop covid. it's endemic, assess/mitigate your own risk and move the fuck on.

> Vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid. Vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid.

The vaccines still reduce the likelihood of infection and thus slow the spread of Covid. It's true their effectiveness against Omicron is reduced compared to prior variants.

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