What We Learned from Hating the Unvaccinated | Hacker News Reader

What We Learned from Hating the Unvaccinated

susandunham.medium.com

19 pointsjohntfella19 comments

This is from a Canadian perspective. I was in Canada for most of the restrictions, and it really opened my eyes to the dark side of human nature. As soon as it's socially acceptable, people basically line up to hate their fellow humans, and to give unwavering support to "authorities". It's terrifying, but also gives some context to historical events that you wonder how they could have happened.

Don't put it that way, people following authority and hating the rebels, as if common sense wasn't involved.

Imagine if fish rained every Sunday, we would have to put them in the trash before they rot, or risk an outbreak. Then you have the few neighbors that just won't do it, using excuses like "that's what the liberals want you to do", "my property, my choice", "why? they aren't making me sick", "it's God's will", "I'm tired of cleaning", etc. You probably won't stay indifferent to those neighbors. Would you love or hate them? Would you encourage them to practice hygienic measures?

It's the same situation, but since a virus cannot be seen, it's easier to ignore than rotting fish. And COVID wasn't active only on Sundays.

The real lesson is how in the midst of the worst pandemic in decades, where most of us lost someone, or know someone who did, there were people who stubbornly refused to practice basic hygienic measures using the most selfish excuses. A global health issue was distorted from science into politics, it was one of the most shameful phenomena I've witnessed in my 50 years of existence.

> The real lesson is how in the midst of the worst pandemic in decades, where most of us lost someone, or know someone who did, there were people who stubbornly refused to practice basic hygienic measures using the most selfish excuses. A global health issue was distorted from science into politics, it was one of the most shameful phenomena I've witnessed in my 50 years of existence

Dont put it that way. Its how we blocked entire generations who had no risks or almost none, and ruined the economy to save old unproductive people who wouldnt just isolate themselves and use drive.

The ability of people to put all responsinbility to "society" or anyone else than themselves is insane. Groupthink and tribalism driven by fear at its best

> Dont put it that way. Its how we blocked entire generations who had no risks or almost none, and ruined the economy to save old unproductive people who wouldnt just isolate themselves and use drive.

I wish I knew what in your head made you form that mental atrocity. Old unproductive people? How many hard working health professionals died tending COVID patients?

The economy was affected, but it's not like it was superhealthy to begin with. Also, most countries took COVID seriously only when it was widespread within themselves, too late to contain the damage. One percent died even with proper medical care, imagine how many would have died without access because the hospitals were full? Is preserving the Jenga economy tower worth a few million lives? Sooner or later another financial crisis will happen anyway.

> The ability of people to put all responsinbility to "society" or anyone else than themselves is insane. Groupthink and tribalism driven by fear at its best

That's called living in society. If you value your absolute freedom above the needs of your own society, start packing and get comfortable in a forest cave, because civilization is not what you want. If you want the advantages of society, you gotta give cooperation in return.

> That's called living in society. If you value your absolute freedom above the needs of your own society, start packing and get comfortable in a forest cave, because civilization is not what you want. If you want the advantages of society, you gotta give cooperation in return.

You can say that to justify pretty much anything starting with all the random bullshit China does to its citizen. There's a middle ground to find, my point is that we were slightly to far down the fear road (and many people will die of the economic consequences actually).

Meanwhile, Japan’s government has actively told the public to not not discriminate against the unvaccinated. Japan also has very high covid vaccination rate, despite one of the lowest vaccine trust/confidence rates in the developed world due to historical scandals.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210410/p2a/00m/0na/00...

I live in Metropolitan Vancouver, somewhere with very low vaccination hesitancy, and still someone in my circle only got vaccinated because of restrictions. Restaurants were re-opening and she couldn't join in without getting the vaccine.

How knows how many avoided infection at all, severe symptoms, or even death because they were similarly convinced by restrictions and mandates. In this light, I really don't have much sympathy for some people who felt a little discriminated against. A public heath emergency doesn't care about your petty feelings.

Discrimination against the unvaccinated is justified, morally and scientifically. Public health policy should be made, and was made, based on good data.

The data shows the opposite: the places with vaccine mandates achieved lower vaccination rates among elderly (most of Europe) than places without them (UK).

The data shows that the greatest benefit from vaccination was to elderly and risk groups and not to healthy young people. Vaccine mandates increased vaccine uptake in less-at-risk groups but did not help to ensure vaccination of elderly people.

Third issue is that vaccination did not prevent spread. Even in Canada the data shows that at the end of 2021 covid spread equally among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Vaccination was good for personal benefit and should have been popularised as such but it didn't meaningfully limit the spread and the restrictions on unvaccinated were not justified.

Your commentary is very disingenuous, the benefit of vaccination is reducing the impact of the virus and avoiding overload of the health system.

10 unvaccinated people needing ICU with covid vs 10 people staying home with a covid headache are very different things.

Disingenuous is a hard thing to say when governments kept changing the goal posts, and the poster you were responding to talked about multiple governments.

Either way, discrimination is wrong. And if we’re following the science, then those who recovered from Covid didn’t need to be vaccinated, so discriminating against them isn’t scientific. It’s a prejudice

I don't think that vaccine mandates had a significant impact on hospitalization rates.

The most people getting hospitalized will be elderly. I already mentioned that vaccine mandates did not significantly increased vaccinate uptake among them. Canada and Australia received high vaccination rates among elderly but so did the UK, so there was no need to push for vaccine mandates. China which is practically a totalitarian country also had low vaccination rates among elderly.

The antivax friends I know are mostly victims of disinformation. They usually lack the skills to judge between science fact and fiction: untrained, or perhaps just average humans at failing to grok cause and effect. They are usually mistrustful of authority, often due to being on the receiving end of poor information, lies, and misdirection from government and world organisations. They can give examples where they believe that they have been deceived in the past. Somehow scepticism is valid when it is our geek heroes, but invalid when it is an average person failing to invest the time to learn all the disciplines required to judge whether the science and politics of Covid are good or bad. Scepticism can be sanitary, or it can be an overactive memetic immune system of the mind.

Discrimination against the unvaccinated is justified, morally and scientifically Your statement is equivalent to me as if you wrote “Discrimination against the disabled is justified, morally and scientifically” or “Discrimination against the below average IQ is justified, morally and scientifically”.

PS: I see engineers make the same category of error, just in different subjects that they are unfamiliar with.

Rant over.

Discrimination against X is justified morally and scientifically.

For you, there are no values of X that satisfying this sentence? Be it even the most objectional group of people (mass murderers, cannibals, etc)?

Then why isn't discrimination against homosexuals justified since they spread much worse diseases?

I still haven't emotionally recovered from this and I might have to switch jobs.

The only thing I say is there is a huge difference between people who lost relatives to COVID and people that got lucky with either no deaths or mild cases. The virus seems random and it shows in the ability to comprehend the consequences of ones own actions. This fluff piece is a slap in the face of over 1 million dead Americans and their relatives. There were always mandated vaccines in a virulent crisis like COVID only this time it got political weaponized.

I have no idea what things were like in Canada, or how they compared to America. But it seems off, imo, to call this piece a slap in the face to Americans when as far as I can tell the author isn’t asserting anything about anything outside of Canada.

I had an uncle die from covid. Like most people who died from covid, he was in his 70s and had additional risk factors. It’s not unusual for people in their 70s to die. It’s always sad, but it’s part of the human condition and we shouldn’t blow it out of proportion.

We have never mandated the entire population, including children, to get vaccinated with a new vaccine based on cutting edge technology. England made vaccination of children mandatory nearly 50 years after the smallpox vaccine was developed.

I’m no anti-vaxxer. The only one of my kids who is eligible to be vaccinated got the vaccine. But I think it was the wrong call to mandate young, healthy people to get vaccinated to protect old people. I’m praying public health officials made the right call here.

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