Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

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Wow. This comment showcases everything that's wrong with America today.

Trying to keep Americans alive is somehow political. The party of "pro life" was so against trying to save lives that we ended up with the highest COVID death rate in the world, and overall had between 4 and 5 million deaths above the normal rates (see CDC excess deaths between 2020 and 2022).

Also, the vaccine IS NOT ABOUT YOU. Vaccinations are about protecting the people who cannot get vaccinated. When you have 97%+ of the populace vaccinated then you are also protecting the most vulnerable from the same. This is why Measles is showing up again, because the people decrying vaccines have caused the coverage to drop below the critical threshold.

Until Americans, and even more importantly the "Christian Right" can wake up and actually start acting like Christ tells us to (feed the hungry, heal the sick, give to the poor, love your enemy, give away your wealth), the cruelty America is inflicting on ourselves and the world will only get worse.

The way you're writing is the actual reason why western society is taking such a nosedive. You're trying to shame someone deciding to do something optional because you, personally, believe it to be worthwhile.

The fact of the matter is that the virus being discussed here (the flu) isn't remotely deadly enough to warrant such an escalation my you.

And wherever the flu vaccine is actually worth it is way more disputed then you seem to think. Almost every doctor I've personally visited told me that its a waste of money for a healthy person, because it merely reduces the likelihood and potentially strength of the infection - at the cost of feeling bad for a few days after getting the shot. But I don't live in America, which is kinda the only place that ritually goes through flu vaccinations, yearly.

The only reference to Corona (before your escalation) was merely the acknowledgement that the ultimately questionable messaging during the pandemic likely caused the current push back against all vaccines. That's completely unrelated to wherever the first strain of Corona was deadly enough to warrant using untested vaccines at large.

I noticed this the other day on a mountain bike safety video. Americans tend to believe safety is a personal matter.

Look at trucks and SUVs. If you aren't driving a giant death machine that's on you.

Look at guns. It's your responsibility to protect yourself and your family from criminals with guns by owning a gun.

Etc etc.

The covid vaccine is mostly about you. A couple months of partial protection against infection is not saving the world.

Where do you get "a couple months of partial protection" from? The numbers I saw are very different, take for instance:

> COVID-19 vaccine efficacy or effectiveness against severe disease remained high, although it did decrease somewhat by 6 months after full vaccination. By contrast, vaccine efficacy or effectiveness against infection and symptomatic disease decreased approximately 20–30 percentage points by 6 months.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8863502/

> In most studies, the vaccine efficacy or effectiveness against severe disease remained high (≥70%) for up to 6 months after vaccination for all four vaccines that we evaluated (and mostly ≥80% for the two mRNA vaccines).

This is the only place I could find in your source that mentions the efficacy numbers (not the drop in efficacy, which is what this is focused on), and it is only against severe disease.

The first one that came up for my search was this:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

The findings section shows that by the time omicron was around, you were at around 43% against infection by 112 days.

That was then. What is it today? How many people do you need to jab to prevent one transmission? And how many people are doing that? Uptake is very low today.

There was a time when "the VAX is not about you!" was plausible. That time has passed.

Thanks for the link. Yeah that's reasonable for 2025, it's perhaps comparable to the yearly flu vaccination now.

The effect on mortality is what mattered, and that effect was very significant in the risk groups.

Would have been even better if the effect on transmission had remained with the later variants, but unfortunately it didn't as the virus changed. Preventing transmission would be ideal, but that was just not possible with this particular virus and regular vaccines. But it still saved a lot of lives because of the very strong effect on mortality.

Yes. In other words, the covid vaccine is mostly for the benefit of the person taking it. In some risks groups that benefit was significant.

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