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Comment by notmyjob | Hacker News Reader

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Right, because real science never updates. Once an idea gets said out loud, it’s locked in forever like when doctors insisted ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food, and we definitely didn’t discover Helicobacter pylori decades later living rent-free in stomachs.

Fauci’s “herd immunity” comments came before Delta and Omicron turned one virus into a family reunion. Updating that view wasn’t deceit. It was responding to evidence, something the “verify, don’t trust” crowd supposedly likes, except when the verification disagrees with their memes.

You have reached a different conclusion than I, viz that Fauci had no way of knowing his comments about herd immunity were potentially misleading, and that the variants were a complete surprise to him and that the unlikely goal of herd immunity was not really part of the definition of vaccines as we have come to know them. You and I will have to live in our different worlds. If you want to give your infant thrice yearly Covid boosters in perpetuity I totally support your right to do that. Hopefully you support my right to disagree and base my own decisions on my own reading of the literature (which isn’t as suppressed for many decades to come)?

But.....we agree that Covid exists, right? And that vaccines against it, just like vaccines against flu, do generally help by increasing your resistance to the ilness itself and its side effects.

If we agree on it....why wouldn't you take it? I got the impression from your post that you generally aren't going to?

Or more simply....who cares what Fauci said? I literally had to look up who that is.

Covid exists and there are claims which I suspect are at least directionally correct that getting regular vaccines (within 3 months of exposure iirc) can reduce some symptoms and prevent what seem to be rare complications. But, my doctor and my insurance company are not suggesting I get these boosters?/vaccines?, and they have a vested interest and better ability to weigh the evidence and make decisions about what pharmaceuticals they recommend as that’s their profession and making mistakes about it poses an existential risk for them. But I’m in a very low risk area and reasonably low risk so ymmv. Even the frail elderly people I know aren’t being vaccinated despite their thirst for it and fear of Covid. Personally, I worry a lot more about candida auris than I worry about covid.

Both my doctor and insurance company in the US recommend getting COVID vaccinations. I am a healthy adult. They make the same recommendations for my children.

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