Comment by rstuart4133 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rstuart4133 | Hacker News Reader

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> https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/statistics-and-data/statis...

Hmm. Official statistics from an OECD government. A very trustworthy source. According to AI's it is "not* an outlier, the figures are the same for most OECD countries.

However the metric is different. I was quoting excess deaths, Sweden figures are deaths attributed to COVID. While it may true COVID caused a lot of deaths, in the elderly with a lot of comorbidities doctors had to put something on the death certificate and COVID was a popular choice at the time. But did it matter if they were going to die away? COVID killing me when I had a many good years left would be very unfortunate. Dying from COVID when I had only a few months because of other reasons doesn't concern me so much.

This means excess deaths measures something more relevant to me than measuring deaths attributed to COVID.

> with a mandate forcing untested chemicals on the populace.

I wasn't aware that any modern vaccine from an OECD country not being tested before used on a human. All COVID vaccines certainly were. The testing was necessarily accelerated, but it's unlikely the normal regime would have caught the issue with AstraZeneca.

Mandated vaccination is tricky. A healthly majority of the population with 80+ year old family members in homes is going to want the workers in those facilities to take every possible precaution, including alcohol disinfectants, masks and be vaccinated. Some of that majority were taking those same precautions in their own homes.

The same reasoning was applied to populations at less risk, at extreme kindergartens enforcing vaccination and quarritines. Where to draw the line is problematic, but in all OECD countries it was drawn well before mandatory vaccination of the entire population. That didn't happen.

ive employed the laymans heuristic that if you die with covid it is most likely what killed you, the comorbidities don't matter to me. on the surface your excess death metric makes sense but im not convinced and need time to reflect.

its too much of a coincidence for me that mrna was not viable until the very moment that it was needed. i vehemently disagree that further testing would have been redundant. moreover the non-mrna covid vaccine by novavax (released to the public less than a year after covid mrna vaccines) has a significantly better safety profile. no, mandatory vaccination of the entire population didnt happen, only the majority of able bodied workers (aka the powerhouse of the economy, hence a bit of rounding occurred when i took artistic liberty).

therefore the world could have waited a year, locked down, and not subjected its driving force to deadly peril. this did not occur, consequently the world's workers were forced to suffer so that pharma companies could make money, the world's elderly/immunocompromised could be protected, and goverments could print less money.

> its too much of a coincidence for me that mrna was not viable until the very moment that it was needed.

Shrug. Such things do happen. The history of development of mRNA crosses decades, with many wrong turns. The final tweaks needed to make it work did happen not long before COVID happened on the scene, but as COVID had not been heard of at the time I can't see how that could be have been artificially orchestrated. The mRNA developers did get extraordinarily lucky when a pandemic generate a healthy return on their decades of investment just as it became viable. Having read the history of mRNA, I don't begrudge them their luck. Individuals invested huge amounts of time, took large personal risks (to the extend of being fired for their persistence) in making it happen. Such efforts usually aren't rewarded.

> i vehemently disagree that further testing would have been redundant.

There was one recorded death to due mRNA COVID vaccines in Australia. Nearly everyone who was vaccinated in the early stages got several doses mRNA. So at the absolute best, more testing could have prevented one death there. But maybe not. Given that, your vehemently disagreement is difficult to understand.

> therefore the world could have waited a year, locked down

I don't know where you live, but in liberal Western democracies lock downs are problematic. The USA mostly failed at it as did most places. Australia did better, but babies going without food when parents weren't allowed to leave apartments effected with COVID caused a lot of angst even with people who broadly agreed with the direction the government took. Such mistakes are entirely avoidable of course, but when sudden drastic action happens fubar's are inevitable. (And it wasn't that serious because locals who weren't in a locked down zone purchased food out of their own pockets and dropped it off.)

The reality is, the enforced of vaccination for some groups of people was much easier for most Australians to swallow than those lock downs, mask mandates, enforced distancing, mandatory tracking apps on your phone, and enforced hand washing. You are in a small minority that thinks otherwise. When you look at the social and economic costs of lock downs vs mRNA vaccines (which history has shown to be very safe), the choice looks to be a no-brainer to me. China did for example did go the lock down route, and were able to enforce it because they aren't a liberal democracy. The outcome by every metric was far worse that Australia, who abandoned lock downs as soon as enough vaccines became available.

you believe in the timing of this discovery and i don't, we must agree to disagree there.

regarding the single recorded death in australia and your assertion that mrna vaccines are very safe, we are commenting beneath an article discussing otherwise, my disagreement is redundant.

regarding liberal democracies, the US has recently been executing its own citizens on the street and any government would do the same if deemed in the countrys best interests, it isnt clear why politics matter here.

regarding the ease of taking mrna vaccines, it is also easy to swallow cyanide pills. australians live a utopic life in low density housing. seems fairly clear that the average australian would accept mandates unquestioningly, furthermore that an australian lockdown would look a lot different to that of a high density country with a billion-strong population.

the reality is that we could have waited 6 months and not caused permanent damage to swathes of our world's future. this wasn't possible to fully predict at the time so i will give some benefit of the doubt. but when trillions are involved, safety of the common man is not the priority. which is also arguably the case when it comes to the gain of function research that initiated this entire situation.

> regarding the single recorded death in australia and your assertion that mrna vaccines are very safe, we are commenting beneath an article discussing otherwise, my disagreement is redundant.

No, we aren't commenting beneath an article discussing dangerous side effects of mRNA vaccines. Granted, the title might make you think that. But the article discusses one side effect: VTT. That side effect was caused by one vaccine: AstraZeneca. It is not an mRNA vaccine. As you noted, our discussion was about mRNA vaccines being responsible for a single recorded death, despite heavy use. AstraZeneca caused 8 or 11 deaths in Australia, depending on who you believe, yet distribution was limited.

> australians live a utopic life in low density housing.

It's true many Australians do live in low density housing. If you're well off I guess it life is pretty good, although I prefer the high density European cities to car centric suburbs. If you aren't so well off no place is a utopia. This summer it hit 48°C in the south. Cooler in Darwin in the north - 39°C, but 90% humidity. Australians get respite from this by going to the shopping centres, the pools or the sea, but you can't do that during a lock down.

> seems fairly clear that the average australian would accept mandates unquestioningly,

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_protests_in_Australia :

"While some protests were peaceful, others ended in clashes between protesters and police."

> furthermore that an australian lockdown would look a lot different to that of a high density country with a billion-strong population.

Maybe. You spend your time staring at your house walls or watching TV in both places. But as you say, Australian houses are bigger, so the walls would be further away /s

whoops i made the incorrect assumption that AZ was mrna. clearly it has scrambled my brain. either way my point stands that further testing would have saved young lives, which as you have noted was the tradeoff for getting the world economy back on track fast. net result seems similar to extended negotiations saving lives in war, so i still think that conscription and a mandate to take untested medicine are highly comparable.

i dont feel like arguing the lockdown point will lead us anywhere, anyway thanks for the laugh from your concluding statement

> whoops i made the incorrect assumption that AZ was mrna.

Oddly, I've seen a few people stridently arguing against all vaccines say this just recently. You're right in saying AstraZeneca was rushed through. I think that was understandable under the circumstances. I sought it out when there were no other vaccines were available, but I am in the high risk group. It would have been madness for the younger population to do the same, but that would have been difficult as the government put age restrictions on it as soon as the side effects became apparent.

Until speaking with you here I didn't realise the general anti-vaccination sentiment it stirred up. That will cause far more deaths than the VITT it triggered.

Thanks for the chat.

'as soon as the side effects became apparent' occurred a few months after millions upon millions of youth had already taken AZ. this was a tradeoff for having protected your demographic, which i agree is a positive note from that particular perspective.

indeed vaccination levels have notably dipped across the west as a result of this entire debacle. it will make for a great comparison in a few years when we can calculate excessive deaths across more diseases than simply covid. thank you for handling this discussion in a respectful manner, its very difficult to talk about these things productively. all the best

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