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I find it disturbing that a post like this gets downvoted. You've said nothing off-the-wall here. A downvote is not a rebuttal or an unceremonious verdict on th

I find it disturbing that a post like this gets downvoted. You've said nothing off-the-wall here. A downvote is not a rebuttal or an unceremonious verdict on the validity of your thoughts. Seriously not a fan of downvotes for this reason...just a blight on public discourse. To get back on topic, I'd really like someone to explain in some way that makes sense to me (because I've heard none--maybe I'm just incorrigible, thought) how a mandatory vaccine is justifiable for a disease with an extremely high survival rate that elderly people who've already exceeded the average life expectancy are disproportionately at risk for.

coldpie 6y ago
Don't worry about early downvotes too much. It doesn't show grey based on percentage of downvotes, it shows grey when it goes below 1 point. So if one guy votes it down soon after it's commented, it goes grey. Others usually come along to correct it.
CyanLite2 6y ago
You're only looking at the death rate. Take a look at the hospitalization rate (~20% for all age groups) and the amount of resources it takes to just keep one person alive. ICUs and hospital staffs are stretched to the brink. People indeed are surviving, but at great expense, and the hospitals have said they can't keep this up much longer. In Houston, TX there was a doctor who had worked 117 days straight and had to be relieved by Army Medical personnel (https://abc13.com/health/85-soldiers-arriving-to-help-treat-covid-19-patients/6317426/ https://abc13.com/health/85-soldiers-arriving-to-help-treat-...). There's just not enough ICU beds and medical staff to go around. Once we run out of hospital resources, the death rate will jump 5-10x. If that happens, you're talking 20+ million deaths in the U.S., on pace with the 1918 pandemic if not worse. If you think the economy is bad now, wait til 20+ million people suddenly aren't shopping anymore. Lastly, consider all of the people who have "recovered" but haven't really recovered, this includes the young 20-30 yr old crowds. There's hundreds of support groups now focused on post-corona-syndrome where people are 100+ days into the recovery but still have symptoms, including brain damage, neurological issues, strokes, kidney failures, shortness of breath, etc. It seems as if the older people are dying, and the younger patients are surviving, but with long-term damage.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Another way of putting is that lockdowns won’t end with a vaccine, they’ll end if there was enough hospital capacity for congressmen and rich people. Why not build more hospitals?
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Because it takes years, and even longer to ramp up the capacity fo medical and nursing schools to staff all of them. Because having ICU beds doesn’t prevent deaths, only reduce them, so a large percentage of the population will still die. Because a vaccine is cheaper and better.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    It takes a long time to build doctors and nurses.
- dead_mall 6y ago
  This is greatly exaggerated and it's really not as bad as you're making it sound. People are surviving at no expense, and even if anything you said were true, that still doesn't justify the reason to go get vaccinated. People here are being downvoted just for being anti-vax and skeptical about it. It seems to me a bunch of fear mongering going around. 20+ million is laughably exaggerated, Worldometer says there has only been 600k deaths total corona related. Who knows if there statistics is even real though cause just last month, it said there were only 350k deaths. There has been times where they've even been manipulated https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/technology-news/other-tech-news/attempts-to-hack-website-publishing-coronavirus-statistics.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/techn... On top of that, just go on google search and look up "covid X patients" where X is any number you can think of, and you'll legit get fabricated results that will fit your search narrative. Now mix this with fear mongering social media people and you've got a force of people advocating for a truly skeptic vaccine
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
What does "extremely high survival rate" mean? Around 0.5% of people who get this virus die. For a highly transmissible virus, that's incredibly scary. It means that left unchecked, around a million people will die in the US alone. That's a massive public health issue. Requiring people to accept a safe vaccine is completely reasonable and proportionate. > elderly people who've already exceeded the average life expectancy Letting hundreds of thousands of people (in the US alone) with easily a decade left to live die of a preventable disease is not ethical. What you're writing sounds extremely callous.
- WildParser 6y ago
  Not all people are going to get infected. One result of the Heinsberg study in Germany was that living together with an infected person only resulted in ~43% chance of infection. With more people living together the chance even went down to 18%. Also the numbers of Covid-19 are mainly following a Gompertz model - like a seasonal virus that starts big and then fizzles. The high R-Values people talked about in the beginning aren't a real thing. Michael Levitt in the beginning already calculated the outbreak in China perfectly. He made good Videos to explain the basic math. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgPf1SuPNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgPf1SuPNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o Maybe take a look at some f'/f in a logchart... It's easy to do - just look at death per day/total. Some countries are easy to model (e.g. Germany) - US is difficult with policies and outbreaks coming from different sides, ... - but some states are not that difficult to understand)
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    > One result of the Heinsberg study in Germany was that living together with an infected person only resulted in ~43% chance of infection. If you're living in an area where the virus is circulating, you are likely to eventually be exposed many times. Getting lucky once is not enough. > like a seasonal virus that starts big and then fizzles. The high R-Values people talked about in the beginning aren't a real thing. They're absolutely real. Seasonal viruses come back every year, so if this is like the flu, then we have to worry about another major wave in the fall. Epidemics can slow down for two reasons: * Increasing immunity. Herd immunity is a long way off in most places in the world. Even places that had some of the worst outbreaks, like NY city, have only had ~20% infection rates. * People change their behavior, causing R to decrease. Social distancing, mask-wearing, enforced lockdowns, quarantining of infected people, quarantining of exposed people - these can all lead to slower spread of the virus. > Michael Levitt in the beginning already calculated the outbreak in China perfectly. The epidemic was suppressed in China through a massive government and societal response. It would have been far worse if there had been no reaction. Because of the reaction, most of the country was spared the experience that Wuhan had. If all containment measures were to end today, the epidemic would flare up again and millions of people would die over the next several months. The only way to permanently dampen the outbreak is to achieve a high level of immunity. That can either be through a vaccine, in which case almost nobody will die, or it can be through herd immunity, in which case many millions of people will die worldwide.
BurningFrog 6y ago
> how a mandatory vaccine is justifiable Where did the "mandatory" come from? If a vaccine is promising but unproven, the sensible thing is to make it available to those who want to take the risk. I agree that for a mandatory vaccine, you want a high level of certainty.
- ghaff 6y ago
  And the odds of a vaccine being literally "mandatory" in democratic countries are essentially nil. No one is breaking down doors and holding families down to get their vaccines. (What is possible is that schools and even workplaces require proof of vaccination once one is widely available if there is still a widespread virus risk. That could arguably be fairly coercive but it's important to distinguish from being "mandatory.")
  - owl57 6y ago
    Why is it important to distinguish things required by most schools and workplaces from literally mandatory ones?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      While a widespread vaccine requirement to be physically present in places that will be important to many is a fairly big stick, it's still a far cry from vaccinating people by force. Certainly I might well favor the former but would be horrified by the latter.
      - saurik 6y ago
        That is a very subtle and impractical distinction, similar to making an argument that you are merely being pedantic instead of deceptive :/.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      It isn't since working is practically mandatory in our society and going to school is even legally mandatory in many jurisdictions.
y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
> Although this virus has killed many, the risk factor for it is nowhere near high enough to warrant an emergency vaccine. > there's a good chance this virus will burn out in our population long before a truly safe vaccine comes to market. That's the reason for the down-votes, and for once I think it's actually appropriate. The rest of the post was fine, but those are some wildly controversial - if not completely incorrect and reckless - assumptions to make. For one, it's too early to make definitive statements like these. As far as I know, public health experts have made it well known the risk factor is enormously high and so it's worth being proactive than reactive. Clearly there's an enormous amount of effort in getting an emergency vaccine out and I would think for good reason. Nobody on HN is qualified to make statements on this, especially if they're not actively studying this disease or they're not a public health expert.

coldpie 6y ago

Don't worry about early downvotes too much. It doesn't show grey based on percentage of downvotes, it shows grey when it goes below 1 point. So if one guy votes it down soon after it's commented, it goes grey. Others usually come along to correct it.

CyanLite2 6y ago

You're only looking at the death rate. Take a look at the hospitalization rate (~20% for all age groups) and the amount of resources it takes to just keep one person alive. ICUs and hospital staffs are stretched to the brink. People indeed are surviving, but at great expense, and the hospitals have said they can't keep this up much longer. In Houston, TX there was a doctor who had worked 117 days straight and had to be relieved by Army Medical personnel (https://abc13.com/health/85-soldiers-arriving-to-help-treat-covid-19-patients/6317426/ https://abc13.com/health/85-soldiers-arriving-to-help-treat-...). There's just not enough ICU beds and medical staff to go around. Once we run out of hospital resources, the death rate will jump 5-10x. If that happens, you're talking 20+ million deaths in the U.S., on pace with the 1918 pandemic if not worse. If you think the economy is bad now, wait til 20+ million people suddenly aren't shopping anymore. Lastly, consider all of the people who have "recovered" but haven't really recovered, this includes the young 20-30 yr old crowds. There's hundreds of support groups now focused on post-corona-syndrome where people are 100+ days into the recovery but still have symptoms, including brain damage, neurological issues, strokes, kidney failures, shortness of breath, etc. It seems as if the older people are dying, and the younger patients are surviving, but with long-term damage.

an_opabinia 6y ago
Another way of putting is that lockdowns won’t end with a vaccine, they’ll end if there was enough hospital capacity for congressmen and rich people. Why not build more hospitals?
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Because it takes years, and even longer to ramp up the capacity fo medical and nursing schools to staff all of them. Because having ICU beds doesn’t prevent deaths, only reduce them, so a large percentage of the population will still die. Because a vaccine is cheaper and better.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tchaffee 6y ago
  It takes a long time to build doctors and nurses.
dead_mall 6y ago
This is greatly exaggerated and it's really not as bad as you're making it sound. People are surviving at no expense, and even if anything you said were true, that still doesn't justify the reason to go get vaccinated. People here are being downvoted just for being anti-vax and skeptical about it. It seems to me a bunch of fear mongering going around. 20+ million is laughably exaggerated, Worldometer says there has only been 600k deaths total corona related. Who knows if there statistics is even real though cause just last month, it said there were only 350k deaths. There has been times where they've even been manipulated https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/technology-news/other-tech-news/attempts-to-hack-website-publishing-coronavirus-statistics.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/techn... On top of that, just go on google search and look up "covid X patients" where X is any number you can think of, and you'll legit get fabricated results that will fit your search narrative. Now mix this with fear mongering social media people and you've got a force of people advocating for a truly skeptic vaccine

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

What does "extremely high survival rate" mean? Around 0.5% of people who get this virus die. For a highly transmissible virus, that's incredibly scary. It means that left unchecked, around a million people will die in the US alone. That's a massive public health issue. Requiring people to accept a safe vaccine is completely reasonable and proportionate. > elderly people who've already exceeded the average life expectancy Letting hundreds of thousands of people (in the US alone) with easily a decade left to live die of a preventable disease is not ethical. What you're writing sounds extremely callous.

WildParser 6y ago
Not all people are going to get infected. One result of the Heinsberg study in Germany was that living together with an infected person only resulted in ~43% chance of infection. With more people living together the chance even went down to 18%. Also the numbers of Covid-19 are mainly following a Gompertz model - like a seasonal virus that starts big and then fizzles. The high R-Values people talked about in the beginning aren't a real thing. Michael Levitt in the beginning already calculated the outbreak in China perfectly. He made good Videos to explain the basic math. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgPf1SuPNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgPf1SuPNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o Maybe take a look at some f'/f in a logchart... It's easy to do - just look at death per day/total. Some countries are easy to model (e.g. Germany) - US is difficult with policies and outbreaks coming from different sides, ... - but some states are not that difficult to understand)
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  > One result of the Heinsberg study in Germany was that living together with an infected person only resulted in ~43% chance of infection. If you're living in an area where the virus is circulating, you are likely to eventually be exposed many times. Getting lucky once is not enough. > like a seasonal virus that starts big and then fizzles. The high R-Values people talked about in the beginning aren't a real thing. They're absolutely real. Seasonal viruses come back every year, so if this is like the flu, then we have to worry about another major wave in the fall. Epidemics can slow down for two reasons: * Increasing immunity. Herd immunity is a long way off in most places in the world. Even places that had some of the worst outbreaks, like NY city, have only had ~20% infection rates. * People change their behavior, causing R to decrease. Social distancing, mask-wearing, enforced lockdowns, quarantining of infected people, quarantining of exposed people - these can all lead to slower spread of the virus. > Michael Levitt in the beginning already calculated the outbreak in China perfectly. The epidemic was suppressed in China through a massive government and societal response. It would have been far worse if there had been no reaction. Because of the reaction, most of the country was spared the experience that Wuhan had. If all containment measures were to end today, the epidemic would flare up again and millions of people would die over the next several months. The only way to permanently dampen the outbreak is to achieve a high level of immunity. That can either be through a vaccine, in which case almost nobody will die, or it can be through herd immunity, in which case many millions of people will die worldwide.

BurningFrog 6y ago

> how a mandatory vaccine is justifiable Where did the "mandatory" come from? If a vaccine is promising but unproven, the sensible thing is to make it available to those who want to take the risk. I agree that for a mandatory vaccine, you want a high level of certainty.

ghaff 6y ago
And the odds of a vaccine being literally "mandatory" in democratic countries are essentially nil. No one is breaking down doors and holding families down to get their vaccines. (What is possible is that schools and even workplaces require proof of vaccination once one is widely available if there is still a widespread virus risk. That could arguably be fairly coercive but it's important to distinguish from being "mandatory.")
- owl57 6y ago
  Why is it important to distinguish things required by most schools and workplaces from literally mandatory ones?
  - ghaff 6y ago
    While a widespread vaccine requirement to be physically present in places that will be important to many is a fairly big stick, it's still a far cry from vaccinating people by force. Certainly I might well favor the former but would be horrified by the latter.
    - saurik 6y ago
      That is a very subtle and impractical distinction, similar to making an argument that you are merely being pedantic instead of deceptive :/.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    It isn't since working is practically mandatory in our society and going to school is even legally mandatory in many jurisdictions.

y-c-o-m-b 6y ago

> Although this virus has killed many, the risk factor for it is nowhere near high enough to warrant an emergency vaccine. > there's a good chance this virus will burn out in our population long before a truly safe vaccine comes to market. That's the reason for the down-votes, and for once I think it's actually appropriate. The rest of the post was fine, but those are some wildly controversial - if not completely incorrect and reckless - assumptions to make. For one, it's too early to make definitive statements like these. As far as I know, public health experts have made it well known the risk factor is enormously high and so it's worth being proactive than reactive. Clearly there's an enormous amount of effort in getting an emergency vaccine out and I would think for good reason. Nobody on HN is qualified to make statements on this, especially if they're not actively studying this disease or they're not a public health expert.