13 ms·

Instead of making the vaccination desirable, politicians in German spent a lot of time assuring people there would be no mandatory vaccinations. But if you have

Instead of making the vaccination desirable, politicians in German spent a lot of time assuring people there would be no mandatory vaccinations. But if you have to entertain the thought of making it mandatory and if you calm people by saying it will not be, you imply that there is something bad about it. They should have emphasized that they are making sure everybody can get it and that it is the norm to get it, like with a measles vaccination. I also think there should be a "yes I am vaccinated" campaign, and they should give away a certain amount of doses in a lottery. The vaccination is not something to fear, but to be excited about. I think the current strategy is a psychological fail.

vfclists 6y ago
Is it just me or is everyone on HN of the opinion that the vaccines are perfectly safe when in fact it may take more time for any adverse effects to emerge if there are any? Just because people prefer to be cautious doesn't mean they are afraid, not to mention that there is no real justification for the vaccine. The ending of the lockdown is being used as a carrot to get people to take the vaccines, when in fact the original reason for the lockdowns was to prevent the healthcare services from being overburdened until they got a handle on a new unknown disease.
- hyko 6y ago
  there is no real justification for the vaccine The vaccines are the only way we’ll be able to sustainably relax the restrictions we’ve faced for the past year. There is no such thing as perfectly safe, but faced with SARS-CoV-2 or a vaccine, I’ll take the vaccine every time. It’s not even a close contest; it’s like comparing the risks of BASE jumping to walking down the stairs.
  - vfclists 6y ago
    The vaccines are the only way we’ll be able to sustainably relax the restrictions we’ve faced for the past year. This only vindicates my point. The vaccine is being promoted as a means for ending the lockdowns. People are being morally and socially pressured into taking it in the hope that the lockdowns will be lifted.
    - hyko 6y ago
      It’s being promoted as a means to end the restrictions because it’s the only plausible mechanism by which we can do so. The alternatives are all pretty terrible, involving restrictions, disability, hardship, and death on a societal scale. All of life the is the management of risk; the plan is to take the abnormally high risks of the virus and turn them into the very low risks from the vaccines. No regulatory body would ever approve SARS-CoV-2 for human use in this context, because of its appalling side effects and high risk of mortality. Nobody in the west is being forced to take a vaccine, it must be a personal choice. It cannot be a free choice though, because people are mortal and they live in a society that has been transformed by a pandemic. The choice people make has consequences, and it’s right that we discuss them. Vaccination against COVID-19 is not just some random act being promoted by people who are keen on needles. It’s literally plans A, B, and C for returning civic life to something resembling normality in a short period of time.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        None of that is true. The modelling that predicted "death on a societal scale" has all been disproven long ago. If lockdowns ended tomorrow nothing would happen; they correlated with nothing at all. See most post here for links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224981 Or this post on what happened in Sweden (answer: normal levels of death, COVID not visible when correcting for the impact of 2019): https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01... Ending lockdowns requires people understand the true severity of the situation, which is not "no severity" but is also not anywhere near the severity that was predicted. Vaccines won't help: coronaviruses have historically not been solvable with vaccines because they mutate too fast. The constant dramas over whether they work against new variants is indicative of what might be the equilibrium state of the vaccine strategy.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  They aren't perfectly safe, they are a lot safer than COVID.
- buran77 6y ago
  > that there is no real justification for the vaccine The only ways hospitals don't get overrun with COVID patients are lockdown measures or the vaccine. We only have so much capacity to treat COVID cases and every preventable COVID case takes away capacity from treating a less preventable illness. > is everyone on HN of the opinion that the vaccines are perfectly safe when in fact Yeah, we all get to hear that same immensely ignorant line from every antivaxxer ever but I have yet to hear about that vaccine that has killed (or greatly accelerated the death) of 2.5 million people in 1 year. The internet isn't perfectly safe either, someone could be infecting your computer with malware and lead to unimaginable damage to your life and livelihood as we speak but you still connected every moment of the day.
  - vfclists 6y ago
    Yeah, we all get to hear that same immensely ignorant line from every antivaxxer ever but I have yet to hear about that vaccine that has killed Since when has suggesting caution implied being an "anti-vaxxer"? These are the kind of labels being bandied about that makes people wary of the whole affair. As for hospitals being overrun, it is mostly down bad environments in old peoples homes and the hospitals themselves. The homes and the government had about a year to reorganize practices in homes and hospitals to reduce the rate of infection and nothing was done about this. Vaccines are not a substitute for healthy living environments. The simple truth is the next time a new virus emerges it will be back to the same lockdown because vaccines where used as a substitute for hygienic behaviour. It is the same mindset that results in farm animals being raised in crowded environments in the belief that antibiotics can be used to treat them, and the same mindset is being applied to human beings.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > Since when has suggesting caution implied being an "anti-vaxxer"? I called your rhetoric as being the exact same thing antivaxxers also constantly peddle in support of a case they simply cannot make with any real evidence. The "irrational fear" argument. "I have nothing to show it's bad but it could be so that makes it bad". > Vaccines are not a substitute for healthy living environments. A non-sequitur, and they're also not intended to be. Healthy living environments are not a substitute for vaccines. Medicine is not a substitute for prevention yet you still go to doctors and take drugs. You don't take a vaccine because it now allows you to live in a garbage dump sucking on a doorknob a COVID patent just sneezed on. You take the vaccine because there is no perfectly healthy living environment, as over a hundred million confirmed COVID infections stand to attest, and the vaccine will help you stay healthy enough. This means you either don't develop the illness at all, or you do but it's a very light form that doesn't need to take away precious hospital resources, or at the very least you don't die from it. > the next time a new virus emerges So you are avoiding a solid measure now because it's not guaranteed to work perfectly forever and ever. Coincidentally this is another pillar of the antivaxxer rhetoric. Does the seat belt not save lives because if you're hit by a train you die anyway? You had several attempts to make an argument and you just jumped from fallacy to fallacy trying to distract from the fact that your rhetoric crumbles just by looking at it the wrong way. Based on your comments you're clearly not qualified to debate this topic. It's your choice whether you get the vaccine or not. But whether it's good for the population is certainly not up for debate, it's already proven and has been for generations.
- thu2111 6y ago
  It is absurd and wrong that this was flagged and dead, so I vouched for it. If people are not allowed to even ask genuine questions about the safety of medical treatments then it will end up with people automatically assuming the worst, which appears to be what's happening in Europe. People must be free to discuss the safety of new vaccine technologies, as with any other new technology. The people who flagged this post and tried to hide it are making the situation worse, not better, and should be ashamed. The straightforward observation that lockdowns have been constantly moving goalposts and economic shutdowns are now being used to get people to take vaccines is also strongly worthy of discussion. The original justifications were poor (given many decisions prior to 2020 that lockdowns should never be used), but at least understandable. Now? Not so much.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > people are not allowed to even ask genuine questions There was no genuine question, it was begging the answer and leading to a conclusion. The actual genuine idea OP presented and the one you really vouched form but are trying to put this under a veil of legitimacy is that: > there is no real justification for the vaccine A statement that was not only never proven correct but it was actively disproved repeatedly. Is it just me or does this idea still float around only because it's powered by an endless stream of people who are either ignorant, uneducated, or have a hidden interest? Let me know how beguine you feel this question is. And I'll put an actual genuine question that I hope you'll "vouch" for. What were the odds you'd stumble today across a post that barely made it to the front page yesterday as a blip with barely 40 upvotes and it on #502 as we speak, comment repeatedly as direct or indirect replies in support of user vfclists's comments, and all my replies get downvoted including the one I posted just now, day later? An unlikely set of circumstances for a "legitimate" interest.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      I never go through people's posting history and downvote them all, if that's what you're asking. It's a stupid tactic, it happens to me all the time and I wish HN had more advanced software and moderation systems to stop it. Whether a vaccine is "justified" or not is a complex risk/benefit analysis and not a binary decision that everyone can arrive at automatically. There's an entire field of health economics devoted to asking and answering questions like that. The post should not be flagged and dead (AGAIN), because it is polite, raising obvious questions, and its only "crime" is to question current popular takes on vaccines, which is not a sufficient reason to try and hide posts from everyone. That's the opposite of intellectual curiousity.
pintxo 6y ago
+1 Not sure why you got down-voted. Yes, the government PR somehow completely failed on the vaccination part. But then, this is really in line with most of it's actions over the last 12 months. Seeing how the current "lockdown" turns out, it's a miracle we got it right in March 2020. For me, what I find even worse than the vaccination PR disaster is the seemingly total lack of efficiency on the public health front. Reports from the field still are delayed 3-4 days. That's stuff that could have been fixed with appropriate software within a couple of months. Also there still seems to be no concerted effort to collect a statistically sound random sample to learn about the real infection rates.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Did Germany "get it right" in March? To my eye it looks like it just missed the first wave by chance along with many other countries (Germany is not unique in Europe in having not really experienced a first wave). As we now know lockdowns don't work and have no impact, same for masks, there's no real explanation for Germany's "slow start" beyond random variation.
atc 6y ago
The AZ vaccination is based on some of the most mature vaccination technology available. The EU, and specifically German approach to vaccination is a failure of catostrophic proportions. A frankly embarassing state of affairs - but let's blame the Brits for it.

vfclists 6y ago

Is it just me or is everyone on HN of the opinion that the vaccines are perfectly safe when in fact it may take more time for any adverse effects to emerge if there are any? Just because people prefer to be cautious doesn't mean they are afraid, not to mention that there is no real justification for the vaccine. The ending of the lockdown is being used as a carrot to get people to take the vaccines, when in fact the original reason for the lockdowns was to prevent the healthcare services from being overburdened until they got a handle on a new unknown disease.

hyko 6y ago
there is no real justification for the vaccine The vaccines are the only way we’ll be able to sustainably relax the restrictions we’ve faced for the past year. There is no such thing as perfectly safe, but faced with SARS-CoV-2 or a vaccine, I’ll take the vaccine every time. It’s not even a close contest; it’s like comparing the risks of BASE jumping to walking down the stairs.
- vfclists 6y ago
  The vaccines are the only way we’ll be able to sustainably relax the restrictions we’ve faced for the past year. This only vindicates my point. The vaccine is being promoted as a means for ending the lockdowns. People are being morally and socially pressured into taking it in the hope that the lockdowns will be lifted.
  - hyko 6y ago
    It’s being promoted as a means to end the restrictions because it’s the only plausible mechanism by which we can do so. The alternatives are all pretty terrible, involving restrictions, disability, hardship, and death on a societal scale. All of life the is the management of risk; the plan is to take the abnormally high risks of the virus and turn them into the very low risks from the vaccines. No regulatory body would ever approve SARS-CoV-2 for human use in this context, because of its appalling side effects and high risk of mortality. Nobody in the west is being forced to take a vaccine, it must be a personal choice. It cannot be a free choice though, because people are mortal and they live in a society that has been transformed by a pandemic. The choice people make has consequences, and it’s right that we discuss them. Vaccination against COVID-19 is not just some random act being promoted by people who are keen on needles. It’s literally plans A, B, and C for returning civic life to something resembling normality in a short period of time.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      None of that is true. The modelling that predicted "death on a societal scale" has all been disproven long ago. If lockdowns ended tomorrow nothing would happen; they correlated with nothing at all. See most post here for links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224981 Or this post on what happened in Sweden (answer: normal levels of death, COVID not visible when correcting for the impact of 2019): https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01... Ending lockdowns requires people understand the true severity of the situation, which is not "no severity" but is also not anywhere near the severity that was predicted. Vaccines won't help: coronaviruses have historically not been solvable with vaccines because they mutate too fast. The constant dramas over whether they work against new variants is indicative of what might be the equilibrium state of the vaccine strategy.
tomjen3 6y ago
They aren't perfectly safe, they are a lot safer than COVID.
buran77 6y ago
> that there is no real justification for the vaccine The only ways hospitals don't get overrun with COVID patients are lockdown measures or the vaccine. We only have so much capacity to treat COVID cases and every preventable COVID case takes away capacity from treating a less preventable illness. > is everyone on HN of the opinion that the vaccines are perfectly safe when in fact Yeah, we all get to hear that same immensely ignorant line from every antivaxxer ever but I have yet to hear about that vaccine that has killed (or greatly accelerated the death) of 2.5 million people in 1 year. The internet isn't perfectly safe either, someone could be infecting your computer with malware and lead to unimaginable damage to your life and livelihood as we speak but you still connected every moment of the day.
- vfclists 6y ago
  Yeah, we all get to hear that same immensely ignorant line from every antivaxxer ever but I have yet to hear about that vaccine that has killed Since when has suggesting caution implied being an "anti-vaxxer"? These are the kind of labels being bandied about that makes people wary of the whole affair. As for hospitals being overrun, it is mostly down bad environments in old peoples homes and the hospitals themselves. The homes and the government had about a year to reorganize practices in homes and hospitals to reduce the rate of infection and nothing was done about this. Vaccines are not a substitute for healthy living environments. The simple truth is the next time a new virus emerges it will be back to the same lockdown because vaccines where used as a substitute for hygienic behaviour. It is the same mindset that results in farm animals being raised in crowded environments in the belief that antibiotics can be used to treat them, and the same mindset is being applied to human beings.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > Since when has suggesting caution implied being an "anti-vaxxer"? I called your rhetoric as being the exact same thing antivaxxers also constantly peddle in support of a case they simply cannot make with any real evidence. The "irrational fear" argument. "I have nothing to show it's bad but it could be so that makes it bad". > Vaccines are not a substitute for healthy living environments. A non-sequitur, and they're also not intended to be. Healthy living environments are not a substitute for vaccines. Medicine is not a substitute for prevention yet you still go to doctors and take drugs. You don't take a vaccine because it now allows you to live in a garbage dump sucking on a doorknob a COVID patent just sneezed on. You take the vaccine because there is no perfectly healthy living environment, as over a hundred million confirmed COVID infections stand to attest, and the vaccine will help you stay healthy enough. This means you either don't develop the illness at all, or you do but it's a very light form that doesn't need to take away precious hospital resources, or at the very least you don't die from it. > the next time a new virus emerges So you are avoiding a solid measure now because it's not guaranteed to work perfectly forever and ever. Coincidentally this is another pillar of the antivaxxer rhetoric. Does the seat belt not save lives because if you're hit by a train you die anyway? You had several attempts to make an argument and you just jumped from fallacy to fallacy trying to distract from the fact that your rhetoric crumbles just by looking at it the wrong way. Based on your comments you're clearly not qualified to debate this topic. It's your choice whether you get the vaccine or not. But whether it's good for the population is certainly not up for debate, it's already proven and has been for generations.
thu2111 6y ago
It is absurd and wrong that this was flagged and dead, so I vouched for it. If people are not allowed to even ask genuine questions about the safety of medical treatments then it will end up with people automatically assuming the worst, which appears to be what's happening in Europe. People must be free to discuss the safety of new vaccine technologies, as with any other new technology. The people who flagged this post and tried to hide it are making the situation worse, not better, and should be ashamed. The straightforward observation that lockdowns have been constantly moving goalposts and economic shutdowns are now being used to get people to take vaccines is also strongly worthy of discussion. The original justifications were poor (given many decisions prior to 2020 that lockdowns should never be used), but at least understandable. Now? Not so much.
- buran77 6y ago
  > people are not allowed to even ask genuine questions There was no genuine question, it was begging the answer and leading to a conclusion. The actual genuine idea OP presented and the one you really vouched form but are trying to put this under a veil of legitimacy is that: > there is no real justification for the vaccine A statement that was not only never proven correct but it was actively disproved repeatedly. Is it just me or does this idea still float around only because it's powered by an endless stream of people who are either ignorant, uneducated, or have a hidden interest? Let me know how beguine you feel this question is. And I'll put an actual genuine question that I hope you'll "vouch" for. What were the odds you'd stumble today across a post that barely made it to the front page yesterday as a blip with barely 40 upvotes and it on #502 as we speak, comment repeatedly as direct or indirect replies in support of user vfclists's comments, and all my replies get downvoted including the one I posted just now, day later? An unlikely set of circumstances for a "legitimate" interest.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I never go through people's posting history and downvote them all, if that's what you're asking. It's a stupid tactic, it happens to me all the time and I wish HN had more advanced software and moderation systems to stop it. Whether a vaccine is "justified" or not is a complex risk/benefit analysis and not a binary decision that everyone can arrive at automatically. There's an entire field of health economics devoted to asking and answering questions like that. The post should not be flagged and dead (AGAIN), because it is polite, raising obvious questions, and its only "crime" is to question current popular takes on vaccines, which is not a sufficient reason to try and hide posts from everyone. That's the opposite of intellectual curiousity.

pintxo 6y ago

+1 Not sure why you got down-voted. Yes, the government PR somehow completely failed on the vaccination part. But then, this is really in line with most of it's actions over the last 12 months. Seeing how the current "lockdown" turns out, it's a miracle we got it right in March 2020. For me, what I find even worse than the vaccination PR disaster is the seemingly total lack of efficiency on the public health front. Reports from the field still are delayed 3-4 days. That's stuff that could have been fixed with appropriate software within a couple of months. Also there still seems to be no concerted effort to collect a statistically sound random sample to learn about the real infection rates.

thu2111 6y ago
Did Germany "get it right" in March? To my eye it looks like it just missed the first wave by chance along with many other countries (Germany is not unique in Europe in having not really experienced a first wave). As we now know lockdowns don't work and have no impact, same for masks, there's no real explanation for Germany's "slow start" beyond random variation.

atc 6y ago

The AZ vaccination is based on some of the most mature vaccination technology available. The EU, and specifically German approach to vaccination is a failure of catostrophic proportions. A frankly embarassing state of affairs - but let's blame the Brits for it.