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> I didn't originate this conversation so I can't speak for the original commenter, but it seems to me it's worth pausing for thought when a billion people are

> I didn't originate this conversation so I can't speak for the original commenter, but it seems to me it's worth pausing for thought when a billion people are due to receive a medical intervention of a type that has never been used before. Sure... but what makes you think the scientific and medical community haven't done the equivalent of this? > I'm not opting to defend against that risk but nor do I think the calculus is as obvious as you are making out. Then how would you describe the calculus? I know what COVID-19 infection numbers and statistics are, at least within some +-% differential. But I have no knowledge or evidence of any future problem with the COVID-19 vaccine. Why would I accept a known and severe risk against an unknown risk with unknown severity? So, could you expand on the less obvious aspects of the calculus here? If there's knew information I want to know. > On the one hand I am very, very glad the vaccines are available because they seem to be significantly suppressing infection numbers and keeping people out of hospital. On the other hand I believe that individuals should not be coerced by their employer into receiving a vaccine. I think it's a tough subject, but just as someone shouldn't be coerced by their employer into receiving a vaccine, I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease. How do you reconcile that? > Which people? Take the total number of people who are now anti-vax, subtract those who became anti-vax before 2020. That remaining population. > People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years. And what has come of it? Billions of people around the world have received vaccines, untold lives have been saved, we've eliminated insane diseases like SmallPox and Polio... but now I'm supposed to side with the anti-vax people because why exactly? What did the medical and science community do to lose my trust? I guess you could argue the funding of gain of function research in Wuhan (where the virus almost certainly originated from), but that's not going to undo the cumulative history of medicine that has been wildly successful for me.

tome 5y ago
I'm not sure how to respond. Did you miss the part where I said I have been vaccinated? I'm not trying to persuade anyone to go unvaccinated! I'm just expressing surprise that a lot of people either (a) don't know that the mechanisms for all the popular vaccines available in the west are completely new or (b) are completely unconcerned about the risks of giving such new medical interventions to a billion people within the space of months. Given the grave situation we find ourselves in it seems to me that mass vaccination is the best option for humanity and for individuals. However, there is an unquantifiable downside risk as a result of lack of knowledge. >I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease. How do you reconcile that? Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months. > > People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years. > And what has come of it? ... I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > However, there is an unquantifiable downside risk as a result of lack of knowledge. ok... but then you (not you specifically) have to weigh that against the known and real risk of COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands dead, "long COVID", etc. versus an unknown and un-hypothesized risk with unknown bad outcomes. Like articulate a possible future bad outcome that is realistic due to these vaccines. Can you (or anyone) do that? Like do you think in 20 years people will start wilting away b/c the took the COVID-19 vaccine? > Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months. I... wouldn't call our response to COVID-19 all that successful. How many in the US and UK alone have died? a million? > I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon. I'm specifically suggesting that there are loads of new "vaccine skeptics" that are only vaccine skeptics starting in 2020 because they've received enough politicization and disinformation to do so. They weren't skeptics when they were getting annual flu shots or shots for measles or w/e and had no issue with vaccines or the scientific community before.
azangru 5y ago
> Then how would you describe the calculus? Here's the calculus. When a needle goes into your arm, you know, with a one hundred percent certainty, that you are subjecting yourself to a tiny risk that something will go wrong. You don't know how your body will respond to the vaccine, nor can you know how protective it is going to be in a couple of months. You know that the risk, to the best of our current knowledge (which tends to change bewilderingly fast), is tiny. Yet, there is no denying that it exists. And you know, know with an absolute certainty, that your body is getting exposed to the vaccine. How much this thought scares you, if at all, is a part of the instrument known as informed consent. What you also know is that if your body gets exposed to the actual virus, there is a much greater chance that something will go very wrong. What you cannot know is whether you will have that encounter with the virus. You also do not know whether you have already been exposed to it and have had it asymptomatically (in theory, it is technically possible to test your immune system, but in practice, no-one is going to do it outside of a clinical trial). > I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease Pre-2019, we did not mandate that people around us get vaccinated against flu, although we know that flu can result in a lethal pneumonia. Nor did we require people around us to be vaccinated against chickenpox, meningococcus, tuberculosis, etc. Each of those infections can be lethal, so why should we be coerced into sharing space with people who can be contagious? Thing is, we were not concerned about it, just as you are not concerned about the possible side effects of a vaccine. The narrative on covid vaccines has been changing over the course of the last several months, which may have given rise to resentment that has nothing to do with politics. The narrative used to be that maybe some happy day we will get the vaccines that will protect our most vulnerable, and then it will be safe to lift the lockdown. Then it celebrated that the vaccines became available to the general public. Good, happy news. Then the narrative shifted to emphasise that vaccines are not perfectly protective, yet still protect people from severe and long covid. That would have been a great place for it to stop, but it keeps shifting further. Now, if a vaccine protects the vaccinated person against catching the virus (with, say, 60% probability) and against a severe covid (with an over 95% probability), then why do the vaccinated make demands of the unvaccinated? The vaccinated got their extra insurance; why are they still freaking out? > but now I'm supposed to side with the anti-vax people because why exactly? No-one asks you to side with the anti-vax people; the only request they can make is to peacefully co-exist.

tome 5y ago

I'm not sure how to respond. Did you miss the part where I said I have been vaccinated? I'm not trying to persuade anyone to go unvaccinated! I'm just expressing surprise that a lot of people either (a) don't know that the mechanisms for all the popular vaccines available in the west are completely new or (b) are completely unconcerned about the risks of giving such new medical interventions to a billion people within the space of months. Given the grave situation we find ourselves in it seems to me that mass vaccination is the best option for humanity and for individuals. However, there is an unquantifiable downside risk as a result of lack of knowledge. >I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease. How do you reconcile that? Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months. > > People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years. > And what has come of it? ... I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon.

ericmay 5y ago
> However, there is an unquantifiable downside risk as a result of lack of knowledge. ok... but then you (not you specifically) have to weigh that against the known and real risk of COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands dead, "long COVID", etc. versus an unknown and un-hypothesized risk with unknown bad outcomes. Like articulate a possible future bad outcome that is realistic due to these vaccines. Can you (or anyone) do that? Like do you think in 20 years people will start wilting away b/c the took the COVID-19 vaccine? > Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months. I... wouldn't call our response to COVID-19 all that successful. How many in the US and UK alone have died? a million? > I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon. I'm specifically suggesting that there are loads of new "vaccine skeptics" that are only vaccine skeptics starting in 2020 because they've received enough politicization and disinformation to do so. They weren't skeptics when they were getting annual flu shots or shots for measles or w/e and had no issue with vaccines or the scientific community before.

azangru 5y ago

> Then how would you describe the calculus? Here's the calculus. When a needle goes into your arm, you know, with a one hundred percent certainty, that you are subjecting yourself to a tiny risk that something will go wrong. You don't know how your body will respond to the vaccine, nor can you know how protective it is going to be in a couple of months. You know that the risk, to the best of our current knowledge (which tends to change bewilderingly fast), is tiny. Yet, there is no denying that it exists. And you know, know with an absolute certainty, that your body is getting exposed to the vaccine. How much this thought scares you, if at all, is a part of the instrument known as informed consent. What you also know is that if your body gets exposed to the actual virus, there is a much greater chance that something will go very wrong. What you cannot know is whether you will have that encounter with the virus. You also do not know whether you have already been exposed to it and have had it asymptomatically (in theory, it is technically possible to test your immune system, but in practice, no-one is going to do it outside of a clinical trial). > I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease Pre-2019, we did not mandate that people around us get vaccinated against flu, although we know that flu can result in a lethal pneumonia. Nor did we require people around us to be vaccinated against chickenpox, meningococcus, tuberculosis, etc. Each of those infections can be lethal, so why should we be coerced into sharing space with people who can be contagious? Thing is, we were not concerned about it, just as you are not concerned about the possible side effects of a vaccine. The narrative on covid vaccines has been changing over the course of the last several months, which may have given rise to resentment that has nothing to do with politics. The narrative used to be that maybe some happy day we will get the vaccines that will protect our most vulnerable, and then it will be safe to lift the lockdown. Then it celebrated that the vaccines became available to the general public. Good, happy news. Then the narrative shifted to emphasise that vaccines are not perfectly protective, yet still protect people from severe and long covid. That would have been a great place for it to stop, but it keeps shifting further. Now, if a vaccine protects the vaccinated person against catching the virus (with, say, 60% probability) and against a severe covid (with an over 95% probability), then why do the vaccinated make demands of the unvaccinated? The vaccinated got their extra insurance; why are they still freaking out? > but now I'm supposed to side with the anti-vax people because why exactly? No-one asks you to side with the anti-vax people; the only request they can make is to peacefully co-exist.