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Unpopular opinion but as countries get majority vaccinated they have to learn to not be as scared of it.

• gunshai 5y ago
  Why is this unpopular.
  • h3cate 5y ago
    Post it on twitter/reddit and see what response you get
    • bin_bash 5y ago
      Well that’s the case expressing any kind of opinion about COVID
      • h3cate 5y ago
        Unfortunately
    • BoxOfRain 5y ago
      To be fair, expecting reasonable responses from Twitter on any subject is a bit like panning for gold in an open sewer. The platform's whole premise is compressing things to the point it's the place on the internet nuance goes to die.
  • lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    Because there is a non-insignificant portion of the population that is thriving off corona hysteria.
    • SamPatt 5y ago
      And a not insignificant proportion of politicians more than happy to take advantage of the fear and expand their power.
      • lp0_on_fire 5y ago
        Tale as old as time. I'd say I'm disappointed and surprised that more people aren't concerned about it but there's a reason it's a historical trope.
        • xunn0026 5y ago
          > more people aren't concerned about it I think a lot of people are concerned about it. And I'd further say for a segment of population this also triggers vaccine hesitancy.
    • lijogdfljk 5y ago
      Also because of how terrible hospitals are in many places. Wait times insane, staff overworked, etc. I'm vaccinated but quite fearful of anything which puts me in needing medical attention. The unvaccinated are a burden i'm tired of supporting.
  • Miner49er 5y ago
    Maybe because the vaccines are looking like they aren't going to be be as effective as they were originally made out to be, but I still think we need to return to normal at some point.
    • tootie 5y ago
      They are as effective as we thought they were. Delta is just more virulent than previous strains and we're at barely 50% vaccination rate. We're still waiting on safe doses for children and the millions of stubborn people who think public health is a personal decision.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
• outside1234 5y ago
  I don't think that's unpopular. More precisely, once the vaccine is available to all age groups, the only people that need to be scared of it are the unvaccinated. And they will have had every opportunity to get vaccinated, so we shouldn't optimize for them.
  • greyivy 5y ago
    Not the immunocompromised or those who are legitimately unable to get vaccinated? Not a very nuanced take.
    • mwint 5y ago
      What can we do for those people, assuming forever-lockdowns aren’t an option?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • jjoonathan 5y ago
        Pressure those who choose to go unvaccinated for misguided "personal freedom" reasons to reconsider their choices.
        • SamPatt 5y ago
          The article explains why a vaccination is not a long term guarantee you will not get and or spread this new flu.
          • jjoonathan 5y ago
            "It's not a perfect solution so we might as well do nothing instead!" Come on. Getting vaccinated has more than enough utility for you and for others to make it a good choice on either principle alone.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  I think the people who don't like that opinion, although very, very loud online, are not actually in the majority. But, it sure sounds like it online though.
  • h3cate 5y ago
    I hope that's the case. The question becomes though, what influences politicians in their policy making the most?
• colmvp 5y ago
  I'm not scared of Covid-19, I'm mostly concerned that as the numbers continue to rise and the hospitals/ICUs around me get more Covid-19 cases, it'll force the government to have to issue harsher measures to prevent the system from bursting at the seams because hospitals don't have limitless resources. People who don't want strict measures can't hand-wave that potential reality away.
  • doubled112 5y ago
    It was pretty much this for me and at this point more so. I've received both shots and was pretty low risk to begin with. However, local hospitals were shipping patients off to other cities, and sending adults to the children's hospital. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that the outcome of something like being in a car accident would be worse now than normal.
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    At some point prior to saturation, hospitals and the public deserve to have unvaccinated COVID-19 patients (without a medical reason) turned away. We can do one of two things as communities: (1) Mandate vaccination for everyone, and provide everyone care (2) Allow everyone the freedom to remain unvaccinated, and limit care There's no other "normal" world where a highly communicable disease that causes a sufficient number of hospital cases exists and circulates in the human population. * Where normal means "normal freedoms of movement" + "normal social interactions allowed" + "normal economic operation" + "hospitals aren't overwhelmed and have capacity for normal care"
    • h3cate 5y ago
      Do hospitals turn away people with the flu away if they are not vaccinated? Or is it only Covid that you would impose this rule for?
      • ethbr0 5y ago
        Fair question. It looks like flu (influenza) hospitalizations run at about 0.15% of total population, per year. SARS-CoV-2, at 1-5%? Although that might be vs confirmed cases (?), which would muddle the numbers. But suffice to say substantially higher. So I think there's an argument to be made for this being a COVID only measure (and probably measles, etc too). IMHO, people are entitled to freedom regarding their choice to vaccinate. But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair. They're externalizing the consequences of their decisions onto me, and the rest of society. So yeah, IMHO, their decisions: their bill to pay. With their life, if necessary. (But I may be biased, as I have family working ICU, triaging unvaccinated coronavirus deniers who show up at the ER, begging to be saved, who are then sapping care from non-COVID patients...)
• Zigurd 5y ago
  That is only unpopular when it serves as an excuse for being against mitigation measures. Those same people are clogging the hospitals, diverting medications from people who genuinely need them, and raising the noise level for real advice to overcome. Everyone wants to go back to normal. The people who from the beginning were contrary just for the lulz are ruining our return to normal.
• dboreham 5y ago
  Isn't that the mainstream opinion?
• adrr 5y ago
  People aren’t scared up. Concern is around ICU usage and that elective surgery in hot areas are put on hold which include critical cancer removal surgeries. Also we have a large group of unvaccinated group which are under kids under 12. With life going back to normal, the standard diseases are back like RSV, paraflu and others. Get two at the same time and it’s a emergency room visit. Get 3 at the same time and it’s life threatening. Two at the same time isn’t uncommon before covid. Now my pediatrician says 3 is happening and it’s a kid killer. It boggles my mind why there is pushback on mandating kids to wear masks in schools.
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    If they’re spending the whole day in a classroom together the effect of masks is going to be minimal.
    • NationalPark 5y ago
      That's simply not what the research has found. Edit: Allow me to clarify - the research everyone is citing that says masking is effective in teachers and ineffective in students (the 37% number) predates both the delta variant and widespread infection in Southern states. Further, masking is understood etiologically as a prevention method and has been used successfully in other outbreaks and in other countries. Clinicians and policy makers as a rule work with incomplete data in an emerging situation, so unequivocally stating that masking kids in schools doesn't help is a very bad misrepresentation of both the data/research and the implications to policy.
      • only_as_i_fall 5y ago
        Can you provide a source? My understanding was that masks were primarily effective at preventing high viral load droplets from spreading the virus during short interactions. I don't have any source to prove that to be the case because data on the effectiveness of masks seems frustratingly sparse.
        • 5y ago
• pohl 5y ago
  Even less popular opinion: fear is irrelevant. What we actually have is a cultural gap in how risk is assessed. Some only consider individual risk of death. Others also consider risk to beyond death, and beyond themselves. Casting the latter as afraid is unhelpful.
  • luckylion 5y ago
    Casting those who have a higher risk threshold than you as "only considering individual risk", while the other, better people also consider others ... yeah, that's helpful.
    • spideymans 5y ago
      “I’m young, so I have nothing to worry about”, is a sentiment I’ve seen expressed all to commonly.
      • luckylion 5y ago
        I'm not young, I'm overweight, my risk is elevated. I'm also vaccinated, but chose to get it way later than I could have based on priority, because I calculated my personal risk to be minimal, and others' to be significantly higher despite lower priority. And "I'm so wise and noble and everyone who doesn't share my opinion is a selfish ass" is still a dumb way to frame it.
  • h3cate 5y ago
    If you are a healthy person then you are low risk. If you are unhealthy (smoke, overweight, health condition) then you are at risk. I think a lot of people demanding the mandating of vaccines and mask wearing are in the smokers / overweight category and yet those people are never told to become healthy in themselves. People with health conditions have thought about illnesses long before covid. Thoughts?
    • t-writescode 5y ago
      I think a look at Texas shows the real danger of Covid. Near 0% ER (edit: availability). If you’re in a car accident, you may not get the life saving attention you need, because so many someones refused to vaccinate. That’s the cascading effects we need to deal with, here. I’m not worried about getting covid, myself. I wasn’t too worried before I was vaccinated and I’m not worried at all, now. I’m terrified of needing normal, emergency medical care, or so-called elective surgeries (which is almost all surgeries, even the vital ones), and being unable to get it because thousands of beds are filled with people on respirators.
• thingification 5y ago
  Long COVID exists. Personally, it's always worried me more than the risk of death from COVID. I think people who haven't had a chronic condition (including doctors) tend to underestimate the impact they can have on your life. Long COVID symptoms may not be "severe" or "serious" in a medical coding dictionary, but those terms in a medical dictionary are quite distinct from their everyday meanings. The best evidence we have seems to be that somewhere very roughly around 20% of people who get infected (vaccinated or not) get it -- more if you're older, less if you're younger. Experts don't seem to be willing to say much about what fraction of those people will have symptoms forever, or to what extent (very happy to hear otherwise if somebody knows better!). While case numbers are high again (in the UK) and with the more infectious and virulent Delta variant having replaced others, it's not totally clear to me that the risks from long COVID are even all that much changed since before the vaccines.
  • thingification 5y ago
    Curious why the downvote? Perhaps because "always worried me more than the risk of death"? If so: this is because the evidence always seems to have said that the risk of long COVID has been at least an order of magnitude higher than the risk of death. Also, if you have no dependents, death involves less suffering: in the unlikely event it happens, you're out of the picture already after a short period of misery. On the other hand, chronic illness can come with a lifetime of suffering.
  • rossdavidh 5y ago
    Yes, but, the reality is that everyone is going to get exposed to this virus eventually. Probably not that long from now, if you haven't yet. Pretending that evading it forever is possible, is not helping people to make wise decisions; I think many of the unvaccinated currently believe they can evade both the virus and the vaccine (they are incorrect). Eventually, long covid or not, we are all getting exposed. We should act accordingly.
    • thingification 5y ago
      One point is that the consequences of getting COVID are likely to become less serious over time as prevalence is controlled (via better vaccines, we hope, masks etc., if we're not fatalistic), better drugs are found. Another important point is that currently, the risks of long COVID seem not at all well understood. "Unknown risk" is quite a different thing than "low risk" or "high risk". The lengths to which it makes sense for people to go to avoid it right now depend on those risks, so lying low seems quite sane to me. A worse problem still is, I think, that "we're all going to get it" is a self-fulfilling prophecy: viruses have been unconquerable in the recent past, but this is 2021, we have incredible understanding of the mechanisms (no, not most of the details: they're not all worth knowing) that should give us incredible power over them at some point in the relatively near future (as in the next few decades). If the next few decades, why not the next few years? If we believe it's "inevitable", we'll make it so. (not to mention abandoning effective measures like masks)
• eli 5y ago
  Cases are more than doubling every 2 weeks. Hospitalizations are up every day. If the numbers were flat maybe you would have an argument, but I strongly disagree that we need to "learn to live" with a situation that is rapidly getting worse. I do not want to learn to live with full hospitals and oxygen shortages, as is currently happening in parts of the US.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  The fact this is an unpopular opinion drives me crazy.
• TulliusCicero 5y ago
  The ICU's of some areas are so full that they have to turn people away and let them die. How is that a good time to "not be as scared"?