4 ms·

> I guess what it comes down to is this: Do you think that if most people got vaccinated, fewer people would get seriously sick & die? > If so, then your posit

> I guess what it comes down to is this: Do you think that if most people got vaccinated, fewer people would get seriously sick & die? > If so, then your position is hard to justify. Sorry, no. For the record, I'm fully vaccinated, but that argument doesn't work. If we all stopped driving cars, fewer people would die in accidents. That's no belief etc, it's a fact. Yet we obviously don't, because cars are super convenient and relatively few people die. We're perfectly fine accepting some people dying for lots of convenience for everyone. The same will have to eventually be accepted for Covid. We can't live in a perpetual half-lockdown because the omega-variant will kill 0.1% of seniors otherwise.

shkkmo 5y ago
> Yet we obviously don't, because cars are super convenient and relatively few people die. We're perfectly fine accepting some people dying for lots of convenience for everyone. Speak for yourself. There are a significant number of people on this site who are pretty vocally opposed to cars precisely due to the safety hazards. There was an article on here just the other day about how drivers of larger trucks and SUVs are twice as likely to kill a pedestrian as drivers of sedans. I would posit that reasons why these risks are so underappreciated (and why we don't wear helmets in cars) is due to long-term concerted efforts to control how cars are understood and protrayed by those who make money from them.
- luckylion 5y ago
  > There are a significant number of people on this site who are pretty vocally opposed to cars precisely due to the safety hazards. No, they're not, otherwise they'd be on a farm and live of the land. Living in the city and being able to walk to the grocery store depends on other people with cars doing all the heavy lifting and delivering whatever they need by car to where they pick it up. > I would posit that reasons why these risks are so underappreciated (and why we don't wear helmets in cars) is due to long-term concerted efforts to control how cars are understood and protrayed by those who make money from them. I fundamentally disagree. Plenty of people die falling off of a ladder each year. Every time you use a ladder, there's a non-zero chance of dying. But ladders are great! They allow you to reach stuff you couldn't get to otherwise, so of course they're worth the risk. So do cars. You can go over that for pretty much any topic. Want to live in a house? Construction workers are dying. Want to eat? People die in the process. But they're few, compared to the population of country, and houses and food are great. If risk minimization is the goal, we'll all run around like the Michelin figure so we don't hurt ourselves. But we don't, because we want to get shit done, and for most things, there's a giant area where the risk is much smaller than the cost associated with avoiding it. The same is true for illnesses. Yes, it sucks, and of course nobody wants to die, but we can't go on like this forever because it could save lives.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    You analogies and argument seems absurd to me. People can believe that cars kill too many people and also not believe that semis should not deliver goods to stores. The broad solutions involve priotizing pedestrians rather than cars and designing cities and transit to make cars both less necessary and safer for other road users. Instead we have regulations that encourage car manufacturers to make and sell bigger cars that kill more people for while achieving no extra utility. Wearing a helmet while driving would increase safety for drivers at not loss of utility. The choice not to do so is indicative of the irrational ways in which we evaluate relative risks. Balancing risk and utility is absolutely necessary, but we do a horrible job of doing that with cars. > The same is true for illnesses. Yes, it sucks, and of course nobody wants to die, but we can't go on like this forever because it could save lives. What are you even going on about here? You think that encouraging healthy people to get vaccinated to help protect other people is stupid because most people are willing to accept the risk of driving? You position makes absolutely no sense to me.
    - baumy 5y ago
      > What are you even going on about here? You think that encouraging healthy people to get vaccinated to help protect other people is stupid because most people are willing to accept the risk of driving? You position makes absolutely no sense to me. This is likely because you're projecting positions onto the person you're responding to that they never stated, and probably don't hold. If you read their comments again, you will discover they said they themselves are vaccinated, and offered no opinion about encouraging other people to get vaccinated as well. That was plainly not the topic of their comment. They are simply pointing out, correctly in my view, that life is not and never will be totally risk free, and at some point the risks that covid presents to the world at large will have to just be accepted, because the costs of lockdowns as countermeasures are simply too great. We can't continue to prioritize minimizing covid at the expense of all else forever. As a side note, the fact that you read someone expressing skepticism of some measures of covid containment, and instantly leapt to "they must think encouraging vaccines is stupid" does not reflect well on you, and is a pretty strong indicator that you're spending a lot of time in an ideological echo chamber that's eager to "other" and strawman anyone that disagrees with its positions. Something worth reflecting on, if you're willing.

shkkmo 5y ago

> Yet we obviously don't, because cars are super convenient and relatively few people die. We're perfectly fine accepting some people dying for lots of convenience for everyone. Speak for yourself. There are a significant number of people on this site who are pretty vocally opposed to cars precisely due to the safety hazards. There was an article on here just the other day about how drivers of larger trucks and SUVs are twice as likely to kill a pedestrian as drivers of sedans. I would posit that reasons why these risks are so underappreciated (and why we don't wear helmets in cars) is due to long-term concerted efforts to control how cars are understood and protrayed by those who make money from them.

luckylion 5y ago
> There are a significant number of people on this site who are pretty vocally opposed to cars precisely due to the safety hazards. No, they're not, otherwise they'd be on a farm and live of the land. Living in the city and being able to walk to the grocery store depends on other people with cars doing all the heavy lifting and delivering whatever they need by car to where they pick it up. > I would posit that reasons why these risks are so underappreciated (and why we don't wear helmets in cars) is due to long-term concerted efforts to control how cars are understood and protrayed by those who make money from them. I fundamentally disagree. Plenty of people die falling off of a ladder each year. Every time you use a ladder, there's a non-zero chance of dying. But ladders are great! They allow you to reach stuff you couldn't get to otherwise, so of course they're worth the risk. So do cars. You can go over that for pretty much any topic. Want to live in a house? Construction workers are dying. Want to eat? People die in the process. But they're few, compared to the population of country, and houses and food are great. If risk minimization is the goal, we'll all run around like the Michelin figure so we don't hurt ourselves. But we don't, because we want to get shit done, and for most things, there's a giant area where the risk is much smaller than the cost associated with avoiding it. The same is true for illnesses. Yes, it sucks, and of course nobody wants to die, but we can't go on like this forever because it could save lives.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  You analogies and argument seems absurd to me. People can believe that cars kill too many people and also not believe that semis should not deliver goods to stores. The broad solutions involve priotizing pedestrians rather than cars and designing cities and transit to make cars both less necessary and safer for other road users. Instead we have regulations that encourage car manufacturers to make and sell bigger cars that kill more people for while achieving no extra utility. Wearing a helmet while driving would increase safety for drivers at not loss of utility. The choice not to do so is indicative of the irrational ways in which we evaluate relative risks. Balancing risk and utility is absolutely necessary, but we do a horrible job of doing that with cars. > The same is true for illnesses. Yes, it sucks, and of course nobody wants to die, but we can't go on like this forever because it could save lives. What are you even going on about here? You think that encouraging healthy people to get vaccinated to help protect other people is stupid because most people are willing to accept the risk of driving? You position makes absolutely no sense to me.
  - baumy 5y ago
    > What are you even going on about here? You think that encouraging healthy people to get vaccinated to help protect other people is stupid because most people are willing to accept the risk of driving? You position makes absolutely no sense to me. This is likely because you're projecting positions onto the person you're responding to that they never stated, and probably don't hold. If you read their comments again, you will discover they said they themselves are vaccinated, and offered no opinion about encouraging other people to get vaccinated as well. That was plainly not the topic of their comment. They are simply pointing out, correctly in my view, that life is not and never will be totally risk free, and at some point the risks that covid presents to the world at large will have to just be accepted, because the costs of lockdowns as countermeasures are simply too great. We can't continue to prioritize minimizing covid at the expense of all else forever. As a side note, the fact that you read someone expressing skepticism of some measures of covid containment, and instantly leapt to "they must think encouraging vaccines is stupid" does not reflect well on you, and is a pretty strong indicator that you're spending a lot of time in an ideological echo chamber that's eager to "other" and strawman anyone that disagrees with its positions. Something worth reflecting on, if you're willing.