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> "...I could easily kill grandma..." see, there's the hyperbole that makes you lose credibility. ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated. visiting

> "...I could easily kill grandma..." see, there's the hyperbole that makes you lose credibility. ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated. visiting with grandma (or any family, for that matter) is an instance where wearing a mask (and certainly a number of other potential mitigations) could make a difference, so use your brain to make that assessment, not some brainless heuristic infringed upon you by an irrelevant affiliation.

Natsu 5y ago
> ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated My grandmother can't vaccinate for medical reasons and I have other specific health reasons, including past issues with the flu, breathing troubles, general poor health, and the fact that she's 100, all give me reason to believe that she has special risk factors. The place she is at has had Covid deaths and there are others of similar age with similar risk profiles. > so use your brain to make that assessment, not some brainless heuristic infringed upon you by an irrelevant affiliation. Please, I haven't done any sneering like this to you and you don't know my grandma's situation or her medical history. I have solid medical reasons to believe that Covid would threaten my grandmother specifically, far more than the general population. That said, I'm not particularly cavalier about a 1-2% risk of death from Covid, even though I know that rate is a moving target (and hopefully getting lower over time with better treatment protocols, vaccinations, etc.). Climbing Everest is something like a 5% risk of death and you can see a trail of bodies on your way to the peak. I see no personal reason not to take a vaccine with a risk ~0.0002% [1] (though I know that some people do have specific medical reasons not to and yes I know of the study that accidentally inflated the risk by 25x due to bad math) and I do wear a mask indoors or when mandated, though I also realize that I'm fortunate enough not to have to wear a mask for long factory shifts or such and I have sympathy for those who do have such problems.
- clairity 5y ago
  this isn't about your grandma (may she live many more years), but the sanctimoniousness (and misguidedness) of your comments. your chance of death from covid is likely (much) less than 0.2%, an average that's disproportionately (and unfortunately) inflated by the elderly and unhealthy. the elderly and unhealthy are the folks who we should encourage (but not force) to get vaccinated because of the elevated risk. everyone else can, and should be allowed to, make their own risk-aware decision. > "and I do wear a mask indoors or when mandated..." and therein lies the crux of my critique. you've outsourced your health decisions to politicians/bureaucrats more interested in their own skin than yours, and yet, make confident claims about the correctness of those decisions. if you're wearing masks as mandated, but not around friends and family (i.e., social situations where you're spitting at each other in close proximity), you're just performing safety theater. and factory workers don't need your sympathy or your mask mandate, since most are distanced enough from each other that a mask literally does nothing more for their safety. the disinformation you seem to have internalized is why this is all so frustrating, and why we need to route around the mediopolitical gatekeepers trying to drown out the 'hard truths' with their relentless deluge of crafted messaging.
  - mike00632 5y ago
    It's crazy how you brush aside the elderly and "unhealthy" as people who can die without your consideration and you think their deaths only 'mess up' the numbers. They are treated like an undesirable population whose deaths shouldn't be taken into account. Shouldn't we vaccinate, wear masks and social distance if only to help the elderly and "unhealthy"?
    - nradov 5y ago
      The virus isn't going away. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but it only has a limited and temporary effect on reducing transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y You can't seriously expect people to continue wearing masks and social distancing forever. That would be absurd.
    - clairity 5y ago
      > ‘Shouldn't we vaccinate, wear masks and social distance if only to help the elderly and "unhealthy"?’ you’re nakedly appealing to emotion here, and baiting for an inflexible, naïve answer. that’s a despicable kind of rhetorical move that doesn’t serve to push our collective understanding forward, but rather attempts to coerce and strives for conformity. it’s diametrically opposed to the point made by the linked nature article. if the question was, “should we take measures to protect the elderly and unhealthy, who are at elevated risk?”, then ‘yes’ is an easy response (and embedded in my previous comment), because that both invites collaboration and admits a variety of potential measures, without ego or mediopolitical posturing. more importantly, it doesn’t presuppose that everyone must be coerced to vaccinate, to wear masks illogically, and to lock down randomly to achieve that objective.
      - mike00632 5y ago
        You can't think of a non-emotional, logical objection to millions of people dying pointlessly? Do we need to say something like "the economy will go down" to get you on board?
  - 5y ago
jimkleiber 5y ago
I lived with my parents for all of last year and my mom was going thru chemo, so at the time, the threat to her life from covid was very present in my mind. That has gone away since she got vaccinated and I'm grateful. At the same time, my best friend's parents are not vaccinated and I worry that they will get very sick and/or die. My great uncle died from covid. I agree that maybe the phrase "easily kill grandma" was hyperbole from the other poster, and yet i don't know their grandma's situation and the way I read it, their grandma cannot be vaccinated. Regarding the vaccination rates, I don't think they are as high as you had said/estimated. What I found[0] said 65-74 was around 80% fully vaccinated in the US and 75 and up was around 77% fully vaccinated. If I did the math correctly on my phone, the difference between 80.83% fully vaccinated 65-74 year olds and 95% fully vaccinated is 4,474,231 people. The diff between 77.1% of 75 and up and 95% of them is 4,027,214. While estimating 95% when the percentages were 80.83% and 77.1% may seem insignificant, combined, operating on a large set of people, the difference between your estimate and what I see reported by the CDC adds up to 8,501,445 people...which is just the difference, not the total number of people not fully vaccinated in those age groups. I also think that those percentages are not evenly distributed across geography, as some places have higher vaccination rates and other lower ones, which could make it lower than 80% or 77% in certain pockets. I'll be the first to admit I don't know if I did the math right above and that I know very little about how statistics work. I think it is very hard for many of us to avoid exaggerating and bending data to align with our fears. Just as I think you were doing your best to estimate the percentage of people fully vaccinated, I assume the original poster was doing their best to estimate the risk to the life of their grandma. [0]: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/ https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...
- clairity 5y ago
  perhaps i misheard it, but i literally heard the 95% for over-65s figure this morning on the radio, which seemed to be quoting the cdc (but again, it didn't have my full and undivided attention). the difference could also be first dose vs. 'fully vaccinated'.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
nuerow 5y ago
> see, there's the hyperbole that makes you lose credibility. It is not a hyperbole, and it saddens me to hear this level of ignorance in this forum. The COVID-19 mortality rate for the age >65 is over 20%. That's over 1 death per 5 infections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_the_COVID-19_pan... > ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated. No, not quite. It is estimated that 95% of the total US population of >65 received at least one shot, but the percentage of fully vaccinated people in that age group is around 84%. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine... However, these numbers are averages. Willingness to get the shot varies widely across the US. There are regions within the US where barely half the population took a single shot. For instance, in Idaho, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Mississippi less than half the population took even a single shot, so the majority is still totally unvaccinated. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-states-have-the-lowest-covid-19-vaccination-rates https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-state...
- stickfigure 5y ago
  The CDC says that the covid IFR for the 65+ cohort is 9%, not 20%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... > it saddens me to hear this level of ignorance in this forum Ahem.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > The CDC says that the covid IFR for the 65+ cohort is 9%, not 20%. It seems you did not noticed that the data I presented was provided by the CDC. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex... Your misconception is that you've tried to compare apples to oranges, as you tried to compare IFR estimates with death/infection ratio, which aren't the same thing at all. Nevertheless, I'm sure no one would make the mistake of interpreting a 10% IFR as being negligible, thus even with that contrarian nitpicking the point still stands.

Natsu 5y ago

> ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated My grandmother can't vaccinate for medical reasons and I have other specific health reasons, including past issues with the flu, breathing troubles, general poor health, and the fact that she's 100, all give me reason to believe that she has special risk factors. The place she is at has had Covid deaths and there are others of similar age with similar risk profiles. > so use your brain to make that assessment, not some brainless heuristic infringed upon you by an irrelevant affiliation. Please, I haven't done any sneering like this to you and you don't know my grandma's situation or her medical history. I have solid medical reasons to believe that Covid would threaten my grandmother specifically, far more than the general population. That said, I'm not particularly cavalier about a 1-2% risk of death from Covid, even though I know that rate is a moving target (and hopefully getting lower over time with better treatment protocols, vaccinations, etc.). Climbing Everest is something like a 5% risk of death and you can see a trail of bodies on your way to the peak. I see no personal reason not to take a vaccine with a risk ~0.0002% [1] (though I know that some people do have specific medical reasons not to and yes I know of the study that accidentally inflated the risk by 25x due to bad math) and I do wear a mask indoors or when mandated, though I also realize that I'm fortunate enough not to have to wear a mask for long factory shifts or such and I have sympathy for those who do have such problems.

clairity 5y ago
this isn't about your grandma (may she live many more years), but the sanctimoniousness (and misguidedness) of your comments. your chance of death from covid is likely (much) less than 0.2%, an average that's disproportionately (and unfortunately) inflated by the elderly and unhealthy. the elderly and unhealthy are the folks who we should encourage (but not force) to get vaccinated because of the elevated risk. everyone else can, and should be allowed to, make their own risk-aware decision. > "and I do wear a mask indoors or when mandated..." and therein lies the crux of my critique. you've outsourced your health decisions to politicians/bureaucrats more interested in their own skin than yours, and yet, make confident claims about the correctness of those decisions. if you're wearing masks as mandated, but not around friends and family (i.e., social situations where you're spitting at each other in close proximity), you're just performing safety theater. and factory workers don't need your sympathy or your mask mandate, since most are distanced enough from each other that a mask literally does nothing more for their safety. the disinformation you seem to have internalized is why this is all so frustrating, and why we need to route around the mediopolitical gatekeepers trying to drown out the 'hard truths' with their relentless deluge of crafted messaging.
- mike00632 5y ago
  It's crazy how you brush aside the elderly and "unhealthy" as people who can die without your consideration and you think their deaths only 'mess up' the numbers. They are treated like an undesirable population whose deaths shouldn't be taken into account. Shouldn't we vaccinate, wear masks and social distance if only to help the elderly and "unhealthy"?
  - nradov 5y ago
    The virus isn't going away. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but it only has a limited and temporary effect on reducing transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y You can't seriously expect people to continue wearing masks and social distancing forever. That would be absurd.
  - clairity 5y ago
    > ‘Shouldn't we vaccinate, wear masks and social distance if only to help the elderly and "unhealthy"?’ you’re nakedly appealing to emotion here, and baiting for an inflexible, naïve answer. that’s a despicable kind of rhetorical move that doesn’t serve to push our collective understanding forward, but rather attempts to coerce and strives for conformity. it’s diametrically opposed to the point made by the linked nature article. if the question was, “should we take measures to protect the elderly and unhealthy, who are at elevated risk?”, then ‘yes’ is an easy response (and embedded in my previous comment), because that both invites collaboration and admits a variety of potential measures, without ego or mediopolitical posturing. more importantly, it doesn’t presuppose that everyone must be coerced to vaccinate, to wear masks illogically, and to lock down randomly to achieve that objective.
    - mike00632 5y ago
      You can't think of a non-emotional, logical objection to millions of people dying pointlessly? Do we need to say something like "the economy will go down" to get you on board?
- 5y ago

jimkleiber 5y ago

I lived with my parents for all of last year and my mom was going thru chemo, so at the time, the threat to her life from covid was very present in my mind. That has gone away since she got vaccinated and I'm grateful. At the same time, my best friend's parents are not vaccinated and I worry that they will get very sick and/or die. My great uncle died from covid. I agree that maybe the phrase "easily kill grandma" was hyperbole from the other poster, and yet i don't know their grandma's situation and the way I read it, their grandma cannot be vaccinated. Regarding the vaccination rates, I don't think they are as high as you had said/estimated. What I found[0] said 65-74 was around 80% fully vaccinated in the US and 75 and up was around 77% fully vaccinated. If I did the math correctly on my phone, the difference between 80.83% fully vaccinated 65-74 year olds and 95% fully vaccinated is 4,474,231 people. The diff between 77.1% of 75 and up and 95% of them is 4,027,214. While estimating 95% when the percentages were 80.83% and 77.1% may seem insignificant, combined, operating on a large set of people, the difference between your estimate and what I see reported by the CDC adds up to 8,501,445 people...which is just the difference, not the total number of people not fully vaccinated in those age groups. I also think that those percentages are not evenly distributed across geography, as some places have higher vaccination rates and other lower ones, which could make it lower than 80% or 77% in certain pockets. I'll be the first to admit I don't know if I did the math right above and that I know very little about how statistics work. I think it is very hard for many of us to avoid exaggerating and bending data to align with our fears. Just as I think you were doing your best to estimate the percentage of people fully vaccinated, I assume the original poster was doing their best to estimate the risk to the life of their grandma. [0]: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/ https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...

clairity 5y ago
perhaps i misheard it, but i literally heard the 95% for over-65s figure this morning on the radio, which seemed to be quoting the cdc (but again, it didn't have my full and undivided attention). the difference could also be first dose vs. 'fully vaccinated'.
- jimkleiber 5y ago

nuerow 5y ago

> see, there's the hyperbole that makes you lose credibility. It is not a hyperbole, and it saddens me to hear this level of ignorance in this forum. The COVID-19 mortality rate for the age >65 is over 20%. That's over 1 death per 5 infections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_the_COVID-19_pan... > ~95% of those 65 and older in the US are vaccinated. No, not quite. It is estimated that 95% of the total US population of >65 received at least one shot, but the percentage of fully vaccinated people in that age group is around 84%. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine... However, these numbers are averages. Willingness to get the shot varies widely across the US. There are regions within the US where barely half the population took a single shot. For instance, in Idaho, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Mississippi less than half the population took even a single shot, so the majority is still totally unvaccinated. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-states-have-the-lowest-covid-19-vaccination-rates https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-state...

stickfigure 5y ago
The CDC says that the covid IFR for the 65+ cohort is 9%, not 20%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... > it saddens me to hear this level of ignorance in this forum Ahem.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > The CDC says that the covid IFR for the 65+ cohort is 9%, not 20%. It seems you did not noticed that the data I presented was provided by the CDC. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex... Your misconception is that you've tried to compare apples to oranges, as you tried to compare IFR estimates with death/infection ratio, which aren't the same thing at all. Nevertheless, I'm sure no one would make the mistake of interpreting a 10% IFR as being negligible, thus even with that contrarian nitpicking the point still stands.