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Anyone can report anything to VAERS. It's exactly as scary as the boogeyman. A severe outcome from COVID is hospitalization. You seriously know multiple people

Anyone can report anything to VAERS. It's exactly as scary as the boogeyman. A severe outcome from COVID is hospitalization. You seriously know multiple people who were hospitalized as a result of a vaccine? (X) Doubt. The "othering" is because people who opted out of getting a vaccine have endangered the rest of us. It appears you've continued to participate in society, as evidenced by your reinfection. People generally shouldn't be surprised that they face social sanction when they act in an antisocial way! If you drive recklessly, you go to jail. If you don't get certain vaccines, you don't get to enroll in school. You can't smoke indoors, or even close to doors, in most parts of many countries. The fact that your "informed choice" is driven more by gut feelings, selection bias, and an innate opposition to any and all authority further underscores the point.

claytongulick 5y ago
Your comment is a great illustration of my point. Many people that share your opinion feel so strongly that they "know the truth" and "are right" that they feel justified in "othering" - even though most have no qualifications for the subject. I'm not sure what causes this, or what the solution is. It's certainly not how science works, or how a liberal society should operate. If those are values that are still important to us, I feel like there needs to be some sort of solution to this. Maybe the problem lies in the medium. I wonder if you would be so hostile if we were discussing this over beers somewhere? Perhaps. I hope not.
- lovich 5y ago
  I think you’re talking past the other poster. Not getting a vaccine is seen as an anti social action by the vaccine taking group. And not just in a “I blare music out loud on the subway” level but a “I leave piles of brush near my neighbors house during wildfire season” level Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives
  - claytongulick 5y ago
    I agree, on review I was. I was trying to be careful in my phrasing to avoid any form of personal attack or hostility, since the other poster clearly has strong feelings about the subject. > Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives That's what's so strange about this, isn't it? I haven't seen any evidence anywhere that deciding against getting the vaccine puts anyone else's health at risk. I've certainly heard some politicians say this, but I haven't seen it backed by any reputable studies. The phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated" has been bandied about quite a bit, without any supporting evidence that I'm aware of. From what I've seen, omicron is spread by fully vaccinated folks without much inhibition. Apparently, being vaccinated reduces the severity of an already (relatively) mild variant. So why all the hyperbole? Why the draconian mandates? Why ignore the demographics of vulnerable populations and insist on mandates for everyone? Even children? Risking lives? Unless you have severe comorbidities or are very elderly, there's asymptotically approaching zero risk of a severe outcome from any Covid infection, especially not with omicron. You've struck to the heart of the matter. Somehow, many people have been convinced, against all reason and science, that deciding against getting vaccinated is somehow antisocial. Why? What are the motivations involved? Who is doing this? There's a reasonable argument that skipping that vaccine isn't smart, but antisocial? That's a very different and aggressive narrative. It all comes across as very scary to those of us who don't necessarily agree with the prevailing interventions of the past couple years. They don't appear, on the surface, to be evidence based. Lockdowns certainly were not, and now that we have retrospective data, we know that they were ineffective and in most cases quite harmful. Universal masking wasn't effective, but some states and companies are still requiring it. Why? Shutting down schools was a societal nightmare, with no demonstrated benefit. Yet we see some places doing it again. Why? At each step of the way with these interventions, those who argued against them were also considered to be "antisocial" and were silenced, ridiculed, and othered. Now we have mandated vaccination, ignoring immunity status and demographics. Even for children, who have a much higher risk from the flu than they do Covid. Doesn't it seem strange? School districts don't mandate the flu vaccine, but several have proposed mandatory Covid vaccines? Doesn't it make you wonder why? What could possibly justify Austria's extreme measures, police brutality and draconian mandates? In Australia, a grandmother was just put in jail for not wearing a mask. I've seen videos of similar things happening in the U.S. How can we even pretend to be a civil society and tolerate this? Why have we allowed ourselves to believe that "othering" anyone is ok? These are the first steps down an extraordinarily dangerous path, history shows us. It's been so sad and disheartening to me to watch our society progress from "free hugs" towards a dystopian nightmare. Were we always so fragile? Were our liberal beliefs always just a beautiful lie waiting to be exposed at the first test?
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  Context: I have a PhD in physics, and I've got a great grasp of ventilation and filtration. I don't know much about the immune system... My biology training never progressed much past Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. I don't have qualifications in the subject, but my qualifications help me assess other experts. Experts often get things wrong, but they tend to become less wrong over time. See the shifting consensus about aerosol spread. Experts think vaccines are a good idea. The data continues to reinforce that position. If you were a family member, an old friend, or otherwise closely connected to me, I'd talk to you on the phone. I love my family, and I would not sit down and consume anything with you. You literally could not pay me enough. Not because I abhor a liberal discussion--quite the opposite. You've shown yourself to be irrational and unwilling to adapt your position, and as a result you've managed to catch Covid a second time. Your wife got it too? I'm not going to waste my time and breath on you. Consider this: what would it take for you to reconsider your position? Because billions of doses of several different vaccines have been delivered to an exceptionally weary world, and a tiny fraction of those recipients have seen negative side effects. Vaccinations are more effective at preventing disease than recovering from the native variant: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
  - curmudgeon22 5y ago
    Have a look as these case rates by vaccination status, per 100,000. There is a higher case rate among the fully vaccinated since late December. Would you have a meal with a vaccinated family member? Why is that safer than a non-vaccinated? https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread (COVID-19 cases by vaccination status)
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Those rates ignore exposure, testing, and severity differences. Ontario mandated vaccination for high risk work and leisure settings. Mandatory tests are more common in high risk work settings. Elective vaccination and elective testing correlate probably.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> The "othering" is because people who opted out of getting a vaccine have endangered the rest of us Unvaccinated people are a danger to vaccinated people??? Isn't the main purpose of the vaccine protection against a severe case of COVID? I don't understand why someone who is vaccinated would feel endangered by anyone, regardless of their vaccination status.
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  > Unvaccinated people are a danger to vaccinated people??? Haha seriously…this has become such culture war bullshit at this point.

claytongulick 5y ago

Your comment is a great illustration of my point. Many people that share your opinion feel so strongly that they "know the truth" and "are right" that they feel justified in "othering" - even though most have no qualifications for the subject. I'm not sure what causes this, or what the solution is. It's certainly not how science works, or how a liberal society should operate. If those are values that are still important to us, I feel like there needs to be some sort of solution to this. Maybe the problem lies in the medium. I wonder if you would be so hostile if we were discussing this over beers somewhere? Perhaps. I hope not.

lovich 5y ago
I think you’re talking past the other poster. Not getting a vaccine is seen as an anti social action by the vaccine taking group. And not just in a “I blare music out loud on the subway” level but a “I leave piles of brush near my neighbors house during wildfire season” level Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives
- claytongulick 5y ago
  I agree, on review I was. I was trying to be careful in my phrasing to avoid any form of personal attack or hostility, since the other poster clearly has strong feelings about the subject. > Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives That's what's so strange about this, isn't it? I haven't seen any evidence anywhere that deciding against getting the vaccine puts anyone else's health at risk. I've certainly heard some politicians say this, but I haven't seen it backed by any reputable studies. The phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated" has been bandied about quite a bit, without any supporting evidence that I'm aware of. From what I've seen, omicron is spread by fully vaccinated folks without much inhibition. Apparently, being vaccinated reduces the severity of an already (relatively) mild variant. So why all the hyperbole? Why the draconian mandates? Why ignore the demographics of vulnerable populations and insist on mandates for everyone? Even children? Risking lives? Unless you have severe comorbidities or are very elderly, there's asymptotically approaching zero risk of a severe outcome from any Covid infection, especially not with omicron. You've struck to the heart of the matter. Somehow, many people have been convinced, against all reason and science, that deciding against getting vaccinated is somehow antisocial. Why? What are the motivations involved? Who is doing this? There's a reasonable argument that skipping that vaccine isn't smart, but antisocial? That's a very different and aggressive narrative. It all comes across as very scary to those of us who don't necessarily agree with the prevailing interventions of the past couple years. They don't appear, on the surface, to be evidence based. Lockdowns certainly were not, and now that we have retrospective data, we know that they were ineffective and in most cases quite harmful. Universal masking wasn't effective, but some states and companies are still requiring it. Why? Shutting down schools was a societal nightmare, with no demonstrated benefit. Yet we see some places doing it again. Why? At each step of the way with these interventions, those who argued against them were also considered to be "antisocial" and were silenced, ridiculed, and othered. Now we have mandated vaccination, ignoring immunity status and demographics. Even for children, who have a much higher risk from the flu than they do Covid. Doesn't it seem strange? School districts don't mandate the flu vaccine, but several have proposed mandatory Covid vaccines? Doesn't it make you wonder why? What could possibly justify Austria's extreme measures, police brutality and draconian mandates? In Australia, a grandmother was just put in jail for not wearing a mask. I've seen videos of similar things happening in the U.S. How can we even pretend to be a civil society and tolerate this? Why have we allowed ourselves to believe that "othering" anyone is ok? These are the first steps down an extraordinarily dangerous path, history shows us. It's been so sad and disheartening to me to watch our society progress from "free hugs" towards a dystopian nightmare. Were we always so fragile? Were our liberal beliefs always just a beautiful lie waiting to be exposed at the first test?
MengerSponge 5y ago
Context: I have a PhD in physics, and I've got a great grasp of ventilation and filtration. I don't know much about the immune system... My biology training never progressed much past Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. I don't have qualifications in the subject, but my qualifications help me assess other experts. Experts often get things wrong, but they tend to become less wrong over time. See the shifting consensus about aerosol spread. Experts think vaccines are a good idea. The data continues to reinforce that position. If you were a family member, an old friend, or otherwise closely connected to me, I'd talk to you on the phone. I love my family, and I would not sit down and consume anything with you. You literally could not pay me enough. Not because I abhor a liberal discussion--quite the opposite. You've shown yourself to be irrational and unwilling to adapt your position, and as a result you've managed to catch Covid a second time. Your wife got it too? I'm not going to waste my time and breath on you. Consider this: what would it take for you to reconsider your position? Because billions of doses of several different vaccines have been delivered to an exceptionally weary world, and a tiny fraction of those recipients have seen negative side effects. Vaccinations are more effective at preventing disease than recovering from the native variant: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
- curmudgeon22 5y ago
  Have a look as these case rates by vaccination status, per 100,000. There is a higher case rate among the fully vaccinated since late December. Would you have a meal with a vaccinated family member? Why is that safer than a non-vaccinated? https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread (COVID-19 cases by vaccination status)
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Those rates ignore exposure, testing, and severity differences. Ontario mandated vaccination for high risk work and leisure settings. Mandatory tests are more common in high risk work settings. Elective vaccination and elective testing correlate probably.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

> The "othering" is because people who opted out of getting a vaccine have endangered the rest of us Unvaccinated people are a danger to vaccinated people??? Isn't the main purpose of the vaccine protection against a severe case of COVID? I don't understand why someone who is vaccinated would feel endangered by anyone, regardless of their vaccination status.

jasonladuke0311 5y ago
> Unvaccinated people are a danger to vaccinated people??? Haha seriously…this has become such culture war bullshit at this point.