10 ms·

The Silent, Vacinated, Impatient Majority

26 points by smoyer 5y ago

skinkestek 5y ago
As a double, soon triple vaccinated healthy grown up, one thing I'd wish to say: For people like me (healty, 40ies male in a job were I can work from home) the big reason to be vaccinated is for my own: I don't want to be sick for days or be unable to smell or taste. I also don't want to feel freezing cold, have headaches that makes it impossible to work or have the nasty long term side effects some get from Covid. To avoid that I take the probably much smaller risk of taking the vaccine. But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society: Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Covid could have been eliminated at some point. We know because there are scary other viruses like ebola that are not ravaging entire world because the moment it shows up we act decisively -- exactly because it is so deadly and scary. Because Covid is not so scary everybody elected to wait and see how exponential growth looks like in practice. If it had 20% death rate we would have couple thousand people die of it at most.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    The worst crime was comrades in Wuhan denying any such outbreak is possible just before a Party meeting.
    - hestefisk 5y ago
      Or American politicians telling their constituents that masks and vaccines don’t work.
      - herbst 5y ago
        We have to keep this stuff in our brain and history. The way how many leaders acted in the beginning of all this drastically changed the way we see some politics and countries. It seems that these horrible stupid decisions and lies are fading into irrelevance already
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    No, we had no tools to eradicate it in the first place.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I think the draconian measures that China put in place make it very clear I could never have been eliminated. Not to mention the animal reservoirs (mink, domesticated pets, livestock). Sure we could have maintained a lockdown for years to keep infection rates minimized, but that’s not a long term solution nor a process that will lead to elimination.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      Except the draconian measures that China put actually worked initially. They lost battle when entire world around them got sick and it did not make sense for China to be isolated. What did not work is other countries closing their borders immediately the moment it was known that the virus escaped China. When the numbers of sick are low you can track every individual and preemptively put everybody he spent time with in isolation. This is how we fight other viruses like ebola, successfully, even without vaccines. There still exists no vaccine for ebola. The only real mechanism to prevent it spreading is finding and isolating people. And, yes, ebola has reservoirs. And no, we are not in constant lockdown due to ebola.
      - refurb 5y ago
        The fact that China has a couple cities of several million on lockdown right now and still seeing rising cases is pretty much proof it didn’t work?
        lmilcin 5y ago
        No, it is not. What happened initially and what is happening now are two completely different things. Nobody disputes that it is no longer possible to beat the virus. Even if China did beat the virus completely they would still be receiving fresh cases from abroad. China is in a difficult situation now, because their vaccines are completely ineffective for Omicron, because their population is so densely packed and has low health standards and because their health system is much more fragile.
        5y ago
  - toolz 5y ago
    Eliminating covid was never possible. Are you not aware of how many animal carriers there are or are you suggesting we could've prevented animal transmission somehow?
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      It could have been killed until around 18 months ago. We chose to let people travel and to not put in place the same countermeasures that China put in place.
      - toolz 5y ago
        China hasn't eliminated covid in human or animals. No one has.
  - mdpye 5y ago
    Some points to consider: - ebola is transmitted via physical contact (with bodily fluids), not vapour in the air - ebola tends to be contagious only once symptoms appear, not for several days before Those two points alone make the two completely incomparable in terms of containment.
- vlaaad 5y ago
  Just a heads up, I'm vaccinated and currently have covid. I was sick for days, barely able to smell, was freezing cold, had headaches — all as you describe. So.. not sure it will help you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    In Australia, of those in hospital or ICU with covid, more than half are unvaccinated. 92% of the country are vaccinated, so the remainder accounts for half of hospitalisations. That’s a massive difference. Vaccines help, they are not perfect, but they help.
    - ssl232 5y ago
      You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated, the vaccines work. You need to stratify at least by age, but also by comorbidities and so on. For example, it could be (not saying it is the case) that most of the ICU patients were considered too frail to be given the vaccine on medical grounds, and thus count as unvaccinated. Too many politicians make "X is true therefore Y is true" statements that cannot actually be made based on the data being cited. One thing that's been clear from the beginning is the need for nuance and consideration of the details, not just blind jumps. There are health statisticians and mathematicians that do this sort of study for a living and I wish more politicians would cite their work.
      - crispypotatoes 5y ago
        > You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated They're two separate data points, he hasn't done this He's stated separately that 92% of the country is vaccinated AND (separately) half of ICU admissions are from the unvaccinated, what it means is that that remaining 8% are responsible for more than half of the COVID hospitalisations Considering how much of a surveillance state AUS has, they likely do have the data to draw these conclusions It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
- its_grubzy 5y ago
  > But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society I'd say that this is exactly the definition of doing it for society!
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    I don't do it for the elderly or for everyone who works in healthcare or so on though. Not because that wouldn't be worth it but because at this point my vaccination status doesn't change anything for those.
    - croon 5y ago
      > Not because that wouldn't be worth it but because at this point my vaccination status doesn't change anything for those. Who do you think is in the hospital with covid? I'm glad you came to the right conclusion even with the wrong parameters though.
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        > Who do you think is in the hospital with covid? Around here? Not 40ish well trained med, and particularly not double vaccinated ones. I do this for me, my wife, my boss and my client (so I won't have to skip my duties at home or work for days).
        croon 5y ago
        Yes, exactly, but you'd have a higher chance of taking up a hospital bed if you weren't vaccinated, thus your status does something for hospital staff, which is what I was replying to. Even if that wasn't your motivation, getting vaccinated is good for society as well.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    No. He's not doing it for society at large waving my hand in a large circle. He's doing it for people close to him which is a very fucking different narrative and motivation. Doesn't mean it doesn't benefit society at large waving hand in a large circle but that's not the same thing.
- klohto 5y ago
  Another heads up, fully vaccinated as well but Delta reseted my smell and taste.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  That's basically the argument I use for masking. The severity of infection appears to be correlated with initial viral load. It seems unlikely that I'll be able to avoid getting COVID, but when I do get it, I want it to be as light as possible.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument. You're doing it to stay out of the hospital. That helps you and helps society. The biggest fuckup in this whole thing was everyone getting their hopes up that the vaccines would end the pandemic via controlling transmission. That is all your largely all you alls fault though. At the end of 2020 it was looking increasingly likely that it was going to be endemic with the Alpha variant having been found, the related coronavirus 229E having been found to evolve antigenically, and Fauci was setting expectations that the vaccines would only be about 50% effective in preventing transmission. For example August 7, 2020: https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-may-only-be-50-percent-effective/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-ma... > Fauci says COVID-19 vaccine may only be 50 percent effective > The odds of a coronavirus vaccine being highly effective are low, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday — and getting people to take it might not be easy, either. The problem is that the initial VE results before any waning of neutralizing antibodies had happened and before any variants were way too optimistic and the results were not durable. But we're still at >90% protection against severe disease and hospitalization along with long COVID and other issues -- turning Omicron into a cold virus for the triple-vaxxed, which was always the point if anyone actually listened to experts and not the news media.
AnonHP 5y ago
The canonical link to this article is https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/politicians-against-unvaccinated-djokovic/621242/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/po... The URL should be updated with that since it’s the original and is not even behind a paywall (though, even if it were, paywalled posts are allowed on HN).
- shric 5y ago
  It's a very half baked paywall, The Atlantic limits you to one or two articles a month before they want you to subscribe or use some other trivial workaround such as incognito
  - greyface- 5y ago
    When I encounter a site that does this, I block it from setting cookies. In Chrome, it's 4 clicks: padlock icon -> "Cookies" -> "Block" -> "Done". I've only seen one site that tests for this; for the rest, it permanently disables the paywall.
iqanq 5y ago
Politicians have found in the unvaccinated a pretty good scapegoat.
- ramoz 5y ago
  While this neglects a lot of science, it’s not wrong to say we have an administration who’s worked very hard to keep this country divided.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  At this stage I think they deserve to be scapegoated. A family friend of mine is terminally ill with cancer (and vaccinated), in a lot of pain. She had to give up her hospital bed to a fool who objects to vaccines and got severe covid as a result. That is not ok.
  - toolz 5y ago
    Nationwide staffed beds are down 6-7% yet you blame an individual? What about the policies firing people with near guaranteed natural immunity for lack of compliance? How are those policy's not to blame? A single person doesn't break capacity, losing half a million healthcare workers to absurd policy does make a huge difference though. Keep in mind the nation has had two years to increase capacity and done the opposite.
    - DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago
      Anybody who's okay with letting the unvaccinated die of COVID as punishment for succumbing to massive misinformation campaigns but doesn't call for the immediate resignation of every single politician responsible for the broken healthcare systems most of "the west" seems to be dealing with should seriously reflect on their reasoning. This isn't normal. People are throwing misguided citizens under the bus to protect the corruption that caused all this.
      - toolz 5y ago
        You act like people are unable to access arguments from both sides and make their own educated decisions. Take me, for example. I consider it unethical for me to take the vaccine as I've had covid twice (the second time was a very mild cold) and I'm in extremely good health. If I take the vaccine that means someone else in a poor country with bad health will not have access to that vaccine. So I would suggest vaccinating naturally immune people in no-risk demographics is quite literally going to be the cause for people dying in less advantaged countries. and before you ask, yes the US has been shipping excess vaccines to other countries for a long time now, so it does matter.
ekianjo 5y ago
> and a quarter of his country remains unimmunized Another ignorant author who does not know that natural immunity exists outside of vaccines... I.e those who recovered from COVID.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  But unvaccinated people carry a higher load of virus, on average, and therefore pass it on to more people, on average.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Unvaccinated but recovered from a prior infection? Doubtful. The UK paper on Delta seemed to suggest that wasn’t true even for the unvaccinated-never infected as well. Google the Lancet article. Viral loads were similars, infection risk wasn’t that much lower for vaccinated. I think recovery was quicker by a day, maybe.
    - hestefisk 5y ago
      https://theconversation.com/your-unvaccinated-friend-is-roughly-20-times-more-likely-to-give-you-covid-170448 https://theconversation.com/your-unvaccinated-friend-is-roug... Research from Australia suggests otherwise. 20x.
      - peteradio 5y ago
        You are spreading misinformation, that link makes no reference to recovered individuals.
      - hestefisk 5y ago
        How is it misinformation? I am talking in general terms, not recovered.
        peteradio 5y ago
        This entire thread is discussing recovered. Only your responses seem to remove that qualifier, if you want to discuss immune naive individuals perhaps find a relevant thread. You'll find it very difficult find immune naive individuals outside of full lockdown countries so their discussion seems odd in the context of nations like France or USA.
foolzcrow 5y ago
sovietmudkipz 5y ago
Anecdata story time. My friends and I went skiing this past weekend. My friends very much subscribe to legacy media/political narratives and repeat back what they hear from NPR, CNN, and "hot" takes from social media influencers. (I've tried to get them to read/listen to Manufacturing Consent or Hate INC and I try not to be obnoxious about it since they're friends) On this ski trip I heard them talk about how they're ready to go back to normal. They are fed up with unvaccinated people but very interestingly they said... Screw them, they've made their choice so let them live and die if they get COVID. They weren't articulating an authoritarian policy prescription of making it painful/miserable for the unvaccinated like I have heard them say before. Now, their network of people (friends, family, coworkers) have mostly all had it and even the unvaccinated unhealthy people got through it. This is a big deal and a milestone. My friends want to go back to normal. They are finally willing to let people make their own risk assessment and they are finally willing to let people die in order to go back to normal. They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people. That's huge! At least, in my opinion.
- crispypotatoes 5y ago
  > They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people I find it interesting you use the word 'other' here, as usually this is said when trying to frame a dehumanisation argument, where the 'other' is a suppressed minority of sorts As someone that holds this opinion (sod the unvaccinated) and has done since the start of people doing this, I'm not surprised other people are now starting to go 'you made your bed' with this one The thing is, being unvaccinated is a choice and if you want to make that choice then go for it However, that choice has contributed to the deaths of people I know and extending the general disruption of the world for months on end for no other reason that unsubstantiated scepticism You can make that choice but as the article says, do NOT expect the rest of the world to respect it when it's blindingly obvious it's a really dumb choice to make for absolutely no gain to you or anyone around you When you see your mates grandmas dying and people are actively refusing the vaccine, I quite frankly do not care what happens to them, as they didn't care what happened to the people I know who have died
molbioguy 5y ago
This strategy is shameless expediency on the behalf of "society" -- really just mob rule wrapped in good intentions. Get vaccinated for yourself or your family or for society - your choice. Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit. Convince people not coerce them.
- crispypotatoes 5y ago
  > Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit This is exactly what remaining unvaccinated is though You're deliberately extending the pandemic and killing people so you can turn your nose up at authority, with no benefit to yourself, while actively denying the scientific consensus on this Don't be surprised when the majority of people have a bad reaction to that, when their grandparents are dying as a result of your actions, of course politicians are going to try and speak to that sentiment, people are really angry over this one I've been vaccinated 3 times now, it's nothing to worry about it and I barely noticed it throughout each one
  - ssl232 5y ago
    > You're deliberately extending the pandemic What makes you think vaccinating everybody will hasten the end of the pandemic?
    - crispypotatoes 5y ago
      > What makes you think vaccinating everybody will hasten the end of the pandemic? It makes it harder for the disease to transmit from person to person Less disease means less of the pandemic
      - smegsicle 5y ago
        Maybe the pandemic would already be over if only the high-risk had gotten vaccinated? Less immunization to the spike protein means less mutation of the spike protein Less mutation of the spike protein means less hospitalization of those immunized directly to it

26 points by smoyer 5y ago

As a double, soon triple vaccinated healthy grown up, one thing I'd wish to say: For people like me (healty, 40ies male in a job were I can work from home) the big reason to be vaccinated is for my own: I don't want to be sick for days or be unable to smell or taste. I also don't want to feel freezing cold, have headaches that makes it impossible to work or have the nasty long term side effects some get from Covid. To avoid that I take the probably much smaller risk of taking the vaccine. But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society: Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument.

lmilcin 5y ago
Covid could have been eliminated at some point. We know because there are scary other viruses like ebola that are not ravaging entire world because the moment it shows up we act decisively -- exactly because it is so deadly and scary. Because Covid is not so scary everybody elected to wait and see how exponential growth looks like in practice. If it had 20% death rate we would have couple thousand people die of it at most.
- hoseja 5y ago
  The worst crime was comrades in Wuhan denying any such outbreak is possible just before a Party meeting.
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    Or American politicians telling their constituents that masks and vaccines don’t work.
    - herbst 5y ago
      We have to keep this stuff in our brain and history. The way how many leaders acted in the beginning of all this drastically changed the way we see some politics and countries. It seems that these horrible stupid decisions and lies are fading into irrelevance already
- ekianjo 5y ago
  No, we had no tools to eradicate it in the first place.
- refurb 5y ago
  I think the draconian measures that China put in place make it very clear I could never have been eliminated. Not to mention the animal reservoirs (mink, domesticated pets, livestock). Sure we could have maintained a lockdown for years to keep infection rates minimized, but that’s not a long term solution nor a process that will lead to elimination.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    Except the draconian measures that China put actually worked initially. They lost battle when entire world around them got sick and it did not make sense for China to be isolated. What did not work is other countries closing their borders immediately the moment it was known that the virus escaped China. When the numbers of sick are low you can track every individual and preemptively put everybody he spent time with in isolation. This is how we fight other viruses like ebola, successfully, even without vaccines. There still exists no vaccine for ebola. The only real mechanism to prevent it spreading is finding and isolating people. And, yes, ebola has reservoirs. And no, we are not in constant lockdown due to ebola.
    - refurb 5y ago
      The fact that China has a couple cities of several million on lockdown right now and still seeing rising cases is pretty much proof it didn’t work?
      - lmilcin 5y ago
        No, it is not. What happened initially and what is happening now are two completely different things. Nobody disputes that it is no longer possible to beat the virus. Even if China did beat the virus completely they would still be receiving fresh cases from abroad. China is in a difficult situation now, because their vaccines are completely ineffective for Omicron, because their population is so densely packed and has low health standards and because their health system is much more fragile.
        5y ago
- toolz 5y ago
  Eliminating covid was never possible. Are you not aware of how many animal carriers there are or are you suggesting we could've prevented animal transmission somehow?
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    It could have been killed until around 18 months ago. We chose to let people travel and to not put in place the same countermeasures that China put in place.
    - toolz 5y ago
      China hasn't eliminated covid in human or animals. No one has.
- mdpye 5y ago
  Some points to consider: - ebola is transmitted via physical contact (with bodily fluids), not vapour in the air - ebola tends to be contagious only once symptoms appear, not for several days before Those two points alone make the two completely incomparable in terms of containment.
vlaaad 5y ago
Just a heads up, I'm vaccinated and currently have covid. I was sick for days, barely able to smell, was freezing cold, had headaches — all as you describe. So.. not sure it will help you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hestefisk 5y ago
  In Australia, of those in hospital or ICU with covid, more than half are unvaccinated. 92% of the country are vaccinated, so the remainder accounts for half of hospitalisations. That’s a massive difference. Vaccines help, they are not perfect, but they help.
  - ssl232 5y ago
    You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated, the vaccines work. You need to stratify at least by age, but also by comorbidities and so on. For example, it could be (not saying it is the case) that most of the ICU patients were considered too frail to be given the vaccine on medical grounds, and thus count as unvaccinated. Too many politicians make "X is true therefore Y is true" statements that cannot actually be made based on the data being cited. One thing that's been clear from the beginning is the need for nuance and consideration of the details, not just blind jumps. There are health statisticians and mathematicians that do this sort of study for a living and I wish more politicians would cite their work.
    - crispypotatoes 5y ago
      > You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated They're two separate data points, he hasn't done this He's stated separately that 92% of the country is vaccinated AND (separately) half of ICU admissions are from the unvaccinated, what it means is that that remaining 8% are responsible for more than half of the COVID hospitalisations Considering how much of a surveillance state AUS has, they likely do have the data to draw these conclusions It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
its_grubzy 5y ago
> But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society I'd say that this is exactly the definition of doing it for society!
- skinkestek 5y ago
  I don't do it for the elderly or for everyone who works in healthcare or so on though. Not because that wouldn't be worth it but because at this point my vaccination status doesn't change anything for those.
  - croon 5y ago
    > Not because that wouldn't be worth it but because at this point my vaccination status doesn't change anything for those. Who do you think is in the hospital with covid? I'm glad you came to the right conclusion even with the wrong parameters though.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      > Who do you think is in the hospital with covid? Around here? Not 40ish well trained med, and particularly not double vaccinated ones. I do this for me, my wife, my boss and my client (so I won't have to skip my duties at home or work for days).
      - croon 5y ago
        Yes, exactly, but you'd have a higher chance of taking up a hospital bed if you weren't vaccinated, thus your status does something for hospital staff, which is what I was replying to. Even if that wasn't your motivation, getting vaccinated is good for society as well.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  No. He's not doing it for society at large waving my hand in a large circle. He's doing it for people close to him which is a very fucking different narrative and motivation. Doesn't mean it doesn't benefit society at large waving hand in a large circle but that's not the same thing.
klohto 5y ago
Another heads up, fully vaccinated as well but Delta reseted my smell and taste.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
That's basically the argument I use for masking. The severity of infection appears to be correlated with initial viral load. It seems unlikely that I'll be able to avoid getting COVID, but when I do get it, I want it to be as light as possible.
lamontcg 5y ago
> Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument. You're doing it to stay out of the hospital. That helps you and helps society. The biggest fuckup in this whole thing was everyone getting their hopes up that the vaccines would end the pandemic via controlling transmission. That is all your largely all you alls fault though. At the end of 2020 it was looking increasingly likely that it was going to be endemic with the Alpha variant having been found, the related coronavirus 229E having been found to evolve antigenically, and Fauci was setting expectations that the vaccines would only be about 50% effective in preventing transmission. For example August 7, 2020: https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-may-only-be-50-percent-effective/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-ma... > Fauci says COVID-19 vaccine may only be 50 percent effective > The odds of a coronavirus vaccine being highly effective are low, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday — and getting people to take it might not be easy, either. The problem is that the initial VE results before any waning of neutralizing antibodies had happened and before any variants were way too optimistic and the results were not durable. But we're still at >90% protection against severe disease and hospitalization along with long COVID and other issues -- turning Omicron into a cold virus for the triple-vaxxed, which was always the point if anyone actually listened to experts and not the news media.

AnonHP 5y ago

The canonical link to this article is https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/politicians-against-unvaccinated-djokovic/621242/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/po... The URL should be updated with that since it’s the original and is not even behind a paywall (though, even if it were, paywalled posts are allowed on HN).

shric 5y ago
It's a very half baked paywall, The Atlantic limits you to one or two articles a month before they want you to subscribe or use some other trivial workaround such as incognito
- greyface- 5y ago
  When I encounter a site that does this, I block it from setting cookies. In Chrome, it's 4 clicks: padlock icon -> "Cookies" -> "Block" -> "Done". I've only seen one site that tests for this; for the rest, it permanently disables the paywall.

iqanq 5y ago

Politicians have found in the unvaccinated a pretty good scapegoat.

ramoz 5y ago
While this neglects a lot of science, it’s not wrong to say we have an administration who’s worked very hard to keep this country divided.
hestefisk 5y ago
At this stage I think they deserve to be scapegoated. A family friend of mine is terminally ill with cancer (and vaccinated), in a lot of pain. She had to give up her hospital bed to a fool who objects to vaccines and got severe covid as a result. That is not ok.
- toolz 5y ago
  Nationwide staffed beds are down 6-7% yet you blame an individual? What about the policies firing people with near guaranteed natural immunity for lack of compliance? How are those policy's not to blame? A single person doesn't break capacity, losing half a million healthcare workers to absurd policy does make a huge difference though. Keep in mind the nation has had two years to increase capacity and done the opposite.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago
    Anybody who's okay with letting the unvaccinated die of COVID as punishment for succumbing to massive misinformation campaigns but doesn't call for the immediate resignation of every single politician responsible for the broken healthcare systems most of "the west" seems to be dealing with should seriously reflect on their reasoning. This isn't normal. People are throwing misguided citizens under the bus to protect the corruption that caused all this.
    - toolz 5y ago
      You act like people are unable to access arguments from both sides and make their own educated decisions. Take me, for example. I consider it unethical for me to take the vaccine as I've had covid twice (the second time was a very mild cold) and I'm in extremely good health. If I take the vaccine that means someone else in a poor country with bad health will not have access to that vaccine. So I would suggest vaccinating naturally immune people in no-risk demographics is quite literally going to be the cause for people dying in less advantaged countries. and before you ask, yes the US has been shipping excess vaccines to other countries for a long time now, so it does matter.

ekianjo 5y ago

> and a quarter of his country remains unimmunized Another ignorant author who does not know that natural immunity exists outside of vaccines... I.e those who recovered from COVID.

hestefisk 5y ago
But unvaccinated people carry a higher load of virus, on average, and therefore pass it on to more people, on average.
- refurb 5y ago
  Unvaccinated but recovered from a prior infection? Doubtful. The UK paper on Delta seemed to suggest that wasn’t true even for the unvaccinated-never infected as well. Google the Lancet article. Viral loads were similars, infection risk wasn’t that much lower for vaccinated. I think recovery was quicker by a day, maybe.
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    https://theconversation.com/your-unvaccinated-friend-is-roughly-20-times-more-likely-to-give-you-covid-170448 https://theconversation.com/your-unvaccinated-friend-is-roug... Research from Australia suggests otherwise. 20x.
    - peteradio 5y ago
      You are spreading misinformation, that link makes no reference to recovered individuals.
    - hestefisk 5y ago
      How is it misinformation? I am talking in general terms, not recovered.
      - peteradio 5y ago
        This entire thread is discussing recovered. Only your responses seem to remove that qualifier, if you want to discuss immune naive individuals perhaps find a relevant thread. You'll find it very difficult find immune naive individuals outside of full lockdown countries so their discussion seems odd in the context of nations like France or USA.

foolzcrow 5y ago

sovietmudkipz 5y ago

Anecdata story time. My friends and I went skiing this past weekend. My friends very much subscribe to legacy media/political narratives and repeat back what they hear from NPR, CNN, and "hot" takes from social media influencers. (I've tried to get them to read/listen to Manufacturing Consent or Hate INC and I try not to be obnoxious about it since they're friends) On this ski trip I heard them talk about how they're ready to go back to normal. They are fed up with unvaccinated people but very interestingly they said... Screw them, they've made their choice so let them live and die if they get COVID. They weren't articulating an authoritarian policy prescription of making it painful/miserable for the unvaccinated like I have heard them say before. Now, their network of people (friends, family, coworkers) have mostly all had it and even the unvaccinated unhealthy people got through it. This is a big deal and a milestone. My friends want to go back to normal. They are finally willing to let people make their own risk assessment and they are finally willing to let people die in order to go back to normal. They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people. That's huge! At least, in my opinion.

crispypotatoes 5y ago
> They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people I find it interesting you use the word 'other' here, as usually this is said when trying to frame a dehumanisation argument, where the 'other' is a suppressed minority of sorts As someone that holds this opinion (sod the unvaccinated) and has done since the start of people doing this, I'm not surprised other people are now starting to go 'you made your bed' with this one The thing is, being unvaccinated is a choice and if you want to make that choice then go for it However, that choice has contributed to the deaths of people I know and extending the general disruption of the world for months on end for no other reason that unsubstantiated scepticism You can make that choice but as the article says, do NOT expect the rest of the world to respect it when it's blindingly obvious it's a really dumb choice to make for absolutely no gain to you or anyone around you When you see your mates grandmas dying and people are actively refusing the vaccine, I quite frankly do not care what happens to them, as they didn't care what happened to the people I know who have died

molbioguy 5y ago

This strategy is shameless expediency on the behalf of "society" -- really just mob rule wrapped in good intentions. Get vaccinated for yourself or your family or for society - your choice. Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit. Convince people not coerce them.

crispypotatoes 5y ago
> Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit This is exactly what remaining unvaccinated is though You're deliberately extending the pandemic and killing people so you can turn your nose up at authority, with no benefit to yourself, while actively denying the scientific consensus on this Don't be surprised when the majority of people have a bad reaction to that, when their grandparents are dying as a result of your actions, of course politicians are going to try and speak to that sentiment, people are really angry over this one I've been vaccinated 3 times now, it's nothing to worry about it and I barely noticed it throughout each one
- ssl232 5y ago
  > You're deliberately extending the pandemic What makes you think vaccinating everybody will hasten the end of the pandemic?
  - crispypotatoes 5y ago
    > What makes you think vaccinating everybody will hasten the end of the pandemic? It makes it harder for the disease to transmit from person to person Less disease means less of the pandemic
    - smegsicle 5y ago
      Maybe the pandemic would already be over if only the high-risk had gotten vaccinated? Less immunization to the spike protein means less mutation of the spike protein Less mutation of the spike protein means less hospitalization of those immunized directly to it