101–110 of 158 posts
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OK, so what were those reasons?
The most convincing one was a version of "what if in 20 years they're running those ads like they did for mesothelioma?"
That argument is equally valid against doing almost anything, not just getting the vaccine.
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> There's nothing I can show you that would make you believe what I'm saying Real data from a reputable source would be more than sufficient. Remarkable how you seem to be unable to produce any...
Do you have real data from a reputable source that says otherwise? I'm talking about hospitalizations broken down by vaccination status. Not cases, not symptomatic cases, not deaths. Hospitalizations.
Are you saying you haven't actually read any of them?
Want more? Okay, fine, here's just one jurisdiction which provides a wealth of data and a variety of breakdowns, including percentage of hospitalizations by vaccination status (this is a jurisdiction where >60% of eligible people are fully vaccinated and >75% are partially vaccinated, so there's a wealth of data about vaccine effectiveness):
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
> 92.1% of hospitalized cases (5,260/5,709) since Jan 1, 2021 were unvaccinated or diagnosed within two weeks from the first dose immunization date
I'll grant you that breakdown doesn't specifically break out Delta cases from non-VOC cases, but they also include a specific analysis of vaccine effectiveness versus Delta based on current data in the province:
> B.1.617 Variant [Partial] 57% (51 to 63%) [Complete] 85% (78 to 89%)
Now, this is a blended set of numbers across all vaccine types, and so represents the average effectiveness across Pfizer, Moderna, and AZ. So there's some nuance that's missing, here.
Regardless, even with just a single dose of a COVID vaccine the average effectiveness versus Delta of symptomatic illness is greater than 50%, which, as I previously noted, will absolutely put a significant dent in the R-value. And 85% is absolutely fantastic.
Alright, I showed you mine, now you show me yours.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Every jurisdiction reporting actual, real data and not just rumours on Fox News has indicated that over 90% of Covid admissions are unvaccinated, even in areas with greater than 50% of the population with two doses.
There's nothing I can show you that would make you believe what I'm saying, so I'm not going to try. But I will say that I heard it directly from a doctor in a high-level position at a large-ish hospital. I know him very well, and he has zero reason to lie to me about it. But yeah, I'm probably lying (or being lied to) and it's all BS. Whatever works for you. The media (aside from Fox News) is always 100% truthful an…
Well, you've made false statements and promoted untrue things in this thread, so ... yah, I think I'll err on the side of not believing a goddamn thing you say.
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Adding to the thoughts before, letting the virus spread and mutate among the unvaccinated to create a new variant sounds like a reset on the progress we've made. With the Delta we got lucky, our vaccines still largely work. I'm not sure how long the luck will hold on with more variants. I'm all for leaving people alone to their own decisions. But with this, their decisions greatly affect me and society at large.
You won't stop mutations. It's a pandemic, world-wide - and short of blocking all international travel, freight/shipping, etc - if there is a new mutation somewhere in the world, it will eventually land here in the US. Herd immunity - either reached by vaccinations, previous-infections, or both - is all we can hope for. Good news is, we don't need unvaccinated people's cooperation to reach herd immunity - they will e…
If the rate of transmission reaches the elusive herd immunity, the time-frame for the virus to evolve into evading vaccines grows significantly longer, even with a non-zero mutation rate.
Lastly, antibodies created via the mRNA vaccines have a broader binding affinity to different variants than those from natural immunity [1].
Again, the goal is to not eradicate, but to scale it down to the point where it is statistically not a threat.
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Nah, it's the part where you and the author conveniently fail to point out that that 600k fatality number (which is close to the current number in the US) is after taking truly historic measures to prevent disease transmission. Had we truly done nothing that number would be significantly higher. But, of course, as was so very predictable at the start, because these measures were in fact pretty effective at slowing sp…
I padded the death count by 50% to account for this in the story (400k people died of covid in the USA in 2020, not 600k). If you compare covid deaths per capita across various states, you won't find huge differences even though some states had extreme restrictions in place (California) and some states had lax restrictions in place (Utah, Florida, etc). Say there's a parallel universe where masks and social distancin…
India or Brazil would seem to be the obvious counterfactuals. Unfortunately, their officially reported death rates probably can't be trusted so the best we can do is look at excess deaths, and in India, as an example, it's... pretty ugly:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/20/1018438...
That's closer to 3 deaths per thousand, or 50% higher than your estimate.
Putting that in context, assuming 8 deaths per thousand as a baseline, that number going to 11 per thousand is a 40% increase in excess deaths.
And that's ignoring that those deaths will be concentrated in specific cohorts (the elderly, the vulnerable, people in high risk jobs, etc) who don't have the luxury of working from a cozy home office.
> The point of the story was that (for Statisticsville, at least) the people were so busy fighting amongst themselves about what actions to take (or not) about an infectious disease that they didn't realize the deadly side effects of that social discord until it was too late.
This is, unfortunately, a unique problem of the US. While there's certainly been plenty of social discord in other countries as a consequence of Covid policies, they've been nowhere near the level of what's seen in the US.
The solution isn't to compromise public health policy so as to avoid touching off a partisan foodfight. The solution is to address the root problem that has lead to such severe social discord; to heal those fissures that have opened up in US society that have lead to every single issue being politicized and thus polarized to the detriment of the entire population.
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* Not infecting others who are more at risk or cannot get the vaccine (allergies, age, availability) or are higher risk than you (age, preconditions), including anti-vaxxers (I would be devastated if a beloved family members died even if they rejected the vaccine ). * Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?) * Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delt…
I hope you understand that we will not be “wiping out COVID” any time soon. We need long term management strategies that are actually sustainable and protect the most vulnerable. And we probably need to worry less about persuading the die hards and more about things like standing up booster distribution and making ventilation improvements. And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes…
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We don't like talking politics here on HN, but we can't hide from the truth: It's not an issue of respect or political polarization. It's the right-wing political movement which has an extreme ideology of reactionaryism. No matter what the issue or situation, they will be against it. Talking more respectfully to them won't change it. It's not possible to talk to them, because most public communication is filtered thr…
I can't disagree more. Doesn't it feel a little too convenient to label your opposition as "beyond saving"? And how do you propose we "deal with this movement now" if you've convinced yourself they can't be reasoned with? I know it's not true from first hand experience. I've convinced a dozen people with hard-right political ideologies to get the vaccine. It hasn't always worked, but I've had much more success than n…
> naturally divisive a position as POTUS
It's not "naturally divisive"; that's only an issue of the reactionary political movement. Presidents have been uniting the country for generations. Biden is not divisive; Obama was not divisive; Trump and the reactionaries are.
> Doesn't it feel a little too convenient to label your opposition as "beyond saving"? And how do you propose we "deal with this movement now"
It's not convenient for me; it's more convenient to keep my head buried while the movement and the problem, which I agree is very difficult, grows worse. People don't want to face the catastrophe; neither do I.
It can't be more obvious; all the warning lights are blinking red. We have a responsibility to our ancestors, who faced catastrophes and built a society for us, and to our decedents, to face the problem and the hardship.
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* Not infecting others who are more at risk or cannot get the vaccine (allergies, age, availability) or are higher risk than you (age, preconditions), including anti-vaxxers (I would be devastated if a beloved family members died even if they rejected the vaccine ). * Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?) * Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delt…
I hope you understand that we will not be “wiping out COVID” any time soon. We need long term management strategies that are actually sustainable and protect the most vulnerable. And we probably need to worry less about persuading the die hards and more about things like standing up booster distribution and making ventilation improvements. And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes…
Have you looked at uptake rates for the seasonal flu vaccine?
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1819estimates.ht...
> Flu vaccination coverage among adults ≥18 years was 45.3%, an increase of 8.2 percentage points from the 2017–18 flu season and 2.0 percentage points higher than the 2016–17 season.
That is not a bar we should be aiming at...
I can. I got my shots as soon as I could, but I know lots of people that will never do it. Yesterday I was eating at a ramen shop - traffic was slow, so I got to listen to the bulletproof young man waiting tables talk to his friend at length about how he'd never get the shot, just like the flu, I'm not an anti-vaxxer - but, I don't wear tinfoil hats - but. The list of reasons not to do it was long and apparently conv…
A relative of mine is buying into the vaccine conspiracies along with shitting on depression and other mental problems, and honestly, I wish they'd get a serious case of Covid or something. These people don't learn until someone they know actually fucking dies.
Some people just don't give a shit if it doesn't affect them personally.
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I hope you understand that we will not be “wiping out COVID” any time soon. We need long term management strategies that are actually sustainable and protect the most vulnerable. And we probably need to worry less about persuading the die hards and more about things like standing up booster distribution and making ventilation improvements. And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes…
> And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes part of the normal, boring health care routine instead of something they’re being “forced into” in an emergency, You know, you go in to the clinic in the winter with a cold. Doc asks if you’ve had your flu shot. Asks if you’ve had your COVID shot. That’s a much more comfortable context for people, I think. Have you looked at uptake rates…