541–550 of 1001 posts
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If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.
But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.
You start with 5% critical strike chance, see how often that happens.
You will be seriously surprised.
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I live in Kansas and have basically forgotten COVID is a thing. The people who wanted to get vaccinated like me have and those who haven’t, haven’t. Nobody asks about it and no businesses have any sort of mask requirements. Half of the people at the grocery store wear masks and the other half don’t. Everyone seems to be getting along. Next door in Kansas City Missouri I stopped at a gas station and an employee was sh…
>I guess 5 miles difference magically makes COVID much more contagious. In my nearest town (in the UK) there are two supermarkets. In the budget one (Aldi) nobody wears a mask, in the upmarket one (Waitrose) everybody does.
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It seems like we are experiencing a very slow and gradual offramp from the restrictions, rather than something that will have a clearly defined endpoint. 2021 is already "mostly normal", for me. I hope sometime in 2022 we will be back to "100% normal", but I'm not confident.
Masks became a regular fixture in Asia after original SARS. Not by regulation, but they just became an ordinary item used by people to avoid getting sick or avoid getting others sick.
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Your children do not need it - perhaps you should evaluate whether they are in an 'at risk' category like the Nordics https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01897-w In the US, 340 children under 17 have died from Covid. Total. During the same period, 187 have died from the flu, and over 51,000 children have died from all causes: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se... Sweden halts Moderna:…
I though most of the point of vaxing children and other low-risk groups is to stop the spread, not for their own individual safety. Reducing the chance they'll infect grandma. And reducing the circulating pool of infections to prevent more virulent strains from developing. Have I got this wrong?
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What a horrible idea. I'm not willing to wear a mask just to avoid a cold. We cannot allow irrational germaphobes to seize control of our society in the name of "safety".
jesus people they said they hope it stays: aka socially it becomes normalized. No one is advocating forcing people to wear masks forever.
We had reports of people who wanted to take weird-ass drugs-of-the-day just to refuse getting vaccinated. And screaming "conspiracy" when their efficacy was not confirmed to be as high as they expected. Good that we have something that actually works, bad that some assholes will use it as an excuse not to get vaxxed, completely missing the point (among others, trying to prevent something worse than Delta).
Genuine question: is it necessary to get vaxxed if - all else held the same - the cost is not significantly higher for the antiviral? Wouldn't that cut the risk down so significantly that we can safely say, "Vaccinate if you're at-risk for your own protection, and have negligible risk otherwise"? This changes the entire risk calculation.
First thing I noticed is these result actually select people who had the antiviral administered to them within 3 days of the symptoms appearing. I have personally known people who unfortunately died in a week tops after contracting the virus (they had pre-existing conditions, namely hypertension and diabetes).
Which brings me to my next point: Suppose the antiviral exists and is viable to even beyond 85%. How much will it cost ? I'm not a US citizen, but I'm thinking insurances will rush to trying not to cover anyone who's not vaccinated or some shady shit because they always do. And how about 3rd world countries like the one I come from. We can't even get RNA vaccines, let alone an experimental drug like this.
And now my final and target point: Suppose you don't want to get the vaccine and you can afford the drug. We do have proof that even if the vaccine doesn't protect you from the virus completely, even in the unfortunate case where you do contract it, you'll end up infecting less people. Now if you choose to not get vaccinated, then you really do risk potentially contaminating more people that will either have no access to the antiviral within a reasonable effective timeframe(and that maybe not vaccinated either) or just plain infecting more people overall.
Not the cleanest reasoning, and not a mathematical proof by any means, but I believe it's one of those "mathematical" problems where the proof is finding an edge case (sorry studied in french, really don't know how they say it in english).
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> the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh). Seeing this stuff so prevalent on HN really disappointed me.
Try to understand why this viewpoint exists. We are all logical people. The difference is in the trust of public media and government. Both sides of the argument are mostly right in what they believe given the information they are consuming. My suggestion - read sources from both sides before deciding that anyone slightly against Covid hysteria is misinformed and is an anti-vaxxer. Second suggestion, anti-vaxxer is a…
That's a bold claim. In my experience the vast majority of people hardly try to think logically or apply critical thinking skills in most opportunities, and no human does so anywhere close to all the time. Humans are deeply irrational creatures, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
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In California, except for wearing masks in retail establishments, everything has been back to normal for months. School has been full time in person, and traffic sucks once again.
I wouldn't call it "back to normal". In addition to the mask mandates, which are more bothersome than you make out (e.g. it's pretty tiring to do cardio at the gym with a mask), there are other restrictions. Parents aren't allowed on our school campus, we don't have any in-person school events, kids get tested once a week, kids have to stay at 3 feet from each other at school, no wind instrument classes.
Those restrictions are on their way out:
https://abc7news.com/amp/face-masks-mask-mandates-bay-area-i...
> Parents aren't allowed on our school campus, we don't have any in-person school events, kids get tested once a week, kids have to stay at 3 feet from each other at school, no wood wind instrument classes.
Not sure where you are but in my very urban CA city, except for testing which is a very good thing IMO, none of these rules are in place.
This morning, the parent community met for donuts at the elementary school campus, where kids were playing close-contact basketball. The local middle school jazz band - with plenty of wind instruments - played recently at the local street fair as a fundraiser, and it's clear they had been practicing.
Then again, around here vaccine and mask wearing rates are extremely high, so we basically had very little in the way of outbreaks and community transmission. It seems like when a critical majority of people are civically considerate and voluntarily mask and vaccinate, life can go on pretty close to normal.
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The vaccines are 92–95% effective at preventing hospitalisation and death. (They also reduce spread significantly.) That's great. However, that means something like this is still very useful because of that 5–8%, especially for the elderly and the immunosuppressed, etc. (I share your skepticism anti vaxxers would be interested in an effective treatment.)
The mRNA vaccines do not, and never have, reduce the spread of the virus from one infected person to someone else. The only thing they do is reduce symptoms. That has been known from clinical trials. Everything else is a talking point not based on a peer reviewed scientific study. Or if you think you have a study that refutes this, please post.
That's simply not correct.
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There are two possible exit strategies. - Vaccinate everyone who can be vaccinated, at gunpoint. - Allow everyone who is vulnerable to die, at which point the death rates will drop. Choose. Which one do you want?
You can't produce, distribute and vaccinate everyone at gun point fast enough before it mutates away from what your vax targeted. And this strategy ignores animal reservoirs where the virus can reside and come back.