281–290 of 330 posts
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Yes, and we are also pretty certain that the mechanism of action is the number of mRNA particles contained: 30 µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100 µg for Moderna. As a result, Germany e.g. uses half-doses for Moderna and vaccinates under 30s exclusively with Biontech.
Just to clarify: half-doses are only used for booster shots (following EMA recommendation). First and second shots still use full dosage.
It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.
Death is not the only bad outcome from COVID, though, so some behavior modification could be justifiable based on risk tolerance.
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This is an unnecessarily sanctimonious post in my opinion. If you're in favour of fresh restrictions then for how long? To what extent? How much collateral damage in terms of mental health, education, the economy, social cohesion etc are you willing to accept? Implying people are selfish after two years of sacrifice is a rather churlish angle, in my opinion people advocating for continuing restrictions need to put nu…
1) No, any sanctimony present (and there was none, really) was entirely necessary. 2) I actually made no argument in favor of "fresh restrictions", but that's a nice straw man you are weaving together, there! 3) I didn't "imply people are selfish". I said it, straight out. GP's stated view is ludicrously selfish and ignorant. 4) After two years of sacrifice? That's just it, though: some people still don't get it, as…
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No need to be black and white about this. It's not just a battle between the rabid authoritarians and hysterical Chicken Littles on one side, and the crackpot QAnons and categorical anti-vaxxers on the other. There's a range of reasonable positions in between. So let's stop framing things in the distorted and divisive way that the media has profited enormously from. I, for one, do not think the COVID vaccine specific…
Vaccine mandates make sense for the same reason drunk driving bans make sense: externalities. The role of government is to cover for market failings, and spillover costs are a prime example of an area where markets are essentially guaranteed to fail.
These are not the same thing. One is an inaction, the other is an action.
It's like saying that forcing someone to have an abortion is the same thing as banning abortions.
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haha those crazy people expecting a few years of safety trials before novel medical treatments are forced onto the public. they sure are silly
I've always loved this logic. Luckily lead, asbestos, CFCs, plastic hardners, microplastics, Teflon, fracking pollutants and ICE/diesel fumes have had no presumed medical benefits so we need rigorous evidence to believe they have already killed us.
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This is an unnecessarily sanctimonious post in my opinion. If you're in favour of fresh restrictions then for how long? To what extent? How much collateral damage in terms of mental health, education, the economy, social cohesion etc are you willing to accept? Implying people are selfish after two years of sacrifice is a rather churlish angle, in my opinion people advocating for continuing restrictions need to put nu…
1) No, any sanctimony present (and there was none, really) was entirely necessary. 2) I actually made no argument in favor of "fresh restrictions", but that's a nice straw man you are weaving together, there! 3) I didn't "imply people are selfish". I said it, straight out. GP's stated view is ludicrously selfish and ignorant. 4) After two years of sacrifice? That's just it, though: some people still don't get it, as…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an unnecessarily sanctimonious post in my opinion. If you're in favour of fresh restrictions then for how long? To what extent? How much collateral damage in terms of mental health, education, the economy, social cohesion etc are you willing to accept? Implying people are selfish after two years of sacrifice is a rather churlish angle, in my opinion people advocating for continuing restrictions need to put nu…
1) No, any sanctimony present (and there was none, really) was entirely necessary. 2) I actually made no argument in favor of "fresh restrictions", but that's a nice straw man you are weaving together, there! 3) I didn't "imply people are selfish". I said it, straight out. GP's stated view is ludicrously selfish and ignorant. 4) After two years of sacrifice? That's just it, though: some people still don't get it, as…
It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.
So, there are a few things here.
Purely from an individual point of view, for the average vaccinated (and especially the average boosted person), this is probably largely true.
And indeed if the whole population was vaccinated then this would probably largely be true for everyone.
But the elephant in the room is the hospitals. If rates are high enough that the ICUs are full (typically, in heavily vaccinated countries, mostly of unvaccinated people and severely immunocompromised people) then that is a big, big problem. If you're in a nasty car accident, say, you may, under normal circumstances, end up in ICU. However, if ICU is full of covid patients, you won't, even if you need it. And, less dramatically, overcrowded hospitals mean a lot of routine stuff gets cancelled. Many countries' hospital systems have, in practice, been in a reduced normal capacity for the last two years, and there are significant backlogs; it can't go on forever.
But yes, if you, personally, are vaccinated and boosted (and not immunocompromised), then you, personally, are unlikely to die regardless of how bad your behaviour is. Not of covid, anyway. Perhaps avoid ending up in a situation where you need to go to hospital for something else, indefinitely, though.
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The problem is that vaccination protects you from having a bad case of Covid, but it doesn't protect you from getting infected and infecting others. So, if the vaccinated carry on as if it's 2019, the disease will jump from one vaccinated person to the next until it finds an unvaccinated person.
I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, but since the virus is now endemic everyone will eventually be exposed. You can't seriously expect people to tolerate restrictions indefinitely.
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The problem is that vaccination protects you from having a bad case of Covid, but it doesn't protect you from getting infected and infecting others. So, if the vaccinated carry on as if it's 2019, the disease will jump from one vaccinated person to the next until it finds an unvaccinated person.
I believe that the proper response to this is to limit the percentage of hospital wards that can be devoted to COVID 19 cases, as the main effect of low vaccination rates is that the hospitals get too full. And suddenly, I'm not worried anymore, unlike now where the regional hospitals are massively backed up or closed due to low vaccination rates. My compassion is completely fatigued. All I can think about now is get…
That's really not going to fly from a political, legal, or medical ethics standpoint. Like, just letting the unvaccinated die and shielding the health system would be an option if societies worked completely differently than they actually do, but given how societies actually are, this is simply not an option.