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More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

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Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#851

Post by solveit »

whimsicalism wrote: post #637
Nbox9 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personal conscience and conviction used to be held sacred in the US […] it has become politically incorrect to have a personal principle or conviction that contradicts the approved viewpoint, or otherwise goes against the grain. I think you might have a grandiose mental image of America’s past. The 1798 Sedition Act ‘made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its…

I am fascinated by this sort of thing. So many people perceive there to be some great American democratic republic tradition being aborated in recent years... but we didn't even get majoritarian democracy until the mid-20th century, and there was certainly not the sort of strong deference to the bill of rights historically that people seem to imagine. I feel like this mythical conception of the history of America has…

It probably helps that the US spent half a century fighting a propaganda war against the Soviet Union.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#852

Post by tablespoon »

georgekv wrote: post #647
afavour wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of regret even mentioning the effects of COVID in my original comment as I figured there would be a reply like yours and you're not wrong! But it wasn't the main point I was trying to make. My main point is that everyone just seems to have moved on from under 5s. We've adopted a stance of "vaxxed and done" for adults and older children and paid no attention to the vax trials for under 5s taking forever. It's b…

The biggest reason the under 5s vaccine is taking so long is that they don't suffer severe enough symptoms that they can easily test the efficacy of the virus. The same issue was there with the 5-11s but pharma, CDC, & FDA just glossed over that to approve the vaccines.

> The biggest reason the under 5s vaccine is taking so long is that they don't suffer severe enough symptoms that they can easily test the efficacy of the virus.

Do you have a source on that?

My understanding is the reason it's taking so long is 1) an abundance of caution because the risk/reward calculation is different and 2) young children's immune systems don't work the same as adults').

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#853

Post by dpark »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #829
dpark wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the CDC redefined the meaning of "vaccine" for this treatment[2] (imo "immunotherapy" would be a more understandable word) -- yeah I'm done. What is it with antivaxxers and their complaints about the definition of vaccination? They complained that the definition was changed to include a new way of conferring immunity. They complained that the definition was posted to be more accurate. Vaccines have never been 100%…

You're not entirely wrong that terms need to be updated from time to time and to match new technological details. I agree with redefining the difference between weakened portions of a virus vs (as i understood it) spike proteins produced within us ... What I personally dont agree with is redefining the success % (about 80%?) and a target of a vaccine to mean "You wont get hospitalized" (as opposed to you will have no…

> What I personally dont agree with is redefining the success % (about 80%?) and a target of a vaccine to mean "You wont get hospitalized" (as opposed to you will have no observable symptoms).

Where are these part of the definition? This isn’t something they put in their definition so far as I can see.

Anyone who thought that the previous definition meant “100% effective, no symptoms” was woefully misinformed. Indeed, if people thought that before, then it’s really, really good that the CDC updated their definition.

> The real issue at hand is that the public has an understanding of what a "vaccine" means to them, and that public definition and the establishment provided new definition are grossly different. I'm not a fan of being told what a word means by overlords who control the definitions of language.

Then, again, the public was woefully (willfully?) misinformed. Vaccines have never given perfect immunity to all recipients. I don’t know anyone in my personal life who has ever indicated that they thought vaccines were 100% protective, though.

I also don’t know who should be defining the word vaccine if not medical professionals. It also looks like Webster agrees with the CDC, though for all I know they’ve changed their definition recently.

I question the intellectual honesty of the people spreading these complaints, because many of these same people talk about “natural immunity”. Someone who thinks “immunity” means “0% chance of infection” shouldn’t be talking about “natural immunity”, either. (I’m not saying you, here, to be clear.)

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#854

Post by Ergo19 »

coryrc wrote: post #623
afavour wrote: post #129

I'm vaxxed. I'm boosted. I'd very much like to be done. But my children cannot be vaccinated. As a parent of a young kid it kind of feels like everyone has just moved on. I know folks in here will tell me that statistically speaking my children are unlikely to be hospitalized and so on, and I agree. But I know enough kids who got COVID and suffered the symptoms (e.g. a months-long scratchy cough) that I'm not going t…

My kid's in day care. He's gotten a dozen diseases since starting. For all we know one was covid. With all this prevention none of these other diseases were stopped so why would anyone think covid could be stopped? It clearly can't.

The interventions deployed against COVID had indeed stopped a notable disease - influenza. It is noteworthy that these interventions were designed to fight the flu, apparently because that was the public health playbook at hand. But I agree it is remarkable how interventions which could crush the flu don't seem to bother any number of common cold viruses much at all.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#855

Post by namarie »

xkbarkar wrote: post #314
ketzo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no longer a real need to vilify the unvaxxed I very, very much disagree with this. Unvaccinated people have a much higher rate of severe illness that requires hospitalization. Filling up hospitals unnecessarily kills people, and delays preventative care. People who are voluntarily unvaxxed without a medical necessity are, to be clear, 1) categorically stupid 2) responsible for the injury and death of other…

I could use the same rationale to say people who are fat are willingly putting others in danger. As up to 75% of C19 hospitaltizations are obese persons I could just a s easily hunt down overweights and accuse them of murder as their unhealthy habits are now clogging the medical system forcing us to shut down society to protect them. I could call them names ,like typhoid Maries. Fat fucks. Ban them from participating…

Honestly, comparing people who are fat to unvaccinated people who could change their vaccination status with a few free jabs but day after day refuse to do so is more likely to tell me you despise fat people more than anything else.

I absolutely agree that no one should ever be threatened to have medical care taken away from them! That is precisely why I'm ok with villifying (note that I'm not saying "calling them names" or "refuse treatment") the unvaccinated, as that is precisely what they are doing! And no, this is absolutely not comparable to anything else: there has been no sudden explosion in the last two years of obesity or drunk driving or smoking to the point that there are no hospital beds for anyone else. Only covid has done that.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#856

Post by nathanaldensr »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #29

I think the message of "vaxxed and done" is the right way for us to be moving, but I think it's incomplete. To get vaxxed insulates you from the risk of severe disease. It reduces the risk to the point that going out and living life is an acceptable risk, just like any other. However, it doesn't protect you from infecting others. To that end, I think that indoor mask mandates continue to be justifiable and should con…

Call me crazy, but I thoroughly enjoy the unrestricted flow of oxygen into my mouth during inhalation and the unrestricted flow of carbon dioxide out of my mouth during exhalation.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#857

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

spookthesunset wrote: post #811
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life This always smacks of hyperbole. How much quality of life was sacrificed, really? It's not like we had to all go dig trenches or something. We just had to stop going to brunch.

Man the privilege required to say what you just wrote is amazing. Not everybody works some cushy work from home tech job. Many people had their life’s work destroyed, their career ripped from them, they got to watch the education system fuck over their kids. Maybe all you lost was brunch, but these last years cost many people a lot . It’s almost insulting to just brush off what we did the last two year as something m…

The parent commenter that I was replying to was talking about:

"people [who] were willing to sacrifice [..] their quality-of-life"

Not people who got fucked over as collateral damage by the pandemic. But people who sacrificed. A sacrifice is "giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else", and it's something you "give", not something someone takes against your will.

The essential workers who sacrificed were and are heroes. First responders, nurses, doctors, teachers, grocery store clerks, vaccine scientists. The people keeping us alive. They deserve our respect and admiration for their sacrifice.

But the parent commenter says they sacrificed their "quality of life". That's something very vague. It's not necessarily their livelihood, or apartment, or life. "Quality of life" could mean nearly anything that makes you happy.

There's a whole bunch of people who are not essential workers who think that what they sacrificed is just as important, and those people's "quality of life sacrifice" were leisure activities like brunch. Or, like the parents who just don't want to deal with their kids, "sacrificed their kid's education" (even though no kid's education is destroyed by a year or two of sitting inside). Probably a majority of the population complaining about their quality of life are these people, and that's who I'm referring to.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#858

Post by TimTheTinker »

hnuser847 wrote: post #834
standardUser wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...consideration for personal liberty has gone by the wayside..." Can you truly say these things with a straight face, in light of the countless laws banning voluntary consumption of drugs and the millions of harsh prison sentences that have been handed out for breaking those laws? People literally lose their freedom - they are put in poorly-maintained cages - for exercising their personal liberty in that fashion. T…

Both liberals and conservatives are massive hypocrites. Neither ideology has a consistent set of beliefs when it comes to personal liberty. Both will use arguments from personal liberty when it's for something they support and will conveniently forgot about those arguments for issues they don't support. Liberals support "my body, my choice" when it comes to abortions, but they don't want you to have a choice over whe…

> Liberals support "my body, my choice" when it comes to abortions, but they don't want you to have a choice over whether or not to get the vaccine. Conservatives support "my body, my choice" when it comes to vaccines, but don't want to you have a choice over whether or not to get an abortion.

But when it comes to abortion, it's not "my body, my choice", according to pro-life advocates. It's two bodies, one of which is not yours.

There's more nuance in these discussions than can be reduced to a slogan or talking point. "Freedom" ought to map to what gives people the most personal liberty possible while restraining evil and its proliferation. But pursuing that requires defining "evil" which maps directly onto worldviews -- and we land squarely back at square one.

We all may be hypocrites in some way, but the real problem is that we don't agree on what is good and evil -- or rather, that a sizable portion of the population (or all of it) is wrong on that most important question.

Modern US politics is what it is because of strongly differing worldviews.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#859

Post by ggreer »

nerdponx wrote: post #72
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #17

I'm fully vax'd and boosted. I'll probably continue to get boosted in the future. All that said? I feel like the government did a really bad job communicating who needs the booster and when. First, they gave vague recommendations to immunocompromised folks. They said everyone else probably didn't need it. Then they said well, ok for older folks. Then this new omni variant comes out and they're badgering everyone to g…

I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain. Ideally I'd also like the vaccine to not make me sick for 2 days, since most other common vaccines don't (e.g. influenza). But maybe that's just not possible. Not having increased risk of heart inflammation and rare dangerous thromboses would be nice too, but then again it seems like Covid causes those anyway. So maybe we just need to update…

> I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain.

By the time the Omicron-specific vaccines are approved by the various government health bureaucracies, Omicron will have run its course. Unless you want to live like a hermit for the next few months, it's probably best to get a booster and live your life. All of my friends & acquaintances who've contracted omicron have had a booster shot and all of them said that the worst part was isolating. Their symptoms were extremely mild- just a sore throat or cough for a few days.

It would be nice if one could choose a lower dose of vaccine. The second shot (and booster) of Pfizer were absolutely brutal for me. A baby aspirin version of the vaccine would provide most of the protection without the days of debilitating pain and fever. When I got my booster I asked the guy giving the shot if he could inject a partial dose because my previous reaction was so bad. He just laughed, emptied the syringe into my arm, and told me to drink lots of water. :(

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#860

Post by coryfklein »

notJim wrote: post #618
bko wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away... That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a foreseeable future. Well, one can cry for the world that was, or one can get up and live in the world that is. Whats the magic number? There are places like New York that have 95% over 18 wi…

To be fair, many people had pointed out that unless we vaccinate the entire world, new variants would emerge, which may be better at evading the vaccine. That is exactly what happened with Omicron.

Fortunately, since a high mortality rate makes for poor Darwinian fitness, viruses tend to evolve over time into variants with lower mortality albeit higher infectivity.

In a few decades, coronavirus may actually end up being just as lethal as the flu! One can hope, at least.

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