More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’ • Hacker News Board

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

#951

Post by systemvoltage » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 7:38 AM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #748

valachio wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the possibility that we will look back on history and realize how hysteria and media fearmongering drove human society to take wholly unnecessary measures and paved a path towards more authoritarianism, more surveillance, a financial crisis due to the government printing trillions of dollars which a lot of it is going into the stock market and driving up companies to insane valuations, creating a genera…

This is the most truth I've seen packed into a few sentences in the past two years regarding what's happened.

One major thing that's missing - NPR radio is about 95% race discussions. Every single time I turn it on, it is about race. When did race become such a dominant part of the society? I saw this flare up right after COVID.

Not sure if these race discussions are doing anything but dividing people more. It is having a negative effect.

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

#952

Post by bruiseralmighty » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #833

maerF0x0 wrote: post #762

Between the 2nd dose putting me in the ER with myocarditis which no one warned me about the risk of, and a $3500 medical bill due, being told I could be maskless and free if I got the "vaccine"[1], getting covid anyways and it being nbd, and then learning that the CDC redefined the meaning of "vaccine" for this treatment[2] (imo "immunotherapy" would be a more understandable word) -- yeah I'm done. I'm not risking an…

"The redefinition undermines what most would colloquially understand as a vaccine" It's very common for people outside of a profession to misunderstand terms from within that profession. That generally doesn't mean we get to redefine it on the fly. The Covid vaccines are vaccines because it is the correct and appropriate terminology to use within the fields that develop and administer vaccines. In terms of not being…

This is not how public health messaging works, or how media narratives in general function today.

The CDC, being a public health agency, had a definition of vaccine that was intended for the public's consumption. Scientists generally do not have to check the CDC website for terms of art regarding their profession.

There is/(was?) a general understanding that a 'vaccine' was an injection or spray or ingestable that primed the immune system to fight a potential 'real' infection of a disease. This priming meant that while you may come into contact with the disease, you would be exceedingly unlikely to develop symptoms.

Changing the public definition of the vaccine after the initial covid vaccines had already been released to allow 'vaccine' to mean any therapeutic that gave any degree of protection from a disease is an obvious bait and switch. Evidence of this definition being changed as a damage control measure due to floundering public trust is evident from emails made available through FOIA requests.

We are not going to pretend that updating that definition was a sincere miscommunication of the science when the text is so obviously not scientific. The political motivations and objectives are clear.

If this had been a single event we may still express doubt, but these language games that prey upon the public's preconceived definitions of common vocabulary have been rampant for years at this point. 'With-cause' being another recent instance.

When reporting covid hospitalizations the phrase "X people hospitalized with covid" was used. Last week we had Fauchi on air explain that although those people are in the hospital _with_ a positive covid test many of them are asymptomatic and are in fact at the hospital _because_ of something other than covid; they just happened to test positive as well. Yet for months these numbers stood without question or explanation allowing a narrative of 'high covid hospitalizations' to be pushed.

Effectively we are treating the public as if they are idiots for hearing the obvious common parlance meaning of such statements-- "hospitalized with covid" when instead they should read as lawyers questioning every word. This is governmental malpractice.

A small note on season flu vaccines. The public generally understands that scientists are playing a guessing game with the flu and some years they guess better than others. But on years where they do guess well, the flu vaccine operates as the public generally understands it in what I've written above. Not only has there been no messaging that these covid 'vaccines' are playing a similar guessing game there has in fact been the exact opposite messaging. We developed an 'alpha variant vaccine' now we are developing a omicron variant vaccine. These are being discussed like treatments that 'should work' similar to a flu vaccine on a good year.

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

#953

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #555

mschuster91 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The democratic party has hung their hat on how bad covid is and how important it is to get vaccinated and to state at this point, NVM lets just get back to normal would be a loss of face. It actually still is important and advisable to keep your coronavirus vaccinations up to date. There's a reason why Israel marches ahead and begins to distribute the fourth shot in a year to the most vulnerable groups, and likely…

I'm not sure why you're voted down here. A lot of good information.

I'm advocating for a massive mandatory vaccination program, which goes against conventional liberal/libertarian standpoints - even though all of the vaccines have proven their efficiency and safety in militaries worldwide and up to now, no one has complained.

We are losing a lot of wealth, a lot of life simply because politicians are afraid of anti-vaxxer propaganda and because prior generations have abused minorities for medical experiments (e.g. the Tuskegee syphilis experiment) or vaccination programs for military purposes (e.g. the Bin Laden discovery).

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

#954

Post by quelltext » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

SailingSperm wrote: post #922

barbazoo wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to [1] Mr Malone said "mRNA vaccine technology I created" which is not true as far as I can find tell. He did work on mRNA technology decades ago but didn't invent mRNA vaccines. He also states that "The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children's cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins.". What does that even mean, a "viral gene"? Toxic spike proteins? Sou…

The terminology 'viral gene' is not a made up fear mongering term... It's a plainly descriptive term. It is an encoding for a protein of a virus, in this case the modified c19 spike protein. Also with regards to fundamental changes to the immune system - this is also true. """ See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting or the Hoskins effect,[1]…

> Also with regards to fundamental changes to the immune system - this is also true.

As far as I understand (from the wikipedia article) the Hoskins effect (also) applies if you simply got infected once. It's not something specific to the vaccine.

Claiming the "vaccine causes a fundamental change" is a bit misleading. The vaccine OR infective exposure have the described effect, which is normal! And altering the immune system to prepare it for future infections is the point of any vaccine, isn't it?

Now, one might say that it's not good to vaccinate everyone so that there remains a population that can get freshly infected with new variants and build up immunity fresh. But they'd then be altering their immune system by the response to that as well, if they don't die from the infection.

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

#955

Post by alx__ » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 8:48 AM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #383

titzer wrote: post #113

I've gone through cycles with this. Mostly I am done arguing. I hate arguing about this. It's just more of the culture war shit that so many different media sources love pushing to keep people amped up. I double vaxxed and boosted. Stopped wearing a mask for the most part, but with Omicron I started wearing a mask again because I just don't want this stupid virus. I'm healthy and would probably not have a symptomatic…

I'm just happy to have a good excuse to wear a mask on an airplane. I always used to get sick after flights.

I will continue to wear a mask on airplanes and airports. I'm really enjoying not getting sick with a cold or flu

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

#956

Post by nullc » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #631

mizzack wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got your anecdotes, and I've got mine. My 3 young kids all caught omicron last week. Each were lethargic for a day, had a minor sore throat, and were back to normal in a day or two. The flu last month was way scarier with high fevers. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.

I would be much more concerned about omicron. The flu is very unlikely to have any long term effects as long one keep an eye on the fever. We don't know about the long term effects of omicron. What we do know about covid is for example fatigue and long term lung damage, both which can have very debilitating effects on health, wealth and social well being. Lung damage in particular can be hard to detect without doing…

The flu kills young children at a non-trivial rate. No strain of covid is known to do that.

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

#957

Post by mleonhard » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

holbrad wrote: post #863

mleonhard wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic. They were expected to stop people from dying from the pandemic. They are doing that. So far, vaccines have saved 1.1M Americans from dying from covid and saved 10.3M Americans from needing hospital treatment for covid [0]. Preventable Covid-19 cases can lead to higher health and life insurance rates. Firing employees who refuse the vaccine is smart business. Vaccine…

"Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic." That's complete bullshit. You can find many examples of experts, governments and politicians claiming that's exactly what was likely going to happen. That was the message people were sold. For good reason, there are many diseases that have been wiped out by vaccination.

I should not have written "Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic." Vaccines were expected to stop the pandemic.

PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries had SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 [0]. It kills 9% of people who catch it, even young people. Their governments performed effective contact tracing and forced quarantining. Everyone in those countries was careful not to catch or spread the disease. It nearly became a pandemic, but the people stopped it.

I hoped that Americans would do the same with SARS-CoV-2 (covid).

Instead, we went half the pandemic without a pandemic expert (epidemiologist) on the National Covid Task Force [1]. Our national leader downplayed the pandemic, refused to be careful not to catch or spread the disease, caught the disease, exposed his political opponents to it during debate, recovered, and consistently undermined and contradicted our national pandemic experts (CDC) [2].

Our government contact tracing programs have been underfunded and ineffective. Only schools performed effective contact tracing. Quarantine is not enforced or even checked. There are no fines or prison time for sick people who go to work or to gatherings and spread the disease.

Many Americans refused to take simple precautions to avoid catching or transmitting the disease. Some places even banned such precautions [3]!

About 20% of adult Americans refused the vaccine [4].

Americans refused to cooperate and achieve herd immunity. Do not blame epidemiologists for telling us what was possible. We should blame callous & incompetent politicians for undermining our medical professionals, blame callous & greedy media companies for targeting medical advice with their anti-establishment dogma, and blame callous & gullible Americans for refusing vaccines and carelessly spreading the disease.

Cities with cooperative people did achieve herd immunity. For example, San Francisco did in 2021-06 [5].

Then Delta and Omicron variants arrived. They break through existing immunity. USA now has 700,000 new cases of Omicron per day [6]. So we should reach herd immunity for Omicron in March. Then the pandemic will be over for us, unless another breakthrough variant arises.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Coronavirus_Task_F...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cd...

[3] https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-execu...

[4] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_San_F...

[6] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&cumulative=0&...

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

#958

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #534

toshk wrote: post #368

Of course people are done with it. Vaccinations were sold as the solution to the pandemic. Yet worldwide infections are going up at the same speed if not faster than before vaccinations. But no policy maker acknowledges this. They refer to the lowered death rate, or blame a new variant. But it means that policy that gave people more freedom because of their vaccination status are not having any significant effect on…

There's some real irony that the people most likely to spread COVID -- those who are vaccinated and thus don't show symptoms -- are the ones "allowed" to engage in the most risky behaviour like large gatherings at restaurants, bars, theatres, sports arenas. Meanwhile those second-class citizens who are non-vaccinated won't take those risks and will also definitely know if they are sick, hilariously probably behaving…

Studies show unvaxxed people: * are five times more likely to catch covid * significantly more likely to underestimate the risks of Covid * are less likely to wear masks and follow other non-vaccine related best practices

You’ve basically chained a series of specious conclusions together and it definitely seems like those conclusions serve to support a particular political narrative.

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

#959

Post by belorn » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

nullc wrote: post #956

belorn wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be much more concerned about omicron. The flu is very unlikely to have any long term effects as long one keep an eye on the fever. We don't know about the long term effects of omicron. What we do know about covid is for example fatigue and long term lung damage, both which can have very debilitating effects on health, wealth and social well being. Lung damage in particular can be hard to detect without doing…

The flu kills young children at a non-trivial rate. No strain of covid is known to do that.

Yes, high fever is dangerous and why monitoring is important and hospitalization is required if the fever goes up. A thermostat is a (I am pretty sure) a recommended tool for parents to own and use during an infection. If the fever do go up there is common available medicine.

For covid it is good to keeping an eye on oxygen levels. There are not many good tools to do this, through the skin do turn blue when things start to go very bad. Oxygen capacity can go down a fair amount before there is obvious signs, especially if the patient is laying down. The recommended medicine is pure oxygen which will require a hospital visit.

Personally I am more worried about covid. It is easier to monitor the fever of the flu, the signs for trouble is more clear, and the medical guidelines for when to go to the hospital is well established. Worrying oxygen levels are silent, harder to measure, and the medicine isn't something that people usually have at home. The guidelines are not fully established and there is ongoing research studies on the effects.

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

#960

Post by obrit » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

Diederich wrote: post #862

StillBored wrote: post #389

Vaxxed and I caught Cov19 a couple weeks ago (likely omicron). Same with the wife. I've had allergies that were worse. It was a 3 day event with a very mild fever and a bit of a cough the last day. It was extremely mild, and if I hadn't decided to take a couple days off to catch up on my reading after getting tested, I would have probably just eaten a couple advil and continued on as though nothing happened. So now I…

> But now, I suspect I might be doing myself a disservice by not exposing myself to all the variants and things floating around. Honest question: do you know of any source that indicates natural exposure to C19 and variants provides stronger (or equally strong) protection than vaccinations/boosters? Thanks!

Perhaps it doesn't say exactly what you're looking for, but you might find it interesting anyway: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...