331–340 of 1001 posts
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They stop the hospitals from filling up though.
Tobacco kills 8 million of its users, annually. Why is their presence in ICU beds not a topic of concern?
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The same reasoning can be applied to obesity.
Obesity isn't contagious and doesn't have spiky behavior in hospitalizations. We also know a reliable cure even if its very difficult to put into practice (impossible for some).
That's why I think vaccination schemes that offered free food were undermining the "following the science" bit.
As was the banning of the popular "Parkrun" in the UK, which is a collective outdoor exercise event, during the lockdown.
So many policies have undermined the "follow the science" bit in my mind.
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Any more details on the "masks don't work thing"? It's news to me, and i don't see how that could have changed - masks, even cloth ones, but even more so for surgical and N95 types, drastically limit how much virus you spread when you're contagious; and especially N95 also offer some protection against catching it. Especially for crowded places, masks seem like a no brainer.
Not OP. They work, but much more marginally and situationally than most people think. They're best thought of as a delaying factor in exposure, with cloth masks adding no or a few minutes and surgical masks adding somewhat more time. In many situations, this is irrelevant, because you're stuck with the group and the air for far longer than the mask differential affords. I'd say the optimal places for wearing masks ar…
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The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.
Cigarette use kills 480000 people every year in the US alone. 300 billion dollars estimated to be spent per year with treatment of smoking-related illness. I don't want even to look at the numbers of the more critical epidemic on the US: obesity and metabolic diseases. By arguing that "the unvaxxed" are a burden and that they deserve discrimination, you are opening the gates for those arguing that smokers should be f…
Why is the opinion of a Pfizer board member relevant to legal policy? In other news, McDonald's board members are quite fond of wafer-thin beef patties.
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> Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. Source?
Consider for a moment that the "antivaxxers" are correct, that there is enormous bias in our medical, pharmaceutical, and media establishments in favor of vaccine safety. Could you really expect a reliable source on the subject if this were the case? What proportion of people are willing to speak out and risk career and social suicide for being labeled an "antivaxxer"? It is a self reinforcing chilling effect - few p…
I'm sorry, but this is just classic conspiracy theory thinking. "The very absence of evidence that I'm right is proof that I'm right."
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I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. The estimate for COVID-19 is that roughly 70% to 85% of the population will need to be vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold. USA is at about 63% fully vaccinated (76% had at least one dose). where does it end? It ends when the the threat subsides. Why this…
> The people you elect to represent you (for those of us with a democracy-like government) The problem is that so many elected officials don't abide by the rules that they push. Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, London Breed, etc. When the powerful can ignore their own rules, they're more likely to enact sweeping mandates.
The sweeping mandates are for our public health. These folks aren't asking us to mask up or vaccinate for their own benefit. And they can only sorta ignore their own rules, because aren't they being roasted in the media when they mess up? The fourth estate at work. It will affect their re-election chances.
> The problem is that so many elected officials don't abide by the rules that they push.
Hypocrisy sucks, everyone agrees. Gavin Newsom having maskless restaurant meals when asking the rest of us to stay home is wrong. But it's wrong mainly because _masking is good for public health_ and he didn't listen to the advice of the medical professionals that he was parroting, nor did he conduct himself in the way a public servant held to a higher standard should. It doesn't change that masking and staying at home _does_ help everyone, by keeping hospitals from exceeding capacity and minimizing needless death.
There will always be virtue signalers and hypocrites but let's not allow them to stand in the way of sane public health policy.
I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice. My problem with mandates is where does it end? Why this mandate and not other mandates? Who gets to decide that?
I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. The estimate for COVID-19 is that roughly 70% to 85% of the population will need to be vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold. USA is at about 63% fully vaccinated (76% had at least one dose). where does it end? It ends when the the threat subsides. Why this…
I'm having a harder and harder time believing this (that herd immunity is actually possible) considering that the vaccine does nothing to stop it from spreading.
(Am vaxed and caught it, fwiw)
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The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.
Cigarette use kills 480000 people every year in the US alone. 300 billion dollars estimated to be spent per year with treatment of smoking-related illness. I don't want even to look at the numbers of the more critical epidemic on the US: obesity and metabolic diseases. By arguing that "the unvaxxed" are a burden and that they deserve discrimination, you are opening the gates for those arguing that smokers should be f…
We also charge smokers more for health care due to the burden they put on the system, yet another form of discrimination.
You're also making the naive mistake of relating a stable system (smokers with health issues) with an unstable system (covid patients). These two types of systems have VERY different impacts on the medical infrastructure.
QED: no one is opening any flood gates. we've had this shit in place for over a century. we use to let you just die at home when you caught the plague.