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Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

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Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#111

Post by nwiswell »

ls15 wrote: post #101
nwiswell wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while a blind person sees 0% For most blind people this is not correct.

Fair point. Near 0%.

The legal standard for blindness in the US is 20/200 vision, i.e. someone with "ideal" 20/20 vision sees with the same acuity from 200 feet away as a legally blind person can from 20 feet away. It's really a misconception that most blind people can't see anything, they just aren't able to operate a car safely, have trouble reading signs, etc., and crucially that this is not something that can be fixed with glasses, contacts, surgery, et cetera. (I am not allowed to drive my car without my glasses, but because the glasses work, I am not legally blind).

The glasses are really quite an apt analogy to the transmission rate with a COVID vaccine. It's not that you can't transmit, but your risk of doing so is several times lower. Nor is it the case that I couldn't drive my car without my glasses, but it's a lot safer if I wear them, so it's required by law.

Personally I like that requirement. Yes, it's theoretically a restriction on my rights, but I like the idea that other people on the road are also subject to that restriction; it makes me safer. Same goes for the vaccine.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#112

Post by TOMDM »

jiggawatts wrote: post #72
jfengel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fact that has essentially nothing to do with the safety or efficacy of the COVID vaccine. There has been a deliberate ideologically-driven campaign to undermine that trust. Ask a COVID anti-vaxxer to explain their position, and it will almost immediately include at least one outright falsehood. Not a "difference of opinion" or "interpretation" or "risk tolerance", but just an outright lie. And correcting that will…

I love the “it hasn’t been tested!” argument… when a billion people have taken it! Just how big a sample size do you want!?

We're actually at over _5 billion_ people vaccinated against COVID now.

If you believe some of the people on Hacker News though, there should be millions of people injured or killed by the vaccine by now.

My question, where are they?

Where are these millions of people injured or killed by the vaccine?

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#113

Post by TrevorJ »

jiggawatts wrote: post #95
BitwiseFool wrote: post #32

What surprised me the most was just how vicious and cruel the people in my life could be towards the unvaccinated. It went beyond mere schadenfreude. Many of my otherwise tolerant and empathetic friends eagerly ate up any and all news about anti-vaxxers suffering or even outright dying. I don't know how much of this was a result of them getting caught up in the social media bandwagon (Twitter, r/HermanCainAward) or b…

When someone gets in a horrific crash because the were driving 50 over the speed limit, do you feel sorry for them? Or do you say that they "got what they deserved" not just for being individually reckless, but also for selfishly putting other people on the roads in danger? Ask yourself: Before COVID, in 2019, if you saw an 18 year old's car wrapped around a tree on the news clearly due to excessive speeding, did you…

Your example elides the fact that the vaccine situation was about risk-benefit analysis in many people's minds.

A more appropriate example might be a situation where someone ran their car off the road because they perceived (possibly incorrectly) some danger that they were attempting to avoid.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#114

Post by daVe23hu »

TOMDM wrote: post #107
daVe23hu wrote: post #86

Quoted post unavailable.

A vaccine that adjusts every year to target a mutating virus is completely normal. It's been done for ages for the flu. The flu vaccines are also only mitigations not immunities. Do you have the same feelings towards the flu vaccine?

Flu vaccines do not cause miscarriages , myocarditis

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#115

Post by BitwiseFool »

jiggawatts wrote: post #95
BitwiseFool wrote: post #32

What surprised me the most was just how vicious and cruel the people in my life could be towards the unvaccinated. It went beyond mere schadenfreude. Many of my otherwise tolerant and empathetic friends eagerly ate up any and all news about anti-vaxxers suffering or even outright dying. I don't know how much of this was a result of them getting caught up in the social media bandwagon (Twitter, r/HermanCainAward) or b…

When someone gets in a horrific crash because the were driving 50 over the speed limit, do you feel sorry for them? Or do you say that they "got what they deserved" not just for being individually reckless, but also for selfishly putting other people on the roads in danger? Ask yourself: Before COVID, in 2019, if you saw an 18 year old's car wrapped around a tree on the news clearly due to excessive speeding, did you…

I think a distinction needs to be made between rationalizing tragedy through a sense of cosmic justice and hiding cruelty behind a personal sense of righteousness.

That 18 year old in your example may very well have 'gotten what they deserved', but I would still lament that their life was cut short. I certainly wouldn't feel a smug sense of satisfaction that I'm still alive because I drive the speed limit. I wouldn't share the experience or seek validation on social media.

I would be okay with 'making an example of him' but only in a matter of fact way meant to educate others. Those driver's ed videos that show real life crash footage do not mock the victims when they seek to educate people.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#116

Post by TrevorJ »

TOMDM wrote: post #109
DeetrixDotter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

How many people have died to the vaccine vs how many people died to COVID who might have been saved by the vaccine? Look at the COVID death rates of the vaccinated vs unvaccinated. Can you bridge that gap with vaccine deaths?

Death rate from Covid among the vaccinated definitely does paint a picture that the vaccine does help prevent Covid deaths, you are right. What troubles me is the VAERS data.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#117

Post by TOMDM »

daVe23hu wrote: post #114
TOMDM wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vaccine that adjusts every year to target a mutating virus is completely normal. It's been done for ages for the flu. The flu vaccines are also only mitigations not immunities. Do you have the same feelings towards the flu vaccine?

Flu vaccines do not cause miscarriages , myocarditis

You know what also causes myocarditis at a far higher rate than the mRNA vaccine?

COVID.

I haven't seen anything suggesting miscarriages caused by mRNA vaccines, do you have any sources?

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#118

Post by maxerickson »

adamrezich wrote: post #89
adamrezich wrote: post #4

how's everyone else from the control group doing these days? things were never really that bad, discrimination-wise, here in South Dakota, but what was/is it like everywhere else? (edit: wow I thought we were, as a collective, Largely Over It now—guess that's not the case! I'm glad things aren't as bad as they are in this thread where I live! one has to wonder though: how long will this deep-seated emotion-based disc…

in the interest of inclusivity & getting a more complete picture, a followup question: is anyone still continuing to get more "boosters" or whatever? are those still being released? or, if not, at what point did you stop? the second shot? third? fourth? did you ever take/are you still taking one of those non-injectable covid medications? I'm so out of the loop about this stuff because it hasn't affected my life in an…

Uptake of the boosters in the US is low.

The one released this fall is targeted more closely at post-Omicron strains (dominant in most of 2022). Something like 15% of the country has gotten it, and only ~1/3 of the more vulnerable older folks. There's studies coming out regularly demonstrating that it is more protective against currently circulating virus than the initial vaccine.

Covid deaths are still in the hundreds per day. Deaths continue to be concentrated in high risks groups and the risk of dying once infected continues to be higher among the unvaccinated.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#119

Post by luckylion »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #83
luckylion wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and I wasn't a fan of the approaches they used, but I do understand them. The alternative is either to accept their willful ignorance that will have life-threatening impact on third parties that weren't willfully ignorant, or to cut them off from societal institutions for anything that follows from their decisions. At least in Germany, that was the debate, and the folks who didn't want to get vaccinated didn't…

I'd love to go further into this but I feel that the attitude I expressed in my first post is coming into play here. I'll give you a short description, I guess. You're throwing around terms like "willful ignorance". It may not be conscious on your part, but that's patronising behaviour, and I don't feel a sense of goodwill there. I'd love to be able to elaborate further and enter into a proper discussion but I'm just…

What term would you prefer for something that just looks ignorant and no other explanation is given for why the person does it even after information has been shared with them?

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#120

Post by adamiscool8 »

jltsiren wrote: post #88
adamiscool8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my age+health cohort, the known and documented risks of the vaccines outweigh the known risks of COVID-19, but you assume “bad reasons” because it’s not a religious objection or medical contraindication. What makes your risk calculus any more valid than mine? I would go so far as to say it’s anti-science to lump 99% of the vaccine rejectors as “uninformed”. I’d venture the average mechanistic knowledge of these pr…

This is one of the reasons why individualism and public health are fundamentally at odds. Ethical questions become easier if you assume that all actions are intentional and made with full knowledge of the consequences. Unfortunately real people are biological organisms that may shed pathogens wherever they go. Your mere presence may be enough to harm other people, without your intention or knowledge. Should we as a s…

I don’t think this is a complex trade-off at all, precisely for the reasons in your second paragraph. The whole issue boils down to whether we should allow the powers that be a framework to criminalize being an unadulterated human. That path may be less salient in the short-term (particularly in the face of manufactured panic), but it’s far, far more terrifying in the long run.
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