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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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would avoiding the covid vaccine mean someone doesn't care about the safety of others?

The fact that you even asked this question speaks volumes. Vaccines provide herd immunity. It’s not like bullet proof armour that only protects the wearer! We all need to get it for the population to be protected. You getting more sick because you’re unvaccinated means you spread it to others. Babies. The elderly. The immune compromised. And so on. What I don't understand is how it's possible to be two years into a p…

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/youre-waiting-herd-immunity-co...

> If you’re still waiting for herd immunity for COVID-19, it's time to move on: Experts

> As scientists learn more about the virus, they say herd immunity won't work.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#122
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do prevent transmission. God, I wish misinformation would not spread so easily. (Edit: I'm a biochemist, merely relaying a consensus position, in my area of expertise, and getting downvoted. Nice.)

In January, the director of the CDC said: "...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated... I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting" https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...

This is an issue of semantics. They "prevent" in the sense that they "reduce the risk", not in the sense that they "preclude entirely".

Put another way: they prevent some transmission. They do not prevent all transmission.

It's not unusual to be sloppy with the definition here. Typically you would say that birth control prevents pregnancy, even though it is not 100% efficacious.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#123
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

VAERS data is a fantastic place to look for early warning signs about what should be investigated.

However given it's self reported nature, and the rampant conspiricism we see today, I think we should only see those VAERS reports as a signal of what to study, not what conclusions to draw.

At this stage though, there are billion dollar incentives to prove those VAERS claims correct, and yet there are no studies to that effect.

Competing biomed companies could seriously disrupt their competition by proving their vaccine has issues.

Russia is looking for any reason to malign the US and it's partners. China and it's zero COVID policy would love to embarrass the US and it's partners over their COVID policy. And yet they don't jump to do so because they have no proof.

There's every incentive, every mean to do so, and no data, no study.

I can't prove a negative but in a world that has every mean and motive to prove the positive, it sure makes me wonder at the absence.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Canada, near Vancouver. It's mostly back to normal now, but for a long time: * couldn't visit restaurants * couldn't fly/take a train/take a ferry Still can't: * Visit my grandparents at their retirement home * Visit the USA The general opinion as that you should be vaccinated, but it mostly doesn't come up now. The government is currently passing legislation so they can better mandate vaccination to medical p…

Most homes for the elderly here require flu vaccinations for all staff, and some even require flu vaccines for visitors. Why is that okay? New flu vaccines are developed annually because it’s a seasonal illness, which makes them just as “experimental” or “novel” as many COVID vaccines such as AstraZeneca that aren’t using mRNA technology. Why is suddenly everyone up in arms about something they were fine with before?…

The AstraZenica and Johnson and Johnson vaccines both use a relatively novel delivery mechanism (a couple viral vector Ebola vaccines were approved in 2019-2020).

The Novavax subunit vaccine is at least an older approach, but assembling the protein fragments onto a particle is a new thing.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#125

I have a friend who is allergic to many vaccines. A bad reaction as a kid led to him needing years of rehab. He's also high risk for Covid. He's pro-vaccine in general I guess I should add, but his doctor told him to not get the covid shots because the risk was too high Whenever I mention that it's cruel to exclude people like him from society, due to vaccine requirements, when people like him are presumably what all…

> Whenever I mention that it's cruel to exclude people like him from society, due to vaccine requirements I know that I’ve only advocated for people who are voluntarily unvaxxed, but medically eligible, face increased scrutiny. I would never suggest anything of the sort for your friend. That’d be like discriminating against someone who requires a wheelchair or cannot see.

No post body was provided.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#126
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've seen quite a few COVID deniers insist that the millions of dead are piling up somewhere, and that fact is being covered up by the gummint. They'll often cite a YouTube video, perhaps of a doctor telling them about all the autopsies he's doing riddled with blood clots.

I hadn't realized that we'd vaccinated over 70% of the world, but various sources back up that number. I had assumed it would take a lot longer to reach outside the developed world. The sheer number of denialists on a web site full of well-educated techies often fills me with despair, but the idea that we've made a decent crack at immunizing poor people is a rare bright spot. Thank you.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#127

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…

Everyone I know with the vaccine has still gotten (and presumably spread) COVID. Many of them multiple times. So you can't make this statement anymore, it's false.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#128
post #97
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, and now that we know the vaccines don't prevent transmission, the same goes for the vaccinated I suppose.

They do prevent transmission. God, I wish misinformation would not spread so easily. (Edit: I'm a biochemist, merely relaying a consensus position, in my area of expertise, and getting downvoted. Nice.)

No post body was provided.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#129
The discrimination was IMO, little different to a community facing a common disaster, to that of someone feeling safe, didn't care or not their problem who elected to sit back refusing to contribute to the effort to overcome the disaster, even if it was something simple and not much of a task, like keeping an eye out for an arsonist doing nature a favour and burning dead dry forest who didn't care if some had built right up in amongst it.

In regard to covid-19, complicating the simple discrimination issue were the many dogs in the fight not to vaccinate against covid-19 - those I'm aware of, most pulling the strings were part of a privileged exclusive small demographic. The noisiest were the group IMO were the "Here, all you've gotta do is take this cheap little pill and keep on working, no worries ... " Sadly many who were unable to be reassured by their doctor that their medical condition would not interact with the new vaccines, started grasping for "bad to vaccinate" straws

I feel most of the population around my way understood some people were going to be unable to be vaccinated. There were concerns that some people even if they did get vaccinated, due to medical issues would not be greatly protected. However at the end of the day, as I once read, it's good to have a practice run before the real thing.

With this pandemic, it became to hard to explain to the public being vaccinated against the fast mutating coronavirus wasn't just about saving time and money spent in hospital wards, but if most of the community that could vaccinated, it significantly removed "run time" for covid-19 to recombine whilst it was inhabiting in a human body, and re-emerge as a new threat -- it was already hard enough to ask people to vaccinate if they could to save hospitals from being run over, something I found quite frankly, shocking.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Canada, near Vancouver. It's mostly back to normal now, but for a long time: * couldn't visit restaurants * couldn't fly/take a train/take a ferry Still can't: * Visit my grandparents at their retirement home * Visit the USA The general opinion as that you should be vaccinated, but it mostly doesn't come up now. The government is currently passing legislation so they can better mandate vaccination to medical p…

Most homes for the elderly here require flu vaccinations for all staff, and some even require flu vaccines for visitors. Why is that okay? New flu vaccines are developed annually because it’s a seasonal illness, which makes them just as “experimental” or “novel” as many COVID vaccines such as AstraZeneca that aren’t using mRNA technology. Why is suddenly everyone up in arms about something they were fine with before?…

I can't comment to staff, but I've never seen a retirement home or similar that required any kind of vaccination for visitors. Not to say they don't exist, but certainly they weren't part of a normal lived experience here.
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