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Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

nature.com

171–180 of 241 posts

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#171

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…

This isn't a good analogy given "people driving the speed limit" can also get and spread Covid and cause extremely negative outcomes. Not wearing a seat-belt is perhaps a more accurate metaphor, given the individual assumes the majority of the risk.

Regardless all you're doing here is trying to justify a bad attitude, and proving the GPs point.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#172
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this meant to contradict the OP? I count at least three falsehoods in this sentence alone.

Is this meant to be a snooty response to troll for a reply instead of an actual engagement based on your non elaborated assertions?

> experimental

mRNA vaccines may be fairly novel, but the technology is not new. And there are other, more conventional COVID vaccines out there.

> rushed

How can this argument be made today? The Emergency Use Authorization no longer applies to mRNA vaccines: they're fully approved, and billions of people have been vaccinated.

> bullshit

And this is just offensive, given the efficacy of COVID vaccines with regard to preventing death and serious illness. Big pharma may be greedy, but they've also saved millions of lives during this pandemic.

> Is this meant to be a snooty response to troll for a reply instead of an actual engagement based on your non elaborated assertions?

Yes, because arguing on forums and social media is completely pointless. If you ever win a debate with someone, they will simply vanish from the discussion instead of copping to it, and someone new will take their place. Besides, everyone knows all the arguments already. Reciting them just feels like a ritual at this point.

(One that I still feel like observing, alas, because people who blithely dismiss COVID vaccines really piss me off. I hope that the actual human beings that you talk to face to face with don't really believe that COVID vaccines are "bullshit," regardless of whether they choose to get vaccinated or not.)

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#173
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually even more argument why it's important to reduce your risk of passing on the virus, then: because it can kill even vaccinated people. Anyway, from the article you linked, here's the punchline: > Unvaccinated people over the age of 5 had about 8 times the risk of dying from a coronavirus infection than those who received a booster shot. Yeah, so more deaths among vaccinated people is merely a product of…

" Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick, and that it's not just in the clinical trials, but it's also in real-world data. " ~Director of CDC Sorry, the trust is gone. They lied on purpose. The only question that matters now is, how do they ever get it back? It's gonna take a LONG time.

Totally unrelated to the question of whether vaccines are efficacious or not.

If I was from Germany or the UK, why would I even care what the CDC said? The study linked at the top of this thread finds this effect across all developed nations.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#174
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get that the hospitals were being overrun by people dying of covid, right? It was to the point where emergency care wasn't available because hospitals were full. I doubt your claim, but even then, there are plenty of other reasons why having such a high unvaccinated population is a problem.

I’m vaxed by the way and yes I’m aware of the problems but you are not addressing what I said at all. The unvaxed person was or vaxed person spread and is spreading the virus at the same rate. The irrationality of treating unvaxed people now differently from vaxed persons is absurd. I’m more worried about the serious mental health issues people obsessed with the virus are having. I keep seeing people on the street wi…

Sorry I missed your comment when I last visited.

An often glossed over reason being vaccinated and why it mattered, was so that when a person was infected, apart from the hope the infection wasn't as severe but the virus had less time to undergo a recombination with other viral segments which could lead to a new more dangerous strain. Ultimately to a few people, days, or even hours might not account for very much, but the sum of hours is quite significant, for thousands or millions of people.

Unfortunately the slow roll out of vaccines and various govts resisting locking down, meant that new more dangerous strains were an inevitability.

From what I recall, it was the arrival of Delta where, even if vaccinated, the accumulation of infective covid virus in the nasal passages was about the same. Don't quote me though it's well over a year since I was reading such material regularly. However the time the virus had to play in a host human body was still less than the typical unvaccinated person. That's why a lot of "seemingly pointless" incentives were put in place by various govts around the world, those who could get vaccinated, would be moved to do so. Sadly people who could not on medical grounds often did get caught up in the details.

People who still wear n95 masks clearly don't want to get the virus, it's not a mental condition. They're most likely around loved ones who are vulnerable.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#175
post #160
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice testimonial, but you do realize that anecdotal evidence is one of the weakest forms of evidence, right?

Let me try this then - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinate... . The data shows that the majority of Covid deaths are from vaccinated people now. Better?

By a wide margin, of all the COVID deaths total, most of them were unvaccinated. COVID deaths in August were slightly more among the vaccinated, but there were relatively few total deaths in August, and most of the population is vaccinated. It remains true that if you are unvaccinated, you have a higher chance of dying of a COVID infection.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine I'm somewhat older than you. "Antivaxer" was not a term I knew as a child. That came later.

That the term didn't exist would suggest it was a fringe belief, wouldn't it? This isn't something where I have a lot of knowledge of history, but I do follow the scientific skepticism movement a bit, and they would probably place the modern pre-covid vaccine denial movement as starting with a discredited paper by Andrew Wakefield in the early 90's that suggested that vaccines were causing greater incidences of autis…

People giving serious credence to 'the flat earth movement' is always a bit of a tell for me. There is no genuine 'flat earth movement'. There are a collection of people who enjoy pretending to believe in a flat earth, with some of them seeing how far they can 'rationally' take their denial that the world is round. It's an exercise in defending a non-defensible belief for fun and winding (earnestly literal) people up.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn't a good analogy given "people driving the speed limit" can also get and spread Covid and cause extremely negative outcomes. Not wearing a seat-belt is perhaps a more accurate metaphor, given the individual assumes the majority of the risk. Regardless all you're doing here is trying to justify a bad attitude, and proving the GPs point.

Getting COVID while unvaccinated makes you much more sick, and hence much more likely to spread it to other people.

This is why China is still under lockdown, and most other (highly vaccinated) countries aren't.

In places with no speed limit enforcement, even people that drive slowly are killed more often.

How is this difficult to understand?

Vaccines, masks, hand-washing, etc... are not just about you!

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#179

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, Your friend was at higher risk from COVID due to to their medical condition. It might be cruel to ask them to reduce their social interaction, but many medical conditions are like that. Their feelings don't change the problem or reduce the risk. It does does not seem to be completely unfounded.

I think there is a difference between asking someone to reduce their social interaction and forcing them to reduce their social interaction

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#180

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…

> Almost everybody was safe from covid -- it was a handful of high risk people who we were trying to protect.

Just on that point, it’s also worth considering what happens when hospitals are overwhelmed.

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