That first part is a mistaken belief. There's also a useful metric for the "chance of dying" - it's known as a micromort. Each micromort is a one in a million chance of dying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort A fair bit of statistical work has been done on COVID-19 and it is summarized in the wikipedia article. AstraZeneca vaccination against COVID-19 – 2.9 micromorts[31] COVID-19 infection at age 10 – 20 micro…
We have to be extremely cautious when considering any of the death-related statistics for this particular situation. For example, we know that a dubious methodology was used for counting deaths in Toronto (Canada's most populous city, and the fourth most populous city in North America). This was publicly admitted to by Toronto Public Health itself, as early as June 2020: "Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but…
You have to look at both sides of the equation. There are excess deaths in every region coinciding with Covid spikes. It takes enormous mental gymnastics to say “some deaths were over counted so deaths as a whole must be over counted” and completely discount the probability of missing deaths too.
The recent Paxlovid study supports this. It reduces deaths days 30-90. Deaths that would not be counted as Covid deaths. But they clearly are if paxlovid reduces them.
The problem here isn't the study---of course we should study possible vaccine side effects. The problem is the massive leaps of logic being made by people who have (quite wrongly, based on available evidence) become convinced that the vaccines are a greater threat to healthy people than the virus is. As unlikely as it is that an otherwise healthy young person will die from covid, it is even less likely that they'll d…
Many other people have replied with great information, but I'm going to respectfully disagree with: > The problem is the massive leaps of logic being made by people who have (quite wrongly, based on available evidence) become convinced that the vaccines are a greater threat to healthy people than the virus is. I believe the problem is that we were so convinced that our solution to covid was infallible that we removed…
> As others have pointed out, mortality counts were wildly off due to many factors, including how death certificates were filled out (died with covid v/s died from covid).
This has never really been shown to be that accurate considering the excess deaths from the averages every year. You’re ignoring an inconvenient fact.
These people also seem to ignore that CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED QUITE A BIT over the entire pandemic. Of COURSE recommendations made when the vaccine first came out might need to be modified or updated as more gets learned about possible side effects and how it interacts with different variants. These people never seem to have a problem with the changes in the polio vaccine over the years, or chickenpox
They also like to yell and scream about how "science can't make up its mind" Yes, because that's how science works. When new information is acquired, new hypotheses are created and tested.
The irony of people on this site not getting that.
If vaccination prevents you from catching covid, then it has prevented you from spreading covid to those you would have otherwise. If vaccination causes you to experience an early immune response, versus several asymptomatic days while unknowingly contagious, then it has prevented you from spreading covid to some of those you would have otherwise. If vaccination results in a less severe infection with lower viral loa…
> If vaccination prevents you from catching covid, then it has prevented you from spreading covid to those you would have otherwise. Depends on what you mean by "covid" here. If you're referring to the virus, then no - this is a misconception. The vaccines at best only reduce symptoms, they don't stop infection or transmission. > versus several asymptomatic days while unknowingly contagious This was also an early gue…
> Right now, getting vaccinated is the selfish action because it's likely to turn you into an asymptomatic spreader. At least when unvaccinated you'll know to stay home.
This is a) insane and b) directly contradicts the point you tried to make above it.
I’ve been watching the vaccine discussions on HN these years and one can see that too many people are stuck fighting vaccination windmills from days gone by, while downplaying vaccine risks which by now are established and continue to be investigated as this publication shows. Meanwhile many EU countries have understood that heart problems are a real risk and have adjusted recommendations accordingly. They’ve also st…
It’s the paradox of intelligence: smart people are more prone to fight tooth and nail, and do all kinds of mental gymnastics, rather than to admit that they too have been misled. People of average or below average intelligence tend to accept it much more easily. I don’t know if there’s already a name for this phenomenon…
I don't either. Personally speaking, after watching the effects of disinformation campaigns over the last 7 or so years -particularly regarding Covid and vaccinations I am pretty much 1,000% unwilling to listen to any "skepticism" simply because I don't trust the source that anyone is getting their information from.
The only reasonable course I can see is to not take any chances and vaccinate early and vaccinate often.
Some are talking about the risk of myocarditis after vaccination as being way less than the risk of dying from COVID. I would say this is just one thing popping up about the vaccines. There no long-term studies of the vaccination even if there are millions and millions of administered vaccines. It's only been three years since the first vaccination was given only 2 years ago, and the control group was burned by giving the placebo group of the control group the vaccine. We don't, and will not know the long-term effects of the vaccine for another 2 to 5 years. The NYT article cited using micromorts to compare this to a soldier in Afghanistan in 2010 is very disingenuous or just bad journalism. It's 12 years after 2010. Let's see where COVID vaccination studies lead to in 2032 for equivalence. Obesity, diabetes, and hypertension were THE amplifiers of COVID deaths, not just COVID. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable deaths in the US. I contracted COVID pre-vaccine, and having natural immunity ignored completely by the CDC and ruling party, was socially irresponsible. I am speaking of the millions of Americans who had COVID before the vaccine, not people trying to get COVID to get natural immunity. My older children, who also had COVID, were forced by the universities they attended to get vaccinated and boosted. I really hope no long-term effects are found from the vaccine, but I have great distrust of Big Pharma, especially Pfizer. They even burned their control group for a long-term study under the argument they wanted to be humane and vaccinate the placebo group. Yeah, right. Stage 1 for the vaccine's EUA were supposed to include animal biodistribution studies, but even after looking through redacted documents released by Pfizer per the FOIA request to get them, it is not clear. Remember they said it is local to the injection site and breaks down quickly? Let's be prepared to adjust the micromort of the vaccine vs. non-vaccine for people who are not obese, diabetic, or suffer from hypertension and contract COVID in the next 3 to 7 years.
I am vaccinated but I am upvoting this post because I believe that it is important to investigate these cases to determine how to improve future vaccines. I really don't like how this topic seems to be treated like some fringe conspiracy theory. Maybe it is just a conspiracy, but we won't ever know until sufficient research has been done. Currently, I still believe that people should vaccinate, even if vaccines cause…
I am vaccinated but I am upvoting this post because I believe that it is important to investigate these cases to determine how to improve future vaccines. I really don't like how this topic seems to be treated like some fringe conspiracy theory. Maybe it is just a conspiracy, but we won't ever know until sufficient research has been done. Currently, I still believe that people should vaccinate, even if vaccines cause…
>I am vaccinated but
Funny how this sounds like you have some special kind of keycard to be allowed to say what you said.
It’s the paradox of intelligence: smart people are more prone to fight tooth and nail, and do all kinds of mental gymnastics, rather than to admit that they too have been misled. People of average or below average intelligence tend to accept it much more easily. I don’t know if there’s already a name for this phenomenon…
In my experience smart people are also far more likely to create elaborate self-reinforcing systems of belief that are detached from reality. Any moron can understand the idea of a round Earth and stuff orbiting around it. It takes a genius to comprehend the sublime intricacies of ether vortex theory which explains how a flat Earth can still permit satellites to stay airborne over the plane. I've met an extremely int…
Were they convinced, or are you convinced that they were convinced? The Kubrick thing is an old joke (which usually ends by saying he insisted on filming "on location" for the sake of authenticity)