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More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

theatlantic.com

611–620 of 1001 posts

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#612
post #127

I wish I could feel "vaxxed and done". My whole extended family is vaccinated and everyone who's old enough is boostered. But I have three children in elementary and middle school. Like school systems across the country, ours is in chaos due to COVID absenteeism. Roughly 1/3 of the students and 1/4 of the teachers are currently out sick due to positive tests, some symptomatic, some not, and the numbers keep going up…

2 weeks? Didn't the CDC change it to 5 days?

My mistake, the requirement is currently 10 days, not 2 weeks. But it's up to the school district, things don't change overnight just because the CDC changed their recommendations.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#613

I feel like COVID has become like a marshmallow test for adults, where those who can manage their emotions and make rational decisions can set themselves up for greater long-term rewards. It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away. That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a forese…

I think the marshmallow test is pretty flawed itself. But maybe the marshmallow test is actually a good analogy. I suspect many of the test "failures" were caused because the test subject (kid) didn't trust the authority figure (test administrator). When you can see a marshmallow with your own eyes, it's more believable. I think it's quite reasonable to factor in some probability that an untrusted stranger would "alt…

I just picked what seemed like a well-known analogy for the long-term value of managing short-term emotional response. You could use other analogies if you want, like putting beer money into an IRA, or eating more veggies, etc.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#614
post #445

I know everyone is tired of this shit but I just want to remind everyone of one thing: This is the FIRST time humanity has come together and actually come up with a way to beat a virus WHILE a global pandemic is still ongoing. At no other time in history have we even had the option of a solid way to protect ourselves like we do now. I think instead of focusing on how awful the past few years have been this is an impo…

What way to beat the virus? Clearly not vaccines as they aren't that great... Clearly not lockdowns as as soon as we give that up the virus hits... We aren't beating it in anyway... Maybe it is time to accept the reality.

The vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization and/or death from the virus by 20x or more.

That’s pretty great even if not perfect. Much better than we ever had when facing the initial waves of any previous pandemic virus.

Unfortunate that delta and then omicron seem to have bypassed the immunity from getting sick but most of his have had a “mild” sickness many times in our lives and the vaccine will prevent it from getting worse.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know someone who almost quit a great job because they were mad about a vaccine mandate from their employer. [...] That is what failing the marshmallow test looks like. Or perhaps it's a matter of personal principle. Personal conscience and conviction used to be held sacred in the US ... to the point that conscientious objectors wouldn't be forced to fight in wars (they could be assigned to work as medics in Army…

Why not both? Personal conscience and conviction -- as overwhelmingly stupid as the vast majority of people are with or without it -- is at least extremely important for the minority of people who end up being front-runners for society. But so too is society a super-organism, in which we are but cells. And cells which actively spread disease for their own sake are kind of independent to a flaw: cancerous one could sa…

There are ways to make this point without comparing human beings to cancer.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got your anecdotes, and I've got mine. My 3 young kids all caught omicron last week. Each were lethargic for a day, had a minor sore throat, and were back to normal in a day or two. The flu last month was way scarier with high fevers. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.

I kind of regret even mentioning the effects of COVID in my original comment as I figured there would be a reply like yours and you're not wrong! But it wasn't the main point I was trying to make. My main point is that everyone just seems to have moved on from under 5s. We've adopted a stance of "vaxxed and done" for adults and older children and paid no attention to the vax trials for under 5s taking forever. It's b…

Covid was never thought to be risky for children, especially under 5s, even when we didn't have a vaccine. Omicron is much less risky than other kinds of covid.

I saw one paper claiming the reason is that MMR vaccine gives children some protection against "severe" covid due to overlapping T-cells, but didn't check if it reproduced so wouldn't believe too much in that. (And I saw it on twitter from Dr Feigl-Ding who's an alarmist type.)

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#617

I feel like COVID has become like a marshmallow test for adults, where those who can manage their emotions and make rational decisions can set themselves up for greater long-term rewards. It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away. That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a forese…

Quoted post unavailable.

You can ask “What if” of anything.

We have limited information in almost every decision we make, yet we still have to decide (inaction is itself a decision). The key is what you fill in those bits of missing information with, not the results of the decision as no one is clairvoyant.

This sounds like a gambler. “You’re putting $100 on black?” “Yeah, I could lose $100, but what if I’m right?”

For both the gambler and the anti-vaxx you get 0 applause from me if you randomly guess a “what if” correctly. You only get credit if you had a hypothesis you could intelligently explain and then tested it robustly. Kind of like the scientific process.

It’s fine to play “what if” games for fun, but not smart if you’re trying to play the odds, then you need more substance in your decision making.

Like “what if eating vegetables ends up causing heart disease?” We’ve been wrong about nutrition before so “who knows?”

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#618
post #318

I feel like COVID has become like a marshmallow test for adults, where those who can manage their emotions and make rational decisions can set themselves up for greater long-term rewards. It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away. That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a forese…

> It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away... That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a foreseeable future. Well, one can cry for the world that was, or one can get up and live in the world that is. Whats the magic number? There are places like New York that have 95% over 18 wi…

To be fair, many people had pointed out that unless we vaccinate the entire world, new variants would emerge, which may be better at evading the vaccine. That is exactly what happened with Omicron.

Re: More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you phrase it that way, because I was thinking exactly the same thing, but from the opposite direction. I caught covid early, and while (for me) it was a nasty bug, I recovered with nothing more than a lingering cough for several weeks. Against enormous pressure I decided not to get vaccinated. Everything I read supported that natural immunity is at least as protective as the vaccine, and most s…

> What will the long term effects be? We don't know. Thank you for bringing this up. It isn’t “anti-science” to ask these type of questions and expect answers. Indeed, it has always been the job of the FDA to hold drug companies responsible for proving that their drugs do not harm. Guilty until proven innocent. Given the rushed approval, incredible profit motive, reluctance of the FDA to respond to FOIA requests and…

There's arguably some profit motive for Pfizer and Moderna. But there isn't any for the FDA or all its other international peers. Not to mention that if the vaccine turns out to be dangerous in any way, the reputational damage will be incalculable and completely wipe away the billions made from what will probably be at most 10 doses of the vaccine, if we're unlucky.
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