71–80 of 181 posts
The Politicisation of the Plague in the USA is the real story here, and I think many in the US are unaware that it’s not like that in other places. For example in the UK vaccination rates amongst Conservative and Labour voters are the same. So why is there such disparity in the US between Biden voters and Trump voters when it comes to Covid-denialism, pseudo-cures, and antivaxxing?
The Politicisation of the Plague in the USA is the real story here, and I think many in the US are unaware that it’s not like that in other places. For example in the UK vaccination rates amongst Conservative and Labour voters are the same. So why is there such disparity in the US between Biden voters and Trump voters when it comes to Covid-denialism, pseudo-cures, and antivaxxing?
An interesting wrinkle to this is all the media personalities and Democrat politicians (including our current VP) that we’re staunchly opposed to the vaccine while Trump was still president. Now that Biden is president, it is apparently a different vaccine (for both sides of the aisle)
See https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-pos...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More to the point: debating the goofballs takes time away from hearing what more moderate people have to say. The Alex Joneses and Billy Grahams of the world take air from people who (for example) think gay frogs sound like a fun time, or favor progressive reform within Evangelicalism. A lot of people have very normal, human fears about the vaccine and still got vaccinated, and those are the people to talk to. People…
Except that nobody is trying to silence flat-earthers, or 9/11 “truthers”, or moon-landing deniers, because we all know they’re nuts. They are trying to silence vaccine skeptics… which just makes me wonder if there’s something there worth paying attention to.
I’m willing to read these articles, and even sort of willing to consider other viewpoints, but this is mostly garbage. What stands out is the authors’ favor of natural immunity being better than vaccination. It may well be, but it has this small caveat that you need to have had the virus to become naturally immune. E.g. you need to take that 1-2% of not surviving entirely, and if too many people take that chance at t…
I’m willing to read these articles, and even sort of willing to consider other viewpoints, but this is mostly garbage. What stands out is the authors’ favor of natural immunity being better than vaccination. It may well be, but it has this small caveat that you need to have had the virus to become naturally immune. E.g. you need to take that 1-2% of not surviving entirely, and if too many people take that chance at t…
"Covid Confusion at the CDC"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-breakthrou...
"...The CDC’s failure to report meaningful data has left policy makers flying blind. In the absence of good data to answer the basic questions Americans have been asking, political opinions have filled the vacuum. Strong data might have prevented much of the polarization over Covid.
Sound data from the CDC has been especially lacking on natural immunity from prior Covid infection. On Aug. 25, Israel published the most powerful and scientifically rigorous study on the subject to date. In a sample of more than 700,000 people, natural immunity was 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic infections..."
"...Despite this evidence, U.S. public health officials continue to dismiss natural immunity, insisting that those who have recovered from Covid must still get the vaccine. Policy makers and public health leaders, and the media voices that parrot them, are inexplicably sticking to their original hypothesis that natural immunity is fleeting, even as at least 15 studies show it lasts..."
"...The CDC did put out a study on natural immunity last month, forcefully concluding that vaccinated immunity was 2.3 times better than natural immunity. The CDC used these results to justify telling those with natural immunity to get vaccinated.
But the rate of infection in each group was less than 0.01%, meaning infections were exceedingly rare in the short two-month time period the agency chose to study. This is odd, given there are more than a year of data available. Moreover, despite having data on all 50 states, the CDC only reported data from Kentucky. Was Kentucky the only state that produced the desired result? Why else exclude the same data from the other 49 states?
Some public health officials are afraid to acknowledge natural immunity because they fear some will choose infection over vaccination. But leaders can encourage all Americans who aren’t immune to get vaccinated and be transparent with the data at the same time..."
"Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
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Conclusions:
"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant."
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I’m willing to read these articles, and even sort of willing to consider other viewpoints, but this is mostly garbage. What stands out is the authors’ favor of natural immunity being better than vaccination. It may well be, but it has this small caveat that you need to have had the virus to become naturally immune. E.g. you need to take that 1-2% of not surviving entirely, and if too many people take that chance at t…
No one is advocating for people to get infected, but many front line workers have already had COVID while they were doing their hero work. Since studies are now showing they have better immunity than those who have received a vaccination, it is foolish to have them vaccinate. If you've had Measles, you aren't required to get a vaccination, so there is a well established precedent. The politicalization of the vaccine…
I think you're confusing cause and effect here. The politicization of the vaccine is the reason the government is now pushing vaccine mandates and such, not a reaction to it. If Fox News had spent the last year telling its viewers that seat belts make you sterile, the government would be raising fines and ramping up enforcement and generally adopting policies to force people to wear seat belts, right? And some of those policies would inevitably look like overreach, and people would be writing essays like this one complaining about that overreach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it just easier (and with virtually no risk) to require people to vaccinate rather than debate over who did/did not actually have COVID?
There is always a risk with vaccination as with any medication. It's small, but why take it? Taking a vaccine to make other people feel better is emotional and not scientific. There is no debate, there are blood tests. The same logic has been applied to measles.
The poor don't care about authoritarianism. They care about having jobs, people coming into their stores, and their children going to daycare.
The poor suffer when the state does not function and does not do its job. Countries like China, both Taiwan and the mainland, Singapore, Vietnam even New Zealand and a few others avoided much harm to the poor by means of crushing the disease. They avoided both economic and disease burden by taking strong measures that anyone in Western Europe would have flinched about. (and then I had to live through anyway during three different lockdowns in Europe after live in China returned to normal in summer 2020.)
Vaccine passports suck but not because they're too authoritarian but because they're not authoritarian enough. They're half measures done by governments that were too indecisive to go all the way, at the expense of the most vulnerable in society.
Reading an anti-vax article afraid of authoritarianism after a crisis caused by weak and dysfunctional governance is like some sort of comedy. As if someone wrote an article in 2010 arguing the financial crisis harmed the poor because we regulated the financial sector too heavily or something
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is always a risk with vaccination as with any medication. It's small, but why take it? Taking a vaccine to make other people feel better is emotional and not scientific. There is no debate, there are blood tests. The same logic has been applied to measles.
Well, there’s a risk with the blood draw as well. It’s also small.