Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have.
With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?
> With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?
Because I have been "statistically likely" to infect N other people every time I had a cold, a flu, or any number of other viruses, most of which are fatal to at least some segment of the population.
Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice.
Being alive is risky. You can try to eliminate all of that risk, but you will be dead long before anyone puts you in the grave.
Many unvaccinated people don't have a lot of faith in the medical establishment. And if they stayed in when they got sick, then died quietly in their homes, it would be different. But they don't. Once they're sick, they suddenly believe in the miracle of modern medicine again. They fill up the hospitals and drain their community's limited medical resources, leading to excess non-covid deaths. This behavior is widely perceived as selfish and hypocritical, because it is.
Some of their "freedom" is now being stripped away by their vaccinated counterparts, who are growing increasingly impatient and frustrated, and who outnumber them.
This may also be selfish, but at least it's democratic.
> Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice.
Except for the people that are unable to get it due to a medical condition. Or unable to get it because they're too young. Or able to get it but it didn't work for them.
And then the fact that, as it spreads, it has a chance to mutate, so the more it spreads, the more we have to worry about dangerous variants.
Anyone who chooses not to get the vaccine just because "they don't want to" is putting the rest of society at risk... purely because they're selfish. As far as a lot of us are concerned, that's a pretty horrible type of person to be.
Of course, such people are welcome to not interact with the rest of society (nobody, not even other unvaccinated folks, per risk of mutation); live on farm and grow your own resources, etc. At that point, you're not putting anyone else at risk, so it's no longer selfish. However, I very much doubt many of such people, claiming "it's my body, so I can do what I want" are willing to actually follow through what's required to avoid putting _other people's bodies_ at risk.
> Except for the people that are unable to get it due to a medical condition. Or unable to get it because they're too young. Or able to get it but it didn't work for them.
> Of course, such people are welcome to not interact with the rest of society.
People who's bodies are at risk are free to avoid participating in society. Being sick sucks, but doesn't give you the right to force others to do medical procedures in order to protect you.
Yes, in our world, participating in society is often mandatory, and not a choice that you can make. That equally applies to people who are sick, and to the people who don't want to be forced to have things done to their body against their will.
There are many communicable diseases, and many things healthy people can be forced to do in order to protect the sick. The choice whether or not to force them is a tradeoff - safety for the society versus freedom for the individual.
People who value individual freedom more than they value safety are simply making a different tradeoff than you do. At some point, a society designed to minimize the risk at the expense of human freedoms becomes a nightmare to live in.
For example, we could significantly reduce the risk of rapes and murders (especially of vulnerable people) by forcing everyone to wear a bodycam and an ankle bracelet. We don't do that because we have decided that this is not a tradeoff worth making.
On the other hand, we did decide to reduce the risk of people dying from drunk driving, we have sacrificed our freedom to drink and drive for the sake of the safety of the other people on the road.
My point is, where you draw the line is a question of your values. Neither side is being "dumb" or "selfish". Some people value social prosperity and safety and are willing to sacrifice their (and other people's) freedoms to increase it. Others value individual rights and freedoms, and are willing to accept some risks and sacrifice some safety in order to not have these rights taken away.
Society without freedoms is better able to protect the vulnerable, and also the life in such society is less worth living.
False equivalence. Actively requiring someone to take an action to participate in society is not the same as someone making a personal risk assessment for themselves and deciding whether or not to participate in society based on that.
Besides, if we go with your standards, those that can't take the vaccine would not be allowed to participate in a mandatory vaccine society anyway. So either they're forced to avoid participating, or they at least have the option to based on a personal assessment.
1. We all go a little out of our way to help those who need help (the sick, those the vaccine doesn't work for, those who cannot get the vaccine for other reasons), OR
2. Some people are selfish and only care about their own self gratification, so are unwilling to sacrifice a tiny bit to help everyone else.
I'll take the society with more 1 and push back on 2.
Yes, and I'm weighing it based on various well educated professional (scientists, doctors, etc) putting forth the opinion that it is well worth the risk given the benefit to society as a whole.
Versus a bunch of people that refuse to get the vaccine because ... they feel like they are better able to analyze the facts than those well educated people.
There was literally an interview with a woman on NPR recently who said, "I have grand children, so I'm not getting the vaccine". Like... she thought that having grand children was a reason _not_ to get the vaccine. And she followed it up with "they don't think we're smart enough to make good decisions for our families". Here's the thing; "they" are clearly correct.
I just get so frustrated by this stance of "Science and facts are propaganda; _I_ know better, because I trust my gut. The welfare of society be damned".
The food pyramid, demonization of fats, antibacterial soaps, and countless other examples were touted as "factually beneficial for society" by well educated professionals until there was sufficient data to definitively prove them wrong, and those that challenged them based on the insufficiency of the data were considered "crazy" until they were proved correct.
> until there was sufficient data to definitively prove them wrong
Yes, and that's precisely how good analysis and decision making is supposed to work. You're supposed to change your mind when the information you based your decision on changes. That's a _good_ thing.
For any given discussion, given enough people, there will always be a set of people that believe each of the possible things that _can_ be believed. We have people that believe the world is flat. However, the fact that _some_ of those people happened to believe what turned out to be true when the set of input information changed... doesn't make them smarted than everyone else. Unless they were basing their conclusions on a known and defensible set of arguments... it just makes them randomly lucky. You can have a watch to tell time... then ignore it and say it's always 12pm. When it happens to get to 12pm, you'll be right. But you'll still be stupid.
lol no, the burden of proof for efficacy and safety is on those pushing the idea. It's perfectly reasonable to reject something based on a lack of, or questionable, empirical evidence.
There's nothing stupid about rejecting "expert consensus" when the data backing the experts doesn't exist.
We know what the efforts of Covid are. I personally know people who have lost their sense of taste, one for over a year and no sign of it coming back and hates cooking/food now - I’ll vaccinate up just to avoid that.
Hope you understand how ridiculous this statement is:
"However, I very much doubt many of such people, claiming "it's my body, so I can do what I want" are willing to actually follow through what's required to avoid putting _other people's bodies_ at risk. "
Most people are healthy enough to beat flu, coronaviruses, strep infections, etc. etc. etc. Most people are "good enough" immune-system wise, and are not at all a risk to anybody.
You're (intentionally?) leaving out the part where we don't know how the vaccine will pan out as more resistant variants get spread. This great vaccine might not hold, and getting a vaccine now helps prevent that from happening. You talk about choice of vaccine, as if those who get the vaccine have a choice against death.. but as the virus gets resistant, it becomes less and less of a choice.
With your argument standing on the foundation of choice of vaccine+no death vs no vaccine+death, why are you accepting of the fact that lower vaccination rates has a non-trivial chance to strip away the individual choice of life or death of themselves and their loved ones?
> You're (intentionally?) leaving out the part where we don't know how the vaccine will pan out as more resistant variants get spread. This great vaccine might not hold, and getting a vaccine now helps prevent that from happening.
I don't know a lot of things.
I don't know that I won't die in my sleep. I don't know if I won't walk out the door tomorrow morning and get hit by a taxi. I don't know that I won't get botulism and die from a bad pickle. I don't that I won't choke on that pickle. I don't know if the next SARS variant isn't festering in some pile of bat poop in a Cave in Kunming right now. I don't know that I won't end 2021 in a hospital, dying from some cancer that hasn't yet been diagnosed.
Life is risky. On the spectrum of "things I don't know but worry about", the third-order effects of someone else's personal decisions is pretty far down the list.
...in fact, this risk is way below the risk that other people seem to be actively trying to take away my freedoms on a daily basis, because they're scared of what "might" happen, and want everyone else to live according to their rules.
But yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with my level of protection from SARS-CoV2.
The problem is, there are other possible outcomes for a COVID case besides death, hospitalization, and recovery. There is absolutely no reason to think that we understand 100% of what this bug can do. For every uncertainty one might perceive about the "unapproved," "experimental," "insufficiently-tested," or "novel" vaccine, that goes double for the virus itself.
Allowing the virus to propagate freely is asking for trouble in the form of mutations as well. If it had been possible to inoculate the majority of the population in India, for example, we probably wouldn't be dealing with the delta variant right now.
Edit: if a single assertion above is wrong, please reply with citations, and we'll all be that much better-informed for it. Downvoting something that's objectively correct just because it disagrees with your political agenda is the weakest of weak sauce.
Interesting... some good food for thought there, because I'm usually vehemently opposed to the precautionary principle. It's good to see HN'ers agreeing with me on that for once.
When it costs us virtually nothing to do the right thing, though, I don't see how the precautionary principle applies. Usually we see that principle come up in arguments over nuclear power, large-scale environmental projects, major technological paradigm shifts, or medical therapies with a real potential for harm. It just doesn't seem to be in play here. Wear a mask in public, exercise reasonable social distancing practices when possible, and get vaccinated with something that has already been used successfully over a billion times. Is that really asking so much?
Yes. The harm is mostly psychological, but it is an existential threat to society. You might not agree, but that is my take, and I would bet it is shared by the others who are downvoting you.
> My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice.
The good news is (assuming that they're not immune compromised in a way that would make them vulnerable to a panoply of other viruses) they're at essentially no risk from Covid. The data on this is unassailable:
“Following the money”, it would seem neither the industry nor the Government share your sanguine view on the vaccines. It would be easy enough to revoke the legal immunity now…it’s been nearly a year and a half since COVID was introduced into US, it’s not the emergency it was in the beginning. Yet I think it is still in place.
If the COVID vaccines are so good, why the failure to accept the typical financial liability that comes with every other medical intervention? There’s a difference between being an anti-vaxxer and an anti-inject-stuff-in-my-arm-without-professional-liability-er. Those who “follow the money” in such things would have reason to be skeptical.
R0 of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.
We are nowhere near all people in a population being susceptible to infection with the vaccine rollout (and the people that are susceptible, it's their choice.)
Irrelevant so long as vaccination levels are as low as they are: there's no population where infection starts in a vaccinated person and spreads amongst the vaccinated only that we can reasonably track.
What we do know is that vaccinated people seem to be getting COVID Delta and spreading it to close contacts: but that's a self-selecting the sample too - people who are getting vaccinated are also vastly more likely to take adequate precautions if they get infected.
I don’t get “nihilism” from any of that. It is just a healthy attitude about life and death, an attitude that is apparently not even close to universal in our culture.
I can try to understand the other side, but please do the same. Pretty much everyone has been disappointed by humanity this year, and we’re all feeling roughly the same emotions even though we have radically different worldviews.
I reread what he wrote and.. yeah, pretty nihilistic still. More-nihilistic-than-not? Hmm. Nah, that's too wordy.
And to point your point back at you, please re-read my post as someone who is trying to understand them. I honestly have no freaking clue why you think otherwise, other than the fact that I disagree with them. I literally asked them a question so that I can understand them better!
> please re-read my post as someone who is trying to understand them.
You may have convinced yourself that this is true, but I don’t believe it. Your comment was mostly passive-aggressive rhetorical sniping:
> Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have.
And the “question” you ask at the end reads like just another attack:
I'll admit that the first paragraph was passive aggressive. The question, though, was genuine whether you want to believe it or not. This thread's ancestor posters were only sharing rebuttals and not really trying to understand each others' reasoning. My question was in-mind that the OP was only talking about themselves, despite the issue at hand being about other people. The question I asked was written to attempt to get a genuine answer that took into account their own loved ones instead of themselves. I was hoping for a genuine answer, and I believe that they responded genuinely, even though I disagree with them.
You gotta understand, friend.. what I think is at stake here are the lives of the people that I love. With that in mind, the seemingly callous disregard of even their own loved ones is... a difficult thing to parse. So again, please try to read my words from the perspective of someone who's desperately frustrated, and at least attempting to figure out why someone is explicitly okay with knowing that their actions will get others killed.
What is the specific acceptable level of risk to expose others to? Please quantify, and show your work. If you're criticizing others on that basis then there must be a quantitative limit.
And note that the limit can't be 0. Real life always involves some risk.
We just need to look at what society and the law have determined is acceptable risk for one individual to put others at. Driving a car puts others in danger, but not as much as driving drunk or recklessly. Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others, simply because one such spreader can put exponentially more people in danger than any single drunk driver.
> Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others
Mandating an unapproved novel 'vaccine' while removing all responsibility from the manufacturers for the side effects is extremely reckless toward others.
Really, if you look at the history of this vaccine, it's the complete opposite of reckless. It was a great technology that had been in progress for years and was essentially held back by too much government regulation. Solving a vaccine for this virus within days was an incredible outcome of American soft power capitalism, and letting the free market pursue a profit. That's why the Bernie/communist crowd are so desperately eager to force Moderna and Pfizer to hand over the patents. How dare we invest in and make something so successful and lifesaving for some reason as ugly as profit. Remember, loosening responsibility is the norm and the ethos for a capitalist society. And the only people asking to see a vax card are private enterprises. It's good news all around, good for the economy. It's only bad for the mentally crippled who are so mired in conspiratorial thought that they can't see what's obviously good for themselves. But no one's ever going to make you get it. I just think we should turn the wilfully unvaxed away from the hospital when you get covid. Why should we pay for your mistakes?
I’m a member of society, and I (along with many others) believe that we are way across the acceptable boundary between my individual rights and the risk everyone else should bear.
What do we do now? Do we need to fight a war to decide who gets things their way? There won’t be any real winners in such an event.
> Being both unvaxed and unmasked is unnecessarily reckless toward others, simply because one such spreader can put exponentially more people in danger than any single drunk driver.
Worst possible case regardless of likelihood is not a good metric. I'll bet the average drunk driver, and indeed the average sober driver, causes many more deaths than the average unvaxed unmasked person in a post-vaccination world.
You'd bet wrong 1.3 million traffic deaths in a year. double it to 2.6 m for 2 years.
In the 2 years of covid we have had 4.25 million deaths with still 90% us and 97% of the rest of the world left to catch it.
You only need a unmasked person to have an R value 1.64 times higher than a vaxed/masked for the proportional deaths to not reach parity even with 90% people vacinated.
That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal. Where as most of the reasons people give for not wearing a mask are either easily debunked or work just as well as a retort to someone asking you "why are you continuously punching yourself?".
WHO confirmed cases so using your numbers that does change it to just another 1.2 million dead americans assuming no change in death rate due to other strains the vaccine rather than another 5.5 million.
>> That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal
And most antivaxers and the unmasked are welfare cases with nothing to do but look at reddit, and so are a burden on the state and a direct cost to me as a taxpayer even when there isn't a pandemic. Hey, maybe this will work out great in the end.
If we have 100 people responsible for a bad thing happening to 10 people in that group that is proportionally the same as 10 people being responsible for a bad thing happening to 1 person in that group and having 90 unrelated people to the side when we are divvying up blame.
Yes and no; if you're accusing unvaccinated-by-choice people of recklessly endangering others, then it's quite different whether they're endangering random other people or only other unvaccinated-by-choice people. (Similarly I have no problem with drivers on private car-only roads, only those who endanger pedestrians and cyclists on the public roads).
Also the dynamics of how far any given infection would spread are very different in a post-vaccination world.
Sure now your only recklessly endangering those who can't get vaccinated and those who opt in. So maybe at steady state the numbers do work out in favour of it being less dangerous than driving proportionally(excluding the people who opt in to this danger). But you realise we're talking about driving, an activity that actually accomplishes something, as opposed to not getting vaccinated which accomplishes at most nothing. If driving accomplished nothing you can bet you wouldn't be able to do it in the city were you are involving others it'd be relegated to tracks.
Technically, I was talking about drunk driving, which kills a lot fewer people than (productive) driving. That's why I selected the limited case of people who innocently die because of a driver's wilful negligence, which is exponentially fewer than those who die because of antivaxers' wilful negligence. Probably even when there isn't a pandemic with an R6 replication rate.
In a post-vaccination world, you'd be exactly correct. And no one is advocating for a permanent mask mandate. But in the present world, where large sectors of the population are not vaxed, the likelihood of an unvaxed spreader killing someone versus a drunk driver, for any individual on any given night, is probably equal or greater.
I'll admit something. I happen to love driving twice the speed limit after a few drinks. Feels great. And I indulge that sometimes on country roads when there's no one around. I know I'm a better driver after a few beers than most people are sober. If it were up to me, there would be a test, and a rating on my license that let me drive with a higher BAC than other people. But you know what? My personal pleasure isn't worth the damage of taking someone's life, or of entitling everyone else in society to do the same. So, on the whole, it's obviously better that it's illegal. Even though it infringes on my personal freedom and pursuit of happiness.
In the US, all of the at-risk population who wants to be vaccinated has been. The only people who can't get vaccinated are children under 12, and they are at virtually zero risk.
Yes, but the at-risk who don't want to be vaccinated are soaking up enormous resources, including hospital beds and doctors and nurses that should be attending people with other health emergencies. Moreover they're a breeding ground for variants that can evade the vaccine. And beyond that, even if they only kill each other, how is that okay?
Because their question is a strawman towards something I wasn't attempting to understand. I can see where they're coming from with their question, but that's a whole different discussion. Like, if you want to have a discussion about why me riding a motorcycle is dangerous to myself and others, let's do that. But it's a different question and not relevant to a pandemic.
With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?