As a double, soon triple vaccinated healthy grown up, one thing I'd wish to say:
For people like me (healty, 40ies male in a job were I can work from home) the big reason to be vaccinated is for my own:
I don't want to be sick for days or be unable to smell or taste.
I also don't want to feel freezing cold, have headaches that makes it impossible to work or have the nasty long term side effects some get from Covid.
To avoid that I take the probably much smaller risk of taking the vaccine.
But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society: Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument.
Covid could have been eliminated at some point. We know because there are scary other viruses like ebola that are not ravaging entire world because the moment it shows up we act decisively -- exactly because it is so deadly and scary.
Because Covid is not so scary everybody elected to wait and see how exponential growth looks like in practice. If it had 20% death rate we would have couple thousand people die of it at most.
We have to keep this stuff in our brain and history. The way how many leaders acted in the beginning of all this drastically changed the way we see some politics and countries.
It seems that these horrible stupid decisions and lies are fading into irrelevance already
I think the draconian measures that China put in place make it very clear I could never have been eliminated. Not to mention the animal reservoirs (mink, domesticated pets, livestock).
Sure we could have maintained a lockdown for years to keep infection rates minimized, but that’s not a long term solution nor a process that will lead to elimination.
Except the draconian measures that China put actually worked initially. They lost battle when entire world around them got sick and it did not make sense for China to be isolated.
What did not work is other countries closing their borders immediately the moment it was known that the virus escaped China.
When the numbers of sick are low you can track every individual and preemptively put everybody he spent time with in isolation. This is how we fight other viruses like ebola, successfully, even without vaccines. There still exists no vaccine for ebola. The only real mechanism to prevent it spreading is finding and isolating people.
And, yes, ebola has reservoirs. And no, we are not in constant lockdown due to ebola.
No, it is not. What happened initially and what is happening now are two completely different things. Nobody disputes that it is no longer possible to beat the virus. Even if China did beat the virus completely they would still be receiving fresh cases from abroad.
China is in a difficult situation now, because their vaccines are completely ineffective for Omicron, because their population is so densely packed and has low health standards and because their health system is much more fragile.
This is just hand waving. You’re basically saying we could have beaten Covid if: a) China locked down before the virus left their country, b) if their vaccine prevented Omnicron [note: no vaccine does], c) China wasn’t densely populated, had a healthier population and better healthcare system?
Whether Chinese policy has been effective depends on how many people have died and to what degree they had to tradeoff their economy for it. But without authoritative numbers on the table for discussion, we're just pumping text around the web.
For most of the duration of Covid I actually worked for a large company that maintains large (hundreds if not thousands of people) development workforce in Shanghai. I left in November 2021.
NONE of them got sick, as far as we know. Some of them are good friends of mine and in safe, private conversation confirmed the same.
There were some lockdowns, but it seems they were largely precautionary.
No one closed their borders as China did. And afaik no one closed their borders when we knew it escaped but just days & weeks later. Europe never really closed any borders for business travel and good transport, etc.
I don't think we can compare any measures against China.
China lockdown did nothing as is made entirely apparent by how they reopened their country and never had to lock down again. Lockdowns don't give immunity so obviously they either have bad reporting or they acquired immunity naturally.
Just watch some videos of china's reopening parties. There were raves and celebrations with hundreds sometimes thousands of people packed indoors in close quarters. Covid doesn't care how strict you were a month ago.
Yes, China is well known for their sophisticated healthcare. A country whose smog regularly makes it hard to see buildings just across the street is somehow becoming the most advanced country in the world at preventing covid transmission even though they ironically don't even share any data to confirm any of these speculations in either direction.
> Yes, China is well known for their sophisticated healthcare. A country whose smog regularly makes it hard to see buildings just across the street is somehow becoming the most advanced country in the world at preventing covid transmission even though they ironically don't even share any data to confirm any of these speculations in either direction.
You were just talking about how China was not locking down. China is locking down. Now you're just shitting on China by saying "How can we trust China with their secrecy and smog?"
because they aren't locking down like they were this is from instagram 4 days days ago in xian, one of their strictest lockdown locations [1] https://i.imgur.com/49QjHJN.jpg and this [2] https://i.imgur.com/OugsA59.png is from an article talking about the lockdowns in xian.
Neither of these pictures could've been taken during their early lockdowns that everyone talks about because people were literally blockaded into their own apartments and homes completely unable to leave.
Journalist Jiang Xue says neighbours have been swapping food to deal with supply shortages and encouraging each other after ‘making it through another day’
Eliminating covid was never possible. Are you not aware of how many animal carriers there are or are you suggesting we could've prevented animal transmission somehow?
Just a heads up, I'm vaccinated and currently have covid. I was sick for days, barely able to smell, was freezing cold, had headaches — all as you describe. So.. not sure it will help you.
In Australia, of those in hospital or ICU with covid, more than half are unvaccinated. 92% of the country are vaccinated, so the remainder accounts for half of hospitalisations. That’s a massive difference. Vaccines help, they are not perfect, but they help.
You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated, the vaccines work. You need to stratify at least by age, but also by comorbidities and so on. For example, it could be (not saying it is the case) that most of the ICU patients were considered too frail to be given the vaccine on medical grounds, and thus count as unvaccinated.
Too many politicians make "X is true therefore Y is true" statements that cannot actually be made based on the data being cited. One thing that's been clear from the beginning is the need for nuance and consideration of the details, not just blind jumps. There are health statisticians and mathematicians that do this sort of study for a living and I wish more politicians would cite their work.
> You may be right, but you cannot actually conclude that, because the country is 92% vaccinated and half of ICU are unvaccinated
They're two separate data points, he hasn't done this
He's stated separately that 92% of the country is vaccinated AND (separately) half of ICU admissions are from the unvaccinated, what it means is that that remaining 8% are responsible for more than half of the COVID hospitalisations
Considering how much of a surveillance state AUS has, they likely do have the data to draw these conclusions
It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
> Considering how much of a surveillance state AUS has, they likely do have the data to draw these conclusions
> It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
This is exactly what I was referring to in my previous comment. These are hypotheses, and professionals are needed to establish causality. This _is_ a nuanced issue, it's not simple (despite what almost everyone seems to think), and we should start ignoring simplistic sound bites on this topic.
Some vaccinated people still get severe disease, and others even die (both at significantly lower rates than for the unvaccinated, of course). The reasons why this happens in some cases and not others is uncertain, and, accepting the Bayesian interpretation of probability as I do, I would describe that as reducing the probability of disease (and also death). Put differently, you cannot tell a priori whether being vaccinated will definitely stop you dying, but you can observe that the a posteriori population level rate is reduced. You are correct that it also reduces the probability of transmission.
Yes, exactly, but you'd have a higher chance of taking up a hospital bed if you weren't vaccinated, thus your status does something for hospital staff, which is what I was replying to.
Even if that wasn't your motivation, getting vaccinated is good for society as well.
No. He's not doing it for society at largewaving my hand in a large circle. He's doing it for people close to him which is a very fucking different narrative and motivation. Doesn't mean it doesn't benefit society at large waving hand in a large circle but that's not the same thing.
That's basically the argument I use for masking. The severity of infection appears to be correlated with initial viral load. It seems unlikely that I'll be able to avoid getting COVID, but when I do get it, I want it to be as light as possible.
> Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument.
You're doing it to stay out of the hospital. That helps you and helps society.
The biggest fuckup in this whole thing was everyone getting their hopes up that the vaccines would end the pandemic via controlling transmission.
That is all your largely all you alls fault though.
At the end of 2020 it was looking increasingly likely that it was going to be endemic with the Alpha variant having been found, the related coronavirus 229E having been found to evolve antigenically, and Fauci was setting expectations that the vaccines would only be about 50% effective in preventing transmission.
> Fauci says COVID-19 vaccine may only be 50 percent effective
> The odds of a coronavirus vaccine being highly effective are low, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday — and getting people to take it might not be easy, either.
The problem is that the initial VE results before any waning of neutralizing antibodies had happened and before any variants were way too optimistic and the results were not durable.
But we're still at >90% protection against severe disease and hospitalization along with long COVID and other issues -- turning Omicron into a cold virus for the triple-vaxxed, which was always the point if anyone actually listened to experts and not the news media.
The URL should be updated with that since it’s the original and is not even behind a paywall (though, even if it were, paywalled posts are allowed on HN).
It's a very half baked paywall, The Atlantic limits you to one or two articles a month before they want you to subscribe or use some other trivial workaround such as incognito
When I encounter a site that does this, I block it from setting cookies. In Chrome, it's 4 clicks: padlock icon -> "Cookies" -> "Block" -> "Done". I've only seen one site that tests for this; for the rest, it permanently disables the paywall.
At this stage I think they deserve to be scapegoated. A family friend of mine is terminally ill with cancer (and vaccinated), in a lot of pain. She had to give up her hospital bed to a fool who objects to vaccines and got severe covid as a result. That is not ok.
Nationwide staffed beds are down 6-7% yet you blame an individual? What about the policies firing people with near guaranteed natural immunity for lack of compliance? How are those policy's not to blame? A single person doesn't break capacity, losing half a million healthcare workers to absurd policy does make a huge difference though.
Keep in mind the nation has had two years to increase capacity and done the opposite.
Anybody who's okay with letting the unvaccinated die of COVID as punishment for succumbing to massive misinformation campaigns but doesn't call for the immediate resignation of every single politician responsible for the broken healthcare systems most of "the west" seems to be dealing with should seriously reflect on their reasoning. This isn't normal. People are throwing misguided citizens under the bus to protect the corruption that caused all this.
You act like people are unable to access arguments from both sides and make their own educated decisions.
Take me, for example. I consider it unethical for me to take the vaccine as I've had covid twice (the second time was a very mild cold) and I'm in extremely good health. If I take the vaccine that means someone else in a poor country with bad health will not have access to that vaccine.
So I would suggest vaccinating naturally immune people in no-risk demographics is quite literally going to be the cause for people dying in less advantaged countries.
and before you ask, yes the US has been shipping excess vaccines to other countries for a long time now, so it does matter.
What is not ok is that bed capacity hasn't increased in two years. That's the politicians fault. But they don't want you to blame them for the obvious.
Agree it is a function of a broken healthcare system as well. That said, vaccination rate and bed capacity are two different issues with separate timeframes to scale up. Adding a meaningful capacity to hospitals takes time - educating more doctors, nurses, buildings, equipment. The capacity for vaccinating everyone is already there, which, given adoption, would avoid over utilisation of beds. I would argue keeping people out of hospital is a better outcome than adding capacity for hospitalisations that could easily have been avoided.
Unvaccinated but recovered from a prior infection? Doubtful.
The UK paper on Delta seemed to suggest that wasn’t true even for the unvaccinated-never infected as well. Google the Lancet article. Viral loads were similars, infection risk wasn’t that much lower for vaccinated. I think recovery was quicker by a day, maybe.
This entire thread is discussing recovered. Only your responses seem to remove that qualifier, if you want to discuss immune naive individuals perhaps find a relevant thread. You'll find it very difficult find immune naive individuals outside of full lockdown countries so their discussion seems odd in the context of nations like France or USA.
Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts.
On avearge That's mainly because among them are those who never had the virus / had it early. Viral load seems to correlate with time since prior immunization, be it recovery or vaccination. Regulations often ignore that and are only built around vaccination status.
It's not the same though. Recovered patients can become reinfected. They can have long term effects all over the body. And finally, it will take millions of deaths to get there.
Anecdata story time. My friends and I went skiing this past weekend. My friends very much subscribe to legacy media/political narratives and repeat back what they hear from NPR, CNN, and "hot" takes from social media influencers. (I've tried to get them to read/listen to Manufacturing Consent or Hate INC and I try not to be obnoxious about it since they're friends)
On this ski trip I heard them talk about how they're ready to go back to normal. They are fed up with unvaccinated people but very interestingly they said... Screw them, they've made their choice so let them live and die if they get COVID. They weren't articulating an authoritarian policy prescription of making it painful/miserable for the unvaccinated like I have heard them say before. Now, their network of people (friends, family, coworkers) have mostly all had it and even the unvaccinated unhealthy people got through it.
This is a big deal and a milestone. My friends want to go back to normal. They are finally willing to let people make their own risk assessment and they are finally willing to let people die in order to go back to normal.
They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people. That's huge! At least, in my opinion.
> They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people
I find it interesting you use the word 'other' here, as usually this is said when trying to frame a dehumanisation argument, where the 'other' is a suppressed minority of sorts
As someone that holds this opinion (sod the unvaccinated) and has done since the start of people doing this, I'm not surprised other people are now starting to go 'you made your bed' with this one
The thing is, being unvaccinated is a choice and if you want to make that choice then go for it
However, that choice has contributed to the deaths of people I know and extending the general disruption of the world for months on end for no other reason that unsubstantiated scepticism
You can make that choice but as the article says, do NOT expect the rest of the world to respect it when it's blindingly obvious it's a really dumb choice to make for absolutely no gain to you or anyone around you
When you see your mates grandmas dying and people are actively refusing the vaccine, I quite frankly do not care what happens to them, as they didn't care what happened to the people I know who have died
> However, that choice has contributed to the deaths of people I know
It was not a choice many people took to get the virus prior to vaccine availability, and these people would be taking extra risk to get vaccinated (excluded from trials) so you are spewing rage at them for what? Because of an error of incorrect application of priors?
Recovered people were excluded from trials so conclusion of trials says nothing for them. What percent of vaccine holdouts do you reckon have already been infected? If that is a significant percentage, realize your anger is being channeled into restrictions against these people you are not speaking to.
So you don't have those numbers on hand? It seems crucial, if 100% of unvaccinated have already recovered then what is to be gained by vaccinating now?
> It seems crucial, if 100% of unvaccinated have already recovered then what is to be gained by vaccinating now?
Except we know this isn't the case at all lmao
Elsewhere in the thread it's stated in AUS that 50% of COVID admissions are from the 8% unvaccinated population, that's about enough to prove the point here and I don't need to go any further
Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page about numbers mattering.
I guess you are in Australia? Australia may well have successfully suppressed natural immunity. In my own country we have large swaths pre-omicron who have natural antibodies: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/
Now you seem to be expecting these folks to be vaccinated with a drug that has specifically excluded them from the trials. Drug recommendations ought to be coupled with safety testing on the impacted group.
If you can find me Pfizer/Moderna trial studies which show specific impact on recovered individuals I will never post again.
> In my own country we have large swaths pre-omicron who have natural antibodies
It's funny this one, as that's not what this should tell you, the page uses antibodies to measure how many people have potentially been infected, it doesn't demonstrate effective herd immunity or that the population would be naturally immune or protected
We know that COVID is a disease where more exposure leads to more damage, so having antibodies doesn't mean anything
> Now you seem to be expecting these folks to be vaccinated with a drug that has specifically excluded them from the trials. Drug recommendations ought to be coupled with safety testing on the impacted group.
I haven't suggested anything of the sort and I'm pretty sure this doesn't work how you think it does
> If you can find me Pfizer/Moderna trial studies which show specific impact on recovered individuals I will never post again.
You know for a fact this doesn't exist because people aren't trying to measure the healthy
What we do have are studies that show the delta goes down as vaccines are introduced, along with the infection rate
I really wish you would stop commenting because this a great demonstrating of not understanding the data at all.
EDIT: someone turned off replies lol
I have addressed them, there's just clearly an understanding gap here
Antibodies are also created by vaccines, if that's your measure here you shouldn't be arguing against them, that's why it's meaningless
Any interaction with disease creates them, so having them present doesn't guarantee that there's enough being produced (or even effectively) to counteract the effects
Not sure how to address this, of course it means a great deal. As a proxy for exposure and coupled with studies that show impact of known exposure towards immunity, its great evidence. Whether someone was harmed by their infection is a moot point for those who've gone through it.
In a place like Australia with only a small fraction of the population having exposure its no wonder the statistics of their hospitalizations look as they do. In my own state hospitalizations have started decouple from vaccine status due to the high degree of natural immunity and that was before Omicron.
If the delta of whatever you are measuring is 90%+ dependent on a single age group then perhaps the guidance should reflect that. Frankly you aren't attempting to honestly address my points.
>deliberately turn it down over nothing AFTER the trial phase
Not as an argument against the vaccine, but maybe to help enlighten why many have chosen not to get vaccinated; keep in mind that the FDA approval letter for the Pfizer vaccine indicates that long term testing is not projected to be complete until June 2025. https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
> I find it interesting you use the word 'other' here, as usually this is said when trying to frame a dehumanisation argument, where the 'other' is a suppressed minority of sorts
Interesting, maybe, but definitely correct. The unvaccinated are routinely dehumanised and you even do so in your own comment.
> Would you make the same point about religious persecution?
Yes, if your religion caused you to harm people by just being near them because it is optional
Again, it's more false equivalency
Some religions require you to not even look at a woman that isn't covered, they need to go and live in an area where that's supported rather than expecting wider society to support that stupid standard
It's funny how you're finding more and more excuses about how your hate for this one group of people is different from anything else. Because it's always different; that's just how tribalism works.
> your hate for this one group of people is different from anything else
I don't hate them, I find them stupid and irresponsible
It's interesting that you're pulling the moral outrage card after you've asked about this and found my beliefs consistent
If there's a choice presented to you of "do X thing and don't harm others, or don't and risk harming others" and you pick the 2nd, you're the one in the wrong, plain and simple
> it seems like you are beating around the bush here a bit
What I'm saying is quite simple: Unvaccinated people are being dehumanised all the time. I'm not beating around the bush, I clearly stated this in my first message.
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments and for using HN (so far at least) as a single-purpose account. Neither of those things are ok here, and definitely not the combo.
> I'm not advocating executing them but I just don't give a fuck about them any more
Thank you very much! Upvoted. That's exactly what we've been asking for. Some of us may have a chance to see the light of another day now. See [0] for obligatory C.S.Lewis quote. I'm really, really happy that you're not willing to push through to an actual extermination stage! I may get my brain un-freeze, my thinking ability back, my psychotic attacks subside, and who knows, I may find the reason to get a jab.
I intentionally used the term 'other' because I wanted to highlight how tribal people tend to get about things; there is an in group and an out group and terrible things can, will, and (horrifyingly) ought to happen to the out group.
I try to keep my tribal sensibilities in check by reframing everyone I am considering as a part of my own tribe. Obviously, there are exceptions for violent criminality which I apply a strategic empathy for (understand as fully as possible while still condemning the actions). The boundary of who gets what treatment is fuzzy if I really thought about it, but pragmatically this model serves me well. But that's my own personal stance fueled from experiences and research.
My friends draw their tribal circles more narrowly, which is their prerogative. I like to listen to how they engage with the world because it helps me understand how they think and what their influences are. They are more willing to allow state hostility/violence against people who are the other (the 'worthy victim' under the propaganda model). I sometimes point out that what powers you give the state will be wielded by the other party as well.
The fact that my friends are saying who cares, let's just go back to normal is an interesting signal IMO. While the narrative is still 'make things uncomfortable (by disregarding constitutional rights and social norms)' they are seemingly okay with 'it's your life and your choice.'
My friend group is not a representation of society as a whole. They do make up a large part of my social reality. This is an important data point for me but it's much less so for everyone else. Still, I felt compelled to share!
I think the tribal thing is interesting but a meaningless distinction when it's such an easy choice like this
The tribes are essentially people refusing free vaccines for no reason vs people who are vaccinated to protect themselves/others
This is one of the easiest cut and dry examples I could think of to justify in-group/out-group behaviour, you shouldn't be forced to tolerate or associate with people making deliberately bad decisions
You could extend this argument to drunk drivers and I think it would hold just as little weight
Don't mistake your friends change in policy with a change in attitude about the individual vs society. Vaccine mandates, incentives, and restrictions were all done with paternalistic intent. However we've reached the point where the rotten child is a danger to the parents and they're being kicked out of the house. Patience and humanity are exhausted and it's been turned into anger. Few accept their "personal risk assessment" as an acceptable choice.
I don't wish ill on anyone, but it's hard not to note hospitals being filled with unvaccinated people, pushing out operations, cancer treatments, other appointments for people who actually have no choice.
If that's a trolley problem where I'm forced to choose, I know what I'd choose.
That said, I don't care about going back to normal, but I would prefer if hospitals weren't clogged up because people can't be arsed to listen to science.
Only a vert small fraction of covid hospitalizations are pure covid. The vast majority has comorbidities, notably obesity. Where does your trolley thinking lead now?
A lot of people have comorbitives, yet unvaccinated are vastly overrepresented in hospitalizations. You changed nothing. You raised a variable that's independent of vaccinations.
This does not make sense. Fewer obese people means (much) fewer covid hospitalizations and fewer hospital beds occupied. There is a clear causal link from both vaccination status AND obesity.
X% of people are obese, Y% of people are vaccinated. An extremely outsized portion of hospitalizations are unvaccinated. Are you saying that obese people are more or less likely to be vaccinated? Otherwise, it's irrelevant. Yes, hospitalizations likely skews toward obese people, but what's relevant is whether they are vaccinated or not, and clearly most (hospitalizations) aren't.
Let's take the Australia example in the thread. 92% of population vaccinated, 50% hospitalizations are unvaccinated. Unless there's a claim that obese people are less likely to be vaccinated, you would free up every other hospital bed by everyone getting vaccinated (minus the portion still going in, which here would be a ratio of 0.5 x total_beds out of 0.92 x population of those 8%).
Yes, if less people were obese there would also be less hospitalizations, but that's an entirely separate problem. Maybe if no one was obese you would halve (as an example) the number of hospitalizations again, but that's much harder than getting a needle.
This strategy is shameless expediency on the behalf of "society" -- really just mob rule wrapped in good intentions. Get vaccinated for yourself or your family or for society - your choice. Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit. Convince people not coerce them.
> Don't force others to assume risk for your own benefit
This is exactly what remaining unvaccinated is though
You're deliberately extending the pandemic and killing people so you can turn your nose up at authority, with no benefit to yourself, while actively denying the scientific consensus on this
Don't be surprised when the majority of people have a bad reaction to that, when their grandparents are dying as a result of your actions, of course politicians are going to try and speak to that sentiment, people are really angry over this one
I've been vaccinated 3 times now, it's nothing to worry about it and I barely noticed it throughout each one
I've been vaccinated twice and my company will force me to get a booster. My second vaccination produced serious adverse side effects that lasted several days. Very scary. Are you going to guarantee that I'll be OK when I get my next shot? If I'm not, will you compensate me? Of course not. I have to assume all the risk because you think your strategy will help you survive.
So you're willing to admit exemptions. Who determines their legitimacy? I think I have a very rational risk/reward assessment that tells me the booster is not in my best interest. It's not so easy. Your strategy of coercion extends to doctors as well. Doctors that post about adverse affects are often banned for spreading misinformation. There's a lot of pressure on them not to write up notes for exemption. There's no guarantee that I will get a life-threatening adverse reaction from my next shot. Maybe I'm just be bedridden for a week. They have to make a judgement call under strong pressure. I'd rather wear masks, stay isolated, work remotely, whatever. I'm cognizant of society and responsible. But I don't have a choice short of quitting work, which I don't want to do. That's why forced vaccination is wrong.
>A doctor, most countries already have an exemption system in place, use it mate
I'm glad your personal experience is different (and much better) than mine. All I can say is that where I live and work, getting an exemption from a doctor is not so straightforward (even if it technically exists) and questioning anything about a vaccine/booster (including relating actual personal experience) is either not well received or just ignored. On social media, it's even attacked. Personally, it's very frustrating.
> getting an exemption from a doctor is not so straightforward (even if it technically exists)
Perhaps you should try, they definitely do exist and you would know this if you actually tried instead of telling me it's hard before you've looked
> and questioning anything about a vaccine/booster (including relating actual personal experience) is either not well received or just ignored. On social media, it's even attacked
Then don't tell anyone you're exempt or get the vaccine, honestly I think you know what you're saying is just an excuse
> This strategy is shameless expediency on the behalf of "society"
Sure, but the forces pushing this anti-science sentiment are doing it based on shameless expediency on behalf of themselves as owners or their shareholders.
What’s completely bewildering to me is the strange idea that ignoring the provably present virus, would in any way whatsoever improve society, least of all from a business perspective!?!
Like, obviously from an extremely naive and ignorant perspective, you would defend your revenue stream in the absolutely immediate short term, far above actual human lives, the real question is why the hell are people actually defending and even espousing this kind of textbook fascism???
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadFor people like me (healty, 40ies male in a job were I can work from home) the big reason to be vaccinated is for my own:
I don't want to be sick for days or be unable to smell or taste.
I also don't want to feel freezing cold, have headaches that makes it impossible to work or have the nasty long term side effects some get from Covid.
To avoid that I take the probably much smaller risk of taking the vaccine.
But it is something I do for me, my family and my employer. Not something I do for society: Covid has already proven beyond all my doubt that it won't eliminated by any of the current vaccines so for now I'm deaf to any claim to take it for anyone else, i.e. the herd immunity argument.
Because Covid is not so scary everybody elected to wait and see how exponential growth looks like in practice. If it had 20% death rate we would have couple thousand people die of it at most.
It seems that these horrible stupid decisions and lies are fading into irrelevance already
Sure we could have maintained a lockdown for years to keep infection rates minimized, but that’s not a long term solution nor a process that will lead to elimination.
What did not work is other countries closing their borders immediately the moment it was known that the virus escaped China.
When the numbers of sick are low you can track every individual and preemptively put everybody he spent time with in isolation. This is how we fight other viruses like ebola, successfully, even without vaccines. There still exists no vaccine for ebola. The only real mechanism to prevent it spreading is finding and isolating people.
And, yes, ebola has reservoirs. And no, we are not in constant lockdown due to ebola.
China is in a difficult situation now, because their vaccines are completely ineffective for Omicron, because their population is so densely packed and has low health standards and because their health system is much more fragile.
NONE of them got sick, as far as we know. Some of them are good friends of mine and in safe, private conversation confirmed the same.
There were some lockdowns, but it seems they were largely precautionary.
I don't think we can compare any measures against China.
Just watch some videos of china's reopening parties. There were raves and celebrations with hundreds sometimes thousands of people packed indoors in close quarters. Covid doesn't care how strict you were a month ago.
You were just talking about how China was not locking down. China is locking down. Now you're just shitting on China by saying "How can we trust China with their secrecy and smog?"
Neither of these pictures could've been taken during their early lockdowns that everyone talks about because people were literally blockaded into their own apartments and homes completely unable to leave.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3162244/acc...
Journalist Jiang Xue says neighbours have been swapping food to deal with supply shortages and encouraging each other after ‘making it through another day’
We chose to let people travel and to not put in place the same countermeasures that China put in place.
- ebola is transmitted via physical contact (with bodily fluids), not vapour in the air
- ebola tends to be contagious only once symptoms appear, not for several days before
Those two points alone make the two completely incomparable in terms of containment.
Too many politicians make "X is true therefore Y is true" statements that cannot actually be made based on the data being cited. One thing that's been clear from the beginning is the need for nuance and consideration of the details, not just blind jumps. There are health statisticians and mathematicians that do this sort of study for a living and I wish more politicians would cite their work.
They're two separate data points, he hasn't done this
He's stated separately that 92% of the country is vaccinated AND (separately) half of ICU admissions are from the unvaccinated, what it means is that that remaining 8% are responsible for more than half of the COVID hospitalisations
Considering how much of a surveillance state AUS has, they likely do have the data to draw these conclusions
It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
> It really does show how effective they are in also reducing the severity of the condition, which is a very important point to make
This is exactly what I was referring to in my previous comment. These are hypotheses, and professionals are needed to establish causality. This _is_ a nuanced issue, it's not simple (despite what almost everyone seems to think), and we should start ignoring simplistic sound bites on this topic.
Vaccines reduce the severity of disease, sometimes to the point of no noticeable effect. They may reduce probability of transmission.
I'd say that this is exactly the definition of doing it for society!
Not because that wouldn't be worth it but because at this point my vaccination status doesn't change anything for those.
Who do you think is in the hospital with covid? I'm glad you came to the right conclusion even with the wrong parameters though.
Around here?
Not 40ish well trained med, and particularly not double vaccinated ones.
I do this for me, my wife, my boss and my client (so I won't have to skip my duties at home or work for days).
Even if that wasn't your motivation, getting vaccinated is good for society as well.
You're doing it to stay out of the hospital. That helps you and helps society.
The biggest fuckup in this whole thing was everyone getting their hopes up that the vaccines would end the pandemic via controlling transmission.
That is all your largely all you alls fault though.
At the end of 2020 it was looking increasingly likely that it was going to be endemic with the Alpha variant having been found, the related coronavirus 229E having been found to evolve antigenically, and Fauci was setting expectations that the vaccines would only be about 50% effective in preventing transmission.
For example August 7, 2020:
https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-ma...
> Fauci says COVID-19 vaccine may only be 50 percent effective
> The odds of a coronavirus vaccine being highly effective are low, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday — and getting people to take it might not be easy, either.
The problem is that the initial VE results before any waning of neutralizing antibodies had happened and before any variants were way too optimistic and the results were not durable.
But we're still at >90% protection against severe disease and hospitalization along with long COVID and other issues -- turning Omicron into a cold virus for the triple-vaxxed, which was always the point if anyone actually listened to experts and not the news media.
The URL should be updated with that since it’s the original and is not even behind a paywall (though, even if it were, paywalled posts are allowed on HN).
Keep in mind the nation has had two years to increase capacity and done the opposite.
Take me, for example. I consider it unethical for me to take the vaccine as I've had covid twice (the second time was a very mild cold) and I'm in extremely good health. If I take the vaccine that means someone else in a poor country with bad health will not have access to that vaccine.
So I would suggest vaccinating naturally immune people in no-risk demographics is quite literally going to be the cause for people dying in less advantaged countries.
and before you ask, yes the US has been shipping excess vaccines to other countries for a long time now, so it does matter.
Another ignorant author who does not know that natural immunity exists outside of vaccines... I.e those who recovered from COVID.
The UK paper on Delta seemed to suggest that wasn’t true even for the unvaccinated-never infected as well. Google the Lancet article. Viral loads were similars, infection risk wasn’t that much lower for vaccinated. I think recovery was quicker by a day, maybe.
Research from Australia suggests otherwise. 20x.
Also, got a journal article to reference? The UK data is pretty good for Delta. That is a quote by the health authority with no references given.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts.
On this ski trip I heard them talk about how they're ready to go back to normal. They are fed up with unvaccinated people but very interestingly they said... Screw them, they've made their choice so let them live and die if they get COVID. They weren't articulating an authoritarian policy prescription of making it painful/miserable for the unvaccinated like I have heard them say before. Now, their network of people (friends, family, coworkers) have mostly all had it and even the unvaccinated unhealthy people got through it.
This is a big deal and a milestone. My friends want to go back to normal. They are finally willing to let people make their own risk assessment and they are finally willing to let people die in order to go back to normal.
They want it so much they are even willing to forego hostilities to the 'other' group of unvaccinated people. That's huge! At least, in my opinion.
I find it interesting you use the word 'other' here, as usually this is said when trying to frame a dehumanisation argument, where the 'other' is a suppressed minority of sorts
As someone that holds this opinion (sod the unvaccinated) and has done since the start of people doing this, I'm not surprised other people are now starting to go 'you made your bed' with this one
The thing is, being unvaccinated is a choice and if you want to make that choice then go for it
However, that choice has contributed to the deaths of people I know and extending the general disruption of the world for months on end for no other reason that unsubstantiated scepticism
You can make that choice but as the article says, do NOT expect the rest of the world to respect it when it's blindingly obvious it's a really dumb choice to make for absolutely no gain to you or anyone around you
When you see your mates grandmas dying and people are actively refusing the vaccine, I quite frankly do not care what happens to them, as they didn't care what happened to the people I know who have died
It was not a choice many people took to get the virus prior to vaccine availability, and these people would be taking extra risk to get vaccinated (excluded from trials) so you are spewing rage at them for what? Because of an error of incorrect application of priors?
If you have access and you deliberately turn it down over nothing AFTER the trial phase, that's who I'm raging at
I'm not going to sit here and guess
You have the information to work this one out yourself if you like and none of these comments make any sense mate
Except we know this isn't the case at all lmao
Elsewhere in the thread it's stated in AUS that 50% of COVID admissions are from the 8% unvaccinated population, that's about enough to prove the point here and I don't need to go any further
You're also seeing more and more cases like this crop up - https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/frighten...
Vaccines work. They reduce severity, transmission and the chance of death.
It's on you to prove your point with some actual facts now, instead of more questions missing the point entirely.
I guess you are in Australia? Australia may well have successfully suppressed natural immunity. In my own country we have large swaths pre-omicron who have natural antibodies: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/
Now you seem to be expecting these folks to be vaccinated with a drug that has specifically excluded them from the trials. Drug recommendations ought to be coupled with safety testing on the impacted group.
If you can find me Pfizer/Moderna trial studies which show specific impact on recovered individuals I will never post again.
Nope
> In my own country we have large swaths pre-omicron who have natural antibodies
It's funny this one, as that's not what this should tell you, the page uses antibodies to measure how many people have potentially been infected, it doesn't demonstrate effective herd immunity or that the population would be naturally immune or protected
We know that COVID is a disease where more exposure leads to more damage, so having antibodies doesn't mean anything
Here's an article for that site telling you about the benefits of a universal vaccine - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists...
It's also worth reading through their other studies about vaccines, as well as how they're looking to tackle the issues with vaccines themselves - https://search.nih.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=nih&q...
> Now you seem to be expecting these folks to be vaccinated with a drug that has specifically excluded them from the trials. Drug recommendations ought to be coupled with safety testing on the impacted group.
I haven't suggested anything of the sort and I'm pretty sure this doesn't work how you think it does
> If you can find me Pfizer/Moderna trial studies which show specific impact on recovered individuals I will never post again.
You know for a fact this doesn't exist because people aren't trying to measure the healthy
What we do have are studies that show the delta goes down as vaccines are introduced, along with the infection rate
I really wish you would stop commenting because this a great demonstrating of not understanding the data at all.
EDIT: someone turned off replies lol
I have addressed them, there's just clearly an understanding gap here
Antibodies are also created by vaccines, if that's your measure here you shouldn't be arguing against them, that's why it's meaningless
Any interaction with disease creates them, so having them present doesn't guarantee that there's enough being produced (or even effectively) to counteract the effects
Not sure how to address this, of course it means a great deal. As a proxy for exposure and coupled with studies that show impact of known exposure towards immunity, its great evidence. Whether someone was harmed by their infection is a moot point for those who've gone through it.
In a place like Australia with only a small fraction of the population having exposure its no wonder the statistics of their hospitalizations look as they do. In my own state hospitalizations have started decouple from vaccine status due to the high degree of natural immunity and that was before Omicron.
If the delta of whatever you are measuring is 90%+ dependent on a single age group then perhaps the guidance should reflect that. Frankly you aren't attempting to honestly address my points.
Not as an argument against the vaccine, but maybe to help enlighten why many have chosen not to get vaccinated; keep in mind that the FDA approval letter for the Pfizer vaccine indicates that long term testing is not projected to be complete until June 2025. https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
Either way, you're risking long-term side effects, I'd rather go with the tried and tested technology we have here
Interesting, maybe, but definitely correct. The unvaccinated are routinely dehumanised and you even do so in your own comment.
They can quite easily change this one by getting vaccinated, people can't with their skin colour
They're people, just very stupid people who have made their own bed and now need to lie in it
I'm not advocating executing them but I just don't give a fuck about them any more and there is a BIG difference
I forgot to finish that point - TL;DR false equivalency, reap the consequences etc.
Yes, if your religion caused you to harm people by just being near them because it is optional
Again, it's more false equivalency
Some religions require you to not even look at a woman that isn't covered, they need to go and live in an area where that's supported rather than expecting wider society to support that stupid standard
I don't hate them, I find them stupid and irresponsible
It's interesting that you're pulling the moral outrage card after you've asked about this and found my beliefs consistent
If there's a choice presented to you of "do X thing and don't harm others, or don't and risk harming others" and you pick the 2nd, you're the one in the wrong, plain and simple
I’m sympathetic to the idea of not hating others, but it seems like you are beating around the bush here a bit.
Freedom fighters I think
What I'm saying is quite simple: Unvaccinated people are being dehumanised all the time. I'm not beating around the bush, I clearly stated this in my first message.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Thank you very much! Upvoted. That's exactly what we've been asking for. Some of us may have a chance to see the light of another day now. See [0] for obligatory C.S.Lewis quote. I'm really, really happy that you're not willing to push through to an actual extermination stage! I may get my brain un-freeze, my thinking ability back, my psychotic attacks subside, and who knows, I may find the reason to get a jab.
[0] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/349305?ref=robber-baron
I try to keep my tribal sensibilities in check by reframing everyone I am considering as a part of my own tribe. Obviously, there are exceptions for violent criminality which I apply a strategic empathy for (understand as fully as possible while still condemning the actions). The boundary of who gets what treatment is fuzzy if I really thought about it, but pragmatically this model serves me well. But that's my own personal stance fueled from experiences and research.
My friends draw their tribal circles more narrowly, which is their prerogative. I like to listen to how they engage with the world because it helps me understand how they think and what their influences are. They are more willing to allow state hostility/violence against people who are the other (the 'worthy victim' under the propaganda model). I sometimes point out that what powers you give the state will be wielded by the other party as well.
The fact that my friends are saying who cares, let's just go back to normal is an interesting signal IMO. While the narrative is still 'make things uncomfortable (by disregarding constitutional rights and social norms)' they are seemingly okay with 'it's your life and your choice.'
My friend group is not a representation of society as a whole. They do make up a large part of my social reality. This is an important data point for me but it's much less so for everyone else. Still, I felt compelled to share!
The tribes are essentially people refusing free vaccines for no reason vs people who are vaccinated to protect themselves/others
This is one of the easiest cut and dry examples I could think of to justify in-group/out-group behaviour, you shouldn't be forced to tolerate or associate with people making deliberately bad decisions
You could extend this argument to drunk drivers and I think it would hold just as little weight
If that's a trolley problem where I'm forced to choose, I know what I'd choose.
That said, I don't care about going back to normal, but I would prefer if hospitals weren't clogged up because people can't be arsed to listen to science.
The trolley problem is unchanged.
Let's take the Australia example in the thread. 92% of population vaccinated, 50% hospitalizations are unvaccinated. Unless there's a claim that obese people are less likely to be vaccinated, you would free up every other hospital bed by everyone getting vaccinated (minus the portion still going in, which here would be a ratio of 0.5 x total_beds out of 0.92 x population of those 8%).
Yes, if less people were obese there would also be less hospitalizations, but that's an entirely separate problem. Maybe if no one was obese you would halve (as an example) the number of hospitalizations again, but that's much harder than getting a needle.
This is exactly what remaining unvaccinated is though
You're deliberately extending the pandemic and killing people so you can turn your nose up at authority, with no benefit to yourself, while actively denying the scientific consensus on this
Don't be surprised when the majority of people have a bad reaction to that, when their grandparents are dying as a result of your actions, of course politicians are going to try and speak to that sentiment, people are really angry over this one
I've been vaccinated 3 times now, it's nothing to worry about it and I barely noticed it throughout each one
What makes you think vaccinating everybody will hasten the end of the pandemic?
It makes it harder for the disease to transmit from person to person
Less disease means less of the pandemic
Less immunization to the spike protein means less mutation of the spike protein
Less mutation of the spike protein means less hospitalization of those immunized directly to it
Virus mutation doesn’t work that way.
No to both, it's your choice not to get it and if it's that serious go to a hospital for an exemption
You already have a process in place for this stuff, if you aren't exempt there's no excuse
Those side effects really suck though, hope you're OK now
A doctor, most countries already have an exemption system in place, use it mate
> That's why forced vaccination is wrong.
No, it isn't unless the country doesn't provide you sick pay
I'm glad your personal experience is different (and much better) than mine. All I can say is that where I live and work, getting an exemption from a doctor is not so straightforward (even if it technically exists) and questioning anything about a vaccine/booster (including relating actual personal experience) is either not well received or just ignored. On social media, it's even attacked. Personally, it's very frustrating.
Perhaps you should try, they definitely do exist and you would know this if you actually tried instead of telling me it's hard before you've looked
> and questioning anything about a vaccine/booster (including relating actual personal experience) is either not well received or just ignored. On social media, it's even attacked
Then don't tell anyone you're exempt or get the vaccine, honestly I think you know what you're saying is just an excuse
You're making a mountain out of a molehill here
I did. I speak from experience, not conjecture.
Sure, but the forces pushing this anti-science sentiment are doing it based on shameless expediency on behalf of themselves as owners or their shareholders.
What’s completely bewildering to me is the strange idea that ignoring the provably present virus, would in any way whatsoever improve society, least of all from a business perspective!?!
Like, obviously from an extremely naive and ignorant perspective, you would defend your revenue stream in the absolutely immediate short term, far above actual human lives, the real question is why the hell are people actually defending and even espousing this kind of textbook fascism???
It’s absolutely ludicrous…