[vokep]

This perspective would seem more reasonable if it weren't based on headlines alone. The sort of headlines it's based on, when you dig into how they conclude to those headlines, often are fairly detached. There are cases of wild stories, but nothing consistent. We don't go in a panic over this sort of possibility with flu strains, when the same possibility does exist. Don't compare COVID to HIV, there isn't a good reason to. COVID is mildly more deadly then the flu, if you wouldn't be scared of dying from the flu, its unreasonable to be afraid of COVID.

[runako]

> if you wouldn't be scared of dying from the flu, its unreasonable to be afraid of COVID.

I'm actually more worried that (as in the fall), my city will have to convert our convention center to a field hospital because the local ICUs are full. And then I'm worried that I (or someone I care about) will experience one of the normal things that send people to hospitals, only there won't be capacity to see them in a timely fashion.

And honestly I'm damn sick of the necessary curbs that keep this thing from killing even more people. (It's possible to prefer society arrange itself in such a fashion that we try not to make it actively hostile to the vulnerable.)

This isn't hyperbole, it was 5 months ago. My governor is GOP and doesn't consider Covid to be real. Yet he still authorized giant field hospitals. He still won't open the governor's mansion for tours, in spite of saying all restrictions are lifted (he's not an idiot, he just plays one on TV. Nobody is really stupid enough to want unvaccinated people coming through their house all day.) He has never done any of this for the flu.

Consider yourself fortunate that this did not happen in your area. But don't pretend it didn't happen or is just the media.

And then the main thrust of what I said is this. Nobody knows what a Covid infection today will mean in 20 years. It obviously has neurological impact in some patients. Does that carry long-term import? Nobody knows. Easier to not get it, since vaccines are available and free.

[vokep]

You're sure those are ICUs full of people in critical condition due to COVID? How many went to the hospital the instant they got COVID despite lack of critical symptoms?

I don't think you're trying to be hyperbolic, I think you've been fed accurate information clothed in fear so as to lead to a bad-faith worst case interpretation of that data.

The most intelligent people I know who have the most experience in the medical field, have always suggested, and still do with the COVID vaccine, to wait a minimum of 5 years before expecting safety in something like that.

To be clear, to the response "be glad it isn't in your area", it is, I've had people directly claim to me a local hospital is overrun with patients. A friend had to goto the same hospital for unrelated reasons. Parking lot was nearly empty, calm and boring inside. Someone is lying, my friend doesn't have a trackrecord of lying, quite the opposite. The news media on the other hand, I can't say the same.

[detaro]

Hospitals here have difficulties finding space for traffic accident victims, they don't just let anyone with COVID book a space in the ICU, and never have. Seriously, be glad it isn't so bad in your area and stop trivializing it.

[runako]

> You're sure those are ICUs full of people in critical condition due to COVID?

You got me, I didn't triage each patient at all the hospitals in a major metro area. You're probably right that everyone came in at the same time for muscle cramps and sprains. The hospitals pretended to give them Covid tests but really just said they all tested positive because that's how unethical medical practitioners are these days. Further, the hospital administrators lied about census numbers in a coordinated fashion so that the census numbers would match predictions from infection data weeks prior. Then, the Covid-denying governor decided to open massive field hospitals because he thought that projecting the image of being overrun with a plague was a good strategy to help Senators from his party win reelection.

You're probably right, Occam was completely wrong.

[detaro]

> To be clear, to the response "be glad it isn't in your area", it is, I've had people directly claim to me a local hospital is overrun with patients.

This is based on first hand reports by people working in those hospitals.

[adamrezich]

your posts here hit the nail on the head with regards to something I've been trying to articulate about this situation, plus many others in the past few years:

why does everyone assume—when obviously, demonstrably massive profit incentives are on the line—that everyone in key positions of power will act 100% honestly and altruistically?

I'm not even advocating that everyone be a complete vaccine-denier or whatever, I'm just kind of shocked at the immune system response-like reaction to even skepticism of the situation, given that the aforementioned factors are at play. it's never, "well, I understand and empathize with your skepticism, but I still believe what I believe to be the truth." instead, you get attacked for even sharing mild skepticism!

how did things come to be this way?

[runako]

Skepticism is often warranted, but frequently the vaccine skeptics pair skepticism with denial of accepted facts.

So for example in this case, the skeptic asserts that the virus is not much worse than the flu. This, despite evidence that basically everyone on earth has seen that this is not the case. (Many people personally know someone who has died of Covid in the last year, despite not ever having known anyone who has died of the flu over the prior decades of their lives.)

Even prominent Covid denialist Trump a) took an experimental antibody treatment and then b) got an early dose of the vaccine after c) spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on Covid relief efforts. If someone like Trump who actually thinks it's the flu also behaves as if it's a serious disease, it makes skeptics like OP here seem much less credible.

What's interesting about the vaccine skepticism on HN is that in any biotech thread, the discussion is around how the FDA is too strict (skeptical) about approving new therapies. But now people suddenly think the FDA is too loose in approving new therapies? The irony is that the FDA is already the skeptic here (see the J&J pause, for example). Occam, again.

[adamrezich]

I'm not commenting on your third paragraph because calling Trump a "covid denialist" is too ridiculous and unrelated to what is being discussed to even begin to explore.

in your second paragraph, you use anecdotes as a means of persuasion, despite referring to "accepted facts" two sentences prior.

none of this addresses my point which is that well-reasoned skepticism is usually met with seemingly dogmatic opposition. for example, elsewhere in the threads here, it was posited that perhaps not every death that was reported as being due to covid was accurately reported as such, given that a.) it's possible to die with covid in your system without it being the thing that killed you (especially assuming the popular "asymptomatic carrier" assertion is true) and b.) that there are demonstrable profit motives for hospitals (many of which, including my local one, have been condensed into mega-corporations in the past couple of decades). this is a reasoned, reasonable cause for skepticism. yet again, to express things like this is to be deemed a "conspiracy theorist," and to have one's reputation diminished and one's statements nullified as a result.

e: re: 4th paragraph, how is one supposed to experience cognitive dissonance from holding both of the following ideas in their mind at the same time?

- the FDA is too strict when it comes to approving experimental, elective procedures and medications

- the FDA isn't strict enough when it comes to allowing several competing drugs to be emergency-use-authorized without sufficient testing, especially when for many people the choice is between taking an experimental drug and losing employment (or worse...?)

[allturtles]

When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory.

If you don't believe the reported COVID death numbers, you can look at excess deaths over prior years, which largely track with or exceeds the reported numbers for COVID deaths.

Ultimately, for most people it's pretty obvious at this point that COVID is a catastrophe of the likes we haven't seen in many decades. Trying to persuade people at this point is tiresome, it would be like living in 1943 and trying to persuade skeptics that, yes World War II is a big deal.

[adamrezich]

> When you seem to be arguing that hospitals around the world all independently cooked the books to inflate COVID deaths because of nefarious profit motives, yes, that sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theory.

except for the lack of conspiracy? when did the definition of "conspiracy" change to encompass the actions of individuals not explicitly working in concert with each other?

why is it so difficult to entertain a possible world wherein sars-cov-2 was hyped to be this massively devastating pandemic, and it was indeed pretty bad in terms of confirmed cases... but then when the number of deaths, while definitely nonzero, wasn't reaching the numbers it was "supposed to" on a per-hospital basis, many individual hospitals fudged some numbers here and there in order to get covid money since there was so much of it flying around into everyone else's pockets? this seems like a completely pragmatic, if unethical, course of action to take. there's a lot of hospitals in the US. do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible?

again, I'm not asking you to accept this possible world as unconditionally Proven Fact or anything like that—I'm merely asking you to entertain the possibility, without breaking the glass and pulling the "Conspiracy Theory" lever. why is this sort of thinking seemingly beyond many peoples' abilities?

where does one acquire this massively optimistic outlook on human nature, especially with regard to those in positions of power, and in the presence of gargantuan amounts of money?

[allturtles]

> do you find it likely that nothing along these lines happened at all, and that, again, with billions of dollars getting moved around here and there, and basically zero chance of getting caught, everyone in positions of decision-making unilaterally chose to act 100% as honestly and altruistically as possible

You seem to be excluding a large middle. You seem to be saying that either COVID is a fraud perpetrated on us by hospitals, or else I must be arguing there is no such thing as corruption.

Your theory is not impossible but it would require a large amount of evidence to believe or even seriously consider. It's similar to the argument that Trump was actually elected president, but large amounts of independent local fraud threw enough votes to Biden to flip the result.

There's also the problem of independent lines of evidence that also point to major Covid death (e.g. excess deaths), and the fact that the Covid pandemic is a global problem - does every country have Covid money incentives that explain inflated deaths?

[vokep]

>why does everyone assume—when obviously, demonstrably massive profit incentives are on the line—that everyone in key positions of power will act 100% honestly and altruistically?

If I hit the nail on the head, you hammered it all the way in putting it that way. Thank you. It's really bewildering, I never expected to see something like this happen, I mean, to see a massive government/corporate push of something, sure, but to see so many just go along with it with seemingly little to no questioning of legitimacy...and when the ability to do further research with hard factual numbers you can think up your own conclusions from...its just bewildering.

[allturtles]

a) But then why be afraid of the vaccine? We have sufficient data to tell its it's much less deadly than the flu.

b) I do get the flu vaccine every year, even though it's not very efficacious. Having the flu is awful, even if it's unlikely to kill me.

c) Your notion that COVID is mildly more deadly than the flu seems wildly off base. Despite all our efforts to contain the spread (which were sufficient to drive flu cases to effectively zero this season) it has killed > 500K in the U.S., 10-20x a typical flu season.

[vokep]

a) We do not have sufficient data, and threat of sterility is a serious concern which is yet to be ruled out

b) Thats your choice. I've never opted for the flu vaccine because the lack of accountability of its efficacy and profit incentives don't make sense as far as motivating any belief that that sort of thing is designed to be good for me

c) Examine the numbers of actual confirmed deaths from COVID vs comorbidities. Yes, it still is more deadly, and I clearly say that, but its not enough more to justify how its being treated.