[dragontamer]

It was extremely difficult getting my knowledgeable and smart sister to vaccinate for COVID19, an eminent disease that we both agreed was killing hundreds-of-thousands of Americans. Fortunately, I pushed her hard enough with a little bit of help from the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie (we will go to theaters if you vaccinate).

Honestly: I don't know how I would have done it without that movie, lol.

Now my sister's sister-in-law also is an anti-vaxxer. Lets call her "C".

------------

Frankly, my political capital is still 100% on COVID19. I don't have enough political capital left to spend on climate change.

If I can't convince these people of the eminent dangers of COVID19, and the incredible relative safety of the vaccines... then climate change is hopeless.

C isn't dumb. But she's part of a family of conservatives. "Conservatism" is part of their identity, and right now, that means that they want to believe that the virus will go away on its own, that masks are stupid, the vaccine is made by Bill Gates (wtf??) etc. etc. etc. And climate change is fake is part of that identity they hold.

Pushing this part of their identity away from them is extremely difficult. Just pushing one concept onto them (ex: get the freaking vaccine) is hard enough.

[briefcomment]

You talk as if you're 100% certain about these things, which is obviously not possible.

[dragontamer]

I'm 100% certain in the vaccine's effectiveness on the average American.

Sure: Immunocompromised individuals may not be saved even with the vaccine (not enough B-cells or T-cells to fight off the disease even with the vaccine training them up). But its pretty much 100% proven at this point that the vaccines are 99.999%+ safe (all deaths due to vaccine are measured in the 10-in-a-million or smaller magnitude), while being 95% effective at preventing symptoms against the disease in question. Because the vaccine has been deployed to over 100-million Americans, I have evidence on how it works!!

There's no doubt anymore in my mind. There wasn't any doubt in my mind in December 2020, and we've only got 7 more months of evidence: the virus is surging in unvaccinated areas (ex: India), while receding in vaccinated areas. Something like 100% of LA's COVID19 deaths were from unvaccinated indivuals, despite only having ~50% vaccination rates (so 50% / 50% split of vaccinated vs unvaccinated in that population, but 100% deaths coming from only the unvaccinated pool?)

What more evidence do you want?

[briefcomment]

And are you 100% certain your sister and sister-in-law are average Americans?

[dragontamer]

I believe them to be well above-average Americans on the scale of intelligence.

If its this difficult to convince them of the facts, when they're open to understanding scientific data, then I don't expect much from the average American.

[tdfx]

I did not downvote you, but I want to explain why some people might be. I don't doubt that the majority of people here, even people downvoting you, don't disagree that the vaccine seems to be mostly safe and effective, based on the limited data we have so far. But you're not saying that: you're saying you're 100% sure and willing to bet your life and the lives of others on that certainty, which is not rooted in statistics but rather emotion. You're following the same style of thinking as the conservatives you criticized, just at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

[dragontamer]

Name the causes of death due to the vaccine.

* J&J has that blood clot issue, measured to be less than 15 in 8-million. Though serious, we now know how to deal with these blood clots thanks to the temporary pause. So with treatment, that vaccine won't kill many people anymore (if you count 15-in-8-million as "many").

* There's the heart-palpatation issue, which is measured to be less than 10-in-a-million and hasn't caused many deaths IIRC.

That's it. After 100-million Americans have received the vaccine for several months, that's all we've seen. And that's taking the worst of the two vaccines that have come out.

---------

mRNA self-disintegrates at room temperature. That's why they have to keep the darn thing at -80C or -30C. After a few days in the body (or ~37C), its __ literally __ gone and can no longer affect the body.

I'm willing to give a few weeks or even months to see if there's lingering effects of the mRNA spike proteins generated from the vaccine. But at this point, I'm willing to call it. The mechanics of how the darn thing works means that long-term effects are negligible.

That's why our bodies use DNA to begin with! Because mRNA (although effective as an "execution engine" so to speak) is extremely volatile and barely lasts. Our bodies transcribe DNA into mRNA instructions constantly, renewing the "code" that our body executes.

--------

Its put-up or shut-up time. The vaccine is in over 100-million Americans. If you think its unsafe, prove it. Find the deaths and report back.

EDIT: That's the thing. COVID19 is "put up or shut up" time. We have the evidence staring at us in the face. Climate Change, as annoying as it is, isn't anywhere near as "provable" as COVID19. We actually have placebo studies on different population sets and a proper experiment set up to create evidence for our COVID19 policies.

Climate change? We don't have a 2nd Earth to run as our "control study" in our experiment. We literally cannot experiment upon Climate change to get the same level of evidence that's available in the COVID19 debate.

And still: look at all these downvoters. Look at this debate. Its ridiculous. If we can't even get COVID19 figured out in our arguments, why the hell should we assume people will agree with us on climate change?

[Pokepokalypse]

The vaccine is 0% effective against denialists.

[Supermancho]

> I'm 100% certain in the vaccine's effectiveness on the average American.

The effectiveness is in giving them COVID and helping them fight against the intentional infection, via mRNA antibody response. COVID will eventually become yet-another-endemic-disease, that everyone is vaccinated against. There are some people who are marginally genetically susceptible, who will survive with the vaccine. There are some people who are genetically susceptible and with or without the vaccine, will die once infected.

The question is, why get vaccinated and take the chance if, due to vaccinations your chances are low to get infected (albeit almost guaranteed over 10 years imo)? That's ok with me. The fact that the unvaccinated individuals are the majority of people dying is unsurprising (as expected, there are some vaccinated deaths as well).

This is the uncomfortable truth, which doesn't change what can be done or will happen. The big difference vaccines have made, is an overall reduction in total deaths (as intended) and speeding up the process of total viral exposure (as intended).

[tdfx]

> they want to believe that the virus will go away on its own

Pandemics have never "ended". Their effects just slide to a level that people stop talking about it.

[dragontamer]

Smallpox.

With a high enough vaccination rate, even a disease with R0 of 20 can go away (COVID19 has an R0 of 3 to 6, maybe 9 if we include Delta variant).

We've literally eradicated a more difficult and deadly disease before. I'm not saying we need to eradicate COVID19, but its absolutely within our power.

[nradov]

Unlike smallpox, SARS-CoV-2 has animal reservoirs. So eradication is not a feasible goal. But widespread vaccination can minimize the long term death toll.

[dragontamer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox

The relationship between Smallpox and Cowpox was well known even in the 1700s. (Though the concept of infectious diseases was not understood until the late 1800s, the people who hung around cows a lot didn't die of Smallpox as much).

Turns out that Cowpox was the same viral-family as Smallpox, and that Cowpox could be used to lessen the effect of Smallpox.

So there were absolutely animal reservoirs of the Smallpox viral family. The disease was shown to hop from different species (from humans to cows and vice versa).

[saalweachter]

The word "pandemic" ~didn't exist prior to vaccines; arguably, it's too early to say whether every pandemic or no pandemic has ended.

We didn't used to have pandemics. We had plagues and poxes. We only had pandemics once we started having the option to not have everyone die of communicable diseases regularly.

[doktorhladnjak]

All pandemics end. That doesn’t mean the disease is eliminated. It means it no longer is spreading uncontrolled around the world.

[lamontcg]

The 1918 pandemic didn't end until 1957. The virus came back as seasonal influenza until it was eventually displaced by H2N2 (as H1N1 displaced whatever influenza was around pre-1918). That H1 envelope protein came back in the 2009 pandemic and has been with us ever since.

[anonAndOn]

COVID is an evolutionary filter for the anti-vax movement. If freedom loving Americans want to roll the dice on survival, let 'em.

[dragontamer]

I happen to care about my sister-in-law's life. So that's not an option.

[lamontcg]

Even if it worked that way, its a poor filter since the IFR is only 1% and it mostly kills people that are very old anyway. Plus ideologies aren't genetic. And even with genetics the whole "evolutionary filter" concept fails due to reversion to the mean. Plus it is a fundamentally right wing political concept. "Evolutionary filters" are about as scientific as the antivax movement.

[anonAndOn]

It doesn't need to be perfect nor does it need to kill to be effective. You can negatively impact the fertility rate just by diminishing the quality of life.

[lamontcg]

Again, that is about as scientific as the antivaxxers.

[anonAndOn]

On the contrary, we have a great public health experiment underway that will be dissected for years to come. Hospitalization rates, medical bankruptcies, prevalence of long COVID, birth rates, excess deaths, etc. For science!

[nradov]

Even in a worst case scenario with no vaccination, COVID-19 would kill less than 1% of the world population. So it's a serious public health problem but not an existential risk to human civilization. I certainly encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can so as to get us to herd immunity faster, but as a practical matter the disease isn't much of an eminent danger to most people who are otherwise in good health.

The potential long term effects of anthropogenic global climate change are more severe. We may see large regions of the world become essentially uninhabitable. That's a far more serious concern than any infectious disease.