If the choice is between 3.5 million dead, and the rise of authoritarianism and censorship, then yes the former is much less tragic than the latter and therefore the more acceptable option. And that's before taking into account that the survival rate is quite a bit higher than 99%, so it won't be 3.5 million dead. And also before taking into account that the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people who took extraordinarily poor care of their health.
Of course the choice isn't that simple or binary in the real world, but there's elements of that choice at play and I stand by the point I'm making.
What about people who can't get medical care like cancer treatments, because hospitals are firing people with natural immunity who don't need (and thus refuse) the vaccine?
Vaccine mandates aren't new. You weren't protesting them 3 years ago, but now you are willing to take the side of 3.5 million members of the community slowly dying so you don't have to get a shot. Your persecution complex is out of control.
The absurdity of peoples' accusations of world-ending authoritarianism and censorship is baffling.
No. But mandating a brand new vaccine is new. We don’t know what the long term effects are. Nothing about COVID or the way in which tyrants around the world are using it to seize new powers is normal.
People at the FDA are resigning left and right [1]. Nobody wants their name on this thing.
How many years, and how many people have to die while going from 99% to 99.9% sure of a vaccine's safety, before you would say it's safe? In your professional opinion as an epidemiologist?
You're willing to sacrifice people that you consider "expendable", because you think vaccination and masks are more dangerous than a highly infectious disease with long-lasting detrimental health consequences even for survivors.
Such a severe lack of empathy is disturbing.
> the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people who took extraordinarily poor care of their health.
This is incorrect, the Delta variant is hitting young people hard, including children.
Scandinavians countries just suspended Moderna for kids.
But keep ranting how the science is _settled_ and everyone just needs to fall in line. Give me a break.
As for your lame "lack of empathy" argument - the only way for an unvaccinated person to be a risk to anyone else with COVID is if they are symptomaic - i.e. if they have a fever. However, as a vaccinated person not only can you have COVID, you can be shedding (spreading) it without any way of anyone around you knowing unless you have been
recently tested.
That's what's beyond crazy - the vaccinated represent a bigger threat for covert spreading than the unvaccinated! An utter 180 from the popular narrative.
So yeah, keep on your high horse about empathy, denial, etc. At this point there is very little science in these discussions - you are espousing dogma and propaganda.
Age, obesity and health conditions play a massive role in the hospitalizations and deaths. When the vaccine isn’t preventing catching and spreading the virus, it makes absolutely zero sense to have mandates. And based on Israel and Australia, the mandate doesn’t stop at 2 shots.
Additionally, the Delta variant (currently the most prevalent by far) hits young people and children hard.
Even if you consider the elderly, the obese and the chronically sick to be "expendable" (which is an absolutely abhorrent worldview), your claims simply are not correct.
Edit: your CDC link is outdated. It uses data from December 13, 2020 to April 10, 2021. That’s ancient and even before delta was around. The second link also doesn’t use delta data.
Look at more newer data or just look at Singapore, Israel, Iceland. That proves my point.
Your last statement shows you aren’t interested in this honestly because you are more interested in virtue signalling and claiming moral superiority. How you came to the conclusion from my statement about me be young fit and healthy (and thus very low risk) to somehow mean I consider elderly, obese and sick to be expendable is beyond me.
I looked at the data for my age group and found that there’s 5-7x more deaths and a lot more serious injuries from car accidents than Covid.
Also you are wrong. Even in asymptomatic or mild cases, the viral loads is the same and you can spread the virus. The virus grows in your nose and pathways and can spread even if you are vaccinated and within the 3 month period after which the effectiveness drastically declines.
How people expect every young person to keep getting injected every 6 months is beyond me.
In Ontario, 36.6% of the cases on October 8 were fully vaccinated and 34.5% of deaths in Canada in the week of September 4-11 were fully vaxxed. We had under 10% fully vaxxed till June 10, so vast majority of our vaccinations occurred in last 3 months. The vaccine effectiveness decline is clearly visible as the weeks go by.
In Iceland, their recent outbreak started from fully vaxxed individuals even when they had around 60% of population vaxxed.
These vaccines are only a potential symptom mitigator. That doesn’t mean it should get mandated.
What’s wrong with people getting vaccinations every 6 months until Covid isn’t an issue? It only takes a few minutes, it’s hardly a big deal. I’m not sure what your Ontario stats have to do with anything.
Have you been looking at the VAERS database and the spike since the emergency authorized vaccines were issued? You want to keep those spikes going every six months?
And what makes you think it will only be every six months. COVID viruses are the family that contains the common cold. Why have we never tried to vaccinate for the common cold? It mutates too fast and too often!
You aren't going to shelter in place or vaccine away this virus. It's here, it's a permanent part of our existence and we better figure out more sane ways to deal with it that don't also destroy the economies of the world.
Sweden never locked down - their curves match pretty much everyone else. New Zealand finally gave up on their extreme quarantine policy and admitted that the virus is there too. So much for being the darling for how to handle the virus and the rest of the world being idiots.
Luckily 1% IFR is an over-estimate by around 10x, may 5x if you use pessimistic assumptions, especially now with the vaccines. UK govt admitted in Parliament a few weeks ago that IFR is now <0.1%
Moreover that number assumes everyone will get infected, but there's nothing deep driving that belief. Scientists don't understand to what extent the immune system can recognize and fight viruses based on prior exposure to other similar viruses, so they just ignore the possibility and assume no such ability exists at all. Yet it's been nearly two years now and I never got infected even after I spent 10 days self-isolating with someone who had it and had symptoms. Most of the population hasn't tested positive despite saturation levels of testing. The assumption of 100% infection doesn't seem to be a very good one.
Dunno why you are getting downvoted - I've been on dozens of flights from coast to coast in the US during COVID and never contracted it. I'm a routine blood donor and have come up negative for COVID every time. I'm not claiming some sort of special invulnerability, just pointing out that I'm either VERY lucky or this thing isn't nearly as transmissible as our darling media is flogging it to be.
Of course the choice isn't that simple or binary in the real world, but there's elements of that choice at play and I stand by the point I'm making.