[dwild]

> There are people still on HackerNews right now, who were back then talking about overreactions, and it just being a flu,

What? It just being a flu is an argument that I only seen from anti-vax... never been a thing here but would be happy to be proven wrong.

> and that masks promote xenophobia and do nothing.

Never seen this also, could you show me? The best I have seen in the past was that a mask in the wrong hands do no good, which is true when you need 100x more mask than you got, which was the case at the time.

> you want to mandate a treatment for non-at-risk people, which can give them permanent damage or even cause death.

I'm curious how you define non-at-risk people too? Covid was not a risk for them but vaccine was? That's weird how the virus works ;). Whatever you fear from the vaccine, you can fear the same from the virus... except that from the virus, the numbers are incredibly much worse. Why would we use the vaccine if that wasn't the case? We would be stuck with the exact same issues.

[33ultra]

For sourcing, I'll see if I can muster some time later. But you'd do the same as me: Look at HackerNews discussions starting around February 2020.

Non-at-risk people are young people without co-morbidities or overweight. These have a similar risk profile as for influenza. At-risk people are older people, and since the decisions are made by older people, these decisions mostly favor their own pockets and peace of mind.

There are groups of non-at-risk people, with naturally acquired immunity (because these worked in supermarkets, when older powerful people had the luxury of work-from-home), for which taking the vaccine has more to fear than contracting COVID. For them, taking the vaccine still helps with pressure on hospitals, the at-risk elderly decision-makers, and aiding economic recovery. Helpful. Selfless. We are in this together. But scared into, or mandated into, or forced into taking the vaccine "for their own good".