[sdrwefgfvb]

This is yet another instance of a phenomenon: When you have good outcomes and bad outcomes, and you take some preventative measures to reduce the likelihood of bad outcomes, as time goes by people start believing that the bad outcomes don't really exist and get rid of the preventative measures. Example, energy independence from Russia and shutting down nuclear reactors. Another example, people think there's no point in taking vaccines.

[TheBlight]

Not all vaccines are equal. Just like all things labeled medicine are not equal and not equally beneficial/recommended for everyone.

[lazide]

Most of the resistance I’ve seen against vaccines have been against ones that are highly beneficial relative to their risks. Have you seen pushback against ones that weren’t?

I’ve literally seen folks push back against Tetanus, Polio, MMR, etc.

[mbg721]

Tetanus and polio do horrifying things to the body; measles and mumps are sort of mid-level, right? And something like chicken pox has a vaccine now, but is relatively harmless if you catch it as a child.

[abakker]

Chicken pox may be harmless as a child. That virus also causes shingles and that is NOT harmless as an adult.

edit to add: things like HPV seem harmless, but HPV infection is linked to the vast majority of cervical cancer. Things like epstein-barr are implicated in certain cancers as well.

There are no "good viruses" and just because they have mild initial symptoms does not make them harmless.

[lazide]

Measles is fatal in about .1% of infections (less than Covid), with hospitalization rates of about 25% and causes hearing loss and long term immune system damage in a decent number of infections.

Mumps can occasionally cause fertility issues in males, among other issues, and is quite painful but rarely fatal (approx. .03-.05%).

Shingles is terrible for adults, and you can’t avoid the risk of you got the live virus. If you’re vaccinated before being exposed, I believe the risk is much much lower but I don’t have the numbers handy.

[xorcist]

One should never trivialize disease, but the numbers cited here is almost a magnitude too large, both for measles and covid.

The most trustworthy data sources I could find points at about .02% for measles and .03% for covid. Then of course, infection fatality rate is notoriously hard to quantify.

Every single case hides a personal tragedy.

[lazide]

Nope? If anything too small.

Different numbers of course, but not that far off -

Measles case fatality rate of 1.2% in unvaccinated population (and they tested everyone nearby, so CFR should be very near IFR here) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8483622/]. The .02% is way too low except in perhaps already vaccinated population.

US deaths by COVID-19 are now just over 1 million. I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal stories of over and under counting, but given current US population of 329 million, and widespread vaccination, the early stage 1%ish fatality rate is about right. It couldn’t be .03% except perhaps in already vaccinated folks, otherwise we’d literally not have had a pandemic. Total fatalities with a 100% infection rate and no vaccination would be less than 100k. More than that die from normal flus and colds every year, and the excess fatality numbers make it clear that isn’t what happened.

[kybernetikos]

> chicken pox has a vaccine now, but is relatively harmless if you catch it as a child.

I think if adults were catching a disease that took them out of action for a week in a fairly miserable way and gave them blisters that frequently ended up leaving permanent scars, we'd be taking it way more seriously. Kids don't make the decisions, and everyone remembers that they suffered through it, so kids these days should too...

[lazide]

Very true. Also, if the kids go to school or daycare (aka 95%+), they’ll get exposed to a cornocopia of disease, both known and yet to be discovered. I don’t know if you have kids, but both of mine were sick with a constant stream of different bugs from 2-3 yrs old.

I didn’t even know what foot and mouth disease even was until I saw the big ‘known exposure’ warning, and based on my youngest (for reasons out of my control) getting COVID 4 different independent times since May 2021, only one of which was a known exposure, I know there have been a lot more.

Vaccinating against the known badness just helps reduce the pain and risks of serious problems. It should be a nobrainer.

Near as I can tell however, a lot of moms and some dads can’t stand the idea of giving their kid a jab (as in, the experience of it), and use the excuse of vaccines bad to justify not doing it. Short sighted and surprising common now.

[adgjlsfhk1]

Chicken pox vaccine prevents 8000 hospitalizations per year (in the US) https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccine-infographic.html. Measles vaccine prevents around 50000 hospitalizations per year.

[tomrod]

I took grandparent comment's reference to be the resistance to COVID-19 vaccines, which could have prevented endemic establishment in the US of COVID-19 had the GOP base adopted them quicker (along with non-pharmaceutical interventions). The mRNA vaccines are an absolute gamechanger in this space. I am glad we have the technology available.

EDIT: Whoa, people surprisingly hate this comment. It's true though -- rural red counties have been hit much harder, due to demographic factors, lower vaccine uptake as well as boosting, lower access, and lower testing generally (leading to higher serology rate differentials to reported counts). The entire state of GA, for example, looks like each county has low case counts compared to the rest of the US until you realize testing there only captures 1 in 4 cases. This selective intransigence to public health measures was a problem when there was one case, and has persisted to be a problem until today.

[vanattab]

This is false. There was no chance of ever stopping covid-19 from reaching endemic status with vaccines. Covid simply is too tranmisable and rapidly changing and spread quickly too wild animal populations such as deer. It was right to be cautious and attempt continment/eradication initially when there was still so much unknown but it's clear now we never stood a chance.

[tomrod]

> There was no chance of ever stopping covid-19 from reaching endemic status with vaccines

>> COVID-19 vaccines, which could have prevented endemic establishment in the US of COVID-19 had the GOP base adopted them quicker _(along with non-pharmaceutical interventions)_.

[xorcist]

What are those interventions? Killing off all deer?

[tomrod]

Feel free to research what each state/county chose to implement, most of which were never actually solidly set up (meaning the policies had large loopholes that made the NPi fairly ineffective). Note that the US Federal Govt could not implement a global set of policies, instead relying on antiquated design where individual states and counties implemented what they felt like without regard to geographical integration.

[tuatoru]

It's more likely to be vaccines for measles and DPT (diptheria, pertussis [whooping cough], and tetanus).

No one gets those diseases [because of vaccines, unstated and ignored] and so there's no point inflicting the unspeakable horror of an innoculation on your precious precious baby... is the reasoning.

My first wife was in this camp.

[treeman79]

A GOP president pushed hard to get vaccine released in under a year. Also strongly recommend people take it.

The issue came in forcing vs persuading.

Also people who got Covid before vaccine were totally ignored and let in an awkward position of being demonized for a vaccine that is to late.

[tomrod]

They weren't ignored, they were given the same advice and a subset did not think it applied. That's different, in my view. Reinfections can and do occur -- lower than vaccine breakthrough for Delta, but not necessarily true for other strains like Omnicron and subvariants.

[JacobThreeThree]

>A GOP president pushed hard to get vaccine released in under a year. Also strongly recommend people take it.

And his political opponents were actively undermining trust in the vaccines at that time.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/563771-guess-who-und...

Seems like even people here have latched onto this partisan merry-go-round.

[TheBlight]

Hmm. Did the GOP's reach extend to the island nation of New Zealand on the other side of the globe?

[nxm]

What economic and costs are you willing to pay to be on lockdown for so long?

[TheBlight]

"Pay" implies there was some benefit that was purchased.

[Schroedingersat]

> Did the GOP's reach extend to the island nation of New Zealand on the other side of the globe?

Well, yeah. New Zealand had great policies and good compliance.

Then the same shitty murdoch and facebook led conspiracy theories, selfishness, and lies spread. Now they're dealing with the same issues as everyone else. Plus without the insane propaganda machine, lack of aid, and hoarding of unused vaccines we may not have even developed some of the mutations or had it become endemic in animal populations.

At least people in new zealand had a chance to get fully vaccinated there and avoid the short term death toll though.