[aurelius12]

If people don't like the China example, they can look at New Zealand or Australia, both of which had tiny fractions of our Covid deaths AND experienced less economic decline AND experienced a drop in suicides during the time.

[thrown_22]

And are now catching up.

New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. Australia 1500. The vaccines didn't keep people from dying, they postponed them to the next flu season.

The old and sick will catch covid and die. There is nothing you can do about it. Putting your head in the sand and hoping for a magic bullet to save us - vaccines, masks, lockdowns - just means that the rest of the health system will collapse too. We need to be realistic and prepare for a world in which life expectancy is 10 years lower and we need a lot more hospital beds.

[DogOfTheGaps]

This is 100% false. The COVID vaccines continue to massively decrease the risk of severe disease, including in old people.

[thrown_22]

Can you say which of:

+ New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday.

+ Australia 1500

+ The vaccines didn't keep people from dying

Were wrong? Because a 100% false rate is a pretty high bar, especially since you already admitted 3 was true.

[guythedudebro]

You almost made even me fall for the bait. Congrats.

[thrown_22]

That a simple statement of fact is bait ought to tell you how much of a fantasy world people live in.

The covid vaccines are shit and don't work.

End of story.

The mental gymnastics needed to claim they do fall apart when you compare them to vaccines for any other deadly disease. We don't still have small pox running rampant in countries with 90%+ vaccination rates. No one walks around telling you that having only your face paralyzed by polio is a great out come and a reason why we should vaccinate toddlers. If you get the MMR vaccine you're not told to be happy that you only got one of the three.

We need to move people's minds to the real world where everyone gets covid during flu season, rename it covid season while we're at it, and build a hospital system to solve that problem.

[spopejoy]

Contradicting hard medical evidence about reduced negative outcomes of the COVID vaccine that the entire medical industry has consensus around is just crank stuff at best.

The vaccines are unreasonably effective given how radically the virus has mutated.

The argument that things had to go this way, that we should just lay down our arms from the outset, throw immunocompromised, children and old folks under the bus, and treat it like "flu season" (which has a vaccine for f's sake!) has bequeathed our massive world-wide (or at least west-wide) gain-of-function laboratory that is bringing powerful new mutations to a geo near you.

Track-and-trace and countless bog-standard public health responses (like requiring masks on planes for f's sake), and yes the occasional lockdown, PLUS the fact that we got lucky on how fast we got vaccines delivering measurable improvement in outcomes, would have been a powerful combo. But it wouldn't have made any money.