> Its the problem of those they affect. "Infectious" is not self-contained to a singular individual.
The stats I've seen suggest the vast majority of people have caught COVID between 2019 and now and pretty much all the preventative measures that worked reliably were things that either individuals could do themselves or that required targeting travellers specifically.
It isn't obvious that people trusting YouTube about COVID affects any third party. Who and how are they affecting?
Even if we assume that's true (everything I've seen says it isn't), then a sole individual always affects others. Humans do not exist as lone monks in the hills, generally speaking. When they are ill, it affects their workplaces, it affects their families, it affects their friends. When they die, it's worse - it affects all of those, but also has tail effects on the health industry.
Nothing you do, ever, is in isolation. So nothing you do, ever, will not affect someone else. Pretending that everyone is a sole unit, to excuse behaviour, has never made sense.
I mean, ok. Everything is connected to everything else, true enough. That seems a bit vague. Do you have a specific example to illustrate what you are talking about? Because the 'disinformation' that I saw being banned was typically people with PhDs in vaguely related fields talking about scientific papers. Disagreeing with them seems like a fair play, deplatforming them seems actually damaging. If I can't listen to people with PhDs to learn about academic papers because everything is interconnected then something has gone rather off the rails.
The disinformation I saw turned into accidental deaths. By attempting to treate the virus with alcohol, horse tranquilisers, and more. And those deaths are verified.
People weren't listening to PhDs getting banned. They were listening to influencers get banned.
So are you talking about your neighbours and relatives here? Like someone next door tried feeding someone else alcohol when their spouse got COVID? What actually happened?
> People weren't listening to PhDs getting banned. They were listening to influencers get banned.
Even if you don't care about those people, what about the people who would be affected by them? A would-be bomb-maker might only blow themselves up, or they may kill many in a crowd. Somebody walking around with a deadly pathogen infects and kills others. Children die because their parents believe in anti-vax nonsense. Individual freedom ends at the point at which it causes real harm to other people.
Also, you know who tends to be most in favour of "let stupid people face the consequences of their poor choices"? Those who want to profit from those people and their choices.
> I would argue that lives have value even when people have preexisting medical conditions
(Otherwise healthy) school-age children - and younger adults - always faced a very low risk from Covid-19, and we had solid statistical data on this from at least May 2020 onwards.
Maybe we need to look at where our decision-makers get their information, and their incentives?
I certainly don't disagree with that, and I would imagine there aren't many people who would, but it is not in any way an argument against how many otherwise healthy children died of covid.
If you want to make an argument that an overweight child should still be considered otherwise healthy, that would be a welcome and relevant argument, and also an interesting one.
If you take the percentages from the CDC and multiply them out (and don't fall for the "polio" vs "paralytic polio" sleight of hand), it was way smaller than that - somewhere on the order of 0.01%.
The flu, for example, was always a worse risk than polio, people just became fearful of polio because we found a way to save some lives in a non-ideal way, which became very visible.
Presented as fact without evidence, preemptively dismissing contrary evidence from the most likely source to have the historical data. I'd love to see your sources for the risk of severe lifelong injury or death of polio vs the flu.
Yeah, not all kids are otherwise healthy. There's kids with Leukemia or whatever that are extremely immunocompromised because of chemotherapy. They have to coexist with anti-vaxxers and, believe it or not, their lives matter too.
> caught Covid
You think the anti-vaxx crazy train starts and stops at Covid? These people have been attacking MMR for much longer than Covid. Children DO die to measles, mumps, and what have you.
No, it's everyone's. Herd immunity can only be achieved if a sufficiently large part of the population is vaccinated. Also, and I know basic empathy is a foreign concept nowadays, but what if I wished for my fellow to not die of a preventable disease because a grifter sold them on an insane idea?
There absolutely is. You just think the word immunity means something else.
After vaccination or a passed infection the immune response is there. When a sufficient immune resopnse from a large enough portion if the population is enough to lower the critical cases below some threshold, we call that type of immunity herd immunity.
It's not binary, but a useful concept nonetheless, and one that some people devote their professional lives to. It can be observed every flu season.
Herd immunity is not a direct goal of vaccination, protection of the individual being vaccinated is. If someone needs protection, then they should get vaccinated!
On the contrary, for the overwhelming majority of children you're absolutely right, they didn't have serious risk from COVID-19, which makes your question a good one, not a rhetorical one.
Regardless, herd immunity was not a serious possibility at any point (given the high Rº and lack of a vaccine that could prevent transmission), which, considering this was known very early on makes your question, again, a good one not a rhetorical one, despite your intent.
Finally, regardless of herd immunity, at risk individuals would still require vaccination, which makes the herd immunity as a goal, again, irrelevant, which is where I started. It's a nice by-product.
I am not sure about America but in India, I was a child during covid, 7th grade - 8th grade and i didn't have a vaccine but my school students just one grade above us were called in school and they were asked for vaccine.
Though, to be fair, my whole family caught a "virus" during 2nd phase except my father but we didn't go to hospital and just bed rest for 2-3 days. My family really were skeptical of vaccine but personally I don't mind vaccines and would prefer it.
Unfortunately, thus far, Covid19 has been through too many rapid changes for natural immunity to be effective. [0] The earlier forms allowed for it, but the evolution of the virus has outstripped most natural defences.
You got it backwards: the vaccines specifically targeted only the spike protein, while natural infection created different antibodies against all parts of the virus.
Its also a problem for the platform - who is now party to it happening.
YouTube allowing bad medical advice will hurt YouTube. Their safest option, is to disallow it.