> If you're vaccinated or too young to be vaccinated, COVID-19 is over for you. The risk went from 1 in 1000 people dying to no worse than the risk in any flu season, unless that very mild risk makes you think that we should reinvent what personal freedoms in society means, stop turning and ending pandemic into a catastrophe.

I'm not sure this is settled fact at the moment. There are known variants which have shown to reduce the efficacy of at least some of the available vaccines.

The danger isn't from the individual unvaccinated person, it's from pockets of them creating a reservoir of the virus from which new variants can develop. Strong arming people into being vaccinated is the stick with which to try to limit these reservoirs.

Personally, I'm comfortable with limiting peoples ability to attend mass events (which are elective and for entertainment value only) in the tail end of a pandemic without proof of vaccination, I'm less conformable about allowing employers (outside of perhaps those who work with people who are at risk) to do the same.

> Strong arming people into being vaccinated is the stick with which to try to limit these reservoirs.

I suppose then that after every single person in more developed countries is vaccinated, we should start readying the troops for invasion into the less developed countries that, inevitably, will not be fully vaccinated? Otherwise, pockets > variants > travel > reinfection.

Or is too inhumane to invade a country to force them to vaccinate fully? Maybe we should just isolate them economically and close borders with them until they do it themselves.

How far should we go?

I understood your personal thresholds, and thank you for sharing. For me only the government should make and enforce a decision on public health at scale, not any employer, that's my threshold.

I have seen other thresholds being crossed in the last 2 years, but now mine has been crossed, and I don't see this slowing down. What's the next threshold to be crossed?

Something like five billion people have yet to have a single dose, I wouldn’t be too worried about “pockets” of holdouts yet.

Yes, variants have shown to be less inhibited by vaccines… but that’s just it, less. Ever had a cold? Influenza? Variants make some vaccinated people sick, but almost none of them end up in the ICU, they’re full of unvaccinated people.

>If a small but militant group insists in putting everyone at risk by intentionally and systematically violating basic health and safety precautions then the only hope society has is to mitigate this risk.

Who is militant? And they aren't putting "everyone" at risk. They are putting themselves at risk surely, but the risk doesn't really spread to people who have been vaccinated.

>You need to prove you are vaccinated when you travel internationally

I also need permission from the government of the country I'm visiting to come at all. They can add conditions if they want and I can choose accordingly.

>So why yes, obviously yes. Don't you agree? Or do you actually believe that an individual's whims and irresponsiblr and reckless behavior should simply put everyone else's life at risk just because?

I don't agree. I think people have lost perspective and have very little idea what the risks of various situations are and can't tell the difference between a risk that could kill millions and a risk that could kill hundreds and are happy to charge forwards to try to prevent any risk regardless of how small because "doing something" has become as a religious mandate.

>I mean, if you really valued freedom then wouldn't you be doing your hardest to ensure that everyone around you should, say, not risk death by an easily preventable disease in spite of everyone except you taking basic precautions?

Freedom is not trying to force everyone around me to do what I determine is best for them.

>do you feel the measles or tetanus shots violate your freedom?

Tetanus basically only spreads through deep puncture wounds with soiled implements. I guess if I didn't seem like I was out of my mind I would want my doctor to accept refusing treatment for a painful and life threatening disease that could only ever effect myself... The question "do you think shot violates your freedom?" really shows that you don't understand my point at all and will continue arguing past and around whatever I have to say.

I am opposed to de facto licensing of public activities based on a choice that should be mine to make. (I did indeed get vaccinated) When there was significant risk and incomplete vaccine access, different rules were acceptable, but only because of the large and temporary risk. Now that that risk is avoidable by anyone in the US who wants to avoid it, continuing to enable and enforce restrictions on everyday activities has gone too far, and normalizing the "papers please" activity does serious harm to our future freedoms.

> They are putting themselves at risk surely, but the risk doesn't really spread to people who have been vaccinated.

They _are_ putting those who have been vaccinated at risk since vaccinated people can still get sick. Also this ignores all of those who wish to, but can't be vaccinated for one reason or another.

> since vaccinated people can still get sick.

Then may be you should complain to people who gave you the vaccine, instead of pushing others to take this thing that apparently does not work as advertised.

> Then may be you should complain to people who gave you the vaccine, instead of pushing others to take this thing that apparently does not work as advertised.

You clearly don't understand how vaccines work. No vaccine in history has ever kept all vaccinated people from getting sick.

Sure, so apparently efficacy matters.

An 80% efficacy may be good enough for you to take the vaccine. But for someone they might be looking for 95% efficacy to make it worthwhile for them.

But in no circumstance, I should be able to dictate that my threshold of efficacy should be good enough for you, and thus you should take it as well, so that my riskier choice will provide better ROI for me...

Honestly, what are you talking about? I was responding to this original quote:

> They are putting themselves at risk surely, but the risk doesn't really spread to people who have been vaccinated.

This is false because no vaccine provides 100% protection. You even here have agreed we me. Your point that people should complain to vaccine manufacturers about efficacy is both irrelevant and misguided.

>>> One has to believe at some point that liberty is worth a certain amount of risk.

Others will be taking a risk for your liberty, that is where it becomes unacceptable.

We live in a society and individual freedoms must be balanced by the responsibilities towards your fellow man.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here but arent those that don't want the vaccine a risk just for themselves? If they want to risk it it's their problem/choice.

One thing everyone seems to ignore is those people that have immunity/antibodies and don't actually need a vaccine. Why is that?

As far as I managed to read here and there not even the shot I had protects me from catching or spreading the virus. It only reduces(at least I hope) the damage done when infected even though my age group should be ok-ish even without.

Whichever vaccine you had, it has a high chance (90ish percent) of preventing any detectable infection, and as a corollary being contagious.

If you do lose the odds and develop an infection, the rates of various outcomes are all better. i.e. very low chance of death or ICU visit, very high chance of no or extremely mild symptoms

People don’t have a good understanding of statistics, of how to treat risk, or of basic disease dynamics.

Is this the same with antibodies from having had covid already?

There is less signal to noise when it comes to reinfections because the data is just harder to come by, but the preliminary evidence shows that reinfections do happen, but quite rarely (some numbers from a few waves of infections showed only 1 out of 150 positive results were from people who had tested positive previously). There has also been evidence that intensity of infection is correlated to post-infection immunity (i.e. if you were asymptomatic you have less immunity than if you were hospitalized)

It is reasonable to believe that having had an existing infection will boost your immunity against future infections and that both vaccines and previous infections will protect you on a diminishing basis, say, for a year or two. (based on existing covid evidence and the behavior of immunity to other coronaviruses which are common in humans which are usually very mild and referred to as a "cold")

How about some citations? At least a few of these claims are wrong. 2,3 I’ve definitely seen at least one study demonstrating the effectiveness of cloth masks in limiting the projectile spread of the disease. Like, recorded video exploring different masks (not all were effective).

5. China’s lockdown was effective, what are you talking about?

To your last point, Brazil is a good example of a complete failure of individual level solutions.

> My mask protects you, your mask protects me". There is no physics behind this, masks aren't one way barriers, were never studied or sold as such, nor are they capable of stopping the sort of explosive air pressure caused by a cough.

The proposed mechanism is that during exhalation (or more importantly speaking and coughing) there are relatively large droplets of saliva/mucus containing viral particles, and these droplets can be catched by masks (they are big and move more balistically, so masks need not be airtight).

But once these droplets are in air, they dry to (much smaller) aerosol that cannot be catched by masks, you would need properly fitted FFP2/3 respirator.

If that were the way the virus spread, pre/asymptomatic transmission wouldn't be noticeable.

There's lots of debate about whether that's really how respiratory viruses spread, but more importantly, we know it can't be that simple because we can see the effect mask mandates had on case curves (there wasn't any). So however they're theorized to work, real world data disagrees. There can be lots of reasons for this that aren't even related to mask material, e.g. most transmission occurs in homes, care homes and hospitals, all places where you'd expect most transmission to take place because people have to be confined in a small space with other sick people for long periods, and also places where you can't make people wear masks all the time.

If they don't vaccine and don't venture out it is fine. But if they don't take the vaccine and do go to work etc, the risk of them catching corona is higher. They in turn can spread to others.

We have seen the kind of snowballing effect 1 or 2 infected can cause.

Of course vaccines do not have 100% efficacy rate, but the risk of getting corona and its effects is at least a bit reduced if you get vaccinated.

>is at least a bit reduced

Reporting is that almost no intensive care patients in the US these days have been vaccinated.

We're not scared of covid-19 because it'll make us feel shitty for a few days, we're scared of it putting people on ventilators or killing them. There is a very strong signal that vaccination makes the rates of severe negative outcomes of infection very very small - down to the levels of many other rarely severe diseases which don't justify significant action.

This misses the point.

"Liberty" isn't the freedom to put yourself at risk with no consequences to anyone or anything else.

It is recognizing that there must be, at some point, a prioritization of giving people choices that might impact others.

>individual freedoms must be balanced by the responsibilities

Must be balanced not obliterated by "responsibilities".

>>> "Liberty" isn't the freedom to put yourself at risk with no consequences to anyone or anything else.

>>> It is recognizing that there must be, at some point, a prioritization of giving people choices that might impact others.

There will always be a set of people who prioritize themselves over others and in the case of corona as we have seen it just takes 1 selfish person to start the snowballing effectt.

We are seeing actual Zombie movie tropes playing out in real life coz of this corona pandemic. even if 98% of people get vaccinated, the holdout population maybe enough to incubate and spread new variants.

Do you really believe what you have written here? People who chose not to take a jab are zombies to you?

That's not what they wrote.