You'd bet wrong 1.3 million traffic deaths in a year. double it to 2.6 m for 2 years.

In the 2 years of covid we have had 4.25 million deaths with still 90% us and 97% of the rest of the world left to catch it.

You only need a unmasked person to have an R value 1.64 times higher than a vaxed/masked for the proportional deaths to not reach parity even with 90% people vacinated.

That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal. Where as most of the reasons people give for not wearing a mask are either easily debunked or work just as well as a retort to someone asking you "why are you continuously punching yourself?".

Where are you getting 90%? The CDC estimates that 36% of Americans have been infected.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

WHO confirmed cases so using your numbers that does change it to just another 1.2 million dead americans assuming no change in death rate due to other strains the vaccine rather than another 5.5 million.

And you are assuming that the next variants will be more deadly.

>> That's completely ignoring the fact that driving is actually a productive activity with a goal

And most antivaxers and the unmasked are welfare cases with nothing to do but look at reddit, and so are a burden on the state and a direct cost to me as a taxpayer even when there isn't a pandemic. Hey, maybe this will work out great in the end.

> In the 2 years of covid we have had 4.25 million deaths

And how many of those were of fully vaccinated people?

If we have 100 people responsible for a bad thing happening to 10 people in that group that is proportionally the same as 10 people being responsible for a bad thing happening to 1 person in that group and having 90 unrelated people to the side when we are divvying up blame.

Yes and no; if you're accusing unvaccinated-by-choice people of recklessly endangering others, then it's quite different whether they're endangering random other people or only other unvaccinated-by-choice people. (Similarly I have no problem with drivers on private car-only roads, only those who endanger pedestrians and cyclists on the public roads).

Also the dynamics of how far any given infection would spread are very different in a post-vaccination world.

Sure now your only recklessly endangering those who can't get vaccinated and those who opt in. So maybe at steady state the numbers do work out in favour of it being less dangerous than driving proportionally(excluding the people who opt in to this danger). But you realise we're talking about driving, an activity that actually accomplishes something, as opposed to not getting vaccinated which accomplishes at most nothing. If driving accomplished nothing you can bet you wouldn't be able to do it in the city were you are involving others it'd be relegated to tracks.

Technically, I was talking about drunk driving, which kills a lot fewer people than (productive) driving. That's why I selected the limited case of people who innocently die because of a driver's wilful negligence, which is exponentially fewer than those who die because of antivaxers' wilful negligence. Probably even when there isn't a pandemic with an R6 replication rate.

In a post-vaccination world, you'd be exactly correct. And no one is advocating for a permanent mask mandate. But in the present world, where large sectors of the population are not vaxed, the likelihood of an unvaxed spreader killing someone versus a drunk driver, for any individual on any given night, is probably equal or greater.

I'll admit something. I happen to love driving twice the speed limit after a few drinks. Feels great. And I indulge that sometimes on country roads when there's no one around. I know I'm a better driver after a few beers than most people are sober. If it were up to me, there would be a test, and a rating on my license that let me drive with a higher BAC than other people. But you know what? My personal pleasure isn't worth the damage of taking someone's life, or of entitling everyone else in society to do the same. So, on the whole, it's obviously better that it's illegal. Even though it infringes on my personal freedom and pursuit of happiness.

In the US, all of the at-risk population who wants to be vaccinated has been. The only people who can't get vaccinated are children under 12, and they are at virtually zero risk.

Yes, but the at-risk who don't want to be vaccinated are soaking up enormous resources, including hospital beds and doctors and nurses that should be attending people with other health emergencies. Moreover they're a breeding ground for variants that can evade the vaccine. And beyond that, even if they only kill each other, how is that okay?