1. Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents.

There are also other downsides, like people in need of non-urgent treatment getting turned away from packed hospitals, and medical staff who are pushed to the point of exhaustion.

2. This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.

A lot of Democrats are squeamish about people's deaths, even when it's a result of the person's own informed choices.

If I killed myself juggling chainsaws, many people would say "ha, what a dumbass" - but if somehow Biden came to comment on it, he wouldn't say that - he'd say every death is tragic and his thoughts are with my family.

That, alongside the fact they've spent a lot of time telling their supporters how very important it is to wear masks, means it's unlikely you'll find any Democrats politicians agreeing with you publicly.

And as for Republicans politicians? Well first of all it's their supporters who are dying, they're not going to come out in support of that; and second of all, by maintaining the stance that these deaths are avoidable and a result of the crisis being mishandled, they can use that against Biden at the midterms.

Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. Rare medical conditions is also a weak argument because those types of people are exceedingly rare.

> This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.

Ouch, this really strikes at one of the core issues. In a very real sense, covid could be re-framed as a proxy war for political control, a crisis that has (and continues to be) artificially hyped and prolonged for political advantage.

I have heard that, yes.

But I've also heard [1] saying when a Houston 11-month-old presented with Covid, five "major pediatric hospital groups" said they had no beds available, and she ended up at a hospital 150 miles away.

I can understand why a politician might not give two thumbs up to such a state of affairs.

[1] https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-...

Not everyone benefits equally from vaccination. The elderly, sick, or immunocompromised especially.

Not everyone who's unvaccinated is making the decision themselves. Infants, children, the disabled, and elderly may not be competent (or allowed) to make the decision, and if denied vaccination by an antivaxxer, are put at risk without informed consent.

Vaccines aren't an absolute protection. They seem to reduce rates of infection about 8-fold, and hospitalisation and death by about 25-fold. But illness, hospitalisation, long-term health impacts, and death, can still result.

The longer the disease is around and spreading actively, and the more different individuals it spreads amongst, the more it mutates. Delta is already more effective at breaking through vaccinations than the original Covid virus, and the likelihood of more infectious or more severe mutations persists.

Much of the world cannot yet get vaccinated, and is at greater risk of transmission by Covid spreading elsewhere.

Covid patients use resources and staffing of healthcare workers, first responders, and caregivers which are already overtaxed and which will result in undertreatment of other medical conditions.

The most powerful argument though was made to me elsewhere:

But of course these people weren’t fully informed; they were misinformed. They chose to believe people who lie to them. They trust people who betray them and are willing to sacrifice your lives to score some political points. They are the victims of a massive misinformation campaign that didn’t just start with the pandemic, but started way back in the 1980s. All of America is the victim of that, and much of the rest of the world too, but these people in particular. They are the dupes mobilised and sacrificed as part of the murderous political game that the Republicans and conservative media have been playing for decades now.

<https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e...>

On top of that though, this doesn't seem like a long term concern. Eventually enough people will have natural immunity or vaccinated immunity that it's not really possible to overwhelm hospitals like it was when the virus was totally novel.

It would be nice if Covid was a slow-moving target like smallpox. It isn't.

Would you believe there’s literally an entire field of study about this called “Public Health”? You can do a Masters in it and everything

Would you believe that that's _exactly_ the kind of things that Public Health professionals and academics _do_ debate and try and explain?

Three reasons unvaccinated-by-choice individuals continue to pose a public health burden:

1. Vaccines not yet available for children under 12

2. Economic costs of covid treatment for unvaccinated (including long covid) passed on to taxpayers / insurance groups

3. Increased risks of even more deadly / infectious / vaccine-resistant virus mutations emerging from ongoing spread

2. Same could be said about Cancer, the Flu, or obesity

3. Same could be said specifically about over-vaccinating. High levels of vaccinations have been known to cause super-bugs.

Eventually, a mutation may allow partial or large bypass against current vaccines -- then it is everyone's problem.

In the short term, increasing ICU loads result in less ICU space for others (e.g., those in a car accident). They also drive up group insurance costs, which we'll end up seeing in our premiums in coming years.

Because they won't reap it alone, everyone else will.

COVID is not 'bad' because of the case fatality rate - it's dangerous, but if just a few people had it, it wouldn't be huge cause for alarm.

What makes COVID evil is it's virality.

The contagion means a lot of people get it, a lot of people suffer, and systematically it causes all sorts of lingering problems.

For example - as long as it lingers, pretty much all of Healthcare System is seriously hampered and compromised.

Every person who gets sick or who undergoes some kind of serious thing (i.e. surgery after accident) is going to be 'much more vulnerable to COVID' etc..

COVID is not an individual problem, it's a systematic problem.

That clashes with notions of choice, freedom, and individuality etc. - which makes it a particularly pernicious issue from a Public Safety perspective.

Edit: It's usually evident to me why my comments are downvoted, I should say in this case, especially without any reasonable retort ... I'm at a loss, but I'll triple down on my comment: until smart people get it in their heads that the issue is systematic and mostly not individual - then we're not going to be make progress. It's not a question of 'I Am Vaccinated' - it's a question of getting to 'Effective Herd Immunity' and suppressing the net virality / R0 of the virus. It's an issue that exposes the material fact that we live in communities whether we like it or not, and that this may challenge some of our assumptions about 'liberty' - then take it as an opportunity for a little bit of personal development, but in the meantime, reality is not waiting up, so we have to get with the program together, or face the consequences, together.

Given that reality, the only responsible choice is for everyone to suck it up and wear a mask.

Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.

That's conjecture. A conclusion from this study[1] is that vaccines correlate with dominance of fitter variants, including Delta. That suggests that it's possible that vaccines allow them to propagate.

"the decline in lineage diversity was indeed correlated with increased rates of mass vaccination. Furthermore, the decline in lineage diversity was coupled with increased dominance of the B.1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.1.617 (delta) and P.1 (gamma) variants of concern, suggesting that these variants may be “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 lineages.”

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v...

Oi vei.

You will pay the price along with them.

So long as the pandemic persists, any number of our systems are compromised, especially our healthcare system.

You still have a decent chance of getting COVID even with the vaccine, though it'll likely be mild, you can still be hospitalized and face consequences.

The vaccine is not a 'seat belt' i.e. just an individual action resulting in some individual consequence, it affects everyone.