As someone who has had both COVID (before vaccines were available) and a COVID vaccine, this reasoning seems frankly dumb as bricks.

There is uncertainty about long-term effects of both. There is no uncertainty about the short-term effects of COVID, which are magnitudes worse than the short-term effects of a vaccine. COVID for me was a multi-week flu that scared the shit out of me because I didn't know how bad it would get or if I'd live through it. I took months to get my smell/taste back, three months to get back to previous fitness levels, hair loss, and significant mental fog and memory problems. The jab was one day of tiredness and I ran a marathon two days after no problem.

I really can't fathom how anyone could put themselves and those around them at such great risk, rather than taking a vaccine.

Thats your personal experience. Most of my friends who got covid without the vaccines never had any major issue you had. They took rest for a week and problem solved. One of my other friends, who was vaccinated, got covid and had to be hospitalised because he couldn't breath. Luckily he survived. A coworker, who was vaccinated, still hasn't got his taste back after getting covid around a month ago.

Vaccine or not, you can still get covid and suffer the consequences depending on your body. So I dont see the point in getting a vaccine and suffer its long term consequences when it basically does nothing.

If you are saying it prevents covid death - you are wrong. Check England's data. More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less. Vaccinated people are getting covid less but the ones who died after getting covid are more. The math isn't adding up for the vaccines.

You seem happy to be countering his personal experience with your own personal experience, and jump to the conclusion that there's no difference (wrong) and the vaccine does nothing (wrong) so why bother risking long term consequences (there's zero reason to think there's any from vaccines, while there are reasons to think there are many from Covid)

If only there was a way to objectively assess these things... Oh wait there is, it's called "doing a randomized controlled trial on more than 3 people" and "numerous observational studies from real world data"

And guess what ? From this data, you're 90% less likely to get severely ill and 95% less likely to die if you've been vaccinated, even with Delta.

> If you are saying it prevents covid death - you are wrong. Check England's data.

No he's right. Still about 95% protection against death from Delta.

> More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less.

Wrong.

> Vaccinated people are getting covid less but the ones who died after getting covid are more.

Still wrong. Unless you've been comparing vaccinated 80 year olds with unvaccinated 20 year olds maybe ?

Being vaccinated makes you 20-30 years younger in terms of your risk to die from Covid (source : https://www.ft.com/content/0f11b219-0f1b-420e-8188-6651d1e74...)

> The math isn't adding up for the vaccines.

Thanks for the brilliant demonstration.

>You seem happy to be countering his personal experience with your own personal experience, and jump to the conclusion that there's no difference

Right

>the vaccine does nothing

Right

>there's zero reason to think there's any(side effects) from vaccines

Wrong

>More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less.

Right

>Being vaccinated makes you 20-30 years younger in terms of your risk to die from Covid (source : https://www.ft.com/content/0f11b219-0f1b-420e-8188-6651d1e74...)

Wrong(Lol medical advice from a Financial blog)

> Thanks for the brilliant demonstration.

Your welcome :*

Have you recovered from the mental fog/memory problems?

As a 30-odd year old knowledge worker (vaccinated), that's the thing that affects my personal risk assessment the most right now.

sadly there are at least a few percentage points of people where that's basically the reason: they're dumb. I'm sorry, but it's true. Nonetheless, social media and other beneficiaries of fear mongering, definitely make this problem a lot worse than it would be without them.

I have a lot of trouble arguing with these people (friends, family) because I read daily about how bad covid is and they are simply ignorant. For some of them it's basically "he said, she said" (so like: who should I trust?) as if anti-vaxxers and science are on the same level of trustworthiness. And also when you talk about data they say something like "I don't trust the data" and rather trust some stupid people in their social circle. Also it appears like they feel like "vaccination can be bad", "covid can be bad (but not necessarily, my daughter had it and it was like the flu!)", so they rather try to avoid both. Yeah, logic...

Of course, we don't have much info on the long-term health outcomes of getting COVID, either.

It's like worrying about the long-term impact of breathing fire extinguisher powder while being engulfed by flames.

More like being inundated by smoke. My town is currently experiencing intermittent days of smokiness from fires burning 100s of miles away. People are dying in those fires. Homes are being destroyed.

But the local fire department isn't doing anything about it. Nobody around here is installing sprinklers as a precaution. They act like there is no fire at all.

Covid is a serious thing. But "engulfed by flames" is the exact overstatement that causes people to question the motivation of fear-mongers.

I'm vaccinated. I wear a mask. I think too many people are whipping up a frenzy for profit. Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? Why not lockdown breweries when there are 2 million drunk-driving incidents? Why isn't there a frenzy over influenza?

Covid frenzy has a better marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that has people claiming we are "engulfed by flames" when things get smoky.

> Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents?

We mandate seat belts, air bags, guard rails, road construction standards, backup cameras, crumple zones, and quite a few other elements involved in road safety. Per-mile road deaths have been on a precipitous decline for decades due to ongoing increases in safety mandates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

So 35000 deaths per year is ok? 100000? 250000? 1.5 million (diabetes)?

500000 hospitalizations (influenza)?

What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

Whats crazy is people have already forgotten that we had large outbreaks and hospitals overrun. The hospitals were way over capacity with the sick. Covid is not a normal problem.

I don't know about the US, but every country that has winter has hospitals "overrun" with flu every year and never such authoritarian measures were taken.

According to this table [1], we spent about double on coronavirus public funding in 2020 as we do _every_ year for diabetes. As an emergent situation with potential for much more death, that seems proportional.

Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID.

Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it?

> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches.

[1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/

[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes

> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.

You nailed it on the head. The fear mongering is absurd, and largely money driven. I would think we suffer many many more deaths from diabetes than 1.5 million/year. Of course, if you die in the hospital from diabetes complications with Covid, you get counted as a "covid death". :-/

well there are legal consequences of causing or being part of an accident, unlike spreading COVID or Influenza. So we don't consider road deaths okay by nearly any metric. If you want to call out bad comparisons your position should be included in that. Not only do we put tons of safety precautions in place on the road, people get in serious trouble when they have been negligent. And we also have tons of companies currently trying to remove the human driver error from the equation entirely.

The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.

Those are band-aids. A car-lockdown would save lots of lives.

GPs point is: compared to other drama, covid's hype seems out of proportion. I agree.

My wife is a children's ER doctor. They are now seeing all patients up to 25 because the adult ER can't handle the number of COVID patients. The pediatric ICU is also now full (in contrast to the earlier COVID waves were virtually no children required treatment).

She's never had to do that because of a bad flu season. More than 90% of the adults in the hospital for COVID and 100% of the kids are unvaccinated.

People wouldn't even be discussing shutting down schools and businesses to get this under control if we had a 90% vaccination rate.

The government is not compelling you to get covid.

The government often is compelling people to in areas where basic safety precautions are not required in public spaces.

In nearly all other aspects of life, inflicting harm on others results in some sort of liability. Unsafe activities are regulated. However, in this time of massive death, massive hospitalization, massive long term health complications, basic safety is being thrown out the window to appease political tribalism.

The government isn't compelling me to get vaccinated, either.

Yes they are, all sorts of "freedoms" hinge on it now.

I can't work in certain jobs without a security clearance.

The government is not forcing me to get a security clearance.

I’m pro vaccine, but requiring I take a test or prove my trustworthiness strike me as fundamentally different than requiring I inject something in my body.

They can't legally force you, so they're using other means to exert as much pressure as possible. Doesn't feel any better to a lot of people to know they weren't technically forced.

In this scenario, you're seeking a job for which a clearance is a prerequisite.

In this world, people with jobs are being fired for not getting vaccinated. It's not a small cohort either; it's the government and giant corporate entities.

There are a few notable exceptions, though, of employers that are not mandating vaccination. Pfizer, for one. The White House, for another. When the pharma that makes the thing, and the POTUS, who is making vaccination priority #1, don't require it, that is some laughably awful PR.

Pfizer is mandating it. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/vaccine-mandate-pfizer-will-...

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021... says the White House has as well.

> The White House didn’t even establish a vaccine mandate for its own staffers until last month, despite the shot being available to them early in the year.

The headline even says "or undergo weekly testing"

If the government said that unvaccinated individuals were not allowed to purchase food, would you consider that OK, because they're not forcing you to stop eating?

Vanishingly small percentages of jobs require security clearance.

Vanishingly small percentages of freedoms require vaccination.

For me to agree with "vanishingly small", I should rarely encounter a vaccination requirement in my day to day life. The wishlist for places and activities that will require verification is so large I will be encountering them multiple times a day, for the rest of my life.

Yes, and that's perfectly fine because 1. you've been accepting that for other vaccines already and 2. there is no cost or significant risk to you from getting vaccinated, mostly just massive benefits. It's a win-win situation. Society is asking you to take 1 hour of your time to save your own life.

The fact that some people don't recognize that gift as what it is because they've been misinformed is irrelevant because, well, whatever they believe is simply not true.

No, not really. I've lived in states where vaccines were required to enter grade school, but there were religious and conscience exemptions. And flu shots are often required in health care. That status quo was far less invasive than what is being proposed here. I have never had to prove vaccination status to just do ordinary things in my life before.

You can’t drive a car without a license for the same reason: unlicensed drivers kill people at higher rates. Just like unvaccinated people kill others at higher rates.

>Just like unvaccinated people kill others at higher rates.

Source? Are you saying unvaccinated people are out there murdering others? Do people no longer have functional immune systems?

Sure, so long as you don't need groceries in a major city.

They also compel you to do things such as wear clothes and shoes in order to get service.

If you want to take part in exchange, you must do it in terms acceptable to both parties. You are not entitled to take from society on whatever terms you dictate on your own.

I live in a major city and I have never even heard of requiring vaccinations to buy groceries. Is this a thing that exists somewhere? I would love to read more on this.

I'm not aware of anywhere in the US requiring it for groceries.

NYC is notable for requiring it for indoor dining, gyms, and a few others. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mand...

I've gone to a variety of stores in a major city, and never been asked for my vaccination status.

Which major City are you referring to that demands vaccination for grocery shopping?

how does the government response to you not being vaccinated interfere with you getting groceries?

Grocery curbside pickup and delivery are readily available in my non-major city.

That's great if you've got a vehicle and/or can pay the extra cost for delivery. The urban groups statistically most likely to be unvaccinated (blacks and hispanics) are also those statistically least likely to have a vehicle or be able to pay for delivery.

This discussion would only be relevant if there was any downside or personal cost to the obvious solution, which is to just get the damn vaccine.

Apart from facing one's cognitive dissonance, fears and ignorance, there is none. Just overwhelming benefits. It's perfectly okay for society to require it.

You don't need a vehicle for curbside pickup.

Make "vroom vroom" noises while you wait, if it makes you feel better.

There are literal quotes from governors, senators, and Congressional representatives talking about herd via infection. Suggesting seniors should do their part and die in order to save the economy.

Depending on where you live and who your political alignment is, the government is absolutely compelling you to get COVID.

That doesn't make it any less dangerous

If COVID was like getting engulfed by flames for children, you can be damn sure we'd be jabbing them. Why aren't we? Because it's way more context sensitive than the analogy permits, so it's a particularly useless analogy.

I'd be pretty fucking pissed if someone sprayed a fire extinguisher needlessly in my vicinity.

The great thing about that excuse is that the amount of information needed can be set arbitrarily. There will never be enough information available to satisfy people using this excuse. It'll just be "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER"[1] until the end of time.

1: https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf

I agree in general. The difference here is that the quote about longterm effects being unknown is from the FDA. A layperson could set their standard as being when the FDA has that information. Hopefully the FDA has objective procedures and measure to make those determinations. I feel that would be a reasonable approach.

The same can be said about getting the real disease, except in that case, the “side effect” in the medium term have already been shown to be worse.

I'm just saying, some people will still use that as a reason.

My brother had that (quite legitimate, really) concern. So he delayed vaccination. Now he has Covid. Doctors talking of amputating his toes because of blood clots. Death is not the worst thing to be feared in this.

Anecdotally, I know someone who got the vaccine, and dropped to the ground of a heart attack 3 days later - no prior history of any heart issues or hypertension. Thankfully, he was near an EMT unit that had to bring him back.

Yay anecdotal evidence !

Responding to another anecdote...but guessing you didn't actually see the thread. :-P

No medical intervention is entirely without risk - the risk must be taken in context

1) Risk of potential negative long-term health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccine.

2) Risk of potential negative health outcomes (long and short term) from COVID-19 infection.

As well as

3) Risk of potential negative non-health outcomes from COVID-19 infection (social and economic, risk of infecting others, risk of overrunning ICUs)

With a proper risk analysis vaccine 100% wins for the vast majority of people and it's not even close.

Take a closer look at the mortality rate from COVID, and then take a closer look at which pre-existing conditions people who are being hospitalized largely have (all easily found on CDC's network of reporting hospitals, at least for the US). It would appear based on these data points, that the vast majority of people have nothing to fear, neither death or hospitalization. However, if you're in the growing minority of folks with chronic obesity, hypertension, and diabetes (the "holy trinity" as my ER-doc friend says), you might want to get a vaccine, but understand the effectiveness will be severely lowered by your conditions.

Anyone tempted to reply to this troll, here's the kind of other stuff he writes : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28082379

Just speaking my lived experience homie. Most of my family and friends are RNs, many of which, have various chronic issues due to work-related mandatory yearly vaccinations. Their cases are facts backed by practicing virologists.

Some of your linked comment was valid but your "negative natural selection" take was just nonsense. Superbugs have nothing at all to do with vaccinations. It's the result of overly zealous use of antibiotics that gets cut before the point of complete pathogen destruction.

There are also sufficient rates of infection of even healthy subjects to warrant concern considering that Covid cases are far more serious than most Flu cases - another illness that affects the healthy far less but can still lead to hospitalisation or even death. Also, before you mention it, the fact that there are more deaths caused by the Flu than Covid statistically per year is due to the greater proliferation of the Flu virus and it's variants over Covid.

On an individual basis, you are far more likely to develop complications from Covid than Flu, even for healthy subjects.

> ..."negative natural selection" take was just nonsense

You're misquoting me. What I said was "negative selection". My belief is, we need to let the immune systems of humans do what they're designed to do, and stop artificially selecting all humans to live for as long as possible, without regard for the quality of that life. Effectively, we need to live, die, and decay in a much more natural way, just like the plants and animals under my care do. Nothing healthy or positive, from a long-term genetic-health perspective, has ever come from me rescuing a feeble lamb, and bottle feeding it, medicating it, throughout most of its life. In fact, only the opposite happens. But I understand, most humans tend to only value today instead of 30-40 years down the road.

>Superbugs have nothing at all to do with vaccinations. You're getting tunnel vision'ed. Superbugs have been created by chemicals being sprayed onto fields, for no longer than 30-40 years. Superbugs have been created or emboldened by broad spectrum sanitization.

>On an individual basis, you are far more likely to develop complications from Covid than Flu, even for healthy subjects.

Maybe; though this seems largely a function of time at this point seeing how its been such a short time since Covid's been around. However, the likelihood of "complications" due to Covid is slim to none, on an individual basis, especially for healthy folks (according to the CDC.gov data, assuming our census numbers are correct'ish).