You seem to be saying that the only issue is a question of time. Be specific: how much time? Will you say a specific number? “I will accept an mRNA-based vaccine if it has been around, and proven safe, for x years.”
Until it makes it into Debian stable repositories.
I think the part that seem hypocritical is that people that I know don't apply the same rigor in other parts of their life. They use recreational drugs that are sourced from who knows where with no clinical trials and a high percentage of adverse reactions even amongst our small community.
What's the alternative?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
> and the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people in <<the under-60 crowd>> (3.2 per 100,000)
So .18% for the most at-risk portion of the unvaccinated. This is the latest data on Delta from the most vaccinated country in the world.
Besides that, just their overall fatality rate beats your numbers, let alone serious cases.
And at the same time not forcing everyone to take the vaccine.
As an example Denmark will reach about 75% vaccinated without any mandates, though a Corona passport will be in effect until October 2021.
That is one of the better ways of handling it in my opinion.
And on top of that, countries like Denmark have much higher levels of social trust than countries like the US.
BTW, if you /don't/ get the vaccine, you'll still almost-certainly get covid antibodies eventually, via contracting the virus. As a reminder, the virus itself has not been FDA approved, and is known to have both short and long-term harmful side effects. The vaccine is many orders of magnitude safer than the virus.
However, I think most of us would agree that literally vaccinating people by force would be wrong. So I also don't think it's unreasonable to be at least a bit discomfited when some combination of government at multiple levels and employers make it harder for unvaccinated people to earn a living and participate in society. Even if at the end of the day I approve of many of those requirements--for example I need to prove vaccination status to go to a planned industry event next month which seems very reasonable--I certainly take no joy in such coercion and recognize that it is further polarizing.
Sure it's just "consequences" but those consequences are such that it's also not really a choice.
I am sick and tired of people believing that their "rights" are more important than public health. I would very much wish that people would recognize this for themselves, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with forcing people to comply if they don't. We've done this for decades already; for example, many/most/(all?) school districts in the US require certain vaccinations[0] for children, else they are not permitted to go to school (and in many places, not sending your children to school, without other arrangements, is illegal, so they are de-facto forced to comply, absent allowed religious/medical exemptions).
Sure, you might say that the scope of some of these new and proposed vaccination rules around COVID go much further, but I don't see a material difference. If we haven't been up in arms about requirements around childhood vaccinations, I don't think we can reasonably be upset about businesses requiring their employees to be vaccinated against COVID.
At this point my patience with the vaccine "hesitant" is gone. Unless you have a valid medical reason, if you are refusing to get vaccinated, you are actively inviting great harm on the health of your community, and that needs to stop. I do agree that literal vaccination by force would be going too far. But I am absolutely thrilled that my city requires vaccination for many indoor activities right now, and requires employees at those indoor businesses to be vaccinated, and that many private businesses are implementing their own vaccination requirements. It's the right thing to do, full stop.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/laws/state-reqs.ht...
You're quite underestimating how quickly sweeping away humans' rights for "the greater good" turns bad. I'm sure China is justifying the Uyghur camps with your exact sentence.
Here's some history... Basically, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that states can take strong measures under the 10th Amendment, and the Commerce Clause can be used for federal interventions.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/yourab...
[on edit: ALSO, wtf: vaccine refusal isn't a human right... In fact, ensuring vaccination helps satisfy Article 25 of the UN Declaration.]
In this case what is coercion or "consequences" of choosing to say no to the vaccine, will turn into something entirely different.
Here is one example on the subject of contact tracing for Covid and how it can be abused:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-seeks-to...
Let me ask you this one thing: if I have antibodies already, do you consider that a valid medical reason?
To be honest, if not, then I feel like you are not arguing in good faith.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that Denmark does the same, and more, if vaccinations number don't reach the thresholds needed to prevent healthcare systems from collapsing.
And you should know that Denmark is far from as "laissez faire" as many Americans imagine. For example even before Covid they were enforcing some very harsh social measures targeting self-isolating communities, in order to maintain social cohesion, for example.
We are way past the time frame for long-term effects to manifest themselves for a corona-like vaccine.
Your priors have to be absolutely outrageous if based on the currently available data you think the risks are even within an order of magnitude.
Of course, but it's a lot worse when a cure causes issues. The point of medicine is to "first, do no harm".
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
b) Isn't that "per 100,000 inhabitants", not "per 100,000 who catch the disease"?
People who argue against vaccines don't seem to think enough about that aspect.
No need to double up on the unknown risks of you already have immunity.
https://www.uab.edu/reporter/resources/be-healthy/item/9544-...
"This is particularly true of the mRNA vaccines. mRNA degrades incredibly rapidly. You wouldn't expect any of these vaccines to have any long-term side effects. And in fact, this has never occurred with any vaccine."
I wouldn't really call that "soon after it is administered".
And the same is also true for covid's long term effects. I'm still reading new articles/conclusions about those effects.
The median delay between vaccination and the onset of narcolepsy in that case was 42 days. Not nearly the four years magic number that sharken was waiting for. I would call that soon after it is administered. Far more people are well beyond that period after the Pfizer-Biontech vaccination than were ever administered Pandemrix.
> And the same is also true for covid's long term effects
Those long term effects are visible soon after infection. Both of your examples seem to be in support of my point.
In this context it is not as relevant how long the median time is for side-effects to show, but rather how long it takes before the vaccine is no longer used.
When you said "visible" I assumed you mean visible to the OP - but you meant visible in general. So you are not wrong, but as we can see from the case of Pandremix, a median of 42 made it take two years before the usage of the vaccine was stopped.
There are a lot of reasons why it would probably be different in the case of covid (e.g. more media presence from the beginning) but in general, you cannot directly compare thus number (like the 42 days) with the 4 years of the OP.
You could argue that the same could be happening with COVID vaccines, but I think that is unlikely given the unprecedented level of worldwide scrutiny on these.
In the case of Pandremix, the vaccine was continued to be used for 2 years or so after the first cases of narcolepsy became visible.
For me the major issue with the vaccine is the extremely fast track from inventing it to getting it out the door.
An FDA approval will not change my mind on the safety of the vaccine, only time can do that.
By that i mean that we need more time to assess the long-term effects, something that many pro-vaccine people seem unwilling to accept. That is unfortunate.