A lot of things, but just the top two would be enough:
1) Being able to sue. If you can sue J&J for baby powder, should be able to sue Pfizer for vaccines if anything goes wrong.
2) Falsifiability in government actions. Many rights have been taken away (some permanently) by saying "we just need to do this and then it will all be over" like "a few weeks to flatten the curve", "the last lockdown", and "x% vaccinated and we'll be back to normal".
But when they don't work, the people are blamed, more rights are taken and more restrictions imposed. It's never that the actions were wrong.
I expect something like if "70% of people are vaccinated then we expect no more than 5000 cases per day" and if the statement turns out to be false there will be no more vaccine impositions because it clearly will have turned out to be wrong.
If something doesn't work you shouldn't double down.
You cannot, with 100% accuracy, model a virus that is mutating in a population that includes the entire planet. We have things we know worked in the past, we try them, and we then modify our next move based on the results. We don't say "well we got that one wrong so now we're just not going to try anything". If every scientist took the approach you're suggesting we'd still be eating raw meat and living in caves.
Why is suing vital? What's insufficient about the existing National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html (I'm genuinely unfamiliar with any flaws it might have)
> Many rights have been taken away (some permanently)
What rights have been permanently removed? For that matter, what RIGHTS have been even temporarily suspended?
I could say I have a right to breathe air and someone would probably come around and tell me I'm wrong, but most people have some intuition for what a "natural" right is, and bristle when something encroaches on those.
If you experience severe enough side-effects from the vaccine to warrant a lawsuit, then you are still entitled to sue for compensation. The only thing that has changes is the entity who you are suing.
The Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program makes this process much easier than a traditional lawsuit, as you merely have to convince a judge that your symptoms were likely caused by the vaccine. If they agree, you get paid.
If you sued Pfizer, then you'd probably be in a class action, going up against some of the best lawyers in the world, in a case that would drag out for a decade or more, likely have no real say in the case strategy, and would just have to accept whatever agreement the class representative agrees to.
I know not everyone has the same set of restrictions on them, so I'm genuinely trying to understand if I'm missing something about how other areas are behaving. I know Australia is at the "papers, please" curfew stage, and that definitely bothers me a lot, but I haven't heard of anything like that in the USA.
Maybe the slope into authoritarianism is actually slippery.
Max compensation is $250k. Life insurance values my life far more. Documents are under seal. Payouts are paid by the tax payer, not the manufacturers. Cases are heard by HHS and defended by DOJ (more taxes footing the bill). HHS has repeatedly refused to add certain injuries to their compensation tables even after CDC directed research indicates that such injuries have been proven to be causal (eg: motor tics in those that received thimerosol containing vaccines). Most cases now go years before any decision is made when the original stated purpose of the program was speedy settlements (6 months or less). The only expert witnesses that might be allowed to speak in secret vaccine court will likely be the scientists that were paid to design the vaccine in question by industry. Doctors that have testified against industry in this court (and others like it in other nations) have had their careers destroyed by retaliatory tactics.
I find it quite funny and sad that you need to ask “what’s wrong with this special, secret court?” What’s NOT wrong with a special, secret court designed to protect a massive industry? NO PRODUCT CLASS should be protected in this manner.
I do think that given my own evaluation of the risks and rewards, the NVICP is perfectly sufficient for my own needs, but I can certainly see how one would be opposed to this on a systemic level, or if you believe the risk-reward ratio skews differently
How do you reach this conclusion?
At a max $250k per life, paid through a secret court with the deck stacked against the plaintiff, it doesn't appear to be sufficient for anyone's needs.
Yeah, there's a tiny risk that I'll end up in a situation where I get screwed over, but I'm significantly more likely to suffer harm from Covid.
Your own calculations will vary, of course - this is just the math given my own risk factors.
The quantity of money required to support my family in the event of my death is not affected by the odds of my death.
Whether I'm the perfect image of health or an obese, chainsmoking, binge drinker, the mortgage bill is always the same amount.
Well, I feel like the latter is a much better deal, even if it's still not ideal.
Understanding that base fear will help bridge the divide between groups.
- Fear, hesitancy about potential long term risks.
- Resistance to government mandating a vaccine (freedom, low trust in government, other options not being considered)
- Resistance to the cultural paradigm of "un-vaccinated = bad/deplorable person"
- Belief that the risk of COVID is already low (at least for them)
It is literally a carrot/stick routine. Do what I want? Get a carrot. Don't do what I want? I'll beat you with the stick of public shaming.
This site is the only public forum I've seen reasoned debate on. Everywhere else and debate/dissent are actively shut down. Any information that conflicts with the seeming narrative is made to disappear.
For example, major hospital/health orgs that have stated in the past that masks don't slow viral spread have removed that data in the complete absence of randomized, controlled trials showing that masks actually work. In fact, meta studies have routinely shown that masks don't work to prevent viral spread [0].
[0]https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...
I posted in an /r/NFL thread saying that asking every single QB if they are vaccinated, and then frothing at the mouth when they decline to answer, is mostly nothing but a witch hunt.
I received a permanent ban with the message from the mod "anti-vaxx moron". I'm not anti-vaxx, and I'm not a moron, but this is generally concerning behavior about the state of discussion surrounding Covid and the censorship taking place online. You aren't allowed to have an opinion that isn't "Vaxx up and mask up and harass anyone who doesn't".
You can verify that they and a few other websites changed the definition by checking archive.org
I'm not sure I'd feel more comfortable with the mRNA stuff being called something different, though.
I'm low risk, I wear a.mask everywhere, always, I rarely leave the house, my "city" has less than 500 people in it, and I have disinfectant and UV lights for deliveries. I go out in the very early morning or very late night, once a month to go shopping. I "work from home". My wife cannot be vaccinated at this time, either. Just a couple more data points.
People are bad at optimizing for low and long term risks, but doing something knowing it's bad for you is different than being anxious about what unknown effects a treatment might have.
By the time group 2 catches up (because years have gone by of the vaccine not causing widespread problems) the threat is gone. Meanwhile the animosity has not truly been diminished because the first group will feel the second is responsible for insert issue pertaining to millions of people willingly not getting vaccinated that caused them pain/suffering.
It's almost like many people are "worried" about "long term effects" as just a smoke-screen to run out the clock on the issue...
A recent study (last week) came out showing after three months it starts wearing and you need to get another vaccine. You will have different people at various levels of vaccines shots (1 to 3 and by Jan you could need a fourth). What being vaccinated means based on the number of shots and where you are in the wearoff cycle makes the vac vs unvac divided not based on reality. If you had one shot got a side effect and decided not to get the next shot where does that person fit?
The two groups(Those opposed to vaccination due to potential long term effects and those in favor of vaccination immediately) cannot come to a meeting of the minds. Both sides see a potential existential threat that they're prioritizing that makes them diametrically opposed to the other point of view ("if you don't get the vaccine today you're actively spreading the plague" vs "if I get the shot, my blood will clot and I'll be sterile"). The truth is somewhere in the middle.
The whole issue with vaccination is that of threat perception. Everyone is building hypothetical models for the future based, mostly, on personal feeling and enough data points from experts to justify that feeling.
Again: There are a number of people who feel that the threat of the virus is less than the threat of the vaccine and are thus using whatever means presently available to them to justify to others why they believe that, just as there are people who feel that the virus is a greater threat than the cure.
I think that statement captures the divide. The belief that the experts have been shutdown in favour of topdown policies means trusting a select few experts who have used top down politices to shutting down discussion and threaten careers for those who do not tow the line. How do you get past that one side has total faith in the current crop of acceptable experts and the other sees them acting in favour of someone else's agenda thus has little faith in those experts.
Which is why I said that you can't bridge this gap. This is the point where "polite discourse" to try and convince people ends. There's no conversation to be had to convince someone to get the vaccine if they're in this line of thought, you can only mandate it with some sort of penalty in place for non-compliance. They are aware that there is a risk in existing unvaccinated, but they see a larger risk elsewhere in the potential side effects.
How do you convince someone something will or won't happen in the future when it represents an idea completely contrary to their worldview? I don't know, and if I did I'd be too rich to post on HN.
When it comes to the vaccine, I got the first shot (Moderna) and had such a terrible week following it that my doctor was fairly convinced I probably already had COVID. Everyone I know had a much stronger reaction to the second shot than to the first, so I've opted to remain partially vaccinated.
With Delta in full swing, I'm now reconsidering that, but am making arrangements in advance to be out of work for another week or two, as that's my expectation going in.
All of that said, the folks I know who are unvaccinated have either already had COVID, so they're just trusting their immune system, or they are in a relatively low-risk group, and are concerned about long-term vaccine side-effects. All of them are fully vaccinated in all other regards, just not with COVID. Make of that what you will, but very few of them fall into the caricatures I see bandied about in the comments here.
Incidentally, I'm also concerned about long-term side effects, but I figure at this point, we'll have to solve that problem as a society, if they ever show up enmasse.
Counter-anecdata: everyone I know (in the UK[1]) had a much milder reaction to the second than the first - first one knocked most people out for a day or two; second one was half a day in the worst cases, couple of hours in the main.
[1] Which means AZ or J&J, I think, not Moderna. But it's anecdata, it's never going to be 100% helpful.
But diseases don’t work like this. If you get sick, you will get others sick. If you get very sick, you will occupy a hospitable bed. Given current hospital utilization rates, this could well end in a sick person being turned away.
Given the societal costs, it seems fair to me to ask for a stronger justification than “I don’t think the virus will hurt me”
In fact, everything you do outisde of your workhours is your personal risk, so it needs to be banned I guess.
Sounds fine to me. I am blind and can not do most of the fancy recreational activities you sighted people are so fond of. So why should I care. In fact, I should immediately start a petition that makes your lifes more dull and miserable. But guess what, no. Thats not my thing. I am not an asshole.
We do outlaw almost every sort of behavior that risks OTHERS safety.
>Almost every sport except chess bears a risk comparable to what you say above.
I'm not aware of any sport which is mandatory, as far as I know everyone participating is doing so willingly.
>And most recreational activities also bear a risk that you might have an accident, which could put some stress on the people working at the hospital.
Again, I'm not aware of any recreational activity that is a required activity. I'm also not aware of any that are participated in by so many people that is simultaneously so risky that we have an issue with ICU beds. Can you name one? We have mountains of data showing that covid outbreaks stress hospital systems and are in fact doing that right now. I'm not aware of any evidence that sports or recreational activities do the same, but I'm open to learning.
>Heck, the helicopter pilot could crash while they bring you to safety, so you implicitly killed them.
The helicopter pilot voluntarily signed up to be a helicopter pilot, nobody forced him to do so.
>Sounds fine to me. I am blind and can not do most of the fancy recreational activities you sighted people are so fond of. So why should I care. In fact, I should immediately start a petition that makes your lifes more dull and miserable. But guess what, no. Thats not my thing. I am not an asshole.
Well, you're comparing recreational activities that carry low risk and have 0 history of causing an issue with ICU beds, to a disease which has an extremely high transmission rate, and is provably causing issues with ICU beds. So it makes your arguments seem rather silly.
Do you claim you receive substantial benefits from not getting a shot? Because I claim society gets substantial benefits from you getting vaccinated.
You’re trying to make this a binary thing, but we live in a society where collectively we try to make small trades in liberty for collective benefit.
I do expect you not to drive 60MPH in front of my house where my children play. I do not expect you to give up tennis.
I am willing to retract my retarded claim if you do the same.
And driving slower almost certainly takes more of your time every year than getting a shot. Both measures save other people’s lives. I don’t think you have a leg to stand on here.
And yes, of course, with a different situation, my decision might be different. If covid were as harsh as our media and government claimed at the beginning of the first lockdown, I would certainly get a shot. However, it turned out the media and government have overstated the danger, apparently to achieve compliance. This sort of lie (we were told "everyone will know someone who died") was my wakeup call. I was originally mislead and expected a deathrate of 1%. As it turns out, almost only the elderly die, and the deathrate (including the elderly) is around 0.1%. Wrong order of magnitude for real panic on my side.
Regarding side-effect-free - not sure anyone ever claimed that? I understand that the relative risk is very low when compared to the risks associated with the disease itself - even for those that might expect milder symptoms from covid. I think people (myself included) are just really really bad at assessing these kind of risk/reward equations - I don't think we have the right tools for it, and our assessments are polluted by our personal history/culture/biases (in every direction).
I can't agree with your assessment of overstating the danger - the full hospital wards and large death numbers at the height of the pandemic before vaccines are enough reasons for me to accept that the costs are high enough for the small risk/inconvenience I'd pay personally.
I also know personally people in public health and can vouch for the sincerity of their (very) educated advice. If anything they have been consistently critical of governments being too slow to accept their recommendations (due to political pressures). I'd feel foolish for thinking I would know better than they who have spent their entire career in this area. I know that's an appeal to authority which isn't always warranted - but I'm comfortable with landing on that side of the fence.
To be fair, this is what the vaccines do.
Well the main feature of the vaccine over the actual virus is that the vaccine doesn't give you covid. The vaccine doesn't cover all of the multitude of compounds your body might recognize on the virus, but it covers enough for most people to build a better immune response to the actual virus than nothing. There is the issue that the viral strains are mutating and so over time so that a recently-vaccinated person today will probably do worse than a recently-vaccinated person 6 months ago, but there's not really much you can do about that.
I never said that humanity couldn't survive without a vaccine. Clearly we can. We also can survive with rotten meat and with poor shelter and with rampant war and famine. Sure a larger portion of us would die, but humanity would certainly survive.
Anyway my point was that when you're infected with a virus, your body basically builds up the ability to recognize certain proteins that the virus expresses and uses that to fight it off. It takes time to build up the ability to fight it off. The vaccine exposes you to basically the same proteins so that your body is able to identify and fight off the virus more quickly after infection. So really the vaccines are just priming your immune system so that it can better do its job.
I'm not really sure what your point is. We shouldn't try to help those with weaker immune systems survive? How far should we take this? Should we as a society not make an effort to help the physically disabled, the old, the blind, etc. survive? Looking to the wild, basically no members of those groups survive. Is that what we should aim for?
If my ability to make a living will be held hostage based on my vaccination status, or if https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4980 gets passed, I will change my mind and get the vaccine just so I can gtfo of here.
What the question your parent poses can do is get to the root of the objection your conversation partner has. "What would make you change your mind" forces the conversation in the direction of uncovering the true source of the disagreement. It helps to avoid talking about "symptoms" or issues that you might find important but are not important to your partner. It helps avoid talking past each other. It helps identify what issues are important to the other person.
If there is nothing that will change one's position, it's not worth engaging because the outcome is set.
Sounds like you should take a look at Street Epistemology. It is a modern version of the Socratic method that asks questions similar to that. The goal is not to make your interlocutor change their mind necessarily, but instead to explore the reasons for the beliefs they hold and whether they may be sufficently justified or not.
I hope that this latest change sways some people but I don't think it will be a lot.
Unless you’re dealing with an extraordinary individual or the issue is relatively trivial then you won’t be told sufficient reasons. A lot of what motivates us is deep down and dumb and we rarely want to admit it even if we’re aware of it which is even rarer. I find that examining reasons to change my own mind is much more fruitful because it’s harder to lie to myself albeit still far too easy.
This is a good example of what I was talking about. You don’t trust big pharma? Most people who say that will still pop some ibuprofen etc when they get a headache so really they do trust big pharma when it suits them. The real reason is deeper down.
On the other hand, any time I see a pharmaceutical ad for some new wonder drug, my incientive-caused-bias hackles are immediately raised.
Clearly Ibuprofen is a product of big pharma, therefore if it were merely distrust of big pharma then using it and all other ordinary drugs like it would be out of the question. Additionally, there are big lobby interests for products and services we all use all the time. Why make exceptions for them? Not trusting big pharma is post-facto rationalization as reasonable caution evaporated sometime before the first 500 million people got vaccinated. No, there are simpler underlying reasons like being disproportionately afraid of the vaccine vs the virus or not feeling any risk and not caring about the risk of others etc.
Im sure it’s involved to some degree but I don’t think anyone has sufficient data to know by how much. It could be insinuated that the demonization of the unvaccinated and the call for the use of force against them is an expression of narcissism by the vaccinated who are frustrated that their “genius” is being ignored. Both accusations have equal plausibility and lack of data.
These are too sophisticated reasons. More realistic renditions might be “that other tribe gets vaccinated loudly therefore I won’t” and “I’m strong, only the weak get vaccinated.” Of course the same in-group dynamics etc motivate the vaccinated and we’d be lying to ourselves if we thought our actions are purely rational and charitable.
For me number one would be: if the CDC starts tracking re-infection rate in the non-vaccinated, and puts that data front and center as key KPIs on all their releases.
Yes, so we can deduce remaining susceptible.
The basic model in a pandemic is SIR. Susceptible, Infected, Recovered. Vaxed is a secondary factor.
We live in crazy land when I have to explain why we should be tracking Susceptible (computable when you know number infected and reinfection rate). (not to pick on you, just speaking about general trends I'm seeing)
Imagine if in computing someone asked, "why should we measure RAM usage?"
It's like, the very very basics.
Without that, you cannot accurately model and forecast the pandemic. And you can see for yourself how poorly the CDC is still modeling this when they said "vax work great! no masks!" and then "shit! vax don't work as great as we said, masks back on!" It's like they are pretending that natural immunity without a vax does not exist. One of the very basics in epi, both theoretically and empirically from mountains of data. It's crazy town, I tell you.
At the individual level you should know this to make the proper conditional decisions. There is scant benefit to be had from the vax if you were infected and recovered naturally (and yes, I've read the Kentucky study, and if that's someone's main argument they're a moron).
The moment you start talking about techniques you've already objectified the person across you to something to be finessed over, and as such less than a full person.
So many of our recent social-media extremized public debates escalate to the point of denying or diminishing the other side's personhood. They are an "obstacle" to overcome for some greater purpose, and thus we "must" manipulate, coerce or the very least impress conclusions down their throats.
The meta-context is that today we are all more psychologically fragile and the breadth of data points we have to reconcile gets wider (in no small part thanks to engagement metrics optimizations). We all turn into fanatics of some sort or other, fueled by this anxiety, including that of self-doubt. At no point we are incentivized to participate in the process of rationality together, we're only incentivized to willfully assert our own conclusions.
I see most of the "resistance" as an acting out as a protest for having been left out of this process, including having been honored in anxieties. Notice I have said nothing about the truth value of conclusions, nor am trying to draw a false equivalency of "all-sides-ism", because the sense of participation, or lack thereof, is orthogonal to the truth of content, but hurts just as much when neglected.
We've forgot how to be a fellowship of people who share similar fates and see each other as such, we've turned into mere proposition debating machines.
There's nothing about any sort of technique that is inherent to objects and not people. Techniques are something used to achieve a goal, and if a person is involved in that goal, there's nothing wrong with using that sort of verbiage.
>thus we "must" manipulate, coerce or the very least impress conclusions down their throats.
You've made any attempt to change someone's mind out to automatically be something that's naturally evil. Ridiculous.
That’s what turning a person to an object is; to reduce them to something to achieve your goal over/with/through.
> You've made any attempt to change someone's mind out to automatically be something that's naturally evil. Ridiculous.
Ridiculousness is originating from your misframing which ignores the condition of participation vs instrumentalization I’ve laid out.
To give an example to non-objectifying persuasion; people pay money to get their own minds changed through therapy and it still takes years with no guaranteed success. This is obviously not “evil” (at least not inherently) because it is participatory and comes from a place of love and growth and alleviation of suffering.
Because it's not like they live in a representative democracy, right?
I agree, engaging people is a good way to go. I don't know any anti-vaxxers personally, so I have to actively work to remind myself they might not all have the same reasons as the ones I know impersonally (who all happen to be full of misinfo, like Eric Clapton, et al.).
There are no silver bullets that lead to peace and harmony, obviously, but a greater understanding of each other is good for many reasons.
It boils down to a really muddy mix of small things that all sum up to a decision against it.
For instance, I'm not the risk group and, due to being super medically conservative for _everything_ (to a fault!), I tend to not take medical interventions I don't strictly require.
I think that the vaccines are overwhelmingly safe from an absolute risk perspective, but among the least safe things we've deployed into wide usage from a relative risk perspective. It's tough for me to convince myself to take an intervention I don't need. Stack onto this things like the PREP act, guaranteed orders, big pharma's history, this being the first mRna vaccine to get through Phase III, and more hesitancy gets added on my side. As data from other countries rolls in, the efficacy side is also interesting, but that's a different topic.
Finally, there's just general disposition. Whether lockdowns, restrictions, or vaccinations, people seem to fall into one of two groups: those who favor public heath above all else, and those who favor personal liberty above all else. Due to some wrongthink, I fall into the latter camp. The behavior of those in the former camp pushes me away from my medically hesitant "wait and see" position, into one of, frankly, staunch dismissal out of pure curiosity to see how willing society is to marginalize those who made a 'wrong' medical decision.
Also, do keep in mind the premise here is that if enough of us get vaccinated as fast as possible, we can, among possibly other things, stop the spread of the disease, stop variants from forming and also lighten the load of hospitals so they can treat more people, including those without COVID. I'm all for curiosity, but is it worth it in this case? Also, you can still observe other peoples' behaviors if you get the vaccine. Even if you want to just observe the people you're close with interact with you directly, you can get it and not tell them.
I'm not sure what you mean? I have no control over how another group chooses to discriminate.
>is there someone you trust with a credentialed medical opinion you can talk to about this instead, like your family physician?
There's this presumption that people who are making the 'wrong' choice are simply uninformed or haven't sought 'qualified' medical advice. It's a bit condescending tbh.
To answer the question directly, yep. I've spoken to my doctor about it. We'll probably talk about it again next time I go in for blood work. His recommendation is his recommendation.
You said you were less likely to get the vaccine because of how people in an out group were behaving. That's what I mean.
The issue is that the behavior of this other group isn't benign. It comes with a very real "comply or else", which already affects my ability to participate in society due to a particular transient medical choice. It's a tough sell that medical decisions are best made under threats of harm (legal, livelihood, societal participation, etc..).
I think it's fairly natural when someone tries to coerce you into something to reject it on principle alone. There's big difference from "you should stop eating so much McDonalds because of downstream effects on the medical system" and "you WILL stop eating McDonalds or we will take away your autonomy to do so." I will not be forced into medical decisions by a mob threatening harm. If/when I get the vaccine, it will because my view of the risks/need ticked in favor of it (in theory anyways).
Eric Clapton took both doses. He suffered some severe adverse reactions. What’s the misinfo?
I haven't had the second jab. I've had nothing but pressure from almost everyone I know to get the second shot, and am still on the fence.
Instead, they are treated as if they are a threat. As if they are the ones who are overstressing the health care systems. When often instead they are the frontline workers these systems depend on. Many give care in nursing homes and at hospitals (in the case of nurses, a large percentage of whom still refuse the vax).
How many health care resources does the average unvaxxed healthy 26 year old consume? A lot less than the chronic smoker, the morbidly obese, the elderly, etc.
I'm sorry that people in your family are being treated like a threat. Can you elaborate on that? I also feel for those if there are issues at work, and I really think US should mandate paid leave to take the vaccine (at a minimum), but that's another discussion. :)
This report details the findings of a case-control evaluation of the association between vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in Kentucky during May–June 2021 among persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. Kentucky residents who were not vaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated
I understand that you believe that unvaxxed are where the mutations happen. Do you have any peer reviewed studies showing this to be the case? We know from experience with antibiotics that the opposite is true. Humans devise a treatment, the pathogen encounters that treatment, then mutates to circumvent it. Of course I'm a layman so if anyone knows why the opposite would be the case for COVID-19 or viruses in general, I'm happy to be educated on the matter.
I do believe the carrot works better than the stick, but I don't think this goes as far as being "treated like a threat".
I understand that you believe that unvaxxed are where the mutations happen.
I didn't say this and this is not my full belief :( . Mutations can happen at any new infection (including breakthrough infections, yes). So, the premise is to reduce new infections as much and as fast as possible. I think we're on the same page that vaccination greatly reduces your chance of infection (even more than having previously been infected before). Getting the most people vaccinated, as fast as possible, is the most efficient way to achieve that.
Overall, though, you've gotten pretty far away from the original question, "Well, what would it take for you to change your mind [to get the vaccine]?"
I will continue to disagree with your one size fits all prescription. It would be trivial to allow an antibody test in lieu of vaccination.
Responding to your edit: I already answered the original question. Allow an antibody test to prove immunity. Stop demanding vax as if it's the only way to acquire immunity.
It's quite funny to me how presumptuous covid vaxx advocates are. They seem to be saying, "you're going to have to relent eventually. What do I need to say to speed that up?". As if there aren't people who will listen to what they have to say yet continue to refuse and have perfectly valid reasons to do so.
That's not an answer to the original question. That's an excuse to not take the vaccine, and I've already addressed how these two things aren't the same.
If 999/1000 of vaccinated people were uninfected while only 998/1000 unvaccinated (but recovered) people were uninfected that would amount to that 2x improvement.
When you look at the error bars on those numbers (due to the ridiculously low statistics of the study) the conclusion becomes even more suspect.
Frankly a study involving less than a thousand participants is pretty poor justification to strip others of their rights.
"The key to unlock NYC" just reeks of cheesy marketing department brainstorming doesnt it?
All that being said, I don't think scare mongering about social credit systems is helpful in this discussion. Most I've talked to who support vax pass are resolutely opposed to China-style social credit systems and I believe such a system would be difficult to implement in the U.S.
I've been living normally without lockdowns or masks for about 18 months now. So has the rest of my country Sweden. So excuse me if I'm not running around fearing for my life anymore. I'm pretty much convinced we all have natural antibodies by now.
What convinced you? Because the upward trend of new cases worldwide (including Sweden) doesn't convince me.
A vaccine that (1) did not use cell lines from aborted fetuses at any point in its discovery, development, testing, or production, and that (2) has been studied for 10 years to determine long-term safety and efficacy like we would do with any other vaccine.
What would it take to change your mind?
In general terms, I would need the society at large to get off the moral high horse and engage in an honest cost/benefit analysis of all covid measures.
Isn't it hypocritical that people accuse the young not taking the vaccine of being selfish, while hoarding the vaccines away from vulnerable people in poorer parts of the world?
It can only hypocritical if it is the same people making both arguments.
That said, I'm absolutely getting _my_ booster as soon as I'm eligible. That isn't hypocritical; at that point the decision was made and if I don't take the booster it won't be sent to sub-Saharan Africa.
Not that this is a silver bullet that automatically leads to peace and harmony, but it's a step in the right direction.