What would you have us do instead? The elderly are severely at risk from the flu but we don't have winter lockdowns for them?

I'm not totally sure what point you're making, but we do strongly recommend the flu vaccine for people interacting with the elderly.

Yes we do. But do we have yearly winter lockdowns to protect the vulnerable from flu?

What can we do for those people, assuming forever-lockdowns aren’t an option?

Pressure those who choose to go unvaccinated for misguided "personal freedom" reasons to reconsider their choices.

How's that been working out so far?

At some point life returns to normal.

The article explains why a vaccination is not a long term guarantee you will not get and or spread this new flu.

"It's not a perfect solution so we might as well do nothing instead!"

Come on. Getting vaccinated has more than enough utility for you and for others to make it a good choice on either principle alone.

Wearing a helmet on an airplane isn’t a perfect solution to airplanes crashing but it could potentially save your life, but we seem fine with the risk trade off of not wearing one. No decisions we make about responding to COVID will be risk free, the question is which trade offs we should accept. No matter how much pressure is put on the unvaccinated some people will refuse to get it, and unless you’re suggesting administering it by force eventually that tactic will meet diminishing returns.

You picked the wrong example. Helmets will do very little to reduce fatalities from air travel simply because the mechanics of how those fatalities occure.

Wearing a helmet while driving a car, however, has a pretty good chance of reduxing injuries and fatalities (probably even better than wearing a helmet when riding a bike on a seperated bike path.)

I don't think this is really a question of people analyzing the trade-offs. This how to do with how the risks and the activity are percieved, people are generally really at accurately assessing such risks.

Yes, and parachutes do not prevent airplanes from crashing.

Brushing your teeth doesnt guarantee you will have no cavities.

Radiation doesnt guarantee you will be cancer free.

At no point did the vaccine promise full immunity.

The article also explains about the significant risk reduction for getting & passing it on, so I think the point still stands.

Have ICU beds ready to accommodate them and not have them filled with unneccesary cases from unvaccinated individuals that have chosen freely to be unvaccinated.

But in my callousness I would simply illegalize treating people that are anti-vaccine.

Is any country with high vaccination numbers struggling for ICU beds at the minute?

> But in my callousness I would simply illegalize treating people that are anti-vaccine.

What about not treating lung cancer in smokers? Or diabetes in morbidly obese?

There are very few people who can legitimately not get vaccinated for science reasons.

The immunocompromised will have accelerated shots etc.

More generally, we can't solve for the 0.5%, we have to solve for the 98%.

Then those people should be at least as scared of the unvaccinated as COVID itself. That will be their primary infection vector.

You still spread covid whether you are vaccinated or not

Sure, there's just many fewer vaccinated people getting infected, so many fewer spreading it. And when they do get infected, they are infectious to others for significantly less time.

Either way, you're still less of a risk to your own health and the health of other people if you get vaccinated.

You seem to be trying to make a black & white argument: The vaccine isn't 100% effective, and therefore isn't necessary/people shouldn't feel obligated/it doesn't reduce risk/or something like that. But it doesn't have to be perfect in order for it to be much much much much much much much much much much better than nothing

> Either way, you're still less of a risk to your own health and the health of other people if you get vaccinated.

Both potential short and long-term side effects of the vaccines put aside for a moment and how important things like fertility and reproduction cannot have been adequately tested yet, I think the comment about risking others' health is completely backwards once you think through the logic of it. If my reasoning is in any way illogical, please clarify for me how you think it is wrong.

If the vaccines are reducing symptoms to the point that the vaccinated might not quickly realize that they're Covid carriers and are still going about their days, wouldn't they be more likely to encounter and put at risk more people than the unvaccinated who know that they're sick and far more likely to stay at home and isolate?