The inflection point happens in the 40's or 50's:
People under 40 are 52% of the population and 2% of COVID deaths (11,212)
Which of course means people over 40 are 48% of the population and 98% of COVID deaths (529,402)
These numbers reflect only cases where the CDC knows their age. The stats are here, which has a nice graph showing just how outsized the deaths as people get older: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics (scroll to "Deaths by Age Group")
Covid is (literally) exponentially worse as you get older. But it's not really an issue for young, healthy people. Alas, not very many people can truly call themselves healthy, which is a concern in its own right.
This is the same thing with wearing masks... you can't just look at the effect on the person wearing the mask, but also on other people around them.
Maybe it's not good faith, I don't know at this point.
So it’s dishearteningly easy to look at this situation from that point of view: “my government, and everyone currently exercising power, has had 18 months to do the dirty work of expanding health capacity, retrofitting buildings to make them safer in the presence of a virus (e.g. open-air supermarkets), and whatever else is necessary to help us all live how we’d like to during this time,” and instead they’ve not really tackled any of those things. We got the vaccine, which is a huge triumph, but beyond that it’s just “hey we need you as an individual to stay at home another couple years while we slack off and keep ignoring any opportunity for letting you live the life you did before.”
I know not all real world systems are as flexible as software systems, especially true of the Frankenstein healthcare system we have here. But it really is not hard for me to say “if this were my problem, I would solve it like an engineer, by building (more capacity, tools to make it easier to grow manpower in the areas they’re needed).” And then be upset at the people who are asking me to make my own life shit for another couple years so that they can avoid making life-long improvements to the systems that need it. Because if our roles were reversed here — if I were the one at risk of this disease — I would never ask of them what they’re asking of me. It’s just not how I think about the world or how I think about solving problems.
I think some people voicing GP’s comment really are doing it in good faith. People have different lived experiences that lead to radically different ways of thinking about the world and how to act within it. These disagreements will always exist. The pragmatist accepts that and says that of the range of possible solutions to your problem, the most successful is the one that can be grounded in this world where people disagree with each other and pursue their own interests.
Coming from an engineering and entrepreneurial background, I can't help but recognize myself in your comment. I do feel like we should have done a "war effort" to improve our healthcare system and even our public buildings. I can agree it's not an easy task, but it seems 1000 times more productive than locking people at home. Plus, it would ready us for the next epidemic or pandemic. Now, if we get hit again, we're doing lockdowns again.
As for protecting myself versus protecting others, I do understand the logic. I haven't been living under a rock for the past 18 months. However, what I hear is that vaccinated people don't get very sick from Covid. If that is true, why do I need to be vaccinated as well? Aren't they already protected? Let's put this simply, my grand-mother is 84 years old and vaccinated. If I end up giving her Covid she will most-likely be fine. And even if I were vaccinated I could still catch and transmit Covid.
Once all at-risk people are vaccinated, haven't we "won" the war on Covid?
But I still wonder how you're not getting this. The vaccine greatly reduces your chances of getting sick, and getting stuck in a hospital, but it doesn't completely eliminate it. If everyone between 18-50 refused to get vaccinated, we would still see a surge in hospitalizations. Do you not understand the word "protected"?
Do you think that the utility of a young person getting vaccinated is zero? Or do you think it's just too small to be worth the inconvenience? I don't know why the conversation turns into "why do I have to do this" - can't we focus instead on why you aren't willing to help your community?
And again, has literally nobody addressed this in the last 18 months that you've read? I'm sure my tone is more hostile than I intend, but I'm really confused at this point.
It's like the trivial "my body my choice right?" gotcha attempt. Does that serve any purpose other than to rile people up who are already in an echo chamber?
Your phrasing of the point, "I'm frustrated with these mandates and may not agree with them for this reason" is fine. But coming at it from a place of articulated-genuine curiosity doesn't make any sense to me, today, given how long these conversations have been happening.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
Of those deaths, many had pre-existing conditions such as cancer, heart failure, obesity, and diabetes which drastically increased their risks. You'll have to do your own calculations on how that impacts your expected mortality rate.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
I encourage healthy adults to get vaccinated because the personal benefits outweigh the risks, and it can help reduce load on the healthcare system.
of the ~7000 people that died of covid in the study ~1000 had no comorbidities. unfortunately this doesnt break down by vax status, but based on other studies ~90% of hospitalizations are unvaxed. So you can probably get an order of magnitude approximation for your metric.
Unfortunately though this isn't the only metric that should be considered because people with no comorbidities can transmit the virus to people with comorbidities, so you really want to take that into account.
Two weeks? What do you need to flatten the curve for? Here’s your mask, now wear two until we have 70% vaccination, and I’ll let you out of the concentration camp when we reach 90% vaccination. Now you just owe me two weeks for delta.
This study suggests about 0.5% of unvaccinated population requires hospitalization.
Obviously just one study, but across about six million people, seems a decent back of the envelope guess.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
All in all, what I wanted to say is that the message to the masses is intentionally or not simplified, and it hides the nuances that everyone should apply to themselves. In my case, I have made drastic changes to better my health after a diagnosis of severe autoimmune illness more than a decade ago, and today am in much better health than I was then, so I have no benefit to expect from taking the vaccine.
Two sources:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
And I recently discovered that the reporting of overwhelmed hospitals is somewhat misleading as well, as in the US hospitals typically operate at 80-90% capacity for financial reasons, especially ICU wings which are expensive to upkeep on standby. So when the news reports that hospitals $CITY are overwhelmed, that's can be as little as ≈10% increase in patients.
If anything good comes of covid, hopefully we can see some effort to improve surge capacity in the US, but I'm not holding my breath.
Some real-world data: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143741231155210240...
A Twitter thread from a scientist and vaccine researcher: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143814553785796199...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
The article states that boys are 6 times more likely to get myocarditis than be hospitalized with covid. But such a claim is inherently biased. You have an extremely well followed population on the vaccine case, and a relatively poorly followed population in the infected case. As such, it should not be surprising when results like this are found; boys in that age range are 3-9 times more likely to get myocarditis from COVID itself than the vaccine: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...