Well, kind of.

1) There really is no such thing as 'Vaccine Risk' in the material sense, any more than we would us language such as 'Flying Risk'. Esp. in the US where thee is no AZ vaccine, the risk is negligible.

'The Vaccine Risk' in the minds of many people isn't consistent with the reality, and it's a major communications problem.

Anti-vaxxers are internalizing and propagandizing a degree of risk that just isn't real, leading to bad health outcomes.

Sure, technically, it's a risk, but so is anything else.

2) 'No push for 100% Vaccine' - maybe not for '100%' but we really need to push hard on vaccines.

COVID is not scary because it's excessively deadly. It's scary because it's excessively viral, meaning, it's a community disease, less so an individual disease.

Stopping COVID means stoping the spread, not trying to cure people when they get it.

With 95% vaccination, R0 drops below 1 and so hospitalization rates are low, we can focus on the hard cases.

With 0% vaccination and a 85% effective drug, well, 'everyone' will get COVID, and a scary number of them will die.

The 'Best Answer' by far in a world where vaccines are very safe, very cheap, and very effective - is to get 'as many as we can' vaccinated. And then use the expensive drugs on the hard cases.

Most people see themselves as healthy and thus in the pool of "very unlikely to have complications from COVID-19" pool. Argue with that however you want (people being dishonest with their own perception of health), but that's how they see it. So taking preventative measures because it is forced down their throats seems hostile. Made worse that 1) vax won't stop the spread, or we would have seen that by now, and 2) we need to boost the vax every few months? That sounds highly suspect to a lot of people.

If you were at risk, you can get vaccinated, why force a healthy person? (The answer is mostly for the folks who can't vaccinate, but those folks are screwed any way you look at this pandemic if we are honest).

No, the vaccine is fairly detrimental to the spread of COVID.

Overwhelmingly, the numbers of people in Hospitals are unvaxxed.

In BC, the last report I saw for a region had almost 100% of people below 50 in intensive care unvaxxed, almost the same numbers for seniors.

Rates of spread are actually coming down even while business activity expands, vaccines are a potent part of this. Not perfect, but a major component.

So again: COVID is a community problem, less so an individual one. 'Stopping the Dominos' from dropping is much better than trying to lift all the dominos up after they fell with drugs.

"So taking preventative measures because it is forced down their throats seems hostile."

It's not hostile to the 80-90% of people in most advanced nations who have basic civil maturity. It's a mild distraction with obvious individual and group benefits, to the point where I have a hard time understanding lack of participation (yes, it's very easy to understand hesitancy and hostility to being required to do something, but not to the level where people actually would avoid doing something obviously beneficial).

I remember when smoking was banned indoors, I get that people were a begrudged, but I think in reality most people 'got it'.

+1

Not to mention, everyone I know knows at least one person who had a stroke within weeks of getting one of the "vaccines", I know three. Previous to this past year I've known one person in my entire life that had a stroke, and it was my wife's uncle who was in his 90s.

My friend's mom technically died in a clinical sense 5 minutes post first jab while still in the parking lot under observation. My other friend's brother dropped dead exactly 36 hours post 2nd jab. Both were zapped back to life. One of them had a pre-existing heart condition. I know at least one ER RN that readily admits they're seeing a high increase in ER cases of young (20s) people with various neurological and cardiac issues 1-14 days post vaccine (and are almost never treating them as vaccine-caused issues hence they stay unreported). The apologists will say things like "but you don't know it was the vaccine". Sure, you're never 100% positive about anything dealing with as complex system as a human body. What you should do is start with "what has changed recently", and almost always the patients that my RN wife handles say "I've been recently vaccinated.".

You can't do stats like this. Even if it seems like a small error or being overly pedantic, it doesn't work for a pretty large number of obvious and less obvious reasons.

Vaccine side effect tracking is done pretty thoroughly, so if what you see would be a real and generic phenomenon, it would have been noticed by now.

Right. The official estimate by the CDC is that 1 in 40 vaccine injuries is reported.

None of the 3 I personally know were (suppose that's just anecdotal also). The one received the second dose 3 days before a major stroke, and massive blood clots. I'm sure it was tOtAlLy UnReLaTeD.

Nobody can tell you based on one case whether it was related or not. That's the point. And that's why they have to report every death or serious injury within 30 days of vaccination. At least here, in the EU. No matter what. If you get hit by a bus, it should be reported and recorded. Exactly because there is no other way to find rare side effects.

> The official estimate by the CDC is that 1 in 40 vaccine injuries is reported.

Source?

All risks are relative, yes. Covid risk is also negligible for some groups (like small children), it is very likely very comparable or smaller than the tiny vaccine risk. There is a lot of propagandizing degrees of risk across all tribes -- democrats wildly overestimating risk of hospitalization and republicans wildly underestimating it.

But what about 75% vaccination (lots of countries are there already or very close) and 85% effective drug? How much effort much be spent on hunting down every last antivaxxer and how many side effects of that are acceptable? (like destroying public support for vaccine mandates in general, creating nice shiny tools for the next wannabe authoritarian, etc)

For endemic viruses that also spread through domestic pets 95% becomes unobtainable unless we start going after the 100,000,000 domestic pets in the US alone.

We don't know the likelihood that it spreads through pets, pets also have owners who make up the entirety of their interactions (ie pets don't take the bus, go to restaurants, go to work or school) so of owners are vaxxed we're kosher.

As for endemic, yes, a problem, but of a different kind.

> one has to necessarily take on vaccine risk without catching covid

Thankfully that risk is tiny.

> Also, if the new pill ends up as effective as they say it is, there is no reason to push for 100% vax uptake anymore -- it would turn covid into a slightly more dangerous cold.

No, vaccination remains far cheaper. Mass vaccination also reduces the risk of mutation, and of infection others.

If everybody gets vaccinated AND this anti viral is widely available for those infected, COVID will be well and truly deranged.

> Mass vaccination also reduces the risk of mutation, and of infection others.

Only if the vaccine is effective enough. With these moderately effective vaccines, there is a danger that breakthrough cases will generate new variants.

This is drivel. First, even against Delta, the vaccines remain some of the most effective vaccines ever, at preventing severe disease.

Second, COVID just doesn't mutate that much considering how prevalent it is, in part due to RNA proofreading.

Moreover, no, emperical evidence shows the neutralizing antibody effect of vaccines decreases the spread of variants.

> Moreover, no, emperical evidence shows the neutralizing antibody effect of vaccines decreases the spread of variants.

The world started vaccinating in January - 10 months ago. You won't even begin to know the true effectiveness of the vaccine and its outcomes until at least one more year goes by ey? Then you can begin to compare year over year health outcomes in highly vaccinated groups, vs unvaccinated, in the same region (same viral seasonality profile), across age groups. I can't wait to see regional all cause mortality with accurately age (and other vars) adjusted data between the vaxxed and unvaxxed.

This is true, however we are pretty certain about the numbers and they are overwhelmingly point towards getting the vaccine. (Maybe except for the very young, by witch I mean under 25 maybe under 20. But I don't know those numbers, so that might even not be a question either.)

One thing to keep in mind is that P(getting covid) is about 1. But for sure greater than 50%, especially if people don't vaccinate in large numbers (I mean others, of course) and if we do away with masks and restrictions.

When doing this kind of comparison, vaccines are tricky, because if you vaccinate close to 100%, then you'll have very few cases, so P(getting covid) will be rather small and then it will seem that the vaccines may not be worth it. But if you don't, then it will be high and that's what you should base your decision on. BTW, this is why antivaxxery could become such a phenomenon lately (even before covid): too few children died or got paralyzed in the past quite a few decades so the usual diseases somehow started to seem not such a big deal. Because people just didn't experience the other side of the equation anymore.

Also, on a side note, I'd expect that an antiviral will have more side effects than a vaccine.