And their response will be "Finally! This is all we've wanted this entire time!"

I don't think most here understand just how much "this class of people" value freedom over safety.

No, the problem is that we do, and also see the selfishness of the position with regards to highly communicable diseases. "My body, my choice" is a fantastic principle when the outcome of the choice has negligible impact on people breathing the same air. Many of these same folks would raise a stir if their neighbor started throwing their trash over the fence. In my mind there is no distinction. Their choice to not be vaccinated or wear masks results in people we love dying. It's not their individual freedom that is the risk. Their choice threatens our collective freedoms to life and liberty which we individually enjoy.

It's hard to see how vaccines stop the spread when places like NYC or Israel (some of the most vaccinated places in the world) had record setting numbers in the recent wave.

If vaccines work, shouldn't the "people you love" be vaccinated and thus not impacted by unvaccinated people?

I understand masks can be effective in some cases, but is it really reasonable to demand people wear surgical or N95 masks all the time to prevent "people you love" from getting an illness with a 99.99% survival rate?

This is an extraordinary claim that runs counter to all available evidence and should be backed up by extraordinary evidence.

Our analyses included 52,297 cases with SGTF (Omicron) and 16,982 cases with non-SGTF (Delta [B.1.617.2]) infections, respectively

I forget the source but survey's suggest the average american thinks if they catch covid they have like a 10% chance of dying. This is in some cases 1000x wrong. People are badly, badly mis-informed on how survivable covid is.

If people knew the actual statistics around covid severity, I don't think we'd be doing any of this at all.

0.1 out of 1000 of the entire U.S. population has died of COVID just in the past 19 days.

You are the first person to assert “of” COVID. Substantiate it. Cite primary sources.

If they are one of the 146 million Americans who recovered from Covid, they are at low risk of reinfection and thus transmission.

The same cannot be said for Covid-naive, vaccinated people who can be infected and silently infect others due to symptoms being suppressed by the vaccine.

The issue is not vaccine denial by itself, its resistance to any public health measures, including vaccines, masking and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, and so forth. In short, these folks actively pursue a course of not behaving rationally because (usually) of misguided politics.

It's ill-informed. If you have a prior COVID infection, you should still maintain active vaccination status, including boosters. If you get COVID, you should get tested and try to not get others sicks.

Instead, the pantheon of behaviors we observe from anti-vaxxers is spiteful and irrational. Which supports my initial point that this is a self behavior.

Effective treatment is considered a public health intervention if it prevents the spread. Otherwise its medical treatment. This is why vaccination is far superior to post-infection treatment.

Assessment:

I'm deeply suspicious of this website. It uses pooled effects across several studies, which is an improper approach for this type of meta-analysis. For example, it lists hydroxychloroquine as effective. Some initial underpowered studies showed potential, but further research showed it was not effective.[0]

Items:

[1] By forcing a random effects design, you may give inappropriate weighting to under-powered studies showing an effect (low power results in higher effect sizes). 10 studies of 10 people each, with effect averaged via pooled regression, may well show a pooled effect significantly larger than one study with 100 people.

[2] People not deeply familiar with the treatment literature (such as you, me) cannot confirm that the meta-analysis is appropriately comprehensive (they claim to scrape paper sources, but not the inclusion criteria). Since this is a random website presented without context, without bonafides, and so forth, even if the information presented is real it may be cherry picked. Here is the documentation of some of their exclusion protocol -- note if they were intending to be persuasive instead of objective, exclusion of negative meta-analyses would be intentionally phrased objectively: https://hcqmeta.com/#exc

[3] Differing definitions can impact results. "Early treatment" is prophylaxis typically, but why the individual ends ups in a treatment or control group (and what the term means) may be systemically biased depending on the treatment standard of care adopted locally. The differences may not be random, resulting in selection bias (and other forms of bias, but simply put not an apples-to-apples comparison). And because we're dealing with people with will, the uncertainty compounds. By way of example, prophylaxis "treatment" group might be fully self-selected people who are just scared they may have been exposed, and a "control" group (from a matched pair example selected on few if any demographics) that was known to have the disease -- causing immediate positive bias. RCT designs can help with this approach, but again showing solely the pooled effects instead of reporting fixed effects assessments and other regression output is in err.

Conclusion:

So, for these reasons and because the source actually matters in an era of mis-/dis-information, I remain highly suspicious.

Notes [0] Economics is facing its own replication issues, and the paper is an important read for why statistical power matters: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecoj.12461

> To the end of week 43 in 2021 (to 31 October 2021) 72,264 possible reinfections have been identified ... 7.9 million first positives

For Delta transmission from vaccinated individuals, a study of Vietnamese healthcare workers found that 70% of infections were pre-symptomatic, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3897733

> 69 healthcare workers were tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. 62 participated in the clinical study. 49 were (pre)symptomatic ... Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people. Physical distancing measures remain critical to reduce SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant transmission.

People made their decision then looked for reasons to support it.

Get off your high horse.

People complaining about masks taking away freedom don’t seem to be rioting about freedom of drinking and driving as an example.

I’m all for freedom. Heck I donate to EFF and ACLU annually. I’m also for personal responsibility when it affects others as we live in a society.

My dad's physician, of all people, was anti vax until he ended up in the ER. Then he started telling all of his patients to get vaxxed.

As someone who is vaxxed, I struggle to see how the harm done by the unvaccinated is categorically worse than the risks taken by others at society's expense. I imagine you have none of the disdain for motorcycle riders that you do for the unvaccinated.

Edit: For those replying to my comment, please note the comment I replied to listed the cost of hospitalization and the crowding out of ICU beds for others as costs society has to bear; if you are crowded out of an ICU bed, whether it be from someone who is unvaccinated or someone who is obese, you are dead nonetheless.

I have personally been vaccinated but I feel a pang of guilt whenever I use the government mandated vaccine passport to make use of restaurants and so on. So I stop using those facilities that require a vaccine passport, with the exception of the gym.

In terms of ethics, yeah I care what other people do. I also care that they stop at red lights so they don’t murder me with their car. We set rules as a society when individual decisions can affect group outcomes.

We have traditionally not violated bodily autonomy for very low probability of benefit to other people, and I think the precedent that some countries have set is a grave mistake. I understand that you are upset and afraid of death, but I would encourage you to look at the statistics. If you are vaccinated then COVID is a very survivable disease. Without vaccination, the average person's risk of dying of COVID is approximately 0.5%. The vaccine trial showed that it is 98% effective, so it cuts your risk by another factor of 50. As a point of comparison, if you are unvaccinated then COVID is ~10x more dangerous than the flu. Vaccination changes that picture. Consider whether your reaction is proportionate, when compared to what your reaction to "people murdering you from across the room with the flu" would have been. Ethical violations have historically happened quite often when people are irrationally afraid. It is true that the vaccines are less effective against Omicron, but on the other hand Omicron is a milder disease than Delta. Current data is looking like we are net very lucky to have Omicron displace Delta.

Also covid is heavily weighted towards the elderly, the flu is not (or at least not as much). IIRC ages 30-50 have around the same risk as the flu, and under 30 have more risk from the flu.

I think I’m as guilty as anyone at binarizing the issue though. You’re right that I have a low risk of death. We don’t have enough data around long-COVID to really talk about other risks. I’m not talking out of fear. I’m talking out of frustration that I’ve made lifestyle changes to help others who clearly don’t feel the need to reciprocate.

Your point about schools mandating vaccines is good. I'm not categorically against vaccine mandates. For a sufficiently transmissible disease, which is also deadly, and where spread can be stopped by vaccination, it can be justified. Measles may be a candidate: very transmissible (more so than COVID) and deadly for children (2.6 million deaths in 1980), and a vaccine which is extremely effective (99% immunity against infection) and has a long term safety record (complications <1 per million). COVID is not such a disease, and the COVID vaccines are not such vaccines.

Even so, in my country it is not compulsory to get vaccinated against the measles, not even in schools. Certainly one does not have to show a measles vaccination proof when entering a non-essential business like a restaurant, which one does have to show for COVID. Nor does one have to get a booster every 9 months, which one does, by law, for COVID.

> I’m talking out of frustration that I’ve made lifestyle changes to help others who clearly don’t feel the need to reciprocate.

Ok but this is not a good reason to compel other people to vaccinate. These people likely did not ask you to make the changes that you did. Nor are the changes that you made likely to have made much difference in the lives of these people, and whether or not these people do get vaccinated has a very minimal impact on your life, other than your frustration.

The fact that you feel like it would be a nice gesture from them if they "reciprocated" by getting vaccinated does not weigh against the negatives. Many of these people are probably genuinely afraid to take the vaccine. They may be very misinformed, but the fear is real. If you put sufficient pressure on these people via the government, for instance by threatening to take away their job and their ability to provide for their children, then they may well take the vaccine. But these people may resent those who forced them into it for the rest of their lives, and feel alienated from a society that made them do it. And some of them will feel ill for a day or two (as many do after getting the vaccine), which may cause them to think that any future pain or health problems were caused by the vaccine. It this worth it to you in order to act out your frustration that they "don't feel the need to reciprocate"?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.21268565v...

This study shows that being boosted gives you 37% protection from infection over a period of maybe a month. But this means at peak spread, you can expect an infection rate among the boosted population of 63% of the unvaxxed infection rate.

If we assume we can get every vaxxed person boosted, you're still more likely to get infected by a fully boosted individual since the vaccination rates are something like 70%. That is, for every 70 vaxxed people there are 30 unvaxxed, and 70 * .63 > 30. If we assume we can get everyone vax+boosted instantly, the estimated infection rate drops to .85 percent of the current rate. With an estimated r0 of 10 for Omicron, such a small reduction in infections has no chance of substantially slowing the spread. At this point mandates are merely a punitive measure against those the majority have deemed moral degenerates.

The vaccines are not 100% effective and not everyone can safely take the vaccine. The unvaccinated put others at risk, not just themselves. I think it's perfectly fair to scorn those who _can_ be vaccinated but choose not to out of ignorance or religious/political ideology.

> As long as they don't mix with the rest of society

Private discrimination is your right — if you don't want to admit unmasked and unvaccinated to your premises, you should be able to. As a pro-vaccine libertarian, it would make me prefer your establishments over others.

> are willing to bear the full cost of their 10x higher risk of hospital and ICU care

Of course. Nobody can claim the rights to other people's labour, and we don't want others to be obliged to pay for our healthcare — and healthcare providers should have the same right of private discrimination.

So I'd be fine with the following deal:

1. I work out some arrangement with my health insurance firm w.r.t. COVID hospitalization costs, possibly just paying the costs myself or possibly paying a higher premium for not taking the vaccine. It's been two years now and I never caught it, all the people I know who did never required a hospital visit and Omicron is very mild so this seems like a safe bet.

2. In return governments force higher taxes on everyone under the age of 65 who took vaccines they didn't clinically need (and almost nobody under that age does). Those taxes will pay for the costs of the vaccines themselves of course but also all the indirect costs and debts caused by their insistence on shutting society down.

Humm, I wish it was that clear. I'm from Portugal, one of the countries with higher vax rate (anti-vax movement here is negligible) and a few days ago we were on world top 5 for new infections.

Disclaimer: I'm fully vaccinated. However I respect who isn't.

We do still need to think about the people who can't get vaxxed for medical reasons. My sister has MS and has been on immunosuppressants which prevented her from getting it. Thankfully she took a break and got vaxxed because now she has covid.

If we get to, say, April without a serious spike in the death rate, I think the protocols will be rolled back. That assumes we don't see a new variant but it looks like the variants are getting less serious, not more.

Trump supports the vaccines that he helped fund and create.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/24/politics/trump-covid-vaccine-...

Trump is actively promoting vaccination.

Predict the time of collapse and define “collapse”. I will take a 1:1 $10k bet for the other side if it’s soon enough and reasonable enough. Soon enough and reasonable enough and I’ll raise it to $100k.

$10k is enough for you to medical tourism to the third world. $100k is enough for you to medical tourism to many parts of the first world. So I think this is fair.

I'm in this category and it doesn't seem particularly rare. Rarely accounted for in these "I am done" type posts though.

I've made and used home sewn masks using one of the recommended sewing patterns for the past two years, and I've managed to get a good fit that only fogged up my glasses partly, but since last week these masks have been banned here in the Netherlands. Not because they are proven to be worse than the type II surgical masks that are recommended now, but because the government wants to standardize. So now I wear disposable masks that mean my glasses fog up every damn time I enter a building. Great.

Then there is that constant feeling of not getting enough oxygen, all while being confronted with the 5% who simply refuse to wear a mask in the shops, and shop staff refusing to remark on it for fear of getting into an altercation. I'm thoroughly through with masks. I'll wear them where and when mandatory, but certainly not indefinitely.

Masks can be uncomfortable. My biggest gripe is actually the awkwardness that sometimes accompanies taking them off and putting them on again. Especially when also wearing glasses, a hat, and/or a helmet. But given my girlfriend wears full PPE for her 12-hour shifts treating COVID patients without ever complaining about getting enough oxygen, I hope the rest of us will bear masking up while we're in the AH or on public transport. Compared to the shit she deals with, it's a minor inconvenience, at best.

Also, maybe I'm wrong but my feeling is the fear of altercation over mask wearing is overblown. I live in a semi-rural part of the United States where masks are a very political and contentious issue (probably more so than in NL). I regularly interact with people strongly opposed to them, and am often in crowds where few if any other people are wearing one, but in the past two years have never experienced any kind of confrontation. Perhaps I'm lucky and my size and physical appearance is intimidating to those who would otherwise pick a fight.

I don't know why, but while I can wear a mask for up to half an hour, anything beyond that becomes torture (doubly so when you are travelling with a toddler who needs you as a parent, which means talking through a mask increasing the out-of-breath feeling). This has made travelling longer distances fairly impossible for me, which again adds to the 'so fucking done' feeling that is gaining the upper hand.

I'm not a medical or public health expert, it's not up to me to figure it out.

But to start with, the idea that you can be "done" because you've already done "enough" and experienced inconvenience and made sacrifices needs to go. People need more from each other still, sorry!

Those people don't have the right to tell you what to do. They are not politicians and they aren't elected. They can tell me to wear a mask for the rest of my life, but it is my right to say "nope".

I don't see how you can flippantly propose this as an option. How can you be ok with wearing masks for the rest of your life—if it can at all be avoided?

I'm not sure how you're convinced it's only the unmasked or unvaccinated people that are responsible for the spread of the virus at this point. In many countries they are not allowed to go anywhere.

How is the virus crossing oceans so quickly if the unvaccinated are unable to cross borders?

Unless regulations across the world have changed drastically in the last couple of weeks, this is just false.

https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/domest... - the part specifically about "You need to be vaccinated to travel in and out of Canada"

They've made it a requirement to be vaccinated to use any form of federally regulated transportation - plane, train, boat - personal vehicles are the last option, but good luck trying to drive on the pacific ocean since you're not allowed to enter the US unvaccinated either AFAIK.

“How is the virus crossing oceans so quickly if the unvaccinated are unable to cross borders?”

> but good luck trying to drive on the pacific ocean since you're not allowed to enter the US unvaccinated either AFAIK

Until 5 days ago you could: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sandramacgregor/2022/01/24/cana...