It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled off and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk about COVID as endemic.
As for evidence, the continued efficacy of some vaccines against variants suggests that, with high levels of adoption, it's at least possible that after a few years of periodic boosters and targeting emerging strains that we could have reached an extremely low level of circulation.
Also why wouldn't you move the goal posts when the data changes? You get new data, you reevaluate prior assumptions and models, and adjust accordingly. Is there a particular instance you're referring to here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...
1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/20/314231260...
why hasn't the flu been eradicated then?
>It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled off and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk about COVID as endemic.
that's because most people have no idea what's going on. experts were saying this was the likely outcome from the begining
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estimates.ht...
Well only those other experts... the "kooks" and "right wing" ones who "care more about the economy than lives". The ones that got their reputations destroyed.
The mainstream "experts" who are the ones we are only supposed to ever listen to have never really made any of this clear. If they did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
They don't actually care about the economy, though. They care about two things - fighting a culture war, and bending over backwards for businesses, at the expense of literally anything else. It doesn't matter that millions of people are racking up billions in preventable medical bills, so long as the Mar-o-Lago can stay open as if nothing happened.
They aren't making a 'trade-off' between the economy and human life. They are utterly failing at protecting both. If you want to see a trade-off between the economy and human life, look at how China handled the pandemic. Harsh lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and as a result[1] - strong economic growth through the pandemic.
[1] Also only 4,000 dead, as opposed to 900,000, but who's counting?
If they stayed 90% effective like they were originally, we could have ended the virus. But vaccine efficiency wanes over time. New omicron+delta vaccines will help somewhat, but their effectiveness will probably wane over time too.
Time to get used to cold, flu, and covid season every winter.
The change is partly that the effectiveness wanes after a few months and partly that its less effectively again new variants like Delta and Omicron. You can create delta+omicron mRNA vaccines to deal the second problem, but the first problem is much harder--and maybe impossible--to deal with.
This is why we had low cases during the summer of 2021. The vaccine mostly worked at stopping the spread. It no longer does.
No, vaccines have eliminated exactly one human virus, smallpox.
Fauci added that vaccinated people essentially become "dead ends" for the virus to spread within their communities.
"When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community," Fauci said. "In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that's when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community."[1]
This is more or less the messaging I recall seeing around the early stages of the vaccine being available.
[1]https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-...
Without a vaccine, viruses will still evolve to be less virulent and more transmissible, leading to endemic status. Within this a large number of the population gain natural immunity also reducing spread.
Vaccines, done poorly and too frequently, cause vaccine escape where the immune system actually does a worse job fighting infection and you get more virus (aside other immune system issues). Which is exactly what we're seeing now where a lot of places have more hospitalisation and death per capita in the vaccinated...two years into the pandemic
The most ignorant thing to think at the moment is 'just need more jabbing.'
Endemic just means 'regularly found', it does not mean mostly harmless!
Vaccine escape refers to a virus evolving to avoid vaccine induced immunity - and can happen with infection induced immunity too. As it happens T cell immunity against severe disease has been holding up just fine - and has saved countless lives. If vaccine uptake was universal, and we took a few sensible precautions, a virus can be completely suppressed, like measles, so wouldn't have a chance for escape mutations.
Your per capita statement is plain wrong.
Now you've been taught a few things about viruses, you can stop spreading misinformation!
Immune system escape can occur, usually in adults, but generally not in children because their immune systems are young and not 'trained' so do a great general response effort.
Vaccines force a targeting of the immune system (e.g. particular spike proteins) that specifically leads to escape, as we're seeing with the vaccines being not only mostly useless, but potentially worse for Omicron.
Per capita not wrong, just not everywhere yet. Example:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/new-data-on-vaccine-effic...
This is a thorough misreading of the evolution of viruses.
Smallpox has been around for thousands of years, and it has not evolved to be less virulent.
If we had protected the vulnerable the best we could, focused on treatments, and let the vaccine rip through the remainder of the population (particularly healthy children) as fast as possible would we have arrived at Omicron levels of deadly much sooner and saved more lives overall?
Not suggesting we should have done that. Just wondering if it might be the case. Guess we'll never know for sure.
No guarantees that we can't get another wave of Delta 2.0 in five months.
Universal vaccination can make the transition of this virus from pandemic to endemic much more pleasant. In terms of deaths, serious cases (with potential long term effects), but also in terms of smoothing out hospital and infrastructure load.
In that respect the vaccines are an awesomely effective tool that can greatly reduce suffering with minimal or no real downsides.
Side note: an omicron infection is no replacement for the vaccination. Omicron doesn’t confer great immunity against delta and other, “older” virus variants which are still out there, potentially ready to come back next winter.
There have been mass firings on the basis that this vaccination will end the pandemic and people who don't get vaccinated are actively harming everyone else. The truth of that claim is far too murky to justify the agressive policies that are being used to force people to get vacinated. Policies which, I note, appear to be deploy what are effectively human rights violations. These are not policieis that should be used. The policy response is what is important here.
To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.
Are they really though? If vaccines work so damn great why do I still need to wear a mask in a place where everybody is vaccinated? And why did Ontario shut down most of the places that required proof of vaccine during this omicron wave? Shouldn't those places be exempt from shutdowns?
If proof of vaccine still requires masking and shutdowns... maybe it isn't a really an effective policy?
One would think that on this forum of all places, people would understand the concept of defence-in-depth. Furrfu…
Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask? Makes no sense.
You can add as many layers of defense as you want. Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid. If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?
They're to reduce transmission to others. You can call them not good enough but it's a respiratory disease, it's what we've got. The alternative is lockdowns.
> Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask?
Why do they get to decide if an unvaccinated person has to wear a mask? You're simultaneously arguing that vaccines are effective and so masks are pointless but also that vaccines are ineffective. Which is it?
> Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid.
It's not about you. If the only risk was only to yourself then nobody would care.
> If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?
Because if you get covid you'll have a mild flu instead of being hospitalized or die? You can say it's low chance but 3,000 corpses today I guess were unlucky.
Others can get a vaccine too if it truly helps them or they just want piece of mind. We all have the choice. Transmission no longer matters. It isn’t a problem each individual needs to worry about. It’s not ethical or moral to keep pushing this as the only concern society can focus on. We need to move on.
And you can use scare words like “3000 corpses a day” but that is propaganda and fearmongering. The more scary the wording, the less the words mean to me. Way more than 3000 people die a day. And people die of many things all the time. Death is one of the only things that will happen to us 100%.
Life is way to short to piss away on this. You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear. It is quite selfish to ask that, especially given you can get a freely available, highly effective vaccine.
Get your vaccine and move on. Covid ends for you when you stop being afraid of it. It’s actually that simple.
You're confusing emotionally charged, high-impact words with propaganda. Having a policy of talking about the dead in a sterile detached way is also a rhetoric choice that affects perception and is just as much "propaganda" by your own standard.
What you're calling "propaganda" is "using words that make something sound more serious than I think it is" or "using words to make something sound less serious than I think it is."
> Only reason I got the vaccine was I had no reason not to.
That's the reason I wear a mask.
> You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear.
The only thing that's being asked of anyone is to get vaccinated, wear a mask indoors, and stay home if you're sick. The first two cost you nothing and you should be staying home with any illness anyway.
> Get your vaccine and move on.
I have moved on, except for wearing a mask when in close contact and having to show proof of it for large events, life has literally gone back to normal.
> To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.
We're talking specifically about the Covid vaccine mandates, not mandates in general. I think there's certainly a serious debate to be had on whether these morally questionable Covid policies are human rights violations.
Are chain smokers antisocial ? What about over eating obese ?
I hate risk-adverse fearful societies.
Obesity ... seems like an entirely personal matter, except perhaps in children where they might be considered victims.
Highly infectious viruses several times more harmful than the usual ones are indeed turning the world upside down. I imagine with time most societies will come to accept such things after they've become endemic for a while.
Just like vaccination for Covid is personal. Remember that the vaccine does not prevent transmission of omicron. And that if the vaccine works, if an unvaccinated person transmits the virus to a vaccinated one, there should be no risk, right ?
Also, obese and overweight people account for 50% of hospitalizations in ICU for Covid in France.
> human rights violations.
Which ones?
> Which ones?
Well, looking at a relevant wiki article [0] I'd say the policies I know best (Australia) are bumping up against the articles dealing with freedom of movement, big chunks of articles 18-21 (underlining peaceful association a few time), I'd argue 22-27 - I forget where 'right to earn a living' is but I'm pretty confident it is in thge UDHR somewhere and that is probably in 22-27.
At some point (and 2 years is past that point) these philosophical issues like human rights start to matter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
For example, Article 29:
> Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
> In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
It's pretty easy to see vaccination and other public health measures as one of these scenarios.
“Articles 28–30 establish… the areas in which the rights of the individual cannot be applied, the duty of the individual to society…”
The declaration says “in a democratic society”. Are we counting Cuba as one?
> That's why I find it incredibly concerning that people seem to just be happy to suspend individual rights so rapidly. The state of Victoria in Australia recently passed legislation that lets it ignore certain human rights - such as the right to employment - in the face of the pandemic.
One might argue they prioritized the Article 3 right to life over that of employment; loss of life being permanent, and employment not, this seems like a justifiable use of Article 29, especially given Australian per capita deaths being massively lower than here in the States. We’ve killed two Tasmanias worth of people over here.
(I have relatives in Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney, and Hobart, incidentally. I’d trade my pandemic experience here in upstate NY with them in a heartbeat.)
Again, the UDHR asserts a variety of rights. You're correct that Article 23 asserts a right to employment, but the apparent desire to read that as the only provision in the document appears to be a motivated one. The document lays out other rights, which naturally may be in conflict with each other at times, a fact that is explicitly acknowledged in Article 29.
I don't object to disagreeing with Victoria's balancing of the various rights, but I do object to the assertion that it's somehow a clear violation of human rights for them to prioritize the rights to life and health over the right to employment.
Ok, so we've taken away all these rights from unvaxxed people. What rights do you believe this has that allowed others to exercise?
Because from where I sit:
1. It doesn't reduce the odds of people getting COVID. We just had ... probably between 2-3 million COVID cases between NSW and Victoria, both with highly vaccinated populations. That is only possible if vaccinated people are infecting each other (as most reporting I've read suggests is happening).
2. Doesn't otherwise affect anyone's rights.
Note that there isn't even a right not to get sick from time to time. Although it even if such a right did somehow exist it isn't obvious how an unvaxxed person would be affecting your right to excercise ti since the problem is how much you come into contact with other humans vs anything any other individual is doing. There has been no threat to our hospital systems at any point that justifies what has been done to the unvaxxed. The pressure the hospital system has come under appears to be from the COVID restrictions (and, ironically, probably things like laying off workers for resisting the unreasonable vaccination policies - although if they've got the capacity to start sacking people then they clearly don't see a problem).
So it seems to me that we're doing this just for fun / for the joy of being authoritarian.
And your damn right the reasoning is motivated. Motivated by a desire to let people earn money and make their lives better at will. To be able to go places and visit friens and family without being arrested. To make their own medical decisions. These are reasonable motivations. These rights are the easy ones with practical justifications.
The Article 25 right to medical care, which unvaccinated people can put at risk by overwhelming hospitals with ICU cases.
I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".
This isn't an emergency any more, this is routine.
> I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".
That is an extreme hand wave. It appears the argument is "We can violate your human rights because you have a duty to do what I tell you". These are serious concerns, you may just handwave things like free travel or ability to see family with "you have a duty, but I don't feel a need to justify it" - but that isn't a respectable position.
What is the real risk to the community of these unvaccinated people? We've pretty much seen the worst case COVID scenario play out in the last 2 months and it doesn't seem like the unvaxxed have been a problem in the slightest. The campaign of bullying should end.
For me ending the pandemic is a return to regular life and a health care system that is no longer stretched beyond typical capacity. This can be achieved by many outcomes but the most likely one given the state of the world today is getting everyone to take the safe and effective vaccine for as long as necessary.
In Quebec where I live, the unvaccinated are now barred from entry in large retail stores like Walmart and Costco. If you don't have your vaccine passport with you that shows you're vaccinated in these places, then you can't enter, even for groceries.
There was curfew in place that prevented everyone from being outside during the evenings and nights for the most part of January.
On top of that, the prime minister said publicly in the media that the unvaccinated would start paying an additional tax, even though health care is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone here. The government just backtracked about this the last couple of days.
A lot of these policies are extreme and have shown to be completely incoherent and not backed by science, given what we know about the virus since the last couple of months.
Aren’t they? Hospitals are overflowing and elective procedures cancelled due entirely to people refusing to get vaccinated.
A) there's more vaccinated in hospital per capita of late. Why aren't we demanding lockdowns again instead of just blaming the "unvaxxed" still
B) the unvaxxed still aren't allowed into many places, yet the virus spreads readily
C) Why, rather than just "argh unvaxxed lepers!" are we not guiding better health and wellbeing instead?
D) a covid case is counted when people are in hospital for any other reason and catch it
E) you are counted as unvaxxed during the two week window after getting vaccinated, which is exactly when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid. Interesting how hard it is to find this data, you'd think it would be strongly monitored
B) This is true. Not sure how it relates to my point though.
C) Aren't we doing both? I've seen both "get vaccinated" and "be healthy" messaging this whole pandemic. Again though, not sure how it relates.
D) True. Again, not sure how this relates.
E) That was a big effect when vaccines just came out, but is a much smaller effect now.
Though I hadn't heard this before, and would be curious to see a study on it if you have one: "when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid."
Edit: Your thing about susceptibility after vaccination is incorrect. It's an Alex Berenson talking point that has been thoroughly debunked.
Do you have a source for this. This directly conflicts the data I've been seeing. e.g.: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily — weekly hospitalizations peaking at 92/100k for vaccinated vs. 772/100k for unvaccinated.
You're comparing two entirely different denominators. This is just sloppy.
Edit: Digging through the source data, I found
> In the last week from 08 January to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population, the rate of acute COVID-19 related hospital admissions in individuals that received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 2.3 to 3.9 times lower than in individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine
Your own data is saying the opposite of what you purport it to.
The rate doesn't matter so much in this instance, because most resources would still be spend on vaccinated people. Much like the fact that when I eventually catch COVID the odds are really good that I'm going to get it off someone who is vaccinated.
If we hypothetically rounded up all the unvaxxed tomorrow most of the strain on the hospital system faces in Scotland would still be there. Vaccination campaigns can't really change that.
It is my impression that it actually does, and that is why Delta was outcompeted so fast. If it didn't, both strains would likely co-circulate together.
There is a possibility that the large majority of the population has been infected with omicron, and recovered. But then delta could come in at that point and produce another wave. At this time, the body would be much more successful at holding off omicron, but maybe not so much with delta.
So purely from the fractions of current infections, you cannot draw conclusions about x-variant immunity.
Searching very quickly, I found this from Dec 21, 2021:
https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/c7efM-om...
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...
Care to share a paper to back this up ? This statement seems hard to prove right now.
Yet... Guess we gave up caring about full research and monitoring a couple of years ago.
We're even at the point where we want to vaccinate our small children because 'it's marginally better than nothing' ignoring that side effects are also marginally more than nothing and we have very little good long term data.
This is an interesting statement.
Where I live, one hospital 30 minutes in one direction was never overwhelmed. In fact, they had to fire people because they were so empty due to cancelling all optional procedures.
Another hospital 30 minutes the other direction had to place patients in offices, conference rooms, and tents in the parking lot.
So I guess the health system where I live was overwhelmed. Or it wasn't. Depending upon who you asked and/or the narrative you wanted to convey.
Shouldn't the politicians have made progress on this issue over the course of two years? At what point is it incompetence or corruption, if the billions being spent to fight the pandemic make zero discernable impact on the most critical issue?
What do you mean? Should they should magically cause the number of doctors and hospitals to double inside two years?
>if the billions being spent to fight the pandemic make zero discernable impact on the most critical issue?
What leads you to believe that measures such as pushing vaccination haven't been having tremendous impact on that issue?
Do you believe that health care systems are currently overwhelmed by COVID?
If that doesn't say "understaffed and overwhelmed", I'm not sure what evidence would.
Good for you
It's not even magic. It just needs to be done. Find a way. There is an emergency. You don't just get to whine and complain that it is too hard. Your solution doesn't need to be perfect. Far from it, in fact. It just needs to patch the issue so we don't need to do restrictions of any kind.
Anybody that claims it is impossible to double or even quadruple healthcare capacity specifically for covid just isn't being creative about it enough. It's not magic. You just make it happen. You have almost infinite resources to do it even up to and including relaxing licensing laws or removing any other political or bureaucratic hurdle.
Funny you're light on specifics. We talk about a situation where people die if it doesn't happen. So better propose something solid.
> almost infinite resources
Build hospital tents.
> relaxing licensing laws
Employ untrained people.
> removing any other political or bureaucratic hurdle
Eh that tends to happen, once you're in that triage situation.
Look you can't will medical care. You have to build it. It takes decades.
So in terms of goalposts, what exactly is your goal? I'd like to see international travel normalize - it's maybe one of the few restrictions I still feel is constraining me - but there is little my government can do about that.
We didn't have to rig tents to use as hospitals, burn dead bodies on the street, or to pay exorbitant sums for oxygen on the black market, as it has happened in other countries.
And if you ask me, yes, that's worth billions, and a bit of self-discipline.
So add more capacity. It's an emergency. Find a way to add it. Why are we into this two years and still have this problem? It's inexcusable at this point.
We did. The government deployed a floating hospital called the USNS Comfort to NYC to massively increase hospital capacity and... it basically just sat there unused for a month and then left after Governor Cuomo said it wasn't needed.
It was that day I realized that none of this has a damn thing to do with science or data.
Here’s my version for pre-Covid vaccines:
Vaccines are like seat belts: they prevent car crashes.
It's amazing how much we've forgotten about how vaccines and immunity work over the last couple of years.
That's an awfully naive and rosy view of "people".
At what point does the justification become 'exaggerated'?
Is "This vaccine would have saved the lives of at least half a million Americans in the past two years" not a good enough justification?
Is "End the pandemic" the only set of goal posts for vaccination that you will accept?
Is not, is there a number of corpses that will be an acceptable justification? How much higher does it have to get? A million? Five? Fifty?
And that they will prevent the appearance of mutated strains.
Or the corollary that the appearance of mutated strains is to be blamed on people being unvaccinated, either because they don’t have vaccines or don’t want them.
Disagree? No problem, just show me the data that backs up that claim. Certainly not above having my mind changed.
> with very exaggerated justification, that they will end the pandemic
For the last time, you can spawn mutations regardless of vaccination status.
Who is saying there is?
>One last thing that’s really important is: We’re not in a position where we think that any virus — including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of non — unvaccinated people — the vi- — the various shots that people are getting now cover that. They’re — you’re okay. You’re not going to — you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
>If you’re vaccinated, even if you do catch the “virus,” quote, unquote — like people talk about it in normal terms — you’re in overwhelm- — not many people do. If you do, you’re not likely to get sick. You’re probably going to be symptomless. You’re not going to be in a position where you — where your life is in danger.
So you can cherry pick and attribute an absurd interpretation while ignoring everything else he said, or go for the reasonable view that he knows infection is still possible based on multiple other points in the conversation. The man isn't a great speaker, but nonetheless it's inappropriate to choose the worst possible interpretation of something when context contradicts that interpretation.
There you go. From the head of the CDC and a few other quotes from biden too.
Then show me the many examples where he's said that vaccines are perfect proof against infection. Because now you're moving the goal posts as your point is refuted by context, so you expand to more vague ad hominem attack against him. The burden of evidence is on you to support that, and to do so with more than brief out of context soundbites.
A link to the entire transcript of an event is an "out of context sondbite"? You're clearly not discussing in good faith.
So there you are-- posting an article, maybe failing to read it or more likely deciding to ignore most of it, and then accuse me of discussing in bad faith? That is quite brazen, accusing me of the exact thing you are doing, A poor, failed attempt at a diversionary tactic to distract from your avoidance of the question.
It's not out of context, it's completely in context. Biden said you won't get COVID if you take the vaccine, full stop. There's no additional context that changes the meaning of those words.
The fact that he also made other statements about COVID doesn't render the quote out of context.
So, I don't think you and I can have a productive conversation. Perhaps you are capable of doing so when it doesn't involve a political figure, but it seems clear that you have a vendetta in this case and are unable to look past it.
If you'd like to reply for posterity, for anyone else who comes along, go for it, but don't do it on my account, I see no point in revisiting this thread. If we encounter each other in a different conversation then I look forward to the possibility of a reasonable discussion & exchange of ideas, but you don't currently, on this topic, seem interested in that.
Technically, the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the disease is called COVID-19[1].
That does mean, technically, that due to vaccination the virus can indeed circulate but that people are not affected by the disease. Is that what Biden has said? Certainly from the excerpt you posted, that seems to be the case.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
Are you suggesting that breakthrough cases of COVID don't exist?
> you can't get COVID if you get the vaccine, implying it would stop the virus from circulating.
It is entirely possibly that vaccination can leave a virus circulating while still preventing disease. Whether it does in this specific case is something you could debate, but you can't draw that implication stand alone.
But breakthrough cases of the COVID disease do occur in this specific case.
What is the relevance of a hypothetical alternative scenario where breakthrough cases don't exist?
Vaccines have long been required in a variety of environments.
Many things have been done in the past. Just because something was done in the past, that doesn't automatically make it the right thing to do.
What are your goalposts here on "basic commerce"? School and many jobs seem like they should be included in that, which refutes your original comment on the topic of vaccine mandates for basic commerce not having precedent.
England did the same thing.
Going back another 100+ years, Virginia passed a law that could see someone not inoculated via variolation jailed & fined if their failure to inoculate spread the disease. I also consider this jailing a barrier to basic commerce.
The precedents exist.
You clearly don't like the restrictions and mandates. If you want to have a productive conversation on the topic with other reasonable people then focus less on precedent and more on why these things are bad regardless of precedent. You'll have to do that with someone else though: your method of discussion up to this point has verged more towards reflexive provocation than productive conversation.
I'll let the reader determine who is furiously trying to list every vaccine mandate precedent. As is often the case, the bad faith argument is one of projection.
Strange phrasing given that you claimed that there were no precedents and I merely brought up precedents in response. I'm not sure how listing historical legal occurrences would cause you to infer such emotional weight to them as to describe them as "furiously" obtained. It's a discussion, that's all. It's been a bit one-sided discussion, because when you are met with counter evidence you level vague accusations of subtle psychological motivations instead of giving a reasoned response.
I'll give you an example of a more productive & reasonable way to respond to the precedents I listed: The precedents are too old and the current situation too varied from them to have any bearing on current legal decisions on these matters. The United States has had more than 100 years of growth & maturity surrounding decisions on constitutional matters and advancements in constitutional scholarship, and during that time has had occasion to revisit decisions that now seem problematic in light of those advances in legal thinking. Additionally, smallpox was significantly more lethal than COVID. Up to 30% might die of it, raising the stakes far above COVID. As such, even granting that the US constitution would, today, allow for those historic measures, we are not now in a situation comparable enough for them to be required.
There you are. That response would have been a more productive conversation to have, specifically addressing my counterclaims without resorting to ad hominem attacks or avoiding the issue all together. We could then have gone on to discuss that in more depth, even if I partly disagree with what I just wrote, a devil's advocate rebuttal to my own rebuttal of your claim. It's a shame you didn't go down that route. It's pretty pointless to be here unless you're simply looking for rhetorical point scoring instead of discussion. Which bring me to:
>let the reader determine
That would be a major difference between you & I: I don't think about other readers when I post. It simply doesn't occur to me to filter what I write through that lens. Until you mentioned it, what other people reading this might think hasn't crossed my mind. It's simply not what I focus on.
I know wearing a mask and taking the bare minimum to try to control a pandemic that has killed millions infringes on YOUR PRECIOUS FREEDOM but it seems a reasonable trade off for the state.
Also what restrictions to basic commerce are you facing? That you can't go get wasted in a bar? Give us a break.
1) Didn't
2) Can't
3) Will never
Stop Sars-CoV-2. You can vaccinate to 100% and double, triple, quadruple boost everyone. In this Omicron wave, almost everyone I know here in Florida has come down with symptomatic COVID. That includes my wife and kids, the entire families of all my best friends, my coworkers, my boss, my kids' teachers, everyone, and they are ALL VACCINATED to the man. The prior two waves never got within 3 degrees of freedom to me, vaccine or not.
This isn't surprising. COVID doesn't care about our stupid vaccine. It doesn't even know it's there. As far as I know we've never beat a bug like this with a vaccine. Consider that while we sit around and put on the mask and point the finger at the guy next door, the outbreak started in Wuhan, Omicron developed in South Africa, and the next variant is probably starting to incubate in yet another remote location. In fact the entire trajectory of this disaster is basically orthogonal to all of our activities.
The politics of COVID, however, the self-inflicted economic and social damage, are entirely our own doing. I believe this is actually comparable to, if not worse than, the direct effects of the virus itself. And since nothing we have done or can do will prevent the direct damage, I say we should stop inflicting all the secondary damage on ourselves.
Maybe millions dead, countless others not entirely recovered, isn't helping economies or folks mental health? I agree, that's all our own doing, but not because we "locked down" it's because we never actually did. There was never a lockdown (at least here in the US), middle class folk just stayed home while the lower class brought us our groceries and died.
You're lucky the virus hasn't effected you till now... guess you don't have any friends in the service, hospitality, or health care industries.
Also if you're in Florida, what do you care. Y'all basically YOLOing this and I don't think there's much in the way of government mandates.
Maybe step away from the keyboard, put on your mask, and chill the fuck out friend. People are dying. Stop being selfish.
And did they die? Because the vaccines are tremendously effective at reducing symptom severity, hospitalization and deaths.
This is objectively false; the IFR of all Covid variants is one order of magnitude greater than the flu, with the possible exception of a few years in the century with particularly virulent seasonal flus.
(and the kicker was we all still needed masks anyway... "science"!)
I liken masks to the requirement to have at least minimal clothing on. Sanitation is the same (wash your hands, here's how to scrub for 30 seconds).
If you want people to go along with a medical intervention, state clearly the expected outcome and don't move the goalposts when the data changes. If the data is strong, you most likely wouldn't need mandates to convince people.