Thanks for having the courage to write this. I couldnt agree more. I find the risk assessment argument of the thread parent really twisted. Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have. And now, the left is trying to force everyone to vaccinate, no matter how good or bad their immune system might be. This world has become a place I actually really dont want to live in. If this trend really wins and people accept a world of forced vaccination and masks and restrictions of public areas, I prefer to contract covid and die.
> Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have
Not true. Delta is showing increasingly worse numbers for younger people. Some children's hospitals are full from it. If you have another argument besides that one let's discuss.
So, yet another article about "cases" that are "surging"...however:
"The study does note that “it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children.”
"Among the 23 states and New York City reviewed by AAP, children’s hospitalizations made up 1.3 – 3.5 percent of all COVID-19 hospitalizations for the week ending July 29."
"According to the study, children were 0.00 – 0.26 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and seven states reported zero child deaths among data from 43 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam, with 0.00 – 0.03 percent of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death in those areas."
If you're trying to provide evidence that Covid does not present a serious threat to children, it'd be hard to do a better job.
What you are describing could be called geritocracy, which is a bit of a pejorative, implying negative outcomes, particularly for the young. But then consider Florida, with the most old folks per capita, and what their policies and outcomes have been.
Jesus christ. Did you go to public school? In most cases vaccinations for common diseases is required to attend. Vaccines save lives, is very little burden to you especially if you "have a good immune system". The faster we get everyone vaccinated the faster we get rid of the need of masks and restrictions. It's morons like you elongating things.
If you get on that ventilatior you won't be thinking you made the right choice. You'll be wishing you took the vaccine like so many stories we see today. What an idiotic hill to die on.
Keep your FUD to yourself and to your family. I am young and healthy enough that I will not need a hospital if I get a covid infection. Your FUD does not change my attitude.
Will everyone you know with that attitude be so lucky? Or those that actually can't get the vaccine. You sound like a selfish jerk. Did you ever stop and think that maybe your family and friends won't be so lucky as to not need a hospital? It's not just for you!!!
Even if your young and healthy there's still a non-zero chance something could happen to you.
> there's still a non-zero chance something somethin could happen to you.
That was true before the pandemic, and it is still true today. If I die, I die. No need to restrict the lives of everyone else just because you are afraid of death.
Just because you don't like the message it's not FUD. Do you not wear a seatbelt in the car too? If you die, you die. Why bother wearing a bike helmet? If you die, you die. Unprotected sex with strangers? Sure, why not. If you die, you die. Why bother mitigating any risk that you can? I mean if you die, you die. Live your life free am I right? No need for silly restrictions like seatbelts, helmets or condoms.
Now you're finally getting it. I don't do any of those things you describe....and I don't particularly value or even like life. You stick to your value system and live however the fuck you want, and let everybody else value what they value and live however they want. If you're afraid of a virus potentially killing random people, I am not sure how you've made it this far without sheltering in place your whole life (hint, we have much scarier superbugs spread in hospitals that are almost immediately deadly to the immunocompromised).
Wow. So you're a moron. Doesn't even have to be random people. I don't want any of my friends or family dying from a currently preventable cause.
The problem with you "living however you want" is that it can impact other people...living. Every person the virus infects is a new chance for it to mutate and potentially get worse. We've already seen that happen once with the delta variant. You have an easy way to prevent deaths and you won't because?
Would you let someone "live their life" running around stabbing people? Some people might just get a nick, some could die, what does it matter?
So you call me a moron, and then you go on to compare stabbing people to not getting a vaccine...hmmmm.
People are largely unvaccinated in New York city (70% unvax), and yet, somehow, we don't see people lying in the streets (at least not from Covid). Hmmmm. Could it be that people's immune systems are functioning despite the human hubris and hysteria?
Your obsession with death avoidance is clearly anxiety inducing. Embrace life, embrace death, embrace (bad) luck and embrace decay are my personal keys to a stress-less life. I grew up in a country and in a household, where the car we owned had no seat belts. We also rode our bikes without helmets (shock! horror!). It was not a big deal. Never got into a car accident and I've personally been driving for over 30 years. For about a decade I drank and drove without incident. I jump out of airplanes with suspect and haphazard inspections on a regular basis. Had some close calls, but I'm still here (broken bones mend). My grandmother died at 99 (by choice mind you), her husband died at 30 of cancer. Life is a roll of a dice, you cannot escape your genetic lottery, a vaccine (especially this one) is highly unlikely to save much of your life if you're a person with 2.8 comorbidities.
I got the 70% unvaxed from a nytimes.com article; apparently it was dated. Looks like only 40% are unvaxed now according to your link. What's the Covid death rate in that highly congested and dense city? In my state, it is .13%, and that's counting many many deaths that have nothing to do with Covid as a "Covid death" (according to my wife [RN] and her friends who work in local ERs and ICUs as well as a head administrator of our largest public state health network).
Survivorship bias. Look it up. Congrats. You didn't die or kill any one drinking and driving or not wearing any seatbelts. Lucky you.
But guess what? They do save lives. That's why it's against the law to not wear a seat belt or bike helmet in most places or to not drink and drive. The vaccine can save lives too but it works best if as many people as possible to protect those who can't, to prevent breakthrough infections etc.
I'm not "obsessed" with death avoidance. I'm just not such a selfish asshat that I can give an hour of my time to go get vaccinated, reduce spread and maybe save some lives.
It's not like those people with comorbidities were going to die tomorrow without COVID anyways, they were going to live 5, 10, 20 extra years. Time to see children and grandchildren grow up, spend with friends etc.
I know, its all survivorship bias, none of it has anything to do with my OCD genes or the thousands of little mitigations to risks I take every day.
>The vaccine can save lives too but it works best if as many people as possible to protect those who can't, to prevent breakthrough infections etc.
What works best is for sick people to stay the fuck home until they're not sick anymore. Healthy people's immune systems, won't allow a large viral load to allow for transmission. This is not a magic virus, there is nothing new here.
>I'm just not such a selfish asshat that I can give an hour of my time to go get vaccinated, reduce spread and maybe save some lives.
Homie, if you believe you're saving some lives by getting vaccinated...I don't know what kind of propaganda you've been feeding on along with those cheetos you were complaining about the other day.
The vaccine will not stop you from transmitting the virus to other immunocompromised people. Don't take my word for it, take Pfizer's.
I'm honestly surprised DUI laws are not brought up more as an analogy when discussing mask mandates and other public health measures.
An argument for driving drunk that sounds a lot like more than a few no-mask and no-vax arguments; "I drive drunk all the time and have never hurt anyone; I will probably never kill anyone. If you can't accept the risk of driving on the roads with me then stay home!".
And also, in both cases of course it's the potential harm to others that tends to make the laws acceptable. In the case of SCOTUS, it's settled that the government can take EXTREME measures in the name of public health.. Likely far beyond anything we have had to deal with so far.
But the courts acceptance (which is the source of truth of what is legal) is contextual. So the slippery slope arguments are off base IMHO because something upheld in the context of the pandemic could be struck down outside the pandemic..
We live by rule of law and it's a glorious thing. As much as I enjoy being cynical, getting together to agree on rules we wouldn't otherwise hold ourselves to(game theory?) is an amazing thing.
This is effectively a "think of the children argument". People with health complications will always be at higher risk of bad disease outcomes than the rest of the population. That includes the regular flu, too, and is pretty much guaranteed to include some form of COVID forever at this point. You don't get to use that as some kind of moral high ground to force your personal stance on everyone else.
Educate people about the low risk and high benefit of getting vaccinated. Encourage them to do so as a generally good thing for society. But framing it the way you are right now is not just unhelpful, it actively makes unvaccinated people think you hate freedom and don't give a damn about anyone's personal opinions.
1) I didn't mention children at all. I'm certainly not making a "think of the children" argument. That implies you think COVID is overblown and not a serious threat. But it is, and it's killed millions.
2) I don't give a damn about dumb opinions, and it's not my job to "educate" people that, let's be honest, don't really want to learn. The solution to stop deaths by DUIs isn't to try and convince people that they're wrong for driving drunk. The solution to stop deaths by lead poisoning isn't to try and educate consumers about the danger of lead in food.
Framing that as "hating freedom" is disengenuous. It would be nice if people did the bare minimum to not endanger lives, without requiring the force of law. Sadly, that's not always the case.
1) Replace "children" with "immunocompromised people". It is the exact same argument. Don't be pedantic. And yes, I do believe COVID is overblown in how it is presented. The risk factors are very clear now and nowhere near as bad as they were originally presented, or as bad as people still seem to think they are.
2) You just did it again - stating other people's opinions are "dumb" because they don't adhere to your personal mantra is exactly how you make other people completely disengage. Just like I'm going to do now.
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with thinking of children (or the immunocompromised or handicapped or any other group). "Think of the children" is an argument where you use children to justify an absurd, overblown, or bad faith argument.
You seem to think it means "I shouldn't have to think about other people's well-being because freedom." I think that's pretty callous.
As a person with a disability, I request respectfully that you leave disability out of your flawed "everyone needs to comply with my opinion" nonsense. I dont want to see disability abused by people like you. Understood? Keep your patronising to yourself and your family.
Yes vaccinated people can pass it on, but not as easily (study released today). Yes getting vaccinated will end the pandemic sooner because A) it won't be transmitted as much, and B) hospitals won't be at capacity for milder cases. Just get vaccinated
>It would be nice if people did the bare minimum to not endanger lives, without requiring the force of law. Sadly, that's not always the case.
I completely agree, we need to somehow get rid of all cell phones, so that people can stop with all of the distracted driving for one. Then we can make sure we force folks to eat right, exercise, and get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. No sleep, no car.
I think if the vaccines offered sterilizing immunity, you'd have a much stronger argument. As it is, vaccinated are able to transmit the disease, also putting immunocompromised at risk.
That the vaccines appear to lack durable protection is a problem as well IMO. What are the compound impacts of the vaccines if booster shots are required on an annual basis?
While we are at it. I also don't care if your bosses mother died or not. Since she is your bosses mother, she likely had an age where death is lurking around the corner anyway.
She wasn't retired, so I'd guess in her early 60s and didn't have any other major health issues from what I understand. But I'm glad you laid your cards on the table about not caring. I mean, it was already pretty clear.
Laws exist to protect innocents from people like you.
I am still not impressed. My father died with 39, my aunt with 42, and both my grannies didnt go beyond 70. This was way before corona. Life isnt guaranteed to last for 100 years. Stop fucking over the whole world just because you can not accept that it is finite.
