pcbothwel wrote:What is with this boards obsession with COVID and the "vaccine"? The jab is simply a therapeutic, not a vaccine. It doesnt keep you from getting it, nor does it stop you from spreading it. So mandating it is pure politics, not based on science.
You want to argue the benefits of getting the vaccine vs not? Sure, sounds like sound fodder and perfectly reasonable.
But I have not heard one sound argument as to why/how anyone benefits by forcing OTHERS to take an experimental therapeutic. Just odd behavior, let alone the gloating and snarky comments about those who are unvaccinated who die.
Enjoy the claps of your likeminded twitter friends who laugh at your "Muh Freedom" jokes, because it sounds like many of you have a deeper unhappiness and insecurity in your life that has nothing to do with politics or the "vaccine".
Given that COVID was the #3 killer of Americans last year, behind only heart disease and cancer: Yes, people are unhappy and insecure. If you aren't you probably haven't been touched by the disease, and okay thank grace for that. But the families and loved ones of 4.5 million people across the world can't say the same. Choking to death with a tube down your throat is an awful way to go.
The vaccine reduces the viral load. It does reduce the spread. It significantly reduces the rate of hospitalization and death. Even with the Delta variant. The unvaccinated populations of places like India and Brazil are where these variants are being generated. The higher the viral load, the more replications of the virus, the more likely a more communicable or lethal version of the disease will mutate into existence. The insistence of half the population of some states to refuse to prevent getting sick has overloaded our general healthcare system. My brother is an emergency room doc. His hospital ran out of body bags. Check the suicide rate of nurses last year.
It is reasonable and just that we are talking politics. That is a question of how we are governed. The job of government is to 'ensure the general welfare'. To provide for the common health and safety of the people, even when they disagree on the terms. Even when people choose to do things to themselves that are dangerous. We try to prevent it.
We pass laws all the time that do so. Sure people can choose to smoke, or drink alcohol. They cannot legally choose to use unsanctioned drugs. Children cannot intelligently make any of those choices, so we pass laws that prevent them from doing so. We pass laws to prevent people from abusing drugs. But you cannot contract alcoholism from someone coughing. We cannot prevent you from smoking, but we can pass laws saying you cannot do so in an airplane or a library or indoors in any public space. We can prevent you from using public motorways if you are using drugs or alcohol.
A government that suddenly was dealing with the #3 cause of death absolutely has a responsibility to pass laws to prevent that. Even to protect people from themselves. I used the seatbelt analogy earlier. Mandatory seatbelt laws literally restrict your freedom -- to turn yourself into a human meat missile. Because people dying in a preventable way is not a good thing. Even if they feel immune to it. And again, you cannot contract 'meat missile' diseases off someone else. If you could, if there was even a 2% chance that someone you coughed on would go flying through the air and smash into a tree, then yeah the government would find a way to regulate that.
We require immunization for childhood diseases before children can enter public school. Measles Mumps and Rubella had been snuffed to the point of non-existence. It is only reasonable that population wide diseases get the same treatment.
With a brand new virus that no one has ever encountered, we can get to herd immunity 2 ways: the natural way where everybody susceptible catches it and dies, or develops antibodies --OR-- an artificial way, by science, where we simulate resistance to the disease. 'Resistance' is absolutely the purpose of vaccines. Few vaccines provide 100% prevention of any disease. It is questionable if we will develop antibodies for this. The common cold is a coronavirus. But the efficacy of vaccines is not debated by those who have devoted their lives and careers to studying these things. The vaccines work. They help at all levels: preventing catching it, preventing contracting it, preventing hospitalization, preventing death from it. The problem is there is a fear based campaign about people forcing you to take medicine. Using the word 'experimental' as if it were a boogeyman.
Of course it is experimental. You can't do a 10 year study on something that popped up a year and a half ago. However the vaccines have gotten a mass trial and are probably the most tested new medicines that have ever been released. And have proven remarkably safe when you look at it. Put it this way, no hospitals are running out of body bags because of vaccine deaths.
Me I understand the fear of the Tuskegee experiment, where our government allowed malfeasance against certain populations. And after any given election cycle I will trust or distrust the party in power accordingly. But aside from that, what is the big freaking fear? What is the monster under the bed?
The vaccine? Its a jab that makes your arm hurt and you get a bit tired for a day or so. But if there is even a chance that your boo-boo prevents the death of that fat funny guy who drives a beer truck to your local bar, then why not just take the shot. Just in case. So that guys kids don't grow up wishing they had their daddy back.
You can argue about the numbers, or how many die or if they were coded correctly etc. But something on the order of four point five million human beings are not breathing today because they got sick. Because they couldn't get the jab in the arm that people are deliberately refusing, and yeah, by the science, endangering other people.
Here is science:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ties-covid-vaccines-lower-transmission-rates(^^^ the CIDRAP director was the guy who wrote a book predicting COVID-19 )