Dat2U wrote:Doc, I'll start by saying there's no easy answer. There's also no answer that would have likely prevented a significant loss of life.
There is. Vaccines. They work. If we had them early on we could have prevented the spread and mutation of the disease.
I'm also not anti-vaccine. But I'm confident that not enough research has been done with MRNA technology and its impact on the human body. (I won't even get into that trash ass J&J shot). As regular boosters have become a part of regime, i feel even less comfortable with the vax option. There is no long term study showing the impact of continued boosters on our bodies. Its as if were going along with the 'best' choice at the moment with zero consideration to what the long term implications could be... especially since we've learned its a leaky vax. As we should know, not all vaccines are created equal. Some are much better than others. A vaccine that doesn't protect you from infection and whose effectiveness wains after a few months is not an ideal vax and can create more problems than it's worth.
We can refer to the other thread but even post-Delta in the Omicron era, the vaccines deter infection. Leaky or no. In the Denmark study cited, vaccinated members in the same household as an infected person are only ~30% likely to catch the virus. 70% effective is still a strong number. This is up from the Delta variant where the vaccines were 80% likely to prevent infection, and up from the original strain for which it was developed (as much as 96% protection). But that is significantly better than say, the Flu vaccine which is only 40-60% effective. This is because influenza has become endemic, multiplies readily, and each year brings a new strain. Every year vulnerable people require a new flu shot. The difference is that because the flu has been around for millenia antibodies have developed in populations that make people flu resistant, and also that vulnerable people in history who contracted the flu already died off, their genes that made them vulnerable did not pass on.
The hope is still that if we can slow the growth of this virus science can stay ahead of it, and we won't have to have mass die-offs to develop herd immunity. If we had a vaccine early on that slowed the spread of the virus to 30% of its speed across populations (and we were able to deliver it to India and South Africa) we would not have had an Omicron variant.
If we had a vaccine that was even 70% effective at the start of this epidemic, 560,000 Americans would still be alive.
Does the vaccine reduce serious illness? It appears so. Did a flu shot help the flu? Yes. Did we mandate flu shots and fire people from their jobs for not taking a flu shot? No.
Hospitals and Nursing Homes require flu vaccinations. Schools require MMR shots before kids are allowed to enroll. Yes, we do. We had effectively defeated measles until Facebook posts allowed anti-vaxx misinformation to spread.
Does a healthy diet significantly reduce the chance of illness? Yes. Do we mandate people to eat healthy to reduce the burden of care for doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies? No.
Totally off the point. You cannot pass obesity to 7 people. If you could contract morbid obesity by breathing the same air in an elevator as a big boy then hell yes we would see vaccines and mandates for anti-fat vaxx.
There's never an easy answer for everything but the current response screams overreach from governments across the world.
Fckn how. How is it overreach to form a public policy to prevent mass death.
800,000 Americans dead. That is over 13 Viet Nam Memorial walls worth of dead Americans. In one year killing more Americans than 30 years of the AIDS epidemic. It's not enough to say 'yeah that's bad, but hey people die'. We have no natural immunity to this thing, so it spreads like wildfire. There is no firewall to slow it down. EXCEPT vaccines or mass death. The very purpose of government in the first place is to protect people, even against their own choices. Dangerous drugs are illegal. Medicines are controlled. People are crying that these vaccines haven't been tested enough, in part because we are used to them being tested for up to 10 years before they are sent to market. And if not they are illegal.
This is a case where it is overwhelmingly in the public good NOT to delay the use of an effective treatment. This is a case where Government very sensibly has flexed in order to protect the largest number of people.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare
Health and Welfare. Defense. Insuring Domestic peace. Ensuring that more Americans don't die and that we can safely open society (and our economy). We have Fire Marshall codes determining how many people can safely stand in one place. We have banned smoking indoors. Children cannot buy guns. And yes if you want to put your kid in public school they have to be vaccinated against the most virulent diseases.
It is reasonable to be hesitant and skeptical. It is fair to be concerned about your individual personal liberty. Marijuana should be legalized at a federal level. Prostitution should be legalized taxed and regulated to ensure sex workers have access to regular health care, as it is in Amsterdam. The government should not force women to keep an embryo in her body. The intelligence agencies should not be in our personal lives.
But absolutely government should have a policy to deal with the cataclysmic overgrowth of a newly mutated virus. The options are: lockdowns, mass death, or science. Doubtless there will be better science as we go, but so far to me the development of these vaccines in that short of a period of time is a f****ing miracle. I'm proud as hell of our scientific community, even if, yeah, huge pharmaceutical corporations stand to benefit from their work. They did remarkably good work with zero time to do it.
