Coronavirus

That's really, REALLY not the same as saying they wouldn't take the vaccine. She said that she would take a doctor-approved vaccine ("first in line"). Would anyone disagree with her stance? I just don't get how saying "I'd take a doctor-approved vaccine but not something that just a politician told me to take" is a political stance. Especially when you consider the context that a ton of non-approved substances were being obliquely recommended to dangerous effect.

Admittedly, I was mostly checked out of the news cycle because it was so stressful. And I'm not denying that COVID has been inappropriately politicized by both parties, but Democrats saying they wouldn't take the vaccine just to spite Trump was never on my radar. My sense is that masking and vaccine hesitancy has always been more centered in the Republican base.

That's really, REALLY not the same as saying they wouldn't take the vaccine. She said that she would take a doctor-approved vaccine ("first in line"). Would anyone disagree with her stance? I just don't get how saying "I'd take a doctor-approved vaccine but not something that just a politician told me to take" is a political stance. Especially when you consider the context that a ton of non-approved substances were being obliquely recommended to dangerous effect.

Admittedly, I was mostly checked out of the news cycle because it was so stressful. And I'm not denying that COVID has been inappropriately politicized by both parties, but Democrats saying they wouldn't take the vaccine just to spite Trump was never on my radar. My sense is that masking and vaccine hesitancy has always been more centered in the Republican base.

As I said, I respect science more than anecdotes, so all I can do is show the studies on the vaccines' side effects which show that they are far safer than an actual covid infection. What is becoming increasingly clear is that everyone will have either an infection or a vaccine at one point, so the real question here is to weigh which one you'd prefer. Side effects of covid also includes a substantial percentage of myocarditis and it's becoming accepted in the medical community that being a covid survivor will practically be considered a disability going forward. Nothing in the medical research shows vaccines causing anywhere near this level of harm.


Unvaccinated people are a social risk because they enable future and potentially more deadly mutations of the virus. This isn't theoretical, as we see these mutations emerging and the level of harm they are creating. Do unvaccinated people have a right to cause this spread? About as much as someone has a right to operate a car with a BAC of 1.2%. Thankfully we don't live in a libertarian paradise, and our behavioral liberties are frequently curtailed for the common good, because people tend to be selfish and reckless creatures.


No one was talking about rights when we mandated prior vaccines. There was a very good reason why this was not controversial. Vaccines have only become controversial in about the past 25 years when a bunch of affluent white people in California read a since-discredited paper about thimerosal. These were also not respectable people. Given the fact that this country has not seen a mortality rate like this pandemic in a century - not from war, drugs, pollution or natural disaster - applying a similar vaccine mandate as we saw in the 50s with polio, or the 1900s with small pox, shouldn't not only be uncontroversial, given the legal case precedent in those cases, it should make modern society ashamed of itself for not having the wisdom of our less technologically-savvy ancestors. I'm personally ashamed to have to share the air with some of these people.

Again, the sky didn't fall when SCOTUS allowed the small pox mandate in 1905, nor did it erupt when we mandated polio in 1955, or when we mandated all of the other childhood vaccinations needed before that child can be admitted into public schools. What we are seeing today with the vaxx resistence is an aberration to the entire history of modern medicine. It really isn't that hard of a decision once you realize that you'll only be hurting a few people's feelings.

I’m not afraid the sky is going to fall and I’m not worried about hurting anyone’s feelings. I said I am of two minds of it and I don’t think it can be reduced to the terms you are reducing it to. I refuse to be the guy that’s for government mandates when my cause is being put forward, and see it as a problem when it’s not my cause. Too much of that from both sides at the moment..or maybe since always, what the hell do I know.

With a lot of these hot button topics there is often conflicting science that we do not hear about. I'm not saying that's the case here, but unless we are scientists ourselves, we only know what we are told.

The vaccine certainly won't improve anyone's health or make them feel better

Hm. That's a good example of the kind of partisan paralysis that we've had to deal with, where "both sides" creates a gridlock to productive action. I hope that we can agree that we shouldn't be politicizing this disease? OK. Now, without political consideration and going strictly on the science and the data of deaths and disability being caused by the disease, which is overwhelmingly more than the death and disability caused by the vaccines, given what we can empirically see in the emergence of new strains absent vaccination, then where would we fall on what would be the appropriate imperative? To help people? Or allow people to continue harming others?

Or we can read the available science? You see, the beutiful thing about science is that it can be testing with data and reason. I haven't seen a lot of reasonable excuses, based on consistent data, to justify not treating SARS-CoV-2 as we've previously treated small pox or polio now that we have similar, perhaps superior, tools to fight it.

If you mandate, and people still refuse, what’s your next step?

How exactly do we read the science? Aren't most of us just taking in an interpretation of the science? Is there any conflicting science whatsoever? Sincere questions.

Are you saying that the vaccine can improve our health, besides fighting Covid?

Ideally if you refuse, then you won't be able to access certain public spaces. Similar to if a parent refuses to have their child vaccinated for measles and diptherea, then that child cannot access a public school. If anyone can find me where any parents were picketing over the latter, I'd love to see it. Instead most people were happy to take the win when these diseases were practically eliminated. When did measles come back? 2019, because we're recently living in a media environment where too many people have lost contact with history and reality.

Look, you know that if all of the qualified scientists were to come to someone's door and tell them with all of the confidence of all of their combined qualifications that vaccines are overwhelmingly safer than a covid infection, that a person who is already committed to disbelieving the science will not take their word for it. If there's any serious conflicting science on the point of vaccine safety, then I'd like to see it.

What public spaces, how are you enforcing it?

I'm not sure "some people shouldn't get it" is actually actionable, though, unless it's predictable. If it's just something you can say in retrospect, then it's useless, and serves only to scare people away from doing something they should be doing. Without a specific and projectable reason to suspect a bad reaction, all you can do is look at the aggregate and make the decision based on that.

And if you do that, you find that the chances of a significant negative reaction are so rare that you're more likely to be harmed driving to the vaccination site than you are to be harmed from the vaccination itself.

I told you there's two 21yo kids that have had significant problems since getting it. More than likely, they would have been better off not getting it.

It's not ideal to force one's way of thinking onto others, and it has nothing to do with science.

Fighting Covid is great but that has nothing to do with what I was saying.

Right, but she’s pushing the same nonsense Trump was pushing. Acting like he’s in a lab somewhere mixing up vaccines. Were the vaccines ever not going to be approved by doctors? Give me a break. It’s complete political nonsense that has no place n sensible discourse.

Without a specific and projectable reason to suspect a bad reaction, all you can do is look at the aggregate and make the decision based on that.

And if you do that, you find that the chances of a significant negative reaction are so rare that you're more likely to be harmed driving to the vaccination site than you are to be harmed from the vaccination itself.

I'm not sure "some people shouldn't get it" is actually actionable, though, unless it's predictable. If it's just something you can say in retrospect, then it's useless, and serves only to scare people away from doing something they should be doing. Without a specific and projectable reason to suspect a bad reaction, all you can do is look at the aggregate and make the decision based on that.

And if you do that, you find that the chances of a significant negative reaction are so rare that you're more likely to be harmed driving to the vaccination site than you are to be harmed from the vaccination itself.

Many of the side effects along these lines mirror the kinds of vascular symptoms that have occured in covid patients. Myocarditis (heart muscle inflammation) has occured in a number of covid patients, especially among young otherwise healthy athletes who are otherwise asymptomatic. According to one cardiologist: "We have data from hospitalized patients that show between seven and 33 percent of people will have some cardiac injury after getting COVID-19." Why is this? Or why only young children are afflicted with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome? What we do know is that the percentages of these side effects among covid patients are far higher than among those receiving the vaccine. Why? The current presumption is that the vaccines can also trigger a milder form of this kind of inflammatory immune response, much as nearly all of the noted side effects are milder versions of symptoms experienced by covid patients. So I think that it's a big question of whether or not these particular men would have been better off without a vaccine or whether with a covid infection they could have found themselves with a more serious cardiac injury.




For me, it has everything to do with science, because reason, after all, is a way of thinking.



When you say "The vaccine certainly won't improve anyone's health or make them feel better", it makes little sense to caveat "except for fighting the disease the vaccine was designed for!" After a year and a half of covid, 600K deaths and several million suffering long-term symptoms, and obviously the unending anxiety of it all, I think it's clear that these vaccines have provided a vast improvement to our collective health. Now maybe we should spread the vaccines to other countries where they'll be more appreciated.