Honestly none of this is going to matter. The unvaccinated are all going to get the omicron variant over the next few weeks, and after that everybody’s immunity will be pretty much the same, vaccinated or not.
I’m triple vaxxxed and got omicron. I’m not saying don’t get vaccinated, but this is coming for everyone. NYC is getting completely slammed right now. My honest hope is that this is the last wave that’s truly a showstopper - omicron so far for me has been about a mild sinus infection.
I was so-called critical infrastructure when the panic started. After a few days of consideration, it became apparent that everyone would be exposed in time. I made peace with myself, my God, my family and kept living. I kept an eye on healthy eating. I did get it in early 2021 and got through it at home. While I am sad for the scared obese carbohydrate and sugar eaters, I am happy to live. And I am happy I could vacation with family this year, without masks, in Florida and Texas.
I wish everyone gets as healthy as they want to be to fight the inevitable virus exposure.
I am a bit superstitious (even if not religious) about declaring that bad things can't happen to me. The culture I grew up in is pervaded with cautionary ideas like "pride goeth before a fall", "don't tempt fate", and "don't put God to the test".
Separately, declaring one's superiority can be interpreted as rude, or as compensation for lack of confidence.
I am curious about the traditions and norms you are used to. I haven't spent very much time in Florida or Texas, and the parts of Florida I've seen most of are the parts that are more like New York than the deep South.
Something I do associate with Florida is the occasional person with large, confrontational signs with way too much lettering on them. I saw someone who had put text describing a business dispute he had all over his truck.
I really wasn't sure if that was a crazy person or just how some people do things there.
While passing through Texas years ago, I remember it as my introduction to temperatures so high that the relatively cool air trapped by long shirt and pants was a blessing that kept me from being cooked momentarily. It made me think of the saying "If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas."
Vaccines for covid are only for lessening the severity. Prevention is widely known not effective for covid vaccines. This is why almost all health professional stop using the phrase "herd immunity". At this stage it is better for everyone to just move on. There will always be people who differ opinions. If they opt to have higher risk of dying from covid and we ourselves have already been jabbed, I think no point to be fixated on it forcing people to do so. There are more people dying from lung cancer, hypertensions, heart attack, diabetes, etc. None bother to address cigs, sugary drinks, overeating as zealously as covid vaccinations. BTW, expect jabbing to be done annually. Your triple jabs are just the "beginning" of the norm.
This is incorrect. The vaccine also provides protection from contracting the disease. This has been known to be true for at least the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines since this Spring, when the first big population studies came in. The efficacy varies based on the variant and the length of time since last vaccine/booster.
And the reason people have stopped talking so much about herd immunity is because Covid is becoming endemic. However, in such a situation, vaccines are just as important, even if herd immunity can’t be achieved anymore. That’s for protection of the individual, the immunocompromised in the community, the population as a whole, and to keep the healthcare system functioning.
Yeah I mean the flu we experience yearly is “descended” from the Spanish Flu but we don’t require flu passports to get a coffee. Eventually (I hope) the madness will subside. Forcing people to get vaccines will only result in contrarian noncompliance due to the peculiarities of the American psyche. We are much better off in the long run investing in universal health care and increasing access but that’s a non-starter in our political climate
I am prepared to submit to authority, even on life and death matters, as long as there is a self-consistent message that I can in principle believe.
I'm struggling with the internal contradictions of saying we have a life and death situation where every non-essential office worker must wear a mask at their desk but we can't go back to full time telecommuting.
If our dear leader feels there are essential workers needed, I am willing to serve and wear a mask. If she feels that we need to be in the office, and the risk is not that great, I'm willing to do that. If she feels that the risk is high and rising and we should be telecommuting, then I'm ok with that.
But don't tell us that we're non-essential and we have to be in the office and we have to wear masks when alone at our desks.
> Forcing people to get vaccines will only result in contrarian noncompliance due to the peculiarities of the American psyche
In my country most non compliance is due to lack of confidence in authorities and passive aggresive behaviour. People would rather believe all sorts of mumbo jumbo than get vaccinated.
Anyway, I feel like vaccine mandates and the green pass only further divides society and after we get rid of the pandemic we'll be stuck with a fascism epidemic.
I'm triple vaccinated and somehow managed to avoid getting infected so far.
I feel Omicron will be the great equalizer, vaccinated unvaccinated natural immune will all get, the few exceptions are those either in their bunkers or lucky enough to have been under the booster’s Goldilocks immunity window when Omicron wave hits their shores. M
Glad you’re doing ok. I’m double vaxxed and got Delta (likely, I don’t know for sure of course) and it was BAD. I didn’t die but I thought I might at one point.
I’m any event, we all have to get it at some point.
I think where I am vaccination rates are upwards of 90%, so I would think essentially everyone getting it is vaccinated or has had a previous variant. Or both.
Multiple sites I've tried for making a booster appointment make you choose a location and a day before they tell you "nope, no appointments available". That seems insane, but it also seems to be a pattern and I'm wondering if there are weird incentives that caused them to design it that way instead of telling you what is available.
LOL! You should check hospitals to see how many fully-vaccinated got checked into ER for Omicron. The admission rate of Omicron over Delta is like ten times worse but its severity is what only milder and much shorter ER visit.
Just looked it up and wow this is actually true! I'm feeling very confident of my upcoming booster now. Guess I'll just hedge my bet by buying Pfizer stock.
Surge in inputs can be explained by the fact that we’re in a pandemic. Based on the investigation of the VAERS reports, what risks are you talking about?
From 1990, roughly ~600 self reported cases of negative vaccine related effects per year. Now, with the COVID vaccine, we are at over 20k a year and counting. From 1990 through 2020 there were various pandemics across the globe, including a few in the US. In that time, there were several innovations with vaccines, as well. So the dismissal that we are in a pandemic seems suspect.
This could mean that the science disproves the previous statement because of reasons A, B and C, or alternatively it could mean that science does not prove statements A, B and C.
If you scroll to the second graph and select 7 days and cases. You will see 2022 cases for the vaccinated, and 778 for the unvaccinated. With the slopes diverging out.
Omicron is still being found in first-generation infected - those who have traveled internationally, and are therefore much more likely to have been vaccinated.
I’m extremely distrustful of the prevailing wisdom on this topic, and have not been vaccinated myself; that doesn’t prevent me from being honest in my analysis.
There is some hope that Omicron will be less severe than the variants that it is displacing, but we won’t have enough data to be confident in that assertion for another week or two at the earliest.
It will be at January before we have an idea how effective vaccine-based immunity is in relation to infection-acquired immunity. We have nothing resembling a representative sample of the general population yet.
> If Omicron is more infectious to the vaccinated than not vaccinated, that would be super ironic wouldn't it be. Would scientists even admit that.
No that would be by design.
particularly if Omicron really is milder to the unvaccinated as well. (that is still an IF). all those vaccinated people will be at the leading edge of the fight to make Omicron the dominant if not the only version of the virus. They will have been a strong wind behind the evolution to "flu like" alterations...
Still go an get vaccinated, Still go and get your boosters. You can't leave this to nature, because nature is constantly trying to kill you. There is not "mother earth" or Gaia... there is only the on-going war that is life. Everything competing to eat or out compete each other for resources to make sure their offspring get to fight the same fight.
The idea of getting more people sick, seems counter intuitive as a goal of a vaccine.
Correct me if I'm misreading your comment.
Scientists made a vaccine that was by "design" to get:
a) "more people sick with new milder variants."
b) "more people sick with stronger variants"
You're claiming a) if it turns out true. b) makes no sense as a vaccination goal. a) really seems unethical gamble if it turns it's false and we end up with b)
Until USSC does a review. From that link, 'a motion requesting a new emergency stay has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.'
The OSHA mandate is ridiculous. The MSHA approach is adequate and reasonable, and MSHA really does safety and not just safety theater. Yes, I am a MSHA regulated miner.
At least for federal employees, some of the questions they ask when judging the sincerity of your belief is what other medical procedures you've opted out of because of your religious belief, and what specific part of your religion forbids you from receiving the vaccine. It definitely wasn't a rubber stamp exemption approval like I thought it would be.
It should be a rubber stamp. (There should be no religious exemption in the first place). I grew up thinking America’s ideal was to be a country with separation of church and state.
I do not see why a religion I make up 10 minutes ago should be any less of a religion than one made 100 years ago.
If you can prove that you sincerely believe in the religion you made up 10 minutes ago, then you'd get the same exemption. It's not like they gave a list of religions that qualify for exemptions.
The sincerity of the belief is a measured by the credibility of the claimant in each specific case. They are assumed to be credible by default unless the other party can show glaring inconsistencies. Even then, the guidance notes that people's beliefs change so challenging such a claim is relatively hard.
A sincerely held religious belief is basically a "get out of jail free" card (figuratively) because of the issues you point out. With the preponderance of evidence standard, all one has to do is convince the judge that their belief is more likely to be sincere than not. If one can prove that they go to church on a semi-regular basis, for example, it's nearly impossible to convince a judge that the belief is insincere.
The thing that's causing issues is that many people who are objecting to the Covid vaccines are largely not anti-vax in general, and their reasons aren't really rooted in the philosophy of religious law around vaccines, but the aggressive and sudden push for these particular ones is tripping all of their mental alarms, because aggressive and sudden intrusions by untrustworthy governments are often used to accomplish evil that is extremely contrary to their religious beliefs. A court probably isn't going to be sympathetic to that argument, but I think it's what's happening.
>Even then, the guidance notes that people's beliefs change so challenging such a claim is relatively hard.
It is not relatively hard, it is (or should be) impossible.
My religion stating that I believe in whatever I want to believe and is subject to change at any time is as valid as any other religion, from the perspective of the government. Assuming we are striving for separation of church and state.
Religion never needs to come up in legislation, just like one's favorite tv shows or music.
Religion is socially acceptable mythology. Your 10 minute one has less social acceptance, even if it is equally a myth to some significantly older one. It is the social acceptance that gives it validity. You can guess the social acceptance of worshiping Zeus.
One wishes they had written something like "belief conforming to established practice" or something, that would defend against antivaccionationists making up stuff on the spot.
You don't need to part of major religion to gain exemption. Some people simply stated that their body is their temple. I don't think you even need religious thinking at all. If you held strong sincere moral and ethical position, like the need to preserve your right to bodily autonomy.
Protestantism isn't a religion, it's thousands of different ones, one for each church or individual who believes they're getting direct revelation or that they've found a new way to read the Bible by taking out every prime-numbered verse or something.
Government should get out of the business of defining religion, and tax them like everyone else unless they can prove they operate in some sort of secularly charitable way (like everyone else.) And if government gets out of the business of defining religion, it should get out of the business of religious exemptions. Make it required or make it optional for people regardless of belief. It's perverse to make me prove that my belief is purely, religiously irrational in order to get an exemption.
Imagine a judge saying: "Sorry, that reason you've given for not allowing your child to have a blood transfusion makes a lot of sense, so it's not a religious belief. Therefore I order that the child be given the blood transfusion."
No, it really does matter. I don't have a problem with people who have genuine religious objections. I do have a problem with people who are just making shit up to get out of taking a shot.
This ignores the fact that there are other religious reasons to oppose it, such as the fact that fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses were used to test the vaccine.
If they didn't know about it before, and only found out about it now, than they can simply state that going forward they will stop using these too. Not really hypocritically or a contradiction.
And you're flat wrong about that. The typical response as pointed out by the Biden Administration has been "I wasn't aware of that but now that I am I will not use those products as well."
Even the Pope, head of the one of the most staunchest antiabortion religions, has gone on record saying that it is the duty of all Catholics to get vaccinated if possible, as all individuals have a collective duty each other.
The sad fact is, it has become a political game to refuse a covid vaccine, as opposed to all vaccines. There is no difference between these vaccines and the countless others all of us have received — and were required to receive — in our lives.
I never said they contained them. I literally said "used to test the vaccine."
Religions that oppose abortion typically don't have a statute of limitations on when the cells from them are okay to use to grow cell lines to use in testing.
> Religions that oppose abortion typically don't have a statute of limitations on when the cells from them are okay to use to grow cell lines to use in testing.
You literally just made this up. I cited the pope himself.
Using abortion as a complaint about vaccines is disingenuous, and it deserves to be treated as such. If this was the case, we wouldn’t be hearing about this in 2021, it would have been well known for 40 years.
They are not separable in a public health crisis. Your personal autonomy does not trump other's right to life. That well educated people can't tell the difference is what is surprising.
There is no right to life. There's not even a right to be protected from dangers. That well educated people wrongly believe such a right exists is surprising.
Instead of inventing imaginary rights you might be more convincing by focusing on responsibilities.
Holding a monopoly on violence over a particular territory is the fundamental basis of the modern nation state. The state enforces that monopoly primarily to assert and maintain it's own legitimacy.
