It’s something to worry about. Worrying seems to be very important to some.
there’ll forever be worry-warts and hypochondriacs, even in this forum
Solution to what? The sky’s the limit.
The sky clearly isn’t the limit when such a tiny percentage of any population are at statistically significant risk of dying with Covid
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“even”?
Checking the released numbers like they are stocks and shares.
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You’re asserting here - although you probably don’t even realise it, despite the fact that I’ve posted the calculations multiple times - that the vaccine effectiveness is close to 100% for omicron, and that the side effects are so vanishingly rare that they’re even less likely than death-by-common-cold. Both of those assertions aren’t even within hollering distance of being true. Nobody else is claiming these things, not even Pfizer or Moderna. So why are you claiming them?
See above. I will reluctantly agree that the long-term effects of an engineered biological weapon may be hard to predict, but it looks to me as if this one was not engineered to cause direct harm, but to be used as a psychological cosh.
I’m not suggesting we pretend to ignore it. I’m suggesting that ignoring it is a practical and sensible way of dealing with any problem that is not merely de minimis but is also fundamentally unfixable. There are much bigger problems that could more productively be funded or talked about. Every time someone pisses some more money down the COVID sinkhole, one of those problems stays on the backburner a bit longer.
While you’re arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a spike protein, all sorts of preventable harms continue to occur. Other posters have pointed out, for example, the enormous costs of smoking. Does the CDC hold a press conference about the 50 people who died yesterday from smoking-related diseases? Does anyone even care who they were? No. Lives could probably be saved here, at very little cost. But it simply isn’t that important.
Freedom is crucial to health and wellbeing. We allow people the freedom to make their own decisions about the value of their own lives not just as a matter of morality, but because it delivers a surprisingly good outcome. Forcing people to follow nonsensical and harmful rules causes such immense stress - at least to anyone who is aware that they are nonsensical and harmful - that the act itself reduces public health.
As for the cost/benefit analysis, I’ve provided such things from several different viewpoints, and whichever way you spin it, there’s an awful lot of cost for very little benefit. If you disagree, then spell it out for me: how, precisely, does jabbing a five-year-old or forcing him to sit in class with a mask on do anything at all for a 90-year-old cancer patient on a hospital ward? How have the financial, personal, and psychological depredations upon my life - me personally - directly resulted in any good for anybody else? And for the grand finale, look me in the eye and explain how the destruction of these young lives (and I can assure you, this is just the tip of the thin end of the wedge) was somehow right and proper, and served some higher purpose:
I have no idea about deaths. But there are lots of ways to harm people. Can you put a figure on the number of QALYs that might be lost by forcing people to walk around with their noses and mouths covered for two years solid? Or are you just going to claim that it’s “obvious” that it’s zero?
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No you are deliberately using hyperbole to avoid acknowledging that the risk of side effects from vaccinations is less than that of infection. If you choose not to get vaccinated, then you are choosing infection without protection. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and be asymptomatic and not suffer any long term consequences. Perhaps not.
Is this the lab theory your eluding to? I was just thinking about this. There seems to be an intersection between those who are resistant to vaccination and those who fervently believe that the virus is not only a lab leak but manmade. So in essence, because you prefer infection without vaccination, you trust the CCP more than you trust Pfizer/Moderna, etc.
I find that ironic.
I suppose you’re tying this into all government policy. I’m just talking about getting a shot in your arm. It’s so accessible and easy to get that you really have to cognitively go out of your way not to get it. And in doing so, you are pretending to be above it all when really you’re making a choice just like everyone else.
I wonder if deaths from smoking cause hospitals to be overwhelmed and impact everyone who needs health services regardless if it’s covid related or not. I wonder if deaths from smoking cause businesses to grind to a halt because half the staff is out sick. You can argue that doesn’t happen, but at this point most of us have personal experience with it actually happening.
The alternative of doing nothing, and not using any preventive measures, as you seem to suggest just ignores those consequences. And it’s not practical.
Again just talking about a shot here not the emotional harm of mask wearing. You may not like this or another government’s policies, but all I see is complaining from you with no practical solutions. Doing nothing is not a solution.
You’re again mixing the effectiveness/side effects of vaccines with all covid policies. Lots of children get shots in their arm…all the time. You can’t seem to stay on topic which is why I said your bias or your resistance to these policies has clouded your judgement and ability to separate the good policies from the ineffective ones. Encouraging vaccination is not causing harm like you claim. You can refuse it, but you’re taking the riskier approach. Which is fine that’s your choice.
Can you stay on topic?
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Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
Tomorrow will be news day about 3+4, lets hope for the best!
If case numbers continue to fall the shit just continues. We want them to rise to a level the health system can handle
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If they fall, then we can all thank the mask gods. We will look at the rest of the world and the unstable pandemic situation and keep the borders closed. If the kids are lucky, we will let them take their masks off for a graduation picture. Winning.
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Thinking cases will get down below 10,000 in under three weeks is some grade-A hopium anyway. They might decline, but it won’t be that rapid.
I like this
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“Cases down to 10,000 / day by the end of June” is not my prediction, by the way. I’m simply following what CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang (莊人祥) said earlier this week. Here’s my source:
Omicron is a strange beast, rushing in like a wave, and then receding . . . with more waves to come—alas this is not once and done—as this wily virus continues to mutate.
Guy
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Another issue related to opening is that Taiwan is a bit out of sync with the many parts of the world in terms of infection. We are going through what they saw a year ago.
I fear that the numbers here will go down…just in time for the West to be hit by an autumn contagion.
One more time very clearly…
It’s endemic now. It’s just a cold or mild flu. It’s time to forget about it and live normally. It’s here to stay…
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Hey, you were the one complaining that I hadn’t read your link (out of nowhere, I might add, because it’s not very relevant to what I wrote). So just wondered whether you’d actually read it properly, given your attempt (intentional or otherwise) to misrepresent the results.
Yes, it’s speculation, and I once again made clear with my phrasing that it’s speculation, as I tend to do. There is nothing wrong with speculating. My main point there was that the relative incidence of the three types of myocarditis wasn’t assessed in the study and the numbers for each group don’t indicate that, in contrast to what you claimed.
I’m not listening to a 33-minute popular science podcast, at the very least unless you want to direct me to a specific part that you feel supports your point. The link you posted seems to be from Dec. 4, 2020, though, pre-dating the first vaccinations, so I’m not sure why it would relate to how the data was collected in this particular study.
It wasn’t even remotely a rant - you just don’t seem to be very aware of how studies like this are performed or the limitations of very small sample sizes, as in this case. I note that you still haven’t addressed that, so I guess nothing I wrote got through again, but n = 9 is honestly bordering on anecdotal.
My initial response to you related to what you wrote about the risk being “many times greater” - that’s what I was disputing. I didn’t say anything about severity. Maybe infection-associated myocarditis is indeed more severe on average than vaccine-associated myocarditis, but to be convinced of that I’d want to see (i) a much larger sample size for the latter group and (ii) decoupling of myocarditis from MIS-C in the former group.
I didn’t draw that conclusion. I refer you once again to my wording.
I didn’t claim that either. Again, I was referring to the specific claims widely reported earlier this year that the risk of myocarditis after infection was 5-6x higher (or whatever) than that after vaccination. My assertion is that this value should be multiplied by the probability of catching COVID/testing positive, which, whether you like it or not, makes the value smaller and the two risks more comparable.
As you pointed out, myocarditis isn’t the only risk of being infected (or the only risk of vaccines), but it was nonetheless widely reported in the media as a reason people shouldn’t not get vaccinated, so I’ve responded to that specific claim.
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Disregarding who is right or wrong here, I appreciate that you, @andrew and @Malasang88, are discussing things in a respectful manner. That is not a given, not a given at all. 
Go on
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Respectful condescension?