Respectful condescension: “l know better than you.”
Disrespectful condescension: “You are stupid.”
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Sigh. If I “acknowledged” that, then as per the coffeecup slogan, we would both be wrong.
Here are some numbers AGAIN, more for the sake of those people who weren’t sitting at the back of math class practicing fart noises during high school. I’m going to focus specifically on children because IMO this is where the harm of government “protection” has been most egregious, but similar arguments apply to most of the population.
Taking the UK statistics as a reference point - because they’re the ones that I’m most familiar with - a total of 53 children aged 5-19 died “of or with” COVID during 2021, about a third of whom died during the Q1 delta episode, and a third again in Q4 (omicron). The gov’t estimates that 50% of those deaths were coincidental (i.e., half of them simply tested positive at the time of death and did not die “of” COVID).
So that’s 2.3 COVID deaths per million, per year; or less than one death per million per “event”. And that is, in fact, the official UK government figure, IIRC. Kids were mostly unvaccinated until delta had gone away and omicron was the dominant strain, and official statistics present the vaccine efficacy (at preventing death in the context of omicron) somewhere around 30% for this age group. So, making a bit of a handwaving argument, we might guess that Taiwan’s plan to vaccinating every child from 6 upwards could save - what? - one life per million.
The problem with that plan is that even the US CDC, whose vaccine page is a list of outright lies, acknowledges that COVID vaccination may cause “severe” outcomes or death at a rate of a handful per million. So we have to harm an unknown number of kids (and let’s not pretend anyone has actually ascertained what this number is) in order to save one.
Now let’s look at all-cause mortality. For that age range, annual risk of death is about 0.02%. Being a teenager during a COVID pandemic changes that to 0.0202%. Being a vaccinated teenager during a COVID pandemic puts your risk at about … 0.0201%. Woohoo! If you would care to look at the Pfizer documents being released, you’ll note that there was no measurable difference in all-cause mortality between the control group and the vaccine group - and that’s after they’d fiddled the data to hide adverse events.
By way of comparison, the rate of death by suicide in the UK is 110 per million. The cost of vaccinating the UK’s 12m 5-19 demographic would be somewhere in the ballpark of US$500m - and that’s only including the cost of the drug and the cost of administering it. How many deaths by suicide might we save with half a billion dollars, I wonder? And is it really a good investment to spend that amount on (hypothetically) saving one life?
In short, the “protection” that you’re claiming here is far from obvious, and even if it were accurate, vaccination money could clearly have been spent more productively, and we haven’t even considered the multifaceted harms caused by adults imposing their hypochondriac phobias onto an entire generation of impressionable kids.
Fun fact: about 200 people die in India every month as a result of being struck by lightning. In other words India’s mortality rate from lightning strikes (~2 per million) is comparable to the rate at which children die as a result of COVID.
And yet, you’re trusting the shit that pours out of the TV or the fact-checker websites instead of making some effort to learn about the relevant issues.
I don’t “believe” anything about the virus as such, because (a) I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth and (b) whatever happened, we can’t do much about it now. Since Moderna hold the patent for a genetic sequence that occurs nowhere else in nature except in the COVID virus, it looks to me as if there’s something a bit stinky going on here, and the usual “it’s all because of China” explanation might not actually be the right one. That’s as far as I’ll go with that.
Of course I’m tying it into government policy! That was the whole point of my post from a few days back, before you went off on a sidetrack about myocarditis. I was suggesting that governments have caused overt harm in a whole bunch of ways - one of which was to force experimental medical treatments on people who do not need it.
As I’ve said before, if people were told the truth about the vaccines (or masks, or “shielding”, or any of the other bullshit) and then left alone to make their own decision, I wouldn’t have any complaints. But that isn’t what happened. Almost every nation instituted draconian infringements on public and private life. Taiwan operated a “no jab no job” policy. Several countries still don’t allow unvaccinated people to enter, and Taiwan looks like they’re shaping up for something similar.
Do you? Where, precisely, has this happened? My niece actually told me that her hospital (London, UK) was indeed turning away patients. But that was because the government had shut the hospitals down, not because everyone was off sick. EVERY disruption that you are alluding to was caused by some similar failure of government policy, not by a massive glut of people needing hospitalisation. The UK actually built a whole bunch of extra hospitals, and not one of them was needed.
Sure, there are preventive measures. There’s an organisation called the FLCCC - about 17,000 doctors, I think - who have developed and used protocols for early treatment of COVID. I’m sure your encyclopedic knowledge of medicine will allow you to effortlessly dismiss these people as cranks. They have of course been persistently persecuted by the authorities for trying to treat patients, so I guess that proves that they’re cranks. I dunno, isn’t it remarkable that these stupid doctors should think that COVID might be at least superficially similar to other coronaviruses, and that it might be possible to offset the worst effects by applying their knowledge and the pharmaceuticals at their disposal? I’m sure many lives were saved by firing them.
My original complaint was regarding COVID policy in general - which includes the enforced or coerced use of pointless medical treatments.
Really? I’m sure you have some strong evidence to suggest that the millions of post-vax adverse events logged worldwide are all completely spurious.
It is not my choice. There are still a whole bunch of things I’m not allowed to do, thanks to medical apartheid.
It was you who went off on some sidetrack about vaccines - which I’ve answered comprehensively above. Meanwhile, you addressed none of my arguments about the harms caused by government policy.
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At this point I just want to know, when I can walk without a mask outside again. Getting uncomfortably hot… 
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No. and not till next year. Masks arent bothering anybody except us foreigners according to the cdc
I went naked in Daan park yesterday. Very freeing. Just wear the mask on your arm and she’ll be right.
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Who’s she?
I expected you continue with a story about going full monty and someone shouting at you for not covering your mouth… 
Weird times we live in.
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Am I the only one who thinks they need to let in the other variants? High levels of immunity now probably lead to fewer and milder reinfections. If they are kept it long enough, we’ll just have to start over again late a second time. It’s time to let this thing be endemic like it should have been from the beginning.
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I disagree about letting it in from the beginning. We would’ve seen much larger death tolls pre-vaccine and all the treatments that have been introduced. But now? Yes, definitely.
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Maybe just in time for winter, when you’ll appreciate the warmth of a mask again? 
The case numbers are going down anyway, so masks are obviously working ( 
).
Because everyone is reporting themselves to the govt when they are sick…
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Speak for yourself!
Guy
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You’re still going to be happily wearing your mask in 2025 as you trundle off for your 37th booster shot, yeah?
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I would be delighted if the pandemic ended.
Unfortunately, in June 2022, it has not.
Guy
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Of course it won’t end. It will reach a point that people are willing to tolerate, as we do with all causes of sickness and death.
The question is what level of tolerance is reasonable. I think opening up now is OK.
Your frequent arguments that it hasn’t ended yet mean that we never will reach a tolerance level that one could describe as normal. Unfortunately, I suspect the CECC share your position in this regard
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I haven’t had so much as a sniffle since I started wearing a mask in indoor crowds two-plus years ago. If it’s okay with everyone I plan to put a mask on whenever I’m in close proximity to strangers for more than a few minutes in the future because I like not being sick. I’ve also lost count of how many annual flu shots I’ve gotten but I know it’s in the double digits. If Covid keeps up I may sneak in an annual Covid booster too if I can do it without triggering anyone.
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Good news! Just got off the phone with everyone and they’re fine with it!
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Glad we settled that one
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Oh, I don’t care what you do - you can wear a mask and get repeatedly vaccinated to your heart’s content as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s your choice. I don’t even object to recommendations, and in certain cases requirements, to wear masks in crowded indoor areas. I’m just sick of the outdoor rule.
It also seems like the 2.8 million (known) people who’ve caught it in Taiwan during the last two months were able to catch the sniffles perfectly well while wearing masks pretty much everywhere, so…
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Excellent. That means no more hectoring about choosing to wear masks and get boosters then, right?
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