this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2021
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COVID-19 Pandemic
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First of all it doesn't matter if you win this argument. Herd immunity does not require 100% of people to be vaccinated. That's why it's such solid public health policy, and why vaccine mandates are so controversial. It doesn't matter one iota if this one guy and all his friends don't get vaccinated.
Seconly, the first data I found was this.
Fairly insignificant then. It's less than the chance of being murdered each year (for an englishman). Less than the chance of randomly dying for some other reason that day. And it's less than the chance of dying from running a marathon. Source
I didn't do the sums, but I'd wager it's also less than the chance of contracting and dying from covid.
Unless you are demented or diabetic etc, you're probably fine. Anyway, it's a free choice he can make. None of anyone else's business, unless he's unfortunate enough to live in Italy.
It does matter
?
Here is a twitter thread listing deaths of vaccinated Indians due to medical issues.
Just Indians alone.
i give statistics from an actual study, and you respond with a list of anecdotes?
you are the problem. you can convince yourself of anything, just by cherry picking the right anecdotes. you'll believe exactly what you want to believe, with no consideration for the truth.
Dude, that pretty much proves you are parrotong what you have been fed by authorities.
What I gave you is much more than the statistical aggregates you are talking about. Newspapers have published the names, age, etc for each of them.
And I don't know what is your exposure to the field of statistics, but 5000 "anecdotes" are statistically significant.
Antivaxxer arguments are so incredibly sad.
"You are parrotong(sp) what you have been fed by authorities" - Right - they're authorities because they're the top relevant medical experts and scientists involved. Reading a twitter thread doesn't make you an authority. See the difference? What you are doing is parroting (spelling matters) typical antivax conjecture.
What you gave is, as previously mentioned, anecdotes. You could provide a million of them, they're still anecdotes.
Exposure to the field of statistics? Would you like to talk to the experts involved with VAERS and the like so you can actually get educated about what they find significant?
They are authorities, because they are authorities. Good one. I am really convinced now.
Forget twitter. Mind reading something from the authorities? Check table 2, page number 13, of 41st week review of vaccination by PHE. Last two columns specifically. It states, statistically, that if you are over 30, and vaccinated, you are more likely to to get covid positive than if you are unvaccinated.
And remember, I am not yet referring you to any "antivax conjecture".
And yet another problem with antivaxxers - refusal to read unless it fits their narrative.
Sorry, try again.
"Narrative" doesn't come from anti-establishment folks like me. Our job is to point to holes in the narrative. Ontology 101.
And I don't need to "try" anything, including vaccines. You can take your jab. Or jabs. Mix and match them, whatever.
"Contrarian" is the word you're looking for.
Is being contrarian a good or a bad thing? Sounds like you think it's a bad thing.
I used to think it's neither. Some people naturally go with the crowd, some go against it. Going against it doesn't make you a free thinker, it's just a different tendency.
But now I think that being a contrarian starts off that way, as just a neutral natural tendency. But it forces you to frequently think deeply about things, because you keep getting in arguments. If you agree with most people you never have to think deeply about anything.
So now I think contrarians are crucial to society, and we should all try to be contradict our natures by engaging seriously (not condescendingly) with them. It foces us to also think deeply about things.
Skeptic.
so what you're saying is that all medicine and healthcare is a racket. gotcha.
Certainly not all.
Of course. Just this one, where there are thousands of researchers and doctors in agreement.
It takes one Galelio to prove entire church wrong, even if church takes 4 centuries to accept that he was right all along.
If argument by numbers is your best argument, you need to read more. Much more.
Tell us more about how reading more anecdotes is helpful and productive.
Do you have a point in any of your whataboutism nitpickings? You deny all the evidence in front of you and what, would like to sit around for 40 years to wait for what YOU consider a body of evidence to get prepared for this virus?
Or is there some other point?
The point is straightforward. I am not convinced that these vaccines are good for me (or for anyone else taking them), and I have good reasons - some of which I have presented. Except for a couple of people, the community here has responded mostly with logical fallacies (argument from authority, and argument from numbers being most popular), simplistic ridicules, and expressions of wild disbeliefs.
As abundantly evident, most people have been indoctrinated to believe that the evidence is settled in favour of vaccines, but not one person has tried to build the case for the vaccines from any evidence. But somehow I am the one doing "whataboutism" and "nitpicking". Sure, burn the heretic. Or, as one bigot here commented, "jab him".
Here's the thing: Just like a flat earther, you're rejecting everything you don't agree with as logical fallacies, bigotry(say what?), or anything else. You are lacking in understanding what good information is, and until you can grasp the notion that just because an authority is telling you something doesn't make it bad, you are simply being contrarian. Also, the people around here are not likely the experts in their fields - true experts are what the rest of us rely on, and just because we agree with them doesn't mean there's been an indoctrination of any sort. If you really want to follow that line of thinking, you can much more easily say that antivaxxers have been indoctrinated by misinformation trolls.
The evidence has become abundantly clear - the vaccine is amazingly safe and effective. COVID-19 is not worth the risk. Being anti-vaxx is a selfish and dangerous stance, as you're risking other people's lives for your "belief".
How exactly did you reach to the conclusion that avoiding vaccination endangers other people?
I didn't reach to the conclusion myself. You can find this information from those authoritarian dictatorship propaganda spreading (I presume this is how you view them) sources. Or even just base information on how vaccines work. Don't ask me, I'm not a virologist or immunologist.
Buh-bye.
Sheep.
You sound foolish and erratic. Your “evidence” is all very weak. Your position is confusing and is hard to tell if you are confused of intentionally trying to spread misinformation.
If my evidence is weak, you should be able to explain it away from how you view things.
If my position confuses you, you should be able to find questions that clarify it to you.
If you think I am confused, you must be able to state what is confusing me.
the church consensus is entirely belief based. they don't operate on science, they can't, it invalidates their existence. your example is not comparable.
if numerous independent scientists fulfill experiments and consistently arrive on the same theoretical consensus, any alternative hypothesis is invalidated until proven. you BELIEVE in something that is unproven and there is no theoretical evidence to support your belief. You need an idea as to why, and experiments to prove it consistently, before it can be presented. basically, what you are spouting right now is a belief you mistake for facts, as anecdotes are not evidence. correlation is not the same as causation.
What exactly do you think science that puts word of authority on high pedestal is? An exercise in scientific method? Philosophy clearly labels reasoning that hangs on word of experts/scientists/preists as argument from authority fallacy.
I am well aware that the current generation is being taught in formal education that consensus of experts represents truth. But that mistake is a different debate, deserves a dedicated discussion.
Philosophy is a creativity exercise. It's archaic, and in modern terms, the first step in a long chain of steps to reach a conclusion.
You are mistaken in the belief that there is a debate here. Not everything is a debate. Not everything can have an opinion nor two sides of an argument. Reality unfortunately doesn't work that way.
Philosophy is the basis of accumulating knowledge, including science, medicine, and statistics. The highest formal degree in most academic disciplines is still called PhD, or Doctor of Philosophy in the concerned subject. If by calling philosophy archaic you mean that it is irrelevant, then modern knowledge automatically loses all authenticity.
If parameters mentioned here are fed values of my choosing, I can agree with your opinion expressed here.
Having a healthy dose of skepticism is always a good thing. It leads to asking questions and hopefully getting answers when applied EQUALLY to both sides of the argument.
The issue here is that you are looking for AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.
I am looking for neither. Check my other replies. I am the one INFORMING, supplying bulk of primary information from good quality sources.
Deluded.
The body of evidence is clear, there's really nothing for one to be skeptical of at this point. It's like calling a flat earther a skeptic. You can title it what you want, but it's delusion.
Lol!
Even if you are supporting vaccination, you need to be aware that the body of evidence is incomplete without phase-4 data, and long term studies of after effects. The CDC once took 27 years to decide that a particular vaccine was making the subjects more susceptible to another serious disease.
Yes, you should not get the COVID vaccines because there might possibly somewhere somehow be an outlying case that you should be afraid of.
COVID is perfectly safe to catch and really does nothing harmful to you whatsoever. Spreading COVID is also "the right thing to do"(tm).
lolicopters!
post a link to your source. if you haven't misunderstood it, that would be very interesting.
Can be accessed from here.
That was interesting, thanks. So table 2 has to looked at together with table 3 and 4. But the same information shown much more clearly in figure 2 on pages 17 and 18.
And page 12 is a fairly good summary, there's not much I could add to that. Do you agree with page 12 or is there another way of looking at it?
Table 2, 3 and 4 are about different aspects. Table 2 deals with cases testing positive without going into severity of disease while Table 3 and 4 deal only with data about severe cases and terminal ones. Figure 2 makes bar charts of parts of these tables, which maybe clarifying for some.
While it puts the maths right, Page 12 is outright misleading about possible causes. The interpretations therein are carefully worded to guide the uninitiated reader to look away from the vaccines themselves as cause of anything bad.
Another pertinent aspect is that only table 2 (and corresponding figure on page 17) has data relevant to the spread of the virus itself and how vaccination is affecting it; and it does appear that covid is spreading faster in the vaccinated, at least for higher age groups.
While Table 3 and 4 may hint that vaccines are reducing serious illness and deaths, the virus has already proven that it mutates and faster spreading of it will ultimately accelerate mutations and Table 3 and 4 will progressively look worse with passage of time.
yes i agree with most of that. i think most people who are interested in this stuff, and are scientifically literate, will be familiar with those problems, and are still pro vaccine. just a couple of things.
what's a better interpretation than page 12? it sounded fine to me.
this is real world data, not a randomised trial. there are lots of confounding factors. this kind of record is no substitute for a rigorous research study.
Literacy doesn't make people any less opinionated. Nor do opinions affect truth. Opinions only affect individual and collective decisions. For instance, if Titanic is sinking, no amount of opinions or voting against the fact of sinking will make any difference to the fact that it is sinking. Opinions only affect what people will do while it is sinking. Similarly, what people think about vaccines doesn't affect vaccines' actual impact.
To put my position on record:
Now, as for the two specific points you raised:
There is much to be skeptical about, but we are collectively grasping on straws. Not the finest hour of mankind.
Then, you're leaving the responsibility to individuals, not taking it on yourself. If as president you force everyone to take a vaccine and that vaccine causes 1% of people to die, you are personally responsible for those deaths. If you make it optional, and most people take it, and some of them die, they are individually responsible.
But politicians think they are smarter than most people, which they are not. Most unusually stupid people think they are unusually intelligent. That leads to politicians having this arrogance that they can, and should, make personal decisions for other people.
2 and 3. The people who say that are just ignorant. The details of vaccine risks are online. You can understand them better than the average politician. They cause heart attacks, and other stuff I forget, in some tiny fraction of people. But in the case of covid, getting vaccinated is much safer than not.
That's the kind of question with no real answer. You can say, evil money and power and corruption, or because of dire emergency, or because vaccines are the best most effective remedy, or because of foolish short-sighted politicians and group think. All these answers are correct. You can argue which one is more correct, you can argue than forever and never convince anyone. Some people do!
While the position I expressed above pertains to vaccines, I am generally aligned with voluntaryism and hold that coersion is wrong in all matters. Being non-voluntary, after all, is the only thing that differentiates rape from sex, and scam from trade.
I feel we are both in harmony on points 1 to 4. I disagree on point 5. Real answers do exist even if we haven't agreed upon them as yet. Public debate, even social media debate, is a way to form, refine or change opinions of individuals, ideally. Let us not treat it as anything less.
Yes great. But I still insist there's two separate problems. Firstly yes you're raping/scamming the very people who pay your salary. Or as I'd put it, stripping their civil rights (in many territories the measures which were taken are actually illegal/unconstitutional).
But the second thing is that it is counterproductive. For example in France the government first banned wearing masks, then enforced it. They first enforced all children goin to school, then enforced all children stopping school.
If they had not done that, many people would have started wearing masks and stopped going to school much earlier. Many lives would have been saved. The best government action would have been to do nothing and allow people to decide for themselves. By relying on the collective intelligence of society, you get a better outcome than relying on your own intelligence. To think otherwise is just the arrogance of the stupid.
But don't get me started on that can of worms, the credibility/competence of governance in Frenace.
These quotes come immediately before and after the cited graph in the report, I've shortened them for clarity and brevity:
Because the elderly and the chronically sick are the most likely to get vaccinated, and the young and healthy are the least likely to get vaccinated, it distorts the numbers to look like getting the vaccine increases your chance of contracting covid.
The report you cited is overflowing with warnings not to misinterpret the data, but you missed all the warnings. Ironically, your own argument is an excellent example why we need authorities to interpret findings for the general public, and why those authorities are deserving of more trust than any stranger on social media.
source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1025358/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-41.pdf
All three of your quotes can be addressed:
Of course it is not the most appropriate way to assess vaccine effectiveness. The most appropriate way is isolate the vector (which hasn't been done till date), then administer it to test subjects (good luck finding willing test subjects), both vaccinated and unvaccinated, and then check the covid positive rates for these test subjects. And then there have to be replication studies to verify results, etc. You'll need no less than a dictator to get this done.
This is a generalised conjecture which can be refuted by one single appropriate example. As it happens, an appropriate example exists. Waterford, Ireland which has nearly 100% vaccination rate, became a covid positive hotbed soon after vaccination reached high percentage ( check here ).
As it happens, the denominators in the tables have been uniquely specified and rates given in proportion to them. If the PHE have not made any mistakes in making the table, it is highly unlikely that my interpretations have erred on this count.
As for your own interpretation about difference in vaccination rate by age and illness distorting rates of covid contraction, that cannot be addressed without more comprehensive data. But there are distortions from other side as well. For instance, those more likely to contract covid may also be taking more social distancing precautions and maintaining stricter personal hygeine, etc.