He dies once every 125,000 years.
He is hospitalised once every 3,086 years.
He is posed a still unquantified risk by the vaccine. By declining it he is “inconsiderate”.

One would think that if the vaccines are so safe and effective as the government loves to say that they are that the government would put their money where their mouth is and boldly declare to pay restitution for anyone damaged by the vaccine (resting safely in the assumption that it will never actually come to that, given that the vaccines are so safe and effective). — baker

If the government declares something to be mandatory tout court it doesn't follow that they will be legally responsible to pay compensation in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. Sometimes seat belts cause terrible injuries for example. Seat belts are mandatory here is Australia, and that is only to protect oneself. If vaccines were made mandatory that would be to protect oneself and others.

If vaccination is provisionally mandatory (if you what a certain job, or you want to do certain things) then the individual still has a choice; but they will have to be prepared to wear the consequences. Also the advice has never been that the vaccines are 100% percent safe and effective, so it is acknowledged that there is always a risk involved in being vaccinated from covid. This is so with all other vaccines and common medications: the rare case of adverse reaction, even death, is always possible.

What's curious though that you insist on making the riskier choice. If you have a risk of something happening for sure and you can cut that risk in half or even by ten, the decision is obvious. How about cutting a 25% risk by a factor 10? 10%? My point is that it's arbitrary to choose the higher risk just because you think the risks are low enough.

If you look at car accidents, there's only a 1 in 35,000 years risk of being in a fatal accident (in the UK). How about not wearing a seat belt then? You'll only die once every 17,500 years!

As with most vaccination it's not only about the person getting the vaccine which is how you continue to portray it. And it's, as I already said not just the hospitalisation, but also transmission (which thankfully the vaccine also had an effect on).

Finally, in addition to my previous points, it's also inconsiderate because while you might feel it's acceptable to accept the higher risk many of those around you don't. And these small risks, if a lot of people make the irrational choice, add up to significant risks for wider society.

Some of those people have compromised immune systems or can't get a vaccine for personal reasons and the likelihood of getting infected and transmitting it to another or being in a causal chain that results in an infection of someone who dies from it are high. After about a year, it's estimated that over 25% of Dutch people have had an infection. And that's "low" thanks to lock downs and other measures.

Thanks to vaccinations we can almost do everything we want again without restrictions but only because the uptake for the vaccine is sufficient. Without that, we'd still be in lock down. So, if enough people are anti vaxxers... then you cannot normalise social rules because too many people will get sick.

He is posed a still unquantified risk by the vaccine. By declining it he is “inconsiderate”. — AJJ

Yes, we will all be soviet nazis when the dust settles. The rest wil be in concentration camps. I wish I could bet that in vegas

isn't that the truth. One thing youll notice is that most of the idiots that have bought into the covid hysteria are hard line democrats. Personally, I have no problem with the democratic party, I think the republican party is equally retarded and evil. But the correlation stands

This is the typical response (not in a bad way, just useful to summarise). The common themes are

1. It doesn't matter how little the risk is reduced, it makes sense to reduce any risk that one can.
2. It's not about you it's about
2a - the hospital bed you might take up putting pressure on the health service, and
2b - the vulnerable others you might infect if you remain unvaccinated, and
2c - the return to normal that's being postponed by lack of vaccine uptake.

The counter arguments have already been presented, but

1. Low risk reduction means that only small preferences are sufficient to outweigh it, like coffee, bacon, sugar, skipping gym... Just not trusting (or even not liking) the corporations who produce these medicines is clearly in the same category of minor preference as coffee, bacon and gym avoidance. If you do trust the vaccine, then I admit a jab in the arm might be too small a preference, but it depends how much you hate jabs in the arms, it's down to personal preferences at this point. Taking a small increased risk for personal preference is quite normal behaviour.

2a. The actual risk is relevant again here though, otherwise the same pressure would apply to a huge swathe of acceptable activities which increase your risk of needing a hospital bed. A moral imperative has to be at least vaguely consistent to have any normative force. Insisting that a very low risk of hospitalisation is reduced even further would apply to dozens of other activities normally considered acceptable. As with personal risk, a small increase in risk to others is still considered part of a normal social compromise made to allow a diversity of personal preferences, so the actual relative figures matter.

2b. The data on how vaccines might reduce transmission is limited and if they do reduce transmission it will vary by cohort. The transmission argument is often wheeled out alongside the symptom reduction argument as if to share in its authority - the two have very different degrees of confidence in their risk reduction. In any case, the person living in rural Wales with a small social group and good hygiene habits is extremely unlikely to have their rate of transmission reduced by any significant amount (and again, as above, there's no normative force behind the argument that all reduction in risk must be taken no matter how small, it's simply not a normal requirement).

Often ignored, but relevant to all these arguments is the fact that immunity drops over time after vaccination. The effects touted for the first 28 days can't be used to assume long-term risk reduction as we know for a fact they they drop off by four months and we don't have any robust data at all on how effective they are after that. Again, if you don't mind the vaccine, and trust the suppliers, then this is all irrelevant because you might as well reduce the risk if you can, but if you don't like the vaccine or don't trust the suppliers, then the risk reduction has to be considerably higher to outweigh the costs and we just don't have the data on that for the long term.

2c. Again, scientific opinion is now largely that vaccination will not bring about an end to the pandemic. The UK's chief adviser recently called the idea "a myth". The sole focus is on preventing the health services from being overwhelmed whilst the virus slowly becomes endemic.

To meet this effect, it's only necessary that people at real risk of hospitalisation (or at real risk of spreading the virus to such people) take the vaccine. That's a very large majority of the population, particularly in America, but it's not everyone. Public health mandates have never tried to account for a minority to whom they don't apply as it waters down the message to very little gain (see 'potatoes are not a vegetable', and 'every unit of alcohol increases your chances of heart disease' as examples - both false, both aimed at a majority who would have taken the truth out of context and missed the important message), so using to public health messages as evidence to contradict this is not appropriate. A public health message is a tool, not a statement of fact.

The public health message on this should be exactly as it is - take the vaccine, mask, distance, clean. But this is not a public health forum and we can afford a little more subtlety here, surely.

It is authoritarianism pur sang. The lofty ideals that are being preached are little more than a pretense to soothe the conscience while the fundaments of what made human society progress from apes are being ripped out from under it.

We've seen this before. History is full of it, sadly. It always starts with good intentions (or at least, allusions to such) and the idea that human rights are just a set of rules, and rules are there to be broken.

Though I think seldom humanity was betrayed for such a small sum.

Though I think seldom humanity was betrayed for such a small sum. — Tzeentch

And the scale has never been greater, it is global. It's really incredible.

Do you have more downbeat platitudes like that in your stash of fortune cookies ? Keep it coming. We all can use a little gloom.

Plenty. Human degeneracy is a favorite topic of mankind's past and present intellectuals.

Such expressions of gloom are great precisely because they make one feel superior to the unwashed, 'non-intellectual' masses.

I would invite you to turn those attempts at psycho-analysis on yourself first.

"You're another". Now that's a new one!

I would invite you to turn those attempts at psycho-analysis on yourself first. — Tzeentch

Did you not get the memo? It's only those opposed to universal vaccination whose motives have any occult psychology. Those promoting it are all completely rational human computers who only ever output the unadulterated facts and strategies dispassionately calculated using them. Is that not obvious from the calm, patient use of non-emotive arguments supported by direct citation of peer reviewed studies?

Oh no, wait...

Anyone can question the motive of anyone else but it takes a huge sense of entitlement and some intellectual laziness to ask me to question my own motive for you, which is in essence what @Tzeentch was asking...

These questions remained unanswered BTW:

"It's not like people are agreeing that these measures are necessary to avoid the net cost of millions of lives but then saying "fuck it, I don't care". They don't believe these measures are necessary to avoid the net cost of millions of lives."
— @Isaac

And you know that how, pray tell?

"They don't believe it because their governments have told them it and their governments routinely lie."

What does their doctor say? — Olivier5

This is the typical response (not in a bad way, just useful to summarise). The common themes are

1. It doesn't matter how little the risk is reduced, it makes sense to reduce any risk that one can.
2. It's not about you it's about
2a - the hospital bed you might take up putting pressure on the health service, and
2b - the vulnerable others you might infect if you remain unvaccinated, and
2c - the return to normal that's being postponed by lack of vaccine uptake.

The counter arguments have already been presented, but

1. Low risk reduction means that only small preferences are sufficient to outweigh it, like coffee, bacon, sugar, skipping gym... Just not trusting (or even not liking) the corporations who produce these medicines is clearly in the same category of minor preference as coffee, bacon and gym avoidance. If you do trust the vaccine, then I admit a jab in the arm might be too small a preference, but it depends how much you hate jabs in the arms, it's down to personal preferences at this point. Taking a small increased risk for personal preference is quite normal behaviour. — Isaac

It is normal behaviour and I don't deny this - it is, however, irrational. One important difference as well is that many of the choices you give as an example do not also entail increased risks to others.

2a. The actual risk is relevant again here though, otherwise the same pressure would apply to a huge swathe of acceptable activities which increase your risk of needing a hospital bed. A moral imperative has to be at least vaguely consistent to have any normative force. Insisting that a very low risk of hospitalisation is reduced even further would apply to dozens of other activities normally considered acceptable. As with personal risk, a small increase in risk to others is still considered part of a normal social compromise made to allow a diversity of personal preferences, so the actual relative figures matter.

Every policy in the Netherlands was about flattening the curve including vaccination. And the problem is that small personal risks and small risks to others add up. If 25 year olds only die once in 125,000 years, then 125,000 of them not getting a vaccine means , with an R0 of .9 (currently in NL) over 1 million other people will be infected by them. That results in about 100,000 hospital admissions, 30,000 ICU admissions and around 200 deaths. With only 1500 ICU beds available you can see the problem.

What makes sense at the personal level doesn't necessarily translate in sensible approaches from a systemic point of view.

2b. The data on how vaccines might reduce transmission is limited and if they do reduce transmission it will vary by cohort. The transmission argument is often wheeled out alongside the symptom reduction argument as if to share in its authority - the two have very different degrees of confidence in their risk reduction. In any case, the person living in rural Wales with a small social group and good hygiene habits is extremely unlikely to have their rate of transmission reduced by any significant amount (and again, as above, there's no normative force behind the argument that all reduction in risk must be taken no matter how small, it's simply not a normal requirement).

The proof is more or less in the pudding that numbers escalate far less now than a year ago despite almost all rules having been relaxed in those countries where vaccination uptake has been significant. In the US there are clear differences at state levels as well.

Often ignored, but relevant to all these arguments is the fact that immunity drops over time after vaccination. The effects touted for the first 28 days can't be used to assume long-term risk reduction as we know for a fact they they drop off by four months and we don't have any robust data at all on how effective they are after that. Again, if you don't mind the vaccine, and trust the suppliers, then this is all irrelevant because you might as well reduce the risk if you can, but if you don't like the vaccine or don't trust the suppliers, then the risk reduction has to be considerably higher to outweigh the costs and we just don't have the data on that for the long term.

Granted.

2c. Again, scientific opinion is now largely that vaccination will not bring about an end to the pandemic. The UK's chief adviser recently called the idea "a myth". The sole focus is on preventing the health services from being overwhelmed whilst the virus slowly becomes endemic.

I don't think I argued for ending the pandemic but ending lock downs.

To meet this effect, it's only necessary that people at real risk of hospitalisation (or at real risk of spreading the virus to such people) take the vaccine. That's a very large majority of the population, particularly in America, but it's not everyone. Public health mandates have never tried to account for a minority to whom they don't apply as it waters down the message to very little gain (see 'potatoes are not a vegetable', and 'every unit of alcohol increases your chances of heart disease' as examples - both false, both aimed at a majority who would have taken the truth out of context and missed the important message), so using to public health messages as evidence to contradict this is not appropriate. A public health message is a tool, not a statement of fact.

Agree.

The public health message on this should be exactly as it is - take the vaccine, mask, distance, clean. But this is not a public health forum and we can afford a little more subtlety here, surely.

Yes.

Since the arguments against much of what you say have already been summarised above I’ll just add:

And these small risks, if a lot of people make the irrational choice, add up to significant risks for wider society. — Benkei

The histrionics surrounding and inspiring these measures have had their own consequences for peoples’ freedom, happiness, livelihoods and by extension their health. On this basis I don’t accept the choice not to participate in the parade is irrational.

Without that, we'd still be in lock down. So, if enough people are anti vaxxers... then you cannot normalise social rules because too many people will get sick. — Benkei

I also don’t accept that lockdowns are necessary; I believe we could have had normalised social rules (that included hand washing and taking care around the vulnerable) from the beginning without the consequences suspect characters like Neil Ferguson convinced so many of.

I don't think I argued for ending the pandemic but ending lock downs. — Benkei

Can you prove the efficacy of lockdowns? If lockdowns aren’t necessary what happens to your view regarding the vaccine?

The histrionics surrounding and inspiring these measures have had their own consequences for peoples’ freedom, happiness, livelihoods and by extension their health. On this basis I don’t accept the choice not to participate in the parade is irrational. — AJJ

It's irrational not to reduce risk, just as it's irrational to eat crap when you know it's bad for you. Perfectly human but irrational nonetheless.

I also don’t accept that lockdowns are necessary; I believe we could have had normalised social rules (that included hand washing and taking care around the vulnerable) from the beginning without the consequences suspect characters like Neil Ferguson convinced so many of. — AJJ

You don't accept it because you believe what?

We had "1.5 meters, hand washing and taking care around the vulnerable, no more parties and congregations" in the Netherlands before we went into lock down because infections just kept rising exponentially and overwhelming the healthcare system. So much for lock downs not being necessary. Here's some research into the efficacy of lock downs.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0254403

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249732

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82873-2

It is normal behaviour and I don't deny this - it is, however, irrational. One important difference as well is that many of the choices you give as an example do not also entail increased risks to others. — Benkei

But they do by the same metric used with Covid. We've introduced a new 'using up a hospital bed' measure. All the things I mentioned have a small increased risk of using up a hospital bed and thus affecting others. But we could have simply listed driving, skiing, building work, any polluting activity, anything which releases CO2...all of which directly harm others, but if the risk is very small, they're usually tolerated. Which leads to the question of what you mean by "it is, however, irrational". Do you mean that it's irrational to allow preferences to override potential for risk reduction even when the risk is small? I'm not sure how you'd arrive at such a proposition...

the problem is that small personal risks and small risks to others add up. If 25 year olds only die once in 125,000 years, then 125,000 of them not getting a vaccine means , with an R0 of .9 (currently in NL) over 1 million other people will be infected by them. That results in about 100,000 hospital admissions, 30,000 ICU admissions and around 200 deaths. With only 1500 ICU beds available you can see the problem. — Benkei

I get what you're saying here. We need to include the full chain of those affected, and I agree, but the numbers you're using are averages, and we've been talking about the diversity of situations and the contextual nature of responses.

Here, for example, the study found that just 9% of the initial cases were responsible for over 80% of the second generation cases.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30287-5/fulltext

and here,

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32685698/

these situations are modelled by Akira Endo at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

that tidy population-level estimate — known as the basic reproduction number (R0) — hides immense variation at the individual level. In reality, most infections arise from just a handful of people. Around 10% of cases in countries outside China accounted for 80% of secondary infections up to the end of February.

My isolated hygienic Welsh hermit, for example, is unlikely to have an R0 value of anywhere near 0.9, not even remotely close. The R0 just becomes another figure like the personal risk, which is different depending on the circumstances and so multiplies the risk of harm by different, often insignificant, amounts. The actual data matters.

So yes, we would have to take into account the chain of consequences (again, only to a reasonable degree), but the R0 gives us an average. We already established that on average one should probably take the vaccine, distance, mask, and wash. What we're discussing here (or at least the point I'm trying to make) is that something which is good policy on average does not necessarily make it good policy for any given individual. A reasonably well-informed decision to act other than such a policy should be a perfectly normal part of any community's healthy diversity of opinions.

The Coronavirus-Social Distancing Paradox

The coronavirus has spread across the world, over distances spanning thousands of kilometers but according to experts a 2 meter/0.002 kilometers distance will prevent transmission between people. :chin:

Anyone can question the motive of anyone else but it takes a huge sense of entitlement and some intellectual laziness to ask me to question my own motive for you, which is in essence what Tzeentch was asking... — Olivier5

I simply took it as an exhortation to be wary of glass-house stone throwing.

These questions remained unanswered BTW: — Olivier5

I didn't realise you actually wanted answers!

Because I've spoken to many of them, depends on who their doctor is, respectively.

You don't accept it because you believe what? — Benkei

At a glance the studies you’ve shared are models/guesswork.

Here are some actual observations:

An interview with Sunetra Gupta where she speaks about the virus behaving in the same fashion regardless of differing lockdown conditions: https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/

Here’s an article referring among other things to the UK death rate falling too soon for lockdown to be the cause: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-the-nhs-was-not-overrun-by-covid-during-lockdown/amp

Here’s the initial Imperial College/Neil Ferguson report that scared the West into locking down in the first place (I think the final paragraph is worth drawing your attention to): https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

And here’s an article listing Neil Ferguson’s past (grossly inaccurate) predictions: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-ferguson-should-be-asked

because infections just kept rising exponentially — Benkei

It’s also worth pointing out that infection numbers are a product how much testing you do. An alarming figure can be created out of thousands of people who test positive but who aren’t actually ill.

I didn't realise you actually wanted answers! — Isaac

You're welcome not to answer my questions but I will keep asking them, if you don't mind too much.

Because I've spoken to many of them, depends on who their doctor is, respectively.

So you've spoken to many of them antivaxxers and, apparently you trusted them. It didn't come to your mind that they could be dishonest. Which is strange given your general mistrust for folks and society. I can see that some people are worthy of your trust, still.

So what does your doctor say then?

What we're discussing here (or at least the point I'm trying to make) is that something which is good policy on average does not necessarily make it good policy for any given individual. — Isaac

There's the point about "what an average is". In the town where I live, there's a railroad trestle over a road that has a 9' clearance, and now and then someone drives a truck into it. On average, vehicles pass under it without issue, but not all vehicles. Simple.

But then there's the desertion paradox, that no soldier's individual contribution to the outcome of a battle is so great that he should risk injury or death, therefore every individual soldier has rational grounds for deserting, even if he wants the battle to be won. But of course if every soldier behaves that way then the battle will certainly be lost.

Around here, that ends up being a difference in the scope of "not", and it's hard to keep straight the difference between "not everyone should get vaccinated" and "everyone should not get vaccinated".

For instance, you have presented your distrust of pharmaceutical companies as a sort of personal quirk, which others ought to take as just your idiosyncratic reason not to get vaccinated. But if you are right about pharmaceutical companies then no one should trust them, and it ought to count for everyone as a reason not to get vaccinated. You present it as "the average is fine without me" but it's also naturally read as leading to the desertion paradox.

It’s also worth pointing out that infection numbers are a product how much testing you do. An alarming figure can be created out of thousands of people who test positive but who aren’t actually ill. — AJJ

Hospital admittance was and is real.

Hospital admittance was and is real. — Benkei

It certainly is. Do lockdowns help in this regard? You can’t say. How many of those admissions are people with other health conditions who go on to test positive for Covid, or whose Covid diagnosis is incidental? Is there an answer to that?

I didn't realise you actually wanted answers! — Isaac


You're welcome not to answer my questions but I will keep asking them, if you don't mind too much. — Olivier5

Of course. I suspect I'm much more interested in your questions than you are in my answers.

So you've spoken to many of them antivaxxers and, apparently you trusted them. It didn't come to your mind that they could be dishonest. Which is strange given your general mistrust for folks and society. I can see that some people are worthy of your trust, still. — Olivier5

More of your jejune all-or-nothing analysis. Why must I either trust all of them or none of them? Is there not scope for me to trust some of them?

So what does your doctor say then? — Olivier5

I haven't a clue. I don't even know who my doctor is any more (my previous doctor having retired some five or six years ago and my not having visited since).