@metal-brain saidHere is more of what I said...
"Fore example, if you have a 1% chance of dying of Covid over 2 year span and a 5% chance of having long term complications from Covid, would you take a vaccine that has a 0.001% chance of killing you?"
Where did you get that 0.001% from? What is your source of information?
For example, if you have a 1% chance....
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You can squabble about the specific numbers I used, but these are just example numbers and the same point can still be valid with substantially less optimistic numbers.
I only have a "wet finger in the air" estimate of numbers. If you have better numbers that change the essence of the argument, show them to me and crunch the numbers.
For example, if you think 1 in 10 people who get the vaccine are dying from it, say so. Tell me your numbers and how you did YOUR risk management.
@techsouth
I would say your risk management point of view views people as numbers and not individuals. Treating everyone as if each person has the exact same risk of death from COVID is incorrect.
Assuming people do not want control of what they put into their bodies is also incorrect.
@metal-brain said"First of all hospitals are still in business despite being liable. "
"Hospitals get sued daily for frivolous stuff"
First of all hospitals are still in business despite being liable.
Is that your explanation for the US taxpayer paying for vaccine injuries instead of the manufacturer? Do you think vaccines are safe and the only people that sue are doing so frivolously?
What about the vaccine courts? Do you think they are paying out billions to settle frivolous lawsuits? Is that what you think?
If they are in business it's because the people who don't sue are paying enough extra so that hospitals can have enough to pay lawyers and plaintiffs.
And it's never going to be black and white. Clearly there are frivolous lawsuits and clearly there are legitimate lawsuits. Our opinion over which is more common does not change the fact that both exist.
With Covid, we have a potential asymmetry. If you die of Covid, it's an act of nature and you have no one to sue. If you die because of a vaccine you could sue the pharmaceutical company (unless their are given protection by the government). But, what if in spite of being not totally safe, the Covid vaccines are safer than the risk of getting Covid? You may not agree that it true, and if so, feel free to say so although I probably won't take on that argument. But for the sake of a 10 second thought experiment, just stipulate that the vaccine is substantially safer than the risk of getting Covid even though people will die in both camps. Doesn't it make sense to create a business environment to allow the vaccine to proceed anyway? Not only does that save lives, but it hastens our path to reopening the world economy. I know several people in 3rd world countries and the economic devastation there is just awful.
@techsouth
The number of deaths is so relatively small, there is no reason why the world economies are being shut down.
@eladar saidI'll accept the accusation of viewing people as numbers. But in fairness, I saw myself that way too. As I alluded to before, I would quietly rejoice as more and more people got vaccinated because I knew each person that became immune reduced my chances of getting the disease even if I never got the vaccine. But I also understood that if I became immune it would in a small way help everyone around me too.
@techsouth
I would say your risk management point of view views people as numbers and not individuals. Treating everyone as if each person has the exact same risk of death from COVID is incorrect.
Assuming people do not want control of what they put into their bodies is also incorrect.
In tough situations, sometimes it helps to look at numbers, especially when there is no winning play that has 0 casualties. In a war, I'd rather serve under a commander that was willing to sacrifice 2 lives to save 200 than to serve under one who refused to make such a hard decision and let 200 die. I'd hope my commander had the backbone to do the cold hard comparison between 2 and 200.
And treating everyone as having the exact same risk is not something I've ever thought, but in writing a few paragraphs on RHP, I'd rather stick to arithmetic by simplifying the problem than to bring in calculus when my only purpose is to illustrate a point among a group untrained in the field and who are not going to be decision makers on a large scale. Besides, a simple and useful understanding of the trade-offs can be gained using simple arithmetic where as I'd expect epidemiologists to be using calculus, statistics, computer simulations and many other tools I've not even heard of. Obviously the "risk management" exercise of an overweight 80 year old man with diabetes is far different than the exercise would be for a healthy 18 year old. I don't know what I said that would make you think I wouldn't have understood that, but I'm making no attempt to go beyond simple arithmetic on RHP.
And I've done nothing nor said anything that has tried to force any vaccine on anyone. However, if you are suggesting that our national plan ought to be to encourage people to use their own education to filter through all the misinformation on the Internet, picking only reliable sources and reading the medical articles themselves as a way to "do their own research", I can only laugh at the whole premise. Maybe we can create pamphlets to hand out when people are buying lottery tickets and alcohol so the suggestion would reach the whole population. Maybe we can also hand out these pamphlets in homeless shelters. And the pamphlets obviously wouldn't suggest getting the vaccine. They'd just tell the homeless people to "do their own research" with the raw data they can scrape from the Internet.
@techsouth
Maybe we just let people die by their own choices, as they do from cancer or liver disease from drinking and smoking.
@eladar saidWell people stopped going to restaurants even BEFORE the government shut anything down. Had things not shut down (both voluntary withdrawal and government mandated), who knows how many more would have died? It seems like it would have been substantially more.
@techsouth
The number of deaths is so relatively small, there is no reason why the world economies are being shut down.
An example, in my own case. My company has about 100 people. In February 2020, almost all of us showed up at a set of buildings and worked 8 hours or so a day in close proximity to other people. Sometime in March, that stopped completely and most of us barely left our houses for months. And this same pattern occurred through companies affecting 10s of millions of people just in the US. I am not attempting to do any difficult math, but it seems a given that this reduced the spread of many diseases in 2020 and 2021, most importantly Covid. How could it not have?
With official numbers, still over 2% of known cases are resulting in death. Probably cases are being a little underreported in some countries, and some argue that deaths are being overreported (perhaps true, but I don't think by enough to be a real game changer). I strongly suspect that both cases and deaths are wildly underreported in poor countries. But who knows?
2% might seem small, but there is no chance I'd ride a carnival ride that killed 1 in 500 riders. Additionally, there are a fairly high percentage of Covid cases that have resulted in long term complications and and very expensive hospital stays.
I'm not saying that governments are good and making good choices with regards to lockdowns, masks, and social distancing. But some of it was going to happen anyway. And since neither you nor I are in charge of the whole world, as long is Covid is raging strong, you nor I are going to be free to make all the same choices we'd otherwise make, and lots of that is determined by entities other than our own government.
@eladar saidIt's always uncomfortable to be on the same side of a debate as duchess. Still, it's good to have allies even if Eladar is more commonly on my side of debates.
What is the percent of population? What is average age of death?
It is a fair point that the average age of death is very high and that as a percentage of population it is lower than both the Civil War and the Spanish Flu. I was just thinking recently that I'd rather there be a pandemic killing people my age than one killing people my kids' age. (And the Spanish Flu was much worse for the young).
However, 600,000+ is a lot, and it could have easily been a lot more had people not significantly changed their behavior (government mandated or not). I know I had already begun to change my behavior in March of 2020 based on what I knew at the time. (I had seen a number of videos from China from about January).
I think it is indisputable that the nature of COVID is such that it is very reasonable to have changed behavior, even if that's limited to only voluntary choices.
@techsouth
Where I live people had to be forced to stay out of bats and restaurants. If people did it naturally, why did governments need to do it by force?
@Eladar
You conveniently forget about the meat packing plants here in the US where HUNDREDS got covid in the same factory, but in a lot of them.
Any place where workers have to stand close together, like in food industry in general, just such a small number of deaths, KEEP THOSE MEAT PLANTS OPEN. WE DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS HOW MANY DIE.
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@techsouth said600k plus are totals of untested deaths, just attributed. It is funny how totals took a huge jump after new more relaxed rules were put in place.
It's always uncomfortable to be on the same side of a debate as duchess. Still, it's good to have allies even if Eladar is more commonly on my side of debates.
It is a fair point that the average age of death is very high and that as a percentage of population it is lower than both the Civil War and the Spanish Flu. I was just thinking recently that I'd rather there b ...[text shortened]... at it is very reasonable to have changed behavior, even if that's limited to only voluntary choices.
Fact is, the covid thing killed very few people of working age or younger.
Feel free to take the side of the totalitarian state.