Posted on 10/17/2021 9:36:34 PM PDT by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
I understand what you’re saying about denominators and numerators, but, If we lower the number of cases, the mortality goes up. If we increase the number of cases, mortality goes down but infectivity rates go up. Infectivity up or mortality up results in crackdowns.
If political, emotional and propagandistic elements were truely subversive throughout last year, then why would the man behind the curtain be so keen on reporting a drop from 25% to 1.6% mortality ontheaverage? Reporting a decline to 1.6% is actually a de-motivator, ie. it actively supports the argument ‘there’s little risk’ why get vaccinated?. It’s probably the most quoted figure in all arguments, whereas we both agree, at 20% we’re willing to take major precautions.
And it can be a little infuriating, in that, first responders, eldercare workers, teachers, ‘essentials’ (like airline workers) were all crowing for vaccine priority and shoving signs in our faces when mortality was 7%, and yet we have issues at 1.6% with these same folks getting vaccinated (or even agreeing to weekly testing), while people are stuck with restricted hospital services and closed or part-time schools.
The problem with the virus is, systemic damage begins hour one. And at 18 months in, we still have only one -preventative- and that’s the vaccine, with a crazy low 0.0013% (for Delta) breakthrough rate.
For those still afraid of the vaccine, monoclonals will help 85% avoid hospitalization (I’ve seen 70% quoted, too). But there’s still going to be 15% - 30% that end up in a 22% mortality within 20 days ICU unit. A higher rate than vaccinated (under 80) but definitely way better than anything else publically available, at least that’s how it’s looking.
risk/reward assessments are done as part of authorizing them. For random numbers example - If there’s 100K heart attacks in infected, 10K background rate and 2K in vaccinated - risk is far less than reward. Worked the other way 100K in vaccinated with a 10K background rate and fur would fly. The FDA authorization letters usually spell out the actual numbers.
A pleasant debate as always, thanks, and I’ll give you the last word
This reminds me of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s supposed deathbed soliloquy.
We have larger brains than a dog, so we have enough sense to understand the science instructing the need to vaccinate—right?
Or the insanity of destroying our economy, our voting process, our culture and society, the education of our children and their future earnings, and our freedom over something with fatality rates for most people below the age of 70 that are less than being killed in a pedestrian accident—right?
Right?
Not a problem. We can discuss this, and I appreciate the civil discourse. I don’t need the last word on it, though I do appreciate that rhetoric gesture.
I am not afraid of the vaccine. I feel like I should be, but I have had a long life and have entered the range where something will get me. If it isn’t a Communist Chinese virus, it will be something unexpected such as putting my foot in a chipmunk hole in my backyard and getting a compound fracture of my ankle, resulting in sepsis, pneumonia, or some other complication. Or it might be cancer of some other kind. Or an auto accident. Honestly, for my own part, I don’t really care if the vaccine is or isn’t effective. But for many people, it is an emotional palliative measure because there are legions of people out there who have been frightened to death by the media and our own government. And they may well be quite frightened of it because they haven’t lived a life as long and satisfying as I may have.
I regard the prospective long term negative effects in two separate aspects.
First, I don’t think we are mature enough as a civilization to do this kind of genetic manipulation on a large scale, and it seems to me that doing it in a mad rush for a virus that kills less than 2-3% of the people it infects across all age ranges is just asking for problems.
Obviously, I would feel quite differently about the “mad rush” if this had a 20-30% fatality rate, which it does not.
To me, with our current level of understanding and knowledge, this frantic genetic approach is akin to putting a loaded pistol into the hands of a six year old boy who knows that pulling the trigger will cause a very loud noise, which is exciting. But that boy has no idea of what that 147 grain bullet will really do if carelessly fired into human flesh. And I get the idea that Leftists are the six year old boy, and genetic engineering, tinkering with the human immune system by poking it with things which human biology has never seen is the gun they don’t understand.
Tinkering with the genetic makeup of an ear of corn to make it drought or insect resistant is a concept I understand even with the possibility of a dangerous outcome, but this concept of poking the immune systems of complex life forms without even understanding fully how OURS will respond, never mind the immune systems of other life forms such as bugs and wild animals which was understand even less.
The second aspect is, if we manage to do something by accident that has unforeseen and irreversible consequences by putting a crude key into the biologic lock that is our immune system, and it then responds with something that appears promising, yet turns out badly in the long run-because we knew how to turn something on but don’t have any idea how to turn something off-well, that will reveal itself in time and will be too late to do anything about it. All for something in which the odds of death are, in some age ranges, extremely low.
Again, I would feel quite differently about the “mad rush” a solution to a pandemic with a 20-30% fatality rate or more. That might well justify the risks. I just do not think this pathogen warrants the risk.
And that is one of the worst aspects of this-I don’t feel there has been any valid risk-vs-benefit analysis. With each passing day, this feels more and more to me as if egg-head genetic engineers are using the entire population of the world as an experimental petri dish. And that is at best. At worst, seeing what evil humans are susceptible to, I do not rule out a malignant motive. There are people on this earth who hate the West with such vitriolic passion that for them, to take the west of the planet even at the risk of themselves, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Never mind the people in the West who worship the earth and view humans as dangerous parasites to it that should be exterminated.
That is a lot to say in one post, I admit. But, in the short term, what frightens me most is the corrosive and invasive government intrusion into our lives fueled by technology. History has shown us that liberty lost often engenders more liberties lost, and it usually takes bloodshed and strife to regain them.
That is what frightens me most right now, not the vaccine.
Exactly.
That is what worries me, is a government that does not recognize me as an individual but a widget to be hit with a hammer to the left or right, with the infinite power of the government to do that.
All for the collective good. It is the road to tyranny.
Notice the date the unfortunate man got the disease is when they weren’t vaccinating people their age because there wasn’t enough from jabbing the elderly.
They didn’t die of COVID, they died because of medical malpractice. Their children to sue the shit out of whatever hospital mistreated them.
benevolent tyrants are the absolute worst kind of tyrant
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
I have only in the past few decades come to realize this evil and annoying tendency as the corrosive and destructive element that it is. I think we all know this instinctively, but when it rises to the level (as it has) of national legislation, fueled by Leftists who want to control everyone "for their own good" (because, after all, they are the smartest people in the room, and they know best) I have come to fully see just how counterproductive it is to liberty.
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