This is a common statement about the vaccines currently being deployed. What is less common is that the expositor of this perspective has considered that the same is true of the virus itself.
Shingles afflicts people decades after they have recovered from chicken pox. I remember HIV treatments in the 90s that were thought to work until it was later discovered that the virus can hide in various organs and wreak havoc later.
Regardless of the comparisons to other pathogens, nobody today can make a credible claim about the impact a Covid infection will have on a person 20 years later.
As a society, the choice is crystal clear: vaccines that do not kill people today versus a virus that demonstrably overwhelms health systems, killing lots of people now. This is as close to an IQ test as it gets in public policy.
The vaccines are killing an alarming number of people today.
>versus a virus that demonstrably overwhelms health systems,
This is not true. Hospitals were and have been fairly empty. Small hospitals at times have been overloaded and imagery from those exaggerated as though its a general pattern when it's not.
>killing lots of people now. This is as close to an IQ test as it gets in public policy.
The death numbers are slightly higher than that of the flu.
Take a look at historical deaths and those this year attributed to COVID. It doesn't add up to any sort of justification of the handling over the last year, nor the push for vaccination.
The IQ test is if you assume headlines are honest condensation of information or not. Every single day I see tens of articles claiming things about COVID that sound terrifying, only to turn out to be the most fearful bad-faith interpretation of the actual information brought up in the article.
I'm actually more worried that (as in the fall), my city will have to convert our convention center to a field hospital because the local ICUs are full. And then I'm worried that I (or someone I care about) will experience one of the normal things that send people to hospitals, only there won't be capacity to see them in a timely fashion.
And honestly I'm damn sick of the necessary curbs that keep this thing from killing even more people. (It's possible to prefer society arrange itself in such a fashion that we try not to make it actively hostile to the vulnerable.)
This isn't hyperbole, it was 5 months ago. My governor is GOP and doesn't consider Covid to be real. Yet he still authorized giant field hospitals. He still won't open the governor's mansion for tours, in spite of saying all restrictions are lifted (he's not an idiot, he just plays one on TV. Nobody is really stupid enough to want unvaccinated people coming through their house all day.) He has never done any of this for the flu.
Consider yourself fortunate that this did not happen in your area. But don't pretend it didn't happen or is just the media.
And then the main thrust of what I said is this. Nobody knows what a Covid infection today will mean in 20 years. It obviously has neurological impact in some patients. Does that carry long-term import? Nobody knows. Easier to not get it, since vaccines are available and free.
I don't think you're trying to be hyperbolic, I think you've been fed accurate information clothed in fear so as to lead to a bad-faith worst case interpretation of that data.
The most intelligent people I know who have the most experience in the medical field, have always suggested, and still do with the COVID vaccine, to wait a minimum of 5 years before expecting safety in something like that.
To be clear, to the response "be glad it isn't in your area", it is, I've had people directly claim to me a local hospital is overrun with patients. A friend had to goto the same hospital for unrelated reasons. Parking lot was nearly empty, calm and boring inside. Someone is lying, my friend doesn't have a trackrecord of lying, quite the opposite. The news media on the other hand, I can't say the same.
why does everyone assume—when obviously, demonstrably massive profit incentives are on the line—that everyone in key positions of power will act 100% honestly and altruistically?
I'm not even advocating that everyone be a complete vaccine-denier or whatever, I'm just kind of shocked at the immune system response-like reaction to even skepticism of the situation, given that the aforementioned factors are at play. it's never, "well, I understand and empathize with your skepticism, but I still believe what I believe to be the truth." instead, you get attacked for even sharing mild skepticism!
how did things come to be this way?
So for example in this case, the skeptic asserts that the virus is not much worse than the flu. This, despite evidence that basically everyone on earth has seen that this is not the case. (Many people personally know someone who has died of Covid in the last year, despite not ever having known anyone who has died of the flu over the prior decades of their lives.)
Even prominent Covid denialist Trump a) took an experimental antibody treatment and then b) got an early dose of the vaccine after c) spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on Covid relief efforts. If someone like Trump who actually thinks it's the flu also behaves as if it's a serious disease, it makes skeptics like OP here seem much less credible.
What's interesting about the vaccine skepticism on HN is that in any biotech thread, the discussion is around how the FDA is too strict (skeptical) about approving new therapies. But now people suddenly think the FDA is too loose in approving new therapies? The irony is that the FDA is already the skeptic here (see the J&J pause, for example). Occam, again.
If I hit the nail on the head, you hammered it all the way in putting it that way. Thank you. It's really bewildering, I never expected to see something like this happen, I mean, to see a massive government/corporate push of something, sure, but to see so many just go along with it with seemingly little to no questioning of legitimacy...and when the ability to do further research with hard factual numbers you can think up your own conclusions from...its just bewildering.
b) I do get the flu vaccine every year, even though it's not very efficacious. Having the flu is awful, even if it's unlikely to kill me.
c) Your notion that COVID is mildly more deadly than the flu seems wildly off base. Despite all our efforts to contain the spread (which were sufficient to drive flu cases to effectively zero this season) it has killed > 500K in the U.S., 10-20x a typical flu season.
b) Thats your choice. I've never opted for the flu vaccine because the lack of accountability of its efficacy and profit incentives don't make sense as far as motivating any belief that that sort of thing is designed to be good for me
c) Examine the numbers of actual confirmed deaths from COVID vs comorbidities. Yes, it still is more deadly, and I clearly say that, but its not enough more to justify how its being treated.
