It's just that I don't believe free will exists, and that all our decisions are predetermined by our DNA and life experiences. But I see that it's a philosophical matter, which gets too far from the point of the discussion about how a pandemic should be dealt with.
Your personal autonomy ends where someone else's begins.
It's not that simple. For example, you donating a kidney could save someone's life. However, should you be forced to donate your kidney against your will?
(Yes, I know the situations aren't fully comparable. That's not my point. I'm just commenting on the absolutist stance of "your personal autonomy ends where someone else's begins" as a general principle. You cannot be forced to save your own life, but you also cannot be forced to save someone else's life in all possible situations. There are gradations.)
Being an anti-vaxxer is not an 'activity', like driving a car or practicing a sport, that involves taking some risk. It's just a risk on itself without any action coupled.
Note that being hesitant with the covid-19 vaccine does not necessarily mean one is an "anti-vaxxer". Some people may have zero problems with other vaccines, but may have doubts about this one because its development was rushed, and many brands are very special type of vaccines that completely different from traditional vaccines.
This is nothing new or special. For example, many people may have zero problems in getting for example their tetanus vaccine at the recommended intervals (10-20 years), but may be hesitant about getting the influenza vaccine. That's because influenza is special, and influenza vaccines are a bit different from other typical vaccines.
The problem with influenza is that there are many strains of it, the vaccine only protects against a particular strain, and every year the influenza vaccine is just an educated guess of which particular strain will become a pandemic that particular year. This guess is only sometimes right. If it's not, then you can still get influenza regardless of the vaccine, because you weren't vaccinated for that particular strain.
However, that's not even the main problem. The main problem is that you would need to get vaccinated every year (with something like a 50-50 chance that they guess the strain correctly), and the influenza vaccine in particular can have more severe side effects than other vaccines usually. There's a reason why (at least in most places) they tell you to wait in the lobby for 10-15 minutes before leaving, after you have got vaccinated. They aren't doing it for the fun of it, nor are they being ridiculously cautious. They are doing it because the influenza vaccine in particular has a relatively high chance of causing a very strong immune system reaction soon after administered, that's very similar to influenza itself. Typically you may get a sudden onset of high fever, dizziness, weakness and even fainting. People have been hospitalized because of this, and it may take days for them to fully recover.
So every year you are taking the risk of being hospitalized because of a vaccine that has like a 50-50 chance of protecting you from influenza that particular year.
No wonder some people are a bit hesitant about it, while not being hesitant about other vaccines (such as tetanus).
Your personal autonomy ends where someone else's begins.
It's not that simple. For example, you donating a kidney could save someone's life. However, should you be forced to donate your kidney against your will?
(Yes, I know the situations aren't fully comparable. That's not my point. I'm just commenting on the absolutist stance of "your personal autonomy ends where someone else's begins" as a general principle. You cannot be forced to save your own life, but you also cannot be forced to save someone else's life in all possible situations. There are gradations.)
They're not remotely comparable. We're not talking about saving a life, we're talking about risking one other than your own. You can't be forced to save someone's life. It'd be nice, but if you see a burning car wreak you are under no obligation to do anything about it. However if you caused that burning wreak, there are criminal consequences for that. Rescuing people and saving their lives might get you out of seeing jail time for the crash, but there will still be other consequences.
When your actions can kill other people, yeah I take offense to that.
I wonder how well the vaccines are working out. On the recent occasions I went out, fewer people were wearing masks. But even then, I kinda fear that measures against COVID can be penetrated.
First of all great job moozooh on gathering all this information and presenting it here in order to save lives!
On another note, I've thought that the inability to smell and taste is a common symptom among coronavirus affected patients. Did I miss something in your post regarding this or this isn't a common observation in other countries? This information came between 2019~2020.
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To be honest, the virus itself was the least worrying part of this situation.
This pandemic has already stabilized but it's not going away anytime soon. No one knows how long the vaccine effects will last plus I'm sure there will always be more variations in the future.
Now think about the really awful future possibilities...
Remember the incessant fearmongering from the media companies?
This virus spreads violently fast, however the mortality is very low.
So there are still some people who don't even think there was a real problem, because they didn't really witness any of the "end of the world" scenarios that were being predicted.
Now you remember a certain country mysteriously having a surplus of personal protective equipment just ready for exporting at very low prices, for no reason at all? The manufacturers from other countries literally had no chance to react.
And all this happened with people getting the masks and vaccines mostly because of peer pressure.
Now what do you think it's gonna happen if there's a REALLY serious pandemic in the future, with an ebola-like mortality rate?
What if people were actually afraid to die and rushed to buy and hoard protective equipment? People fighting to wait in long lines just to get the life-saving shot...
What about the skeptics who will think the media companies are just exaggerating again and won't do anything until it's too late?
Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. I wonder if this certain country would get lucky again...
Also "flatten the curve" was a hilarious meme.
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Bisqwit wrote:
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pirate_sephiroth wrote:
To be honest, the virus itself was the least worrying part of this situation.
This pandemic has already stabilized but it's not going away anytime soon. No one knows how long the vaccine effects will last plus I'm sure there will always be more variations in the future.
Now think about the really awful future possibilities...
Remember the incessant fearmongering from the media companies?
This virus spreads violently fast, however the mortality is very low.
So there are still some people who don't even think there was a real problem, because they didn't really witness any of the "end of the world" scenarios that were being predicted.
Now you remember a certain country mysteriously having a surplus of personal protective equipment just ready for exporting at very low prices, for no reason at all? The manufacturers from other countries literally had no chance to react.
And all this happened with people getting the masks and vaccines mostly because of peer pressure.
Now what do you think it's gonna happen if there's a REALLY serious pandemic in the future, with an ebola-like mortality rate?
What if people were actually afraid to die and rushed to buy and hoard protective equipment? People fighting to wait in long lines just to get the life-saving shot...
What about the skeptics who will think the media companies are just exaggerating again and won't do anything until it's too late?
Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. I wonder if this certain country would get lucky again...
Also "flatten the curve" was a hilarious meme.
Humanity was proven to be way too stupid to survive a deadlier pandemic. Covid itself has killed more than half a million people in our country, and a significant proportion of us keep insisting it's no big deal. And I don't see science denialism fading away anytime soon: There will always be those capitalizing economically and politically on it, and people like to buy shit narratives of 'massive media manipulation' to feel intelligent and to not have to adjust any of their world views.
The scenario of a pandemic that kills like ebola and spreads like covid would require absurd levels of cooperation among humanity and of competence among public administrators. We're nowhere close to able to reach those levels.
Climate change will probably finish humanity way before a more powerful such virus has a chance, though, so I wouldn't worry that much about it.
Now what do you think it's gonna happen if there's a REALLY serious pandemic in the future, with an ebola-like mortality rate?
It’s almost like Ebola had too fast of a mortality rate for it to spread quickly enough to be an actual pandemic. Have you ever thought about that?
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Black death had a super high mortality and infection rate
It also was 700 years ago, long before modern medicine, but what do I know?
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EZGames69 wrote:
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Now what do you think it's gonna happen if there's a REALLY serious pandemic in the future, with an ebola-like mortality rate?
It’s almost like Ebola had too fast of a mortality rate for it to spread quickly enough to be an actual pandemic. Have you ever thought about that?
That's specific to ebola. There could be a virus with an ebola-like mortality rate but with an higher incubation period (and that spreads during incubation). That would be a disastrous scenario for humanity.
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EZGames69 wrote:
P.JBoy wrote:
Black death had a super high mortality and infection rate
It also was 700 years ago, long before modern medicine, but what do I know?
I don't understand the rhetorical question here. I didn't mean to imply that you weren't an expert in the field of history or global epidemics, I'm sorry if I came across that way
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BrunoVisnadi wrote:
Climate change will probably finish humanity way before a more powerful such virus has a chance, though, so I wouldn't worry that much about it.
Well yeah that's already been spoiled, unfortunately.
When the media companies can no longer scare people with the virus, they're gonna go full force on climate change.
EZGames69 wrote:
P.JBoy wrote:
Black death had a super high mortality and infection rate
It also was 700 years ago, long before modern medicine, but what do I know?
Natural selection is a thing. Modern medicine is good but it has also made modern bacteria much more resistant to antibiotics.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Modern medicine is good but it has also made modern bacteria much more resistant to antibiotics.
[citation needed]
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Modern medicine is good but it has also made modern bacteria much more resistant to antibiotics.
[citation needed]
Overuse of antibiotics having resulted in bacteria evolving resistance to them is absolutely a thing, and it's a real problem. One source, and another source.
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Modern medicine is good but it has also made modern bacteria much more resistant to antibiotics.
[citation needed]
Overuse of antibiotics having resulted in bacteria evolving resistance to them is absolutely a thing, and it's a real problem. One source, and another source.
All I can gather from those sources is that Bacterial resistance is caused by many things in human nature, not just modern medicine. So to say that modern medicine is problematic because it causes bacteria to be resistant to antibodies is just misleading.
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pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Well yeah that's already been spoiled, unfortunately.
When the media companies can no longer scare people with the virus, they're gonna go full force on climate change.
You must feel very intelligent, don't you?
Corporations and politicians won't really need to give a shit about it because there'll always be enough of those who are just way too redpilled to be persuaded by widely verified facts.
EZGames69 wrote:
[citation needed]
That thing pirate said is actually very true though - we are totally creating superbacterias through antibiotics abuse.
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The pot wrote:
The kettle wrote:
Well yeah that's already been spoiled, unfortunately.
When the media companies can no longer scare people with the virus, they're gonna go full force on climate change.
On another note, I've thought that the inability to smell and taste is a common symptom among coronavirus affected patients. Did I miss something in your post regarding this or this isn't a common observation in other countries? This information came between 2019~2020.
These actually started being widely reported already after I had made my last edit to the post (for example, here's the corresponding edit to the Wikipedia article dated 26 March, a day after I had made my last edit at the time, citing the symptoms as "less common").
There was also some misinformation floating around at the time because the mechanics behind smell and taste loss wasn't well-understood. The initial reports quoted medical specialists saying the reason was concentration of the virus in the upper respiratory tract directly damaging local parts of the tissue responsible for olfaction. This was false. SARS-CoV-2 was later confirmed to be actively neurotoxic much like many other viruses, as well as causing indirect damage to all sorts of tissue via blood clotting (see thesetwo articles for examples). The information on this aspect of it has been very intermittent and took a while to arrive at a suitable level of verification because it highlighted overlooked general mechanisms of viral infections. You might have noticed anticoagulants being prescribed to patients and working extremely well relieving them of symptoms that they normally don't even treat at all (e.g. fever).
I'll need to clean the OP up a little bit and update it with new knowledge. It was mainly intended to provide an immediate digest for people to avoid misinformation and stupid mistakes so I kind of stopped when I thought it had served its purpose. But a lot of it has aged by now.
EZGames69 wrote:
All I can gather from those sources is that Bacterial resistance is caused by many things in human nature, not just modern medicine. So to say that modern medicine is problematic because it causes bacteria to be resistant to antibodies is just misleading.
Medicine isn't; its application is. For what it's worth, antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is recognized by UN and its affiliated structures as a global threat. Indeed, the primary cause is the overuse of antibiotics because that effectively breeds stronger bacteria at a greater pace than new antibiotic research is able to keep up, and it becomes a race where the stakes are continuously driven up because the bacteria can mutate pretty much indefinitely and the same cannot be said with confidence about our ability to develop new antibiotics. The overuse in question happens routinely in underdeveloped countries, but if we're to look at it fairly, you could probably count the countries where that doesn't happen on one hand. For example, here in Russia, patients with mild COVID symptoms were pretty much at a greater risk of contracting a life-threatening bacterial infection if hospitalized than dying from COVID itself. Hospital infections are very hard and/or expensive to treat because their spread and continuous presence at a hospital is already indicative of their ability to survive standard hospital treatments. One of my friends who barely survived a tick-borne meningoencephalitis was killed by an AMR infection during recovery because the treatments did nothing to help the weakened immune system. These things are a real threat but they don't receive the attention they deserve.
AMR's sister issue is pesticide resistance which, similarly, breeds superweeds, which is another pressing concern because regular pesticides are by themselves a threat to ecosystems and human health, and adding a potential global food supply crisis time bomb to the issue doesn't help it at all.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
This virus spreads violently fast, however the mortality is very low.
Low compared to the most deadly viruses out there, sure. It's actually crazy high compared to any other globally spread virus of the last hundred years, give or take. I mean, how many viruses you know that have caused excess mortality of at least 3 million people worldwide in a single year? That is approximately 100 times more than the average annual fatality rate of flu and more than 10 times the annual fatality rate of battle conflicts worldwide. In fact, it's about close to a fatality rate you'd expect from a world war. I mean, sure, it's not the end of the world, but on the other hand, people in general wouldn't start worrying about any sort of the actual end of the world until after too late. There's little use in worrying at the point where you can't change anything anymore. That's the back side of skepticism.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Now you remember a certain country mysteriously having a surplus of personal protective equipment just ready for exporting at very low prices, for no reason at all?
If you mean China, they were already the world's leading supplier of PPE and had the largest percentage of population using it regularly for manydecades. And unlike all other major industrial countries, China is also uniquely equipped to shift its production efforts in whatever way its government commands. There is a very good explanation why China was able to get ahead of other countries' manufacturers easily. The perks of centralized control, if you will.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
What about the skeptics who will think the media companies are just exaggerating again and won't do anything until it's too late?
I think you're overestimating the power of the media companies. While it's true that they exert a huge pull over the population, it hasn't been remotely enough to get people in some of the most affected countries to vaccinate quickly and avoid engaging in behavior promoting faster spread of the virus. Some of this was due to conflicting messages, but otherwise it's just because it's simply not as powerful as some like to portray.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Also "flatten the curve" was a hilarious meme.
A lot of people died in places where hospitals became overcrowded and doctors had to choose whom to save. Aside from excess deaths that could've been avoided, it's taken a heavy toll on the doctors' mental health. Not very hilarious if you ask me.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Thanks for the answer. I've searched again for the two symptoms I mentioned earlier and it looks like that:
- It is still unclear why the loss of smell and loss of taste happens.
- The first "official but not recognized as official" evidence of this seems to be around 2019 December ~ 2020 March. The first time I've read this on the internet was before 2020 March through imgur (same place where I've heard about coronavirus from the Chinese doctor)
- Sources claim wild differences between where and how many patients actually got either of them. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7397453/pdf/11882_2020_Article_961.pdf says somewhat low percentages (country dependent, graph at page 3), medicalnewstoday.com (not a link because of inability to validate credibility) says 80% while it also says 25% ?!... https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/covid-19-story-tip-helping-coronavirus-patients-who-lose-their-sense-of-smell-and-taste says "overwhelming majority".
- Sense of smell and sense of taste returns around 6 months, dependent on many factors like coronavirus strain, person immune system strength, other illnesses etc.
So I just want to suggest that these two symptoms should be monitored (those who actively try to avoid being infected).
Google put these two symptoms under less common symptoms.
https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+symptoms
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It's pretty hilarious when you think about it.
Look at how pretty, symmetrical, smooth and juicy those curves are.
Look at how most people died outside the hospital, where highly competent physicians saved the lucky bastards who got the intubation.
I would really love to defend pirate_sephiroth and point out that he is talking about the flatten the curve memes and not coronavirus or anything else than humorous contents of something, if he would still be TASing after his inactivity from 2013 that mostly consists of trolling (which I personally enjoy usually).
Can you pirate_sephiroth be just a little bit not too edgy? I see that not everyone has the taste nor piece peace of mind especially these times. I dont want to miss TASers just because they are way too honest and express themselves in a offending manner.
This is just my personal observation and trying to be constructive, not to offend you.
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Amaraticando wrote:
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Also "flatten the curve" was a hilarious meme.
It's pretty hilarious when you think about it.
Look at how pretty, symmetrical, smooth and juicy those curves are.
Damn, the curve is thicker there than it is over here-- flat, but getting a curve that slows the spread is damn important to get that flatness.
It was flat for a good 60 days over here of just having zero local cases after we saw our worst on the 4th August with 687 cases in one day.
Those 100 days to just to eventually get to 60 days of just zero (31st Oct - 30th Dec). Worth and now even more with more attention, quick action and being more prepared at getting a lockdown. Thanks Premier, it sucked we were the guinea pigs.
This also makes us more cautious cause of our half-assed Prime Minister taking their lazy time to get those damn vaccines that Premiers and ex-Prime Ministers are doing the job that he should be doing, cause he doesn't hold a needle he already got his, and believes it isn't a race.
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Look at how pretty, symmetrical, smooth and juicy those curves are.
Look at how most people died outside the hospital, where highly competent physicians saved the lucky bastards who got the intubation.
