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COVID: 100% Vaccination Is NOT the Goal
Or at least shouldn’t be.
Reducing the spread and/or seriousness of the disease is the goal. Vaccines appear to be a tool that helps toward that goal. Yet the rhetoric about Covid vaccine mandates now treats vaccination itself as the goal. So confusing the goal and a tool intended to help achieve that goal keeps people and organizations from seeing other tools that might be useful to achieve the real goal, and causes people and organizations to pursue the tool regardless of whether it continues to contribute toward the goal.
I have often seen in the corporate world employees and departments get so focused on a particular tactic used to achieve a company goal that the employees come to think of the tactic as the goal, and lose track of what the real goal is. Besides becoming blind to possible alternatives to achieve the real goal, they get so wedded to the tactic that they fail to consider whether the tactic is still contributing to the goal, and run the risk of continuing the tactic even if it no longer contributes to the goal.
With respect to Covid, I fear that so many have become wedded to the tactic of 100% vaccination that they have lost sight of whether other tactics might be useful, and they are not considering whether the tactic is really accomplishing the goal of reducing the spread or seriousness of Covid. Natural immunity is being almost completely ignored. Treatments of the disease are being almost completely ignored. Health issues that suggest the vaccine could be high risk for some people are ignored by many of the vaccine demands. Employers and schools with populations at extremely low apparent risk of serious Covid consequences (the young and healthy) fail to consider whether vaccination will really reduce the spread or seriousness of the disease within their populations, and refuse to consider any balancing of the very low apparent risk of the vaccine with the very low apparent risk of the disease itself. 100% vaccination has become the goal.
If we could keep our eye on the goal of reducing the spread and seriousness of Covid and treat vaccination as A tool that seems to contribute to that goal, rather than treating vaccination as the end goal itself, we could have much more useful public discussions about how to achieve the real goal. Unfortunately, too many people and organizations in government, media, and corporate businesses have become wedded to vaccination as the only tool they will consider, and thus 100% vaccination has become the goal, instead of reducing the spread and seriousness of the disease itself. Thus, such useful public discussion of the goal of reducing the spread and seriousness of Covid no longer seems possible.
Published in Healthcare
To date I know five people now that have died from Covid. I wrote about two of them a year and a half ago in the early months of the pandemic. I must also a half dozen or more that have gotten the illness and have not died. In fact two friends got Covid at the same time. We were at a wedding in July and a number of people got Covid right after. One of the friends was vaccinated and one not. The one not vaccinated spent a week in the hospital in pretty bad shape, part of the time on a ventilator. It’s a good thing we had developed treatments since the early days or he would have been another death, just like Luigi I described in that post I linked. The vaccinated friend at the wedding was just told to quarantine at home, and while he was ill he did not need to be hospitalized.
Until there is actual force, it’s just wild speculation. No, it’s not force to have employees vaccinated. That employer can get sued and you know in this day and age he will.
Your point that you were referring to those with medical conditions that preclude them from the vax is small has already been noted.
Go back and read my comment. I was working with people who had AIDS before it had a name and when Faucci was blowing smoke about how you get it. Read more carefully.
Except by keeping this pandemic going, you are perpetuating the slow economy and forcing people to wear masks and jump through all sorts of hoops. You don’t think that is irksome? You are basically right, the non-vaccinated are assuming the risks, but they are also the spreaders. Being non-vaccinated you are much more likely to spread the disease.
LOL, I have no power to enforce anything or create policy. I’m just giving you my opinion. Isn’t that what we do here? You are right, my thoughts are irrelevant. ;)
I know about a dozen people who’ve gotten covid, usually just mild symptoms, none vaccinated, and no deaths.
Vaccination won’t stop lawsuits, especially if there’s any evidence suggesting – not even proving, just suggesting – that vaccinated people might actually spread covid more because they don’t feel as bad so they still go to work etc. Indeed, a vaccination mandate could be used as a sign of consciousness of risk.
Either way, good luck to anyone trying to prove that they got covid from a certain place and couldn’t have gotten it anywhere else. Vaccinated or not.
This was already addressed back on page one of comments:
And how many people were getting AIDS? We’re now over 750,000 deaths and over 46 million cases on Covid in the US.
I don’t know what to say about AIDS. You can only give it to someone by a limited number of means and it does not spread through the air. I know our country’s reaction was very poor initially on AIDS. I feel bad about that. We should have done better.
Yes, it’s a political football. I still don’t understand why people don’t get vaccinated.
“Because it’s a political football” might be reason enough.
If you’re going to let politics determine the risk level between life and death for yourself and your family, I think that’s beyond foolish.
Sounds like maybe a case of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
I must say that I am also relieved that the concept of liberty does not require “true believers” to comprehend my reasons for exercising mine. At least it didn’t back when words had meanings. But that’s just me…
(P.S. This is a keeper of of a conversation. Some true gold in them there comments.)
I fully admit to being stubborn at this point. That said, my weight is perfect. My immune system is strong. I’m on no medications. I’ve already had Covid and I’ve never felt better.
I’m not in the habit of taking any drug I don’t need.
Maybe if my doctor hadn’t been behaving like a drug pusher for the past 10 years I’d be a little more open. So blame him.
Manny, if you still don’t understand, I can’t help.
I think the more important question – why this determination that everyone get this particular vax?
And the very idea that they want to start vaxxing children makes me sick to my stomach. Covid poses no threat to children so are we now sacrificing our young to protect others? Not in this family
I’ve followed the news as closely as anyone. There has been no official advice or recommendations about losing weight and getting healthy. I think anyone who thinks any of these agencies, their employees or any pro vax politician gives a rats ass about your health or mine is a fool.
So back to the original question – why? Why this obsession? Why this vax to lessen the symptoms of a virus that damn near everyone under a certain age walks off?
It’s the government at all levels perpetuating a slow economy and forcing people to wear masks and jump through hoops.
Don’t ask me to comply with an unreasonable demand. Get irked at the unreasonable demand.
Even so, is quarantining the healthy a legitimate order? It appears that quarantining doesn’t stop the spread, and even promotes it.
And as an aside, because I don’t really remember this, but the President of Belarus? said he was offered a billion dollars, I think, to lock down his country and he refused it. If this is true this could likely be the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, it’s force. Coercion, intimidation and pressuring are are all uses of force. You don’t have to tie someone down to stick a needle in them for it to be forced.
Cutting them out of society, from going to supermarkets, and parks, and places of employment and hospitals for treatment, is all force.
I’ve heard over and over that the vaccine ameliorates symptoms but does not activate the immune system to destroy the virus. This, as I’ve read and heard from virologists, causes them to shed more virus than the infected unvaccinated.
How is it that the virus is spreading so widely in an area of Ireland which is reportedly 99.7% vaccinated if the spread is reduced by vaccination?
What constitutes a case again?
Because it’s an unproven, unnecessary and potentially disabling and deadly inoculation?
And it’s being forced down our throats. and people are being disemployed and demonized for not taking it.
And discussion of its safety and efficacy is being moderated or censored in the public squares and on the electronic post boards of America.
And because nonetheless the science and data involved, and the means of collecting and collating it, are still in dispute.
And because the government is now on the verge of mandating inoculations for children as young as five, and talking about inoculating infants age 6 months, without any safety trials.
And we still don’t know what the long term effects are, and the way the FDA is deciding things now, we never will know.
And because there’s room for corruption and there’s at least one allegation that someone offered a country’s premier a billion dollars to mandate a lockdown in his country.
I’m waiting to get my third shot, a booster, because I’m naturally compliant and I have a need to fly, and I’m oldish and I have no children or grandchildren to watch grow up, and if it were otherwise I would much rather take my chances with the virus. And I am just hoping that the vaccine doesn’t maim or disable me.
Here is one of a few answers that this guy surmises:
April 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Dr. Michael Yeadon, Pfizer’s former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory who spent 32 years in the industry leading new medicines research and retired from the pharmaceutical giant with “the most senior research position” in his field, spoke with LifeSiteNews in a telephone interview. …
Possible end game: vaccine ‘passports’ tied to spending allowances, thorough control
“I think the end game is going to be, ‘everyone receives a vaccine’… Everyone on the planet is going to find themselves persuaded, cajoled, not quite mandated, hemmed-in to take a jab.
“When they do that every single individual on the planet will have a name, or unique digital ID and a health status flag which will be ‘vaccinated,’ or not … and whoever possesses that, sort of single database, operable centrally, applicable everywhere to control, to provide as it were, a privilege, you can either cross this particular threshold or conduct this particular transaction or not depending on [what] the controllers of that one human population database decide. And I think that’s what this is all about because once you’ve got that, we become playthings and the world can be as the controllers of that database want it.
“For example, you might find that after a banking reset that you can only spend through using an app that actually feeds off this [database], your ID, your name, [and] your health status flag.”
“And, yes, certainly crossing an international border is the most obvious use for these vaccine passports, as they are called, but I’ve heard talk of them already that they could be necessary for you to get into public spaces, enclosed public spaces. I expect that if they wanted to, you would not be able to leave your house in the future without the appropriate privilege on your app.
“But even if that’s not [the] true [intent of the vaccine campaign], it doesn’t matter, the fact that it could be true means everyone [reading] this should fight like crazy to make sure that [vaccine passport] system never forms.”
“[With such a system], here is an example of what they could make you do, and I think this is what they’re going to make [people] do.
(cont.)
(cont.)
“You could invent a story that is about a virus and its variations, its mutations over time. You could invent the story and make sure you embed it through the captive media, make sure that no one can counter it by censoring alternative sources, then people are now familiar with this idea that this virus mutates, which it does, and that it produces variants, which is true [as well], which could escape your immune system, and that’s a lie.
“But, nevertheless, we’re going to tell you it’s true, and then when we tell you that it’s true and we say ‘but we’ve got the cure, here’s a top-up vaccine,’ you’ll get a message, based on this one global, this one ID system: ‘Bing!’ it will come up and say ‘Dr. Yeadon, time for your top-up vaccine. And, by the way,’ it will say ‘your existing immune privileges remain valid for four weeks. But if you don’t get your top-up vaccine in that time, you will unfortunately detrimentally be an “out person,” and you don’t want that, do you?’ So, that’s how it’ll work, and people will just walk up and they’ll get their top-up vaccine.”
So I have read here that people vaccinated for Covid are less likely to spread Covid than the unvaccinated because (if I understand the argument correctly) the vaccinated are sick for a shorter period of time. Therefore universal (or near universal) vaccination is an essential part of the public health goal of reducing the spread of Covid. But if shortening the duration of sickness serves the purpose of reducing the spread of the disease, vaccination isn’t the only tool. I would think faster and better treatments would also accomplish that. Yet the current mono-focus on vaccines doesn’t allow for that.
Answering the question of whether the vaccinated spread the disease in the real world seems to me a key factor to public pushbacks against vaccine mandates. Public health officials keep saying (some explicitly, others implicitly by demanding measures like masking, distancing, plexiglass walls, etc. regardless of vaccination status) that vaccination does not affect disease spread. In which case people who perceive themselves (and their children) to be at low risk of serious Covid illness to see little reason to get the vaccine.
As an Army tanker, I’ll submit that lawyers and cooks were just civilians in uniform. ;-)
I submit that, as a matter of public policy, it doesn’t matter how many any of us know of people who’ve gotten it, not gotten it, etc.
I know that for the vast majority COVID will be no big deal. But I also know it’s a damn crap shoot. With COVID you are rolling a dice with fewer sides that what you roll when you are vaccinated. So for me, I want my loved ones, especially the older ones like my dad, to be vaccinated. But I’m not going to demand publicly policy be made around my own anecdotal data.
Hence I’m opposed to mandates.
The same can be said for you and those who have conspiracy theories on Covid.
80-90% of hospitalizations due to Covid today are of those who have not been vaccinated. A few weeks ago I saw it was over 80% in New York State. Recently I saw Texas was at 90%. Death rates I believe follow hospitalization rates. That’s not political B.S. Those are hard facts. I do not know if being vaccinated reduces the chances of catching it, but it sure makes a difference if you do catch it. Perhaps you’re healthy and you’ll shrug the virus off. Perhaps not. I don’t see any down side to getting vaccinated, even if one has already gotten ill. How long one has natural immunity, I don’t know, but it’s not forever, just like the vaccine.
Perhaps people have forgotten what I said above. I don’t support mandates. But I think you’re really foolish if you don’t get vaccinated.