People in 150 cities globally standing up to authoritarian controls on freedoms(worldwidedemonstration.com) |
People in 150 cities globally standing up to authoritarian controls on freedoms(worldwidedemonstration.com) |
Personally, I'm pro-vaccine, double jabbed and luckily no bad experiences with side effects. But I'm vehemently anti-vaccine passport. Every one should have a right to choose. We all have a unique and complex life. It is not for me or you or govt to decide on things like this.
Never mind the outrageous curbs on freedoms, vaccine passports are likely to be if anything counterproductive. Vaccines work in saving lives. But the vaccinated are being infected at higher rates than the non-vaccinated according to UK govt data [0].
More details and a handy extract of the data, protests, and my views in this thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColinHayhurst/status/1462003898898657291
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-...
There are some of them still in jail, they were snatched from cafés or from home. Some of them were arrested for a Facebook status, or a cartoon. Some were arrested for 'intelligence with a foreign power' (they were accredited journalists). I may be arrested for writing this.
Managing public health is difficult enough even without people forcing their choices on to others.
The most insanely ironic thing happening in Australia at the moment is a small group of anti-protester-protesters calling themselves 'anti-fascists' as they oppose those protesting against a risk of authoritarian powers!
Wait, I was led to believe that the vaccine doesn't necessarily stop you from catching covid, it just doesn't put you in the hospital on ventilators. If that is correct, then the vaccine IS doing its job, no?
Clearly, or at least there are absolutely zero studies to show they are helping in any way. And yet more and more countries are trying to impose them in lockstep fashion.
> in lockstep fashion
A not so naive frame.
How long have COVID-19 vaccine passports existed?
Same reason the media are who pushed the narrative that covid is as bad as the spanish flu. Even though it never was. It has left quite a number of people believing that covid is worse than the normal flu. Which it never was.
I've considered as well, if the media reported the truth. Would our society have considered lockdowns at all? If society knew the truth that covid has lower risk than the normal flu season. We wouldn't have done anything. We know because we dont do anything for normal flu.
Flipside, shouldnt we try to eliminate these things?
I've been poring your gov.uk link and the closest thing I can find to data that would back this affirmation comes with very heavy caveat:
« Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is summarised on pages 5 to 8 in this report.
The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. »
Also, assuming that your conclusions are, is that the number we should be watching? We're looking for number of people who go to the hospital, die or suffer from long covid. According to the same table you're looking at, vaccines are a huge success at preventing deaths (I haven't bothered looking data on these other points).
edit Nuanced my response. I believe that the parent's response came before my edit.
I just checked your source and can't find anything to confirm your claim. Just take the latest vaccine surveillance report https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... and please do tell me where it confirms your claim that vaccinated people are infected at higher rates than the non-vaccinated. I am very intrigued.
First and second columns are shown per 100,000 people.
For ages 18-80 the cases per 100,000 people are the same or higher (up to 2x higher) in the fully vaccinated vs the unvaccinated.
Good god I'm so tired of having to explain vaccines to people.
Vaccines do NOT prevent you from being infected. That is NOT their purpose. That is NOT why they are created. The vaccine would have to somehow physically prevent the virus from entering your system. Not a single qualified, authoritative person on this subject has ever claimed they do.
EDIT: Downvoters, you're downvoting fact. Do you realize this? Healthcare professionals all over the world are absolutely sick of the willful ignorance. Your actions are getting people killed.
"We all need to get vaccinated!"
"But I am afraid!"
"You are unsafe for your community and should be ashamed!"
"I don't want to be stigmatized. Why are you pushing this so hard?"
"You are now required to prove that you have complied to live a normal life."
"This is literal fascism! You are violating my rights!"
The fact that we have a number of unmoderated forums such as Facebook and YouTube did not help. It's okay to have a hide park on 4chan, but having a syndicated stream of uncredentialed nobodies who have just happened to win an algorithmic loterry was not a very bright idea. Especially since some have noticed that inflammatory and/or fear-inducing content is interacted with more frequently.
This might be the most appropriate description of social media that I ever got to read.
It has also successfully acquired user base that was never really acquainted with netiquette of such moderated spaces. Namely the generation of my parents.
I'm just curious, did you happen to pick up that term from Jasun Horsley?
So, antivaxxers don't want to get vaccinated.
At least as many double vaccinated attend these rallies because they realise that tracking via QR code checkin, vaccine passports, manadatory vaccinations or you lose your job, mandatory boosters every 6 months, and the unvaxxed being banned from public life, are a huge assault on freedoms within our liberal democracies.
As if vaccine passports and mandates etc would be used for anything not positive and helpful to the public...
So I hope that these dangerous protests get crushed by the respective governments.
Once you have established a higher moral ground, you have proposed to ostracize THEM from public life, until they become US.
The problem is that they say we are discriminating against them, which we objectively are.
Please refrain from furthering the divide and concentrate on productive strategies to mitigate the situation. Especially if you truly believe that its an issue with emotional regulation, because these usually cannot be handled safely by piling on more pressure.
Regardless of the ideology of the protest, you are demanding authoritarian response because you disagree. Could you see how this could have a very bad outcome down the line?
- Make it possible for my younger teammates to have options (https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/145841354768011264...) and potentially get another passport that gives them options.
- Make it possible for them to have a sizeable equity to apologize for the opportunity cost they have incurred by staying.
- Make it possible for my whole family to have options.
Let's also say that practically everyone I know has left: I am in a local exile. Let's also say that I am way too familiar with how precincts work and have too many lawyers in my contacts for anyone not involved in criminal activities to have, and let's also say that I am extremely careful about what I say online. Let's also say that I'm pushing my friend whose wife is pregnant to make sure his wife gives birth elsewhere so his daughter gets a passport that offers mobility. Let's also say that my first advice to students who ask me for advice is to Get the Fuck Out, and let's also say that I'm constantly reminding my team to save money, and let's also say that I'm having conversations with my siblings to answer the question: what are we still doing here? (we're the only ones who have stayed. Practically all my family has left decades ago). My mother's refusal to live elsewhere was the main reason we stayed. She passed away in July.
Would you say that I have answered your question?
But sadly not for a 100%
In complete darkness internationally for three years.
There are massive numbers of people fleeing the country not because there is violence, but because they don't see hope. I think there are more who left the country now than during the decade of civil war.
I know very well about peaceful protests in North Macedonia[0], which thankfully led to a bloodless, at the ballet box, overthrow of a corrupt government. It was a powder keg for years, including fights in the parliament chamber (thankfully not involving guns) and the election vote was a knife edge decision. The former leader escaped to Humgary and is protected by Orban.
Similarly massive numbers of people (>30%) have fled the country also not because of violence, but because they don't see hope. The economy was ruined and money siphoned out by those in power. It has not got much better since, and now the country is again on a knife edge with the PM having resigned.
Do you see how using such a narrow lens could be unwise? How many boosters are you willing to tolerate to maintain your certificate, 2, 5, 10? How about we make them a monthly requirement, any issues?
The certificate does not stop you catching or spreading covid, but it will make you feel more 'safe' and better about yourself.
It is much harder to take care of yourself when you have less money, also. Typical example from the US is eating cheap, subsidized burgers instead of healthier veggies.
Maybe tackling the stress from the "modern" capitalist lifestyle might help everyone to lead a healthier life. :-)
At the same time I have been looking at the other columns as well. The first column shows the rate of infection in people that have just tested positive. The other three columns show how much more dangerous the virus is to people who have not been vaccinated and end up in the hospital. Way more unvaccinated people end up in the hospital than vaccinated people. At the same time, way more cases of unvaccinated people that ended up in the hospital end in death than in cases of vaccinated people. The hospitalisation rates in the unvaccinated populations are from 2 to up to 4 times higher than in vaccinated populations. The death rates even more so show this discrepancy between the cases that end up in death coming from unvaccinated vs. vaccinated people.
Besides that, there are some very important pieces of information missing in this entire story. We do not know how many people have had previous infections. Read the following comment on p24: > people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks
With that being said, I give you that, you are right in the fact that there are more infections in the vaccinated population than in the unvaccinated, but at the same time the former seem to have a better time after contracting the virus than the latter (proof are the death rates).
With that being said, I do not think that the right decision is to dump the vaccination certificates/passports, rather I think the right decision would be to further implement the certificate as a requirement alongside periodic testing. It has been proven in other parts of the world that the vaccination certificate is indeed an incentive for people to get the vaccine, which in turn would help the hospitalisation rates fall. Testing is still detrimental.
What is the point of the passport if you can do effective pre-testing and the vaccine does not prevent covid in itself?
I'd wager a guess that vaccinated people reported COVID to authorities more often than non-vaccinated people, because they apparently tended to comply with the recommended policy.
Unvaccinated people might have tended to treat mild COVID cases as simple colds and unless more severe symptoms developed not test or report.
Yet, these antivaxers simply can't accept reality. They are like flat earthers - Earth is round below their feet, but they insist the opposite. Only instead of NASA lying to them, now it's "fascism" (like anyone can give the actual definition of this), the pharma mafia, plandemic. A bunch of delusional morons in agreement with one another doesn't make them right. But for that to be realized, you gotta have a bare minimum of neurons left in the hollow top bone.
The footnote under that table also says "Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection."
Edit: it would also be difficult to reconcile with the enormous disparity between <18 and subsequent rows.
I may be misreading what you write, but are you putting together "media attention" and "scientific attention"?
In this crisis as in everything else, media have the attention span of a goldfish and considerably less attention to detail. In this crisis as in everything else, scientists, on the other hand, are working hard to obtain and study serious data, something that may very well take years.
And then there are people (not claiming you're among them) who are angry at scientists because media are not doing their work and who prefer taking the word of charlatans because - big surprise - since they don't need scientific rigor, or sometimes even real data, they can find answers to all questions.
Not a big fan of where this is all going.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I believe in individual freedom. I should have the right to choose. I should have the right to associate with who I want to associate with.
I'm really uncertain why people are so intent on taking away essential rights. Even though you may not agree with the choices people make, they should be allowed to make them.