© 2008 Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Or maybe the modern version is “Oxygen, Oxygen, everywhere and not a canister to purify the water”? Wired mag explains, Why Florida’s Covid Surge Is Screwing With the Water Supply (Hint: Oxygen). More people in the hospital means more people need oxygen. But treatment plants also need the gas to purify water.
But remember: people choosing not to get vaccinated–even if vaccination almost entirely protects the 97% of the non-immunocompromised population from serious breakthrough infections of the type requiring hospitalizations–or wear masks in public, which helps reduce transmission of COVID, are making a personal choice that we all should respect. If that purely personal private liberty-loving choice somehow mysteriously has an effect on others, then it is the responsibility of those others–who probably don’t exercise or take care of themselves right–to alter their behavior regardless of the external costs blithely imposed upon the whole state by the freedom-loving among us whom, my commentators and others (like Fl. Gov. Ron DeSantis) instruct, we must coddle and respect and not burden with our greedy desire to do things like drink clean tap water or have an open hospital bed available if we need one.
So, today, I suppose we must invest in home water filters or environmentally hazardous plastic-bottled water, until that runs out, anyway. What? That’s not in your budget? Tough on you, eh? Stand up and learn not to drink so much water! (Wait, staying well hydrated is good for you? But, but…) And, meanwhile, feel the patriotism! And thank Gov. DeSantis for his leadership on the COVID issue! And wait for tomorrow…
I am absolutely terrified of taking this vaccine.
How can we help you get over this irrational and dangerous (to self and others) fear?
I would recommend the development of vaccines that introduce the pathogen to the body’s immune system in the way that the body evolved to respond to airborne particles.
https://www.whsv.com/2021/08/05/uva-health-researchers-working-intranasal-covid-19-vaccine/
But am I truly irrational though to be afraid of the unknown?
I don’t think it’s irrational to fear (some) unknowns. I think at this point it is irrational to classify the vaccine as an unknown, as opposed to being well on the continuum to partially known, just like so many many things we use every day in our lives.
True, we don’t know that the vaccine won’t cause you to grow a 2nd head, or have some more likely side effect in 20 years.
But we do know a lot about the short- and a bit-less-short- term effects of the vaccine: not totally risk-free but in fact very very low risk as these things go, and — here’s the key point — much less risky than no vaccine even if we ignore the externalities. In other words, YOU are, it is now quite clear, much better off with the protection it offers than without it, even when we net out the side effects we know about. Add in doing your part for the herd, and I think it’s either a no-brainer or at worst a very-little-brainer.
So, yes, if we define “irrational” as not “not being rational” when the stakes matter, I do think this IS irrational.
And I’m afraid what we need to do is change your perceptions, not wait while we develop a whole new technology for you.
Everything that I have been taught by society with respect to questioning my premises and forming independent conclusions has led me to this belief.
It quite honestly appears to me that every single logical fallacy in the book has been used since the start of this situation to push a single, polarized narrative that disallows any dissent.
What does that say when my rationality has been judged by society to be quite high from the earliest years in the gifted programs to the rigors of the legal profession’s filtering function?
“To err is human”?
I may be wrong.
The issue is that the experts don’t seem to share my humility.
The facts are in: “According to Dr. Erin Kobetz, the medical school’s vice provost for research and scholarship and a leader on the university COVID-19 task force, around 80% of the UM students testing positive for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, despite the fact that only around 23% of the total student body is still unvaccinated.”
What about natural immunity that creates a broader profile of the virus such that variants are by definition less of an overall change than the mere spike protein itself and thus less likely to result in declining protection over time?
[responding to above]
What I’ve seen suggests that natural immunity is better than no shot, and no immunity. But the shot may be better in most cases than the natural immunity, and that seems true for Delta too.
There is also some decent evidence that, statistically (ie generally but not necessarily in every case), natural immunity + shot beats natural immunity alone at least for the original version of COVID.
How true that is for the Delta variant is, from what I see, less clear at present — the numbers are not in yet ..
Is it possible that natural immunity by itself is enough to prevent the spread?
This depends on what you mean by “possible”. If everyone gets it fast, and lots of folk die, and an immunity-resistant variant doesn’t emerge from the giant pool of incubators, then yes, after the initial die-off of humans you get a low r among the survivors..
That was the ‘natural herd immunity’ scenario. It is of course barbaric. And it has many failure modes, e.g.it spreads more slowly, helping variants get established, or some folks remain in pockets of health, becoming a launching pad for a new variant. And many other scenarios too.
Plus a lot, lot, lot of people die, including many from overburdened hospitals (and including non-covid patients who can’t get care b/c hospitals are swamped).
This is a very bad way to go when we have the option of good vaccines, masking, distancing and other social protocols.
Should exceptions to a vaccine mandate take into account individuals with natural immunity that is reasonably equivalent to vaccine-based levels of immunity?
I would leave that up to the sound discretion of experts so long as they gave reasons for their decisions.
We’d need to know how good our measuring tools are, how long natural immunity lasts compared to vaccinated, what the marginal value of adding the vaccine would be (since breakthroughs happen) vs marginal risk, what the admin burden would be, and doubtless many things I haven’t thought of.
And, of course, the decision on that could change as knowledge and conditions changed.
I agree with you.
Great! Get your shot as soon as you can.
Okay.