Hey, I apologize that my stance, as to me it appears to rub you the wrong way. If you're feeling heated or triggered, please accept an apology from an internet stranger.
My stance on the necessity of vaccines isn't a belief. Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.
Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research. The simplest assumption is they believe something that is not supported in the science, but have too much ego on the line to accept they are incorrect. This accurately classifies most of the concerns I've seen. I can empathize. We've all made mistakes in who we trust or what we conclude. But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk. Hence why I am absolutely okay with a mandate to ensure the anti-vaccine advocates burden the social costs for their decisions.
> Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research.
It's very important for you to understand if you hope to impact the behavior of people who don't share your beliefs. Or am I misunderstanding and you live in a universe where you can wave a magic wand? If so, I'd recommend just using that aforementioned wand to eliminate all mortality :P
> Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.
It's logistic, not exponential, because the exponential growth tapers off as the proportion of immunity increases. This might seem like a nitpick*, but it's very indicative of the inability of those in your camp to foresee higher order effects. From a purely societal perspective, these vaccines do not offer anywhere near enough protection to actually avoid the propagation of the virus. All they've done is create a rich population of SARS-2-naive vaccinated individuals who provided perfect substrate for a variant like Delta, which possess point mutations on the spike, to rip through the vaccinated (given that, insofar as the vaccines were reasonably effective against "alpha", they prevented the vaccinated from acquiring natural immunity). It is no coincidence that a strain that largely-but-not-entirely bypasses vaccine immunity is now by far the most dominant strain here in the US.
* granted you could counter-nitpick me here by pointing out that the pandemic phase is specifically the exponential part of the epidemic curve
> But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk.
Kids are not at serious risk of COVID-19. How can you claim to "understand the science" if you won't even admit this very basic fact? The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is dramatically lower than Influenza, and we never pulled kids out of in-person schooling for two years straight when presented with pandemic Influenza. (Yet if we applied COVID risk standards, we would have)
Note that this is usually where people come in and make a bunch of unfounded assertions about long COVID and how the kids will be crippled for life. I hope you're not going to take that route :)
> the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk.
Ignoring the ethical issue of how much responsibility someone has to ingest a pharmaceutical product with no manufacturer liability, I think a much more accurate statement is that those individuals are put at risk by those who have not acquired natural immunity. Briefly:
The difference between a SARS-2-naive vaccinated individual and a SARS-2-naive unvaccinated individual is real, but quite minor in the context of Delta in terms of infection & transmission. The difference between a SARS-2-recovered unvaccinated individual and a SARS-2-naive vaccinated individual is absolutely massive. (https://pastebin.com/8yR3y5NA to avoid cluttering this comment)
So, while ethically I don't accept the notion of assigning blame to transmission of highly infectious endemic respiratory viruses, if we're gonna assign blame, the relevant criteria is "previous exposure to SARS-2", not vaccination status.
My stance on the necessity of vaccines isn't a belief. Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.
Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research. The simplest assumption is they believe something that is not supported in the science, but have too much ego on the line to accept they are incorrect. This accurately classifies most of the concerns I've seen. I can empathize. We've all made mistakes in who we trust or what we conclude. But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk. Hence why I am absolutely okay with a mandate to ensure the anti-vaccine advocates burden the social costs for their decisions.