Nothing to do with the story, a whole other event in Mexico
I spend my winters, non-pandemic, in Mexico. I hope to be driving down (from Canada) next month. There is a “Visitor’s Comments” website from my region which I follow and contribute to when so inspired. There was a post today from one of the right wingers on the forum. I had to respond.
“Socialism is alive and well up north ...in both countries sadly. No mention is ever made about those millions who have contacted covid and have a natural immunity many times greater than any vaccine produced who do not need to get a double dose of the virus. Socialism takes away one' freedom to chose and you are to obey or be punished. If you chose to be vaccinated and the vaccine actually works, which the government insists that it does, then you have absolutely no risk from someone who is not vaccinated. IF someone choses to not be vaccinated and is willing to accept the risk of getting the virus, why take that choice away from them? Hospitals are full excuse? Then they have to stay at home. So why force it on the public? Government control is the reason. What is next on the government's health control list, you are too fat, smoke, drink alcohol, drive too fast, eat too much, have HIV or a cold, have a STD, bad breath? We have entered very dangerous territory in civil liberties destruction.
In my personal opinion the main reason so many people have resisted the vaccine is due to the fact that the gov has told so many lies and half truths about the virus that people don't trust the vaccine or information from the gov....no you don't need a mask, yes you do, children don't need to be vaccinated, yes they do, the vaccine protects you except when you get it, etc. Like the often publicized new story that over 700,000 have died from the virus in the US. It fails to separate out of those deaths people with underlying conditions like obesity, heart disease, cancer, etc. who are already sick before catching the virus. Stats show that a healthy person who takes care of themselves rarely dies from the virus.”
My reply:
Though it is likely a waste of time to respond to such crap. I feel I must.
1) Vaccines are better protection against a new infection than a previous infection with COVID:
New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection
Media Statement
Embargoed Until: Friday, August 6, 2021, 1:00 p.m. ET Contact: Media Relations (404) 639-3286
In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.
[www.cdc.gov]
2) If it is "Socialist" to make choices to minimize the risk of illness and death to yourself and to everyone else on the planet, we should all be socialists. Choosing to unnecessarily risk infection not only puts you at risk, but your family, your caregivers, the others who need hospital care you are hijacking, and everybody else on earth if you are the one who breeds a new variant that is more transmissible and/or deadly. Everybody's actions and choices potentially effect everybody. We can defeat this disease if we work together but if a sufficient pool of selfish anti-vaxers exists to serve as a reservoir of active virus the odds increase that it will be with us forever. Be a “socialist”, or, you know, be an asshole.
3) It is a legitimate function of government to defend the population from deadly disease. It's why you haven't died of cholera, smallpox, ebola, rabies, or host of other microbes, and why life expectancy has about doubled in a century or so. If this is government overreach, bring it on. I consider this a pretty good use of my taxes. Government, at base, is a way of doing together things none of us could do alone.
4) The advice was never "A mask isn't good for you." The advice 20 months ago was that the finite mask supply should be reserved for those most at risk, medical workers serving infected people. Some other advice has changed over time, as that is the nature of science and medicine; as we study more and learn more we get better guidelines.
5) Surprise! Sicker people were more likely to die than healthy people. Here's the thing...people who were LIVING with various conditions and diseases DIED when they got COVID. No, they were not going to live forever (neither are you, or I) but their other conditions were not what killed them. If you put a bullet in the head of a person with lung cancer, it wasn't the cancer that killed them.
6) It is reasonable for the people who study such things to make it clear that smoking, alcohol, obesity, and STDs can be bad for you. They are not banishing eating, smoking, drinking or f#cking, just letting you know that any of those in excess might not lead to a long life.
7) If you like your tax and insurance dollars well spent, complete vaccination costs like $100. A case of COVID, even not hospitalized, likely costs much more. Hospitalized folks probably average at least 100x as much. Long COVID costs a lot. The disruption to the economy, schools, flights, etc., from every case costs thousands more. Not even counting the potential future contributions to GDP from dead or long-term sickened people the economics are, shall we say, persuasive.
8) The only reason the US, the one nation in the world that two years ago was judged the most able to handle a potential pandemic, leads the entire world in COVID cases, and deaths, is that the mentally ill former president and his cheerleaders in the right wing media downplayed, disinformed, minimized, and mismanaged this pandemic due to his/their own perceived short term self interest. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead unnecessarily, and many more around the world because that guy demonstrably does not give a shit about anyone with a different last name. Or named Mary.
