Covid Vaccine thread

[Bene Futuis]

Are you actively encouraging others to gain weight as well?

That's the real difference - bad health choices are one thing, but bad health choices that foist themselves on other, unwilling participants are another. Driving without a seatbelt is not a smart move but it would be a whole different discussion if one person's refusal to use a seatbelt caused someone else to be unable to use a seatbelt. Admittedly, a poor analogy but you get what I'm saying.

[Bene Futuis]

One in three new COVID cases in the U.S. over the weekend were in Florida or Texas.

[Kevin Seitzer]

One in three new COVID cases in the U.S. over the weekend were in Florida or Texas.

Florida has 6.4% of the US population and had 18.5% of the COVID cases identified in the US over the past 7 days.
Texas has 8.7% of the population and 11.7% of the new cases.
California has 11.8% of the population and 10.6% of the new cases.
Louisiana has 1.4% of the population and 4.5% of the new cases.
Georgia has 3.2% of the population and 4.1% of the new cases.

To me, Florida and Louisiana are in a different class here than Texas or California. There's a reason Texas gets mentioned in these anecdotes and California doesn't, and I don't think it's because of the relative severity of the outbreak in the two states, although Texas is somewhat worse. It's an easy way to blame it on the red states. Many of the red state governors are to blame, and Texas Governor Abbott is a mess in multiple ways, but I don't think including his state as a current pandemic disaster is accurate.

I say all that believing that things are poised to get a lot worse in Texas over the next several weeks. I just don't think it's that bad currently.

[Kevin Seitzer]

This is the current NY Times COVID "hot spot" map:



You can see that from southern Missouri down to Louisiana and then through coastal Mississippi and Alabama to southern Georgia and into Florida is all a COVID mess. The rest of the South, including Texas, is worse than the Northeast and upper Midwest for sure, but not that much worse than a lot of the West.

[chancellor]

That's the real difference - bad health choices are one thing, but bad health choices that foist themselves on other, unwilling participants are another. Driving without a seatbelt is not a smart move but it would be a whole different discussion if one person's refusal to use a seatbelt caused someone else to be unable to use a seatbelt. Admittedly, a poor analogy but you get what I'm saying.

Yup, this. And that many of the other health choices have levels of "badness" - if you're 10 lbs overweight that's a minor issue, if you're 100 lbs overweight, that's really bad. The vaccine is analog - you either are or you're not.

[Ken]

That's the real difference - bad health choices are one thing, but bad health choices that foist themselves on other, unwilling participants are another. Driving without a seatbelt is not a smart move but it would be a whole different discussion if one person's refusal to use a seatbelt caused someone else to be unable to use a seatbelt. Admittedly, a poor analogy but you get what I'm saying.

To clarify, I did carve out that how it affects others is different (and obviously based on my numerous comments in this thread I agree with you here).

I was trying to separate that from the death of the individual himself.

[chancellor]

This is the current NY Times COVID "hot spot" map:



You can see that from southern Missouri down to Louisiana and then through coastal Mississippi and Alabama to southern Georgia and into Florida is all a COVID mess. The rest of the South, including Texas, is worse than the Northeast and upper Midwest for sure, but not that much worse than a lot of the West.

Wonder if the Data For Progress info on vaccinations can be sorted to those areas...

[Bene Futuis]

To clarify, I did carve out that how it affects others is different (and obviously based on my numerous comments in this thread I agree with you here).

I was trying to separate that from the death of the individual himself.

Definitely - that guy dying is simultaneously sad and frustrating with, if we're being honest, just a little bit of schadenfreude mixed in. I don't want anyone at all to die of this horrible, horrible virus but guys like that sure don't make it easy to root for them once they've been infected or, heaven forbid, die of COVID. But you're right about casting stones - very few of us could say that we are living fully healthy lifestyles. Complicated, philosophical stuff....

[Kevin Seitzer]

To clarify, I did carve out that how it affects others is different (and obviously based on my numerous comments in this thread I agree with you here).

I was trying to separate that from the death of the individual himself.

I have a number of friends/acquaintances who are refusing to get the vaccine. I don't know all the reasons, but I think it comes down to a combination of not wanting to appear weak or to be pushed around by authorities/elites who claim to know better and wanting to identify as conservatives. Both cases where I know specifically (and not just guessing) that person is not vaccinated, it's a single man my age (late 40's, early 50's) who probably doesn't want to take a day off work and certainly doesn't want to look like a liberal.

My dad (just turned 90) refused the vaccine for a while but finally gave in and got his first shot recently. For him I think it was more about "I don't like medical doctors or putting anything 'unnatural' in my body" than it is about a political statement or ideology.

For all of those people, I would have a great deal of sympathy and sadness if they got badly sick or died because of COVID, even though it would have been avoidable by their own choices.

I feel a little bit different for someone who is actively campaigning against the vaccine and spouting misinformation on a public platform and misleading others. I still wouldn't want them to die, but I might want them to learn the error of their ways, including some pain along with the lesson.

[Bene Futuis]

This is the current NY Times COVID "hot spot" map:



You can see that from southern Missouri down to Louisiana and then through coastal Mississippi and Alabama to southern Georgia and into Florida is all a COVID mess. The rest of the South, including Texas, is worse than the Northeast and upper Midwest for sure, but not that much worse than a lot of the West.

That is a really, really discouraging map. I can't imagine being in one of those hot spots. It has to be immensely frustrating battling against the conspiracists and politicians fighting vaccination.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Wonder if the Data For Progress info on vaccinations can be sorted to those areas...

There is definitely some correlation with vaccination rates, although not perfect. I don't know about Data for Progress.

NY Times maps here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

[Ken]

I have a number of friends/acquaintances who are refusing to get the vaccine. I don't know all the reasons, but I think it comes down to a combination of not wanting to appear weak or to be pushed around by authorities/elites who claim to know better and wanting to identify as conservatives. Both cases where I know specifically (and not just guessing) that person is not vaccinated, it's a single man my age (late 40's, early 50's) who probably doesn't want to take a day off work and certainly doesn't want to look like a liberal.

My dad (just turned 90) refused the vaccine for a while but finally gave in and got his first shot recently. For him I think it was more about "I don't like medical doctors or putting anything 'unnatural' in my body" than it is about a political statement or ideology.

For all of those people, I would have a great deal of sympathy and sadness if they got badly sick or died because of COVID, even though it would have been avoidable by their own choices.

I feel a little bit different for someone who is actively campaigning against the vaccine and spouting misinformation on a public platform and misleading others. I still wouldn't want them to die, but I might want them to learn the error of their ways, including some pain along with the lesson.

Good anecdotes and reasonable stance. You had me up until "pain". Based on your posts on this board I would not have guessed that you wished pain on someone, even one of your worst enemies. Wishing that they came to understand the consequences of their choices, and wishing they would reverse course and apologize for their actions and contribute to a positive cause instead, sure. But pain? That surprises me.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Good anecdotes and reasonable stance. You had me up until "pain". Based on your posts on this board I would not have guessed that you wished pain on someone, even one of your worst enemies. Wishing that they came to understand the consequences of their choices, and wishing they would reverse course and apologize for their actions and contribute to a positive cause instead, sure. But pain? That surprises me.

Not in the sense of torturing them, but in the sense of some painful experience being a better teacher. I don't think if they got COVID and it was "like the flu" that they would learn the needed lesson. I mean, I say that as a dispassionate observer and not as one of their family or friends. Maybe it's too easy for me to say that.

I remembered now that I have another cousin where he and his wife are anti-vaxxers across the board, not just for the COVID vaccine. They are homeschooling their kids so they don't have to vaccinate them. I don't agree with them at all and I worry about their health and that of his elderly parents (my uncle and aunt), but I also feel a bit helpless. I don't see any way to talk them out of their belief set.

[revo]

I have a number of friends/acquaintances who are refusing to get the vaccine. I don't know all the reasons, but I think it comes down to a combination of not wanting to appear weak or to be pushed around by authorities/elites who claim to know better and wanting to identify as conservatives. Both cases where I know specifically (and not just guessing) that person is not vaccinated, it's a single man my age (late 40's, early 50's) who probably doesn't want to take a day off work and certainly doesn't want to look like a liberal.

Yet they don't mind the authorities who claim to know better pushing around women.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Yet they don't mind the authorities who claim to know better pushing around women.

I don't know if that's true. I certainly wouldn't claim it is, and I know them and you don't.

Edit to add: I assume you're talking about favoring abortion restrictions. I don't know their views on that. They are both conservative politically, so one might make that assumption, but given that they haven't talked about that, I am loathe to just make that leap and further to ascribe motives to it.