Thanks for dropping that Holocaust stuff. I’ll address your thoughts:

1. This is a little like saying “if you believe seat belts work, you shouldn’t feel threatened by a drunk driver.” I believe the vaccine is as effective as science proves it to be, which is very effective against original COVID 19, and fairly effective against the Delta variant. In neither case 100%. I do not feel personally threatened by the unvaccinated, but I do believe they pose certain threats to society- clogging up hospitals is a big one, as hospital capacity statistically has a huge impact on the mortality rate that the anti-vax crowd is so fond of touting. 99.x% survival? Not when hospitals are full & treatment is unavailable.
2. I don’t know of any studies suggesting natural immunity is better than vaccine based immunity- I think you’re making that up. There are studies suggesting that the vaccine can provide a significant boost in naturally derived immunity, though, so vaccinating the recovered is not totally pointless. That population is of generally lesser concern to me, although I do believe there are many “recovered” individuals who are either assuming without proof that the cold they had last February was COVID, or just flat-out lying.
3. I think increased risk of severe side effects from recovered individuals is anecdotal. Not aware of any actual studies suggesting otherwise. Severe side-effects to the vaccine are very rare- far rarer than a severe COVID reaction. Again, vaccinating the recovered is not my battle so much, but there is science to suggest it is effective.
4. I think the “mounting evidence” you’re referring to is the fact that as new variants emerge, some (like Delta) are proving to be more resilient to the vaccine than the original strain. If you were paying attention, experts have been predicting this from the start. The presence of such strains in no way invalidates the importance of vaccination. In fact, the solution will most likely be a targeted booster.
5. There is an intelligent discussion to be had on this topic (and you’re definitely getting closer now than you were with all that Nazi stuff), but I still don’t really see it happening here. I’m generally cautious on the idea of government-mandated medical procedures. On the other hand, vaccine requirements for school, border entries, etc. are pretty well established. If the airline wants to be able to provide an assurance of safety to its passengers- as well as be a global competitor in markets like Asia that have different regulations & cultural views on infectious disease, what actions are reasonable to require of its employees? The answer is not as simple as just saying “personal liberty”. I agree, the loss of your job would be a huge price to pay for your exercising of said liberty, but outside of legitimate religious objections, you’d have a really hard time arguing your UAL seniority is protected by the constitution- especially while pilots are being hired in droves into companies (for now, at least) without vaccination requirements. Somebody’s gonna challenge this, but I think legally it will hold up. My advice to anyone struggling with this- don’t die on this hill. It’s safe & effective. Tucker, Sean, & the Donald all got it (Donald got it even after recovering from COVID) while telling you it’s a health risk & the greatest threat to your personal freedom. Don’t lose your job & livelihood over the lies they are taking to the bank for more than you could ever hope to see from your entire aviation career.

 

This is so funny that I spit out my coffee and chuckled. Just doesn’t make any sense does it. If companies mandate that customers must be vaccinated then they might see a reduction in traffic and or profits. If half of the adults in the USA are vaccinated then these corporations will only have access to half of their customer base.

 

Here is a source for the natural immunity topic. It has not been peer review so there is going to be that argument but the sample size is a good number.

I think the data is out there but due to the high degree of censorship around the vaccine we will not hear the data that talks about the deaths and negative side effects of the vaccine. Recently there was a group of victims giving testimony about their negative side effects. I posted the link earlier. That’s the most mainstream I’ve heard of any negative side effects.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....01.21258176v2
Conclusions Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.

Summary Cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was examined among 52238 employees in an American healthcare system. COVID-19 did not occur in anyone over the five months of the study among 2579 individuals previously infected with COVID-19, including 1359 who did not take the vaccine.

 

Saw the same interview. You’re either deliberately taking things out of context or you somehow missed the most important point.. Delta produces similar amounts of virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people if they get infected -- data that suggests vaccinated people who get a breakthrough infectioncould have a similar tendency to spread the virus as the unvaccinated, but the likelihood of a breakthrough infection is less than 10 percent in the vaccinated.

 

Appreciate the thoughtful reply. To your point about making up what I said about natural immunity being more effective than the vaccine, I didn’t. Here’s a reference (https://bit.ly/3lKmbvu) I was able to find rather quickly. That being said, I also was able to turn up plenty of articles and studies affirming the exact opposite. There can be only one right answer but unfortunately correct information is so elusive these days that the word “misinformation” has become as meaningless as so many other media buzzwords.

The side effect concern may indeed be anecdotal only, but no one can argue that there’s zero risk, and so again when you calculate the personal risk/reward as a previous COVID survivor it’s a hard sell. Unfortunately I have a couple of anecdotal examples myself.

You’re probably correct in your assumption that I stopped paying attention to the “experts” a long time ago. See my first rebuttal above.

I’m still waiting for hard evidence on how the Delta variant effects those with natural immunity.

One more thing...I never said anything about the Nazis or the Holocaust. You’ve got me mixed up with someone else.

 

https://www.visir.is/g/20212140884d/na-thurfi-hjardonaemi-med-thvi-ad-lata-veiruna-ganga?fbclid=IwAR0R9EFHpVhnZbjeTYm_fBDO7ueuVK3nQ8P N4jnBwLqb8DCa4AeUsSdkL6A

Iceland gave up and found their common sense again

 

She never specified delta or other. It was a generic statement.


Does not stop transmission.


Nice try.

You cbreezys other account?

 

Google Translate is your friend. This is a worldwide pandemic, after all.

 

Intresting. The second biggest newspaper in Iceland is def a source I've been looking for. Seems to me that Drum's claims of Iceland rubbishing the vaccine were based on fake news. The Epidemiologist quoted followed up with this statement. Didn't think that Drum would come around to supporting border restrictions and further vaccinations. Btw check the mortality rate for Iceland. Hint hint it's not Florida...



"The goal is to achieve herd immunity in one way or another, either through vaccination. We've tried it. Half of those who are vaccinated are immune so we get herd resistance. In order to get herd resistance in the community, more people need to be immune to the virus and it can not be done otherwise than to vaccinate better as we are doing with the third dose, re-vaccinate those who are most vulnerable so that we can caught it in many ways other than to say: now we just let the virus loose around society. Nobody has said that. I have always said that we need to have some kind of restriction, both at the border and at home, and then we have these vaccinations, "said Þórólfur, who also added the possibility of new vaccines and re-vaccinations as weapons against the epidemic."

https://translate.google.com/transla...search&pto=aue

 

Oh yes, I see that now. Your initial post quoted me calling someone out for making that comparison & I mistook you for him. Please accept my apologies for that.

As far as no longer paying attention to the experts, respectfully, I think this is an enormous error. Science makes mistakes but trends toward greater accuracy & consensus over time. We are still early on in our understanding of this virus. Couple that with the fact that the virus itself is changing, it follows that our understanding of it is also changing a lot. I’ll even consent there are lots of conflicting studies out there. But fewer today than there were a year ago, and fewer next year than today.

I get how frustrating it can be to feel like what they told you yesterday they are contradicting today, but that is to some degree the nature of a dynamic situation. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking just because the CDC reversed its guidance of mask wearing, they’ve become equal in credibility to a guy peddling baseless theories on YouTube. I can find you someone with an MD attached to their name that will be willing to confirm almost any medical nonsense you can come up with, just like I can find a meteorologist who lives in a floodplain or a pilot who has no business flying an airplane.

The best we can do is to look at the experts, not individually, but as a whole. Follow the most upheld & legitimate studies. They’re not always right, but they are much more frequently than you or I making gut-based opinions.