>They don't MANDATE vaccinations, masks, and social distancing for the flu. SAYING I DONT WANT TO BE FORCED TO DO SOMETHING IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING ITS USELESS.

All true and second point is good.

We don't mandate vaccination, masks, or social distancing for the flu but we should consider it, given that the WHO estimates 250k-500k deaths per year.

If we assume 5.5MM COVID deaths from Jan 1 2020 onwards (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda7594740fd402994234...), and 250k-500k flu deaths yearly, that makes COVID 5.5-11 times deadlier than the flu.

>They delay the inevitable, but with huge cost. The lie is that they were to "not overwhelm the hospitals", they changed it to that because they utterly failed at stopping the pandemic. hospitals got overwelmed too.... and if that was your goal, you'd think they would build more hospitals and graduate more doctors instead of canceling classes.

It's not inevitable but it is difficult to tease apart cause and effect. Masks, vaccines, and other measures like social distancing definitely reduce the spread of COVID which reduces the burden on our healthcare system. Catching COVID isn't inevitable, neither is an overburdened healthcare system.

As much as I'd love to see us build more hospitals and graduate more doctors (I think it would reduce healthcare costs), we still operate based on capitalist principles and are fundamentally optimistic - COVID will go away one day and the excess capacity will end up wasted. No one wants to build today to lose tomorrow.

The reasoning behind cancelling in person classes in many regards wasn't mainly to protect the young, who tend to have better COVID outcomes than other groups (except for the very young and old). It was to prevent spread to teachers and other members of the household who were not young AND who were likely working or caregiving (or receiving care). I feel for all the parents during this time. What a nightmare.

>Its strange you picked New York when New York has the 6th highest death rate. 44 other states have lower death rates. Some of the southern states with higher african american populations really suffered, for many reasons. There was also the oasis effect where northerners getting away from lock downs brought covid south. California had many things going on, lockdowns definitely lowered their numbers, but at great economic cost.

Mostly true. NY def has high death rate, but that's largely due to NYC. My theory (with no research to back it up) is that population density has an outsized effect on death rate, for fairly obvious reasons.

There's been a large economic cost born by everyone, but California has done remarkably well considering the circumstances. Huge surplus, record productivity, continued increases in household income, manufacturing growth, investment, clean energy, etc. As of April of this year, they added 1MM+_people to non-farm payrolls YoY. Despite the "exodus", they still managed to grow GDP near the top quintile YoY.

I don't really have the energy to respond to everything else you wrote and I question why I even spent the time to respond to this.

Ultimately, people who don't get vaccinated and have no valid medical or religious exception are acting irresponsibly and are likely to behave irresponsibly in other areas. I imagine opposition to masking and anti-vax attitudes are highly corelated. Your assumption that people sick with COVID know they're sick, stay away from others, and prevent spread is wrong. We all know you can spread COVID with very very mild symptoms.

Your idea to not mask/vax and instead isolate the elderly and ethnic would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. It also just would not work.

VAERS is not being ignored. It's being super closely monitored not just by US health authorities, but by the vaccine manufacturers and developers. Trust that they have their profit margin in mind and don't want to kill future customers or lose EUA.

Not trusting Facebook isn't favoring censorship and authoritarianism. Heck, I'd hope a Hn reader would understand that. I definitely do not trust science or analysis that comes from Facebook.

I get you're mad - lots of missteps, bad/wrong communication, horrible few years, etc.

Don't lose sight of the fundamentals - vaccines work to prevent serious illness, reduce mortality, and lessen mutation.

Masks work to reduce spread as does social distancing.

No one is holding a gun to your head to force a vaccination. "If you don't believe in driver's licenses you should simply not drive"

And after all that, I should have just never read the comments...