Fulltext archive: https://archive.md/A9Mm0

Getting vaccinated doesn't prevent you from spreading covid.

It significantly reduces the chances of spreading it…

No, but if everyone was vaccinated we’d be a lot less concerned about spread in the first place.

Same if no one was obese.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28533668

>One takes a couple minutes and the other is something requiring an hour or more of dedicated time per day for potentially years (or a whole lifetime!

Nope. You don't have to dedicate time to exercising to lose weight, you can just eat less.

You could even have mandates. Exclude them from eating at restaurants or fast food places and ensure they don't purchase too much or unhealthy food.

Not only would it be for Their Own Good™, but if it saved just one innocent life due to reducing the load on the healthcare system, it would have been worth it.

/s of course - I'm not a lunatic.

>Not only would it be for Their Own Good™, but if it saved just one innocent life due to reducing the load on the healthcare system, it would have been worth it.

There's so many people who seem to draw a completely arbitrary line between authoritarianism and paternalism despite them being exactly the same thing with different justifications. I don't care if it's "for my own good" or "because I said so", I oppose authoritarianism in general on principle rather than justifying authoritarianism towards things I happen to like with a different name.

For sure, and the government knows that meat is bad for you, and also sugar, and fat. You’re allowed to eat bland protein paste citizen, enjoy!

I lost 80 pounds eating mostly hot dogs and kimchi. I doubt the government would prescribe that though.

Naturally the ruling class would be allowed to eat meat and desserts though. Their palates are sophisticated in ways you would fail to appreciate, pleb. And besides, you're just jealous that they're better than you.

meat is good for you.

Except hot-dogs contain almost no meat :)

Eating less is much more mentally intensive than taking a corona shot.

Ask some of my friends that are otherwise healthy and they'll say quite the opposite.

(Full disclosure: I'm vaccinated and disagree wildly with them, but they are still my friends and these are very capable engineers/programmers, they just don't trust authorities in this case.)

Yeah, I don’t want to say bad things about people but…

I’ve very recently found that a lot of very smart people are still quite capable of doubling down on stupid.

It’s not even really wrong. They just weigh the risk disproportionately against the benefits (for the person themselves and society). I just cannot understand how a rational person can do that.

> I’ve very recently found that a lot of very smart people are still quite capable of doubling down on stupid

Being consistently the smartest person in the room can lull some to believe they are smarter than everyone, everywhere, every time.

Sometimes the lack of intellectual humility is an independent personality trait, but I've encountered a number of very smart people that held really weird beliefs which bordered on conspiracy thinking, but was self-reinforcing because they thought everyone else was not smart enough to cotton-on to "the man" (one believed in over-unity energy,the other one is basically synthesizing a new religion(/cult?) by gaining "insights" into "correct" aspects of multiple existing ones, whose current practitioner's "get it wrong" in one way or the other.)

I have found: The smarter I think I am, the dumber I behave.

You are in good company:

«Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.» ‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭26:12‬ ‭

This chapter was probably written around 2700 or so years ago according to my reading of Britannica :-)

Firstly, I hope you accept and understand that we are all fucking idiots. Every last one of us, yourself and myself included. I'm not sure what specific nuanced position you believe equals "doubling down on stupid". I honestly can't tell from the previous handful of posts in this thread, what specific arguments yall are making. It would seem, COVID is not a problem for 99% of humans (according to CDC Data Tracker numbers). The humans it is a potential serious problem for, are already stricken with obesity, hypertension, and diabetes (at the least), and likely have systemic chronic issues due to these diseases. With this in mind (very low risk of serious illness for most people), and seeing how studies show natural immunity is more robust (not just reactive to the spike protein, but "surprisingly" all 4 major proteins in the virus) and longer lasting than the vaccines we have available, it would seem counter productive for me and my family to get vaccinated.

I found when losing weight that the first 20 pounds was easy. After that every half pound was a major mental challenge to keep going. Then COVID-19 hit, I stress ate, my activity level fell to virtually 0, and yeah. Back to -0 from where I started. Time to start over.

I think there are pretty rational cases to forego a vaccination, especially young people under 20. And that there is advertising for them getting a vaccination might even be borderline irresponsible.

Add some political urge to stand out and make disproportionate regulations and I cannot call many of them irrational. I am vaccinated but surely that is irrelevant for the argument.

We will get the invoice for Covid in a few years in any case.

I have lost a lot of faith in people and their ability to argue and this doesn't really stem from the anti-vaccination camp, far more this comes from people asking for restrictions.

All of these are reasonable arguments. I personally agree with them. I am vaccinated (J&J), and was vaccine hesitant for 6 months prior to making my decision. I still stand far more in unity with the anti-vaccination camp than those asking for restrictions.

Many in the "people asking for restrictions" camp will not see these arguments as reasonable because they don't comply with "the science" (which is actually a crafted narrative).

Part of the problem is that we aren't just dealing just with a morphing dataset being communicated very imperfectly across digital mediums to the entire globe. We have all of that, and then that already fantastically complicated scenario is being ham-fisted into a narrative, and the narrative trumps all the data.

Yes, what's troubling to me in this imperfect communication, is the media reporting "COVID deaths", as if they were "deaths of COVID", instead of "deaths with COVID". The spin is palpable, and completely unnecessary.

Yeah, eat less for months or years. Slightly harder than getting an injection.

Also not trivial, given the legitimate hunger and compulsion someone with an overeating problem may have after suffering with it for years.

So yes, not an explicit time dedication, but you’re being pedantic at that point and the practical reality that a vaccine is a minimal inconvenience is reasonably unavoidable.

Obviously exceptions exist, which is what medical exceptions are for etc etc.

> Also not trivial, given the legitimate hunger and compulsion someone with an overeating problem may have after suffering with it for years.

Yeah but you could just mandate it. Force them to eat small amounts. Fire them from their jobs, prevent them from traveling, and lock them out of civil society if they do not comply. Make them submit to weekly weigh-ins.

They wouldn't like it of course, but neither do the people being coerced into taking vaccines. Point is it's for the greater good, and if reducing their load on the healthcare system saves just one life, it all will have been worth it. Right? I mean while we're just here completely making up values and cost/benefit out of thin air, we can mandate pretty much anything.

Being fat isn't contagious. While it does increase medical load, it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.

We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed. It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.

> Being fat isn't contagious.

But it does tend to result in worse outcomes when you catch covid, which you can when you go eat at a restaurant. From the vaccinated patrons who can still transmit it.

> it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.

The vaccinated can contract covid and can transmit it to other vaccinated though. So this can't be the reason to ban unvaccinated, because allowing the vaccinated to restaurants will also increase medical load.

> We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed.

Oh? It sort of seemed like it was since the science on natural immunity was being ignored.

> It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.

> Being fat isn't contagious.

Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are not contagious.

The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.

Your argument could equally apply to DUIs:"Driving sober doesn't mean you won't be involved in an accident" - sure, but the likelihood is lowered by a measurable amount.

> The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.

So? What are the numbers? You seem to have it all figured out, so all I'm asking is how the situations are different, and how exactly you arrived at the conclusion that one merited forced medical procedures and the other did not, based on those numbers.

Handwaving about more or different doesn't really cut it because I want clear, unambiguous hard criteria and step by step reasoning for why one particular set of numbers justifies this serious step and another does not.

The probability being very different argument above is based in massaged data; data fit to a narrative.

The narrative wants you to trust it and set aside such petty questioning! "The science" will prevail! The elites no better! How dare you ask for specifics, a practical dataset and explanations. You might be labeled a anti-vaxxer over such things! /sarcasm

> Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are not contagious.

Being vaccinated reduces contagion (with known variants other than Delta, it reduces probability of contagious infection, intensity (viral load) of contagious infection, and duration of contagious infection; with Delta it does the first and third.

This article is about previous infection.

Is there data comparing previous infection to vaccine in terms of contagious properties listed above?

You're again misrepresenting the situation. Taking the vaccine is a 2 x 30 minute process (maybe adding 3-4 sick days with mild fever and soreness, to be fair). Losing weight after being overweight/obese is something that you need to do every second of every day for the rest of your life.

Also, people who chose not to get vaccinated chose to expose others to their disease. People who chose not to lose weight hurt no one but themselves.

The amount of burden you put on someone when you make them take the vaccine is nothing like the amount of burden you put on someone when you make them lose weight. The risks for you if I don't get vaccinated is high, the risk for you if I remain overweight/obese is 0. So, one is an acceptable compulsion, the other is not. How is this so hard to understand?

You can also view it the other way around: there is no compulsion or punishment for those who don't get vaccinated. The government can and must mandate a quarantine for everyone. However, since some people are immune, they are exempted from this quarantine.

I think you're just doing everything you can to avoid acknowledging any similarities in the situations. The two situations are not exactly identical in every way of course. But getting bogged down in this minutiae with these construction of rules is missing the point, and such precise rules have never been a feature of covid policies.

Mandating overweight people lose weight would benefit their own health and it would take pressure of the healthcare system. Pretty straightforward analogy.

No, I am pointing out the 2 most relevant differences. You are doing your best to ignore those and look at the similarities.

The government, in practice, can only issue mandates and bans that are relatively easy to follow, and extremely urgent. That's why banning radioactive material is easy and has wide support, but banning alcohol or tobacco is not.

While the government is extremely corrupt and oligarchic, it's still not a dictatorship that can actually up and decide to ban dancing on some idiot's whim.

They aren't really relevant to the issue though. The matter at hand is that mandating overweight people lose weight would improve their health outcomes and take pressure of the medical system, improving helath outcomes for others as well. This is the justification for vaccine mandates and coercion.

I've explained this enough, you're obviously arguing in bad faith at this point.

And then that justification is weighed against the difficulty and invasiveness of implementation.

I've never seen that weighing or justified anywhere. Do you have any sources on that?

Mandating overweight people lose weight is not more invasive than mandating people undergo unwanted medical procedures. Forced medical procedures are actually an incredibly serious and problematic issue with a long and dark history.

The problem I have is not any one particular procedure, it is the idea of coercion, and the bullying and excluding of people (disproportionately disadvantaged, non-white, etc too, I might add).

> I've never seen that weighing or justified anywhere. Do you have any sources on that?

You have to be kidding. The difficulty and invasiveness of different interventions for covid alone has been constantly under discussion.

> Mandating overweight people lose weight is not more invasive than mandating people undergo unwanted medical procedures. Forced medical procedures are actually an incredibly serious and problematic issue with a long and dark history.

You're being vague on purpose.

When you replace "unwanted medical procedure" with a much more specific "approved vaccine shot" that stops being true.

> The problem I have is not any one particular procedure, it is the idea of coercion, and the bullying and excluding of people (disproportionately disadvantaged, non-white, etc too, I might add).

You can't take a hard-line stance against coercion unless you're asking to abolish government. Any reasonable analysis takes the particular coercion into account.

The load on the medical system from obesity is largely predictable and stable. It's no comparison to how COVID overwhelms the medical system.

Nobody is going without necessary surgery or treatment because some other people eat too much food from McDonald's.

Healthcare spending is $X. When obesity related illnesses cost $Y, that means only $X-$Y is leftover to pay for the remaining care.

But now you’re back at the original comparison of one or two quick injections versus constant monitoring of meals or weigh-ins.

I mean... I created a wearable device[0] that can detect when you're eating and deliver an electric shock. Why not just mandate every obese person to wear it?[1]

[0] https://pavlok.com

[1] </sarcasm> -- it wasn't made for this purpose.

I'd seriously use something like that if it was stronger, tamper proof and would shock me whenever I'm browsing Reddit (and a blacklist of other garbage just in case).

Where did this "quick fix" clause ever come into it? It feels to me like it's something that you have retroactively made up to suit one particular argument but which has never been an important point before.

The point was always to save lives. I don't remember quick ever factoring into any calculations when people were forced to stay home, their workplaces shut, their education disrupted, their jobs lost, for indeterminate periods of weeks, months, years. Over this past two years we could have collectively lost many tons if only we had some mandates.

So I reject your assertion that quick is a material difference between these two scenarios, and my analogy stands.

No, it came from the beginning of the thread we are currently in. It’s what this thread is about.

But that has never actually been a thing in the public policy debate about it which is the wider context we're talking about. I think it was just made up now to exclude certain other inconvenient analogous situations like this.

How was that tradeoff decided, who decided it and where is the justification? And you can start losing weight in your own home, on day 1. That's faster than even a single shot of vaccine, let alone two shots with a delay, plus boosters etc. So that's not a very satisfactory answer as to why some mandates for the greater good are acceptable and yet others are not.

In this hypothetical scenario, the assumption is being made that the collection good is more important than individual liberty.

Another issue at play here in the US is that Americans are divided on where the line should be drawn between what can be allowed in the name of the collective good. I think it's quite obviously that the nation is very split on this. There isn't a constructive debate going on about the interplay between these two positions or a compromise.

One side (people mandating restrictions) are trying to brute force mandates without interacting, constructively discussing and persuading the other side.

By the way, sometimes I wish comments would not be deleted because I would have liked to reply to your reply to my reply, and ask what problem you have with what I said?

I hope it is obvious I don't actually feel this way toward overweight people -- it's hateful, discriminatory, divisive, bullying, and it goes against everything I believe about freedom people should have to live their lives.

And yet being overweight is a detriment to health. And it places additional burden on the healthcare system. So I think it is a good analogy to use, if there was an equally effective one that was less shocking, I would gladly use that instead.

See, I can see the "perfect" society where everything is done for "the greater good". Where the ruling class and their alleged experts hand down edicts by which we much live. Everything is mandated accordingly. Nobody may question the mandates or the rulers, lest they be bullied and branded grandma killers / fascists / baby killers / etc. And I can see how yes you might micro optimize this society by forcing people to take vaccines. And by forcing overweight people to lose weight. I don't deny that maybe some people could be "saved" if we had all these mandates. That is not the society I value or want to live in though.

And I think that's a very underhanded bullying argument to coerce people into giving up their freedom or having medical treatment they don't want, to suggest that they are responsible for killing others because of choices like this. Because there are hundreds of ways we could all change our choices and indirectly save people,it does not always mean we are responsible for them if we don't.

I mean, you take it to the limit and you might well say elderly have passed their used by date, no longer contribute to the greater good, and are increasingly a burden on the healthcare system, so let's turf them out. Every hospital bed they selfishly take up is stealing the life of a sick child who could not be admitted due to the shortage. Or that you are personally responsible for the death of anyone around the world who dies of hunger so long as you have not donated every last penny of your income beyond what you require to barely survive on in a tent.

My position is that actually the most dangerous thing facing our society and our children and their children is authoritarianism and the unaccountable and unchecked expansion of power of the ruling class over our lives. Unimaginably more dangerous than covid-19. And I think mine is quite a reasonable position to take.

So if someone can be bullied and told they are responsible for killing grandparents and responsible for continuing lockdowns for not wanting to take the vaccine then fine, and we can say with similar intellectual honesty that those bullies calling for mandates are responsible for the next Stalin.

EDIT: And one last thing, it's not "those hateful others", aka your fellow citizens, who are responsible for the breakdown of trust in authority and their "experts". It is entirely the fault of the ruling class. Their greed, lies, lust for power and willingness to divide has caused this. You really wonder why people might not have complete blind trust in the politicians, journalists and other self-proclaimed experts who told them we had to invade Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, we had to destroy Syria and Libya, etc.? That it was for their best interest? Remember that? And then they stole their money and sent their sons and daughters away to die? And then they laughed all the way to the bank and did it again.

Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?

If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?

By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.

> Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?

I'm a big believer in personal responsibility. Yes I think they would be responsible and even should be criminally liable in some circumstances (e.g., if they knew they had HIV). I would also bear responsibility for my own actions of course.

> If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?

Consider the same what?

> By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.

First of all, we aren't talking about going somewhere if you are sick or not, we are talking about going somewhere without being vaccinated. And I don't think that's a reasonable standard. Before 2020, people weren't banned from society if they didn't have a flu vaccine for example. Nobody thought this was unreasonable despite the seasonal fl being potentially lethal disease that can kill others.

Some places, e.g., where certain vulnerable or compromised people were (nursing homes), would mandate vaccines presumably based on reasonable evidence.

Now covid may be worse than the regular flu, but I think the numbers involved matter and so I don't just blindly agree it's reasonable that people should be banned from their work or public places if they haven't had it. Fear mongering aside, I don't think the evidence is there.

I think everyone would agree that reasonable measures should be taken, what we disagree on is what is reasonable.

>You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk.

^^ This is where you go off the rails. You don't "eliminate" that risk with a vaccine. Nobody who produced the vaccine has ever claimed this.

> And I think that's a very underhanded bullying argument to coerce people into giving up their freedom or having medical treatment they don't want, to suggest that they are responsible for killing others because of choices like this. Because there are hundreds of ways we could all change our choices and indirectly save people,it does not always mean we are responsible for them if we don't.

That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.

If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.

If you have "hundreds of ways" we can make minor changes to save the lives of others lives, please share them because that sounds likr really useful information.

I think communication is best done with honesty and politeness and without censorship. That does not mean we absolve people of the responsibility of theor choices

The descent into authoritarianism is also a significant risk, but vaccine mandates are NOT that start of a slippery slope. They have been around for many decades and they haven't resulted in any slipping. If anything, getting people riled up about vaccines is a way to justify censorship and distract from the ever growing power of the surveillance state.

> That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.

I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox, the bullies and fearmongers making comparisons like that were simply lying and spreading misinformation. And if it was similar to smallpox, I think it would be quite clear and people would be far more inclined to get vaccinated.

And I disagree with your idea of blame, as I said above the same argument can be made about overweight people and others. Maybe you are responsible for the death of starving children right now because you were browsing the internet instead of donating your time or money?

And it absolutely is authoritarianism because it is not about the virus or even the vaccine itself really. It is a totally politicized tool that authorities are using. That should have been clear when people were flip flopping between being skeptical of the "Trump" vaccine and calling border closures racist and refusing to acknowledge natural immunity and all that other nonsense. It's not the slippery slope because this is already authoritarianism. Telling people they can not go about their lives, they can't work or go to school, tracking and controlling where they go, who they meet, what business they do. It's already here.

If mandates were such a non-issue, why was it just a few months ago the experts and politicians were all lying and denying there would be mandates? Are they just pathological liars who will lie about trivial things that don't matter? Or did they know the seriousness of the issue and decide to lie and mislead until the opinion polls looked better for them? Neither option inspires a lot of trust in them.

Edit: my 10% number below is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.

> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.

A minor illness??? This is the worse illness that has affected the world since the Spanish flu. It's worse than AIDS, malaria, it even beat tuberculosis in terms of raw people killed in 2020. Calling COVID19 a "minor illness" is simply delusional at this point.

And this death toll was only kept somewhat in check because of the biggest social disruption and curbing of liberties since WW2. If social isolation weren't forced, we would have seen situations like we did in Lombardia in the early days - not 1% death rates, but 10% or more because of overwhelmed hospitals.

> It's worse than AIDS

It's more acute than HIV was, but HIV still has an order magnitude more deaths. I remain hopeful that covid deaths won't reach those levels.

Covid19 killed 1.89 million people worldwide by Jan 1st 2021, according to Our World in Data. HIV killed the most people per annum in ~2004, at 1.7 million worldwide, ~23 years after the first outbreak (1981).

If we can stop Covid19 with vaccinations, lockdwons, contact tracing, then hopefully it will not reach HIV levels of cumulative historical deaths. But otherwise, it would reach the same death toll as HIV did in 40 years in about 12 years like 2020.

And note, HIV was enough to completely change human sexual interactions maybe forever - at least for ~30 years.

I said relatively minor, comparison being to something like smallpox. And certainly compared with the unfounded fearmongering you've written here. There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates! Have unvaccinated hospitalization rates ever gone above even 1%?

Edit: my 10% is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.

> There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates.

But that's exactly what the death rates looked like in all regions that didn't impose lockdowns soon enough. The case of Lombardia is perfect - it's one of the richest regions on Earth, and while local hospitals were overwhelmed, it was surrounded by other rich regions that could accept patients. And even so, it had ~10% death rates in the early days of the pandemic, before lockdowns.

They didn't really look like that, it was probably more like 1% and that is quite an outlier.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

A lot of places around the world have had little or no lockdowns or vaccinations and have not seen anything like 10% fatality rate over the population. This is fear mongering.

Oops, you're right - I completely messed up the numbers. 10% is way too much, even for CFR. Still, 1-2% death rates is a huge number.

No problem, hope I can help you sleep a little better tonight :)

> It's worse than AIDS, malaria,

Malaria has killed ~2 million in 2 years. It's actually just around half of Covid but while Covid deaths are slowing, Malaria is steady.

Sure, because Covid has a vaccine that can actually be afforded by most of the population suffering from it. Malaria has been completely eliminated from all rich regions of the world, and it only festers in places that can't afford the vaccine.

> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe.

You honestly don't believe you are responsible for the knowable results of your own actions?

> a relatively minor illness

I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.

> others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.

The vaccines both reduce spread and reduce the risknof serious illnessm. They do not eliminate that risk so choosing to remain unvaccinated bis choocing to increase the risk for both the vaccinated and the other unvaccinated people around you. This is risk that you ARE RESPONSIBLE for so you better make sure it is worth it.

As for the rest, please try reading what I actually wrote rather than making assumptions and arguing against partisan strawmen.

Where did I advocate for vaccine mandates?

Where did I advocate for continued lockdowns?

Where did I call border closures racist?

Where did I compare covid to smallpox?

Natural Immunity does seem superior to vacination alone, but having both is even better.

You seem to be projecting partisan talking points onto me to divert from the serious flaws in your moral philosophy and grasp of reality.

I don't see how you can conceivably believe that covid vacinations should be a choice but that the people making that choice are not responsible for the effects of that choice. Being responsible for the results is part of having choices.

>I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.

I mean, according to CDC's data, it is a very minor illness. Affects very few seriously, and kills even fewer: CDC believes (they obviously don't know for sure) only about 5% of their "total COVID deaths (deaths with COVID), are actually attributed specifically to COVID. As of right now, that would put total deaths from COVID at around 33K, that's over 18 months that we've started tracking. Total deaths from car accidents, yearly, around 36K and rising quickly over the last two years.

I've had it twice, 18 months apart. Yes, it was not nearly as bad as the flu, and definitely not as bad as the antibiotic resistant strep I had picked up at a hospital.

I wasn't accusing you of those things, if that wasn't clear. And I used relatively minor in context (which you deleted). Hopefully that was clear, I'm not denying it may be on the order of 1% death rate among the unvaccinated which is not to be taken lightly.

And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment, and that worries me for the future far more than covid. I'm not expecting to change any minds, but I'll put forward my position now and again.

I completely understand the other point of view, even if I believe a lot of people have arrived at it due to a campaign of fearmongering and politicization.

> And I used relatively minor in context

I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.

> And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment,

That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.

You seem fixed on thinking I am arguing something I am not.

> I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.

And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?

relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox

> That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.

I don't say they don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice. I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example). And accusing them of it is dishonest bullying.

Countles choices we make every day directly and indirectly affect the world around us including others.

Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck and dying does not make you responsible for that. You could quite easily have chosen not to go to the beach though. You had no compelling need to go. It was a selfish choice to go. And that's all fine.

> And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?

I cut away the rest of the sentence because it didn't provide any modifier or qualifier that change the meaning or strength of your highly inaccurate claim.

Take a look at how the sentence would read if you removed "relatively minor" from it? Your overall point would remain intact.

Point in fact, you haven't even tried to justify the "relatively minor" claim and instead complain about being taken out of context when that context is easily available to the reader.

> I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example)

If you choose to not get vaccinated and your area runs out of ICU beds to such a degree that people start dying due to lakc of care, then yes, you are partially responsible for their deaths.

> Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck

The choices you make affect your culpability. Were you tailgating, driving through residential streets, driving an unnecessarily large vehicle, did you let your elderly parent drive or were you texting while driving? Somehow your moral theory seems to end up excusing every possible contributory choice that increases the risks for others.

It is fine to make selfish choices, but you should make them with an attitude that minimizes the risks you place on others. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you should find ways to avoid indoor public spaces, maskless social gatherings and anything else you can do to manage those risks.

Personally, I find ways to minimize driving and when I do drive, I drive carefully and slowly. I think driving is an activity we tend to be unreasonably callous about the risks of. I think society at large should place more responsibility on drivers for the risks they create.

>If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.

without trying to talk about vaccination and politics, a recent personal mandate, i'd like to bring something up.

there is a weird change in scope within your example.

You choose to drive drunk and are responsible. Sure, got it. You personally lie about an STD and are responsible. Sure, got it. You convince someone else to not take a vaccine and you are responsible.

Well.. wait a minute. Why does that responsibility fall one actor back?

Why isn't the actor who refuses the vaccine the guilty party?

If we can continue this line of thinking, when does it become OK to blame parents for the birth of murderers?

It occurs to me that liquor companies convince people to drink via advertisement, same as car companies woo potential customers over. And while not as legal as the under endeavors, the STD laden sexual partner certainly convinced their victims to continue.

Why not mention the role of the 'convincers' here, too?

In other words : I think 'moral truth' is kind of bullshit. More like "social truth".

> If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible.

Just jumping in here to reply to this statement... if you're talking about someone expressing their opinion to others that they shouldn't get the vaccine, the person expressing that opinion isn't responsible if the other person decides not to get the vaccine; the other person is the one who is responsible for their own actions and decisions. It's on them to weigh that advice with whatever other advice they are hearing.

I do agree that people are responsible for consequences of driving drunk, or lying about the status of their STD testing.

Food prep takes time. Even if we abandon looking at it as as a strictly energy in energy out situation, we probably still recognize that healthier foods take more time than unhealthy foods.

>Even if we abandon looking at it as as a strictly energy in energy out situation

There is no reason to abandon looking at it that way. Eating healthier will not result in you losing weight if your caloric intake remains the same. Feel free to continue eating $1 burgers, just eat fewer of them.

Read an interesting piece here on HN that suggested weight had other, perhaps more important elements, and that consuming fewer calories while using fewer of them was the symptom of something else. Sort of rocked my world because I had always sort of accepted/repeated the argument from thermodynamics and it really upended that world view.

In fact, that (caloric deficit) is the only way you lose weight.

Starvation mode is only an issue when you're actually starving, like seriously undernourished for weeks. It's not a real thing for dieters who cut down by a few hundred calories per day.

This is a whole load of misinformation. Please stop spreading this BS.

That is a coping mechanism for the obese. It is simply not true.

The more I read about all the excuses obese throw out the more I realize they have so much in common with the anti vaxx do my research in on Facebook crowd. The simple fact is they both put strain on hospital systems and with their ignorance are putting others in danger and risk of not getting the much needed hospital bed.

There's a pretty compelling case to be made that obesity is caused by some environmental factor that is making people hungrier.

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/

What in the world is that website? Why in the world would I read a website with zero credentials trying to push new ideas in science? There's not a single person or credentialed organization associated with the blog.

This screams misinformation.

I literally cannot speak to a human at my ISP unless I tell the robocall system that I want to cancel. As in, I'll call and say I need to return some equipment, be on hold for an hour, leave a callback number, and not get called back in the same week. Versus calling and saying I need to cancel, then getting connected to a service rep in 15 seconds and asking them about returning equipment.

I recently had the same issues you did with my ISP. I started mentioning firing middle management for tolerating such poor customer service. I received a call from a person within a couple minutes.

If only there was meaningful ISP competition in my area.

I'm amazed that the FCC wasn't on him in days, or even hours.

The FCC does nearly zero proactive enforcement of its rules (source: I've worked in the radio industry for nearly a decade). Violations are pretty common since there are a lot of rules to follow, though most people do operate properly or at least make a good faith effort to do so.

I’ve read that the FCC will actively pursue reports of pirate stations or other illegal interference, and they’ll drive around the neighborhood in a van to triangulate the offenders.

In fact here’s a list, but it looks like they stopped updating in 2018.

https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/AmateurActions/Welcome.html

A more recent set of actions is here: https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders

The FCC does do enforcement, its just that much of is is reactive based on complaints from other spectrum users. They aren't rolling around making sure that, for example, a license holder licensed for 10W isn't operating at 15W by using a higher gain antenna than originally specified. Those are the sort of violations that are reasonably common, but also are unlikely to impact other users significantly, so generally wont be complained about.

What do you think led to the FCC's failure to address this in days or hours?

Anecdata from other HN threads is the FCC doesn’t really go looking for these, rather it accepts cases wrapped up in nice little bows by pissed off HAMs. Maybe there weren’t any HAMs in range or he didn’t affect their bands.

Nobody reporting it?

I'd like to think, for all their promises of reliability, mobile phone carriers would notice a sudden hole punched in their coverage maps, since they can monitor the signal quality of each device from their central control as they move around the area, and investigate themselves or summon the FCC once they discover it's not natural interference.

There's a NewPipe fork with SponsorBlock support. https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

I am going to buy all the land surrounding your house and use it to build airports and coal processing plants. Not your land, not your business, so I better not hear any complaints alright?

Full speed hits are a greater threat to other people when you're in a larger vehicle. More mass means more force to impart at the same speed.

> More mass means more force to impart at the same speed.

technically yes, but the effect of more mass in a vehicle-pedestrian collision is asymptotic. a small (3000 lbs) sedan is already 15-20x the mass of a typical human. the vehicle loses a very small fraction of its initial velocity to momentum transfer. it really doesn't make much difference if you double or triple the mass of the vehicle.

try playing around with a momentum calculator to see what I mean: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/conservation-of-momen...

Generally speaking, you don't lose access to your Steam library unless you defraud them, e.g. by charging back purchases. I don't buy that the Russian guy got banned for spamming. The only evidence that that was the ban reason is his own words. Considering that this story seems to have only been picked up by sites like "oneangrygamer", "riseupgamer", and the Daily Stormer, I'd lay money he's not being honest.

>Make it expensive for those caught cheating and equally expensive for those making false report

Well now you've tipped the scales too far. Nobody is going to make a report, even when it's justified, if they're risking their account to do so.

The cost can (should) be progressive for repeated offenses, and it can be divided if multiple people make the same (wrong) call. Say you get one "free" report per month, but you don't lose it if either you were correct and/or more than 5 people reported the same person.

The important thing is not about being "perfectly provably fair", it is just to curb abuse (on either side) so that people still can have fun playing without having to accept such invasive software on their machines.