I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that any claim is patently false in a world chock full of fake news, hidden agendas, and news that’s primarily dispensed by corporate-owned media. You may suspect my claim is false, but “patently” implies an omniscience that I’m doubtful either of us possesses.
Facts are in the eye of the beholder now, and it’s up to us to use our common sense and good judgment to make sense of the information overload. If you haven’t noticed, there is a war for our minds now.
That said, I’m not disputing that the unvaccinated comprise 90% of all hospitalizations and deaths. The crux of the argument I was making requires one to pull focus — something our government and media actively encourage us not to do — and look at the big picture. The absolute number of hospitalizations and deaths has declined dramatically. I mean, by orders of magnitude. See for yourself:
Of course, we can attribute this dramatic decline to the vaccination effort, but deaths began to fall substantially in February (from their peak in January) to nearly half. In February only a very slim portion of the population had been vaccinated. I’m not saying that the vaccine isn’t effective at all; in saying that the virus is also becoming less lethal, on its own, without our assistance — just as many “discredited” scientists and doctors have been arguing since the beginning of this pandemic.
This is the natural course of all viruses, with it without a vaccine intervention. I assume this is also a claim you believe to be patently false? If so, do you know of another coronavirus or influenza that became more lethal with subsequent strains? There’s a very practical reason that this doesn’t happen: it’s in the very nature of a virus to prolong the life of its host for as long as possible; ergo, increasing lethality runs counter to its instinct to survive.
Bottom line: we are talking about 90% of an increasingly small number. COVID-19 deaths — whether due to the assistance of vaccines or not, and even with all variants accounted for — are nowhere near what they were last year, or what has been frantically predicted for the past several months. That’s the big picture, and it’s good news. It’s not reason to be panicking and insisting that every Homo sapiens on the planet get vaccinated the way we would expect in a Steven Soderbergh film.
No, it’s not “normal” for any child to die, but it’s not unusual for children and adults to die every single day, as they have been doing for thousands of years prior to the arrival of COVID-19, due to a myriad of illnesses, diseases, accidents, etc. Point of fact, far more children die each year form leukemia and other cancers than have perished during this entire pandemic. That’s the big picture.
I asserted that we have never successfully eradicated any prior coronavirus, a claim which I also assume you believe is patently false — although again, I don’t believe you explained why? When dealing with a contagion from a family of viruses that has outwitted man for thousands of years — and which continues to outwit us with “breakthrough” cases — it seems unrealistic to think we can ever hope to eradicate it. Along those lines, consider this: regardless of how valiant our vaccination efforts are in the U.S., we are still at the whims of what occurs in the rest of the world. It was widely-disclosed last week that nearly HALF of all hospitalizations in the UK are fully-vaccinated individuals:
Incredibly, we’re now told that this statistic was released “in error” and that 60% of UK hospitalizations are unvaccinated (query what public official commits an “error” of that magnitude during a public health crisis)?
But errors aside, once again, here’s the big picture: if COVID and its variants are at best (according to this error-free data) leaving us with hospitalized people in a highly populous country, 40% of whom are vaccinated, that is extremely disconcerting. Yes, we can downplay this data because AstraZeneca is the prevalent vaccine used in Europe, but not the United States. Yet once again, big picture here: if the unvaccinated are being sent to hospitals at this rate, how many Brits are positive and walking around asymptomatic? How many are boarding planes in London for points all over the world?
My point is that we are chasing the wind.
We will never eradicate COVID, despite our best attempts to comply, because we have never eradicated any coronavirus. This is a reality we must deal with, just as we must deal with climate change despite our noble efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
My point is that the best course of action in the face of this reality is to focus on vaccinating the elderly and most at risk and allow this virus to continue to do what ALL viruses throughout history have done, what every single coronavirus has done: become less lethal as the majority develops immunity to the subsequent strains.
Regarding polio: I did not claim that polio was as prevalent as COVID; I said that the polio vaccine was vastly more effective than any COVID vaccine. The number of “breakthrough” polio cases was infinitesimal. Three doses of the polio vaccine are 100% effective (not 90%).
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html
That’s why polio was eradicated.
You can’t possibly hope to eradicate a virus that’s mutating bi-weekly when the vaccines are not 100% effective and breakthrough cases are happening everywhere, even in the White House!
I’m not trying to change your mind, but I am hoping to provide another perspective that you might be able to appreciate. I’ve been vaccinated for everything known to man; I’m not an anti-vaxxer. But there’s sound reason for people to resist taking this vaccine. You don’t have r to be a Republican or a conspiracy theorist to aka the questions Caleb asked.
