I mean... yes. So what? The same thing happened for smallpox[1] and polio. I think we're all constrained by laws that allow society to function. Why is this news or shocking? The only shocking thing is how resistant some have been to taking a vaccine that, at this point, has been administered to millions of people with very few, very rare side effects more serious than a sore shoulder.
If VAERS is to be believed, the odds of dying from it are about 1 in 11,000. Relative to other vaccines, that is astronomical, and is far worse than a "sore shoulder". I'm not sure it qualifies as "very few, very rare" either. I know all of the issues with VAERS, but the truth is somewhere in between the CDC's official position that no one has died from the vaccine, which is preposterous on its face, and the VAERS numbers, which currently stand at 16,310 deaths [1] out of ~180 million vaccinations.
IMO, the reason for the hesitancy is the heavy handedness with which it is being pushed, and the obvious lies of the CDC. When the CDC says that it can't be proven that anyone has died from the vaccine, and then there are multiple credible news reports of healthy, relatively young people dropping dead from it, it calls into question everything else they say. They don't want to admit these things because they don't want to alarm people, but IMO coming out and saying "it kills and injures some people, but the benefits outweigh the risks for many groups" would be the right approach. It's the lying that's the problem. Even reporting adverse events based on the total number of doses administered, and not on the number of people that have received doses, is specifically intended to mislead and cut the real statistics in half. It just all looks terrible, and people assume they are lying about everything when they lie or obfuscate obvious things.
Ok, forget the CDC. Let's look at health Canada's site[1]:
> A total of 56,151,862 vaccine doses have been administered in Canada as of October 1, 2021. Adverse events (side effects) have been reported by 17,982 people. That’s about 3 people out of every 10,000 people vaccinated who have reported 1 or more adverse events.
> Of the 17,982 individual reports, 13,307 were considered non-serious (0.024% of all doses administered) and 4,675 were considered serious (0.008% of all doses administered).
> Most adverse events are mild and include soreness at the site of injection or a slight fever.
> Serious adverse events are rare, but do occur. They include anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction), which has been reported 307 times for all COVID-19 vaccines across Canada. That’s why you need to wait for a period of time after you receive a vaccination so that you can receive treatment in case of an allergic reaction.
And[2]:
> Up to and including October 1, 2021, a total of 195 reports with an outcome of death were reported following vaccination. Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine. Based on the medical case review using the WHO-UMC causality assessment categories, it has been determined that:
> 73 of these deaths are unlikely linked to a COVID-19 vaccine
> 75 deaths could not be assessed due to insufficient information
> 41 deaths are still under investigation
> 6 deaths followed a diagnosis of TTS (refer to the TTS bullet above)
So serious side effects in 4,675/55e6 doses. That's something like a 0.01% incidence rate. And 195/55e6 deaths - 1 in 282,000.
If you don't want to trust any national health service I think we're at an impasse. Your problem is then fundamentally with the government (or even government as a concept) and not with the COVID vaccine.
Looks like Canada is playing this game with “number of doses administered” instead of “number of people actually vaccinated” too. I just don’t understand the propensity to try to mislead people, at least in such obvious ways. Most of these vaccines require two doses. Reporting adverse events on a per-dose basis effectively cuts the actual adverse reaction rate per person, which is all anyone cares about, in half.
FYI I am vaccinated. The statistics lean toward the benefits outweighing the risks for many groups of adults. I just wish these official agencies wouldn’t lie/mislead. They should lay out the actual facts and let people decide on their own. They undermine their own message and cause more of the very problem they are trying to solve.
> Reporting adverse events on a per-dose basis effectively cuts the actual adverse reaction rate per person, which is all anyone cares about, in half.
Cutting it in half doesn't really undermine the conclusion that the vaccine is safe. I'm not really sure if the average person would go "1 adverse reaction in 282,000, that seems safe. But 1 adverse reaction in 141,000? That's too risky!" Arguably the "per dose" incident rate is also most useful for answering the question: "If I go get vaccinated today, what are the chances I'm going to have a very bad day?" Reporting per person would also obscure cases like a person getting both doses and having a serious adverse reaction both times and we might instead be arguing about how they're underreporting those cases.
I think this would be a more pertinent point if the adverse event rate was higher - e.g. 20% vs 10% is a much more significant difference from doubling. Basically, if they wanted to mislead they did a really poor job. To me this points to bad design or some kind of data collection related requirements/restrictions we're not aware of (perhaps it's a problem of correlating reports to a person if you also need to keep this data anonymous for privacy reasons - but I'm just speculating).
I think this would be a more pertinent point if the adverse event rate was higher
The point is that they are intentionally doing something to water down the stats. In the minds of the vaccine hesitant, it destroys their credibility on everything else they say, even when those other things are entirely factual. Just seems like a terrible strategy to me. They are giving their critics both the gun and the ammunition with which to shoot them.
We should mandate that Tinder and other dating sites force people make their current STD test results and last date of testing public on their online dating profiles. Porn performers have to do it in California, and sex workers in Australia, so there's no reason why college students here shouldn't have the same requirement. It's already normal in some places. Then keep a list of anyone who declines, because putting people at risk like that is unethical, surely. That is a poor argument, but one of the same quality as the comment it responds to.
We have never had to show a compliance document to eat in restaurants. Even the age of majority for alcohol was a single event, and not an ongoing compliance test. Equating transportation, restaurants, private employment, and cultural venues - to schools kids are forced into, is a false equivalence.
Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business.
Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business.
Exactly this. It either works or it doesn’t. If it does, we don’t need to worry about anyone else’s vaccine status. If it doesn’t, then people are taking an unnecessary risk by getting it.
I am against the mandates, and I am vaccinated. Whether or not to get it should be a very nuanced decision, based upon the specific adverse reaction and breakthrough infection statistics for a given person’s age and underlying health conditions vs the COVID statistics for the person. If the CDC had any desire to be honest, they would have an online calculator that would ask a few questions about BMI, age, etc., and then it would tell you the your specific odds of being killed/injured by the vaccine (with the odds of dying from COVID despite being vaccinated factored in) vs the odds of catching and then dying from COVID unvaccinated.
Instead, it has become a test of wills. Tests of wills have historically not played out well at a national level in “free” countries.
This is ridiculously black and white thinking. It's like saying "Oh, you support seatbelts? Well how would you like it if the government had a camera in your house to make sure you're wearing PPE every time you use the table saw!"
> Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business.
If only that were true. Unfortunately I don't like lockdowns and new and exciting COVID "variants".
[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemi...