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There are going to be gray areas. Some individuals should not or cannot get the vaccine. What qualifies for that exactly is a bit muddy as well. So I agree what is "should" isn't very clear.

As an individual, it's really the numbers around the ratio of unvaccinated individuals in hospital / ICU consuming resources unnecessarily and therefore depleting them for the rest of us unnecessarily that's maddening. That plus the regrettable stories about people that are vocally anti-vax that end up dying from covid.

So for me it's like fine, freedom is important and you can choose to go against whatever recommendation you want. But at the same time you have to shoulder the consequences for it too. You can't have it both ways. Have the freedom to do whatever you want but also not bear the consequences of those actions.




> As an individual, it's really the numbers around the ratio of unvaccinated individuals in hospital / ICU consuming resources unnecessarily and therefore depleting them for the rest of us unnecessarily that's maddening.

I think I'm failing to make this clear enough. I'll try again.

The set of unvaccinated people is made up of those with a prior infection (call them R for recovered) and without (call them N for naive). And for simplicity, we'll keep the vaccinated variable to a binary, yes or no. So you have vaccinated with a prior infection (VR) and vaccinated without (VN).

When you say unvaccinated you are talking about R + N. We have data from the CDC that says R and VN were at roughly equivalent risk of hospitalizatiom during delta, and VR was a little bit better. N was by far the worst, and is who you actually mean when you talk about the people disproportionately filling up the hospitals. Because that's what the CDC is saying, that members of R, VR, and VN were all showing up in the hospitals at a similar much lower rate, and N was in a different universe.

You wouldn't know this unless you specifically asked yourself the question and went looking for the answer, because so far it has gotten very little air time. So it's not surprising that you and lots of other people are not aware. I'm only aware because I happen to be a member of R, and so this is important to me. It sucks living in a world where lots of people think its fine to lump me in with N, and advocate for taking away my livelihood and freedom of movement.

Saying "the unvaccinated are clogging up the hospitals" is like saying "I don't like Mexican food" when really you just don't like spicy peppers. You may avoid some burn that way, but now you're missing out on the rest of the cuisine, and you've failed to equip yourself with the knowledge to avoid the Indian or Thai dishes that will destroy you (because you think it's just the Mexican part that matters, not the spicy ingredients).

Does that make sense?


I think we're in agreement, and I wasn't being clear enough as well. I do mean the N set. This is what I mean by the "should" being fuzzy.

Unfortunately some of the R set ("some" is also fuzzy, I don't know how much but by this point I'm guessing high proportion), were in the N set and just didn't need to go to the hospital. So the mentality and risk factor prior to move from N to R is the same. There is no deterministic way (except moving to VN first) to mitigate that risk ahead of time.




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