• markr@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Holy shit I thought this was only about Covid. These absolute idiots are breaking herd immunity for the entire field of virus based diseases.

  • Veneroso@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Well, given that the vast majority of these folks are aligned to a particular political party… And it’s an election year during covid/flu/rsv season…

    Carry on!

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Ever since April 2020, whenever I hear something about vaccines, I just assume the worst.

    I never got rid of my mask or hand sanitizer. Keep some in your car too. We’re all responsible for our own germs because culturally and legally, your right to life is considered less important than the right to stupidity.

  • gregorum@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I’m well past feeling bad for stupid people who die needless and preventable deaths, and I’m well past feeling anything but hostility towards those who, through stubborn and willful ignorance, would threaten my life and the lives of those I care for, not to mention everyone else around them— especially the elderly and infirmed.

    it’s as simple as that, and any equivocation on these points is just them trying to pass responsibility for their own social and moral failures onto others. and for that, fuck them.

    edit: subject-verb agreement

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      If only they were islands to themselves and didn’t take innocent people down with them in pursuit of their Darwin Awards

      • gregorum@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        that’s one of the things about conservative philosophy, especially today, is the subscription to the concept of solipsism, at least to the part f that philosophy which states that nothing outside of the self exists, not really, except as a projection of the self. meaning, in actuality, everything one sees and experiences is, in actuality, simply part of one’s imagination— a “projection” on one’s ego whose existence is purely to fulfill a need of the self and is represented/projected as such.

        it’s a particularly sociopathic and self-serving view of the world, which illustrates very quickly the types of people it attracts as an ideology and those to whom it’s an easy and quick defense.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        If you are a liberal and a vegetarian then you do not eat meat. If you are a conservative and a vegetarian you are the only one allowed to eat meat.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Only 19% of people have gotten the latest lastest Covid vaccine.

    The first one was giant walk in clinics where you just told them your name and address. Completely free. The largest vaccine drive in US history.

    The second round was at pharmacies and some popup spots. Free but they bill via insurance.

    The third was at pharmacies only and free only if you didn’t have insurance.

    I know I am speculating here but is it possible, just remotely possible that trying to reduce costs in the short run by managed inconvenience and using crony capitalism is a factor in the decline of vaccination? And furthermore costs us as a society more with more deaths, more disability, more sick time taken, less time for students in school, less overally human happiness than just doing the way that proved it worked amazingly well 2 years ago. Could it be that by making things harder for people they are less likely to do it? Do humans really respond to incentives and short term cost savings do not always translate to greater long term prosperity?

    Oh man this is like way too wild. No way I am right about any of this.

    • markr@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Covid vaccines remain free to anyone with insurance, including Medicare. They are immediately available at just about any pharmacy. Access is not the problem.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        If it is not a problem how come last month they would not go forward without my insurance information and made a big stink about having problems confirming everything?

        • markr@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          because back in september the government transitioned from direct funding to an insurance mandate based system. So yes you have to provide your insurance information.

            • markr@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Because your insurance is now paying. Previously it was directly funded by the government.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Why is there a 2nd middleman? The retailer is already a middleman buying in bulk and selling to consumers. If the vaccine costs x amount why not just pay the pharmacy the x instead of the government paying y + x to an insurance company? The insurance company isn’t adding any value to the process. They aren’t coordinating the logistics, they aren’t pushing their users to come in, they aren’t providing anything.

                • markr@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Huh? The person with health insurance has already paid the insurance company. That person owes zero dollars to anyone for the vaccine. The government also is not involved in the transaction. The payment is from the insurance company to the pharmacy.

                  Insurance does add value. It buffers people from variations in health costs. In the case here of one $200 vaccine dose, sure many people could pay directly. Also many people can’t. In either case that $200 is a barrier to getting vaccinated. It is in society’s interest, our interest, to have high vaccination rates so we try to remove the barriers to getting vaccinated.

                  I think for profit health insurance is a shitty system but as long as we have this shitty system I want the government to regulate the crap out of those insurers. Like requiring no cost vaccines.

    • numberfour002@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The third was at pharmacies only and free only if you didn’t have insurance.

      For people in the USA: The covid vaccine is free for people with insurance.

      Additionally, at least some doctor’s offices have it (mine does, but I don’t want to assume they all do), and there are vaccine clinics where they do flu/covid/etc that show up periodically if that’s more your style.

      I’m not specifically calling out the user I quoted, just making a general statement because I’ve seen that exact sentiment (“the covid vaccine is no longer free”) like 4 or 5 times on lemmy in just the past day. It’s disinformation/misinformation and it leads to situations where misinformed people decide not to get vaccinated, in part, because they think it’s going to cost them money.

        • numberfour002@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          If the provider you were seeking the vaccine from didn’t already have up-to-date, accurate, and valid insurance information for you, then that would be one reason for asking. Realistically, a random internet stranger isn’t going to know the answer to your specific situation. However, if you want to know more about your specific circumstances, you may consider contacting them again and asking for clarification.

    • jettrscga@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You might be right about the Covid vaccine, but this article is mostly referring to young children and vaccines such as measles. I don’t think it would be about distribution changes in that case.

      More parents are requesting exemptions, with the implication being that more people have become polarized against all vaccines.

    • sigmund@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I got my vaccine while in the weird period after getting a new job where you don’t have your health insurance info yet.

      I paid $200 for it.

      I’d do it again - got covid a few weeks ago and it was pretty light, likely a result of the vaccine - but damn, that’s a hard ask for a huge portion of the population.

  • Kethal@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    A lot of people here are claiming something “like this is a problem that only affects these idiots”. Sadly, that’s not the case. A number of these vaccines are only roughly 80% effective. The efficacy of these lies in herd immunity, where the 20% of people who did get the vaccine, but are not protected, will never encounter the disease because the other 80% can’t get it to spread it to them.

    Let’s say you need 70% of people to be protected to maintain herd immunity. Then just 10% of the population needs to be idiots, and the disease spreads to the 30% that isn’t protected. Of that 30%, 20 points are people who were not idiots and got vaccinated, but unfortunately are not protected. The idiots will get sick, but twice as many not-idiots will get sick too. Unfortunately, for some of these diseases, the idiots will be hurting many more people than themselves.

    The affected people are not necessarily immunocompromised. For example, after two doses of the mumps vaccine, 88% of people are immune. Immunity decreases with time, so the proportion that’s immune is lower than that. Let’s guess at 80%. You, the person reading this, can be a normal healthy person who got the mumps vaccine, and you have a 1 in 5 chance that you’re not immune. Those are some pretty big odds.

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      Yes, the immunocompromised people are relying on the herd for protection, and the morons are letting them down

      • Kethal@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Well, I wasn’t even considering them. That’s a particularly vulnerable group, but I was referring to uncompromised people for whom the vaccine is not effective, or for whom immunity has waned.

        • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          Unfortunately, many people don’t consider them :( Getting a vaccine is not just for ourselves. It’s an investment in civilization.

      • Sagifurius@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        You guys are still spreading this misinformation? Like two years ago know we’ve known the vaccines do not prevent transmission, it’s not protecting the immunocompromised at all.

        • Kethal@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          “It’s”? Are you talking about covid? Because we’re talking about other diseases, and if you’re claiming that a population fully vaccinated against mumps, other than the immunocompromised, doesn’t protect the immunocompromised from mumps, feel free to look up and compare current and past rates for mumps infections.

          Then, use your half a brain to extend that to COVID. The COVID vaccines do little to prevent transmission in that if you are vaccinated, and are exposed to the virus, you will still likely become infected. But the vaccines reduce the duration of infection and reduce the viral load shed by the infected person, thus reducing the probability that an infected person will spread to anyone else. If an infected person is infecting fewer people, that is a reduction in overall transmission. So when you say “’we’ve known the vaccines do not prevent transmission”, you’re completely wrong, or at the very least, equivocating, by conflating individual transmission with overall transmission rates. Here’s a link, since I doubt you’ll know what that means either: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/equivocating.

          • Sagifurius@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            So much for “trust the science”. You’re blowing as much bullshit as the anti vaxxers here

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    We can’t drown out botnets without botnets of our own. Information war is war, but lacks attrition, so the opponents never actually get defeated.

    So, we can either accept this status quo, or we can escalate. But I don’t think we can just try harder, we’re givin her all she’s got, Jim. It’s not like medical professionals are known for having tons of free time and extra morale to burn away on twitter.

    So, we need technical assistance, of some sort.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I’ve come to accept that I’ll have to work until I’m dead. So one thing that doesn’t make me upset is less people. Specifically less people to take my job—younger people.

    So, anti-vaxers, if you really wanna pwn me, you’ll make sure your kids live long enough to take my job.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    These people have gone too long without people they love dying in front of them from things like prolonged diarrhea lung, mucus intoxication and blood tears. Also the holocaust survivors and WW2 soldiers have mostly passed away.

    We have a collective goldfish memory and right wing governments constantly sabotaging public education. We also lack empathy on the whole. Civilization doesn’t feel like it can sustain much longer.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      We saw it during COVID too though, so many people refusing vaccinations because they are complete morons who don’t believe in science, as their family members die around them one by one, many of them still deciding that they won’t let “the man” win and inject them with “that poison”.

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Looks at notes: We’ll need to get that up to hundreds of thousands before anyone even starts to think about doing something about it.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Don’t worry though, the faster you approach a million, the more likely they’ll just start to shrug it off and say it’s the new normal.

  • Rogers@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    While I’m all for vaccination including covid vaccines, we would not have the distrust towards the mega pharmaceutical companies if they were not so untrustworthy. They sold their trust for profits a long time ago.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Do you trust automakers? What about Apple or Google? How do you feel about GMOs in food? I bet you still eat, have a smartphone and drive. I get that it is hard to trust megacorps and industries thst have the populace captive, yet fear of a vaccine is what illicits special irrational behavior in people.

      • Rogers@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        In the US I don’t trust the phone and big tech companies to not sell my data, i dont trust the automobile industry to not lobby aganst good public transportation, and i don’t trust mega pharma to not SKU the test results when they could can away with it. I dont trust any of the above to not Astroturf, buy off ftc officials or anything if they are in a position to get away with it. Perhaps im just bitter because i was prescribed an absurd amount of opioids as a 16 year old. They were pushed so hard they told us it was safe they blantently lie

    • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      We didn’t trust their business practices, or that they were treating not curing people (which comes from r&d startups anyway). Pfizer overcharges diabetics and shit, we never thought they put 5g chips in your DNA or whatever tf these nut jobs think. This is not an extension of corporate mistrust, it’s anti science luddites keeping the population uneducated and sickly.