OP,
I’m going to take a crack at addressing some of the questions you raised in your first response… but I’m only going to engage in respectful discourse. People are way too emotional on both sides of this debate, I’m just trying to give you an opposing viewpoint.
I’m not going to try to disprove conspiracy theories and things that have zero evidence. Anyone can come up this a theory with zero evidence to support it. If there is no real data backing it, then it’s not worth refuting.
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1.) 99.96% individual change of survival is incorrect… by you saying “or something” I’m assuming you made the number up… but I assume you are probably referring to the IFR, (deaths / total infected cases).
The biggest error here is that you cannot just use a single number to address your individual risk. A child is going to have a very, very low risk, where an 80+ year old will have almost 10%
Averaged TOGETHER, is when you see numbers like 99.7%, etc.., but that DOES NOT mean a 75 year old has that chance… it’s an average.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0
2.) A more appropriate number if we are going to talk about the population as a whole is around 99.0-99.5%%, (before vaccines)... where the final IFR ends up will take some time, but I'll use some available data to make some very ROUGH estimates below:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/202...-fatality-ratio-is-about-one-point-15-percent
There are 331 million people in the US… assuming that we let the virus run rampant, and it infected people until we reached herd immunity (assuming 75% infections are required)… that would be 2,482,500 dead people.
Just standing by while 2,482,500 Americans die, and knowing I didn’t do anything to try to stop it? I mean, assuming 99.5% average survival is still 1,241,250 dead people…
I just don’t think people think about the ACTUAL number of dead people they are talking about when they throw out those survival numbers…
3.) The whole thing was politicized… but that doesn’t change the fact that the virus is REAL, and is killing Americans each day.
4.) I agree the lab-leak there is very much a real possibility and needs to be investigated. This is something else that was taboo to even talk about because Trump mentioned it… The GOOD news is that its getting main-stream attention now…but again, it doesn’t change the fact the virus is REAL and we have to deal with it.
5.) mRNA vaccines do not change a persons DNA… this is pretty well established science.
https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-can-mrna-vaccines-alter-human-dna
6.) Vaccines do not in any way cause virus mutations. This is VERY WELL established science. Viruses mutate during their replication, because they do not have a way to ensure that the cell makes the copy EXACTLY correct.
As long as a virus is allow to freely replicate, the more times it has a chance to mutate. Vaccines actually cause your body to kill the virus. Killing the virus prevents it from infecting more cells, thus reducing mutations.
https://www.unitypoint.org/article.aspx?id=db428f77-6e61-497b-91ce-1317a3396dd8#:~:text=The creation of a vaccine,likely see more new variants
Also, Delta came From India. India didn’t even have the mRNA vaccines, heck, they basically had no vaccines… so Delta could not have possibly come from an mRNA vaccine anyway.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/5-things-to-know-delta-variant-covid
7.) Yes, the CDC and other government agencies have flipped flopped and screwed up… they did it under Trump, and they’ve done it under Biden.
Here’s the thing… there has never been anything like this in the history of our nation. It was totally new, and they are ill-prepared….if you don’t trust them, listen to the advice of your states local health department… or the tons of qualified public health experts that are almost universally saying the same thing.
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Summary and my personal thoughts:
- Even though the virus does have a high survival % on average, when applied to large populations, that still means A LOT of dead people. CDC estimate so far is 610K dead so far… and that number isn’t that far off if you do some basic math.
- Morally, I feel a duty to try to help prevent unnecessary deaths of fellow citizens. I’m a christian, it is how I was raised. I understand I have the choice NOT to, but I feel taking some basic precautions to do my part is the least I can do.
- It appears to me that people are letting their blind hatred for the left cause them to have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to oppose ANYTHING the left is for…. Instead of thinking objectively about it, and really, scrutinizing misinformation that is being passed around… they are accepting bad information as fact because it fits their narrative… that is called a “confirmation bias”