I don’t agree with either of those points.
This is false. There are hundreds of different scientific organizations doing different studies and analyses of COVID infection and vaccination. The reason that their numbers are all largely consistent is that they’re all encountering the same basic facts, not that they’re being controlled by some mysterious “puppet masters” (whom none of the conspiracy theorists talking about them seem able to identify).
This displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the most elementary principles of medical statistics. What makes a disease dangerous from a public-health standpoint is not whether it kills or severely sickens a majority of its victims, but whether it kills or severely sickens at least a large enough minority to put a serious strain on healthcare resources and the working of society.
Typhoid, for example, doesn’t kill a majority of its victims: not even a third of them, even if untreated. Neither did smallpox. But typhoid and smallpox epidemics back in the pre-vaccine days were still a pretty huge fucking deal. Measles kills only about 0.2% of those it infects, but we still require people to get vaccinated for it.
Yes, many COVID vaccine manufacturers are making billions in vaccine sales. So what? Why is that a problem? They’re making and selling a safe and effective product that hugely reduces the risk and severity of COVID infection, which for a significant minority of people can be fatal and/or extremely costly. Why shouldn’t they be making “obscene money” from that?
Shoot, the Lego company makes obscene money from making and selling fundamentally useless messy bits of plastic that hurt when you step on them. Why is that somehow a legitimate capitalist enterprise, but making and selling vaccines for a high-mortality-rate coronavirus currently causing a global pandemic is somehow scold-worthy?
Moderator Note
This is a reminder that the Straight Dope’s purpose is fighting ignorance, not spreading it. The Quarantine Zone here is also largely a fact-based forum. If you want to post baseless nonsense, I think you’ll find places like Reddit and Facebook more accepting of it. Here, we expect you to be able to back up your assertions with facts that can be cited.
If you want to make posts like this, feel free to do so in the Pit, where you can rant about whatever you want and you can call things bullshit as much as you’d like. If you want to post in this forum, stick to the facts, or you will be prohibited from posting on this topic.
I’m fortunate not to have been pushed into such a conversation, but my response to this specific argument would be, 1) the vaccine is free, and 2) the moronic nonsense people have told you to get instead of the vaccine is not. So guess who is trying to exploit the disease for money.
I’m sure they would instantly segue into a different argument at that point, at which point I would ask them if they have a point they’re trying to make.
I would also respond to the questioning of the vaccine-side-effect numbers by totting up all the people I know who’ve been vaccinated and how many of them, if any, have had a reaction to the vaccine. Since the ratio of the latter to the former is going to be either zero or a really tiny number, I’d ask the antivaxxer why I should assume that the official vaccine safety statistics are wrong, when they’re in line with what I’ve observed myself.
A lot of the problem is these people want to see a conspiracy where there is none. If there were a cure for cancer, they’d find something suspicious about it. A person I know thinks the vaccine is putting time released diseases into you.
As I’ve pointed out to certain posters in other fora here, once you (generic you) have dismissed the public sector scientists as lying in order to promote a government agenda in a quest for power and the private sector scientists as lying in order to promote a corporate agenda in a quest for money, you’re basically saying that the only people you will listen to are those who know the least about the subject and are just making things up out of whole cloth and their own delusion (or that you’re making things up yourself based on nothing of substance).
And anyone unable to reconcile (or even notice) the contradictions and inconsistencies in their own working theory, as the OP’s “guy” appears to be, probably isn’t open to reason. Which leaves the “back away slowly” option.
…While pointing accusingly and yelling “Unclean! Unclean!”.
(Bolding mine)
Not just people, they’ll listen to their pets as well, or as Jordan Klepper would ask:
Do you often take medical advice from a cat?
I saw that. I’m surprised she consented to letting them air that. I wonder if they get consent before or after.
Accompanied by dramatic music.
“There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.” – Louis Armstrong
Your friend is trash and should be shunned. Seriously. Don’t waste your time with stupid people.
From that clip in Venice Beach, it’s interesting how well aligned the crunchy antivaxxers are with the MAGA antivaxxers. The German girl making the same ridiculous comparison to persecution in Nazi Germany. And the comment from the vaccinated NY guy that he felt that (unlike NY) he did not feel that people here have much sense of civic duty.
Vikings? Isn’t the OP having enough trouble with Berserkers already?
Even if Covid were created in a lab, it is still killing people. Even if vaccines were created by profit-seeking companies, they are still saving lives. The data clearly shows this, even from red states.
The OP should tell the person that if he wants to sacrifice his life to protest capitalism, fine. But he should write out something giving up a bed in the ICU if he gets Covid.
I never said he was my friend.
Simplest solution then is to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.
“Never Attempt To Teach a Pig To Sing; It Wastes Your Time and Annoys the Pig”
- Attributed to Mark Twain
I’ve always liked, “Never wrestle with a pig. You both end up covered in shit, but the pig enjoys it.”
show the anti-vaxer pictures of Arlington Cemetery. Ask him what he thinks of their sacrifice to protect this country. Because their efforts we built one of the most powerful nations that fought against common enemies that killed millions.
There are 400,000 people buried there who sacrificed themselves to the horrors of war in order to protect and preserve life. Many of them died in agonizing pain. Was it worth it?
Imagine what these people would say to someone who wouldn’t step up to save millions of people by getting a shot. A shot no different than the vaccinations they got as children.
We’ve already doubled the people buried in Arlington because of covid.
Probably claim there’s nothing there except gravestones. It’s all a long con.