serious question for anyone pro-vaccines: what’s your problem with people choosing to not get vaccinated?

@kino I am neither anti-vaxer nor pro-vaxer when it comes to covid. Being new technology I feel its reasonable for people to be cautious, but at the same time there are no significant risks that have popped up.

That said I think the general issue with it is quite clear. If you are the only one vaccinated out of a crowd you are safer than if you werent vaccinated at all, but you are at higher risk than if the entire crowd is vaccinated. So the issue in their minds, and a valid one, is that your choice is increasing their risk.

@freemo wdym by "your choice is increasing their risk"?

@kino Vaccines increase protection, but they dont make you immune. Others who arent vaccinated have significantly high viral loads and thus are more capable of spreading the disease. So by others not being vaccinated it increases the risk of everyone, including those vaccinated.

@freemo yet recent studies after the failure of vaccines to contain delta variants found vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have similar viral loads in communities with a high prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2; this was even conceded by the CDC in their own study from the massachusetts outbreak (where 74% of infected were fully vaccinated) which found that fully vaccinated people who get infected carry as much of the virus in their nose as unvaccinated people and could spread it to other individuals just as easily.

at this point, the only real remaining argument for vaccination (within the context of COVID) is that vaccinated individuals may exhibit lesser symptoms if infected, ergo having a greater chance of recovery, and furthermore reducing hospitalization rates.

so, contemporaneously, it really just seems like vaccines are only for the benefit of the vaccinated and don't really do anything insofar as stopping spread. if you're vaccinated then you're better off, but if someone chooses to refuse vaccination they are only detrimenting themselves and not risking the safety of others. at most one could argue they are being irresponsible since their infections will be more severe and may require greater attention and hospitalization.

@kino Looking at just Delta varient is what we would call cherry picking the data. Putting aside if the viral load is the same on delta itself, which is debatable, the fact remains that on the original virus there is no debate that it significantly lowers viral load and therefore having the crowd vaccinated does, in fact, provide greater protection.