Have infectious diseases stopped spreading? And all this is happening in the shadows of COVID where the vaccines famously had no significant impact on the rate of the spread. The people claiming they would turned out to be part of the misinformation crowd.
We ran a natural experiment in Australia. Everyone got the vaccine, then everyone got COVID over the course of a month or two. The official numbers were high and aren't even accurate because there were too many cases to count, it got everywhere and the measurement kits ran out.
> That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources.
Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread, no evidence was ever provided that vaccines slow the spread and theory suggests they probably won't slow the spread. The people making things up in defiance of the obvious are the ones who need to start providing sources on this one.
If you want to check the numbers; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia - we've got 22 million vaccinated people on a population of around 25 million in 2021. We see ~12 million confirmed COVID cases and in the immediate post-lockdown period the testing system crumbled under load. Do the math. An exponential process that everyone was exposed to was downgraded to ... still an exponentially growing process that everyone was exposed to. Maybe it spread the pandemic phase out to 2 months instead of 1 (based on my memory of watching the stats at the time).
The vaccine didn't cut down on the number of infections. It was strictly personal protection. Members of my family regularly get COVID.
Vaccination slowed the spread of the primary varients and reduced the health impacts on those that tested positive for COVID by preloading the immune response.
Yeah. That is a really good argument for recommending people get the vaccine. But it concedes any reason to start coercive medical treatments. The COVID vaccines were very much about personal protection. It circles back quite neatly to the idea that people should be allowed to make their own determination about what is good for their health, what isn't and what risk tolerance they are personally comfortable with.
The people arguing that collective action knows best once again blew their credibility with COVID, making up the theory about herd immunity was a big shot in the arm for the anti-vax movement. And as you can guess I'd rather side with the anti-vaxers, they're better friends than the authoritarians.
> I sourced my claims: smallpox, polio, measles, mumps.
1. That isn't what sourcing a claim means. It means to provide sources for why your claims are true; or at least where you heard the claim first. Picking specific examples is helpful, but it isn't providing a source.
And despite those examples, I still catch an infections disease ... basically annually.
2. I suppose I assumed it was going to be made obvious by context, but I don't care about smallpox, polio, measles or mumps and I'm not talking about them. Nobody forced me to do anything in relation to them, nobody threatened my livelihood over them and I don't feel at any risk of being forbidden from leaving my house because of them. It is a good point but I didn't intend to talk about it - it stands alone as a point and beyond that I don't care. Since you bought it up more then once you get this paragraph. But if it is necessary to put up with measles to put the authoritarians in a box? So be it. The anti-vaxers are the lesser of two evils, they're minnows compared to the sharks who were showing their colours through COVID; we're lucky that episode only lasted long enough for the authoritarians to do terrible economic damage.
Absolutely is. Those are examples of serious, deadly, infectious plagues that were either eradicated or seriously contained by vaccines.
> but I don't care about smallpox, polio, measles or mumps and I'm not talking about them.
I know you don't care about evidence. You care about vibes. Vaccines are icky, governments are authoritarian, you want to live in your fairy-tale self-serving world and society be damned.
I was replying to you not under any fantasy that I would convince you otherwise. I understood pretty well from the outset what sort of rhetoric you were on about.
I replied so it was made clear for others what exactly is being discussed here.
> But if it is necessary to put up with measles
It is. I am extremely grateful that the advances in medicine in the past couple of centuries allowed me to live without having to worry about serious plagues such as measles.
Either way, you didn't disappoint me. Have a great weekend.
