Maybe I'm missing something obvious here but arent those that don't want the vaccine a risk just for themselves? If they want to risk it it's their problem/choice.
One thing everyone seems to ignore is those people that have immunity/antibodies and don't actually need a vaccine. Why is that?
As far as I managed to read here and there not even the shot I had protects me from catching or spreading the virus. It only reduces(at least I hope) the damage done when infected even though my age group should be ok-ish even without.
Whichever vaccine you had, it has a high chance (90ish percent) of preventing any detectable infection, and as a corollary being contagious.
If you do lose the odds and develop an infection, the rates of various outcomes are all better. i.e. very low chance of death or ICU visit, very high chance of no or extremely mild symptoms
People don’t have a good understanding of statistics, of how to treat risk, or of basic disease dynamics.
There is less signal to noise when it comes to reinfections because the data is just harder to come by, but the preliminary evidence shows that reinfections do happen, but quite rarely (some numbers from a few waves of infections showed only 1 out of 150 positive results were from people who had tested positive previously). There has also been evidence that intensity of infection is correlated to post-infection immunity (i.e. if you were asymptomatic you have less immunity than if you were hospitalized)
It is reasonable to believe that having had an existing infection will boost your immunity against future infections and that both vaccines and previous infections will protect you on a diminishing basis, say, for a year or two. (based on existing covid evidence and the behavior of immunity to other coronaviruses which are common in humans which are usually very mild and referred to as a "cold")
How about some citations? At least a few of these claims are wrong. 2,3 I’ve definitely seen at least one study demonstrating the effectiveness of cloth masks in limiting the projectile spread of the disease. Like, recorded video exploring different masks (not all were effective).
5. China’s lockdown was effective, what are you talking about?
To your last point, Brazil is a good example of a complete failure of individual level solutions.
> My mask protects you, your mask protects me". There is no physics behind this, masks aren't one way barriers, were never studied or sold as such, nor are they capable of stopping the sort of explosive air pressure caused by a cough.
The proposed mechanism is that during exhalation (or more importantly speaking and coughing) there are relatively large droplets of saliva/mucus containing viral particles, and these droplets can be catched by masks (they are big and move more balistically, so masks need not be airtight).
But once these droplets are in air, they dry to (much smaller) aerosol that cannot be catched by masks, you would need properly fitted FFP2/3 respirator.
If that were the way the virus spread, pre/asymptomatic transmission wouldn't be noticeable.
There's lots of debate about whether that's really how respiratory viruses spread, but more importantly, we know it can't be that simple because we can see the effect mask mandates had on case curves (there wasn't any). So however they're theorized to work, real world data disagrees. There can be lots of reasons for this that aren't even related to mask material, e.g. most transmission occurs in homes, care homes and hospitals, all places where you'd expect most transmission to take place because people have to be confined in a small space with other sick people for long periods, and also places where you can't make people wear masks all the time.
If they don't vaccine and don't venture out it is fine.
But if they don't take the vaccine and do go to work etc, the risk of them catching corona is higher. They in turn can spread to others.
We have seen the kind of snowballing effect 1 or 2 infected can cause.
Of course vaccines do not have 100% efficacy rate, but the risk of getting corona and its effects is at least a bit reduced if you get vaccinated.
Reporting is that almost no intensive care patients in the US these days have been vaccinated.
We're not scared of covid-19 because it'll make us feel shitty for a few days, we're scared of it putting people on ventilators or killing them. There is a very strong signal that vaccination makes the rates of severe negative outcomes of infection very very small - down to the levels of many other rarely severe diseases which don't justify significant action.
>>> "Liberty" isn't the freedom to put yourself at risk with no consequences to anyone or anything else.
>>> It is recognizing that there must be, at some point, a prioritization of giving people choices that might impact others.
There will always be a set of people who prioritize themselves over others and in the case of corona as we have seen it just takes 1 selfish person to start the snowballing effectt.
We are seeing actual Zombie movie tropes playing out in real life coz of this corona pandemic. even if 98% of people get vaccinated, the holdout population maybe enough to incubate and spread new variants.
Others will be taking a risk for your liberty, that is where it becomes unacceptable.
We live in a society and individual freedoms must be balanced by the responsibilities towards your fellow man.