Re: What's Going on in the Americas?
Reply #1474 –
I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
We're -most of the Developed West- doing more and more... Logistics and cultural resistance are formidable obstacles. But do we really want to ignore the likelihood of another massively mutated strain of SARS-CoV-2?
Look at what a dither many are in over Omicron! (Deaths, hospitalizations. Not "cases": Panic-induced policies have caused enough pain already...)
There are a couple of issues here. As you said before, last things first. This entire time, Republicans have been focusing on deaths in their attempts to trivialize this virus to the point where it almost seems they forgot people get sick and then die, not vice versa. I've been in many arguments where the anti-mask/anti-vax person will say something idiotic such as "But hardly anyone has died for the 'surge' and I tell them to give it a couple of weeks. In this matter, I was correct 100% of the time. Yes, someone claiming to right 100% of the time is arrogant in nearly all cases, but not this time. Why? Deaths are always a trailing indicator of the disease's severity. With Covid, the true death rate won't be known for years. Let me explain. Many survivors emerge from the other side of the disease with permeant damage that will likely yet shorten their lives, despite the "recovery".
Meanwhile, despite the anti-mask/anti-vax crowd's claim to the contrary, the current death toll is undercounted . Note this has been known since last March, at the minimum.
Now onto the mutations. Your claim the vaccines themselves are causing the mutations is an anti-vax talking point, despite your claim that you don't have talking points. They are not directly causing mutations. What does causing them is the virus infecting more people and reproducing. Simply put, people refusing to get vaccinated and refusing to wear their masks are creating more chances for the virus to infect more people and multiply and thus mutate. I fail to understand how someone as intelligent as yourself doesn't understand this. Actually I do; you allowed yourself to get wrapped up in the politics of the situation and not the science. I beg you to prove me wrong on the count (but using the psuedo-science of the anti-vax/anti-mask movement for the love of God!)