Because so many adults are refusing to get their first vaccination so the road to herd immunity seems to be through kids. (At least some of them have parents that aren't anti-vax.)
If you've been a parent and had kids in day care or elementary school you've probably lived the way that a respiratory infections explode in classrooms and they bring them home. There was that day I was eating some food my son hadn't finished (which seemed perfectly natural) and there were also some plates with leftover food from horse riders and when I thought of it I was filled with disgust at the thought of these snotty little girls.
The anti-vax movement is really driving the rest of us crazy. If they just gave up on resisting they'd find a whole lot less to resist.
Many of us who are resistant to vaccine mandates and undue coercion are by no means "anti-vax". I am double-vaxxed myself. I simply refuse further doses of this product until safety concerns are rightfully addressed.
Everywhere I go, I'm hit with messaging about how important the "vaccine" is. On the buses, on YouTube, on the Twitter sidebar "fact-checking" doctors who don't toe the party line. Nine or ten months ago, we were told by our President and media elites that vaccination is the way out of the pandemic. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true. We can point the finger and say we were lied to, or that they were operating off incomplete information, but none of that really matters. What matters is that now, we know a lot more about these "vaccines" (which should REALLY have been called a prophylactic shot) than we did a year ago. The clear and present facts are:
1) Even with mRNA shots, you can catch COVID
2) Even with mRNA shots, you can still spread COVID
3) Even with mRNA shots, you can still die from COVID, however the risk and severity of illness is supposed to be far reduced, though that benefit seems to wane after 4-5 months.
4) Even in a country in which over 90% of the population has had mRNA shots, COVID continues to spread. Why is this? I don't know. But it's clear as day that contrary to what we were told before, vaccination is NOT the path out of the pandemic, nor the path to herd immunity. Omicron is actually the answer. Study the great flu of 1917-1919 - the virus mutated to a far less harmful form, and became endemic. The same will happen with COVID, unless puts on tinfoil hat some fuckery goes on.
But these "vaccines" don't actually provide immunity, unlike previous vaccines, which is why the dictionary entry for vaccine was actually changed. They reduce the severity of symptoms. The best way out of this is herd immunity via the Omicron variant, which causes minor cold symptoms and doesn't kill people (especially not kids).
Anyone who has had kids in school or daycare for the past 2 years and doesn't think their immune system has been repeatedly exposed and assaulted by SARS-CoV-2 is completely out of their mind. My 2 year old spends a good half the year hacking coughing and snotting, it's laughable to think she hasn't already contracted (and her immune system built anti-bodies to), perhaps multiple times, one of the most common viral illnesses of the past two years. If you didn't want your child to acquire some natural immunity, the time for covid vaccination was almost 3 years ago (before the vaccine existed).
the Omicron variant is less deadly, but it's far from not killing people. There are hundreds of kids dying with the Omicron right now. Should we deny vaccines to these children? The vaccines not only reduce the severity of symptoms, but also decrease the mortality and infection rate. Even if we try herd immunity, vaccines can still be used to save lives.
My whole family got Omicron. For us it was no big deal. All of us were vaccinated, I was boosted about two weeks prior. Vaccination did not stop us from getting it but it may well have modified the course of the disease.
People had no idea the highly transmissible Omicron variant was going to come along. Against prior variants the mRNA vaccines really looked like a miracle in that you could really get people vaccinated before the disease got to them. Moderna said they could have an Omicron vaccine ready in 100 days but I (I think the median person) got it 45 days after it was discovered.
I am sick of the armchair quarterbacking. In our family we had our own model for how it was going to progress last summer and we thought that the seasonal effects would really drive it, the Delta and Omicron variants broke all our assumptions.
The new battle is over variants it's a global problem. China has kept the virus out with strict but targeted lockdowns. Even if they achieve "zero COVID" that won't stop variants from being bred in the rest of the world. Even if the US controls it will spread in Africa and other developing countries. Even if the blue states do everything right than the red states will breed new variants.
Stricter controls in better controlled areas are going to have a limited impact, what will make a different is stricter controls in less controlled areas.
In the Omicron date range about 160 children died of COVID-19 in the US, which is 0.01%.
This is about the same mortality percentage of the common cold.
But vaccines could help, sure.
Just, we don't know the percentage of severe existing preconditions in these mortalities, but the guess is 99.9%
>Q: Why has Bari Weiss, a lifelong liberal journalist, suddenly adopted all the talking points of the right?
Hold on. Why is discussion or criticism of a current practice (giving young kids a third mRNA dose) considered a "talking point of the right"?
Why is it _pointless_ to discuss why something is being done? How much peer-reviewed research about booster shot efficacy has come to light? We were told that a third shot is ineffective against the Omicron variant, and also told that the Omicron variant's symptoms are very cold-like and that it's not really killing people (which is great news and likely a key way out of this pandemic via herd immunity (which the booster shot does _not_ provide, despite what we were told 6 months ago.
> Why is discussion or criticism of a current practice (giving young kids a third mRNA dose) considered a "talking point of the right"?
The right wing in America generally supports Trump, who initially called covid a minor cold in February 2020. Ever since then there’s been a strong faction of the right that argues that taking measures to prevent covid is wrong, whether that be masks, vaccines, or anything else. Implicitly this is because if fighting covid is good, downplaying covid in February 2020 was wrong. (This persists even now that Trump has claimed the vaccine as his achievement).
> How much peer-reviewed research about booster shot efficacy has come to light? We were told that a third shot is ineffective against the Omicron variant, and also told that the Omicron variant's symptoms are very cold-like and that it's not really killing people
FWIW, research is and has been showing the opposite - that booster shots generate antibodies which can neutralize the Omicron variant, and that Omicron is killing people despite initial claims - mostly from the right wing, anti-covid mitigation crowd - last year that it was “mild”.
Another aspect is that "science" is never a settled-and-done, I-told-you-so sort of matter. It's a process of hopefully disinterested individuals making discoveries and comparing results.
For example, FTE: "America is an outlier regarding its vaccine policy for young people. Numerous other countries have taken a far more conservative approach. The UK allows a third dose only for 12 to 15-year-olds who have serious medical conditions that put them at high risk or who live with a vulnerable person. Finland has a similar policy for 12 to 17-year-olds. In Ireland no one under 16 can receive a booster. Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and Spain, are among the countries that have approved boosters for adults only. Some countries don’t recommend Covid vaccines for healthy children at all, or just one dose. Norway’s Institute of Public Health, for example, states: “12-15-year-olds already have high protection against a severe disease course after the first vaccine dose.”
Maybe researchers in those countries know something that we don't. Maybe we should risk being a little more conservative when we're talking about giving our children shots which may do more harm than good. If that's a "talking point of the right", and makes you think that I vote Republican or supported Donald Trump, I'm sorry, but that's simply not the case.
As someone who occasionally reads Bari Weiss, I'm a little confused with your comment.
Was your intent here just a straight up ad hominem/name-calling approach, while not addressing any substance of anything? She's 'weak, pathetic, controlled opposition' and a 'greedy journalist' and 'suddenly adopted all the talking points of the right'?
Can you substantiate any of those claims? Is every journalist a 'greedy' journalist? Is she greedy because she's doing well for herself outside of a large traditional for-profit american media company? Or is she greedy or disingenuous because all of her views don't perfectly align with the prevailing opinion of those large traditional for-profit american media companies and their subscriber base? (or is she greedy because of her intersectional identity as a jewish lesbian?)
Why is what she writes pointless? What writing does have a point? Does anything have a point? What are you even talking about?
This ad hominem argument is so typical of American online discourse today. Everything gets the ad hominem attack if it falls outside of the prevailing opinion of the tribe in that particular moment. Labeling someone as 'the right' when they are not in fact on 'the right' is one of the stupid tactics of the day to try to keep people flowing with the prevailing opinions on random topics.
There are many american liberals who are not 'the right' who are not on board with the illiberal direction that many institutions & people flying under the 'Progressive' banner have been advocating for. There is a growing population of these disenchanted liberals (who also have a strong distaste for 'the right'), and that is where I see Bari coming from. This population isn't motivated by 'greed', but will be attracted to liberal voices who are willing to speak against these illiberal trends.
My point is that Weiss and all these journalists who have suddenly adopted the "free speech" cause are doing nothing but loudly complaining. They're throwing pieces of meat to their base. I honestly doubt that many liberals pay attention to her, after she was dragged through the mud when leaving the NYT. I feel like Weiss and the rest don't actually care about boosters, or free speech, or any of the things they so often complain about. They just say these things, and right wing media proclaims "oh look at these former left wing journalists agreeing with us, we're awesome", and then they use their newfound attention to sell books.
At the end of the day these people would rather complain than actually do something. In fact, if the issues they complain about were solved, they probably wouldn't make nearly as much money.
If Weiss is indeed widely read by center left folks, then that makes me very happy. It would indicate that maybe, just maybe, we do indeed have a chance of defeating the plague of "progressive" lunacy infecting the West. But there aren't really many signs of that yet.
If it seems like I'm trolling I apologize, I'm just getting very disillusioned and cynical about the future of freedom in this country.
If you've been a parent and had kids in day care or elementary school you've probably lived the way that a respiratory infections explode in classrooms and they bring them home. There was that day I was eating some food my son hadn't finished (which seemed perfectly natural) and there were also some plates with leftover food from horse riders and when I thought of it I was filled with disgust at the thought of these snotty little girls.
The anti-vax movement is really driving the rest of us crazy. If they just gave up on resisting they'd find a whole lot less to resist.