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Comment by sjg007 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious to how the math works... Basically they are willing to let covid explode among the unvaccinated which presumably won't impact those that can't get vaccinated (i.e. young kids < 16) and maybe that that number is smaller than what our hospitals can treat.

I'm also gonna guess that the people who have gotten vaccinated basically have always worn masks and the unvaccinated never have unless forced. That explains my town.

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12 - 15 years olds can now get the Pfizer vaccine in the United States[1]. That should help a lot.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/fda-authorizes-pfize...

Not really, < 12 is a big concern.

How so? The risk of a bad outcome from children under 12 catching COVID is basically nil.

A family can spread it to their child, who brings it to school and then home to their family. I agree the chances are lower, but even if the kids themselves don't have severe cases or bad outcomes, if they have any symptoms they are probably spreading it to the rest of their household.

But the older members of the household can be vaccinated.

The US population is around 30% fully vaccinated. Herd immunity requires about 90%* which we're never going to achieve because of vaccine resisters. Therefore COVID-19 is going to be endemic in the US for the rest of our lives. That means we'll see repeated temporal and geographic outbreaks forever, and people who are not vaccinated will continue to die. This is now our world.

*90% is based on the high R-value of this virus taken together with the known even-higher R-value of several of the variants. It's a realistic number, despite what some politicians would have you believe.

Covid will be like the 1895 Russian flu, the coronavirus OC43 that eventually mutated into insignificance

Covid has shown many people, including myself, how powerless the government really is in enforcing policies imo. This includes both presidential administrations. It has also showed that a lot of people that trust words of scientists do so in dogmatic ways that are unwilling to change their stance after the scientists do, like Fauci saying there is no point to wearing a mask when people get vaccinated.

This "pro-science" dogmatism has become a religion for people to the point that you cannot refute it. They hold the keys to some arbitrary insight and unwillingly compromise. It's almost like it has become a unorganized paganistic belief system in the name of science, but not even partaking in the basic fundamental steps of the scientific method by readdressing your hypothesis when brought about with new information.

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