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Comment by terracottage | Hacker News Reader

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terracottage

"Summer of freedom"

"Here we regain our freedom"

"There will not be a 4th wave"

That's what we were sold. Anyone who questioned it was called an antivax conspiracy theorist.

And the worst part is, the namecallers still think they're on the right/smart side even after miles of backpedaling.

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Who specifically said that and when? What I heard was medical professionals saying we could have those things when people got vaccinated. When political posturing caused large numbers of people to refuse vaccinations, masks, and other public health precautions, those ambitions weren't met but I don't blame the people who said it was possible as much as I blame the Republican leaders who personally got vaccinated but told millions of their followers not to.

It's like saying that flossing and tooth brushing were a lie because you had cavities after only doing either half of the month.

Countries with very high vaccination rates such as Portugal or Singapore show quite clearly that all of these statements have been correct. At this point, antivaxers are the only reason why the pandemic is still an issue in industrialized countries.

Singapore may have been a poor choice of example.

In late August it was announced that 80% of the Singapore population was now vaccinated against COVID-19.[1] However, in September and October there has been a dramatic surge in cases and deaths in that country.[2]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-v...

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/

It's true that it's a dramatic increase, but the death rate still seems to be considerably lower, which is what you'd expect from a vaccine which is not sterilizing. The big question I'd have is what this would look like adjusted for age since American vaccination rates for the highest-risk age groups were also pretty high.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Nit. CFR may not be the best measure, as it is very sensitive to the level of testing, which I expect is higher in a small homogenous country like Singapore. Alternatively, raw deaths per million shows closer numbers, though unclear if Singapore peaked yet.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Yeah, I definitely would want a professional analyst to compare things. The main one I’d be interested in is age-matched rates since as we saw with the Israeli data it’s easy to hit confounds like Simpson’s paradox.

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