Let me start by clearly stating I believe in vaccines. I believe vaccines are useful in minimizing (if not curing) the effects of disease and in relation to Covid-19, we already know very well who the at-risk populations are: the elderly (particularly over the age of 70), those with pre-existing respiratory conditions and the obese.
Let me clearly state that I believe the at-risk populations should be getting vaccinated as quickly as possible all over the world. And those are the only people that should be getting vaccinated. Vaccinating others serves no purpose and merely erodes the efficacy of the vaccine itself.
It's not that vaccinating everyone is a dumb idea, it is that it is an impossible idea. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, vaxxing them all, then shutting them down for two weeks and then vaxxing them again would go a long way to eradicating the virus. That still wouldn't completely work because vaxxing and locking down could only occur on a rolling time frame, meaning at any given moment there are still billions of people unaccounted for. Oh, and there's absolutely no political will from the various factions of Earth's population that would allow this to happen. So in short: absolutely not at all possible to do and wouldn't even necessarily work if we could do it.
Therefore a strategy of vaxxing everyone is not possible, it is not going to work, it is doomed to fail, it is built to be unsuccessful (meaning many more people living with Covid-19, whether vaccinated or not--which is what's going to happen anyway!). The virus is here to stay. No amount of immunizing is going to make it disappear. If we vaccinate everyone, then tell them to go live their lives as if they're bulletproof, that won't get rid of the virus. Indeed, it will enable it to spread (through easing of social distancing) and will encourage a more virulent strain (the virus will have to work harder once a vaccine has been introduced).
The idea that we have to vaccinate everyone to eradicate the virus sounds good, but we are far from being able to pull that off. This virus has only existed (that we know of) for two years and has already gone around the world now in multiple forms and currently accounts for 200 million active cases. Vaccinating it out of existence is not gonna be easy--indeed, it's not gonna be possible. Living healthier lives in relation to Covid-19 is the way to go, vaccinate those in real danger but not those without underlying conditions.
This is a basic respiratory illness that spreads very quickly, it is not going away any time soon. Eradicating Covid-19 by, say, the end of 2021 is absolutely not humanly possible for a million different reasons. I don't anticipate Covid-19 will go away in my life time--and I don't understand why anyone would think that it would.
In two years there have been (according to the July 29 South China Morning Post) 4,182,008 deaths from this virus. In two years there have been (according Statista.com on July 15) 177,226,941 Worldwide Covid-19 recoveries. A lot more people (177.2m:4.1m) don't die from Covid than that do. So why are we vaccinating everyone? Just vaccinate the people that need it!
The vaccine has done a fine job of keeping serous symptoms from developing, it is doing a fine job at keeping people from dying of the virus. However, the virus itself already has 98% survival rate...the extra 1% the vaccine provides is really only for those people who are at risk. And not for anyone else.
So why are we trying to vax everyone? Pure politics. Serves no other purpose. There's no medical reason to do anything other than vaccinate the at-risk people, keep social distancing as a basic practice and then move on with our lives. Why are we still acting like this is a dangerous disease? We've had a full year now to see that the initial introduction of Covid-19 to the Human population brought a lot of chaos and killed people already close to death but has otherwise had a fairly mild effect on our actual bodies. And that it isn't stopped by a vaccine.(*)
Create an impossible ideal than blame your political enemies when it fails--and it absolutely will fail. That's what the current leadership has done.
Look, man, the doomsayers (and you probably assume that I am one) will tell you that this was all a mind control game and now the Democrats have all the levers of power right as gov't spending is ramping to a new all time high, the Federal Reserve is claiming ever more powers on overnight markets, the White House is finally seemingly in lockstep with the communications tech giants and now they're hooking us on a vaccine to control us. I would agree that they've tried to do those things (have been trying with erratic success for the last 200 years), but American culture is extremely fluid and I don't think it will even take the usual 5-10 years for the next generation to pound this current mindset into the dust.
The contemporary crop of cultural controllers are all about paranoia, never ending grievance and rewarding laziness. This is the most myopic, selfish, humorless batch of humans ever created in the Western world and at the moment they are ascendant (the coming January 6th Hearings will likely be their peak, I would suggest). But they represent all that is backward in American culture. America is about the go-getters, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the daredevils, the mavericks, the thrill seekers, the people with new ideas. This reliance on the past and on passive-aggressive social control is fruitless and 100 liberals in a room together will never agree on anything. So the idea that this current Democratic control will lead to some dystopian future doesn't really worry me. (**)
The next batch of young people will see how the media manipulated demonization of Trump is merely a gutless power grab by people that have no vision of the future, only complaints about the past, and by people who claim to be experts when they display no skills or abilities (most of all they don't understand how medicine works--and they are proving it right in front of us all day long!) The anti-anti-Trump reclamation may take a while. Unfortunately, Trump himself is still around blocking the Republican Party like a kidney stone and until he's gone, the right is still just a turtle flipped over in the sun. But the Democratic Party is a bunch of fascists (***) and soon even the dutifully vaccinated will realize that the vaccination served no purpose other than that to minimally weaken their sense of self-control.
But if we just vaccinate the people that are at greater risk of dying (re: treat this vaccine like every other vaccine) from the virus and allow the rest of the population to absorb the virus itself, then the at-risk people are safer and the virus needn't mutate. Meaning, next year's vaccines could steadily chip away at the virus while continually providing more assurance to the rest of the population. Herd immunity is going to happen eventually--no matter how far off into the future our bureaucracy tries to push it.
We haven't made people safer. We've maximized political control and nothing else. The game we're playing now of pretending like everyone is going to get vaccinated (****) is not going to work. But, of course, that powers that be will just blame (insert: your particular political bullshit here). That plan is not feasible for a million different reasons, so pretending like that's what we're doing is just straight up foolishness. Eradicating the virus through mass vaccination is not a worthwhile policy. Herd immunity will save us....eventually. If we can only survive the herd-drivers currently calling the shots.
(*) Now, the idea that the vaccine itself creates variants is a bit like the "lab leak hypothesis" in that it doesn't need to be true. Viruses create variations naturally just as the Earth produces viruses quite naturally. Covid-19 did not need to be bred in a lab (whether it was or wasn't) because the Earth has already produced tons of viruses in the past and will produce more. Likewise, vaccinating everyone may produce even more vicious variations, but doing nothing at all may have produced vicious variations, as well. I don't see the overly aggressive vaccine rollout as a smoking gun. But I also don't see how it helped anything. All it can do is water down the efficiency of the vaccine.
(**) Well, except that they are trying to get us addicted to a vaccine instead of just absorbing the virus that has already penetrated every nation on earth. Like many medications, once you take this vaccine you're basically addicted to it for life. And you will need boosters once or twice a year for the rest of your life: the numbers are pretty clear that the vaccines and the virus itself wear off after 4-6 months. Now if you have underlying conditions, then this is a lifeline. But if you don't, this is just unnecessary medication and warping your immune system to match the vaccine's version of Covid-19 every year for the rest of your life becomes a less good idea the longer you live. If you follow the gov't plan, you'll be on the gov't plan for life (that's the Democrat vision of public service). So far the vaccine (like the first taste) is free....but for how long....?
(***) As per Wikipedia: "Fascist movements advocate a form of democracy that advocates the rule of the most qualified, rather than rule by a majority of numbers." Only a matter of time til smart young political science kids realize that this is the action performed by Super-Delegates within the Democratic Party, the Party that wanted Bernie instead of Hillary in 2016 and anyone instead of Biden in 2020. Most good liberals I know pride themselves on being smart and informed, though it's always amazed me they've never grasped that their own Party is specifically designed to thwart the majority of its followers. Any minute now...it's gonna dawn on them...any minute now...
(****) I am a smoker, I am prone to respiratory infections, my lungs are the weakest part of my body. That said, I am otherwise in excellent health for my age, I exercise regularly, eat pretty healthy, socially I'm already comfortably distanced and thinking that I would be in the 98% of people who survive their encounter with Covid-19 does not strike me as hubris or tempting fate. I never stopped wearing the mask deciding some time ago that I'll wear it at least until summer 2022 regardless of what anyone else is doing. I like the mask, I'm a big fan of the mask, and I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks, I'm keeping it when in public for the foreseeable future. Getting vaccinated wouldn't change that. Getting vaccinated would merely take me from a 98% chance of survival to a 99% chance and while some people need that extra marginal lift, I do not believe that I am one of them.
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