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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31934 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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What I'm claiming is that the, say, practical or utilitarian impact of the vaccines in terms of preventing deaths was almost as good as it would've been if they'd fully stopped transmission, which ... seems like the important part. That the media messaging around it and cultural norms around it was very confused doesn't change that.

Contracting COVID had also become socially shameful; friends of mine reacted to exposures or infections as one might to an STI. A vaccine that could not protect against this was unsatisfactory, so they yelled “anti-vaxer!” at people on Facebook for saying the vaccine could not protect against this.

Which is very dumb, but doesn't have much to do with how practically useful or effective the vaccine, the technological artifact, is. We (correctly) don't do that with the flu!

What I'm claiming is that the, say, practical or utilitarian impact of the vaccines was almost as good as it would've been if they'd fully stopped transmission

But you're wrong. The only way you van come to this conclusion is if you disregard the preferences of people who didn't want to get vaccinated but were forced to, or who had their doubt's, got talked into it, and now regret it. You can gloss over these objections when vaccination prevents transmission, because it protects more than just the person getting vaccinated, but you can't if the impact is individual.

Wait no, this whole conversation began with Ash's

The vaccines were kinda sorta effective, but not in the way that I had hoped they would be

And my response

I mean, they strongly prevented severe illness and death, which is the only really important thing.

I'm just talking about the effectiveness of the vaccine itself, not about negative aspects of the way it's used. I'm not 'glossing over' them, I'm just not talking about them, it's a separate but reasonable (if beaten to death) discussion to have.

You're the one that brought up "practical utilitarian impact". If the argument is about only the vaccines themselves then he was correct that they only "kinda-sorta work", because they don't prevent transmission, which is "really important thing" when it comes to vaccines.

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