The statistics - from trained scientists (or nutters, in your (the "royal" you) view) - point to a much greater vulnerability for the old and infirm, so that makes me heartless?
They are at greater risk of death, yes. But everyone else’s risk goes up
as well if the health services are overwhelmed (which is what would happen if you went full herd immunity and only protected the “old and infirm”). This disease is not picky. It will go for a wide range of people. It will leave one in ten with long-term health problems and a significant number effectively disabled. I know plenty of people who pre-COVID were fit and health. Now? Not so much.
The only solution is to lock everyone down, destroy countless small businesses (thus concentrating consumers more and more towards big businesses), spread fear and misinformation, force everyone to take an experimental mRNA vaccine whose safety precautions have been replaced with the much more scientific political Warp Speed, and all that?
No. This is just bullshit. This is the kind of rot you’d see from full-on anti-vaxx. In fact, this is quite literal misinformation. The vaccine is not experimental. In fact, it’s not one vaccine—we have several solutions to a disease problem, approaching it in different ways. This is science in fast forward, sure, but only because resources were thrown at it in a manner unseen in modern history. That doesn’t mean a few boffins in a lab fucked around for a bit and said “that’ll do”. So much effort went into this, precisely because of the clear and imminent danger to the entire planet.
Arguably, this is what should happen elsewhere. I suspect a lot of eyes have been woken up to “well, why haven’t we dealt with X or Y better then?” Flu is an excellent example in the west. But to suggest this is some half-arsed thing just thrown out there without regard for safety is just outright wrong.
protecting the most vulnerable
OK, then: how? You’ve responded to this point a few times in a snarky manner. So how do you “protect the vulnerable” in your world where we immediately open everything back up and, presumably, radically reduce the number of people having the vaccine?
But no, send them off to die because they're old and useless - that's all you can come up with?
Shark, your plan so far is quite literally radically increasing their risk of death.
As I said at the start of all this, COVID certainly isn't nothing and poses a very real danger to some sections of society, but it does not pose the same level of danger to everyone.
This, at least, is correct. You are much less likely to die from COVID if you’re 20 than if you’re 40. And you’re less likely to die of it at 40 than 60. And so on. But, again, let it run through the population and, according to even the most optimistic statistics out there, you’re talking 3.5 million Brits with long COVID. Averages are more like 7 million. A significant number of them will have permanent disability, from something that was probably avoidable, if we just have a bit of patience and ensure people are vaccinated.
And THAT is why I described your thinking about this as callous.
Anyway, look on the bright side - the dose I refused will be available to save the life of someone more worthy. If they live and I die then that's a fair swap, even I can see that.
Only vaccine-based immunity doesn’t work like that. By not taking the vaccine, you become a more likely transmission vector. We need to leave the vaccine nowhere to jump to. We can see from the return of measles what happens when a lot of (in this case, mostly entitled middle-class white people) start thinking they know better than centuries of vaccination science.
