Pfizer Says Its Vaccine Targeting Omicron Will be Ready in March

[ichbins]

a better question is: "would they still be alive if they did not have these conditions but had COVID?"

That's the question fearmongers don't like to ask.

This question has been asked - and answered. I quote from David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters excellent book "Covid by numbers", p. 106:

"At the start of the first wave, one of us [David Spiegelhalter] was quoted as saying, 'many people who die of Covid would have died anyway within a short period'. Others estimated that this proportion could be over half. We were wrong: it is plausible that between 5% and 15% of the 60'000 excess deaths in the first wave were hastened by under a year. The great majority of these people had their lives shortened by a somewhat greater extent; analysis suggests that, on average, around 10 years of life are lost from Covid-19 deaths in the UK, and 16 years globally." (they quote from a Nature article).

 

[MrMacphisto]

This question has been asked - and answered. I quote from David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters excellent book "Covid by numbers", p. 106:

"At the start of the first wave, one of us [David Spiegelhalter] was quoted as saying, 'many people who die of Covid would have died anyway within a short period'. Others estimated that this proportion could be over half. We were wrong: it is plausible that between 5% and 15% of the 60'000 excess deaths in the first wave were hastened by under a year. The great majority of these people had their lives shortened by a somewhat greater extent; analysis suggests that, on average, around 10 years of life are lost from Covid-19 deaths in the UK, and 16 years globally." (they quote from a Nature article).

Even if we assume that to be true, since the vast majority of COVID deaths involve at least one comorbidity, people without any serious health condition and who are under 60 don't have much reason to get the vaccine.

By the same token, there's no compelling reason for the people I mentioned to isolate or be forced into lockdowns. Yet, we see multiple governments enforce lockdowns (like Australia) and vaccine mandates. The response by various societies has been vastly out of proportion to the dangers presented.