Athias

If you didn’t find that part of my sentence relevant to the point I was making then why single that part out to respond to it?

I’m an American citizen, which gives me the right to cast a vote for the candidate who best represents my views on what US policy should be.

It’s as if you don’t understand what context is or why it matters. Thoughts and ideas are typically expressed in more than just one word or one sentence.

Do you believe in elections?

If not, do you have any actual ideas on how a society should ensure it’s functionality and prosperity

or is “I hate government” all you have to offer?

The argument is not that government is society

the argument is that government is the means by which society solves its problems and imposes obligations amongst its citizenry.

If you disagree with a representative government then again, what is your solution?

Do you believe criminals should be locked up?

If so, who locks them up and under what authority?

There was no point to address, it was literally half a sentence.

The government is a direct reflection of the society you live in.

he people in government are the representatives they sent there in their behalf.

How are you communicating with me right now?

Through what device

made by who

connected to what

powered how

and… how are you paying for this?

Or to ask it slightly differently… do you think you did all this yourself?

If you’d actually make it to the end of the sentence you would have a better idea.

I read everything before I respond. My parsing your statements reflects particular points which I intend to address.

If you don’t like being part of a society then move

or at the very least stop taking part in an taking advantage of all the perks that come along with it

If the group I lived amongst decided to rape me, I wouldn’t be living amongst them

Context matters. You’re entire argument about luck was focused entirely on the deceased. We’re not talking about the deceased, we’re talking about the beneficiaries. If you really need me to explain how one would be considered lucky to be handed a fortune they did nothing to earn, we have much bigger problems to address than estate taxes.

I’m an American citizen

which gives me the right to cast a vote

for the candidate who best represents my views on what US policy should be.

Is there some other credential I’m supposed to have?

Please tell me what word you would use to describe that person. 

I suppose you don’t believe we should have a government then either.

No, it’s not. If you choose to participate in our economic system then you are choosing to follow its rules.

If you don’t like it move to a deserted island where you can live in isolation and do whatever you want.

I explained that starting with the very next sentence.

You don’t have to respond I to every sentence I write, just keep reading.

First off, if you read the thread you would know that my position is the first few million (I said 5 earlier) should not be taxed at all, so no one is saying wealth should be excluded from anyone.

Second, what does that even mean? We’re not talking about excluding people from wealth, we’re talking about whether the wealth generated by one individual should flow tax free to their beneficiaries.

Do you have an actual position of the estate tax,

or like I asked for in the OP, a substantive reason for opposing it?

Yes, it’s the poster child example of luck.

We’re not talking about the man who made his fortune, we’re talking about the people who did nothing to help build it but yet will reap all the rewards.

Hypergamy suggests luck isn't a factor in the calculation of marriage, at least for a woman.

There are no "equal males" when a woman decides to marry.

Some of it might be luck, some of it might be merit. But in a system of enforced equality, the tree makes no distinction as Pol Pot smashes a noble's skull against the bloody bark.

That misses the point of the estate tax in the first place: to prevent the creation of a nobility class.

It's not about jealousy.

It's about an age old conservative value: making something of yourself.

Instead of just being lucky to be born into circumstance.

And the system I'm proposing doesn't even fully prevent that, it just sets a cap on the amount of capital you can bequeath, providing FURTHER advantage to people who are already advantaged (from having grown up with vast wealth, they'd have gone to better schools, etc.).

I'm just demonstrating what you can do with their money once they're gone. 

Instead of having this anarchic system, imagine a state elected board where their only job is to do roads.

Government doesn't actually "do" anything. It's a middleman that pays for services. The government isn't the only way to fund things. I've seen much better road service funding from online "adopt a pothole" programs.

The idea that nothing gets done without a bloated aristocrat in a government office needs to go by the wayside like the donkey and the cart.

You understand the tax is not for ME personally to use the money, right?

Calling it the 'jealousy tax' or making it like I am pro 'stealing someone's money' is a misrepresentation, it implies that you give people a cut of a person's estate to use at their own discretion, like I'm using it to allay my envy of their yacht or whatever.

In reality, what I'm for is taking some portion of what we can call VAST wealth (not 1M dollars, that's not vast wealth, 1B dollars is vast wealth), and having the government use it to do things like fix roads, build schools, etc.

Building a school has nothing to do with jealousy.

The concept is that their family has already benefited from the life of vast wealth AND have been bequeathed vast wealth as a result

this is INCOME and should be subject to tax too

the community at large now benefits from the success that the individual and their family enjoyed, presumably FROM the community.

It's not jealousy, it's altruism and it's FOR EVERYONE

And again it doesn't have to be schools or hospitals or whatever else conservatives apparently hate, especially if the person's will endows a fund for abuse victims, builds cost free homes for disaster victims... Not so I can buy a playstation. 

Do you need an audience for that ?

Let's try to have a respectful discussion about this problem in America.

What do you personally value ?

That is in fact my point. Assuming no business would knowingly employ unnecessary workers (and you have given me no reason to believe otherwise) there is no one else to eliminate. A minimum wage increase is therefore immaterial to who is necessarily employed. 

I maintain that if a business cannot afford to pay their workforce a living wage then they cannot afford to be in business.

If the only thing keeping you in business is that you get to exploit people more then you do not have my sympathy. 

Nonsense. You just pointed out the cronyism that makes our current state a capitalist state. Also without the implicit threat of state enforced violence no one would acknowledge the right of corperations to own the means of production at the expense of their own starvation. Capitalism cannot exist without the state.

It could but under our current capitalist state resources are used to coerce the cooperation of the proletariat.

Resources are never voluntarily given under capitalism.

Giving anything away voluntarily is anathema to capitalism. Things are only given in exchange for payment. 

All businesses are already on the lookout for any possible ways of trimming the fat. No buisness purposefully employs workers that are not essential for a company to function. It can therefore be assumed that all businesses have already eliminated any unnecessary workers they know of and would promptly eliminate a y that they discovered were unnecessary.

This is a truism regardless of the minimum wage a d therefore any argument to the contrary doesn't hold water.

Every business has expences.if your profit doesn't exceed your expenses then in the capitalist model you should fail.

Paying for labor is one of the primary expenses. If you cannot afford to pay your workforce a minimum wage perhaps you shouldn't be in business.

You just described a capitalist state. This is the best case scenario for capitalism. Capitalism cannot be supported without the state's support.

How else would they secure the means of production besides the threat of police violence?

This is not true. Mathematics is used in Physical Science to calculate the measurements of objects and their characteristics, as well as to show the relationship between different functions and properties. 

2.5 doesn't equal 3 if you define half of 1 as 0.5, which you did.

It's not the ONLY measure.

It's more of a baseline.

Please suggest a counter-proposal (if you have one).

Good point; however separation of church and state prohibits legal policy from being made on religious grounds.  Otherwise we would have to ban abortion and gay sex and punish them as they are to be in the bible

It is silly to think that employers would employ fewer workers if minimum wage increases.

There is already no incentive to have more workers than absolutely necessary.

If you are worried about people with redundant jobs will become unemployed then you need not worry about minimum wage as this has already happened and continues to happen. 

It is silly to say that inflation will take away everyone's buying power if we raise minimum wage since inflation continues despite the stagnation of minimum wage. If you are worried about inflation then you need not worry about minimum wage as this has already happened and continues to happen. 

It is silly to say that small businesses will be unable to compete if we raise minimum wage

since capitalism already tends towards monopolies.

If you are worried that most of the world's wealth will he concentrated into the hands of just a few companies giving them an unfair advantage over small businesses then you need not worry about minimum wage as this has already happened and continues to happen. 

18 million dollars per missile launch

we could build at least 18 homes for that price

No.

You are never "obligated".

(IFF) you can do something to mitigate human suffering (AND) you decide instead to buy yourself a private plane (THEN) you are denying the INTRINSIC VALUE of other humans

I'm not suggesting that humans are intrinsically valuable.

I'm not suggesting that humans are NOT intrinsically valuable.

What do atheists believe?

And in real terms, what is a materialist?

I would suggest that we all premise our arguments upon our intellect.....Variously acquired stored and modified data.

How do you think that you are different.

And relative to the issue of 3....I have easily demonstrated that data manipulation can make  2.5 = 3.

What is the premise for this deduction?

Is this an atheistic or materialistic response?

Am I being hypocritical?

Perhaps I am being externally manipulated by Satan.

Your conclusion from these statistics are based on a post hoc fallacy.  You're claiming an efficacy of vaccination simply by counting after the fact. In December of 2020, 336,802 were claimed to have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. Give or take, there are about 332,000,000 people in the United States. If we subtract the 2.8 million who were vaccinated at that point, then we'd have, give or take, 329,200,000. Now if we divide this number by the number of deaths in December of 2020, and multiply it by 100, then that is 0.102% of the unvaccinated who have succumbed to this virus. If we considered the amount of people who had remained hospitalized at that point, assuming they weren't vaccinated, then it would .0360% of the unvaccinated were hospitalized.

I based my comment on your above comment. My point is if the vaccine saves mores lives than it takes, it is worth it.

I was referencing a previous statement of mine to DoubleR in response to your point about the hospitalization and death statistics. Even if we were to place significance on the total number infected and the total deaths, it would still render a 98.4% "survival rate." I put survival rate in quotes because it's ecological and fallacious. The point I'm making is not to give validity to these statistics; it's to demonstrate that even if we are to indulge these fallacious reasons, it would still not favor vaccination.

Because as an individual, one's chances of surviving or succumbing will always be 50/50. One either survives or dies. So I can no more say that as an unvaccinated individual, I have a "99% chance" of survival, than you can say that as an unvaccinated indivdual, I have a "XXX% chance" of dying. That will depend on one and one's condition.

“Think for yourself” is a theme I’ve come across quite a bit lately, the implication of course being that you are not doing so but rather just regurgitating what other sources have told you.

This always amuses me. Take Covid for example. Is anyone on this site a doctor or scientist?

I’m betting not, I’m betting instead that the overwhelming majority of us get our information from sources we trust telling us how to interpret the data, or at the very least reports that someone else we trust performed.

In fact nearly everything we think we know, especially when it comes to politics is gained this way. It’s almost entirely about who we trust.

There’s little way around that.

1. Where do you get your information from? What news channels are you watching, what publications are you reading, etc.?

2. How do you go about vetting the information you consume?

3. How exactly do you identify when you think someone else is not “thinking for themselves”?

And BTW, if you haven’t told us where you get your information from please do not jump in here and criticize anyone else. You have no standing to do so.

Saw an interesting video.  Is this "3" the number three?  No it's not, it's a representation of the number three as is III etc, so what and where is the number 3?  Which of our senses can we identify the number three with?

Sorry to interject

But It would seem a fair assumption to make.

Sugar cube V needle though.....Just reinforces some previous assumptions of my own.

Only joking?

The USA population in 1952 was 156.369.000. The ratio of polio cases to population was .00037. So I assume you think that there was no need for the polio vaccine?

I was reading through, and that comment stood out to me, cause I had just listen to Fauci snippet addressing what your snippet seemingly was saying.

They were opposites and I trust Fauci more than I trust your oppinion.

You may even have a long list of web sites that support your conclusion, that,

Not according to Fauci. 

Who do I trust more.  Obviously it is Fauci over you and my guess any web  sites you have to offer.

My interpretation, flawed though it has been at times, of your words here is that you accept that many studies of vaccines have produced results you would say are logically/scientifically sound, i.e. that there are definitive conclusions you could make regarding their results.

I'm not sure if that encompasses what you could say about the effectiveness of those vaccines in a broad population, and perhaps your argument is that those kinds of broader claims are impossible to support in a logical/scientific manner. However, as your argument focuses on claims that vaccines prevent death, and you have also made the following statement:

But my argument isn't that vaccines don't work; my argument is that vaccines which claim to "prevent death" cannot be proven to serve this effect because there's a necessary lack of observational data.

I interpret that as an acknowledgement that vaccines do "work" in some measurable way that can be said to apply to a broad population. Again, I could be misinterpreting, but if your argument is that only the conclusions regarding prevention of death are insufficiently supported, then what conclusions about vaccines do you acknowledge as supported by the available evidence? In essence, I'd like to know what you would argue is proven by sufficient observational data with regards to vaccines.

I might be phrasing this poorly, but I hope you'll be able to determine my meaning.

An ecological fallacy is a formal fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data that occurs when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the group to which those individuals belong.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is an informal fallacy that states: "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy.

This sounds nutty to me...

...Mind over matter is one thing but ego over rational, logical common sense, based on evidence,  is another

Close, but not quite. Satirical, yes, but it’s not *really* about Chappelle’s feelings about Trump supporters. There’s an extra layer of satire there. I even attached a video to supply context. 

Lets imagine for purposes of edification there is a married couple. Person 1 in the married couple is quite unhappy with Person 2. So much so that Person 1 hires(pays) Person 3 to kill Person 2. 

Person 3 kills person 2. This plot is uncovered by Law Enforcement and both are arrested. 

Should Person 1 or 3 be charged with homicide[1], or both? Why?

Should Person 1 or 3 receive the more severe punishment? Should their punishment be equal? Why? 

What critiques do you have, if any, with how homicide, and its variations, is classified and prosecuted?(in the US) Why?

I suppose where I'm having the most trouble with your argument overall is that I can't understand what standard you would use to actually make a determination that anything works if you cannot use data obtained after the fact to make those determinations. What you're effectively arguing here, as far as I can tell, is that it's impossible to make these conclusions because it's functionally impossible to meet the level of stringency required to make them. Assuming that's the case, I sincerely question how we can make any such conclusions about any preventative measure. After all, the only means we have to evaluate the degree to which a population is afforded protection from an infection is, necessarily, after the fact. We can provide all the data to support what the vaccine actually does, establish how that helps immune responses, and determine that that likely contributes to declines in infections, hospitalizations and death tolls among that population, as correlates with the data. If your argument is that that's not enough to make these conclusions, then functionally, nothing is,

and I'm honestly not sure why you buy into vaccines at all if this is really your perspective.

Again, I disagree.

I think there are sufficient controls to establish that conclusion. You're effectively saying that there are other factors that could explain why death tolls are reduced among the vaccinated population, and if so, I'd honestly like to know what those are.

I also don't see why observation of both a subject's death and survival is required for a study to be sufficiently controlled because, if it is, then no scientific study that assesses survival (or anything, really - you cannot simultaneously view a person in two states at the same time, including "sick" and "healthy") is sufficiently controlled.

Every study is fallacious because it cannot meet the perfect standard demanded for internal controls. I'd respond to your "How?" that you gave prior to this, but if this is the standard for controls, then nothing I could say would meet it because no controls ever could.

I like how you turned pandemic into an adjective

but that's not what makes a pandemic. A pandemic doesn't and shouldn't presume that a majority of the world population has been exposed to the virus at some point. It literally means that it occurs over an area that encompasses multiple countries and affects some significant subset of the populations therein. Significant amounts do not necessitate majorities. The fact that the virus had lots of time to spread before vaccination started doesn't lend credence to your claim, either. All it does is tell me that the virus infected a lot of people. I'll certainly grant you that the numbers of infected that we know about is probably quite a bit smaller than the real number of infected, but I don't grant that the actual number is greater than 50% of the population. That kind of claim requires support.

You say "necessary", and I agree that it hasn't been demonstrated to be necessary to add this specific immune response to the natural antibodies generated by many in order to see effectiveness.

I would say that it has been demonstrated to be beneficial, and I would disagree with the statement that it's solely a plausible benefit. Even if we ignore basic viral mutation as a means of evolution and the demonstrated (yes, this has been tested) importance of the mechanisms inherent to the structure of the spike protein, it's not at all controversial to say that a more rapid adaptive immune response to the virus is beneficial in viral clearance, regardless of the virus. At worst, this immune response is net neutral for someone who has already generated their own antibodies.

I'm not going to get into semantics with you. Suffice it to say that if you don't like that style of presenting an argument as a means to allow the other person to clarify, then so be it, but it's how I tend to handle things I will likely continue to do the same. Carefully choosing my verbiage as a means of placing myself as the source of misinterpretation is worth a shot, but I'm not always going to be so careful in selecting my words, and I think it's still far better to suggest that a plausible misunderstanding is occurring than to state another person's position with certainty.

The rest of this just seems like it's revisiting the same points we've now talked about at length. I don't agree that it's non-scientific or fallacious in every instance to look at correlative data, especially on a very large scale, and make conclusions that infer plausible causation, especially when you can actually test for far more specific elements of said correlation (e.g. the development of antibodies and resultant activation of immune response when someone gets the virus). I really don't understand the argument that these studies cannot in any way inform how you are likely to respond to the vaccine or to the virus, but clearly, that's an area where we just won't agree.

You can control for how an individual who has and hasn't been vaccinated would respond to the virus, even if you cannot control for every element of their behavior and prior immune development.

If we're looking at it from that perspective, I would say that it's effectively impossible to control for every variable in any experiment once you get a sufficient number of people to make statistical inferences, which would mean that every medical study is similarly flawed.

The question presumes that a majority of the population has been directly exposed to the virus, i.e. has been infected in some way, shape or form. If it doesn't presume that, then presuming that there is no positive effect of vaccination doesn't make sense to me, because while a majority of the population may not have been exposed to the virus, a majority has been exposed to the vaccine. But if we do presume that a majority of the population has been exposed to the virus (I'd like to see evidence of that), I'd say that the big difference is in the means by which that defense is mounted.

Naturally-generated antibodies can target any number of sites from the virus, and many of those sites can mutate without substantially negative effects for the virus. Vaccine-generated antibodies target a specific protein that is an essential virulence factor, changes to which can substantially impede the virus. Even for someone with effective natural antibodies, there is no harm in generating a separate set and a plausible benefit in having multiple modes to recruit immune responses.

https://youtu.be/P9LJRvMJu60

Capitalism is naked profit motive.

Please explain.

Choosing to "ignore" human suffering WHEN you can do SOMETHING to mitigate that suffering = denying that person's intrinsic value.

LOVE = COMMUNISM

SHARING RESOURCES AND OR SELF-SACRIFICE WITHOUT CONCERN FOR REWARD

FAITH IN CREDIBLE THREAT

I include "appear" specifically for this purpose, since I recognized that I could be misstating your position and invited you to correct me. I'm not going to straw man you just because it's convenient to make a point. And, again, I think the difference here is between supporting a conclusion and proving said conclusion. You're right that the existing data is not definitive proof, but not providing complete evidence of causality does not mean that the evidence in no way supports their conclusions.

I believe it was your argument that the research in no way derives conclusions from the health of individuals.

Those are individual assessments, and those assessments can be carried forward into new patients to demonstrate the positive effects of the vaccine in those patients. As for saying that looking at the antibodies of one person "cannot inform on my own antibody production", in some sense, you are correct. It can't provide 100% certainty on how your immune system will respond to the vaccine. However, the multitude of studies monitoring antibody production certainly do inform how you're likely to respond.

I think narrowing down the argument to a given "person X" isn't exactly what the general argument has been for increasing vaccination. The argument has been that a broad swath of the population has benefited in these specific ways and imparts greater degrees of protection from the virus to those around them, therefore a larger swath of the population should also be vaccinated to similarly protect themselves and those around them.

I wouldn't call that a fallacious argument, and if it is, then I don't see how we apply any treatment or prevention to any population without engaging in fallacy.

Of course. It's not just possible, but highly likely that an unvaccinated individual will mount a sufficient immune response to eliminate the SARS-CoV-2 virus from their system, eventually. It's less likely that said unvaccinated person will mount an immune response as quickly as someone who is vaccinated. That has been tested.

It is therefore more likely that the virus will spread further and cause more harm in an unvaccinated patient than in a vaccinated patient. I'm not arguing that it's the difference between having an immune response and having none, I'm arguing that it's the difference between a weaker, slower immune response (in the unvaccinated) and a stronger, faster immune response (in the vaccinated). The absence of an early antibody-based adaptive immune response in patients who have not seen the virus or vaccine before is a known deficit in patients who have not been vaccinated or infected.

Another instance where I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If you're asking what evidence would be required for me to buy that this is a lab-engineered strain with inserted genes, then I would expect to see the hallmarks of such genes. From what I've read, those hallmarks are absent. So, in lieu of that and under the assumption that scientists may have added genes without these hallmarks, I would have to see evidence that those scientists planned this out and executed it. Scientists keep lab notebooks and notes on what they do. It's plausible that they could have gotten rid of that evidence as well, in which case I will always find it difficult to accept this as damning. This is hardly the first time that a deadly new version of an existing virus suddenly got into and spread through the human population, and the kinds of changes to a virus that would lead to this exist in nature. I would have reason to be upset with researchers who didn't respect this facet of viral evolution and either chose to actively modify a virus to become more dangerous or, as I would consider more likely, simply did basic experiments with it in their lab and didn't take adequate precautions to prevent its escape from the facility. 

I can't fathom how that could be done. If it was possible, it would be common practice in the laboratory where it is a lot more laborious to make permanent changes to the genome or to regularly make short-term functional changes.

mRNA messages are, by their very nature, built to be used and discarded. You would have to change how loose, single-stranded RNA functions within a cell to achieve long-term functional changes.

Proven =/= substantiated. A strong correlation among a very large population over a long period of time provides substantiation.

It's not definitive proof, but claiming there is no substantiation for a claim backed up by massive amounts of correlative data (as well as a great deal of causational investigation into how the vaccine provides protection from the worst that COVID-19 has to offer)

seems absurd to me, especially when you aren't offering any alternate causality.

I disagree. Vaccination imparts maximum effectiveness when a population reaches herd immunity. That doesn't mean that vaccination requires herd immunity to be at all effective.

I'm not sure I understand the follow-up question.

I really don't understand how noting a survival rate among people who have been infected is fallacious, especially since your argument regarding how the ecological fallacy works is applying it to subsequent populations and we're talking about the actual population of infected. Why is this fallacious?

As for the latter statement, again, that seems like a statement with regards to the death rate from infections not being high enough to justify vaccination, which implies that there is some threshold at which such a number would be sufficient to favor vaccination. I'm not sure what that number is, and any choice seems arbitrary.

Again, not really sure I'm understanding your point. Traces of the mRNA and translated spike protein are absent from the body after a few days. Patients were monitored for weeks and months and that remained the case. If there is something that isn't limited to a narrow window of time that is worth considering, please, elaborate.

This doesn't seem to be responsive to the point you're addressing, since the point of that argument was addressing the likelihood of such long-term side effects rather than excluding any possibility of their existence. It's possible that long-term side effects could occur. It's implausible that they would based on the established evidence.

So often I find people criticize Race Realism by trying to tie it as inherently racist in nature,

When science discusses that men are, on average, more aggressive than women, or women are, on average, more empathetic than men it is not seen as inherently sexist,

nor is it seen as justification for sexism.

It is understood that just because men and women are different in some aspects that it doesn't change the moral value of the individual, the dignity of the sexes is not in threat.

However, when people try to talk about how people of different races might be, on average, different due, in part, to nature it is seen as inherently racist, an attack on the moral value of the individual, etc.

it is the idea that some of the difference in outcomes between races stems from real qualities about nature. Look at the world's best sprinters, for example. Regardless of the culture they are raised in (aka, a variety of nurture elements) there is a tendency for one particular race to be "over-represented" among these world class sprinters.

Why does this happen? If Race Realism is true it does not follow that any race is morally of greater importance, it just means that there are differences. It doesn't justify racism, just like differences between men and women doesn't justify sexism.

Yet that is consistently brought up by many who oppose the idea of Race Realism.

Race Realism is essentially metaphysical realism applied to race, and that there are different races. The idea that 'race is a social construct' almost always stems from a sort of metaphysical anti-realism.

Dr. Steven pinker is obviously not a racist, and he takes the view that there are genetic differences between races that lead to different outcomes via nature. One of the things he points out is that Jews, regardless of where they live in the world, tend to have higher average intellect than the population around them, and he attributes this, in part, to genetics.

66% is a great start.

I agree with the former statement to a point. If the argument is that there could be long-term effects, then I'd like to know where those potential effects could be derived from if not the material from the vaccine or the resultant products of its expression.

As for the latter statement, I disagree. I guess it depends on how much you value of the lives lost in the process of trying to contain this pandemic,

I've got mixed feelings about the mandate, but suffice it to say that I don't see it as inherently immoral, particularly if it gives various exemptions. Not going to get into the morality of a mandate here, though.

I think it could be the primary countermeasure, assuming that everyone behaves accordingly. It's extremely effective if everyone does it, not so much if they don't.

In the hospitalization and death statistics. If they're getting hospitalized in far fewer numbers and dying in far fewer numbers than the unvaccinated, they tend to do much better than the unvaccinated.

You said half the population has been vaccinated and yet 99% of COVID-related deaths are among the un-vaccinated.  Let's for a moment indulge these statistics at face value. For example, the United States has a population over 330 million, about 210 million of which are adults. Thus far, there have been about 616,000 people who have died in the U.S. as a result of COVID--or so they state. 99% of that is 609, 840. According to the CDC, 165,637,566 people have been vaccinated which accounts for about 49.9 percent of the population. So, 50.1 of the unvaccinated would amount to 166,301,444. Now we take 609, 840 deaths of the unvaccinated, divide it by 166,301,444 of the un-vaccinated populace and multiply it by 100 to acquire the percentage. Do you know what that percentage is? 0.367%. Not even close to 1 percent. That means 99.633% of the un-vaccinated have survived after being exposed to this virus for almost two years.

Now there are studies that say that COVID deaths go as high as 900,000 in the U.S. Substitute this figure in the previous calculations and that would still mean that 99.464% of the un-vaccinated have survived after being exposed to this virus for almost two years. Your interpretation of your own statistics fail you, sir.

The difference here is that your argument is based in the view that there could be something that happens in the long term, but lacks any analysis of the vaccine or other vaccines that provides a meaningful basis for believing that such long terms effects are more than just faint possibilities. It's possible, I grant that, but I don't grant the plausibility of long-term harms because of the extremely short-lived nature of the vaccine and its product.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-norway/fact-check-discussion-of-deaths-in-elderly-vaccine-recipients-in-norway-lacks-context-idUSKBN29P2R1

There was a bit of a fact check by Reuters on this one. Apparently, no causal link between their vaccinations and their deaths were discovered. Also, considering the already substantial death toll among the elderly in nursing homes (an estimated 45 each day), attributing these deaths to vaccination solely because they happened to receive the vaccine the day they died is a bit problematic.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/norway-deaths-coronavirus-vaccine

My argument wasn't that the vaccine affords absolute protection from death, though I think these numbers are similar to those in my link. Saying that they aren't attributable to the vaccine only begs the question of what you could attribute this high survival rate to among the vaccinated population.

...I'm sorry, does antibody production have nothing to do with individual health?

We can look at individual patients and monitor differences between a vaccinated and unvaccinated person in terms of what they produce with regards to immune defenses and provide a pretty clear picture of how they're likely to respond to the virus.

There is always going to be variation in how people respond to the virus, but having a head start on an immune response provides a pretty clear picture of how likely they are to mount a strong immune response to the virus before it has time to replicate and spread.

I'd say that the rushed schedule was justifiable given the existence of the ongoing and, in some cases, worsening pandemic. I'd also say that a lot of the studies were done before this that paved the way for these to be produced in both a safe and efficacious manner. You clearly don't agree with either assessment.

Again, would really love to see that patented virus. I haven't been able to find it. Assuming that it was patented, I'd like to see some evidence that it's the same coronavirus. Coronaviruses existed before the patent, they existed afterward, and they have been worked on in many labs. If you can provide some link between that patented virus (not really sure it exists, but I'll assume it does) and the current pandemic, be my guest.