[wazu]

Originally Posted by DaFace

This isn't at all an attempt at putting together a manifesto to send people, but here's where I generally land on everything. Mostly just a train of consciousness, but maybe Ill refine it at some point.

1. You're not an idiot for being little skeptical of a new medical treatment. There is plenty of history around drugs that ended up doing more harm than good. However, vaccines have never been in that category (despite the fact that those who are convinced otherwise are really loud about it). Vaccines just give your immune system a blueprint of what the virus looks like so that they can be on the lookout for it. And once the blueprint is delivered, the vaccine itself disappears.
2. Similarly, we have never had a vaccine that started showing side effects months or years later. Every side effect of concern happens quickly or not at all. But there ARE some possible side effects. A vast majority of them are just feeling shitty for a day or two. There have been some more major cases (mostly blood clotting), but they're extremely rare, and we now know what to look for and how to treat those issues if they do occur. We otherwise have no historical precedent for a vaccine causing side effects months later. Combine that with the fact that these vaccines have been in testing for over a year now, and it would be completely unprecedented for major issues to occur at this point.
3. A vaccine doesn't truly keep COVID out of your body - it just helps your body to fight it off. That means that some people will test positive without being symptomatic, some people will have mild symptoms, and some people might even have to be hospitalized (or, in a worst-case scenario, even die). But for all of those cases, the vaccine makes the situation a little better. Some people who might have had mild symptoms end up with no symptoms at all (and are less likely to pass it on since they aren't coughing and sneezing all over the place). Some people who might have been hospitalized end up with only mild symptoms. Some people who might have died are able to fight it off in the hospital. The few who die would have died without the vaccine. The vaccine isn't guaranteed to prevent all bad scenarios, but it's pretty much guaranteed to make every infection better.
4. Just in general, it's completely indisputable at this point that you're better off with the vaccine than without (and it's not close). In every state in the country, 95%+ of those hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated. Every study we have done shows the impacts of the vaccine on infection rates clearly. There's just no rational debate here. Your chances of illness, hospitalization, and death are all much, much higher if you don't get the vaccine.
5. All that said, your chances of serious illness from COVID are indeed pretty low if you're a healthy individual. That's where a bit of societal perspective really would go a long way. If we filled up Arrowhead Stadium and said "Here's the deal. Either everyone gets a vaccine shot on the way out the door or ~100 people have to die." Sure, someone might die from a car wreck on the way home or have a heart attack, but does that really mean we shouldn't try and save the others?
6. Relatedly, if your take is "I'm not worried about COVID," why are you worried about the vaccine? Or if you just don't want to do it out of apathy or whatever, isn't it worth a little effort to try and get back to normal as quickly as possible? Aren't you sick of dealing with capacity restrictions, debates about masks, events being cancelled, and just in general having shit for entertainment because no one can get things done or go anywhere? Not to mention our entire healthcare system is messed up because our doctors and nurses are getting overloaded and burned out from dealing with COVID.
   There's an easy ticket out of this, and it only takes a couple hours of your time.

Could use line spacing between points, but other than that this is just about perfect.