It's very hard to convince anyone from either side. There is a true saying , nl. "If you don't follow the news you are uninformed, and if you follow the news you are misinformed". This goes for both sides. Each bubble has their own views, and people hardly follow the principles of truth finding. Not everyone has time for that, nor a philosophy degree. But critical thinking comes a long way. If the outcome of critical thinking does not match the mainstream narrative, you risk social rejection if you express that.

People that only follow mainstream media in the west will have a completely different view then the people that hardly follow the news, or even follow alternative news.

Based on the data/numbers, released by the WHO and especially the highly detailed data of the CDC, one has to conclude that there is no pandemic, in the true sense of the meaning of the word pandemic. Anyone with a spreadsheet program, or python data analyzing tool, and uses calculation and logic will conclude that. If one calls covid19 a pandemic, one also has to start calling the flu a pandemic. After 2 or 3 months, it was already pretty clear that it was simply not comparable to the "deadly plague", that the doomsayers "promised" us. And especially the data released by the CDC showed exactly the groups of people that were at risk, nl 70+ people with serious underlying conditions, and 50+ men with overweight and bad health condition in general. These people need the protection if they want it, and should be financially supported during that process.

Obviously there are rare cases were younger people suffer from covid. But these are really rare cases. Thing is, the mainstream media covers this, at least over here, structurally as the normal, which it is not. Younger people also suffer or die from regular flu or other infections every year, which is also rare.

The polarization is very logical. You have a group of people who hardly financially suffer by the measures taken against covit (closed stores, lockdowns, etc) because they still have work or are on some kind of benefit anyway. And if those people follow the mainstream news, they will agree to the measures taken. Then there is a group of people that loses big time. They have to take extra loans, sell their house to cover for the expenses of their business, and/or are on the edge of going bankrupt. Those people will be against the measures taken. And you can imagine why, since those people lose their livelihood and future. There is no way you will change their minds. We are really NOT IN THIS TOGETHER. It's each in their own bubble, with their own consequences.

There is also those people who look at the measures taken, and don't find it logical. And they see the suppression of news, and the lack of a true open debate, in media, social media, the framing of people that have a different opinion. Due to the difference their logic and the measures taken, they suspect some kind of bigger scheme. The so called conspiracy theorists. But I can't blame them.

In my opinion, the measures that are currently taken to "beat" covid19 are overdone. The financial and social consequences are far worse then the worst case scenario of the Covid19 "pandemic". Children grow up with a government that can tell them when they can go outside, when they can do something, etc. This will stay in their memory, and also play a role in their later life. youth can not live their life in the best years of their life. Businesses suffer, and people get generally more unhealthy physically and mentally. Etc, etc, etc..

I'm not against vaccines. Vaccines can safe lives. Everyone that wants one, should be able to get it. But it should be by own free will. The holiness of the human body ( be it spiritually or just from a human rights perspective) should never be broken. If society allow governments forcing, practically or lawfully, a medical procedure on a person, it has overstepped a boundary that it will regret forever. That should NOT be part of the new normal. Because one day they will come for you. I believe in freedom.

The classic definition of a pandemic is an epidemic i.e an outbreak of a disease on a global scale that crosses international borders but nothing to do with the severity of the disease. Seasonal diseases like the flu are considered an epidemic but not a pandemic.

IMHO getting vaccines is my civic duty, it protects me and protects the rest of the population in preventing the spread to those that can not or do not want to be vaccinated. Your welcome.

Thanks for the halpful posts. I don't want to fan in any way the flames of a vaxer vs. anti-vax debate, so we can return to the topic under discussion.

You are right. I phrased that incorrect. I actually meant how people imagine the severity aspect of a pandemic to be, I should have phrased it differently.

I respect your choice that you see it as your civic duty. But I do think that natural (herd)immunity will already do that, which I don't say is a fact, but my opinion.

Without getting into the semantics side, maybe people should be treating other viral infections more seriously than they have done to date.

It would be nice if an eventual positive outcome from this is a general decline in such diseases, due to better understanding of them and appropriate precautions being taken.

Natural immunity in the case of Sweden did not work. One positive outcome is taking techniques in developing the COVID vaccine and applying it to creating a universal flu vaccine.

I think that is also a philosophical question, or just simply said the way you want to live your life. Some people prefer more protection, and others want to live more free, and not worry too much. Fact of life is, that everyone dies some day. And depending on the age, that's imo not a bad thing.

In Sweden immunity worked fine, just like in The Netherlands. It's just the political point of view that has changed.

Just to put things a bit in perspective. Here is a full year of data from The Netherlands, with the official data from the RIVM and CBS (which is too high, because the reported cases are a mix of people who died with, i.o.w. with a positive PCR test, and because of Covid-19, which can mean someone that died of a hospital infection but also had a positive PCR test, would be counted as Covid-19 casualty).

Remarkable detail is that in The Netherlands there was only a 404 excess mortality, while the yearly average is 6443. so >10 times less flu casualties. This has never happened before in history. The same happened in Sweden.

interesting columns are MCB (mortality rate covid-19 of total population age group)
And PCM (percentage of all covid-19 casualties per age group)

If you are below 35 of age, you have a 0.008% chance of dying of Covid-19. If you are of age <25 that drops to 0.0002%

75-79 age group MCB percentage gets higher, at 0.3727%. But people at older age with weakened immunity and at the end of their life often die of some infection like the flu or pneumonia.

(comma and dots are reversed in the numbers, because of dutch language. Some other info, to put the numbers into perspective, Every week 2,900 people die of all kinds of causes in the Netherlands, which is ~151,000 yearly )

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I can remember that when we had the Asian Flu pandemic, no one published daily or weekly death figures. We knew that a lot of old people died of it, but their death certificates usually read "pneumonia" because that was what actually killed them in the end. And no one considered it a tragedy if old people died because that was what you got old for. Besides a lot of them had dementia, which in those days was considered a fate worse than death, so when they died, it was called a merciful release.

Some younger people died too of course. They were considered to have been unlucky. But no one expected to be unlucky themselves, so no one was particularly scared. We expected that we would all get it and we all did, and then most of us got better.

As to the NHS, intensive care was in its infancy then but no one would have dreamed of using what there was on dying old people anyway, so there was never any real danger of hospitals being overwhelmed by cases.

I'm not saying we should go back to that. There's no way we could. People think differently about life and death nowadays if only because everyone lives so much longer. And we have social media and everything so you can't go back. But I still think the way we handled it then worked better.

Now that a lot of vaccines are about (Pfizer, Astrazeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and the competitors Sputnik V & Sinovac), does anyone have a url or reference for a good comparison between them? I'm particularly interested in side effects & Contra indicators, but efficiency also matters). Some of us have one or the other shoved on us, but others have a choice. I've heard the Sinovac is rather inefficient, the Pfizer vaccine should not be taken by those with severe allergies, but I don't know how accurate that is.

I've heard the same about sinovac. They used that in Brazil and look where it got them!

You need to consider other things besides efficacy too. For example the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have to be kept in a freezer so they're no use to developing countries. On the other hand, they are very easy to edit to catch new variants because they are basically just code. It can be changed and the new version put into production in a couple of weeks. I think it would take longer to modify the AstroZenica vaccine because it's a live adenovirus and you have to breed it.

To get vaccine is still free choice. I read 1/3-rd professional soldiers in USA refused vaccine. As one woman said "I had choice I chose not". We don't know actual numbers of people who refused vaccine. But it must be quite high due to attempts to enforce vaccination. Not in legal way. But through privileges. Those vaccinated are allowed to live almost normal social life. From other hand it is not possible to legally enforce vaccination due to possible side effects. Say last time 60 years old woman in Japan died just after vaccination. Although officially it is said that cause of death is not clear. I mean if vaccine would be obligatory lawmakers would have to deal with how to manage thousands of possible lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. It would be government of manufacturer to pay compensations? In possible harmful side effects. So some people are trying to show vaccination as our "last hope" "last standing". Or eventually "greater good". The latter always reminds me Tau Empire always fighting for "the greater good".

Edit: 10,000 people suing for average $1 mln sums up to $10 billion.

Cumulative confirmed deaths per million for a selection of European countries: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavir...pickerSort=asc

If Sweden's approach "worked fine", why is their death rate almost double that of Denmark, Finland, and Norway combined?


Where does this "404 excess mortality" come from and what is "6443" an average of?
Those numbers do not appear to come from the image you attached.
Please back up any statistics you provide with the URL of the source.

The deaths from all causes in the Netherlands for 2015-2019 averages to 149,918 per year.
The same figure for 2020 was 167,098 - this is an excess of 17,180.
(This number aligns with the 15,649 figure from your image.)

Data comes from here: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-dat...cess_mortality
Direct CSV link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ow..._mortality.csv

Where does this "404 excess mortality" come from and what is "6443" an average of?

according to the RIVM ( National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport ), but the source in in dutch, but if you can read it, you can find it here. This was not in the table, but I gave that as extra info. Just like the total number of people that die on average weekly, and yearly. And that data comes from the CBS. CBS is the central Bureau for Statistics, which is used by the governement and news sites in the netherlands.

The data in the table can be downloaded from the RIVM as well, as a csv file.

Looks like they only vaccinated about %5 of the population though, so I'm not sure it's fair to say that they "used" it in a meaningful sense yet.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavir...pickerSort=asc