03-29-2023, 12:08 AM
It’s a mistake to generalise our own experiences to represent everybody else’s experiences. Just because Covid didn’t affect you greatly doesn’t mean it didn’t affect anyone else greatly (especially when the number of deaths was so high). The next pandemic might not be so kind to you while others get off scott free.
This is the big difference between sexual and asexual reproduction. Parthenogenesis ensures that the whole population has the same exposure to disease and can lead to a mass die-off. But sexual reproduction leads to variations in the genes that can help some of the population avoid illness. I linked an article that one such variation helped some people survive the Black Death and the same variation may have helped people avoid Covid. On the other hand, it predisposed those people to diabetes.
It’s also a bit rash to assume away the benefits of vaccination. Maybe the vaccine ensured that Covid didn’t have much affect on you when you caught it.
Finally, dwelling on the possibility that you could have blown off the vaccine and other preventative measures given that Covid ultimately had little impact on you is pointless. How could you know this ahead of time? The early advice was that age and certain co-morbidities increased one’s exposure and this was reflected in the vaccination release dates. But as with insurance, is it a wasted expense just because the risk you’re insuring against didn’t occur? Quite a few years back, there was some research that suggested that cannabis generally didn’t cause schizophrenia but in a small number of cases a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia could be activated by heavy cannabis use. The problem at least at that time was that there wasn’t a test available to determine whether a particular person was at risk. Therefore a heavy cannabis smoker who didn’t suffer from schizophrenia would be able to say there was no connection while a heavy cannabis smoker who developed schizophrenia would be able to say the link was clear.
This is the big difference between sexual and asexual reproduction. Parthenogenesis ensures that the whole population has the same exposure to disease and can lead to a mass die-off. But sexual reproduction leads to variations in the genes that can help some of the population avoid illness. I linked an article that one such variation helped some people survive the Black Death and the same variation may have helped people avoid Covid. On the other hand, it predisposed those people to diabetes.
It’s also a bit rash to assume away the benefits of vaccination. Maybe the vaccine ensured that Covid didn’t have much affect on you when you caught it.
Finally, dwelling on the possibility that you could have blown off the vaccine and other preventative measures given that Covid ultimately had little impact on you is pointless. How could you know this ahead of time? The early advice was that age and certain co-morbidities increased one’s exposure and this was reflected in the vaccination release dates. But as with insurance, is it a wasted expense just because the risk you’re insuring against didn’t occur? Quite a few years back, there was some research that suggested that cannabis generally didn’t cause schizophrenia but in a small number of cases a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia could be activated by heavy cannabis use. The problem at least at that time was that there wasn’t a test available to determine whether a particular person was at risk. Therefore a heavy cannabis smoker who didn’t suffer from schizophrenia would be able to say there was no connection while a heavy cannabis smoker who developed schizophrenia would be able to say the link was clear.