Anti-vax/science/lockdown folks facing consequences in the courts

Experts and scientists are constantly debating the vaccines, all the time, their effectiveness, their safety, their efficacy against new variants.

That has nothing to do with the tidal wave of social media woo and anti-vax quackery that is evangelised all over the internet by fanatics.

Even though one tries to disguise itself as the other, there's a very clear difference between the two.

It's not taboo. Again, there is constant scientific debate on vaccines. You are confusing that with something entirely different.

I see that MP continued on down the rabbit hole.

isnt the data moving in the skeptics favour these days? China proved that the 0 covid fans were wrong. That the vaccine while undoubtedly saved lives in the old and unhealthy, wasnt good enough to decide whether you could eat out, travel or keep your job, and the large amounts of excess deaths now around Europe suggests you shouldnt close societies down for 2 years. Not to mention the knock on effects of all the borrowed money and logistics disruptions largely behind the inflation we are going through now.

Skeptics of what exactly?

The term and the details of your post are vague.

What data? You seem to be conveniently forgetting why the lockdowns and restrictions and vaccines were put in place.

What would excess deaths have been without them?

No one pretended lockdowns would be consequence free. They were done because the human cost of doing nothing was too high.

And equally you seem to take for granted that if we hadn't had lockdowns, economies etc would have carried on as normal. This is patently false.

The vaccines were good enough to decide that, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do so now. Post the vaccine rollout you were able to go to pub, travel, work except for a short period where there was uncertainty and caution re: Omicron.

There's also a major war going on affecting food and energy prices, so the extent to which covid is responsible for current inflation is debatable.

At this point it seems anyone that doesn't swear allegiance to them!! I think it also applies to people who opposed vaccine mandates...can't be sure.

China's policy was unique and widely unpopular, including over there.

Countries weren't closed down for 2 years, there were temporary and partial lockdowns, mainly to keep national health systems from collapsing. One country which tried the opposite approach (Sweden) experienced higher deaths than their direct neighbours in the first year and had a similar economic turn-down.

There are knock-on economic effects from the lockdowns, but the flipside at the time was the potential for a complete collapse of hospitals and lots of people dying as a result. We can borrow money but we can't borrow lives. Which is why countries naturally erred on the side of caution (for obvious reasons)

There's plenty of valid criticism of specific or individual measures and restrictions, however the majority of people in the majority of countries agreed with the principle of them.

It's people who have an irrational agenda against vaccines. Some are open about it, others try to mask it. For those that mask it, there are the usual red flags.

Same happens in history, there are revisionists who have an agenda (due to prejudice or whatever) and use methods to try and "change" properly researched consensus based history. Some are very clever about it, but usually the red flags (which are similar) build up and are easy to spot.

you would have had more excess deaths if there had been lighter restrictions (not necessarily no restrictions) but in some shape or form the actions in 20 and 21 are causing excess deaths now. Germany for instance has similar excess deaths now to their peak in dec 21.

As for the economics, "carried on as normal" is doing some heavy lifting there. Construction for instance could have continued normally and thats time you never get back which fed into housing problems and costs, whereas industries like tourism or the nighttime business would indeed have been more affected.

As for the vaccines they were sold as they would stop the spread which they didnt do, so a healthy 20 something was prevented from socializing and was thus compelled to take a vaccine that had no benefit to them.

On your war point, inflation in Ireland in Dec 21~5.5%, inflation in Nov22 was nearly 9%, so inflation had already kicked off, the Ukraine/energy effect added to the cycle

throw the question into the future, would you think if there is a theoretical "covid-25" for example that the planet has no direct prior immunity and we find out out early that it has a similar profile to who it affects ie it doesnt target the young , ought Europe etc. follow the same playbook as 20/21, or would they go for a more targeted 80/20 approach, try to protect the vulnerable but largely keep most things open like schools? I'd guess it would have to be more tailored and voluntary

No I think the vaccine mandates we had here, so that high risk non essential venues such as pubs which had been closed during restrictions, reopened to those who were vaccinated was a reasonable and proportionate measure, backup up by the science showing the reduction in risk of severe covid and transmission.

I don't think Sweden's strategy scales to other countries, I think they were lucky to get away with the excess deaths they did. A few isolated Swedens here and there maybe, but Sweden's strategy in London, Paris or continent wide would be a disaster.

Oh totally it is not mandatory vaccines ... vaccine passport might be better phrasing to avoid confusion.

Did I use the word "absolute" anywhere in that post...?

Getting it less bad means having a degree of immunity

There was no mandate for Covid vaccines, however it was a global pandemic so there were obviously travel restrictions and other requirements. Vaccine mandates and restrictions have been around for a very long, for example, there are around 20 countries you can't travel to without a Yellow Fever jab. It's simply for people's protection, nothing political about any of it.

Yawn