LuckyR wrote: ↑June 26th, 2021, 2:49 am
All true. But why isn't there a thread about moral obligation to get a flu shot? Because 60,000 deaths a year isn't worth shutting down the economy, whereas over 600,000 deaths was. Well Covid at this point isn't in the 600,000 death zone anymore moving forward, it's more like the flu, statistically.
There are a few problems with this analysis. Covid is much more deadly than the flu, so obviously is it a bigger threat. Covid also affects younger and healthier people with more deadly results than the flu, though it is still much more dangerous the older you are when you get it. Covid seems to have some serious lingering effects that don't exist with the flu, though I think the jury is still out on that. Covid has a longer period before symptoms appear, allowing you to spread it without being aware you have it, in addition to many asymptomatic cases who can also spread the infection.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/covid-sp ... 33b24195f4
Because of all this, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread are much more common with COVID-19 than the flu.
Further, you are comparing older stats from the flu to present stats for covid. The protections we put in place for covid were ridiculously, if accidentally, effective against the flu.
The flu was down 90%+ this year!
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/flu-dea ... 39181.html
So, the fact that both rates of infection are down for both the flu and covid does not negate the fact that covid is still many times more deadly, easier to spread and has other complications. The comparison is either something like 600,000 to 60,000 or 60,000 to 2,000.
After saying all that, you could easily make a case that we have a moral obligation to do more to protect the vulnerable members of our population from the flu. We've done it by accident this year and probably saved tens of thousands of people. You just can't make that case by saying the threat from the flu is the same as the threat from covid, because it definitely is not.
"If determinism holds, then past events have conspired to cause me to hold this view--it is out of my control. Either I am right about free will, or it is not my fault that I am wrong."