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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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But if you have lung cancer and are in your 80s, it can and will kill you. As was his case.

My mother had lung cancer and was in her late 70s and got COVID and it was asymptomatic. She died shortly afterwards anyway. Of lung cancer.

So will everything else. Covid didn't merit any special precautions except interning the paranoid ninnies trying to shut down our society.

If you have lung cancer and are in your 80s you're going to be dead soon enough anyway. There's pretty much no demographic that can clearly gain QALY from covid restrictions. To give specific numbers people in their 80s have a life expectancy of 2.5 years and an IFR of 8.5%, so avoiding covid is worth only 77 days. You likely have poor quality of life as is (so you have less QALYs to lose) and abiding by restrictions will reduce that quality from poor to near zero.

And a related note, but most covid comorbidites have small effects compared to just being older. In other words, the hypothetical 40 year old lung cancer patient still does not benefit because covid is about as dangerous to them as it is to a healthy 45 year old. If there is an exception to this, and it's a big if, it's kidney disease, not cancer.

Eh, my grandma had throat cancer (both lived as prolific smokers), she did take the vaccine, got covid at the same time, and is still alive and kicking.

Other side, my other grandpa is 92 and plays tennis every other day. I’ve got some strong longevity genes on both sides, but sadly messing around with stuff like this can cause you to lose out on a decade of life. Guy would’ve definitely enjoyed to take a couple more vacations with his wife before it was all said and done, I know that.

Do you not think that your grandfather perhaps wanted to live out his few remaining years in dignity, rather than fear?

“I’m going to die within 2 years anyway, let’s do so standing rather than on my back”.

This was the express intent communicated to me by my grandma and my friend said the same about his grandma.

Meanwhile it’s my grandma who decided to vaccinate herself who is living with dignity and he unfortunately died without being able to breathe.

In my opinion anyway. Dying that way fucking sucks man. But I can respect that he was ready to face those consequences for his principles.

It’s a strange counterfactual where a man in his 80s with lung cancer would be living this great life 4 years later if only he had just taken an almost laughably ineffective vaccine…

Yet his wife is?

Throat cancer, she talks with one of those electric voice boxes you press up to the neck.

She took the vaccine, contracted Covid at the same time, and she’s alive and kicking and living with her children and grandchildren.

Modern cancer treatment is actually surprisingly effective when you catch it early.

Also, the COVID vaccine is objectively effective at preventing deaths.

By the time the vaccine came out, refusing it was a pure and well deserved fuck-you to the people shutting down all of society over the disease. After the diamond princess cruise incident I knew well enough that the restrictions were not warranted; by the time the vaccine was available my condition for taking it was 'everyone who pushed covid restrictions executed. No literally, ALL OF THEM. If that means no healthcare workers then everyone else should have thought about that before going along with their neuroticism.'

Had the vaccine been released in March 2020 I likely would have taken it.