Cole Hocker is unvaccinated going into Olympic Games

Phil Ken Sebben wrote:

These Pretzels wrote:

Comes down to this: If you don't get vaccinated, you don't want to win that badly.

If you don’t get vaccinated, you don’t want _______ that badly.

How far do you see this going in the future? Fill in the blank with:

— health insurance?

— permission to travel; cross-country, across state lines, to see family on the other side of town?

— First Amendment guarantees?

This is getting ridiculous

Kid could have got the one shot J&J the week after the trials with no hard training required that week anyways . He choose not too and is rolling with the results.

When I got the vax, pfizer, I was sick for two days and my sister in law was sick for a week. so yes I know some of the after effects.

Why should you get vaccinated, to protect yourself and others you love, period.

Why are the anti Vax people so aggressive about my body my choice ??? it feels very insecure

Hey brojo's how bout you just ban anybody who mentions Vax and @#$%chip cause that is just load of misinformation.

Agreed. There are ample reasons for vaccine hesitancy. As you said, a formal apology from Biden and Harris for sowing skepticism and politicizing these life-saving treatments might go a very long way toward bridging the gap between the two main camps, and more importantly those caught in the middle.

It's alright to be wrong when acting in good faith if amends are made... but to see such an about-face in such a short amount of time raises some serious concerns for those of us who pay attention.

Is it any wonder why someone like Hocker finds himself between a rock and a hard place both in terms of his own conscience and decision making without rabid anonymous critics taking cheap shots?

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"So, let's just say there is a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election. Would you get it?" - Interviewer

"Well, I think that's gonna be an issue for all of us..." - Kamala Harris

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"If and when the vaccine comes, and it's not likely to go through all the tests it needs-- and all the trials that need to be done..." - Joe Biden

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"When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine who's gonna take the shot? Who's gonna take the shot? You gonna be the first one to say, 'Put me-- sign me up! They now say it's OK!'" - Joe Biden

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"And the question of whether it's real when it's there, that requires enormous transparency. You've got to make all of it available to other experts across the nation. So they can look and see. So there's consensus this is a safe vaccine." - Joe Biden

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"If [President Trump] announced tomorrow, 'We have a vaccine, would you take it?' Only if it was completely transparent and other experts in the country could look at it. Only if we knew all of what went into it." - Joe Biden

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"If Donald Trump can't give answers and the Administration can't give answers to these three questions then the American people should not have confidence." - Joe Biden

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"... but if Donald Trump tell us I sho-- we should take [the vaccine], I'm not taking it. - Kamala Harris

Transcribed from this audio super cut:

keep portland weird wrote:

Phil Ken Sebben wrote:

If you don’t get vaccinated, you don’t want _______ that badly.

How far do you see this going in the future? Fill in the blank with:

— health insurance?

— permission to travel; cross-country, across state lines, to see family on the other side of town?

— First Amendment guarantees?

Why are the anti Vax people so aggressive about my body my choice ??? it feels very insecure

I'm pretty secure in my ability to spot the hypocrisy between approval of one class of people the right of "my body my choice," while simultaneously denying another class of people the exact same right.

Karma Police wrote:

beeBsteps wrote:

So what. He’s not visiting elderly care facilities or pediatric cancer centers. He’s an Olympic competing against a handful of other athletes who are likely vaccinated.

So he's entitled to rely on others doing the right thing?

Nice.

The point is that he’s not putting anybody at risk. The vaccine is 95% effective. He’s only around a handful of people. None of them are at risk. If anybody gets Covid, it will probably be him. His problem. Only his.

Sadly, if Hocker won the gold and went home without Covid, all you haters would be angry about it. You’re all nasty.

beeBsteps wrote:

The point is that he’s not putting anybody at risk. The vaccine is 95% effective. He’s only around a handful of people. None of them are at risk. If anybody gets Covid, it will probably be him. His problem. Only his.

Actually, he could easily catch COVID and spread it to someone else, as a silent or minimally-symptomatic carrier. That person could become very sick, or be shut out of competition due to a positive test.

The vaccine{b}S aren't even close to 95% effective against currently circulating variants. (Hint: talking about "the vaccine" makes you look uninformed.)

Oh and I'm an MD.

Correct, don't fix what isn't broke!

average letsrunnner wrote:

Actually, he could easily catch COVID and spread it to someone else, as a silent or minimally-symptomatic carrier. That person could become very sick, or be shut out of competition due to a positive test.

The vaccine{b}S aren't even close to 95% effective against currently circulating variants. (Hint: talking about "the vaccine" makes you look uninformed.)

Oh and I'm an MD.

You think this is true even though he has recently been COVID-positive with likely the second or third variant...? While he could catch COVID, from what I've read the odds are against this similar to if he had the vaccine.

Having had covid his immunity is better than those who are vaccinated. He doesn't need the vaccine.

You're making a bad-faith argument if you think Kamal Harris and Joe Biden had a major impact on vaccine hesitancy. There's no way anyone actually believes that.

average letsrunnner wrote:

beeBsteps wrote:

The point is that he’s not putting anybody at risk. The vaccine is 95% effective. He’s only around a handful of people. None of them are at risk. If anybody gets Covid, it will probably be him. His problem. Only his.

Actually, he could easily catch COVID and spread it to someone else, as a silent or minimally-symptomatic carrier. That person could become very sick, or be shut out of competition due to a positive test.

The vaccine{b}S aren't even close to 95% effective against currently circulating variants. (Hint: talking about "the vaccine" makes you look uninformed.)

Oh and I'm an MD.

So then taking the vaccine shouldn't matter if it's variants you're worried about (assuming the vaccine doesn't provide immunity to variants). And if he caught the original virus, the only people he could spread it would be other unvaxxed people, which it doesn't sound like there are many. All of this is moot since Hocker already had the virus and should have natural immunity anyways. If you're going to bring up variants, then talking about vaccinations at all is pointless.

He supports trump.

Im going to assume he’s unvaccinated because he didn’t want the side effects to get him during a race or peak training. He should get the first dose now imo. He can get the 2nd when he comes back from Tokyo. Side effects won’t be bad to screw with his running

Y'all see the paper in Nature recently that was showing an immune response even 12 months after infection, which suggested that immunity after natural infection could be pretty long term? For the crowd that likes to dogmatically use the word science (which is sort of a paradox), Nature is one of the most prestigious journals in the world. It's not speculation, it's published data (i.e. actual science, not message board hypothesizing).

So, if Cole has had Covid, that should do about as much for him as getting vaccinated. Herd immunity includes vaccinated people and people that have been infected naturally. My opinion is that people who tested positive shouldn't be required to get vaccinated. Give that vaccine to somebody else that needs it more, which at this point is probably someone outside of the U.S.

average letsrunnner wrote:

beeBsteps wrote:

The point is that he’s not putting anybody at risk. The vaccine is 95% effective. He’s only around a handful of people. None of them are at risk. If anybody gets Covid, it will probably be him. His problem. Only his.

Actually, he could easily catch COVID and spread it to someone else, as a silent or minimally-symptomatic carrier. That person could become very sick, or be shut out of competition due to a positive test.

The vaccine{b}S aren't even close to 95% effective against currently circulating variants. (Hint: talking about "the vaccine" makes you look uninformed.)

Oh and I'm an MD.

True, vaccines are less protective against variants. But we’ve already seen at least one positive Covid test from an athlete that qualified for Tokyo, right?

I would’ve had no problem with a ban on athletes who chose not to be vaccinated. For whatever reason, it’s believed that merely testing athletes and excluding spectators will be sufficient. We’ll have to trust that this will be sufficient. The way I see it, Hocker will be at increased risk of testing positive and not competing. But I don’t see much risk to other athletes. He’ll likely avoid contact with as many people as possible. There’s a brief period between getting the virus and spreading the virus, yes/no? If he’s positive, then he’ll be out before exposing himself to other athletes.

I’m really getting tired of the name-calling by pro vax crowd. They should take it up with those setting the rules if they want better protection for athletes. The attack on Hocker right now is completely ridiculous in my opinion. Not the safest decision. But the risk he presents is not commensurate with the outrage.

DirtyT wrote:

Mattyc wrote: bit certainly selfish too.

How is it selfish to not get the vaccine? You can still get, and spread Covid if you get the vaccine. It’s literally only helpful in protecting yourself from getting bad symptoms. I know 4 people who got Covid after getting the vaccine and they all spread it to others.

Fully vaccinated are less likely to spread covid actually. Well documented.. I’m sorry google doesn’t exist in your country 😢

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

You're making a bad-faith argument if you think Kamal Harris and Joe Biden had a major impact on vaccine hesitancy. There's no way anyone actually believes that.

I... shouldn't take the President and Vice President at their word? Not a single person either took their vaccine-critical statements verbatim nor are people skeptical of the complete reversal in rhetoric and signaling mere months later when they assumed power? It was political grandstanding then, but now it isn't, and I should ignore that pesky little credibility red flag-- one of dozens at this point-- and trust that it's all sorted now. That unlike the day-to-day or week-to-week wholesale shifts of paradigm exhibited over the past 18 months this is the exact moment where all (...or even enough...) is known to be confident in decision-making?

You don't see how these things are contributing to a less coherent/cogent state of understanding in a situation that been rife with inconsistency (being generous) or outright dishonesty for a year and a half? Maybe you're partially right because a non-trivial swath of the population cannot remember the very recent past in light of the brand new shiny fact pattern/narrative. And if/when reminded of the prior set of facts or events they cannot be meaningfully weighed against the current set.

This differential capacity for discerning information separates the people who think critically, perhaps causing them to (re-)act more slowly, and those people whose actions are guided by base instinct, which has been hijacked en masse on an unprecedented scale, into reflexive fearful then fear-mitigating actors. And I'm not saying those who are confident in the vaccine fall into this trap... unless they have become wholesale vaccine crusaders against the "other" out of fear, group identity, or rote.

Wow, kind of beyond belief that someone would choose not to be vaccinated but be part of a team, workout with others, travel and participate in the Olympics, where Covid is rising and affecting the public. Some sort of personal choice about his own health and training???

Hopefully, he saw fit to skip all those other vaccines that cut into his freedom and training - measles, chicken pox, polio, hepatitis, etc. - and refused to put that seat tray up when instructed on the flight! Luckily, he'll probably never know if he was an asymptomatic carrier, or how many others he endangered. Still, he's running well, and will have that USA on his singlet, so might as well cheer for him, right!?