@layman,
layman wrote:
Why don't we shut down the whole country every year for the seasonal flu? It kills about 60,000-70,000/ year in this country alone (millions world-wide). It mainly strikes the elderly and infirm and, according to recent data, its mortality rate is even higher than the Kung Flu.
If we did shut down the country every flu season, we could "save" thousands of lives!!!! Old people die, day in, day out, year in, year out. Did you know that?
You lack perspective, like most other people who can only think of turbo-charged industrial-consumerism in terms of cultural normativity.
We need exposure to small quantities of a diverse 'balanced diet' of pathogens to keep our immune systems healthy and functioning properly.
Everyone getting flu shots is like everyone driving motor-vehicles and thus undermining their body's natural transportation system that makes them healthy by doing plenty of healthy walking every day.
Flu shots and other vaccinations are for people and diseases that are not easily dealt with by healthy people with good-functioning immune systems.
Right now we are in a major correction for patterns of exposure and widespread immune-system degeneration caused by unhealthy lifestyles. We have to lockdown to protect all the people who have become vulnerable to COVID19 because they don't get enough exercise and normal pathogen exposure for their immune systems to function well. They have destroyed their health through year upon year of shirking exercise and dietary discipline that could have prepared them to survive infection.
Our economy sets people up to be vulnerable to pandemics, whether it is COVID19 or seasonal flus. Some people have to get vaccinations to protect them because they cannot get healthy enough to fight off such infections, just as some people need wheel-chairs, motor-vehicles, and other support machines because they lack natural healthy mobility.
We have built cities and an economy where people shirk normal walking, outdoor exposure to light loads of pathogens, pollens, etc. and thus become health-compromised and more vulnerable to infections. It's no easier or harder to reform these social-economic patterns that have gotten built into our infrastructure and economic patterns than it is for someone who has been sitting sedentary for years to change their lifestyle habits to get in shape and be healthy.
