I wonder should we also start mandating yearly influenza shots from everyone? And bar those who are not tested or vaccinated from work places? It would certainly save some lives wouldn't it?
Yeah what's next? Making other behaviors that have a small but established likelihood of endangering the lives of others or their property illegal at little to no cost to the liberty of an individual? Pretty soon I won't be able to drive my car under the influence, or without proper insurance, or while not wearing a seatbelt, or I won't be able to discharge my firearms in my 0.2 acre backyard in a suburban area.
650,000 people have died and that's with taking some pretty extreme precautions (for what we consider extreme anyway). It's not just the old or the infirm. Healthy people in their 20s and 30s. Toddlers. We have gone to war over much less.
We have a ton of safety regulations that govern how we build homes and infrastructure, how we plan for fires and natural disasters, how you live your daily life, and pretty much anything else because they are effective and do save lives. This one seems reasonable (mandatory COVID vaccination - influenza vaccines are significantly less effective and in general the people that die from it society seems to be ok with).
Florida has been doing almost nothing since April 2020 and still has less deaths per capita than North eastern states with their extreme measures. So your argument that even 600k deaths was only achieved because of lockdown etc does not make any sense. You couldnt tell what state does or does not have strict covid restrictions if you looked at the outcomes.
That's a bit misleading because those NE states got around half of their deaths in April and May 2020.
From June 1 2020 to the present Florida has had 203 deaths per 100k. New York has had 130 deaths per 100k. New Jersey has had 170 deaths per 100k.
From June 1 2021 to the present, Florida has 42 deaths per 100k, New York 7 deaths per 100k, New Jersey 9 deaths per 100k.
For the first ~10% of the pandemic in the US you were statistically safer in Florida than in New York or New Jersey. For the rest of the time you were statistically safer in New York or New Jersey than in Florida.
As another comment said, if the unvaccinated were willing to stick to their "ideals" and die at home instead of an ICU bed, I would be a lot more amenable to arguments against mandates.
But as-is, normal people who took precautions to get vaccinated are being hurt by anti-vaxxers when they get an unrelated illness or injury (car wreck, infection, etc) and then suffer worse outcomes (including death) just because the ICU beds are full of people who could have literally just decided not to be in them (given how effective the vaccine is at preventing hospitalization).
Our society is far too interconnected for almost anything to not at least indirectly affect someone else, even if the first-order effects are well-limited to "just you".
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
> As another comment said, if the unvaccinated were willing to stick to their "ideals" and die at home instead of an ICU bed, I would be a lot more amenable to arguments against mandates.
Can you extend this logic to other groups beyond "unvaccinated"? For example, imagine the ICU beds that would be unoccupied if people who smoke tobacco and drink alcohol chose to "die at home". As a society, we know both of these behaviors are detrimental to health, and yet there are people occupying ICU beds because of their decision to use those 2 substances. Slippery slope and whatnot.... health insurance premiums would also be a lot cheaper if my group health insurance plan wasn't subsidizing treatment for all my coworkers with lung cancer, emphysema, and liver failure.
No we have laws to limit that, so why not have laws that limit where Typhoid Mary and Covid Christ can participate in society. They aren't putting them in jail they're simply giving the choice to get a jab or lose their current job or eating in a crowded restaurant. They are free to still start their own business and remain vaccine free.
>As another comment said, if the unvaccinated were willing to stick to their "ideals" and die at home instead of an ICU bed, I would be a lot more amenable to arguments against mandates.
This depends on where you're at. Where I live we currently are not near capacity in hospitals or ICUs. There isn't an issue and we are not near one.
Should so many be mandated or highly pushed to get vaccinated because of a few hot spots that affect a small part of the population? This is a question I've heard.
Note, there is a difference between believing (or knowing) the positive effects of vaccines, being a proponent, and getting one yourself.
This is about forcing others against their will do to something. I fear this will come back to bite our nation in the future. Both in terms of the willingness to force people and the repercussions that will come from it.
>As another comment said, if the unvaccinated were willing to stick to their "ideals" and die at home instead of an ICU bed, I would be a lot more amenable to arguments against mandates.
This argument falls flat when we do not require mandatory weight loss from other citizens. The point of the vaccine is not to protect oneself from taking up an icu bed, but to protect other people.
> A vaccine that protects me from getting the virus or getting a serious case
But if the vaccine protects you, and you have it, why do you care if I get it or not? By definition, the only people I could hurt are myself or other unvaccinated people.
Society is a closed system. Mandating wearing seatbelts only saves me right? Except that someone will have to go to the effort of scraping me off the sidewalk, attempting to resuscitate me, transporting me to the hospital, resources at the hospital will be consumed that could have otherwise been preserved or applied elsewhere, and if I'm not insured, the cost of most of this will be borne by others. If I don't make it, what happens to my dependents? Friends? Family? People counting on me at work?
Communicable disease and taking reasonable precaution isn't that different. This one is interesting because its virality and fatality rates are apparently on the cusp of what society as a whole agrees are worth doing something about.
Wearing a seatbelt saves others besides you - people die and are injured by getting hit from non-seatbelt wearers, particularly those in the vehicle with them.
Helmet laws for motorcycles? I'm generally against them for the reason that it doesn't affect others (except in really weird edge cases) and I don't think we should mandate people risking their own lives (Except in situations where people don't realize the danger they are in)
Vaccination provides clear social benefit by reducing infections, which limits spread of the virus and potential sources of mutation. It also limits the number of hospital resources that must be allocated to covid patients, freeing up those resources to aid others who are in need of medical care.
In the same way, driving while drunk is tremendously dangerous to yourself but is also a danger to others.
Except the vaccine doesn't just protect you, it's also a layer of protection for anyone you might come in contact with. This is the whole concept of herd immunity. There are some people where the vaccine will not work, and others where it works but for whatever reason they are very susceptible to the virus. When you skip the vaccine you are now putting others at risk.
> When you skip the vaccine you are now putting others at risk.
When you skip the flu vaccine you put others at risk. In a normal year 40k people die of the flu in the US.
At what point do we draw what lines?
I'm not suggesting what that point is. Just that we slow down, think about it, and understand the tradeoff. There is no perfect answer.
There is also the element of the co-founding factors. Things like heart disease. Many of the co-founding factors, though not all, are repercussions of lifestyle (e.g., most heart disease is the result of many years of unhealthy eating).
We don't force people to eat healthy which would avoid a significant amount of disease and related factors in COVID deaths.
I realize this is not all cases... and I'm attempting to push thoughts forward rather than state my own ideas. Thinking this stuff through in depth is important. Seeing folks on the other side is important.
Somewhere. One one side, we don't allow you to shoot anyone you see to protect yourself against COVID. On the other we don't allow people with COVID to intentionally infect people (even sneezing on them in an obviously purposeful way implying you have COVID is getting punished.) So we draw it somewhere.
> Just that we slow down, think about it, and understand the tradeoff.
No. I have no desire to slow down. It's killing people now. It's delaying cancer treatments now. It's causing people to die of burst appendixes because they cannot get treatment now. If we need to revisit, fine. But it has to be after taking action.
Which itself is an epidemic. There are multiple levels of cellular automata at work here, riding on each other like layers of foam.
The Meme of COVID being all of the AJ talking points. The antivaxxers are a surrogate host, they act in symbiosis. The mind virus and the cellular virus reinforce each other.
>In a normal year 40k people die of the flu in the US.
So we draw the line somewhere between 40k and the number of deaths from covid? Note, it's not 650K in the US, those are deaths after all the social distancing, mask wearing, etc and more recently vaccinations. The true number would have been in the millions just in the US if these precautions weren't taken. Actually the IFR/CFR would be at a higher rate than now because hospitals would have been completely pummeled so people who now survive due to hospital care would die at home or in an ambulance waiting for a bed. Not to mention long covid, organ damage etc. The economy would suffer even with everything open.
Are you saying that you would draw the line at more than millions dead in a year in the US for covid because we draw the line higher than 40k per year for the flu?
If anything can be learnt from this, I think the argument can be that we can do more to combat flu every year, make it socially necessary for sick people to stay at home or mask up in subways etc.(like in Japan), increase testing, increase uptake of vaccines, new better MRNA vaccines etc.
>So we draw the line somewhere between 40k and the number of deaths from covid?
Why do we need to draw the line there? Why not at 10k or 1m? It seems like you are advocating we arbitrarily pick the number to not include the flu but to include covid without providing a good reason.
How is 10k or 1m not artbitrary? Society has already drawn the line where I stated. You can make arguments for or against it, for example by stating 1M deaths from a respiratory should be okay.
I am not actually saying it should be 10k or 1m. I am saying your numbers appear to be arbitrary and am asking you why you didn't pick the numbers I listed.
Also, society has not really drawn the line. Politicians and unelected bureaucrats have chosen for us.
Indeed. People who raise this argument tend to ignore the fact that the most important impact of the vaccine is the systemic protection it offers against the irresponsibility of individual choice.
The vaccine does not in fact guarantee person X will not be infected or hospitalized. Widespread vaccination does result in systemic reduction in community spread.
> The vaccine does not in fact guarantee person X will not be infected or hospitalized. Widespread vaccination does result in systemic reduction in community spread.
We aren't going to wipe out COVID. It's here to stay. From people to animals. At some point most of us will likely get it. There has been a fair amount written on this.
If we look at past times we had pandemics (e.g., pandemic of 1889-90) we can see patterns. There the virus hit people and was bad the first year and gradually was less and less until they stopped tracking it. When we get hit the first time we get some immunity. For the virus from that pandemic it happens today as kids. Antibodies fade over time (while T cells remain). That means our nose and throat can easily get reinfected but after the first time we usually just get a simple cold (and first time is usually a simple cold, too).
That situation moved from pandemic to endemic. The same will happen here.
Yet, every year ~40k people in the US die from cold/flu.
We can't stop it. How we treat people along the way will say a lot about us and impact our relationships once we hit the endemic stage.
We'll get to endemic without or without the vaccine. The vaccine will help. Forcing people is going to create enemies and the side effect will live beyond the pandemic.
"How we treat people along the way" is super important.
Associating public health mandates with (EDIT correcting typo) "forcing people is going to create enemies" is the opposite of being respectful of people.
The idea that enemies are made by enforcement of a public health mandate, and that that enemy creation is evidence of poor example of how to treat people and will redound....elides the rather obvious point that those who refuse to volunteer for vaccination in this context are exhibiting...poor treatment of others. In any kind of social context it is grotesque sociopathy. To accede to this notion of "enemy creation" is irrational and cowardly.
Did the MMR vaccine mandates from the 70s and 80s create permanent enemies? Lots of people say this is a huge world-shaking issue for them, and I believe that they believe that, but politically active people are heavily incentivized to learn how to see everything in maximalist terms. If most businesses begin mandating the vaccine and infection rates are low next year, I'm confident the vast majority of people won't remember why it was supposed to be a big deal.
I get branch of questions you are raising, but I don't see anyone educated raising opposition to the vaccine. There could be lots of reasons for this to be true, not seeing them, they are staying quiet, etc.
What we are witnessing in a distrust of non-demogogic power that has been instilled into the Republican base over the last 40 years. The multigrade attack on intellectualism, science, logic. That is like your opinion man. The same qualities of Fascism, the hero worship, the sacrifice of the individual, emotionally charged thinking, all of that is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the tools of the enlightenment.
If folks had better understanding of how vaccines work from a mathematical/statistical level their internal framing of "should I get it or not" would be altered. It isn't whether this is a benefit to me directly, but is it good for the heard. For society as a whole.
Thinking of the heard is socialist. Self-centered, me vs the world is another Republican strategy. All of them actually weaken the individual vs the state and the corporation.
Choice, responsibility, individualism are great concepts, but they have been perverted into a form of control that divides and distracts.
The “for the herd” moral argument only makes sense for a vaccine that stops transmission of the virus. In that case, the individualistic argument for not vaccinating is “I’m going to leech off hers immunity.”
Ironically, because COVID vaccinated individuals still transmit the virus, the individualistic argument now favors the vaccine. Since anyone vaccinated is going to reduce social distancing and try to “return to normal,” they will spread the virus. So now the individualistic argument is that you should get the vaccine because the virus will become endemic and on a long enough timeline you will become infected.
No one is asking that you get the vaccine. Go buy 50 acres and subsistence farm by yourself. Or do you mean you'd still want to clog up a hospital bed for two months if you get sick. Because I'm pretty sure that impacts everyone.
This argument implies that we should start mandating mandatory weight loss for the obese. The vaccine is about protecting other people, not hospital space.
Not saying I disagree with you, but all the examples you gave are about some things that are a privilege or just optional (e.g. if you can't build a bridge to follow all the latest standards, you can just postpone it). Working is not really a privilege, you have to do it in order to survive.
but not driving drunk...you choose to drink, which is entirely optional. Driving drunk is something you choose to do. Getting a vaccine by mandate is something the state decides you have to do, with no way around it, if you want to continue working.
I was commenting on the insurance part, not the drunk driving. But we don't even have to go that far, we require licenses to drive, and if you aren't fit to drive, you can be denied that privilege outright.
>Yeah what's next? Making other behaviors that have a small but established likelihood of endangering the lives of others or their property illegal at little to no cost to the liberty of an individual? Pretty soon I won't be able to drive my car under the influence, or without proper insurance, or while not wearing a seatbelt, or I won't be able to discharge my firearms in my 0.2 acre backyard in a suburban area.
I wonder how many lives we could save if we required every car to have a breathalyzer that has to be used to start the car, and maybe a second test once 2 miles have been driven.
Also, if you want to get technical, most of those car laws only apply to public roads. On a private road you can get away with far far more.
“ 650,000 people have died and that's with taking some pretty extreme precautions (for what we consider extreme anyway). It's not just the old or the infirm. Healthy people in their 20s and 30s. Toddlers. We have gone to war over much less.”
Given that 10% of the population has been exposed at this point that makes likelihood of dying in the young age ranges extremely low. So many commonplace things people do in these age ranges have a vastly higher chance of causing death.
Fair point. I'd be curious to see it as data points on the range and variance in opinions on the site. I have less interest in which individual comments are "controversial".
The alternative also has a large cost. Pretending that no lives would be lost under a prohibition scenario ignores the data from times that's been tried either for alcohol or other drugs.
Drunk driving is illegal, as is smoking in public places (with very broad definitions of "public") - I have no idea what you're on about "sexual immorality", although I would point to the horrific law passed in Texas, as well as many of the terrible laws governing our sex lives. Most of those laws aren't because they hurt people, but because people want to tell other people what to do.
Drunk driving is illegal, drinking isn't. Just because drunk driving is illegal doesn't mean people care or are trustworthy to abide. The stats speak for themselves. And as I mentioned, it's not just drunk driving, but homicides and many other problems.
Secondly, see the new research coming out about second or even third hand smoking. It affects everyone.
Sexual immorality does hurt people and society at large. Everyone is paying the cost.
Yes. Based on my traumatized friends that work in ERs in a few different states and the people I know who have died, I would say that it is much more reasonable to believe that those numbers are close to accurate than to suspect a large scale conspiracy, but I guess the world is less interesting and more depressing when you consider the likely reality over shadowy intrigue.
Well, technically smoking kills ~400k a year and has been legal for over a century, so we could start there. We could get into heart disease and diabetes and the legality of unhealthy food if it’s about the raw numbers.
It would probably save lives _and_ lower the cost of healthcare. This is why many employers already offer free on-site "influence" (heh) shots for employees: it makes good business sense.
I'm never sure how to take objections like yours, because there are certainly a few different things to discuss. Is your objection to the government's role in this (such that you'd be fine with private employers enforcing whatever mandates they wish)? Or are you objecting to the mandatory vaccination (in which case, what do you have against spitting into a vial once a week)?
Or are you more of a technocrat, concerned that the ROI (in terms of, say, QUALYs, as economists like to put it) gained through these policies isn't worth the cost?
All strike me as viable arguments, but it's always hard to tell which one is being put forward.
If we lived in a non-influenza world that suddenly experienced influenza for the first time, we would think it's crazy to not only allow, but many times encourage, sick employees to come to work and basically take out the entire office. It's like just committing to losing a week's worth of productivity across the board.
One nice benefit of going more remote is that we can hopefully "personalize" the cold/flu experience vs. making it a de facto office-wide experience, and without the bizarre politics around vaccines/masks/sick-days/etc.
One would hope. My struggle previously with having a cold is that those can stick around for a week or two - until we set this new precedent for working from home I couldn't just disappear for a week because I didn't feel well so I'd inevitably take a day when it was especially bad, but then I'd come in and spread it around anyways.
One of the unfortunate parts about colds is that the range of experiences seems to be fairly large for different people. It sounds that like me, you've never experiencd a "24 hour bug," and a cold is at minimum a one week affair. Not sure if you've looked into it, but there is some research starting to develop around why this is the case, namely, it might be bacteria that inhabit our nose that take advantage when our defenses are down from a cold: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20181001/colds-espec...
It seems fairly common for a cold to last a week[1]. They wouldn't be debilitating for the whole time - it'd be a day or two of bad symptoms and then a obnoxious sniffle for another week. But I'd still come into the office and be that guy in the corner who was going sniffsniffsniff the whole day, even with a box of kleenex. Thankfully I haven't had one since I moved to working from home - I've come to realize that I need to be more careful with hand washing and general hand/face hygeine.
I count myself extremely fortunate, as [knock on wood] I rarely get the flu. About once every 4 years on average, and most times when I get it, I'm through it in about 48-72 hours. And my clients are always very understanding and I'm able to still deliver while WFH, except in the very worst depths of about 12-24 hours.
There has got to be some genetic component where others have it way worse than I do, and yet still others skate by even better than I do. We know far less about biology than we think we do.
My objection is that it's generally creepy anytime an institution tries to control or monitor the inside of an individual's body. Same reason I find workplace drug tests extremely distasteful. Like you can give me all the arguments you want about why it's a utilitarian positive, but at the end of the day you're asking for a cup of my pee so you can sniff it. That's just fucking weird and dystopian.
And to be clear, I'm fully Covid vaccinated and get flu shots religiously. But when an impersonal institution is coercing and coaxing people into injecting something into their body that they don't want, I'm out. I won't vote for those politicians, I won't work with those companies, I won't cooperate with those federal agencies.
It's weird, it's creepy, it gives my lizard brain a bad vibe that screams "Get Away From Them FAST!" You can go on all you want about QALYs and ROIs and R0s. But that's about as convincing as a man with a pencil mustache and a windowless van explaining to me why he's qualified to babysit my kids. I'm sorry, I won't do it. I won't eat the bugs.
When I was a youth, most public schools mandated a variety of vaccinations. If you didn't get them, you couldn't go to school. Is that no longer the case?
In the US, all 50 states have some type of mandatory vaccination for public schools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy_in_the_Unit...). Most, but not all, allow religious or similar exemptions; some (including California) only allow medical exemptions.
I think your point--which is spot-on--is that a lot of the outraged reactions appear to be from people who are unaware (or unwilling to acknowledge) the very long history of compulsory vaccination (and who probably had such vaccines themselves as children).
That's not to say that any mandatory medical intervention shouldn't be treated with serious consideration, but the unwillingness to acknowledge precedent is bizarre and, I suspect, to some degree dishonest.
This is a bit different. First, the type of vaccine is different - the COVID vaccines don't stop you from getting COVID or -- crucially -- transmitting it to others, whereas the ones that school children require to get do so.
Second, two of the three available are still under EUA, and the one that is approved is of a new type of vaccine that became approved through a very unconventional route, which has some folks cautious. Those other vaccines you mention are well-established and have been proven over time and through clinical testing to be safe and effective. COVID vaccines have proven to be only effective at reducing reactions, but not very effective at reducing spread.
Note that a typical clinical trial lasts years[0] - phase II usually takes 2-3 years and phase III takes an additional 2-4 years. We've had these vaccines for less than one year; if this was a typical vaccine, it'd be only part-way through phase II trials.
And now it's mandated by the government; get this shot, some of which are using new technology, that has had shortened clinical trials or lose your livelihood (because, at $14k per infraction, I don't see many large companies bothering to offer testing as an alternative unless it's for the CEO or other executives; it's just too much liability for an easily-replaceable lower-wage employee).
> but the unwillingness to acknowledge precedent is bizarre
That's because your precedent isn't an exact match, and has had easy alternatives and ways to opt-out.
Now, to be perfectly serious, I do think that any efforts at compulsory--or, as in this case, incentivized, since testing remains an alternative--medical measures exist in a tension between the utilitarian and the libertarian point of view. We should certainly be cautious about mandating any medical procedure, and do our best to preserve alternatives (like testing, or mask wearing, or by limiting mandates to as narrow a scenario as necessary).
But I don't think the debate is helped by getting the facts wrong.
It's also possible that the dissenters are aware and knowledgeable of the history of compulsory vaccines. The question in their minds might be how society determines which vaccines should fall into that mandatory category and what level of force the government and others should use to enforce it.
For example, should flu vaccines be mandatory to attend school? Historically they have not been in any large degree (to my knowledge). If you look at the IFR for those age groups for flu (varies somewhat by strain) and covid, then you'll see that they are generally very close. So we have to ask what changed, because it doesn't appear to be the value proposition.
I don't see the necessary nuance for this debate to be meaningful. As a case in point: the OSHA regulations are for vaccination _or_ weekly testing.
There's probably a reasonable debate to be had about requiring people to disclose vaccination status (but, again, significant precedent)--but I do think the hysterical reactions sound a bit funny when viewed as a reaction to being forced to spit into a cup once a week.
I think we agree that the debate is, as is, not very good. I might be making it worse by highlighting the least productive comments instead of engaging more selectively with the actually constructive ones, but, well...this is the Internet, right? :)
Is it really accurate to call it mandatory when exemptions have been relatively trivial to acquire and use if one desires to?
People keep acting surprised that other people would say no and also object to not having a choice.
Then there's the immunocompromised people who react poorly to vaccines and programs such as this are trying to corral them into a one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination program.
> I think your point--which is spot-on--is that a lot of the outraged reactions appear to be from people who are unaware (or unwilling to acknowledge) the very long history of compulsory vaccination (and who probably had such vaccines themselves as children).
I think this is a strawman argument as virtually everybody is aware of past childhood vaccine requirements and acknowledges that they existed for a long time.
What might make this Covid vaccination and decision process different from those in many peoples' eyes is that:
* Past vaccines took years of development and testing before being applied to the public and were not rushed through any approval process. Covid vaccines in contrast use a new technology, were rushed through the approval process in a political process, and in fact are still technically in clinical trials. To many people, not enough time has passed to see about any possible long-term health impacts, fertility problems, or other issues. And obviously, discussions of short-term health problems in social media are suppressed or minimized too. Personally, I would argue that trying to vaccinate all people (especially the young) for such a low individual risk is one of the most irresponsible risk-management decisions in human history.
* Dr. Fauci and other health experts have spent much of the last 18 months either lying (remember experts insisting that masks are pointless before doing a 180) or being wrong about many things. Is it a wonder that people don't trust them?
* The media is the boy who cried wolf. They spent the last 5 years hyperventilating about Orange Man to the point that anything they say now is viewed through a partisan lens. Sorry, but if public trust is frittered away on political motives, don't cry now that you're telling the truth this time.
* The medical establishment seemed desperately against even trying alternative medical treatments (HCQ, Ivermectin) due to the vaccines emergency use authorization being tied to no treatments being available. How would a normal person react to the idea that there's a possible alternative treatment from a cheap already tested drug? You'd express some hope and be willing to try it, but express doubts about the treatments due to the limited studies available that don't show good enough results. Instead, we get a pile of propaganda labeling a legitimate medical drug as only a "horse dewormer".
* The focus is not on health and safety (which should be the goal), but only vaccination. Millions of people have had Covid and have natural antibodies: why isn't Covid antibody testing a suitable substitute for vaccination? Has even one health leader recommended steps to lose weight and get some sunshine for instance despite the clear worse Covid health outcomes for fat people with Vitamin D deficiencies? Or take NYC's draconian vaccine requirements to visit a ball game as an example. You're not allowed to attend a game if you're not fully vaccinated, but you can walk from the ballpark to a vaccination clinic, get "the jab (TM)", and immediately go attend the same ballgame even though the science says you're not immune. Everything about public policy is oddly specific about urging vaccines and incredibly creepy right now.
> The medical establishment seemed desperately against even trying alternative medical treatments (HCQ, Ivermectin) due to the vaccines emergency use authorization being tied to no treatments being available.
No, they have always been against use of drugs that have not been shown useful. That is the job of the FDA. It seems you aren’t aware that they did approve some treatments? Didn’t really affect the vaccine development, since the two aren’t really that dependent: their goal is to promote the best option.
> Has even one health leader recommended steps to lose weight and get some sunshine for instance despite the clear worse Covid health outcomes for fat people with Vitamin D deficiencies?
Yes, they are surprising reluctant to engaging in victim-blaming. You aren’t the only person who heard these may be helpful; I think it was pretty widely popularized since the beginning that poor health is a risk factor.
> why isn't Covid antibody testing a suitable substitute for vaccination?
As I noted elsewhere, in many jurisdictions it is, as is testing.
In fact, as the very article upon which you are commenting notes, under the new OSHA rules those who do not want to get vaccinated can simply take a test once a week instead!
I admit, some mornings I have a bit of dry mouth, but after my morning coffee I always have enough spit to hock a loogie into a cup. For science and the greater good.
It's still the case in most (all?) of the US. However, it's generally pretty well accepted that the documentation requirements are lax and that parents can opt out for a variety of reasons.
When I was in school (both K-12 and college), my schools just accepted a paper document (trivially forgeable) that stated what vaccines I had received and when.
No, when you were a youth enough people were vaccinated that the RE dropped to almost nothing, meaning there were no breakouts. They never gave 100% immunity.
They were also more numerically effective at keeping people from turning into a carrier, but they had the benefits of decades of tuning.
If vaccines never gave immunity how come people who had the natural immunity from having the disease naturally were not required to be vaccinated? Actually even in my older years all I had to present as a proof of vaccination to the US government was my blood with antibodies.
I am not sure where did you get the 100% thing but for the record I am not claiming that. What I am noticing is that it used to be an objective criterion for the inoculation, seemingly based on the concept of immunity.
I got the "100% thing" when I said it in the first post, and you started responding "if vaccines don't give immunity", yada yada. In response to me saying tehy don't give 100% immunity.
Some states (including big ones like California and NY and conservative ones like Mississippi and West Virginia) have no exemptions to school vaccine requirements other than medical exemptions.
California used to have more exemptions and they were used heavily by new age/hippie types (i.e. not conservatives) to skirt vaccination requirements so the laws were changed recently.
Since the change there have been a number of doctors willing to grant medical exemptions to any who want them. [0] It isn't as much of an impediment as it appears.
The article you linked talks about a new law that invalidated those exemptions from that doctor because they were not supported by clinical guidelines.
It's just an example. There are lots more doctors who will give exemptions just to make parents happy. There is clearly friction between parents/doctors/state over this policy.
It's an example that you provided a source that says the exact opposite of your example. In California there is a new law designed to specifically combat your example and it's been quite effective.
The flu doesn't overwhelm hospitals in recent history. Covid-19 regularly causes governors to declare state-of-emergency in order to care for the massive number of people who need medical attention due to the disease.
I can't help but think like your comment is more intended provoke heated responses than encourage constructive discussion.
The flu definitely did something in 2017-2018 (although that was a standout year). However, that "overwhelming" was mostly dealt with by telling people to go home and take theraflu (and OTC medication). As in, literally a press at the ER/admitting, which resulted in people needing to be examined before they were turned away. And doctors/nurses had to work overtime to do that!
But the ICU beds never got overwhelmed. In hospital treatment never failed.
The response then was "if you have a flu, call your GP who will just prescribe you the medicine over the phone". The exact same situation that most non-COVID patients have been in for months.
Here in Quebec they were overwhelmed. Actually our hospitals were constantly at over 100% capacity, and were almost empty during most of the pandemic. Even at the peak of covid they weren't as full simply because most of the critical cases died in nursery homes or at home before reaching a hospital, thanks to the negligence of the government.
Smoking kills 500,000 people per year in the US - which is only slightly less then COVID at current rates - I don't see anyone rushing to shut that down.
Heart disease kills 650,000 per year, but there is still a McDonalds and Taco Bell on every corner.
There are absolutely enormous anti-smoking adversing and education campaigns. Cigarettes are mandated by law to have very specific packaging that loudly lists the risk of death. Large taxes are placed on them. In a great many places you are not allowed to smoke in public. Smokers have higher health insurance premiums and cannot access certain kinds of medical care like various organ transplants. Selling a cigarette to a child is a crime. Exposing children to second hand smoke can be abuse.
And yes, there are a large number of people who sue Cigarette manufacturers for their role in the deaths of these people with the attempt of completely destroying the industry.
The could save the lives of 500,000 per year if they just forbid the sale. Why do you suppose the 500,000 that die from smoking and the 500,000 that die from COVID are treated differently?
If you come to my workplace and smoke indoors and refuse to stop, you'll be fired. At this point, I'd wager that the large majority of jobs in the US ban smoking indoors at the workplace. There are also various state (and perhaps federal?) laws that prevent indoor smoking in a great many locations.
Clearly I was talking about getting fired for smoking in the privacy of your own home/car etc. Restrictions on locations of smoking are not even close to national Jab or Job policy.
Then get weekly tested. That's also allowed. That is a mechanism of ensuring that you are not harming others while allowing you to do whatever the heck you want on your own time.
And when that option gets removed in a few months (already being mused by DC talking heads) will you be singing a different tune? I doubt it. You can go straight to hell, I hope my unvaxxed cooties scare the shit out of you and your demented ilk. Funny how only the vaccinated live in fear.
Evil never recognizes itself as evil. That was the lesson people still haven't learned after WWII--everyone was an enlightened good-guy, especially the eugenicists purifying humanity.
OSHA limits workplace exposure to some smoking products like CO (which can motivate employer policies on smoking that restrict the behavior); many states have more specific limits on workplace smoking. These reduce the employability of unwilling or unable to restrain their smoking.
The difference being that people's general livelihoods are not being affected by these campaigns and requirements. The choice is still available to people even if there are restrictions on use and distribution. That is not the case with the vaccine.
In my state, if I work at a restaurant and I smoke indoors on the job that is against the law. A tremendous number of jobs ban indoor smoking among employees and will absolutely fire you if you don't comply.
A) Typically ban smoking indoors because the state has banned smoking indoors
B) Also typically provide areas for smokers outside the building in compliance with local regulations. Are those places generally outside? No. Is the onus of responsibility on the business should an employee smoke inside? No, the employee is the one that would face the consequences, including possible termination and/or criminal charges. A business doesn't have much in the way to worry about.
There is no such provision for the vaccine. You either need to get the vaccine to continue working there, get tested every week, or find a different job. This is also without taking into account two things:
1) While the testing is offered according to OSHA, with potential fines up to 14k per instance what are the odds that employers are actually going to offer that to their employees? You actually, as a business, face less fines for leaving a piece of paper in plain sight that has someone's SSN, Name, and Address than you do for not potentially following this regulation.
2) That we are also looking at good odds of the testing option going away. It's not an option for federal employees, I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that it will be going away for those under this mandate in the near future.
They should introduce scales in addition to big events, since we know the obese are the main ones that overflow the hospitals. Pandemic over 1.5yrs now.. Plenty of time to do your job and lose weight.
Haha! That is the perfect and natural conclusion - want to see a movie? Or attend the big game? First we need to check your temperature and weigh you in.
The IRS can be in charge of making sure every American purchased at least one ADA approved toothbrush, submit your proof with your tax return.
We can give ration books for processed meat products - if you can’t choose wisely then the state will choose for you.
You know what kills more than COVID? Sugar which causes cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. If we're going to go after COVID for the havoc it causes, there's a long list of similar issues that could be tackled with the same type of mandate.
I don't look forward to our health-police state we apparently decided was a great idea. Well we didn't decide, because that would have required congress to pass a law. This was just some old man skipping congress, likely knowing this will be overturned by the Supreme Court, but desperately needing to change the national debate away from Afghanistan.
Downvoted because you assert a simplistic and erroneous equivalence between damage caused by sugar consumption and that caused by a communicable disease.
If you eat sugar, you don't endanger others' health. If you don't get vaccinated, you put others at risk. See the difference?
Heart disease kills more people than covid because heart disease is an umbrella term for thousands of conditions, while covid-19 is one disease. Same for cancer, there are hundreds of types of cancer.
Why not prevent such cancers in the first place? Forbidding sales of sugar, cigarettes, and trash food would go a long way to prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Sh*t happens, you can't have a vaccine for everything.
If flu vaccines were paid for entirely by the government I'd imagine that mandating companies hold onsite influenza vaccine clinics yearly would be largely uncontroversial and fairly effective.
When this all started and the stats for influenza deaths came out (usually as a poor attempt to downplay the seriousness of COVID) I was shocked at my own ignorance as to the effect of influenza. I'd previously tried to but been inconsistent in getting my flu shot, but now that I understand the human cost that's changed for me.
It amazes me that people would be hesitant to get it and that there'd even be need to mandate it now. None of the same arguments can be made against the flu shot that can be made against the COVID vaccine (and in fact if we had yearly COVID vaccines those arguments would be moot there as well), but I'm sure we'd have a ton of vaccine deniers there, which really just proves it's ideology and feelings over any sort of real concern.
I've said this in another thread, but many I've talked to who don't want the vaccine are hesitant because of the accelerated timeline. A typical vaccine goes through 3 phases of clinical trials, with phase 1 lasting 1-10 years, phase 2 lasting 2-3 years, and phase 3 lasting 2-4 years.
That means you have anywhere from 5 to 17 years worth of data to look at and determine if there are long-term effects.
And that's what I meant by "and in fact if we had yearly COVID vaccines those arguments would be moot there as well" - in a few years the "it's rushed" argument (which I understand to be a misunderstanding of the vaccine approval process - just because it usually takes a process two decades to complete doesn't means it's less trustworthy if it completes in a year under different circumstances) stops holding water.
At some point you have enough money, as a famous beloved man once said, and issues like agency become far more important (he didn't say that last part).
Mississippi might be a poor state, but its GDP is still higher than most European countries.
Net GDP? Mississippi is a small state, why would you compare net?
And its economy per capita is somewhere between Israel's and Slovenia's, hardly bad economies. And this from a state where more than half the kids grow up in small rural schools.
I don’t think most people have an issue with voluntary vaccination. The problem is when nefarious actors use the situation to create a surveillance state, social credit system, and then exclude people from doing simple human things like eating at a restaurant.
>If that exists, it existed before COVID, and vaccinations against COVID certainly haven't changed that.
Australia is taking it to the next level and using covid as an excuse. Do you believe that they will end their programs in 5 years when all of this is over?
>Are you referring to mandates? These have been a thing, in the U.S., for many decades
Vaccine passports are starting to be required to go to concerts, grocery stores, ball games, etc. If you do not do what the state wants you to do you will become a second class citizen with restrictions. This is similar to the social credit system in China.
>Vaccine mandates have excluded people from things far more important than restaurants, such as education, for many decades. This is not new to COVID.
No one is restricted from education. You can go to a private school or get an exemption.
For example, requiring almost everyone to get a vaccine? That's not new. That's been happening for decades.
The only difference is there's a new vaccine that needs to be rolled out to everyone, as quickly as possible.
Most people get their mandatory vaccines as children, in a staggered way.
Because of the current situation, it's happening all at once, and the restrictions that enforce the vaccine are also being changed, based on the age of the people required to get the vaccine. What am I missing here?
When was it common to prevent people from entering a restaurant unless they were vaccinated with a vaccine that itself had only been developed 15 months prior?
Apparently, in the past, the Supreme Court even allowed knocking down people's doors in order to force vaccinations.
"That was a relatively easy no for the court. In a 7-2 ruling in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, it decided that jurisdictions do have the right to require people to get vaccinated. Back then, the government was much more forceful about it, knocking down people’s doors to get them vaccinated, the New York Times says."
This meme about “Jacobson vs. Massachusetts” doesn’t seem as strong an argument as the useful idiots believe. It’s an example of the court affirming the right of a State Legislature. It says nothing about the right of the executive branch of the federal government to forbid private transactions between employers and employees, unless the employee submits to a medical procedure mandated by executive order.
I’m sure the argument falls apart in many other ways. You can probably find the counter arguments in the same Twitter thread where you found your talking points – just make sure to unhide the tweets containing them.
The poster above was replying to a comment about mandates to enter restaurants. Those mandates have been entirely state directed. So it does not fall apart at all.
You're comparing denying education to children to denying non-essential services, such as restaurants, to adults. One is an essential right, the other is not.
If anything the restrictions people are putting in place to enforce the vaccine mandate have been less extreme. As workplace mandates get rolled out, this will become more even, as the right to work is comparable to the right to an education.
As I tried to communicate before, curtailing basic rights in order to enforce vaccinations for everyone is not new. The only difference is that these usually happen based on age, instead of happening to everyone, all at once.
As in most such trade-offs, the "cost to freedom" and "infringing of rights", to the extent they actually exist, factor into the cost/benefit decision of whether or not to ultimately go through with the mandate
since everybody has their own opinion on where that balance is, there will always be individuals unhappy with what decision makers decide
aside from the trade-off discussion above, it looks like you also have opinions about the constitutionality of this move
it is, of course, totally okay to have an opinion on that, but an opinion does not necessarily grant decision power, or even veto power, so ultimately you aren't the one who gets to decide what constitutes a right, and you aren't the one who gets to decide what constitutes a violation or an infringement of a right
I'm not trying to slam you here, because I am also not the one who gets to decide that -- I'm just one of hundreds of millions of Americans, the majority of which do not have a problem with this move
now, of course, if someone/you believes this move is an unconstitutional violation of rights, they/you can bring it to SCOTUS, who will let them/you know if they/you are right
and if SCOTUS does ultimately say that this specific mandate is unconstitutional, then of course I agree with you that such a decision should be respected unless and until We The People change the constitution, which would be okay, too
No I’m simply rejecting your framing of the discussion. Rights are not a question of votes. It is not up for deciding democratically. To frame the question this way is to fundamentally misunderstand how rights work.
it does -- SCOTUS is the one who will decide whether or not you are correct when claiming this move is a violation or an infringement on constitutional rights
I can't keep repeating the same thing over and over again
Just to be extra clear — the constitution does not grant rights. It acknowledges rights that were “endowed by our creator.” They exist by default, and they… oh, you know, the thing…
> Just to be extra clear — the constitution does not grant rights
Just to be clear, it absolutely does establish such rights in law and thereby grant them as legal rights. It may be that some of authors and ratifiers (and some current constituents) of the Constitution have a (quasi- or literally) religious belief about the metaphysical preexistence of and/or independent ethical universal necessity of exactly such rights (or a super- or subset of them) against any legitimate government, but that's...largely immaterial except in terms of arguments between people sharing such views as to what rights should be established in law, or social science analysis of why the particular rights chosen were established in the Constitution.
That is certainly one theory of government, but it is not the only one, or probably even the most popular one. For instance, we have many laws that infringe free speech rights, and the great majority of people are perfectly fine with that. Your platonic ideal of “rights” isn’t the way rights actually work in the real world.
> For instance, we have many laws that infringe free speech rights, and the great majority of people are perfectly fine with that.
I think you'll find that most people who are okay with the laws you are referencing likewise disagree that those laws infringe free speech rights, rather, they view them as operating in a space outside of the proper conception of the right to free speech; the complexity isn't as much in the operation of rights as in the parameters of rights.
let me weigh in as one of the above sample points to say, that sounds like "sometimes that right can be infringed" with more words, which yeah, I am okay with
an alternate interpretation with the exact same implications might be "that right isn't absolute", which, yeah, I am okay with
ultimately it's just semantics that fails to meaningfully address GP's comment
If, as real property analogy, I have fee simple title to a parcel part of which is subject to utility easement, the utility company’s access within the scope of the easement is not an infringement of my right of exclusive control, it is outside of the scope of that right.
Similarly, most people who support laws that you see as “infringing” on the right of free speech who agree that a right with that name exists view the definition of the scope of that right more narrowly than the people who see the law as an infringement.
> you've twice said "most people" don't view the "fire in a theater" analogy to be a limitation on a right,
No, I haven't.
In fact, I’ve said nothing in this thread about that analogy (and nothing at all about it, IIRC, on HN except [in summary form] that it has fuck-all to do with the actual law, either now or when it originally appeared as dicta in an abomination of a decision.)
Nor have I said anything about what “most people” view as a “limitation” on a right. What I’ve said is about that most people who support a given law that others characterize as an “infringement” of the right do bot view it as an infringement, but as an act outside the scope of the meaning of the right.
> yet here I am, one of those people
Even if literally everything you said preceding this wasn't false, “one” ≠ “most”, except in a particular degenerate case where it is also “all”.
so far, of the data you've presented plus the data we see here, the sample size is 1, me, and 100% of respondents disagree with your proposition, so it's unclear where you are getting "most" from -- but let's ignore all that and grant you the point for now
if I am understanding you correctly, you are saying there is a difference between society viewing something as outside the boundaries of a right, versus society viewing something as an allowed, permitted-by-society infringement on a right
if we assume that is true, then what are the implications to OP's post?
e.g. the vaccination mandate can be presented as either "outside the boundaries of the right" for whatever right those protesting the mandate cite, or an allowed, permitted-by-society infringement on that right
"We violate rights therefore it is fine to violate rights"
The whole idea of rights is that they cannot be violated, period. There's no reason to even have for example a UN Declaration on Human Rights if they can just be violated for Good Reasons™. Rights are absolute or they don't exist.
You miss my point. It doesn't matter if it has never happened, that just means we have failed ourselves. What matters is defining the concept of rights, exploring what they mean and what they are. I'm not talking about if they exist in practice in any specific country, I'm talking about "what are rights?"
Rights are things reserved for individuals to hold unilaterally, sovereign over them, no democratic process or other consideration can take them away. That's the whole idea. That's at the core of the definition of the concept. Without that, the concept of rights doesn't exist.
Influenza is not shutting down the country and making us miserable. It's a much less disruptive disease. Just because you don't want to get a jab doesn't mean society should shut down for you. That's why this should be done through employers and other methods requiring you not participate if you won't participate in something to help society. If you don't want to get a jab don't work for them. Easy choice. Start your own Jab Free Lawn Service.
After I lose my job I plan to be a company of 1 working on my SaaS or doing contract work... but I'm not confident that restrictions won't get harsher the more that people get vaxxed. The vaccines will work less and less, and the unvaxxed will be blamed more and more, leading to them being treated as criminals.
At what point does the US government freeze my bank account? At 95%? 98% vaccinated? I'm planning to leave the country before then.
