One of the reasons we find ourselves even in such a predicament is so odd: while governments the world over were (and are) quite willing to put very strong curbs, shut-downs etc. in place, they are hesitant to generally mandate vaccination. So now we are in these proxy campaigns on vaccinations.
Of course, one could argue that governments should not/cannot mandate vaccination, but then we also generally accept that governments can send you off to die in wars. Generally speaking, this whole mess actually brings some much deeper issues on state vs the individual to the surface. Those are the ones that will eventually need proper debate much more than finer points on immunology.
It would look like this: people get dragged out of their houses by armed men, and are forcibly injected while screaming and being held down. "We also send people off to war" is not a sufficient argument for removing the right to bodily autonomy.
Edit: oh, and probably you wouldn't get to see any videos of it online, because it's anti-vaccination content. Haha.
yet we force our children to be vaccinated in school in order to be part of society.
we also force other things that impinge on personal liberty, such as wearing seatbelts, getting car (and medical) insurance, etc.
I can see the argument that this is a slippery slope, such as "well, the common good dictates that I get this neuro implant to ward off the 2157 neurovirus", and unfortunately, the short answer is "it depends on the context".
Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
as with war measures or other emergency measures, personal liberty has historically been set aside for the common good. I don't see this going away, nor should it.
The conversation should be how to draw the right balance, so that, when the emergency is over, we return to some modicum of personal liberty, while still preserving the common good.
In some cases, it means that the mandate becomes the accepted practice (e.g., child vaccinations). In others, we would hope, personal liberty returns (e.g., habeas corpus).
TL;DR: it is contextual, rather than dogmatic and a-priori
> yet we force our children to be vaccinated in school in order to be part of society.
It's important to note that this isn't some worldwide, universal practice. Many countries, such as the UK, do not have vaccine mandates to enter their school system. There are also different rules in different U.S. states. It's also quite unfair to compare vaccines that have 1-3 doses to essentially vaccinate children for a lifetime against horrible and deadly diseases to a vaccine that needs endless boosters for a disease which presents very little risk for children or immune adults. My child isn't required to get an annual flu shot to go to school and I don't see how this is much different.
So I agree it is contextual and I think this is the proper context.
Also, all of these vaccines that ARE mandated for children against said horrible and deadly diseases were tested for YEARS prior to becoming mandatory to ensure that they are safe for children.
It is impossible to have that dataset for the COVID vaccines. The time has not elapsed yet. The trials have not been done. They are rushing to approve them in a sense of emergency, which I do understand. I do also acknowledge that the data so far is promising! I certainly hope that the vaccines are safe for children and that we can use these going forward in the future.
But I want the process followed; the full 3-5 year trial test before these are mandated. The emergency push for this towards children would be different if COVID was killing the same % of children that it kills the very old. But the data is overwhelming clear the world over: children do not die from COVID; well over 99% have no deaths or long term issues.
>Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
Is this even true anymore? Delta is highly contagious and the vaccines are leaky, thus it is not obvious that the effective R0 of Delta will be less than one assuming a fully vaccinated population. We already know that vaccinated people can still be infected, and not at minuscule rates, and once infected they are similarly contagious as an unvaccinated person. If Delta is endemic now, blaming the unvaccinated for the ongoing pandemic is just false.
It’s not true, because I know people with children under 5 who are prepared to socially isolate until their kids are able to get the vaccine because they believe you have a >50% chance of hospitalization due to COVID.
Some people are playing the long game and blaming vaccine holdouts, which in cases like this is irrational (but who said people are rational).
>Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
I think the challenge here is the media and the government are heavily promoting the MESSAGE that vaccine holdouts are screwing things up for everyone.
But the truth is that they are not. The unvaccinated are unvaccinated at their own choice. If they die from not being vaccinated, that's their problem.
I'm open to having triage laws at a hospital where, if they are overwhelmed with the unvaccinated, they can be sidelined for others coming in with other needs. The unvaccinated do have this strain on the medical system and it cannot be ignored. As many have said, the DEATHS from Delta and most of the hospitalized CASES from Delta are indeed among the unvaccinated.
But I think the right to chose is worth the cost.
Delta is also spreading around among the vaccinated. It is indeed true that Delta cases for the vaccinated are far more mild. Almost none result in hospitalization, never mind in death.
But Delta is endemic, vaccinated or not. For the first year of this virus, there NEVER was the assumption we could eradicate it entirely. It's a Coronavirus like the common cold; it WILL be endemic. There never was any other outcome once it passed into the millions of cases world wide.
The left's fantasy of authoritarian control and creating a perfect world from harm is simply unobtainable.
The common good is to learn to deal with this, as we do the flu. Reopen, learn, make the choices you think are best and deal with the consequences. This nanny state of lockdown to try to achieve the impossible is stupid, and turning tyrannical in it's pursuit of a utopia that cannot be had.
>yet we force our children to be vaccinated in school in order to be part of society.
Here's what's different: mandating it for everything else. It seems disingenuous to treat the documentation/mandate requirements between countries, public schools, and your local pub as equivalent.
>e also force other things that impinge on personal liberty, such as wearing seatbelts, getting car (and medical) insurance, etc.
"we do it for these other things" is something that sounds like an argument, but actually isn't. Does it make sense for this scenario, with this virus, at this point into the pandemic, and with these tradeoffs? If anything, saying "you've lost liberty elsewhere" is an argument for fighting tooth and nail for the bits that remain.
>the short answer is "it depends on the context".
I think you nailed the crux of the problem and the disconnect between people.
"The context" is wildly different depending on your disposition. For a large swath of the population, the 'context' is that COVID is not an existential threat which warrants the suspension of liberty. For others, the 'context' is that COVID represents such a threat to public health that personal liberty can be traded away.
We're doomed to fight, because each side finds the other reprehensible, and one side is trying to take away the liberty of the other.
>Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
This is categorically false. The unvaxxed aren't the ones preventing you from doing anything. They don't have the power to do so! The government is holding us all hostage and continuously shifting the goal post. Right now, it has been moved to the unvaxxed. Just as before it was about the curve, then controlling case numbers, then acquiring the vax, then reaching minimum vax numbers, now blaming all woes on those unvaxxed. If we look at Australia, maybe we can predict where the post will move next.
>The conversation should be how to draw the right balance, so that, when the emergency is over, we return to some modicum of personal liberty, while still preserving the common good.
For it to actually be a conversation, you have to accept that there are people with a different world view from you, and that they're not wrong, nor an enemy which is holding society hostage. Presumably everyone on this site can read a graph. We looked at the same data and came to different conclusions.
replying to this comment, even though actually applies to multiple replies to my parent comment.
> This is categorically false. The unvaxxed aren't the ones preventing you from doing anything. They don't have the power to do so!
That itself is categorically false. unvaxxed folks provide a tremendous wealth of externalities, such as undue burden on the healthcare system, behavioral and legal changes that require masking due to lack of critical mass in vaccinations, etc.
But, to get to the crux of your arguments:
you do have the personal liberty to not vaccinate. That is not being taken away from you.
However, you do not have the privilege of making it a protected class (which is really what you are talking about).
If you choose not to be vaccinated, you can:
- home school your children
- self-employ and self-insure
- self-medicate and avoid the healthcare system entirely
etc..
Now, none of this is practical in reality, but never at any point is your choice to remain unvaccinated impinged upon.
You simply don't have as many career or social options as you would like, equivalent to being unvaccinated as a protected class.
And that is a horrendous idea (i.e., being a protected class). You can't have it both way... personal liberty often comes as great personal cost. If you truly walk the walk, then be prepared to pay the cost.
>That itself is categorically false. unvaxxed folks provide a tremendous wealth of externalities, such as undue burden on the healthcare system, behavioral and legal changes that require masking due to lack of critical mass in vaccinations, etc.
Again, it's not the unvaxxed doing that to you. That's who you're currently being told is what's preventing you from returning to normal. And again, the last last 18months have been an ever shifting goal post of "if group X would do then..." or "if we had just done Y then..." and yet here we are. Too bad HN doesn't have RemindMe!, as we could check back in a few months post mandate to see what dastardly group/cause/issue is the problem this time.
Those "tremendous wealth of externalities"? That's called living in a society. There's no getting around it. Lots of negative, bad individual choices/actions have Nth order effects on everyone else. Americans specifically make a lot of very, very bad choices over the course of decades that causes "undue burden on the healthcare system" (pick you fav from the CDC's health report). Just because they're not as visible and 1st order as COVID doesn't mean they're not there and a massive portion of the hospital's load.
>you do have the personal liberty to not vaccinate. That is not being taken away from you.
>never at any point is your choice to remain unvaccinated impinged upon.
Ok. Honestly, I don't know where people come from with this argument. "You don't have to, we'll just remove your ability to work, feed yourself, and pay for housing until you comply." These sorts of things are generally challenged because in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever. "You're free to choose size of the whip," where previously there was no beating involved, is not actually that great of a deal.
I don't think we're going to agree here, and that's fine.
There is one interesting outcome of this discussion, though:
Given our discussion, one of us has to bite the bullet on a particular point:
Artifact A:
> Those "tremendous wealth of externalities"? That's called living in a society. There's no getting around it.
Artifact B:
>These sorts of things are generally challenged because in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever. "You're free to choose size of the whip,"...
I will bite the bullet, and accept that unvaccinated people are not directly causing me harm (unless, for example, one punches me in the face). I will wave my hands and accept the externalities as simply "living in society", (even though, as societal beings, unvaccinated folks do have a significant detrimental effect...)
Accepting, for the sake of argument, that personal responsibility ends at what the individual does (rather than any 2nd to n-order effects, i.e., "externalities"), then it also means that the argument "in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever." doesn't hold, since no one individual is holding a syringe up to you and forcing you to take it.
again, can't have it both ways.
Thus, if we accept that we are societal beings, and externalities matter (e.g., 2nd to n-order effects), then my right to swing my fist ends at your face, and vice versa, directly and to a tolerable n-th degree.
Just as an employer can choose not to hire you for toxic behavior or any numerous reasons (particularly at at-will states), the only thing they cannot use as a factor is anything that makes you a protected class.
You are effectively proposing that the choice to be unvaccinated should be a protected class.
That is what I disagree with. There is no justification to make it a protected class.
It's a privilege to drive, not a right, thus it's reasonable that there are conditions around that.
You do have a right to an education but, at least in my state, you can completely exempt your child from vaccines and still send them to public school. But even if you don't, you have the right to educate your child in other ways (i.e. home school).
Arguably; drafts do look like that. I mean, I can't say how many people scream while being dragged off to fight in a war, but the concept is very similar.
There hasn't been a draft in most of our lifetimes. There also hasn't been a virus as deadly as this one.
So, maybe the better frame of reference would be: nationally mandatory vaccinations can be alright and make sense, under the same argument that allows the draft to be alright and make sense; we just need some quantitative framework under which it can be instituted.
For example: if covid becomes endemic (which seems to be likely), and we institute mandatory vaccinations for it during this phase of the pandemic, pre-endemic; the argument for mandatory vaccinations may make sense today, given the level of infections and deaths that are occurring, but will "mandatory boosters" make sense in three years when the level of deaths is (hopefully) far lower and more in-line with the seasonal flu?
The critical difference between a draft and mandatory vaccinations is: most people understand the general need for, but also hate the implementation of, the draft. Its a duty; its not desirable. In a democracy, this, alongside the massive cost and logistics effort of maintaining such a large army, acts as a very natural counter-balance to the impetus for people in power to abuse it.
Vaccines do not have such a counterbalance. They're very cheap per-shot, relative to the draft. The logistics are already in place and have successfully operated at scale. And, most concerning; many people want mandatory vaccination. No one should want it. Its an ugly necessity, but far too many people don't see the ugliness.
If you're reading this and need help to see the ugliness: Our government experiences corruption, like any government. Moderna's stock value has gone up by ~2,000% since the beginning of the pandemic. This, alone, is an obscenely powerful bias for people in key positions of power to push for more vaccination, irrespective of their need or efficacy; for example, maybe you assemble a panel of experts, who tell you vaccine boosters aren't necessary, then overrule the panel and say they're necessary anyway [1].
> And, most concerning; many people want mandatory vaccination. No one should want it.
The alternative is overflowing hospitals, masks forever and the restrictions on movement. I 100% want those who force this on society to stopped. The last 18 months have already been tremendously ugly. A vaccine mandate is far less so.
It is, if nothing else, hopefully proof to anyone with eyes that the Left is just as susceptible as the Right to turning something which should mostly be a medical decision, into a political one. Let alone the possibility that it could be corruption (which I feel is unlikely, but not impossible).
Much ire was thrown at Trump during his Presidency for filling many government positions with Yes-men who would blindly fall in line with the party.
Now, we have Biden's White House ranting non-stop about Boosters, a significant amount of concern that the Federal government, as a whole, has no unified message on whether boosters are even necessary and who they're necessary for, a CDC panel saying they're not necessary, and the head of the CDC falling in line with the Biden White House against medical advice. Its awfully similar to what Trump was lambasted for.
Ultimately the position I fall back on is: These decisions are medical decisions. Politics (and, it follows, corruption) need to be removed. When you take issues to the national level, politics and corruption will ABSOLUTELY, undoubtedly, in 100% of instances, be involved, no matter how well-intentioned the cause is. Thus, these issues need to stay out of the federal government, and be handled among the smallest number of people possible. Vaccination, for me and my children, may be something my doctor recommends; it may be something my school system requires; maybe even my workplace and the state has a say. But the discussion inevitably reaches a lower and lower quality as more voices and mandates and requirements are added.
The counter-argument to this is: Vaccination is only strongly effective if we reach some level of herd immunity, so we need federal mandates. Unfortunately, that's irrelevant; we live in a democracy, and if you push against the other side too hard, they push back, your mandate gets repealed, and your yes-men lose their re-election.
May point was: you already have only a limited right to bodily autonomy.
But that aside: I think pushing people in some (oblique) ways towards vaccination while at the other hand not mandating it sends a somewhat confused message.
I'm not sure if there is really any widespread acceptance in any democratic country that the government can just decide to send anyone to a foreign war. Every western soldier who died in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. volunteered. I think that if the US government just decided to reintroduce conscription back in 2003 it would had went down much worse than when they were sending conscripts to Vietnam and there'd probably be even much more resistance to that these days.
I’m not sure if you are familiar with Stop-loss [1] but it’s been used to some extent in pretty much every conflict over the last 30 years to keep people serving involuntarily.
Which country has given up its ability to conscript? Not just chosen not to exercise it. I would call that general acceptance of that policy. In a specific case, whether to exercise on that policy is a more complex choice.
There are many things governments in theory could legally do that would not be generally accepted by the public. I can hardly imagine a realistic scenario under which any western country could deploy conscripts in an overseas war without extreme opposition.
Indeed. I rationalized it so: COVID is a wild enemy that will do whatever to survive at our own expense. We need to fight and wage all-out war, conscript, treat the wounded and comfort the widowed.
That is not rational at all. It's a manageable disease class with limited health impact on population, in death numbers comparable to strokes. It is not appropriate to compare it to war at all; in most places people are not afraid of COVID much.
It’s only manageable with heavy handed medical care and heavy handed containment to preserve care capacity. Have you been living under a rock or are you just trotting out talking points? Let me ask: how many deaths in the USA alone? How does it compare to KIAs in one of the many US wars? Please stop pretending you know what you’re talking about
For the whole year 2020, heart disease was 2x bigger killer (700 thousand) than COVID (350 thousand). Cancer was bigger killer still than COVID. Stroke was smaller than COVID - I was wrong about that.
COVID gets scary in the few months when it gets out of control, like in January [2]. Those trips are a reason to use some extraordinary measures to prevent next ones.
Yes, like every infectious disease with a high mortality rate and capable of overwhelming our healthcare infrastructure. And no, the world of professionals do care, as always. You’re talking about yourself
Of course, one could argue that governments should not/cannot mandate vaccination, but then we also generally accept that governments can send you off to die in wars. Generally speaking, this whole mess actually brings some much deeper issues on state vs the individual to the surface. Those are the ones that will eventually need proper debate much more than finer points on immunology.