I'm pretty much a high-modernist when it comes to vaccines - I think that having governments build sewage and create vaccines go into the same category of "damn useful for civilization". But it does involve curtailing liberties, and I just can't put it in a "fell good" category.

Requiring vaccination is "curtailing liberties".

Restricting movement due not being vaccinated is "curtailing liberties".

No shit. One can either be part of society or not. Society has minimum requirements if one wants to participate. One is free—exercise their liberty—to live as a hermit if they don't want to do either of these things. That's the price of admission of getting the benefits, whatever they may be, of interacting with other people. Added bonus, the rest of us don't need to hear about hermits complaining about their liberties then too.

Building sewage management infrastructure is not curtailing liberties. There is very little noise made about having to give up liberties because of the majority of other public works. Civilization decided that shitting on the sidewalk is not something that should be encouraged or condoned, so here we are with our sewage management infrastructure. We gain the freedom of not having to dig a hole and maintain an outhouse.

No one is giving up any "liberties" by getting vaccinated, but it's more likely they are acquiring liberties by getting vaccinated. At the very least it's the liberty of reducing the risk of dying.

This is all a "I don't want to do what you said I should do purely because you said it". Fine. The rest of us are at liberty to exclude or chastise these people.

This is exactly the kind of tone and comment I was speaking against. I am _pro_ vaccinations, I am _pro_ making them soft-mandatory, I was even pro other restrictions back before vaccines. All I said, in a rather moderate tone, is that I disagree with being happy about the downsides. Somehow in the kind of comments I'm speaking against, yours included, I don't see happiness that we're getting vaccinated per se. I don't see "yey, poeple won't be dying any more". I see a lot of "chastise these people".

I also see quite a lot of scare quotes and misrepresentation. I didn't say sewage was a restriction - I gave it as positive example. I didn't say (WHO would even say that?) that getting a vaccine is giving up liberties. That's stupid, really, it doesn't even make sense. I will say that not being able to do stuff without being vaccinated is a restriction. A worthy one, yes, and one I totally agree with, but by god, how can you even try to spin ... I'm not even sure what you're trying to spin, because the more I read your comment the more I realize it's just appeal to emotion and void of content.

Are you free to rant against categories of people? Yes. I just said it's not a nice thing to do, is all.

As a person waiting to get his booster shot next week, I find this quite concerning. Those liberties we had and were taken away from us. Nobody cares about people dying. I am sitting now next to my mom who 1 month ago was diagnosed with terminal secondary cancer after all her check-ups were cancelled last year. So yeah, nobody gives a damn about anything else than seeming virtuos and better than others online. But no one cares any more about any other diseases or other people that are suffering, it’s all social signaling for the rich and well off people to show how moral they are, all while their lifestyle is supported by those that can’t afford to have any liberties.

It's not about saving lifes, it's about getting re-elected.

You make it sound as if there is a fixed, god given set of rules for society. That's not the case. Societies rules are constantly being negotiated by society.

So your argument is not an argument at all. It boils down to "you have to follow the rules because you have to follow the rules".

I think society has opinions and ideas that evolve into ethics and morals that are represented in laws.

It’s not a secret. In this case, rights are curtailed to require vaccines. This is deemed acceptable. If you don’t like it, convince your country mates to change their mind. Or move to a country that feels differently. Or move to the wilderness.

I think it also varies from country to country as it varies quite a bit.

But negotiation often isn't occurring in good faith. There's way too much flat-earth- holocaust-denial- style arguments from those who "just don't want to be told what to do". Getting vaccinated doesn't take away someone's liberties; "I don't want to be told what to do" is not an argument against vaccination. Many of these people are just making noise, and it's getting old.

I'm not saying there aren't good arguments for not getting vaccinated, but it falls flat when those same people got vaccinated in order to attend public school or have state issued IDs or use passports or will bitch about a loved one dying because they failed to get vaccinated.

> There's way too much flat-earth- holocaust-denial- style arguments from those who "just don't want to be told what to do".

This is how you want the discourse to look like? Somebody puts an argument, and gets labeled flat earther.

Do you know Gell Mann amnesia? I shared an article the other day on facebook and got it flagged as "out of context". As it happens, it was something not out of context, just slightly against the mainstream. What do you think this did to my confidence in the mainstream?

And before you say that my article must have been wrong, let me remind you that the mainstream was against wearing masks 12 months ago. Hell, CDC was against wearing ffp2 masks... I don't know, 3 months ago?

Civil discourse and tone are much more important long term than just winning conversation points. Sure, go for points if you want. But every time you say things like "flat earth", you take a small chip out of the boat we're all in.

This style of dialogue is not welcome here. Try Reddit.

Let's try and keep it that way.

One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.

The cost of Pfizer is a lot more than the per shot cost, you need highly specialised storage and distribution due to the low temperature requirements.

Before mixing, the vaccine may be stored in an ultra-cold freezer between -80°C and -60°C (-112°F and -76°F). Vaccine may be stored until the expiration date.

Before mixing, the vaccine may be stored in the freezer between -25°C and -15°C (-13°F to 5°F) for up to 2 weeks. The total time vials are stored at these temperatures should be tracked and should not exceed 2 weeks.

So once they reach their destination they can be put in a normal freezer, which in turn are abundant and cheap.

It's not a negligible cost but it's far from highly specialized.

I had Astra, so did several people from my social circle. Hell, some took JJ being aware of its level of effectiveness.

The vaccines need to be stored at a low temperature - that's it. I doubt it adds more than €1 to the price.

FWIW, it is not feasible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 anyway since it can survive in certain types of animals as well. All the germs we eradicated thus far were limited to human hosts.

(Source: A German podcast that interviews professors of virology every week.)

Society already excludes many people due to expensive housing, education etc... Living as hermit in a van is not that bad. But society should not expect taxes from excluded people :)

Looking at social media it feels like too many people are celebrating because they've been given another opportunity to show how virtuous they are. They're not one of those people that oppose vaccines and progress, oh no. The clout associated with putting up pictures of you with a needle in your arm is probably the most off-putting thing I'd gotten to gawk at.

My assessment is similar to yours. The situation just kinda is. We've had a novel viral agent, what followed is what you'd expect of a society that optimised for lack of novel viral agents. Now the viral agent is mostly gone and we have two new taxes to show for it: further encumberement of civil liberties and more revenue for the pharmaceutical industry.

It's not a bad result but there's no big win to point at either

It contained a few key words/ideas, so it became immediately polarized. I guess given enough years we'll become inoculated against such failure modes, but meanwhile, it is what it is.

If you don’t want to be vaccinated or pay your taxes, you are, on some level, a danger to society.

Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? So in theory you could have some small degree of worry about your safety. Different people have different places they draw the line for an acceptable amount of worry vs an acceptable amount of freedom restrictions.

In (most of) the EU, it’s illegal to carry a weapon of any kind unless you have a reason to do so (ie, going hunting). You can’t even carry pepper spray.

To take it to the extreme, the law could force you to live in a little cell locked away from everyone. This would prevent you from being stabbed by someone else (except one of the guards).

Like I said, there's a tradeoff between security and freedom.

(As opposed to gun control.)

Use of it should constitute assault, which gets turned into legitimate self defense in various situations, just as if you were hitting someone.

Some of those bans and laws are just reasons to jail or fine people and do not in particular help with safety. After all, anyone can have a knife or martial arts on them anywhere for legitimate reasons, and you better have means to defend against these.

Also, I bet you're vaccinated against polio. Do people feel their freedom has been limited because of being vaccinated against polio?

I don't understand.

If we know that people who recovered from covid are effectively as if they were vaccinated, why do they have to wait until they have the privilege to be in the lucky age group to receive the vaccine before they can go visit a loved one they don't see for more than one year?

Are you assuming that everyone in the world is living in a privileged country where people as young as 30 can already access vaccines?

I read a lot from Americans complaining how bad their country was and all that, but hey, all my American coworkers got vaccinated and I can't visit my mom in Switzerland because she aged 68 just got her first shot yesterday. That's right, Switzerland not some third world country. Switzerland with all its pharma industry can't get the same vaccine production capacity and rollout throughput as your "utterly unorganized federal state that totally botched covid", as I often read Americans.

This is about what other countries want to restrict in terms of non-citizen's entering the country without isolation.

These are countries which have had a significant portion of their economy shut down for more than a year, so unsurprisingly they might want to ensure non-citizens who travel in have done something to limit the risk (even if that is isolating for 2 weeks).

You may say "ok, we don't have yet the beurocratic apparatus to accept natural immunity in our protocols and for the time being we're going to focus on vaccinated people, sorry".

You may not say "we want to force you to vaccinate, that's the whole point, duh"

That's a dangerous attitude. It feeds vaccine skeptics or denialists, who use this attitude as a proof that there is as much dogma in the "official scientific community" who are in big pharma's pockets. They are a bunch of nuts, but they are infecting otherwise reasonable people I know all around me.

Let's avoid setting up official policies and discourse tones which effective feed the trolls.

They are only going to let people in they want, and they don't want people who could spread the virus, or bring it in.

Besides they are allowing people in with natural immunity too - as defined by a positive antibody test.

(But it should be noted that many states are not doing as well)

There are also many diverse ways the individual states have handled restrictions, it will be interesting to see if some consensus will be reached regarding keeping restrictions or not.

My family is vaccinated, but I don't see why this should be forced on people. Anaphylaxis and Thrombosis are rare reported conditions after vaccination - some even causing deaths. Vaccination should be a choice.

"An unvaccinated worker set off an outbreak at a U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized." One vaccinated resident died.

https://www.businessinsider.com/kentucky-nursing-home-unvacc...

Some takeaways:

* Elderly, especially with underlying illnesses should be vaccinated.

* One vaccinated elderly person died, though there are not many details in the article.

* 90% or 74 out of 83 residents were vaccinated.

However, getting vaccinated should also help reduce the transmission of the disease to people who haven't yet had a chance to get a vaccination even though they could; the pandemic will end faster than if you let it run its natural course.

There may be a few people who can not be vaccinated (old and very sick), but it hardly seems appropriate to restrict billions of people just to protect those few. It would be more efficient to isolate them, which most of them probably already are (in care homes or hospitals).

Requiring certain vaccines for travel has been something that has existed for decades and was never controversial.

Also the comparison with other vaccines does not automatically make sense. All vaccines are not the same. At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. There is a reason why people are not simply being vaccinated against all possible diseases.

We mandate that people take all kinds of minor risks in life; that’s always been part of being in a society.

The reason vaccine advice is conservative is because anti-intellectualism and belief in conspiracy theories has gone off the charts and politicians now have to coddle these people. It’s a collective mental illness.

Scale and proportion is the reason. 7 per 1,000,000 risk of blood clotting if you are a woman between 18-49 (and basically no risk if you're a man or outside that range, or use one of the vaccines that have not shown this risk). This is on the level of shark attacks and getting hit by lightning. Actually getting COVID has more serious risks and a much higher rate of being affected by them.

We regularly ask of citizens to do things that have a 7 per 1,000,000 risk of injury; it's a reasonable ask.

What other risky things to we ask citizens to do, exactly? People certainly choose to do other risky things. But how many are mandated?

Anyway, I'm done feeding a troll account created today.

Well then good news, COVID-19 is "especially risky".

In any case, yes, both disease and vaccination have risks, that should be weighed against each other. Matters are complicated because risks differ among different age groups.