It's really not difficult at all to see how "public health" taking precedence over anything can very easily lead to government overreach that is unwarranted.
I get frustrated with antivaxxers not necessarily because they are against mandates, but because their arguments for not getting vaccinated are complete and utter nonsense.
I am vaccinated, advocate others getting vaccinated, have immunocompromised family, but am uncomfortable with mandated medical treatments.
What if you've already had Covid and recovered? The data seems a lot less certain about whether the vaccine is a clear advantage over the natural antibodies that you have from a natural recovery.
What if you genuinely have allergies or other issues that might cause serious complications with receiving a vaccine? People like this definitely do exist.
Those issues are both real. Alas, it's also tough to prove for certain that somebody is in one of those buckets and not making something up because they're afraid of the vaccine.
The antivaxx community is filled with people willing to take some vaccines but not others.
Random article on the subject: You can essentially break anti-vaxxers into two groups, says Tim Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta. The first consists of full-on disbelievers who make up somewhere between two and five per cent of the population, depending on which study you look at. Their minds won’t be changed. The second group — somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent of Canadians — is for what some now call the vaccine-hesitant. They may get some of the required vaccinations for their children, but not all of them. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/who-are-the-anti-vaxxer...
Philosophically, yes. Practically, no. If you are voluntarily unvaccinated because you’re a nutter or are lazy, you’re the same risk to the public.
"Oh I'm totally for vaccine, but not the one that went through full trials and helps stopping the actual pandemic going on right now, nope, that one is a no go better people keep dying when we could stop it"
At this point we have more data on COVID vaccinations than most prescription medications as their so widespread.
Which? Next to medical reasons there are none.
It's just selfishness and not caring about the greater good and health of society, your neighbours, colleagues, friends or family.
I'm not prejudging how an individual's assessment of risks and benefits might shake out and I personally feel it's not a huge deal either way. That said, I very greatly disagree with the sense of entitlement baked into the comment I'm responding to, e.g., that I and all others should collectively drop everything and abandon all personal preferences and goals to focus single-mindedly on defeating the virus. The flaws with the majoritiarian premise are at least three-fold. 1. We most certainly will not defeat the virus in any way-- history teaches that we will at best coexist with it. 2. The viral risks are not infinite and easily may be overshadowed in many cases by life circumstances-- I am not required to quit my life and livelihood to serve majority sensibilites or lack thereof. 3. Before this pandemic I had some sense that my choices are personal, sometimes private, and always mine-- the pandemic has made me realize those sentiments are not universal, but have not persuaded me I'm wrong.
This is SO dramatic! It's just a vaccine! It's done in less than an hour! Wearing a mask is not fucking hard! What happened to American tenacity and strength in the face of adversity? How do these things even make your life harder?
The risk of getting this due to an acute Covid infection is eight times higher than after getting the vaccination.
This is an emotional appeal that has been used to justify countless atrocities in countless civilizations. A rational society shouldn't be thinking in such blanket and qualitative ways
That is to say, judging an action solely by its reason is intellectually lazy; Especially because you can just interrogate the action and its effects themselves.
To make it clear: Saying getting vaccinated is dangerous because the 'greater good' is also used to justify atrocities seems like something profound, but it actually lacks any insight whatsoever.
Then say that, don't say "the greater good". The "greater good" means very different things to Nazis or Islamist terrorists. We should encourage people to say what they mean, not vague and meaningless phrases like "greater good".
If nobody got the covid vaccine, would things be better or worse across our society than they are now? Simple question, simple answer, but something you are ignoring and thus you aren't rational.
Unbounded utilitarian arguments can be used to justify any number of atrocities, and therefore must be bounded by human rights and other factors.
Ultimately, it comes down to what you are and aren't measuring when you are assessing "impact over the collective".
Anything complicated like this requires nuance.
Spock wants to have a word with you.
anything less is just selfishness and not caring about the greater good and health of society, your neighbours, colleagues, friends or family.
Not according to a recent Oxford study. Quite the contrary, actually.
https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/covid-19/covid-19-infection-survey/...
>Two doses of either vaccine still provided at least the same level of protection as having had COVID-19 before through natural infection; people who had been vaccinated after already being infected with COVID-19 had even more protection than vaccinated individuals who had not had COVID-19 before. [my emphasis added]
COVID vaccines aren't eligible for the VICP and have a laundry list of horrific side-effects, that's plenty of reason for any reasonable person.
> It's just selfishness and not caring about the greater good and health of society, your neighbours, colleagues, friends or family.
You can say the same about fat people, smokers, drinkers, and all other people who take unnecessary risks of any kind. They're all burdens on the healthcare system that reduce access and affordability for everyone else.
They cannot kill someone by walking by them in a grocery store.
This kind of hyperbole really damages the debate.
A “laundry list of horrific side-effects” sounds like there are known long-term problems that result from getting the vaccine.
This is simply not the case. There is a list of side effects, but it’s not long, and no reasonable person should consider them to be ‘horrific’.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/af...
2. Guillain-Barre syndrome
Yes, the chance of risks from Covid is orders of magnitude higher than the vaccine. People are still bad at it.
Politics didn't help the situation.
In recent years huge swath's of the united states have been suffering from another epidemic: the opioid crisis. It is well established that a major part of this epidemic was caused by many of the same major pharmaceutical companies that are now claiming to have developed a vaccine in record time.
What's sad is that this legitimate concern has been whipped up by one side into a completely irrational frenzy that no longer makes coherent sense. I don't trust big pharma companies as a general rule, but I also don't believe that micro chips are being implanted (or even could be) into a vaccine. So, imho, legitimate vaccine skepticism is transformed into insane conspiracy thinking.
What is also sad though is that the reaction against vaccine skepticism has been equally turned into an insane "what are you anti-science!?!" Pharmaceutical companies are complicit in the death of hundreds of thousands of individual over the last decade. Being skeptical of the claims of these companies is common sense, not anti-science. We're also seeing consist contradictions about safety and efficacy of the vaccine. There are already complex side effects and the break through rate among full vaccinated is much higher than initial claims.
For me personally the vaccine still makes sense, and it certainly seems like our best path forward as far as policy efforts to end the pandemic. However the current language and public discourse on the topic is ridiculous.
As an aside, according to random internet site, 1.7% of Americans have a phd.
When it comes to "consent", it's the same as the whole Apple CSAM ordeal. Why talk about consent when it's for the good of children?
As an analogy:
mRNA technology is NOT like sending a saboteur into a factory to change the blue prints / designs / masters records (=genes) of the factory.
Rather it is like dropping a bunch work instructions (RNA snippets) over the factory and have some workers (cells) pick them up and build the things described there-in.
mRNA tech isn't the same as CRISPR.
The worst that could happen is that a work instruction that we inject becomes self-replicating (a virus), but because it can't replicate to begin with it there is no way that it mutates to gain such an ability.
It's important to have that clear-headed discussion, not this elite arrogance that discussion and arguing the points is somehow bad for discourse or society.
People are rightfully skeptical of new pharmaceuticals based on new technology with zero long-term studies being not just approved and being sold, but also being required for basic activities in society like earning a living.
There is definitely an argument to be made about not being locked down forever, and finding a way forward despite endemic COVID. But vaccine passports, and accusations that anyone with a hint of hesitation is "anti-vaxx", is a terrible way to engage and broaden the tent so all concerns are heard and addressed.
This is lip service to make it seem like vaccine hesitant individuals have a legitimate argument when they actually don’t. It’s impossible to have a clear-headed discussion when the other side’s argument pretty much comes down to gut feel at best and government conspiracy at worst. If you are (oddly) skeptical of MRNA technology, then the J&J vaccine exists and is also free.
There are well over 100MM shots administered since April and the worst side effect as been a dozen blood clots in women who had a pre-existing condition that caused them. Anyone who tells you they aren’t safe is trying to sell you a bridge. If you want to argue against hard data, then you must have an actual data-backed argument or we can just assume you aren’t a serious person.
Thalidomide was perfectly safe, too, until kids started being born without arms and legs. Oops.
What are _you_ talking about?
2. No regulatory body in America ever claimed it was safe to use before the side effects were discovered.
I don’t see how the comparison is apt. The FDA doesn’t have a track record being too cavalier when it comes to public health so I don’t understand why you would bring up an example of the FDA doing their job to imply they aren’t doing their job
US regulatory bodies said that the COVID vaccines were safe before blood clotting and myocarditis were discovered.
> The FDA doesn’t have a track record being too cavalier when it comes to public health so I don’t understand why you would bring up an example of the FDA doing their job to imply they aren’t doing their job
You're a little too hung up on "The FDA". "The FDA" isn't a person. "The FDA" of 50 years ago isn't "The FDA" of today.
The CDC paused the rollout of J&J after fewer than 50 cases to do further research and understand what factors cause blood clots. Once understood they resumed the vaccine rollout.
By that same logic - Tylenol/acetaminophen is also known to cause liver problems in a small number of otherwise healthy individuals. Is your logic here that Tylenol should also be declared unsafe?
> "The FDA" of 50 years ago isn't "The FDA" of today.
By that very same logic then what does the distribution of Thalomide 50 years ago have to do with the FDA of today then?
I would suggest not taking what you see on TV and the internet as gospel and engage with a few folks in real life.
There are certainly people who you won't be able to have a discussion with, but you're not being that open-minded either by shutting down everything by declaring "they don't have a legitimate argument".
*Edit: The myocarditis issue is real. Please don't handwave away legitimate concerns because of lack of understanding and compassion.
Again you are playing lip service. If there are legitimate arguments you would list them. Either you don’t know them and you are carrying water for charlatans or they don’t exist. This kind of argument would not be tolerated in any other field of science. Can you imagine Einstein saying “The speed of light is constant for all observers but you need to talk to these people, who I won’t tell you who they are, to figure out why?”
I’ve had these discussions before and it almost always turns out the “blessed” arguments are just wordier statements of constantly debunked talking points
1) Concern over long term effects which we have no data on (legitimate but low probability in my estimation)
2) Natural immunity is slightly less effective than the vaccine against alpha variants, but still very robust. These people should therefore be exempt from the vaccine.
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On the policy side, the legitimate arguments/discussions I see are:
3) We should strive for a society where consent is obtained by changing minds, not force, even if this is extremely difficult.
4) Slippery slope concern- There is no hard limit or consensus on when public health outweighs bodily autonomy and other considerations.
5) Who owns the responsibility to ensure personal safety. (should the obligation fall on people who don't want to catch covid to avoid public spaces and take defensive action, or fall on people who could be spreaders in the public spaces)
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If it helps to have a productive discussion, I declare my tribe as vaccinated and encouraging others to get the vaccine.
2) This is a public policy problem. Let's say you allow this; then everyone, in lieu of getting an actual vaccine will just claim they had COVID already.
3) No one is getting forced to take the vaccine. Vaccine mandates just mean you can be prevented from entering certain federal buildings until you are vaccinated. This is not a new power - children have been mandated to get vaccines to enter public schooling. If you don't want to get a vaccine, then society has kindly asked you to not step on a plane.
4.) This is only a slippery slope to people born after the time where vaccines have pretty much eradicated most contagious diseases. Previous vaccine mandates for polio and chickpox did not lead the USG into forcibly inoculating children with super soldier serum. It's a slippery slope to you because you weren't around that last time this power was enforced.
5.) Following this logic - should the government be banned for giving you a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt? Should the government allow the sale of cars without airbags? After all if I drive safe why should I pay extra for seatbelts and airbags? The short answer is - we do these things because, you living in a society, can cause negative externalities. If you drive a car without seatbelts and airbags you cause not only danger to your passengers, but also to the emergency services system that has to pry you from your car. You are only "free" from your responsibility as long as you pledge to not visit a hospital and operate on yourself. Otherwise it's simply unfair that someone who could have gotten vaccinated should occupy an ICU bed from someone who cancer. The second you are in the ICU, your "responsible" decision now must fall on nurses, doctors and other patients.
Again, I want to stress, I do not think these are very strong or well-researched arguments against the vaccines at all. I hope I have answered your arguments non-combatively, but I want to point out I do not think these are strong or even well intentioned arguments now that we are more than a year into this pandemic. Only one of your arguments had to do with actual safety and public policy, and the rest I believe came down to your personal opinion of how things should be done. I'm sure you are a smart individual, and again I don't mean this in combative manner but I'm going to trust the people who have been studying this for years. Going back to my original comment, most arguments against the vaccine are "gut-feel" at best and not backed by any actual data.
2) I split the topics into scientific 1 & 2 vs political 3-5, and think this is more a question of science. If natural immunity is reasonably close to vaccination immunity, I think they should be treated the same (whatever that may be). This is the question that science can answer. For your implementation concern, positive covid test or antibody test would be a simple way to administer an equivalent immunity pass.
Questions 3-5 are political because they can not be answered by science or data. Science can inform the decision, but they come down to questions of values, morality, ect.
3) I agree nobody is being tied down and given a shot, and only wackos are advocating this. There is a scale for how hard society can incentivize or punish people until they get a vaccine. I personally think society has done a terrible job of informing people to change their mind, and skipped straight to the punishments, and am deeply uncomfortable with this.
4) I agree that past vaccinations were largely a success via eradication. I have not seen a success criteria stated for the covid pandemic, as eradication is unlikely. At what point will we stop ratcheting up control mechanisms? X deaths per year, sustainable hospital capacity of Y? Is any sacrifice warranted to prevent 1 death?
5) Again, this is political question, and reasonable can and do have different opinions on how much personal risk you can take on, and when the government should protect you from yourself. You brought up seatbelts, going on somewhat of a tangent, the things you described are not true negative externalities in the technical sense. They are cost society chooses to pay, and could simply choose not to. I could give a beggar $5 but that isn't an externality. If I make a rule that I will give every beggar I see $5, it still isn't an externality. If the beggar on the corner lowers my property value, that IS a negative externality because it is imposed on me and I have no control or choice. You can say that seatbelts and vaccines both reduce the cost to the social safety net. Lots of things would reduce costs, and we can choose to to pay them, or not, opposed to controlling people. I personally love seatbelts, but think that tickets for adults are unreasonable (different story for minors in their care, ect).
>I don't mean this in combative manner but I'm going to trust the people who have been studying this for years. Going back to my original comment, most arguments against the vaccine are "gut-feel" at best and not backed by any actual data.
With the exception of the first two, these arguments aren't backed by data because they aren't questions that can be answered by data. They are simply matters of opinion, and I think we would all be best served if we acknowledge this. At the end of the day, science can conclude that universal vaccination would reduce deaths, or save $X, but it cant answer question on what public policy should be. This will be different based a multitude of values in addition to deaths and money.
Opinions you disagree with (assuming they are not based on incorrect data) are not wrong, just different.
https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrou...
2.) I'll have to do more research, but I can only assume that natural immunity is not reasonably close to vaccination immunity which is why it's not an appropriate replacement. I saw a Fox News segment last night that said essentially natural immunity is a perfect solution, but I don't accept things from Fox at face value.
3.) States are literally paying people money to get vaccinated - no one "skipped straight to punishments". The vaccine is completely free with very few barriers, in a country with no socialized medicine. This kind of framing feels deliberately misleading. I don't know what more you expect the state to do at this point - even Trump is telling people to get vaccinated to boo-ing crowds.
4.) The success criteria has been ICU bed capacity. That is the key criteria that seperates the regular old flu from COVID. That is why efficacy rate stress hospitalization rates, and not breakthrough rates. When you have mass ICU usage, that is when a pandemic becomes a public policy problem.
5.) I don't feel your response has addressed my point. I brought up seat belts because it's something the government does today to enforce personal responsibility. You framed forced mandates as some government overreach on personal responsibility and I'm saying that isn't the case and the government has always had that power. Secondly if you refuse to get the vaccine and end up in the hospital - why aren't you framing this decision as someone selfishly controlling doctors, nursers and other patients to deal with their selfish decision? The doctor has "no control or choice" in being forced to treat you to a respirator. When the public health officials tell you get a vaccine that's being "imposed on you and I have no control or choice", but when you catch or infect someone else with COVID, it's 100% ok in imposing your choice on nurses? I hope I've highlighted the hypocritical selfishness of your argument.
>They are simply matters of opinion, and I think we would all be best served if we acknowledge this.
Again, they are not. They are poorly researched opinions and that is why I continue to reject them. You said the state "skipped straight to punishments". That's not true. You said "there's no success criteria". That's not true, it has always been ICU capacity. These two "opinions" are demonstrably false statements that are masquerading as "harmless opinions". To me that's misinformation. Your fifth point just exposes your selfishness. I'll give you that you have your own personal freedom to be selfish, but I wouldn't be shocked if you are called an asshole for acting selfishly.
2) I'm OK to defer this until the science is in.
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3) Vaccination rates are climbing, and we have no idea where they will end. In many demographics they are already quite high. Uptake is 91% in 65+ and 73% for 18+. Breakthrough cases are extremely low at <0.1% of cases, so 99.9% of cases are self imposed by choice of not to get vaccinated. One easy thing that states could do is wait, let the numbers continue to climb, let people change their mind as all their vaccinated neighbors walk around fine, or their unvaccinated neighbors die, or they get sick and get a decent level of personal immunity. As of today, the death rate is 0.3/100k per day. That is 359,160 deaths per year, of which 360 will be people who chose to get vaccinated but died of a breakthrough case. This is pretty close to the CDC numbers, which puts the the breakthrough deaths for the first 4 months of 2021 at 160 people, who had a mean age of 82 [1]. For context, lawn mower accidents kill >1000 people a year in the US.
4) I still don't think that an objective goal has been communicated. Less covid cases, or more ICU capacity is not an objective or achievable goal. What is the criteria for ICU beds, what is the metric, and what is it now? Is it a national average, or until every hospital in the country meets it, ect? The CDC has stopped tracking ICU capacity as of July 2021 with an average of 60% of beds full and doesn't even report the number of those which are covid related. All bed occupid with covid patients was 8-9% (including the asymptomatic admitted for other reasons), but I admit this could be higher in the ICU. If this is the primary goal for our pandemic response, we should at least track where we are relative to the goal. If there is a measurable goal you can share, I would be ecstatic, and it might change my opinion that we are in a foreverwar against covid with no success criteria (not unlike Afghanistan & the war on terror).
My guess is that we will continue aimlessly focus time and resources into it without any idea of what completion looks like until everyone is burnt out and comes to the realization that covid is endemic. We will check vaccination cards when traveling, for employment, and potentially events out of fear of triggering one of the 360 breakthrough deaths. My mental model for the war on Covid is largely based on the war on terror, and I think there are several parallels.
5) I would rather live in a world where doctors, hospitals, and insurers were free to refuse services to the unvaccinated, than one where people were both compelled to get medical treatment, and provide health services.
>[these] are poorly researched opinions and that is why I continue to reject them. You said the state "skipped straight to punishments". That's not true. You said "there's no success criteria". That's not true, it has always been ICU capacity. These two "opinions" are demonstrably false statements that are masquerading as "harmless opinions". To me that's misinformation. Your fifth point just exposes your selfishness. I'll give you that you have your own personal freedom to be selfish, but I wouldn't be shocked if you are called an asshole for acting selfishly.
"Skipped straight to punishments" was vague and exaggerated language. Replace that with implemented punishments faster than I would like. Is that sufficiently an opinion now? I stand my by statement that there is no success criteria. I never said opinions are harmless. For example, I said that it would be tolerable to have 50k vaccinated covid deaths. That is a real opinion, that if enacted, would let people die.
As mentioned before, I am fully vaccinated, and will probably get a booster when available. I just have a very high tolerance for other people being assholes or selfish. More so when we have what looks to be a very effective vaccine available for "free" and boosters on the way to provide a huge degree of protection to those who want them.
Sad to see smart people talking about "consent" when public health is in danger.