Because there's more to creating effective public policy than just forcing people to do what "the scientists" say.

People value things differently. There's people who bristle at the idea that the government should coerce them into getting unwanted medical procedures or restrict their movement. There's people who don't believe governments who have badly and repeatedly bungled the response to covid are a reliable or trustworthy authority on the matter.

Not everyone may take covid exactly as seriously as you would wish them to, but it doesn't mean they don't take it seriously just because they value other things more. People going out en masse to protest police brutality for example apparently understood the risks of covid but believed their cause and their right to protest it to be more important. Who are you to say they are wrong? People who understood the risks but believed border closures to be wrong or racist believed that cause was more serious than covid, again who are we to say that's wrong? Do we have some ivory tower of government experts who are there to provide us unthinking plebs with the canonical guide for ranking everything in seriousness and importance?

If we had the government telling us that driving automobiles causes a million deaths every year and the only way to solve it is for everyone to stop driving, but maybe we can start driving again after everyone's cars have been fitted with modifications to limit speed to 5mph which should be at least 90% effective at eliminating hospitalizations and deaths, then they're not exactly _wrong_, but of course people are going to protest it. If you drove anyway that does not mean you don't take automobile accidents seriously, that you're anti science, or that you're a grandma killer. You will certainly statistically increase the load on the hospital system if you drive, that choice does not make you responsible for possible deaths of other people who could not access sufficient medical treatment. Not even if you just went for a drive to the beach, up a mountain, or an aimless drive through the streets just because you enjoyed it.

It's 30-40,000 automobile deaths a year, which is bad enough.

If it were a million, I certainly hope the government would step in. And if you drove anyway, illegally, knowing that it caused a million deaths a year, it would reveal you to be an anti-science grandma killer, yes.

I was talking global but sure in USA 40,000 per year. So an ongoing disaster of a far larger magnitude than covid all told, which is only 20 years worth of automobile deaths so far.

So my point stands for USA as well. And we're generally not talking about crimes here, we're talking about people deciding not to wear masks, not to get vaccines, or to attend events or go about in public or go to work perhaps against advice of experts, but not breaking criminal laws.

And who are you to be the decider of what exact number is acceptable or not? Who are you to say 40k/yr is okay? Some people surely believe that's far too many, so are you an anti science grandma killer for driving? No. Neither is someone who doesn't get vaccinated, doesn't wear a mask in public, and doesn't shut themselves in their homes and avoid going out in public.

Can you not see that people can have different thoughts and values, assess risks differently, or have different opinions on the trustworthiness of government advice, without being evil boogymen?

"So an ongoing disaster of a far larger magnitude than covid all told, which is only 20 years worth of automobile deaths so far."

I'm sorry, this sentence makes no sense. 40k annual auto deaths is of larger magnitude than 400,000 annual covid deaths? Are you saying that auto deaths are a more serious phenomenon because covid is . . . new?

I certainly think 40,000 auto deaths is far too many. I would love to see the government step in with safety measures, as some levels of government have done for covid. We have indoor mask mandates where I live, as well as vaccine mandates for a number of public-facing job categories.

People certainly have different thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts are muddled.

No, I'm saying covid in the US has caused about 20 years worth of auto accidents, and with vaccinations and natural immunity and the pandemic running its course, it's not likely to reach the scale of the ongoing automobile disaster, which has been over 20k/yr for about 100 years and total might have killed about 3 million people and will continue to kill tens of thousands of people very year for many years to come.

If covid does somehow reach that scale, then automobile deaths is still a perfectly valid comparison to use.

And so my point stands. People aren't monsters, evil bigots, anti science or grandma killers for choosing to drive places, even though statistically that will result in increased deaths and increased load on the hospital system. They would also not be any of those things if they protested government bans on driving.

I'm repeating myself though. If you simply can't accept that anybody could reasonably have a different opinion about things than you without being anti-science or evil or stupid or bigoted, I don't think you'll be able to understand or accept my point.

I'm not sure driving is a great analogy to taking/not taking a vaccine or refusing to follow COVID restrictions, but if we do, we also need to consider this:

When driving, you can exercise caution and attempt to minimize the risk of an accident. I'm not from the US, but where I'm from you're also legally obligated to do so - if I drive and hit somebody, and it turns out I did so because I was going too fast or not paying proper attention to my surroundings, I will be held responsible for their injuries and damages.

Further, there are laws stipulating what safety requirements newly sold cars have to meet: again, this may vary by country/state etc, but fairly common requirements are having an air bag and seat belts (which you are legally obligated to wear where I'm from, and you will be fined if you do not).

I would say that the rules governing driving can be considered analogous to those governing social distancing, masking etc. And the safety guidelines for car manufacturers can correspond to vaccine mandates.

Of course you are free to refuse to follow driving rules, but the only legal way to do so is to refuse to drive a car entirely. Just as you can be responsible and stay at home and avoid contact with anybody as much as possible if you refuse to be vaccinated.

Driving is a fine analogy in my opinion. It doesn't have to be 100% exact identical to the other situation to be able to explore the idea and consider different perspectives on the argument.

Not wearing masks or shutting down the economy for the flu and common cold, obesity, driving cars, extreme sports, and more are all great analogies you can use to explore logical consequences of various measures or lack of measures being advocated for dealing with covid.

Maybe gun violence is the best analogy, as it is a situation where people's preferences and convenience are given priority over thousands of other people's lives.

Maybe. I think automobiles is better because preventing driving prevents automobile deaths, so there is a pretty reasonable case to make that it is a necessary and sufficient measure to end deaths from car crashes. Pretty hard to rebut the automobile analogy, isn't it?

Gun violence is illegal and quite significantly committed with illegally obtained guns and particularly pistols. So banning or increasing legal controls on rifles (for example) would not be an evidence based policy for reducing the largest sources of gun violence. Unless you are drawing parallels with the relatively low effectiveness of vaccines, but even then I don't think vaccines are quite that bad :)

Forget cars. Think cigarettes. They kill way more people every year and even if we banned it tomorrow it would keep on killing for the next 20 years

Obesity too. As well as the injury to the sufferers, load they put on the hospital and healthcare system, and wider society is just staggering. Hundreds of billions, or about 20% of annual medical spending in the United States is due to obesity.

And yet I would never ever advocate for restaurants to demand BMI licenses for service, people denied jobs or freedom to travel or freedom to buy and eat the food they want to combat this, or forced gastric surgery "for the greater good". It would be horrific and inhumane.

If you could transfer your obesity and smoking habit to me by being too close to me at Target it would be a good comparison. Kill yourself however you please by all means.

Transmission according to the CDC involves prolonged close contact. Not very likely that you are going to catch it by a random choice encounter at target

And if you're so irrationally petrified of catching it despite being vaccinated you can choose to shut yourself in your house.

It's not like you can't catch it from vaccinated people, even if you could somehow tell them apart.

No, obesity puts a huge load on the hospital system and therefore deprive others of health care. This is one of the arguments used to bully people who don't want to be vaccinated.

If there was a vaccine for obesity i would absolutely bully you into getting it for the same reason