I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

Re:I am a New York City public high school student. The situ... by roenxi on Saturday January 08, 2022 @08:05AM (#29851277)

Huh? You're leaving out some massive yet important parts of your argument here. It is a complete non-sequitur to go from you, personally, being perfectly safe and therefore mandatory vaccination is necessary to protect everyone.

Fact is that mandatory vaccination doesn't seem to do much to change the risk to society at large. Coronavirus is tearing through fully-vaccinated Australia at a rate which suggests vaccines do literally nothing to stop the spread. Since the vaccines don't protect bystanders, all the surveillance and mandating of medical treatments should be scrapped immediately.

We are in territory where if someone isn't vaccinated, they are bearing all the risk personally and that is acceptable.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I am a New York City public high school student. The situ... by kbelder on Saturday January 08, 2022 @05:09PM (#29856931)

I mostly agree. I think it is certain that vaccinations slow the spread somewhat; probable that they're stopping medical services from becoming overwhelmed; and almost certain that they will not eliminate covid from circulating.

You'll probably catch covid, whether vaccinated or not. Your elderly relatives will probably catch covid, whether you and they are vaccinated or not.

They'll probably catch it even if everyone on the planet become vaccinated tomorrow.

Vaccination is simply one tool to moderate the effect. It's wonderful that we have them, but having 20% of the population stay unvaccinated is not going to drastically affect the spread of the disease.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I am a New York City public high school student. The situ... by pfg on Saturday January 08, 2022 @10:03AM (#29852271)

There are plenty of countries where the vaccination rate is too low to effectively prevent the healthcare system from being overrun. In Austria, we were in another lockdown due to this just a month ago, with a vaccination rate of about 70% at the time (IIRC). This is in a country with a relatively high number of unoccupied ICU beds, and we still peaked at a level just short of where doctors would have to triage patients (and well where the quality of care could be kept at its usual level due to i.e. fewer nurses and doctors per patient.)

So no, the unvaccinated aren't solely at risk personally, they could also prevent vaccinated people from getting treated at the standard of care that they would normally expect. I'm not okay with that, so mandatory vaccination with fines for non-compliance seems like the lesser evil to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]