I think you might have a grandiose mental image of America’s past. The 1798 Sedition Act ‘made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials’[0]. A congressman went to jail for speaking critically against President John Adams. President Nixon tried to suppress the 1960s cultural revolutions. The US has always had a bit more of an authoritative twist than the American History books write.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams#Alien_and_Sedition_...

I feel like this mythical conception of the history of America has been increasing with time.

> I think you might have a grandiose mental image of America’s past.

And your attempt to use the historically trivial 1798 Sedition Act in the manner that you did indicates you may have the opposite and mistaken mental image. If anything the US learned from the Sedition Act and became better for that very short-lived mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrams_v._United_States

etc etc

> It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years.[2] The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times "when the United States is in war." The U.S. was in a declared state of war at the time of passage, the First World War.[3] The law was repealed on December 13, 1920.[4]

Holy moly! Land of the free indeed.

Anecdotally, my mom didn't believe it was a real virus even after I got it, tested positive, and got pretty sick in 2020. When she and my unvaccinated dad got it in summer 2021 and Dad was hospitalized with severe illness from it, she changed her mind on it being real, but is still convinced there are conspiratorial forces behind it, the vaccine, public health measures, etc.

Trying to pretend that the top levels of government are free from corruption and that Pfizer is the one good company that isn't evil and that there isn't a major incentive for Pfizer to ensure approval and mandates, and those imposing mandates don't have incentives to do so, whether implicit or explicit, is simply naive.

So all that talk about the military industrial complex wasting money to waste money to ensure dominance isn't likely, or even possible? Because thats exactly what people believe is happening with pharma. And that's what people believed was happening to pharma until Covid.

The question isn't whether Pfizer is an Evil Corporation (of course they are). The question is whether the vaccine that they manufacture and market is effective. And in the full light of day, they proved, first in randomized trials, and then in the real world, that their vaccine is safe and effective.

Full disclosure, I was a test subject in the original Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial, and continue to be a test subject in the booster trial.

You sure it was "COVID denial" that poisoned the well of information and not:

1) Health officials lying about masks at the start of the pandemic 2) Government officials encouraging people to crowd into primary booths during the height of the pandemic to vote in the Democratic primary. 3) Health and government officials declaring that it was safe to attend riots and mass street protests, but not to go out for any other reasons. 4) That it was a racist conspiracy theory that COVID was created in a lab and not started by people eating bats in China. 5) That the vaccines were safe and effective, and that you couldn't get or spread COVID if you were vaccinated. 6) That vaccines would never be mandated. 7) That its absolutely essential that every receive(at least) a 3rd dose of the vaccine as a "booster" when even the most favorable studies show that "boosters" reduce the odds of serious illness and death only by fractions of a thousandth of a percentage point.

At this point the well contains no water at all - just poisons - and it isn't the skeptics who are responsible. At this point anyone who isn't skeptical about what they are being told by our Dear Leaders has their head buried deep in the sand.

My guess is that you also don’t understand the reasons why others are denying the vaccine. Do you think some people are incapable of doing the only thing that will help us, isolating? Vaccines are child’s play to staying in your damn house.

From my perspective it’s the vaccinated that keep this pandemic going. Exactly in the spirit of this statement. “Vaccinated and done”. People think once they get vaccinated they can continue life like normal. Meanwhile the unvaxxed i know are isolating and most still haven’t caught COVID. The few that have realized, after having few or minimal symptoms, that this entire mandate thing is about control.

TLDR, no they’re exactly on point. Democrats are wannabe dictators and the goal of the mandates are an attempt to test power.

Can you truly say these things with a straight face, in light of the countless laws banning voluntary consumption of drugs and the millions of harsh prison sentences that have been handed out for breaking those laws? People literally lose their freedom - they are put in poorly-maintained cages - for exercising their personal liberty in that fashion. That has been standard procedure in this country for generations with little dissent. Yet the voices that seem the loudest against vaccine mandates (voices that barely exists for the dozen or so other vaccine mandates over the generations) don't seem to be speaking up to these far more grievous and damaging violations of personal liberty.

Liberals support "my body, my choice" when it comes to abortions, but they don't want you to have a choice over whether or not to get the vaccine. Conservatives support "my body, my choice" when it comes to vaccines, but don't want to you have a choice over whether or not to get an abortion.

There, it's settled. You're all hypocrites.

And for the record, I'm triple vaxxed, anti-mandate, pro-choice, and think all drugs should be legalized.

But when it comes to abortion, it's not "my body, my choice", according to pro-life advocates. It's two bodies, one of which is not yours.

There's more nuance in these discussions than can be reduced to a slogan or talking point. "Freedom" ought to map to what gives people the most personal liberty possible while restraining evil and its proliferation. But pursuing that requires defining "evil" which maps directly onto worldviews -- and we land squarely back at square one.

We all may be hypocrites in some way, but the real problem is that we don't agree on what is good and evil -- or rather, that a sizable portion of the population (or all of it) is wrong on that most important question.

Modern US politics is what it is because of strongly differing worldviews.

Also - the Covid vaccine is really more like religion in that - most parents are fine with vaccinating their children. But like religion - now they’re choosing which vaccines (gods) they don’t believe in and it mostly comes down to tradition. There’s almost no logical thought in it.

Im also anti-mandate but certain job should require you to wash your hands with soap and be vaccinated to keep your job (teacher, nurse, doctor ..) but nobody is forcing you to choose those jobs.

On the contrary, I think we're at the other extreme. There would be an uproar if people were even forced to work as medics today -- or to do nearly anything at all beyond their own self-interest.

I was forced to be vaccinated as a child to go to school, and there were no exceptions for personal convictions. There was also no uproar. Everyone did it because it was normal and there wasn't any legitimization of "alternative" information.

It seems to me this is really the cause far beyond any other factor. The fragmentation and "democratization" of media over the past 15-20 years led to a devaluation of expertise and qualification. It's not so much anti-elitism anymore (although they seem to overlap) but simply that nobody cares what your credentials are, they are no longer necessary to reach a mass audience.

(This is also the cycle against seatbelting.)

It's a great argument, so long as "rejecting a vaccine during a pandemic" meets the same moral tests as "opposing war". In fact it does not, and so this "personal principle" is quite silly and actively harmful.

The government has not done anything in mandating vaccination that it has not done, over and over again, with total societal unanimity. Until some people decided there was political hay to be made with a bad, dumb argument about "personal principle" and now tens of thousands of people are dead for no good reason.

It's super dumb, and the "personal principle" argument fails every test you could throw at it.

You say this, but you don't name any criteria by which this judgment should be made.

Could you elaborate?

It's not hard to understand the difference.

Why do the people that accept driving on the government mandated side of the road for public safety, who accept food being cooked to government standards for public safety, who have gotten the other multiple government mandated vaccines for public safety, who don't get into fights in stores for being required to wear shoes for public safety, who don't march against government mandated building codes for public safety, and so on for literally hundreds of items, suddenly obtain "personal liberty" for this particular vaccine, which has killed more Americans than any event in history?

Because they've been fed a constant stream of chaos from the grifters milking them, grifters that mostly got the vaccine themselves.

It's amazing what culture and virtue signaling can do.

The fact that so many people disagree with your position seems to suggest that you might not be as correct in your thinking as you believe.

The fact that so many of those dying right now are precisely such people, and by using up so much hospital resources, they are causing others who where responsible to suffer.

Correctness in thinking is not popularity. It's demonstrable statistical evidence.

>perhaps they think that none of what we are doing kept those 800,000 out of the grave

This is complete nonsense. There is no question whatsoever that vaccinated people are not dying at the rate unvaccinated are. I work with a decent number of medical personnel, and more importantly, can read the science.

>Perhaps they, rightly in their mind, think there are far worse threats out there than Covid and being asked to make such a significant sacrifice doesn’t make sense.

Are you claiming that the outcomes from taking the vaccine are worse than the outcomes from not taking it? Care to provide a single peer reviewed, published article that supports this?

That statement does not make sense under any possible rational interpretation.

"No serious adverse effects" < Nonsense. People have been injured and died from these vaccines. Perhaps you meant to say "side effects so far appear very rare"? (which I'd agree with).

If there are no serious side effects we can remove the liability protections drug companies currently enjoy right?

I do agree the vaccines work to an extent for some months. They have reduced deaths. I'm glad they exist and would encourage any vulnerable person to take them. But my risk profile is very low. My Covid experience was a short cold a week ago. And the statistics aren't showing they do a whole lot to prevent transmission.

So I won't be playing any level of Russian roulette with unneeded pharma products, even if it's a 1 in a million chance of serious issues or death.

This is deeply irrational and highly antisocial behavior. It it disgusting and awful. Bodily autonomy is not that important, either.

To you.

If bodily autonomy isn't that import rape only lasts 10 minutes so what's the harm? Nope, it's of primary importance.

Lose some weight and keep your D levels high, get vaccinated if you chose, and stop demanding that everyone engage in risky or unnecessary performative behavior to create an illusion of safety.

Really, how many? How many have died that didn't take it that could have?

Those honestly medically unable to take it (which is a crazy small number) compared to those that don't out of willful ignorance is a drop in the ocean.

>So I won't be playing any level of Russian roulette with unneeded pharma products, even if it's a 1 in a million chance of serious issues or death.

hahhahaha.... Right now you'll not take something you claim affects under 1 in 1 million while helping spread something that has killed 1 in 400 in the US. That's a difference by a factor of 2500. 2500 - think about that. And has likely given millions lifelong permanent damage.

You really prefer a 2500 times increased death rate, and view that as defensible for society? Really?

Now, let's look for demonstrable numbers. About 500 million doses have been given in the US last year, 206 million people fully vaccinated, many partially vaccinated. Where are the hundreds dead by your claims? There are currently (as far as I can tell on Google scholar, CDC, etc.) exactly ZERO people whose death is attributed to the vaccine.

So go ahead and show me your data.

So it's not 1 in a million - it's likely more like 1 in 100 million or even fewer that die from the vaccine. 1 in 400 die from COVID.

This clearly shows the lack of compassion, understanding, numeracy, that such arguments display.

In many (most?) adult cases the risk from the virus is many times greater then the _known_ risk from vaccines. No argument.

But the risk from the vaccines is not 0 and we should be clear about that. Additionally (and this is one of my main issues), the risk of allowing big pharma subscription model to be instituted by force is also not 0.

That number seems to be nonsense [0]. Since the VAERS data is on the CDC site, care to show me the real number? It looks like this claim is QAnon nonsense.

Do you understand what VAERS is? It is an adverse effect, death, from ANY reason, following someone taking a vaccine. The reason is to LOOK for things caused by vaccines by follow-up investigations. A VAERS deaths is not a death caused by a vaccine; it is a possibility.

So far, ZERO of them, count it, ZERO have been shown to be from the COVID vaccine. Here's another take [3] on the actual VAERS data: "no evidence has established that a COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S. caused any deaths".

If someone is old, takes the vaccine, and dies from old age. That is a VAERS death. Given that about 400,000 people die a year from old age, many of them are going to be VAERS entries. It's the followup studies that determine if there is any issue caused by COVID vaccines, and so far, there simply is not.

Here [1] are the VAERS reports for the past 21 years. Go ahead and read about before you make such goofy assumptions. I'm pretty sure the COVID vaccine wasn't killing people in 2002. Here's [2] an overview of the VAERS program. First page, in bold, so people don't do what you are doing: "a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event".

Read that again: "a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event".

Now, please show me the report, study, publication (not some rando website or youtube video), that has shown these deaths to be caused be the COVID vaccine, because there just isn't the evidence.

>In many (most?) adult cases the risk from the virus is many times greater then the _known_ risk from vaccines. No argument.

So why subject yourself, your loved ones, those around you, and your community to the "many times" greater risk? I honestly don't understand how someone could believe they're putting so many at risk for such severe consequences and simply continue to do it. The death and destruction is obvious. Go to your local funeral parlor and ask them about it, if it's real, and watch some families come through, and see how many are glad they exercised bodily autonomy. That should be a sobering experiment.

And the risk of transmitting it to others, the risk from straining the medical system so others that need help for other things, vastly increases as the unvaccinated spread the disease more and more, is completely immoral. Just because the unvaccinated don't see the deaths and destruction don't mean they're not contributing through ignorance and self-absorption.

I'm pretty sure we're done here. You've obviously believed a lot of bad sources of information, and have posted a decent amount of super easily disproven stuff. I've found it's not generally worth the time to unwind someone from this, since it takes so long for someone to get into this state. You are the rare one that also seems to believe that vaccination has vastly better outcomes than not being vaccinated, yet still refuse it, which is odd.

I would recommend you find higher quality information sources to base your beliefs on - start with things rated as unbiased as possible, like Reuters, and completely avoid crap like youtube, facebook, tiktok, or any of the zillion fringe sites designed to suck people into a cycle of chaos and fear.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19-vaers/fact...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/...

[3] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/sep/20/facebook-p...

What that means is you can determine when you are "done here". You don't determine when "I am done here" (unless you somehow control access). It's a lazy attempt to shut things down and have the last word so as to appear correct.

You point to a fact checker, a "trusted news source" for one month, that says the number of deaths claimed for the month is not exact and say "see, not proved". I'm sorry that is very weak.

There has been a massive uptick in VAERS reporting since the introduction of this series of vaccines. Massive. Now, understood these vaccines are being administered widely all at once so they may or may not be more dangerous then say, the flu vaccine. And in raw numbers, so far, the risk of taking them appears very low.

But they have a risk profile. The manufactures admit it. The CDC admits it. Myocarditis has been observed. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the corresponding (very large) uptick in deaths reported in VAERS might be responsible? One would have to be willfully blind not to acknowledge that.

You never address unknown future risks. It's obvious it was unknown (or unstated) that the vaccines would only be effective for such a short time without continuous boosters and exactly how effective the vaccines would be. What else don't they know or are not saying?

You never show, nor has anyone else, that "others around me" is a valid consideration in the context of transmission. So I take them "for the common good". How long does that last? Not a year apparently.

"Straining medical system". Not on my part. That's a very weak argument. It's largely untrue in the extreme and perhaps points to larger problems with the medical system if the 500 or so people currently hospitalized (with not from Covid) in my state with a population of millions is breaking things. What other things might be "straining the medical system"? Can we start mandating on that too?

You haven't "disprove" anything as you claim, just more "you are dumb, Q nonsense" and lazy attempts to circumvent. Yes people have died from the disease no need for the emotive funeral home spiel.

You can leave off statements like "ignorance and self-absorption". You don't see me saying "scared, cowardly, unperceptive, and prone to authoritarianism".

This is apparently a highly emotional issue that makes people on all sides not be as objective as they may be in other contexts. I've made my points and don't have much else to say in this thread. I don't fault you for your point of view and assume you have good reasons for it but do not agree it's objective.

I just posted the data, which you ignore. Post this "massive" increase, because, as I show next, ....

>There has been a massive uptick in VAERS reporting since the introduction of this series of vaccines.

This amuses me - you put such effort into reading the worst materials and believing them, while ignoring any good, reliable sites, or putting any thought why there might possibly be an uptick in deaths not attributable to vaccines that also shows up in VAERS....

Maybe there has been an uptick in deaths unrelated to the vaccine, say, perhaps, from the worst pandemic in 100 years? Gee, guess what. Increased deaths for ANY reason will increase deaths in VAERS.

COVID was 10% of deaths in 2020. That is a large increase, so large, that life expectancy dropped. It's a category that did not exist in 2019. The US death rate soared 17% in 2020, with no vaccines, leading to, you guessed it, a ~20% increase in VAERS deaths, because the underlying population is also dying.

Before the vaccine. Yet you are happy to put the blame on a vaccine that had not been invented?

Same in 2021.

If you actually find the VAERS deaths, and look at the graphs (which are public) you will see no such massive uptick - there is one, which begins, you guessed it, when COVID started, not when the vaccine did.

So, again, cite a source. Because this is not true, except for tiny values of "massive"... And again you will not cite a source....

This is why it's not worth my trying to give you data - you ignore, attribute the least thought out and nonsensical claims attributable to data that is easily explained not needing such fear and doubt.

Again, any death in VAERS cannot be attributed to a vaccine until a study determines the cause. Stop making this simple reasoning mistake. It's clearly stated on the VAERS site that this is faulty reasoning, I pointed it out, and you do it again.

Seriously - why do people believe fringe sites, youtube idiots, facebook, ticktok, over the people that have put entire careers into hard science to solve precisely this type of problem?

>Myocarditis has been observed

This is the perfect example of spreading fear and doubt. Quick question: which has shown more likely to increase the chance of myocarditis: getting the vaccine or getting COVID? Hint, one has been shown in peer reviewed, vetted, published papers to have a vastly greater (over 10x) chance of leading to myocarditis. Yet you continue to recite the fear and doubt nonsense on the opposite side of what the actual evidence is. The evidence so far is not getting a vaccine leads to a higher chance of getting myocarditis by a large margin since it comes along with COVID.

Seriously - put the time into learning this stuff before you continue to spread more ignorant fear, which is exactly what such statements are. They are the opposite of reality, completely well documented, yet you must have consumed enough nonsense fear sites to repeat it without simply looking at the evidence.

I'll help you - go to google scholar, google covid myocarditis and read rates, then add the word vaccine, search again, and read the rates. Done. Now you know, and should never repeat such nonsense again. But you won't put in the work and will repeat it I am quite sure.

>attempt to shut things down and have the last word so as to appear correct.

No, it's realizing that, as I wrote, people that have worked themselves into such deluded worldviews do not change easily, so becomes worth less and les of my time the clearer it becomes such people straight up ignore well presented data. I've requested multiple times you source ANY of your claims with reputable sources, and so far, zero. I only continue since others that are not like that do learn from such discussions get better knowledge. And it's interesting to see how people rationalize behavior.

Once I realize that someone does not want to look at evidence, look at data, cite and inspect reputable sources, it is clear they are not someone who uses reason to make choices or adapt. At that point it's sometimes useful to poke them enough to anger them into looking stuff up. Or give up on them. That's the game, purely rational based on actions.

Has this been quantified or is it just hand-waving? Because it's very obvious transmission is widely occurring regardless.

I've already explained how the vaccine does not help me. Was not needed.

We know short term risks exist from vaccination, we know people have died, we know that it is rare to have very serious side effects (like death). What about long term risks? More hand waving claims of "unlikely"?

The end of your post is a long way of saying "well you are dumb". Ok, whatever. If you don't want to accept rationality or have different views of human agency, it's not my business.

I've clarified my position on these vaccines. I'm glad they exist, I recommend vulnerable people take them. I don't need them and won't be taking them. Unless it can be clearly shown it would be of great benefit to others (we've already established minimal risk for myself). And that somehow taking the vaccines with immunity from previous infection already existing is needed to do that.

You would have ended up with full hospitals everywhere and people dying in the streets, and the Delta variant way before a vaccine was ready if we didn't do lockdowns.

Non-medical interventions were also employed during the 1918/19 flu pandemic, also in the US. In fact, when things like school closures were initially discussed people were literally looking up old data from the 1918/19 flu pandemic to see what, if anything, we could learn from the non-medical interventions back then.

I doubt that we would have been able to create a vaccine (as quickly) in the 70s or 80s. Our knowledge about corona viruses wasn’t there yet and we also didn’t have plausible easy technological paths towards a vaccine.

So that would have sucked a lot. Really, a lot. Given that I think we would have necessarily accepted more deaths – but it would still all have been quite annoying since you really don’t want to run your hospitals at 110% all the time even if you are willing to accept all the deaths.

It’s just that now vaccines do provide a good solution with dramatically reduced deaths, hospitalizations, even (though much more limited) spread. Which makes it all the more frustrating that people aren’t taking advantage of that.

So I’m not so sure why you think that if we miraculously had an effective and safe vaccine for a novel pandemic corona virus in the 70s or 80s we there wouldn’t be mandates. Seems quite in line with US and overall Western tradition.

Presumably we would have increased hospital capacity, rather than slightly decreasing it [1][2].

[1] https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals - total staffed beds 919,559

[2] https://www.aha.org/statistics/2020-01-07-archived-fast-fact... - total staffed beds 931,203

However, covid in the 70s would have been substantially worse than the flu - a large reason covid nowadays is not deadly is due to increases in quality of care.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-joe-biden-no-vaccines-ma...

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/197/11/

> Harlan ruled that the vaccination law did not violate the 14th Amendment because the police power of the state may be allowed to constrain individual liberties through reasonable regulations when required to protect public safety. He reasoned that individual liberty does not allow people to take actions regardless of the harm that they could cause to others. Harlan felt that the plaintiff had failed to show that the vaccination law was arbitrary or oppressive, or not reasonably required for the safety of the public. He noted the increasing presence of smallpox, which prevented the plaintiff from convincingly asserting that the rule had no real or substantial relation to protecting public health and safety. Although the plaintiff presented evidence that some doctors believed that the smallpox vaccine was not effective and could cause further diseases, Harlan pointed out that the opposite view represents the common medical belief and is followed by more reputable doctors.

Not the same thing at all. And you also don't want to go down that road.

EDIT: Getting downvoted so here's the primary holding. Read it for yourself.

> A state may enact a compulsory vaccination law, since the legislature has the discretion to decide whether vaccination is the best way to prevent smallpox and protect public health. The legislature may exempt children from the law without violating the equal protection rights of adults if the law applies equally among adults.

Take drunk driving, for example. We don't give people the freedom to do that. On the other hand, we do allow people to smoke and to eat unhealthily, both of which impose costs on the rest of us. So there seems to be a balance - we allow some behavior that impacts our personal freedoms, but not egregious impacts.

So: If someone doesn't get vaccinated, how bad is the impact to you? Given that vaccinated (and boosted) people can still get infected and spread the infection, how bad is the impact to your personal freedom to live a healthy and free life if someone doesn't get vaccinated?

Vaccines reduce transmission. They do not eliminate transmission completely.

Personal conscience and conviction -- as overwhelmingly stupid as the vast majority of people are with or without it -- is at least extremely important for the minority of people who end up being front-runners for society.

But so too is society a super-organism, in which we are but cells. And cells which actively spread disease for their own sake are kind of independent to a flaw: cancerous one could say.

Maybe there's a better world in which context is a factor in whether or not a persons convictions are the most valuable thing in the room. Personally, I'd say if you're killing others for your beliefs, then your beliefs should be allowed the same treatment. Whereas if your beliefs are merely unpopular.. well, I wouldn't fix a car with a popularity contest, let alone a toaster or an entire fucking government.

Some reading I've done recently has changed my mind on this. Check out the recently released unclassified (but suppressed) DARPA documents on the SARS-Cov2 virus.

It appears there actually has been a significant information war going on from the top... but I suspect it remains to be seen why exactly the campaign took place.

in any case, i have friends here in progressive seattle who were part of the “vaccinate and done” group back in Apr/May but once the governor used vaccine uptake as an excuse to enforce new mandates now say “i’ll get the booster once i know doing so means i get to go back to normal”. so mandates definitely do push a certain type of otherwise compliant person away from getting the vaccine. i only have anecdata, but i think it’s worth keeping an eye on that viewpoint. could this “vaccine and done” group grow into a “reject mandates (including boosters) and done” if the mandates prevent them from actually being “done”?