> Vaccines do not stop transmission of Covid nor do they stop you from getting Covid.

They don't stop it, but they do decrease your chances of acquiring it and they do reduce the viral load you shed.

> They merely decrease your chances of getting severe Covid or dying from Covid.

So they prevent you from taking up a hospital bed, exposing the people who have to care for you to COVID and preventing other non-COVID emergencies from being tended to. That seems to impact others to me.

Should we apply the same standards to the obese? Arguably a greater strain on our health care system.

If avoiding obesity was as easy as a $20 needle prick with minimal side effects... absolutely. Without question, I would require that vaccine for everyone that didn't have a valid medical reason not to.

It is even easier, just dont eat too much. Also free.

If you think that is easier than a needle prick, then you have zero understanding of obesity.

Again, Is it more complicated than: maintain caloric equilibrium?

Or are you about to make a bunch of Socio-economic and cultural justifications for obesity that you will not extend to the unvaccinated?

Yes it is more complicated. Here's two reasons. Glucose only gets converted to fat and harmful proteins at about 1:4 rate, whereas ethanol, fructose, and sucrose get converted to fat and harmful proteins at double or more that rate. So mere "counting calories" is meaningless.

Secondly, and this is the one that people find weird, once you've weighed X pounds, and lost some significant mass, you must eat less calories than simple "calories in is calories out" would suggest, because our physiology reacts as if food is scarce, and will store fat to the detriment of all other functions.

Not sure why I cant reply to the below comment but:

1. Sugar and its substitutes are bad for you, yes thats true (Thank you FDA for recommending 10 servings of grains, and backing the lipid hypothesis which caused low fat (aka High Sugar) products to appear everywhere.

2. Unless the obese somehow violate the law of thermodynamics if you reduce energy in while maintaining energy out mass will decrease.

There's also a difference between difficulty and complexity.

edit : Also, what's the protocol/norm about posting the same reply in multiple threads? I can see some pros and cons to it being within standard behavior, and don't see a clear answer as to which is larger

Just because something is simple, it doesn't make it easy. Dunking a basketball is simple. But it's not easy for most people.

I promise you, if losing weight were "easy" then most people would look like Hollywood action heroes.

I don't know, is there a free two-shot regimen to help deal with obesity? Also, last time I checked, hospitals weren't running out of ICU beds thanks to obesity.

I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but hospitals literally are running out of beds thanks to obesity.

https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...

> hospitals literally are running out of beds thanks to obesity.

... as a co-morbidity of COVID. Clearly the most effective option for people who are obese (and other people at elevated risk) is to get vaccinated.

Its even easier. Just dont eat too much.

You clearly don't know much about obesity or simply don't care. Either way, if you're truly invested in the public health implications/strategies for obesity, you're welcome to look into it. :)

So its more complicated than: maintain caloric equilibrium?

Or are you about to make a bunch of Socio-economic and cultural justifications for obesity that you will not extend to the unvaccinated?

All these things will just select for more virulent, more severe, more contagious forms of the virus. And extend the lifetime of the pandemic.

You might as well be telling people to take antibiotics 'just in case' because a partially resistant strain of something is going around.

That partially resistant strain won't be "partially" resistant for long.

Because if you're unvaccinated you're much more likely to require hospitalization should you get Covid. The impact to others is the unvaccinated are consuming medical resources and causing burn-out amongst medical practitioners.

We dont make this distinction with the vast majority of personal choices. Obesity causes a ton of strain on our health system. Should we start a class system based on BMI?

I’ve never caught obesity by sitting next to someone. Have you?

Again, vaccines do not stop transmission or contagion

Where are you getting the information for this claim? The vaccines certainly reduce your chance of catching it, and though vaccinated individuals may have similar viral loads to unvaccinated people at peak, the period of time that they're infectious is shorter. [0] One study even suggests less infectiousness. [1]

Where have you seen otherwise?

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

[1] https://www.jwatch.org/na54386/2021/12/15/transmission-risk-...

Both of those studies predate the omnicron wave. The rate of transmission in fully vaccinated regions is still very high.

This one [0] references omicron specifically, noting that though omicron is better at evading immunity, vaccines still helped.

[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788485

So you’re in favor of mandates along the lines of “Get the vaccine or you are fired” for marginal benefits? Would you be ok if this precedent was extended to other prevention areas? Eg. Maintain social distancing or you are fired (protests of any kind are typically not socially distanced)

Wasn't this subthread was about your claim that getting vaccinated doesn't influence one's chance of infecting others?

If you want to retreat to "ok, they probably do actually help a little bit with that, but I think the amount to which they help with that is small enough that [thing] isn't worth it.", then ok, but, like, I think you should probably make it explicit.

(earlier, the topic was about like, health insurance, not employment, and so I'm using [thing] to cover both of those things.)

Seatbelts. Helmets. Cigarette taxes. Drinking ages.

Sure but there is a big difference between finding somebody for not wearing a seatbelt in denying them medical care.

If nurses and doctors were quitting and students dropping out of medical school for fear of dealing with the fallout surrounding people not wearing seatbelts... yeah, we'd probably be considering it.

And, of course, the numerous other routine vaccines.