There have been mass firings on the basis that this vaccination will end the pandemic and people who don't get vaccinated are actively harming everyone else. The truth of that claim is far too murky to justify the agressive policies that are being used to force people to get vacinated. Policies which, I note, appear to be deploy what are effectively human rights violations. These are not policieis that should be used. The policy response is what is important here.
To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.
Are they really though? If vaccines work so damn great why do I still need to wear a mask in a place where everybody is vaccinated? And why did Ontario shut down most of the places that required proof of vaccine during this omicron wave? Shouldn't those places be exempt from shutdowns?
If proof of vaccine still requires masking and shutdowns... maybe it isn't a really an effective policy?
One would think that on this forum of all places, people would understand the concept of defence-in-depth. Furrfu…
Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask? Makes no sense.
You can add as many layers of defense as you want. Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid. If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?
They're to reduce transmission to others. You can call them not good enough but it's a respiratory disease, it's what we've got. The alternative is lockdowns.
> Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask?
Why do they get to decide if an unvaccinated person has to wear a mask? You're simultaneously arguing that vaccines are effective and so masks are pointless but also that vaccines are ineffective. Which is it?
> Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid.
It's not about you. If the only risk was only to yourself then nobody would care.
> If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?
Because if you get covid you'll have a mild flu instead of being hospitalized or die? You can say it's low chance but 3,000 corpses today I guess were unlucky.
Others can get a vaccine too if it truly helps them or they just want piece of mind. We all have the choice. Transmission no longer matters. It isn’t a problem each individual needs to worry about. It’s not ethical or moral to keep pushing this as the only concern society can focus on. We need to move on.
And you can use scare words like “3000 corpses a day” but that is propaganda and fearmongering. The more scary the wording, the less the words mean to me. Way more than 3000 people die a day. And people die of many things all the time. Death is one of the only things that will happen to us 100%.
Life is way to short to piss away on this. You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear. It is quite selfish to ask that, especially given you can get a freely available, highly effective vaccine.
Get your vaccine and move on. Covid ends for you when you stop being afraid of it. It’s actually that simple.
You're confusing emotionally charged, high-impact words with propaganda. Having a policy of talking about the dead in a sterile detached way is also a rhetoric choice that affects perception and is just as much "propaganda" by your own standard.
What you're calling "propaganda" is "using words that make something sound more serious than I think it is" or "using words to make something sound less serious than I think it is."
> Only reason I got the vaccine was I had no reason not to.
That's the reason I wear a mask.
> You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear.
The only thing that's being asked of anyone is to get vaccinated, wear a mask indoors, and stay home if you're sick. The first two cost you nothing and you should be staying home with any illness anyway.
> Get your vaccine and move on.
I have moved on, except for wearing a mask when in close contact and having to show proof of it for large events, life has literally gone back to normal.
> To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.
We're talking specifically about the Covid vaccine mandates, not mandates in general. I think there's certainly a serious debate to be had on whether these morally questionable Covid policies are human rights violations.
Are chain smokers antisocial ? What about over eating obese ?
I hate risk-adverse fearful societies.
Obesity ... seems like an entirely personal matter, except perhaps in children where they might be considered victims.
Highly infectious viruses several times more harmful than the usual ones are indeed turning the world upside down. I imagine with time most societies will come to accept such things after they've become endemic for a while.
Just like vaccination for Covid is personal. Remember that the vaccine does not prevent transmission of omicron. And that if the vaccine works, if an unvaccinated person transmits the virus to a vaccinated one, there should be no risk, right ?
Also, obese and overweight people account for 50% of hospitalizations in ICU for Covid in France.
> human rights violations.
Which ones?
> Which ones?
Well, looking at a relevant wiki article [0] I'd say the policies I know best (Australia) are bumping up against the articles dealing with freedom of movement, big chunks of articles 18-21 (underlining peaceful association a few time), I'd argue 22-27 - I forget where 'right to earn a living' is but I'm pretty confident it is in thge UDHR somewhere and that is probably in 22-27.
At some point (and 2 years is past that point) these philosophical issues like human rights start to matter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
For example, Article 29:
> Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
> In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
It's pretty easy to see vaccination and other public health measures as one of these scenarios.
“Articles 28–30 establish… the areas in which the rights of the individual cannot be applied, the duty of the individual to society…”
The declaration says “in a democratic society”. Are we counting Cuba as one?
> That's why I find it incredibly concerning that people seem to just be happy to suspend individual rights so rapidly. The state of Victoria in Australia recently passed legislation that lets it ignore certain human rights - such as the right to employment - in the face of the pandemic.
One might argue they prioritized the Article 3 right to life over that of employment; loss of life being permanent, and employment not, this seems like a justifiable use of Article 29, especially given Australian per capita deaths being massively lower than here in the States. We’ve killed two Tasmanias worth of people over here.
(I have relatives in Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney, and Hobart, incidentally. I’d trade my pandemic experience here in upstate NY with them in a heartbeat.)
Again, the UDHR asserts a variety of rights. You're correct that Article 23 asserts a right to employment, but the apparent desire to read that as the only provision in the document appears to be a motivated one. The document lays out other rights, which naturally may be in conflict with each other at times, a fact that is explicitly acknowledged in Article 29.
I don't object to disagreeing with Victoria's balancing of the various rights, but I do object to the assertion that it's somehow a clear violation of human rights for them to prioritize the rights to life and health over the right to employment.
Ok, so we've taken away all these rights from unvaxxed people. What rights do you believe this has that allowed others to exercise?
Because from where I sit:
1. It doesn't reduce the odds of people getting COVID. We just had ... probably between 2-3 million COVID cases between NSW and Victoria, both with highly vaccinated populations. That is only possible if vaccinated people are infecting each other (as most reporting I've read suggests is happening).
2. Doesn't otherwise affect anyone's rights.
Note that there isn't even a right not to get sick from time to time. Although it even if such a right did somehow exist it isn't obvious how an unvaxxed person would be affecting your right to excercise ti since the problem is how much you come into contact with other humans vs anything any other individual is doing. There has been no threat to our hospital systems at any point that justifies what has been done to the unvaxxed. The pressure the hospital system has come under appears to be from the COVID restrictions (and, ironically, probably things like laying off workers for resisting the unreasonable vaccination policies - although if they've got the capacity to start sacking people then they clearly don't see a problem).
So it seems to me that we're doing this just for fun / for the joy of being authoritarian.
And your damn right the reasoning is motivated. Motivated by a desire to let people earn money and make their lives better at will. To be able to go places and visit friens and family without being arrested. To make their own medical decisions. These are reasonable motivations. These rights are the easy ones with practical justifications.
The Article 25 right to medical care, which unvaccinated people can put at risk by overwhelming hospitals with ICU cases.
I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".
This isn't an emergency any more, this is routine.
> I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".
That is an extreme hand wave. It appears the argument is "We can violate your human rights because you have a duty to do what I tell you". These are serious concerns, you may just handwave things like free travel or ability to see family with "you have a duty, but I don't feel a need to justify it" - but that isn't a respectable position.
What is the real risk to the community of these unvaccinated people? We've pretty much seen the worst case COVID scenario play out in the last 2 months and it doesn't seem like the unvaxxed have been a problem in the slightest. The campaign of bullying should end.
For me ending the pandemic is a return to regular life and a health care system that is no longer stretched beyond typical capacity. This can be achieved by many outcomes but the most likely one given the state of the world today is getting everyone to take the safe and effective vaccine for as long as necessary.
In Quebec where I live, the unvaccinated are now barred from entry in large retail stores like Walmart and Costco. If you don't have your vaccine passport with you that shows you're vaccinated in these places, then you can't enter, even for groceries.
There was curfew in place that prevented everyone from being outside during the evenings and nights for the most part of January.
On top of that, the prime minister said publicly in the media that the unvaccinated would start paying an additional tax, even though health care is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone here. The government just backtracked about this the last couple of days.
A lot of these policies are extreme and have shown to be completely incoherent and not backed by science, given what we know about the virus since the last couple of months.
Aren’t they? Hospitals are overflowing and elective procedures cancelled due entirely to people refusing to get vaccinated.
A) there's more vaccinated in hospital per capita of late. Why aren't we demanding lockdowns again instead of just blaming the "unvaxxed" still
B) the unvaxxed still aren't allowed into many places, yet the virus spreads readily
C) Why, rather than just "argh unvaxxed lepers!" are we not guiding better health and wellbeing instead?
D) a covid case is counted when people are in hospital for any other reason and catch it
E) you are counted as unvaxxed during the two week window after getting vaccinated, which is exactly when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid. Interesting how hard it is to find this data, you'd think it would be strongly monitored
B) This is true. Not sure how it relates to my point though.
C) Aren't we doing both? I've seen both "get vaccinated" and "be healthy" messaging this whole pandemic. Again though, not sure how it relates.
D) True. Again, not sure how this relates.
E) That was a big effect when vaccines just came out, but is a much smaller effect now.
Though I hadn't heard this before, and would be curious to see a study on it if you have one: "when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid."
Edit: Your thing about susceptibility after vaccination is incorrect. It's an Alex Berenson talking point that has been thoroughly debunked.
Do you have a source for this. This directly conflicts the data I've been seeing. e.g.: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily — weekly hospitalizations peaking at 92/100k for vaccinated vs. 772/100k for unvaccinated.
You're comparing two entirely different denominators. This is just sloppy.
Edit: Digging through the source data, I found
> In the last week from 08 January to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population, the rate of acute COVID-19 related hospital admissions in individuals that received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 2.3 to 3.9 times lower than in individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine
Your own data is saying the opposite of what you purport it to.
The rate doesn't matter so much in this instance, because most resources would still be spend on vaccinated people. Much like the fact that when I eventually catch COVID the odds are really good that I'm going to get it off someone who is vaccinated.
If we hypothetically rounded up all the unvaxxed tomorrow most of the strain on the hospital system faces in Scotland would still be there. Vaccination campaigns can't really change that.
It is my impression that it actually does, and that is why Delta was outcompeted so fast. If it didn't, both strains would likely co-circulate together.
There is a possibility that the large majority of the population has been infected with omicron, and recovered. But then delta could come in at that point and produce another wave. At this time, the body would be much more successful at holding off omicron, but maybe not so much with delta.
So purely from the fractions of current infections, you cannot draw conclusions about x-variant immunity.
Searching very quickly, I found this from Dec 21, 2021:
https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/c7efM-om...
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...
Care to share a paper to back this up ? This statement seems hard to prove right now.
Yet... Guess we gave up caring about full research and monitoring a couple of years ago.
We're even at the point where we want to vaccinate our small children because 'it's marginally better than nothing' ignoring that side effects are also marginally more than nothing and we have very little good long term data.
Universal vaccination can make the transition of this virus from pandemic to endemic much more pleasant. In terms of deaths, serious cases (with potential long term effects), but also in terms of smoothing out hospital and infrastructure load.
In that respect the vaccines are an awesomely effective tool that can greatly reduce suffering with minimal or no real downsides.
Side note: an omicron infection is no replacement for the vaccination. Omicron doesn’t confer great immunity against delta and other, “older” virus variants which are still out there, potentially ready to come back next winter.