It's philosophical:
> The issues stem from [a lawsuit](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/02... ) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida late last year alleging servicemembers’ rights are being infringed upon by the COVID vaccine mandate because their religious beliefs prevent them from taking the vaccine.
From that link in the quote:
> “Through much prayer and reflection, Plaintiffs have sought wisdom, understanding, and guidance on the proper decisions to make concerning these COVID-19 vaccines, and Plaintiffs have been convicted by the Holy Spirit that accepting any of the three currently available vaccines is against the teachings of Scripture and would be a sin,” according to a Florida lawsuit first filed in late 2021, then amended on Feb. 7 with additional plaintiffs.
I mean, if they sincerely believed that they were created by a God and intended to follow God's laws, forcing them to refuse orders that they'd otherwise have complied with, then that'd be one thing. But if they're merely insubordinate and lying because they know the law wouldn't agree with them, then that'd seem different.
Anyway, you're right that it'ld seem like an over-statement to call the vaccines "benign" in an absolute sense. Strange to think of service-members as being afraid of potential risks of that magnitude, though, if they'd voluntarily joined to serve in the armed-forces.
I guess part of me kinda hopes that they're sincerely religious, as the alternative would seem distasteful. However, if they're just lying, then I suppose I'd speculate that they're making decisions based on political-ideology rather than a true understanding of the issues involved. For example, I'd be skeptical that most of them had even read a single academic-article on vaccines, much less be equipped to understand its contents.
But what I meant here is philosophy in the narrow sense. Religion includes revaluation, a discussion of theology. (again, not to say that philosophy and theology don't interact: they do. see philosophical theology).
I call bullshit!
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
1 in 10k getting something that ultimately has no impact seems trivial to me.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35157759/
It could go either way imo: we may find only a small number of people were harmed, or we may find that thousands of young men now have subclinical heart damage that they need to monitor and make lifestyle choices to address. I suspect we will know more in the next year, but in any case this radically alters the bioethics of mandates.
I was of the impression (and, tbh, am still under the suspicion..) that any myocarditis risk was "noise" -- not noticeably higher than that in the larger population, or that reported cases have confounding factors that would suggest the vaccine is not the cause.
That being said, I think the more interesting question is what constitutes non-trivial medical risk. 1 in 10k is really small, especially for a medical treatment.
Fascinating! Thanks. (to be pedantic, my emphasis on the word "was", meant to convey that my opinion was changing)
I was gonna ask "do you have a source on that?" but was able to find this in JAMA w/o much effort: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346 which states in no uncertain terms that "The rates of myocarditis cases were... in adolescent males aged 16 to 17 years .. 105.9 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine", sure enough, 1 in ~10k.
I think it's also important to note, just for larger context -- not attacking or negating anything you've said -- that that cohort (16-17yo males) is the most extreme, it's down to 1 in ~20k once you include up to age 24. Across the whole population it becomes closer to 1 in 200k.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2022/01/09/covid-vaccine-vs-i...
"And myocarditis is a serious disease, make no mistake. Lately, I’ve been hearing this sentence alot: “but the myocarditis caused by the covid vaccines is mild!”. I’d never heard of “mild” myocarditis pre-covid. Pre-covid, myocarditis was always considered a serious disease. What the people saying this mean is that the patients admitted to hospital with myocarditis after vaccination are usually able to go home after a few days, and don’t generally end up in an ICU. Which is true.
But we don’t say that most heart attacks are “mild” just because they don’t result in a stay in an ICU, and just because the patient is usually able to leave the hospital within a week. A heart attack is a heart attack, and is by definition serious. The same goes for myocarditis. Our heart muscles are not very good at repairing themselves, and it is impossible to know today the extent to which an episode of vaccine induced myocarditis increases the person’s future risk of serious long-term complications, such as chronic heart failure or atrial fibrillation.
So, myocarditis is always serious, regardless of whether it puts you in an ICU or not, and we need to know whether the risk of myocarditis caused by the vaccines is greater than the risk caused by infection."
There are 20m American men in their 20s.
That’s still more than 1/10000.
Isn’t this supposed to be a forum where people can do math?
If we're talking about relative personal risk assessment, you need to incorporate natural immunity, omicron, the waning effect of the vaccines, demographic skew on both sides of this, uncertainty about the mechanism and scope of side effects, and a bunch of other things beyond dividing two numbers together.
1/10,000 men develop a medical problem from taking a vaccine.
Around 2/10,000 men die from not having access to the vaccine (I don't have the data, but I imagine most of those under 40 men died unvaccinated based on this [0])
You can mental gymnastics all you want about 'personal risk,' and 'natural immunity,' but at least agree that's not a data-driven approach.
[0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-co...
- Youth + non-obesity reduces risk from COVID
- BA.X are less dangerous than previous variants
- Vaccine induced heart damage is more likely in younger men
- The vaccine induced immunity drops off after 5 months due to waning + evolutionary pressure
- Natural immunity of a prior infection confers protection towards BA.X
I'm not doing any mental gymnastics. I stated specifically: your counterargument is one for some arguments, not others. I am illustrating clearly when what you wrote is not a meaningful counterargument if it is being used to persuade someone to get vaccinated or to justify a mandate when, for example, that person is a young, healthy man who has already had COVID.
Now go ahead and reply again with another thinly veiled insult, citing broad, long term statistics and dividing two numbers. It reflects poorly on you.
And it is unnecessary. COVID was already almost always mild for people outside of risk groups like the elderly (who aren't serving in the military anyway), and Omicron just took that mildness to another level. It just isn't necessary for this CO to get vaccinated against Omicron, especially as the vaccine effectiveness has gone negative i.e. not only can they get it anyway after vaccination but they're actually more likely to.
I'm not saying I would take that deal, but the person in the article did. If he can't comply, he should be discharged. Simple as that.
Protecting one's body and exercising one's individual rights is not antisocial behavior. Just want to make that crystal clear. And nobody has the right to force you to inject anything into your body. Especially the government. Erich Fromm wrote the masses have a slavish need for authority and most people are incapable of being true free individuals. I really didn't believe until covid. You saw bits of it during the start of iraq war, but not to this degree.
In fact, when raw rate data is published (e.g. by England) what you see is that vaccination starts to actually increase the risk of infection after some months, not decrease it! This article has an in-depth analysis of the UK data along with animations of their graphs so you can see the evolution over time:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/03/06/covid-deaths-continue-to...
The cause appears to be a form of immune imprinting, in which the vaccine trains the immune system to make antibodies against the original Wuhan strain spike, then Omicron comes along with a very different spike but otherwise looking kinda similar and the immune system misfires. It builds antibodies as it was trained to, instead of ones that will work, and then it takes a while to notice what's going on. In that time period you've become more badly infected than an unvaccinated person would have done. It turns out that this has happened many times before with vaccines; it's not a given that vaccines definitely cause lower rates of infection or sickness.
This would appear incompatible with initially high effectiveness, but when examined closely that appears to be a set of nasty statistical artifacts (invalid assumptions underlying TNCC study design + immortal time bias). Therefore it might not actually be real. The UK data shows evidence that these problems exist in their data, and the UK HSA is unusually thorough. Data from Alberta that they published and then swiftly deleted when it was realized what it meant, also backed this theory up. Certainly the trials couldn't show benefits even for 3rd doses pre-Omicron, so they had to be approved on the basis of elevated antibody levels rather than clinical outcomes (which is backwards - putting the cart before the horse). The fact that most countries had by far their largest waves after vaccinating most of their population is suggestive that the negative effectiveness might actually have been there from the start, but hidden.
Your rights stop where the rights of others begin.
Which is why nobody has the right to force you to get penetrated and injected with something against your will.
Before the vaccines, people were dying because hospitals were saturated, it's clearly turned for the better after them, because people can still get infected and spread it, but their viral charge is mild. COVID can't be eradicated because there are animal reservoirs, but having people stubbornly refuse to vaccinate means they are like we were at the start of the pandemic, forming a permanent human reservoir breeding new mutations, because politics.
There are those who hold individual rights to be the highest.
I think the second is more compatible with the United States. We are guaranteed individual liberties.
Sorry but this has never been the case. I mean when the country was founded slavery was perfectly legal. The enslaved people would certainly argue that the US did not hold individual rights to the highest standard.
Not to mention the first president literally did exactly what we're doing now [1]
[1]: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/30/viral-imag...
- I don't want to die!
- I don't want to be really sick!
- I don't want to lose my job!
- I want to travel!
And on the opposite side of the coin, the "for the greater good" reason:
- I want to prevent spreading the disease to my fellow man.
Is not even a benefit of the vaccine.
- You distrust the medical science of vaccines?
- You distrust the data showing the current effect of mass vaccination?
- Is it truly about individualism, or religion?
- Does it have to do with politics and those damned democrats?
- Because the governments didn't ask nicely?
Remember that we're trying to stop deaths, not infections. It would be awesome if we could stop infections, but COVID mutates. Nevertheless, deaths have decreased sharply among the vaccinated population.
Yes, there are many ways to play your stupid game.
It's exhausting.
It’s basic autonomy over your own body. No government or employer should have the right to determine what gets injected into your body.
There isn't even a draft any more.
Nobody has signed such a contract.
The orders must be lawful, and not unreasonably interfere with personal matters. Manual for Courts-Martial (2019 ed.), Part IV, para. 16.c.(2)(a)(iv).
Your argument would be stronger if there were better evidence that the vaccine was significantly effective at preventing infection rather than ameliorating its course.
>FOR ALL ENLISTEES OR REENLISTEES: I understand that many laws, regulations, and military customs will govern my conduct and require me to do things under this agreement that a civilian does not have to do. I also understand that various laws, some of which are listed in this agreement, directly affect this enlistment/reenlistment agreement. Some examples of how existing laws may affect this agreement are explained in paragraphs 10 and 11. I understand that I cannot change these laws but that Congress may change these laws, or pass new laws, at any time that may affect this agreement, and that I will be subject to those laws and any changes they make to this agreement. I further understand that: a. My enlistment/reenlistment agreement is more than an employment agreement. It effects a change in status from civilian to military member of the Armed Forces. As a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, I will be: (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties. (2) Subject to separation during or at the end of my enlistment. If my behavior fails to meet acceptable military standards, I may be discharged and given a certificate for less than honorable service, which may hurt my future job opportunities and my claim for veteran's benefits. (3) Subject to the military justice system, which means, among other things, that I may be tried by military courts-martial. (4) Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations. (5) Entitled to receive pay, allowances, and other benefits as provided by law and regulation. b. Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/ reenlistment document.
and the oath:
>I, , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/forms/dd/dd0...
- Required to obey all lawful orders (not all orders)
- Congress may change these laws, or pass new laws, at any time
See, e.g., RFRA.
(Not important to the issue, but yes, DD Form 4 is used for officers and enlisted; however, the officer oath does not swear to obey the President)
He can quit if he doesn't like it. He's not entitled to a job.