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> Thus limiting those that are not vaccinated and making it difficult to move freely for them. > ... that effectively will force many to be vaccinated. Yup, t

> Thus limiting those that are not vaccinated and making it difficult to move freely for them. > ... that effectively will force many to be vaccinated. Yup, that’s the point. No man is an island. You already can’t walk around doing literally whatever you want just because it’s your body you’re doing it with. You depend on other people, and other people depend on you (or at least can’t avoid intermingling with you, especially if you decide to travel internationally). Those who don’t get vaccinated slow down our recovery from the pandemic, putting other people’s health and lives at risk. Society has to make these trade-offs, and this one seems very reasonable to me.

radu_floricica 5y ago
I agree with your points, but I'd really really like to avoid giving the impression of... glee? "Look at those unwashed unvaccinated Trump supporters, so good they'll be forced to do things our ways now!". I'm not saying you're doing it, I'm just piggybacking on your comment. I'm pretty much a high-modernist when it comes to vaccines - I think that having governments build sewage and create vaccines go into the same category of "damn useful for civilization". But it does involve curtailing liberties, and I just can't put it in a "fell good" category.
- unilynx 5y ago
  This subthread started about the EU. What does Trump have to do with this?
- refactor_master 5y ago
  I completely disagree. As we say with code, there’s freedom in restrictions. I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that. There’s no inherently moral good in limitless freedom. Especially because humans are far from rational agents that can reasonably act without boundaries. If you don’t want to be vaccinated or pay your taxes, you are, on some level, a danger to society.
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    >I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that. Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? So in theory you could have some small degree of worry about your safety. Different people have different places they draw the line for an acceptable amount of worry vs an acceptable amount of freedom restrictions.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      > Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? In (most of) the EU, it’s illegal to carry a weapon of any kind unless you have a reason to do so (ie, going hunting). You can’t even carry pepper spray.
      - Thorrez 5y ago
        Interesting. But someone could break that law. So the law doesn't stop you from being stabbed.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        The law doesn’t stop anything, at all. It just provides a framework for punishing people who break them.
        Thorrez 5y ago
        Not entirely. There are people at the boarder searching some cars that come in, and searching some mail. Laws could be passed increasing those searches, and even searching everyone's house regularly. This would reduce the risk that you get shot, because some illegal guns would be found in these searches. To take it to the extreme, the law could force you to live in a little cell locked away from everyone. This would prevent you from being stabbed by someone else (except one of the guards). Like I said, there's a tradeoff between security and freedom.
      - 5y ago
- thwarted 5y ago
  This is getting stupid, if it wasn't already. Requiring vaccination is "curtailing liberties". Restricting movement due not being vaccinated is "curtailing liberties". No shit. One can either be part of society or not. Society has minimum requirements if one wants to participate. One is free—exercise their liberty—to live as a hermit if they don't want to do either of these things. That's the price of admission of getting the benefits, whatever they may be, of interacting with other people. Added bonus, the rest of us don't need to hear about hermits complaining about their liberties then too. Building sewage management infrastructure is not curtailing liberties. There is very little noise made about having to give up liberties because of the majority of other public works. Civilization decided that shitting on the sidewalk is not something that should be encouraged or condoned, so here we are with our sewage management infrastructure. We gain the freedom of not having to dig a hole and maintain an outhouse. No one is giving up any "liberties" by getting vaccinated, but it's more likely they are acquiring liberties by getting vaccinated. At the very least it's the liberty of reducing the risk of dying. This is all a "I don't want to do what you said I should do purely because you said it". Fine. The rest of us are at liberty to exclude or chastise these people.
  - cigaser 5y ago
    In my country shitting on sidewalks, had higher priority than health or liberties. Dog walking was allowed, while exercise and outdoor activities were prohibited. Society already excludes many people due to expensive housing, education etc... Living as hermit in a van is not that bad. But society should not expect taxes from excluded people :)
  - Guthur 5y ago
    But it's such a nonsense strategy, there is no way that this will provide eradication, covid is just too virulent and not deadly enough, it will remain in small pockets, remember there will be many countries that won't be able to afford this on going pharmaceutical tax. If it does provide protection vaccinate the at risk and be done.
    - Tade0 5y ago
      The aim is to prevent the virus from clogging up the healthcare system. Countries which vaccinated all the citizens they could(e.g. Israel) already achieved that. One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.
- HighlandSpring 5y ago
  It's a shame your comment has been found to be polarising, I think your phrasing is quite moderate. Looking at social media it feels like too many people are celebrating because they've been given another opportunity to show how virtuous they are. They're not one of those people that oppose vaccines and progress, oh no. The clout associated with putting up pictures of you with a needle in your arm is probably the most off-putting thing I'd gotten to gawk at. My assessment is similar to yours. The situation just kinda is. We've had a novel viral agent, what followed is what you'd expect of a society that optimised for lack of novel viral agents. Now the viral agent is mostly gone and we have two new taxes to show for it: further encumberement of civil liberties and more revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. It's not a bad result but there's no big win to point at either
  - radu_floricica 5y ago
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-lights https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-l... It contained a few key words/ideas, so it became immediately polarized. I guess given enough years we'll become inoculated against such failure modes, but meanwhile, it is what it is.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Seatbelt laws curtail liberties, too, but most societies have decided that the good effects massively outweigh the small freedom inconvenience of putting a buckle in a latch and going about your day. Also, I bet you're vaccinated against polio. Do people feel their freedom has been limited because of being vaccinated against polio?
cigaser 5y ago
That is not how it works. Most people can not get vaccinated right now, even if they would want. And frankly nobody cares at this point.
ithkuil 5y ago
> Yup, that’s the point. I don't understand. If we know that people who recovered from covid are effectively as if they were vaccinated, why do they have to wait until they have the privilege to be in the lucky age group to receive the vaccine before they can go visit a loved one they don't see for more than one year? Are you assuming that everyone in the world is living in a privileged country where people as young as 30 can already access vaccines? I read a lot from Americans complaining how bad their country was and all that, but hey, all my American coworkers got vaccinated and I can't visit my mom in Switzerland because she aged 68 just got her first shot yesterday. That's right, Switzerland not some third world country. Switzerland with all its pharma industry can't get the same vaccine production capacity and rollout throughput as your "utterly unorganized federal state that totally botched covid", as I often read Americans.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Just want to interject that a lot of us Americans are pleasantly surprised with just how quickly and effectively the vaccine rollout has gone. It has been a real turnaround for those living in states whose government was able to pull it off. (But it should be noted that many states are not doing as well)
  - sharken 5y ago
    Yes kudos to America for actually having an effective rollout, even with all the Trump drama. There are also many diverse ways the individual states have handled restrictions, it will be interesting to see if some consensus will be reached regarding keeping restrictions or not.
- Closi 5y ago
  You don't actually have a birth-given right to enter all other countries - which might be a surprise to people with good passports that effectively used to let them travel anywhere (try entering the USA with a passport from Pakistan or Iraq and see how it compares with a Swiss passport!). This is about what other countries want to restrict in terms of non-citizen's entering the country without isolation. These are countries which have had a significant portion of their economy shut down for more than a year, so unsurprisingly they might want to ensure non-citizens who travel in have done something to limit the risk (even if that is isolating for 2 weeks).
rajup 5y ago
ELI5, if someone is not vaccinated isn't the only person being put at risk themselves? I have heard speculation of how this could cause more variants to arise which seems to be mostly just that: speculation. Or how this can be problematic for at-risk (elderly, immuno-compromised etc) but how frequently does that happen? I am 100% confident I have not encountered any such people in the last 6 months (or well atleast for any amount of time that would actually be harmful). FWIW I'm fully vaccinated, I'm genuinely curious about this.
- chousuke 5y ago
  That you haven't met someone who can't take vaccines is not a reason to dismiss them. Intuitively, such people may prefer to stay in self-quarantine to protect themselves, making you even less likely to encounter such a person during a pandemic. However, getting vaccinated should also help reduce the transmission of the disease to people who haven't yet had a chance to get a vaccination even though they could; the pandemic will end faster than if you let it run its natural course.
- yaris 5y ago
  For any vaccine (and the corresponding disease) there are people that cannot be vaccinated, but that can have quite severe symptoms (and/or die). If a person is not vaccinated - then this person can spread the disease among those vulnerable people. How this can be problematic - here is an example. One of the reasons Sweden has so high mortality from COVID is that during the first wave elderly care homes were hit hard, because workers spread the virus (mostly unknowingly). That you have not met such people in the last 6 months depends, I guess, on your social interactions style and on the structure of the society you live in in general.
- hnthrowaway8493 5y ago
  Read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-homes-infections.html?0p19G=2103 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-ho... "An unvaccinated worker set off an outbreak at a U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized." One vaccinated resident died.
kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
Except that the people who are worried can simply get vaccinated themselves. There may be a few people who can not be vaccinated (old and very sick), but it hardly seems appropriate to restrict billions of people just to protect those few. It would be more efficient to isolate them, which most of them probably already are (in care homes or hospitals).
- p49k 5y ago
  Seems incredibly selfish to force vulnerable people into isolation because some people allow themselves to get absorbed into conspiracy theories about a harmless vaccine. Requiring certain vaccines for travel has been something that has existed for decades and was never controversial.
  - kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
    It's not a harmless vaccine. You want to mandate vaccinating people who are at no risk from the disease, and expose them to unnecessary risks. And that means children - all to protect sick people who for the most part are already isolated. They are in hospitals or sick people homes, where you can protect them in other ways. Also the comparison with other vaccines does not automatically make sense. All vaccines are not the same. At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. There is a reason why people are not simply being vaccinated against all possible diseases.
    - ben_bai 5y ago
      > At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. Well then good news, COVID-19 is "especially risky".
      - kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
        I should have added - risky for the person who might contract the disease. In any case, yes, both disease and vaccination have risks, that should be weighed against each other. Matters are complicated because risks differ among different age groups.
lenkite 5y ago
My Body, My Choice went the way of the gutter I see. My family is vaccinated, but I don't see why this should be forced on people. Anaphylaxis and Thrombosis are rare reported conditions after vaccination - some even causing deaths. Vaccination should be a choice.

radu_floricica 5y ago

I agree with your points, but I'd really really like to avoid giving the impression of... glee? "Look at those unwashed unvaccinated Trump supporters, so good they'll be forced to do things our ways now!". I'm not saying you're doing it, I'm just piggybacking on your comment. I'm pretty much a high-modernist when it comes to vaccines - I think that having governments build sewage and create vaccines go into the same category of "damn useful for civilization". But it does involve curtailing liberties, and I just can't put it in a "fell good" category.

unilynx 5y ago
This subthread started about the EU. What does Trump have to do with this?
refactor_master 5y ago
I completely disagree. As we say with code, there’s freedom in restrictions. I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that. There’s no inherently moral good in limitless freedom. Especially because humans are far from rational agents that can reasonably act without boundaries. If you don’t want to be vaccinated or pay your taxes, you are, on some level, a danger to society.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  >I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that. Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? So in theory you could have some small degree of worry about your safety. Different people have different places they draw the line for an acceptable amount of worry vs an acceptable amount of freedom restrictions.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    > Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? In (most of) the EU, it’s illegal to carry a weapon of any kind unless you have a reason to do so (ie, going hunting). You can’t even carry pepper spray.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      Interesting. But someone could break that law. So the law doesn't stop you from being stabbed.
      - withinboredom 5y ago
        The law doesn’t stop anything, at all. It just provides a framework for punishing people who break them.
        Thorrez 5y ago
        Not entirely. There are people at the boarder searching some cars that come in, and searching some mail. Laws could be passed increasing those searches, and even searching everyone's house regularly. This would reduce the risk that you get shot, because some illegal guns would be found in these searches. To take it to the extreme, the law could force you to live in a little cell locked away from everyone. This would prevent you from being stabbed by someone else (except one of the guards). Like I said, there's a tradeoff between security and freedom.
    - 5y ago
thwarted 5y ago
This is getting stupid, if it wasn't already. Requiring vaccination is "curtailing liberties". Restricting movement due not being vaccinated is "curtailing liberties". No shit. One can either be part of society or not. Society has minimum requirements if one wants to participate. One is free—exercise their liberty—to live as a hermit if they don't want to do either of these things. That's the price of admission of getting the benefits, whatever they may be, of interacting with other people. Added bonus, the rest of us don't need to hear about hermits complaining about their liberties then too. Building sewage management infrastructure is not curtailing liberties. There is very little noise made about having to give up liberties because of the majority of other public works. Civilization decided that shitting on the sidewalk is not something that should be encouraged or condoned, so here we are with our sewage management infrastructure. We gain the freedom of not having to dig a hole and maintain an outhouse. No one is giving up any "liberties" by getting vaccinated, but it's more likely they are acquiring liberties by getting vaccinated. At the very least it's the liberty of reducing the risk of dying. This is all a "I don't want to do what you said I should do purely because you said it". Fine. The rest of us are at liberty to exclude or chastise these people.
- cigaser 5y ago
  In my country shitting on sidewalks, had higher priority than health or liberties. Dog walking was allowed, while exercise and outdoor activities were prohibited. Society already excludes many people due to expensive housing, education etc... Living as hermit in a van is not that bad. But society should not expect taxes from excluded people :)
- Guthur 5y ago
  But it's such a nonsense strategy, there is no way that this will provide eradication, covid is just too virulent and not deadly enough, it will remain in small pockets, remember there will be many countries that won't be able to afford this on going pharmaceutical tax. If it does provide protection vaccinate the at risk and be done.
  - Tade0 5y ago
    The aim is to prevent the virus from clogging up the healthcare system. Countries which vaccinated all the citizens they could(e.g. Israel) already achieved that. One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.
HighlandSpring 5y ago
It's a shame your comment has been found to be polarising, I think your phrasing is quite moderate. Looking at social media it feels like too many people are celebrating because they've been given another opportunity to show how virtuous they are. They're not one of those people that oppose vaccines and progress, oh no. The clout associated with putting up pictures of you with a needle in your arm is probably the most off-putting thing I'd gotten to gawk at. My assessment is similar to yours. The situation just kinda is. We've had a novel viral agent, what followed is what you'd expect of a society that optimised for lack of novel viral agents. Now the viral agent is mostly gone and we have two new taxes to show for it: further encumberement of civil liberties and more revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. It's not a bad result but there's no big win to point at either
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-lights https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-l... It contained a few key words/ideas, so it became immediately polarized. I guess given enough years we'll become inoculated against such failure modes, but meanwhile, it is what it is.
ryandrake 5y ago
Seatbelt laws curtail liberties, too, but most societies have decided that the good effects massively outweigh the small freedom inconvenience of putting a buckle in a latch and going about your day. Also, I bet you're vaccinated against polio. Do people feel their freedom has been limited because of being vaccinated against polio?

cigaser 5y ago

That is not how it works. Most people can not get vaccinated right now, even if they would want. And frankly nobody cares at this point.

ithkuil 5y ago

> Yup, that’s the point. I don't understand. If we know that people who recovered from covid are effectively as if they were vaccinated, why do they have to wait until they have the privilege to be in the lucky age group to receive the vaccine before they can go visit a loved one they don't see for more than one year? Are you assuming that everyone in the world is living in a privileged country where people as young as 30 can already access vaccines? I read a lot from Americans complaining how bad their country was and all that, but hey, all my American coworkers got vaccinated and I can't visit my mom in Switzerland because she aged 68 just got her first shot yesterday. That's right, Switzerland not some third world country. Switzerland with all its pharma industry can't get the same vaccine production capacity and rollout throughput as your "utterly unorganized federal state that totally botched covid", as I often read Americans.

tomc1985 5y ago
Just want to interject that a lot of us Americans are pleasantly surprised with just how quickly and effectively the vaccine rollout has gone. It has been a real turnaround for those living in states whose government was able to pull it off. (But it should be noted that many states are not doing as well)
- sharken 5y ago
  Yes kudos to America for actually having an effective rollout, even with all the Trump drama. There are also many diverse ways the individual states have handled restrictions, it will be interesting to see if some consensus will be reached regarding keeping restrictions or not.
Closi 5y ago
You don't actually have a birth-given right to enter all other countries - which might be a surprise to people with good passports that effectively used to let them travel anywhere (try entering the USA with a passport from Pakistan or Iraq and see how it compares with a Swiss passport!). This is about what other countries want to restrict in terms of non-citizen's entering the country without isolation. These are countries which have had a significant portion of their economy shut down for more than a year, so unsurprisingly they might want to ensure non-citizens who travel in have done something to limit the risk (even if that is isolating for 2 weeks).

rajup 5y ago

ELI5, if someone is not vaccinated isn't the only person being put at risk themselves? I have heard speculation of how this could cause more variants to arise which seems to be mostly just that: speculation. Or how this can be problematic for at-risk (elderly, immuno-compromised etc) but how frequently does that happen? I am 100% confident I have not encountered any such people in the last 6 months (or well atleast for any amount of time that would actually be harmful). FWIW I'm fully vaccinated, I'm genuinely curious about this.

chousuke 5y ago
That you haven't met someone who can't take vaccines is not a reason to dismiss them. Intuitively, such people may prefer to stay in self-quarantine to protect themselves, making you even less likely to encounter such a person during a pandemic. However, getting vaccinated should also help reduce the transmission of the disease to people who haven't yet had a chance to get a vaccination even though they could; the pandemic will end faster than if you let it run its natural course.
yaris 5y ago
For any vaccine (and the corresponding disease) there are people that cannot be vaccinated, but that can have quite severe symptoms (and/or die). If a person is not vaccinated - then this person can spread the disease among those vulnerable people. How this can be problematic - here is an example. One of the reasons Sweden has so high mortality from COVID is that during the first wave elderly care homes were hit hard, because workers spread the virus (mostly unknowingly). That you have not met such people in the last 6 months depends, I guess, on your social interactions style and on the structure of the society you live in in general.
hnthrowaway8493 5y ago
Read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-homes-infections.html?0p19G=2103 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-ho... "An unvaccinated worker set off an outbreak at a U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized." One vaccinated resident died.

kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago

Except that the people who are worried can simply get vaccinated themselves. There may be a few people who can not be vaccinated (old and very sick), but it hardly seems appropriate to restrict billions of people just to protect those few. It would be more efficient to isolate them, which most of them probably already are (in care homes or hospitals).

p49k 5y ago
Seems incredibly selfish to force vulnerable people into isolation because some people allow themselves to get absorbed into conspiracy theories about a harmless vaccine. Requiring certain vaccines for travel has been something that has existed for decades and was never controversial.
- kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
  It's not a harmless vaccine. You want to mandate vaccinating people who are at no risk from the disease, and expose them to unnecessary risks. And that means children - all to protect sick people who for the most part are already isolated. They are in hospitals or sick people homes, where you can protect them in other ways. Also the comparison with other vaccines does not automatically make sense. All vaccines are not the same. At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. There is a reason why people are not simply being vaccinated against all possible diseases.
  - ben_bai 5y ago
    > At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. Well then good news, COVID-19 is "especially risky".
    - kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
      I should have added - risky for the person who might contract the disease. In any case, yes, both disease and vaccination have risks, that should be weighed against each other. Matters are complicated because risks differ among different age groups.

lenkite 5y ago

My Body, My Choice went the way of the gutter I see. My family is vaccinated, but I don't see why this should be forced on people. Anaphylaxis and Thrombosis are rare reported conditions after vaccination - some even causing deaths. Vaccination should be a choice.