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Requiring people to consume a medical product, especially one that has not been subject to the full FDA approval process, just to live their normal lives is mor

Requiring people to consume a medical product, especially one that has not been subject to the full FDA approval process, just to live their normal lives is morally wrong. They are making people into test subjects for a multinational corporation. It doesn't matter if we already do this to an extent with other vaccines; nothing in the past has ever come close to this. It doesn't matter if you think the vaccine is more or less dangerous than the coronavirus. It goes back to basic human dignity and human rights. You wouldn't want strangers mandating injections into your body that you don't want. No one would be okay that, unless they are insane. You might make the argument that anti-vaxxers are endangering others' health by being out in public without a vaccine, but that's only a claim. Lots of people make claims about others infringing their rights all the time, and a nontrivial number of those are baseless. A huge number of assumptions about medical science and constitutional law would need to be tested in court for it to hold any weight, unless you're willing to jettison the entire process of civil society.

sprafa 5y ago
Stop getting your opinions from Facebook misinformation as if it’s a Macdonalds burguer bro.
q3k 5y ago
> You wouldn't want strangers mandating injections into your body that you don't want. I mean, compulsory vaccination is a thing in many countries, and I think it's a net good for the world?
- zepto 5y ago
  Compulsory injection with compounds that are not medically approved because they haven’t been tested to accepted standards is a good thing? For what it’s worth, I’m vaccinated and wear a mask in every public encounter until I’ve discussed the risks with whoever I am dealing with whether required to or not. However I strongly disagree with mandatory medical treatment of any kind. I could imagine a law for emergency vaccinations that I would find acceptable, but it would need to have a lot of safeguards.
  - q3k 5y ago
    > Compulsory injection with compounds that are not medically approved because they haven’t been tested to accepted standards is a good thing? First, that's not what the GP said. It's also not what I'm saying. Second, where I live the vaccine I got [1] went through a well-defined process designed explicitly to safely but swiftly approve medicine for emergency use, eg. during pandemics [2]. [1] - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty [2] - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/marketing-authorisation/conditional-marketing-authorisation https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/marketing-auth...
    - zepto 5y ago
      > compulsory vaccination is a thing You said this, and we are referring to a vaccine that is not FDA approved. ‘Well defined’ doesn’t mean anything. The vaccines have not been approved according to normal medical standards.
      - q3k 5y ago
        > ‘Well defined’ doesn’t mean anything. The vaccines have not been approved according to normal medical standards. Except they have. They've literally been approved using medical standards developed to handle time-critical medicine approval, which is as much of an approval process as the standard non-fast-tracked system. The studies are there, they're just taken from much earlier in the development process of the medicine than usually, and the approval is granted for a shorter period with continuous close monitoring and repeated follow up reviews. The reason this accelerated approval isn't used for all medicine is not because it's less safe, but because it's more expensive and more effort consuming for all parties involved. Things are less sequential and more parallel, but all the important steps are still there. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/public-health-threats/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/treatments-vaccines/vaccines-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines-development-evaluation-approval-monitoring https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/publi... Compare: Fast-tracked: https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_fast_track_development.png https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_fas... Standard: https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_standard_vaccine_development_-_update_05-20212x.png https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_sta...
eropple 5y ago
How many compulsory vaccines were necessary for you to attend school? For me, it was three or four at least, and until some genuinely inimical people decided vaccines were a good way to get famous at the expense of the body politic, nobody cared.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Are you drawing a comparison between requiring vaccinations (with 30+ year safety records) against measles and polio, for children to attend public school, with requiring vaccinations (with no long-term safety data whatsoever) against Covid for people to go to public establishments? Did you ever need proof of a polio vaccine to get into Equinox?
  - eropple 5y ago
    Hi! Thanks for asking! I very much am drawing that comparison, because there is literally no--and I mean that, literally no--evidence from a credible source to suggest that the possibility exists in terms of actual pathways to a long-term problem. Should that evidence be forthcoming from sources with a credible tether to reality, I will re-evaluate my position, but unlike so many of the fearful types who insist one "should do their own research", I have, and this is the conclusion I've come to, and to such a degree of certainty that I am comfortable with the requirement. Further, I am also asserting that the fearmongering to the contrary is foolish and worth immediate discount. And given that literal disinformation ops are trying to recruit YouTubers to take a ninety degree swerve from tech or whatever they normally do to talk very seriously about the just asking questions about vaccination, I am okay with being pretty damned hard on this. Thanks for asking!
    - corey_moncure 5y ago
      So do you consider VAERS to have a credible tether to reality?
      - Daishiman 5y ago
pcurve 5y ago
We live in a society that operates under a set of laws, including entrusting public officials and experts to make decisions on our behalf. Not all the laws are going to be popular. I'm sure not everybody is thrilled about schools requiring all children be vaccinated. People can object to it and express concerns about, and you can even try to change it through legislation. But the majority will prevail. Regarding your statement: "You might make the argument that anti-vaxxers are endangering others' health by being out in public without a vaccine, but that's only a claim." It's a claim backed by stats. On an individual level, it may be discriminatory to accuse an anti-vaxxer of endangering others without specific proof. But in aggregate, unvaccinated people are more likely to be infected and also spreading disease unknowingly. At least until the Delta variant came along, and now the officials have revised guidelines to ensure everyone wears mask. Do I think it was premature to let vaccinated people go without mask? Sure. It wasn't my call. But nobody has a crystal balls into the future. So we adapt. In the long run, operating this fashion has served us well.
- swader999 5y ago
  Right, and the check against these laws becoming unjust is the constitution.
mthoms 5y ago
Your rights end when exercising them endangers my life and the lives of my family. That’s also a basic tenet of civil society (see traffic laws for example).
- bsagdiyev 5y ago
  But if you’re vaccinated then you’re not at risk? I say as a vaccinated person.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    What about the immunocompromised? Those who can’t have the vaccine. To say nothing of breakthrough infections and the fact that the mutation rate is tied to the number of infections, and therefore a vaccinated person’s immunity could indeed be impacted by large contingents of unvaccinated persons being infected. And how about the financial cost of COVID? Perhaps we should make it so that if one gets severe COVID and has no proof of vaccination, all coverage of medical costs by insurance are voided. You can’t make a reasonable argument that society should be on the hook for paying for your life saving medical treatment when you intentionally deny free, effective preventative measures.
    - jdhn 5y ago
      This focus on the immunocompromised is so strange to me. Bad flu season? Nobody really cared about them. Bad cold season? Again, nobody really cared about them. Yet covid comes around, the vaccines are produced, and suddenly everyone keeps talking about the immunocompromised. At some point, we have to just tell those who are immunocompromised that we're going to reopen society, and they have to be responsible for managing their own risk.
    - swader999 5y ago
      There simply isn't enough of them to justify the counter-measures.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    If you're vaccinated you're at less risk, not zero risk.
closeparen 5y ago
Requiring me to consume a novel virus in order to live my life is morally wrong. You're making me into a test subject for the bats. The whole point of civil society is to solve coordination problems and deliver public goods like sanitation and health. If it can't accomplish something as basic as vaccination then it is blatantly unfit for purpose. Absolutely, jettison it! The truly crazy idea here is that we would retain and bear the costs of a civil society which is so incompetent at its bread and butter job. We don't leave the water mains to gush into the street, we don't leave the sewers to back up into the toilets, and we don't leave the viruses to circulate in the bars.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  I assume you are for mandatory vaccine of every communicable disease right? Every person should be required to have ebola, flu and every other vaccine before they go to a bar. If you do not support this then you believe in letting viruses circulate in the bars.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    You don't need an ebola vaccine because you're not going to encounter ebola at a bar. The few outbreaks which occurred in the US were contained through tracing and isolation.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Ok, then what about the flu vaccine? Thousands die in the US every year from it.
bart_spoon 5y ago
So your hang up is the FDA giving full approval? Because recent reports indicate that will likely be happening for the Pfizer vaccine next month. Somehow I think there will be a major shifting of goalposts by the anti-vax camp around that time.
- textgel 5y ago
  > Requiring people to consume a medical product just to live their normal lives is morally wrong. > So your hang up is the FDA giving full approval? Perhaps they will but could you save the strawman arguments for then as well.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    It’s not a strawman. We already require a variety of vaccinations so the “requiring people to consume a medical product is wrong” argument is bunk. The only differentiation is that this vaccine has yet to receive full approval. I’m simply focusing on the only relevant part of the argument that is being made here, and pointing out that in 6 weeks it won’t hold any water anymore.
- makomk 5y ago
  Recent reports indicate that the reason it's getting FDA approval so soon is not because of any specific scientific evidence or the standard FDA process, but instead it's being approved early as a deliberate political tactic to undermine this argument used by people who don't trust the vaccines: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus-502397 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer... I don't think it's the "anti-vax camp" who's behind the major shifting of the goalposts here.
  - magicalist 5y ago
    > Recent reports indicate that the reason it's getting FDA approval so soon is not because of any specific scientific evidence or the standard FDA process, but instead it's being approved early as a deliberate political tactic to undermine this argument used by people who don't trust the vaccines: > https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus-502397 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer... That is not information, explicit or implicit, that is in that article.
coccinelle 5y ago
Well, it happened to all of us for months for the past several months: in many places, people were prevented from "living their normal lives": in San Francisco, you could no longer get your hair cut, go to a restaurant, or worse, have family or friends over etc. Now, we are saying instead of imposing such restrictions on everyone, we are giving the opportunity of those willing to vaccinate to get back to some of these things. Why is it a problem to keep some restrictions for the unvaccinated that we've had for all for months? Unless you think there should never have been restrictions, but then how would you propose to handle all the folks that would have come knock on the doors of hospitals and clamor for oxygen, like what apparently happened in India?

sprafa 5y ago

Stop getting your opinions from Facebook misinformation as if it’s a Macdonalds burguer bro.

q3k 5y ago

> You wouldn't want strangers mandating injections into your body that you don't want. I mean, compulsory vaccination is a thing in many countries, and I think it's a net good for the world?

zepto 5y ago
Compulsory injection with compounds that are not medically approved because they haven’t been tested to accepted standards is a good thing? For what it’s worth, I’m vaccinated and wear a mask in every public encounter until I’ve discussed the risks with whoever I am dealing with whether required to or not. However I strongly disagree with mandatory medical treatment of any kind. I could imagine a law for emergency vaccinations that I would find acceptable, but it would need to have a lot of safeguards.
- q3k 5y ago
  > Compulsory injection with compounds that are not medically approved because they haven’t been tested to accepted standards is a good thing? First, that's not what the GP said. It's also not what I'm saying. Second, where I live the vaccine I got [1] went through a well-defined process designed explicitly to safely but swiftly approve medicine for emergency use, eg. during pandemics [2]. [1] - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty [2] - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/marketing-authorisation/conditional-marketing-authorisation https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/marketing-auth...
  - zepto 5y ago
    > compulsory vaccination is a thing You said this, and we are referring to a vaccine that is not FDA approved. ‘Well defined’ doesn’t mean anything. The vaccines have not been approved according to normal medical standards.
    - q3k 5y ago
      > ‘Well defined’ doesn’t mean anything. The vaccines have not been approved according to normal medical standards. Except they have. They've literally been approved using medical standards developed to handle time-critical medicine approval, which is as much of an approval process as the standard non-fast-tracked system. The studies are there, they're just taken from much earlier in the development process of the medicine than usually, and the approval is granted for a shorter period with continuous close monitoring and repeated follow up reviews. The reason this accelerated approval isn't used for all medicine is not because it's less safe, but because it's more expensive and more effort consuming for all parties involved. Things are less sequential and more parallel, but all the important steps are still there. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/public-health-threats/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/treatments-vaccines/vaccines-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines-development-evaluation-approval-monitoring https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/publi... Compare: Fast-tracked: https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_fast_track_development.png https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_fas... Standard: https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_standard_vaccine_development_-_update_05-20212x.png https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/timeline_-_sta...

eropple 5y ago

How many compulsory vaccines were necessary for you to attend school? For me, it was three or four at least, and until some genuinely inimical people decided vaccines were a good way to get famous at the expense of the body politic, nobody cared.

AndrewBissell 5y ago
Are you drawing a comparison between requiring vaccinations (with 30+ year safety records) against measles and polio, for children to attend public school, with requiring vaccinations (with no long-term safety data whatsoever) against Covid for people to go to public establishments? Did you ever need proof of a polio vaccine to get into Equinox?
- eropple 5y ago
  Hi! Thanks for asking! I very much am drawing that comparison, because there is literally no--and I mean that, literally no--evidence from a credible source to suggest that the possibility exists in terms of actual pathways to a long-term problem. Should that evidence be forthcoming from sources with a credible tether to reality, I will re-evaluate my position, but unlike so many of the fearful types who insist one "should do their own research", I have, and this is the conclusion I've come to, and to such a degree of certainty that I am comfortable with the requirement. Further, I am also asserting that the fearmongering to the contrary is foolish and worth immediate discount. And given that literal disinformation ops are trying to recruit YouTubers to take a ninety degree swerve from tech or whatever they normally do to talk very seriously about the just asking questions about vaccination, I am okay with being pretty damned hard on this. Thanks for asking!
  - corey_moncure 5y ago
    So do you consider VAERS to have a credible tether to reality?
    - Daishiman 5y ago

pcurve 5y ago

We live in a society that operates under a set of laws, including entrusting public officials and experts to make decisions on our behalf. Not all the laws are going to be popular. I'm sure not everybody is thrilled about schools requiring all children be vaccinated. People can object to it and express concerns about, and you can even try to change it through legislation. But the majority will prevail. Regarding your statement: "You might make the argument that anti-vaxxers are endangering others' health by being out in public without a vaccine, but that's only a claim." It's a claim backed by stats. On an individual level, it may be discriminatory to accuse an anti-vaxxer of endangering others without specific proof. But in aggregate, unvaccinated people are more likely to be infected and also spreading disease unknowingly. At least until the Delta variant came along, and now the officials have revised guidelines to ensure everyone wears mask. Do I think it was premature to let vaccinated people go without mask? Sure. It wasn't my call. But nobody has a crystal balls into the future. So we adapt. In the long run, operating this fashion has served us well.

swader999 5y ago
Right, and the check against these laws becoming unjust is the constitution.

mthoms 5y ago

Your rights end when exercising them endangers my life and the lives of my family. That’s also a basic tenet of civil society (see traffic laws for example).

bsagdiyev 5y ago
But if you’re vaccinated then you’re not at risk? I say as a vaccinated person.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  What about the immunocompromised? Those who can’t have the vaccine. To say nothing of breakthrough infections and the fact that the mutation rate is tied to the number of infections, and therefore a vaccinated person’s immunity could indeed be impacted by large contingents of unvaccinated persons being infected. And how about the financial cost of COVID? Perhaps we should make it so that if one gets severe COVID and has no proof of vaccination, all coverage of medical costs by insurance are voided. You can’t make a reasonable argument that society should be on the hook for paying for your life saving medical treatment when you intentionally deny free, effective preventative measures.
  - jdhn 5y ago
    This focus on the immunocompromised is so strange to me. Bad flu season? Nobody really cared about them. Bad cold season? Again, nobody really cared about them. Yet covid comes around, the vaccines are produced, and suddenly everyone keeps talking about the immunocompromised. At some point, we have to just tell those who are immunocompromised that we're going to reopen society, and they have to be responsible for managing their own risk.
  - swader999 5y ago
    There simply isn't enough of them to justify the counter-measures.
- mthoms 5y ago
  If you're vaccinated you're at less risk, not zero risk.

closeparen 5y ago

Requiring me to consume a novel virus in order to live my life is morally wrong. You're making me into a test subject for the bats. The whole point of civil society is to solve coordination problems and deliver public goods like sanitation and health. If it can't accomplish something as basic as vaccination then it is blatantly unfit for purpose. Absolutely, jettison it! The truly crazy idea here is that we would retain and bear the costs of a civil society which is so incompetent at its bread and butter job. We don't leave the water mains to gush into the street, we don't leave the sewers to back up into the toilets, and we don't leave the viruses to circulate in the bars.

_-david-_ 5y ago
I assume you are for mandatory vaccine of every communicable disease right? Every person should be required to have ebola, flu and every other vaccine before they go to a bar. If you do not support this then you believe in letting viruses circulate in the bars.
- closeparen 5y ago
  You don't need an ebola vaccine because you're not going to encounter ebola at a bar. The few outbreaks which occurred in the US were contained through tracing and isolation.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Ok, then what about the flu vaccine? Thousands die in the US every year from it.

bart_spoon 5y ago

So your hang up is the FDA giving full approval? Because recent reports indicate that will likely be happening for the Pfizer vaccine next month. Somehow I think there will be a major shifting of goalposts by the anti-vax camp around that time.

textgel 5y ago
> Requiring people to consume a medical product just to live their normal lives is morally wrong. > So your hang up is the FDA giving full approval? Perhaps they will but could you save the strawman arguments for then as well.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  It’s not a strawman. We already require a variety of vaccinations so the “requiring people to consume a medical product is wrong” argument is bunk. The only differentiation is that this vaccine has yet to receive full approval. I’m simply focusing on the only relevant part of the argument that is being made here, and pointing out that in 6 weeks it won’t hold any water anymore.
makomk 5y ago
Recent reports indicate that the reason it's getting FDA approval so soon is not because of any specific scientific evidence or the standard FDA process, but instead it's being approved early as a deliberate political tactic to undermine this argument used by people who don't trust the vaccines: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus-502397 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer... I don't think it's the "anti-vax camp" who's behind the major shifting of the goalposts here.
- magicalist 5y ago
  > Recent reports indicate that the reason it's getting FDA approval so soon is not because of any specific scientific evidence or the standard FDA process, but instead it's being approved early as a deliberate political tactic to undermine this argument used by people who don't trust the vaccines: > https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus-502397 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/fda-approval-pfizer... That is not information, explicit or implicit, that is in that article.

coccinelle 5y ago

Well, it happened to all of us for months for the past several months: in many places, people were prevented from "living their normal lives": in San Francisco, you could no longer get your hair cut, go to a restaurant, or worse, have family or friends over etc. Now, we are saying instead of imposing such restrictions on everyone, we are giving the opportunity of those willing to vaccinate to get back to some of these things. Why is it a problem to keep some restrictions for the unvaccinated that we've had for all for months? Unless you think there should never have been restrictions, but then how would you propose to handle all the folks that would have come knock on the doors of hospitals and clamor for oxygen, like what apparently happened in India?