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> we should have. Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being

by timr 5y ago

> we should have. Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous. Maybe this finally shakes people awake and puts public health and safety to the top of the agenda rather than people throwing tantrums like children about government incursion. You can certainly go down this path, and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as "children", but what you value is not the same as what everyone else values. I am willing to balance the risk of never having a normal life again with an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive. Eventually, I too will become old and frail, and become vulnerable to some virus or another. If I ever become so afraid of death that I demand that other people give up their basic human rights to "keep me safe", then I hope that illness takes me quickly after that. I don't want to live in the world you propose.

yezr 5y ago
You're not being asked to give up your basic human rights though. What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm. A vaccine that also has a known chance of causing current harm, and an unknown chance of causing future harm.
- natchy 5y ago
  > a free, readily available vaccine Nothing is free. How much did pharma companies make from the vaccine? I don’t know the answer.
chaps 5y ago
Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have. With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?
- timr 5y ago
  > With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you? Because I have been "statistically likely" to infect N other people every time I had a cold, a flu, or any number of other viruses, most of which are fatal to at least some segment of the population. Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice. Being alive is risky. You can try to eliminate all of that risk, but you will be dead long before anyone puts you in the grave.
  - zapstar 5y ago
    My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice.
    - timr 5y ago
      > My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice. The good news is (assuming that they're not immune compromised in a way that would make them vulnerable to a panoply of other viruses) they're at essentially no risk from Covid. The data on this is unassailable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775 The far bigger risk to children, at this point, is panicky parents doing things that negatively impact their psychological well-being.
      - fomine3 5y ago
        The article seems to not considering delta variant.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - mrdrqr 5y ago
        You're a panoply of bullshit. I have an immunocompromised kid, and just because he's at risk for all these other viruses that we worry about on a daily basis, doesn't mean you shouldn't help lower that chance just a bit by getting a stupid vaccine at your stupid pharmacy.
wwweston 5y ago
> an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive. The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you, but more importantly: > If I ever become so afraid of death that I demand that other people give up their basic human rights Are basic human rights really what we're talking about here? If so, they've always had limits when it came to impacts on others. The freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone's nose; the freedom to spread certain pathogens might end there as well. Of course, the article here is talking about vaccination as a condition for participation in venues where density and proximity is a concern. "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities." Hell, it's hard to actually make an totally unqualified case for bodily autonomy itself, even though that's a good principle to start from, it isn't the only one. Basic human rights were not lost from the world by smallpox or other vaccination mandates. They wouldn't be destroyed even if there were going to be a federal mandate for covid vaccination, which doesn't even seem to be on the horizon. They are certainly not going to be destroyed by proof of vaccination being required for entry to restaurants and gymns.
- lmm 5y ago
  > The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like? > "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities." This is disingenuous. Freedom of peaceful assembly is widely recognised as a basic right.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    > What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like? VAERS currently reports 11,000 deaths (50% in USA mainland) after Covid vaccines. VAERS only has a subset of data on vaccine adverse events, so the true number when private/HMO databases are included will be some multiple (5x to 100x) of the VAERS total, https://openvaers.com/ https://openvaers.com/. A German pathologist has estimated that 30% of post-vaccine deaths were caused by vaccination. We need more autopsies in other countries, along with earlier post-vaccine clinical observation, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/panorama/Corona-Chef-Pathologe-der-Uni-Heidelberg-draengt-auf-mehr-Obduktionen-von-Geimpften-id60235361.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... > pathologists therefore worked with public prosecutors, the police and resident doctors, reports Schirmacher. More than 40 people have already been autopsied who died within two weeks of being vaccinated. Schirmacher estimates that 30 to 40 percent of them died from the vaccination. In his opinion, the frequency of fatal consequences of vaccinations is underestimated Existing Covid vaccines are non-sterilizing, i.e. they do not prevent infection or transmission. In fact, because a non-sterilizing vaccine suppresses symptoms, an infected vaccinated person doesn't know to isolate (unless they get tested after exposure, as recommended by CDC) and can infect others. A non-vaccinated person would show symptoms and can self-isolate, ending the transmission chain. Natural immunity is sterilizing, i.e. NYC essential workers who have already recovered from Covid are much better for public health than anyone vaccinated with a non-sterilizing Covid vaccine, https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advised-push-to-vaccinate-the-young https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advise... > During the pandemic, the professional laptop class protected themselves by working from home while exposing the working class that brought them food and other goods. It is now the height of hypocrisy to recognize immunity from vaccinations but not immunity from those exposed while serving the laptop class. US Covid deaths peaked in early January, three months before US daily vaccines peaked in mid-April (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-doses-administered https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do...), and VAERS deaths peaked in March-April, https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?GRAPH=ON&GROUP6=DEAM&GROUP7=CAT&VAX=COVID19&DIED=Yes&DEATH_YEAR_LOW=2020&DEATH_MONTH_LOW=09 https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?GRAPH=ON&GRO...
mlang23 5y ago
Thanks for having the courage to write this. I couldnt agree more. I find the risk assessment argument of the thread parent really twisted. Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have. And now, the left is trying to force everyone to vaccinate, no matter how good or bad their immune system might be. This world has become a place I actually really dont want to live in. If this trend really wins and people accept a world of forced vaccination and masks and restrictions of public areas, I prefer to contract covid and die.
- FactolSarin 5y ago
  Oh, get over yourself. Vaccines save lives. That life might be an immunocompromised person for whom the vaccine doesn't work. My boss lost his mother last month in just that manner. I personally don't care if you decide to die or not, if you choose to forego the vaccine. But your freedom to be dumb ends when you put other lives in danger. In that way, being unvaccinated is like driving drunk. We don't make DUIs illegal to save the drunk driver's life, that's just a bonus. We're mostly trying to stop them from killing innocents with their poor decision making.
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    This is effectively a "think of the children argument". People with health complications will always be at higher risk of bad disease outcomes than the rest of the population. That includes the regular flu, too, and is pretty much guaranteed to include some form of COVID forever at this point. You don't get to use that as some kind of moral high ground to force your personal stance on everyone else. Educate people about the low risk and high benefit of getting vaccinated. Encourage them to do so as a generally good thing for society. But framing it the way you are right now is not just unhelpful, it actively makes unvaccinated people think you hate freedom and don't give a damn about anyone's personal opinions.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
maxerickson 5y ago
You don't have a basic human right to go into buildings that other people own.
- prepend 5y ago
  You do if they are open to the public. We once lived in a country where people were banned from entering buildings based on the color of their skin. If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Places open to the public can almost arbitrarily ask people to leave (at which point their presence becomes trespassing), they just can't ask people to leave for being members of protected classes. So if I don't like what your t-shirt says, that's all it takes. And for instance, Walmart doesn't have to open to the public tomorrow just because they opened to the public today.
  - albedoa 5y ago
    > If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter. You actually can. It might help the discussion for you to tell us where you picked up this idea.
  - filoeleven 5y ago
    > private public space Please explain further what that means. Also please explain how setting restrictions on use of the space based on conduct, such as being vaccinated or not, is more arbitrary than, say, a dress code.
  - timdev2 5y ago
    Discrimination is largely legal. You absolutely can discriminate on any characteristic you like, with several well defined exceptions (such as race or sex).
- fredros 5y ago
  But you have the right to invite people into buildings you own, right ?
fumar 5y ago
Sure, self preservation or self preference first. I get that. What about empathy to frail or at risk people? What about people on cancer treatments that diminish their immune systems? Those people even vaccinated may be at higher risk. Are you saying that the greater good in overall societal health is less valuable than your individual preferred method of existence? Genuinely curious.
tekromancr 5y ago
That's a bit dramatic, no? The proposal is wear masks and get a needle in your sholder, we aren't putting people in concentration camps here. I see it as on par with indoor smoking bans and seatbelts. You are giving up a relatively small degree of freedom in order to stop a highly contagious, highly mutable virus; and yes, to protect people who aren't you.
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
I am willing to balance the risk of never having a normal life again with an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive. It’s not about you. It’s never about you. There are plenty of people who cannot legitimately get vaccinated. Since these people have no choice to get the vaccine, then your rights to choose for yourself are rightly curtailed. I’m always curious about these arguments. Why do you think your rights are superior to the rights of others?
res0nat0r 5y ago
Everyone here has never been able to go to school in the usa since they were kids unless they proved they were vaccinated against the standard diseases we've been giving out shots against for decades. Same goes for most high education too. It's just become "a thing" now thanks to the rightwing using it as another way to aggravate their base, and thanks to "experts" who have an internet connection and think they know more than epidemiologists. Unless these steps are taken this will never end and the daily hassles will be worse and go on longer for everyone.

by timr 5y ago

yezr 5y ago

You're not being asked to give up your basic human rights though. What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm.

logicchains 5y ago
>What you are being asked to do is to get a free, readily available vaccine that will protect you and others from current and future harm. A vaccine that also has a known chance of causing current harm, and an unknown chance of causing future harm.
natchy 5y ago
> a free, readily available vaccine Nothing is free. How much did pharma companies make from the vaccine? I don’t know the answer.

chaps 5y ago

Okay, so then you die. Nihilism is your choice, so that's cool I guess. But your post is about you, and only you, fullstop. There are other people out there, despite whatever solipsistic beliefs you have. With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you?

timr 5y ago
> With an R0 value of 6, you're statistically likely to infect 6 other people. Why is that acceptable to you? Because I have been "statistically likely" to infect N other people every time I had a cold, a flu, or any number of other viruses, most of which are fatal to at least some segment of the population. Moreover, those N other people can get vaccinated if they're worried about this particular risk. It's a great vaccine. It essentially prevents death from SARS-CoV2. If they don't, that's their choice. Being alive is risky. You can try to eliminate all of that risk, but you will be dead long before anyone puts you in the grave.
- zapstar 5y ago
  My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice.
  - timr 5y ago
    > My children are in those “N other people”. They are not yet able to be vaccinated. It is not their choice. The good news is (assuming that they're not immune compromised in a way that would make them vulnerable to a panoply of other viruses) they're at essentially no risk from Covid. The data on this is unassailable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041775 The far bigger risk to children, at this point, is panicky parents doing things that negatively impact their psychological well-being.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      The article seems to not considering delta variant.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - mrdrqr 5y ago
      You're a panoply of bullshit. I have an immunocompromised kid, and just because he's at risk for all these other viruses that we worry about on a daily basis, doesn't mean you shouldn't help lower that chance just a bit by getting a stupid vaccine at your stupid pharmacy.

wwweston 5y ago

> an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive. The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you, but more importantly: > If I ever become so afraid of death that I demand that other people give up their basic human rights Are basic human rights really what we're talking about here? If so, they've always had limits when it came to impacts on others. The freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone's nose; the freedom to spread certain pathogens might end there as well. Of course, the article here is talking about vaccination as a condition for participation in venues where density and proximity is a concern. "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities." Hell, it's hard to actually make an totally unqualified case for bodily autonomy itself, even though that's a good principle to start from, it isn't the only one. Basic human rights were not lost from the world by smallpox or other vaccination mandates. They wouldn't be destroyed even if there were going to be a federal mandate for covid vaccination, which doesn't even seem to be on the horizon. They are certainly not going to be destroyed by proof of vaccination being required for entry to restaurants and gymns.

lmm 5y ago
> The excess death statistics would like to have a word with you What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like? > "Basic human rights" may well not quite reach into unqualified access to "indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities." This is disingenuous. Freedom of peaceful assembly is widely recognised as a basic right.
- walterbell 5y ago
  > What do excess deaths of vaccinated people look like? VAERS currently reports 11,000 deaths (50% in USA mainland) after Covid vaccines. VAERS only has a subset of data on vaccine adverse events, so the true number when private/HMO databases are included will be some multiple (5x to 100x) of the VAERS total, https://openvaers.com/ https://openvaers.com/. A German pathologist has estimated that 30% of post-vaccine deaths were caused by vaccination. We need more autopsies in other countries, along with earlier post-vaccine clinical observation, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/panorama/Corona-Chef-Pathologe-der-Uni-Heidelberg-draengt-auf-mehr-Obduktionen-von-Geimpften-id60235361.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... > pathologists therefore worked with public prosecutors, the police and resident doctors, reports Schirmacher. More than 40 people have already been autopsied who died within two weeks of being vaccinated. Schirmacher estimates that 30 to 40 percent of them died from the vaccination. In his opinion, the frequency of fatal consequences of vaccinations is underestimated Existing Covid vaccines are non-sterilizing, i.e. they do not prevent infection or transmission. In fact, because a non-sterilizing vaccine suppresses symptoms, an infected vaccinated person doesn't know to isolate (unless they get tested after exposure, as recommended by CDC) and can infect others. A non-vaccinated person would show symptoms and can self-isolate, ending the transmission chain. Natural immunity is sterilizing, i.e. NYC essential workers who have already recovered from Covid are much better for public health than anyone vaccinated with a non-sterilizing Covid vaccine, https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advised-push-to-vaccinate-the-young https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advise... > During the pandemic, the professional laptop class protected themselves by working from home while exposing the working class that brought them food and other goods. It is now the height of hypocrisy to recognize immunity from vaccinations but not immunity from those exposed while serving the laptop class. US Covid deaths peaked in early January, three months before US daily vaccines peaked in mid-April (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-doses-administered https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do...), and VAERS deaths peaked in March-April, https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?GRAPH=ON&GROUP6=DEAM&GROUP7=CAT&VAX=COVID19&DIED=Yes&DEATH_YEAR_LOW=2020&DEATH_MONTH_LOW=09 https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?GRAPH=ON&GRO...

mlang23 5y ago

Thanks for having the courage to write this. I couldnt agree more. I find the risk assessment argument of the thread parent really twisted. Younger people effectively have no risk of dying from covid. Elderly have. And now, the left is trying to force everyone to vaccinate, no matter how good or bad their immune system might be. This world has become a place I actually really dont want to live in. If this trend really wins and people accept a world of forced vaccination and masks and restrictions of public areas, I prefer to contract covid and die.

FactolSarin 5y ago
Oh, get over yourself. Vaccines save lives. That life might be an immunocompromised person for whom the vaccine doesn't work. My boss lost his mother last month in just that manner. I personally don't care if you decide to die or not, if you choose to forego the vaccine. But your freedom to be dumb ends when you put other lives in danger. In that way, being unvaccinated is like driving drunk. We don't make DUIs illegal to save the drunk driver's life, that's just a bonus. We're mostly trying to stop them from killing innocents with their poor decision making.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  This is effectively a "think of the children argument". People with health complications will always be at higher risk of bad disease outcomes than the rest of the population. That includes the regular flu, too, and is pretty much guaranteed to include some form of COVID forever at this point. You don't get to use that as some kind of moral high ground to force your personal stance on everyone else. Educate people about the low risk and high benefit of getting vaccinated. Encourage them to do so as a generally good thing for society. But framing it the way you are right now is not just unhelpful, it actively makes unvaccinated people think you hate freedom and don't give a damn about anyone's personal opinions.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

maxerickson 5y ago

You don't have a basic human right to go into buildings that other people own.

prepend 5y ago
You do if they are open to the public. We once lived in a country where people were banned from entering buildings based on the color of their skin. If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Places open to the public can almost arbitrarily ask people to leave (at which point their presence becomes trespassing), they just can't ask people to leave for being members of protected classes. So if I don't like what your t-shirt says, that's all it takes. And for instance, Walmart doesn't have to open to the public tomorrow just because they opened to the public today.
- albedoa 5y ago
  > If I run a private public space I shouldn’t (and can’t) discriminate arbitrarily on who can enter. You actually can. It might help the discussion for you to tell us where you picked up this idea.
- filoeleven 5y ago
  > private public space Please explain further what that means. Also please explain how setting restrictions on use of the space based on conduct, such as being vaccinated or not, is more arbitrary than, say, a dress code.
- timdev2 5y ago
  Discrimination is largely legal. You absolutely can discriminate on any characteristic you like, with several well defined exceptions (such as race or sex).
fredros 5y ago
But you have the right to invite people into buildings you own, right ?

fumar 5y ago

Sure, self preservation or self preference first. I get that. What about empathy to frail or at risk people? What about people on cancer treatments that diminish their immune systems? Those people even vaccinated may be at higher risk. Are you saying that the greater good in overall societal health is less valuable than your individual preferred method of existence? Genuinely curious.

tekromancr 5y ago

That's a bit dramatic, no? The proposal is wear masks and get a needle in your sholder, we aren't putting people in concentration camps here. I see it as on par with indoor smoking bans and seatbelts. You are giving up a relatively small degree of freedom in order to stop a highly contagious, highly mutable virus; and yes, to protect people who aren't you.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago

I am willing to balance the risk of never having a normal life again with an overall risk of illness and death that is on par with every other year I have been alive. It’s not about you. It’s never about you. There are plenty of people who cannot legitimately get vaccinated. Since these people have no choice to get the vaccine, then your rights to choose for yourself are rightly curtailed. I’m always curious about these arguments. Why do you think your rights are superior to the rights of others?

res0nat0r 5y ago

Everyone here has never been able to go to school in the usa since they were kids unless they proved they were vaccinated against the standard diseases we've been giving out shots against for decades. Same goes for most high education too. It's just become "a thing" now thanks to the rightwing using it as another way to aggravate their base, and thanks to "experts" who have an internet connection and think they know more than epidemiologists. Unless these steps are taken this will never end and the daily hassles will be worse and go on longer for everyone.