5 ms·

So why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences of their irresponsible actions? Why are we obligated to protect people from their own conscious decisi

by umvi 5y ago

So why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences of their irresponsible actions? Why are we obligated to protect people from their own conscious decisions? In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated. If anything, it just sows more social discord and ill will in the population that is doing the most good from a public health perspective. If some parent doesn't want their kids to get chicken pox vaccination and their kid gets chicken pox and dies, so be it. They made their choice, I made mine to vaccinate my kids against varicella.

king_magic 5y ago
As I've said in another comment, the science is demonstrating that the vaccinated can spread Covid just as easily (though likely for a much shorter duration) than the unvaccinated. And the vaccinated can still (rarely) get severely sick. So it's still a danger to everyone. Given that reality, the only responsible choice is for everyone to suck it up and wear a mask. Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.
- frockington1 5y ago
  As a vaccinated person, I don't care if the unvaccinated get Covid. They made a choice, let them deal with the repercussions
  - king_magic 5y ago
    You should, because you can still get Covid from one of those unvaccinated people - and you might die from it, or spread it to someone else who might die from it.
    - morsch 5y ago
      What is the risk of serious illness (and/or death) from delta covid after double vaccination? Too soon to tell?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - jollybean 5y ago
    " They made a choice, let them deal with the repercussions" Oi vei. You will pay the price along with them. So long as the pandemic persists, any number of our systems are compromised, especially our healthcare system. You still have a decent chance of getting COVID even with the vaccine, though it'll likely be mild, you can still be hospitalized and face consequences. The vaccine is not a 'seat belt' i.e. just an individual action resulting in some individual consequence, it affects everyone.
- briefcomment 5y ago
  > Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold. That's conjecture. A conclusion from this study[1] is that vaccines correlate with dominance of fitter variants, including Delta. That suggests that it's possible that vaccines allow them to propagate. "the decline in lineage diversity was indeed correlated with increased rates of mass vaccination. Furthermore, the decline in lineage diversity was coupled with increased dominance of the B.1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.1.617 (delta) and P.1 (gamma) variants of concern, suggesting that these variants may be “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 lineages.” [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v...
MattGaiser 5y ago
They still fill up and cripple the hospitals.
- umvi 5y ago
  Well maybe hospitals should start charging more for specifically covid admissions. Nothing like an economic/financial incentive to get vaccinated. On top of that though, this doesn't seem like a long term concern. Eventually enough people will have natural immunity or vaccinated immunity that it's not really possible to overwhelm hospitals like it was when the virus was totally novel.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    Never going to happen, but yes, I’d love to see the NHS sue the people who didn’t get the vaccine and didn’t have an exemption for costs.
    - peteradio 5y ago
      Here in America we get sued regardless, its called the bill. Many many many people are effectively uncovered from covid bills regardless of their insurance. My daughters 7k bill from early 2020 says so (less than 1 day of treatment!! No outpatient or take home drugs!!). Now I can't say for sure whether she had covid but she received exactly the emergency treatment I've come to see is used in covid ICU, so the bills ought to be the same.
comrh 5y ago
A virus allowed to spread will mutate.
- umvi 5y ago
  So we'll update the vaccinations annually like we do with influenza. We can't hope to prevent covid from mutating, it's a game of whack-a-mole that requires a totalitarian state to win at.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  The highest rates of mutation have been observed in the immunocompromised, many of whom can't get vaccinated. Add to that the fact that vaccines don't terminate the spread by any means, and there are vast reservoirs of animals and people in the Global South who will never be vaccinated all at once, and the idea that mutations can be prevented by mass vaccination quickly comes into focus as a scientific fairy tale. It would be nice if Covid was a slow-moving target like smallpox. It isn't.
TuringNYC 5y ago
Over-exposed individuals, collectively, serve as a population where the virus can thrive and mutate over time. Eventually, a mutation may allow partial or large bypass against current vaccines -- then it is everyone's problem. In the short term, increasing ICU loads result in less ICU space for others (e.g., those in a car accident). They also drive up group insurance costs, which we'll end up seeing in our premiums in coming years.
KittenInABox 5y ago
There are children who can't get vaccinated and people with immune issues that also can't get vaccinated. Neither of these people are responsible but together they are millions of folks who could potentially be put in danger.
jollybean 5y ago
"why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences" Because they won't reap it alone, everyone else will. COVID is not 'bad' because of the case fatality rate - it's dangerous, but if just a few people had it, it wouldn't be huge cause for alarm. What makes COVID evil is it's virality. The contagion means a lot of people get it, a lot of people suffer, and systematically it causes all sorts of lingering problems. For example - as long as it lingers, pretty much all of Healthcare System is seriously hampered and compromised. Every person who gets sick or who undergoes some kind of serious thing (i.e. surgery after accident) is going to be 'much more vulnerable to COVID' etc.. COVID is not an individual problem, it's a systematic problem. That clashes with notions of choice, freedom, and individuality etc. - which makes it a particularly pernicious issue from a Public Safety perspective. Edit: It's usually evident to me why my comments are downvoted, I should say in this case, especially without any reasonable retort ... I'm at a loss, but I'll triple down on my comment: until smart people get it in their heads that the issue is systematic and mostly not individual - then we're not going to be make progress. It's not a question of 'I Am Vaccinated' - it's a question of getting to 'Effective Herd Immunity' and suppressing the net virality / R0 of the virus. It's an issue that exposes the material fact that we live in communities whether we like it or not, and that this may challenge some of our assumptions about 'liberty' - then take it as an opportunity for a little bit of personal development, but in the meantime, reality is not waiting up, so we have to get with the program together, or face the consequences, together.
peteretep 5y ago
> So why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences of their irresponsible actions? Would you believe there’s literally an entire field of study about this called “Public Health”? You can do a Masters in it and everything
- umvi 5y ago
  Yes but it doesn't explain why we've allowed people to willingly not get flu vaccines or why prior to 2020 we didn't force people with flu-like symptoms to stay home from work or mask up even though flu kills tens of millions over the course of a few decades.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    > Yes but it doesn't explain why we've allowed people to willingly not get flu vaccines Would you believe that that's _exactly_ the kind of things that Public Health professionals and academics _do_ debate and try and explain?
dredmorbius 5y ago
Not everyone can be vaccinated. Not everyone benefits equally from vaccination. The elderly, sick, or immunocompromised especially. Not everyone who's unvaccinated is making the decision themselves. Infants, children, the disabled, and elderly may not be competent (or allowed) to make the decision, and if denied vaccination by an antivaxxer, are put at risk without informed consent. Vaccines aren't an absolute protection. They seem to reduce rates of infection about 8-fold, and hospitalisation and death by about 25-fold. But illness, hospitalisation, long-term health impacts, and death, can still result. The longer the disease is around and spreading actively, and the more different individuals it spreads amongst, the more it mutates. Delta is already more effective at breaking through vaccinations than the original Covid virus, and the likelihood of more infectious or more severe mutations persists. Much of the world cannot yet get vaccinated, and is at greater risk of transmission by Covid spreading elsewhere. Covid patients use resources and staffing of healthcare workers, first responders, and caregivers which are already overtaxed and which will result in undertreatment of other medical conditions. The most powerful argument though was made to me elsewhere: But of course these people weren’t fully informed; they were misinformed. They chose to believe people who lie to them. They trust people who betray them and are willing to sacrifice your lives to score some political points. They are the victims of a massive misinformation campaign that didn’t just start with the pandemic, but started way back in the 1980s. All of America is the victim of that, and much of the rest of the world too, but these people in particular. They are the dupes mobilised and sacrificed as part of the murderous political game that the Republicans and conservative media have been playing for decades now. <https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e506#14dfdc10d99f0139d03a005056264835 https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e...>
wgjordan 5y ago
> In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated. Three reasons unvaccinated-by-choice individuals continue to pose a public health burden: 1. Vaccines not yet available for children under 12 2. Economic costs of covid treatment for unvaccinated (including long covid) passed on to taxpayers / insurance groups 3. Increased risks of even more deadly / infectious / vaccine-resistant virus mutations emerging from ongoing spread
- core-utility 5y ago
  1. Anyone under 12 is extremely unlikely to suffer severe issues from COVID 2. Same could be said about Cancer, the Flu, or obesity 3. Same could be said specifically about over-vaccinating. High levels of vaccinations have been known to cause super-bugs.
michaelt 5y ago
There are two factors preventing this. 1. Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents. There are also other downsides, like people in need of non-urgent treatment getting turned away from packed hospitals, and medical staff who are pushed to the point of exhaustion. 2. This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans. A lot of Democrats are squeamish about people's deaths, even when it's a result of the person's own informed choices. If I killed myself juggling chainsaws, many people would say "ha, what a dumbass" - but if somehow Biden came to comment on it, he wouldn't say that - he'd say every death is tragic and his thoughts are with my family. That, alongside the fact they've spent a lot of time telling their supporters how very important it is to wear masks, means it's unlikely you'll find any Democrats politicians agreeing with you publicly. And as for Republicans politicians? Well first of all it's their supporters who are dying, they're not going to come out in support of that; and second of all, by maintaining the stance that these deaths are avoidable and a result of the crisis being mishandled, they can use that against Biden at the midterms.
- umvi 5y ago
  > Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents. Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. Rare medical conditions is also a weak argument because those types of people are exceedingly rare. > This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans. Ouch, this really strikes at one of the core issues. In a very real sense, covid could be re-framed as a proxy war for political control, a crisis that has (and continues to be) artificially hyped and prolonged for political advantage.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    > Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. I have heard that, yes. But I've also heard [1] saying when a Houston 11-month-old presented with Covid, five "major pediatric hospital groups" said they had no beds available, and she ended up at a hospital 150 miles away. I can understand why a politician might not give two thumbs up to such a state of affairs. [1] https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-150-miles-away-cases-us-pediatric-capacity/10934562/ https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-...

by umvi 5y ago

king_magic 5y ago

As I've said in another comment, the science is demonstrating that the vaccinated can spread Covid just as easily (though likely for a much shorter duration) than the unvaccinated. And the vaccinated can still (rarely) get severely sick. So it's still a danger to everyone. Given that reality, the only responsible choice is for everyone to suck it up and wear a mask. Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.

frockington1 5y ago
As a vaccinated person, I don't care if the unvaccinated get Covid. They made a choice, let them deal with the repercussions
- king_magic 5y ago
  You should, because you can still get Covid from one of those unvaccinated people - and you might die from it, or spread it to someone else who might die from it.
  - morsch 5y ago
    What is the risk of serious illness (and/or death) from delta covid after double vaccination? Too soon to tell?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jollybean 5y ago
  " They made a choice, let them deal with the repercussions" Oi vei. You will pay the price along with them. So long as the pandemic persists, any number of our systems are compromised, especially our healthcare system. You still have a decent chance of getting COVID even with the vaccine, though it'll likely be mild, you can still be hospitalized and face consequences. The vaccine is not a 'seat belt' i.e. just an individual action resulting in some individual consequence, it affects everyone.
briefcomment 5y ago
> Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold. That's conjecture. A conclusion from this study[1] is that vaccines correlate with dominance of fitter variants, including Delta. That suggests that it's possible that vaccines allow them to propagate. "the decline in lineage diversity was indeed correlated with increased rates of mass vaccination. Furthermore, the decline in lineage diversity was coupled with increased dominance of the B.1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.1.617 (delta) and P.1 (gamma) variants of concern, suggesting that these variants may be “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 lineages.” [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v...

MattGaiser 5y ago

They still fill up and cripple the hospitals.

umvi 5y ago
Well maybe hospitals should start charging more for specifically covid admissions. Nothing like an economic/financial incentive to get vaccinated. On top of that though, this doesn't seem like a long term concern. Eventually enough people will have natural immunity or vaccinated immunity that it's not really possible to overwhelm hospitals like it was when the virus was totally novel.
- peteretep 5y ago
  Never going to happen, but yes, I’d love to see the NHS sue the people who didn’t get the vaccine and didn’t have an exemption for costs.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Here in America we get sued regardless, its called the bill. Many many many people are effectively uncovered from covid bills regardless of their insurance. My daughters 7k bill from early 2020 says so (less than 1 day of treatment!! No outpatient or take home drugs!!). Now I can't say for sure whether she had covid but she received exactly the emergency treatment I've come to see is used in covid ICU, so the bills ought to be the same.

comrh 5y ago

A virus allowed to spread will mutate.

umvi 5y ago
So we'll update the vaccinations annually like we do with influenza. We can't hope to prevent covid from mutating, it's a game of whack-a-mole that requires a totalitarian state to win at.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
The highest rates of mutation have been observed in the immunocompromised, many of whom can't get vaccinated. Add to that the fact that vaccines don't terminate the spread by any means, and there are vast reservoirs of animals and people in the Global South who will never be vaccinated all at once, and the idea that mutations can be prevented by mass vaccination quickly comes into focus as a scientific fairy tale. It would be nice if Covid was a slow-moving target like smallpox. It isn't.

TuringNYC 5y ago

Over-exposed individuals, collectively, serve as a population where the virus can thrive and mutate over time. Eventually, a mutation may allow partial or large bypass against current vaccines -- then it is everyone's problem. In the short term, increasing ICU loads result in less ICU space for others (e.g., those in a car accident). They also drive up group insurance costs, which we'll end up seeing in our premiums in coming years.

KittenInABox 5y ago

There are children who can't get vaccinated and people with immune issues that also can't get vaccinated. Neither of these people are responsible but together they are millions of folks who could potentially be put in danger.

jollybean 5y ago

"why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences" Because they won't reap it alone, everyone else will. COVID is not 'bad' because of the case fatality rate - it's dangerous, but if just a few people had it, it wouldn't be huge cause for alarm. What makes COVID evil is it's virality. The contagion means a lot of people get it, a lot of people suffer, and systematically it causes all sorts of lingering problems. For example - as long as it lingers, pretty much all of Healthcare System is seriously hampered and compromised. Every person who gets sick or who undergoes some kind of serious thing (i.e. surgery after accident) is going to be 'much more vulnerable to COVID' etc.. COVID is not an individual problem, it's a systematic problem. That clashes with notions of choice, freedom, and individuality etc. - which makes it a particularly pernicious issue from a Public Safety perspective. Edit: It's usually evident to me why my comments are downvoted, I should say in this case, especially without any reasonable retort ... I'm at a loss, but I'll triple down on my comment: until smart people get it in their heads that the issue is systematic and mostly not individual - then we're not going to be make progress. It's not a question of 'I Am Vaccinated' - it's a question of getting to 'Effective Herd Immunity' and suppressing the net virality / R0 of the virus. It's an issue that exposes the material fact that we live in communities whether we like it or not, and that this may challenge some of our assumptions about 'liberty' - then take it as an opportunity for a little bit of personal development, but in the meantime, reality is not waiting up, so we have to get with the program together, or face the consequences, together.

peteretep 5y ago

> So why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences of their irresponsible actions? Would you believe there’s literally an entire field of study about this called “Public Health”? You can do a Masters in it and everything

umvi 5y ago
Yes but it doesn't explain why we've allowed people to willingly not get flu vaccines or why prior to 2020 we didn't force people with flu-like symptoms to stay home from work or mask up even though flu kills tens of millions over the course of a few decades.
- peteretep 5y ago
  > Yes but it doesn't explain why we've allowed people to willingly not get flu vaccines Would you believe that that's _exactly_ the kind of things that Public Health professionals and academics _do_ debate and try and explain?

dredmorbius 5y ago

Not everyone can be vaccinated. Not everyone benefits equally from vaccination. The elderly, sick, or immunocompromised especially. Not everyone who's unvaccinated is making the decision themselves. Infants, children, the disabled, and elderly may not be competent (or allowed) to make the decision, and if denied vaccination by an antivaxxer, are put at risk without informed consent. Vaccines aren't an absolute protection. They seem to reduce rates of infection about 8-fold, and hospitalisation and death by about 25-fold. But illness, hospitalisation, long-term health impacts, and death, can still result. The longer the disease is around and spreading actively, and the more different individuals it spreads amongst, the more it mutates. Delta is already more effective at breaking through vaccinations than the original Covid virus, and the likelihood of more infectious or more severe mutations persists. Much of the world cannot yet get vaccinated, and is at greater risk of transmission by Covid spreading elsewhere. Covid patients use resources and staffing of healthcare workers, first responders, and caregivers which are already overtaxed and which will result in undertreatment of other medical conditions. The most powerful argument though was made to me elsewhere: But of course these people weren’t fully informed; they were misinformed. They chose to believe people who lie to them. They trust people who betray them and are willing to sacrifice your lives to score some political points. They are the victims of a massive misinformation campaign that didn’t just start with the pandemic, but started way back in the 1980s. All of America is the victim of that, and much of the rest of the world too, but these people in particular. They are the dupes mobilised and sacrificed as part of the murderous political game that the Republicans and conservative media have been playing for decades now. <https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e506#14dfdc10d99f0139d03a005056264835 https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e...>

wgjordan 5y ago

> In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated. Three reasons unvaccinated-by-choice individuals continue to pose a public health burden: 1. Vaccines not yet available for children under 12 2. Economic costs of covid treatment for unvaccinated (including long covid) passed on to taxpayers / insurance groups 3. Increased risks of even more deadly / infectious / vaccine-resistant virus mutations emerging from ongoing spread

core-utility 5y ago
1. Anyone under 12 is extremely unlikely to suffer severe issues from COVID 2. Same could be said about Cancer, the Flu, or obesity 3. Same could be said specifically about over-vaccinating. High levels of vaccinations have been known to cause super-bugs.

michaelt 5y ago

There are two factors preventing this. 1. Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents. There are also other downsides, like people in need of non-urgent treatment getting turned away from packed hospitals, and medical staff who are pushed to the point of exhaustion. 2. This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans. A lot of Democrats are squeamish about people's deaths, even when it's a result of the person's own informed choices. If I killed myself juggling chainsaws, many people would say "ha, what a dumbass" - but if somehow Biden came to comment on it, he wouldn't say that - he'd say every death is tragic and his thoughts are with my family. That, alongside the fact they've spent a lot of time telling their supporters how very important it is to wear masks, means it's unlikely you'll find any Democrats politicians agreeing with you publicly. And as for Republicans politicians? Well first of all it's their supporters who are dying, they're not going to come out in support of that; and second of all, by maintaining the stance that these deaths are avoidable and a result of the crisis being mishandled, they can use that against Biden at the midterms.

umvi 5y ago
> Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents. Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. Rare medical conditions is also a weak argument because those types of people are exceedingly rare. > This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans. Ouch, this really strikes at one of the core issues. In a very real sense, covid could be re-framed as a proxy war for political control, a crisis that has (and continues to be) artificially hyped and prolonged for political advantage.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. I have heard that, yes. But I've also heard [1] saying when a Houston 11-month-old presented with Covid, five "major pediatric hospital groups" said they had no beds available, and she ended up at a hospital 150 miles away. I can understand why a politician might not give two thumbs up to such a state of affairs. [1] https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-150-miles-away-cases-us-pediatric-capacity/10934562/ https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-...