4 ms·

No, you are not. If I am not vaccinated I am far more likely to carry the virus to you, and your vaccine, while good, is not 100% protection. So you have a sign

by sho 5y ago

No, you are not. If I am not vaccinated I am far more likely to carry the virus to you, and your vaccine, while good, is not 100% protection. So you have a significant decrease in your risk by forcing me to be vaccinated.

sleavey 5y ago
Do we apply this thinking to any other public health threats? Smoking for example, particularly for those forced to be around smokers like their children? I'm curious to hear the arguments for why this virus needs to be treated differently to all others that have come before, and to other public health issues. Not trying to start a fight here. I just haven't been convinced yet why our old behaviour towards threats like CoV-2 doesn't apply to it itself.
- exdsq 5y ago
  Can you give some examples?
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  We do apply the same logic. You can choose to be a smoker, but you can’t choose to be one in certain public spaces, including airplanes and trains. This type of mandate is no different. You can still choose to be a non-vaccinated individual, but not in particular areas.
  - sleavey 5y ago
    I did mention in my comment above that children of smokers don't have a choice being around second hand smoke. Yet most governments consider the harm to the health of the child to be less critical than the smoker's individual freedom to smoke. I'm not some freedom loving libertarian, I'm normally quite left leaning, but the dual standards I see applied by governments here really bother me. I can't help but think their response was driven more by fear than sense.
    - bart_spoon 5y ago
      No one is taking away the children of anti-vaxxers, they are saying you can’t use public transportation. The same principle is at play: you can live you life in a way that negatively impacts the health of your children, because you have authority over your children. But when it becomes a threat to others that aren’t in your stewardship, you no longer have that freedom. What is the double standard here? You aren’t even comparing the same situations.
      - sleavey 5y ago
        > You aren’t even comparing the same situations. We've gotten quite far from the original point; I'll reply once more but probably not again on this branch because we seem to have a fundamental disagreement over whether governments should have the right to mandate (either de-jour or de-facto) medical interventions on people in return for the ability to take part in society. Governments can't mandate for every eventuality, they have to make policies covering broad areas. We're discussing public health policy here, i.e. the ways in which governments can reduce harmful effects on the health of the populace through rules and regulations. My point was that if governments truly cared about public health, they would have already for example banned smoking universally (or at least in situations where there is another person within X meters of the smoker), since second hand smoke is a demonstrable cause of premature death. The justification would be one of public health. And if anything, such a policy would be even less controversial than mandating vaccines because a smoker can simply stop smoking temporarily to be around other people whereas people cannot stop breathing and therefore potentially spreading viruses. Yet it seems governments have skipped over all of these easier public health issues, and gone straight to mandating that people get vaccinated to enter publicly funded places from a public health justification. To me, regardless of how effective or not these mandates have been and are, I smell bullshit when I hear governments justifying such rules with public health arguments because they have not from their previous actions demonstrated that they are merely following through with their public health manifesto. I rather fear they're mandating vaccines to enter public spaces because the public demanded something be done. Governments in representative democracies aren't doing their job if they do merely that which the public want; they are supposed to lead even if the majority of the public disagree.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > Do we apply this thinking to any other public health threats? Smoking for example, particularly for those forced to be around smokers like their children? Yes, of course. Most developed countries ban indoor smoking in most or all places outside the home.
ghiculescu 5y ago
I think the slippery slope argument this creates is what is frightening a lot of people.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by sho 5y ago

sleavey 5y ago

Do we apply this thinking to any other public health threats? Smoking for example, particularly for those forced to be around smokers like their children? I'm curious to hear the arguments for why this virus needs to be treated differently to all others that have come before, and to other public health issues. Not trying to start a fight here. I just haven't been convinced yet why our old behaviour towards threats like CoV-2 doesn't apply to it itself.

exdsq 5y ago
Can you give some examples?
bart_spoon 5y ago
We do apply the same logic. You can choose to be a smoker, but you can’t choose to be one in certain public spaces, including airplanes and trains. This type of mandate is no different. You can still choose to be a non-vaccinated individual, but not in particular areas.
- sleavey 5y ago
  I did mention in my comment above that children of smokers don't have a choice being around second hand smoke. Yet most governments consider the harm to the health of the child to be less critical than the smoker's individual freedom to smoke. I'm not some freedom loving libertarian, I'm normally quite left leaning, but the dual standards I see applied by governments here really bother me. I can't help but think their response was driven more by fear than sense.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    No one is taking away the children of anti-vaxxers, they are saying you can’t use public transportation. The same principle is at play: you can live you life in a way that negatively impacts the health of your children, because you have authority over your children. But when it becomes a threat to others that aren’t in your stewardship, you no longer have that freedom. What is the double standard here? You aren’t even comparing the same situations.
    - sleavey 5y ago
      > You aren’t even comparing the same situations. We've gotten quite far from the original point; I'll reply once more but probably not again on this branch because we seem to have a fundamental disagreement over whether governments should have the right to mandate (either de-jour or de-facto) medical interventions on people in return for the ability to take part in society. Governments can't mandate for every eventuality, they have to make policies covering broad areas. We're discussing public health policy here, i.e. the ways in which governments can reduce harmful effects on the health of the populace through rules and regulations. My point was that if governments truly cared about public health, they would have already for example banned smoking universally (or at least in situations where there is another person within X meters of the smoker), since second hand smoke is a demonstrable cause of premature death. The justification would be one of public health. And if anything, such a policy would be even less controversial than mandating vaccines because a smoker can simply stop smoking temporarily to be around other people whereas people cannot stop breathing and therefore potentially spreading viruses. Yet it seems governments have skipped over all of these easier public health issues, and gone straight to mandating that people get vaccinated to enter publicly funded places from a public health justification. To me, regardless of how effective or not these mandates have been and are, I smell bullshit when I hear governments justifying such rules with public health arguments because they have not from their previous actions demonstrated that they are merely following through with their public health manifesto. I rather fear they're mandating vaccines to enter public spaces because the public demanded something be done. Governments in representative democracies aren't doing their job if they do merely that which the public want; they are supposed to lead even if the majority of the public disagree.
rsynnott 5y ago
> Do we apply this thinking to any other public health threats? Smoking for example, particularly for those forced to be around smokers like their children? Yes, of course. Most developed countries ban indoor smoking in most or all places outside the home.

ghiculescu 5y ago

I think the slippery slope argument this creates is what is frightening a lot of people.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]