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> Why must I be vaccinated if the vaccine doesn't prevent spread? (...) I am comfortable catching the disease and even comfortable dying from it Became it's no

> Why must I be vaccinated if the vaccine doesn't prevent spread? (...) I am comfortable catching the disease and even comfortable dying from it Became it's not about you, it's about everyone around you as a group. Those who are "comfortable catching the disease" are taking up a non-insignificant portion of available hospital beds, for instance, keeping health workers at their limit and preventing other people from getting treatment for diseases for which there is no accessible, free vaccine to take. Organizations are expected to do what's best for the majority of those they represent. Sure, some people may not want to wear a helmet all day and would be willing to take the risk. But if one of those people gets impaled and dies it ends up putting a burden in everyone around them, from those picking up the skull pieces and the person's family to the investors.

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
This reasoning also would justify mandatory colonoscopies, or requiring a 3 mile daily run, for 100 million people. Yes, that might reduce the load on the health care system long term (except the colonoscopy & PT departments ...), but historically in the U.S. that would have been viewed as a galactic overreach.
- Woberto 5y ago
  The load on the system is apparently hugely different. The system has managed to accommodate people with colon cancer and heart disease, so mandating those things hasn't been as pressing from that perspective. Meanwhile, covid has filled up hospitals and ICUs
- commondream 5y ago
  Your city’s hospitals have run out of beds due to colon cancer? That’s wild.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  The crucial difference between cardiovascular diseases and severe COVID is that COVID comes in waves. In a very short period of time a large number of people can end up with the virus, thus having a significant chance to develop serious pneumonia. All at the same time, in a very short time span. While lots of people suffer from cardiovascular diseases and cancer every year, they are distributed over the year. You don't usually see thousands of people having strokes in a given area in the span of a week or two, for instance. It's this sudden surge of people needing ventilators and ICU beds that overwhelms the healthcare system of an area, causing repercussions on those that are sick for other reasons or get injured in accidents. For instance, in Italy cancer screenings on vulnerable subjects have been postponed for months, if not a year, due to the ongoing pandemic. Who knows how many people have now a higher risk of cancer due to hospitals and clinics being overwhelmed by COVID patients. COVID vaccines are not sterilizing, but it's getting quite clear that they somewhat reduce the circulation of the virus too by reducing the viral load of symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers. At least they greatly greatly reduce the strain on doctors and avoid disruption of society at large, which is by itself a solid choice for mandating them. The only possible choices here are to a. neglect the virus, with potentially serious social repercussions and loss of human lives, or b. resort to containment measures, which hamper the economy and are deeply unfair towards vaccinated people which objectively risk much less from the virus, or c. mandate vaccination, which is the only choice that avoids lockdowns and (most) deaths. Also, vaccine mandates aren't anything new. That's how rubella, diphtheria, polio, smallpox, mumps, .. have become a thing of the past. They've been put in place on for decades, and no-vax movements have always been small and irrelevant before before social media came with droves of dubious content.
- OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
  None of those are protecting against infectious diseases.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    GP is likely arguing that reducing obesity reduces infectious disease, which is true at least in the case of COVID.
huffmsa 5y ago
Citizen, our records indicate you ate more than your mandate controlled 100g of chocolate and only ran 2.95mi of your mandatory 3mi on our freely available sidewalks. Your employment has been terminated. You many apply for unemployment benefits after our records show compliance. Combating obesity is for the good of society.
- zpeti 5y ago
  I remember having a beer at night with an Apple employee who halfway through started walking around the table. Apparently his smart watch was telling him his group of 5 people were under their target miles for the day and he had to walk a mile right now to have his daily quote done. He didn’t want to disappoint his fellow staff. Including his boss I think. Not quite what you posted but it certainty is similar.
  - a4a4a4a4 5y ago
    What you're probably referring to is the "June Fitness Challenge", which is completely optional and just for fun (I don't do it, neither does my boss or half my team). You get a t-shirt or something if your team has a certain number of "active days" per month. It's not as draconian as it sounds.
    - zpeti 5y ago
      Yeah I’m sure it seemed worse than it was, it was just funny it happening during a night out, and how it seemed to work on a group obedience emotion in my friend
      - prawn 5y ago
        Similar is my wife getting on a train with 7,000 steps still to go to maintain her x00 day streak of 10k steps/day. She proceeded to march on the spot for some time to keep her streak active. Our room was about 2-3m across.
bjt2n3904 5y ago
I read an interesting article a while back, which asked... why were so many of the doctors in Nazi Germany willing to engage in sterilizing mentally deficient people, and other atrocities?[1] The answer was because, healthcare was viewed as a collective good. Doctors did not treat a patient for their own benefit, they treated a patient for society's benefit. And I see echoes of that here. [1] - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/fernandes-doctors-who-became-nazis https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/fernande...
- moritonal 5y ago
  How about that, a textbook case of Godwin's Law and it only took three comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    " In less mathematical terms, the longer the discussion, the more likely a Nazi comparison becomes, and with long enough discussions, it is a certainty." Seems like a silly "law". In mathematical terms, the longer the discussion, the more likely literally any comparison becomes. With a long enough discussion, every possible comparison being mentioned is a certainty.
    - NickGott 5y ago
      Someone gets called a nazi for being in support of vaccine mandates and your response is "well in a infinitely long conversation everyone will get called a nazi" this is the most hackernews comment I have ever read
DiffEq 5y ago
If I may ask - can you tell me which city's hospital beds are full due to Covid 19 patients?
- probably_wrong 5y ago
  Right now? In the USA? "Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arkansas have less than 10% left of their ICU bed capacity, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. (...) Idaho had just four ICU beds available out of the 400 beds total in the state, Gov. Brad Little said." https://www.wktv.com/content/news/These-5-states-have-less-than-10-of-ICU-beds-left-as-COVID-19-overwhelms-hospitals-575222991.html https://www.wktv.com/content/news/These-5-states-have-less-t...
  - DiffEq 5y ago
    I asked for FULL hospitals. There are none apparently. 97% is concerning but not full and that is what these beds are for...looks like everything is fine. I also think it is interesting how I get voted down for just asking the question.
    - probably_wrong 5y ago
      Per my comment, there are exactly 4 free ICU beds in all of Idaho. If there are more than 4 hospitals in Idaho (Wikipedia lists ~30), all hospitals after the 5th are therefore full.
      - DiffEq 5y ago
        So these are due to staff shortages. I don't live there now but I use to live in that region and this occurred from time to time...because the hospitals are small and the staff are few...it was normal procedure to fly patients out of state for care. These headlines are misleading because it does not put the issue into context. This is why the National Guard is being considered...because of staff. One reason why there are fewer staff these days is because people are tired of this crap and also may get paid more to sit at home.
over_the_raibow 5y ago
>Became it's not about you, it's about everyone around you as a group. Those who are "comfortable catching the disease" are taking... Bla bla... Then why are you smoking, or why are you eating fast food, why are you not exercising? These actions also put a burden on the health system. Why do covid and not tobacco? You know the answer already. This is not about anyone s health
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- k__ 5y ago
  Whataboutism, really?
- Riverheart 5y ago
  Tobacco isn't communicable like a virus, doesn't produce symptoms in 2 weeks, hasn't ground the world to a halt and actually serves a purpose as a heretofore deeply ingrained cultural activity. The rest of the comparisons arent any better.
- bentlegen 5y ago
  They do put a burden on the healthcare system, but last I checked ICUs are not presently being filled up across the country with lung cancer and heart disease patients.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  Dont take this as me agreeing with the previous comment but I just want to point out that smoking, fast food, etc are all things that kill you "slowly", therefore has less of a risk of overrunning the healthcare system. It would have been smarter IMO (though probably not politically possible) to mandate the vaccine for specific age groups. If what they are trying to do avoid hospitalization, they should focus on the groups that are most susceptible. If you're under 40 for example you won't be required to take it but if you're older you would because the risk of a 40 something getting hospitalized is way higher than a 20 something.
  - 5y ago
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
> are taking up a non-insignificant portion of available hospital beds Healthy, non obese young people do not get hospitalized by this disease at any significant rate at all, most aren't even aware they got it. If you're a healthy young person you have rationality on your side to object to a vaccine. Especially one that is trying to hit a moving target as covid is probably now another mutating flu that will be around indefinitely. Especially because you still pass on the disease vaccinated or not.
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  Fwiw I know an overweight alcoholic 65 yo woman, cancer survivor, diabetic and has cardiac problems (she had to be in a wheelchair for a couple years). Oh and she's a chain smoker too. She's the perfect COVID victim. She got it twice, even though it was quite bad never had to be hospitalized and her health is now not worse than before.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- steverb 5y ago
  And yet they can have enough of a viral load to pass it along to any non-healthy people they come in contact with. Which is why this NOT a personal health issue, it's a public health issue. As I have explained to several of my children's young friends "you are correct, COVID will probably not make you sick, but how will you feel when you find out you killed your grandmother by giving it to her".
  - poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
    As others have mentioned here you pass it along vaccinated or not. You can also have the vulnerable population take precautions, not the young population. To be frank what kind of sick society pushes the young population to take on risk (novel vaccine incomplete clinical trials, rare heart inflammation issues documented, spike protein membrane break off issue, etc) to protect the elderly population? This is the first time societies have ever called for risking the youth for the elderly and it's not morally right.

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago

This reasoning also would justify mandatory colonoscopies, or requiring a 3 mile daily run, for 100 million people. Yes, that might reduce the load on the health care system long term (except the colonoscopy & PT departments ...), but historically in the U.S. that would have been viewed as a galactic overreach.

Woberto 5y ago
The load on the system is apparently hugely different. The system has managed to accommodate people with colon cancer and heart disease, so mandating those things hasn't been as pressing from that perspective. Meanwhile, covid has filled up hospitals and ICUs
commondream 5y ago
Your city’s hospitals have run out of beds due to colon cancer? That’s wild.
qalmakka 5y ago
The crucial difference between cardiovascular diseases and severe COVID is that COVID comes in waves. In a very short period of time a large number of people can end up with the virus, thus having a significant chance to develop serious pneumonia. All at the same time, in a very short time span. While lots of people suffer from cardiovascular diseases and cancer every year, they are distributed over the year. You don't usually see thousands of people having strokes in a given area in the span of a week or two, for instance. It's this sudden surge of people needing ventilators and ICU beds that overwhelms the healthcare system of an area, causing repercussions on those that are sick for other reasons or get injured in accidents. For instance, in Italy cancer screenings on vulnerable subjects have been postponed for months, if not a year, due to the ongoing pandemic. Who knows how many people have now a higher risk of cancer due to hospitals and clinics being overwhelmed by COVID patients. COVID vaccines are not sterilizing, but it's getting quite clear that they somewhat reduce the circulation of the virus too by reducing the viral load of symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers. At least they greatly greatly reduce the strain on doctors and avoid disruption of society at large, which is by itself a solid choice for mandating them. The only possible choices here are to a. neglect the virus, with potentially serious social repercussions and loss of human lives, or b. resort to containment measures, which hamper the economy and are deeply unfair towards vaccinated people which objectively risk much less from the virus, or c. mandate vaccination, which is the only choice that avoids lockdowns and (most) deaths. Also, vaccine mandates aren't anything new. That's how rubella, diphtheria, polio, smallpox, mumps, .. have become a thing of the past. They've been put in place on for decades, and no-vax movements have always been small and irrelevant before before social media came with droves of dubious content.
OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
None of those are protecting against infectious diseases.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  GP is likely arguing that reducing obesity reduces infectious disease, which is true at least in the case of COVID.

huffmsa 5y ago

Citizen, our records indicate you ate more than your mandate controlled 100g of chocolate and only ran 2.95mi of your mandatory 3mi on our freely available sidewalks. Your employment has been terminated. You many apply for unemployment benefits after our records show compliance. Combating obesity is for the good of society.

zpeti 5y ago
I remember having a beer at night with an Apple employee who halfway through started walking around the table. Apparently his smart watch was telling him his group of 5 people were under their target miles for the day and he had to walk a mile right now to have his daily quote done. He didn’t want to disappoint his fellow staff. Including his boss I think. Not quite what you posted but it certainty is similar.
- a4a4a4a4 5y ago
  What you're probably referring to is the "June Fitness Challenge", which is completely optional and just for fun (I don't do it, neither does my boss or half my team). You get a t-shirt or something if your team has a certain number of "active days" per month. It's not as draconian as it sounds.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    Yeah I’m sure it seemed worse than it was, it was just funny it happening during a night out, and how it seemed to work on a group obedience emotion in my friend
    - prawn 5y ago
      Similar is my wife getting on a train with 7,000 steps still to go to maintain her x00 day streak of 10k steps/day. She proceeded to march on the spot for some time to keep her streak active. Our room was about 2-3m across.

bjt2n3904 5y ago

I read an interesting article a while back, which asked... why were so many of the doctors in Nazi Germany willing to engage in sterilizing mentally deficient people, and other atrocities?[1] The answer was because, healthcare was viewed as a collective good. Doctors did not treat a patient for their own benefit, they treated a patient for society's benefit. And I see echoes of that here. [1] - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/fernandes-doctors-who-became-nazis https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/fernande...

moritonal 5y ago
How about that, a textbook case of Godwin's Law and it only took three comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- missedthecue 5y ago
  " In less mathematical terms, the longer the discussion, the more likely a Nazi comparison becomes, and with long enough discussions, it is a certainty." Seems like a silly "law". In mathematical terms, the longer the discussion, the more likely literally any comparison becomes. With a long enough discussion, every possible comparison being mentioned is a certainty.
  - NickGott 5y ago
    Someone gets called a nazi for being in support of vaccine mandates and your response is "well in a infinitely long conversation everyone will get called a nazi" this is the most hackernews comment I have ever read

DiffEq 5y ago

If I may ask - can you tell me which city's hospital beds are full due to Covid 19 patients?

probably_wrong 5y ago
Right now? In the USA? "Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arkansas have less than 10% left of their ICU bed capacity, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. (...) Idaho had just four ICU beds available out of the 400 beds total in the state, Gov. Brad Little said." https://www.wktv.com/content/news/These-5-states-have-less-than-10-of-ICU-beds-left-as-COVID-19-overwhelms-hospitals-575222991.html https://www.wktv.com/content/news/These-5-states-have-less-t...
- DiffEq 5y ago
  I asked for FULL hospitals. There are none apparently. 97% is concerning but not full and that is what these beds are for...looks like everything is fine. I also think it is interesting how I get voted down for just asking the question.
  - probably_wrong 5y ago
    Per my comment, there are exactly 4 free ICU beds in all of Idaho. If there are more than 4 hospitals in Idaho (Wikipedia lists ~30), all hospitals after the 5th are therefore full.
    - DiffEq 5y ago
      So these are due to staff shortages. I don't live there now but I use to live in that region and this occurred from time to time...because the hospitals are small and the staff are few...it was normal procedure to fly patients out of state for care. These headlines are misleading because it does not put the issue into context. This is why the National Guard is being considered...because of staff. One reason why there are fewer staff these days is because people are tired of this crap and also may get paid more to sit at home.

over_the_raibow 5y ago

>Became it's not about you, it's about everyone around you as a group. Those who are "comfortable catching the disease" are taking... Bla bla... Then why are you smoking, or why are you eating fast food, why are you not exercising? These actions also put a burden on the health system. Why do covid and not tobacco? You know the answer already. This is not about anyone s health

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
k__ 5y ago
Whataboutism, really?
Riverheart 5y ago
Tobacco isn't communicable like a virus, doesn't produce symptoms in 2 weeks, hasn't ground the world to a halt and actually serves a purpose as a heretofore deeply ingrained cultural activity. The rest of the comparisons arent any better.
bentlegen 5y ago
They do put a burden on the healthcare system, but last I checked ICUs are not presently being filled up across the country with lung cancer and heart disease patients.
_fat_santa 5y ago
Dont take this as me agreeing with the previous comment but I just want to point out that smoking, fast food, etc are all things that kill you "slowly", therefore has less of a risk of overrunning the healthcare system. It would have been smarter IMO (though probably not politically possible) to mandate the vaccine for specific age groups. If what they are trying to do avoid hospitalization, they should focus on the groups that are most susceptible. If you're under 40 for example you won't be required to take it but if you're older you would because the risk of a 40 something getting hospitalized is way higher than a 20 something.
- 5y ago

poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

> are taking up a non-insignificant portion of available hospital beds Healthy, non obese young people do not get hospitalized by this disease at any significant rate at all, most aren't even aware they got it. If you're a healthy young person you have rationality on your side to object to a vaccine. Especially one that is trying to hit a moving target as covid is probably now another mutating flu that will be around indefinitely. Especially because you still pass on the disease vaccinated or not.

jmnicolas 5y ago
Fwiw I know an overweight alcoholic 65 yo woman, cancer survivor, diabetic and has cardiac problems (she had to be in a wheelchair for a couple years). Oh and she's a chain smoker too. She's the perfect COVID victim. She got it twice, even though it was quite bad never had to be hospitalized and her health is now not worse than before.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
steverb 5y ago
And yet they can have enough of a viral load to pass it along to any non-healthy people they come in contact with. Which is why this NOT a personal health issue, it's a public health issue. As I have explained to several of my children's young friends "you are correct, COVID will probably not make you sick, but how will you feel when you find out you killed your grandmother by giving it to her".
- poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
  As others have mentioned here you pass it along vaccinated or not. You can also have the vulnerable population take precautions, not the young population. To be frank what kind of sick society pushes the young population to take on risk (novel vaccine incomplete clinical trials, rare heart inflammation issues documented, spike protein membrane break off issue, etc) to protect the elderly population? This is the first time societies have ever called for risking the youth for the elderly and it's not morally right.