4 ms·

Nurses, teachers, doctors, hairdressers, etc. are subject to vaccine mandates - why should politicians be treated any differently?

ghoward 5y ago
Nurses, teachers, doctors, hairdressers, etc., should not be subject to vaccine mandates. Doing that exacerbates the problems of understaffed ICU's, schools, and service industry, not to mention the fact that governments have been the biggest killers of people. Compared to a virus with a 99+% survival rate, they have killed orders of magnitude more. Giving governments more power at a time like this, and tanking the economy like this, as well as shutting so many people out of the economy, seems like stepping on a landmine to prevent getting shot.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Okay, sounds like you have a pamphlet you'd like me to read. I'd simply state that many public health measures are mandated. This is just another one. You can't drive drunk, you have to wear a seat belt, you can't build buildings out of straw or sticks (you silly pigs), you can't pour sewage into you can't have unprotected sex without disclosing it when you know you're HIV positive. You can't sell black tar heroin. You can't fly into various countries from a country with yellow fever without proof of vaccination against yellow fever. You can focus on that "99+%" survival rate if you like (which involves ignoring that the actual survival rate greatly differs between different cohorts), but if you don't take into consideration the considerable amount of resources and effort that healthcare systems put into achieving that, you're only deceiving yourself. Also - hospitals have limited capacity designed for non-pandemic times. Vaccination against Covid prevents excessive demand from a preventable severe illness overwhelming healthcare systems, causing even more excess deaths, even if they didn't die from Covid, they died due to Covid. Lastly, as members of society, we have obligations to other members of our society. Pay tax to contribute to shared infrastructure, follow the laws passed by representatives of your country's voters, etc. I'm quite happy for people to remain unvaccinated if they ensure that they can never pass it onto others, and if they waive their rights to medical treatment if they become ill.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    > You can't drive drunk, you have to wear a seat belt, you can't build buildings out of straw or sticks (you silly pigs), you can't pour sewage into you can't have unprotected sex without disclosing it when you know you're HIV positive. You can't sell black tar heroin. None of these are an irreversible medical treatment, so they don't even fall into the same category. Thus, this argument is disingenuous. > You can't fly into various countries from a country with yellow fever without proof of vaccination against yellow fever. This is reasonable for a vaccine that has been well-tested using already proven technology, and by "well-tested", I don't just mean widely tested. I mean tested long-term with a control group. The COVID vaccines are not tested in that way. The supposed control group got the vaccines pretty quickly, eliminating them as a control group. Also, it's only reasonable because such countries require it of non-citizens, who don't get the same privileges as citizens of the country do. When a country starts requiring citizens to get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs, but don't require illegal immigrants to get vaccinated when they cross the border, it is clear that it's about power, and such an argument is disingenuous. > You can focus on that "99+%" survival rate if you like (which involves ignoring that the actual survival rate greatly differs between different cohorts), but if you don't take into consideration the considerable amount of resources and effort that healthcare systems put into achieving that, you're only deceiving yourself. That was always the survival rate. It hasn't changed since COVID appeared. Nothing the medical system did changed that. In fact, there's speculation that using ventilators caused protons and more deaths. Also, would we have so many deaths if so many politicians had not made so many stupid or malicious mistakes? The mayor of NYC ignored it for a while. The governor of New York sent COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. In actual fact, the virus might have had a better survival rate without those things. > Lastly, as members of society, we have obligations to other members of our society. Pay tax to contribute to shared infrastructure, follow the laws passed by representatives of your country's voters, etc. Sure thing. The problem? These mandates are not laws! They are executive edicts. Laws are passed by legislatures, and as far as I know, not a single one has passed an actual law. The mandates should not have the force of law. Oh, and when there was such a law? It was upheld by the Supreme Court, but the only penalty was a one-time fine of $150 in today's money. I'd gladly pay such a fine and move on with my life. However, that law and Supreme Court ruling were then used by the Supreme Court to justify the forced sterilization of women. It was playing with fire then, and it's playing with fire now. Do you want to live in a world where the government can make such medical decisions for you? > I'm quite happy for people to remain unvaccinated if they ensure that they can never pass it onto others, See the above point that there is no data that the naturally immune spread COVID. > and if they waive their rights to medical treatment if they become ill. Ill with COVID? Fine. I accept that. Ill with anything else? That would be disingenuous and pure power-seeking. But even if ill with COVID, the fact that naturally immune people don't spread it means that you want such people to recover to them be useful as a shield against COVID for everyone else with their contribution to herd immunity. Thus, in any case, denying medical treatment to the unvaccinated is not about health, it's about power.
- p49k 5y ago
  > Compared to a virus with a 99+% survival rate The virus wouldn’t have a high survival rate if we didn’t have these measures. Otherwise hospitals would be completely overrun, which would not only increase death rates directly related to COVID but also those of people with any other illness who rely on hospital care to survive. You can’t have it both ways: if you’re against the measures then you have to accept what that would mean.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    > The virus wouldn’t have a high survival rate if we didn’t have these measures. Otherwise hospitals would be completely overrun, which would not only increase death rates directly related to COVID but also those of people with any other illness who rely on hospital care to survive. Where's your proof? Seriously. How do you know it would be worse? We might all have herd immunity by now and not be worried about it. Also, if people are so worried about hospital capacity, why are they firing doctors and nurses who haven't had the shot, but have natural immunity? The CDC recently admitted they have no data showing that people with natural immunity spread COVID [1]. Yet the vaccinated can (and if you don't believe that, then you have not been paying attention). So why are naturally-immune doctors and nurses being fired when we supposedly need them most, to stop ICU's from being overwhelmed? The reason is because it's not about health. It's about control. So when you bring up the argument that ICU's are being overwhelmed, I just ignore it; it's a distraction. You just don't know that yet. [1]: https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/12/cdc-admits-it-has-no-evidence-of-recovered-covid-patients-spreading-the-virus/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/12/cdc-admits-it-has-no-ev...
    - p49k 5y ago
      I agree with you that people who have proven to already have antibodies should not be required to get a vaccine. That is a compromise that probably would have already happened if there wasn't a constant stream of insanity from antivaxxers clouding the ability to have normal, nuanced discussions about policy. Instead, the front lines of debate are on 5G causing COVID, microchips, space lasers, and comparisons of vaccine mandates to the holocaust. But the data showing that mass-vaccination has reduced deaths and kept ICUs from overflowing is so blatantly obvious that you have to be exercising willful ignorance to not accept it. It's basically flat-earth level of denialism. You can see the direct correlation between vaccination rates and deaths/ICU intakes by looking at the data.
- atoav 5y ago
  With the same argumentation nurses and doctors should not be forced to wash/disinfect their hands before treating their patients. But of course that would be silly. If your job is to help others to get to health requires a small insignificant action that involves your body, this action can (and should be) mandated. Getting a COVID vaccination that 7.000.000.000 shots have been administered to other people (world wide) without any speakable side effects is not a big thing to ask for. Washing/desinfecting hands also has side effects on that scale.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    > Getting a COVID vaccination that 7.000.000.000 shots have been administered to other people (world wide) without any speakable side effects is not a big thing to ask for. If you think that, you haven't been paying attention. Several shots have been halted by countries because of side effects. The FDA recently admitted that they expect about as many kids to get myocarditis as will be saved by the shot if they approve it for kids. VAERS data has shown a jump in reported cases. If you don't think side effects exist, you are in a bubble.
    - atoav 5y ago
      I think you are misrepresenting my statement. I said "without any speakable side effects". You always have to compare potential side effects of a measure against the effects of the things the measure should protect against. Safety belts might be detrimental to saving you life in traffic accidents in a not insignificant percentage of cases (e.g. being trapped in a burning car) – however if you compare it to the likelyhood of dying because you are not using a safety belt the whole thing is miniscule. Many people say they don't want to get vaccinated because they don't know about the long term effects of such a vaccination. But if they were honest they would need to admit that they don't know about the long term effects of getting the virus as well. Not to speak of the real risk to die or destroy your respiratory apartus in the process, in which case worrying about purely hypothetical long term effects seems to be a little delusional. The one minor difference to the safety belt example is that your choice also affects the risk for the rest of society. If you dont wear your safety belt, you don't increase the risk for others in a meaningful way. If you don't vaccinate, you not only do that, but you prolong the pandemic for the rest of society – for what to me looks like a purely symbolic "victory".
Ekaros 5y ago
And why should they be subject to those? Why should anyone be subject to fascist totalitarianism driven by the left?
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  You have a weird understanding of fascism.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - EdwardDiego 5y ago
      Sweet as, feedback acknowledged.
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ghoward 5y ago

Nurses, teachers, doctors, hairdressers, etc., should not be subject to vaccine mandates. Doing that exacerbates the problems of understaffed ICU's, schools, and service industry, not to mention the fact that governments have been the biggest killers of people. Compared to a virus with a 99+% survival rate, they have killed orders of magnitude more. Giving governments more power at a time like this, and tanking the economy like this, as well as shutting so many people out of the economy, seems like stepping on a landmine to prevent getting shot.

EdwardDiego 5y ago
Okay, sounds like you have a pamphlet you'd like me to read. I'd simply state that many public health measures are mandated. This is just another one. You can't drive drunk, you have to wear a seat belt, you can't build buildings out of straw or sticks (you silly pigs), you can't pour sewage into you can't have unprotected sex without disclosing it when you know you're HIV positive. You can't sell black tar heroin. You can't fly into various countries from a country with yellow fever without proof of vaccination against yellow fever. You can focus on that "99+%" survival rate if you like (which involves ignoring that the actual survival rate greatly differs between different cohorts), but if you don't take into consideration the considerable amount of resources and effort that healthcare systems put into achieving that, you're only deceiving yourself. Also - hospitals have limited capacity designed for non-pandemic times. Vaccination against Covid prevents excessive demand from a preventable severe illness overwhelming healthcare systems, causing even more excess deaths, even if they didn't die from Covid, they died due to Covid. Lastly, as members of society, we have obligations to other members of our society. Pay tax to contribute to shared infrastructure, follow the laws passed by representatives of your country's voters, etc. I'm quite happy for people to remain unvaccinated if they ensure that they can never pass it onto others, and if they waive their rights to medical treatment if they become ill.
- ghoward 5y ago
  > You can't drive drunk, you have to wear a seat belt, you can't build buildings out of straw or sticks (you silly pigs), you can't pour sewage into you can't have unprotected sex without disclosing it when you know you're HIV positive. You can't sell black tar heroin. None of these are an irreversible medical treatment, so they don't even fall into the same category. Thus, this argument is disingenuous. > You can't fly into various countries from a country with yellow fever without proof of vaccination against yellow fever. This is reasonable for a vaccine that has been well-tested using already proven technology, and by "well-tested", I don't just mean widely tested. I mean tested long-term with a control group. The COVID vaccines are not tested in that way. The supposed control group got the vaccines pretty quickly, eliminating them as a control group. Also, it's only reasonable because such countries require it of non-citizens, who don't get the same privileges as citizens of the country do. When a country starts requiring citizens to get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs, but don't require illegal immigrants to get vaccinated when they cross the border, it is clear that it's about power, and such an argument is disingenuous. > You can focus on that "99+%" survival rate if you like (which involves ignoring that the actual survival rate greatly differs between different cohorts), but if you don't take into consideration the considerable amount of resources and effort that healthcare systems put into achieving that, you're only deceiving yourself. That was always the survival rate. It hasn't changed since COVID appeared. Nothing the medical system did changed that. In fact, there's speculation that using ventilators caused protons and more deaths. Also, would we have so many deaths if so many politicians had not made so many stupid or malicious mistakes? The mayor of NYC ignored it for a while. The governor of New York sent COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. In actual fact, the virus might have had a better survival rate without those things. > Lastly, as members of society, we have obligations to other members of our society. Pay tax to contribute to shared infrastructure, follow the laws passed by representatives of your country's voters, etc. Sure thing. The problem? These mandates are not laws! They are executive edicts. Laws are passed by legislatures, and as far as I know, not a single one has passed an actual law. The mandates should not have the force of law. Oh, and when there was such a law? It was upheld by the Supreme Court, but the only penalty was a one-time fine of $150 in today's money. I'd gladly pay such a fine and move on with my life. However, that law and Supreme Court ruling were then used by the Supreme Court to justify the forced sterilization of women. It was playing with fire then, and it's playing with fire now. Do you want to live in a world where the government can make such medical decisions for you? > I'm quite happy for people to remain unvaccinated if they ensure that they can never pass it onto others, See the above point that there is no data that the naturally immune spread COVID. > and if they waive their rights to medical treatment if they become ill. Ill with COVID? Fine. I accept that. Ill with anything else? That would be disingenuous and pure power-seeking. But even if ill with COVID, the fact that naturally immune people don't spread it means that you want such people to recover to them be useful as a shield against COVID for everyone else with their contribution to herd immunity. Thus, in any case, denying medical treatment to the unvaccinated is not about health, it's about power.
p49k 5y ago
> Compared to a virus with a 99+% survival rate The virus wouldn’t have a high survival rate if we didn’t have these measures. Otherwise hospitals would be completely overrun, which would not only increase death rates directly related to COVID but also those of people with any other illness who rely on hospital care to survive. You can’t have it both ways: if you’re against the measures then you have to accept what that would mean.
- ghoward 5y ago
  > The virus wouldn’t have a high survival rate if we didn’t have these measures. Otherwise hospitals would be completely overrun, which would not only increase death rates directly related to COVID but also those of people with any other illness who rely on hospital care to survive. Where's your proof? Seriously. How do you know it would be worse? We might all have herd immunity by now and not be worried about it. Also, if people are so worried about hospital capacity, why are they firing doctors and nurses who haven't had the shot, but have natural immunity? The CDC recently admitted they have no data showing that people with natural immunity spread COVID [1]. Yet the vaccinated can (and if you don't believe that, then you have not been paying attention). So why are naturally-immune doctors and nurses being fired when we supposedly need them most, to stop ICU's from being overwhelmed? The reason is because it's not about health. It's about control. So when you bring up the argument that ICU's are being overwhelmed, I just ignore it; it's a distraction. You just don't know that yet. [1]: https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/12/cdc-admits-it-has-no-evidence-of-recovered-covid-patients-spreading-the-virus/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/12/cdc-admits-it-has-no-ev...
  - p49k 5y ago
    I agree with you that people who have proven to already have antibodies should not be required to get a vaccine. That is a compromise that probably would have already happened if there wasn't a constant stream of insanity from antivaxxers clouding the ability to have normal, nuanced discussions about policy. Instead, the front lines of debate are on 5G causing COVID, microchips, space lasers, and comparisons of vaccine mandates to the holocaust. But the data showing that mass-vaccination has reduced deaths and kept ICUs from overflowing is so blatantly obvious that you have to be exercising willful ignorance to not accept it. It's basically flat-earth level of denialism. You can see the direct correlation between vaccination rates and deaths/ICU intakes by looking at the data.
atoav 5y ago
With the same argumentation nurses and doctors should not be forced to wash/disinfect their hands before treating their patients. But of course that would be silly. If your job is to help others to get to health requires a small insignificant action that involves your body, this action can (and should be) mandated. Getting a COVID vaccination that 7.000.000.000 shots have been administered to other people (world wide) without any speakable side effects is not a big thing to ask for. Washing/desinfecting hands also has side effects on that scale.
- ghoward 5y ago
  > Getting a COVID vaccination that 7.000.000.000 shots have been administered to other people (world wide) without any speakable side effects is not a big thing to ask for. If you think that, you haven't been paying attention. Several shots have been halted by countries because of side effects. The FDA recently admitted that they expect about as many kids to get myocarditis as will be saved by the shot if they approve it for kids. VAERS data has shown a jump in reported cases. If you don't think side effects exist, you are in a bubble.
  - atoav 5y ago
    I think you are misrepresenting my statement. I said "without any speakable side effects". You always have to compare potential side effects of a measure against the effects of the things the measure should protect against. Safety belts might be detrimental to saving you life in traffic accidents in a not insignificant percentage of cases (e.g. being trapped in a burning car) – however if you compare it to the likelyhood of dying because you are not using a safety belt the whole thing is miniscule. Many people say they don't want to get vaccinated because they don't know about the long term effects of such a vaccination. But if they were honest they would need to admit that they don't know about the long term effects of getting the virus as well. Not to speak of the real risk to die or destroy your respiratory apartus in the process, in which case worrying about purely hypothetical long term effects seems to be a little delusional. The one minor difference to the safety belt example is that your choice also affects the risk for the rest of society. If you dont wear your safety belt, you don't increase the risk for others in a meaningful way. If you don't vaccinate, you not only do that, but you prolong the pandemic for the rest of society – for what to me looks like a purely symbolic "victory".

Ekaros 5y ago

And why should they be subject to those? Why should anyone be subject to fascist totalitarianism driven by the left?

EdwardDiego 5y ago
You have a weird understanding of fascism.
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    Sweet as, feedback acknowledged.
dang 5y ago
Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html