23 ms·

Covid-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified

• bluecalm 5y ago
  Here is a proposal: divide ICU beds in hospitals proportionally between vaxed and unvaxed population. If all unvaxed beds are taken you don't get one. As all libertarians know there can't be freedom of choices without responsibility or responsibility without freedom.
  • angelzen 5y ago
    This is a reasonable proposition in principle. But there are other admission criteria. For example, you might end up passing over a 30yo mother of two for a 85yo nursing home resident, just because all nursing home residents get vaccinated, while still having relatively large numbers of hospitalizations. From the UK covid reports (Table 4), notice how hospitalization raw numbers are majority vaccinated >50yo, with 5389 out of 9831 (55%) cases. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1034383/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-46.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    • bluecalm 5y ago
      Well, I believe you shouldn't discriminate on age in those situations. After all older people were paying to the system for their whole life and still pay (well, depends on the country). If 30yo mother refused the vaccination I believe it's reasonable to refuse the care. I think it's unjust to save someone irresponsible instead of someone responsible just because of age.
      • angelzen 5y ago
        It is a tough call. My hope is that in spite of failing to expand surge hospital capacity, the winter delta covid waves will recede before reaching spillover point.
• lamontcg 5y ago
  We're in the middle of a global pandemic and we can't all agree that vaccination is the best strategy and that unvaccinated people are placing themselves, and by the strain they put on the healthcare system, the rest of the population at risk. This is very deeply into idiocracy territory.
  • eganist 5y ago
    I'll venture a guess that a worse mortality rate would've changed the balance on this.
    • blindmute 5y ago
      People making a risk assessment would assess differently if the risk was different? You don't say...
      • eganist 5y ago
        > People making a risk assessment would assess differently if the risk was different? You don't say... People unqualified to make a risk assessment would assess differently if the perception of risk was different. If it was as cut and dry as "1 out of every 10 would die" yeah, tons would sign up. But people can't reasonably value risk when the numbers can be framed differently, e.g "98% of people survive" (but with what issues?)
• tyleo 5y ago
  I find the argument unconvincing. The phrase in the opening sentence, "pandemic of the unvaccinated" seems apt. As a vaccinated person I don't interpret it as, "we have problems because unvaccinated people are getting vaccinated people sick". Instead, I interpret it as, "we have problems because unvaccinated people are at higher risk of illness and causing unnecessary stress on healthcare".
• mStreamTeam 5y ago
  Just a reminder that medical consent is your right. You have the right to say no to any medical procedure for any reason.
  • minitoar 5y ago
    Perhaps tangential but you actually do not have the right to refuse quarantine.
    • thedream 5y ago
      You have the right to refuse _anything_. If someone else chooses to violate your body after that refusal, then that is their own choice. They will live with that karma.
  • kevinprince 5y ago
    And the rest of society has the right to exclude you if your carrying a deadly virus.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      So why don't we mandate testing from the vaccinated? Isn't that only way to guarantee that they don't spread this disease?
  • loudmax 5y ago
    This is absolutely true. Rights are also responsibilities. Inasmuch as you have a right to authorize or deny medical procedures on your own body, you are responsible for how your own body affects those around you. When you allow your body to become a vector for transmission you bear responsibility for spreading the disease.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Only way to not spread this disease is quarantine and testing. Why aren't vaccinated doing that? Why are they so evil or callous that they take risk of spreading it? Why isn't there talk that anyone who wants to protect others must regularly take the test?
• chtitux 5y ago
  At some point of the pandemic, we will discover we should have put more effort in the psychology effects of the words. Make people panicking is probably not a very good thing to do if we want to expect them to take the best decisions. Special mention to French president that described March 2020 situation as « This is a war ».
  • Capira 5y ago
    war on freedom.
  • nomfortable 5y ago
    He actually called, and held regular "defense councils" (with generals, etc.) to deal with the Covid situation. Was it because they are less compromised by industry than public health officials? Or just because it's popular with voters? Your guess is as good as mine.
• wobblyasp 5y ago
  Comparing it to discrimination based on skin color seems extremely disingenuous. I don't care if you get vaccinated; but I also recognize that your are making a suboptimal choice, based on available data, if you don't.
  • fuckyah 5y ago
    Wrong, the available data shows, that the vaccines do not significantly reduce spread, and only offer a individual protection for several months.
  • thepangolino 5y ago
    What a lot of people seem to miss is the amount of discrimination the covid passports being generalised are enabling. I pitty those with too etnic names.
  • eganist 5y ago
    > I don't care if you get vaccinated, but I also recognize that your are making a suboptimal choice, based on available data, if you don't. The [dead] comments in reply to yours seem to imply that choosing to refuse a vaccine (without a sound medical reason to do so, e.g allergies) isn't a choice, which is how they — and I assume millions of others — justify the comparison to racism. It is, of course, ludicrous on its face as traits such as race are in fact truly immutable, whereas a decision whether or not to vaccinate is certainly subject to change up until onset of illness leading to death.
    • tyleo 5y ago
      This is a very charitable reading of the [dead] comments. In spite of that, I think I agree with your final point: “It is, of course, ludicrous on its face as traits such as race are in fact truly immutable, whereas a decision whether or not to vaccinate is certainly subject to change up until onset of illness leading to death.”
      • eganist 5y ago
        In fairness, I only skimmed them and didn't really give them the time of day. You know, [dead] and all.
• pfisch 5y ago
  Seems like it is justified as long as they are flooding hospitals and overwhelming our shared medical resources that other people need.
  • ttyprintk 5y ago
    Yes, this paper asserts we are “talking about a pandemic of the unvaccinated” when I think we’re talking about a system burdened by the unvaccinated and a class of workers who are underappreciated by the unvaccinated.
  • fuckyah 5y ago
    Not even In Florida's latest wave, where hospitals overrun... https://rationalground.com/hospital-and-icu-capacity-dashboards/ https://rationalground.com/hospital-and-icu-capacity-dashboa...
  • lithos 5y ago
    Very Silicon Valley mindset, grouping people up and getting them to only interact with people like themselves.
    • pfisch 5y ago
      ? I know unvaccinated people. I imagine most people do. Doesn't change what is happening.
  • thedream 5y ago
    Hospitals so flooded the nursing staff had to cut one of their scheduled TikTok group dances this week!!
• thepangolino 5y ago
  Better late than never.
• caslon 5y ago
  This is a very low quality article and the arguments seem to be very poor and don't really align with the data. Maybe I'm just old enough to remember there was a period of time when people actually thought stigmatizing unintelligence was the only way to have a healthy society and a second and third industrial revolution happened; this paper seems ridiculous. It's worth noting, also, that The Lancet contributed much to global vaccine hesitancy with its historical lack of quality control. We might not be in the present situation if not for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lancet#Andrew_Wakefield_and_the_MMR_vaccine_(1998) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lancet#Andrew_Wakefield_an...
  • xiphias2 5y ago
    While vaccine hesistancy is at crazy levels, the so called scientists that get invited to news are regularly underreporting the seriousness of possible side effects of COVID vaccines, which can add to the hesistancy. Of course it's still much better than getting the virus itself, but it's usually not explained honestly in the media.
    • peter422 5y ago
      Every single person I know has gotten the vaccine at least twice, some three times, and not a single person has had any persistent side effects. I think the problem with saying the vaccine has all these side effects is that in placebo controlled trials a lot of people also get “side effects” from the placebo, either by random chance or they make it up. There really isn’t any evidence these vaccines (mRNA at least) have any serious level of side effects above background noise.
      • zekica 5y ago
        I had a side effect that lasted 5 months - persistent pain in the arm and is confirmed by doctors as caused by the vaccine. This is much better than the ilness but is not something I would like to repeat.
        • 5y ago
• eganist 5y ago
  > I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens, and to put extra effort into bringing society together. Or on the flip side, we can keep describing it as what it is, i.e an illness which largely inconveniences the vaccinated and jeopardizes the lives of those who are not. This really seems like it's just an opinion piece. The vaccine cuts the window of contagion, spares capacity in hospitals for the immunocompromised as well as for people suffering other ailments beyond covid, and enables a resumption of normality necessary for mental health. People who choose not to vaccinate for reasons other than contraindications or other medical exclusions such as allergies to vaccine components are really just choosing to play Russian roulette with a 50 chamber revolver — and risking the lives of those who can't vaccinate by projecting the virus for longer durations of time and occupying ventilators, ECMOs, hospital beds, and pricey monoclonal antibodies.
  • gaetgu 5y ago
    > Or on the flip side, we can keep describing it as what it is, i.e an illness which largely inconveniences the vaccinated and jeopardizes the lives of those who are not. Well actually, it largely inconveniences the unvaccinated /and/ the vaccinated. The difference in severity comes with age. Older people and babies are far more susceptible to the virus than are children and adults. The amount of people who truly can't vaccinate is probably small enough that someone who is exercising their right to choose is probably not going to take beds from those who could not get the vaccine.
    • mherrmann 5y ago
      Except people might need hospital beds, urgently, for things other than COVID?
    • neogodless 5y ago
      The hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is much lower.
  • mrfusion 5y ago
• valine 5y ago
  There’s increasing evidence that the mrna immunity wanes after about 6 months. That’s an argument for booster shots, not a valid justification to stay unvaccinated.
  • superkuh 5y ago
    That is one "failing" but not the most important one. No intramuscular shot seems to provide protection against infection of upper respiratory aerosol spread viruses. They provide IgG antibodies in the body serum, and that seeps into the lower lungs to provide protection from serious disease. But intramuscular vaccination does not provide even medium term protection against infection of the upper respiratory mucosal tissues. And that's really unfortunate but not unexpected if you knew anything about how influenza vaccination works. Those muscosal surface tissues require local IgA antibodies and resident B and T cells to prevent infections. Intramuscular vaccination does not cause this (though it does train the T cells that will go there when you do get infected). So, intramuscular vaccination is not preventing sars-cov-2 infection of the upper respiratory and spread of the virus to others. This does not mean intramuscular vaccination is not needed. It is the vital first step. The next step is an intranasal vaccination booster to provide resident T cells to the upper respiratory (as well as a brief period of IgA antibodies and B cell residence). If we're gonna get through this both "sides" have to acknowledge their failings. Intramuscular vaccination is both not enough and a required first step. Intranasal is next. Then we can finally start ending this pandemic.
• goldenkey 5y ago
  Breakthrough hardly means breakthrough anymore. Perhaps it's the deluge of strains, or maybe it's just that vaccines were never very effective at preventing transmission. People keep trying to compare taking the Covid vaccine to taking the Polio vaccine but the Polio vaccine lasts nearly a lifetime and is 99.9% effective... Recently a nursing home had 89 total infections, and 87 people were fully vaccinated. Are we still gonna call these cases breakthrough if it's nearly guaranteed that the vaccine won't stop you from getting covid? I don't dispute that it will help protect one from becoming seriously ill. https://nypost.com/2021/11/16/covid-19-outbreak-kills-8-in-connecticut-nursing-home/ https://nypost.com/2021/11/16/covid-19-outbreak-kills-8-in-c...
• vehemenz 5y ago
  People unwilling to make a minor sacrifice for themselves and their community deserve to be stigmatized. That is, if we value sacrifice for our community. Ironically, the type of people who are unvaccinated are disproportionately in this camp, I suspect.
  • ramphastidae 5y ago
    > Ironically, the type of people who are unvaccinated are disproportionately in this camp, I suspect. What do you mean by this?
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    I fully agree. Vaccinated people should also participate in regular testing at their own expense to protect the others. Anything else is just putting others lives at risk. They should be absolutely ready to make that small sacrifice. If they are not willing to do they should be heavily stigmatized.
  • kzrdude 5y ago
    At the same time, we vaccinate to protect us collectively, and those with legitimate reasons to abstain can be respected. We are supposed to have margins that allow for this.
    • ianai 5y ago
      And it’s protecting those same innunocompromised people that requires everyone who can take a vaccine to do so. You can’t be both pro-care for the innunocompromised and anti-vaccine for reasons other than destructive politics.
      • nradov 5y ago
        I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, however in the long run that won't protect the immunocompromised. The vaccines aren't sterilizing to any significant extent and the virus is now endemic, so everyone will be exposed regardless of how many people are vaccinated. There will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect those who lack immunity. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
• sschueller 5y ago
  The primary issue causing that we keep having to lockdown is that hospitals only have a limited number of ICU beds (not physical but trained staff to operate them). Once full, all others such as traffic accident victims can't be treated. There is no way to quickly get more certified ICU beds at least if you want them at the standards expected. 71% of people in the ICU in Zürich, Switzerland are unvaccinated [1]. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated even if the vaccinated can spread the virus, the ICU beds are full because of the unvaccinated. [1] https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/gesundheit/corona/hauptseite/gd_zh_corona_lagebulletin.pdf https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/...
  • mrfusion 5y ago
    That’s not a great argument when we’re firing health workers left and right. Also we had two years to expand our ICU’s. What happened?
    • sschueller 5y ago
      It takes at least 2 years to train them and like you said. The job sucks, underpaid, too many hours etc. That is why the vote on the 28th for better working conditions will pass [1]. [1] https://www.srf.ch/news/abstimmungen-28-november-2021/pflege-initiative/2-srg-umfrage-das-ja-zur-pflege-initiative-scheint-klar-zu-sein https://www.srf.ch/news/abstimmungen-28-november-2021/pflege...
    • seoulmetro 5y ago
      >Also we had two years to expand our ICU’s. What happened? You seem to think that governments are interested in actually spending money to stop the virus. They're not or they can't.
  • charbonneau2 5y ago
    Are all vaccinated getting tested in Züri hospitals? How many hospitalized COVID-19 cases have severe acute respiratory symptoms? Age breakdown? Health status? Population representative data? Historic data on hospital capacity?
  • 5y ago
• Capira 5y ago
  Snowden Warns Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build ‘the Architecture of Oppression’.
• nfRfqX5n 5y ago
  justification aside, stigmatizing the unvaxxed seems to be completely ineffective
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• jeffrallen 5y ago
  To the author, here's a proposal: I'll stop stigmatizing unvaccinated by choice people going around endangering others when you stop stigmatizing drunk by choice drivers going around endangering others.
  • HarryHirsch 5y ago
    The comparison to drunk driving is apt. If you have to go to hospital with active covid you endanger the personnel and you take up a bed that someone else could use. Not too long ago there was a man in Alabama who couldn't get an intensive care bed because they were all taken up by Covid patients. (Let's face it, we know how that goes - if you end up in intensive care because of Covid there's a 50 % chance that you die, but only after a month, and a 50 % chance that you make it out of there with multiple disabilities.)
  • angelzen 5y ago
    Imagine a police officer stopping you at the side of the road. "When was the last time you drank alcohol?" "A couple of months ago at my brother's birthday party, I had a can of beer." "Step out of the car, you are under arrest for drunk driving." This manichean logic worked wonders last time it was tried.
• Capira 5y ago
  The WHO agrees: Does it prevent infection and transmission? There is currently no substantive data are available related to impact of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine on transmission or viral shedding. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can-take-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19--vaccine https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can...
  • eqvinox 5y ago
    The WHO agrees on "transmission or viral shedding". The WHO disagrees if anyone's tries to claim the vaccine doesn't help. The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 has an efficacy of 95% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. And each and every ICU bed taken up by an unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 case taking a severe turn is an ICU bed that, with above 95% probability (yes, naïvely), could've been available for someone else. Like a cancer or heart patient.
  • brutusborn 5y ago
    This doesn't mean the WHO "agrees". A poster explained this above: " That is one "failing" but not the most important one. No intramuscular shot seems to provide protection against infection of upper respiratory aerosol spread viruses. They provide IgG antibodies in the body serum, and that seeps into the lower lungs to provide protection from serious disease. But intramuscular vaccination does not provide even medium term protection against infection of the upper respiratory mucosal tissues. And that's really unfortunate but not unexpected if you knew anything about how influenza vaccination works. Those muscosal surface tissues require local IgA antibodies and resident B and T cells to prevent infections. Intramuscular vaccination does not cause this (though it does train the T cells that will go there when you do get infected). So, intramuscular vaccination is not preventing sars-cov-2 infection of the upper respiratory and spread of the virus to others. This does not mean intramuscular vaccination is not needed. It is the vital first step. The next step is an intranasal vaccination booster to provide resident T cells to the upper respiratory (as well as a brief period of IgA antibodies and B cell residence). If we're gonna get through this both "sides" have to acknowledge their failings. Intramuscular vaccination is both not enough and a required first step. Intranasal is next. Then we can finally start ending this pandemic. "
• andrewclunn 5y ago
  A poor argument. I'm unvaccinated because I am unconvinced that it is in my or society's beat intereat for me to do so. The avoidance of shaming those who are not vaccinated should be: 1) Because telling someone they're stupid almost never works when they have a community of people who agree with them. 2) Because it activates moral faculties that keep the shamers from contemplating if they might be mistaken. 3) Because bodily autonomy is an important enough issue for a principled stance to be taken against even effective and safe treatments. I think shaming the unvaccinated is foolish, but playing to people's empathy to prevent it? That's the thing about "othering" a group: empathy no longer exists there. A poorly constructed emotional argument, but perhaps the only kind allowed here, as evidence based discussion of why one might not want to get the shot is an instant ban hammer.
• deleted 5y ago
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• rnqav 5y ago
  Of course it isn't. In highly vaccinated countries like Ireland (89.1%) the virus is spreading and the bar for "herd immunity" has been raised to 95%. The daily death rate is the same as last year: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~IRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Gibraltar has 100% vaccination rate (for the eligible) and cases are sharply rising. Unrelated to the issue of stigmatization, the obligatory reminder that Sweden's Covid-19 policies, while they resulted in a slightly higher cumulative death rate (1,468 per million vs 1,187 per million), are now producing excellent results, and the death rates are converging: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
  • rnqav 5y ago
    Are the downvotes coming from beneficiaries of Covid-19 like Internet corporations?
    • ModernMech 5y ago
      The downvotes are coming because you've told us that cases are skyrocketing but the deaths are the same as they were last year, when cases were not skyrocketing. This shows that the vaccine is doing its job. Deaths Nov 2020: 6.57 Nov 2021: 6.14 Cases Nov 2020: 386.14 Nov 2021: 894.86 So over 2x the cases, and yet lower death rate. I'm not sure what Ireland is like but if it's anything like where I'm from, people are out and about more this year so more cases are expected. But a lower death rate with 2x more cases seems like an unambiguous win for the vaccine to me. You've said cases are exploding in Gibraltar, but no one has died there since October 15 due to Covid. Since they became highly vaccinated, only 4 people have died in total in Gibraltar. Almost 100 died last winter before vaccinations were distributed. Then the vaccine became available and they all got vaccinated. Now only 4 have died despite a huge outbreak. Again, seems like a huge win for the vaccine.
• 323 5y ago
  This is part of a bigger trend happening in healthcare right now. For example, health workers are asked to replace "vulnerable population" with "oppressed population". It's also interesting to see the American Medical Association talk in a medical guide about "cultural appropriation" and > “Discovery” of the Americas > The land known as the Americas was not discovered; it was conquered and appropriated. This violent acquisition and genocide perpetuated by European settlers followed by centuries of illinformed and harmful federal policy https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.... > The Medical Establishment Embraces Leftist Language > New guidelines urge doctors to talk like social-justice ideologues. Whether patients understand them is beside the point. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/leftist-language-policing-wont-fix-health-disparities/620695/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/leftist-la...
• amacbride 5y ago
  Note: this is just a letter (someone’s opinion, not peer-reviewed.)
• mikem170 5y ago
  Current numbers [0] show 1 in 417 people in the U.S. have died of covid. These fatalities tend to occur to people who are older and/or have other health problems [1]. Many people intuit that this is not the end of the world. Many may not be able to argue the case well, but they believe that the fear of covid is overblown. They don't believe that lockdowns and masks will make enough difference in the end, not for the pain incurred. Some are freaked out more by the vaccine but often this is subconscious reaction to being forced through all this trouble by a bunch of people whipped up into unreasonable fear by clickbait headlines and fanned by meddling or power hungry politicians. Quibbling over details doesn't change what they believe. I would defend their position by saying that the per capita mortality rate for covid is similar to the 1968 hong-kong flu [2], maybe less. That was not the end of the world, either. Many people who were alive in 1968 don't remember it. We live in a word of longer than ever life expectancy. We are better than ever at keeping vulnerable unhealthy people alive. What do you expect? These things have happened before, and will happen again, part of living in the real world. These people opposed to punishing young, and non-young, people who have a 1 in 10,000+ chance or less of dying, taking away years of their schooling, social life, and careers, because a bunch of people have a skewed perspective of risk. Whether or not you agree, this is what a lot of people think, and why. Supporting and expanding hospital facilities and targeted protection of vulnerable people like in nursing homes would have been my biggest concern. Some people have good reason to be afraid. Others do not. I don't blame anyone for wanting to protect themselves. We should support that, too. EDIT: minor edits for clarity [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/covid19-comorbidity-expanded-12092020-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/covid19-comorbid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu
• deleted 5y ago
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• prohobo 5y ago
  I got the virus in late January 2020, before any lockdowns or vaccines. Haven't been ill since then. Now I'm hanging out in the periphery and listening to vaccinated people calling me a burden while the entire western world falls apart due to their genius plans. They decided I'm inconveniencing them and want to force me to get shots, but won't say it to my face, yet. I'll wait and see on these vaccines, but I'm not worried about mine or anyone else's health - mostly I'm just afraid of these people. These are the people who ordered from Uber Eats throughout the pandemic and didn't give a shit about the poor guys and girls delivering their food at personal risk. The Zoom class thinks they know better than everyone else, and god help you if you don't fall in line. These people throw everyone under the bus when they become inconvenienced by them. I wonder, is Snowden considered a conspiracy theorist now? This is a political and class issue, not a health one.
  • ttyprintk 5y ago
    There are lots of people in this situation. In USA, to meet this administration’s standards you show proof of vaccination or weekly tests. It sounds like you’re the one who’s inconvenienced.
    • prohobo 5y ago
      Rapidly shifting ethics, scientism, totalitarian discourse, and stripping people's rights - all over a background of harming people while claiming to help them - is not what I consider "inconvenience". I consider it stupid and dangerous, as does any free society. Do you know the cost/benefit analysis results of the COVID interventions? They're not good, and they're going to get a lot worse in the coming years, not just in the west but particularly in poorer countries that have to deal with the economic fallout. They're estimating 20 million people are now starving to death because of the lockdowns (https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/six-fold-increase-people-suffering-famine-conditions-pandemic-began https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/six-fold-increase-pe..., https://unglobalcompact.org/take-action/20th-anniversary-campaign/covid-related%20hunger-could-kill-more-people-than-the-virus https://unglobalcompact.org/take-action/20th-anniversary-cam..., https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-..., https://www.france24.com/en/20200728-coronavirus-linked-hunger-kills-10-000-children-per-month-says-un https://www.france24.com/en/20200728-coronavirus-linked-hung..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/09/25/pandemic-pushes-hundreds-millions-people-toward-starvation-poverty/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/09/25/pandemic-pus..., https://devpolicy.org/recipe-for-disaster-covid-19-and-world-hunger-20210922/ https://devpolicy.org/recipe-for-disaster-covid-19-and-world..., https://ipdefenseforum.com/2021/03/u-n-official-warns-covid-19-lockdown-causing-starvation-poverty-in-north-korea/ https://ipdefenseforum.com/2021/03/u-n-official-warns-covid-...) As for the vaccines you think should be mandated: https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-produces-the-first-91-pages-of https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-produces-the-first-91-p... and thousands of people losing their jobs because they refuse (https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-workers-quitting-getting-fired-mandates https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-work...). This is amazing progress, truly: you are helping the community. Good fucking work, please tell us what else we should be doing - I think we might be able to save some lives by doing the opposite.
• deleted 5y ago
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• _xnmw 5y ago
  I've found it interesting to note how folks who are pro-choice/pro-life on the issue of abortion often have a morally contradictory stance in supporting mandatory vaccination. So if you are pro-choice, you believe women have the right to decide what happens to their bodies, even if it involves ending a potential life (a fetus), while people do not have the right to decide what happens to their body with respect to vaccination, even if it involves transmitting a potentially deadly virus. And vice-versa for pro-life.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    In my mind, the key differentiator there is whether ending a life is the goal of the choice or an unintended consequence of it.
• thedream 5y ago
  The product works so well, you'll only need to get it twice! Or maybe three times! Or maybe ten! ... what's YOUR number?
• pupppet 5y ago
  The funny thing about the unvaccinated, when they get sick with COVID, 100% of them will immediately start trusting doctors again and run to the nearest hospital. If you're supposedly making a choice about your own body, then stick with that choice, right to the very end.
• blindmute 5y ago
  If you're not vaccinated by now, you're pretty much immune to 'stigma', I should think. Time to get over it folks; the unvaccinated are among us and they will be for the rest of time. Continuing with this stigmatization will upset yourselves far more than will upset them. In my country at least, it's obvious there will be no law requiring injection, so continued complaints are really just yelling into the wind (unlike something like drunk driving for example).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• sazz 5y ago
  It is very interesting to witness how quickly people are driven into fascist thinking. As if the history of the last century becomes real again. In fact, at that time it was not about races, but about the thought that only one race can be the right way. Democracy is balancing of different interests. But that doesn't count anymore, because there is only the one incontrovertible truth that vaccination is the only right way out of the pandemic. Was there ever a serious debate about this? What about alternative solutions? The direction in which a society is drifting can always be seen in the development of language. Here in Germany, groups of people are defamed as "tyrants" or as a "virus to be eradicated" just because they make a different decision for themselves. According to the hatred and agitation that this personal decision is met with, this is a betrayal of public health. Goebbels could not have orchestrated this better. Morality is a set of principles. And someone with moral standards cannot use them selectively depending on the subject matter. They determine his actions and always apply. So why is it such a crime when an unvaccinated person needs an ICU? What about smokers, drinkers, skiers, mountain climbers, people who like to listen to loud music? In Germany 88% of the patients in intensive care are treated for non-COVID related things. Shouldn't we have a closer look on them as well if their treatment is due to personal misbehaviour? Morality does not only apply to COVID, it applies to everything. So where do we stand now? People are finding it hip again to blanketly defame and marginalize people as scapegoats. Don't play with the dirty kids! Because anyone who opposes the will of the people has to reckon with consequences. And the people's will knows only one direction. In science there is for a long time the thesis that the pandemic cannot be solved by vaccines. (https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/11/05/covid-how-long-does-vaccine-based-immunity-last/ https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/11/05/covid-how-long-doe...) People have long since given up their right to their own argumentative opinion and prefer to be fed by the public media and politics. We also no longer have debates about better solutions, but only about how to get a better grip on troublemakers. So what I'm witnessing is that people are back to rioting. Someone has to pay for their misery. Their bubble is on the right side of the argument and therefore all the others are disinformed idiots and therefore belong to be fought, marginalized, bullied and insulted. I'm not particularly surprised that people don't realize that their way of thinking has actually landed them in a fascistoid mindset. After all, history repeats itself. Lucky for us last time it lasted only a few years.