6 ms·

>But unvaccinated people are doing NOTHING to make life more difficult for others. They are taxing the healthcare system, in some areas overwhelming it. COVID

by Klinky 5y ago

>But unvaccinated people are doing NOTHING to make life more difficult for others. They are taxing the healthcare system, in some areas overwhelming it. COVID hospitalization and eventual death is typically not quick, often 4 - 6 weeks taking up ICU resources. They are spreading the virus more rampantly than the vaccinated and literally killing people, often each other. If we could trace viral spread back to each specific individual who passed the virus on and hold that individual criminally and civilly liable for their actions, then maybe we can have the lecture on personal liberties and behaving responsibly at their own discretion, because then they'd actually have some skin in the game. We can't do that, so we're already being forced to socialize the detrimental outcomes caused by antivaxxers. Society can certainly ask for something in return for the limited liability granted to these antivaxxers and place limits on those who continue to make little to no effort to reduce their potential harm to those around them and society in general.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago
If the healthcare system is being taxed, why are you not pointing fingers at the failures of the healthcare system? Just because someone is unvaccinated does not mean that they are taking up ICU resources. Neither are they literally killing people - that would be the virus' doing. Your point about tracing viral spread has some merit. But what you would find is that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are both spreaders of the virus. It may lean more on one side, but you're effectively reducing this into an us vs. them problem, and labelling antivaxxers as if the whole spectrum of human opinion can be expressed neatly into two distinct categories. Look, I'm not saying that we can't ask for limits so that we can feel safe in general as a society. There are certainly those who engage in more risky behavior by not wearing masks, gathering in large groups, etc. But it is important to remember that unvaccinated people are not the ones causing harm - it is the virus. To blame this minority and hence enact procedures to forcefully inject a foreign substance into their body against the subject's will is certainly of no historic precedent in Germany.
- Klinky 5y ago
  When, in many areas, 90% of ICU resources are devoted to unvaxed COVID cases, most of the problem is the unvaxed. Should we build entire hospitals solely for the unvaxed now? When measuring negligence based on attempted mitigations taken to prevent harm or death of others, antivax would likely be considered extremely negligent, based on little to no efforts taken to reduce risk to others, or even intentional actions that purposefully increased risk. Saying the virus kills and not the carrier/spreaders is like saying the car killed the person it hit, not the driver of the car. If you want to drive around your body with a deadly and extremely contagious disease, without mitigations, be careful who you crash into. No one is forcibly injecting anyone, just society limiting access of those who do not care to limit their potential harm.
  - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
    Should hospital capacity be dependent upon a population's susceptibility to disease? I certainly hope not. If hospitals are overrun by old people with prior medical conditions, do you blame them? You might sure, but I don't. Hospitals being overrun indicates a failure of government spending to adequately allocate proper funds in the case of emergencies. The fact that they are pointing their fingers at the unvaccinated, as you are as well, is precisely what they want to absolve themselves of blame. Sure, I like your car analogy. But someone who is antivax != they have covid. Assuming thusly would be but a witch hunt. In your scenario, someone who is vaccinated could also be driving around their body with a deadly and contagious disease. If they are out and about because they believe the vaccine bestows them immunity, their repeated and continued exposure to others increases the likelihood of them contracting the disease more so than an antivax who stays at home all the time. So in this case, I am saying that you are conflating the source of covid with the population that does not want a vaccine. They are not one and the same. Yet you are conveniently blaming this pandemic on your imagined construct of people you classify as "antivax".
    - Klinky 5y ago
      Should I blame old people for inevitably getting old? No. We all get old, and the health system normally handles this load okay. Should I blame someone unvaxed getting severe COVID-19, a well known and highly contagious disease with a free vax that greatly reduces the chance of severe infection? Absolutely. COVID is particularly unique in its long ICU stays. Even for other conditions which could be blamed on poor patient decisions, 4 - 6 weeks in the ICU, and needing vents or ECMO, is not typical or widespread. In the car analogy, we still have perfect biomarker tracking to determine exactly who, when and how long someone was infected and who exactly they infected. Perfect information. Obviously we don't have perfect information to hold people accountable, so we end up with tragedy of the commons. We need to protect the commons and the best option we have is through vaccination and limited access to the commons for those who refuse it.
aakresearch 5y ago
Out of intellectual curiosity, how the reasoning about the following concept differ from reasoning about other public health mandates, especially vaccination? Each of the questions represents some model of collective contribution where 100% participation is desirable and every refusal to participate will lead to some bad outcomes earlier or later. If all people in US give only $10 to cancer research charity, it would be a whopping $3.3bil. Surely it could result in hundreds or, possibly, thousands lives saved. Even more impressive if we count life-years. $10 is a measly sum for most people, not even too inconvenient, especially considering a compounding effect it can produce. It is as "little to no effort to reduce their potential harm to those around them and society in general" as possible. Some people can give more. Society where 100% of people are donating to good cause will be quite thriving, I'd imagine. 1. Should we make charitable donations, to approved institutions, of course, mandatory? On top of existing tax structure, because clearly many people have excess capacity to give? Exceptions to be approved only by qualified financier after thorough audit, because almost nobody can be trusted to assess own financial position fairly. 2. Should charitable donations be made public as a matter of policy? 3. Should hospital triage decisions be made with consideration to the past charitable donations of the patient? What if they did not donate at all? What if they donated to cancer fund, but hospitalized with diabetes? What if they donated regularly but cancelled? 4. Should we ban voluntary cancellations of regular charity payments? Only exceptions validated by commitee of experts are possible. 5. Should we run a shaming campaign branding everyone who refuses to donate "a selfish one"? After all, if they don't donate, they clearly don't care about their fellow citizen and effectively killing them? And their choices, surely attributable exclusively to irrational reasons, must have consequences? And how is it different from parent punishing their child for forgetting to brush their teeth, for example? And a few more. 6. Should "organ donor" consent be opt-in or opt-out? Should the consent even be considered at all? Aren't those non-consenting "endangering" the society at large? 7. Should blood donation be made mandatory, only excepted by valid medical reason, validated by a doctor guided by central policy? Same questions apply as for charitable donations. I understand blood donation is a huge problem, there aren't enough donors everywhere. 8. Should autopsy be done solely at the discretion of authority, without relatives' consent whatsoever? And a grotesque one, I have to admit, but would like to hear reasoning. 9. High testosterone level is known to be linked to aggressiveness, drive for power and domination. T influences the "lizard brain", which causes a lot of second-order harm to society, including capital crimes. It has been proven that de-sexing is beneficial for dogs, it lowers the dominance drive, aggression, makes them more mellow and convenient. It raises life expectancy as well! It is not unfeasible that it may be statistically proven, taking guidance from animal models, that overall lowering of T level in society does more good than bad and lowers overall crime and "toxic masculinity". Should we mandate full neutering of human males upon reaching 40yo? Or routinely cut one testicle from every male infant? Or only do the operation to those showing "abnormally" high T level? Should we brand "selfish" those who refuse to contribute to such scientifically-solid model? The last one is extreme, but would help to perceive where exactly the line between socially acceptable and unacceptable violation of one's body is.

by Klinky 5y ago

TheRealNGenius 5y ago

If the healthcare system is being taxed, why are you not pointing fingers at the failures of the healthcare system? Just because someone is unvaccinated does not mean that they are taking up ICU resources. Neither are they literally killing people - that would be the virus' doing. Your point about tracing viral spread has some merit. But what you would find is that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are both spreaders of the virus. It may lean more on one side, but you're effectively reducing this into an us vs. them problem, and labelling antivaxxers as if the whole spectrum of human opinion can be expressed neatly into two distinct categories. Look, I'm not saying that we can't ask for limits so that we can feel safe in general as a society. There are certainly those who engage in more risky behavior by not wearing masks, gathering in large groups, etc. But it is important to remember that unvaccinated people are not the ones causing harm - it is the virus. To blame this minority and hence enact procedures to forcefully inject a foreign substance into their body against the subject's will is certainly of no historic precedent in Germany.

Klinky 5y ago
When, in many areas, 90% of ICU resources are devoted to unvaxed COVID cases, most of the problem is the unvaxed. Should we build entire hospitals solely for the unvaxed now? When measuring negligence based on attempted mitigations taken to prevent harm or death of others, antivax would likely be considered extremely negligent, based on little to no efforts taken to reduce risk to others, or even intentional actions that purposefully increased risk. Saying the virus kills and not the carrier/spreaders is like saying the car killed the person it hit, not the driver of the car. If you want to drive around your body with a deadly and extremely contagious disease, without mitigations, be careful who you crash into. No one is forcibly injecting anyone, just society limiting access of those who do not care to limit their potential harm.
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  Should hospital capacity be dependent upon a population's susceptibility to disease? I certainly hope not. If hospitals are overrun by old people with prior medical conditions, do you blame them? You might sure, but I don't. Hospitals being overrun indicates a failure of government spending to adequately allocate proper funds in the case of emergencies. The fact that they are pointing their fingers at the unvaccinated, as you are as well, is precisely what they want to absolve themselves of blame. Sure, I like your car analogy. But someone who is antivax != they have covid. Assuming thusly would be but a witch hunt. In your scenario, someone who is vaccinated could also be driving around their body with a deadly and contagious disease. If they are out and about because they believe the vaccine bestows them immunity, their repeated and continued exposure to others increases the likelihood of them contracting the disease more so than an antivax who stays at home all the time. So in this case, I am saying that you are conflating the source of covid with the population that does not want a vaccine. They are not one and the same. Yet you are conveniently blaming this pandemic on your imagined construct of people you classify as "antivax".
  - Klinky 5y ago
    Should I blame old people for inevitably getting old? No. We all get old, and the health system normally handles this load okay. Should I blame someone unvaxed getting severe COVID-19, a well known and highly contagious disease with a free vax that greatly reduces the chance of severe infection? Absolutely. COVID is particularly unique in its long ICU stays. Even for other conditions which could be blamed on poor patient decisions, 4 - 6 weeks in the ICU, and needing vents or ECMO, is not typical or widespread. In the car analogy, we still have perfect biomarker tracking to determine exactly who, when and how long someone was infected and who exactly they infected. Perfect information. Obviously we don't have perfect information to hold people accountable, so we end up with tragedy of the commons. We need to protect the commons and the best option we have is through vaccination and limited access to the commons for those who refuse it.

aakresearch 5y ago

Out of intellectual curiosity, how the reasoning about the following concept differ from reasoning about other public health mandates, especially vaccination? Each of the questions represents some model of collective contribution where 100% participation is desirable and every refusal to participate will lead to some bad outcomes earlier or later. If all people in US give only $10 to cancer research charity, it would be a whopping $3.3bil. Surely it could result in hundreds or, possibly, thousands lives saved. Even more impressive if we count life-years. $10 is a measly sum for most people, not even too inconvenient, especially considering a compounding effect it can produce. It is as "little to no effort to reduce their potential harm to those around them and society in general" as possible. Some people can give more. Society where 100% of people are donating to good cause will be quite thriving, I'd imagine. 1. Should we make charitable donations, to approved institutions, of course, mandatory? On top of existing tax structure, because clearly many people have excess capacity to give? Exceptions to be approved only by qualified financier after thorough audit, because almost nobody can be trusted to assess own financial position fairly. 2. Should charitable donations be made public as a matter of policy? 3. Should hospital triage decisions be made with consideration to the past charitable donations of the patient? What if they did not donate at all? What if they donated to cancer fund, but hospitalized with diabetes? What if they donated regularly but cancelled? 4. Should we ban voluntary cancellations of regular charity payments? Only exceptions validated by commitee of experts are possible. 5. Should we run a shaming campaign branding everyone who refuses to donate "a selfish one"? After all, if they don't donate, they clearly don't care about their fellow citizen and effectively killing them? And their choices, surely attributable exclusively to irrational reasons, must have consequences? And how is it different from parent punishing their child for forgetting to brush their teeth, for example? And a few more. 6. Should "organ donor" consent be opt-in or opt-out? Should the consent even be considered at all? Aren't those non-consenting "endangering" the society at large? 7. Should blood donation be made mandatory, only excepted by valid medical reason, validated by a doctor guided by central policy? Same questions apply as for charitable donations. I understand blood donation is a huge problem, there aren't enough donors everywhere. 8. Should autopsy be done solely at the discretion of authority, without relatives' consent whatsoever? And a grotesque one, I have to admit, but would like to hear reasoning. 9. High testosterone level is known to be linked to aggressiveness, drive for power and domination. T influences the "lizard brain", which causes a lot of second-order harm to society, including capital crimes. It has been proven that de-sexing is beneficial for dogs, it lowers the dominance drive, aggression, makes them more mellow and convenient. It raises life expectancy as well! It is not unfeasible that it may be statistically proven, taking guidance from animal models, that overall lowering of T level in society does more good than bad and lowers overall crime and "toxic masculinity". Should we mandate full neutering of human males upon reaching 40yo? Or routinely cut one testicle from every male infant? Or only do the operation to those showing "abnormally" high T level? Should we brand "selfish" those who refuse to contribute to such scientifically-solid model? The last one is extreme, but would help to perceive where exactly the line between socially acceptable and unacceptable violation of one's body is.