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Personally I like the idea of significantly taxing un-vaccinated people without a medical exemption, and using it as a toward stimulus for the vaccinated in the

Personally I like the idea of significantly taxing un-vaccinated people without a medical exemption, and using it as a toward stimulus for the vaccinated in their area. They endanger our health (viruses can become resistant or otherwise overcome your bodies defenses) they can compensate me for the risk they put me in. say start at a $100 a month and raising it at regular intervals eventually they wont be able to afford to go un-vaccinated.

eru 5y ago
That's a nice revenge fantasy, but it's very different from what orthodox economics would suggest. Mainstream economics takes the preference of some people to go unvaccinated serious. The idea would be to arrive at an accurate estimate of the externalities, and then charge that (or alternatively, subsidize the vaccinated to that amount). So that people can make accurate decisions that take their preferences _and_ the costs and benefits to wider society into account. The idea is NOT to apply an ever increasing spiral of costs on people who make decisions we disagree with. Over time as vaccines get better the size of the externalities might even go down. In the idealised extreme case of a vaccine that is 100% effective and can be taken by anyone who wants it, there's no externality from anti-vaxxers at all. (In reality, there are some people who can not get vaccinated for medical reasons, and our available vaccines don't even seem to be good enough to give herd immunity at the moment.)
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > available vaccines don't even seem to be good enough to give herd immunity at the moment AFAIAA, no COVID vaccines confer "immunity" - they confer resistance. Vaccinated people can still catch and transmit COVID. The vaccines are effective at preventing you being hospitalised; this protects health services from being overwhelmed, and reduces the chance that you'll die. I don't think that even catching live COVID confers immunity. I imagine that live COVID confers better resistance than a vaccine, especially a vaccine such as these mRNA vaccines that target a specific spike protein. But I have no reliable source for that notion (/me not a doctor or researcher, just some dude on the internet!)
  - eru 5y ago
    Keep in mind that I was talking about 'herd immunity', not 'immunity'. If vaccines provide enough resistance (or whatever) to bring r0 below 1, that's herd immunity: any infection transmittion chain (or tree) fizzles out.

eru 5y ago

That's a nice revenge fantasy, but it's very different from what orthodox economics would suggest. Mainstream economics takes the preference of some people to go unvaccinated serious. The idea would be to arrive at an accurate estimate of the externalities, and then charge that (or alternatively, subsidize the vaccinated to that amount). So that people can make accurate decisions that take their preferences _and_ the costs and benefits to wider society into account. The idea is NOT to apply an ever increasing spiral of costs on people who make decisions we disagree with. Over time as vaccines get better the size of the externalities might even go down. In the idealised extreme case of a vaccine that is 100% effective and can be taken by anyone who wants it, there's no externality from anti-vaxxers at all. (In reality, there are some people who can not get vaccinated for medical reasons, and our available vaccines don't even seem to be good enough to give herd immunity at the moment.)

denton-scratch 5y ago
> available vaccines don't even seem to be good enough to give herd immunity at the moment AFAIAA, no COVID vaccines confer "immunity" - they confer resistance. Vaccinated people can still catch and transmit COVID. The vaccines are effective at preventing you being hospitalised; this protects health services from being overwhelmed, and reduces the chance that you'll die. I don't think that even catching live COVID confers immunity. I imagine that live COVID confers better resistance than a vaccine, especially a vaccine such as these mRNA vaccines that target a specific spike protein. But I have no reliable source for that notion (/me not a doctor or researcher, just some dude on the internet!)
- eru 5y ago
  Keep in mind that I was talking about 'herd immunity', not 'immunity'. If vaccines provide enough resistance (or whatever) to bring r0 below 1, that's herd immunity: any infection transmittion chain (or tree) fizzles out.