I mostly agree, but I think the core difference with HIV is how it's transmitted. You're more in control of your transmission risk. That's less true with Covid

I mostly agree, but I think the core difference with HIV is how it's transmitted. You're more in control of your transmission risk. That's less true with Covid given its contagiousness through the air. I'm of the opinion that private companies have every right to require restrictions they see fit. I'm more mixed about government restrictions now that we're post vaccine (with the exception that requiring vaccine mandates for healthcare workers seems reasonable). What gets to me about this whole thing is it's not binary but people often talk like it is (probably just political tribalism). Vaccinated people who are infected spread the disease like the unvaccinated, that's true - but since vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected on exposure things like the vaccine mandates for restaurant entry do have an affect and are not just theater. They reduce the overall probability of positive people in the restaurant. I think people like Bret Weinstein have done a lot of harm and I'm often surprised by the extent to which intelligence is independent from accuracy. It's really interesting in the context of this book review: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret... Basically, the argument in that is a little reason (incompletely applied or understood) can be a dangerous thing and blindly following consensus is sometimes the adaptive behavior. It's a little misapplied to vaccines since in that case someone did actually know the details and understand the mechanism, but it's possible for a cultural understanding to be entirely selected by natural selection and the reason for it was never understood by anyone! When we see animals do complex behavior we don't usually assume it's because they understand fully why that mechanism is adaptive, but we often misapply this understanding to ourselves. Mostly getting off topic, but I thought this was an interesting thing to think about.