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> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd th

> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior. The idea that a vaccine is a punishment is disturbing. I'm glad to have been able to get it.

timr 5y ago
I said the mandate is punitive, not the vaccine. If you feel more comfortable getting an unnecessary vaccination, nobody is stopping you. Other people should not be coerced into doing the same against their will. College kids are currently being expelled for refusing boosters. Children are being refused classroom education. Prior infection is not taken into account, and risk/benefit is not a factor. There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior.
- lovich 5y ago
  College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. > There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior We coerce people constantly when they have bad behavior that affects society and others. I don’t know why people keep trotting out mandates as having aspects of coercion/authoritarianism is a mic drop moment explaining why they are bad. How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had?
  - nomel 5y ago
    I think their point is that the data shows that previous infection provides good protection. If the goal is protection, then this should count for something, and should be factored in to the risk-benefit ratio. The risk-benefit ratio is not negligible for young, which is why the vaccine still hasn't been approved for the very young (and there's certainly not a step function in the risk-benefit ratio, by age). But, the risk-benefit ratio calculations being used don't seem to be including previous infection. This is not necessarily scientific. For the other-than-COVID vaccines that are required for enrollment, there isn't existing protection in the majority of the population. Nobody has natural, effective, protection against measles. I think the practical problem/reason is that there's infrastructure set up to track and share vaccination/booster status. There's no infrastructure set up to track, or even test, immunity status, which is the real metric of risk. So, for practical reasons, proof of vaccination status will always be favored and, almost certainly, held above the true, yet difficult to measure, immunity status, to drive policies. This is an easy out, that might cause harm, relative to an "ideal" policies that were based on immunity.
  - chronofar 5y ago
    > College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. Saying it's happened in the past isn't an argument that it should continue in the future. I doubt your swine flu nasal spray had as intense of negative side effects as the COVID second shot and booster tend to in the young and healthy. Now that we're in booster territory and Delta is being phased out the shots are almost certainly more painful than the disease for some portion of the population. > How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had? I can't recall any other health based requirement for attending an event or restaurant. I also don't understand why people continue to harp on how a personal COVID vaccination decision "affects society and others" at this point. The vaccine only marginally prevents infection at this stage, and the primary benefit of reduced severity should stop everyone who's vaccinated from worrying about what others around them may be doing. I get the flu shot so I don't get the flu, and I'm not sitting around telling others who haven't that they're putting me in danger.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Marginal reduction in transmission can mean the difference in ending a pandemic or dragging it out for another year or two. There is a big difference in an R value of R1 and R0.9 And you probably don't remember ever being required to show vaccination status to get into a stadium or restaurant in your lifetime because you hadn't previously lived through a pandemic.
      - chronofar 5y ago
        > Marginal reduction in transmission can mean the difference in ending a pandemic or dragging it out for another year or two. Sure, it’s great that we have the vaccines to do so. We should be focusing on making them available to everyone on earth rather than forcing them down the throats of those who don’t want them to get to the fastest “end.” > And you probably don't remember ever being required to show vaccination status to get into a stadium or restaurant in your lifetime because you hadn't previously lived through a pandemic. Fair enough. My reply was in response to a status quo argument, but indeed this pandemic hasn’t been just that. In which case I think you have to assess the dangers to those who have been vaccinated, which is not much. Indeed with omicron the risk isn’t very high for a large portion of the population vaccinated or not. And the vaccines are available to anyone who wants to reduce their risk, thus the mandates make little sense.
- alchemism 5y ago
  There is a pre—existing vaccination mandate for enrollment at colleges in the US.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    All the vaccines mandated by colleges have been around for decades. It’s not “just another vaccine” to add to the list; there is a difference.
    - autoexec 5y ago
      Which brings it all back to a lack of trust in the vaccine/science. The current science is that the vaccines are safe and provide a greater degree of protection than prior infection alone. Outside of some very rare conditions that would make someone unfit for a vaccine, there's no reason not to get vaccinated. Refusing to get one only increases your chances of ending up in a hospital and for what? There's no advantage to giving yourself a disadvantage no matter how small you think the benefit a free vaccine would give you over the protection a natural infection has already given you.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

timr 5y ago

I said the mandate is punitive, not the vaccine. If you feel more comfortable getting an unnecessary vaccination, nobody is stopping you. Other people should not be coerced into doing the same against their will. College kids are currently being expelled for refusing boosters. Children are being refused classroom education. Prior infection is not taken into account, and risk/benefit is not a factor. There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior.

lovich 5y ago
College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. > There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior We coerce people constantly when they have bad behavior that affects society and others. I don’t know why people keep trotting out mandates as having aspects of coercion/authoritarianism is a mic drop moment explaining why they are bad. How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had?
- nomel 5y ago
  I think their point is that the data shows that previous infection provides good protection. If the goal is protection, then this should count for something, and should be factored in to the risk-benefit ratio. The risk-benefit ratio is not negligible for young, which is why the vaccine still hasn't been approved for the very young (and there's certainly not a step function in the risk-benefit ratio, by age). But, the risk-benefit ratio calculations being used don't seem to be including previous infection. This is not necessarily scientific. For the other-than-COVID vaccines that are required for enrollment, there isn't existing protection in the majority of the population. Nobody has natural, effective, protection against measles. I think the practical problem/reason is that there's infrastructure set up to track and share vaccination/booster status. There's no infrastructure set up to track, or even test, immunity status, which is the real metric of risk. So, for practical reasons, proof of vaccination status will always be favored and, almost certainly, held above the true, yet difficult to measure, immunity status, to drive policies. This is an easy out, that might cause harm, relative to an "ideal" policies that were based on immunity.
- chronofar 5y ago
  > College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. Saying it's happened in the past isn't an argument that it should continue in the future. I doubt your swine flu nasal spray had as intense of negative side effects as the COVID second shot and booster tend to in the young and healthy. Now that we're in booster territory and Delta is being phased out the shots are almost certainly more painful than the disease for some portion of the population. > How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had? I can't recall any other health based requirement for attending an event or restaurant. I also don't understand why people continue to harp on how a personal COVID vaccination decision "affects society and others" at this point. The vaccine only marginally prevents infection at this stage, and the primary benefit of reduced severity should stop everyone who's vaccinated from worrying about what others around them may be doing. I get the flu shot so I don't get the flu, and I'm not sitting around telling others who haven't that they're putting me in danger.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Marginal reduction in transmission can mean the difference in ending a pandemic or dragging it out for another year or two. There is a big difference in an R value of R1 and R0.9 And you probably don't remember ever being required to show vaccination status to get into a stadium or restaurant in your lifetime because you hadn't previously lived through a pandemic.
    - chronofar 5y ago
      > Marginal reduction in transmission can mean the difference in ending a pandemic or dragging it out for another year or two. Sure, it’s great that we have the vaccines to do so. We should be focusing on making them available to everyone on earth rather than forcing them down the throats of those who don’t want them to get to the fastest “end.” > And you probably don't remember ever being required to show vaccination status to get into a stadium or restaurant in your lifetime because you hadn't previously lived through a pandemic. Fair enough. My reply was in response to a status quo argument, but indeed this pandemic hasn’t been just that. In which case I think you have to assess the dangers to those who have been vaccinated, which is not much. Indeed with omicron the risk isn’t very high for a large portion of the population vaccinated or not. And the vaccines are available to anyone who wants to reduce their risk, thus the mandates make little sense.
alchemism 5y ago
There is a pre—existing vaccination mandate for enrollment at colleges in the US.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  All the vaccines mandated by colleges have been around for decades. It’s not “just another vaccine” to add to the list; there is a difference.
  - autoexec 5y ago
    Which brings it all back to a lack of trust in the vaccine/science. The current science is that the vaccines are safe and provide a greater degree of protection than prior infection alone. Outside of some very rare conditions that would make someone unfit for a vaccine, there's no reason not to get vaccinated. Refusing to get one only increases your chances of ending up in a hospital and for what? There's no advantage to giving yourself a disadvantage no matter how small you think the benefit a free vaccine would give you over the protection a natural infection has already given you.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]