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Because we are free individuals and can make medical decisions for ourselves and our abilities to feed our families should not depend on upon our willingness to

Because we are free individuals and can make medical decisions for ourselves and our abilities to feed our families should not depend on upon our willingness to take a medication that does not appear to stop the spread of Omicron COVID. The mandates also make no exception for natural immunity which DOES appear to at least slow the spread of Omicron COVID.

jbay808 5y ago
This answer seems to be a mix of principles and practicals. I'm curious which matter more to you. Hypothetically, in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly, would you support a vaccine mandate? Or is it the principle that matters more, where regardless of the vaccine's effectiveness or the dangerousness of the virus, you believe you should be free to decide for yourself whether to get a vaccine, without it impacting your employability?
- throwawaythekey 5y ago
  I'm not the parent but you have posed a funny question. > in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly If either of these were true then mandates would be far less required because people would be far more willing to take them voluntarily. Instinctively though I do want to answer yes, I would support mandates more under higher risk scenarios. In an ideal world though I would probably prefer if communities could self select by risk tolerance i.e it's possible to live/work/party somewhere nearby with like minded people.
  - u801e 5y ago
    >> in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly > If either of these were true then mandates would be far less required because people would be far more willing to take them voluntarily. I don't know whether that would necessarily be the case. We have seen how easily people are manipulated via misinformation campaigns.
    - throwawaythekey 5y ago
      > We have seen how easily people are manipulated via misinformation campaigns. I'm also not against a small amount of natural selection. People choosing their own fates helps to keep everyone happy and some Darwinism is probably a good outcome for humanity in the long term.
  - jbay808 5y ago
    Thanks for the answer! I posted a followup question to the sibling but I'm curious about your thoughts there too, ie if hypothetically, say, the virus had selective lethality based on eye colour or blood type, so most people with that trait feel safe without themselves getting a vaccine. Self selected communities are another good answer although I imagine it's hard to totally bubble communities up along the axis of vaccine-opinionation without any overlap.
    - throwawaythekey 5y ago
      > if hypothetically, say, the virus had selective lethality It might depend on how selective the lethality is! If a small population is vulnerable then I don't have a problem with them protecting themself to the best of their own abilities (no mandates). This is fairly common already with the immunocompromised etc. If a large portion of the population is vulnerable then it becomes more grey. I'm pretty uncomfortable with there being a large amount of preventable suffering but intellectually my brain wants to take a long term view. The best possible society in the future seems like one where humans have stronger immune systems and take fewer vaccinations, not more. Is this something we can evolve towards? Is my poor knowledge of biology leading me astray? Who knows! Given I know nothing I'm happy to fall back onto the distributed decision making apparatus (individual choice).
      - jbay808 5y ago
        Fair enough, if that's your view! For me, this hypothetical is more a situation where we're talking about one's freedom to make choices that endanger those around them, in addition themselves. When the principal danger is to oneself I think restrictions are rarely justified, but when the consequences are borne by others, I think it's more justified. For example, when operating cars, we don't allow you to drink and drive, run red lights, or drive on the sidewalk, primarily because it creates at least as much risk for your neighbours as it does for yourself.
        throwawaythekey 5y ago
        > When the principal danger is to oneself I think restrictions are rarely justified, but when the consequences are borne by others, I think it's more justified. I think this point makes broad sense but needs refinement. For example if we assume there is a vaccine available that: - Reduces personal injury - Does not prevent transmission Using the above logic would mean that after taking the vaccine restrictions are more justified because the burden of the disease has shifted. I don't think that's what you intended and probably means that there still needs to be reference to absolute harm and taking reasonable minimization measures.
- chrissnell 5y ago
  That's a great question, seriously. In a world where Omicron is as deadly as, say, SARS or Ebola, and the vaccine is super effective, you would not have to institute mandates to get people vaxxed. They would gladly get it or they would perish. This is where the trouble with the COVID vax lies: many of us look around and we don't see people dying like flies. We don't have dead friends or relatives. We do, however, see vaxxed people sick with COVID, and we a government doing its best to suppress information about COVID that it perceived as harmful to the vax effort, regardless of its veracity. The totality of all of this makes many of us very distrustful of our government and foments resistance where there used to be none.
  - jbay808 5y ago
    Thanks for your answer! I really want to get at the root principles here, so let's veer even further from reality and say that the virus is lethal only to people with, say, type-AB blood, or blue eyes, or whatever. But other people are asymptomatic carriers. Is it justifiable to impose a vaccine mandate, if brown-eyed or type-A/B/O people are not bothering to get vaccinated because they feel safe themselves? (I'm really more interested in the philosophy and ethics than the facts of the actual situation. I agree that on the factual level in 2022, there's plenty of room to argue about the usefulness or counterproductivity of these mandates. I want to know if vaccine manades are ever justified).
  - bobthechef 5y ago
  - pas 5y ago
    > They would gladly get it or they would perish. ... people don't work like that. :/
lalaland1125 5y ago
> medication that does not appear to stop the spread of Omicron COVID The current evidence indicates that the vaccine reduces the spread of the virus by about 50% [1]. It's a preprint, so take it with a grain of salt, but it does seem to match our prior 50% estimate for delta. [2] That is a significant reduction, especially when we are talking about truckers who are inherently high risk as they tend to visit a lot of small towns. 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v... 2. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597
fishidns 5y ago
How do you feel about paying for other people's healthcare who need treatment for getting Covid and have taken no measures of their own to avoid catching it or being severely ill from it?
- TravHatesMe 5y ago
  You could say the same about obese people, drinkers, and smokers. We also pay for the healthcare of pedophiles and rapists.
- ROTMetro 5y ago
  Are you arguing that socialized medicine can't exist in a free society and treatment should be based on meeting a list of requirements? Are you arguing that the government should only make benefits available if you make the correct fiscal choices? Let's say you are poor and choose to have a child, should the government prevent you from getting benefits for that child because of the choice you made?
Tiktaalik 5y ago
The issue is that individual medical decisions impact the community. Individual decisions, in aggregate, impact the community and those most at risk. The various vaccine mandate restrictions really aren't about protecting the young and healthy. We'll be fine. It's about limiting the most dangerous, transmission risk areas (eg. bars) to people who are best able to handle the disease (ie. are vaccinated) as others are more likely to die of the disease and more likely to catch it in these places.

jbay808 5y ago

This answer seems to be a mix of principles and practicals. I'm curious which matter more to you. Hypothetically, in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly, would you support a vaccine mandate? Or is it the principle that matters more, where regardless of the vaccine's effectiveness or the dangerousness of the virus, you believe you should be free to decide for yourself whether to get a vaccine, without it impacting your employability?

throwawaythekey 5y ago
I'm not the parent but you have posed a funny question. > in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly If either of these were true then mandates would be far less required because people would be far more willing to take them voluntarily. Instinctively though I do want to answer yes, I would support mandates more under higher risk scenarios. In an ideal world though I would probably prefer if communities could self select by risk tolerance i.e it's possible to live/work/party somewhere nearby with like minded people.
- u801e 5y ago
  >> in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly > If either of these were true then mandates would be far less required because people would be far more willing to take them voluntarily. I don't know whether that would necessarily be the case. We have seen how easily people are manipulated via misinformation campaigns.
  - throwawaythekey 5y ago
    > We have seen how easily people are manipulated via misinformation campaigns. I'm also not against a small amount of natural selection. People choosing their own fates helps to keep everyone happy and some Darwinism is probably a good outcome for humanity in the long term.
- jbay808 5y ago
  Thanks for the answer! I posted a followup question to the sibling but I'm curious about your thoughts there too, ie if hypothetically, say, the virus had selective lethality based on eye colour or blood type, so most people with that trait feel safe without themselves getting a vaccine. Self selected communities are another good answer although I imagine it's hard to totally bubble communities up along the axis of vaccine-opinionation without any overlap.
  - throwawaythekey 5y ago
    > if hypothetically, say, the virus had selective lethality It might depend on how selective the lethality is! If a small population is vulnerable then I don't have a problem with them protecting themself to the best of their own abilities (no mandates). This is fairly common already with the immunocompromised etc. If a large portion of the population is vulnerable then it becomes more grey. I'm pretty uncomfortable with there being a large amount of preventable suffering but intellectually my brain wants to take a long term view. The best possible society in the future seems like one where humans have stronger immune systems and take fewer vaccinations, not more. Is this something we can evolve towards? Is my poor knowledge of biology leading me astray? Who knows! Given I know nothing I'm happy to fall back onto the distributed decision making apparatus (individual choice).
    - jbay808 5y ago
      Fair enough, if that's your view! For me, this hypothetical is more a situation where we're talking about one's freedom to make choices that endanger those around them, in addition themselves. When the principal danger is to oneself I think restrictions are rarely justified, but when the consequences are borne by others, I think it's more justified. For example, when operating cars, we don't allow you to drink and drive, run red lights, or drive on the sidewalk, primarily because it creates at least as much risk for your neighbours as it does for yourself.
      - throwawaythekey 5y ago
        > When the principal danger is to oneself I think restrictions are rarely justified, but when the consequences are borne by others, I think it's more justified. I think this point makes broad sense but needs refinement. For example if we assume there is a vaccine available that: - Reduces personal injury - Does not prevent transmission Using the above logic would mean that after taking the vaccine restrictions are more justified because the burden of the disease has shifted. I don't think that's what you intended and probably means that there still needs to be reference to absolute harm and taking reasonable minimization measures.
chrissnell 5y ago
That's a great question, seriously. In a world where Omicron is as deadly as, say, SARS or Ebola, and the vaccine is super effective, you would not have to institute mandates to get people vaxxed. They would gladly get it or they would perish. This is where the trouble with the COVID vax lies: many of us look around and we don't see people dying like flies. We don't have dead friends or relatives. We do, however, see vaxxed people sick with COVID, and we a government doing its best to suppress information about COVID that it perceived as harmful to the vax effort, regardless of its veracity. The totality of all of this makes many of us very distrustful of our government and foments resistance where there used to be none.
- jbay808 5y ago
  Thanks for your answer! I really want to get at the root principles here, so let's veer even further from reality and say that the virus is lethal only to people with, say, type-AB blood, or blue eyes, or whatever. But other people are asymptomatic carriers. Is it justifiable to impose a vaccine mandate, if brown-eyed or type-A/B/O people are not bothering to get vaccinated because they feel safe themselves? (I'm really more interested in the philosophy and ethics than the facts of the actual situation. I agree that on the factual level in 2022, there's plenty of room to argue about the usefulness or counterproductivity of these mandates. I want to know if vaccine manades are ever justified).
- bobthechef 5y ago
- pas 5y ago
  > They would gladly get it or they would perish. ... people don't work like that. :/

lalaland1125 5y ago

> medication that does not appear to stop the spread of Omicron COVID The current evidence indicates that the vaccine reduces the spread of the virus by about 50% [1]. It's a preprint, so take it with a grain of salt, but it does seem to match our prior 50% estimate for delta. [2] That is a significant reduction, especially when we are talking about truckers who are inherently high risk as they tend to visit a lot of small towns. 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v... 2. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597

fishidns 5y ago

How do you feel about paying for other people's healthcare who need treatment for getting Covid and have taken no measures of their own to avoid catching it or being severely ill from it?

TravHatesMe 5y ago
You could say the same about obese people, drinkers, and smokers. We also pay for the healthcare of pedophiles and rapists.
ROTMetro 5y ago
Are you arguing that socialized medicine can't exist in a free society and treatment should be based on meeting a list of requirements? Are you arguing that the government should only make benefits available if you make the correct fiscal choices? Let's say you are poor and choose to have a child, should the government prevent you from getting benefits for that child because of the choice you made?

Tiktaalik 5y ago

The issue is that individual medical decisions impact the community. Individual decisions, in aggregate, impact the community and those most at risk. The various vaccine mandate restrictions really aren't about protecting the young and healthy. We'll be fine. It's about limiting the most dangerous, transmission risk areas (eg. bars) to people who are best able to handle the disease (ie. are vaccinated) as others are more likely to die of the disease and more likely to catch it in these places.