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Serious question- how many rights are ok to trample, and how much economic harm is ok for a government to inflict upon its people? I can't take the claims of ec

Serious question- how many rights are ok to trample, and how much economic harm is ok for a government to inflict upon its people? I can't take the claims of economic harm from the protests seriously when the govt itself inflicted unnecessary measures that destroyed lives that far outweigh the economic costs of these protests. Besides, the govt can end this issue as well, just end the mandates. The vaccines don't work against Omicron anyways.

wk_end 5y ago
Although not as well as they did on previous variants of the virus, the vaccines continue to work extraordinarily well against Omicron. For example, consider the latest data from California (https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/): * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
- colechristensen 5y ago
  None of those three points should warrant a mandate. For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported. For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date. If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.
  - jsjsbdkj 5y ago
    > You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. > If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. You just immediately contradicted yourself. "It's only a risk to you", but also the government needs to find more hospital staff to take care of you. The fact is, nurses and doctors are burnt out and they're leaving the field because of this bullshit. They don't have enough people to train new health care workers, and even if they did it takes years before they're qualified. You can't just throw money at a staffing issue like this.
    - wk_end 5y ago
      Even if you could throw money at a staffing issue, I still would rather mandate vaccines than require the government to vacuum up/print tons of money to treat illness that's trivially preventable. COVID vaccination is leagues cheaper than COVID hospitalization, and that cost affects everyone.
      - koolba 5y ago
        It’d be much cheaper for the government to ban cheeseburgers than pay for all those heart surgeries too.
        wk_end 5y ago
        It would be! And if banning cheeseburgers had remotely the same material consequences as vaccination (i.e. virtually none), and would be remotely as effective for preserving public health, we could seriously consider the notion that we should go ahead and do it. But since it would, in fact, not be nearly as effective (because if I stopped eating cheeseburgers alone I wouldn’t be 16x less likely to die of an obesity related condition), and because it would make everyone besides vegans very sad and do terrible harm to lots of industries, whereas vaccination mostly just harms the funeral business and only makes people very very bad at statistics unhappy, it is, in fact - like all comparisons between obesity and vaccination status I’ve seen people who think they’re clever whip out - a completely ridiculous comparison.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  Do those statistics account for the selection effect?

wk_end 5y ago

Although not as well as they did on previous variants of the virus, the vaccines continue to work extraordinarily well against Omicron. For example, consider the latest data from California (https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/): * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."

colechristensen 5y ago
None of those three points should warrant a mandate. For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported. For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date. If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.
- jsjsbdkj 5y ago
  > You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. > If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. You just immediately contradicted yourself. "It's only a risk to you", but also the government needs to find more hospital staff to take care of you. The fact is, nurses and doctors are burnt out and they're leaving the field because of this bullshit. They don't have enough people to train new health care workers, and even if they did it takes years before they're qualified. You can't just throw money at a staffing issue like this.
  - wk_end 5y ago
    Even if you could throw money at a staffing issue, I still would rather mandate vaccines than require the government to vacuum up/print tons of money to treat illness that's trivially preventable. COVID vaccination is leagues cheaper than COVID hospitalization, and that cost affects everyone.
    - koolba 5y ago
      It’d be much cheaper for the government to ban cheeseburgers than pay for all those heart surgeries too.
      - wk_end 5y ago
        It would be! And if banning cheeseburgers had remotely the same material consequences as vaccination (i.e. virtually none), and would be remotely as effective for preserving public health, we could seriously consider the notion that we should go ahead and do it. But since it would, in fact, not be nearly as effective (because if I stopped eating cheeseburgers alone I wouldn’t be 16x less likely to die of an obesity related condition), and because it would make everyone besides vegans very sad and do terrible harm to lots of industries, whereas vaccination mostly just harms the funeral business and only makes people very very bad at statistics unhappy, it is, in fact - like all comparisons between obesity and vaccination status I’ve seen people who think they’re clever whip out - a completely ridiculous comparison.
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
Do those statistics account for the selection effect?