7 ms·

The issue is that there were coercive government mandates. "Almost everyone should get vaccinated" does not mean the government should coerce everyone into mak

by danhak 4y ago

The issue is that there were coercive government mandates. "Almost everyone should get vaccinated" does not mean the government should coerce everyone into making the correct medical decision by barring them from employment or access to private establishments. Absent a very compelling reason, people should be free to go against medical advice. People have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. People have the right to make the wrong choice. In this case, the reason given for overriding that freedom was a highly specious argument that the unvaccinated were putting other people at significant risk. That argument did not pass the smell test from the very beginning.

ethanbond 4y ago
You don't get to dismiss an argument by just declaring that it "didn't pass the smell test." That guidance was exactly in line with every counter-pathogen campaign since, Idk, before germ theory?
- deleted 4y ago
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- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The worst part is that we have already comprehensively litigated all of this. The spanish flu had people protesting being forced to wear masks and other societal health measures and the Supreme court affirmed the US's right to mandate those kind of large scale health things.
  - briandon 4y ago
    The mask push then was because, for a while (and despite evidence of infectious agent passing through too-small-for-a-bacterium filters) they believed influenza was being caused by a bacterium, not a virus. Even then, they knew that the masks available would not stop airborne viruses. And masking didn't work then either (areas with enforced masking fared no better than areas where masking was optional). You're welcome to dig into accounts of the pandemic and medical journal articles written during and in the immediate aftermath of the influenza pandemic and confirm this for yourself. Likewise, the initial (honest) advice not to bother with masks for covid was based on the fact that covid, like other coronaviruses and influenza, is aerosol-borne and aerosol particles pass through surgical mask material easily (so wearing a 2nd tight-fitting mask over a surgical mask to get a better fit doesn't matter). The u-turn on masks for covid wasn't based on science. The justification later given was that the earlier, correct advice not to bother with masks was a noble lie to conserve supplies of masks for healthcare workers. At the time, the reversal was publicly predicated on hand-wavey (and false) claims that covid might be droplet-spread (droplets are larger than aerosol particles and droplet emissions could conceivably be greatly reduced by well-fitted surgical masks with no gaps).
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      The initial advice on masks was that we don’t know that they help. This is a truthful and different claim than the claim that we do know they don’t help. The only record you’ll find of a public health official saying we DO know they DON’T help is USSG Jerome Adams. It’s weird that you’re writing this implying that we now know masks don’t work. That’s not true. We DO know that SOME masks work, others work hardly at all or none at all.
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Yes, the binary thinking unfortunately continues. Masks were/are/will never be 0% or 100% effective. Reducing the number of viruses transmitted at once could mean the difference between life and death for covid though. Closing the beach however, was 100% BS.
- lmm 4y ago
  Has this kind of vaccine mandate (for everyday life, not for travel) ever been imposed before? I remember the possibility of denying public services (e.g. schooling) to children who weren't vaccinated against measles being discussed but being extremely controversial, and that was for a vaccine that was far more reliable and well-tested.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Which mandate are you talking about?
    - lmm 4y ago
      Requiring restaurants/gyms/etc. to require customers to be vaccinated.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        Yep, states have more or less complete authority to mandate things like this. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep197/usrep197011/usrep197011.pdf https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
        wellthatsawrap2 4y ago
        He asked if it had ever been done before.
      - svnt 4y ago
        It is a basic tragedy of the commons problem. Solving this is basically the reason why we have government.
lamontcg 4y ago
> a highly specious argument that the unvaccinated were putting other people at significant risk. The unvaccinated were filling up the hospitals which was putting other people at risk. Your right to gamble with your health ends when you expect to be able to get treatment if the gamble comes out badly.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Well... the awkward part about this is right now, it is now the opposite problem. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opinion/environment/covid-19-pandemic-elderly-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opinion/environment/covid... https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20221127/more-vaccinated-people-dying-of-covid-as-fewer-get-booster-shots https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20221127/more-vaccinated-peo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinated-people-now-make-up-majority-covid-deaths/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinate...
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    As even that top article points out we'd expect the rate of unvaccinated people to approach the base rate which is 76% of the population having received one dose. And since old people are at more risk and are more vaccinated, we'd expect it to reach even higher eventually. But that happens because eventually the unvaccinated do all pick up natural immunity and the effect we're measuring is that the excess load caused by the unvaccinated is declining. We could have gotten to this point much quicker by having 100% vaccination rates (and 100% of the people still being admitted with COVID would then be vaccinated) but with an order of magnitude less load on the hospital system. The top article you cite has all this information in it, and even mentions the base rate fallacy. It is criticizing the framing of the pandemic as a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" and trying to focus attention on the elderly, but that is orthogonal to the question of if the unvaccinated are disproportionately clogging up the hospital system. Both statistics are true. Everyone should still get vaccinated to reduce the load on the hospital system (although this concern is now fading as antivaxxers actually do pick up immunity the hard way). We should also focus on the elderly more. As a simple example: if a population begins entirely susceptible and there's a vaccine from day 1 which is available and reduces the risks of hospitalization by 9x and 90% of the people get the vaccine, then the rates of hospitalization will be split 50/50 between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Vaccinating the rest of the population would increase vaccination rates by 10% but would decrease overall hospitalization rates by 44%.
ajross 4y ago
> the government should coerce everyone into making the correct medical decision by barring them from employment or access to private establishments. But... the government has been doing that for decades and decades, since the very invention of the vaccine! Why is that "The Issue" when there's suddenly a pandemic and it's important, vs. when you needed to show your vaccination records to join the military or go to school in the 90's or whatever? You see that the concern you're showing seems, to those of us on the other side, maybe a little insincere?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- danhak 4y ago
  What about my position seems insincere to you? You see no philosophical difference between the government mandating vaccination records for schools and public institutions like the military vs. them mandating vaccination records for private establishments such as gyms, irrespective of the wishes of the owners of those establishments? Should the government have the right to mandate vaccination records for entry to a private home, irrespective of the wishes of the homeowner?
  - wpietri 4y ago
    The government has the right (and I'd argue, the duty) to quarantine people with diseases that are both contagious and dangerous if that's the best way to keep them from harming others. More details here: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - emmelaich 4y ago
      AIDS/HIV sufferers would like a word with you. Speaking of which, Fauci's early statements on AIDS in the initial outbreak were interesting.
gamacodre 4y ago
> ...does not mean the government should coerce everyone... Here you're presuming that the government's role in a pandemic is to wring their hands and issue PSA's. That might be what some folks want them to do these days, but when the legal foundations of public health policy were laid the government was expected to do quite a bit more. > People have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. This might be your opinion, but the majority of your fellow citizens disagree with you. Try asking them about drug use, abortion, suicide, and other "purely personal" matters. > People have the right to make the wrong choice. Many wrong choices come with severe state-imposed consequences. We in the US long ago delegated to our elected representatives the authority to force some choices onto individuals, including in a health emergency. We are of course vigorously debating whether they used that authority wisely this time, but it was theirs to use.
- RhysU 4y ago
  And... They... Just... Keep... On... Using... It. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/us-extends-covid-public-health-emergency-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/us-extends-covid-public-heal...

by danhak 4y ago

ethanbond 4y ago

You don't get to dismiss an argument by just declaring that it "didn't pass the smell test." That guidance was exactly in line with every counter-pathogen campaign since, Idk, before germ theory?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mrguyorama 4y ago
The worst part is that we have already comprehensively litigated all of this. The spanish flu had people protesting being forced to wear masks and other societal health measures and the Supreme court affirmed the US's right to mandate those kind of large scale health things.
- briandon 4y ago
  The mask push then was because, for a while (and despite evidence of infectious agent passing through too-small-for-a-bacterium filters) they believed influenza was being caused by a bacterium, not a virus. Even then, they knew that the masks available would not stop airborne viruses. And masking didn't work then either (areas with enforced masking fared no better than areas where masking was optional). You're welcome to dig into accounts of the pandemic and medical journal articles written during and in the immediate aftermath of the influenza pandemic and confirm this for yourself. Likewise, the initial (honest) advice not to bother with masks for covid was based on the fact that covid, like other coronaviruses and influenza, is aerosol-borne and aerosol particles pass through surgical mask material easily (so wearing a 2nd tight-fitting mask over a surgical mask to get a better fit doesn't matter). The u-turn on masks for covid wasn't based on science. The justification later given was that the earlier, correct advice not to bother with masks was a noble lie to conserve supplies of masks for healthcare workers. At the time, the reversal was publicly predicated on hand-wavey (and false) claims that covid might be droplet-spread (droplets are larger than aerosol particles and droplet emissions could conceivably be greatly reduced by well-fitted surgical masks with no gaps).
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    The initial advice on masks was that we don’t know that they help. This is a truthful and different claim than the claim that we do know they don’t help. The only record you’ll find of a public health official saying we DO know they DON’T help is USSG Jerome Adams. It’s weird that you’re writing this implying that we now know masks don’t work. That’s not true. We DO know that SOME masks work, others work hardly at all or none at all.
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      Yes, the binary thinking unfortunately continues. Masks were/are/will never be 0% or 100% effective. Reducing the number of viruses transmitted at once could mean the difference between life and death for covid though. Closing the beach however, was 100% BS.
lmm 4y ago
Has this kind of vaccine mandate (for everyday life, not for travel) ever been imposed before? I remember the possibility of denying public services (e.g. schooling) to children who weren't vaccinated against measles being discussed but being extremely controversial, and that was for a vaccine that was far more reliable and well-tested.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Which mandate are you talking about?
  - lmm 4y ago
    Requiring restaurants/gyms/etc. to require customers to be vaccinated.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Yep, states have more or less complete authority to mandate things like this. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep197/usrep197011/usrep197011.pdf https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
      - wellthatsawrap2 4y ago
        He asked if it had ever been done before.
    - svnt 4y ago
      It is a basic tragedy of the commons problem. Solving this is basically the reason why we have government.

lamontcg 4y ago

> a highly specious argument that the unvaccinated were putting other people at significant risk. The unvaccinated were filling up the hospitals which was putting other people at risk. Your right to gamble with your health ends when you expect to be able to get treatment if the gamble comes out badly.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Well... the awkward part about this is right now, it is now the opposite problem. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opinion/environment/covid-19-pandemic-elderly-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opinion/environment/covid... https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20221127/more-vaccinated-people-dying-of-covid-as-fewer-get-booster-shots https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20221127/more-vaccinated-peo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinated-people-now-make-up-majority-covid-deaths/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinate...
- lamontcg 4y ago
  As even that top article points out we'd expect the rate of unvaccinated people to approach the base rate which is 76% of the population having received one dose. And since old people are at more risk and are more vaccinated, we'd expect it to reach even higher eventually. But that happens because eventually the unvaccinated do all pick up natural immunity and the effect we're measuring is that the excess load caused by the unvaccinated is declining. We could have gotten to this point much quicker by having 100% vaccination rates (and 100% of the people still being admitted with COVID would then be vaccinated) but with an order of magnitude less load on the hospital system. The top article you cite has all this information in it, and even mentions the base rate fallacy. It is criticizing the framing of the pandemic as a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" and trying to focus attention on the elderly, but that is orthogonal to the question of if the unvaccinated are disproportionately clogging up the hospital system. Both statistics are true. Everyone should still get vaccinated to reduce the load on the hospital system (although this concern is now fading as antivaxxers actually do pick up immunity the hard way). We should also focus on the elderly more. As a simple example: if a population begins entirely susceptible and there's a vaccine from day 1 which is available and reduces the risks of hospitalization by 9x and 90% of the people get the vaccine, then the rates of hospitalization will be split 50/50 between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Vaccinating the rest of the population would increase vaccination rates by 10% but would decrease overall hospitalization rates by 44%.

ajross 4y ago

> the government should coerce everyone into making the correct medical decision by barring them from employment or access to private establishments. But... the government has been doing that for decades and decades, since the very invention of the vaccine! Why is that "The Issue" when there's suddenly a pandemic and it's important, vs. when you needed to show your vaccination records to join the military or go to school in the 90's or whatever? You see that the concern you're showing seems, to those of us on the other side, maybe a little insincere?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
danhak 4y ago
What about my position seems insincere to you? You see no philosophical difference between the government mandating vaccination records for schools and public institutions like the military vs. them mandating vaccination records for private establishments such as gyms, irrespective of the wishes of the owners of those establishments? Should the government have the right to mandate vaccination records for entry to a private home, irrespective of the wishes of the homeowner?
- wpietri 4y ago
  The government has the right (and I'd argue, the duty) to quarantine people with diseases that are both contagious and dangerous if that's the best way to keep them from harming others. More details here: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    AIDS/HIV sufferers would like a word with you. Speaking of which, Fauci's early statements on AIDS in the initial outbreak were interesting.

gamacodre 4y ago

> ...does not mean the government should coerce everyone... Here you're presuming that the government's role in a pandemic is to wring their hands and issue PSA's. That might be what some folks want them to do these days, but when the legal foundations of public health policy were laid the government was expected to do quite a bit more. > People have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. This might be your opinion, but the majority of your fellow citizens disagree with you. Try asking them about drug use, abortion, suicide, and other "purely personal" matters. > People have the right to make the wrong choice. Many wrong choices come with severe state-imposed consequences. We in the US long ago delegated to our elected representatives the authority to force some choices onto individuals, including in a health emergency. We are of course vigorously debating whether they used that authority wisely this time, but it was theirs to use.

RhysU 4y ago
And... They... Just... Keep... On... Using... It. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/us-extends-covid-public-health-emergency-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/us-extends-covid-public-heal...