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It isn't particularly hard to understand - people should be allowed to make their own determination about what is good for their health, what isn't and what ris

by roenxi 10mo ago

It isn't particularly hard to understand - people should be allowed to make their own determination about what is good for their health, what isn't and what risk tolerance they are personally comfortable with. If that principle is embraced a whole heap of good things are fairly obvious - why there shouldn't be state-backed eugenics programs, why exercise is voluntary and it makes health policy a lot less charged. If the principle is thrown out then a lot of problematic policy becomes hard to reject. I mean, look at what the vax-mandatory movement got - they enraged a bunch of people, helped secure Trump II, made vaccine scepticism a mainstream and popular position which arguably handed the US health department vaccine policy to anti-vaxers. Maybe avoiding authoritarian tactics and sticking to principle would have gotten them a better outcome? Hard to see how it could be worse, to be honest. They screwed up pretty badly.

tempodox 10mo ago
Yes, the right to spread avoidable infectious diseases obviously has priority. /s
- roenxi 10mo ago
  Have infectious diseases stopped spreading? And all this is happening in the shadows of COVID where the vaccines famously had no significant impact on the rate of the spread. The people claiming they would turned out to be part of the misinformation crowd. We ran a natural experiment in Australia. Everyone got the vaccine, then everyone got COVID over the course of a month or two. The official numbers were high and aren't even accurate because there were too many cases to count, it got everywhere and the measurement kits ran out.
  - surgical_fire 10mo ago
    > Have infectious diseases stopped spreading? Thanks to vaccines? Yes. Multiple times in history. Smallpox, polio, measles, mumps. > vaccines famously had no significant impact on the rate of the spread. That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources. As far as I remember, vaccines were the main reason things became safe enough to things to return to a sense of normalcy. I mean, I am not from they US, so my actual response to this news is a vague shrug. I just hope the anti-vax bullshit is contained within US borders.
    - roenxi 10mo ago
      > That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources. Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread, no evidence was ever provided that vaccines slow the spread and theory suggests they probably won't slow the spread. The people making things up in defiance of the obvious are the ones who need to start providing sources on this one. If you want to check the numbers; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia - we've got 22 million vaccinated people on a population of around 25 million in 2021. We see ~12 million confirmed COVID cases and in the immediate post-lockdown period the testing system crumbled under load. Do the math. An exponential process that everyone was exposed to was downgraded to ... still an exponentially growing process that everyone was exposed to. Maybe it spread the pandemic phase out to 2 months instead of 1 (based on my memory of watching the stats at the time). The vaccine didn't cut down on the number of infections. It was strictly personal protection. Members of my family regularly get COVID.
      - lostlogin 10mo ago
        > Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread How much polio or small pox have you seen?
      - defrost 10mo ago
        > We see ~12 million confirmed COVID cases but only 5,025 and 19,265 deaths. Vaccination slowed the spread of the primary varients and reduced the health impacts on those that tested positive for COVID by preloading the immune response.
        roenxi 10mo ago
        Yeah. That is a really good argument for recommending people get the vaccine. But it concedes any reason to start coercive medical treatments. The COVID vaccines were very much about personal protection. It circles back quite neatly to the idea that people should be allowed to make their own determination about what is good for their health, what isn't and what risk tolerance they are personally comfortable with. The people arguing that collective action knows best once again blew their credibility with COVID, making up the theory about herd immunity was a big shot in the arm for the anti-vax movement. And as you can guess I'd rather side with the anti-vaxers, they're better friends than the authoritarians.
BoingBoomTschak 10mo ago
It's also worth mentioning that some people seem to have a worriyingly short and/or selective memory. I mean, how could you ever trust your government on such matters after stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood... ?
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
  No one is asking you to “believe the government”. We’re asking to believe the scientific literature and the non partisan experts who decide these recommendations. Further, these recommendations are not new. They have a track record. You can look io the number of lives they’ve saved/reduced damage to. The people who insist that we should throw out the expert advice based on openly available scientific research and literature in favor of one person’s feelings because he happens to hold a politically powerful position are the ones asking us to trust the government blindly. Actually, not blindly, but contrary to the evidence that our eyes see.
  - BoingBoomTschak 10mo ago
    I didn't write "belief" but "trust", which is a related but different thing. You'd be very naïve to think that the powers that be are automagically uninvolved in both the Scientific Truth^tm that trickles down to the layperson and the source research and studies (both due to funding, censorship and outright lies in some hot fields like sociology). tl;dr: I'm ready to believe in the vaccine theory, not in the infrastructure; applied science doesn't live in a vacuum
Quothling 10mo ago
To me it seems needlessly cruel to relearn the lesson on a mountain of dead children.
runamok 10mo ago
Aren't they optional in most cases? You can opt-out of vaxing your kids today right? They just won't be welcome in public schools. I guess the other common cohort is health care workers (which seems reasonable) per https://leadingage.org/workforce-vaccine-mandates-state-who-who-isnt-and-how/ https://leadingage.org/workforce-vaccine-mandates-state-who-... More than 1 million people died in the US from the COVID pandemic so it seemed reasonable to work hard to get herd immunity but the backfire effect made that counter productive. Hindsight is 20/20 though.
- Animats 10mo ago
  > More than 1 million people died in the US from the COVID pandemic so it seemed reasonable to work hard to get herd immunity but the backfire effect made that counter productive. There is no herd immunity for COVID, because you can get it more than once. Vaccination only protects for a few months, and doesn't reduce spreading much. It's not a "sterilizing vaccine". There are sterilizing vaccines for many childhood diseases. Measles, diphtheria, polio, etc. Can't get the disease at all if vaccinated. Those vaccines can almost eliminate a disease. With smallpox, this was taken past "almost" all the way to eradication. Here's a list of 14 almost forgotten diseases, eliminated by vaccination.[1] The current generation of parents has not seen most of them. [1] https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/immunizations/Pages/Vaccination-Protects-Against-These-Diseases.aspx https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/im...
_DeadFred_ 10mo ago
Google Joe Rogan Measles. This is the level of information that people are using to make these decisions, being fed to them by the LARGEST mainstream media source (Joe Rogan has the largest mainstream media audience).

by roenxi 10mo ago

tempodox 10mo ago

Yes, the right to spread avoidable infectious diseases obviously has priority. /s

roenxi 10mo ago
Have infectious diseases stopped spreading? And all this is happening in the shadows of COVID where the vaccines famously had no significant impact on the rate of the spread. The people claiming they would turned out to be part of the misinformation crowd. We ran a natural experiment in Australia. Everyone got the vaccine, then everyone got COVID over the course of a month or two. The official numbers were high and aren't even accurate because there were too many cases to count, it got everywhere and the measurement kits ran out.
- surgical_fire 10mo ago
  > Have infectious diseases stopped spreading? Thanks to vaccines? Yes. Multiple times in history. Smallpox, polio, measles, mumps. > vaccines famously had no significant impact on the rate of the spread. That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources. As far as I remember, vaccines were the main reason things became safe enough to things to return to a sense of normalcy. I mean, I am not from they US, so my actual response to this news is a vague shrug. I just hope the anti-vax bullshit is contained within US borders.
  - roenxi 10mo ago
    > That's quite a claim. I see you provided no sources. Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread, no evidence was ever provided that vaccines slow the spread and theory suggests they probably won't slow the spread. The people making things up in defiance of the obvious are the ones who need to start providing sources on this one. If you want to check the numbers; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia - we've got 22 million vaccinated people on a population of around 25 million in 2021. We see ~12 million confirmed COVID cases and in the immediate post-lockdown period the testing system crumbled under load. Do the math. An exponential process that everyone was exposed to was downgraded to ... still an exponentially growing process that everyone was exposed to. Maybe it spread the pandemic phase out to 2 months instead of 1 (based on my memory of watching the stats at the time). The vaccine didn't cut down on the number of infections. It was strictly personal protection. Members of my family regularly get COVID.
    - lostlogin 10mo ago
      > Why do I need to source anything? Nobody credible ever claimed the vaccines would slow the spread How much polio or small pox have you seen?
    - defrost 10mo ago
      > We see ~12 million confirmed COVID cases but only 5,025 and 19,265 deaths. Vaccination slowed the spread of the primary varients and reduced the health impacts on those that tested positive for COVID by preloading the immune response.
      - roenxi 10mo ago
        Yeah. That is a really good argument for recommending people get the vaccine. But it concedes any reason to start coercive medical treatments. The COVID vaccines were very much about personal protection. It circles back quite neatly to the idea that people should be allowed to make their own determination about what is good for their health, what isn't and what risk tolerance they are personally comfortable with. The people arguing that collective action knows best once again blew their credibility with COVID, making up the theory about herd immunity was a big shot in the arm for the anti-vax movement. And as you can guess I'd rather side with the anti-vaxers, they're better friends than the authoritarians.

BoingBoomTschak 10mo ago

It's also worth mentioning that some people seem to have a worriyingly short and/or selective memory. I mean, how could you ever trust your government on such matters after stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood... ?

hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
No one is asking you to “believe the government”. We’re asking to believe the scientific literature and the non partisan experts who decide these recommendations. Further, these recommendations are not new. They have a track record. You can look io the number of lives they’ve saved/reduced damage to. The people who insist that we should throw out the expert advice based on openly available scientific research and literature in favor of one person’s feelings because he happens to hold a politically powerful position are the ones asking us to trust the government blindly. Actually, not blindly, but contrary to the evidence that our eyes see.
- BoingBoomTschak 10mo ago
  I didn't write "belief" but "trust", which is a related but different thing. You'd be very naïve to think that the powers that be are automagically uninvolved in both the Scientific Truth^tm that trickles down to the layperson and the source research and studies (both due to funding, censorship and outright lies in some hot fields like sociology). tl;dr: I'm ready to believe in the vaccine theory, not in the infrastructure; applied science doesn't live in a vacuum

Quothling 10mo ago

To me it seems needlessly cruel to relearn the lesson on a mountain of dead children.

runamok 10mo ago

Aren't they optional in most cases? You can opt-out of vaxing your kids today right? They just won't be welcome in public schools. I guess the other common cohort is health care workers (which seems reasonable) per https://leadingage.org/workforce-vaccine-mandates-state-who-who-isnt-and-how/ https://leadingage.org/workforce-vaccine-mandates-state-who-... More than 1 million people died in the US from the COVID pandemic so it seemed reasonable to work hard to get herd immunity but the backfire effect made that counter productive. Hindsight is 20/20 though.

Animats 10mo ago
> More than 1 million people died in the US from the COVID pandemic so it seemed reasonable to work hard to get herd immunity but the backfire effect made that counter productive. There is no herd immunity for COVID, because you can get it more than once. Vaccination only protects for a few months, and doesn't reduce spreading much. It's not a "sterilizing vaccine". There are sterilizing vaccines for many childhood diseases. Measles, diphtheria, polio, etc. Can't get the disease at all if vaccinated. Those vaccines can almost eliminate a disease. With smallpox, this was taken past "almost" all the way to eradication. Here's a list of 14 almost forgotten diseases, eliminated by vaccination.[1] The current generation of parents has not seen most of them. [1] https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/immunizations/Pages/Vaccination-Protects-Against-These-Diseases.aspx https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/im...

_DeadFred_ 10mo ago

Google Joe Rogan Measles. This is the level of information that people are using to make these decisions, being fed to them by the LARGEST mainstream media source (Joe Rogan has the largest mainstream media audience).