[HN Gopher] England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secre...
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England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-09-12 09:07 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that
| people _like_ having power.
|
| The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are
| successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the
| world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken
| them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will
| be _harmful_ to the unvaccinated.
|
| If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid. You
| just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
|
| So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc.
|
| Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others
| what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be
| familiar with this.
|
| The data shows that these do not have a positive effect, but the
| people enacting them enjoy it, and the people who have found
| themselves on the enforcment side of the political divide enjoy
| the feeling of righteousness they experience because of them.
|
| I can't reply to everybody making the same incorrect point. Here
| is the graph of Texas's hospital utilization: https://covid-
| texas.csullender.com/
|
| (Luckily Texas gives us great data!).
|
| The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the
| percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it
| is entirely flat.
|
| Here's a really interesting statistic that suggests _even less_
| effectiveness of these control measures: the vaccines appear to
| have had no effect on hospital utilization.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's completely and incontrovertibly bullshit that vaccines
| don't help unvaccinated people.
|
| Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up
| medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't
| vaccinated and those that need care.
|
| We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and
| hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to
| your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| > Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up
| medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't
| vaccinated and those that need care.
|
| Don't hospitalise unvaccinated people who have covid then,
| problem solved.
| longthrow1 wrote:
| Also don't hospitalise people who refuse to take care of
| their own health. They're a terrible and disproportionate
| burden on health care. We'll set a body fat % cutoff for
| care.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or when it was clearly their own fault. Lets say sports
| like skiing, games or swimming. Maybe poisonings too if
| it was due neglience.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Sure, also don't offer services to the obese or smokers
| either (/s)
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Okay. As long as you remove all medical regulations so that
| those people can buy whatever drugs or treatment machines
| they want.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Yeah, again this is a great talking point for those who are
| enjoying their newfound power, but unfortunately for them
| (and fortunately for the inhabitants of this country!) the
| numbers do not bare this out:
| https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/hospitalization-
| utiliza...
|
| Do you know of a hospital system that's overloaded in the way
| you are worried about? I've seen plenty of bloggers who talk
| about this, but they never seem to actually link to the
| _data_ backing up their stories.
| charrondev wrote:
| Alberta, Canada right now is getting its medical system put
| through the ringer.
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-
| alber...
|
| During Canadas third wave hospitals were overwhelmed the
| point that people were dying while waiting for care.
|
| In this case 6 patients died while waiting for cardiac
| surgery because the ICUs were overwhelmed dealing with
| Covid patients.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/covid-19-stay-
| home-o...
| ADSSDA wrote:
| Idaho has already implemented crisis standards of care:
|
| https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-activates-
| cris...
|
| And is absolutely overwhelmed. It seems incredibly
| disingenuous to only consider some random state that's
| doing well and ignore those doing poorly.
| 13years wrote:
| Idaho doesn't seem to be in trouble based on the capacity
| dashboard.
|
| https://rationalground.com/hospital-and-icu-capacity-
| dashboa...
|
| Also, if you go back in look for headlines of hospitals
| being overwhelmed, you will see they exist for the flu
| for almost every year as well.
|
| https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/01/24/Hospitals-
| overwhe...
| ADSSDA wrote:
| You should use the actual state's dashboard:
|
| https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/idaho.division.of.
| pub...
|
| And Idaho is absolutely overwhelmed. In past flu seasons
| they have not moved to crisis standards of care, I don't
| even see Idaho in the article you linked so I'm not sure
| what relevance it has here. Are you claiming the Idaho
| Department of Health and Welfare is unaware of their own
| ICU utilization status?
| 13years wrote:
| Those numbers seem to match the numbers from the site I
| posted. The rational ground site also shows the numbers
| in relation to capacity. You can filter by state.
|
| Based on the numbers and your original post, it doesn't
| seem to be a statewide issue. It is a localized issue of
| what seems an area covered by 10 hospitals.
|
| The relevance is that hospitals having issues with
| capacity is not beyond the realm of normal.
| ADSSDA wrote:
| The site you posted only goes to Aug 27th, which is
| hopelessly outdated for a rapidly deteriorating
| situation. The actual information from the Idaho Division
| of Public Health indicates 10 ICU beds staffed and
| available across the _entire state_ as of yesterday. This
| is _after_ activating the national guard to assist. If
| that 's not a crisis, I don't know what is.
|
| You seem caught up in a narrative that this is not real,
| I urge you to consider the facts on the ground rather
| than fit things to your political views.
| 13years wrote:
| I'm caught up in the narrative of looking at all the data
| and comparing with relevant perspectives.
|
| Thanks for yours and your input.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What kind of argument is there to cite a single state's
| COVID ICU utilization as an argument?
|
| First of all, that's not total ICU utilization, which is
| the metric that should interests you.
|
| Illinois, the state you cherry-picked, has only 508 ICU
| beds remaining out of 3127. That's one doubling away from
| disaster.
|
| Here's an example of people dying because they couldn't
| find an ICU bed : https://meaww.com/ray-demonia-cardiac-
| failure-dies-icu-beds-...
|
| Right now the US is at the cusp of disaster with 78%
| nationwide ICU utilization. As we've seen some states are
| at functionally 100% utilization and turning away patients.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| 78% ICU utilization is about the base load for ICUs.
|
| Hospitals are businesses. They don't just create tons of
| empty ICU beds and then never use them.
|
| If you are getting your information from for profit blogs
| and magazines then I'd suggest doing a quick analysis on
| their motivations. Do you think they have more motivation
| to get you to click on their products, or more motivation
| to give you valid (but boring) information?
|
| Most of the states (all? I've looked at a lot of them)
| have some for of data dashboard that will give you a
| better overview of this. I'd highly suggest checking
| those instead of twitter/blogs/etc. It might not give the
| data that you are hoping for, but that's kindof the
| behavior that is the problem (seeking out blogs and
| magazines that confirm your priors)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I'm really not. 78% utilization is completely
| unsustainable when 20% of the utilization is from COVID
| and infection rates can easily double in the span of two
| weeks.
|
| 78% may have been the past utilization, however nowadays
| use of the ICU removing COVID patients is around 60%. So
| clearly there has been some level of denial of care. And
| even then we are close to the breaking point.
|
| I think you're not making the point you think you're
| making with that data. 78% utilization is a lot when a
| very significant part of that is from an infectious
| disease known to spiral out of control easily.
| indecisive_user wrote:
| As the sibling comment pointed out, 78% ICU occupancy is
| not that high compared to baseline.
|
| From a 2014 analysis:
|
| >Issues pertaining to the utility, interpretation, and
| reporting of ICU occupancy measures were identified and
| there were indications that optimal ICU occupancy rates
| were around 70-75%
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24373914/
| freeflight wrote:
| It's not really as black&white as that.
|
| Vaccinated people are more prone to be asymptomatic when
| infected, which means they are less likely to notice the
| infection, thus less likely to isolate and go into
| quarantine.
|
| This is made even worse by the fact how a whole bunch of
| countries have stopped testing vaccinated people, they are
| just assumed healthy and not contagious by default.
|
| Now throw in vaccinated people demanding to be exempt from
| pandemic measures, like not having to wear masks anymore and
| being allowed into crowded venues, and vaccinated people have
| the biggest potential to become the new super spreaders.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| None of your logic is valid if everyone gets vaccinated as
| it will be "as good as it can be". Some non controllable
| number of people will get the disease, but the number of
| people in ER and ICU will be way down and they can get the
| help they need instead of help from an exhausted,
| overworked ICU department that is far from in optimal
| condition to handle you and other non-covid emergency
| cases. Your "logic" simple falls apart at the seams.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Vaccinated people are less symptomatic because they have a
| lower viral load. Their infectivity window is lower. In the
| corresponding time frames, they have similar symptoms
| freeflight wrote:
| If they had similar symptoms then there would be no point
| to the vaccination at all because it's symptoms why
| people get hospitalized.
|
| By now that's even become the main argument for
| vaccinations: Less hospitalizations due to less severe
| symptoms. While all the talk about "herd immunity", the
| original most pushed reason for mass vaccinations, has
| turned out to be not realistic.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No, that's not what I'm saying. Whether you're
| unvaccinated or vaccinated, you are asymptomatic during
| the times you're most infectious. By the time you develop
| symptoms you're statistically not that likely to infect
| people if you're unvaccinated. If you were vaccinated,
| you would have cleared the infection already.
|
| And in vaccinated people even that infectious phase is
| lower.
| Straw wrote:
| All the data suggests that vaccines significantly reduce
| transmission, both by decreasing the likelihood of infection
| and onward transmission from vaccinated individuals.
|
| Additionally, anything that incentivizes more people to get the
| vaccine will result in higher uptake, which benefits everyone
| in terms of lower overall spread and hospital usage.
| mapme wrote:
| Exactly, the attack rate of vaccinated individuals who are
| infected is significantly lower.
| 13years wrote:
| All the current data suggests something very different.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/08/06/fully-v.
| ..
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
|
| If you are vaccinated you are less likely to get COVID, less
| likely to spread it at peak (except, apparently, with Delta)
| while you have it, and have a shorter contagious period (even
| with Delta).
|
| So, yes, you _can_ still get and spread it, but you are
| significantly less likely to.
| javagram wrote:
| > If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
| You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
|
| The vaccine reduces the chance you can get and transmit covid.
| 40-60% protection against infection, and even when there is a
| breakthrough case viral load declines faster than in an
| unvaccinated person meaning less chance and time to spread the
| virus to others.
|
| > So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc.
| Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others
| what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be
| familiar with this.
|
| No, it's because lots of people are literally dying. An HOA
| arguing with you over the color of your garage door or the
| height of your lawn is, at most, trying to protect property
| values or as you say just being a busybody.
| toast0 wrote:
| > The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the
| percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that
| it is entirely flat.
|
| Compare June to September, total staffed beds is about even,
| total ICU beds grew somewhat, and usage of both jumped from
| about 80% to 88% for overall beds, and 90ish to 96% for ICUs
| (which is a bigger increase in use than it might seem because
| capacity increased)
|
| If overall use increased 10% and covid users are 20% of overall
| and 40% of ICU, up from maybe 5% and 10%, it seems there are a
| lot of non-covid users whose care is being delayed or denied
| because of covid. There's some room for misleading statistical
| information, such as ICU patients in for something else that
| happen to have asymptomatic covid and are only tested because
| of other patients, but the difference in stats seems large
| enough to ignore that. Stats I've heard are that the vast
| majority of hospitalized covid patients in most states had not
| been vacinated, so it does seem useful to the person taking
| them, and by reducing the overall hospitalization rate, seem to
| have kept Texas within hospital capacity, if barely (I haven't
| heard stories of Texas hospitals running triage and tents in
| parking garage like some other states)
| htkgigktmrnnr wrote:
| > The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the
| percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that
| it is entirely flat.
|
| So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds
| available and that they are sending patients out of state?
|
| > At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity,
| according to numbers reported to the federal government during
| the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin, five hospitals were at or
| above 90% of their ICU capacity during the same period, with
| two reporting no available ICU beds
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/10/coronavirus-texas-ho...
| chana_masala wrote:
| It could be related to staff shortages. Number of beds is not
| a literal figure, it also accounts for the number of staff
| that can treat patients in the bed. If you're short staffed
| you're short bed'd too
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I don't know. But what I do know is that data will speak much
| more clearly than somebody's news article.
|
| Those hospitals at 90%: what is their base load? The
| hospitals with no beds: what is _their_ base load?
|
| These things make very profitable news articles, but they
| don't do a very good job of informing.
| htkgigktmrnnr wrote:
| The news article is literally quoting hospitals saying they
| are out of ICU beds.
|
| But you trust a dashboard more...
| mapme wrote:
| For me the major point of vaccinating others is ensuring
| hospitals are not overwhelmed and have enough capacity to treat
| other patients and perform elective procedures.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Yeah this sure is a common talking point that comes up, but
| unfortunately for those who enjoy enforcing these things, it
| is not backed up by any data.
|
| Daily deaths (which is the best proxy we have for
| hospitalization) is nowhere near any of the peaks we have had
| in the last year and a half.
|
| If somehow deaths are down but hospital capacity is _also_
| down, that is the fault of the hospitals, not the vaccinated.
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
| mapme wrote:
| Did you read the linked article? The governor of one of the
| largest US states asked hospitals to delay elective
| procedures to ensure hospital capacity.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| You seem to be missing another option: that treatments get
| better so that hospitalization leads to fewer deaths than
| it did earlier. Which seems obviously true.
|
| Why would deaths be the best proxy for hospitalization? Why
| don't you have actual hospitalization numbers?
| makomk wrote:
| The UK probably has a large chunk of the benefit it could
| ever possibly get in terms of stopping the hospitals from
| being overwhelmed - vaccination levels are very high in the
| age groups that're most at risk here.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You are 100% wrong. The purpose of mandating the vaccine is to
| keep people from dying, particularly older, immune compromised
| people and kids who can't get the vaccine just yet. I'm tired
| of this damn limbo of somewhere in the middle. If you don't
| want to get a vaccine then don't work for one of the employers
| that will now be required to make sure their workers are
| immunized. Your rights end at the end of your nose. No one is
| going to come looking for you to drag you out to the street and
| get immunized. However if you want to participate with the rest
| of us then get vaccinated. Texas is currently a shit show of
| overcrowded hospitals, voter suppression laws, and pro-birther
| (but not pro life) people trying to install their theocracy. I
| know because I live here.
| 34523trefds12 wrote:
| Unfortunately you are also 100% wrong.
|
| For example, a care home in London recently held a trip, all
| individuals in attendance were 'double jabbed', and were
| required to bring a negative PCR test. The attendees were not
| allowed to board the coach if they did not bring a negative
| PCR test. Attendees also had their temperatures taken before
| bording the coach and were also asked about how they felt,
| and encouraged not to come should they even feel like they
| have any symptom/s. The next day, a member of staff tests
| positive.
|
| Simply being double jabbed isn't a solution, because the
| vaccine, fundamentally, doesn't work the way you think.
|
| Whilst a jab may remove some affects of Covid, it does not
| stop transmission; Covid can and will be passed from those
| who are vaccinated to vulnerable people regardless. This
| results in a quandry where advocating for proof of a negative
| test can not actually be proof of a negative test, and being
| double jabbed does not stop an individual from catching Covid
| and stopping them from suffering.
|
| Forcing people to be jabbed is unethical; boys have been
| reported to be 6x more likely to suffer vaccine-related
| myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid. What
| groups are deemed more precious? Are our young boys worth
| sacrificing, or should we sacrifice those who's age is
| greater than the average age of death?
|
| Excluding people from society because they are not willing to
| take a drug which is still experimental; The CDC may have
| approved it, but in the UK has not its approval is temporary
| and that lasts one
| year:(https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4759).
|
| It also quite frightening to hear power hungry individuals
| advocating agency over anothers body; I find your comment
| regarding Texas ironic given the current abortion issues
| present, but perhaps you agree with that removal as well.
|
| When rights are removed, they do not come back. we still
| remove our shoes when travelling through airport security. It
| is important that we consider the our actions and
| implications for the long term, not just the current
| political cycle.
| 34523trefds12 wrote:
| Simply being double jabbed and providing a negative test
| isn't a solution, because the vaccine fundamentally doesn't
| work the way you think.*
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
|
| I can win the lottery, but I probably won't. Don't think of it
| as black or white, binary, can/can't. Unless you talk about the
| probability of getting and transmitting COVID, and how
| vaccination reduces these, you will be making nonsensical
| statements like the one above.
| bequanna wrote:
| In addition to the power, don't forget the pseudo celebrity
| status that many formerly ignored politicians and bureaucrats
| have enjoyed.
|
| The hour long daily briefings rarely contain any new
| information and are nothing but pure ego and attention seeking.
|
| Exactly like a movie star whose time is passing, you should bet
| they will do whatever it takes to stay in the spotlight and
| stay relevant.
| prawn wrote:
| The daily briefings in NSW (Australia) ceased this week and
| there was immediate criticism that it was a vital service
| that should've been maintained.
|
| The media and public create that public brand; the health rep
| is generally just doing their job. In my state, the relevant
| person happens to have a recognisable hairstyle. It's not
| like she has a PR team going out telling people to dress as
| her for halloween or parties, people just do things like
| that, then the media covers that, and people send the link
| around and on it goes. Given the intense reactions that are
| the norm around this pandemic, I'm sure she'd feel safer
| without that level of attention.
| bequanna wrote:
| I appreciate that you are able to give people the benefit
| of the doubt, but that isn't human nature. Most people are
| not self sacrificing do gooders. Indeed, almost everyone is
| self interested.
|
| Don't be surprised when the person you cite above who will
| "feel safer without that level of attention" suddenly
| decides to step back into the limelight seeking some higher
| office or elevated position.
| xphilter wrote:
| Wouldn't another reason be to reduce cost? It's expensive to
| treat covid patients and the vaccine is proven to reduce the
| incidents of hospitalization. But I'm willing to forgo all
| vaccine mandates, mask mandates, etc if we can all agree that
| unvaccinated have to pay for their own treatment or buy bespoke
| covid insurance.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Can you think of a solution that doesn't just allow
| government officials to profit even more?
|
| If you build in a system where the government can extract
| profit by not complying with their actions, what makes you
| think you wont someday find yourself on the wrong side of
| those actions?
|
| Keep in mind, your side might not always be the one in
| control and once you hand over extra power to the government
| it's extremely rare for them to hand it back to you.
| xphilter wrote:
| How does the govt profit here? They are losing b/trillions
| due to covid in lost taxes, medical expenses, and
| individual sentiment. What is your solution if you don't
| want people vaccinated? I couldn't care less if people get
| vaccinated but I def don't want to pay for them when
| there's an easy way to lower those costs right now. (And,
| please tell me, who is "my" side? Logic and reason?)
| jwlake wrote:
| The people self selecting into positions of power wanting
| more power?
| tomp wrote:
| As an unvaccinated (but protected by naturally-acquired
| immunity) I completely agree with this. As long as the same
| is true for car accident victims (except pedestrians), HIV
| patients (except those that got it via birth/rape), obese
| people, smokers, drinkers, skiers, ... All these are 100%
| voluntary activities that put undue burden on the medical
| system.
| ericmay wrote:
| I think the difference is effort to get the vaccine is very
| close to 0 - it's free, you can get one at Costco.
|
| And what's the benefit or not getting it? As much as I
| despise cars you can at least go do something arguably
| beneficial with them. I think we should have fewer though
| because they do cause unnecessary deaths. But what is
| gained by not having the vaccine? If I have a car I can do
| something beneficial. If you don't get the vaccine you can
| transmit the disease or wind up in the hospital and for
| what reason? Do you, or society get much pleasure from
| skiing? Seems like it. There's an entire industry. Will
| there be COVID-19 resorts and YouTube videos showing who
| can get the sickest or something?
|
| We do deprioritize smokers and drinkers BTW on the
| transplant list.
| pbourke wrote:
| If I'm in my home and you get into a car accident across
| town, you can't injure me. The same is not true if you
| contract and spread the virus.
| ghoward wrote:
| Not GP. You're comparing apples to oranges.
|
| If I get into a car accident and you're across town,
| you're right, that doesn't affect you. Likewise, if I get
| COVID and you're across town, I can't infect you, so
| likewise, you're not affected.
|
| However, if we're on the same side of town, and I get
| into a car accident, it _could_ affect you because I
| might hit you. Likewise, if I get COVID, and we 're on
| the same side of town, I could infect you.
|
| You might protest that I could still infect you if I get
| COVID on the opposite side of town by infecting someone
| else who infects you. This is false. The person who
| actually infected you infected you. To claim it was my
| fault that you got infected means that we should all
| blame patient zero and China. I mean, we should blame
| China, but probably not patient zero.
| pbourke wrote:
| > You might protest that I could still infect you if I
| get COVID on the opposite side of town by infecting
| someone else who infects you. This is false. The person
| who actually infected you infected you
|
| If you had reasonable actions available to you (wearing a
| mask, getting vaccinated) that you chose not to pursue,
| then yes, in my view you do bear some responsibility for
| continuing the chain of infection. If you had taken those
| reasonable actions then you bear no responsibility: it's
| an act of nature that the chain passed through you.
|
| If everyone who could get the vaccine did get it, then
| it's almost certain that 10's of thousands of people
| would be alive today just in the US and hospitals would
| not be under strain. Who are responsible for those 10's
| of thousands of deaths if not those who chose not to act
| to protect their own lives and their communities?
|
| You can choose your "freedom" over your life and your
| community, but you bear culpability for doing so.
| "Freedom isn't free," as the saying goes.
| ghoward wrote:
| Patient zero had reasonable actions they could have done.
| They could have followed protocols better, so should we
| still blame them?
|
| If I get a vaccine and suffer an adverse reaction, should
| I receive blame for getting the vaccine? After all, since
| compensation for adverse reactions are paid for by
| society (the government), I failed to protect my life and
| my community, as you say.
|
| By the way, hospitals have been under strain long before
| COVID. That's how they operate.
|
| Also, if I get vaccinated and found get myself tested
| regularly, I could spread COVID. Is taking a test weekly
| to prevent spread as a vaccinated person a reasonable
| action?
| pbourke wrote:
| > Patient zero had reasonable actions they could have
| done. They could have followed protocols better
|
| Patient zero being the first person who contracted
| COVID-19? I wasn't aware that they had been identified.
|
| > If I get a vaccine and suffer an adverse reaction,
| should I receive blame for getting the vaccine? After
| all, since compensation for adverse reactions are paid
| for by society (the government), I failed to protect my
| life and my community, as you say.
|
| All of the evidence at this point is that the harms from
| getting vaccinated are orders of magnitude less than the
| harms from the disease. So no, you should not receive
| blame because you took the best action known to you at
| the time.
|
| > By the way, hospitals have been under strain long
| before COVID. That's how they operate.
|
| They are under strain now because of COVID, out of all
| proportion to the strain experienced in recent memory
| from any other cause.
|
| > Also, if I get vaccinated and found get myself tested
| regularly, I could spread COVID. Is taking a test weekly
| to prevent spread as a vaccinated person a reasonable
| action?
|
| I don't know what you're trying to say here. Yes, get
| tested if you are worried about being exposed to COVID,
| irrespective of whether you're vaccinated. Leading
| epidemiologists have long called for widespread rapid
| antigen testing to prevent asymptomatic spread.
| ghoward wrote:
| > Patient zero being the first person who contracted
| COVID-19? I wasn't aware that they had been identified.
|
| They haven't. Neither can we identify with certainty who
| spread COVID to who. Yet you want to blame the
| unvaccinated.
|
| > All of the evidence at this point is that the harms
| from getting vaccinated are orders of magnitude less than
| the harms from the disease. So no, you should not receive
| blame because you took the best action known to you at
| the time.
|
| For those who might be at risk for one or more of the
| adverse events from the vaccine, or have already
| recovered from COVID, the best action would be to not get
| the vaccine. Yet you still want to put culpability on
| their shoulders. Your can't have it both ways.
|
| > They are under strain now because of COVID, out of all
| proportion to the strain experienced in recent memory
| from any other cause.
|
| They are under more strain, yes. How much of that is
| COVID, and how much is that hospitals are not willing to
| pay enough to stay staffed?
|
| > I don't know what you're trying to say here. Yes, get
| tested if you are worried about being exposed to COVID,
| irrespective of whether you're vaccinated. Leading
| epidemiologists have long called for widespread rapid
| antigen testing to prevent asymptomatic spread.
|
| I'm saying that if it's reasonable to blame the
| unvaccinated for spreading COVID, it's also reasonable to
| blame the vaccinated who don't get tested weekly because
| getting tested weekly is, in your terms, a "reasonable
| action." In other words, if you think the unvaccinated
| are culpable, so are the vaccinated who don't get tested
| weekly.
|
| If you claim that requiring the vaccinated to get tested
| weekly is not reasonable, then my answer is that neither
| is it reasonable to blame the unvaccinated. In fact, in
| my opinion, it's as reasonable as requiring weekly COVID
| tests. You and I would have different definitions of
| reasonable. We are not going to agree.
|
| You want to blame me for COVID and to force me to conform
| to an orthodoxy that changes daily, and you call that
| reasonable. I want to be left alone and call that
| reasonable.
| tomp wrote:
| If you're in your home and don't invite anyone, then
| people who spread the virus also can't injure you.
| junon wrote:
| > The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but . . . not
| really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them.
|
| This isn't true, though.
| perlgeek wrote:
| > If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
| You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
|
| While you still _can_ transmit COVID-19 if you 're vaccinated
| against it, it's far less likely (the time during which you can
| transmit the disease is far shorter).
|
| So while your statement might be technically correct, it is
| also very misleading.
|
| > In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will
| be harmful to the unvaccinated.
|
| What is over-vaccinating (and in a pandemic, no less)? And what
| is that argument you speak of?
| refurb wrote:
| I haven't seen much about this but I assume the passport systems
| are a potentially huge security risk. The ones I've seen require
| personal identifying information (yet again) which you know is
| stored in a new database (again).
| _Microft wrote:
| > which you know is stored in a new database (again).
|
| The (european) vaccination certificates include all necessary
| information in a QR code that is stored locally, either
| digitally in an app or as actual print-out of the QR code. You
| only have to show an id card to proof that this QR code belongs
| to you then (it also encodes your full name and date of birth
| for making the connection).
| jjgreen wrote:
| Wouldn't work in the UK since we don't have ID cards.
| _Microft wrote:
| How do you identify yourself if required for some reason?
| For example when interacting with an office or when you
| have to cast your ballot in an election?
| jjgreen wrote:
| For offices, typically a utilities bill (with your name
| and address on it) will suffice. Voting only requires a
| voting card which is sent to your address. Registration
| to vote is mandatory and requires your National Insurance
| number, but the penalty for not registering is small (a
| fine of PS80 IIRC) and rarely enforced.
| motohagiography wrote:
| This is hopeful news, because the passport plans completely
| debased the practical, pro-social, and even altruistic aspects of
| the vaccine program.
|
| However, provincial and federal politicians in Canada have also
| very cynically lied about this in the recent past, where they
| said they were against them and they wouldn't happen, to making
| snap announcements that they were implementing them with hard
| deadlines, so let's see how this plays out.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Same in the US. Both Biden (later confirmed by his press
| secretary) and Fauci previously stated they would not mandate
| vaccines.
| reillyse wrote:
| Irony is you have to show your papers (id showing proof of age)
| to get into nightclubs anyway.
| throwawayfear wrote:
| Showing proof of age so you can drink alcohol and participate
| in the sexualized activities at a club are nowhere near in the
| same ballpark as "paper's please" tyranny in order to
| participate in society.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| When is the last time you needed to show your papers to enter a
| mall? Or a library? Or a museum? Or a public restroom? Or a
| McDonalds?
| throwawayfear wrote:
| Ditch the plans everywhere. No more mandates.
| eddof13 wrote:
| I concur, good on England
| tchalla wrote:
| > "I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show
| your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity,
| but we were right to properly look at it.
|
| We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card
| for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for
| driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
| edent wrote:
| > We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library
| card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license
| for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
|
| I don't think you live in the UK - because none of those things
| are true.
|
| You can go into just about any library and read a book without
| showing a library card.
|
| I've never had to show ID for a hotel stay.
|
| My driving licence stays at home. If I want to hire a car, I
| generate a one-time code.
|
| I can pick up a parcel by showing some non-ID like a bank card,
| utility bill, etc.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > If I want to hire a car, I generate a one-time code.
|
| The GP comment said "driving a car," not hiring one. It's not
| clear to me why you responded to a different assertion, and I
| can't find anything that supports the idea that you don't
| need to show a driving license while driving if it's
| requested.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-
| righ...
|
| "If you do not have these documents with you, you have 7 days
| to take them to a police station. You're breaking the law if
| you do not show the requested documents within 7 days."
|
| > You can go into just about any library and read a book
| without showing a library card.
|
| If I may be so bold, I think it's fairly reasonable to
| understand their comment (in the context of requiring ID) as
| referring to checking out/borrowing books from a library to
| read, rather than simply reading them in a library.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| As that link says, you do not need to routinely carry your
| driving licence in the UK even if driving. If stopped, you
| are required to give your name and address and police have
| the option of giving you a "presenter", a notice that you
| must turn up at a police station within 7 days with your
| licence (with some exceptions eg it's been stolen or with
| the DVLA for changes to be applied). But in my experience
| it's unusual to be given one of these.
| edent wrote:
| I don't need to show my licence to get in my car and drive.
| For any normal use of a car, there is no requirement to
| show a licence before doing so.
|
| Have you ever applied for a library card? Most libraries
| will give you one without any verifiable form of ID. And
| the card itself certainly isn't ID.
| toyg wrote:
| _> I don 't need to show my licence to get in my car_
|
| It would likely be difficult to buy a car without it, and
| obviously you could not rent it (yes, code and blabla,
| it's just a proxy for it).
|
| _> Have you ever applied for a library card?_
|
| Yes, and in fact they were pretty fastidious with
| validating that I lived in the area they serve (that
| might be because I have a funny accent, but still). I
| don't remember how I managed to get it, eventually -
| likely with the usual utility bills, which here work
| exactly as ID would, as long as you have a pair of them.
| Their use for this is extremely problematic.
| EliRivers wrote:
| _It would likely be difficult to buy a car without it_
|
| Did you definitely mean this? I have never had to present
| a driving license to buy a car. I don't see the link; the
| license isn't to own a car, it's to drive one. Unless
| you're thinking of places where one does need a license
| just to own a vehicle?
| toyg wrote:
| _> You're breaking the law if you do not show the requested
| documents within 7 days_
|
| Many people might also not know that it's against the law
| to carry a driving licence that is not perfectly up-to-date
| regarding your address details.
|
| Coming from Italy, a country with strong ID card
| requirements (because of Napoleonic attitudes compounded by
| actual Fascism), the UK situation looks to me idealistic,
| naive, pragmatically disastrous, and only very occasionally
| safer (ID-card fraud in Italy is an actual problem the UK
| does not have, but the practice of validating identity with
| house bills in the UK is even more open to abuse). I expect
| we'll eventually get something that works like an ID card,
| looks like an ID card, but it's not called an ID card -
| possibly owned and operated by banks, who are the real
| authorities here.
| longthrow1 wrote:
| By the same token, you don't show your id to buy groceries,
| or your license to enter a party. Gattaca was a dystopia, not
| a goal.
| edent wrote:
| I've never had to show any ID to buy groceries. Not sure
| what point you're making.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library
| card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license
| for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
|
| This is a classic demonstration that "slippery slope" isn't a
| fallacy.
|
| First you need a driving license. Privacy conscious people
| objected. You don't need to show your driving license to drive,
| was the response, only if you break traffic laws or get into an
| accident. There's no one using it to track everywhere you go or
| anything.
|
| Then comes the vaccine passport. Privacy conscious people
| object. Now the response is, hey, you already have to show your
| driving license if you get pulled over for speeding, what's the
| difference? And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if
| you, um, never go outside again.
|
| Meanwhile we now have ALPR cameras recording the location
| history of every vehicle on the roads. Because some slopes are
| actually slippery.
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| >Privacy conscious people object. Now the response is, hey,
| you already have to show your driving license if you get
| pulled over for speeding, what's the difference?
|
| The main objections to vaccine passports in England aren't
| privacy, they're that it discriminates against those who
| refuse to get vaccinated.
|
| >And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um,
| never go outside again.
|
| You'd have to show your vaccine passport if you want to
| partake in proportionately high risk activities where you not
| only have risk to yourself, but you also pose a risk to
| others. And it's [almost] always places you have to take ID
| anyway, to prove your age.
|
| Why should those who chose to not do the socially responsible
| thing of getting vaccinated, get to amplify the risk to those
| who do?
| joenot443 wrote:
| >The main objections to vaccine passports in England aren't
| privacy, they're that it discriminates against those who
| refuse to get vaccinated.
|
| Plenty of Canadians, like myself, have huge objections to
| the privacy implications of our passport program.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Would you be okay with a card showing your religious
| affiliation before being allowed into a crowded public space?
| Or before being allowed to rent a truck, or buy fertilizer?
|
| Even though this would likely make the world safer: I wouldn't,
| and even though it wouldn't prevent me from doing anything, I
| would still resist it.
|
| But it _would_ increase my safety, even though it would
| inconvenience some other people based on the choices that they
| have made.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Why do you think it would increase your safety? That's not at
| all obvious to me.
| bequanna wrote:
| There is a well known trade off between public safety and
| personal freedom. I believe that is the point the parent
| comment is trying to make.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That is the thing I don't understand. Who do these vaccine
| cards protect?
|
| Anybody can get a vaccine that keeps them out of the
| hospital or dying. There is no reason for a vaccinated
| individual to give a single hoot about the vaccination
| status of person next to them.
|
| The idea that the vaccinated population needs to be
| "protected" from all the unvaccinated individuals is
| absurd. Covid is here forever and we will all probably
| catch it at some point. If you are vaccinated you'll at
| least not have any serious complications from it, which is
| pretty damn good...
|
| So yeah, I haven't the faintest idea who vaccine passports
| actually protect?
|
| Also, all these pro-mandate arguments never discuss if
| boosters will be required to remain a "vaccinated" status.
| Does that mean we are now obligated to get a booster every
| time it comes out?
|
| And when does this all go away? At what point to we drop
| this stuff? Or are we seriously gonna be "carded" at the
| door of every business from here on out? Again, covid is
| here forever and there will always be some level of "cases"
| provided we continue testing for it...
| himinlomax wrote:
| > Would you be okay with a card showing your religious
| affiliation
|
| If there was a good reason for it, possibly. But this is a
| ridiculous analogy, because there is no plausible reason for
| this. On the other hand, there is a good reason for strongly
| encouraging people to get the vaccine, as well as an
| excellent reason to restrain pro-virus people from spreading
| it more.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Those IDs are not meant to 1) show your medical history which
| is a protected right and 2) is used as a way to coerce a
| medical intervention which is against free and informed
| consent.
|
| Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public good
| has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and abuses in
| history.
| junon wrote:
| > against free and informed consent
|
| This is a problem - it is often not very informed.
|
| As for medical history, we have to show vaccination records
| for a number of things - school, travel sometimes, certain
| lines of work.
|
| Proof of vaccination against a highly mutation-prone virus in
| the midst of a pandemic doesn't reveal anything more about
| you than it would about anyone else - which is specifically
| allowed via HIPAA, for example. It's no more medical history
| than knowing your age.
|
| These points don't really stand up for me. It's like saying
| "I choose to believe they cause autism, I've been informed by
| my other Facebook Mom group members, thus I do not consent."
|
| None of it is based on science or rationality, in my opinion.
| hervature wrote:
| What about waiting for full FDA approval? I agree that your
| Facebook Mom groups are full of BS but why are PhD earners
| more hesitant than only high school educated [1].
|
| [1] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21
| 260795v...
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Full FDA approval has happened though. It was basically
| just a formality that anti-vaxxers managed to find. At
| this point the vaccines are known to be safe, they have
| billions of doses given.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| There are no way to know the long terms effects (if you
| do please provide the plans of your time traveling
| machine to nearest patent office).
|
| The drug companies are not only under total immunity but
| also will get paid regardless if the vaccine works or not
| in the long term. The reporting of adverse effects is
| probably getting suppressed, for example OSHA is now
| admitting it won't record vaccines adverse effects so it
| doesn't discourage vaccinations
| (https://ogletree.com/insights/osha-revokes-guidance-on-
| recor...). There were vaccines that were deemed "safe"
| yet were scrapped because they weren't (Dengue vaccine,
| Guillain-Barre of the 1979 flu vaccines).
|
| The immunity of the vaccines is fading after a few months
| and Pfizer is now talking about bi-annual booster shots
| and daily pills.
|
| Personally I got my two shots of Pfizer, which is
| considered the safest, because it made sense to _me_. But
| even then I got adverse effects making me not want
| another booster shot. Calling people "anti-vaxxers" is
| because they do not want to take an experimental vaccines
| (mRNA vaccines are not vaccines in the traditional
| definition) is just intellectual laziness.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > There are no way to know the long terms effects
|
| Vaccines almost never have long term side effects, and
| there is no reason to believe the vaccines at hand have
| any reason to have any. But maybe it does. What's the
| probability? Based on those priors, extremely low. Not
| zero, but extremely low.
|
| The disease, on the other hand, definitely has long term
| side effects. We know that.
|
| If the risk of infection was low, you'd have a point.
| Maybe. But the fact is, without vaccine, everyone stands
| a very significant chance of getting infected. The very
| small risk of long term side effects is just ridiculous
| compared to those of the disease, and unlike the vaccine,
| the disease does not care about your "freedom."
| himinlomax wrote:
| > What about waiting for full FDA approval?
|
| Because it's pointless, and because the pandemic is
| killing people right now, not whenever some arbitrary
| administrative milestone is achieved. But most
| importantly, because people who bring that point up are
| typically completely ignorant of what medicine approval
| entails, why the process is there in the first place, and
| why it normally takes so long.
|
| Just one element among several: it usually takes a long
| time because diseases take time to develop and we lack
| test subjects. Here the disease spread very rapidly,
| develops insanely fast, and thus judging the efficacy is
| nearly immediate. As for safety, vaccines almost never
| have long term side effects, so the risk is low to begin
| with, whereas the risks of the disease are huge.
|
| In short, this is a specious argument, and a ridiculous
| proposition on the face of it born of ignorance and
| motivated by a rebeliousness as callous as it's puerile.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| If it's not a PhD in biochemistry or something similar,
| then it's not relevant to their decision making
| abilities. FDA approval is based on having enough data to
| determine efficacy and safety - with so many administered
| doses at this point there is no question about either of
| those things.
| hervature wrote:
| Is your argument that only "PhD in biohemistry or
| something similar" can make decisions about the vaccine?
| I think that's incredibly patronizing to the vast
| majority of humanity. There is literally vaccines that
| earned FDA approval in recent memory that were later
| found to cause problems in babies [1]. If people are
| concerned about vaccines, the best way to deal with it is
| to address concerns, show them the data. Not calling them
| stupid for not having a PhD.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-
| history....
| junon wrote:
| > Not calling them stupid for not having a PhD.
|
| GP simply stated that we should be consulting experts in
| the fields, not laypeople, when it comes to things of a
| scientific nature.
|
| These were your words, not theirs.
| hervature wrote:
| They said:
|
| > If it's not a PhD in biochemistry or something similar,
| then it's not relevant to their decision making abilities
|
| In my opinion, that is much closer to "if you don't have
| a PhD in biochemistry, you can't don't deserve to make a
| decision (i.e. stupid)" than "listen to experts".
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| FDA approval is worthless.
|
| The chance of long term effects is not very high. You'll
| likely survive covid without pneumonia and you'll likely
| survive the vaccine without an aneurysm.
|
| The reason I was hesitant was: - It doesn't stop the
| spread - I already had covid / the risks of covid are
| mostly minuscole for healthy young people - New variants
| will drop the efficacy
|
| In the end, I did it only because I was planning to
| travel (which ended up being wise, given the
| requirements). And I still had to waste money getting
| tested.
| howinteresting wrote:
| The Pfizer vaccine has already received full FDA
| approval, and Moderna is expected to get it shortly.
| linuxftw wrote:
| While this is technically true, it's only because the FDA
| abandoned all previous procedure for full approval.
| junon wrote:
| Expedited approval in the middle of a pandemic is not the
| same as "abandoning all previous procedure".
| linuxftw wrote:
| Except that it is. They were already able to distribute
| the product under EUA. The push for 'full approval' was
| entirely political.
|
| What's the bar for full approval? Whatever the FDA says
| it is. Usually that includes convening the advisory
| committee. That didn't happen. Recently, 3 members
| resigned from said committee. While these resignations
| weren't about the vaccines, they were about a lack of
| trust in FDA (interim) leadership.
|
| If you want to continue to believe everything is just
| okie-dokie, knock yourself out, but you're not going to
| convince anyone.
| Retric wrote:
| People avoiding vaccination and thus dying because the
| FDA hasn't done full approval is more than a political
| issue. It's a real heath issue and exactly the kind of
| public health problem the FDA is concerned with.
|
| The general public doesn't understand that expedited
| approval was a well understood category years before
| COVID and designed exactly for situations like this.
| Check the way back machine of your feeling paranoid.
|
| As to the actual science we have vastly more data on
| COVID vaccinations than most drugs or vaccines the FDA is
| approving. It really isn't some ad hoc process it's well
| designed procedures and massive quantities of scientific
| data.
| [deleted]
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > People avoiding vaccination and thus dying because the
| FDA hasn't done full approval is more than a political
| issue
|
| People can refuse medical treatments, even if deemed in
| their utmost interest.
| Retric wrote:
| This isn't about the option to refuse, this is about the
| reasons someone refuses.
|
| The FDA does quite a bit of outreach over heath and food
| safety because information has real public health
| implications. Ex: https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-
| serve-safe-food/selecting...
|
| Which isn't to say their doing a great job, just that
| they consider it part of their mandate and they get
| funding for it.
| linuxftw wrote:
| > As to the actual science we have vastly more data on
| COVID vaccinations than most drugs or vaccines the FDA is
| approving
|
| Who is we? We never received the raw trial data. The data
| that the general public does have access to, while very
| flawed, says these vaccines are the most deadly ever to
| be widely administered.
|
| > People avoiding vaccination and thus dying because the
| FDA hasn't done full approval is more than a political
| issue. It's a real heath issue and exactly the kind of
| public health problem the FDA is concerned with.
|
| People mistook the desire for long term safety studies
| and completion of phase 3 clinical trials as "FDA
| approval." The two things were previously synonymous, at
| least to the lay person. FDA approval was merely a proxy,
| now it's meaningless.
|
| > The general public doesn't understand
|
| The general public can't add 2 fractions, what they think
| is irrelevant.
| junon wrote:
| > If you want to continue to believe everything is just
| okie-dokie, knock yourself out
|
| Seeing as how I'm in Germany and I have close friends at
| RKI, I choose to believe them - as they are unequivocally
| the experts on the topic - over American politics.
|
| > but you're not going to convince anyone.
|
| Please argue in good faith next time.
| [deleted]
| hervature wrote:
| Exactly, I'm just pointing out that there were (and still
| are in my opinion) valid scientific and rational thinking
| for being hesitant of getting the vaccine.
| howinteresting wrote:
| I am fine with people being hesitant to get the vaccine,
| as long as those people are fine with being excluded from
| all non-essential social activities.
|
| Where my sympathies really like is with people who *want"
| the vaccine but cannot get one due to circumstances (no
| paid time off, live in an inaccessible area, under the
| control of an anti-vaxxer, etc.)
| junon wrote:
| > valid scientific and rational thinking for being
| hesitant of getting the vaccine.
|
| Care to expand what these "scientific" reasons are?
| hervature wrote:
| I think the landscape for child and newborns is not
| entirely understood. Given that long COVID is rare in
| children, the personal risk tradeoff for a child is
| unclear at best. I would be hesitant to vaccinate my
| children (if I had any). Certainly if they were
| homebound.
| junon wrote:
| That's a different point than before, though. That's
| child vaccination vs. general population vaccination.
| hervature wrote:
| Just because certain subgroups of people have valid
| reasons does not mean it applies to the general populace.
| junon wrote:
| Yes I think I agree with you. Just because certain
| subgroups of people might not feel comfortable getting
| vaccinated, it doesn't mean you can apply the same logic
| to the general populace, as most people are safe to get
| vaccinated.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public
| good has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and
| abuses in history.
|
| Then you have examples of the "worst atrocities and abuses in
| history" that were due to schools requiring vaccinations?
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Is this a joke?
|
| Japan's Unit 731
|
| The Nazi medical experiments
|
| MK Ultra in the US and Canada and elsewhere in the world
|
| Lobotomy and the other psychiatric abuses
|
| The human atomic bomb and nuclear radiation experiments
|
| Tuskegee syphilis experiments
|
| Buck v. Bell which game way to +70k forced sterilizations,
| which by the way relied upon Jacobson v. Massachusetts
| where the State forced vaccination upon someone who had
| adverse effects.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Every one of those examples has nothing to do with
| requiring vaccinations to attend schools. Only the last
| one has any relation to vaccine mandates at all and the
| causal link there is somewhat tenous given the sordid
| particulars of Buck v Bell (including the deliberate
| incompetence of Buck's lawyer). It isn't clear that case
| would have gone differently without the Jacobsen v.
| Massachusetts precedent.
|
| Given the strength which which you made your claim, I
| thought you would have better evidence to support it.
|
| I do think that the medical attrocities you list have had
| a lasting and deleterious effect on public trust of
| government medical ethics and contribute significantly to
| vaccine hestitancy.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Vaccinations are _already_ forced on e.g. school-going kids
| in the name of the public good, for very good reasons!
| TeeMassive wrote:
| They're often not forced for mundane tasks such as going to
| the restaurant or the gym. And the vaccines were
| administered for decades prior and for diseases far more
| dangerous than Covid19.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Both of them are nonessential tasks, definitely far less
| essential than school.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 1) show your medical history which is a protected right
|
| Your medical history is not a "protected right." The people
| who provide medical care to you are not allowed to release
| your medical records without your consent.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > Your medical history is not a "protected right."
|
| What are you talking about? It is under the 5h and 14th
| amendments and under similar rights in other jurisdictions.
|
| https://healthcare.uslegal.com/records/sources-of-
| protection...
| Retric wrote:
| Not in case of vaccinations.
| https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/school-immunization-
| exe...
|
| Medical data does have various protections in the US, but
| it's far more limited than just blanket protection.
| gadders wrote:
| Voting?
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| In America it's widely controversial to require ID when
| voting, but not so in the rest of the world.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > In America it's widely controversial to require ID when
| voting
|
| Yes, one party seems to think those of a non-white skin
| color are unable (through ignorance or lack of access) to
| obtain any form of ID so they can vote.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's rather one-sided. _Both_ major US parties
| recognize (almost certainly correctly) that the more
| friction you put in the voting process, however seemingly
| reasonable, the fewer low-income people will
| proportionately vote. And one party considers that a bug
| while the other considers it a feature.
|
| ADDED: Is there _anything_ in this statement that is
| remotely controversial?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| As a European, I think it's completely insane not to have
| to provide an ID to vote.
|
| Of course it's a system that's ripe for fraud if you
| can't even identify and record voters reliably.
|
| I don't know how you can think this will introduce any
| more friction for low income people. You need an ID to
| drive. You may introduce friction for illegal immigrants
| and mentally handicapped homeless.
|
| Saying this will affect low income people doesn't make
| any sense. Saying this will affect black people is plain
| racist.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Saying this will affect black people is plain racist.
|
| Did you actually just call me a racist for very lightly
| touching on the fact that there's a whole lot of racial
| history tied in with voting rights in the US?
|
| Maybe you should just keep your mouth closed until you
| learn something about what the hell you're talking about
| because you clearly don't.
|
| And I'll let the rest of your words stand by themselves.
| Many legal US citizens do not drive and do not have
| government ID. Is it a _lot_? Probably not but it 's
| enough to drive political decisions around voting where
| fraud is actually not a serious problem.
|
| But really, don't care that a European thinks we should
| be required to have an ID to vote.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, they think the poor are less likely to be able to get
| ID. You probably also think that, because it is obviously
| true. You don't need to transform it into a reverse-
| wokeness argument.
| manquer wrote:
| Not American or OP, in my country it is lot more likely
| the poor to have such IDs as without IDs they are not
| eligible for a lot of social benefits so that correlation
| is not necessarily obvious to many.
| edent wrote:
| This is not true. In the UK there is currently no
| requirement to show ID when voting.
|
| There may be soon - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| politics-57723200 - but it certainly isn't common in the
| UK.
| hef19898 wrote:
| In Germany it's either the voting papers sent to your
| primary residency (same database used to issue ID cards
| and passports) or your passport / ID card in case you
| forgot / lost your voting papers. Easy enough, even if
| the voting papers are a lot easier in practical terms.
| roenxi wrote:
| But those are largely proving your identity in a situation
| where you wish to identify yourself.
|
| Proving an unrelated fact about yourself solely because the
| government thinks so is a different thing.
| paul_f wrote:
| I don't understand the downvotes. This is a legitimate
| distinction.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Discussions generally don't sway people. When someone has a
| fixed worldview and you present facts that undermine that
| worldview, he perceives you as a threat (like he would a
| large bear) and reacts to those facts with the same fight-
| or-flight response that threats generally elicit.
|
| Online, this fight-or-flight response manifests as people
| downvoting you, flagging you, doxxing you, and so on for
| presenting hard-to-refuse facts and arguments contrary to
| any entrenched but incorrect narrative.
|
| The problem is exacerbated on HN by high-karma accounts
| having the ability to flag discussions to death without
| engagement and essentially end them unilaterally.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not about disagreeing with them. I generally
| downvote pedantic exceptions because you should respond
| to an argument in the most generous terms. _largely
| proving your identity_ did apply to the examples given
| but doesn't address the thrust of their argument.
|
| Showing an ID to drink or get a senior discount isn't
| about identifying you specifically just something about
| you and that is completely accepted by the general
| public. Show your military ID to get a discount is
| another.
|
| The issue I take with such pedantic exceptions is they
| derail the thread.
|
| Edit: This is a far more direct response which I upvoted:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28501323
| kuraudo wrote:
| That's not true: people in the peanut gallery can be
| swayed. sub-midwits like myself only form opinions based
| on what smarter people have convinced us about areas
| we're not experts on.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| Showing your ID to buy alcohol because the govenment has
| decided that under 18's cannot buy it. That's widely
| practiced and accepted without issue
| gruez wrote:
| >That's widely practiced and accepted without issue
|
| There's two components to this.
|
| 1. It's widely accepted because in most cases the cashier
| just glaces at the ID. How is the vaccine passport going to
| be implemented? Are they going to give you a laminated ID
| card, or is it going to be some QR code thingy on your
| phone? The latter would necessitate some sort machine
| scanner, which would mean it's trivially easy to turn this
| into some sort of a tracking system.
|
| 2. "being 18" isn't a medical intervention that's forced
| onto people.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| The last time I was asked for ID to buy alcohol in a
| supermarket in the UK was over 15 years ago (and the last
| time I was asked in a pub was probably 20 years ago).
| It's not like parts of the US where venues are required
| to check literally everyone - it's only people who look
| like they might be underage.
| fragileone wrote:
| No, there's a "Think 25" rule where if the person looks
| above 25 you don't have to check.
| jlokier wrote:
| I would say the hotel stay situation is more like a "papers
| please" than a "situation where I wish to identify myself".
|
| Last time I booked a hotel via an app at the last minute for
| an overnight stay after going to the pub in a city away from
| home, the booking process didn't mention we needed to show
| our passports at reception. It was a new policy for that
| hotel.
|
| When we went to the hotel, about midnight, _of course_ we
| didn 't have passports with us, why would we? It's not normal
| to take your passport when visiting a neighbouring city for a
| night out.
|
| I've stayed at countless hotels, and never had this problem
| before. But I understand the UK is becoming more draconian so
| perhaps a rule had kicked in since the previous time I went
| to a hotel. But I had the impression, it was a recent policy
| change by this hotel, and "oh, we should update our website".
|
| It was pouring with rain, there were no other hotels
| accepting bookings by then, and the last train home would be
| in a few hours. Our Uber had dropped us off, and hotel
| reception was telling us we had to go outside into to the
| pouring rain as we couldn't stay despite having paid.
|
| They knew perfectly well _who we were_. It wasn 't an
| identity thing. We were able to show booking numbers, credit
| cards, confirm emails, and other forms of identity. But not
| the type their new policy required.
|
| They required every guest's passport, not just one person. As
| luck would have it, we each spent about an hour trawling
| through the contents on our electronic devices and online,
| and we each found _images of our passports in some location
| or other_ because of the ubiquitous requests for photos of
| passports these days, and those photos were accepted by the
| hotel.
| ghaff wrote:
| It varies in the US. Some is probably locality. Some is
| probably chain policy. Although hotels don't in general do
| the copy of passport things that is common in many places.
|
| A few years back, I got in a tight situation. I had a last
| minute trip and, among other things, didn't grab the little
| travel folder which I have with backup ID, credit cards,
| etc.
|
| Get my license out in the back of the car for TSA. Somehow
| I managed to lose it between there and the airport doors.
| Called the driver. They looked no luck. No idea what
| happened.
|
| To my considerable surprise, the TSA let me fly with no
| real hassle. (Rules may have tightened.)
|
| But when I got to the crappy Travelodge motel on the other
| side--no luck. I assume I would have had better luck at one
| of my regular chains but they didn't want to budge in spite
| of a wallet full of other cards and a photo company ID.
|
| I wasn't sure where I was going to sleep but they
| eventually relented so long as I paid cash. Fortunately the
| cost was relatively low enough I was able to get enough of
| an ATM. (I didn't have photos on my phone.)
| manquer wrote:
| Airbnb is usually good for those scenarios, they have
| your details already, and hosts will not ask any further.
| ghaff wrote:
| It was a bit late at that point. I was near SFO in the
| evening and needed a room.
| manquer wrote:
| of course, you were already at the motel so it made sense
| to try and negotiate there first.
|
| Airbnbs near SFO at San Mateo or Burlingame is just as
| expensive as hotels anyway!
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Providing ID to enter a bar or nightclub (where some have
| these machines which no doubt capture and store that data) is
| commonplace even though the venue has no business knowing who
| the person is.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean the reason you do this is to prove you are 21.
| Requiring anybody who enters any random business on the
| street to show a vaccine card is not even close to an apt
| comparison.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The vaccine card is to prove you are vaccinated. In both
| cases they're merely after a boolean (is_over_18? vs
| is_vaccinated?).
|
| But we're clearly accepting the idea of giving up way
| more information in the former case even though all
| that's needed is the boolean, so why the fuss around the
| vaccines when they're ultimately also after a boolean?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Not to go into a restaurant to eat. Which is what is now being
| asked in many places.
| davb wrote:
| Unless you are a young person (or look like one) and decide
| to have alcohol with your meal. As much an optional act as
| going to a restaurant in the first place.
| dgellow wrote:
| Well, now we do. At least in Hamburg, Germany. It was very
| quick to adapt, you flash your QR code and that's it, we are
| back to supporting our local restaurants and other businesses
| we love.
|
| The alternative was to see them close one by one, I'm
| personally very happy with the way the EU vaccine pass has
| been implemented.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| You understand that the restaurants were closing "one by
| one" because the government was closing them, and not
| because patrons were not attending them? It was a self-
| inflected wound.
| howinteresting wrote:
| What is your evidence for the implied counterfactual?
| tazjin wrote:
| I'm not the parent poster, but to answer: All the
| countries in which restaurants, bars etc. are open as
| normal, no "health passports" and other newspeak gadgets
| are needed, and the apocalypse still hasn't happened.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > We regularly show papers for everyday activities
|
| When is the last time you had to show papers to go to a
| McDonalds, a clothing store or a museum?
| davb wrote:
| Indeed. Bear in mind that that before becoming Health
| Secretary, Javid was very recently Chancellor of the Exchequer.
| Perhaps his motivations lie somewhere other than public health.
| jlokier wrote:
| I've generally regarded his motivations as "be supine" and
| "pander to the right", whatever his role. His position on
| "papers please" type issues is mixed, saying one thing and
| doing another. I can't tell if that's because of his own
| personality, or because of ongoing prejudice in the British
| system and in the Conservative party, requiring him to not be
| too challenging. The way he was pushed out of the Chancellor
| position by Dominic Cummings sounded awful; I'm surprised he
| accepted another job under the present governent.
|
| He was Home Secretary before being Chancellor, and in that
| role opted to keep up the Hostile Environment policies and
| Deport First, Appeal Later policies.
|
| I mention those two, because they are indicative of a "papers
| please" type of culture.
|
| The former requires every minor landlord to perform a "right
| to rent" check on every tenant or lodger they suspect to be
| not British, or face a large fine. Inevitably leading to
| landlords choosing not to rent to non-British people to avoid
| the hassle and risk of getting it wrong, an increase in
| homelessness among people without the right papers to prove
| they're allowed to pay for a home, and an increase in abusive
| housing relationships.
|
| The latter ensure that illegal actions by the Home Office go
| unchallenged despite statistics showing the Home Office often
| acts unlawfully and often loses in court. It's very difficult
| for a person to conduct an appeal after they're removed from
| their own documents at home, legal support, income, friends,
| and other resources; this is also borne out in statistics: No
| appeal lodged in this way has succeeded, which stands in
| stark contrast to appeals lodged in country. (The UK Supreme
| Court just ruled this policy unlawful. I expect the Home
| Office will try to continue the policy anyway.)
|
| Point is, Javid said he was going to address injustices in
| the immigration department when he became Home Secretary, and
| then he didn't.
| cstross wrote:
| Note this is specific to _England_. Other countries in the UK are
| following their own course -- the Scottish government agreed in
| principle to introduce vaccine passports as of a week ago and
| will require them for entry to large venues from October 1st:
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-passports-requir...
|
| The NHS is a fully devolved issue, with separate NHS
| organizations in Wales, England, Northern Ireland, reporting to
| the devolved parliaments and legislative assemblies, and
| Scotland, leading to differing outcomes in handling COVID19.
| Vaccination and COVID19 control is not _quite_ as crazily
| politicized as it is in the USA, but the conservative (right
| wing) government in England is handling it rather differently
| from the SNP /Green (left wing) government in Scotland.
| azalemeth wrote:
| This is very true. I personally find it _mad_ that the UK is
| the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western
| europe, with ~30k new cases /day. Long covid is a real,
| debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the
| young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a
| long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those
| individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost
| of this, from an economic point of view alone, surely _this is
| mad!_ -- it 's very much _not_ in the national interest.
|
| I'd therefore naively think that the integrated burden would be
| greater than the short, sharp dip that comes with more
| conservative measures -- but this government is rolling ahead
| full-steam with pretending that the disease isn't there and
| telling us all to "get on with our lives". That makes me feel
| deeply, deeply unhappy. One in ~70 people nationally have covid
| at the moment. Nightclubs, etc, typically contain far more than
| 70 people!
| MatteoFrigo wrote:
| You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the
| latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.
| gov.uk/government/uploads/..., it is not clear whether
| pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any
| way that makes you happy.
|
| For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors
| has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous
| infection. This number is almost 100% for older people. Maybe
| blood donors are not representative of the population, but if
| they are, it's not obvious that the extra 3% buys you
| anything, even if you could capture it.
|
| For some age groups (Table 4), the vaccinated are more likely
| to be infected than the unvaccinated. I am sure there are
| good reasons for this, e.g. people more at risk may be more
| likely to be vaccinated, but whatever the reason is, the
| vaccine does not seem to be powerful enough to compensate for
| the extra risk.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Blood donors are going to be underrepresentative of people
| with a fear of needles, people who don't trust the medical
| system, and be overrepresentative of selfless people.
|
| I suspect an extremely strong correlation between giving
| blood and being vaccinated.
| mcny wrote:
| I agree that there must be a strong correlation.
|
| I had a classmate who was horrified to learn I checked
| the organ donor box in my driver's license. Their parents
| told them if you check that box, the medical staff will
| be more likely to let you die so they can reuse your
| parts. I did't have any authoritative answer but the
| point is there are people out there with fears that sound
| rational but are completely in the realm of conspiracy
| theory.
| shkkmo wrote:
| In the US there are issues with the organ donation
| checkbox. I am fine with organs going to save the lives
| of people on waiting lists. I am less fine with my
| tissues veying harvested by corrupt "non-profits" that
| re-sell my bits in commodity markets while undermining
| the ethics of medical examiners and coroners. I wish
| there was a way to do one and not the other.
| rdtwo wrote:
| This is the reason for me too. Someone is making a
| handsome profit off my body parts and that's not cool
| rdtwo wrote:
| I checked no for the same reason. Also I don't want
| corporations to profit off my body parts. It would be
| different if they shared the money with my family or they
| at least got to choose who got them.
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| But then your organs just go to waste, rather than be
| used to save lives.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah it's true but I'd rather not enrich a bunch of
| middle men. I think the system is unfair and I don't want
| to contribute
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > conspiracy theory
|
| We don't call them that anymore. The new term is "spoiler
| alert"
| toyg wrote:
| _> fears that sound rational but are completely in the
| realm of conspiracy theory._
|
| Sadly these fears in the UK are well-founded:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Hey_organs_scandal
|
| * https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-
| news/missing...
|
| There were quite a few other similar scandals,
| particularly in England. The medical profession in this
| country, for a very long time, has had a remarkable
| contempt for the lives of people, probably steeped in the
| classism and elitism traditionally entrenched in
| university education in Britain. This might be different
| today (Alder Hey, in particular, triggered new
| legislation about organ handling in 2004), but it's hard
| to shake off such a history.
|
| I used to carry a organ-donor card and I'm probably still
| on some register somewhere, but over the last decade I've
| kinda soured on the idea. As a clear outsider and a bit
| of a loner, living in the downtrodden North of England,
| there would likely be nobody who would oppose an over-
| eager doctor from pulling the plug on me without even
| trying to help first, just so that a few waiting lists
| can be shortened and he can look good with his boss.
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| Neither of those are about organ donation.
|
| If you think that doctors aren't likely to do their level
| best to save your life and to act in your best interests,
| you surely have larger problems that you, being braindead
| at the time, having your organs potentially used to save
| the lives of others?
| toyg wrote:
| They are about organ misuse, which these days would
| likely include donations (less common at the time).
|
| _> you surely have larger problems_
|
| Maybe, but that's one more incentive, and not a small one
| either. Even the definition of "braindead" is somewhat
| controversial in many circumstances, nowadays, with
| doctors having the power to make some pretty radical
| choices - occasionally even against the explicit wishes
| of patient and family.
| rjsw wrote:
| Organ donation is now opt-out in the UK.
| toyg wrote:
| ah wow, thanks, i see - from last year. Opt-out here:
| https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-
| decision/do-n...
| pasabagi wrote:
| To be honest, even if that was official policy, I would
| totally tick that box. You're much better off avoiding
| the kind of extreme intervention to prolong life that
| makes scrapping your corpse for parts seem like a good
| idea to a doctor.
| new_guy wrote:
| If you're not able to refute their statement why would
| you dismiss it as a 'conspiracy theory'?
|
| In fact your classmate is correct, you also need to be
| 'alive' for your organs to be harvested, there's an
| entire ongoing field of debate in the medical community
| about the ethics of this, which a quick peruse of the
| literature will get you upto speed on.
| bserge wrote:
| Hmmm, how would they deal with a card that says both "Do
| Not Resuscitate" and "Organ Donor"?
| Bombthecat wrote:
| And, well, taking care of yourself.
|
| Distancing, not going to parties etc etc
| quotemstr wrote:
| > pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in
| any way that makes you happy.
|
| Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland
| (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that
| COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving
| the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold
| for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning
| the public health case for mandatory universal vaccination.
| I wish more people would think critically about this issue
| instead of adopting an aggressive attitude of enforced
| conformity to an orthodoxy that doesn't appear to have all
| its facts lined up.
|
| Looking objectively at experiences of countries around the
| world, one is forced to conclude that in the case of COVID,
| with the non-sterilizing vaccines currently available,
| vaccine passports are neither sufficient nor necessary for
| safeguarding public health and present serious challenges
| to privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
| dia80 wrote:
| Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal
| burden of infection. While I agree these measures are
| potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no
| benefit.
| kuraudo wrote:
| Well said, but I think the problem we're fighting is that
| people don't view these as vaccines so much as preventive
| treatment now. The Israel, Malta, and Iceland cases with
| very high vaccination rates and growing number of
| hospitalizations means we need to acknowledge that these
| things don't confer immunity, but that their benefit is
| still tangible and real in that it confers better
| outcomes to those that do contract the disease.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers
| better outcomes to those that do contract the disease
|
| The thing is that a treatment having real and tangible
| benefits is not an adequate justification for the state
| imposing that treatment by force.
|
| And yes, laws requiring vaccine passports for
| participation in public life are a use of state force. If
| the police stop you doing something, that means the state
| is using force to stop you doing that thing. If the state
| mandates that businesses require papers under the threat
| of fines or losing their business license, that's also an
| application of force on the part of the state.
|
| Informed consent has been the bedrock of medical ethics
| for the past 70 years and it would be unwise to throw
| away this principle just to impose a preventative
| treatment that might be mildly good for people.
|
| People are right to point out that the push for vaccine
| passports --- because the vaccines are merely
| preventative individual therapies --- is a gravely
| concerning break with nearly a century of tradition and
| law. In general, we don't mandate things merely because
| they're good for people, and it would be extremely
| dangerous to start doing that in general.
|
| Look: elsewhere, people have suggested that I'm claiming
| that because the vaccines can't stop the spread, they
| have no benefit. That's not true. They do seem
| beneficial. Lots of things are beneficial. Vitamin D
| deficiency, for example, is common and vitamin D
| supplementation would benefit most people. Do we require
| that people present evidence of vitamin D supplementation
| to eat at restaurants? No, of course not! That's an
| individual medical decision.
|
| The whole point of mandating traditional vaccines is that
| eradicating a disease has huge positive externalities,
| ones large enough to justify public health measures ---
| like vaccine requirements for admission into schools ---
| that would ordinarily fail on civil liberties grounds.
| COVID vaccines simply do not have the same large positive
| externalities. Yes, they might be good for _you_ , but
| _this fact alone_ does not justify coercive state action.
|
| COVID vaccines are not like the vaccines that have been
| mandated for a long time in public schools and at border
| crossings. COVID vaccines are non-sterilizing. The
| previous vaccines were sterilizing. These are two
| completely different categories of medical tools, and
| pointing out that we've done thing X with previous
| vaccines is _not_ an argument that we should do thing X
| with respect to COVID vaccines.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > the state imposing that treatment by force.
|
| Do you have examples of the use of force?
|
| > we don't mandate things merely because they're good for
| people
|
| Vaccinations were already mandated for all sorts of
| things, from crossing borders to attending schools.
| angelzen wrote:
| Very true. Vaccines have helped in great measure. OTOH,
| there are other forces at play. The very existence of
| covid waves that come and recede much faster than the
| increase in the vaccination rate should be an indication
| that vaccines, while very helpful, are _not_ the end all
| of covid pushback mechanisms. For example in US delta is
| receding after a couple months of mayhem. R is estimated
| <1 for most of the states, see https://covidestim.org.
|
| There is a point after which the effect of human measures
| becomes marginal. If anything because most people would
| have been already exposed to covid, with or without
| vaccines. I can't say whether we've passed that point or
| not, but OTOH the draconians have not made their case
| either. What concrete benefit do people expect from an
| additional 10% of the population being forced to
| vaccinate?
|
| Long term there are concerns of vaccine escape. Pfizer
| CEO raised them recently, it's not just the 5G
| conspiracists. A new strain emerges for which vaccines
| aren't that helpful against severe complications. Some
| people, myself included (I am vaccinated thank you very
| much) are concerned that creating a population with
| immune monoculture is likely to result in strains
| bypassing the monoculture. The nightmare scenario is the
| emergence of a strain for which the vaccines are a net
| negative. Hopefully nothing terrible happens. But we
| don't know. Nobody knows. Perhaps we should not be
| placing all our eggs in the same basket, e.g. not (force)
| vaccinate everyone against the exact same protein.
| pbourke wrote:
| > What concrete benefit do people expect from an
| additional 10% of the population being forced to
| vaccinate?
|
| An intact hospital / critical care system.
| ghoward wrote:
| > An intact hospital / critical care system.
|
| Given that there are many nurses protesting vaccine
| mandates, it could be that putting such mandates in place
| will lead to a lot of them quitting, which could make the
| hospital system _less_ "intact" and resilient.
| rdtwo wrote:
| The system is failing under the weight of its own
| policies.
|
| Underpaying and understaffing nurses Failing to provide
| ppe And a whole slew of covid related policies that deny
| folks "non critical " care like cancer treatment and
| surgery. I mean my friends couldn't even get in to see
| their pcp for 2 weeks for an illness that presented with
| fever, finally gave up and hit the er. Vaccines are nice
| but they won't fix this
| vixen99 wrote:
| You're right to insist on looking at cost _and_ benefit.
| Vaccines have indeed saved lives.
|
| Problem is that the emergency authorization means that we
| don't yet know what the cost is aside from the adverse
| reactions. The latter are described as 'rare' by
| journalists who prefer that term to quoting freely
| available data which changes week by week as in the case
| of boys who we now know suffer x6 risk of myocarditis
| than the same risk if they contract Covid. Is there a
| further risk down the road? A number of peer-reviewed
| papers have pointed out that this cannot be ruled out.
| When the papers dutifully write 'very unlikely' we know
| we're looking at a lottery with unknown odds.
| eynsham wrote:
| In the UK since we have barely any hospital beds I can
| see a strong case for universal vaccination to avoid
| inundating hospitals. One could also simply deprioritise
| the unvaccinated (though the privacy problem would
| arise.) The only politically palatable alternative has
| been lockdowns it seems.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| How do you distinguish between the symptoms of "long covid"
| from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There
| have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume
| confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate
| according to John's Hopkins) so if "long covid" is so real,
| where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there
| should be at least ten million sufferers.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad
| flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and
| weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for
| weeks and months.
|
| I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but
| this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect
| as well as the after effects of the inhuman living
| conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social
| isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of
| sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun
| entertainment options), etc.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| The official symptoms list of Long Covid, according to
| Mayo Clinic, includes "depression" and "headache and
| muscle pain" and "confusion." This is lockdown-driven
| depression. If the virus had lingering physical effects,
| there would be tens of millions of sufferers seeking
| treatment, and there arent.
| hcykb wrote:
| So don't go out yourself, but don't tell others what they can
| do.
| Proven wrote:
| You have the right to not go to nightclubs, or get your 3rd
| shot and double-mask before you do, if you like.
|
| What exactly are you mad at? That the government won't send
| its goons to weld your doors?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > short, sharp dip
|
| Short? It's been a year and a half with no end in sight.
| paul_f wrote:
| I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID.
| It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely.
| People need to make their own decisions on how to protect
| themselves and get on with their lives.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing
| and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new
| normal?
| anthomtb wrote:
| If only there were some far less costly preventative
| measures that could be taken to limit COVID
| hospitalizations instead of building more ICU capacity...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Y'all had 1.6 years to do this. And no, the present ICU
| loads are not gonna be "the new normal".
|
| Covid is here forever. We knew this way, way back in
| March of 2020. Only now are people finally getting the
| message. Life is short. We cannot play this game anymore.
| The time to go back to actual, 2019 pre pandemic normal
| is today.
| drewrv wrote:
| I take your argument as "covid will be around forever so
| we should act like it doesn't exist" which is nonsensical
| to me. I'm not sure I can come up with a more charitable
| interpretation: sometimes things change and societies
| need to adapt.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| There is nothing unique or special about covid that
| requires society to adapt to some dystopian "new normal".
| There is nothing but fear that stops society from
| returning back to what life was like in 2019. Many places
| are completely over this already.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| why not? it seems absurd to think that at no point in the
| future will there be infectious endemic diseases.
|
| hospital infrastructure hardly seems like the wrong thing
| to overbuild.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We already spend a lot on healthcare as it is, more so
| here in the USA than in countries with universal
| healthcare. Should we go from spending 17.7% of our GDP
| to 30%? Just because some people aren't interested
| getting a vaccine?
| pessimizer wrote:
| The USA doesn't spend the amount it does on healthcare
| out of necessity, it does it because of graft. If we're
| willing to spend twice as much as everyone else for no
| reason, why not four times as much?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| So? If healthcare needs rise, what is to assume that the
| graft won't rise with it? The same people against
| vaccines are also against universal healthcare (at least
| in the states), so these problems will just keep being
| compounded.
| dia80 wrote:
| ICU load is now much lower for a given level of cases and
| barring new variants it will likely decrease further with
| boaster shots and more people recovered from infection
| and possible new therapeutics. Moderately increasing ICU
| capacity would be expensive but not vastly so. See
| "people in ventilator beds" in the link
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
| pessimizer wrote:
| > barring new variants
|
| I didn't know this was an option. How do we go about
| doing it?
| bidirectional wrote:
| That's not what barring means. The statement is
| contingent on there not being new variants.
| toyg wrote:
| Which is, let's face it, extremely unlikely - and made
| even more so by the "laissez-faire" attitude.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Hell yeah we should have done it 20 years ago but now is
| the second best time.
| eynsham wrote:
| I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets-- -
| restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we
| could put up with temporarily while waiting for something
| (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with
| temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g.
| March lockdown.)
|
| Now the question is what further restrictions now would do.
|
| I think there are some things we should definitely encourage
| as not very intrusive (especially when it's encouragement not
| law)--e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks
| in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c.
|
| I don't think that we're really waiting for anything though.
| We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines.
| Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we
| should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we'd
| be closer to herd immunity.)
|
| Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated.
| This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn't
| necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse.
|
| So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the
| inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in
| contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous
| breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we
| vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would
| be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst
| vaccinating those aged 12-15 though--I suspect vaccination
| would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I
| don't see why we don't just administer the first dose to them
| anyway--even if the second is too risky the first is much
| safer.)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The country has one of the highest vaccination levels in the
| world also.
| shucksley wrote:
| the CDC recognizes long covid,
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-
| effects/..., but not necessarily as a result of mild
| infections.
|
| it is also worth noting that the CDC, so far, does not
| recognize vaccine-induced long haul syndrome as a real
| syndrome.
|
| edit: re vaccinating the young, you need to pay special attn
| to the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which can
| potentially outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. vaccine
| advocates already made this mistake of ignoring vaccine risks
| with young women / GBS previously in the context of another
| vaccine and it would be a tragedy to needlessly maim the
| young with these new innovative vaccines.
|
| edit: dear creeps who are downvoting me without a reason,
| please take note of another HN submission at
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-
| at-r...
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The purchase (and maybe rollout?) of the vaccines was done at
| the nation level rather than individual country.
| lampington wrote:
| Purchase was national, rollout per-country (though they did
| all do it pretty much the same way, with broadly similar
| results)
| NomeChomsky wrote:
| Good. There is no evidence to support them. You can still
| transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated. They do not slow
| spread only hospitalisation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's wrong. The vaccine is moderately effective at preventing
| the spread of early variants. It's not very effective at
| preventing the spread of Delta from an infected person, but
| it's quite effective (but far from perfect) at preventing
| people from getting infected in the first place, thus overall
| significantly slowing spread .
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1
| quotemstr wrote:
| Vaccine passport proponents routinely cite "slowing [the]
| spread" as a reason to impose vaccination requirements
| despite discoveries earlier this year showing that vaccinated
| individuals can still spread the disease. In light of these
| discoveries, vaccine passports and other coercive measures
| don't make any dense.
|
| Delta has an R value of 8. That makes it one of the most
| infectious diseases we know about. Future variants are likely
| to be even more contagious. (That's the evolutionary pattern
| we see in other diseases.) Even if universal vaccination were
| to somewhat reduce the R value, the R value would remain
| above the critical threshold value of 1.0 regardless ---
| because R starts out so high naturally. We know R is above
| one post-vaccination because highly-vaccinated places like
| Iceland and Gibraltar see COVID waves despite near-universal
| vaccination. If R is above one, everyone will get the virus
| sooner or later anyway no matter what, and we are not
| operating in the regime in which universal vaccination has
| the kind of large positive externalities that might justify a
| universal vaccination program for _other_ diseases (e.g.
| measles).
|
| It's _only_ large positive externalities that can justify
| state intervention in individual health. (The 1905 SCOTUS
| case that people have been citing discusses the issue in
| detail.) Current COVID vaccines, due to the R-value threshold
| effect, don 't have the large positive externalities attached
| to previous vaccines.
|
| As an analogy: a leather jacket might reduce a bullet's
| velocity to some extent, but that bullet will still penetrate
| and kill you. Nothing short of body armor that can actually
| _stop_ the bullet is effective. Likewise, unless the vaccine
| can reduce R below 1 --- and no current COVID vaccine can do
| that --- universal vaccination cannot stop the spread of the
| disease.
|
| The vaccines may be beneficial, but being beneficial, by
| itself, doesn't present a case for coercive state action. If
| it did, we'd probably all eat healthier and exercise more ---
| and we'd be less free as a people.
|
| There are real social and economic costs to creating a
| "papers, please!" culture and setting a precedent for state
| intervention in individual medical choices. As it stands, the
| low risk posed by COVID and the insufficiency of current
| vaccines can't the coercive state programs being proposed
| around the world.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Delta has an R value of 8
|
| no it doesn't.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Hey former coworker, it's been a while. What you're saying
| isn't quite correct: there are large positive externalities
| to reducing disease severity, disease spread, and the risk
| of long COVID, all of which vaccines help with. This isn't
| a binary between eradicating the disease and giving up
| completely.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Delta has an R value of 6 to 7.
|
| Measles has a much higher R value of 12 to 18, yet the
| vaccination is highly successful.
|
| You're promoting disinformation.
| quotemstr wrote:
| The vaccine for measles is sterilizing. The vaccines for
| COVID are not. They're two completely separate classes of
| intervention. I'm not the one spreading disinformation
| here.
|
| Just because substance A and substance B are both called
| "vaccines" doesn't mean that A and B have comparable
| effects and can be treated the same way.
|
| It is simply not medically possible for COVID vaccination
| to stop the spread of COVID. We have to accept that and
| move on with our lives.
|
| The government is not justified in mandating any medical
| treatment merely because that treatment is good for you.
| The vaccines seem beneficial, yes. This fact alone does
| not justify the use of state power. We have a 70-year-old
| taboo against involuntary medical treatment for a very
| good reason. The weak threat of COVID combined with the
| insufficiency of our vaccines suggests that we don't have
| a compelling case for breaking this taboo.
|
| The vaccines may be beneficial on an individual level but
| I do not see a case for mandates.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It's quite possible that if measles were introduced to
| our global population now it would be exactly the same:
| has so much spread that it has the chance to mutate to
| evade the immune system next time around.
|
| If 99% of people were vaccinated then covid wouldn't have
| populations in which to mutate.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Sterilizing immunity is a myth.
|
| MMR is definitely not a 100% guarantee of immunity; and
| the vaccine, despite what you've been lead to believe, is
| not a lifetime guarantee.
|
| Herd immunity is what makes vaccines work so well. You
| want freedom? Get the shot so that one year or two from
| now, we can get on with our lives without more
| legislation being put into place.
|
| Because the mandates will be happening if people keep
| ignoring the "your right to swing your fist ends where my
| nose begins" principle.
| andybak wrote:
| It's hard to unpick your argument but it seems that you say
| in a couple of places something similar to "eradication
| isn't possible therefore reduction has no benefit".
|
| For example:
|
| "Vaccine passport proponents routinely cite "slowing [the]
| spread" as a reason to impose vaccination requirements
|
| Yep.
|
| > despite discoveries earlier this year showing that
| vaccinated individuals can still spread the disease.
|
| If you'd said "can still spread the disease as much as
| unvaccinated" then this would have made sense. From my
| understanding the jury is still out on this question with
| the consensus being "the vaccinated spread it less but
| we're not sure how much less".
|
| > Likewise, unless the vaccine can reduce R below 1[...]
| universal vaccination cannot stop the spread of the
| disease.
|
| Even if we accept this part (and I'm not sure I do) then
| you again seem to be conflating "can't stop it entirely"
| with "has no benefit"
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Meanwhile hospitals fill with the unvaccinated...
| dgellow wrote:
| Hospitalisation is what actually matters
| nilkn wrote:
| While this sub may be a bit distasteful for some, I recommend
| spending some time reading through the countless examples
| documented there of folks who refused the vaccine based on this
| kind of thinking and then ended up dying often very unpleasant
| deaths while unable to breathe for days or weeks:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
|
| This sub has seen extremely rapid growth, which is perhaps one
| of the most tragic "success" stories of a subreddit ever.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| Rapid growth means absolutely nothing on Reddit when it's
| possibly the most the most astro-turfed platform on the
| internet. I came across a thread from that subreddit and it
| resembled a grotesque celebration that a 4-year old had died
| due to an anti-vax family member.
| nilkn wrote:
| The sub's content is based on actual examples of vocally
| unvaccinated people dying. Unfortunately, there has been an
| endless supply of new content. That's not the result of
| astroturfing. It's the result of large numbers of people
| refusing the vaccine and ending up in the hospital for
| weeks, often dying.
|
| Frankly, the sub has probably saved lives by convincing
| some folks to go get vaccinated. My own parents refused to
| get vaccinated until my dad's unvaccinated cousin got COVID
| and was dead within a week.
|
| I can't find the example you're referring to. Feel free to
| link to it.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated.
| They do not slow spread
|
| That's not correct.
|
| I can win the lottery, but I probably won't. Don't think of it
| as black or white, binary, can/can't. Unless you talk about the
| probability of getting and transmitting COVID, and how
| vaccination reduces these, you will come to false conclusions
| like that.
| sofixa wrote:
| There is, the number of vaccinations in France jumped
| remarkably after vaccine passports were made mandatory for
| cinemas, theatres, restaurants, etc. Considering that's the
| main goal of such policies, it seems like a success.
|
| And yes, the main point is to limit hospitalisations, because
| they're the main limiting factor ( at least in France, but
| probably in most other developed countries as well).
| gruez wrote:
| >Considering that's the main goal of such policies, it seems
| like a success.
|
| The ends justifies the means right?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In a democracy there is a way
| to make your point for every particular case in question:
| voting. Or demonstrations, which were held against Covid
| measures basically since the first wave all across
| democratic nations.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The same brand of 'successes' can be achieved by banning
| alcohol, tobacco, fast food or whatever vice you want.
| sofixa wrote:
| Which is why, in absolutely the same vein, there are
| regulations to incite people to consume less of those
| things - e.g. little branding, serious warnings and graphic
| pictures of the long term damage on tobacco packaging; a
| ban on advertisement for tobacco products; serious warnings
| and limitations on the advertisements for alcohol products;
| warnings/good advice on food-related advertisements, etc.
| etc.
|
| And all of those, including the vaccination passports, work
| and achieve their goals.
| ghoward wrote:
| Why do we accept mere warnings and labels on everything
| else, but vaccines are supposed to be mandated? That's a
| double standard and hypocritical. Let governments keep
| advertising and let people make their own decisions.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Those who are downvoting this are being blatantly
| disingenuous. Tobacco alone kills over 480,000 people per
| year in the US. There is a very strong case for banning it
| if your fundamental concern is the health of others and the
| upkeep of the health system.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/hea
| l...
|
| Alcohol kills another 95,000 per year in the US
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-
| death...
|
| Obesity related deaths are around 300,000 per year.
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192032
|
| No one can honestly look at these figures and come away
| with with the opinion that we need to protect the
| unvaccinated from themselves through mandates while turning
| a blind eye to these other self inflicted diseases. Argue
| for or against limiting personal choice to preserve health
| but be prepared to defend your position on all of these
| fronts.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Let's start with the simplest: tobacco. There is no way
| to make it disappear, you can only make it illegal. Our
| experiments with making other addictive drugs illegal had
| been a complete failure, I doubt you could even find
| convincing research that shows that making them illegal
| has led to less deaths due to them. Whereas vaccine
| passports appear to actually work. That is a major
| difference.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I think it's still too early to draw conclusions about
| how effective vaccine passports are. There is still a
| significant proportion of people not accepting them,
| there is also another group who have been vaccinated but
| are now protesting the use of vaccine passports, and with
| the requirement of a third shot and the potential
| requirement for a fourth or continuing boosters we cannot
| know how the sizes of those groups will change. If
| vaccine passports become permanent my money is on it
| following a similar progression as prohibition or the war
| on drugs, it will eventually become a law that everyone
| flaunts. The human cost will depend on how much violence
| the state is willing to pursue enforcing laws that no one
| wants. If history is a reliable measure it will be
| horrific, biased, and long lasting.
| kuraudo wrote:
| I take issue with this comparison: just because the prior
| 'experiments' have been failures does not mean that
| future efforts which utilize entirely different methods
| will be. The war on drugs was already highly criticized
| for its ineffectiveness on several accounts: there is
| definitely a way to eradicate the problem, but those were
| not it and even people at the time knew it.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| What methods would you suggest? My parent said "ban
| tobacco".
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| To be clear I was not advocating banning all of those
| things, I was saying that mandating vaccines is as
| counterproductive as trying to revive prohibition or
| enforce weight loss.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm not sure if I would consider the vice of drinking
| alcohol quite the same as the vice of infecting and
| potentially killing other people.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think alcohol might be even more dangerous to others
| than being unvaccinated. Violent drug users are well
| known ending up in fights and even causing death or
| permanent damage when they attack randomly at others
| during night. Or even kill them sometimes. So I think we
| should apply the new standard to it and ban it totally.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| And we have laws to hold people accountable when under
| the influence, they do something bad and affect someone
| else.
|
| That's a fantastic idea: Start holding the unvaccinated
| criminally responsible, if they're the likely point of
| infection for someone else.
|
| Thanks for the idea.
| angelzen wrote:
| Vaccinated people also spread covid. The #1 population-
| level defense against infection disease is self-isolation
| on symptoms onset. It is possible that vaccinated people
| spread covid more aggressively than unvaccinated, because
| the vaccines dull the symptoms to a point where they
| don't trigger the 'stay at home' signal anymore.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| That's like saying sober drivers can cause accidents.
|
| It's the likelihood, and willful the personal choice that
| leads to a higher of incident which society decides
| whether or not to tolerate.
| ghoward wrote:
| We also hold sober drivers accountable when they cause
| accidents. Why not vaccinated people when they spread the
| virus?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Only when they do something reckless, like look at their
| cellphones or sleep on rhe wheel. Or speed or blow a red
| light.
|
| Otherwise it's civil penalties at most
| ghoward wrote:
| So staying unvaccinated counts as reckless now?
| angelzen wrote:
| Those that admit they are drunk and take an Uber instead
| of driving do not cause accidents. It's the 'Oh, it's
| just a couple of beers (narrator voice: and two vodka
| shots, and three martinis.)' that choose to drive while
| impaired that cause most of the accidents.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Yes, because they chose not to drive while drunk. If the
| uber driver kills someone while driving, that's not on
| the person who hailed the uber.
|
| Someone who infects another after getting vaccinated
| falls into the same bucket.
|
| They did their due diligence by being responsible. The
| infector in that case isn't at fault.
|
| In your analogy, the vaccine is the taxi driver.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why not apply that to also vaccinated people?
| mcny wrote:
| You will go to jail for repeatedly driving drunk even if
| you never have an accident.
|
| Do you also want prison time for unvaccinated people who
| repeatedly go out in public? I support you if you do.
| Ekaros wrote:
| No, but clearly many people do.
|
| I don't think we should make distinction if person
| spreading virus was vaccinated or not if we start to
| punish for that. That should not affect the punishment or
| how guilty person is. I see absolutely no reason why
| being vaccinated should protect you from criminal charges
| in case we start to charge for spreading covid. The
| person is as guilty without or with vaccine. They should
| have gone be tested or taken actions to not spread it.
| mcny wrote:
| Thank you for your reply. My question was because I got a
| ticket for having an open container in the back seat of
| the car while I was stranded on the side of the road.
|
| They did the breathalyzer several times on me, zero each
| time. I didn't have a drop to drink. I didn't cause an
| accident. I was not driving recklessly. In fact, I was
| stopped on the shoulder.
|
| If I have to pay almost five hundred dollars in fines and
| court fees even though I didn't do anything other than
| drive a friend's car home, I don't see why people who
| refuse to take the vaccine for no reason shouldn't have
| to pay even if we don't have any proven incidence they
| spread the disease.
|
| Point is, our legal system is very inconsistent and you
| can't scare me with the slippery slope like today covid
| vaccine and tomorrow I am in legal trouble for a second
| serving of fries.
| [deleted]
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If vaccinated people can spread the virus, which they
| can, going to a bar they can also infect and 'kill'
| people. So yes, it's pretty much the same.
| dgellow wrote:
| You're clearly trolling here.
|
| The virus is an invisible agent spreading exponentially
| throughout society, putting the health system under a
| massive stress. That's of course not what smoking,
| drinking, or over-eating is about...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No, these only put the health system under stress that we
| are used to. Remember that story about that guy in
| Mississippi who had trouble finding an ICU bed? If you
| look at the real data it turns out the vast majority of
| these beds are not in use by people with covid, but by
| people with other problems, like heart diseases. You
| know, the problems caused by that lifestyle that's a-ok
| because we're used to the problems it causes.
| ceesharp wrote:
| The difference is that in a very short period of time,
| numerous people can end up with the virus. The diseases
| you listed are distributed over the year. You don't see
| thousands of people getting a heart attack in a week in
| the same area. COVID puts the healthcare system at risk
| because it is a sudden surge of cases which ends up being
| overwhelming.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| What is the difference with 'we're used to it'? The
| things you describe also apply to the flu, yet no one
| would consider requiring vaccination cards for that. It
| just turns out there already are beds for people that get
| that because we are used to it.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Every day 28 people die in the US from drunk driving
| crashes
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
|
| 261 per day from excessive alcohol use
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-
| death...
|
| Alcohol consumption directly affects people who do not
| consume it in a multitude of ways from the monetary cost
| of increased demand on the health care system, police,
| prisons and damage to public property to the emotional
| and psychological burden of interacting with the
| inebriated or dependent to the physical impact of abuse
| and accidents caused by intoxication.
| mcny wrote:
| I for one fully support a complete ban on humans manually
| operating motor vehicles as soon as we can get to self
| driving cars.
|
| A scarier argument that I saw yesterday was something
| called a welfare check or something in which a police
| officer and a jail doctor can just declare you something
| like insane and you no longer have any medical autonomy.
|
| You don't have to reach for hypotheticals about how we
| will ban people from eating a second cookie or a full
| size candy bar. This is the law we have today. People
| with mental health issues apparently have effectively no
| rights. Imagine making the wrong people angry and you end
| up drugged up in a strait jacket... Or if you want to go
| conspiracy theorist, a specific set of photos appears in
| your iCloud account and you face prison time where you
| are very likely to face abuse from the guards and other
| prisoners alike. This is also the reality we already
| have, no need to reach for hypotheticals.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Drunk driving is very illegal. If we could identify
| unvaccinated people who infected others and punish that
| with jail time, would you be happy about that?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Would the people who were infected even want to press
| charges? Assuming they were vaccinated, they would
| probably have an extremely mild case, if they were
| unvaccinated then they would essentially be arguing a
| case against themselves.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Would you also jail the folks ho _were_ vaccinated but
| still infected others?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| No. I don't even have a strong opinion about punishing
| people for infecting others through negligence. But I
| think it is worth bringing up whenever anti-vaxxers bring
| up alcohol and drunk driving.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| To be clear, I am not opposed to vaccines. I think the
| current vaccine is the best option for people at high
| risk of negative outcomes due to COVID. What I am opposed
| to is coercion by the state on something that is a
| personal choice. Calling this argument "antivaxx" is
| another example of the disingenuous way people are
| behaving. It's a smear campaign that is being parroted
| without any critical thought.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Cool. But the argument "we let people drink alcohol
| despite harm caused to others" is a bad one.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated.
| They do not slow spread only hospitalisation.
|
| With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert: that's wrong. The
| vaccines are extremely efficacious in preventing
| hospitalisations and deaths, and are moderately efficacious in
| reducing transmission.
| kuraudo wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the case: the iceland, malta, and israel
| results (very highly vaccinated population) are worrying in
| the extreme; take a look and see if you agree that
| transmission might actually be worse. As to why that is,
| perhaps because they think they're not a spreader? Are we
| actually typhoid mary/joe when we go out thinking that we're
| not putting people at risk? I think this means wearing masks
| for the entire population is a good idea.
|
| Either way, everyone should get the vaccine for the health
| benefit when they actually acquire covid (when not if). The
| better outcomes are without question, but what is
| questionable is the rate of spread, especially of delta and
| the new... is it called lambda(?) variant.
|
| We need to be honest about this: the benefit of the vaccine
| is clear due to the milder outcomes across even low risk
| groups. That itself makes it worth it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And if the vaccine prevents hospitalization and death Covid
| will become just like any other virus making turns in our
| societies. _IF_ enough people are vaccinated, that is. if it
| wasn 't for the people unable to be vaccinated, kids under 12
| for now, medical conditions and so on, I'd say get rd of
| restrictions. If it was only the unvaccinated that are at
| serious risk, well, it was their decision and I don't really
| care. they are still putting others at risk, and that is
| simply not acceptable.
| _Microft wrote:
| Dr. Drosten [0], maybe Germany's most well known virologist at
| the moment, recently commented on rules to only allow
| vaccinated/recovered (but not unvaccinated but tested) people
| into restaurants and venues [1]. The reasoning behind that is a
| lot different than you would expect. It is not because
| unvaccinated would pose a threat to others but because they are
| at risk of catching the disease from a vaccinated, infected but
| asymptomatic guest (you would only find these if everyone would
| be tested).
|
| [0] He's co-discoverer of SARS-Cov _1_ and co-developed the
| first workflow for the realtime PCR test that was approved for
| SARS-Cov2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten
| (en), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten (de)
|
| [1] Here is a transcript of the interview that he made these
| comments in, in german language. I linked directly to the page
| that it is on:
| https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript324.pdf#page...
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| They could ban elderly and overweight people and other such
| undesirables^Wvulnerable people from civil society too. For
| their own good.
| javagram wrote:
| Overweight and elderly is not something you can fix in an
| hour with a free vaccine shot. Don't you see the obvious
| difference?
| freeflight wrote:
| The shot doesn't work in an hour nor does it fix the
| actual problem.
|
| Nor is it really as simple as just trying to bully
| everybody into getting injected with vaccines that have
| been developed and pushed trough regulatory approval in
| record times.
|
| The last time something like that happened, during the
| 2009 H1N1 pandemic, it turned out the people skeptical of
| rushed vaccinations were actually the ones with the right
| idea.
|
| While many others ended up suffering for the rest of
| their life's for it, among them a whole lot of children.
| javagram wrote:
| I'm talking about the amount of time and effort one has
| to put in. Losing weight can take years even for a
| determined person, recommended weight loss speed is
| usually 1-2 lbs per week at most.
|
| To get vaccinated you have to just drop by the pharmacy
| during your grocery store run, wait about 15 minutes
| after the shot for observation, and it's complete. (If
| taking a 2 shot vaccine, repeat the same 30 minute task 4
| weeks later).
|
| Asking people to become non-obese before entering society
| is an entirely different level of effort. Asking people
| to become non-elderly is an impossibility at our current
| or near-future level of science.
|
| H1N1 was nowhere near as dangerous as COVID-19. And even
| in that case there's no reason to believe getting the flu
| vaccine that year was a bad idea. https://www.cdc.gov/vac
| cinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... " In 2018, a
| study team including CDC scientists analyzed and
| published vaccine safety data on adjuvanted pH1N1
| vaccines (arenaprix-AS03, Focetria-MF59, and Pandemrix-
| AS03) from 10 global study sites. Researchers did not
| detect any associations between the vaccines and
| narcolepsy."
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| So? It's for their own good. Don't you care about what is
| best for the undesirables?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| This is snarky but poses a real question. If we ban people
| from spaces or events due to their vulnerability to COVID
| then why do we not do the same for those vulnerable to
| other diseases? Flu is a good example for the young and
| elderly since it poses a significant risk. It would strain
| the argument but you could make a case for banning the
| obese from fast food restaurants based on this reasoning as
| well.
| javagram wrote:
| Because covid is 10-50x more deadly than the flu, it
| makes more sense to advocate for precautions against it.
|
| Just got my flu shot this week, but even for the young
| and healthy covid is more dangerous than the flu, except
| possibly in young children ages 0-12.
| [deleted]
| skytreader wrote:
| Don't forget what makes COVID19 so insidious: without
| testing, it takes time before an infected contagious
| person shows symptoms. By the time they decide to stay
| off public spaces, they have already potentially spread
| the virus.
|
| With the common flu, you know almost instantly so you
| stay home to recover.
|
| Fat people know their condition and it's their choice to
| eat fast food anyway. And obesity is also non contagious.
| charbonneau wrote:
| > Symptoms can begin about 2 days (but can range from 1
| to 4 days) after the virus enters the body. That means
| that you may be able to pass on the flu to someone else
| before you know you are sick, as well as while you are
| sick. Some people can be infected with the flu virus but
| have no symptoms. During this time, those people may
| still spread the virus to others.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm
| skytreader wrote:
| For comparison:
|
| > People with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms
| reported - ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness.
| Symptoms may appear _2-14 days_ after exposure to the
| virus. Anyone can have mild to severe symptoms.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-
| testing/s... (emphasis added)
| gruez wrote:
| > Don't forget what makes COVID19 so insidious: without
| testing, it takes time before an infected contagious
| person shows symptoms. By the time they decide to stay
| off public spaces, they have already potentially spread
| the virus.
|
| but AFAIK even vaccinated people can spread the virus?
| skytreader wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget that
| preventing spread through all these measures is all in
| service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public
| health infra.
|
| To put it another way, it doesn't matter if vaccinated
| people can still catch and spread the virus ( _any virus_
| , even) as long as this infection chain does not result
| to an unmanageable pipeline of people who might need
| intensive medical care. In this context, the _main
| benefit_ (but by no means only) of vaccines is the
| decreased hospitalization rate.
| gruez wrote:
| > As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget
| that preventing spread through all these measures is all
| in service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public
| health infra.
|
| If the ends justifies the means, what other public health
| interventions should we carry out, even in cases where
| there's no direct harm to society[1]? Heart disease is
| the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have
| blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people
| into being healthier?
|
| [1] ie. you getting infected and infecting other people,
| as opposed to the more tenuous link of you getting
| infected, having to go to the emergency room, causing the
| emergency room to go over capacity and causing someone to
| die because of lack of care
| skytreader wrote:
| > Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US.
| Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to
| pressure people into being healthier?
|
| Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the
| potential to strain medical resources in a matter of
| days?
|
| Again, these aren't interventions against social
| freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public
| service from being DDoSed, so to speak. The measures a
| matter of _hospitalization_. It's pointless to compare a
| "cause of death" metric to a "plain case count" metric.
| gruez wrote:
| >Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the
| potential to strain medical resources in a matter of
| days?
|
| How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still
| contagious?
|
| >Again, these aren't interventions against social
| freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public
| service from being DDoSed, so to speak.
|
| Just like banning encryption isn't against social
| freedoms, but rather an intervention to prevent baddies
| from winning?
| skytreader wrote:
| >> Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the
| potential to strain medical resources in a matter of
| days?
|
| > How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still
| contagious?
|
| Because while still contagious, they are not
| _exponentially_ contagious. It 's not like I left out
| that important qualifier in the statement you are
| replying to.
|
| Vaccinated people can spread in case of a breakthrough
| infection and infections are _less likely_ to occur in
| vaccinated individuals.
|
| > Just like banning encryption isn't against social
| freedoms...
|
| Way to go attacking a straw man, and not even a
| particularly clever one at that. What does encryption
| have anything to do with vaccination and vaccination
| passports?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Because while still contagious, they are not
| exponentially contagious.
|
| All contagion is exponential, but they have a much lower
| exponent.
| gruez wrote:
| >Because while still contagious, they are not
| exponentially contagious. It's not like I left out that
| important qualifier in the statement you are replying to.
|
| 1. source?
|
| 2. It really wasn't obvious because you failed to link
| "vaccinated" with "not exponentially contagious".
|
| >What does encryption have anything to do with
| vaccination and vaccination passports?
|
| In the previous comment you basically made the argument
| that the measures are justified because they're not
| "interventions against social freedoms, rather an
| intervention to prevent a public service from being
| DDoSed". I just took that argument to its logical
| conclusion. Law enforcement resources are stretched
| pretty thin, right? Why not give them a helping hand as
| well by allowing them to eavesdrop on everyone's
| communications? After all, it's not an intervention to
| decrease public privacy, it's an intervention to prevent
| law enforcement resources from being DDoSed.
| skytreader wrote:
| 1. For one, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/sci
| ence/science-br... -- the jury still seems out as to by
| how much exactly the spread is prevented, it seems to
| depend on the vaccine and social demographics of the
| population studied. But at least for vaccines approved
| for use in the US and EU, the reduction seems
| significant.
|
| 2. I mean, this whole discussion is rather about the
| merits of vaccinations no?
|
| > ... I just took that argument to its logical conclusion
| ...
|
| This is just dishonest and misleading chain of reasoning:
|
| - Law enforcement and public health are both public
| resources, yes, but of different nature and not
| comparable. I thought that's rather self-evident. Even
| assuming, for the sake of argument, that law enforcement
| is indeed stretched thin, aiding law enforcement takes on
| an entirely different form than aiding the public health
| sector.
|
| - Encryption is not analogous to vaccination passports at
| all. It's not even an apples to oranges comparison, more
| like, apples to cars.
|
| Please, do learn how metaphors work.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| The only people they would need to protect are other
| unvaccinated people who have made the choice to take
| whatever risk there is in going unvaccinated. The choice
| to not be vaccinated involves knowing that you may
| contact the virus from someone else and may become very
| ill or die. Attempting to protect someone by taking away
| their ability to make that choice is equivalent to
| removing the option to eat enough food to become obese.
| skytreader wrote:
| > Attempting to protect someone by taking away their
| ability to make that choice is equivalent to removing the
| option to eat enough food to become obese.
|
| We do that to obese people already. It's called a diet.
| Some of them even go farther than mere "prescriptions"
| but with psychological tricks to keep people on track.
| Also, really, comparing obesity to COVID19 is an apples
| to oranges thing. Obesity is not even viral.
|
| What you're missing is that in all these measures that
| seem so controversial (lockdowns, vaccination campaigns)
| preserving an individual's life/health _is secondary to
| the main goal, a means to an end_. The main goal is _to
| not overwhelm the public healthcare infra_.
|
| No one cares if you want to go to a concert when you're
| ill but when that illness has the potential to strain
| public health resources, then that's a different story
| entirely.
| smileypete wrote:
| _It is not because unvaccinated would pose a threat to others
| but because they are at risk of catching the disease from a
| vaccinated, infected but asymptomatic guest_
|
| Haven't read your link yet but I'd expect a double vaccinated
| 65 year old is still waaaaay more vulnerable than an
| unvaccinated 18 year old.
| [deleted]
| woopwoop wrote:
| Vaccine passports are less offensive than regular passports.
| Ekaros wrote:
| How come? So it's much more offensive for countries to control
| who enter them than what goes inside them?
| ByteJockey wrote:
| Some people don't like the idea of national borders (usually
| extreme libertarians and leftist-utopians).
| woopwoop wrote:
| Restricting people's freedom of movement based on their
| liability to spread dangerous diseases is much more
| reasonable than restricting their freedom of movement based
| on where they were born.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As they should be, considering that the vaccines do not stop
| people from getting infected and infecting others. Making sure
| there are only vaccinated people in a bar does not mean the
| people inside can't get infected so this measure does not help
| achieve that goal.
| jmull wrote:
| Thanks for the Covid misinformation, buddy! Thanks in part to
| your diligent work, many people will get sick and die! Give
| yourself a pay on the back! And whatever you do, suppress this:
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > For people who are vaccinated and still get infected (i.e.,
| "breakthrough infections"), there is a risk of transmission
| to others.
|
| Not sure why you'd want to suppress that truth. It's just a
| little vague on how big the chances are.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Nobody is suppressing anything. The vaccines help but not
| 100%. You're rounding everything down to "doesn't work".
| Would you say condoms "don't work" because they are not
| 100%?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| I would if they worked 42%.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-
| covid-19-vaccine-42-in...
|
| Which is just a random result for searching. I'm sure
| there other numbers to be found, but they are nowhere
| near 100%.
| jmull wrote:
| Of course the vaccination isn't a perfect shield -- not
| against covid infections nor transmission... who said it
| was? But wouldn't that be a pretty stupid bar to set?
|
| You said the vaccine does not prevent people from getting
| infected. That is not true. The popular vaccines are about
| 95% effective. Also, people who are not infected do not
| transmit the virus -- that is a rather effective limit on
| transmission.
|
| Apart from infections, the vaccine also reduces the
| severity of covid. The severity of covid-19 is the whole
| damn problem, BTW. If it wasn't making lots of people
| seriously sick we wouldn't be worrying about infections in
| the first place.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Of course! Now how is it logical to not allow person A,
| who has X*1.6 chance of infecting someone else, into a
| bar without a test, but do allow person B, who has X
| chance of infecting someone else? Is X chance not a
| problem, but X*1.6 is? And why is that? Just because the
| blessed action results in a chance of X?
|
| _edit_ by the way the magical number for how effective
| the popular vaccines are against getting infected and
| being able to infect others, is not 95%. It's 42% and
| dropping for the Pfizer vaccine.
| jmull wrote:
| Your 42% Pfizer number appears to come from a study that
| suggests we (1) use Moderna, which is 76% effective, and
| (2) get boosters, _not_ to not bother with the Vaccines.
| Also, it 's a single study, preprint, and not yet
| reviewed, so not that appropriate for setting public
| policy.
|
| It looks like your X*1.6 formula is made-up nonsense.
| elcomet wrote:
| It makes sense if vaccine reduces infection rate.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Clearly only true solution to stop spread is permanent
| lockdown. And ban bars, restaurants, events and any sort of
| gatherings forever. I believe all pro-vaccine people already
| agree that no sacrifice of freedoms is too big for greater
| good.
|
| After all, why wouldn't they support keeping the vulnerable
| safe? Cost is only small sacrifice in bodily autonomy and
| clearly most effective thing to do.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Well, of course it's mostly about sacrifices other people
| have to make. You know, 'I don't go to festivals so I don't
| mind if they're banned'. But 'it's inconvenient if my
| children are quarantined from school so that should be
| lenient'.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The benefits of society from in person education are so
| much higher than the benefit of music festivals that your
| comparison is absolutely ridiculous.
|
| A better comparison would be churches and bars.
| WorkLobster wrote:
| This is a ridiculous straw-man take and you know it. Please
| aim for helpful discussion instead of empty sarcasm.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I take that support of vaccination passports and mandatory
| vaccinations or limiting people without vaccinations is
| also not helpful discussion. But still that sort of support
| goes on...
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'd argue this is not a straw man, but a clear summary
| policy and a lot of public belief. The prevailing attitude
| is so poor that it can be humiliated this easily by even
| the slightest sarcasm.
|
| When passports do finally fail, it's going to shame a lot
| of people in managerialist roles who disinhibited their
| cruelty when they thought they were going to be able to
| shut the objects of their contempt out of society.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| I didn't have the vaccine for the greater good. I had it
| because, for me, the risk vs reward balance was tilted that
| way. I have high blood pressure and I'm borderline diabetic.
| Not much of a choice for me.
|
| Why would someone that is healthy risk ending up like that
| dead BBC presenter and leave their family behind for complete
| strangers?
|
| Who gives you(or anyone) the right to decide what risks they
| should take and that their lives are worth less than anyone
| elses?
|
| My mother is healthy even though she's almost 70 and she
| didn't have it. It's her choice. My wife didn't have it.It's
| her choice. Then again, she's in perfect health and 30 so for
| her the risks are next to none.
|
| Small sacrifice? How about lock down the "vulnerable" like
| me(or worse) then and not screw up everyone else?
| nilkn wrote:
| There are entire subreddits dedicated just to trying to
| keep up with stories of vocally unvaccinated people dying
| awful and scary deaths from COVID. These incidents are so
| common it's impossible to keep track of all of them -- 1k
| deaths a day in just the US, virtually all of which are
| unvaccinated.
|
| If what you're saying is true and the vaccine itself is
| even more dangerous, the internet should be overflowing
| with countlesss stories of thousands of vaccine-induced
| deaths every single day. Instead, it's overflowing with
| stories of folks like your mother dying after spending
| weeks in complete agony not able to breathe on their own.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| Tbh the whole reason I actually had the shots was because
| it would increase my chances of survival but that is not
| my point.
|
| I'm not saying the vaccine is good or bad. What I am
| saying is: As long as it's not 100% safe people shouldn't
| be forced to have it (or coerced by any means).
|
| Neither you or anyone else has the right to force(or
| coerce by limiting their freedoms) anyone to do anything
| that has even a 0,00000001 change of being detrimental to
| them. It's their life, their body, their choice.
|
| If the excuse if to "protect the vulnerable" then
| lockdown people like me that are considered vulnerable
| and leave the healthy ones alone to mind their lives. I
| am aware that I'm at risk and it's my choice how I deal
| with it. What give anyone the right to make the decision
| for me?
|
| If my mother chose not to have it... All I can and will
| do is respect her call. At the end of the day she paid
| for the priviledge to end up in a hospital bed if that is
| her choice. Her tax money at work. It's as simple as
| that.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The chances of ending up dead from COVID is higher than the
| chance of dying from the vaccine for basically everyone
| right?
|
| Even if you're in your 30's and in perfect health.
|
| I absolutely agree that I'd much rather die from COVID than
| from the vaccine that is supposed to save me. But logically
| speaking, choosing to not take the vaccine doesn't make any
| kind of sense.
|
| It's like choosing to drive a car because you might get hit
| by lightning if you take a walk.
| jowsie wrote:
| >The chances of ending up dead from COVID is higher than
| the chance of dying from the vaccine for basically
| everyone right?
|
| Your chances of catching COVID aren't 100%, your chances
| of getting vaccinated are if you choose to do so.
|
| >It's like choosing to drive a car because you might get
| hit by lightning if you take a walk.
|
| This argument also works in reverse.
|
| note: I'm double vaccinated and urge others to vaccinate
| if they are medically able to do so.
| [deleted]
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Your chances of catching COVID aren't 100%, your
| chances of getting vaccinated are if you choose to do so.
|
| Well, yes. Obviously we're taking that into account when
| determining absolute chance to die from a certain thing.
|
| > This argument also works in reverse.
|
| It's like choosing to take a walk (and risk getting hit
| by lightning, very very low chance) because you might get
| in a car accident if you drive a car (relatively high
| chance)?
|
| Not sure I follow. Inverting it makes it reasonable.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It is comparable to the right to refuse treatment, which
| is in many jurisdictions considered to be a basic civil
| right.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I believe all pro-vaccine people already agree that no
| sacrifice of freedoms is too big for greater good.
|
| Just like the anti-vaccine/science people think _any_
| sacrifice they have to make is too much?
|
| God forbid you'd do something that helps your fellow man
| instead of yourself.
| [deleted]
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > vaccines do not stop people from getting infected and
| infecting others. ... does not mean the people inside can't get
| infected so this measure does not help achieve that goal.
|
| This is absolutist thinking - "people can still get infected,
| so this does not help at all" - this not true in the slightest:
|
| "it can still happen" is not the same "as it happens at the
| same rate as before". And "It's not perfect" isn't the same as
| "does not help".
|
| vaccination reduces the rate of infection, a lot, so it does
| help, a lot. None of this is binary, thinking in absolutes will
| lead you to false conclusions.
| _Microft wrote:
| Vaccinated are actually at a lot lower risk to catch the
| disease and even less likely to actually develop symptoms and
| severe cases. Keeping unvaccinated out protects them from those
| who can spread it unknowingly.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Or you can not accept the nanny state and let people decide
| for themselves over things that affect themselves. Who knows,
| if you afford people that kind of respect they might even
| believe that states ideas on whether getting vaccinated is
| good for them.
| _Microft wrote:
| You mean I could think for myself? OK, here is my
| reasoning:
|
| I am in no position to make an informed decision on these
| vaccines and measures by myself, so I trust those who
| actually know what they are talking about.
| kuraudo wrote:
| I'm in your camp: the problem is the people we rely on as
| experts are said to be
| lying/wrong/stupid/evil/devils/.etc by the people against
| the positions they hold.
|
| How do you fight that kind of thing?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Wow, you thought for yourself and your conclusion was
| you're not going to think for yourself. Well that's fine.
| Now try affording others that same privilege and allow
| them to draw their own conclusions.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Well, the issue with this approach is that one's actions
| don't only affect oneself. It's not like wearing a
| seatbelt, where in case of a crash, you're only killing
| yourself. Of course, it's more complicated than that,
| because if you only get badly wounded, then society's gonna
| have to foot your bill.
|
| Here, however, we're talking about a highly contagious
| virus that's transmitted through air, which can be spread
| even if you don't have symptoms and even if you don't
| actively interact with someone (as opposed to, say, HIV).
| Vaccines seemed to lower the spread risk, although with the
| new variant that effect looks weaker. So deciding for
| yourself to not vaccinate has a high likelihood of
| effecting others.
|
| To go back to the road analogy, this doesn't look so much
| like a nanny state as setting some ground rules. Like
| driving on the same side of the road, mandating lights,
| blinkers, etc.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| How does this follow from your earlier point, or in any way
| answer the parent? It seems more like a change of topic.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Reading threads like this, I get the sense that the very notion
| of civil liberties is completely foreign to vaccine fans.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I get the sense that people like police states that are pointed
| at other people, not themselves.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Moral authoritarians in general should be strongly opposed no
| matter what their values are, I struggle to think of a more
| retrograde force against human progress than the kind of
| curtain-twitching, aggressively conventional sort of person
| whose world view is "I'm absolutely right and you're wrong,
| because I'm an authority figure and I said so". People with
| an overemphasised disgust reaction are genuinely terrifying
| as a bloc because they're fertile soil for the seeds of
| tyranny to grow in.
|
| Moral authoritarians who get powerful enough produce an
| ideological monoculture, something which does to ideas
| exactly what inbreeding does to genes. You can see this
| eventually in any overly authoritarian system, no strict
| moralistic ideology can survive contact with objective
| reality in all its shades of grey forever. Political and
| moral opinions can only ever be approximately correct, but
| moral authoritarians think they can just ignore all the
| complexity and produce simple answers with all the finesse
| and grace of a freight train that ignores the curves in its
| track as too complicated to bother with.
|
| Ideological pluralism and cognitive diversity are so
| important for a free society that can grow and develop, and
| moral authoritarians stand directly opposed to these things.
| Unfortunately the pandemic has brought many of them out of
| the woodwork and validated their appalling worldview.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The downward spiral has been observed for long time now. Civil
| liberties aren't really important unless it's some nebulous
| discriminated class... Freedom of speech is just about
| government, not general civil liberty. Gun rights were relevant
| are not important. And so on...
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Gun rights aren't important. We don't have guns
| commandlinefan wrote:
| In America we've known this since 9/11/01.
| libertine wrote:
| Well, if the large majority of your population is already
| vaccinated, I guess these passports could potentially be
| dismissed, if masks are still mandatory, but for some countries -
| like Portugal where we have +80% of the pop. vaccinated - the
| main concern are tourists that completely disregard any etiquette
| or measures in place.
|
| So I think keeping passports is a good measure, not perfect due
| to breakthrough infections, still better than nothing.
| ddxxdd wrote:
| Last time I checked, the top 3 countries in terms of
| vaccination rates are also the top 3 countries in terms of
| number of active covid cases.
|
| Israel is #1 in vaccination rates and #1 in daily cases.
| martin8412 wrote:
| That must have been a while ago, because Israel is nowhere
| near top in vaccination rate anymore. They had a fast
| rollout, but are now stuck at around 61%.. Meanwhile, western
| Europe is around 80-90% vaccinated
| maxerickson wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA
| shows more like 60%-70% for the total population (I turned
| on more countries than France).
|
| Are your numbers percent of adults or including people that
| have recovered from infection or something?
| jvzr wrote:
| Government numbers in France show 80.2% today ("The
| figure gives the share of the population over the age of
| 12 that are fully vaccinated (all required doses")
|
| We crossed 60% on July 29, and 70% on August 20
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, "over the age of 12", that isn't 80% fully
| vaccinated, it's 80% of over 12s fully vaccinated. Which
| is a useful measure of administrative effectiveness when
| the vaccine is not being given to people under 12, but it
| isn't 80% of the total population.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Europe: 102.58 doses per 100
|
| Israel: 163.74 doses per 100 (#5 in the world)
|
| Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-
| data-explor...
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Doses don't mean much if a large portion of the
| population have taken none.
| libertine wrote:
| Not to mention Janssen vaccine is a single dose and it's
| being widely used in some EU countries, which renders
| that measurement even more "useless" (in the sense that
| it doesn't give an accurate picture of the reality of the
| vaccination programs)
| [deleted]
| libertine wrote:
| I don't know where you getting that information, last time I
| checked Israel wasn't even in the top10 countries.
|
| Last week Portugal was number 2, and our cases have been
| dropping (which is a good sign for winter, though it's still
| early), also deaths and hospitalizations are nowhere near
| pre-vaccine numbers.
|
| We even had breakthrough cases in homes and care centers for
| the elderly, the majority seem to be mildly symptomatic or
| asymptomatic, very few deaths.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| According to https://ourworldindata.org/ Israel is #4 in
| COVID cases right now (856.81/M) and #5 in vaccine doses
| per 100 people (163.74)
| libertine wrote:
| Well maybe vaccine doses per 100 people isn't the best
| benchmark, especially if they are already giving 3rd
| doses - it's way more important the share of full
| vaccination of the total population, because the goal is
| to get the imune system primed.
|
| The reality is that Israel only has 63% of their
| population fully vaccinated, even if they keep giving
| extra doses, a large slice is still not vaccinated
| (people under 59 apparently).
| kuraudo wrote:
| Highly suspect: I heard that they count anyone without
| three jabs as "unvaccinated." that might not be israel
| and it might be two jabs, apologies on unreliability. I'm
| putting this out here because I hope someone can disprove
| or verify it.
| belter wrote:
| Cases in Portugal are staying stable neither growing or
| diminishing. Looking at the curve for deaths there seems to
| be no correlation between deaths and the vaccination
| program.
|
| https://expresso.pt/coronavirus/2021-09-10-Covid-19.-O-oita
| v...
| libertine wrote:
| I can't even take your comment seriously.
| rszfa100 wrote:
| Why? The graph under "Total de mortes" shows that the
| number of fatalities is higher right now than last year
| (when no one was vaccinated).
|
| We don't know yet if the clearly seasonal winter outbreak
| will be the same as last year (or worse).
| libertine wrote:
| First the graph of newly daily cases is trending downward
| since July, why did the he say they are not diminishing?
| If you compare to last year they were trending upward.
|
| If this is going to keep going down, sideways, or up we
| have no idea.
|
| About the "Total de Mortes", today you have more then
| double the amount of active cases, why are you ignoring
| that?
|
| >We don't know yet if the clearly seasonal winter
| outbreak will be the same as last year (or worse).
|
| Yes, but to say vaccines aren't doing anything it's
| absurd.
| belter wrote:
| I was talking about the last few weeks. That is the
| almost straight line you see in the graph. You know what
| the curve looks like, and almost a copy? The curve in
| India one the countries with the smallest percentage of
| vacinnated people:
|
| Have a look (13% vaccinated...):
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/india-
| covid-c...
| belter wrote:
| Look at the active cases graph starting at 8 Aug and the
| line to latest 10 of Sep. In approximately 45,000 cases
| there is a variation of -/+ 2000 is that not basically a
| straight line?
|
| Also what I mean by there is no correlation between
| deaths and the vaccination program, and there, I could
| have been a bit clear in my explanation, is the
| following:
|
| Again looking at the active cases diagram between 3 of
| March and 15 of April you get a massive peak and a
| massive drop. That is the expected behavior of
| mathematical models, and a runways virus propagating to
| several hosts. The vaccination program as seen in the
| graph here: "A que ritmo estamos a vacinar?"
| https://www.publico.pt/interactivo/vacina-covid-19
|
| started in 28 Dec linear grow, a peak 11 July where more
| people on holidays have the time do take the vaccine and
| continues in for with a large intensity of 60,000 this 8
| Sept.
|
| So I am calling attention to very quick and strong record
| of active cases seen within 2 to 3 months in the active
| cases diagram versus the gradual vaccination program.
| libertine wrote:
| >Look at the active cases graph starting at 8 Aug and the
| line to latest 10 of Sep. In approximately 45,000 cases
| there is a variation of -/+ 2000 is that not basically a
| straight line?
|
| Look at the daily active cases, does it look like a
| straight line?
|
| >So I am calling attention to very quick and strong
| record of active cases seen within 2 to 3 months in the
| active cases diagram versus the gradual vaccination
| program.
|
| Why do you dismiss the number of active cases when you're
| talking about deaths? Isn't the fact that we have more
| than double the active cases an indicator that less
| infected people are dying?
|
| Because what you're doing is simply assuming the virus
| mortality rate remained constant, and all the extra cases
| are just cases that weren't identified in the past, and
| you have nothing to back this claim.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Look at case fatality rate in Portugal:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
|
| It dropped off a cliff from 2.9% at its highest to about
| 0.5% today.
| belter wrote:
| I used the same graph as you but superimposed India ( 13%
| vaccinations only) pandemic behavior is a copy slight
| shifted in time 2-3 months:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
| Loveaway wrote:
| No it's shit. Just let people decide if they want to get the
| vaccination or not, and go on with life as normal. By now
| everyone can get it and be protected against the virus. You now
| have the immunity, so act like it! Stop dragging this out with
| requiring passports, masks, and whatnot.
|
| The "main concern" aren't tourists - tourists are the lifeblood
| of many places, and they should be welcomed. They come to you
| to see your culture, and you encumber them with your own burden
| and fears.
| libertine wrote:
| >Just let people decide if they want to get the vaccination
| or not, and go on with life as normal.
|
| Uh, where did I say that people shouldn't decide? Do you
| think we got +80% (87% if you factor in single doses), at gun
| point?
|
| If these passports had an influence on 5 percentual points I
| was being extremely generous.
|
| It's all about education, being informed, and a sense of
| duty. Probably the majority where fearful and anxious to do
| it, but they did it anyway.
|
| > tourists are the lifeblood of many places, and they should
| be welcomed.
|
| Being welcoming doesn't mean put up with shit, right? Wear a
| mask and have the vaccine passport at hand, not that hard now
| is it?
|
| One is a tiny piece of cloth, the other is a tiny piece of
| digital paper.
| Loveaway wrote:
| No the tourists have to put up with YOUR shit.
|
| You are immune for fucks sake, how hard is it to actually
| be welcoming and say: It's ok for unvaccinated to enter a
| restaurant. We can live without implicitly checking
| everyone. We don't need to be like that and can act like
| normal decent humans again! Is that so hard?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| So when I visit your house I can put my feet up on your
| couch like Rick James/Dave Chappelle? Take New Orleans
| for example. Do they have to let nonresident tourists
| determine their policies?
| libertine wrote:
| >No the tourists have to put up with YOUR shit.
|
| If by shit you mean the law, yes. That's what you have to
| do when you visit another country - even though a lot of
| people don't act like it truth be told.
|
| _Psst_ , come here, I'll drop you a quick tip: _if they
| don 't want to abide by the laws and mandates... don't
| come?_
|
| I don't get why you're ok to enforce your choice onto
| others, yet others can't enforce their choices onto you
| just because you're a tourist and we should welcome you.
|
| >You are immune for fucks sake, how hard is it to
| actually be welcoming and say: It's ok for unvaccinated
| to enter a restaurant.
|
| Uh, I don't think you can even enter the country without
| vaccine passport or valid PCR negative test. So you have
| that for starters, and if you choose to not be vaccinated
| what's the problem of taking another PCR test to go to
| restaurants?
|
| >We can live without implicitly checking everyone. We
| don't need to be like that and can act like normal decent
| humans again! Is that so hard?
|
| You just need to realize this is temporary, and the
| faster we go through this, the better - that was the
| whole game plan. Some people are opting to get infected
| without vaccines, that'll just delay things, but the end
| will come eventually.
|
| Also we check people on regular basis: drivers licenses,
| IDs, tickets, etc.
|
| Human decency is alive and well, and the fact that 87% of
| a country population, so far, adhered to a cause to
| protect themselves and the next person is the proof of
| that.
| design-material wrote:
| Yo if someone wants to visit my house/town/city then fuck
| yeah they need to put up with my shit
| jlokier wrote:
| > You now have the immunity, so act like it!
|
| This is factually incorrect.
|
| The Covid-19 vaccines significantly reduce symptoms, risk of
| hospitalisation, risk of death, and transmission rate. They
| are worth it on balance if you care about your own health,
| and/or the health of other people you interact with,
| especially those close to you, for almost everyone above a
| fairly low age.
|
| But they do not provide complete immunity, which is called
| "sterilising immunity".
|
| Which means other people's behaviour still affects you.
|
| Some vaccines for other diseases do provide sterilising
| immunity. For example the smallpox vaccine does, which is why
| that disease is pretty much eradicated. But unfortunately
| none of the vaccines currently available for Covid-19 provide
| sterilising immunity.
|
| Even so, if we are able to dampen the transmission rate in
| each community to below R < 1 by a combination of measures,
| which includes vaccination, the disease will gradually fade
| away instead of spreading to everyone. Probabilities are
| everything in this game.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Which means other people's behaviour still affects you.
|
| We have multiple vaccines for well over 9 months now.
| Anybody who needs them can get them for free. Covid is
| never going away -- it is endemic. Dragging this pandemic
| game past vaccines is unethical as hell.
|
| People need to accept that covid is always around now and
| get back to actual life. It may come as a shock to some
| people but there is an entire world of problems besides the
| myopic fixation on exactly one illness. Life is to be
| lived, not survived. Move on. Covid myopia is a disease
| much worse than covid itself.
| jlokier wrote:
| Sure, you can weigh up your value system how you like.
|
| My comment was to address the parent's serious misleading
| _factual_ idea about immunity, and provide some nuanced
| background to readers who may find that useful, as the GP
| 's summary is a false but attractively simplistic belief
| that a lot of people hold about the vaccines. For some
| people that misunderstanding is causing them to act
| _against_ their own personal values.
|
| Even if you believe people should act according to their
| personal values regardless of consequence to others, you
| probably believe people should be entitled to the correct
| basic facts if they want them.
|
| I have met too many people who said "I've had the vaccine
| so I can't get Covid", "I've had the vaccine so I can't
| give anyone Covid", or "I've had Covid so I can't give
| anyone Covid", and then walked right up close to other
| people in confined spaces with other people (service
| workers etc) unable to leave.
|
| Presumably some of those people believe what they are
| saying, and would _choose_ based on their own personal
| values to act differently if they knew they had
| misunderstood that there are different kinds of vaccine
| immunity.
|
| Read my comment carefully and you will hopefully see it
| does not contain value judgements about how people should
| choose to respond to Covid. (Even if other comments of
| mine do.)
|
| I agree with you that "Covid is always around now". But
| that is an over-simplistic, black-and-white summary of
| something quite nuanced. I'll try to summarise my view in
| a black and white way (always misleading for a nuanced
| topic unfortunately):
|
| There is "ok endemic" and "bad endemic". It can _still_
| go either way.
|
| Most people want the "ok endemic" version instead of "bad
| endemic". And they don't know how to get it, so rely on
| government and other major actors to help chart a path.
|
| To someone who gets that there is a difference, people
| who say "but it's going to be endemic" as though that
| settles everything, sound like they are saying "I don't
| care if it's bad endemic, and you shouldn't care either,
| stop bleating".
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean, at some point we _must_ return to what life was
| like prior to march of 2020. There is nothing unique or
| special about covid that requires anything but a full
| return of actual normal. Mankind has lived with
| respiratory illness since, well, forever.
| kazinator wrote:
| Says who?
|
| What if we have been doing it wrong until now?
|
| Maybe, going forward, we should have proper vaccine
| passports which include _everything_ , not only COVID-19.
|
| Have you had _all_ your shots, or not.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That sounds like a super shitty way to live. A step short
| of dystopia. I'll pass.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > if masks are still mandatory
|
| Cloth masks provide no protection against viruses. If you don't
| believe me, just read the warnings on the box itself.
| jlokier wrote:
| If it's a good quality mask, that would be misunderstanding
| the words on the box.
|
| Masks provide some protection against the spreading of
| _liquid droplets_ , as it says on the box. (Quality of mask
| varies a lot, though.)
|
| In the case of Covid-19, droplets are believed to be the
| primary way it is suspended in air and breathed in by the
| next person.
|
| Although that type of mask doesn't protect against pure
| airborne virus transmission _without_ droplets, that is more
| applicable to other viruses than Covid-19.
|
| The key difference: "Airborne virus" means virus without
| droplets (or such tiny ones that it's not what we mean by
| droplets); it does _not_ mean the same thing as virus carried
| by small liquid droplets of the size normally breathed out by
| humans, and attenuated by cloth masks.
|
| Maybe some Covid-19 is transported without droplets, but
| quantity of exposure matters, and suppressing droplet
| transmission, as done by good cloth masks, still has a
| significant effect. There are better, more thorough mask
| types available, of course.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I'm confused. The NHS app already has QR codes to show proof of
| vaccination. I've been to public events that required the QR code
| to get in (though I don't think they scanned it.) You can
| generate new codes whenever you like and they are valid for 30
| days if, for example, you wanted to print it out instead of
| taking your phone.
|
| Wasn't this the passport scheme?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| tbh the document and qr code are trivial to generate and forge
| from what i remember. I'm not condoning it i'm just pointing
| out its weakness.
| tonfa wrote:
| They're not based on public key crypto like in the rest of
| the world?
| isoskeles wrote:
| They are. They're trivial to create with your own issuer
| but not to forge an existing issuer, unless their private
| key is leaked.
| fy20 wrote:
| And what's the point of that? Aren't the verification
| apps going to check the issuer?
| isoskeles wrote:
| Verification apps should check the issuer. But you can
| issue and sign your own vaccine codes trivially.
|
| Some apps will go a step further to check that the issuer
| is "trusted." For example, there is a good list of
| issuers considered trusted here:
|
| https://github.com/the-commons-project/vci-
| directory/blob/ma...
|
| The most popular reader app I know of will mark issuers
| that are not on this list as "Partially-verified."
|
| I'm not going to get too deep into this because it's
| clear that HN is, for some reason, very antagonistic
| toward any discussion on the matter unless some correct
| permutation of words is used. Nonetheless, I've
| researched this quite a bit. Anyone can make and issue
| their own SMART Health Card.
| tonfa wrote:
| This seems odd given that EU+CH did implement things
| properly wrt to cryto and trusted certs, but yes I guess
| there's a possibility that UK messed it up :)
| isoskeles wrote:
| Oh yeah, I don't know exactly what they're doing in UK.
| SMART Health Card is an open standard that requires using
| ES256 for signing (more here:
| https://spec.smarthealth.cards/).
|
| I assumed we were just talking about SHC, but UK could do
| something outside that standard. These all look the same,
| like a QR code, but the underlying structure could be
| different. I believe NY's Excelsior Pass is also doing
| something slightly different, although I won't claim it
| has anything to do with the signing aspect.
| levinb wrote:
| NY has the "Excelsior Pass Plus" that can also include
| recent CoV test results.
|
| In my experience only high end restaurants, union
| industries, and major public institutions are requiring
| either, but the number and type of venues is increasing.
|
| Both types are publicly funded apps for both the QR pass
| and reader apps, and they have data privacy terms that I
| think most of the HN crowd would find palatable.
|
| One can debate the effectiveness of the mandates in NY,
| but the state did play a reasonably proper role in
| providing the tech to facilitate it.
|
| And yes, anyone can create and sign a SHC, but the VCI
| initiative is trying to create trust networks so that
| only certain signing keys may be considered valid. Not
| moving fast enough there, IMO.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Don't worry everyone. The unilateral powers created by our
| government during covid is a one time thing.
|
| Surely covid will one day "go away", and with it the surveillance
| state will dismantle their powers and stop trying to control what
| their citizens think and do!
| kuraudo wrote:
| I believe everyone should be vaccinated but your point worries
| me. This doesn't seem 'right.' I don't believe in conspiracy
| theories of people pushing anti vaccination propaganda just to
| bring this state of affairs about as some are suggesting: that
| said, I don't want us to be in this place, but I also want
| everyone vaccinated so the vaccines can actually work and we
| can eradicate this thing.
|
| I can't help but feel manipulated in this state.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Being pro vaccine and anti-government "emergency powers" is a
| perfectly reasonable position to take.
|
| The media and the government forces the false dichotomy on
| people. They say you're either all-in surveillance state or
| you're antivax. It's part of their design.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| This is exactly my position, I'm very pro-vaccine but I
| despise the surveillance state as the apparatus of tyranny.
| bengale wrote:
| Just goes to show how weak this current government is. Polls show
| 60% approve of the idea, with 27% opposed. Yet they still can't
| get their own policy done due to infighting in the tory party.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Polls show 60% approve of the idea, with 27% opposed.
|
| Tyranny of the majority. Just because 60% support some crazy
| idea doesn't make it right.
|
| Also the average american thinks if they catch covid the
| chances of dying are 10%[0]. For most age groups that is 100 or
| 1000 times off. People are _wildly_ off on their estimates of
| how bad covid is. How can the average person make an informed,
| rational decision about public health policy if they think
| Covid is Black Plague v2.0?
|
| [0] https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
| bengale wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's something I want to get into but I don't
| really agree.
|
| All I was saying is a policy supported by a large majority,
| proposed by this government, had to be walked back because of
| their inability to control the back benches. Boris is a piss
| poor leader.
| jjgreen wrote:
| No point now, who would go to a nightclub now that we know there
| is a risk that you find yourself dancing with Michael Gove
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4
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