TOS: A Taste of Armageddon

[CharlesPhipps]

Freedom doesn't mean much if it's only freedom to do things you approve of, CharlesPhipps.

Amen to that. I have no problem at all with getting vaccinated. I got vaccinated as soon as I could. I have very, very big problems with medication being compelled by law. Compulsory medication is a line that should not be crossed and I have an extremely dim view of anyone who disagrees.

It is something that is the law of the land in many places and groups. I see no reason not to if the person wants to live in society.

[Riedquat]

Freedom doesn't mean much if it's only freedom to do things you approve of, CharlesPhipps.

Amen to that. I have no problem at all with getting vaccinated. I got vaccinated as soon as I could. I have very, very big problems with medication being compelled by law. Compulsory medication is a line that should not be crossed and I have an extremely dim view of anyone who disagrees.

It is something that is the law of the land in many places and groups. I see no reason not to if the person wants to live in society.

And I'd say those places and groups are messed up then.

I see no good reason not to get vaccinated personally speaking, but that does not mean I will ever come close to accepting that compulsory medication is ever acceptable; it is a fundamentally unethical concept.

Getting vaccinated is a very good idea. Those who are against it invariably appear to have either a very twisted view of the risks or an even more twisted view of the reasons behind it. But just because I believe something is a good idea, with no good reasons not to, doesn't therefore mean I'll go as far as having no issue with compulsion, even if I can see no reasons not to get vaccinated.

As a generalisation I am against compulsion. This is true even for things that I think are a very good idea. I am not one of those people who'll get behind anything if it looks like it'll give me the results I would like.

[AllanO]

The required vaccines are for dangerous childhood diseases.

Unless the child is immunocompromised, Covid is a mild, non-deadly disease. The side effects of vaccination may be a greater risk than the disease, for this particular disease.

As noted in a another comment in many jurisdictions the chickenpox vaccine is a required for school attendance (in various Western democracies including some states of the USA and some provinces of Canada). In children the chickenpox is usually a mild non-deadly disease, its only if you get it for the first time when you are older that it is likely to cause serious problems.

COVID certainly causes long term effects (death, long COVID) some of which we won't know about for years and so on, it could be that 10% of kids who get COVID may have lingering symptoms so a few percent having long term health consequences seems disturbingly likely, glad your so positive about it though.

OK, i'll let you give me your side as to why I am wrong by asking you two questions: Austria mandating that ALL of its citizens MUST have the vaccine. Is that liberal or not liberal?

Next question: Could you have imagined a Western democracy two years ago doing this?

Yes, the US has had universal vaccine mandates in the past most famously in the early 20th century Cambridge, Mass. had vaccine orders where you had to get a smallpox vaccine or pay a fine. Someone fought the case to the supreme court and lost. Austria's proposed mandate at this point is likewise a get the vaccination or face a fine thing. Universal vaccine mandates (vacc' or face a penalty) have been a thing in Western democracy for over a century and the sky did not in fact fall etc.

Note that vaccine mandates are unnecessary when because you vaccinate all school kids for decades virtually the entire population has been vaccinated. I am willing to bet the lack of universal mandates in recent decades is because they would be redundant because greater than 90% of the population have already gotten the shot, not because mandating school kids is okay but everyone was a step too far.

We already know vaccination isn't going to wipe out the disease. (Hell, we knew that before, but we're having confirmation of what our reason informed us of in the real world now.) They're going to boosters for the new strains... how long will it be before the effective immunity from *those* shots dwindles to the point of uselessness?

It's the Sunk Cost Fallacy in action. We can't bring ourselves to acknowledge that our entire strategy was disastrously costly and accomplished nothing, so we keep pretending that it's effective - and that people should be forced to comply with our effective strategy.

I brush my teeth every day (twice), floss and visit the dentist. Is that a losing strategy, should I just yank all my teeth and gum down a liquid diet, would that be a winning strategy?

There are plenty of vaccines that have to be given on a regularly boosted schedule (the need for ten year boosters for tetanus, diptheria and protusus, as pointed out the flu vaccine is an annual event and I've heard it claimed they are only about good for 6 months each) this does not imply that the immunity granted will be less on each subsequent shot. Heck there are vaccines that require 3 shots but not boosters like HPV and Hep B there is at least a chance COVID shots will turn out to work like that. Your reasoning that requiring more shots (something that was being contemplated in the fall of 2020 before the vaccines had been approved) proves that somehow resistance can not be restored is a huge leap. One could as easily imagine that because we have evidence that immunity induced by previous infection wanes that everyone will be reinfected and those reinfections will induce less immunity and so on until the entire human race has been wiped out and we should start making our peace with it.

I'm pretty sure vaccination has been really cheap and cut down hospitalization which is really expensive, it has also in many jurisdictions eased restrictions on number of people gathering, at restaurants etc. (things that are very expensive or disruptive) without large increases in case numbers and hospitalizations (which again are expensive). Even if vaccines somehow magically stopped working today, I suspect its actually the one policy that paid for itself so far (other COVID policies have probably be far more expensive and ineffective). However because of that success that it will suddenly fail now seems unlikely, it is just more complicated than the best case scenario (where get the initial two doses and forget about everything else). The belief that if things don't go perfectly they are some kind of abject failure is a hard way to live.

Vaccinations that have had proper clinical trails spanning years, not ones that have been rushed through human testing without animal testing done. Nothing is said about the potential long term consequences.

To be clear the Salk Polio vaccine appears to have been formulated about 1952, Salk injected himself and his family with it in 1953 and it was given a massive trial on 1.3 million kids in 1954 before being rolled out in massive national vaccination campaigns once that trial concluded in 1955. So what you are saying is that one year is not enough we need two years to be sure?

Looking ( https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-sid ... 19-vaccine ) it does not seem like anyone has ever found a side effect from a vaccine that occurred more than a few months after initial infection. At the point it was approved (slightly less than a year after initial formulation) they would have found all the effects a study could reasonably be expected to find.

And I'd say those places and groups are messed up then.

I'm not sure what you mean by compulsory medication, but I would include laws mandating a vaccination or paying a fine, laws requiring vaccination to use a public service (a school, a public venue etc.), laws allowing the forcible quarantining of people deemed a risk to spread a disease (see Typhoid Mary etc.), laws requiring the administering of a medical test (including blood alcohol tests for drivers etc.). I'm pretty sure every country on Earth has compulsory medicine (outside failed states like Somalia) by my definition.

Even just in terms of say allowing the possibility of universal get shot or get fined vaccine mandates that probably covers most places on Earth even if rarely used in recent years.

What is rare is say strapping down mentally competent people and injecting them with stuff.

[Riedquat]

I'm not sure what you mean by compulsory medication, but I would include laws mandating a vaccination or paying a fine, laws requiring vaccination to use a public service (a school, a public venue etc.), laws allowing the forcible quarantining of people deemed a risk to spread a disease (see Typhoid Mary etc.), laws requiring the administering of a medical test (including blood alcohol tests for drivers etc.). I'm pretty sure every country on Earth has compulsory medicine (outside failed states like Somalia) by my definition.

Compulsory medication is exactly what it says it is - being compelled by law to take some form of medicine.

I really don't believe most countries do have laws requiring vaccination to use a public service, and most people would've been fairly appalled at the idea before Covid started them panicking. Quarantining someone already ill is not really comparable - you then know for a fact that that individual is a risk, you are not compelling everyone just by virtue of being alive. It's the difference between imprisoning someone who has committed a crime to protect the public and locking everyone up just in case they might be (not that I'm trying to imply being ill is a crime).

I am unaware of general compulsion of medical tests either just for living; there are sometimes some when applying for a specific situation where a specific test is justifiable (e.g. an eyesight test to drive). Does your country routinely administer blood alcohol tests for drivers at random, or only when there is good reason to suspect them of drink-driving?

[AllanO]

I really don't believe most countries do have laws requiring vaccination to use a public service, and most people would've been fairly appalled at the idea before Covid started them panicking. Quarantining someone already ill is not really comparable - you then know for a fact that that individual is a risk, you are not compelling everyone just by virtue of being alive. It's the difference between imprisoning someone who has committed a crime to protect the public and locking everyone up just in case they might be (not that I'm trying to imply being ill is a crime).

Well whether you believe it or not this website ( https://ourworldindata.org/childhood-va ... n-policies ) counts that 89 countries require children to get vaccinated for all children and 20 countries require on a national level vaccination for school entry (out of 149 countries total) and they are undercounting since they don't have any data for dozens of countries and they are only counting national level vaccine requirements for example they list Canada as not requiring vaccines for school entry, but that is only true in the sense that health is a provincial responsibility so it is the provinces that pass laws requiring kids to get vaccinated not the government of Canada, but it is still required by law. I know Canada's biggest province Ontario has a vaccine requirements for school entry and I'm pretty sure most if not all the other provinces have such requirements. Anyway definitely more than 2/3rds of countries they could get data on require at a national level that kids get shots either just for being alive or to be allowed in school.

Anyway to your just being alive point there are diseases where if you have 100 people with the disease (or rather 100 people who have tested positive but there are uncertainties with every test so maybe 1 of them does not have the disease at all) 50 of them won't be transmitting it to anyone, the problem is you don't know which 50, so you treat them all as a risk even though half of them are not actually going to effect anyone else. This is totally comparable to treating 100 susceptible (known unvaccinated and not confirmed to have had a previous infection) and you know given the way the disease has been spreading 50 of them are going to have the disease if you don't do something, but you don't know which 50. If everyone is susceptible that is like everyone having the disease. Also it is not just for being alive it's in a situation where a disease is spreading and you are trying to stop it or mitigate the damage it causes.

The thing about public health is that it's not like criminal law where you deal with individual circumstances it's more like road safety a question of collective action everyone has to be subject to the same treatment. You put in the speed bumps and they slow everyone down the drag racers and the ambulances. You put in a barrier rail on the turn and everyone has to pay for it not just the guy it stops from shooting off the curve over the cliff. You set the speed limit to 70 miles an hour even though there are people who could drive it safely at 85 mph.

I am unaware of general compulsion of medical tests either just for living; there are sometimes some when applying for a specific situation where a specific test is justifiable (e.g. an eyesight test to drive). Does your country routinely administer blood alcohol tests for drivers at random, or only when there is good reason to suspect them of drink-driving?

Look you said compulsory medicine was bad, now you're saying compulsory medicine is bad unless you have a good reason. If you're allowing that proviso then a whole raft of policies like vaccinating people going to schools become not compulsory medicine if you buy the reason, this means in each case to know what you mean by compulsory medicine I have to go through the reasons and figure out if it meets your standard. Hence my listing policies earlier to feel you out.

[Mickey_Rat15]

The required vaccines are for dangerous childhood diseases.

Unless the child is immunocompromised, Covid is a mild, non-deadly disease. The side effects of vaccination may be a greater risk than the disease, for this particular disease.

As noted in a another comment in many jurisdictions the chickenpox vaccine is a required for school attendance (in various Western democracies including some states of the USA and some provinces of Canada). In children the chickenpox is usually a mild non-deadly disease, its only if you get it for the first time when you are older that it is likely to cause serious problems.

COVID certainly causes long term effects (death, long COVID) some of which we won't know about for years and so on, it could be that 10% of kids who get COVID may have lingering symptoms so a few percent having long term health consequences seems disturbingly likely, glad your so positive about it though.

Except the Covid vaccines do not prevent one from contracting Covid, it makes the case milder. Basing a mandate on hypothetical scenarios, that the mandated action dubiously counters is a weak case.

[AllanO]

Except the Covid vaccines do not prevent one from contracting Covid, it makes the case milder. Basing a mandate on hypothetical scenarios, that the mandated action dubiously counters is a weak case.

The vaccines reduce both onward transmission of COVID by the vaccinated person and reduce the chances that a vaccinated person will get COVID in the first place. People who don't get COVID can't pass it on so that also reduces transmission a great deal. A study in Isreal estimated an 89% reduction in transmission. https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... accinated/

There is evidence that these protections wane with time but also evidence/indications that a third dose/booster will restore that waning protection.

The vaccines were only initially tested on whether they reduced symptomatic disease, but that is because it is very hard to test for either the effect on transmitting the virus on or confirm that the person was never infected (you would have to constantly test the study population to confirm they were not infected but asymptomatic) before the vaccine is deployed on a wide scale. Therefore initially (when the vaccines were first approved) there was no evidence they reduced transmission because no such evidence had been collected it is.

It is an oft abused phrase that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but this would be one example of a situation where the phrase and principle are appropriate. We did not have direct evidence one way or the other on how the vaccines effect transmission when they were first approved in Dec. 2020. Now we do.

Of course even before we had that direct evidence there was good reason to think that any vaccine that reduces symptoms will reduce transmission at least a little because when people have symptoms like a cough they spew out more stuff into the world and so probably transmit more virus and so more disease, so if you reduce that it would have to reduce transmission at least a little. Also most (all?) vaccines that have worked in the past reduced transmission. So we actually had lots of reasons to expect there would be some reduction in transmission from any working vaccine, but given how much COVID has surprised people and I guess because they don't want to be vague the experts were not willing to say absent the direct evidence that it would and by about how much.

So the vaccines reduce transmission and it was always a good bet that if they worked they would reduce transmission at least somewhat.

[Frustration]

I brush my teeth every day (twice), floss and visit the dentist.

... which is demonstrably a pretty effective way to avoid tooth decay and limit the damage when it occurs.

We're discussing a strategy which is NOT effective and has been extremely expensive, especially in ways that aren't measured in money.

[Frustration]

There is evidence that these protections wane with time but also evidence/indications that a third dose/booster will restore that waning protection.

To what end? How many updated booster shots do you want people to receive, and for how long?

[Frustration]

Nailed it. This is the truth that is often ignored about Freedom.

No, this is a rejection of freedom. I am free to do lots of things that don't protect others. Direct harms are prohibited. In the example of driving, one can certainly drink and drive. The blood alcohol levels that make it a crime are considered to be high enough that the overwhelming majority of people cannot drive safely with them - and then the crime occurs on public roads, with acceptance of that condition a necessary part of getting the license to drive on those roads.

You seriously think that's equatable to not receive a vaccination against Covid? Seriously?