Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by magicfractal 1994 days ago
Should be pretty simple to me: if one doesn’t take the vaccine and passes covid to someone else and this person comes to die it is manslaughter. Folks are putting others in risk by not taking the vaccine.
5 comments

What a fear driven, nonsensical statement to make. Firstly the person who died would have had to not have taken the vaccine also; otherwise wouldn't they be immune to the serious side effects? Secondly, it's not even known if the vaccine prevents you getting the virus and transmitting it. Thus even vaccinated people could still transmit it.
Right, I’m assuming that covid, like most diseases, won’t be transmissible after the vaccine.

You’re also assuming that everyone will take the vaccine at the same moment in time, which won’t be true. Also, some people won’t be vaccinated on a first moment such as pregnant women.

I think the whole point is responsibility, going to a concrete example: let’s say I have the chance and refuse to take the vaccine, then I pass covid to a pregnant women which comes to pass away. How wouldn’t that event not be 100% my responsibility?

I wonder if we take this to its logical conclusion; McDonald's is culpable for millions of cases of manslaughter, what about diesel car owners? Meat eaters? Tourists taking carbon heavy flights?
On mcdonalds, the only damage is to oneself (not others) so should be fine.

On carbon/pollution is much harder to show a direct cause and effect between one’s actions and harm done to another individual. But it seems logical to me that i when/if zero-carbon were to become a serious thing there should be some kind of enforcement framework around it (like smog inspections we have right now but hopefully more effective...)

You are talking about so called (negative) externalities. Pricing these costs in to the price of a product or service can incentivize less harmful behaviour. This is the idea behind having a carbon tax to help with climate change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

> Thanks to California Senate Bill 329, as of January 1, 2017, it is no longer a felony for people who are HIV-positive to have unprotected sex and not disclose their status.

What do you think about this?

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

It was changed from a felony to a misdemeanour.

I don’t agree with that (in fact, that specific case is a crime similar to physical aggression in the country where I live).
Thanks for bringing this up btw, it’s a very interesting topic I hadn’t thought about.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_transmission_of_HIV

You are welcome!

From what I remember there has been an increase in infected people after this bill. I cannot back it up at the moment, but you might want to look into it.

Why should someone that takes antiviral medicine and can't transmit HIV anymore have to disclose their status?
A virus is a separate agent from the people you allege are committing manslaughter. A virus is a background condition, like a weather event. An asymptomatic human shouldn’t be considered the agent committing a crime in your scenario, because they’re under no obligation to make changes to THEIR body to make YOU comfortable with a background environmental condition.
And they would be indeed under no such obligation (their body, their choice) but if the worst happens it would be their responsibility.
Yes, but they killed someone who was willing to kill. It could be argued it was self defense.