[simonh]

The pandemic is happening now, hundreds of thousands of people are dying and the hospitals my wife works at here in London are getting hammered. No grace period. As you say there are plenty of precedents for restricting travel rights based on vaccination, this is not a new idea.

[commonsenseplz]

Interesting, since I thought I had a radical position but your position seems to be more radical, let me ask you:

What if we later find out that the first generations of the vaccines came with a whole bunch of delayed-action side effects?

[shkkmo]

> What if we later find out that the first generations of the vaccines came with a whole bunch of delayed-action side effects?

What if you killed my mom because you were more worried about theoretical side effects than the very real lethal direct effects that are currently taking lives?

[andi999]

One cannot brush these things away so easily. It is basically the first time Mr A vaccines are used, so basically apart from the known unknowns there might be a few unknown unknowns.

[shkkmo]

The risks of the vaccine deserve serious discussion. The person I was responding to was not doing that. They were fanning fears with a vague hypothetical without any reference to real risk assessments.

I replied in a similarly flippant fashion to make a point.

[helge9210]

> What if you killed my mom

What if he gets cancer to let your mom live additional month?

[throwawaysea]

What if your mom took responsibility for the risks of her own choices self quarantined permanently instead of asking everyone else to take on a risk with a rushed vaccine that has undergone no long term testing and uses a new approach (mRNA) to vaccination?

I’m not trying to be snarky but this common argument of blaming those who don’t want a vaccine is an abdication of personal responsibility for one’s own safety.

[shkkmo]

>What if your mom took responsibility for the risks of her own choices self quarantined permanently

> common argument of blaming those who don’t want a vaccine is an abdication of personal responsibility for one’s own safety.

My mom is extremely careful does take responsibility for her own safety.

What you are saying, that she should have to self-quarantine for years because people are unwilling to EITHER take the vaccine OR choose accept the restrictions on their movements that society requires to stay healthy.

If we had taken stronger steps to contain this, we might not need to push everyone into vaccinating. The same people who pushed back against those steps are now complaining that we are in a situation where mandatory vaccination for certain types of activities has become necessary.

[tareqak]

Some people have the hard decision of having to self-quarantine permanently and being able to pay their bills on time and/or have a roof over their heads. Choosing between dying hungry and homeless versus dying sick is not appealing to anyone and some argue that one purpose of a government is to deal with dilemmas like these.

[simonh]

It's a matter of choosing which risks we're willing to take. An extremely low risk from the vaccine, bear in mind all vaccines carry risks, or the known risks from a virus that has killed pushing two million people and itself seems to have long term health impact on many survivors. My wife is a Nurse and had the virus in April, she's had chest infection problems ever since and is currently on long term antibiotics to try and shake it off.

Waiting to check for long term effects is a novel and unprecedented standard for a vaccine. Yes the testing process usually takes several years, but testing for long term effects would take much, much longer. Nobody has ever held a vaccine to that kind of standard before, so why are we suddenly panicking about it now?

I'm fine with people choosing not to get vaccinated, but I'm also fine with them losing their travel and some employment privileges as a result.