[dTal]

When you're operating at the level of a government setting policy for an entire country, you're no longer in position to view the world in terms of "personal responsibility". People, as a mass, are a fairly deterministic blob. "Reopening" sends the message that the pandemic is over. If you want to reopen, you need to accept that this will - directly, as a result of your decision - lead to avoidable deaths.

As for the other half of your proposition, I can see why it might seem appealingly logical - why should people who refused vaccination be entitled to medical care? - but I think it's ultimately inhumane. You don't know why they're not vaccinated. Maybe they weren't even offered it. Maybe they were in a disadvantaged life situation - there's a suspicious correlation between economic class and vaccination rate. Maybe they were prevented from getting it by oppressive relatives or partners. Maybe they were just being honestly cautious, and badly misjudged the relative risks. It's not fair to condemn people to death for those things.

[ub99]

I do believe there is away to send a more complete and nuanced message. We can reopen and keep communicating the fact that the disease is still here, people should be careful. I am not sure we really have an alternative. Covid might stay with us forever.

As to your humanitarian point - this can also be addressed with more nuance. A patient can explain that they are coming from a situation where they couldn’t get vaccinated. I don’t think it’s fair to prioritize the treatment of intentionally unvaccinated Covid patients who believe doctors are a part of a worldwide conspiracy. It’s a difficult ethical question - but we have to answer it nonetheless.

[unearth3d]

Wise response. I wouldn't be surprised if ~20% of any society/state/country is immune compromised in some way, most of those people work across their societies; letting covid run would force them to separate, and eventually end in poverty, this would weaken any society.

[ub99]

What do you expect to happen? 20% of the population will not get vaccinated and will wait for Covid to go away? This is also highly unlikely. Keeping the country closed and divided is adding a lot of stress to the stress we are already under due to the pandemic.

[unearth3d]

Just a case in point, some regions only have one vaccine type avy e.g. Australia with Astra, my wife would have serious problems with Astra, fortunately we have Pfizer in NZ, there are many many examples like this.

[SantalBlush]

Sure, if they're unvaccinated but still taking precautions to mitigate the spread to others and reduce the hospital workload, I'll certainly have more sympathy for them. How many unvaccinated people do you believe really do this?

[mdp2021]

?! Most, surely, if they are rational. You seem to be implying the unvaccinated may tend to be careless.

If people delay vaccination in fear of health consequences, of course they will also be extra careful about avoiding contagion.

If people delay vaccination for other sensible, defensible reasons - I cannot guess them. And I do not want to get inside the pit of the "it's all fake" minds. Even today I had to listen to a mate stating that "only the already compromised got killed" - many of "my" dead were very healthy.

[SantalBlush]

There were plenty of people who spoke out against simple precautions at the beginning of the pandemic, before vaccines were available to anyone. So I don't even need to speculate that at least some people do not take precautions while being unvaccinated; I've already seen a lot of it.

[mdp2021]

Of course in the population you will see the whole range, the bell has two tails:

do not assume there is one tail only.

Remember that one side is louder than the other: do not be fooled scouting by noise. (Nor do commit fallacies of generalization at rights - responsibility is on the individual.)

Anecdote: you tell me? The day before posting that - which already contained other anecdotes - this nice guy went for a takeaway and an unknown fool, the wrong tail of cheeky, started smiling and fake-coughing - owner reported he did that whenever he saw anyone wearing a mask. Is that the end of the pandemic? Because the nice guy saw the same at the early beginning: fake-coughers at the supermarket, mocking those who seemed to want to stay at a distance. She, almost twenty, kept herself coughing smiling and almost adhesive (well, it's nice guy involved, what else can you do) at the counter. The boyfriend went along but while leaving went "Well, on the other hand, when it's full of people...", in a sudden strike of reason. And nice guy looking and the sky thinking, the are so foolish they do not remotely guess that I kept at a distance especially because I had to attend to business, hours before, in the biggest epicenter city of the epidemic. Now: if society thinks that combating and preventing foolery is not a priority...

[SantalBlush]

Yes, probability distributions have two tails, but you can't just assume they're the same size. If you know what the probability distribrution of unvaccinated people is w.r.t. precautionary measures they take, then I'd love to see it. But my bet is that you don't have any actual data on it, and you're just making assumptions.

edit: To be clear, I don't know what the distribution looks like either, but I'm not assuming the average unvaccinated person takes other precautions. I don't think we can confidently say that.

[mdp2021]

> you can't just assume they're the same size

I did not. I am stating: one can not assume that the set of the unvaccinated who take strong precautions against the infection is negligible. As I wrote, it would be irrational: those who are hesitant about the vaccine for health reasons must also be very wary about being infected - plain logic. Many are are hesitant about the vaccine for health reasons, so they must also be very wary about being infected, if not insane.

I would not call what I have made and again follows 'assumptions': positively both tail exist, that is easy to prove (as above. We do not need to prove the other tail, it is evident and loud). I do not know what benefit is brought by drawing proportions. I am not sure what gain we get by assessing the average.

In fact - but this brings us elsewhere -, I am already extremely diffident towards the opinions of the average. I believe by experience that the distribution also of intellectual resources is in general paretian. I start already by believing that Average Joe and Median Jack "will be a mess". But of course, given that, I also insist that the average and median cannot be representative of the whole.

So, for example, calibrating policies on the median would be a Procuste's bed for the healthy part. "Please open your purse Sir, and let me check your items: the median customer is a shoplifter" - I am very wary of this kind of perspective, I have met it instanced many times in my life. This is also in the area of what I meant with «fallacies of generalization at rights».