[jlmorton]

What is the harm?

"I'm very worried about getting Covid, but I'm also worried about the vaccine, so I'll get Covid to protect me against Covid?"

This is an important public health topic to model how the pandemic proceeds as more and more are naturally infected.

[deelowe]

That's exactly it. Almost everyone in my immediate family is more concerned about getting the vaccine than they are covid. And this is AFTER someone in the family has died from it. It is extremely concerning how bad this has gotten. My own mother literally had a panic attack after getting her first shot. My kids' school administrators are making decisions based on these illogical conclusions. I have had school staff tell me that it's best that they all go ahead and get covid. They compared it to chicken pox parties from the 80s. When I mentioned shingles, they told me that was a different disease. I have an at risk child at home. My tolerance for stupidity is waning.

I'm afraid the general publicly is woefully underequipped to engage in nuanced discussions around this topic. They need simple and clear instructions.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I wish I was more surprised about how easily covid made people rationalize authoritarianism.

[Buttons840]

The heart of the issue, and the one we seem most unable to talk about productively is "I'm worried about the vaccine".

[sjg007]

In Minnesota 645k people had covid and 7k died. In contrast 3M are vaccinated and basically nobody has died from the vaccine. In the US 363M vaccine doses have been given and about 7k may have died from vaccination side effects vs 628k who have died from covid from covid.

So the vaccine is safe and effective.

[acituan]

No one in this forum says otherwise.

But you miss human emotions 101: If someone tells you they are worried about something, you don’t throw facts at them as the first thing. You ask them to tell more about their emotions, hear them and make them feel heard. They might as well be missing factual data (as the case with vaccine hesitating folks) but their emotions are real, and unless they are treated as a person they’d be close to influence because they are in a skeptic, anxious state to begin with.

Often people barge in like performing an exorcism expecting the power of data compelling the “possessed” demonized other to the “light”. Such vilification is a self-fulfilling process.

[sjg007]

You are more likely to get hurt or die in car accident on the way to get your vaccine then from the vaccine itself. After that car accident when you are in the hospital recovering you will probably get covid there.

[acituan]

I don't see the relevance of your point. Perhaps you replied to the wrong thread or misunderstood what you've read?

[sjg007]

The point is to translate it into a related human experience vs "throwing out a bunch of numbers and data".

[angelzen]

Vaccine protection is weakening over time (boosters), mutations evading the vaccine are around the corner (Pfizer CEO), epidemiological profile is vastly different between <20 and >70. There are 4 other coronaviruses kids get exposed to when young with no vaccine and naturally build immunity for it for a lifetime.

Over 30: Take the vaccine and hope for the best.

Under 20:

a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges.

b. Don't take the vaccine and build wide spectrum immunity to infections from covid family. Considering that the risk of complications from covid infection for this age group is in the same ballpark as the flu.

[CarelessExpert]

> a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges.

First, this is deeply deeply misleading, to the point of being misinformation. The idea that a version of COVID will pop out that renders the current vaccines completely useless is founded in nothing but alarmist speculation. Could it happen? Maybe. But we have a virus now that's known to be dangerous, for which we have a vaccine that's very effective. To not take that vaccine, now, based on this speculative fear is completely nonsensical.

Second, it's a false dichotomy:

c. Take the vaccine, get a mild breakthrough case of covid later that builds even stronger protection.

[angelzen]

This is also a possibility. The open scenario is: take the vaccine, don't get a breakthrough case (vaccines work as intended and quickly suppress it), but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on.

If there is more information on the long-term behavior of the immune system conditioned on vaccines and/or natural immunity and/or mutations, please share. My understanding is that nobody has a complete understanding and a reliable prediction model. Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark, though I am very open to learn more from credible sources.

[CarelessExpert]

> Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark,

We are absolutely not.

Are there many things we don't know about the function of the immune system?

Sure.

Are we "in the dark"? This couldn't be more incorrect, and again, borders on deeply misleading misinformation.

Frankly, this smells a lot like the kind of climate change denial we used to hear. i.e., because there was uncertainty, we therefore can trust nothing and know nothing. And that "logic" was just as flawed, then, as it is now.

[sjg007]

Umm. Presumably you've had the chickenpox vaccine, the TDAP vaccine, and a bunch of others as a kid as a condition to go to school. These have been well studied for decades.

> but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on.

This is a redherring.

This would be the equivalent to have never encountered covid and getting infected by that variant then. So you know maybe a new kid born in the next few months or something.

It'd also be equivalent to someone getting chemo that wipes out their immune system and now gets covid after they recover.

[CyanLite2]

Some folks are looking for any excuse to not get the vaccine.

[aww_dang]

I'm not sure the specific rationalizations are as relevant as the moral questions.

Do individuals have a right to their own body?

Does a collective or a technocrat have a right to coerce an individual into a medical procedure?

If we answer "yes" to the second question, only then does it become relevant because we must next ask:

Is there a limit to what a collective or technocrat can medically impose upon an individual, where and why do we draw this line?

[cogman10]

> Do individuals have a right to their own body?

Insofar as their rights don't impact the rights of others.

Individuals have a right to drink alcohol. They do not have a right to then drive a car.

Vaccination by mandate is an extension of that reasoning. You have a right not to get vaccinated, but you don't have a right to participate in the public. Because restricting public interaction is neigh impossible (Even with imprisonment) the lesser of the two evils is mandated vaccination.

> Is there a limit to what a collective or technocrat can medically impose upon an individual, where and why do we draw this line?

Yes, communicable illnesses prevention. That's the line. It's something that seems to have been lost on the modern era. It was not controversial 50, 100, or 150+ years ago to quarantine people with disease by force of government (but often just voluntarily). This notion that there is no public interest in disease prevention and instead it's a "individual choice" is modern. Likely due to the advances in medicine, ironically vaccination, that have weakened the effects of most diseases.

I dislike this moral pearl clutching. Perhaps it's because I'm more morally a utilitarian.

At the end of the day, the harm caused by vaccination is next to 0 for almost all the population. The small percentage with adverse reactions is a small price to pay for society to work in general. The alternative is a lot more harm that we are currently seeing from the covid deaths.

[aww_dang]

Thanks for your response.

>It was not controversial 50, 100, or 150+ years ago to quarantine people

However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.

There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

>At the end of the day, the harm caused by vaccination is next to 0 for almost all the population. The small percentage with adverse reactions is a small price to pay for society...

And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.

> The alternative is a lot more harm that we are currently seeing from the covid deaths.

I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.

[kiba]

However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.

These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate. These methods work best if we work together. Because some people chose to ignore measures, it means we're prolonging the misery.

There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

Because the least vulnerable and healthy population can spread diseases to the obese and the elderly.

Exercise is a useful health intervention. It's also not very effective for losing weight. It's also the government's fault that we are obese to begin with, because the governments are responsible for urban design, dietary and market regulation.

I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.

It is unclear to me why only partial quarantine would be useful. It just means that the virus are spreading among the healthy. The moment we stop the quarantine, the moment people starts dying.

[AndrewBissell]

> These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate.

In what sense is this not an unfalsifiable hypothesis? Are cases exploding in Japan because of the 1% of people who don't wear masks in public there? Are Australia and New Zealand trapped in dystopian house arrest because there are just boatloads of degenerates who won't follow the rules?

What the hell good is a public health intervention if it requires an impossibly perfect 100% level of compliance to even work? And crumbles to pieces the second you relax the restriction?

[cogman10]

> There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly.

The studies are still out, but early reports are showing that delta is hitting more than just the old and the fat [1].

In particular, pregnant woman seem to be at particularly high risk of death. [2]

The problem with these communicable disease is they can mutate. Delta appears to be breaking a lot of the older assumptions about who is at risk. Perhaps that's because the older population is better vaccinated than the younger population and delta is just more deadly for all.

> If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.

Further, it will take months/years to lose enough weight to eventually move out of the risk category for COVID. A vaccine takes minutes.

> And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.

The trust problem is precisely from propaganda. It's because, frankly, Trump kept saying "fake news" and casting doubt on experts without a shred of evidence backing his assertions. Pushing untested and unproven medications which ultimately spawned the "ivermectin" crowd which is now taking horse dewormer to try and combat covid.

The deficit because an autocrat got power and pulled the typical move of an autocrat.

The experts have been straight through covid. It's the yellow journalists and russian interference [3] that have been spitting out mistrust where none existed previously.

[1] https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/younger-people-in...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-icus-doctor...

[3] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

[aww_dang]

>Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.

Yes, but under your theory of collectivism, we all have a responsibility to protect these obese individuals via authoritarian measures. Therefore, if they were not obese, we would not be burdened by the collective responsibility they impose upon us.

I'm disappointed that you've brought Trump into the discussion. I'm not a fan of the political classes as a rule, so it pains me to defend him here. He was recently panned for recommending the vaccine to his followers at a rally in Alabama.

As for autocracy, it seems a bit ironic to level this accusation in a discussion defending authoritarian lockdowns and medical interventions.

If you can't see any other problems with the mainstream political landscape outside of your focus on Mr. Trump, then there's really nothing more to say here. I could cite Iraqi WMD, Snowden's revelations, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the lab leak controversy or a number of other incidents, but it seems futile at this point.

When you play the Trump card you reveal your hand as a partisan.

[angelzen]

Wild.

'you don't have a right to participate in the public'.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 13.1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

'quarantine people with disease'.

This is an elementary precaution that everyone, vaccinated or not, should voluntarily take at symptom onset. Not only for covid, but for flu as well. However, preemptively restricting the rights of healthy people, just because they may eventually catch a disease, is unheard of.

[cogman10]

> However, preemptively restricting the rights of healthy people, just because they may eventually catch a disease, is unheard of.

It is not. In fact, most quarantines take exactly that form where entire households, communities, or in the extreme case cities are locked down. [1]

COVID is unique in that it is both more deadly and more infectious than the flu. That's why the measures have been so extreme. They are warranted.

Further, COVID has the major issue that a large number of people are asymptomatic. It doesn't work to say "Well, just have people feeling sick stay home" when a large number of people that are spreading the disease don't even know they have it. [2]

> 'you don't have a right to participate in the public'.

I was perhaps unclear, I mean "being infected with a disease removes your right to participate in public". Without the disease modifier, yes, you have a right to public interaction. Just like you have a right to drive without the drunk modifier.

In any event, even the UN agrees that quarantining seemingly healthy people in the face of covid isn't a human rights violation. [3]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html

[2] https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-deta...

[3] https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/guidance_on_quaran...

[angelzen]

'quarantine' comes from Italian 'quarantina': ‘forty days’. It's not 'persempre'. By its very name it implies a time limited action.

Link 3 does not support your point: 'The term “quarantine” refers to the separation and restriction of movement of non-sick persons to see if they become sick.'. There is no blanket support for indefinite restriction of rights.

Furthermore, the 'line' is muddy. Vaccines are only 66% effective against delta. This means that 33% of vaccinated people are, under your definition, walking public health risks that may catch covid and start shedding virus in the population. Thus we should also indefinitely quarantine vaccinated people.

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021082...

[nybble41]

Don't forget:

Article 29. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. ... In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. ... These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Which between them basically nullify articles 1 though 28 to the extent that the infringement can be justified on the basis of "morality" or "public order" or "duties the community"… which is how governments aiming to present themselves as anything more than petty criminal gangs have always justified violating human rights, with or without the UDHR.

Regarding the original quote, though:

> you don't have a right to participate in the public

You do have a right to participate in the public—or more precisely, no one has the right to stop you from interacting voluntarily with whichever members of the public you choose, so long as the other parties consent to the interaction. However, if that participation in the public leads to you getting someone else sick through your own negligence or reckless disregard for others' welfare then you are morally responsible for the consequences of that infection and liable to make the injured party whole, or as close to whole as they can possibly get. Ergo, you ought to take steps to ensure that doesn't happen, for example though vaccination, for your own sake as well as others'.

[angelzen]

Got it. There are no human rights. Thanks for spelling it out for the rest of us.

[polote]

And so what ? We should lie so that they take it ?

[actually_a_dog]

You appear to believe it would be immoral to lie to people to get them to take the vaccine. I don't believe anti-vaxxers want to die from COVID. Is it not also immoral to allow people who don't wish to die to die needlessly? It would seem to be a "lesser of two evils" sort of situation, and, in that case, the harm of lying is probably less than the harm of allowing people to die senselessly.

[sleavey]

I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government. I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.

I suggest, if you are unfamiliar with his work, that you read up on Kant's categorical imperative, in particular his absolute prohibition against lying. He argues that lying, even noble lying, is bad because it dehumanises the ones being lied to. If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.

[actually_a_dog]

> I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government.

Completely understandable, and, I agree.

> I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.

Regarding "can always govern by telling the truth," that's demonstrably untrue. For instance, there is such a thing as classified information for a reason (that reason ostensibly being national security). Yes, this does get abused at times, but that's not an argument that the government should not classify any information. Given your reference to Kant, I don't necessarily expect you to find this persuasive, but, I wager many reasonable people would.

> ...Kant's categorical imperative....

I am actually familiar, but I reject the logic of it. It's... well... too categorical. I can't accept a principle that forbids me to take an action that may save a life. For example, I would be prohibited from hiding someone in my home who's being pursued by people who want to kill them, if the pursuers asked me directly where that person was.

> If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.

I agree with this, but I reject the idea that not following the categorical imperative at all times necessarily deprives anyone of any right.

[sleavey]

The Murderer at the Door hypothetical is commonly mentioned in response to Kant, but I don't think this serves as reason to reject the overall thesis. Kant also said that there is no right for someone to obtain information from another against their will. You don't need to tell someone who comes to your house looking for someone they plan to harm that they are there. You simply tell them they have no right to know who is in your house, and that they should bugger off! In the context of the current discussion, the government doesn't have the moral duty to reply to requests for classified information, they simply say they cannot provide classified information. If the public are unsatisfied with that answer, they need to vote them out.

Now I understand that, stretched to extremes, Kant's theory gets rather tricky to defend, such as a hypothetical situation of a Nazi coming to your house to ask if you are harbouring Jews he plans to kill. But Kant and others since have argued ways to deal with such situations too, though I must admit I haven't studied their arguments in detail and wouldn't do them justice to try to paraphrase. But I don't think we're really dealing with such a high stakes situation in the context of this discussion, so I think "lower order" arguments in favour of Kant (like mine) suffice. This is something I expect you'll disagree with given your response.

Coming back to the original context of governments lying to people to get them to have vaccines: I think it's possible to do huge damage to public trust in government and science if lies are told for the (always subjective) "greater good", even if the immediate outcome is positive. Governments should understand Kant.

P.S. thanks for your level headed response, it's refreshing and rare to see in threads that discuss COVID.

P.P.S. sometimes it needs to be said explicitly: I am open to changing my views on this if I hear a convincing argument.