[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]

If 10% or 20% weren't following the rules, it'd probably be fine.

However, because COVID in the US is a political thing, it's easily 30%+ of americans that aren't "following the rules". In my state of Idaho, there were rallies to get together and burn masks. [1]

Have you ever heard of mask burning rallies in either Japan or Australia?

It's not political in most nations. This is primarily a US problem.

Anecdotally, at the height of COVID compliance in Idaho I never saw > 50% masking participation.

[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/08/mask-burning-idaho-or...

[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...

[cogman10]

> 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.

What "rights" are is muddy. I'm not proposing an outright quarantine. Nobody is. However, I thought it prudent to point out that the "quarantining of healthy individuals" is not unique or unjustified. Your previous comment suggested that all quarantines are human rights violations.

However, what I see from all medical experts is social distancing, masking, and getting vaccination. Those are the "rights" being infringed on at the moment.

At one point, the CDC did recommend that someone vaccinated didn't need to mask up. Unfortunately, that changed with Delta as you correctly point out.

A vaccine + mask would be highly effective at stopping the spread of delta.

[angelzen]

Perpetually quarantining certain classes of people is abject tyranny. Worse, the line is muddy: there are false positives (unvaccinated, but with solid post-covid immunity) and false negatives (vaccinated, but with breakthrough infections). Doing a 40 day isolation to see if there is an active outbreak is completely different than isolation in perpetuity: 'you don't have a right to participate in the public'.

I have yet to see medical evidence that vaccinating under 20s, for which the risk of covid-infection complications are vanishingly small, has significant positive effects for them. There are people that have already got covid, and their immunity to covid is much stronger than that of mRNA vaccinated people (see the OP article). These 2 classes of unvaccinated people should not be forced to undertake an unnecessary medical procedure with an unclear long-term risk profile.

Covid is endemic, there is no path to ZeroCovid. Thus population-level arguments are uncompelling: we are all going to be exposed to one or more covid strains during our lifetime. Given how post-infection immunity is strong (see the OP article), the bulk of the argument comes down to how to manage the first exposure.

Riddle me out: There are vaccines, they work really well, I am vaccinated, you probably are vaccinated. Vaccinate your loved ones. We are safe, to the extent of mRNA vaccines are long-term safe. Why do you have to insist that everyone has to take them, to the extent of proposing abject tyranny to accomplish this goal? What are you afraid of?

Not a rhetorical question, I stumbled upon an intriguing piece recently: https://thestoa.substack.com/p/ontological-flooding-towards-...

> The fears that come online for the COVID thesis: I fear dying from the virus and being responsible for the death of others. I also fear being called dumb for not understanding the science and shamed for being called a bad person by failing to act in ways that would protect others.

> The fears that come online for the COVID antithesis: I fear losing freedoms and giving my power away to top-down control structures that can slip into totalitarianism. I also fear being societally segregated and persecuted by those scapegoating me for this mess.

(If it wasn't clear yet, I also worry about a medical covid antithesis: for <20s, getting the mRNA vaccines is unnecessary and potentially long-term worse than doing nothing.)

[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.

[nybble41]

How did you read that into my comment? There certainly are human rights. The UDHR just doesn't protect them nearly as well as it should. Eliminating the limitations that articles 29 and 30 impose on the rights enumerated in the rest of the document would be a good start, along with certain other contradictions (articles 22, 23, 24, 25, 26.1-2, 27.2, and 28—you can't have a natural right to services which someone else would have to provide to you; that implies slavery, which is contrary to article 4) and some irrelevant commentary (articles 13.3, 25.2) about the authors' preferences about how society is organized which has no bearing on human rights. But the first 20 articles are mostly fine. They should have just stopped there.

[angelzen]

Sorry. I quoted a somewhat non-controversial source, then didn't pick up that you were rightfully describing that UDHR is weak, not prescribing that human rights are obsolete unless we all just take the vaccine.